Transcript:
You are as I mentioned, a leadership development strategist and you lead what? You lead individuals, you lead business leaders? Tell me a little bit about what you do.
Judy Lair: Sure, so I have the distinction of being both a licensed, professional clinical counselor and a certified coach and within that certified coach designation then I use my leadership development strategist skills, but I’ve been a counselor for 15 years at my own private practice. I’ve had lots of leaders on the other side of the couch. And-
David Brower: Right.
Judy Lair: also lots of the people that are complaining about the leaders.
David Brower: That makes perfect sense.
Judy Lair: On the couch.
David Brower: Yeah. Absolutely.
Judy Lair: Yep. So that-
David Brower: What’s really interesting is if you have a leader from one company and an employee from the same company that would be a little challenging, wouldn’t it?
Judy Lair: Yeah, I’ve had that. Yes, I have. I’m pretty good at negotiating around all of what I do know and don’t know and all that kind of thing.
David Brower: Understood. Underst-
Yeah, I have a counselor that I enjoy and she’s the same. She’s the same way. So, private practice for 15 years or so and then what brought you into this leadership arena?
Judy Lair: Well, my years as a clinical counselor gave me a really extensive understanding of relationships and how that affects people, so I wanted to move into the coaching arena because actually so many of my management and leadership clients begged me. Begged me to come into their workplaces.
David Brower: Wow.
Judy Lair: To find a way to get the same message that I was talking about in terms of understanding insight, understanding the roots of what’s going on underneath the surface, especially relationally that helps with complex skills because leaders are primary influencers. Their influence is what makes the difference between success and not meeting goals. So they need to learn how to create a vision, chart a course, bring their team on board and manage all the complex problems and barriers to get the job done. And most of that has to do with relationships. So that’s where I feel like that my counseling background can come to play and give me some insight and teach each other people how to have insight into where the barriers and hurdles are.
David Brower: How fun is that? That’s got to be great fun and I’m sure you’re learning something each and every time with a different leader, right?
Judy Lair: Yeah, absolutely. I was a litigation paralegal for a bunch of years. I’ve done a lot of things. And the cool thing about that like with coaching is that each case or each client brings a whole new world to me. I learn absolutely new things about different industries or different ways that leadership programs or training programs or how people try to get their team on board and team dynamics within certain companies. I get to see all of that which adds to my ability to have more tools and more ways that I can help each further client that comes along.
David Brower: So you’re not only an advocate, a teacher, but you’re also a student.
Judy Lair: Yes, always.
David Brower: Yeah.
Judy Lair: Always.
David Brower: Good for you. Good for you. So you have Leading From Insight Format. Tell me about that.
Judy Lair: The Leading From Insight Format came about when I was reading recent research that talked about how leadership training programs are failing the leaders. I have all sorts of research that talks about that the way that the horizontal method of just teaching skills and individual focus methods and just learn something really isn’t working, which we can see a lot of stories in the news recently-
David Brower: Yep.
Judy Lair: About some leaders that are not doing a very good job.
David Brower: Right, right.
Judy Lair: Exactly and that’s because leadership development training often does not teach the types of skills that they need. It’s like trying to download a bunch of new software programs and install them and use them all at once in your computer. An internal combustion happens and shut down occurs and you can’t access what you need when you need it.
David Brower: [crosstalk 00:05:11]
Judy Lair: You go to a wonderful seminar and you know on conflict resolution, David, and then you’re in the midst of a heated battle between a couple team members. Are you gonna go remember that three step way of dealing with conflict?
David Brower: No.
Judy Lair: At that point in time? No, you’re not. So we-
David Brower: No, you’re not. I managed radio stations for a long time and so I would go to these conferences that are identical to what you’re talking about and we would all talk about what happens three days later because we didn’t remember anything.
Judy Lair: Exactly. That’s because what you’re doing is horizontal training. You’re just having a bunch of new software trying to be installed. You’re trying to access when you need it. What are-
David Brower: So how does your vertical training work then?
Judy Lair: You stop training and you start developing. So development is a process. A systemic response to change. There’s so much change in the world right now that we have to be able to learn how to confidently navigate our team and our business through the anxiety and uncertainty and ambiguity with change. You also have to have emotional quotient training, expand your mindset and really work on relationship buildings because what’s coming into place now in businesses is more of a collaborative type of hierarchy.
David Brower: Right.
Judy Lair: You know, it’s flattening out. And those are skills that a number of folks who’ve been in the workplace for a long time really don’t understand that way of interacting with folks and be able to be collaborative and part of a team instead of the top down. So with insight what I help folks do is be able to stop and understand both what’s being said on the surface, but also to be able to think, okay there’s something going on underneath. How do I ask enough questions of them that I’m getting this intuitive, uh-oh. You know danger signal.
David Brower: Right.
Judy Lair: Something’s going on and then have a set of questions and guideline format to help the other person and their team figure out what actually at the bottom of the problems. The root of the problem and then that you can be more strategic in problem solving and figuring it.
David Brower: So how do you and I know from personal experience there’s a lot of leaders out there especially old school types and people in general really who just cannot handle change in any way shape or form and whether it’s fear, which is probably right. Or whatever it is. Learned behavior. This is the way I’ve always done it. That kind of stuff. How do you break through those kind of tough barriers?
Judy Lair: That’s where inspiration comes in. Inspiring your team to see the value in what they bring. So even if someone feels like that they’re only good in one area or doing it one particular way. A really good leader can find a way to say I see the value in what you’re doing and let’s just take what you can do and let’s just tweek it, move it over in this area a little bit and this is how it will help the whole. That’s the alignment piece. So help the whole company or the whole business or the whole goal, but it also helps you and you want to grow. I know you want to grow. I know that you want to see.
So it’s that leadership piece of inspiring others to get on board and really want to see their own personal goals met when they grow and change a little bit and see that they can take what they’re good at, but also maybe just expand it or use it in a little different way when they see the whole picture.
David Brower: And so I love that because it not only helps the employee because it gives them some trust from their employer, some freedom to kinda put their toes in the water a little bit, but the payoff back to the employer’s got to be just tremendous.
Judy Lair: Yes, absolutely. It goes beyond the, “Oh, well I’m only here for a paycheck,” or “The employer only wants me to make the bottom line for them.” You get this alignment of both goals and then it’s good for everybody.
David Brower: Absolutely. Wow. I love that. I know you’ve had hundreds, thousands, whatever experiences in this arena. What’s been one of your most challenging situations.
Judy Lair: Well, I had a gal that was going into a buyout. The company that she was in bought out another company in a different state and she was the person that was sent to that new company to try and get everybody on board. And try to-
David Brower: Oh wow.
Judy Lair: Get them oh, we’re all happy we got bought, which is not to happen.
David Brower: Wow. Yeah.
Judy Lair: And so we talked through and role played through how she would go about doing that and her first thought was, you know what? I’m just gonna be firm and cut and dry and I’m gonna go in and I’m gonna tell ’em and this is the way it’s gonna be from now forward and I’m the boss and you’re gonna do this. And I go whoa. Whoa.
David Brower: Self destruct.
Judy Lair: Yeah. That is not gonna work at all.
David Brower: Yeah.
Judy Lair: So the part of insight was for me to role reverse and say all those things back to her and she’s feeling empathetically what I’m sure everybody else in the room would have felt and then have her talk about well, what message did you hear and how does that make you want to be on board or not and what do you do with your job now and she was able to sort of understand it that way. And then we talked about how she languaged and crafted after she listened.
She stopped and she listened and said, “So you all have been doing this for a long time on your end. I could learn something from you. Tell me more about what you’ve done so we can make this the best merger that there is.” Instead of going in and telling ’em what’s going on.
David Brower: I got goosebumps on that one. That … if nobody takes anything away from this 20 minute conversation take that nugget away. You know-
Judy Lair: Yes.
David Brower: You’ve got two ears, you got one mouth, use them proportionately and the role playing aspect, I’ve always believed in role-playing. I think that fixes a lot of cures.
Judy Lair: Yes, it does. To sit in somebody’s else’s shoes and use not only your cognitive you know, I know this and that, but how does it feel that helps you go down into that intuitive insightful place where in our humanity and I also like you, feel that God talks to us in there, and we just get more information that way.
David Brower: No question about it and I love the relationship part of this because back in the day when I was managing a group of stations my last journey into that, I felt like I was blessed to be able to navigate those kinds of things. And my competitors in town, without trying to judge them, I felt they weren’t able to do that because they were more focused on the bottom line and here’s the numbers and again I was blessed to be able to go well, hey team. What are we going to do? What’s going to happen here? What’s going to happen there? What? And just give people freedom to succeed and I gotta tell you, I got more payoffs from that than I thought humanly possible.
Judy Lair: I absolutely agree with you. When people know that we care about helping them maximize their own potential.
David Brower: Right.
Judy Lair: The potential of who they are as person. Calling that out and giving them opportunity to really grow in that, they return that 10 fold.
David Brower: Absolutely. Have you had the experience of your clients from years back reaching out to you and thanking you for what you taught them?
Judy Lair: I have a huge box of thank you cards and they constantly come and they’re handwritten. I mean-
David Brower: Wow.
Judy Lair: I get emails too.
David Brower: Wow.
Judy Lair: But I have a huge box of handwritten cards that say my life is really different because you taught me to look at things differently and I walked out every single time saying, “Man, I never saw it that way before,” and that makes all the difference.
David Brower: And that’s gotta be, probably one of the most repeated lines that you hear a lot, right? Is I’ve never looked at it that way before.
Judy Lair: That one and wow Judy, this is really creepy you know what’s going on in my head.
David Brower: I love that even better.
Judy Lair: Yep.
David Brower: Oh, my gosh and you’ve written some books. You’ve got what? Four books? And, of course, you do guest speaking opportunities and all kinds of workshops and conferences and stuff, but tell me a little bit about your books.
Judy Lair: Yep, my books, I’ve written from the counseling perspective so the first one is called “From the Other Side of the Couch,” and I really believe in showing my clients that I’ve walked the same road that I’m talking to them about. And so that book is fully about what I learned from my journey on the counseling side of the couch, which then led me to really fill a call to be on the counselor’s side of the couch and so all of the model about how you critique your beliefs. How you vent your feelings in a way that you gather information out of it so that then the way you live life is not a base of rules and shoulds and supposed tos, but it’s a really engaged relational approach to life as you walk through it.
So all of that model is “From the Other Side of the Couch” and then I did a series called “Moving from Fear to Freedom” and that one is ongoing, but the three that I have in that right now is a book on stress and worry, a book on generalized anxiety disorder and a book on obsessive-compulsive disorder.
David Brower: Oh, my gosh.
Judy Lair: Yep. They’re all written. That’s my main area of practice actually. I’m one of the main people here in the state of Ohio that understands, literally understands, what’s going on in people’s brains with the obsessive-compulsive piece of it. So I wrote the book from almost like a parable, you know?
David Brower: Yeah. Yeah.
Judy Lair: Where a story of a quote, client and her life story and how the generalized anxiety or obsessive-compulsive part affected her and then I go in to explaining sort of a little more clinically how I addressed that and give tips on how people suffering from that could look at it from themselves so they get the full picture.
David Brower: Wow. You and I need to do another podcast on that.
Judy Lair: Yes. I agree.
David Brower: I would love to that. Yeah, because one of the things that I run into the most in talking with people and, of course, myself from time to time. One of the biggest hurdles is fear.
Judy Lair: Understanding, underneath there, we generally most folks only have one or two really core harp fears that just come and grab them in different ways and manifest in different ways, but if you really understand what your core underlying fears are, then you understand what holds you back from just about everything. Mine growing up was always that I would be in trouble. Just like a little kid, “Oh no, I’m gonna be in trouble,” you know?
David Brower: Yeah.
Judy Lair: And I never really got that fully worked through until I was on the other side of couch.
David Brower: Yeah.
Judy Lair: And recognize where that came from, was able to use a process to really speak into that over time because it’s not just something that you cognitively recognize, oh, well, I guess I won’t do that anymore.
David Brower: Right. Right.
Judy Lair: It doesn’t work that way. You have to have somebody walk alongside you in the process of having it like grip you and panic you and then to help say remember this. Remember what’s true. Remember this is the present not the past and all of that to walk through it to get victory over time in it.
David Brower: Oh, my gosh. All right, we got two more podcasts to do.
Judy Lair: All right. I love this stuff. I am so blessed to be able to talk with folks every single day and help bring freedom.
David Brower: Yeah.
Judy Lair: Into their life so they can walk out all of their potential. I am so blessed. I cannot believe that I get to do this every day.
David Brower: Well, and your email is loveandinspire@gmail.com and that speaks volumes because that’s who you are.
Judy Lair: Yes.
David Brower: You are indeed blessed and I am blessed to have you on the show today and tell people how they can reach out to you.
Judy Lair: I have a free e-book called “Getting Your Team on Board.” And you can go to my website at judylaircoach, that’s j-u-d-y-l-a-i-r coach.com/team and you can get your free “Getting Your Team on Board” e-book and then I’ll send you some more free leadership resources.
David Brower: Outstanding and, of course, you’re all over social media with LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.
Judy Lair: Yep.
David Brower: And if they go to your website judylaircoach, again j-u-d-y-l-a-i-r coach.com, they’ve got access to all that stuff, right?
Judy Lair: Absolutely.
David Brower: Judy, you are a gift. Thank you so much for taking the time today.
Judy Lair: Thank you, David.