0:00:00.0 Wayne Brown:Hello. I’m your host Wayne Brown and welcome to the ET Project. We’re delighted to be delivering this podcast for executive talent all over the world. Whom we’re affectionately referring to as team ET. Today we find ourselves cutting down on our travel costs by engaging with yet another guest in the same location as our previous episode that’s in Seattle Washington State USA. This time we’re very happy to welcome Mr. Eric Girard to the show.

0:00:58.5 WB:Eric is a very experienced and accomplished learning and development professional who specializes in management and employee development with over 30 years of helping improve the performance of managers and employees. His current focus is on new managers and helping them transition successfully to their role while making their teams as effective as possible. Eric has a highly engaging facilitation style and through his company Girard Training Solutions has designed, developed and delivered leadership management and employee training for multiple well-known large corporations in high tech, academia, advertising, healthcare, and education.

0:01:12.9 WB:He has successfully delivered training and improved performance in locations all around the world. London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Paris, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Shanghai, Bangalore, even Cook Island as well as all over the United States. Eric holds a large number of certifications, qualifications, and achievements, which we will include in our show notes. For now, it’s best that we get started. So team ET brace yourself for this conversation with our guest Mr. Eric Girard. In the episode titled, An Educators Guide for Success As a new manager.

0:01:50.5 Speaker 2:Welcome to the ET project a podcast for those executive talents determined to release their true potential and create an impact. Join our veteran coach and mentor Wayne Brown as we unpack an exciting future together.

0:02:04.2 WB:All right. Well, welcome back team ET. Welcome to another week and it’s great to have you with us again. We’ve got a really interesting guest with us. As I always say but it’s very true, Eric Girard, Eric’s LND professional, let’s put it that way. You’ve done so much in the learning development space, Eric, over the space of several decades. And I’m really looking forward to digging into some of that background and understanding who you are a little bit more. But welcome to the ET project. Great to have you on board with us.

0:02:41.1 Eric Girard:Thank you very much. I’m glad to be here Wayne.

0:02:44.1 WB:Let’s start with a little bit of background about who you are and what you’ve been doing and what brought you to this moment in time.

0:02:51.6 EG:Background. I’ll try to keep it short. I’ve been in learning and development my entire career, which is over 30 years now. And I spent 20 years of that in Silicon Valley working at places like Apple, applied Materials, Nutanix, Symantec. So I’ve worked at some pretty heavy hitters in Silicon Valley. And in 2020 during the pandemic, my wife and I said, you know what, Silicon Valley is crazy. Let’s up and move. And so we moved, I started my business my wife started a side hustle and got a new job and we bought a house and I became a SCUBA instructor all during the pandemic all during 2020.

0:03:29.3 WB:Wow.

0:03:29.3 EG:And so since then I’ve been focused all on management development and helping new managers transition from being great individual contributors to great people managers.

0:03:38.4 WB:So you went north I believe. So you’re sitting up in Washington at the moment and.

0:03:42.4 EG:Yeah. So Silicon Valley is roughly in the middle of the state on the coast and I’m now off the coast or across the sound from Seattle.

0:03:52.5 WB:But you’ve got big brother up there, Microsoft sitting up in Seattle still I believe. So you haven’t totally moved away from the IT scene and the high tech. So if I look at your background, Eric you’ve been in L&D as you’ve said, but you’ve had the opportunity to work around the world delivering, facilitating programs in multiple countries. What was the experience for you?

0:04:16.7 EG:I love traveling. The older I get the less I like jet lag, but I love traveling and I love experiencing new places and I love experiencing new food. One of my favorite experiences was I was teaching in Malaysia and the hotel I was in had an amazing food court. So I was there for a week and ate a different cuisine for every meal. And yeah, I gained 10 pounds in a week. I loved it. But it’s really fun to see how some of the wisdom that I grew up with as far as learning styles and adult learning theory hold the same regardless of where you are. And then at the same time there are also cultural differences. And so that’s also been fascinating to learn and to be able to weave in with my experience with cross-cultural consulting.

0:05:06.1 WB:Gosh I forgot about Malcolm Knowles, so I thank you for reminder on the adult learning therapy. I’ve had the good fortune to live around the world and experience multiple cultures. And hence the reason for the question, because I know when you go to some of these locations the way that the training or the facilitation is received takes a while to get used to, right? Some audiences are more engaging, some are very conservative and less outgoing, let’s put it that way and often a challenge. You do so many things. I was just looking at your bio a little bit earlier and you license create e-learnings. You are certified in so many different areas, situational leadership, you crucial conversations, crucial accounting, you’re a disc facilitator. You’ve got all these things. What do you find biggest challenge today when you set out to create a program for an organization?

0:06:05.1 EG:Yeah, you mentioned I’ve got all these certifications, so I’ve probably over certified myself, if I’m honest. I just, I love learning and I love keeping up on the latest and greatest. 

0:06:20.9 EG:One of these days that’ll, that’ll make the list. But the challenge I have is I’ve got access to all this good stuff and clients only have a certain amount of time and money, right? And so trying to get to understand clearly what the client needs, what their audience needs, and presenting that, rather than going to the toy box and saying, “oh, we could do this and we could do that like that.” That’s not helpful. Overloading a client is not a, not a good way to start. And so making sure to really do a good needs analysis and understand what’s needed by the folks on the ground is the most important part, I think.

0:07:00.3 WB:Yeah. I love that tip. I mean, working with so many facilitators, particularly those that are subject matter experts that are brought into share their knowledge, share their wisdom. They may have a thousand ideas in their toolbox and they try and deliver all of them in one day. And it’s just a disaster in the making. And so I think understanding exactly the need, as you’ve said, and being able to factor in the amount of time you to impart that knowledge and get that knowledge embedded. How do you go about helping people retain the knowledge?

0:07:40.4 EG:So I go back to something I learned in my first training job. So this is in 1992, and I was teaching people how to use the Mac and how to use windows back when the mouse was still new. So mice were fairly new devices in the workplace. And the mnemonic that I learned, or the mantra that I learned was tell, show, do. So I’m gonna tell you about it and then I’m gonna show you how to do it and then you’re gonna do it. And so I always keep my lectures minimum. I explain a concept, I’ll demonstrate the concept if it needs to demo, and then as soon as possible, I get participants to do it. So then you’re engaging as many learning styles as possible. So you’re getting the verbal the kinesthetic the folks who like to read the folks who like to see things trying to collapse as much of that as possible into a learning activity during the program.

0:08:33.9 EG:And then after the program, I always talk about the forgetting curve and the fact that the forgetting curve is a real thing. And sort of combat that, I ask folks to partner up with one or two other people that they’ve gotten to know through the program and make a coffee date right there in the room. So pull out your phones, make an appointment to get together within one calendar week, within seven calendar days to talk about what you learned and apply it and maybe make that a recurring meeting. It doesn’t have to be super long, 15 minutes over a cup of coffee, but just make sure that you do something with the information that you got ’cause otherwise it will vaporize. And one thing that I also don’t do anymore, remember training binders. You go to a class, you get a big thick binder. I don’t do binders anymore. If I print handouts, it’s a very thin handout with lots of room for notes. So I’m not printing books for people to reread. It’s just the basics and lots of room for them to write their insights.

0:09:31.7 WB:Oh, small workbook rather than handbook.

0:09:34.4 EG:Yeah.

0:09:34.8 WB:Yeah. Great advice. We were just talking before we hit record and we we’re talking about instructor led versus virtual instructor. The transition for many leaders today to conducting Zoom meetings like we’re on now, to being able to connect in our case, talking about facilitation. What have you found is the greatest challenge from a virtual perspective in trying to facilitate learning?

0:10:03.6 EG:The first thing that pops into my head is the technology there’s of course the fact that I’m trying to connect with you from a distance over a camera, over the internet. And you’re in a different country. So there’s all of that. But first principles, the technology I think is still glitchy. So I was just recording a podcast this morning with a woman who is in Mexico City, and we had to start and stop eight times because she kept freezing, she kept freezing and who knows where the problem was, whether it was in the software we were using, whether it was my end or her end, or something in between. So I think that the technology still creates a bottleneck and those glitches, those hangups differences in audio quality, differences in visual quality cause issues that then take away from learning and take away from bonding.

0:11:00.1 EG:And then add to that, the fact that I’m trying to have a connection with a human being, but the way I look you in the eyes is to look at my camera up there. You are down there.

0:11:11.3 WB:Exactly.

0:11:12.4 EG:But so look at you to look you in the eye. I have to look at a camera, which is not very engaging for me. So that’s it. It’s things like that that I think we’ll get better at. I have faith in the technology. It’s just gonna take some time. And it’s still, in my humble opinion, I still don’t think it’s gonna be as good as being in person with folks.

0:11:32.7 WB:I think the jury’s out on whether we’re ever going to transfer 100% to virtual. It’s definitely shifted a long way on the access towards virtual. But being old school myself, I’m very much a in-person facilitator. I miss that connection. I miss being able to see the whole person and read their whole body language, not just the upper half of the body. So there’s a few things that we lose in the transition. I think let’s transition there ourself to the topic that you are really passionate about, which is helping new managers transition. And as you rightly say, yesterday we were guardians of ourself and then all of a sudden we’re given this new role, this title of a manager, and we’re sort of now responsible for other people. And quite often that transition is so foreign that we just totally stuck. Where did you first put your, well, how did you come to put your focus on this specific area? What was the trigger made you into that?

0:12:40.2 EG:Yeah. Trigger’s a good word for it. So like many other folks, I was managed badly by new managers. So especially in Silicon Valley, folks who were peers of mine would be promoted. And they all had good intentions, but they were unprepared…

0:12:55.6 WB:Right…

0:12:58.1 EG:And maybe they got a little bit of an ego trip because it’s like, okay, I was one of them, now I’m the boss, so now I’m gonna do it my way. And without being properly prepared, to do things like change the mindset from doer to leader, learning how to set good goals, learning how to be a good coach without understanding how to do those things, folks made a mess. And my teammates and I suffered because of it. So I thought, there’s something there, let me think about that. Then when I got to applied materials, I got promoted, so I worked on a team of three, and then my boss promoted me without any training. He said, okay, now you’re leading these two, and oh by the way, one of them is a problem and I want them gone.

0:13:43.0 EG:So right away, I got sandbagged and had to manage out one of my team members. And because I wasn’t prepared, I made an absolute mess of that, I really did. And if I ever meet these people in person, again, I’m gonna apologize and grovel for being such a terrible manager. But when I walked away from that experience, I thought, never again. And I don’t want that to happen to anybody ever again. So that’s my origin story is having had it done to me, and then having done it to others, having committed the sin myself, I thought, you know what? I’m gonna make this my life’s work. So now I’ve done lots of reading, beside me is a stack of books, including one of my current favorites, the Coaching Habit by Michael Stanier. I think that every employee deserves great coaching, and it’s on the manager to do that coaching. And so, you don’t have to go and become ICF certified, you don’t have to go become a formal coach, but learn how to ask good thoughtful questions rather than telling. And that will improve your employees life a lot. So those are just some of the things that I’ve picked up over time, and I’ve decided, do you know what? I know enough about this now that I’m gonna make a business out of it, and so now here I am.

0:14:55.7 WB:Excellent. And we were just talking before you, sorry. You have an ebook that you’ve put out, which is correct. The title Advice for New Managers, basically, and you offer six tips or six steps to making that transition easier and better. Maybe we can go through those six briefly and just look at them, but, the first one you talk about is empathy. And you’re big on empathy, so I’d love to hear some of your insights around why believe it’s so important.

0:15:30.3 EG:Yeah. So not only is it the first chapter in the Ebook that I’m actually in the process of writing a proper book, that’s gonna be aimed at new managers. I have yet to decide on a title. I think I have one. But if folks wanna help me crowdsource the cover and the title of the book, I will take that help. But the first and longest chapter in the Ebook and in the proper book is about empathy. Because I think in the 2020s, we’re talking about this in 2023. In the 2020s, it’s so important for managers to understand, you know what? People are stressed, people are overwhelmed with all the things that are going on around the world. Like right now we’ve got Ukraine, we’ve got the debt ceiling, and the fact that we’re this close to a default with the United States debt.

0:16:21.3 EG:We’ve got, problems around the world. We’ve got the fact that COVID is gone, but not really gone, and then may be other things coming. COVID went away and got friends. That’s just what’s going on at a macro level. And then you got the fact that so many people have checked out of the workplace and have left. And so the people who are left in the workplace are completely overloaded. It’s a lot for any human being to handle, and so I think as a manager and as a leader, it’s important to have a little bit of empathy, not necessarily to become someone’s therapist, I wouldn’t say that, that’s what employee assistance programs are for.

0:17:00.8 EG:But to be at least be able to listen deeply and understand and say, listen, I hear you, I’m with you, I’m walking with you and together we’re gonna get through that. So I think that’s the first skill, and if you’re not a naturally empathetic person, it’s a skill that you can learn. There’s tons of books, Daniel Goldman wrote the seminal book on emotional intelligence, and there are other books that are not quite as dense as that book that you can pick up in any bookstore, that would help you learn emotional intelligence and learn how to be empathetic. So that then you can lead a group of people, through the ups and downs of corporate life or, organizational life and do that in a way that has people thinking, yeah, wow, this person has got my back and understands me.

0:17:47.6 WB:Transitioning is a second point that you highlight and you have five misconceptions that you highlight. We don’t have to go through all of them, but maybe you can just touch on it briefly. What is it about the transition itself that you highlight?

0:18:06.1 EG:I think what a lot of folks assume is that when you get the title of manager, when you’re some kind of a leader, you automatically have a great deal of authority. And because you can wield the scepter of power, you’re able to magically make people do things, and that is just not the case. I’ve been in situations, when folks had that authority and wield it pretty heavily, and it had the opposite effect. They didn’t get the results they wanted, because what you need instead of power and authority is influence. And influence takes a lot of work, to build influence and to wield the influence well, so that you don’t lose your credibility with folks. And so I would advise any new manager, anybody who is manager curious or management curious, you’re thinking about it, build your influence skills so that, you’re not trying to beat people into submission, but again, slowly turning the ship your way kind of a thing.

0:19:12.9 WB:That’s great advice, I mean all six of your tips are great advice, but we won’t have the time to go in depth into all of them unfortunately but the other forum will pick a couple of these delegation, trust, Lencioni’s, dysfunctional teams, they talk about coaching feedback and setting goals or performance management through goal setting. There’s so practical foundational elements for leaders or new leaders in particular, but for all leaders, to be honest. Is there any overarching message that you like to give new managers about their approach as they’re coming into the role? Is there anything specifically that you talk about?

0:20:01.0 EG:There’s a fantastic book called What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and I think that the precepts of that book are really applicable to new managers whether you’re a new manager or whether you’re a director becoming an executive sort of a thing it still works the same. And that is the skill set that made you excellent in your old job. It’s probably the opposite of the skill set you need to be great in your new job. So as an individual contributor as a great facilitator I was great at facilitating I was great at creating instructional design I was great at writing I was great at creating widgets whatever it is. If I’m an engineer I’m great at coding but when you get promoted into a leadership position into a management position you actually have to let a lot of that go. And there actually might be some grieving associated with that because it’s like well wait I really like doing that thing over there but your job is now about getting work done through others.

0:21:04.5 EG:And to get work done through others you need an entirely new skill set of influence and goal setting and coaching and providing feedback in a way that is kind and yet constructive. You can do both. So those are the sorts of things that we have to let go of you see our domain expertise has to get downplayed. And in a lot of places you still have to be a domain expert to some degree. You still have to be able to do some of the work but most of what you do as a manager is motivate others to get the work done. And I think that that’s a big mindset shift for a lot of folks.

0:21:41.6 WB:Yeah for sure. There’s so many points there we could dive into we don’t have time unfortunately but feedback is often one that I like to work with my clients about because it’s such an easy statement particularly when we talk about seeking not delivering necessarily but seeking feedback as a leader. Because you know what? At some stage we get that big S painted on our chest when we are called a leader we think we’re superhuman and why should we need to get feedback about our performance? That egotistical mindset comes into the fore. So how do you talk with your groups that you facilitate around this topic of feedback particularly in seeking what’s your suggestions for this?

0:22:30.6 EG:The first thing I talk about is the fact that you can be completely candid and completely respectful and completely kind when you’re giving feedback. You can do all those things. So you don’t have to water down your message you don’t have to be wishy washy but you can choose a kind tone of voice you can choose kind words. Those are all things that we can do and it might take some practice but that’s something that we can do. The second thing I would say is always always deliver feedback in person. So whether it’s via zoom or over the phone or actually in person I think that those are ways to deliver feedback giving feedback over Slack or via email or via instant message bad move. It’s way too easy to misinterpret tone of voice and things like that when you’re reading feedback. And to me it’s a sign of respect. It’s like hey you can tee somebody up and let them know. I’ve got a little feedback for you. Can you talk in half an hour?

0:23:29.7 EG:Okay. At least the person knows there’s feedback coming that’s fine but don’t deliver that feedback over electronic medium. Use as much human centered communication as you can via zoom or something like that because it takes the sting out of what might be constructive feedback. If you’ve got negative feedback or constructive feedback to deliver if you at least make virtual eye contact and smile and watch your tone of voice when you’re delivering it and choose your words it’s going to go down better than if you do it the other way. So that’s a big thing and so then I would say to receive feedback I would ask for it and just let people know hey I want some feedback from you and I would prefer it if you would give it to me in person if you would give it to me via phone or via Zoom or via in person rather than in writing. Okay? So that there’s no misunderstanding. And then again for receiving feedback be open for it take the good leave the bad so have an openness to okay There’s room for improvement here. I can definitely improve and you don’t have to agree with everything that somebody says. And so just because you’re giving me feedback doesn’t mean you’ve got a patent on the truth. So there’s room for folks to accept and not accept what they want as long as they’re looking for what’s good in this. I think that that’s important as well.

0:24:57.1 WB:Everybody has their own perspective on a situation it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s correct. However if you aren’t open to it if you’re closed off immediately it doesn’t matter what they say. You’re only going to hear what you want to say and you’re going to interpret it the way you want which highlights one other aspect that I’d like to touch on that I know you’ve talked about as well which is your own biases your cognitive biases and how they come to the fore if you like when you’re a leader and sometimes your biases may lead you down the wrong path. So what’s your feeling about how people can deal with this?

0:25:36.8 EG:When it comes to bias I think for me a good bias killer is getting a lot of input. So when I’m about to make a big decision or when I’m struggling with something I will ask people in my inner circle and maybe people who are not necessarily in my inner circle but I’ll ask several people for advice on Hey what do you think about X? What should I do about Y and just kinda assemble a team to give me some advice. Again it doesn’t mean that I have to accept or do everything that they say but at least I’m not running around with my own biases running wild because Lord knows I’ve got a whole host of biases running loose in my head. But if I can get Darren and David and a couple of other folks to speak into my head a little bit and say well consider this. Have you thought about that? Then I’m less likely to run wild with the mayhem that’s going on between my ears.

0:26:31.5 WB:In finance they talk about the four-eyes principle where they wanna make sure more than one person is looking at the financials. I leverage that and talk about that from a perspectives point of view. So I suggest to people that they have at least 2 other inputs into decision making and ideas. But as you said the more the better within reason.

0:26:54.2 EG:Absolutely.

0:26:55.9 WB:As we’re winding down towards the end of the recording we haven’t touched on one of your pet hobbies. I wanna call it hobby I don’t know if you do it professionally but you scuba dive. How does scuba diving play into the broader scheme of things for you in helping new managers learn about their transition? I can imagine scuba diving presents some challenges as well for you as you’re learning how to scuba dive? Is there any correlation you can make?

0:27:26.3 EG:I think so. Scuba for the longest time Scuba was my selfish thing. I did scuba only for me to relax to go float in the water to go see interesting creatures and things like that. And then when I was diving in Maui a couple years ago I got it into my head that I wanted to be become a scuba instructor and semi-retire in a few years and teach scuba someplace tropical. So again it’s selfish. It’s like okay I want to teach scuba and make a little money and I wanna live someplace tropical while I’m doing that. But while I was learning how to teach scuba I was reminded of some of the principles of how to teach and provide feedback and bring people along along an idea. Okay so I’m standing in the shallow end of a pool and I’ve got a group of eager divers in front of me and they’re eager and they’re also scared because they’ve never breathed under water before.

0:28:26.8 EG:And so how can I take these people from standing breathing air above the water to bending over and breathing through a regulator for the first time and get them to do that and come up smiling and not freaked out. And so I think that the parallel to that in management is like in change management. So the change in scuba is going from breathing air to breathing through a regulator underwater. How can I make that attractive? How can I make that change attractive and interesting and intriguing and ultimately fun and satisfying? Like wow that felt good. We went through something scary and now look at where we are. So I think that there are parallels in teaching scuba things like change management things like overcoming fear overcoming resistance adjusting the way that you approach different people. ‘Cause I might have a class of 8 different people with 8 different learning styles or 8 different styles. And so I’ve got to pivot pivot pivot for each person so that they all have a great experience. Well I think a manager has to do that too. You’ve got a team of 8 people they’re all gonna have different needs and you’ve got to switch quickly from one to the next one to the next. So I think that there are several different parallels that way.

0:29:39.9 WB:That’s great advice in itself in recognizing that everyone is unique and as a leader we need to be mindful of that constantly. So just because we see things one way our team is going to see it in multiple other ways as well. We have to really be open and as you say pivot as needed. Eric great conversation. Where can people connect with you?

0:30:04.3 EG:So you can get a hold of me a few ways. I’m on LinkedIn. I’m all over LinkedIn I publish LinkedIn posts three times a week. I’ve got a couple of different newsletters that you can sign up for. If you head to my website girardtrainingsolutions.com you can pick up the ebook that Wayne mentioned. And you can also get on my mailing list where you get my newsletter. And then of course the proper book will be coming out probably this fall. And that’ll be available on Amazon. So watch out for that probably October.

0:30:34.0 WB:We’ll make a note in the show notes. And you mentioned about people giving you suggestions about the title. So how would we do that?

0:30:42.9 EG:Shoot me a note to eric@girardtrainingsolutions.com Yeah so maybe the place to start is to look at the ebook and look at the title for the ebook because the proper book is gonna be an expansion of that. And let me know what you think a better title would be based on that.

0:31:04.6 WB:I look forward to it. Any final words of wisdom that you would leave with new managers? I know we’ve covered a lot of territory today but any final parting comment you would like to leave?

0:31:16.9 EG:I would say read deeply. Never stop learning and learn how to be a great coach.

0:31:24.2 WB:Fantastic. Well Eric I appreciate the conversation. I appreciate you being a guest on the show. So thank you and all the best for the book and all the best for the future.

0:31:34.5 EG:Thanks Wayne. I appreciate it. It was good being here.

[music]

0:31:38.5 Speaker 2:Thank you for joining us on the ET project a show for executive talent development. Until next time check out our site for free videos, eBooks, webinars and blogs @coaching4companies.com.