12 Oct Ep. 73 Aligning Your Team with Mary Kausch of AlignmentPartnership.com

TRANSCRIPTION

Welcome everybody to the St. Louis REALTOR® Podcast. As you know I’m your host Adam Kruse, REALTOR® and broker owner for Hermann London Real Estate Group here in beautiful Maplewood, Missouri. I’m super excited today because I have what I would consider to be a very special guest. This is Mary couch and she’s the owner of Alignment Partnership but Mary and i have known each other i guess for i don’t know eight or ten years or something long like that mary’s played a lot of roles for me from mentor to she’s done taught me a few different classes she’s put on an event for our company we hired her to put on a big event for like our business planning retreat and motivational stuff i’ve learned a ton from her about the disc personality assessment i’ve hired her in different hr roles to do interviews and stuff like that for candidates we were considering and i just always love talking to you mary and so i just really wanted to have you on as a guest and um kind of share you know you and i when we meet or we’ll have a beer or something like that we always have these such interesting conversations and i thought it would be nice for our millions of podcast viewers to get a little taste of of all the interesting stuff that you have going on yeah thank you Adam it’s nice to see you this morning and it is a beautiful day it is a beautiful day out there yeah so i’m wanting to cover a few different topics with you you know like one of the my favorite things that you and i talked about is the disc personality assessment it’s not a test you’ve made that very clear to me but before we jump into that i guess if you don’t mind me asking you’ve been a self-employed person for as long as i’ve known you but you just told me it’s oh it’s nearly 30 years that’s correct except for a very recent stint for about nine months okay oh i’ve been an uh an entrepreneur for uh officially it’ll be 29 years wow that’s amazing good for you and i don’t know what we’re going to do to celebrate when it becomes 30 years i don’t know yet either well let me ask like did you start out self-motivated or did you start out kind of with the employee mindset and then have worked your way into being a self-motivated entrepreneur or like how did how did this all go for you well um i’ve always been very self-motivated that started when i was a kid with my family my parents and how they raised us but the thing that got me the most was i had two really bad bosses and that was my motivation to actually start the company because i wanted to save people from having to experience what i experienced with bad bosses because they they can make it or break it you know they can make us or break us and so it was really clear when i was very young that um that this is an area that needed some more assistance let’s say that for sure okay and so i’m sure you you know without getting into too much detail was it bad boss like they didn’t know how to give the right kind of motivation or discipline or were they inappropriate or like kind of what made them a bad boss that’s a good question adam what made him a bad boss uh not setting expectations not giving feedback not spending time i had a boss that sabotaged me in front of peers um i had one who only wanted to look good for the ceo and not take care of the team there was no drive to really pull the team together and really talk about the things that mattered for what the results were that we were there to achieve um nothing to do with camaraderie you know so it wasn’t like we were all in this together and um and that’s that’s one of the the foundational principles of having a team that’s going to function in a high performing way is are you all in this together or do some of you just look out for yourselves and that’s that whole you know you have to hire people that you want to be part of an intact team that they’re all in this together rather than being a maverick interesting i i think part of the problem we’re going to have today by the way is everything you say i want to like go off on these little tangents and ask you about it you know you mentioned that the boss didn’t know how to set expectations and uh i’ve i’ve had to learn over the years about how important that is you know and i always thought that can i give example we when i first formed the company our our policy with the agents was like hey just turn in your paperwork it’s all good you know but as we went along i realized i had to make a checklist of exactly the forms that they needed for each deal and when i came out with that checklist i thought it was going to be pitchforks and torches at my door right you can’t make us do this stuff or something like that but what i found is everyone loved it because like you said they want to know what’s expected of them and so it made it it made a huge difference anyway yeah well Adam you’re you’re not wired for some of that because i know your style very well as you and i have gotten to know each other and actually we’ve known each other well way over 10 years oh wow okay and the thing that like a checklist would do because i love checklists the thing that a checklist would do and i’m not wired for checklist necessarily either but i have learned over the years is that a checklist just gives me some structure it’s my guide and it actually it helps me be more successful so i don’t forget things yeah and so it is it’s about those expectations and so i’m so glad that you did that because that’s a that’s an important part of being a good leader and a good manager is having these structures in place absolutely and i’ve and i’ve really had to take some of those things that i’ve learned from you and others and you know i’ve really implemented them into our business as we’ve gone um but so i sticking on this topic of you being self-motivated for so many years you know one of the things that i think a lot of people that are that are self-employed struggle with is i think you kind of wake up in the morning and it’s like okay what should i do today right and it’s like i got this list of 100 things that i want to accomplish but i also have laundry and boy my dog looks like they could use a walk you know so how do you kind of like decide what you’re going to do on a daily basis yeah well i i know in a week for a week exactly what i need to accomplish for the whole week so i have to break that down and make sure that i know what the the key priorities are for that day so you know i i can get very overzealous and think oh i can get these 10 things done today ah it’s not reality because inevitably a phone call comes in or something that i didn’t expect was coming up and and it’s like we have to plan for what’s unexpected and those unexpected things usually take up about two hours of my day and so i know that i’m not going to get 10 things done and usually i get my top three you know that is what i have to focus on because by the end of the week i have to be this far along and whatever it is that i need to be doing whether it’s doing instructional design which is creating programs creating training programs or workshops or if it’s something around marketing or it’s thinking about a schedule one of the things that i’ve learned over the last three years that has been very helpful is to get a cadence and a cadence is so like on Mondays i do this on Tuesdays i do this Wednesdays i do this and also no cadence not only a certain days all right but also weeks of the month so on certain weeks of the month what am i really doing you know because sometimes i mean i just have to spend you know business development that’s all i can be doing for x number of days a month so that’s a lot of phone calls that’s a lot of emails that’s thinking about a campaign if i want to do a campaign around a certain product you know so it’s all those things and i think that that cadence helps give that structure for most people not everybody likes that cadence but the cadence is just really important well you so as part of your cadence you mentioned that you have to know kind of what you have to do for the week i think you said that to start yeah it’s a week so do you have like a ritual on sunday nights i plan my week or something like that or how do you know what you have to do for the week oh i do it by the end of the week because i want to play all weekend i don’t i don’t want to work i need a break so my main work work days with clients is always tuesday wednesday thursday and monday and friday are my days to get it all together to make sure i’ve got everything taken care of on mondays and fridays so that’s almost a given and the beauty about doing that too is with uh technology the way it is if i want to extend a weekend somewhere out okay i can log in and do my thing from one of my favorite places in the universe we’re gonna get into that i plan on asking you about that but so you’re saying you find us sometime like every friday or maybe Monday to figure out what your priorities are for the week yeah it’s usually thursday or Friday Adam i don’t want to wait till Monday because i i need to know what i have to do when i get up on Monday morning and get moving okay cool and you you love a lot of notes i remember we were on like the economic development committee for the Maplewood chamber of commerce years ago and we had a meeting and you were kind of like had you left post-it notes right are you still a post-it note lover no i’m not doing that anymore because i started losing post-it notes yeah i wondered if you would go back would you when you were doing that would you go back and look at all the post-it notes or like are you like me with these stacks of notes of things that i’m like really just writing it down put it in my head but i’m not really going back to it so here’s the thing with how i kind of operate is i’m a very visual person and i also i love quotes so quotes are very motivating for me so is color so part of the thing with the post-it notes was color and things that kept me inspired and kept me motivated all right so i do that i was like i only have one post-it note on my computer right now which is something i have to actively do like daily and it’s because of Microsoft 10. you know i’m moving files to one drive so it’s the only thing i got however i keep a book in my purse i always have for years and years and years and people always tease me about this little book i have um right now hang on i’ll go get it you go get it so i probably have this is this this is what this one looks like others i have have motivational quotes on them and stuff but this was given to me by a very special friend and i write things in here all the time and i go back and everything’s dated everything has who the person was and everything but it just helps me keep track of my ideas and my thoughts and and i also have people that i get to talk to on a regular basis my colleagues and my friends my clients you know so i make sure that that helps keep me motivated regularly so when you said that you make a plan for the week and then kind of you have a cadence for each day um you’re saying that you you wouldn’t ever say like okay these are the things i’m gonna get done on monday and pack so many things in there that there’s no time for that what you’re calling like two hours like the plan’s gonna change stuff yeah i used to do that adam and it just doesn’t work so i have discovered that you know don’t set yourself up for failure because then you feel bad so set yourself up for success being reality is how many key priorities can i work on on any given day because i have to know what the exact result is and how it’s going to translate into what’s next so you know like i know today i have to call five people today all right so i got these five people i have to call but i also because of a project i’m working on i need i had to put clients in for this afternoon so i’ve got clients this afternoon as well that’s not normal for me to do that so i know that when you and i get off this that i will make those phone calls and then you know then it’s time for lunch and then i come back and do that but i knew what my reality was for today at the beginning of this week and i just knew that i would only have the time to do those specific things and then i’d be done by the end of the day yeah because it is friday it is friday that’s right you got a busy day for your friday yeah and i know you wanted me to save on this whole thing about really getting this balance thing and i just i we’ll talk about that i know later but it is just so important because we become our own worst enemies as human beings let’s just go into it right now then mary you know okay so one of the things that i’ve noticed from you uh is that you are um you’re not bashful or shy or whatever about saying hey i’m gonna go on this trip or i need to unplug you know but i find if i go like golfing on a thursday or something like that i’m like i’m like secretly golfing you know i don’t want anyone to know that i’m golfing and i’m not working and i and then i’m on the golf course and i’m texting and emailing and stuff like that you know which is is much less enjoyable than what i’m imagining your approach to be which is don’t call me for three weeks or whatever so tell me about kind of your what you do and your strategy there it is it is very specific and i’m not i’m not afraid to say tell somebody i’m taking time off yeah i’m gonna be off i’m leaving on if you need to talk to me when he has to happen by noon on thursday because i’m leaving on thursday afternoon to unplug and i won’t be back in until noon on monday and adam over all these years i have found that people have great respect for that yeah and i’m not gonna hide that i need time off because we all need down time and it is truly rejuvenating i mean i cannot be good for you if i’m not being good to me and a lot of people think that’s a trite saying but it is true and so i i have to do that i you know nature is my therapy so i’m going to be out you know and about and like this right now is fall foliage and i just talked to a friend of mine the other night and i said hey let’s go for a drive northern missouri is going to be peaking here and southern missouri is going to be peaking here let’s go so and if that’s going to be on a friday afternoon i am going to schedule time for that next friday afternoon because i’m going to go for a drive and see the trees and on that drive what do you do like where’s your cell phone um usually somewhere um you know i i mean i’m not very good i’m not even hooked up to bluetooth purposefully because i don’t want to be using all my time i like windshield time because it gives me time to think so you know we you know there’s burnout’s real you know did you know i did a i did a blog post on this but the world health organization that employee burnout burn out has actually become a health classification burnout it makes sense especially but also uh have you found like i have that when you’re doing that sort of unplugging time do you have some of your best ideas absolutely i get clarity i figure out some of the dilemmas that i’m i that i’m in personally i figure out some situations with my with my clients and my colleagues i i get to think about what i want to write about next i get to think about people that i haven’t talked to for a while that i wanted to re-engage with and give them a phone call or something and you know but i do that too because i mean i i walk regularly as you know and um and i get my exercise in and it’s just it’s i need to calm my brain so do you have uh like you just kind of mentioned that you sort of randomly called your friend and said let’s make this drive but do you have a cadence of when you take your your like unplugged trips well i have my annual one right yeah i didn’t get to do it this year uh for 2020. um given all the lockdown and different things and things were just a little bit um things were not a little bit things are very very different this july but um this would have been my 18th consecutive year and i started it and i was really worried about doing it and it was um i call it the extravaganza and the extravaganza you’ve heard me talk about this is i would leave on july 1st and i would not come back until july 31st and i would wander and typically i would always have a destination and sometimes i would make it sometimes i would not it would always involve many things out in the woods and exploring downtime you know i would i would check in with clients along the way i would give them a designated time when i knew that i would be somewhere where i could check in with people but it was one of them it’s the most glorious time of my year because i get completely refreshed wow yeah did you did you choose july because that’s when you like to be outdoors most or is that generally a down time in people’s businesses or how did you kind of come across that yeah so the downtime in people’s businesses so i didn’t start doing it i looked at what was happening in my business for 10 years and in 10 years i had no income in the month of july and i was like okay well everybody’s on vacation you know it’s just kind of like one of the hottest months here in the midwest and people were were just kind of doing their things it was just like like a low month so i was like why do i keep fighting this you know because if this is if there’s there’s if i’m not going to be able to generate what you know i need to be generating i want to be generating in july why don’t i just join why don’t you just join this effort so that was one reason and then the second reason is it’s my birthday so yeah and i always celebrate my birthday and um for i as long as i can remember doing this is i make sure that on my actual birthday that i am doing something i have never done before and it could be cooking a crazy dish it could be going to a new park it could be something i’m doing with my family that i’ve never done before it doesn’t have to be grandiose it can be something that’s very very simple and it i remember these things and photograph it and it just it it just fills me especially when i look back over the years and all the crazy stuff i’ve done you know the little stuff the big stuff and um it really it brings me so much satisfaction but it’s also very inspiring for me i love it i love it as you go will you try to go for longer would you rather have like a second month you know november or would you rather have like june and july or you know two months at once oh adam i i mean i can see me doing it for three months in a row easy so would you would rather do it three months in a row or like one month you know let’s call it retreat because you are working and thinking about work at least one month retreat two months at work one month you’d rather do three months in a row yeah i really haven’t i haven’t really given it much thought because i get so rejuvenated but i mean i regularly will schedule other other vacations you know i find that i get into the winter winter dole drums and so i need it i need to break that you know so i need to again to get re-energized i need to see sun or i need to i need to get out of the winter mode so i’ll go do something besides you know just keep trying to push and the grind i can’t keep you just can’t keep doing that you’re just going to burn out you know and this goes this is actually things with every day too you know i have a tendency to be and work way too much you know the whole proverbial workaholic yeah when i was coming up through the ranks in corporate america is that got rewarded being a workaholic got rewarded you know this also goes back to this bad boss thing because part of people being a bad boss too was the the proverbial carrot and stick trying to motivate through intimidation or if you don’t do this then this is what’s going to happen you know so that that has never worked for humans and so when when we start thinking about like what it is that people need you at some point in your day we gotta stop and you’ve gotta get recharged to get ready for whatever your next day is going to be otherwise you won’t be as good as you could be all right and it’s always about giving your best effort hopefully every day to do your best work and like some people are most productive at six a.m that would not be me other people are most productive at noon you know so we have to find that i’m going to go back to the word cadence that has been something that’s been really big these last few years for me is cadence cool okay well um one of my favorite things if i might switch topics now sure one of my favorite things to talk about with you because you are you might not call yourself this but to me you are the foremost worldwide expert on the disc disc personality assessment right and so you uh over the years like you said we’ve known each other now over 10 years um you know you i think we’re probably the one who introduced me to the disc personality assessment um i’ve learned a lot about myself from it um from the assessment we’re not allowed to call it a test mary you taught me that that’s right it’s not a test i learned a lot about myself yes yeah it’s not a pass fail so i learned a lot about myself from this disc personality assessment i’ve um learned a lot about um other people right um when i started dating who’s now my wife molly we had her take the disc personality assessment and then you gave us a comparison report yep and so then i took molly out to dinner and we went through those reports together and she still thinks that’s funny but um and then i’ve done that with other you know people that work here and stuff um and it’s just had such what you’ve taught me through that disc has had such a crazy dramatic positive impact on me that um i i don’t know i hope that we can talk about a little bit today and maybe you can give an overview of what it is and yeah so adam why don’t you just why don’t you just embellish on that a little bit more in terms of like what it how was it so powerful for you because i mean even if you took you i mean i remember when you wanted us to do this with molly you know which i thought was great i’ve also done it with a sister and brother-in-law as well okay yeah it can only improve your relationships if you use the information so i’m i and i i love hearing this because you were such a fan yeah but can you give us like two things that it actually really did to help you with growing herman london sure sure so what what we’ll find is that everybody maybe has the same goals or similar goals or whatever but they all have different personalities and different ways that they like approach people and approach a problem but i guess it’s about like they have different ways that they sort of process information right and so one example um there’s this guy who works here his name’s tom i i you know tom knows i love talking about this but tom and i were friends for years before he started working here and tom’s personality is way different than mine and i’m always this guy who has all these big ideas and ideas and change let’s do this all the time and i would say tom i’ve got this great idea time to say no tom let’s change this no tom let’s try this new thing no and it’s like god tom hates me tom i’m thinking tom hates me tom hates my ideas tom must think i’m an idiot whatever right and then you have tom take the disk personality assessment and then we both understand tom and we realize tom doesn’t hate you adam tom just processes information differently tom doesn’t like change tom you know you have to so for my relationship with tom now i can say tom i have this great new idea i know he’s going to say no and i don’t get all mad and flustered and try to convince him right then of what it is but because of what i learned from you i give him time to process the information i give him time to do his own research right i give him time to think about it and then we’ll come back and talk about it a couple days later and tom might come around you know i might be able to convince tom at that point or tom might have convinced himself that it is a good idea and that was like that smaller thing was just so important for our relationship because now i don’t feel like tom hates me or thinks i have bad ideas and now tom and i are actually doing things and moving forward we just had to sort of communicate with it a little bit differently well tom i remember this fateful day adam i’ll never forget that fateful day okay i remember really well it was over at your office but the thing that tom also helped you do i mean he really helped you because he took you from way up here and pulled you down here and he gave you some insight that you just aren’t naturally wired to discover on your own uh-huh all right but you also feed him ideas that he can then really like crunch on and think through his research is very important to him and to make sure that he had they the way the time is wired for those of you who are listening times conscientious and what it would be is he would want to have his quote-unquote ducks in a row he would want to make sure that he would be successful because he has done the logical approach okay adam does the inspirational approach because he’s an i he’s an influencer in disc language and so because you had took the time really to understand each other you have now benefited both of you you’ve benefited your team and you have grown your company because you are taking that time to make sure that you’re balancing out adam wants this but tom wants this and so how do you come together and make it happen yeah and so then i’ve got a lot of examples i’m trying to think of which one to focus on mary but i like to i cannot oh sorry go ahead wasn’t that one of the easiest ones i can bring up to is the one you just did on the checklist because you’re not wired for checklists okay and so you just actually stepping i call it flexing your style you know i’ve talked about that but to flex your style is you created this checklist that set everybody else up for success that’s not naturally you but that helped the whole rest of your team yeah perfect yeah so you know my personality isn’t to be that like deep into the details you know i’ve got a lot of ideas i like a lot of action and um i know that i need those kind of detailed type of people around me and that they have value you know just because that person’s not like spewing out tons of ideas all the time mary i like to compare this to painting a room what a great analogy so when i when my wife and i paint the room i’m the roller right and she’s the cutter and so i when you when you roll think of the wall rolling is really 90 of the wall right and cutting is percent of the wall but rolling is really only 50 of the job because you can’t leave the room uncut right and so my wife and i have from this kind of the disc stuff we talk a lot about that like 90 10 stuff i’m the 90 guy and she’s the 10 person but her 10 is really at least half of the work you know and so i like to go in last night we were reorganizing our house we got some new furniture whatever i go in i’m moving the tables i’m moving the sofas you know i’m cleaning out the big junk and then i’m done i’m sitting down and my wife’s like going through the little boxes of toys taking out and cleaning this stuff and it’s like that is very important work that i can’t do that kind of stuff you know yeah but we we do we need each other basically you know yeah well she’s a good balance for you adam yeah we knew that we knew that immediately you know at the very beginning so what you’re even talking about is like people orientation or task orientation and that’s a big thing to understand you’re very much people in relationship oriented and people around you are much more task oriented and you need them i need them they help you do your best work yeah absolutely and so i can’t not mention jerry and this you know i know jerry right yes and so everybody terry jerry is adam’s like right hand right all right she’s like your right side of your body probably jerry’s everything if it wasn’t for jerry i always say and i’ll say it again if jerry ever quits i’m shutting the company down you know she’s very important actually i please i hope you tell her this yeah well actually because of the because of the disc assessment and that uh comparison report i learned from that thanks to you that uh for example jerry likes to know that she’s sincerely appreciated absolutely right and so we it’s kind of a running joke but it’s serious now because of that years later i mean i don’t know that’s probably been seven years since she took that that report with you but i still say to her jerry i sincerely appreciate you and she knows i’m saying it because the report told me to say it right i mean she knows i appreciate her too but she i think still likes hearing it anyway you know and so like working with me i would come in especially like as our company was um was like really getting started i would come in almost every day with a new idea and jerry being the s the steady that keeps it all together person i think that at fir you know it’s like day one she’s like okay new idea i can do it i can do it and then day two it’s like okay another new idea i can do that i can do both of those and then the third day i’m like another new idea and she’s like ah how can i keep it all together right and and i think jerry had to learn and you probably helped her learn this like adam’s gonna have a lot of ideas he doesn’t necessarily need you to do every one of them you know you guys are gonna have to communicate about what priorities are and things like that because then that without that conversation jerry would feel like she was doing a bad job because i’m throwing stuff at her all day and she’s like how many of these things can i juggle you know yeah you just need to keep your ideas on a whiteboard and figure out which ones are really going to work you know and get tom involved of course as you have and jerry just needs the plan we did that mary because of you again we have a white board now in jerry’s office and occasionally we used to do it weekly but now occasionally we’ll go in there and we have this huge list of things that i’ve written down that i want to do and we’ll talk about priorities you know okay let’s put a little g by this one let’s put an a by this one and let’s talk about priorities and and it’s been um it’s just been super impactful for us and that’s to me that’s all thanks to what you taught us via the disc well i’m proud of you i’m proud of you for stepping into this because this is this is vulnerable yeah adam and you are naturally a vulnerable leader you always have been all these years and and that’s one of the things that you’re you’re willing to step in and try something and do something that might expose something that ah you know and some people don’t want to know about that but the more that you become vulnerable and you actually like explore some of these things that you’re not sure about it’s like the thing with tom and you you weren’t sure about that just during your friendship but then when things came to light is it was a vulnerability that we that you accepted a new embrace that hey i want to make this better i want to make this team better yeah and in order to get better sometimes you know that soft underbelly that we have needs to be exposed as to the it’s the why the why that we’re doing something or not doing something yeah yeah so i applaud you i’m so proud of you and this is smart you’ve turned this around on me and now you’ve got me talking about disc but i i’m so excited about it i have i want to give another example if i can oh sure this this is your this is your show adam you just do whatever you want i’m i’m supposed to be pulling stuff out of your brain but you’ve already taught me so much that i’m just kind of sharing some of that you know one of the things that we do often is we’ll get new realtors that join our company and our approach to training i think is maybe a lot different than what other companies approaches is because i s i don’t know where i heard this maybe from you but i say if you treat everyone equally someone’s being treated unfairly and and i mean that in terms of like how people learn right and then how what they want to do with their day and so one of the first things that we do when we have someone new here or when someone wants to meet with me and do business planning is we have them do the disc assessment and then i that helps me to help them make a plan right so we narrowed down a weekly plan for them with specific things that they’ll do that works for their personality right absolutely well and the other thing that i believe that you’ve done adam is the thing that you know equally and fairly and all that but what happens is if you look at i’m just going to say training is adult learning styles visual kinesthetic okay and auditory and so if you modify your training and make sure that you’re doing you know people get a chance to do something which is the kinesthetic people hear things which is the auditory and people get to see things which is the visual all right you can meet those styles okay and if you do it in a structured approach that means that people will get it they will learn and you just always have to keep that in mind because if you do that it crosses over all of the different preferences of all the different styles i love it yeah just be organized like that so that’s a key thing with with training but the other thing that you have done and to your to your credit adam is thinking about this business planning because i i’ll never forget that day over in the uh the old the former restaurant there is when we did all of that visioning and planning for each one of your agents and that is key because if you don’t know i mean how can you organize a day or a week if you don’t know like where you’re going you know what do you want to achieve what kind of things do you want to have happen for you that year what do you want to try what ideas do you have and throw all that out there and then start putting a plan together to make sure that you can can do those i love it i love it that was an energizing day well you did uh amazing you know it was fun yeah um can we give your information on how can people can get a hold of you if they want sure i don’t know if you’re still helping people with disc i assume you are i hope you will absolutely not only just this but um all of my all the learning products all of the assessments so to speak adam all right are all through the wiley w-i-l-e-y so it’s widely publishing and so i am an authorized partner with fili to use these instruments and there’s way more than desks you can do things around five behaviors of a cohesive team which is based on the work of patrick lencioni and it really looks at trust trust is the foundation and it looks at what happens when we get in you know conflict gets in our way and then it helps us cascade not cascade but to elevate our performance based upon the results that we want to seek and are we putting trust in as our foundation conflict do we have commitment are we really having accountability all right it moves you up and it’s it creates a different kind of conversation amongst the team so that’s something else that’s that can be even dis-based or myers-briggs based okay because our styles tell inform us of a lot of in the manner in which we go about trusting each other having conflict being held accountable committing to something and achieving results so it’s very informative so how can they do you want to give your number or how do they yeah sure sure my phone number which i enjoy phone calls and texts a lot it’s 314-409-6622 so 314-409-6622 and you can always reach me on email mary at alignment partnership dot com one of the other things that you uh at least your teachings did for us is when we were making our you know we made a listing presentation like a big packet of information that we give to a seller so that they can learn about us and the disk was implemented into that right because this big packet of information it has pictures of us smiling with happy clients right for the for the i right it has uh data and definitions for the c right yeah it has charts and graphs for i don’t know who that’s for is that for s’s or something oh that could actually be for that could be inform everybody especially a visual person but you’re you’re a seas are going to love that and i’m hoping to that your ds would enjoy that too it’s a quick snapshot just yeah yeah and like we have a map of st louis with little dots all over it of all the homes that we’ve sold you know i think maybe the ds would like that like and and so we designed this whole thing with all the different personality types in mind you know you were also out did you outline your process oh yeah uh-huh steps to selling a home and all that kind of stuff yeah that’s for your s’s and c so no see you adam no we couldn’t have done it without you mary seriously seriously i appreciate it what do you want to say anything more about the disc or should we just say hey call mary if you want to know more about this yeah we can just we can move on i i mean i’m just i’m getting i’m just like i’m jumping for joy even though i’m trying to stay here in front of this camera but i’m jumping for joy cool well i can’t say enough about how much of an impact it’s had on me and our business and our people so yeah i i could my family did this because of you like all sorts of stuff um all right well one of the things you just mentioned is kind of like other assessments and stuff and are you getting into like emotional intelligence yeah yeah wiley has just put something out that i’m really really excited about it’s called agile eq and it actually eq is emotional intelligence and um daniel goldman has been the at the helm of this for many many years on emotional intelligence and that’s really looking at the interpersonal skills the soft skills of how we approach situations how we respond how we react to different situations and it goes it goes much deeper than you’ll ever know on just a style component and so the agile eq is going to help people understand how they are responding and and handling um their current situations and in fact next week i am actually diving more into that because i have a client who’s very interested in doing that and so we’re having some more conversation about it and um i can’t remember the exact dates but adam right now with everything that’s happening with covid and people with how their lives have had to change and children being at home and they’re trying to work and they’re just trying to navigate um maybe parents that they’re taking care of our grandchildren that they’re taking care of and homeschooling their kids which some people never ever thought they’d be homeschooling their kids it’s it’s a way for people to especially couples to take a look at how are they responding to each other and responding to the their current environment within which they have to be productive and they have to live their lives and and so i’m really excited about that for where we are right now as society so what so you kind of what is a you know one or two sentences definition rough definition of emotional intelligence a rough definition or maybe an example or something yeah so it’s like um i’ll give you an example right because i i think i’ve kind of defined it and i’ll i’ll say it again it’s about how it’s it’s very interpersonal it’s about how we relate with each other so the whole interpersonal skills like um for example you you’ve been in conversations with some people who constantly interrupt that’s an interpersonal skill you have some people who fly off the handle right some people who hear something and they just go you know the ballistic and it’s like okay let’s let’s let’s wait wait wait let’s let’s talk about this where are you going with this so it’s how people are are reacting to certain things and how they’re behaving in different situations so let’s say you’re in a staff meeting and um somebody starts like rolling their eyes or somebody starts like huffing and puffing and it’s very obvious that somebody is tuning out whoever is the facilitator or somebody’s presenting well that’s an awareness piece that some people don’t even know that they’re doing and it’s a blind spot and some people won’t don’t want to tell that other individual that hey did you know what you just did in that meeting yeah you know a lot of people don’t want to be that candid with one of their co-workers or one of their team members and there’s there’s just a fear of being honest with people about that and so this agile eq helps bring some of that to light because self-awareness is the very first step to modifying behavior if you don’t see it it’s not going to change or it’s not going to be modified um is agile being used kind of in the same way they’re using it in like development now where it means like just sort of like checking in every two weeks or whatever yeah you can use that you could use this you could use your myers-briggs you could use some things like the five behaviors of a cohesive team you could talk about your expectations you would just say hey let’s talk about how we’re getting along let’s talk about how i’m managing you right what do you need me to do more of what do you need me to do less of all right and especially looking at like where people want to grow into these days what would you like to do next is there a certain kind of project and if we’re not touching base and having those kinds of conversations we don’t know okay um can i give an example of what i think uh like where emotional intelligence might come into play and in my business can you tell me your thoughts on this um lately with covid we’re sort of uh encouraging our agents to try new things and get out of their comfort zones and whatever and part of that is coming into play is we’re making a lot of phone calls you know and calling a neighborhood and inviting him to an event or something like that and um or calling people and offering to buy their house you know and when i’m getting some new people that are going to do this with me it seems like they’re real worried about their script what’s my script my script and the script and they want to talk about the script they want to do the script and i’m i’m saying the script is sort of important but you need to get on the calls you need to practice right and they are uncomfortable with practicing a lot and but to me that’s where the kind of the emotional intelligence comes in is in that practice right so if you talk to somebody and they say yeah i need to sell my house because you know i’m getting a divorce or something right if you just follow the script it’s like okay getting a divorce great so you’d love to sell your home and like you know but if you have any shield of freaking emotional intelligence right you would pause there and go oh my gosh i’m so sorry or like oh that’s terrible like whatever like you you give some sort of empathetic response right yeah and that’s not scripted you can’t put that in the script someone has to have emotional intelligence to be able to do that to look past like well does that mean i’m gonna make money here or not right it’s like let me actually care about what you’re saying and i think i’m finding success on these calls and and i guess that’s because i i think i have emotional intelligence or goes up remember you’re also the people-oriented person you’re the relational person so and and people want to know when we’re communicating with them people want to know that you can identify with what they’re going through so let’s take the case of this person being divorced is rather than following a script it is to empathize with them oh i’m i’m so sorry to hear that or wow that must be difficult right now um this must selling your house must be must be bringing you you know some some angst you know something to start to identify with the other person rather than just launching in because if we don’t identify with the other person then they probably don’t think that we’re listening mm-hmm yeah we’re not a robot yeah right you’re not a robot and so how do we identify with the other human the other human that we’re actually you know in this dialogue with all right so that’s that’s a big thing and yeah i can see where that would be into into this emotional intelligence absolutely also falls into communication it also falls into style so here’s an example oh yeah please because a script is just like that checklist that you talked about earlier so a script is something that will give me some parameters it will give me confidence when i practice it it will be my guide it won’t be like i’m going to get tongue tied all right and people’s biggest fear you know is picking up those phones one of their biggest fears is picking up that phone and making those cold calls without having a foundation without having an opportunity to say hey i’m confident here i know what i’m gonna say and hey if the conversation goes this way i know that i should say this or i could cover this or i could do that and i really think it’s much more about confidence is why they’re asking you for scripts is to help them and then of course you can step into your coach mode with them and say okay so give me some of the scenarios that you’re experiencing where the script didn’t work and then you coach them through what that is okay um so with emotional intelligence is there like high and low or is there sort of other variables like with disc where you’re sort of want to be eat you know what i mean yeah well it’s all i’m going to say it’s all variable because we’re not all just you can’t just pigeonhole me okay i can’t just be this like you’re just not an eye i see you going dominant i see you going conscientious i see you going steady you’re just your primary is that so it’s all in a behavioral they call it a behavioral continua okay continuum okay so this behavioral because we we all we move and we flex especially when we we we learn things about ourselves or we have a situation that comes up that really is impactful it’s like me telling you about this cadence thing you know i had to learn that because i’m not naturally wired like that so several years ago that came into me as a from a coach a coach that was coaching me said you know mary you might want to try this and when you get success with that and you can get into this routine we like routines our braves our brains crave certainty so this cadence gives us gives us the structure and the plan and we know what we need to do and so we have success and that gives confidence okay well um by the way i know we’re taking longer than i promised you do you need to go or can i keep asking you questions because you know how about how about just a couple more questions adam because you know what i remember my cadence today i got to make those five phone calls okay all right uh let’s see well i wanted to ask i have two more topics so let’s try to spend like three minutes on each topic okay that sounds good yeah and i’ll stop talking and let you talk so you know i wanted to ask you about uh trends and like leadership and stuff i went to one of your classes or workshops recently and all these new like terms came up and you’re talking about herding cats and all this kind of stuff and uh there’s another term that was used a lot that i forget what it was but what what do you what’s your work with that what are you finding can you talk about that a little bit yeah well what you participated in adam was what i called an executive briefing and it was an overview of a process called the leadership for organizational excellence okay and really what it is is it’s looking at your blind spots as a company you know what is it that you’re not thinking about or what is it that’s back over here that you’re not you’re not necessarily paying attention to and let’s bring it to light it could be something around your plan it could be something around like the positions that you require in your company or your business or your organization to make sure that you achieve the plan so plan positions it could be about the people that you have it’s the proverbial thing about the rights you know the right people in the right seats at the right time all right so plan positions people and then it looks at things around process so like do you have the right processes in place the scripts okay that’s a process the checklist that you do that’s a process do you have processes that work do you need processes all right so that’s that and then you look at how do we measure all right so this it’s called perform metrics and then lastly is do you have passion for what it is that you’re doing all right it’s actually it’s the it’s the 60s of the leadership for organizational excellence it’s actually a sandler training product all right so it really is very insightful to take a look at what it is that um you have that’s working well and that’s not working in a snapshot you can go through some of these things and realize this is why we’re unsuccessful because we’re hiring the wrong people or we’re on onboarding the wrong people because we don’t have a process in place for that and that will never go away that’s always going to be you know a plan is always going to be imperative and if you think about it through all of this we’ve been going through for six months with kobit is we have had to for some companies they have had to have a new plan every day so having a new plan every day or new shipments or the manufacturing facilities that totally change one of their one of their manufacturing lines to start doing ppe i have a client that actually changed manufacturing line to to produce a part for a ventilator so they were able to shift and that means shift processes shift people get the right people in the right spots on the lines so you so we always have to do that it’s never changed i love it um all right i promised you i wouldn’t i could ask you 50 more questions about that but i promise you i wouldn’t um last thing that i just wanted to ask about today is you know i met you through the what was the maplewood chamber of commerce now i guess it’s the mid county chamber of commerce and i was just curious like for people who are are listening and i know this is like a big shift from the topics we’ve talked about but you’ve been a major believer in chamber of commerce you know for as long as i’ve known you what what are you why would you encourage uh someone to join a chamber of commerce why i can speak about the value that it’s brought me and this is my why number one is community is really knowing your community and knowing the people that are helping your community be sustainable i mean maplewood is a vibrant community and much of that has is attributed to our merchants the people who are here that they they help each other out you know i can be in one restaurant and they actually get their their vinegar from another merchant right here in town you know exactly what i’m talking about all right and so if you think about community and isn’t that a community as a team and so that’s that’s a big thing for me so i have this this term and this is part of why i’m part of the chamber is i it’s a local bore l-o-c-a-v-o-r-e so it’s all about consuming what’s local and shop small and like that i want to i want to where i live i want to be able to i’ve always had this thing it happened when i was living in a small community in the middle of nowhere in indiana and i could put on my backpack grab my dog and i could go to the bank i could go to the post office i could go to the grocery store i could stop and get a rent rent a video okay read a video and i could do all of these things on a walk around my community and i loved it and so when i got back to st louis 20 plus years ago i really wanted to find that kind of community and i found that here in maplewood so i wanted to be able to keep giving to my community and being part of my community and knowing what’s going on and to really serve them so that’s what i do i shop here i live here i work here i play here love it okay so if someone wants to join a chamber they shouldn’t just come into one meeting pass out a bunch of business cards and expect to get a bunch of business it’s more join the community give back go to the things build relationships right absolutely it’s all about building relationships and you know what happens to everybody when somebody walks in and starts just handing out business cards i mean how likely is it that you adam is going to take that business card and say oh my gosh of course i’m going to call you that’s so unlikely right no you won’t do that until you build a relationship and a rapport with somebody and that’s what the that’s what the chamber actually does any chamber is about getting to know the people with whom you can do business with but also to serve each other it’s not just about business it’s about how do we help each other and that’s what a chamber can do for you and they also help you they have tons of resources there are some very very knowledgeable people in every chamber of commerce all right well mary you are amazing um sincerely i i sincerely appreciate you and anna if you have so many questions for me i’ll be happy to do this again anytime okay let’s do that let’s do that uh one last time i know that joey will add to like the show notes how people can get a hold of you but for people listening do you mind giving your phone number in your email again sure my name is mary cash it’s k-a-u-s-c-h phone number is 314-409-6622 and my email address is maryad alignmentpartnership.com marriottalignmentpartnership.com thank you very much mary i suspect i’ll be seeing and talking to you very soon you know it i’m going here in maplewood that’s right okay thank you very much and take care for all the listeners too bye-bye bye adam