018: Elevate Your Leadership: Exploring the Impact of Managing Yourself and Leading Others

Margaret Andrews (00:00:00) - A lot of people, the really smart, hard working, good intention people they can power through everything. As you go up in a level of organization, the work is done more with and through other people scientists, engineers, doctors. They will tell me I'm an awesome scientist, but now I'm running the lab. In fact, I'm messing everything up. And a lot of times they would think, you know, Oh, I'm the smartest guy in the room, so, you know, I should be the leader. And then they get there, you realize, Oh, man, this is so much harder than it looks.

Christopher Nelson (00:00:35) - All right. Welcome to Tech Careers and Money Talk. I am your host, Christopher Nelson. I've been in the tech industry for 20 plus years, and after climbing my way to the C-suite, working for three companies that have been through IPO and investing my way to financial independence, I'm here to help you figure out how to do it too, and introduce you to people that can help you out.

Christopher Nelson (00:00:56) - And a part of this is really thinking about career and money and how it all works together. Well, today I'm excited to introduce you to Margaret Andrews. Margaret Andrews is an instructor at Harvard and she runs the Mylo Center, which is managing yourself and leading others. She has, you know, one of the most attended sessions that she has for MBA students at Harvard. And the concept is we need to be self aware in managing ourselves so we can be effective in leading others. We know that, especially in technology companies, we need to be focused on leadership. I'm excited to introduce you to her today. Let's go talk with Margaret. I am so excited to introduce you today to Margaret Andrews. Margaret ran the MBA program at MIT Sloan School of Management for seven years before becoming an associate dean at Harvard University. She teaches several graduate courses, including creativity and innovation, leading with emotional intelligence. But what I'm really interested in is her two day executive program, Managing Yourself and Leading Others. It is the most popular professional development program at Harvard.

Christopher Nelson (00:02:07) - She's also been written about in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal in Times of India. But this is what I love. Do not hate Margaret. You've won three lotteries and didn't buy any tickets. They were all given to her like, yes. Wow, that's amazing. No. One. Now, that's the reason that you don't have to work for equity. You won all the lotteries, right?

Margaret Andrews (00:02:28) - That's right. And you know, I'm always open to more tickets, So, you know.

Christopher Nelson (00:02:33) - I guess, yeah, if I'm going to give you a ticket, I'm definitely going to give it to you. And on the back, say I'm in for a half, right? Yes. You got the lucky touch.

Margaret Andrews (00:02:44) - That's fair.

Christopher Nelson (00:02:45) - Well, thanks so much for coming on today. Appreciate you joining.

Margaret Andrews (00:02:48) - Thank you. Thanks for asking me. I've been looking forward to this.

Christopher Nelson (00:02:52) - Well, excellent. I love origin stories. And I know in getting to know you, the one thing that you always talk about that I want to take a moment because I know that there are people who work in tech, who are in the accounting and the finance and the tax department that proclaim you are a recovered accountant.

Margaret Andrews (00:03:14) - I am. I'm recovering. I will say I'm a recovering CPA. Yes, that's recovering CPA.

Christopher Nelson (00:03:20) - So walk us through a little bit about how you went from CPA to now all of a sudden running the Sloan School of Business in where you know what you're doing now.

Margaret Andrews (00:03:32) - Yeah, well, thanks. So, yeah, I started my career as a CPA in San Francisco, and I did that for about four years and I was actually on the tax side. But I also did a lot at work and things like that. And I realized, I don't think I want to do this. This isn't really, you know, what I want to do for the rest of my life doesn't fit me that well. So I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I did the obvious thing, which was to go back to business school. So I did that. And then I came out and I thought, you know, I was very narrow in my career before and I want to stay abroad for a while.

Margaret Andrews (00:04:08) - So I went into strategy consulting and I did that for I guess I did it with one of the big firms for about five years and actually really enjoyed it really. I joined the right firm, had great people that I worked with and things like that, and I found myself gravitating to two types of work. One was marketing kinds of things and the other was executive education, which we did a lot there. And so I said, I want to do one of those. And so I found one in marketing. And so I did. I was a VP of marketing at a financial services firm, and I did that for a couple of years. And then I threw a series of lucky accidents. I became the executive director of the MBA program at the MIT Sloan School of Management. So I kind of found, I mean, I knew I loved higher education, but that was kind of a dream job, really. MIT had tried to hire me a couple of other times previously, but it wasn't the right job at the time and it wasn't the right time.

Margaret Andrews (00:05:12) - It wasn't I didn't feel like they were really quite ready to do what I thought needed to be done. So at this point, they had gone down in the rankings. You know, they never cared about the business school rankings until they fell out of the top ten, and then all of a sudden they cared because people were saying, well, why should I go to. School is not in the top ten. So anyway, that was part of my charge, you know. Out. And it was an awesome job because I got to use all of my consulting skills, but I had to eat my own cooking, right? So I actually had to implement all this stuff. And it was really challenging and really fun to do that. So I did that and I was at MIT Sloan for about seven years, and so I worked on the MBA program Admissions and Student Affairs and career development and marketing for the school and alumni relations and things like that. So I realized, hey, you know, I kind of like this turnaround stuff.

Margaret Andrews (00:06:12) - Um, so anyway, I went out and did some more consulting and then one of my clients hired me and that was Harvard. So I was associate dean at Harvard running management programs for, I guess about six years. And during that time we revamped the program. You can see a theme here and also start up some executive programs or professional development programs. So I did that for I guess about six years, then went off and joined an international business school where I ran all the graduate programs across, what was it, five campuses in four countries and 16 time zones. So did that for a while. And then I realized, you know, I've been teaching now for the last 15 years and found that that's actually what I really like doing. I really like teaching. So I've been teaching at Harvard for about a little over 15 years now, and I'm just kind of doing more of that. So I've created lots of classes and, you know, managing yourself and leading others was absolutely the first one and it was the one that I had sort of in my heart that had to come out.

Margaret Andrews (00:07:23) - Wow. Yeah.

Christopher Nelson (00:07:25) - So before we get into that, I'm going to reel back a little bit. It sounds like the real inflection point for you was that experience in strategy consulting. It seemed like all of a sudden it gave you a broader business view. It gave you a broader, arguably world view. What were some of the you know, what were some of the things that you became aware of like, like playing that or having that role? Because I do think I myself came out of school and I did big for consulting for a number of years before I moved on to other things and even at an entry level, and I think especially at a post MBA strategy level, what you witnessed there I know creates a lot of opportunities or the the awareness of opportunities.

Margaret Andrews (00:08:15) - Absolutely. I think that is so true. I would say that the five years that I spent in consulting were some of the best education years I've ever had. Yes. Since that, you know, when I was being a CPA, one of the best things I took out of working there, I worked for Deloitte was I have great work paper technique, right? You know, I can, you know, find things.

Margaret Andrews (00:08:36) - ET cetera. You know, I leave that trail of crumbs. ET cetera. So that was actually a great learning experience. And I've carried it through my whole life. And with strategy consulting, it's always kind of looking through it at different angles, right? It's, you know, what if, what if that And, you know, there's I'm a believer and this is part of what I teach is that there is no single right answer to almost any question, certainly in leadership. Right. Usually in business and most things in life. Right. That there are some are better than others, but there is no single right answer. That every decision that you make involves trade offs and has consequences. And so you have to weigh all of those things. So, you know, you can't say always do this because there are times when that's not the right thing to do. So I think strategy consulting really helped with that a lot. And we always had this saying that I worked with really smart, really nice people, right? It was a great combination.

Margaret Andrews (00:09:40) - And we always had this saying there that when we're reviewing things, when we're looking over the deck or the report or something, we said, we're beating up on the deck, not each other. Right? And that was the best thing because anyone could say anything, right? You know, I don't like that. That doesn't make sense. Wrong, whatever. And it was never personal. It was about making it better and it was our product. So we want to make it better. And I've carried that forward as well.

Christopher Nelson (00:10:10) - So it was great training. That's so interesting because I learned the same lesson. And it seems like this, you know, you think consulting is a people business. They need to develop people. People are their products, right? Yes. And yes. And I'm saying this in a healthy way, not sterile like their product, but they're developing people. And that was one of them. I think it was a piece of advice that I got from a mentor leader.

Christopher Nelson (00:10:36) - There was a conversation about the work. It's not about the person who did the work. We're trying to vet the work and make it stronger. And I think that's a very sound principle that's been with me to this day.

Margaret Andrews (00:10:49) - Yeah, it's it's, it's great. And it's never it's not personal. But by making it not personal, we develop personally, right? It's kind of that right.

Christopher Nelson (00:10:59) - Now when you are in strategy and this to me is where I'm seeing that there was an inflection point in your career because it was really after the strategy that you started moving towards education and especially executive education. I know in and I've done some strategy roles when I was in consulting as well, is I find that strategy consultants really are looking at sort of the roadmap, the plan, or they look in and they say, I want to develop the people because regardless of the map or the plan, if I actually make the people better, that may have a bigger impact on this company, this program that we're developing.

Christopher Nelson (00:11:43) - What was there some type of an inciting incident or, you know, moment where you realized I'm more drawn to developing the people than creating these plans?

Margaret Andrews (00:11:55) - Actually, you know, I think I've always gravitated to what I'm going to call the people's side of the business in strategy consulting a lot. What you often hear and I'm sure you've heard is that you know oh, we had this great strategy, but we couldn't implement it. And then I always think, well, then you have a very good strategy, right? If you can't implement it, it's not good. And if you don't have the skills for it, it's not the right strategy. So I've always thought that they are much more integrated than people. Often you can't do one without the other. You know, you have the heads of the coin and the tails of the tails of the coin. It's still the same coin. So yeah, I've always been drawn to that. And you know, you were asking about inciting incidents and I was saying that, you know, the Mylo class was one that just absolutely was inside of me and just was like, you know, think of Alien.

Margaret Andrews (00:12:47) - It had to come out. And so it's a great visual, you know, And I know there were really two. So, you know, one was maybe the seed and the other was the water or, you know, one was fire and the other was the accelerant. So, you know, whichever metaphor you like. But, you know, the first one was actually when I was in business school and we had this case and it was this case about this guy, you know, a real hotshot guy, somebody who, you know, you would want to be like and things like that. And he just had this great background, etcetera. And he's going to interview for this job that everybody wants. So it's very, very competitive. So, you know, he's in this process and things like that and he gets the job and then six months later he is miserable in this job and he cannot figure out why. And of course, my classmates and I had quite a chuckle at that because in any case, there are clues all throughout the process that this is the wrong job for him.

Margaret Andrews (00:13:50) - But he misses all of them because he's so focused on getting the job and I remember thinking that. But what really happened then was, you know, after we all graduated, we would those of us that lived in the Boston area would get together, you know, occasionally for beer or something like that. And after about six months, people started coming to those gatherings saying, oh my gosh, I'm Dan Davis, Right. The name of the character and. Right. And it wasn't just 1 or 2. I mean, it was multiple. And I remember that's what struck me because I said these are some of the smartest, kindest, hardest working people I know. How could that happen to them? And that just stayed with me, right? That was that seed or, you know, the fire was starting to burn. And then later when I went to run the MBA program at MIT, I would get to know some students pretty well, right? And they'd tell me, Oh, I'm going off to work.

Margaret Andrews (00:14:43) - And sometimes I go, Ooh, you know, kind of thinking about what I know about this person and what I know about that organization that just doesn't feel like a match. And if I knew them well enough, I would have a conversation, you know? Are you sure? Etcetera. And almost every time they would say, Oh, yeah, you know, everything's fine. But several times people called me about six months later and we had a really different conversation about how they exit that and get to something that they like. So I kept seeing this and I thought, Man, we need to teach people, How do you understand yourself so that you can put yourself in the right environments? And, you know, I have this saying you have to plant yourself where you will grow. And I just saw people planting themselves in the wrong soil again and again. So that was the first one. And the second one was much more deeply personal, which was one time one of my bosses said to me, he said, You're not self aware.

Margaret Andrews (00:15:41) - And it was not set in a developmental uh oh. But it turned out to be exceedingly developmental and said, You know, you've done some great things right, you know, and could take those things off. But, you know, I don't think you have a great leadership style. And so that rattled me. That definitely rattled me. You know, I didn't have a great relationship with that boss. And when I really went to think about it, you know, I can be pretty hard charging and, you know, I want to run and run fast and I can be demanding. But, you know, I could also sometimes be a little insensitive to context and things like that and which is embarrassing to say, but was true. And so I realized, you know, as I say, the worst part of that story was that he wasn't wrong. And so I determined I do not want to be this way. Right. I do not want to have this be, you know, the way I am.

Margaret Andrews (00:16:41) - So I started looking at all kinds of different things. And I looked at people I knew that were great leaders and academic studies and books and history and philosophy and theology and all these kinds of things. And I, you know, kind of when I. In that exploration, My goal was to say, how do we become better versions of ourselves? And I meant that I'm kind of on a leadership level as well as a personal level. And so as I was going through this, I did find and I thought, ding, ding, ding. There it is. Right There it is. And guess what? It's in all of those things that I just mentioned. And so I changed that, my leadership style, you know, knowing this. And that's where Mylo came from. That's where managing yourself and leading others came from. And that secret was really that you have to manage yourself before you lead others, and that managing yourself comes to really the first part of that is understanding yourself. You know, who are you? Who has shaped you? You know, the influences in your life, the people.

Margaret Andrews (00:17:46) - And that includes obviously parents and family. But yes, friends, lovers, enemies, people that have helped you, people that have hurt you. Right. And, you know, events and I say lucky and lucky. Unlucky accidents. Right. They were a series of lucky accidents that got me to MIT. Right. So those count and lots of other things, your values and your definition of success. So I thought people understood themselves better. They would make much better choices for themselves and therefore they would be more sort of comfortable in their own skin. And those people make better leaders. So that was kind of what it's all about.

Christopher Nelson (00:18:25) - Well, and it sounds like I want to sort of roll this back because I think there's some similarities to what I'm doing now. And I think what you're doing now, which is. You see, I remember you said these bright, smart, kind, hard working people, but they can't see this blind spot. Like they can't. And it's this thing that, you know, causes them to make a series of unfortunate mistakes and get themselves into bad emotional states that can lead to bad physical states.

Christopher Nelson (00:18:59) - ET cetera. And that's honestly, you know, really the ethos of creating tech careers and money. Talk is again, it's the same thing. People start doing some of that stuff, right? They start leading themselves, but they're focused more on the career and they don't fold in the financial aspect. But I think that from a and I like this whole concept of you have the fire and then you have the accelerant. I think the question is: it sounds to me like you sort of observed this pattern. And then it was like when you realize like, oh, my gosh, like, that's me, too. That then became this accelerant that said, okay, I need to solve this for myself. And while I'm doing this, there's an opportunity to help other people.

Margaret Andrews (00:19:43) - That's yeah, that's exactly right. That I felt like my results were better. I was enjoying it more, right? I was working insane hours and things like that. So it made a difference. It made a difference.

Margaret Andrews (00:19:57) - And I also realize that I enjoy teaching a lot. I love, love, love that light bulb moment when you see somebody, you know, really have a change of heart or, you know, they get it all of a sudden. And it's interesting that you say that, you know, with because you're right a lot of people the really smart, hard working good intention people have gotten through everything they can, power through everything. Right. They just keep going. But as we know, you can't do that forever. And also, as you go up in a level of organization, the work is done more with and through other people. So it's not just you. And that's when it shows up. And I find that I get in my in particularly in these professional programs, I get a lot of Stem people, scientists, engineers, doctors, and they will tell me a variation on the theme of I'm an awesome scientist, but now I'm running the lab and I have no idea what I'm doing.

Margaret Andrews (00:21:03) - And in fact, I'm messing everything up, you know? And a lot of times they would think, you know, Oh, I'm the smartest guy in the room, so, you know, I should be the leader. And then they get there and realize, oh, yeah, exactly, I'll figure it out. And then they realize, Oh, man, this is so much harder than it looks. So yeah.

Christopher Nelson (00:21:20) - It's a completely different discipline. So I want to be able to get into all of that in the second half of the show. But right now, like what are the plans for the Mylo Center? I mean, I think this message in what you're communicating is so important. Are there ways that you're trying to grow and educate other leaders, you know, outside of the Harvard Arena?

Margaret Andrews (00:21:41) - Yeah. You know, so I you know, I do most of my teaching through Harvard, and then I have private clients and things like that. But I'm in the process right now of writing a book, which is very hard, as you know.

Margaret Andrews (00:21:55) - It takes a lot of time and effort and hair pulling, but that's part of it as well. So I've started doing some of the speaking I want.

Christopher Nelson (00:22:05) - I'm just laughing about the book writing because it seems like book writing can also lead to a lot of just sad alone time where you're like, Well, but it's a process. It's a process.

Margaret Andrews (00:22:16) - It's definitely a process. And there's times when I'm writing like, Who wants to read this right and right? Then you have good days too. But yeah, so it's writing, speaking, teaching. And that's kind of my, my sort of three legged stool and each one helps the other, which I always felt, you know, when I was consulting and teaching, each of those helped the other as well. So I like things that I always like to have kind of a portfolio career because where I do lots of different things, because I'm interested in a lot of different things. And when I get tired over here, I just take that hat off, go over here, put that hat on and I can keep going and keep moving.

Margaret Andrews (00:22:56) - I think you know that feeling.

Christopher Nelson (00:22:58) - Oh, I do. I do. And I mean, I'm excited to be at that point in my career to where there's, yeah. Opportunities, writing the book, talking, podcasting, etcetera. Well, I thank you for the first half. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back and we're going to get into managing ourselves and leading others because something I'm really passionate about and I'm going to share a story to kick us off. We'll be right back. All right. Welcome back. We're back here with Margaret Andrews. And I have to say, like, I am super excited about this half of the podcast because we are going to go deep on managing yourself and leading others. And I want to start off by saying two things. Number one is I appreciate you in the way that you teach, because it's obvious to me from our first half of the conversation that. Like I have this mantra that's serve, educate, connect and like you embody those same things.

Christopher Nelson (00:23:55) - Like this whole concept of, you know, Mylo came out of you something that broke your heart. You saw these people that were just crashing and burning. You're like, Oh, man, that hurts. You also realize, then, wait, I have the same problem. There's an opportunity to then serve through education and then there's an instant connection, right? And this and this is what we're identified with. So I just want to say, I see you. That's awesome.

Margaret Andrews (00:24:23) - Great. Thanks.

Christopher Nelson (00:24:24) - And I want to start off so. I don't know. I think I may have told you this story before, but I want to tell it so that everybody can understand when I. So I was a director, and so I'd moved over from consulting and I'd worked my way up to be a director at a startup company that had just gone through an IPO. And I got into a peer group. And what it was is it was I was so I was in it. So I was on the Chief information Officer track.

Christopher Nelson (00:24:56) - So I reported directly as chief information officer. And I went to the, you know, CIO development programs, what it was called. And it had a lecture from Cal who was there. I mean, it was a really nice group. And we're still friends to this day. They brought in the chief information officer from AMD, a very large hardware organization, multinational location. And when he started off his conversation, he said. I am going to give you my leadership secret tonight. And what it is, is it's the 8020 rule. I know. Okay. I can relate to that. Prado. I got you, man. 80% of the time is spent leading myself. 20% is leading others. And I tell everybody because I like you, like you got to be honest, at that point, I'm like, this guy is crazy. I guess I need to unplug right now. Like Watts. I'm looking around at my buddy going like, Is this guy crazy? He went on to go do his talk and by the time he was finished, of course or not, of course.

Christopher Nelson (00:26:02) - But for me, I was like, this guy's a genius. Like, oh my goodness. Like, what am I missing out on? Like, I, you know, and I think I had some level of self awareness and I think I was aware enough at that point to get the message. That's where I needed to be. Like I had that foothold in self awareness to realize, wait a second, my management strategy is askew because I was in the 20% managing myself, 80% managing others, and I had to reverse it. Is this common? Is this what you see out there?

Margaret Andrews (00:26:37) - I think it is. And it's funny, I had breakfast this morning with a friend that we met in the strategy consulting firm, and he's off doing very big things in tech right now. But we got together and we're just laughing over some of these things, too. And that, you know, when you are not leading. This is one reason why I don't usually teach this to undergrads or people very early in their career, because a lot of times I think there are two there are two new to it.

Margaret Andrews (00:27:07) - It's because of what you and I are talking about, I'm sure there are some people going, Well, duh, of course, right? But as we know, it's harder to do than it sounds. And so a lot of times I really like working with people from middle to senior managers who have, as I say, been around the block and probably hit a wall or two because that's when they realize, Oh, this isn't fluff, right? This is actually important and it's hard to do. So, you know, as I think I mentioned, I get a lot of Stem people in a lot of tech people in my programs because that's exactly where they are. This leadership thing, which I thought was a bunch of bonk or fluff or, you know, so obviously easy. But now I realize it's not and it's not just about best practices, really. It's about, you know, who are you and how do you show up to other people?

Christopher Nelson (00:28:10) - And so break down for us a little bit of some of the core concepts that you think really could help anchor people.

Christopher Nelson (00:28:18) - I want to make sure that, you know, we're we're we're breaking it down and giving them some bite sized chunks so that they can understand this, too.

Margaret Andrews (00:28:25) - Yeah. Yeah. So the way I look at it is that you are in a current state. I'm in a current state. Everybody is. And so the idea is that you have to understand yourself. And this is where you look at. And, you know, I eat a lot of kinds of multilayered questions with people to help them get at this. You know, the first one, as I mentioned, is, you know, who you are, who and what thinking has impacted you for better and for worse. And sometimes it's both that sometimes we have old ideas of who we are or what we should do. And we have to kind of go through and say, "Is that really true? Is that really true? Was it ever And certainly is it now? Does it serve me now so you know who and what has shaped you? What events, what are your values? What's your definition of success? And I find that a lot of times if we don't know what it is, we're just being carried along with whatever social media thinks and definition of success, which oftentimes is more right, more, you know, more money, higher title.

Margaret Andrews (00:29:35) - And yet, you know, a lot of times that's not really what it is. But if people don't know that, then they're kind of pulled along with that, you know? And also, do people understand what emotions they are having and how they know, I asked people, do you know, how do you show up when you're angry? How do you show up when you're sad? You know, these different things. And most people don't know. And I say, yeah, but everybody else does know. Yeah. So these are things. And then also, what kind of feedback have you received and especially the one you didn't agree with, you wanted to fight about? Because that's often the one that hits close to home. That's the one.

Christopher Nelson (00:30:18) - That's getting you.

Margaret Andrews (00:30:18) - They want to pay attention to? Yeah, exactly. So that's kind of the whereas I say you sort of go inward. You also kind of go backwards in a way, and that gives you insight, insight into who I am, what do I want, what, how do I want to contribute to the world? What are my skills and how do I want to bring those out into the world? What change do I want to make in the world? And then thinking about, okay, what do I need to do? Maybe I need some new skills, you know? Or usually what it is, is I need some new behaviors.

Margaret Andrews (00:30:52) - I need to change these kinds of things. So, you know, if you think about as you go through your career, very often when people are early in their career, they'll tell you you need to speak up more in meetings. We need to hear your ideas. Christopher Right, right, right. And then, you know, you get good at that. And then later they say, Christopher, you need to not talk as much in meetings, right? You know, I need to let other people. Right. But both were true at the time. And the other is, you know, if you've ever tried to learn to delegate, it's hard. Right? Because I always say it's a pendulum or, you know, it's Goldilocks, right? Sometimes you micromanage and then you go over here and you don't delegate. You abdicate. Right. That has disastrous consequences as well. But you have to learn how to do it. So when you're learning a new skill, your performance often goes down.

Margaret Andrews (00:31:43) - Right. Because. But you have to kind of keep at it because that's the way we learn, right? We learn in these S curves that you get better slowly and then quickly. Right. So you have to keep at it. And then you level off and it's time for a new one. It's time for a new skill or behavior. So that's part of it.

Christopher Nelson (00:32:05) - What do you do? Do you advocate for some type of a practice that helps people just reflect more? I realized that myself and you just you struck a memory with me that it was really going through this this journey of of managing myself that got me into, you know, a morning journaling practice that got me into a seeking quiet time type practice because I realized that if I didn't have the time to do those things, I mean, it's it's how am I feeling? How am I feeling right now? There was always sort of that. And then I would always sort of reflect on, you know, what, what had I done last week, last month, last quarter to try and say like, where how am I growing? Is that something that you advocate for as part of a program like this?

Margaret Andrews (00:32:56) - Yeah, I do.

Margaret Andrews (00:32:57) - And I think it's you know, to me, it kind of goes at the heart of both self management and resilience in the sense that, you know, the three things that we can do that help us with any kind of self management are also the three things that help us with resilience are also the three things we all know and usually just don't do right. It means you should get enough sleep, which right you think of all the times in your career that that was not the case and the ramifications of eating well. Right. And I remember I cannot remember his name, but he's a doctor from Columbia University and he has a saying which really resonated with me. He said, you know, every brain cell begins at the end of your fork. Well, what you put right when you put in your body becomes your, you know, becomes your body. And so what. Right. And we feel better when we're eating. Well. That's right. Right. You can tell the difference.

Margaret Andrews (00:34:03) - And these are small things. And by the way, we all know them. And the third thing is exercise. It's just moving your body because it helps with stress regulation. It also helps you sleep. Right. All of these kinds of things. So, you know, I teach this one program called Emotional Intelligence and Leadership. And when I get to this part about self management and I say these are three things and everybody's all excited, and then I say those three things and I can just see everybody's face droop, you know, sort of like that. Is that it? Like, isn't, isn't there like some magic thing? And it's like, no, it's actually fairly simple.

Christopher Nelson (00:34:37) - Yeah, you just have to do it now. Just doing it, you know it already. You just gotta do it now. Yeah, that's.

Margaret Andrews (00:34:44) - Right. Yes. There's a big learning gap in that area for most of us.

Christopher Nelson (00:34:50) - And so is there a different way like I think of we obviously lead ourselves, we're leading teams.

Christopher Nelson (00:34:57) - And then as you ascend in leadership and you're influencing organizations, does some of how we manage ourselves change even more as potentially where our scope or breadth of leadership changes?

Margaret Andrews (00:35:12) - Absolutely. Because I think when, you know, if you think about most people's career, you kind of go through you start off as an individual contributor and then you're a part of a team and then maybe you're managing that team and then you're leading multiple teams and then units and maybe organizations. But at each one of those levels, you have to have different relationships with people. And so that means that you and it's not it's not that there's oftentimes people will say, well, learning this new behavior, whether it's delegating or speaking up more or speaking up less or, you know, whatever it is that they say, oh, it feels very inauthentic and but growth feels inauthentic. You know, think of a hard class that you had in college or something like that. Your brain hurts. And and it can be the same thing with learning a new skill that discomfort is oftentimes a sign that you're growing, that you're stretching, you know, just like when you go and run and you haven't run for a while, those sore muscles are saying, Yeah, I'm still here, right? You have.

Margaret Andrews (00:36:20) - You have worked for me for a while. Yeah. So I do think that you have to kind of constantly. I'm going to say each new level of your career requires kind of a new and improved you. It's you. It's you. But ratchet it up.

Christopher Nelson (00:36:38) - Right? Ratcheted up and yeah, the new skills to learn and new ways that you need to. I mean I just found for myself that the more my career ascended, the more I needed to focus on managing all the subtleties, right? Because everything was important. I had a larger impact on teams, a larger impact on myself. So you are right. Like I had to lock down some of the eating, some of the exercise. I had to show up much more prepared. Because I was making bigger decisions in moments.

Margaret Andrews (00:37:11) - Yeah. And I think that now and you also mentioned something earlier that I think is really important and I don't want to skip it. Self-reflection is that, you know, I don't think we're a terribly reflective society and a lot of times people think that it's selfish.

Margaret Andrews (00:37:28) - These kinds of things are selfish and they are not. They're actually kind because when you're well rested and you've eaten well and you've exercised, you show up better and you're better for everybody around you. Right? So that 's it. Taking care of yourself helps to take care of other people. But the the other thing on the self reflection is that the the higher up you go in your career, the more whether it's people or money or projects that you're responsible for, actually the more important reflection becomes because as you say, you have to respond quickly in the moment and you don't want to be relying on, you know, kind of patterns in the past. You have to be very aware that things are different.

Christopher Nelson (00:38:16) - You do. And this is one of the things that I learned working at startup companies is that it was because I really focused on hyper growth companies that were, you know, getting ready to go through an IPO and then going through an IPO. And, you know, the one that really shaped me was a company called Splunk that I started in 2011, probably around 300 people, around $120 million in revenue.

Christopher Nelson (00:38:42) - And then when I left, it was close to 3000 people, $1 billion in revenue five years later. So it was a massive growth. And the one key thing that I learned is that. The the. The skills, the attitudes, the activities that we had last year will keep us in last year. Like we have to now. Every year we have to reevaluate and say, you know, what do we want to keep? What do we want to throw out and what do we actually need to learn to scale? Because the things that got us here are going to keep us here.

Margaret Andrews (00:39:15) - Yes, I think it's very, very well said that as a company, we realize that you have to look out into the future. And even though it's very uncertain and things like that, you can't just go, well, we'll wait and see. And the same is true of us, that if we're not continuing to develop, we're actually backsliding and it hurts us and it hurts people around us.

Margaret Andrews (00:39:37) - You know, I believe we're not this same as we were when we were ten years old or 18 years old or 28 years old. Right. We change as. And that's a good thing. That's good.

Christopher Nelson (00:39:47) - Thing. It is a good thing. And I do think that that to me is an anchor. And part of that self awareness is being aware of who we are today versus who we were, you know, two years ago, five years ago. Everything changes so dramatically, so quickly sometimes.

Margaret Andrews (00:40:05) - Yeah, yeah. And I think if we're intentional also about how we want to change, that's better because we are changing. The question is, and I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of times people do come to managing yourself and leading others is because I've definitely had people say, you know, I really wasn't paying attention to this, and now I'm a person I don't want to be. Wow. And yeah, And so but, you know, I would say, hey, that's it's good to know where you're starting from, right?

Christopher Nelson (00:40:31) - Yeah, 100%.

Christopher Nelson (00:40:32) - Like you got to have a starting line. And that's the thing, the best time to plant a tree is what, 20 years ago and today, right?

Margaret Andrews (00:40:38) - Yes. Yes. The second best time is today.

Christopher Nelson (00:40:40) - That's right. And so what do you see are some of the blockers for people, You know, I mean, so so, you know, we have people that are in leadership that are listening to this right now. And we want to help them understand like, you know. Is there something that they could be unintentionally blocking themselves or the blinders are on or, you know, how do you get how you start getting even signals that, you know what you may need to manage yourself a little bit?

Margaret Andrews (00:41:07) - Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's lots of different signs of people that are kind of low on, I'll say, emotional intelligence or self understanding, etcetera. You know, there are things like people hold grudges, they're easily stressed out, they're easily angered. They often feel misunderstood, which is right.

Margaret Andrews (00:41:25) - Because they have something that they're thinking, but they're not portraying it the same way. Right. They have problems with relationships. They don't have long term friendships or long term relationships. You know, those are some of the ones that I see happen a lot. But I think it's also that when people ascend in their career that we become so busy. Right. Your day becomes chunked up. So in such a granular way that you can be buffeted by all kinds of different things. And so the when and that I think, causes a lot of that stress because people. Yeah. Aren't taking care of themselves, don't necessarily understand themselves. And I think one of the biggest blockers that I see is actually what I'll call I should or I need to or my boss won't allow that. And, you know, I teach another class in creativity and innovation and. Right. We say there's multiple, multiple ways to solve a problem and we can't get stuck in that.

Christopher Nelson (00:42:37) - We can't.

Christopher Nelson (00:42:37) - And I mean, one of the things that you made me think about is, you know, is, is I started feeling at some point because I was really getting into a very busy part of my career. And we had three children very quickly. And I wasn't clear on how this worked growing up. But now I am clear that we had a son and then 18 months later, we had twins. Boom, three kids under, three sons under two. It was crazy. And so I was trying to know that to be with my family, I had to set better boundaries and. What is the one rule that has always sort of has ruled my life and I don't think I may have got this from my mom. I'm not sure where I get this, but it's negotiable. Right. Go in there and just negotiate. Like, let's figure it out. Let's try and drive to win. But I always knew, like, what my goal was in the conversation and also what my limit was.

Christopher Nelson (00:43:34) - And I think that sometimes people do get stuck in some ways of thinking, you know, and this is now a bit of a self observation. And then also observing some and others is people can get stuck from leading themselves because they see these external forces and say, oh, to your point, that's a should, I must. And it's like, man, it's negotiable. Like, where do you want to move that? And it's not maybe it doesn't need to move 100% of the way overnight. Maybe you just want to move the goalpost. 25% know that you can move it and then keep moving in that direction.

Margaret Andrews (00:44:07) - Absolutely. And I was you know, a lot of times I'll ask people, why do you say that? Right? How do you know? A very common one is, you know, in my family, my husband and I, we take real vacations, right? We go, we leave work behind. And people say, oh, my boss wouldn't allow that.

Margaret Andrews (00:44:25) - I'm like, leave your phone at home. Right. You know, oops. So, I mean, what's going to happen if the building is burning? You know, you're not going to be able to do anything for them over the phone. They'll get out. So, I mean, I think a lot of times we think we're more important to our team. Right? We need to go away. We need to refresh. They need to refresh without us. So I often think people, you know, check email multiple times over a weekend. And I mean, there are times when you do need to, you know, if you're the business owner or, you know, you have an A business where that is. But I think that most businesses actually aren't like that. And we to your point, it's kind of boundaries, you know, what's going to work for you as well. People will respect the boundaries that you put up.

Christopher Nelson (00:45:16) - That, to me is the most you know, it is I know in tech it can easily bleed into a 24 by seven lifestyle.

Christopher Nelson (00:45:22) - And when I started setting boundaries and saying, okay, from, you know, I think I get home like around six, but I'd say from 6 to 8, you know, until my kids get a bed, I'm offline. I can't do anything. The more I said that, the more everybody understood it and it became protected and it was fine. And then it became the new normal. Nobody then, you know, there's obviously the ramp up time, there's the establishing it. There's also making sure again, I'm managing myself and I'm setting expectations. I'm getting what I need to do before I enter that time. But I think that there's. It starts with you. I think that's ultimately what I'm trying to communicate right here, right now is it does start with you and you can move it in. It's negotiable.

Margaret Andrews (00:46:11) - Absolutely. And I think what you said also is that when you set those boundaries mentally, you're much better because now when you're with your kids, you're not thinking, oh, somebody's trying to reach me, Right? You just know I'm here.

Margaret Andrews (00:46:25) - And then when you're not with your kids, you're there and it makes you better in both realms. And also, the other thing I think, too, especially this is true of leaders, is that then you're giving permission for other people to take care of other things in their lives, too, and they will be better. That actually sometimes working a little less, sleeping a little more, or being with your family or whatever it is, makes you much more productive while you are working.

Christopher Nelson (00:46:54) - It really does. So overall, what are you? What have you seen is the benefits to teams that adopt this?

Margaret Andrews (00:47:03) - So I would say that it starts with any individual. You know, a lot of times people will say, well, it doesn't matter if I'm self-aware, if, you know, my boss is hard. And I say, Oh, it still does, right? Because really the only thing that you can control is you. And so but the more control you have over that, the more you can manage other things.

Margaret Andrews (00:47:26) - So with teams, I think that it allows teams to have more honest conversations, talk about what's really important or what's really going on, as opposed to hiding mistakes or people being stressed out and not talking about it. You know, that just leads to a lot of burnout, which, you know, is pretty rampant right now.

Christopher Nelson (00:47:50) - No, it is in what I was thinking is. What I experienced myself is as I became more emotionally aware and I was talking about things that I needed and providing permission for people to let me know what they needed. It created psychological safety. And then people start feeling like they can speak truth to power. They can.

Margaret Andrews (00:48:15) - Absolutely.

Christopher Nelson (00:48:17) - I'm I'm you know what? If you're doing this. I haven't been spending time with my kid. Okay. Let's make it. How do we make this happen for everybody? What do we have to do to make it work?

Margaret Andrews (00:48:27) - Yeah, and that's the thing is you were saying it's negotiable. And I always say there's multiple ways to figure this out, right? It doesn't have to be a certain way.

Margaret Andrews (00:48:34) - We can figure it out. We can. It's up to us, right? We get to decide. So, yeah, I think it can help teams a lot. But the other thing is, you can't force it on anyone, right? You can only manage yourself. You can only. And that's not nothing.

Christopher Nelson (00:48:53) - It's not. And here's one of the other takeaways, too, is when you start managing yourself, you may start choosing to put yourself in different situations. You may then start choosing a different boss. Well, my boss isn't self-aware and I see how he's managing himself and I really don't want to be like him. And maybe there's other opportunities elsewhere where I can work for somebody who's actually now self-aware managing themselves. And I could get more growth or I could live better. I could you know, this is where I think it's really important for people to realize that when you start managing yourself first, that the ripple effect is this eye opening awareness that may move you into situations where now I don't know if people are going to give you three winning lottery tickets, but you could be getting just better mojo in your direction.

Margaret Andrews (00:49:44) - Yeah, Well, and I also think, too, that what you were saying is that being self-aware, you may have a boss. It is really, really difficult. And you know, we've probably all had that too. But sometimes you are not in a situation where you can move yet, but being self-aware helps you say, kind of turn the conversation for yourself to what can I learn here? Right? So it just changes it from being really rattled and stressed by this person to, you know, what can I learn here? And sometimes what you're learning is how I don't want to make people feel.

Christopher Nelson (00:50:24) - It's true that I've even been in this situation where being self aware in having a boss that wasn't as self aware and starting to ask questions of. You know, they'll be in a moment where somebody laughed and maybe they're venting in, they're frustrated, and then it's like, well, how else did that make you feel? Or you start doing a little active listening exercise with them and being really aware and they can hear themselves say things.

Christopher Nelson (00:50:53) - I found that, you know, and I actually had a mentor of mine once tell me that if if you are executing a discipline, the reality is, is that discipline will push into other people and not saying that they will adopt it the same way that you are, but it will ultimately affect them, right?

Margaret Andrews (00:51:12) - Yeah, I think that's absolutely right, because it changes you and it changes the way you interact with other people. So it changes the impact that you have on them. So absolutely, if it's good for you, it generally is good for other people.

Christopher Nelson (00:51:29) - Wow. Well, that's really exciting. Are there any exercises or something that you would recommend for people who want to get started with this?

Margaret Andrews (00:51:37) - Yeah. I mean, I think one of them is self reflection. You know, I use some fairly deep questions and things like that, and I'm always happy when people want to send me an email. I'm happy to do that or find me on LinkedIn. That's always a very good way to do it.

Margaret Andrews (00:51:53) - In fact, I'm running something on LinkedIn probably it'll start in about two weeks. It's called the Self Awareness Challenge. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to do one of the big questions each week for six weeks, and I'm just going to ask people if they would fill out a survey to tell me, how long did you spend on it? And, you know, did you have some insights? I'm not going to ask them what their answers were because that's obviously very private. But if people want to do that, it's going to probably start in about two weeks and they can find me on LinkedIn.

Christopher Nelson (00:52:22) - Oh, great. Well, I'll definitely put your LinkedIn and some comments about that in the show notes. The other thing that I would tell people is I was literally talking to a friend this morning who I can't remember what they had to write out something. And I said sometimes one of the great things about technology, technology can change our lives is a tool like order. You can ask a deep question.

Christopher Nelson (00:52:48) - And this is something that I do now as far as journaling exercise, I may incorporate the journaling in the walking because I'll take a question. I'll look at it, I'll go walk, meditate, and I'll have my headphones on. I'll be talking to myself. Obviously you have to feel comfortable looking a little crazy walking around. But I'll go and I'll talk and then I can go on to order and sort of distill out what were the main points that I took. And I can shape that and edit it into something that then I want to put into my journal that makes the process a lot easier. But I also think that the process of walking, talking things out loud, even with yourself, is or especially with yourself, is really valuable.

Margaret Andrews (00:53:32) - Yeah, I totally agree. Any way that you have of reflecting is good. You know, whether some people journal, some people talk to themselves, some people actually talk to a friend. You know, some people talk about it. And all of this is good, right? It's kind of sometimes it's getting what's in your head or in your heart, verbalizing it or writing it down because, you know, I'm a Harry Potter fan.

Margaret Andrews (00:53:55) - And, you know, in Harry Potter, when their mind is so full. Right. And you can't, you've had your mind so full of thoughts that you can't think of anything else. So they would take their wand and take their thoughts out of their head and write them and stir them up. Right. And look at them for insight. To me, that's what journaling is. It's your own personal pensive, and what you're doing is very, very similar to that. It's kind of getting it out, right? It's kind of verbalizing. And it really does help because sometimes you, you hear yourself say something and that gives you an insight, right? Like, oh, really?

Christopher Nelson (00:54:30) - It does.

Margaret Andrews (00:54:31) - Word right. But, you know.

Christopher Nelson (00:54:33) - You can hear yourself say things like, oh, that's great. Or I'm like, why did I say that? But I try to give people some of these tips because I think now, now journaling, you know, because if people do want to record for posterity.

Christopher Nelson (00:54:48) - State I'm saying there's other options besides getting in front of your computer that can be distracting, writing things out that people don't write a lot, so they get tired real quick. There's a lot of other options to get this done.

Margaret Andrews (00:55:00) - Yes, absolutely. Lots of different ways to do it. And what works for one person doesn't work as well for another. And that's totally fine. I think you just have to experiment with it. But what works for you and try something for a week and if it. Yeah. Not not hitting the mark, then try something else. Something. But the point is just do it. Just try it.

Christopher Nelson (00:55:21) - It is. It is. Try, try some self-reflection and just become a little bit more aware. Well, Margaret, thank you so much. I really appreciate the time. We're going to move now into the fire round where I'm going to hit you with five questions, and you're going to help us understand how you would respond to how you keep learning?

Margaret Andrews (00:55:42) - How do I keep learning? I teach, which is the best way because I have to keep current.

Margaret Andrews (00:55:49) - So I'm constantly every single time I teach something, I teach it a little bit differently. You know, I'm looking at, you know, academic studies, etcetera. I read a lot of online papers, all kinds of stuff. I read cereal boxes, all of those kinds of things. So yeah, teaching and reading.

Christopher Nelson (00:56:06) - You know what sanctum gum is? Yes. You can read me cereal boxes. Yeah. What do you do to recharge?

Margaret Andrews (00:56:15) - Uh, the big one is I swim. I swim especially. I swim on a masters team, but I. I also swim on my own. And I love open water swimming. I swim at Walden Pond, which is absolutely magical. So it's a half mile across, half mile back, do a few laps on that. And I feel like a totally new person afterwards.

Christopher Nelson (00:56:40) - Oh, that's amazing. What is the sage piece of advice that you would give your younger self?

Margaret Andrews (00:56:47) - Oh, man, so many things. I don't know if it's hard to pull out a couple, I guess.

Margaret Andrews (00:56:53) - Number one would be chill, you know, And then to just ask yourself, what do you want? What do you want for these kinds of things? Because I think a lot of times when I was younger, I kind of did what other people wanted. And yeah, so I would just just pause and ask, What do you want?

Christopher Nelson (00:57:15) - That's great. I love that. What soft skill do you believe has helped your career the most?

Margaret Andrews (00:57:24) - Observation. I would say observation. I'm an introvert, so I am generally the quieter one in a meeting. So that gives me a lot of time to look and watch. And so I'm pretty good at picking up on cues, you know, what people are saying and not saying and things like that. So I would say observational skills and it kind of goes along with listening.

Christopher Nelson (00:57:55) - And what is the best investment of time that you've ever made?

Margaret Andrews (00:57:59) - Oh, my gosh. I mean, it would be for me. As I say, I'm an introvert.

Margaret Andrews (00:58:03) - It's spending time with other people, people that really make me think differently. Jazz me up with new thoughts. You know, I have some friends that I just, you know, I have some friends that I get off the phone with and I'm just no matter what, I'm just in a better mood. And I have other friends where I get off the phone and my head is bursting with new ideas. So. So, yeah, this introvert gets a lot of energy from other people. So that and, you know, I say that with my kids. I say that with my husband, you know, so it's not just friends and coworkers. You can learn a lot from everybody.

Christopher Nelson (00:58:43) - That's everybody. Well, thank you so much for the time. We really appreciate you being here. And I just want to let everyone know that we are a new podcast. So please subscribe and listen on Spotify, Apple, Google, Amazon, you name it. We're there. And I would also say if you give us a review, we would love to understand what you're taking away from this podcast and please just share it with somebody.

Christopher Nelson (00:59:07) - Our goal is to help people figure out this whole career and money thing and how it all works. So please let people know that we're here for them. Thank you very much.