Episode 05: Elaine Biech’s Secret Focus Formula, 3 Big Workplace Trends, and the 2 Career Accelerators for Leaders

/
Episode 5 Elaine Biech

About Episode 5

In this episode of the TalentGrow Show, I talk with award-winning organizational development consultant, prolific author, sought-after speaker, and “Trainer’s Trainer” Elaine Biech. We discuss the relationship between generosity and career success, Elaine’s four step formula for achieving total focus for those really important, deep-dive types of projects, and the three huge workplace trends that Elaine sees in our next five years that every leader and employer must pay attention to. Elaine also shares her two key actions that leaders must take to ensure they’re ready to succeed in our fast-moving world of work. Plus, learn about the insane number of books Elaine has authored and edited, why work-life balance is dead and what replaces it, and the surprising age at which organizations are currently beginning to develop leaders (it’s too old!).

What You'll Learn:

In this upbeat and conversational episode, you’ll learn:

Listen to Stitcher
  • What’s the distinguishing characteristic that really helped shape and propel Elaine’s career trajectory?
  • Why the virtuous cycle of giving and generosity are so important for successful leaders to use
  • Elaine’s secret formula for staying focused on big, dense projects that she has used to crank out over sixty books (and you can use to crank out that budget or report that’s due on Friday)
  • The three big trends in the workplace that Elaine says leaders and employers MUST address to bring in and keep good employees and to ensure they stay engaged
  • Elaine’s suggestion for what leaders really have to focus on and spend time doing in order to stay relevant and accelerate their success in today’s noisy world of work
  • What topic does Elaine open up that we decide we should discuss in a future episode and why she is so passionate about it

About Elaine Biech

Elaine Biech is president and managing principal of ebb associates inc, an organizational development firm that helps organizations work through large-scale change. She has been in the training and consulting field for thirty years, and works with business, government and non-profit organizations.

She has presented at dozens of national and international conferences. Known as the trainer’s trainer, she custom designs training programs for managers, leaders, trainers, and consultants.

She is the author and editor of over four dozen books and articles, including: ASTD Handbook for Workplace Learning Professionals, 2015 and 2008; 10 Steps to Successful Training, ASTD 2008; The Business of Consulting, 2nd ed, 2007; Thriving Through Change: A Practical Guide, 2007; 90 World-Class Activities by 90 World-Class Trainers, 2007; Training for Dummies, 2005; The Pfeiffer Annual for Consultants and The Pfeiffer Annual for Trainers (1998- 2009).

Elaine has her BS from the University of Wisconsin-Superior in Business and Education Consulting, and her MS in Human Resource Development. She is active at the National level of ATD (formerly ASTD), serving on the 1990 National Conference Design Committee, a member of the National ATD Board of Directors and the Society’s Secretary from 1991-1994, initiating and chairing Consultant’s Day for the seven years, and as the International Conference Design Chair in 2000. In addition to her work with ATD, she has served on the Independent Consultants Association’s (ICA) Advisory Committee and on the Instructional Systems Association (ISA) board of directors.

Elaine is the recipient of the 2012 CPLP Fellow Recognition (first ever recipient), the 2012 ISA Outstanding Contributor Award, the 1992 National ASTD Torch Award, the 2004 ASTD Volunteer-Staff Partnership Award, and the 2006 ASTD Gordon M. Bliss Memorial Award. She was selected for the 1995 Wisconsin Women Entrepreneur’s Mentor Award. In 2001 she received ISA’s highest award, The ISA Spirit Award.

Elaine specializes in helping people work as teams to maximize their effectiveness. Customizing all of her work for individual clients, she conducts strategic planning sessions and implements corporate-wide systems such as quality improvement, reengineering of business processes, and mentoring programs.

Elaine Biech and Halelly Azulay

Resources:

Elaine Biech’s ebb associates inc. website: www.ebbweb.com

Elaine’s books on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1IS1DYI and on her site: http://www.ebbweb.com/publications_thumbs.php

The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan http://amzn.to/1LqNfEs

Elaine’s ATD Webcast: Our Profession: Where We've Been; Where We're Going (Exclusive Webcast for ATD's Professional Plus Members) https://www.td.org/Digital-Resources/Webcasts/TD/2014/03/Our-Profession-Where-Weve-Been-Where-Were-Going

Halelly’s book, Employee Development on a Shoestring, which features a foreword by Elaine Biech –www.bitly.com/EmpDevShoestring

Free Agent Nation by Daniel Pink http://amzn.to/1ISbDkJ

Intro/outro music: "Why-Y" by Esta - a great band of exquisitely talented musicians, and good friends of mine.

TRANSCRIPT

Announcer: Welcome to the TalentGrow Show, where you can get actionable results-oriented insight and advice on how to take your leadership, communication and people skills to the next level and become the kind of leader people want to follow. And now, your host and leadership development strategist, Halelly Azulay.

Halelly: Hi there. Welcome back to the TalentGrow Show. I’m Halelly Azulay, your leadership development strategist. In this episode I interview and speak with Elaine Biech, who is a personal mentor of mine and someone whose work I greatly admire. Elaine Biech is the President and Managing Principle of Ebb Associates Inc., an organization development firm. She’s an award-winning expert in the field of talent and organizational development who is also a prolific author, a well-known speaker and also known as “The Trainer’s Trainer.” Elaine and I discuss how important generosity is to her own career success, and that for every leader. And we also talk about how Elaine suggests we stay focused on big, dense projects that require all of your attention. She shares four fabulous tips for how to stay focused. Projects like her book writing or maybe that budget that you have to turn in by Friday, how do you get it done without being distracted? Elaine also talks about three big shifts she sees in the workplace culture that she says employers must address to be able to bring in good talent and also to keep people engaged. And finally, Elaine suggests what every leader really has to focus on and spend time doing in order to stay relevant and be successful in today’s noisy world of work. I hope that you’ll check out and enjoy this episode. Thanks for tuning in.

Hi there, and welcome to another show of the podcast. This is Halelly Azulay, and I am very pleased to have with me one of my mentors and a woman I admire greatly, Elaine Biech, who is the President of Ebb Associates, Inc., that is a strategic company that focuses on leadership development, experiential learning and change, whole large-scale change management in organizations, and Elaine is someone that I’ve looked up to for many years as someone who has written over 50 books – she’s going to tell us exactly how many in a minute. She is one of those people that is highly regarded in both industry as well as in our specific world of workplace learning, talent management, talent development, because of all of the work that she has done over 30 years in the field. Elaine, thank you so much for being on this podcast and I really look forward to our conversation today.

Elaine: Well thank you for inviting me. It’s an honor to be a part of it.

Halelly: Great. And you know, Elaine, I met you and I’d heard of you a lot before I met you, and I finally got a chance to meet you when I was lucky enough to be invited to a program that you were piloting for the professional association we’re both actively involved in, ATD. It used to be called ASTD. And you are one of those people who have built a lot of the certification programs that they have for people in our industry who want to up their game. And this was one of the ones that you created, and I was invited. At the time I think I was the president of the local chapter in the Washington, D.C. area, and I was invited to come and participate and it was such a pleasure to be in your presence and to learn from you. And you were very gracious to invite me to give some feedback on the pilot, to stay after, and that’s when we first connected. I’m grateful to say we’ve been friends ever since. So you’ve had an amazing career and a multifaceted career. We don’t have, I think that in 30 minutes that we talk we don’t have enough time to cover everything that you’ve done, but in a few, short minutes, can you give us just a synopsis of your career trajectory? Kind of where you’ve been and how you’ve gotten to where you are today?

Elaine: Sure. I started out training teachers back in the late 70s to use a specific internationally and very well known model for working with special ed children. And at the time, I didn’t even know that there was a profession called training, and I went out and did training and of course the training was a lecture, stand up, talk to these people for four and a half straight days. And I started interjecting things like relay races and crossword puzzles and things like that. I still didn’t know that adults learning was something that we ought to be thinking about as a profession, and I thought that I must have invented adult learning theory, because people loved my classes better than the lecture. And so I just kept doing that, and I was so lucky to have fallen into something that I really, really loved. Once I did find out that there was a profession called training, I started my own business. There’s lots of other detail behind it that I won’t tell you about, but my very first client was Johnson Wax. Now, this is a pretty big first client to have, and really it was unintended. I went there as a practice run because I thought, I didn’t know how to do a sales call, so I said, “Well, who can I practice on?” Well, Johnson Wax – I was living in Wisconsin at the time – was in the general area, so I found out who the VP of HR was and marched up to his door and at the end of this, while I’m taking notes about how to be a good salesperson, he’s taking notes about me. And he offers me a job! And so that was my first client. Wasn’t that exciting?

Johnson Wax ended up, he was a good friend of the director of HR at NASA Langley, and so he introduced me to Bill Williams, who was the director of HR at NASA, and they gave me a job, just upon an interview. And so I can trace almost every one of my clients back to NASA or Johnson Wax. They were wonderful first clients and they just kept passing me around to other people. So I never did learn how to do a very good sales call.

Halelly: Well, and I’m sure that it helped!

Elaine: So I write and I design learning events and do strategic planning and team building, and just a whole lot of other things.

Halelly: And you’ve really, I mean, it’s amazing. You’ve made a name for yourself and you are completely self-made. You’ve built yourself up to this point, hard work and through modeling what you teach and also through I think your generosity. In my experience, what I observe, is that you’re always a person who is the first to jump on a project where you’re helping others learn and you’re sharing your experience and your time and your knowledge of the profession, and I think that is something that has really helped create a really special brand for you.

Elaine: Well thank you very much. I think that’s really important. The profession has given me so much that anytime I can give back to the profession, and individuals, I want to do that. Because so many people have helped me along the way too. And isn’t that what life is all about, is giving to other people and helping other people grow and learn? If we aren’t modeling that as professionals in our field, then I’m not sure that we should be in the field at all. That’s a pretty strong statement, wasn’t it?

Halelly: It really is. I think that often people … when people don’t do it, for most people – I mean, there are sociopaths out there – but for most people, it’s often just sort of an oversight. I can tell you when I first started, I wasn’t focused on that. I was really just focused on learning for my job, and doing what I needed to learn in my job, and then going home. And I didn’t really even know how to do any of the other stuff. It didn’t cross my radar. And so I was not doing it, but it was more just like a mission on my part in terms of recognizing that it’s possible, or what’s possible. And once I discovered it, it exponentially increased … what was amazing about that is yeah, it’s nice to give and I know you don’t give with an expectation to get, but inevitably, it’s a virtuous cycle. And I really believe that there is such a win-win in giving, when you do it like that. You don’t do it with an expectation of tit for tat, quid pro quo, but it increases your visibility, it increases your credibility, it increases your knowledge, it increases your network, it increases your reach, it increases how people see you and your character, increases opportunities that come knocking on your door. Because gosh, your door is much more visible to others than the hidden doors that are out there.

Elaine: You’re absolutely right. I received a package in the mail yesterday, as a thank you from someone that I had sent books to, she said several years ago. I’m embarrassed to say I don’t remember this person at all, but I do want to help everyone that I possibly can, and she was starting her own business and she just said, “I want you to know that I am secretively starting my business, finally.” I don’t know what secretively meant. “And I wanted to thank you.” And she had, I can think – I believe – that she is going to have a very successful career for her to have remembered a conversation that we had three or four years ago, and is now sending a thank you for that. And again, it’s hard to talk about, Halelly, because you don’t want to say, “I’m doing this in order to get a gift.” That’s not why I did it, but yet that’s what happened. And things come back to you. The more you give, the more that’s going to come back to you. There’s definitely something in this wonderful world that we live in that creates that dynamic. I don’t know what it is, but it’s good.

Halelly: Now there is research – I don’t know if you’re familiar with Adam Grant’s book, I think it’s called Give and Take – well, he’s studying this. It’s the people that are givers that are actually getting ahead more in the world, so it’s an interesting concept. But I don’t want to take us on that detour. I think that you mentioned books, so how many have you … you do two things. You write, start to finish, you write your own books, but you also have a whole lot of books for which you serve as the editor, where you actually get all the luminaries in the field and the thought leaders and people who are sort of up-and-coming and have an interesting new perspective and you pull them all together and you put out these amazing volumes of books that are useful, either with techniques and tools and games and activities, or articles and whitepapers. I mean, it’s amazing. So how many books do you have under your belt now?

Elaine: Well, this summer, three different publishers will release five new books. And that takes me to 63.

Halelly: Oh my gosh!

Elaine: That’s almost embarrassing for me to say that, but again, this is one of those joys of this profession. It gives me an opportunity to do that and to do exactly what you are saying, and that is to pull together the basic concepts that we need to have and not forget in our profession, as well as those new, crazy ideas that are out there that are created that are going to help grow our profession and make us better at what we do. And, ultimately, to serve our clients better too. So it is exciting.

Halelly: Wow. That’s amazing. Well, I am very fortunate to have been a beneficiary of both sides of that equation. I use your books often to pull ideas and use activities and tools that you’ve shared that make my work easier in my facilitation, and I’ve contributed to some of your books, which has been such a joy and a great opportunity for someone like me to be able to do something like that, to contribute to a book that has such big names in it, and expand my reach.

Elaine: But also, Halelly, you’ve written a book too.

Halelly: That’s true, and you helped me with that.

Elaine: But I remember that very first conversation that you and I talked, I remember where I was and when it happened, about laying out a book and what kinds of things you could do for topics and all of that. And at the end of the conversation, you had such a great idea that I said, “You know, Halelly, you have to write this, because if you don’t, I’m going to!” And it was just a great, great idea and it resulted in a fabulous book, a book that in fact I referred to just two weeks ago as I was putting something together. So it’s lying right here on my stack of books with me.

Halelly: Thank you. Well, I remember that gave me some motivation. I was like, “Oh, shoot, Elaine is going to steal my book if I don’t get moving!” No, I didn’t think you would steal it, but that was good. I love it and it gave me impetus. Thank you for that. So you are obviously a pro at writing, and what you do is you crank out these books in short periods of time of great intensive focus, and you obviously are prolific and create a lot of volume of writing, and you do this while you’re working with these huge organizations, different companies and government organizations and private sector organizations of all sizes, and around the globe and speaking at conferences. So, I thought no matter who is listening, everyone has projects where they feel like they’re working on multiple things, they have a lot of deadlines, and there is something that requires their focus. And I know I struggle with this, because distractions abound. And so what would be three, I guess, or however, a few tips that you can share for how to stay focused on these kinds of stick-to-it kind of projects?

Elaine: Well, the first thing I think is to have a definite deadline. Because people don’t start projects at all until they have a deadline. They have to have something that they aim for. Part of that is because we are just so crazy busy with so many things that are going on. Emails pop up on a regular basis, we get phone calls, so you have to have a deadline. Second thing is just, as you said it, there has to be a focus. We just live in a world that doesn’t allow us to focus on one thing. And we could get so much more done if we focused. So here’s my sort of four-step process for focusing, whether you’re writing a book or whether you’re doing a paper or whether you’re just trying to finish up the details of a budget or some project. So for the first thing is to go away. Now, for a book, I suggest you go away for at least a week, two weeks is ideal. It cannot be in your house. It has to be someplace away so that you can’t be distracted with, “Oh, gosh, I guess it’s time to clean the refrigerator or I should mow the lawn,” or whatever. You have to go away. If it’s a short project, you can go away by going into your office, closing the door and before you even do that, you have to establish it with your staff that, “I’m going to shut myself away for two hours or three hours because I have to finish this budget. It has to get done. And it’s due tomorrow. So whatever it is.” So the first thing is just go away, even if it’s just two hours in your office.

The second thing is have all the supplies ready. And both supplies for the job as well as bodily supplies. So if you think you’re going to need a snack or going to need a glass of water, make sure you have that in your office and before you close the door so you don’t have to walk out and get those at a later time. For example, when I go away and write a book for two weeks, I have all of the groceries, all of the food that I know that I’m going to need for those two weeks tucked away. I load up my car, drive to the location, unload everything, put the car in the garage and close it and I never leave. I never go any place after that. I’ve done this so often that I now have my own shopping list and it’s exactly the same thing every time. I know what I need.

Halelly: Not surprised!

Elaine: The third thing is to eliminate all distractions. So if you’re going into your office for an hour or two, turn off the phone, have someone else take messages for you, turn off your email, truly those messages can wait for an hour or two. And just don’t pay any attention to it. That’s really hard for people to do. When I go away for two weeks to write a book, I do the same thing. I do not read email at all. And I have someone else taking my messages for me, and if there’s an emergency of course they can get ahold of me, and I don’t answer the phone. Someone else takes all of my messages. So again, that helps to eliminate those distractions that might occur.

And then the fourth thing is to enlist someone else to help, like I’ll call it to protect you and protect your time and protect your focus. The person that’s going to run interference for you and take care of the minor issues. So you need that. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve been outside someone’s office where, in an organization that I’m working for, and the door is closed and I will not go in because I know that that door is closed for a reason. But one of their other employees will just open the door and pop their head in and say, “Hey, I need this.” So you need somebody to help to protect you. So those are the four things. Go away, have all your supplies ready, eliminate all distractions and enlist somebody else to help protect you.

By the way, I just a couple of weeks ago, one of my publishers sent me a book that is excellent, and the name of the book is The One Thing, and the author is Gary Keller. K-E-L-L-E-R. It is exactly what I’ve just talked about. It’s about focusing and how important it is to just focus on one thing in order to really accomplish more and have higher quality. And I think it’s that higher quality piece that I think is more important than getting more done. I think we’re all sort of overwhelmed with being more productive and cranking more out, but really what their focus is you’re losing a lot by not being focused. So I like that book a lot.

Halelly: Great. I’ll link to it in the show notes. Thank you for that resource. Well, those are really good tips, and I loved how – I hope people are hearing this – you mentioned how you can scale this. Because not everybody can go away for two weeks, not everyone has an assistant that they can call on or whatever the case might be. But all of us can implement this to some degree, and any degree, an hour or two hours, asking a colleague … maybe you don’t have someone who is your assistant, but just ask one of your colleagues to run interference for you and you return the favor some other time when they’re doing their focus time, you know, there are a lot of ways to scale this to fit your life.

Elaine: Right. You know, I have people that I work with who don’t have doors on their offices, and so what they’ll do is sign up for a conference room or they’ll go to the local coffee shop and stay there for an hour to get something done. You have to make it work for you, but you still, you can make it work, as you said. You just have to figure out what’s going to do it.

Halelly: That’s awesome. Be creative. I went to the library when I was writing my book, because it was quiet and no one knew me there, and I rented out a hotel room in my town. I just went on Priceline and got it half price, and just got closed up there for a weekend. So it’s possible to scale it. Awesome. Those are such great tips.

Elaine: So how many pages did you write in that weekend that you were in the hotel, do you remember?

Halelly: Oh my gosh. First of all I don't remember numbers very well, but I got a lot done. And the deadline thing, wow, that’s just number one for me. I waited until there was no more waiting and it just had to get done, so when people ask me about writing, I always tell them, I could never do it if it was more like, “I’m going to write a book and then I’m going to shop it for a publisher.” I had a submission deadline from the publisher and then the book had to become written. Then it got done! So I listened to you.

Elaine: Good.

Halelly: I want to ask you something else, shift gears a little bit here. You are a person who has been described – I love that these monikers that you’ve received. I hope that you love them as much as I do – a trainer’s trainer I’ve seen said about you. And the one that was my favorite, there was one time where a magazine came out, ATD’s magazine came out, and it had “The Titans of training,” and you were on there. I was like, man, I need to put that on my gravestone! The Titan of Training!

Elaine: Thanks. That’s a great idea!

Halelly: Go for it. We don’t want to think about that. So, but you’ve done a lot to earn this. And that means that you’re the kind of person who sees the big picture. You’ve got the depth, and you see the trends. And actually, recently, I also listened to a great webinar that you gave about some of the trends, because in writing one of your latest books, The ASTD Handbook, you really got a big picture. And so in talent development, organizations are struggling with keeping good people. Nobody can expect employees to stay forever like they used to, but when they stick around, how do we keep them engaged and how od we keep them performing at their maximum capacity and feeling really good about it? That’s what we do here in talent development, in our industry. What do you think are the biggest shifts that need to happen or that will be happening in the next five years to help get, to keep people engaged and productive in the kind of changing environment we have?

Elaine: Well, some of the shifts I think are happening are really not shifts so much as what we’ve said has to be done. It’s that employers have to begin to embrace them. So one of them is that whole idea of employee development. Employee development has always been important to everyone but the Millennials are finally being very vocal about it, and there’s just lots of attention around them. So we have to make sure that we’re developing our people. I just worked with a person who quit his job a month ago. His name is Patrick, because his development opportunities had been delayed several different times. And he finally just gave up on it and said, “I just can’t wait around for this anymore.” And his employer was shocked that he would go out and find a different job simply because the opportunity that he had to be developed had been postponed a couple of times. I think that’s one of the things. There’s lots of attention around the Millennial employees as there should be. Very soon they’re going to be the largest portion of the workforce. But the things that they want aren’t any different than what you or I wanted as employees. It’s just that they’re being more vocal about them.

I think that there’s another shift that’s happening, and that’s workers demanding high flexibility. The work/life balance movement, as I’ve said several times in the past, is dead. It’s been a failure to companies and individuals alike. And what’s going to replace it is the work/life blend. So people are going to be doing more personal things on the job and they’re going to be more job-related things at home. But more important than money is the high flexibility. It’s going to be the primary motivator, both to lure top talent as to keep them. And the flexibility is going to be seen in things like time shifted hours, more frequent sabbaticals, also the results only kind of work.

And then another shift that’s sort of related to this high flexibility is that freelancing is going to become just a normal way of life. One-third of all working Americans today are freelancers, contractors or consultants. That’s a lot. Some part-time, some full-time. But eventually, there are going to be more freelancers than full-time employees, probably in about five years from now. So employers are really saving more money hiring freelancers, because they don’t have to pay them benefits and they don’t have to keep them around forever. They come in, they do the job, they leave and while they charge more, usually three times more per hour, they aren’t there forever. They’re there to get the job done. So we need to be ready for these, and how that’s going to affect the other employees who are in the, who work for the company and are full-time employees, as well as the culture of the organization. I think there’s going to be a culture shift because of that. So I think those are kind of the top level, key things. That engagement, making sure we’re starting to pay attention to the development and getting people to have that, and that flexibility that employees are going to demand as well as the freelancing piece.

Halelly: Wow. Those are amazing, I mean, really, and so Dan Pink wrote the book Free Agent Nation, and here it is, like it’s on our doorstep. It’s coming to fruition. Well, I know that you’re a busy lady and there is a lot more that we could talk about, and maybe we can have a part two someday. But for now, who is listening, how they can find out more about your – what would be one actionable tip that you would leave the listeners with, that you think that anyone, no matter what position they are in an organization, can take to maybe proactively prepare and to harness these trends? What would be one actionable thing that you suggest everyone should do? Especially leaders, I should say.

Elaine: Especially the leaders. Well, I think leaders all should pay attention to themselves and their own needs. I think that both are more important today than ever. And I think often times, leaders get so wrapped up in everything that they’re doing for the organization that they forget about themselves and what they need to do to grow. They’re not going to be helpful and useful to the rest of the organization unless they’ve taken the time to grow themselves. So setting a goal for how they’re going to be doing that, that’s important. I think one of the biggest things that our organizations are having a problem with is right now, the dilemma of not having enough leaders to lead the organization. We need to be thinking about training leaders much, much sooner than what we do. Right now, the average age for leaders to begin their training to be leaders is 41. That’s ridiculously too old!

Halelly: Wow! Yes.

Elaine: So we need to be looking at training folks much sooner than that, and I’m hoping that our schools are going to pick this up to help kids learn how to be leaders as a part of their curriculum. Not as a separate class, but just as how teachers model leadership and how it’s built into the curriculum. I can go off on that for quite a while!

Halelly: Yes. Well, you’re right, it’s a fascinating topic unto itself. So let’s make sure that we cover that another time, maybe, if you’ll agree. But those are great tips. So, leaders, train thyself, or prepare thyself. Make sure that you are taking care of your own growth needs. If you’re thinking about how to help others grow, you need to model it, plus you need to be prepared and developed, and then getting people ready sooner with leadership preparedness.

Elaine: That’s right. Exactly.

Halelly: Those are great tips. Elaine, it’s been such a pleasure speaking with you, as it always is. I really appreciate everything that you do and I appreciate your time. What would be the best way for people to find out more about you and about what you’re up to?

Elaine: Well, my website is probably the best place to start. And that’s www.ebbweb.com. And of course anybody can just reach me through you as well!

Halelly: Yes, because I’ll be happy to tell them all about you. Well, it’s been fun and I hope that the listeners have learned a lot from you, as I always do. Elaine, thank you again. Thank you for listening and this has been another one of our podcasts. Take care, until the next time.

Elaine: Thank you. Bye-bye.

Halelly: Thank you for tuning in. I hope that you found this episode with Elaine Biech as inspiring as I have. Elaine is such a great mentor and role model, so don’t forget. Leader, train thyself. You’ve got to model and prepare yourself so make sure that you’re doing things to help grow yourself, like listening to this podcast. Maybe if you subscribe to it, you will never miss an episode, and also if you want to share it with other people that you know who want to work on developing their own leadership skills, that would be really, really helpful. Take a look at the show notes where all of the links are to the tips, to the books, to the resources that we mentioned during this episode. That is found at www.talentgrow.com/podcast/episode5. I hope that you’ll tune in for the next episode, and in the meantime, make it a great day. Thank you for tuning in.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to the TalentGrow Show, where we help you develop your talent to become the kind of leader that people want to follow. For more information, visit TalentGrow.com.

Don't forget to LEAVE A RATING/REVIEW ON iTUNES! It’s easy to do (here’s how to do it in 4 easy steps). Thank you!!

Get my free guide, "10 Mistakes Leaders Make and How to Avoid Them" and receive my weekly newsletter full of actionable tips, links and ideas for taking your leadership and communication skills to the next level!