This engaging discussion offers practical advice, sprinkled with real-life examples, for anyone keen on applying the lessons from "Surrounded by Idiots" to their personal and professional lives. So, pull up a chair, lend your ears, and prepare for some transformative takeaways.
This engaging discussion offers practical advice, sprinkled with real-life examples, for anyone keen on applying the lessons from "Surrounded by Idiots" to their personal and professional lives. So, pull up a chair, lend your ears, and prepare for some transformative takeaways.
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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership and I'm your host, travis Moss, and you are listening to a special team interview with some amazing women, emmy and May. We are going to be diving into their actual real life experience with some of the lessons learned from Surrounded by Idiots, how they've applied them, what they've learned. There are 13 episodes in all. I know 13 is a lot, right? 13 entire days of listening to takeaways on Surrounded by Idiots, but there were 13 unique and complete thoughts about what you can do to use this information in your life to better your client experience, to better your employee experience, to better your business experience, to better your own experience. We didn't want to waste any of them. So there's 13 straight from the heart, life changing takeaways with lots of laughs and even some tears.
Speaker 1:
Emmy and May are some of my team members at Seed Planning Group and you can get a face with the name and more information about them from seedpgcom. That's S-E-E-D-P-Gcom, and I want to encourage you to go there and look them up, because if they say something special or something that touches your life or leaves an impression to you, or you have a question about some of the things that they've mentioned because again they're living this they deserve to know how special they are. Let them know so, without further ado, please enjoy.
Speaker 2:
Um, alright, so we have two sets of questions left.
Speaker 3:
I'll give you guys both up.
Speaker 2:
I'm going to give you I'm going to give you both sets of questions so you can think about and why the other persons are going right. The first one is different question for each of you. May, if you were in a room full of yellows, how would you manage that room? Now, let's pretend it was. You have a team at work and you've got five yellows that you're in charge of. Emmy, if you had a room full of reds, what would you do? Okay, that's going to be the first question, and there's a little caveat to that and I'll share it in a minute. And then the second question is as far as adopting this with seed, what have you? If you were going to share this with somebody else? What would you tell them to be prepared for to get the most out of this right, or if there's any pitfalls, they need to look for stuff like that. So we're going to go back to the questions. We'll start with May.
Speaker 2:
Oh, dang it Okay so an ideal team player. What I did is no, I was team of teams. So it was my very first series. I was talking about teams and the whole team of teams concept is kind of like what we have with our specialty teams. At seed right. You have these sub teams and there's somebody in charge of each one. And if you took each person in charge and you said, okay, you're going to sit on another team, we're going to call this the project team. So now you have a team of team leaders, so each team leader has their own team. So at the project team you're going to talk about big collaborative projects everybody has some work on. So let's pretend that you're at the head of the project team table and somehow all the team leaders are yellows.
Speaker 2:
How are you going to handle all of them?
Speaker 3:
I'm going to get right to the cause of it, because we know with yellows you put a cause in front of them. There's nothing else in the room.
Speaker 2:
Gotcha, you're talking about the why. Yeah, we got to save the world.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, like I'm going to start right off the bat, like I'm going to go to the depth of it because there is nothing more. Like people ask me you know how would you describe yourself? First thing, I say full of purpose and I'm full of passion, right? So as a yellow, I got to do something with that. I don't care what it is. I mean, sometimes I care, but if I'm in a room of all yellows, I'm putting that on the table right off the back, gotcha.
Speaker 2:
You're going to give them all sugar high. Yeah, for sure Like a lot of permanent sugar high.
Speaker 3:
And I'm going to let them run around the room in circles until they pass out and fall down, and then we'll wake up and go get to it.
Speaker 2:
So I did not know where that was going to go because I couldn't figure out what to do. I was like I don't know Me either.
Speaker 2:
Like how did that mess happen? And then you just like you went right back to really where you should go, go back to the purpose, go back to the passion and let them go through the passion thing. Yeah, all right, amy, your turn. You got a room. You're at the head of the project table, so there's a little bit like my life and maybe not everybody's a red, but you got a whole bunch of reds in the room. How are you going to keep these reds from killing each other?
Speaker 4:
Be really direct, straight to the point and not waste any time. I'm going to say this is the project, this is what you have to do, this is what you have to do, this is your part, your part, and give the deadlines all the direct, factual information. Reds want you to lay it out. In fact, they don't want to hear the whole details, they don't want to hear a story, they want to know exactly what their part is and what you expect from them. And I think as long as you manage that appropriately and, you know, feed off their ego a little bit because reds always have some ego you're going to get that productive work and conversations. The hard part is when you come in hotheaded. If you're coming in hotheaded, every other red is going to instantly come to that boiling point to meet you, and then it's going to be like a mosh pit where everybody is just bumping into each other, trying to take the lead and nothing is successful.
Speaker 2:
So what do reds respect the most?
Speaker 4:
I mean speaking for me, genuineness.
Speaker 2:
So, and I would agree with that, I hate hypocrisy, right you got to own it. You know I want to understand where you stand at all times and I'm not going to even judge you normally for where you stand. I just need to know, because I don't know what to do with you If I don't know where you stand.
Speaker 4:
On things Reds are big with say what you mean and mean what you say.
Speaker 2:
So you walk into a room full of reds. You got to be genuine, well-defined, factual and specific, because I think that we have a unique and I'm going to come back to you, Mae, with that. So I actually got extra questions. You got to get extra points. Okay, I know you like that.
Speaker 3:
I need them.
Speaker 2:
We have a lot of reds in our company. For a small company, most companies and people have worried about that. They're like, oh, we hired her, what are we going to do with that red? And I think one of the skill sets for reds to learn is how to work with other reds. Yes, and I think reds, I think the genuineness, I think the strength and the confidence, right, and so reds will look to that almost. I compared it in a previous episode. I compared it to like a pack of wolves.
Speaker 2:
They look at it and they go where's the most confidence, strongest and, I think, genuine you would definitely throw in there Person. Where's the trust bank the fullest?
Speaker 4:
Yep.
Speaker 2:
Where can I go? And reds will get in line as long as that person who's leading it says this is your role, this is what you're going to be held accountable. Here's the facts about it. Because what will happen if you give a red vagueness? They will make the rule themselves. Yep, right. And then they will fight you to the death about the fact that you didn't make the rule. They did because you didn't Right and therefore you can't be upset about it. And everybody else will be like what the hell is going on, right? So it's like an Italian Christmas. It's just everybody's yelling at each other. So that's amazing. That's awesome. How about yellows? What is? Because I don't know this May.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
What is the trait? That if you had a room full of yellows, the yellows are really going to look up to.
Speaker 3:
That's a good question. I think it might be loyalty.
Speaker 2:
Loyalty.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, like, or maybe that's just for me.
Speaker 2:
You can speak for your whole color. A whole race of yellows Loyalty.
Speaker 3:
Now I don't want to answer.
Speaker 2:
And we're going to have every yellow ever again accountable for this. No, I'm joking.
Speaker 3:
Like right. If we're passionate, if we live to live, we live for the cause, we live for other people. When that is your passion and how you're webbed, you're loyal to that. I would not be okay with myself if I didn't remain loyal to that when I lay my head on the pillow every night. So I don't know if that's going to be true for everyone, but for me I have to remain loyal. And if I see that in someone else, not only does it cause a stirring of belief, but it also lets me know that when I commit to something, other people can see it as a yellow in what I'm doing, and so, off the cuff, I think that would be my answer.