We're still in the book "Surrounded by Idiots," discovering practical insights that can drastically improve your personal and professional life. You're in luck, because that's precisely what we did in our enriching conversation with Emmy. In this episode she shares her experiences, lessons, and tips she extracted from the book, and how she used them to foster effective communication and personal growth. She challenges you not to let the book's classifications define your identity, but rather use them to propel your development.
We're still in the book "Surrounded by Idiots," discovering practical insights that can drastically improve your personal and professional life. You're in luck, because that's precisely what we did in our enriching conversation with Emmy. In this episode she shares her experiences, lessons, and tips she extracted from the book, and how she used them to foster effective communication and personal growth. She challenges you not to let the book's classifications define your identity, but rather use them to propel your development.
📖 To access Travis' complete book list, visit his storehere
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. 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.
Speaker 2:
All right. So now we're to the last questions. You walk into a new business. You're never going to leave us, but pretend you were going someplace else to work. And you walk in and the boss says what's one thing that we could do? That you would do that you guys used to do. You'd say we're going to use Surrounded by Idiots. What would you tell them about being prepared to implement some of the lessons learned from Surrounded by Idiots?
Speaker 3:
I think I would probably start with not letting it define you completely and not using the colors as an excuse, but as not using it as an excuse for bad behavior, but using it to grow and strengthen your characteristics and traits to be in a way that is going to be the best way to communicate Honestly.
Speaker 3:
Most importantly, read it more than once, because you're going to learn something from it different every time you read it and it is going to offer more growth and improvement in how you communicate and how you tame your little monster within. I think I've read this now three times and every single time I read it, I take something different. Or I notice hey, you know what? I still really haven't gotten this part of me under control and I need to work on this some more. Or you know what? Last week, dealing with this blue, I really triggered him because of this or that and I need to be more careful of it. So that would probably be the biggest things that I would say Don't let it define you completely, Don't use it as an excuse or a crutch for bad behavior. Make sure you're willing to look inward and grow, and read it more than once.
Speaker 2:
Is there something that they could do to prepare for this? We talked about crucial conversations being a good thing to read after it, I think. But is there a framework where if because we talked about being prepared, right and intentionality Yep, so if you just read a book, I'm done, I'm reading a book, you know what I mean, and everybody goes out that was fun, and then they go on and do their thing. That's one thing, but is there something that people could do to be prepared so that, when they do read the book, the lessons are hopefully going to resonate and take root?
Speaker 3:
I think, owning it yourself when you ask someone to read something, owning how it helped you, owning how you used it to do better or grow or improve. You know, when I brought crucial conversations to my team, I told them these are the things that I used to struggle with. This is how this book helped me. I wanted to read it. I want to read it again with you guys so that we can, as a team, implement some of this stuff and grow together and improve together and, you know, strengthen our relationships and our Conversations. And I think when you are willing to do the work you're asking others to do, it makes a huge, huge difference.
Speaker 2:
And I gotta say that there's a huge amount of humility and you taking that book to your team and saying team, I want you to read this so you can get better, because On the surface it sounds like you're asking the team to get better. You're saying, hey, may, I need you to get better communication. Here's a book we're gonna read together. And what some people say is I've read the book, I'm the expert in the book. What you were doing there, I believe. As you were saying, I'm also working on this myself and if you read this book and you understand this book, you can also help me get better.
Speaker 2:
Yep and I mean that is like Transcending leadership, right? I mean like that. That's a type of leadership that most people the. The rate balance between confidence, you know, and and and Mentorship. That's happening there, right, because you have enough confidence to say that I'm a strong enough person to learn this and to open myself up, the vulnerability and I'm gonna teach you how to do that, too, by being your example Is a very, very special trait in quality. That's a skill. However, you've learned that. What whatever happened along the way. So, whether that's something that you developed over the last three years or something that you came in the door with, that is what we're talking about when we talk about skills. That is not something that comes innate to people. You have to learn how to do that. So, and probably you learn how to do that by screen up a whole bunch. That's how that's.
Speaker 2:
I that's how we learned. That's how we learned right like you. Either get a really good mentor, but they're hard to find, or you just grew up a bunch, or you have both.
Speaker 3:
I Was lucky enough to have both and I definitely I have grown more in the last three years with you and with Dave and Others on this team who have helped me to be okay with being vulnerable, to help me being okay to look in the mirror and say, okay, here's the things that I really need to do better if, if I want to be successful in relationships, in life and work in in every way and that's something really special that we do here at seed we fight for each other To do better.
Speaker 3:
We give that safe space For each other to be okay with saying, hey, I need to work on this or you need to work on this or we need to work on this.
Speaker 3:
There's a lot of we here and In all of the things that I have learned, in the ways I have grown and improved, I've never been alone and I think that that is something that I have really taken, you know, to heart here and tried to pass on in my leadership With my team or, you know, even with those not directly on my team, but just having that support, offering that safe space and Emulating what you and Dave have provided to me, because you guys gave me a chance, you, you. I remember some of the conversations that we have had to this day and you know some of them. I ended in tears, but you made that okay. You made it okay for me to to accept the hard truths of how I was perceived or the the areas in which that that I needed to get better if I wanted the communication and the relationships to to grow and to be strong and to build what we have.
Speaker 2:
I think I Think one of the important things I want to say here, too, is that we didn't pre discuss any of this. So what you're saying right now is just coming from the heart and and it was unprompted in any way other than the fact that we were going to get together and talk about the book, and I give you some very basic outline stuff, and I think that that's one of the other things that's very interesting there and it just speaks to you too, because a lot of times and we have a, we have a number of reds that we work with and I and I think this is going to resonate with them too Um, red tends to be a tough personality. Right, like, if you need somebody to start a fight, you pick a red, right and. But reds do cry, reds do hurt, reds do have feelings, reds do really care about everybody.
Speaker 2:
Yes um, it just doesn't always come out the right way, and, uh, and I think that that's, each one of these people, these colors of people, right, each one of these personality profiles, um, the at the, at the heart of it's still a person, mm-hmm, and I think we forget sometimes that, as people too, we're all just we're, you know, we're caring, we have emotions and we have feelings and we have dreams and we have failures. Um, and it doesn't matter what color you are, you know you're still feeling it. You know blues, a lot of the blues, I know, are not very emotional at all. It doesn't mean they don't feel it though, right, it just means they don't show it, right, um, so, anyway, I just, I think that that's. Thank you very much.