Jennifer Colosimo, President at FranklinCovey | The Role of Leadership in Uncertain Times

Thanks again for joining me today. I'm sitting down with Jennifer Colisemo, who is a senior vice president of sales at Franklin Covey, a global performance improvement firm. She has led teams and operations, HR IT sales, learning and development, corporate social responsibility. She's worked for Accenture, Davida, Franklin Covey, several private equity backed organizations. She's ran the entire gamut of executive C.C.C. positions. Right now, of course, she's working with a leadership training organization, Franklin Covey, the organization that was birthed by Dr. Stephen Covey, responsible for seven habits of highly effective individuals, highly effective people, excuse me. And this is the 30th anniversary of that book. So that's a big deal. I'm pretty sure everyone listening knows the book, or if they don't, they have to know the book. It's almost a required reading at this point for self growth, even if it's not professional personal growth. So very excited to just, you know, unpack your story, Jennifer, unpack your career. What's happening at Franklin Covey, all of that good stuff. So thank you. Thanks for having me. We are really excited about the 30 year anniversary. I mean, the seven habits of highly effective people is in over 50 languages. We've sold 40 million copies. It might be a little bit more now. We are excited about number one, the ongoing timeless success of this, but also the fact that the principles that it's based on are timeless and really applicable to super challenging environments, which I think we find ourselves in right now. So excited to have the opportunity to talk about stuff. Yeah, no, I'm excited as well. And like you mentioned, we'll get into that a little bit later, but super relevant during challenging times. And I don't think for many of us, we've lived through a more challenging time than what we're going through right now. And what we've gone through over the past six months, but to tee up your origin story. So how did you get involved with Franklin Covey? What's your background? You've been there for a while, but you've also done a ton of other stuff. So walk me through that. Well, when the first real job that I had out of graduate school was with Accenture, the consulting company. And I was lucky enough to find an opportunity to work what what was then called the Covey Leadership Center. It was a small private legal organization, as you mentioned, started by Dr. Covey around the seven habits and getting that into organizations. And we then went through herger with a company called Franklin Quest. And my skill set with Accenture was very applicable to managing merger related tasks. So I primarily helped with due diligence, merging the sales forces. And since then have had multiple roles at Franklin Covey. I've been one of our delivery consultants. I've sold, I've led operations. And then there was a moment in time, after being here quite a while, that I left and worked with a Fortune 200 healthcare company with their five years. And then went with some private equity backed organizations in the healthcare space. It was just a point in my career where I thought, I want to try not publicly held. I'd only done public went private for a while. That was a wonderful experience to see the difference in kind of the goals and how you approach it. So I'm the Franklin Covey four and a half years ago. And I lead our sales operations finance for the US and Canada, which is our biggest operation in the enterprise business unit. We also have a business unit that works primarily with K through 12 education separate from us. And we have 100 global offices. Some of them directly held some of them partner offices. I lead the US and Canada component. So walk me through what as a sales leader. Yes, if everybody only knows the book, what does your team or teams, what do they sell to people and companies? It's a great question. So Franklin Covey and I'm sure other organizations would say this performance improvement. We really focus on what we call jobs to be done. Things that organizations need that we've decided where uniquely qualified to do and require a lasting change in human behavior. You know how hard that is if you've ever had to change just your own behavior. Stop smoking. Do anything on your own. Let alone a team or an organization that's working towards some kind of improvement, cultural, sales, customer experience, individual productivity building trust, which is huge as a foundational leadership skill. So we work in these areas that we know we can help you move that behavior change. We don't do all training and probably the one that we do the most around is leadership development. We do offer one of the things that's made us I think unique in this environment. Everybody's pivoting to this, but for 10 years, we've been doing this live online. So just like you or I are engaged, but in a more what I would say engaging our proprietary platforms as well as platforms like this. So there's live online. We do coaching. So our services include coaching and live online and then of course live and we offer our content to our clients in a kind of IP subscription business approach understood and and help me understand how the book turned into this. Great question. So when Dr. Covey, who I'm very proud of his legacy, he's passed several years ago, many years ago now, he started, he wrote the seven habits of highly effective people while he was a university professor. So he had been studying for years what success looks like and he came out of that study saying the point is not success, although that is a good point. It is effectiveness, which is being able to get results now and in the future, which has a big relationship component, not just your ability to execute on a goal. So out of that, the book became very popular and organizations started to ask for training. In the early years, it was a lot of inbound, we want to bring this into our organization. Out of that, we developed content or actually partnered with other outside thought leadership to bringing content that built around that effective leadership, building emotional resilience, how behaviorally you build trust. But what are the behaviors, how you execute on goals, which is critical to that. And as I mentioned, some of those other components, how does this apply to effective selling, making yourself strikingly different in an emotionally intelligent way and customer approach and how you execute on priorities. So it built really from that to what are the big problems we can address uniquely behavioral change that stay in alignment with who we are. So the organization is to enable greatness in people and organizations everywhere and truly the part that motivates me about that. And I think so many of the people in the organization and our clients is there is a proposition inherent in that statement that greatness does exist in every human being. It might not be unleashed. They might not ever choose to unleash it, but what can you do to create the conditions for real true human fulfillment while achieving your organizational goals. So we've grown over time. We actually worked with Dr. Covey Sun. Steven M.R. Covey wrote the book, The Speed of Trust. And we partnered with Harvard professors like Clayton Christensen around innovation and how this approach to abundance and mutual collaboration leads to more innovative environments. And we're most excited about our most recent partnership with Liz Wiseman, who is the author of multipliers, especially in our environment right now, you can't have lone geniuses. You need to have someone who enables genius and grows genius around the organization. So we built from that beginning into all of the different components we offer today. So so now you have the ability to go in and impact an influence organizations, but I would assume that as you do that, there is of course a lot more nuances and just somebody who is internally motivated wants to pick up the book and change. Now you have an organization you're trying to you're trying to invoke change across a business unit because a certain leader wants that that change to happen. They respect what you do. So what or how do you best take the works of Dr. Covey as well as all the other individuals who you've partnered with in the years of experience. And what is the best practice to actually across a business unit, change the behaviors and habits and perhaps unlock leadership across an entire team and make sure that those changes stick and are permanent and are long lasting. And for all of your listeners who think about behavior change, this this is a field that is known and one of the things that we say in behavior change and behavior change experts is and you can just apply this to yourself. You can read about what you should do to manage your blood sugar. You you can read about it. Now if someone is really managing their blood sugar, they often have regular check-ins to check in holding themselves accountable, maybe with in this case a physician, but as you think of behavior change in your organization, a coach, you have to learn a lot. So you learn, you work on mindset, you have a reinforcement path to keep that going. All of those components have to come together for behavior change to happen in an organization. And when you're talking about more than one person, you also have to have that cultural support. So leaders have to bring it into their language. It has to be recognized. Oh, I'll use some seven habits language. That clearly was someone going for a win win. Right. I can see how we came together to creative collaborate. We came up with something better than any of us could have come up with our own things that come out of that. So people see, this is what's culturally acceptable. And frankly, you have to see improved results. Is it that you want more resilience to change? Is it that frankly, the seven habits have been used significantly lately to help people in a virtual working environment? Are you seeing improved collaboration retention results? People have things they want to achieve and making sure that you've got that measurement component in addition to the sustainability path. And I think that all those lessons, like you mentioned, even like the, especially the measure ability and accountability and culture, it's there's probably a similar word that can be used to describe something that is encapsulating your own life. But all those things that you use for success at an organizational level, that's, I think that's what psychologically goes through somebody who actually doesn't implement positive change on themselves as they sort of go through these steps, just in a different, in a different, at a different scale, of course. Different scale. Yeah. Agreed. But I want to, and the reason why I bring that up, every time I speak to somebody who, who I feel is a strong, strong leader, the word you mentioned was, I think, professional, I can't remember what it was, professional, what you describe what you do as an organization, it was, there was a word. We, we do behavior change with personal and professional development. I think it was something, it was, yeah, that is what it is. I thought you had a really good word for it, but it doesn't really matter. I think the point I'm trying to get across is when organizations hire somebody to come in for a day. And they do like an eight hour day and they try and fix the entire organization or they try and fix an entire thing and I just come from like a sales background. And I remember the amount of times, both as an individual contributor or higher up as director or VP when you'd have like a CEO coming in and saying, I want to hire a sales coach for a day or something like that. And you know, it, it's a waste of money. It's 100% a waste of money because there's psychological drivers, there's cultural drivers, there's all these things you have to have in line for that effective long term behavioral change, positive behavioral change. Positive, I mean, you're so right. We, when you think of Franklin Covey clients, folks that work with us organizations, we really know that there are three kinds of buyers that will come and approaches. One is an event. And if I'm clear and you were saying, I want you, Jen, to speak at this keynote. I would just want to manage expectations to the conversation we're having. What do you want them to know, feel anything you might want them to do out of this 90 minute speech. And there's some better capability. You know, we've promoted all of these highly technical people into a first level leader role. And I just need a few days so they even have a picture of what that looks like. And there are some that if you truly want to behavior change, there has to be some level of sustainability. Even if it's we invest some time with you, live online or live, they have some on demand elements that they take, they have coaching, they have manager accountability. There's lots of ways that behavior change can be implemented. But you, and sometimes, and you know this, I bet you were one of these people, you can find people who will see a speech and think, okay, I'm going to do that. Right. You know, it's like someone hearing a runner and their plan for how they got to be able to do a half marathon and you're thinking, I'm going to do that. I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to do that. But that is just so that is not going to move an organization. You'll get individual. I want to, I want to also understand. I also, I do want to speak a little bit about seven habits. We can, because it's not like going deeper into the book itself is going to be anything outside of what I really want to cover in the interview anyways. Just in terms of, you know, you've, you've worked with a whole bunch of organizations. There's a lot of leadership lessons that you've implemented over the years. What is an organizational issue? And I think, you know, if anyone's listening to this, it's going to be quite obvious. But COVID, work from home, remote, what are some things that you're seeing with organizations, things that they're struggling with. How are you solving those through these habits or other lessons that you teach them? It's relevant right now. You know, there's a couple of things. If you think about adapting to our current environment, let's put aside the virtual work, which is a big piece and just start with where people are in the challenging environment. And of course, we've had a minute to adjust, but now we have maybe your children are going back to school. Maybe they're not. Maybe you think they're going to go and they'll be home in a couple of weeks. There's this constant flux of change, huge. And unfortunately, and I know some on my own, in fact, my husband's uncle passed from COVID. It's even life threatening, right? There is real life challenges. And then day to day, I'm only living day to day because I have to adapt. The key piece there that comes out of the seven habits or other content that we utilize is having, and it's a skill set, but it's also a mindset. None of our skills matter, if you don't have the right mindset, is do you have empathy? And when I say empathy, of course, if you work in an organization, things have to get done. But can you stop the train that says these three tasks need to be done? And this is what an actually listen to people in a way that you've taken off. I mean, the best way to say you take off your hat and you put on theirs. You're not trying to respond. You're not trying to solve. You're not trying to judge. But you're truly getting the feeling that they are feeling about what, because I think our deepest human need is to be understood. And right now, people are really stressed out. I think some of the reactions that we're seeing are normal reactions to an abnormal situation. So that balance, especially if you're a leader of relationship and empathy and results, of course, if your organization is still, whether it's in a pivot mode or a thriving mode. If you're still a viable concern, you need to get things done. But do you have empathy? Can you slow down in this situation? And then, of course, it gets to the actual productivity for those of us who are lucky enough to have jobs, but doing them on a screen like this all day every day. There's a whole different piece of skill sets there that are critical. I mean, from the very technical. Does your microphone work? Do you have good lighting? What's your background? Do you have good internet, right? There's all of those components as well as selling in a virtual environment. Very different how you make a contrast between you and how possible other providers, how you're clear and concise, selling in another environment, getting work done, holding yourself accountable. If you think of first level leaders, I personally think one-on-ones and that ability to make sure that you do your one-on-ones are more critical than ever, so people don't get disconnected, more team communication. And frankly, one of the things that I often say is the number one career advice I give people when they say give me career advice, do you? Are you helping people build emotional resilience? And I'm not talking about true clinical anxiety. That's outside of my scope of expertise. But on knowing low grade anxiety, are you helping them recognize what they can influence when not everything is in our control or influence? Here's what we can influence. Let's focus on what we can do in a really abnormal situation. But also, I like to highlight that point even further, the psychological security to know what they can make them aware and be okay with what they can't influence. That's important as well. I think that skill set personally and professionally is the number one. It comes out of the seven habits. We talk about the habit of choice and that really foundationally for someone to be highly effective. The number one foundation is do you recognize that you have a choice in any literally any situation to choose what you say and how you behave? And take it to the most extreme of the challenges we're facing right now. But can you say, okay, this is the situation. And I'm going to be emotionally triggered. I'm going to be scared sometimes. I'm going to be angry sometimes. What can I do? And even Martin Sillingman, the positive psychology, the father of positive psychology says happiness itself of course has a genetic component, has a circumstance component. But the main thing that you can influence about your own happiness is recognizing that you can influence what you can influence. And then not investing mental physical energy in things you can influence. It's logical, but sometimes our emotions take over it. The more time you invest in things that you can't do anything about, the less influence you actually have on your organization, your team, your own happiness. And the more time you spend on, okay, but here's what I can do. The more impact you have in your influence grows team organization personally. So it's a key skill and I think more than ever critical here. That actually, that really dovetails into what I want to get into now, which is a little bit more topical and focused on the seven habits out of the seven habits. What do you think is, is that the one that's the most relevant right now choice? I would say there's two that come to mind and I have colleagues who answer this question quite a bit. And you only hear two answers. One is choice, which I'm going to stick with as mine, but I think would only be fair to share my colleagues. The other one, especially those in leadership roles is empathy is a mindset skill set can be developed and worked on and having choice and empathy all of the others are critical, but in this environment, I would say those are the two that stand out. And as you, I appreciate that as you as you teach these habits as you teach these habits out over your career. Speak about the impact that implementing these at a personal level or at an organizational level, like if you even have stories, that would be great. I love stories. How do these change a company for the better? Maybe somebody's not sold on investing in leadership, I hope not, but maybe somebody's not sold on investing in leadership training. Maybe somebody says, you know, that's a whole bunch of, you know, self help, you know, bull, like I can figure it out myself, like walk me through some actual use cases of how these have impacted people over your career. Perfect. One that we actually have in on our website, we have case studies and videos, but one that always strikes me because I think these habits are more important, the more difficult the situation. So well, there's a lot of great business impact. The one that really strikes me is our work with Mississippi power, Mississippi power. We worked with for years. So think of the people who actually are working on your power lines all the way to those that are curing the electricity, the both power people, the people in the office. They had implemented the seven habits as part of their cultural language. So making choice, having a vision for the future, really, you know, personal and team management and then that empathy, thinking of how to solve things and collaborative cooperation. And then there's a habit on keeping yourself sharp, but that really implemented this in their organization and Katrina hit right. Katrina, the hurricane hit and you may recall all power went out and truly Mississippi power attributes the seven habits as the driver to how they were so quickly able to interact in an emergency situation to get the power back. Those kinds of things are most inspirational to me, as well as improving emergency room errors. So think how critical that is if you were a loved one has been in hospital, right. That having that team have the language and the ability to work through things eliminated silos has gone more medicine in teams, even looking at like the pit crew metaphor of using the pit crew, how that uses the seven habits and trust behaviors in order to be more effective. The impact that I've seen that matters the most is when I think life and death and frankly beyond life and death, we have several organizations and continuing into today and I know they're doing some work today that use the seven habits as part of their onboarding solutions for new whatever job category because what we're finding is in many cases. People have the technical skills, you know, totally trained in cybersecurity, great web development, think of an or supply chain and what they need is resiliency, emotional, social management, having self awareness, ability to self manage, social awareness, social manage and to be able to innovate and grow at a different speed. And so we have organizations who use this as their primary onboarding approach others come in at the merger level and they're saying we're so different with life to use this to have a common culture and also to help us integrate more effectively as we've grown through merger so many, many business cases from onboarding to life and death. And that begs the question, how do you at a business level say somebody does want to adopt seven habits. I think you did touch on this a little bit, but I want to highlight this again, how do you see a business successfully adopt something like seven habits into their culture so that it is more than just plaque on a wall or a page on their website. Number one, and this I actually think with any change to an organization, you need to have, and of course it can be done at the team level, but the most ideal is what I'll start with, you need to have executive support. It can't be this one off in the organization, but then once you get any higher, nobody supports that. It's much more if you want a whole organization to move, of course, a team or a function can do that as well, but the most ideal, frankly, even we have CEOs getting on events like this saying this is why this importance, this is how we'll be looking at it. This is how it integrates with our talent management process or aligns with our values or a mission really having a good support structure. Then I think one of the things that many do this, but one of the things that's really unique about the seven habits is it starts with mindset. So you can't just teach people the skill of empathic listening, and if they don't have the mindset of actually caring about other people and wanting to do this with the right intent, it's manipulated. You know immediately, you would know right now if I was trying to manipulate you for some empathic listening skill, it has to start with, here's the less effective mindset, here is the more effective, and now let us teach you how to do that. And once you've done that, it's having ongoing practice built into our solutions are, you know, seven habits over the next seven weeks, or here's a five to ten minute element where your managers can show a video and then have a discussion about how this works on their team. Here's a coaching process you can follow or that we can do. There has to be more simply because we're all busy. We're busy. And unless I am that one self-motivated person, and you always have those that says, I'm going to do that. If you're really trying to drive this change, there has to be a sustainable communication. In fact, in many cases, people use assessment. So we'll do a 360 degree assessment, your boss, your peers, the people who report to you, previous to the seven habits around all the behaviors that drive it. And then let's do a post after three months of implementation. Let's look at just even how that individual is viewed and also behind your key business results. That's really how you drive it. You have to have you don't give up. I don't know. You've been in so many roles. Think about changes you've tried to drive that were maybe just a process. Yeah. Selling process. It's incredibly difficult. The tough things to do in the job. That's the toughest thing, right? To get the executive level to buy into what you want to do, what you want to change. Yeah. And not everybody can't. I mean, we work with organizations where you may have a manager of a team who's going to make a significant difference in that team. And it may not be organization wide, right? You don't always get that. But the ideal would be there is executive support for these behaviors to drive these results. And an implementation process that they're behind. It is it's difficult to talk about the principle of abundance and how you and I can approach things in a way where we we we're trying for win win. What people sometimes forget is that habit is think win win. It isn't so naive to think people always get there. You might have compromise. You might not get to it. But we're going to approach it. Can we come up with something better than either of us would have thought of on our own. And we're really going to try. Here's what you're saying. Here's what I think. What are all the possibilities that would get to some of those same things? Can they come up with something? And of course you always have influence over yourself. And you do influence others by your behavior. But having I know this from personal experience when you're really trying and I'm saying Scott. Are you at least willing to try to come up to something better with me? You can frankly run across people that say no. I'm going to win this argument. I mean, there is a lot of power in the word no to because then it moves the conversation forward, which is not always a bad thing either. No, I'd rather know it. I would rather have you say no, Jen. I am not going to try one of us is going to win this one because then I think. Okay, so now I know where I am. Yeah, but I just think from a values from an integrity standpoint, even though I've experienced that of course myself in this length of a career, I'm never not going to try. But that's so that's that is a that is a I think that's an internal internal mode internally driven decision that some people don't don't have that right some people. I think you know what actually that's a lie. I think some people haven't been enabled to feel that way. That's really what I believe. I agree with you totally if you even I mean the seven the thing about the seven habits is the concepts in them are not unique. I they are very and this is not in any way to minimize the work of Dr. Covey. They're organized in a way that's really unique because they start with what we call private victory. So you building emotional resilience, you knowing who you are and what you're trying to achieve really having a future view. What do I want people to say about me when I retire? What do I want my family to say at my 80th birthday, you know having a future view thought about their values, making choice, then moving to relationship skills. Because if you think about it, it requires a tremendous amount of self confidence to be humble. It requires a tremendous amount of self confidence for me to not be threatened that in the end your idea might have been better. You know because it's not threatening me personally. If you've ever been in an argument where you're thinking this person wants to win because they need a win. It's not even about this topic. Yeah. I think we all have. I mean, I have been that person believe me. I'm going to put myself out there as perfect. I have been that person being like, oh no, I'm going to win this one. And then you go back to wait. That's not what I believe. That's not who I want to be. It's all about working toward being highly effective. Very, very well said. You went deep there. I appreciate that. I didn't even need you to go that deep. But like, I just let you go because there's like, oh, this is this is the goal. This is actually a goal. Oh, thank you, sir. I apologize. I ran gold. No, no, no, no, apologize. My god. Okay. What's new? Okay. I want to, I want to bring this up because it's important. Okay. So why, why, what's the 30th anniversary edition? What's new in this that's different from like, this is, this is golden. And everyone's read this book. I'm pretty sure at some point in their career. What's different about 30th anniversary edition? What adds on to it? Great question. So, of course, we didn't change one word that Stephen Covey wrote. Those principles are timeless. And the practices have changed, right? Practices adjust to as our world changes. I really don't think the principles will ever change. Here's what's new. Dr. Covey son Sean Covey, who is a colleague of mine. He leads our education division. So K through 12 and higher education. By the way, they're in 5,000 schools in 50 countries, implementing how to build leadership within students effectively. And he wrote for each habit some updated stories and ways that this habit was applied in terms of practices that basically bolted on either to the front or to the end of that particular habit. The interesting thing is, you know, we wanted Sean to do that because we know how, how relevant this is and what great examples he had. He resisted for quite a while. I was involved in conversations where he said, no, I don't want to interfere with my father's legacy and it's his work. Yeah. And yeah, but Sean, Sean, by the way, is a very successful published author. He did seven habits of highly affected teens. He's done seven habits of happy kids. He's a co-author on our execution book. Definitely a thought leader. And he didn't want to touch this one. This is not like a, like a, oh, you know, just take on a project you've never written a word in your life. I know what you're saying, right? Like just to put some context around it. So, okay, I appreciate that. Yeah. I'm glad he did. The stories are and the practices and the application are very compelling, great additions. And we've gotten significant feedback on that addition. I'm glad he finally agreed to do it. And I also understand his initial reluctance. I understand the reluctance. I'm happy he did it. And the reason why I'm happy he did it is because there's not a single lesson that leaders learn. Anybody learned today that has not been taught over at one point in history going back thousands of years. Context and relevancy and timeliness is is as important in teaching. It probably not to the same extent as the actual lesson, but it's it's almost there, right? It's almost there and get somebody to buy into that and to understand it and to deliver value and context into the world that they live in. You're right. So, right. And I think that's a very exciting, very exciting addition. I'm we're really pleased. It's also provided the opportunity for us to have more to discuss with, you know, because sometimes if you've been through a lot of training, you think to yourself, yeah, I did that training. But to really bring it into today and how this addresses your growth mindset, innovation, the emotional maturity and resilience you need to deal with change. It's just given us a whole new audience that maybe, you know, especially you think of leaders, um, depends on their age. They didn't hear of it unless it was covered in their college class or their high school reading. Yeah, or they've gone it on their own and found it, but yeah, yeah. And what do you think? What advice would Dr. Covey give today to everyone who's who's dealing with all this stress and anxiety in their life? I'm very proud of being able to carry on the legacy. And I'm also as reluctant as Sean to put words into. Yeah, that question. It's a really tough question. And, you know, I had the opportunity to work with him very closely for several years. We co authored a small book called Great Work and Great Career. And I'm one of the very few people who's co authored with him. So I was able to invest some time with him. And so I'll venture a guess knowing that that's a difficult question. I really, there were two things that always really struck with me. And I think now more than ever, we need people to lead us forward. And I don't mean formal. Of course, we need the people with titles, but we also need people who will work to bring a group of people together to achieve a meaningful goal, right? They'll build the trust, they'll work whether that's informal or formal. And one of the things that always really struck me is he would say leadership is a choice, not a position. And I think he would advocate for more of us to look out within what we can influence leading us forward as we're facing difficult times. What can you influence and how can you help lead a group forward to achieve a meaningful goal? Leadership is a choice, not a position. I like that a lot. That's good. And even if it's coming from you, it's still good advice. He said it. He said it, but like I said, I'm always reluctant. Yes, no, that's I appreciate that. Okay, I want to ask a couple rapid fire questions just based on your career, your insight. Before I switch off from what we've just been going through, it's all incredible stuff. Was there anything that I didn't ask that's relevant to your role, business leadership, or seven habits right now, 30th anniversary that you wanted to bring up? We we really covered the topics that I think are so critical today, choice and empathy. The one that I would just add personally and I wrote some articles around this is that if you do lead people, their anxiety is a natural reaction to what's happening. So are you viewing your role, not just to achieve the results, which of course you've got to do, but in a way that continues to build relationship and help people through change. We're in a different time, right? You can't just be in my perspective, which is what I'm offering. You can't just be, okay, we have to hit that number. We have to hit that number. We have to hit that number. I'm over sales for the largest component of this particular organization, which is a public company. I get hitting the number and slowing to the bottom. I am not naive. And are you thinking about how this is truly differential in my lifetime anyway? And so are you thinking about the challenges they may be facing virtually and how to help manage through those? Are you thinking about relationship and results all because truly effective gets results now and in the future? I think that's a very, very smart thing to say. And I think that if business leaders haven't adapted yet, say they just have to hit that number no matter what. And it doesn't matter. Come hell or high water, right? You carry a bag. You got to hit that number. And if that's the case, I can tell you which one of your employees is going to go remote work somewhere else, the second the job market turns around. I completely agree with you, right? And of course, we're all making very difficult decisions. I have colleagues, peers, peers that are today preparing very bad news about because the organization simply can't support it. I'm not saying when you're in a leadership role, you don't make difficult decisions. And as you do that, are you doing that with respect and building empathy? And can you balance results and the relationship? Especially if that's not your forte, right? If that's not your forte, what are you working on to be able to lead effective in this environment? Because in our fiscal year runs September through August, so my Q2 ended in February. Q3 was March, April, May. So I completely get the immense amount of stress those who lead, you know, chief revenue officers, those who are responsible both for revenue sales. That is something anyone wants to talk about it, I get. So it's an incredible pressure on you, but what are you going to do? So as you mentioned, Scott, the minute the job market turns, they don't leave. Let's assume you have the runway to keep them. Yeah, yeah, very good. Okay, let's go into some rapid fire insights from your career. How do you continue to learn and stay on top of things in your role? Well, I have a colleague, you've met him who's extremely well read. And he's on your podcast. Yeah, just go to Scott. He runs an on leadership series for us that is our kind of podcast and leadership series. I am doing an immense amount of learning based on him curating. I have my own personal curation, right? Yeah. In addition to that, typically when I listen to those or buy their books and read them, they'll recommend. So I'm kind of following, of course I follow on LinkedIn as well when things come up and I'm thinking I should read that. And to be really clear where I've been going very deep and maybe I'm behind in how deep I should be going. Is I've been looking for recommendations around better understanding structural systemic racism and what my part is in adapting to that. Um, my most recent book that's been very good for me, challenging, you know, debating with myself. What I think is how to be an anti racist by even candy. Yes, very good book. That's been actually been recommended a few times. It's amazing. And then of course I go, I go through my curated and I have a bunch of folks that will recommend to me as well. So I usually invest a big chunk of time on the weekend because I am a very curious person. I'm always thinking, oh, I don't know anything about that. I need to know something about that. I want to learn. So that's how I do it. So that cues up the next question. You didn't even do this on purpose, but this is actually what I was going to ask. What are you most curious about in the world of business or leadership that you're investigating right now? And I do think this is a critical leadership component and always has been I am. I currently serve on a board where I live, a women's foundation and we know that women of color are disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. And we also at least have research because we also worked on research and public policy about some of the structural systemic things. So what I've really been looking for is what I don't understand about it and what I can do to go back to the theme of this. I have influences a leader within my organization. I have some influences a leader within my community. What is the highest and best use of where I can impact something that I think is so critical? Of course, in our recent environment with Black Lives Matter as a focus. And I'm also focused, of course, on LGBTQ plus on gender on how veterans can be disproportionately impacted with, of course, my overriding right now being focused on racism. Those are good things to be focused on. Very good things to be focused on right now and forever to be honest, not just right now. Right. I think it's also that that's the caveat right forever, not just right now. That's what that is and what's most important and I'm a bit sheepish that I didn't I wasn't I felt pretty informed, but I felt sheepish that I hadn't I needed this impetus to be really. I think that's how a lot of people felt and I think that better late than never does apply. It's unfortunate, but at the same time don't lose that drive don't lose that question for understanding you things and I think that's, you know, maybe there is naviti and a lot of individuals previous to global social unrest. Right. But don't let that die out right don't let this have to happen again in 20 years. Right. Right. What advice would you give to somebody pursuing? I want to say a career similar to yours, but you've done so many damn things over your career for maybe just just general career advice. I don't know. That's a better. I am an interesting one career because I I look at and I think this is good career advice. So here's this even though I've done so many different things is when you're looking at doing something. You have your unique talent passions those don't always overlap you might be really good at something that you don't like doing or you might really like something that's going to take you a lot more work to be good at than someone with that natural talent, but your talent passions your values how you want to contribute. If you're a hiring manager, you have a need. So how do you as someone who's looking at something you want to do. Bring your talents out passions your values and apply it to that need. I think that's what's really unique about some people that I've that have hired that I've been interested in is it's one thing for me to go out in the world and say, hey, I want this. It's another thing for me to really understand what you need Scott and apply who I am and what I can do solving that problem that's why we have work there's something to be done someone will pay you for it. And I think the biggest career skill is really looking at okay based on that job description based on that conversation here's what they need can I take who I am and show how I can solve that challenge. And I've done that fairly well there have been things that I mean people sometimes get surprised I have wanted to do and people did not choose me. I think people get this idea like oh she's just been able to know no but do you look for ways to match you with what something is needed or if you're an entrepreneur I know you have lessons that are entrepreneurs to create a need. Do you have something you make that will create a need in the world that doesn't exist yet but really thinking about it through both lenses yours and something. What you're going to create in the world or something the world needs is the best way to move and not just be like why aren't I what haven't I been promoted. But that's also a point on self awareness right so don't just think that because you're good at something you deserve a promotion because you have to be aware of that need don't just take a product market because you like the product because you may not be fixing anybody's pain right. You may not be fixing anybody's pain or you know the best entrepreneurs creating something none of us needed. Well that no I guess that's what I mean so that's the good thing that's it when you can when you can show people they need it but just don't don't assume that people need something just because. Through your lens you feel they should need it right you have to you have to tap into what their drivers are that's what I mean exactly you're exactly right and it's both for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs yeah yeah. Exactly very good what would be one lesson that you would tell your younger self. So hopefully I have built my effectiveness and my maturity level what I would tell myself what I would say think younger twenty twenty one. Don't take everything so personally. You know it isn't in many cases personal rejection not getting everything in the alignment that you want it's a long life have a long view and really it's primarily a worship waste of time to take decisions that don't go in your favor as personal move on. Get your have your vision look at a long view of how to achieve what you want to do not I think at least when I was young I don't know if this applies to anyone else I was discouraged more easily. And it would throw me on track. That's good advice as well. What does success mean for you. It's also a bit of a long view and it's evolved it's nice that you're talking to me at this age and not thirty years ago. I want to be a partner right it was that easy. I'm going to get the partnerships for me success is not necessarily balanced but an integrated life. That if you talked success to me would be if you talk to the people that are around me whether they work with me my children who are grown. My spouse my best friends if you talk you would get the same picture of this person that I'm an integrated whole person and that I'm the same sort of in any sense to a situation that you can trust me. And they wouldn't especially when you go to the inner circle none of them would they would feel like they got the best of me in that role. So it's really I'm not trying to be everything to everyone but what are the most important things based on the the people and the results are most important to me and am I developing an integrated approach to that. I made it if you talk to my husband and he was like she's really good at work she's horrible at home. Yeah or the other way around. Yeah. And it's in that require setting expectations and so on but to me success is how am I contributing in a meaningful way that my legacy would have been positive on people you know Dr. Covey used to say his whole mission was to unleash human potential I may not be that lofty but did my presence do I leave a legacy that's positive across the roles that are most important to me. I like that I like that answer a lot. Thank you very good. And then the most important question. Where can people go to find more about you your socials websites for the book for Franklin Covey all of that. So let's start with Franklin Covey we're at Franklin Covey.com and there is currently a page up around the seven habits of highly effective people. As well as some of the other behavior change topics that we address effectively so I would say Franklin Covey.com. I'm on Twitter at at Jen Colisemo. And I'm also LinkedIn at Jennifer Colisemo on LinkedIn. So there's where you can find out about me about my organization and obviously our books are across all kinds of sellers that you would choose to buy physical or audio books wherever you go whether that's local or the large larger present places. .