Episode 21
How Communication Fiascos Transformed My Leadership Approach
Summary:
Join Dr. Jim and Alexa Beavers, founder and CEO of The Axela Group, as they chat about the art of strategic communication in leadership. Discover how Alexa navigated a communication misstep and transformed her approach to consulting. This episode explores the importance of pacing, crafting impactful messages, and aligning action with words. Learn about frameworks like "Know, Do, Feel" and the PACE plan to better plan for success. Tune in for insights on how a miscommunication taught valuable lessons about deliberate, strategic engagement in fast-paced environments.
Chapters:
0:00
Avoiding Pitfalls of Rushing Leadership Decisions
1:57
Alexa Bevers: Transformative Leadership and Coaching Excellence
3:02
The Impact of Communication Missteps in Corporate Initiatives
9:34
Balancing Direct Communication with Empathy and Connection
Balancing Activity and Outcome for Long-Term Success
Balancing Task and Human Focus in Client Partnerships
Adapting Leadership Strategies for Fast-Paced Environments
Strategic Planning: Slow Down to Speed Up
Host Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk
Guest Alexa Beavers: linkedin.com/in/alexabeaverspmp
Executive Producer Jim Kanichirayil: linkedin.com/in/drjimk
Music Credit: "Lost in Dreams" by Kulakovka
Transcript
Alexa Beavers - Master
Alexa Beavers: [:What do we want them to do with this information and how does it, what are we gonna say that we'll connect them with this broader initiative so we do a little bit more deeper thinking about the words. Before we just go out there and blurt and I really should have taken that time and that step instead of rushing to get the word out . That was on me, not on the CEO.
So I make it sound like this poor CEO had done something terrible. But I feel like it was really my responsibility.
Dr. Jim: You just heard from Alexa Beavers, CEO, of the Axela group.
changes in your rush to run [:What if the way that you're delivering those messages is so hacked? So bad that you have people fleeing the ship, and before you know it, you look behind you and there's no one there. Now you're dealing with a much bigger problem. You're trying to solve one problem and in your rush to try to solve it, you've left everybody in the dust and they've jumped ship, and that's the risk that you run into when you try to do too many things too fast, too soon without actually talking through how it needs to be done, and more importantly, what the impact is gonna be on your organization.
In today's conversation, we're gonna talk through how you avoid that problem.
The person who's gonna be guiding us through that process is Alexa Beavers. She's the founder and CEO of the Axela group, where she leads with a mission to acce equip leaders to shape a positive future for themselves, their teams, their industries in the world.
years, and [:She brings deep expertise in leadership development, team dynamics, talent management, business transformation, and navigate complex systems and disruptions. Recognized for her insights and her ability to drive impact. Alexa has been. Honored as both an industry riding star and a pharmaceutical industry luminary by the Healthcare Business Women's Association in 2024.
Alexa and the Acela Group were awarded the ICEF Virginia Coaching Excellence Award. Distinguished Coaching Catalyst in the social excellence category, which further solidified her reputation as a transformative force in leadership and coaching.
y to have Alexa on. So Alexa [:Alexa Beavers: I ran this project once. I was working closely with a CEO of a pharma company, and we were working on a project to create a much more competitive cost structure in the company, which relates to creating efficiencies, cutting costs, things like that. I think the CEO and I had a really good relationship. We had talked together many times.
We were clear on the goals of the initiative, but when it came time to announce this to the broader employee population. The CEO took it upon himself to say some things like we have gotten way out of whack with our spending. And from there those words remained. We couldn't scrub 'em away, we couldn't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
a whack. And they translated [:Dr. Jim: It's interesting that you mentioned that example. I think the part that that has me a little off balance is that this sounds more like a CEO screw up than a you screw up. So where's the connection there?
Alexa Beavers: Oh, I messed up royally. I feel like it's my obligation as a consultant with a CEO and a partner to set that partner up for success. I didn't anticipate, and I wasn't careful enough about saying, let's talk about your intention. Let's talk about how your words will come across. We totally missed that coaching session because words matter as much as actions.
Actions matter a lot too, but those initial words set the tone for the whole engagement. Ever since then. I've taken a lot of time with my partners to say, let's really step back and say, okay, we have our objectives, but how do we, what do we want people to know at the end of this? How do we want them to feel?
What do we [:So I make it sound like this poor CEO had done something terrible. But I feel like it was really my responsibility.
Dr. Jim: when I take what you just said, it sounds like you walked into that session without a firm communication plan when it came to making the announcement. I wanna wind that back a little bit and put me in the moment of when this is actually happening.
What was going through your mind?
hadn't prepared this. Really [:But this was a, countrywide organization. And, you could just feel the tension rise with the employees.
Dr. Jim: So when you're replaying that in your head and you're feeling the energy in the room shift, you're probably seeing some of the energy in the room shift. Was there anything that could have been done in the moment that might have been able to salvage that that botched delivery?
Alexa Beavers: Absolutely. I think there, there was, and in the moment. I was sitting across from the CEO, from there on out. One of the things we did is we used to be making eye contact and he could, he wasn't looking at me at the time. We could have had some nonverbals and things like that to redirect.
hindsight, hindsight's always:Dr. Jim: You've, you went through that exercise. You had a bots delivery of the message. You didn't execute a good communication plan prior to this message being rolled out, and now it's out there and everybody's feeling all sorts of different kinds of ways. When you got a chance to step away from that moment and debrief about how everything went.
Were both of you aware immediately that this got screwed up or did you have to arrive at that after more analysis?
h the impact. And of course, [:So at first we were not on the same page that this was a major screw up. It took a couple weeks of. Employee feedback of watching employees put in resignations to really say, Hey, this was something that we need to find a way to not do again. It wasn't irre recoverable, but it did set the whole program on a tone of being on the defensive instead of saying, let's go together, let's do this as a team.
And it really, it created a tough, a tougher road than we would've had otherwise.
nt versus impact. I'm in the [:I'm always looking at the impact side of it. That's just a me thing. Now, when we take all of that and wrap it into the, wrap it into the communication styles of everyone that we might be dealing with. How would you advise somebody who has a direct communication style to make sure that they have full awareness of the impact of their words?
What would you advise them to think about when they're constructing what they wanna say?
Alexa Beavers: That's what really turned us to going to the know, do, feel, connect methodology. So direct communication is actually a gift in my mind because you know where you stand, however. Sometimes directness can be misinterpreted as being mean or unkind. And when you're on your way to that direct message, I like to have people just pause and saying, okay, what are the main things you want somebody to know?
[:What's another thing you could do so that you could have them feel interested in staying with you, for example? So the no do feel and we also talk about what they wanna do. So direct people are pretty good with the do but if you don't have the feel part, they're. It's gonna be potentially your listener is not necessarily gonna be engaged from the heart.
They may comply, but they won't be engaged in really giving you that extra effort. And then we also, the other place where direct communicators often skim over very quickly is the connect. The connect is really alright. What's the impact of this gonna be for this receiver of communication? How does this program connect to them, something that's meaningful to them?
hat direct communicator just [:Dr. Jim: One of the other things that I've noticed when people who tend to be very direct in communication style, they tend to also over index towards activity as a measure of momentum versus outcome as a measure of momentum. Have you seen that, and if so, how have you managed that to make sure that people are aligned the right way, that they're looking at the right things versus getting false positives.
Alexa Beavers: That's a really good one. I think that a lot of times, even people that are less direct really do getting short-term wins and seeing the activity. Our whole society is built around being busy. You get rewarded for being always scheduled. So it's not a surprise that we may, I.
ow will we have some leading [:When you're constantly doing that back and forth, are we moving towards the outcome through outputs? Or those activities, the results of the activities. And then is that leading us towards the outcome that helps us to keep focused on what's really important? Sometimes we re, we recalibrate as a result, but we really wanna tie the outputs, the results of those activities that we feel good about to the outcome, the longer term vision that we have set in front of us.
Dr. Jim: So when we recap what you just talked through, there's a handful of screw ups in, in what you just described. There wasn't alignment on communication plan. There wasn't alignment on what we're actually looking at as a gauge of progress. There wasn't line of sight into what would be the potential impact in terms of how this is gonna be received by the audience.
a bunch of other stuff too. [:Alexa Beavers: There were a myriad of lessons. Beyond, just these two. But one is to be in lockstep, a much stronger partner for my CEO or my project sponsor. I really wanna make sure that they are fully equipped and that we are on the same page. So I do that through a lot of, not just talking about what we wanna say and but also talking about how we wanna say it and what the impact of that will be.
We also tend to spend more time on talking about the conditions of satisfaction. So really what will good look like at the end of this? And it's putting our mind on that helps us look more to the outcome than the immediate message. So really saying, okay. I. Where are we heading with this? What do we wanna see at the end of this?
ions and tools that I use as [:What the intention of this was and to bring people along for the ride to engage in the program. And so we really talked a lot about does our audio match our visual? How do we make sure that what we're saying matches our actions? Because people take their cues from actions. The words really did matter, but the actions themselves that we took after that were the healing things because we were very intentional about the actions and showing.
Dr. Jim: People what they could expect from us with real measures, not just words. So audio and visual really need to match and you need to be intentional about that.
n your current conversations [:Alexa Beavers: I made an immediate change, everything that we did after that in the getting to know, in the discovery phase of this, what are you looking to do? With this program, learning more about the individual and getting on the same page has really become part of our initial get to know and discovery process.
So we aren't just talking about what we want the program to achieve. We're talking about, talk, tell me about you and why this matters to you and how do you wanna come across during this time. So it really shifted. From looking at the initiative to looking at the person being personable together helped me and helps me with all my clients to understand how can I be the best partner to them with this goal in front of us together?
gonna make 'em feel, pissed [:So I turned my attention completely from being much more task focused to balancing it with task and human focus.
Dr. Jim: That makes sense. I would imagine you're gonna come across people who want to go fast and who also think at the same time that a lot of this stuff that you just mentioned is just a bunch of fluff and I don't have time for it. So how do you deal with people that are wired that way that don't really put a whole lot of value on the relationship side of it?
They just want to drive impact as much as quickly as possible.
at the implications will be. [:They just wanna hear about the data. They wanna hear about use cases, and they wanna understand that what we're doing is not a waste of time. 'cause time is so precious.
Dr. Jim: So digging in a little bit, you just mentioned something where you're talking through if then scenarios, why is it important and necessary to talk through those if then scenarios in these sort of conversations, especially when you're dealing with somebody that has a pace of play bias, a bias for action.
n't talk through the if then [:I think the if then scenarios open up whole new pathways for me as a partner too, because there are things that I would never have anticipated, not being part of the organizational culture like that person is. So it's a learning process for me, but it's also a learning process for my partner because they're thinking through something that they might not have slowed down enough to do.
So it's a sparring match in a way.
Dr. Jim: So you just said something that caught my attention, which is you wanna walk, and I'm gonna paraphrase. You wanna walk people through potentials. What's your threshold for the number of, I don't knows that you get from that person that you're asking these questions that indicates to you, Hey, we need to slow this way down because there's too many questions.
lexa Beavers: Today, there's [:So it's an act of being nimble, having courage and doing things in an informed way, but not a perfect way. So oftentimes I do get a lot of, I don't knows, and then I talk about what's our tolerance for risk? How important is this for us to know that thing? And then we make choices from there.
Dr. Jim: So when you look back on the experience that you had, the lessons that you learned what are some of the ways that this actually helped you accelerate to impact in your later roles?
em later on. We fast forward [:And then resetting. So instead of saying, Hey, let's just do this thing, let it play out. We build a habit for agility, and that has helped us tremendously because we can't predict everything. I don't know about you, but when Covid happened, I just threw my crystal ball away. It just stopped working. I can't predict the future, so that means that I guide my clients and guide my partners in these things to be scanning all the time.
pivot will help you to move [:Dr. Jim: So really interesting stuff that we've walked through so far. One of the things that I'm wondering about is when you look at all of this stuff that you've gathered from that experience, I. And you zoom out, and now you're talking to that person that's 10, 15 years behind you in their career. Maybe they're stepping into their first leadership role or their first major consultancy role.
How would you advise them to move in that experience so that they don't make the same mistakes that you made?
Alexa Beavers: Advising is interesting. I have to put on my advisor hat. Oftentimes I'll take a coaching approach in those situations, but I would ask folks that are 15 years earlier in their career, how well do you know the partner you're working with? What are the things that is, are important to that person and important to the outcomes of the initiative?
between you and your program [:What are the things that we want? Do we want transparency? Do we want to keep this close to the vest, you need to really talk about those things because when you can bring those guideposts together, they form a little bit of a. I don't know, river banks for you to flow through with ease instead of having those hard and fast rules.
And that's really important today as things are changing so quickly, it gives people enough freedom to be the leaders that they are. You're not working with, a bunch of schmucks, you're working with strong leaders, so you wanna come up with guideposts so you all can, move together as one.
Dr. Jim: Great stuff. If folks wanna continue the conversation with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
ah, I'd invite them to reach [:Dr. Jim: great stuff. Thanks for hanging out with us and sharing with us that story of how you learned from one of the bigger mistakes that you made earlier in your career. I think when I think about this conversation, there's a couple of interesting things that I think I wanna pull out that, I think will be helpful for a lot of folks that will be listening and watching this. The saying goes that, you always want to be oriented towards running fast and breaking things, and that has its own merit because the faster you can fall into mistakes, the faster you can iterate into something that is center of the circle.
ard, and that's really gonna [:And one of the other things that stood out in what you were describing. Is that when you're going through this planning exercise, it's always good to have a framework. You mentioned the no do feel framework as a way to map this out. I would add onto it that you need to have a PACE plan when you're developing what could happen going forward.
You need to have a PACE plan, and that stands for primary, alternate contingency and Exit. So this way it allows you to decide what's plan A, what's plan B if something happens. That's in this category. What's our plan for that? And then what's our exit strategy if things go off the rails? Having that sort of framework in place and talking through it really helps you identify and map out any potential blind spots or even things that you haven't thought about so that you can be deliberate and fast when things happen instead of having to constantly readjust.
anging out. If you liked the [:
