S5E19: The Spirit of Emotional Intelligence with Ruben Minor

From the desk of Peter Margaritis

“The beauty of good leadership has a wonderful platform to impact someone you may never know-how.“ Ruben Minor

Our guest today is Ruben Minor, who is the president of RAM Consulting Group, an organization that focuses on speaking, training, and coaching individuals and groups regarding leadership, team dynamics, relationship building, diversity, equity and inclusion, fundamental business philosophies, and business and personal branding. Reuben is a leader with a rich and resourceful network of professionals across the business spectrum, ranging from influential political figures to educational leaders and entrepreneurs. 

Ruben leverages his network to make more meaningful connections for clients and business partners, evolving into lasting, mutually beneficial relationships. Ruben served this country for 15 years in the US Navy as a Supply Corps officer is a John Maxwell certified professional speaker, trainer, and coach, and is intimately engaged in the community, serving as president of the Council for the village of Galena. Reuben enjoys spending time with family, history movies, and hiking, and as a side note, he is a professional speaker. 

Emotional intelligence is the ability to process information that has been received. The information goes through a filter system in your mind, which helps you dissect what’s being said and the intention behind it so that your response to what you are processing will be emotionally appropriate. Emotional intelligence, like sales, is either you naturally have it, and you’re good at it, or you don’t have it, and therefore becomes a difficult process for you to gain that. 

It takes a particularly savvy person to be sensitive and to know how to respond and not hurt someone. Psychological safety entails asking how one can create an environment where a person feels safe enough to say and express what is on their mind. Naturally, everybody wants to be heard, and when you can exercise psychological safety, that’s the foundation of building great relationships.

Corporations have learned a lot post-COVID, as employees have realized that they do not have to put up with toxic work environments. Unfriendly cultures have been in place for decades and are not expected to change overnight. It’s going to be a constant, intentional effort by those in leadership and making sure that they’re keeping in step with the culture in the corporate community. 

The beauty of good leadership has a wonderful platform to impact someone that you may never know how to. 

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Accounting Education: Why Power Skills Matter

From the desk of Peter Margaritis

If you’re looking to find an accounting job, you may have noticed that employers often list strong communication skills and sales/client management experience as requirements for their open positions. You might be wondering why these two items are needed if accounting isn’t typically seen as a people-focused industry. The truth is that understanding how to sell yourself– both in an educational setting and in the workplace – can help you succeed professionally in the accounting profession. Technical accounting skills are the foundation of accounting education. However, in today’s accounting profession, technical skills are not enough to grow your career by themselves. Your career growth comes from developing your power skills.  

What are power skills?

What exactly are power skills? The first time I heard the term power skills, I presented an improv workshop to the incoming Master of Science in Accounting students at Oklahoma State University. However, before I began my session, the chair of the accounting department, Dr. Audrey Gramling, addressed the importance of developing their power skills, aka soft skills. You see, this is the mission of Oklahoma State University School of Accounting, which is “to prepare people to make a difference in the world by teaching essential interpersonal skills alongside a high-quality accounting education backed by impactful research and outreach.” And to steal a phrase from Guy Fieri, they are “spot on.”

Power skills are helpful in just about any career and essential to communicating accounting complexities to those non-accounting business leaders. They include aspects like curiosity, self-awareness, empathy, and more. According to The Josh Bersin Company blog titled “Let’s Stop Talking About Soft Skills: They’re PowerSkills, states that, “the skills of the future are not technical; they’re behavioral. Yes, engineers, designers, and technical people need to know how to build and fix things.” The article goes on to state that IBM’s latest research lists the top 5 Power Skills that are most critical to the workforce today are:

1. “Willing to be flexible, agile, and adaptable to change.”

2. “Time management skills and ability to prioritize.”

3. “Ability to work effectively in team environments.”

4. “Ability to communicate effectively in a business context.”

5. “Analytical skills and business acumen.”

Considering how important they are for success both in your professional life and personal development, it makes sense to begin the process of learning these power skills in the university classroom. Being a former university professor, I understand the politics that go into a well-rounded education, and making room for new courses is a challenge. However, if higher education would adopt the first power skill and “be flexible, agile, and adaptable to change,” a solution can be obtained.  

One potential solution is that if your state requires the 150-hour rule to be licensed in your state, then add these power skills courses into the Master of Accounting programs. However, the extra 30 hours, in many states like Ohio, do not have a mandate on the type of courses that qualify.   

Ability to communicate effectively in a business context

A few years ago, my doctor ordered some tests because I was not feeling well. A few days later, my doctor called me, not her assistant, and said she got the results back from the tests. Then she went into this tsunami of medical lingo and gibberish, and I had no clue what she was trying to tell me. So, I said to her, “Doctor, stop! I have no idea what you are trying to tell me. Can you tell me in plain English?” There was a pause, and then she said, “you may I cancer.” Wow. Thankfully, I did not have cancer. 

The experience with my doctor is the same experience accountants have when communicating with non-accountants. Accountants speak the foreign language of business – accounting, which is no different from speaking Spanish, Greek, or Chinese to someone who is not fluent in that language. We need to be cognizant of this fact and become better translators of technical accounting knowledge. We need to start taking the numb out of numbers! 

Translating technical accounting into plain English is not an easy task, and it takes time. Where should we start? I know, in a college classroom! The ability to develop this skill in the safety of the classroom is ideal. The classroom allows us to experiment, fail, hone, and gain confidence. Oh, you are stuck on the word fail. Then think of it as an acronym, First Attempt In Learning. Failure is part of the process when we view learning any new skill. For example, we don’t pick up a golf club for the first time and make solid contact or contact at all. Same with learning new skills. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. 

Change is necessary to be relevant. 

Higher education needs to change how accounting is taught and align it with the critical power skills required to succeed in today’s business climate. Technical knowledge is essential, and a lot of the technical – nuts, bolts, calculations – is done with artificial intelligence. We need to ensure that the calculations are accurate. However, our role as an accountant is evolving into a position of a business advisor and out of being thought of as a number cruncher. Let’s find a way to start this transformation of the accounting profession in the classroom instead of making it the employer’s responsibility. Let’s begin to embrace the term ‘Financial Leadership’ – and teach and prepare with excellence in technical accounting skills and power skills – a win/win for everyone!

If this article resonated with you and you would like to learn more, contact me at petr@petermargaritis.com

Power Skills are Hard to Master!

From the desk of Peter Margaritis

On August 10th, I delivered the keynote address welcoming the Master of Science in Accounting students at Oklahoma State University to the Fall 2021 semester.  The title of my keynote was Improv Is No Joke.  Not something you would expect to be a keynote title to a group of accounting students.  

Prior to the students attendance, I had a conversation with the department head of the school of accounting, Dr. Audrey Gramling.  Dr. Gramling is a huge proponent of developing accounting students’ power skills.  You know, those skills that we commonly refer to as soft skills.  I like to say, ‘we may call them soft skills, but they are very hard to master’.  I assured her that my presentation would focus on these Power Skills.  

Before my keynote began, there was a video message to the students from the dean of the Spears School of Business, Dr. Ken Eastman.  In his welcome to the students, he referenced the Korn Ferry five skills that need to be developed right now: Agility, Creativity, The Service Mindset, Communication, and Leadership.  In other words, the improviser’s mindset.  

Let’s dig deeper into the Korn Ferry blog posting, ‘Five Skills That Need to be Developed Right Now’. Agility, Creativity, The Service Mindset, Communication, and Leadership.

Agility means “being able to adapt quickly to uncertainty and constant change.” That, in and of itself, is improvisation.  The ability to adapt or be agile means focusing on the things that we have control over and letting go of things that we have no control over.  This is accomplished through the philosophy of Yes! And. Accept the premise that is handed to you, and positively add to it.  

Creativity “can be as simple as staying curious and not falling into the trap of “this is how it has always been done.” It also requires two separate and distinct types of thinking, divergent and convergent thinking.  Divergent thinking is the process of coming up with lots of ideas without censoring yourself or others, or saying the dreaded creativity killer, “we can’t do that.” In improv we say, you can’t create and criticize in the same space. Criticism is essential in creativity only after all of the ideas have been vetted. Convergent thinking is the process of analyzing those divergent ideas to determine which ideas can solve the problem at hand. 

The Service Mindset is “having the awareness to adjust the goods and services we provide to customers, in the way they need them, when they need them – this is a critical skill for talent.” To do this effectively, you need to park your ego and listen to what the customer wants, not what you think the customer needs. In improv, it is all about the team, and the customer, and less about ourselves.

Communication is essential ​​in both “written and verbal skills and presenting well in-person and on videoconference, [these] are growing in strategic importance.” The ability to articulate your thoughts and deliver that message in a way that your audience can understand has always been important, even more so when delivering it virtually.  This communication also extends to your body language, both in-person and on Zoom and other virtual platforms. Always present positive body language when speaking or attending any meeting or presentation.  This means no slouched posture, no using your smartphone, and always have your camera on when in a virtual environment, just to name a few.  

Leadership is developing “talent with the ability to reach out and take the initiative, build relationships across the organization, and foster trust and inclusion through behavior and actions – [these are skills] in demand at every level.” Leadership is also about being vulnerable around your team and letting them know when you are wrong.  In improv, it is all about the team and less about you. Our job is to make the individuals on our team look good, support them, and treat them with the highest respect. It is not our job to disrespect them or tear them down. That is just your ego getting in the way. Let your ego sit on the bench for a while and focus on what is best for the team.

The two-hour keynote on improv contained the essence of this Korn Ferry blog, along with helping these accounting students understand that they speak a foreign language called accounting.  Those in the corporate world who are not well versed in the foreign language of accounting have no idea what you are saying.  The sixth critical skill that every accountant, engineer, or financial person needs to develop is a translation of technical language into plain English.  When you master all six of these skills, you have become a well-versed and highly impactful leader within your organization. 

If you would like to discuss this article, please email me at peter@petermargaritis.com

Psychological Safety is a Must if You Want Your Organization to Succeed

From the desk of Peter Margaritis

Have you ever been in a meeting and your boss asks you a question about your ideas on a particular subject? After you share your thoughts, your boss has that look of disgust on their face and says, “we can’t do that because this is the way we have always done this,” or “we tried that in the past, and it didn’t work,” or everyone starts laughing and someone says, “their he/she goes again while rolling their eyes.” Negativity and dismissiveness hurt! When your boss responds this way, creativity stops and suppresses the rest of the group’s creative thoughts and ideas. No one wants to be humiliated like this in front of others. 

Then it gets even better – you are in a meeting with the accounting and finance team, and they are reviewing your financial results for the last quarter.  You are afraid to ask questions or make any comments because you don’t want to look stupid.  After all, you don’t have an accounting or finance degree, so what do you know?

What is the real issue in both of these scenarios? The corporate culture does not allow you to speak your mind and ask questions without feeling insecure or embarrassed. In my 30+ years in the corporate world, I had experienced too many times when I was ridiculed because I said something that was perceived as stupid, or I should have known the answer. Is this behavior motivating, inspiring, or productive? Of course not, and yet, we’ve all experienced it at one time or another. 

The good news is, you can create a culture where all ideas have validity, where ideas are accepted and discussed; and, where questions are asked without any judgment or the fear of embarrassment. Okay, quit shaking your head and thinking that will never happen, and saying, “there he goes again with his crazy ideas and comments.” As you continue to listen to this episode, do this – keep an open mind, and don’t pass judgment until you hear me out. Deal? DEAL! 

There is one critical element in creating this new corporate culture, and that element is psychological safety. In a Harvard Business Review article titled, “High Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety And Here’s How To Create It,” the article defines psychological safety as “the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake. Studies show that psychological safety allows for moderate risk-taking, speaking your mind, creativity, and sticking your neck out without the fear of having it cut off.” I know someone out there thinks that I am making this up and using HBR as a cover, but I am not. Psychological safety is a real thing. Google the term to learn more.  

In a similar article by re:work titled “The Five Keys to a Successful Google Team,” the article starts off stating that “who is on a team matters less than how the team members interact, structure the work, and view their contributions.” In other words, the way the team collaborates is more important than who is on the team.  In improv, the team is the sum of all of its parts not just the individual contributions.    

The article goes on to state that there are “five key dynamics that set successful teams apart from other teams at Google, and the number one dynamic is psychological safety.” Psychological safety is defined as “can we take risks on this team without feeling insecure or embarrassed.” The remaining four dynamics are… well now – wait a second. I have a better idea.  Google the article and read it to learn about the other four!  

So, the question becomes, how do you increase psychological safety on your team? The HBR article states that “approach conflict as a collaborator, not an adversary when conflicts come up, avoid triggering a fight-or-flight reaction by asking how could we achieve a mutually desirable outcome and be curious to hear the other person’s point of view.” 

I am no ‘brain expert’, but what I do know is that when you are harassed by your boss, or one of your coworkers with an over-developed ego, or one of the “whatever” coworkers, your brain goes into the fight-or-flight mode. In other words, we act first and think later. That has never happened to you, right? Well, when this happens at work, it debilitates our strategic thinking and kills our self-esteem. Are we now a productive member of the team or a disgruntled employee? Once again, you know the answer. 

When I read both of these articles, my mind went straight to improvisation. For those who have been following my work, you are thinking “shocker.” (just a bit of sarcasm). There is a lot to unpack here, so let’s start with “the belief that punishment will not occur when you make a mistake.” In improv, we say, “there are no mistakes, only gifts, and happy accidents.” No one is perfect, and even those who don’t suffer from a lack of certainty make mistakes. Leaders and teammates need to respect each other, trust one another, and support each other when taking risks. Remember, there are risks in everything we do. Don’t punish but praise the person for taking the risk. There is another saying in improv, “Bad ideas are bridges to good ideas. No ideas lead to nothing.” If everyone justifies everyone else’s actions, there are no mistakes.

Then there is the fear of being embarrassed and feeling insecure.  Once you put your ego out of the way, we stop judging others’ ideas – instead, we consider them brilliant and eagerly follow them! You see that great improvisers accept the ideas of the other teammates without judging them to be “good” or “bad,” always thinking, “This is now our idea.” When we do this unilaterally throughout our team and give people the freedom to speak their mind, magic will happen almost immediately. 

One of my all-time favorite improv quotes describes psychological safety by saying, “There are gems in every idea. Embrace and build. Treat every idea as though it has the potential to change the world, and at some point, one will.”

Creating a safe place for the team to share their ideas under the umbrella of psychological safety may be easier to achieve versus asking a question during a financial meeting when you don’t have the financial foundation necessary to articulate a question. To avoid being perceived as stupid, we are more inclined to nod our heads up and down and agree than ask a question.  

However, when you ask the financial question, you will more than likely receive an answer full of accounting and finance jargon, leaving you even more confused. So, what is the solution? Knowledge is the solution. Accounting and finance knowledge, to be exact.  I addressed this in S4E8; I discuss what is financial leadership. The answer is taking an accounting and finance fundamentals course powered by Color Accounting. 

In S4E8, I describe the Color Accounting process, the benefits, and provided three perinate examples.  I would highly suggest that you listen to that entire episode to learn more.  In the meantime, I have another case study to share with you, and it is entitled “We Could Save About $80K a Year.”

In early 2000’s, Mark Robilliard was facilitating a corporate workshop for team leaders and middle managers in a large multinational HQ in Sydney Australia. After becoming accounting literate using the Color Accounting System™, the final session in this particular workshop involved the participants having a quick review of their own work area and then discuss any thoughts on generating additional revenue or incurring less expenses. One of the participants (the Team Leader in the internal mail room) shyly raised their hand and nervously said “I think we could save about $80k per year if we changed how we do this process.” The CFO who just happened to be in the room almost fell off his chair and when he recovered his composure, he asked the team leader “How come you never brought this to us before?”. The answer was simple: “I just do my job – I didn’t know we should be thinking about the business too.”

What value would these type of business conversations have in any organization? Shouldn’t everyone be accounting literate and develop a ‘business owner’ type mindset?

Everyone in your organization should increase their accounting literacy because how much money would your organization save if they did their job AND thought about the business too. Novel idea, right? 

How effective are your senior managers, managers, sales team, and back-office teams around finance? Do they perform with psychological safety in your accounting and finance meetings? Do they speak their mind and ask questions without feeling insecure or embarrassed?

In conclusion, the HBR article states, “if you create a sense of psychological safety on your team starting now, you can expect to see higher engagement levels, increased motivation to tackle difficult problems, more learning and development opportunities, and better performance.” So, what are you waiting for? 

If you would like to learn more about how improvisation leadership creates a culture that fully supports psychological safety within the organization and/or more about the Color Accounting process, please contact me at peter@petermargaritis.com. 

Effective Negotiating in Corporate America

From the desk of Peter Margaritis

What do you feel when you hear the word, negotiate? Dread, Anxiety, Excitement? Do you believe that negotiation skills can be taught? Do you agree with this statement – “we negotiate all the time”? Have you ever searched Google asking one or more of these questions: 

  • What skill is the most helpful during a negotiation? 
  • How does ego play a role in negotiating? 
  • What role does leverage play during negotiations?  

I will address all of these questions, and how the world of IMPROV can help make you a much better negotiator, and more, in this episode.  Yes!  And this same topic will be continued in at least two, if not three, more upcoming podcast episodes.  Stay tuned!

Let’s get started! Most of us have experienced a negotiation gone bad.  However, have you ever been negotiated up? That’s right negotiated up.  Early in my business, I wanted to work with a specific association because of the painful negotiation their members were experiencing. I knew I had a solution for that pain.  In my conversation with them, they asked what my fee was? I replied, what is your budget for this event?  The person responded with the speaker budget for the entire year and it was $1,000 above my fee for the event.  I wanted the job, so I offered a fee that was 75% less than my normal fee.  Then came the awkward pause.  After about what seemed like 30 min but more like 30 sec, the person replied with a fee that was 50% more than I offered.  I got negotiated UP! I learned a valuable lesson that day.  Learn how to negotiate better!  So from that point forward, I offer my full fee, and if rejected, I work with the other person to find common ground where both parties WIN and walk away with value.  

Not every negotiation table has a client on the other end. Sometimes it’s an employee. And when it is, it is often about negotiating to give them a voice their role within the company and in the business’s direction.  These negotiations take success to a whole level. 

So. What makes some negotiations successful and others dead in the water? Conducting a successful negotiation requires the use of six essential skills – and they are ALL foundations of Improvisation.

These six skills will ensure every negotiation has the potential to end with a positive solution.

6 PRINCIPLES OF IMPROVISATION

  1. Take your ego off the table
  2. Have and show respect for the other party
  3. Be in the moment (focus)
  4. Listen to the other party’s needs and wants
  5. Adapt to the situation
  6. Yes, And…

These steps truly help everyone one win in a negotiation. One of biggest impacts the 6 principles have is to  take the emotions off the table. Heated emotions can cause negotiations to shut down. They are more likely to end in a stalemate with wasted efforts. Anthony K. Tjan wrote in a Harvard Business Review blog, “Time and emotion — these are the two things most often wasted during a negotiation.” And he is right. We tend to react emotionally and negatively to any points of negotiation that oppose our own agenda. And that wastes time and energy. When our goals for a negotiation are so firmly anchored that we cannot budge, it becomes hard to see any common goal as a solution. Instead, emotions kick in, and egos inflate—and we cease to listen. All we hear is our own voice in our head trying to find a way back to what we want.

SKILLFUL NEGOTIATION IS ROOTED IN IMPROVISATION

Tom Yorton was once in the corporate ranks before becoming CEO of Second City Communications, the business solutions division of the world- renowned comedy company, The Second City. He had this to say in a recent Business Innovation Factory article, “But my experience – and in fact, my scars – are from bumping up against the same organizational hurdles that improv is so effective at helping companies get over – challenges that include connecting with customers, engaging employees around change, moving into new

markets, innovating new products and services, working without a script.”

All of the aspects of driving positive change inside the company depend on how well leaders in corporate America can negotiate. That equates to how well business professionals can handle ‘blocking’. ‘Blocking’ are those things that are brought to the table that are unexpected – out of the blue – out of nowhere Blocking like this It halts forward momentum and does not neatly fit inside the box of your agenda.  And it happens every day.

Daena Giardella teaches an improvisational leadership class at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. She spends an entire lesson on teaching how to avoid using the most common block, the “yes, but.” In an NPR article, she points out, “Even though you say, ‘Yes,’ the but says, Yeah, but that’s not really valid because here is the better point.“

Negotiations can quickly come to a grinding halt when “yes, but” comes to the table. It is when emotions get heated and time gets wasted.  Michael Wheeler, Harvard Business School Professor and Program on Negotiation (PON) faculty member wrote the book The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World. Michael states in a PON Q&A interview that, “real-world interactions between parties by looking at the uncertainty of negotiations and how to develop flexible strategy when you have incomplete information. Negotiation cannot be scripted. Your goals may change during the course of negotiation, a little or a lot. Unexpected opportunities and obstacles may pop up. Your across-the-table counterpart may be more or less cooperative than you expected.” 

Too many times we practice a rigid strategy – a script – a plan – prior to going into a negotiation.  By doing so, we quit listening to the other party because we are following the linear thought process we created and practiced.  We miss out on key opportunities or threats by not being fully present. Michael states in this Q&A, “There’s a misperception that military strategy is very rigid. Yes, there’s a chain of command, but there’s also a military saying: “Plans go out the window with first contact with the enemy.” In an uncertain situation, you have to think through your best- and worst-case scenarios.” This military strategy can be witnessed back in 2011 when the U.S. Navy SEALs executed the raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.  “The mission had been meticulously planned; the SEALs trained for it over months and several contingency plans were developed and put into place. When one of the navy’s Black hawk helicopters crashed within the compound, a very specific kind of improvisation was required if the mission was to succeed.” This is adapting to the change in the strategy in order to achieve a positive outcome. 

Improvising is not winging it or making things up.  Improvising is all about over-preparing and developing alternative plans and when you enter the room, you throw the script away, you listen and stay present in the negotiation and adapt in order to achieve success.   

Time to remember the 6 principles of improvisation!

  1. Take your ego off the table
  2. Have and show respect for the other party
  3. Be in the moment (focus)
  4. Listen to the other party’s needs and wants
  5. Adapt to the situation
  6. Yes, And…

Listen to the other party’s needs. What are they really saying when they block your proposal? Be adaptable by taking your ego off the table. Take a deep breath if you need to and then let the next words that come out of your mouth be “Yes, and…”

A successful negotiation is birthed from being able to rebound, to take the blocks and build with them. That is how you connect with other people.

Have you ever watched preschoolers play with blocks? They take turns stacking them on top of each other until it gets so high it just topples over – or they like to watch it fall and knock it over on purpose. But the point is that both of them have an agenda. They each want to pick up a block and put it on the tower and each one probably has an idea about what the tower will look like, but they keep building until they can’t build anymore.

We are more likely to succeed in negotiations when both parties can envision a common goal. Improvisation teaches us to set aside our personal agendas and ego and take whatever the other person gives you and go with it. The glue that ties it all together is the principle of “Yes, and…” Successful people all intuitively do this. They just don’t necessarily realize that they are using improvisation in their daily lives.

To succeed in negotiations, we need to drop our agendas long enough to truly listen—and with respect for all

involved. It is true for formal negotiations around a conference table and is the way to success in the daily negotiations of life and career—during a chat with the boss or with one’s spouse, or with a child. This is the kind of straight talk we can cultivate that truly will make the biggest difference.

If you would like to learn more about negotiating using improv techniques, please contact me at peter@petermargaritis.com