Make More Money with Chrysta Bairre & Define Your Power with Todd Cherches52 min read

Bryan Hyde
Welcome to the Janine Bolon show, where we share tips from around the globe. As we guide practical people with their finances using money tips, increase their incomes through side businesses, and maintain their sanity by staying in their creative zone.

Janine Bolon
Hello and welcome to the Janine Bolon show. And with me today I have Chrysta Bairre who is a career coach and speaker helping women create balance and she helps them advocate for themselves and find happiness not only in work, but in their lives. She is the founder and CEO of she goes high and introvert focused Women’s Leadership Organization and it’s based in northern Colorado. She is also the author of beautiful badass, how to believe in yourself against the odds. Thanks so much for being with us here today, Chrysta.

Chrysta Bairre
it is wonderful to be here. Janine, thank you so much for having me. And I’m super excited to share what I think is going to be some really valuable mindset shifts with your audience.

Janine Bolon
Well, as you know, on the Janine Bolon show, we like to help you with your money, your time, your sanity, and your knowledge base. And so we’re going to hit a couple of those today with Chrysta because she is going to kind of guide us on Did you know you could make $10,000 more without having to work harder? So kind of guide us through that that was such a wonderful teaser that you gave me? I’m actually looking forward to hearing this answer. So take it away. So early on in my career coaching practice, I had a woman come to me, and she wasn’t making the money that she wanted to make. She was traditionally employed, she had a bachelor’s degree, and had ended up working in a field different from what she got her degree in. I’m sure none of your listeners can relate to that.

Chrysta Bairre
I mean, how many of us actually end up working in the field that we got degrees in right, here you go. And so she had this idea, she came to me for some advice, because she was strongly considering going back to school spending a lot of money to get a second degree in the fields she was currently working in for the purpose of being able to demand a higher salary.

Chrysta Bairre
In our consultation, it was very clear to me that the reason that she was not making more money had nothing to do with how many degrees or what degree she had. And we work together for three months, and she got a $10,000 a year raise. I will never forget what she said to me. I texted her I knew she had the conversation with her boss scheduled, I texted her and said how did it go? And her response was, it was so easy. I realized now I could have asked for even more. Wow, that’s always a good thing to hear, isn’t it? It was so easy. I could have asked for more. So talk to us a little bit about what that means what that looks like. So the thing is, what I’ve noticed for myself as well as the women that are in she goes hi and all the coaching clients that I’ve had in the past is that so much of the time when we think about increasing our income, we think about doing more or being more

Chrysta Bairre
we think about that additional certification that more training, putting more hours in providing more value to our clients. That’s the path that our brain tends to follow when we think about how do I make more money? How do I increase my income.

Chrysta Bairre
But I have talked in front of many audiences and heard so many stories. And I know and I truly believe that a lot of this time, the secret to actually earning more, has actually nothing to do with you getting that additional certification, doing more work working harder. In fact, it’s usually the opposite. Usually you need to scale back, you need to simplify, you need to really focus and set some really great boundaries around whoever you’re serving, whether you’re an entrepreneur and you’re serving your own clients, or whether you are an employee and you’re serving you know, your boss and your coworker and your team. Because here’s the thing, we give so much of ourselves, and we give more and more and more and the more we spread ourselves thin.

Chrysta Bairre
The less honestly, I think we appreciate our own value that we’re offering and the less other people appreciate that as well.

Chrysta Bairre
Now, in my coaching with this woman, this client of mine, we did not talk about negotiation strategies or tactics. We spent those three months that cost her way less than a second college degree, way less time, way less money. We really focused on boundary setting at work. We focused on her doing things like going home at five o’clock, and not working late into the night. And it’s counterintuitive because we think that we have to be more and we think we have to do more. But I promise every one of your listeners that you do enough

Chrysta Bairre
You are enough?

Chrysta Bairre
And what if there was nothing more that you needed to do or be to earn the income that you really want to earn?

Janine Bolon
That’s like, totally against everything we’re kind of taught, right? I mean, I don’t know about you, but anybody who grew up with any kind of quote, quote, work ethic that your parents were teaching you, it was all about, you know, the early bird gets the worm and I heard work smarter, not harder. But that never really integrated with me. So talk to us a little bit about how do we, you what you’re saying resonates? But how do you integrate that in your daily life?

Chrysta Bairre
It’s practice, it’s really starting small. I mean, I have gone through this with so many coaching clients. In fact, about a year and a half after that first coaching client, I had a very similar client, who got a $15,000 year raise, and this woman came to me and said, you know, throughout my professional career, every time I’ve made a job change, I’ve accepted a lower and lower salary. And I know this is not the direction I should be going, how do I turn this around and started working together, you know, it was very clear that she was in a habit of over giving at work. And when you spread yourself thin, and try to be everything to everyone, you dilute your expertise, you dilute your credibility. Sometimes, if you happen to have a habit of over committing yourself, you actually start to perform a little bit at a lower level, because of how much you’re trying to do. But if we take a step back, and you think about, let’s say, you need to have heart surgery, who would you rather go to to have heart surgery, the surgeon who is a specialist in heart surgery, and who does heart surgeries every day, or a general surgeon who performs a heart surgery, maybe once a month? Most people are going to pick that doctor, that surgeon that specializes in heart surgery that performs heart surgery on a daily basis. They’re at the top of their game, they’re going to do a great job, and most people would pay more for that, right? You betcha. So what is that version of specialty to you? If you are saying yes to every request, if you’re trying to diversify yourself to the point that you’re diluting what you’re really best at, or what you want to be known for, then first of all, it creates this perception in other people’s eyes like they aren’t as willing to pay you for that expertise that you have. But the other part of it to the other side of what we’re talking about is not overworking, right? Not not going above and beyond all the time, what we have agreed to do. So that can look like when we’re constantly saying yes, when we don’t value our time, other people don’t value our time. They’re not going to value our time if we’re not. So the more you value, your time and your expertise, the more other people will as well.

Janine Bolon
That’s something that happens a lot in corporate America, though, because the people who are seemingly rewarded are the folks that are putting in the 60 to 70 hour work weeks, and now we have this great resignation, or the great migration or whatever you want to word you want to use. And I think it’s just a lot of the folks going, Hey, after the COVID, shut down, and all this, we know what’s really important. So as people move into that, what do you have some tips or some advice that you can help them with? You say, overworking. So what do you put in place of the job? So how do you integrate that?

Chrysta Bairre
And it this doesn’t matter if you work for someone else, or you work for yourself. And I almost think it’s a little bit worse when you work for yourself, and you have clients paying you, right? Because there’s there’s a little more stability in a traditional job than there is you know, when you’re working for yourself in the fear of losing a client if you disappoint them. But I think one of the things that it looks like is, first of all, setting expectations up front about what you are going to do. And then following through on that, but also listening to feedback. So that second client I mentioned that got the $15,000 a year raise. One of the things that came up in our coaching was she had mentioned that there were days that her boss would say to her, why don’t you go ahead and clock out and go home early. And she would not she would keep working because she felt compelled to continuously add value. If she wasn’t actively adding value. She felt like she wasn’t doing her job. And I said to her when she told me that her boss had told her to go home early and she didn’t Do it. I said, Well, how often does your boss tell you to do something and you ignore her? And she said, Never. And I said, You just told me that she suggested to you that you go home early, and you ignored her. And she was like, Oh, my gosh, I totally did. Right. So sometimes people are giving us these opportunities. And we aren’t listening. Because we feel like no, I have to keep working, I have to keep adding value. If I’m not actively being productive 100% of the time, then I’m not giving enough. And so it’s like listening, where are people trying to let you off the hook? And maybe you’re not even listening to it? You’re, you’re saying no, you’re ignoring it, because you feel this compulsion to keep being productive to keep giving more and more and more of yourself. So you know, in that scenario, you don’t even have to set a boundary or an expectation, you just have to listen to what they’re telling you. And say, okay, great. I’d love to go home early.

Janine Bolon
It would be great if I got to go home early. Thank you so much. Well, Chrysta, is there anything else you want to share with us as we have this last minute before we have to go for our sponsor?

Chrysta Bairre
Absolutely. I just want to remind you, that you do enough and you are enough. And you absolutely have the potential to make a lot more money, working less hard, less hours than you are currently working right now. It’s going to require some mindset shifts, it’s going to require doing things a little bit out of the box, and maybe differently than you’re used to. But I’m telling you, this will work.

Janine Bolon
And that was Chrysta Bairre, for those of you who are just tuning in with us, and I wanted to let you know that she is the author of beautiful badass how to believe in yourself against the odds. Chrysta has quite a story that you may want to read not only from her book, but also on her websites. We’ll have links in the show notes where you can go but I highly recommend that if you struggle with doing too much and being over extended and being overwhelmed. Then you give Chrysta a chance to show you the show you the other side of life. Even if you just follow her on her Facebook page, you will see how she truly walks her talk. And that is a refreshing change in this world that we live in. Thank you very much for being with us today, Chrysta .Thank you. And we will see you after the break.

Janine Bolon
Back, we are so happy that you are here and this segment is going to be awesome. His power has been something that’s been around for a long time, how people use it and abuse it. But our next guest Todd Cherches is the CEO and co founder of big blue gumball This is an innovative New York City based leadership development and executive coaching firm. And before you think oh, this guy has nothing to tell me you would couldn’t be more wrong. Let me just tell you, I’m holding his book called Visual leadership. And literally, I could do podcast and radio show after radio show with this guy and we would never run out of content if I did that for a full year. His book is just chock full of leadership strategies and how to bring power into your life. Even if you feel like there’s nothing you can do. Not only is he the member of marshals, mg 100 coaches, he’s also the founding partner of the Global Institute for thought leadership, also known as gift. pod was recently nominated by thinker’s 50 as the shortlisted finalists for the 2021 Distinguished Achievement Award for Leadership. He’s ranked number 35 on there, 2021 thinker’s 360 list of top 50 global thought leaders and influencers in the field of management and before you start yawning, I want you to realize this is a guy who’s a three time award winning adjunct professor of leadership at NYU. I mean, this is this is a guy who’s high powered, oh, and in case that wasn’t enough. He’s a TEDx speaker on the power of visual thinking. So as author of this groundbreaking new book, visual leadership, leveraging the power of visual thinking and leadership and in life, he’s published it this past year. I want to welcome Todd Cherches. Thank you so much, John, for being with us.

Todd Cherches
Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. It’s funny being mentioned as an influencer, because like growing up I was like the prototypical nerd like I always tell them a three Bs kind of guy by nature, a back of the room behind the scenes bookworm. So for me to be an influencer is like, Wait, who are they talking about? So it’s kind of surreal, but it’s been fun. The last couple of years have been a number of things have happened that you mentioned on that list.

Janine Bolon
Yes. And influencer is one of those things where But when you were tagged as that, it’s just so weird because you and I, we talked about this before the show, we’re both bookworms, we read constantly. And one of the things that you can do is you if you go to Todd’s website, he has for free his top 52 books that you can download the list on how to help you with leadership skills. But today we’re going to talk about the power dial the power to change to get the power you need. And this is a very personal topic, not only for me, but also for Todd. And he actually had people take this and license it talk to us a little bit about just the power of chapter 19. Folks, this is one chapter in this 300 page book. So go ahead.

Todd Cherches
Sure, yeah, actually chapter 19. Luckily, I read it. So I know what we’re talking about. Sometimes you write something and you forget. So especially the book came out last year, but the power dial is a model that I created a number of years ago, I teach it in my classes, I teach it in my workshops, because as you mentioned, power is so key. And there’s a famous quote by by Alice Walker, who wrote The Color Purple, saying that the best way to think you don’t have power, the best way to give up your power is to think that you don’t have any. So we all have a lot more power than we think. And when we say power, it’s sometimes has a negative connotation, because so often it’s misused and abused. But power is really about influence. It’s about control. It is about having a say in your life, and, and being able to make decisions and take action. So this model will help you sometimes people think, Oh, I have power, I don’t have power. But the way I frame this model is I break it down into three components. And each one has three sub components. And we can talk about that today. And people can say, Well, I mean, I have this power, but I have this other power. And we all have our own personal superpowers, right? So it’s about how can you I leverage the power and develop and grow my power. So to be more powerful, more influential, and more effective and more successful.

Janine Bolon
And that’s the thing that I’m very excited about, we’re lucky, we’re going to have Todd with us on multiple segments. So don’t go away. And I’m serious about this, because there’s so much information just in this one chapter. And also, we’re going to let you know how at the end of the show how you can go about look getting access to the blog posts that started at all. So talk to us a little bit about how this group license, just your blog posts, like you hadn’t even written a book yet. Talk to us about that group, what they did with it.

Todd Cherches
Yeah, I created this model a number of years ago, and I was writing a blog for for another company. And I wasn’t going to put it out there because you always think oh, if I put it out there, people could steal my intellectual property, right. But I did it, I wrote it, I put it out there. And rather than stealing it, an organization, I mentioned which one but they contacted me they were doing a search for models related to influence and love my model. And they licensed it and now and they built a whole three day workshop around it on influencing without authority. So that was pretty cool that you know, you put something out there into the world. And people not only find it valuable, but valuable enough to say, hey, can we talk about using that. So I love that. So that was actually, you know, a great honor to do that. And that was just one chapter of the book. And a number of the chapters in my book, including this one could be their own book like this could be 100 of 200 page book, just on the power dial, right. So what we’ll do today is give people the highlights of the model itself and how it works and how they could use it.

Janine Bolon
And once again, this is not stuff that it’s airy, fairy sky, you know, pie in the sky kind of stuff. This is stuff that you can actually implement. Starting today, this is going to walk you through where you kind of self analysis and look at what kind of superpowers do you actually have? And where have you given your power away? So do you want to talk to us about those three areas, those three sources of power that people have?

Todd Cherches
Sure. But first, I’d like to start out with a metaphor that I use in this chapter. And all my work is around using Visual Thinking using mental models and metaphor, picture a light socket, I’ll look around your room right now and find a light socket in the wall, an electrical outlet, right? That is potential power until you plug something into it. It’s just sitting there dormant. Similarly, we are like an outlet, right? And so once we plug in, we could light up the world, right? We could create music, we could create live, we could create energy, think about you know, all the things you could plug in. But again, one of the aspects of ourselves that are just dormant like an outlet with nothing plugged into it. So this is about how do I plug into my potential power to important increase my performance and my productivity. So the three categories are your personal power, your positional power, and your relational power. So I break it down just into those three areas. So it’s not like oh, I’m powerful, or I’m not your personal power has to do with who you are and what you bring to the table. Your positional power, which is the traditional way of think about power is whether it’s my title, what is my role, right? Am I a VP? Am I an entry level person? Am I an individual contributor and relations No power is about who do you know, and who knows you, right. So if you just break it down to those three areas, your personal power is internal, that is something you have complete control over your positional power, you can always make up your own title, but very often that’s that’s bestowed on you by an organization, right. And we try to work our way up the ladder to get more a higher level position and more power, and power, meaning influence and control. And we’ll talk more about that in a second. And then relationship. Relational power is who you have access to you, who knows who do you know, but also, who knows you? Who do you who’s an ally, who are people that would respond to your emails, or if you reach out to them can help you. So those are the three areas. So whether your initial thoughts do that, you think just about breaking it down into those three components.

Janine Bolon
Right. And I love the fact that you talk about the different locus of control, right, you have personal power, so the locus of control is internal. So this is something you have total control over, you can work on this very quickly, you can plug into that light socket immediately, then positional and relational, we’re gonna have to spend a little bit more time on different segments with that. But I’d love to start talking about the personal power first, if you don’t mind.

Todd Cherches
Sure. So let’s start with the personal power, which has three components to it, it is your intellectual or physical power, your emotional power, and your interpersonal power. So your interpersonal power has to do with your communication skills, and all of the way that you interact with other people. Right? I mentioned before, I’m an extreme introvert. So it takes a lot from me, even though I talk loud and fast, because I’m from New York, it takes a lot for me to push myself out of my comfort zone to reach out to people and, and communicate and influence. So those but those are skills that are all developable, and I’ve developed those over the years working on them, that did not happen overnight, but over time, so we can all improve our communication skills and our interpersonal skills. Secondly, the emotional component that’s about emotional intelligence that is about how we react to things and respond to things that’s also within our control, do we react emotionally, do we act with composure, so the emotional component has a lot to do with, first of all, displaying passion and enthusiasm. But on the flip side of that, you know, too much too much of any of these things could be could backfire against you. So that’s one of the things to power could be misused or abused if it’s not under our control. The third category is your intellectual or physical power, that is about intelligence that is about knowledge that is about when it comes to physical activities, your strength or skills in certain areas. So there’s numerous examples. But those are the three areas of interpersonal. And as we mentioned, those are all within your control, you can you could work on those, you could develop them. And we can talk about some tips for how to do that shortly. But those are the three components of your personal power that you bring to the table based on what you possess internally.

Janine Bolon
Okay, so we have about two minutes to go ahead and just pick one this one of your favorites. And let’s go ahead and just launch into that, if you don’t mind.

Todd Cherches
So let’s have those three, I would start with the interpersonal, because that is you could look that his communication skills, that’s the foundation of it, right? So you can improve your listening, you can improve your public speaking, you could practice how, let’s say you’re in a meeting, and you tend to respond like a deer in the headlights, because because you’re caught off guard, right? You could say, all right, why do I need to do that? Knowing that about myself, what can I do going into this meeting to prepare so that this doesn’t happen? Right? So you could say, I need to think about who’s my I always say, one of the other chapters in my book is my three legged stool model. And any communication, if you picture a three legged stool, the seat of the stool is the purpose of the communicate the conversation, who’s sitting on the stool is the person you’re interacting with. And the three legs of the stool are your content, your design and your delivery, right. So that’s just again, painting a picture with words that picture a three legged stool, so that you could work on you could say, alright, if I do my homework, if I find out who I’m going to be communicating with, and I clearly identify, what’s the purpose of this conversation, what do we want the outcome to be? Then I could decide what to include what not, not to? What examples do I want to use? And how am I going to deliver it. And so often, we just think about the delivery, but we forget about those other components, and like a stool with if you don’t have all three legs, it’s gonna topple over, right? So if you’re trying to develop your interpersonal skills, you need to think about all those things, and also practice and rehearse. You could practice with another person, you could practice in front of a mirror or with your dog, or it just in your mind, but you want to roleplay it out and think about how am I going to communicate with someone and that will give you more interpersonal power.

Janine Bolon
And we’re gonna wrap that up for this moment, Todd Cherche’s visual leadership. He’s going to be back after the segment to talk to us more about relational power and personal power, as well as that positional power that you may feel like you don’t have any and that is why you have given it away so stay tuned, so that you can hear more from this amazing TEDx speaker. We’ll see you after the break.

Bryan Hyde
Welcome back.

Janine Bolon
This is Janine Bolon. And I am lucky enough to have a TEDx speaker, and world, influencer global thinker, Todd cherches, and we’re describing the different types of power that people have. And sometimes you feel like I have absolutely no power, you’ve given it away. And Todd is here to walk you through the different types of power that you do have that you do have within your control, such as your personal power, your relational power, and then your positional power. So would you like to kind of wrap up the personal power for us, and then let’s go ahead and launch into the other two?

Todd Cherches
Sure, we talked about personal so interpersonal is the main one, that’s your communication skills, that’s your ability to interact with other people, emotional power has to do with emotional intelligence. And it all starts with self awareness. It’s just about hitting the pause button looking in the mirror and saying, How am I coming across? am I reacting emotionally? And those are the things that could be within our control? How do I you know, not react, how to how do I self regulate, even if I’m upset or whatever. So that’s emotional, being control of our emotions. And the intellectual physical is kind of like a bucket for all other things, right? It’s your knowledge, it is your skills in certain areas. So if your whatever function you’re in any of those skills that you need to be successful, you could work on and get better on that is completely within your control. So that’s the personal section in a nutshell. So which one would you like to go to next positional or relational?

Janine Bolon
Let’s go with relational because right now, we’re all kind of struggling as we’re in this new dynamic. And we’re on Zoom, and we’re got masks that were meant wearing and some of us are against it. Some of us are for it. So yeah, I think we could really use some assistance with the relational side of life right now.

Todd Cherches
Yeah, so very few of us live in a vacuum or are not interdependent, not not codependent, but interdependent on other people to be successful, whether it’s co workers, whether it’s vendors, whether it’s clients, right, we all need to interact with other people. So our relational power has to do with how well we leverage our relationships. So I break it down into three areas, your networks, your affiliations and your coalition’s right. So networks, who are the people that you’re connected to? Those are people that you’re connected to on, on LinkedIn or Facebook, those are the people that you know, so like, who’s in your network? Who can you reach out to for certain things who reaches out to you? Your affiliations is what do you belong to? What are some of the communities you may not have a personal relationship with every single person in it, but that’s the difference. So your network you have personal relationships with these people with affiliations, you’re part you’re a member of a club or a group so you can reach out to them but just based on the fact that you’re part of the same group so that’s affiliation. And coalition’s those are more formal, those are more partnerships, like a business partner, or clients or it’s like an affiliation where you’re not just part of a group, but you’re actually involved in some activity with them. So they’re very similar. But those that’s kind of how I break it down. So each one again, it all comes down to human relationships. In fact, I was just reading an excellent book. Another book I wanted to mention is cultivate the Power of Winning Relationships by my friend more ag and Mr. Ag Barrett, and she actually lives in Broomfield, Colorado, was that somewhere in the area? And yeah, just a little, okay. She was just she was just She’s originally somewhere in the UK. And I forget, I don’t wanna say which country I think it may be Scotland. But she loves she’s, I met her in person, she was a friend, we were passing mg 100 coaches group. And we met in person when she was here in New York, and we got to be friends. I just read her book. And it’s excellence about how do you create ally ship? That’s a word that’s part of the relational who are your allies, right? Who are the people who you can reach out to who you can rely on? Who, who are willing to come to your aid if you need help, right? So there’s so now some people are there in your network, but you can’t necessarily depend or rely on them, like you can reach out to them, they may or may not respond, your allies, the people who not only you’re connected to a know, but would actually take steps to help you and come to your aid. So who are your allies? Who are the people who’ve got your back basically, right? So in terms of relational power, we want to develop our relationships. But one of the things I always say my three G’s are be genuine, be generous and be grateful. And you’re more likely to have sincere genuine relationships, if that’s who you are. So a lot of times when people network, it’s like, alright, what can this person do for me? But if you go into any relationship, saying, What can I do for this person that just flipped in, they may or may not reciprocate, but it doesn’t matter. So if you go into it with the spirit of generosity and connection, and how can I help this person? So just flipping that orientation goes a long way, because very often they will. Sometimes they won’t, sometimes what goes around comes around, sometimes it doesn’t. But if you go into developing relationships with integrity, with sincerity and generosity, you know, very often it does come back to in the future. or what not, if not with that person, then with someone else, it’s just, it’s just a good way to be. And then again, by doing that, you build your network of genuine sincere relationships. And then same thing with affiliations can turn into good relationships and coalition coalition’s can be when you join forces with someone and partner with them. So those are, that’s the relationship bucket.

Janine Bolon
And one of the things I want to go back to a little bit is let’s talk a little bit about the difference between network and affiliations. Because when LinkedIn first started, a lot of people were trying to make it an affiliation based community. And it ended up being kind of overrun with sales and marketing done in not the way that Todd recommends, which is relationship marketing, basically, you know, you have a business and yeah, you want to reach out to these people and see if they can become clients. But you want to approach it as a network, like you said, being genuine. So talk to us a little bit about how social media started off to help us with affiliation, and how we can get back to doing some of that, through that, since we’re not all meeting face to face anymore. How do we bring our affiliations into networking? Do you see what I mean?

Todd Cherches
Sometimes people reach out to me and send me a LinkedIn invitation saying, Hey, I see you went to I went to State University in New York at Albany, I see went to Albany, and they try to then they give you a sales pitch. It’s not like, oh, I watched your TED talk, or I read your book, or I’d love to connect, or I was also an English literature major, it was just literally like, you’re in this, you’re affiliated with this group. So I’m going to try to sell you something, right. That’s not what we’re talking. We’re talking about reaching out to someone. And that’s what I was trying to do when I look at someone’s LinkedIn profile. And again, I’m fine. I’m trying to look for common points of connection, like, oh, you know, so and so. Or, sometimes people generically reach out saying, Oh, I see we have 10 common connections, it’s like, but you didn’t mention even one and then I got a look. And we have none or two, right? So a lot of times we’re using social media. Again, the manipulative insincere in you know, ingenuous way, as opposed to a real way to connect with people I like whenever I meet with someone, I always go to their LinkedIn profile, say, Oh, who do we know and comment? And sometimes it’s like, very, you know, expected connections with sometimes it’s like, how on earth do they know this person? Right? So that’s and that a lot of times you connect with some because you have someone in common, oh, I went to college with them, or, you know, they were my wife’s best friend or whatever. That’s how you form relationships and connections. So just because you belong to the same group as someone, so you have an affiliation doesn’t necessarily mean that that person wants you in their network, or that you have any kind of relationship. So sometimes people overstep, and that basically turns people off. So again, you want to go in with a spirit of how can I how can we connect? How can we help each other? You know, that’s how we met right through the affiliate only club. Yeah, only Club, which is a networking group. But so the cannoli club is that so apart, we’re affiliated with the same group. Now, let’s join each other’s networks. And now let’s get to know each other, right? So it’s a progression. And a lot of times when you work too fast, you know, it’s like, you know, trying to it’s like asking someone to marry you on the first date. Right? It’s like, you know, yes, we’re in the same restaurant. But let’s, let’s slow things down a little bit.

Janine Bolon
Your speed demon here, and I’m not ready to move that fast. Let’s see what we can actually offer one another. So that’s on the, the relational side. And so when it comes to coalition’s we hear that term when we think of very formal sorts of obligations. So kind of talk to us a little bit more about that definition. What is a coalition? And how can somebody who maybe is a plumber or someone who’s retired? What kind of coalition would they embrace?

Todd Cherches
Yeah, MC coalition is like, co isn’t together? Joining Forces, right? CO it’s like a co Alliance, right? So if you’re an electrician, and someone else is a plumber, and someone else is a roofer, you might form a coalition that together, you can share leads, you can support each other’s work, you can say, I’m working on this house, I Oh, here’s my this is my go to person for this specific thing. So I always say that people, what do you want to be known as the guru of or the go to person for? So that’s part of your personal branding? That is part of relationship building is letting people know, like, you may know, but do other people know what it is that you do? So really being clear on that. So when you join forces with someone and creates a coalition, it may not be a formal partnership, like you have a contract and you know, but who do you refer business to? Who are the people that refer you? So that’s kind of a coalition where you, you could join forces with someone else. And it’s a win win mutually beneficial relationship, and something that I wanted to chat with you about personally, and that is taking care of and nurturing your network when it comes to your personal network? How do you go about nurturing those relationships so that they can move into more beneficial agreements?

Todd Cherches
Yeah, I mean, what I try to do is to support people I know and I like so liking and commenting and sharing their blog posts, right, or their LinkedIn posts right when you do that, and it’s not just click love One is just I click the Like button level two might be clicking the heart. I loved it right? But you add a comment to it. Do you say hey, Janine loved your post about this? I totally agree. And here’s why. So then let me gauging with you. Now we have a relationship to click the like button is the bare minimum. So at least it says, I read it, I’m aware of you. Thumbs up. But if you want to take the relationship to the next level, and actually help the person, take that action, how long does it take 30 seconds to write a comment. And yet, then your followers will see that and it helps to boost and one of the groups I belong to, we talk about. Again, it’s not just empowering is basically amplifying that’s the word I was trying to think of how do you amplify the people in your network to their benefit, and then it’s again, it’s a win win, it costs you nothing, and it makes them look better, and it creates their enhances their visibility, and I always talk about three V’s visibility, voice and value. Visible visibility is are you seeing and how you seen voices are you heard and how you heard and value is what the perception of what you add or what you can contribute. So when you are visible on social media, when you amplify other people’s work, it enhances your visibility gives you a voice and increases your value not only among your followers, but among theirs as well. So again, we’re trying to find mutually Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People said to try to form Win Win relationships, right? We’re both people benefit. If you’re always like a win lose, let’s let’s see what I could get out of this, then that’s not what we’re talking about here in terms of relationship building. And sometimes I frame things as give, get and grow. What can I give to this person? What do I need? What can I get out of this relationship? And what can I do to help our relationship grow and to help each other grow. So there’s just a few models and frameworks I use related to the relational components of the power dial.

Janine Bolon
And so stay tuned, because we have one more segment with the wonderful Todd Cherches as he uses his visual leadership book. And we were just talking about chapter 19. People, this is a 300 page book, I highly recommend you go out and get it, prepare to be kind of overwhelmed by all the things that he has to offer you. But the biggest thing is when we come back, we’re going to talk about positional power, whether you are the person that waxes the floors, or does the laundry for an institution, versus if you are a middle manager, Todd’s going to help us understand where that power is and what we can do about it. So we’ll see you after the break.

Janine Bolon
Welcome back. This is Janine Bolon. And I have with me, Todd Cherches. And if you don’t know this TEDx speaker, if you do not know this award winning author, please take a few minutes out of your day, go to his website, and definitely download get on his newsletter, he is somebody you definitely want to know. Because whether you are a janitor of a high school, or you are a middle manager of a fortune 500 company, this man can teach you what you need to know about your own personal power, how to increase your relational power. And what we’re going to be talking about in this segment is people’s positional power. So Todd, if you wouldn’t just go ahead and take off with this because I know that you have multiple steps involving positional power.

Todd Cherches
Yeah, positional power is the one that people very often think of first, when we talk about power. Right? You know, what’s your title? Are you the president? Are you the CEO? Are you the Vice President, people pulling rank in the organization years ago, I work for a TV network. I won’t mention which one but in fact, I won’t mention which one at all. I was gonna get my hands into a job, but you never know who your sponsors might be. So I’m not gonna I’m not gonna bash anyone. Thank you. But once but one time, I was talking to my boss’s boss’s boss, by the elevator. He was just asking me how my weekend was. And my boss called me into our office and flipped out last term, I say yelling at me thinking, yeah, why are you talking to him? You have no, right. He’s three level two levels above you. It’s like he was just asking me how my weekend was right. So that’s all he was really insecure about her power, right? See a little bit of imposter syndrome combined with incompetence. So that was that’s a deadly combination. But so positional power is has their three components. So what is what is your role, your title, or your rank, or your level of seniority in an organization? That’s what we often think about. If someone’s a VP and you’re only a director, or you’re only a manager, that people that person has more power than you. And then how does that translate? The other two categories are authority and control authority, authority has to do with how much empowerment you have. And control has to do with control of resources, or your ability to veto something or say no to something. So I break it down to those two categories. So the higher and traditionally most organizations, the more the higher your title, the higher your role, the more authority you have. And the more you’re empowered to make decisions and to take actions and the more control of resources you have in terms of signing a check or signing a contract or saying no to something. So those are basically three categories.

Janine Bolon
And so with those three categories, so how can somebody by using the personal power that we talked in the first segment and the relational power that we talked about in your second segment? How can we then use those tools in this power dial that you have this action plan, if you will? What are some things that we can go after positionally without like selling our soul to the devil? Some people like to say, right, what are some recommendations that you have? Because you talk to Fortune 500 companies all the time. So what is it that you recommend as far as how you move through that in your own area?

Todd Cherches
Yeah, well, one in terms of role, if you work for yourself, you can pretty much put anything you want on your business card, right? You could say, Master of the Universe, you know, right. So you can make up your own role or title. Now, I interestingly, I hadn’t thought about this, while I used to work for a company called Liquid net. They’re a financial services company in New York, where the one point they were startup, where the there was a woman who was like the, it was like a temp, and then she was answered the phones, he was the receptionist, and then she became the office manager. And then she handled HR responsibilities. A year later, she was the VP of HR. Right? Wow. So her title got inflated. So as all boats as the water rose, her boat went way high, but she was so unqualified for this job. So she had this. So people would can’t, you know, to speak to people as the vice president HR for this company. And she wasn’t qualified for that she didn’t she didn’t have the skills, abilities, and they eventually moved her out and got someone who was more suited for that role. So that’s an example of how role can roles can be inflated. So you want to think about your role, your title, your position? Is it just about power and status? Or what did you do to earn it and if you’re at a certain level, whatever level you are within an organization, it’s good to talk to your boss or talk to HR to find out, what do I need to move up the ladder? Right. And what’s interesting is, in this day and age, some things have shifted, though the old school mentality of working your way up from the mailroom to the corner office isn’t as important for a lot of people as it used to be right. First of all, there’s no mailroom anymore, because there’s no more mail. Right? And there’s no email room as far as I know. And people who care about the corner office, or would you rather be working from home in the comfort of your own corner office in your in your in your house rather apartment? So a lot of times those old school trappings of that metaphor, don’t hold true anymore. So it really is about roles and responsibilities more than the, you know, the symbolism of a title, right? So it really is about the other two categories, your authority, what do you have? What are you empowered to do? Do you have the authority authorization to make a decision to sign a contract to take an action to say yes to something and control is you have access to the resources great, whether it’s human resource technology, financial resources, what what is within your control, to say yes to or even to say no to so that those are some of the things to think about? So when it comes to power, it really is about your decision making power and your ability and your power to act, right? Because beyond that, it’s a title. It’s just a title, something on your business card or your LinkedIn. It really is about what can you actually do? What can you produce based on the what’s within your sphere of control.

Janine Bolon
To your point about working for yourself, I was trained as an analytical biochemist, I worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 15 years, and I was always in the basement because and for those of you who don’t know, analytical chemistry requires multimillion dollar machines that are extremely heavy. So us analytical chemists were always in the basement, because you also need a lot of shielding. So you didn’t have interference with these very technical and fussy instrumentation. And so now I work from home, I’m doing something totally different. I’m a podcaster, a radio show host, and I have a corner office in my home. And I have I have windows. So for the first time in my career, I’m looking at with Windows. And that’s that personal power. And I’d like to come back to that as we close out this segment, we only have about six minutes left. And what I wanted to learn from you is people have so much more power than they ever have before because of the old model being turned on its head when 2020 and 2021. People are looking for skillsets to talk to us a little bit about our personal power and kind of how we move forward in this new way of hiring. It used to be if you were over the age of 50, you could not get reemployed. Well, that’s not the case at all, especially if you have certain skill sets that people need to talk to us a little bit about that personal power.

Todd Cherches
You really want to leverage your strengths you want to see what can I work on? What can we be better at one of my sayings is that in an ever changing world, if you’re standing still you’re falling behind because the rest of the world is speeding past you. So one of the things you need to learn we talk a lot about you know, upskilling rescaling unlearning relearning, right. So it’s all about the personal power the good thing you could watch a video you could take a course you can read the book, you can develop your knowledge and skills in certain areas, make yourself more marketable. So in terms of the personal power, so interpersonal, you can work on improving your communication skills, your listening skills, for example, emotional intelligence, you can say, right? am I reacting emotionally? I’m under a lot of stress, or am I am I under control of how I’m feeling? And you can we can work on that intellectual physical, you can read a book a week you can or a month, you can watch TED talks, you can, you know, develop your knowledge in certain areas. So those are some ways of enhancing your personal power to make yourself more marketable. So you want to find out, where is there a market need? And how can I fill it? So you want to think about solving problems. Relational power is my leveraging LinkedIn, my leveraging Facebook and like having one on one zoom conversations, or meeting someone for coffee, if it’s if you can do that. So So in terms of networks, you can add muscle. With all these, it’s gonna if you set a tangible goal, like I’m going to add five new LinkedIn contacts a week, but real ones real, genuine sincere ones, not just like random one. So that’s how you increase your network, I’m going to start to like and comment and share people’s posts that helps to form a bond and a connection with them affiliations, are there any groups I could become a member of and join and participate in? Maybe take on a role on a committee or something like that increases my three V’s I mentioned earlier? Visibility, voice and value? How can I collaborate with people? Who can I partner with? How can I add my skill sets with theirs to make us both more powerful and create a mutually beneficial Alliance and with with the positional power, let’s say you have a job and you can’t rise within the organization, you could be a volunteer, right? I was a volunteer for a lot of things in New York many years ago, New York cares or Operation Santa, you could take on a leadership role and develop your leadership skills while also giving back to your community. So you may not be the president in a company, but you could be the team lead on a volunteer project, right. So there are ways of enhancing those skills, while also doing well and doing good at the same time. So that’s how you increase your role and your role, potential authority, take on greater leadership responsibilities, raise your hand and say, oh, you know, you need someone to do that. I’ll take that on. Right. And in terms of control, you know, managing your time and you’re prioritizing, you’re taking control of your financial resources. And time, as Peter Drucker said, Time is the scarcest resource. If it’s not managed, nothing else can be. So those are some of my tips for how to enhance your power. And those are all within our control to do.

Janine Bolon
And like Todd says, he talks fast, he talks loud, he gives you so much wonderful content in such short periods of time. So in his book, one of the things that it’s amazing, like I said, we’ve spent this entire time talking about only one chapter, and we’re still not done, believe it or not, there are deeper levels that he goes into in chapter 19, which is about the power dial. And just to let you know, do sign up for our newsletter, because what we do is when our guests come on, and they offer us opportunities to dig deeper into what we discuss, Todd is going to allow us to have a PDF and a blog post of his and we’re going to be able to link it to you. So definitely go to the Janine Bolon show.com. And sign up for your newsletter so that you can receive these free gifts that many of our guests offer. So tell us a little bit about what prompted you to have every chapter at the end of every single chapter, you have four things, it’s in review. And for this particular chapter, it’s on page 109, you have the big lesson, the big question, your big insight, your big action, what prompted you to do that for every single chapter in this book, it’s wonderful…

Todd Cherches
One of my sayings is that the true value of knowledge is not in its accumulation, but in its application. So the purpose of this summary up in review piece at the end, is to think about, alright, how can I apply this? How can I actually use this? So it’s not just academic, hypothetical, or theoretical? These are real life tools that will enhance your productivity. So the big lesson is, here’s the key takeaway. The big question is just a thought piece. And then I leave blank, your big act, I always talk about insights, actions and outcomes. Inside is what did you learn action? What is What are you going to do with it? And outcome is what’s the result going to be? If you do those things, so I basically provide a thought piece at the end of each chapter.

Janine Bolon
And that is what is so powerful about this 300 page book that is so dense, it’s a hardcopy book. If you think it’s expensive, trust me, it is not. It is like having a PhD level course in visual leadership. Todd, thank you so much for being with us today.

Todd Cherches
Thanks so much. It’s great talking to you.

Janine Bolon
Yeah, so he was suffering from a storm. We didn’t know if the power was gonna stay on. So this is Janine Bolon please make sure that you reach out to us at the Janine Bolon show.com. So that you can sign up for the free offerings that all of our guests offer us. And in Todd’s case, he is going to give us the power dial and have you be able to download that as well as read the blog post that goes a little deeper. We’ll see you soon.

Bryan Hyde
Thank you for listening to the Janine Bolon show. Be sure to subscribe to our show notes by going to the Janine Bolon show.com, where you’ll find additional resources as well as the opportunity to sign up to receive our program and your email each week. Be sure to visit our sponsor at https://the8gates.com/