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Balancing Heart and Strategy in Leadership

• Courtney Twiss • Episode 41

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What happens when you blend decades of executive leadership with real estate coaching? Eric Palmaer, a seasoned Vistage chair, joins me, Courtney Twiss, on Making Moves in Real Estate to reveal all. Learn how Eric’s journey from an entrepreneurial household to coaching CEOs can transform your business approach. With expertise in managing stress and maintaining a positive mindset, Eric shares practical techniques like box breathing and positive intelligence, guiding leaders to align with their values and make wise decisions.

Ever wondered if your firm commitment is just stubbornness in disguise? Together, Eric and I tackle the delicate art of decision-making and the impact of emotions on your choices. By emphasizing openness, empathy, and curiosity, we uncover how aligning business changes with personal values can lead to success. Eric’s actionable advice on building confidence from past achievements provides a roadmap for overcoming fear and stress in challenging times.

Our discussion crescendos with the powerful notion of leading with love in the workplace. Balancing employee opportunities with accountability, we explore how kindness and compassion can coexist with organizational goals. By adopting a team-focused approach, businesses can foster healthier cultures that thrive. Connect with Eric Palmaer on LinkedIn for more insights and be inspired to create a more positive and successful work environment.

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Speaker 1:

then that way she'll have, because they record our audio separately.

Speaker 2:

Do you edit it?

Speaker 1:

I have an editor out of Canada that we send it to. Hi Nicole, she'll see this. She's great, all right. Well, welcome to the Now Podcast Making Moves in Real Estate. This is Courtney Twist here. We do not have Michelle today because she's at an investing seminar over in Florida. So we're dividing and conquering here Today I have a very special guest, eric Palmier. With 25 years of executive leadership experience, he is a Vistage chair my Vistage chair, actually and yeah, so we've known each other for a few years now, and at Vistage he's poured his experience into helping CEOs grow strong, lasting businesses. He believes strongly in cultivating workplace environments where people feel appreciated and they get to do what they do best every day. Eric is certified in many different areas of coaching and uses predictive index talent optimization tools, as well as being an implementer for EOS. Lastly, he's authoring his first book, which we cannot wait to hear more about. Welcome to the podcast, eric.

Speaker 2:

Oh, thank you, Courtney, this is going to be fun. You're turning the tables on me. Normally I sit and ask you questions and listen, and then ask you follow-up questions and help you take a step to make progress on your challenges.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, Now it's my turn.

Speaker 2:

Yes, so where do you want me to start?

Speaker 1:

Well, I just think this is going to be really fun that I have you in the hot seat. Yes, you do Like you said, Eric's the best at making you dig in and get to the root of your issues, even though I'm sure none of us in real estate have any issues right now to dive into. Well, Eric, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit more about your story and your background?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I'm presuming that your target audience is real estate professionals and entrepreneurs. So, um, my background in business is I come from an entrepreneurial family. My dad started a business, uh, and started several of them actually and when I was growing up, he was running a small business and, you know, I just have a heart for entrepreneurs because I realized what a challenge it was for him and all the pressure he was under, you know, and the impact it had on the family when he brought it home and when he didn't bring it home. So, you know, and then, as I worked with him for 20 years, I was able to see that firsthand experience. And then, as I actually ran the organization or my leadership, I felt that I really have a heart for the challenges that people have running an entrepreneurial business and I know, you know, real estate executives are doing that.

Speaker 2:

Right, to wear many hats, a lot of pressure on your shoulders. So, you know, one of the things that's really been important to me is to help I call it, you know, start with love, leadership, and really it's about entrepreneur leaders, you know, taking care of themselves, right, so, understanding, being aware of their conditions. We talk about, you know what's kind of state they're in. Um, you know victor frankl talks about that the moment of choice between stimulus and response. Right and genetically, we're so hardwired for looking for danger and so when we get a stimulus that's something like oh, a person decided not to do the listing today, or the offer fell through, or any of those things our body can look at that as really danger. And when we do that, we don't have access to our best qualities to be able to respond to the situation and be effective. So I really want to help entrepreneurs manage their state more effectively, to have access to our best qualities, and I think that's one of the most important and most challenging things we do as leaders.

Speaker 1:

Oh, definitely, it's hard to see through when you're stressed right, when you're actually hyper-stressed. And I would say I think I could speak for most realtors this year that it's been a stressful number of years. Actually, even with coven we were all busy. It was a different kind of stress. And then the last couple years with transactions down by about half oh my goodness yeah there's about. There's a lot of financial stress for many people in our industry right now. So I mean, how many years now have you been coaching Eric?

Speaker 2:

Well, you mentioned 25 years, so it's been that long.

Speaker 1:

My gosh, wow, I know it said 25 plus on your LinkedIn. I thought my goodness, you've been pouring into people for a long time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's really rewarding. It's awesome to see the changes people make when they're able to really tap into their best qualities, do what they do best. I think in my introduction you said helping people do what they do best and are great at and that they love, right? So I mean one of the ways that I think people find the way to recover. So in our humanness we're going to get quote triggered or get knocked into that fear and flight response. It's how fast can we recover, how fast can we have access to our best qualities? So there's a lot of information out there about how to do that there's. You know, maybe seals do box breathing. You're familiar with positive intelligence, where we get in touch with our senses.

Speaker 1:

Yes, our PQ reps.

Speaker 2:

Our PQ reps, pq, yeah. So anything Very helpful. Anything if we can do to tame our busy mind and tame those voices inside that aren't helpful. So those are things that can immediately help us get that on track. The other thing is to keep in mind I talk about, you know, be powerfully aligned, so be really clear about personal values, the mission that you're on, the vision you have for your organization, and if we keep those in mind it can keep us inspired about making great decisions top of our mind. You know we have access to empathy and creativity, curiosity, playfulness, wise decision-making all those great things. So it's just how do we tap into that on a regular basis?

Speaker 1:

Okay. Well, this time of year there's a lot of, I would imagine, many realtors, at least team leads, brokers, especially getting ready doing their business planning. What do you suggest, like how do you think would be the best method to go about as they're planning for this next year or quarter, maybe, if we're doing the 12 week year?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Thanks for that book, by the way. So Courtney gave me a book as to help me continue on the path of writing this first book of mine, called the 12-Week Writer's Year. So well, you know, as far as planning goes, as an EOS implementer, one of the things that you know we do in annual planning is just really make sure that your vision is clear, right? So you know we talk about the vision traction organizer, which answers the eight questions that are really important, which is what are our core values? What's our core purpose or focus, which is our purpose and cause or passion or niche. Where are we headed? Where do we want to be in five and ten years? You know, that's clear. What's our target market and marketing strategy? How do we set ourselves apart from the competition? So we know who we are, what we want to accomplish, why we're doing what we're doing, where we want to go and how we're going to get there.

Speaker 2:

And then look at, break it down into smaller chunks and look at where you want to be in three years and put some more detail to that and what does it look like? You know, how many locations are you going to have, how many agents are going to be working with, and then that informs what one year looks like. So what is the one year revenue plan, profit, and what are the three to seven most important goals that you want to accomplish? You know we a lot of myself included we set so many goals that we lose focus. Right, it's goal diffusion, if you want to call it that. So if we can narrow it down to three to seven, the fewer the better, the more likely we are to succeed at those. And then break that into quarterly chunks right, and you call it a 12-week year.

Speaker 2:

So what are you going to get done in that quarter? And then break that down into what do you want to accomplish on a weekly basis to understand what are the challenges that are going to get in the way in each one of those rocks or poles and how am I going to overcome those, develop all the obstacles and now you're going to get by.

Speaker 1:

It just leads towards, you know, better execution, um yeah, and I think at least from us running with eOS for however many years now. I think the scorecard is something that's really important, because for me it's fun to do this. You know strategic planning and I'm a visionary. Michelle is the integrator, and so that part's always fun, but it's like the how do you stick to it?

Speaker 2:

Exactly.

Speaker 1:

And you are. You. Do you need a pivot? Is this like you're in at one quarter now? What is this the right direction? So I always found that the score card was actually probably the most helpful metric, for me at least, to see if we were on or off pace with our goals yeah, it's really important.

Speaker 2:

So you, we talk about the six areas of business that we help people get better at. One of them is data, which is, you know, measuring what's most important and looking at on a weekly basis. So scorecards are great, and then you know what's your measurable. So what are you going to get done this week? What do you want to accomplish? Make sure you're on track. How's that working for you? For?

Speaker 1:

me. Well, pretty good, I've switched it up a little bit. After reading the 12-week year oh good.

Speaker 1:

So now I'm trying to just focus on three, or, as I hold up, I hold up for three goals on a weekly basis and then I have utilizing kind of like my daily, my daily measures each day of what I'm doing that will meet and help me achieve those three, those three goals. So I've I've pared it down or toned it down from what I used to do, because it's just Michelle and I and I'm actually doing a lot of it myself, whereas before I had a much larger leadership team, before I switched to a cloud-based model.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and that's perfect. So if you narrow your focus, you're more likely to succeed. And then the other thing is regularly look at what those goals are daily, if you can, and then make sure that you know what's my daily part, what am I new today to make sure I move towards that, and that's pretty much nuts and bolts, block and tackling.

Speaker 1:

And sticking to your calendar. Yeah, I think.

Speaker 2:

So, interestingly enough, I was thinking about so, as I talk about managing state right, so again, where we can make great decisions, have access to you know what's our purpose, those kind of things so that we can, you know, make decisions about what's the best thing for um, for our business, for our lives going forward. Um, how do, how do we decide between, um, healthy perseverance and pigheaded stubbornness? So I've got a story, and then you, you made a strategic and tactical switch so we can talk a little bit about yours. But I heard of it, I was aware of a person that was leading workshops for CEOs and he really wanted to challenge them, and so he thought the best way to challenge them was point out all the stuff they were doing wrong. And then he did that, one by one, through the group, in front of each other. Yeah, nice way to get people inspired, right, right, people got up and left. Yikes, now, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Morale, killer, morale, killer, morale killer.

Speaker 2:

So he went out to the you know, they left and were out going to their cars, and he went out to the parking lot and encouraged them to come back in, and so his strategy was in tactic was to let people know what they were doing wrong. So they had an opportunity to fix it in a way that was public and probably embarrassing for people. So we got him to come back in and then he continued to do exactly the same thing.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:

So I would call that pigheaded stubbornness.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

So how do you know the difference in the moment? So my promise is we know the difference in the moment by the state that we're in when we take the next action. So if we're, you know, stubborn is closed, right. So that's a fearful state. I'm closed, I'm not open to new ideas. I don't have empathy for people. I'm not curious about what happened. What could we do differently? Now that you're back in the room, let's get creative. So none of that took place. And the state, what's the person? My premise is the state that this person continued from was a state of fear, and he probably had great intentions, but it didn't end well. No, and so for you. So it's important, you know, it may have ended well, depending on what his vision and purpose was right. So if his vision was it's most important for me to stick to what I think is right and if people want to follow, great. If they don't, that's okay too Then he was probably successful. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I definitely, I'm definitely guessing he's a high D on the disc, all the way.

Speaker 2:

I don't know.

Speaker 1:

No, I don't know. I know I'm there, I don't know.

Speaker 2:

So you know it's again managing, that's the point. But the choice between stimulus and response and what an impact it can have. I mean, there's so many times when leaders make reactionary decisions and then regret it, right, so again managing state. So I want to ask you you just made oh no, you're switching back.

Speaker 1:

You're trying to Eric you today you can't help.

Speaker 2:

I think you're an example of how how to make a um a tactical and strategic switch that is healthy and aligned with your purpose and vision. So you made a business model change right.

Speaker 1:

Yes, one year ago.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, one year ago, you made a business model change and your decision was based on what was important to me in my life and in my business and what you wanted to create. All right, and you thought about it. You took a lot of data. Right, you did a lot of research, am I correct?

Speaker 1:

You are correct, including through our Vistage group.

Speaker 2:

Yes. And then you made a decision based on all that what, what's what is most powerfully aligned with who I am and what I want to create? Right, so that's healthy, that's a healthy switch. And then the other thing that's so important, so powerful alignment. And then courage other thing that's so important, so powerful alignment. And then courageously committed.

Speaker 2:

You know, and you're a great example of that, I mean, you just been so much courage in the face of new stuff, right, to be able to lean in and tackle things that I've never done before. Right, so it's having the courage to keep the commitment even when things are tough, and then be competently equipped right, so what you've been doing is continue to improve competencies in areas that are most important to create what you want to create and contribute what you want to contribute to the world. So you keep working on those competencies, right. And then the last is, I think, and it's kind of a circle, so it's peacefully, passionately and confidently engaged.

Speaker 2:

So that's about managing our state, and the book I'm writing about says let's start with thinking about loving qualities. Let's start to bring that every day to our work and to our lives and then to focus on bringing that being that in every moment, all right. And then that helps us make decisions again which bring our best selves to it so powerfully aligned, courageously committed, competently equipped, peacefully, passionately and competently engaged. And confidence doesn't necessarily come until we've actually done things right and realize that, hey, we can do a great job at this particular thing. At the same time, confidence comes from looking at all the things you've accomplished, we've accomplished. So when, when I work with leaders and they have, you know self-talk that that is discouraging and fearful, like wait, hey, look at where you've been, you know, look at, look at how much you've accomplished you know.

Speaker 1:

Look at your, your wins right. Live in the gain, not the gap.

Speaker 2:

Live in the gain. Live in the gain, absolutely so. And that gives people confidence that, hey, whatever's ahead of me, I can conquer. So there's that confidence, and the confidence in the actual event comes from doing it right. So we've got to be uncomfortable. Right, so we've got to be uncomfortable. You know, I heard from a leadership guru years ago that one of the most important things about leaders is to get comfortable being uncomfortable, right, yes, I actually, I actually have that written on my whiteboard.

Speaker 1:

Yes, we're in conference room.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so that means we're growing. You know, we're trying things that are different because we're going to run into things that are new every day.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's why I'm in the real estate business. I like that my days are different and that, 20 years in, I still come across new situations that I haven't seen before. That's something that appeals to me, although it definitely we have negative stress and we have positive stress, okay.

Speaker 2:

So new stress is something that's like the excitement of doing something new that's going to be life-changing or, you know, gets us towards our goals. And negative stress is like where we're fearful, so, and it negatively impacts our, our body and all those things.

Speaker 1:

So so what do you? What would you recommend, eric? So let's say that I'm in the fearful mode. I'm having feeling a lot of negative stress. I'm having a really hard time getting out of it. Maybe I've had a number of deals fall through or my production's way down from where I need it to be or I feel like it should be. How would you coach me up?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So a couple of things, courtney. One would be to do some immediate things to help quell the sensations in your body, the thoughts, negative thoughts. There's four things that happen when we get quote negative stress. Our posture can change. We might tuck ourselves in, get in a more fetal position. Our physiology can change, you know we have our face can get flushed or ears turn red or our heartbeat increases, right. So there's physiology, there's emotions. We can feel anger, frustration, fear. And then there's thoughts.

Speaker 2:

We could have these thoughts that are negative running through our heads and typically all those things happen, but there's one that we notice first. So there's one that's usually the first thing we notice, and so I would have a conversation with you about what do you notice first? Um, well, first of all, do some breathing or some uh PQ reps to get to get you focused, and then talk about what did you notice first, right, okay, um, and then also move into okay, what are you afraid of? What's this negative thought in your mind? And so one of the things that we often don't understand is our subconscious. We have an initial fear, but our subconscious usually takes that fear much deeper, right? So what's the fear behind the fear? Behind the fear. So if we can get in touch with that and put it out there and then really ask ourselves is this really true? And if it was, what would we do about it? And if it was, what would we do about it?

Speaker 2:

So, let's say, a deal dropped or I'm not making enough deals. Well, I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to pay my bills. Okay, I'm afraid I might lose my house. I'm afraid, if I lose my house, then you know, I mean my fear used to be on the side of the road living in a cardboard box, right. So as I went through all the fears, it's like, okay, well, the side of the road living in a cardboard box, okay, what would I do if that happened, if the worst thing happened, what would I do? And I could create a plan that, well, you know, I go find a. The worst thing happened. What would I do? And I can create a, create a plan. And, well, you know, I go find a job somewhere, move into an apartment, you know, um, maybe a gardener, uh, work at mcdonald's, whatever, right, um. So take that plan, stick it in a drawer, right, start over, right, yeah, and then not worry about it. The deepest dark.

Speaker 1:

I feel, like you work through that. I feel like you could almost work through that with clients as well. Yeah, because we have a lot of clients with are fearful or have a lack of trust sometimes when you're dealing with stressful situations with escrows. Yeah, I think almost, if you acknowledge what their true fear is, you could work through that with them.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. I'm afraid I'm not going to get the deal. I'm afraid I'm going to not get the maximum amount of money for my house. You know, I'm afraid if I accept this offer that's a little bit under asking price, that, uh, I'm going to miss out on the one that was over asking price. Or if I don't accept this one now, I'm never going to sell it. Whatever, that is Right. So, um, so we talked through. You know what's the fears. And the other question is it true, right? Is it really true?

Speaker 1:

Or is it the story we're telling ourselves?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the story we're telling ourselves. And then, you know, another great question to ask people is so, courtney, as an example, I would say that I have the same problem you have, courtney. I have the same problem, you know. Whatever it is, as a friend and a colleague, what would you tell me to do? It's usually people have the answers. It's so much easier to give wise advice to people other than our. You know other people.

Speaker 2:

So, so we asked that, and so we get you tell me this list and I and I come back and say, well, what's kept you from doing that Right? So again, more fears come out. A lot of it's right, this is going to happen, or I don't know how, or whatever. So, every trust, every one of those things, you know, what's one small thing you can take to make progress on that? Just take baby steps that aren't so scary. I mean, we think about building teams, but Patrick Lencioni is famous for his Five Dysfunctions book. It's like the Bible of building teams and he talks about it's trust, healthy conflict, uh, commitment, accountability and attention to results.

Speaker 2:

Well, the foundation is safety, so we've got to feel safe, even though it could be uncomfortable.

Speaker 1:

That's great.

Speaker 2:

I'm not suggesting that we don't pay attention to situations where we're really dangerous, but what I'm saying is that our body tells us, our mind tells us, our physiology tells us that we're in life-threatening situations, that truly are not.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and in your book you take all this that you have learned and you're basically tying that into how to grow your team and do it with love. Yeah, do you have a title yet?

Speaker 2:

Well, a preliminary title is the Power of Love and Leadership how to grow an organization that you love to lead and where people love to work. Because one of the other things I find is, you know, I'm clear leaders, they get tired, right, get worn out, burnout. They're not loving leading anymore, right? Yeah, so life's too short. You know it's like love what you do and are great at Love leading, build an organization.

Speaker 2:

One of the things I talk about in the book is love, your team, and I mean this in two ways. One is what we do. You know the verb, we do you know the verb um, how we treat them with loving qualities of kindness, compassion, curiosity, openness, um. And then, second, do we love them in our lives? So, are they the type of team we love working with? We love the results they get, we love being around them, you know, do we love our team? Would we not want anybody else on our team? Right, because we want a team that is energetic, that builds us up, not a team that you know. Oh, man, I got to talk to not Courtney, but I got to talk to Courtney again.

Speaker 1:

You cringe when you see their name on the phone. That's not your team.

Speaker 2:

And so you know life's too short have a team we love to work with.

Speaker 2:

We love to work with, we love them and we love them as a team.

Speaker 2:

We love them in our lives Because you know it's common, it's common as entrepreneurs because we have people generally have big hearts, so we want to give people as many chances.

Speaker 2:

We give them the benefit of the doubt over and, over and over again, which I think it's important to give people chances. Usually, once we make a decision and you know we give a person the opportunity to step up into the role fit our organization culturally, be a positive force in our organization, make great contributions, and they choose not to. When we make that change, usually everybody else in the organization says, well, it took me so long, Right. And so my encouragement is to address the things that are sucking energy out of the organization quickly and give people an opportunity to step up, like treat them with kindness and compassion, passion and, even if they choose not to, to treat them with kindness and compassion out the door to help them find a place where they really can be truly successful. And when we do that, the rest of the team sees how we treat people right, Even if they don't take our organization anymore.

Speaker 1:

That's great. It's hard to do sometimes. I know with you, know, jared, my husband and I having multiple companies, we've been in some of those situations where someone maybe is just not quite the fit. And it's hard, it is.

Speaker 2:

It's hard. It's hard. Sometimes we feel hostage, because how am I gonna find somebody else? Right, I've got work to do and I don't have anybody else to do it.

Speaker 1:

So yes, I saw about a month ago, I think it was, maybe I don't know if you saw where netflix released their new. I think it was their core values and it was referencing a lot about that. They are the people. There are a team, not a family and that you're going to do what's best for the team and you're going to put them in the best position for their skills and their talents. And I just loved it. I thought that was so cool, so great.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think, yeah, it's, they're a team and you know, the good of the order also, the good of the team overshadows the good of, I mean, what the individual needs are Not that you want, don't want both to be taken care of.

Speaker 2:

And then the good of the organization is hierarchy to the good of the team. Yeah, and it's interesting. You know, when you talk about teams, you talk about sports, right. I think they they reference that in the Netflix book, right, that if we have a team and we need and the quarterback's not not getting us where we need to go, we get a new quarterback Right. Right, at the same time, when I listen to interviews of players after going through the playoffs and listen to the 49ers after they beat the Lions last year, that huge comeback they had, team member after team member after team member, the reason they're so successful is that they love each other Right and they hold each other accountable to doing a great job at their position. So it's not mutually exclusive. We can treat people with kindness, compassion and with love and still have a culture of accountability, right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And one of the things that's encouraging is more and more people are talking about love in the workplace. You know, thank God I'm not the first and I won't be the last. You know just this looking blanchard, and the person who led, um, no, not in front of me. And the person who led no, it's not in front of me. Who's at Southwest Airlines? They wrote a book called Love, leadership, luv, so they've talked about it for 15, 20 years. Marcus Buckingham just wrote a book about love and work.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

There was another group from a software company about love as a business strategy. So I mean it's great to see and I just think it's so important.

Speaker 1:

I just think it's so important you know, nearly 50% of all people that work in the United States work for small and pure companies. Right, I would believe it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's the backbone of our country and our economy. Yeah, you know, I just think that, as small and big leaders, we have a choice that not necessarily everybody has and that if we adopt and really embody this thought and being a leading from a loving state, what?

Speaker 1:

a difference it can make in the world Be a lot happier place.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, wow, well, we could be talking about this for hours and we will have to wrap it up, but I so, so appreciate you coming on. Eric, if someone wanted to reach out to you, where's the best place for them to go to find you? I?

Speaker 2:

think on my LinkedIn. It's got contact information there. I have an EOS website. If you go to EOS and search my name, you can look at there, but really the best place is my website, the LinkedIn site.

Speaker 1:

Eric Palmier, that's where you can find him.

Speaker 2:

Yes, that's right, so thanks. So much, courtney.

Speaker 1:

Well, Eric, thank you, I loved having you on yes thank you I appreciate it so much and hopefully I'll be seeing you soon and and appreciate it all right, thanks, courtney bye you.