Growth & Grace

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a KU NB studios original program. The following program is underwritten by Crawford management group and Chris glow and does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and Moore the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education. Even better than that was the last time, baby

Music 0:35
we back and we back and we back and we back.

Leaha Crawford 0:46
Angry you see the game this week. Yeah, good morning, Las Vegas. It is cool

Julian Rosado 0:54
outside. Yes, yes, it is. It

Leaha Crawford 0:57
feels good outside. You don't like the cold

Julian Rosado 1:01
weather. I like it, but there's no snow. Yeah, good morning. You're listening to

Leaha Crawford 1:10
growth and grace. I am Leah Crawford. This is Julian Rosado, and we are here this morning. Did you see that Eagles game?

Leaha Crawford 1:21
Detroit? A Detroit was good, but we played the Cowboys this week. Oh man. Oh yeah, that's going, Yeah, I had because a lot of my friends are Cowboys fans. I'm I'm tempted. A lot of your friends are cowboys. A lot. I have a lot of friends that are cowboys. Oh my god, I have a lot of friends. I won't name them, but shout out to y'all, because y'all know I will be harassing y'all the whole game we're talking to you, not harassing you. Cowboys. You want they got die hard fans. No, I they haven't won a ring since. I, you know, since, since, I don't know, since I was in high school. I don't know.

Julian Rosado 1:54
You know exactly when they want to ring.

Leaha Crawford 1:57
But no, they are Die Hard Cowboys fans. I have their Die Hard Cowboys fans, and every year when this game comes, you know? So it's a group of us, and I just start texting because one of them, if and I'm gonna make him this, well, I'm going to encourage him, not make him encourage him this year. Eric Cole, yes, I'm talking about you. If we win, Eric, you got to get that jersey. You got to get that Eagles jersey, right and no, but just having good conversations around, you know, just good banter, because the Eagles and Cowboys player twice a year, every year, yeah, so it's just a good way to have good conversations. But I have a lot of friends that are Cowboys fans, a lot, all right, yeah. Well, you got anything good you want to talk about? Okay? You over here like

Julian Rosado 2:44
you still? Yeah, let's just say last night was a series on unfortunate events with the ring.

Leaha Crawford 2:54
It'll be fine. Yes, it'll be fine. All right, so today, y'all, we have Tracy Duran on here with us from Ida collaborative. Tracy has been on here before, but it's been over a year. I think it's been a while. Yeah, yeah. I think we did a class together. We did we did a class together. Downtown Business Alliance, yes, yeah, yeah,

Tracy Duran 3:14
the small business incubator, the Small Business

Leaha Crawford 3:16
Yep, the small business incubator. And You accepted my invitation to come on the show I did. So thank you. So what's going on? Tracy, how's the business?

Tracy Duran 3:25
Business is good, slow right now, but good, slow and steady.

Leaha Crawford 3:29
Well, let's talk about the business. Tell us what. What is idea eight collaborative? Yeah,

Tracy Duran 3:33
idea eight collaborative is a consulting firm. We work with nonprofit, Small Business and educational institutions as well as museums and cultural institutions to really help boost their human systems, that human capacity to build high performing teams,

Leaha Crawford 3:49
high perform okay, you said, What does that mean?

Tracy Duran 3:53
We do everything from cultural audits and strategic planning to the execution and implementation around training and development and so really looking at what are the needs of the organization, and how do we develop the people within the organization to meet those needs, to meet their mission, to be able to operate within the systems they have in a really collaborative, High Performance way, engaging in productive conflict. So there's innovation that comes out of it, giving them the skills and capacity to work across differences, to work across team dynamics, work across sectors.

Leaha Crawford 4:33
Okay, so something you said struck it's just struck a nerve in me. It was something with the conflict. Say it again, productive. Conflict, productive. What is productive? Because I think that'd be a lesson for all of us, yeah, what is productive conflict?

Tracy Duran 4:49
That's a great question. Well, one of the things that I find that organizations get stuck on is they become conflict avoidant. And when they become conflict avoidant, because we. Associate conflict with negativity. We associate conflict with combative behavior, defensiveness, a need to be right. People get stuck in that, and then when they they get stuck and uncomfortable, they just avoid it. But when we avoid those difficult conversations, when we avoid engaging in conflict, we eliminate the opportunity for change and productive innovation and so productive conflict is looking at, how do we engage and have difficult conversations in a way that creates space and opportunity for everybody's ideas to surface? So even if we don't agree, we can have dialog around why we don't agree, what direction we want to go, and how do we utilize that differences within that conflict to leverage it to produce better outcomes? And most, most people, steer away from conflict versus having those difficult conversations, letting those differences of opinions exist within a space. And that those differences of opinions is where the innovation and creative change happens. You can

Leaha Crawford 6:05
take that and Thanksgiving is coming up. So Happy Thanksgiving, because a lot of people want to be, you know, with their families and stuff product, you know, productive conflict might be a good I mean, that could be transferable into your personal life, 100%

Tracy Duran 6:18
and picking your battles, per se,

Leaha Crawford 6:21
and picking your back because the Thanksgiving is coming up. And I Yeah,

Julian Rosado 6:25
yeah, I found out what startups is is really helpful, too. Because one founder, he wants everybody on the team to fully, fully believe, and he wants to sacrifice everything, but not every employee they want to sacrifice. They just, actually just want a good paying job. And that's not really the mission for the founder. You really have to understand that, yeah,

Tracy Duran 6:47
yeah, absolutely. And really looking at one of the things is that I ask people often is, do you want to be right or do you want to be effective? Yeah. And so, you know, do you want to be, in this particular case, with the founder? Does he want to be right or effective with the employees in terms of that motivation and inspiration? Yeah, that works at Thanksgiving dinner as

Leaha Crawford 7:08
well. Well, you want to know what? Because I say something similar, I don't want to be right. I want to get it right. Yeah, I want to get it right. So if getting it right means that I have to listen to opposing because sometimes it's hard to listen to opposing opinions. Some people might take them as personal attacks,

Julian Rosado 7:25
like the Cowboys are going to win this year. Okay, I don't take it as a personal attack.

Leaha Crawford 7:29
Okay, we'll see you coming down. You coming over for dinner Sunday, so we can see and we can sit there so I can smile.

Tracy Duran 7:38
You guys can engage in some productive

Leaha Crawford 7:41
conflict, some productive conflict, the thing. But, okay, so with when you're going into companies, how do you even assess where to start and what trainings they may need in order to engage your company?

Tracy Duran 7:56
Yeah, I when I go into a company, I make sure I'm engaging staff and leadership at multiple different levels to understand how people are experiencing their work environment and so doing a lot of discovery, sometimes it'll involve staff engagement surveys to really, truly identify where are these root causes that might be keeping people stuck, and then from there, after we understand where those root causes are, designing strategies and training and coaching to support getting past those challenges, whether it's conflict avoidance, whether it's burnout, really looking at what is, what is keeping them stagnant or stuck. And then how do we build up, first leadership capacity to create the support, and then doing the team building and training and development to make sure everybody has has the skill. And Julian, you mentioned startups, one of the things that I work with is looking at those three stages of work, going from ideation to activation to implementation, and oftentimes in small, small businesses, we're piecing together, or we're working to put together what we can, but we're forgetting to look at where the genius is. Where does each individual's genius exist within those three stages of development? And if we're, you know, if we have those visionaries that are in ideation, but we're not actually working, we don't have the people that can do the implementation, we miss out on that opportunity, or we don't have people that can galvanize and activate and inspire, our ideas can stay stagnant, so making sure those are the types of things I look at in my discovery to see where's the organization or the business stock and how can I help support moving moving them Through that, your training and development. What's your contact information? Tracy. My contact information is. Tracy at ID eight, collaborative.com,

Leaha Crawford 9:50
one more time. Tracy

Tracy Duran 9:52
at ID eight. Collaborative.com,

Leaha Crawford 9:55
now spell spell Tracy, because people might spell Tracy whole lot of ways.

Tracy Duran 10:00
Yes, T, R, A, C, y, okay, at, I, D, E, A, T, E, C, O, L, L, A, B, O, R, A, T, I, V, e.com,

Leaha Crawford 10:13
I love it so engaging you. I am a startup. Because when people, I guess, when we talk about startups, we talk about a whole bunch of stuff, but I guess getting the idea to market. Yeah, you know, we talk about the financial piece, we talk about the business plan, but I guess this is basically getting to the implementation of how you make it happen.

Tracy Duran 10:33
Yeah, looking at taking that idea through the ideation, so the wonder, the visioning, the finding that finding that inspiration, that idea, that nugget that you want to take, and then from there, doing any sort of problem solving that's associated to make sure it's viable, going through a process and activation of, how do we evaluate to understand where we might be missing information, what gaps, what barriers might be present, and then through that building up to make sure that we're creating buy in and investment, to have people who can activate the idea and run it through that follow through and implementation. And oftentimes leaders, many leaders will be will fall into that visionary place or those startups. They'll they'll have really strong visions of where they want to go, but their skill set, or their desire, their where they bring find joy, might not be in the building and galvanizing and building interest, or it might not be in that evaluation. They just might see their idea and go. Let's go without having the mindsets in place to pick holes in it for a little bit to make sure that you know where those barriers or gaps might be be to address them. And then another place, which is a place where I oftentimes struggle because I fall into the, you know, that ideation activation is in the implementation, and then it's, you know, you have to also have the people who can carry those ideas through what and or the systems in place. What

Julian Rosado 12:00
happens when you find an associate and you maximize all your resources and tools, and you say that, well, this is this associate is is toxic? Well, this associate cannot progress. Well, with this company, what would be your next step?

Tracy Duran 12:15
Yeah, my next step is coach. I oftentimes tell people, are you in a position where you can coach up. Are you in a position where you need to coach out? And so really looking at, you know, what is, what is, where is this person at? Does this person possibly not have the supports they need to be able to rise to the expectations that have been given? And if the answer to that is yes, then the you know, there's opportunity and obvious direction there. But if the opportunity is Ooh, they're just really not a good fit, then it's having those conversations to start the coach them out. Where do you see your strengths? What are some opportunities you see and not just dismissing them, but actually working with them to design their path? Okay? Yeah, sometimes, you know, sometimes people are open to it, and sometimes people aren't. And then, you know, there's sometimes hard decisions that have to be made,

Julian Rosado 13:07
yeah, but I think it's always good for both parties. I mean, once they actually come to the light and realize, yeah, this is not Yeah, it's not really working out,

Tracy Duran 13:18
yeah, yeah, really looking at where is the person's genius, and if they're working outside of that skill set, if they're working outside of they might be able to do the job, but if it's every day, it's depleting them, it's probably not a good fit. Yeah, hmm,

Leaha Crawford 13:33
but that's more like a but that's a self awareness thing you need to understand, I guess, understanding, if you doing this? Is it adding? Are you a benefit or are you a hindrance?

Tracy Duran 13:45
Yeah, absolutely. And building self awareness is almost always where I have to start in an organization, because if a if a leader, doesn't understand their strengths and weaknesses, or doesn't understand their communication style. They don't understand that complexity of self how can they lead and guide people below them and vice versa, as you're working at the independent individual contributor level, if they're not, if they don't have the self awareness to see their strengths and opportunities and weaknesses, or, know, ooh, I'm a direct communicator, but I'm speaking to somebody that I need to adapt into a more indirect style. Or vice versa. You have to build that self awareness up so people can bridge, bridge those differences, across communication, across working styles, across strengths, and be able to leverage it. So really looking at that mutual adaptation, if you build self awareness, people can begin to meet each other in the middle. If that self awareness is lacking, it's really hard to build up leadership, capacity, performance, innovation, all of that stuff is reliant on people being self aware.

Leaha Crawford 14:57
How about the feedback? Because feed you. Hmm, when they get the feedback,

Julian Rosado 15:01
so it's understanding perspectives, right? Yeah,

Tracy Duran 15:05
understanding perspectives. Even, to Leah, what you said about feedback, even understanding how to give and receive feedback. And you know, one of the things when I'm coaching new leaders is, one of the things I coach them on, is to ask, in the very beginning, how do you like to receive feedback? And so when you hear that and you're able to have that conversation with them, you can be one, hopefully be more effective. And two, if you're meeting that need for them and they're still not receiving the feedback, you have that opportunity to have a different conversation.

Julian Rosado 15:40
I would tell my ex, just keep it inside, you know, keep that internally,

Leaha Crawford 15:44
well, but that's but the thing about it is, is that, are you avoiding productive conflict? Because if somebody

Julian Rosado 15:53
is, that's why we're broken up. Yeah, that's

Leaha Crawford 15:56
why she is your ex, right? Didn't know how to do productive conflict. Okay, got it, but at the same time and moving on, because avoiding conflict is not the answer either. Yeah, right, because it grows in a different way. And that happens in companies as well. It does,

Tracy Duran 16:15
yeah, and creates those toxic environments that you were referring to. Julian, yeah. Okay.

Leaha Crawford 16:21
So when you walk into a toxic environment, can you feel it? Yes, okay, yeah. And do you still start with the leaders first and then go to the employees, or do you just kind of observe and just see what's going on?

Tracy Duran 16:37
I do a lot of initial observation and listening before I make any recommendations.

Julian Rosado 16:43
Oh, wow. Okay, because you have to

Tracy Duran 16:47
understand what impact, what patterns of behavior are happening within the organization that are creating that toxic environment, and that's happening at all levels of the organization

Leaha Crawford 16:57
Now, normally, does it normally start at the top, or is it starting at the bottom? Is it somewhere in the middle, from what you normally see? Yeah,

Tracy Duran 17:04
that's a great question. I would say most of the time it starts at the top. But that starting at the top isn't intentional. It's, you know, for example, one thing I see a lot is a leader works at a really high capacity, even over capacity, but in that leadership role as a founder, Owner, Executive Director, they're okay with it. It's it's what they're doing, but it sets the culture that that's the expectation, whether it's implicit or explicit, being set. And then you see that burnout start to happen. And so oftentimes it'll start at the leadership level, but it's not necessarily intentional, you know, it depends on the situation. I've also seen it to where there's silos within an organization based off of functional areas. And so in those cases it might, you know, you might have one really toxic team with high performing teams around it, but that one toxic team because they can't get their interpersonal dynamics straight, then have a negative impact throughout the organization.

Leaha Crawford 18:15
A toxic team, tt, tt the TTS, the TTS, the TTS. So when you've seen that the toxic team, is it normally the toxicity because of one person, or is it like, collaborative is like, you know, one, one bad apple just spoiled that whole bunch? Or is it, you know, just their behaviors the same, just what they see, the work ethic,

Tracy Duran 18:39
it's all of the above. Oftentimes it's it could be one person and that person, the information, you know, that culture, those mindsets, disseminate that energy, that negative energy, just kind of disseminates out and impacts everybody. Sometimes it's a really passionate team that has a leader that doesn't know how to lead. I see one of the things I see in nonprofits often, is people are promoted based off of their passion and ability to do to do their job. They're not promoted based off of their leadership capacity or potential. And so then you'll get a person in a leadership role that is passionate about the mission but hasn't had the opportunity to develop those leadership skills, to lead a team, to understand the difference between delegation and abdication, between micromanaging and leading, or even management and leading, and so oftentimes it's a skill gap that creates that toxicity.

Leaha Crawford 19:40
All right, you are listening to growth and grace. I am Leah Crawford. This is Julian Mazarin, and we had Tracy Duran on here with this with us this morning. I mean, honestly, these are, like, personal skills. They are, yeah, because I'm sitting here and I'm like, All right, these are some things that we I mean, you can check off your list. Okay, so am I self aware when I walk into this place? How do I show up? How am I communicating? Am I communicating effectively? Is my message being received? You know, am I leading or am I taking a walk? Because no one is following me

Julian Rosado 20:08
exactly? Do you have businesses contact you are like, how would a business even know? Like, well, like, my business isn't toxic. Everybody loves each other. They all come in, give each other food. That's the self awareness you're lying to

Tracy Duran 20:22
yourself. Usually, they start to see a decline in whether it's revenue, whether it's funding. There is some catalyst that makes them realize oftentimes it'll be high levels of turnover. Because, you know, as you turn over employees, you cost yourself a lot of money turnover. And so oftentimes it's turnover that triggers it, you know, why? Why am I seeing all these people leave? Or it might be, as Leah said earlier, oh, we have one bad apple. Can you come in and help coach them? And it's like, well, actually, that bad apple is existing because of the environment that Apple's in, yeah.

Leaha Crawford 21:01
So maybe it's not just coaching. That's like, that's like the in Julian's case, if one Julian would have called to said, You know what, my wife, my girlfriend, needs counseling. No, y'all both need to go. Yes, exactly. Both of you need to go because you need to talk about why you are avoiding, what's causing you to avoid the conflict. You know, that's a whole different issue,

Tracy Duran 21:22
right? Are you telling her to keep her conflict internal?

Leaha Crawford 21:27
You keep that to yourself. Well, I don't want to keep I think I need to share. But then it's all in how you should learning how to communicate with people

Tracy Duran 21:35
is a skill. It is a skill. It's a skill. It's a skill we dismiss often as soft skills, and it's really not it's a core capacity for high performance.

Leaha Crawford 21:46
Do you find that they do personality tests in the orgs that you go in with? Does that help? Yeah, because one personality i know i i use one coding system and one personality again, they have to like me being the owner of the business. I needed to learn how to effectively communicate with the people around me and even clients. And over the years, have gotten better at it, but it was a challenge at first.

Tracy Duran 22:19
Yeah, absolutely. Assessments are really helpful because they help support that self awareness building, okay? And you have to take it beyond the assessment and do the training and development, any coaching that's necessary. But assessments are are critical at times, because if you've been operating, you know, I think about culture, the culture of an organization is the fish tank, okay? And so if you're swimming in the fish tank, you don't you don't see it, you don't feel it, you don't know your communications bad. You're thinking, Oh, but you know, I'm communicating like I always do when this person's not getting it. But what you're not realizing is the person needs communication in a different way. Maybe you're indirect and they need direct communication, or vice versa, or they're, you're a very direct communicator, and they're taking you is really brash or harsh, and you're going, Well, I'm just direct. And so if you're, if you're swimming in that water, it's impossible for you to see your impact. And so they, when you utilize a personality assessment, I utilize the disc a lot, okay? DISC assessment, yeah, because that gives some tangible tools of how not only your personality, it touches on personality, but where it really is helpful. Is it I isolates workplace behaviors, and so you can see how you're showing up in the workplace and how other people might be receiving you, even if you can't. So using the disc as an example, it's really helpful in seeing how you are showing up in the workplace through those characteristics that are dominant or primary for you. And so they can be really helpful in the building self awareness, like I'm

Julian Rosado 23:59
sure you probably have this exam. So what happens? Okay, well, it's coming from you, it's it's coming from you. And then the founder says, Well, I'm not changing. You have to fix everybody else. I'm not changing at all.

Tracy Duran 24:13
I'm not broken. Yeah, I will jokingly say I've fired one client in my life, and that was why, that was the reason, yeah, because the exact it was a nonprofit, and the executive director wasn't willing to look at their self as part of the process. And I said, if you're not willing to look at yourself, I can't help you. That hard for you, it was a hard decision. It was, it was a it was a hard decision on multiple levels. Is one, I'm stubborn, and I didn't want to admit that I couldn't be effective. But ultimately, I had to realize, if the executive director that's setting all of the expectations throughout the organization wasn't willing to look at themselves as. Part of this process as as contributing to the environment. There's no way for me as a consultant to be effective, because change isn't going to happen. And so it was hard at that level. And then, you know, as a small business owner, it's hard financially,

Leaha Crawford 25:13
financially because you I mean, especially when you are working and you're getting paid per client, and you're looking at, okay, so I got these bills to make. I got to do this, this client. I didn't, I mean, this was in the funnel and my calendar, I calendared it in. Now I have to pivot and do something else. But what I also know is when one door closes, another one opens, yeah. And that is true, yeah. And sometimes the toxicity is not worth the effort,

Tracy Duran 25:40
yeah. And one thing that I learned from that is, especially in the consulting space, I'm sure you Leah experienced this, is I have to be a good fit for them as much as they have to be a good fit for me. And so over time, getting better at understanding where are my skill sets and how can I be helpful, or identifying those characteristics or behaviors that I know I won't be a good fit, things like that,

Leaha Crawford 26:06
and that's self awareness, too. It is to say that I'm not a good fit. I mean, because I'm not the CPA for everybody, yeah, but the people that I am the CPA for, we have amazing relationships, yeah? And I kind of have that conversation when we start off as client, you know, I might not be the right fit for you, because you can't come in here and tell me what I'm gonna do, yeah, and if that's what you want, you know, go down the street.

Julian Rosado 26:28
But they really respect that. Well,

Leaha Crawford 26:31
some people do, some people, some people like yes, people around them, and those are not my clients, because if you are a person that everybody has to agree with you no matter what you say, right or wrong, you're not the person that I you know, not in not not for my business, not in my personal life, but if you're a person that, and not to say that, the feedback is always good, but there is something to say, and when you receive a feedback, because I'm not a yes person. Never have been, yeah, yeah. Created an interesting life, but no, not a yes

Tracy Duran 27:06
person, yeah. If I, if I can't, challenge somebody, they're not a good fit for me. Yeah, if

Leaha Crawford 27:10
I can't, because I want to challenge you, and I want you know, why did you say that? What's or, more importantly, when you said that, what did you mean by that? That's why I told my ex, yeah. When you say Yeah, but you didn't follow through. Okay? Because you also say, keep it to yourself.

Julian Rosado 27:25
That's what I said in my head every time he was talking.

Leaha Crawford 27:29
Well, you said that in your head, so you didn't say it out loud, and then your verbal cues didn't go through. Okay, okay, all right, I understand. I totally understand. Well, Tracy, again, let's how do we get in contact with you?

Tracy Duran 27:41
Yes, you can reach me at my website@www.id, eight, collaborative.com or by email at Tracy, T, R, A, C, y, at ideate, collaborative.com

Leaha Crawford 27:56
Okay, I appreciate that. Well, once again, I want to say thank you. Thank you for coming on the show and sharing the information. Because even though you do it for companies, I think, I think you should do a big thing for people that are interested in learning about themselves, do the DISC assessment and get in and teach them some tools. And you know, how do you handle conflict resolution? Teach them about the pregnancy. We didn't even talk about the pregnant pause when people say something to you and you just stop and

Julian Rosado 28:23
look, yeah, I think our business could really benefit. I do. I

Leaha Crawford 28:27
do. Maybe we'll talk about that off the air. How do we do something like that? Yeah? Because that's like, yeah. Because I think self of self awareness is huge. Well, being is huge. It's huge. Because if you are going to work every day and it's a hassle to go to work. Maybe something needs to change. If you don't know, you should go, Hey, I'm happy to you know

Tracy Duran 28:47
it's having an impact on your mental well being, your physical well being. I mean, how you show up, how you show up, for your self, for your family, for your friends and community.

Leaha Crawford 28:57
Stress levels, your health, health benefits, absolutely, you know, headaches, high blood pressure, stress, yeah, everything,

Julian Rosado 29:07
being in a bad relationship, all of that.

Leaha Crawford 29:10
And honestly, the thing about it is, when you're in a good relationship and you're in a healthy environment, things change, yeah, when you're in a healthy environment, things change, yeah, it really does. And sometimes I tell my daughter, start by cleaning your room. Let's just start there. Just clean up. Yeah, let's clean this. Have no things either. You will feel better in a clean space. Just a clean space. All right. Well, that brings us to the end of our show. All right, E, A, G, L, E, S, eagles, all right. Julian, you coming over on Sunday? Think about it. Don't give me answer, because I don't want you to lie to me. Think about it, all right, guys, we will talk to you next week. Have a Happy Happy Thanksgiving. Talk to you soon. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai