119: Making the Most of Your Personal & Professional Life

1. Many leaders struggle to help their people play to their strengths. Leaders are often too busy focusing on results versus on the human who’s driving those results. They’re focused on driving the success of the business versus the engagement of the business. And effective leaders focus on both — driving results through happy, engaged people.

2. The percentage of people actively disengaged is at the highest it’s been in over a decade. A lot of organizations became disconnected during COVID because everyone went remote. The burn out that came with the great resignation was not about compensation; it was about purpose. An achiever just wants to mark things off their to-do list and get things done. If someone, something or some process is in their way and they can’t mark that thing off, they will be frustrated. Keeping great talent happy and working in their zone of strength is important to your overall organizational health.

3. Leverage your strengths at home. Playing to your strengths doesn’t start and end at work. When you have an awareness of your strengths, what to call them, how to aim them for that near perfect performance and playing to them in a productive manner, no matter the environment, you’re able to succeed by aiming them inward towards yourself.

Carrie Fabris:

Sales teams are, especially where I see this issue come up because you take someone who is a hunter and a driver, and then you put them in a farmer role, right? So they’re hunting, they’re selling, they’re getting the revenue. When they become a leader of people, they’re not the one out there hunting anymore. They’re now a farmer where they are nurturing the hunters and stepping in to support the hunters. If the hunter’s having a hard time with the kill, so to speak.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Welcome to One Next Step, the most practical business podcast in the world. You’re now one simple tip, practical tool and small step away from growing your business. One Next Step is brought to you by BELAY, the incredible 100% remote organization, revolutionizing productivity with virtual assistants, bookkeepers and social media managers. Accomplish more, juggle less. Modern staffing from BELAY. And now to your hosts. 

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Welcome to One Next Step, the practical business podcast that helps you run your business so it stops running you. I’m Ryan, and today BELAY CEO Tricia Sciortino is gonna talk with Carrie Fabris. Carrie is a career and leadership coach and author of the new book All In, which is focused on helping working mobs make the most of their personal and professional lives. In her conversation with Tricia today, Carrie’s gonna focus on explaining how leaders can help their team members play to their strengths. She’s also gonna share some examples of how we can leverage our strengths and our personal lives to win at home as well as at work. No matter where you’re at in your career and your personal life, this episode is gonna be full of applicable insights. So let’s jump right in.

Tricia Sciortino:

Carrie, thank you so much for joining us today on the One Next Step. I’m so glad you’re here.

Carrie Fabris:

I’m so glad to be here.

Tricia Sciortino:

Yes. So I heard an interesting thing that I feel like is a great opener and getting to know you questions. So I, I wanna hear a little bit about this. Is it true that you wrote a book about your son’s love for fans?

Carrie Fabris:

It sounds so random, doesn’t it?

Tricia Sciortino:

Yes, so we have to hear about this!

Carrie Fabris:

Yeah, it is true. And I think it’s, it’s good for the listener for us to clarify. We’re not talking about like fans at a football game. We’re talking about ceiling fans, box fans, anything that spins like a fan that creates wind, those kind of fans. So, yes. Ever since he was two months old, he has been absolutely fascinated, almost obsessed, uh, with fans. And I went looking for children’s books on fans to not only give him something that he loved, but also to help him with his reading. He was a little behind in reading. I couldn’t find any, and so I created one. So I wrote Fans are Fantastic, and it came out in 2019. It’s out on Amazon.

Tricia Sciortino:

That is amazing.

Carrie Fabris:

Yeah.

Tricia Sciortino:

That is super fun.

Carrie Fabris :

A true, true labor of love. 

Tricia Sciortino:

Truly. That’s like Mom of the Year award type things that you couldn’t find the right book for your kids, so you decided to write one. Can we say, overachiever? 

Carrie Fabris:

What I learned through that, Tricia, is, so I’m an activator, which I know we’ll talk about strengths through today a little bit. I will achieve — I will bring something to fruition when it truly truly matters. Other things, I get a lot of things started by bringing it to fruition. It’s gotta really matter. And this one really mattered. So yeah, it was, it was fun. He loved it and it’s, it’s really, it’s about him. So he’s in the book. So he loves, like, seeing himself in illustrated form.

Tricia Sciortino:

So cool. That’s an amazing story. And also, to your point, an excellent tee-up to today’s conversation, how you just mentioned you being an activator. So we talk a lot about hiring people that are good at their jobs and then also having a variety of competencies, but that’s not necessarily the same thing as playing to someone’s strength. So I’d love to just start off and hear you define for us what a strength is and how it’s different than a competency.

Carrie Fabris:

Absolutely. So I am a Gallup CliftonStrengths certified coach. And I have been working with leaders in various companies over eight years or so. And so when we talk about a strength, and by Gallup’s definition, is it’s basically a talent. We all have natural talents, and it is a talent that is productively applied for, air quotes, near-perfect performance. So it’s something that is innate in you. It’s something that you do well that drives your energy. So you get energy from this talent or strength, you’re engaged, you’ll be more productive, you’re happier. And oftentimes it’s subconscious. It’s kind of like we … how many thousands of times a day do we blink, but we don’t pay attention to blinking until we talk about it. And then we start filling ourselves blink. So it’s when we bring awareness to the areas of our life that light us up and give us energy and keep us in that zone, then we are essentially playing to a strength.

Carrie Fabris:

So I would say strengths are more around behaviors and personalities. Uh, the CliftonStrengths assessment is a personality assessment. So when we talk about a competency, I would say that a competency is more about a skill or an ability, not so much nature or nurture, or maybe it’s more the nurture side, whereas strengths is more the nature side. So with the competency, it’s something that can be learned and honed in and perfected. That said, I do think they have similarities and they’re both aimed towards happiness and productiveness and being in an energy zone of doing things that feel good and that you’re good at.

Tricia Sciortino:

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah. So there’s almost this natural wiring that you would naturally have versus a way with which something you’ve learned to do very well, potentially. You can kind of look at it that way.Cause I could see that — I’m obviously reflecting on myself in that — and I can I could sit here and pick out things that I know that I’m naturally gifted at always happen, versus things I’ve learned to do well in my career, in my life through trial and error or teaching or coaching or whatever. So I love the difference of those things. I love the difference of those things. So, you know, as leaders, we obviously want our employees to enjoy the work that they do so that they can contribute to an organization and, and do so purposefully and joyfully. But yet as leaders, we have such a hard time or we struggle with helping people play to their strengths at work. Can you talk a little bit about why, why do we, why do so many leaders struggle to help their people play to their strengths?

Carrie Fabris:

I love this question so much, honestly, and based on my almost eight years of doing this, working with hundreds of leaders in a corporate environment, I think a big reason is that leaders are often too busy focusing on results versus on the human that’s driving those results. So often they’re focused on driving the success of the business versus the engagement of the business. And effective leaders really focus on both driving results through happy, engaged people. It’s what keeps me very busy with clients, to be honest, it’s all the leaders that, that don’t take the time for this. And it’s why I love what I do. And, I too would like to believe that most leaders want their employees to enjoy the work they do. But there are a lot of people and leadership roles that really shouldn’t be. They become a leader because their leader tapped their shoulder and said, you need the, you need to be in this role because it served that leader, not the person who is being put in the role.

Carrie Fabris:

Sometimes people become a leader because it’s the next step in their career. It’s a new title, it’s more authority, it’s more money. Rarely, and it does happen, thankfully it happens, but rarely does someone tell me in my coaching experience that they don’t care about title or compensation. They only wanna make a difference and develop people. It’s, sometimes just really interesting to me, how many times I have to remind people leaders, that they’re leaders of people. So there’s this crazy statistic that was shared by the Center for Leadership Studies. So I am also a certified situational leadership facilitator for the Center for Leadership Studies. And this, when I heard the statistic the first time, it was a little jaw-dropping. And I love asking this to people and having them guess. So I’m gonna play this with you a little bit, if that’s okay. So what percent of people do you think are promoted for what they know? What would you guess?

Tricia Sciortino:

Um, 75 percent.

Carrie Fabris:

Okay, so very impressive. 70 percent. That’s why you’re the CEO of BELAY. Look at you. So 70% of people are promoted to what they know. And what percent of those people do you think lack human skills?

Tricia Sciortino:

Oh, probably the same amount of people.

Carrie Fabris:

Yeah. 80%. So that’s telling us that there’s a lot of people that are going into leadership roles, but are not going into it for the humans that they lead. So leaders are, they’re just not as focused on people and what makes them tick. They’re often more focused on the mentality of, I pay you to show up and do a job, now do it. So if we bring this back to strengths, when a leader chooses to unlock someone’s strengths in a Gallop assessment, for example, they’re given basically a roadmap, a step by step roadmap on how to communicate and engage someone effectively and productively. Here are this person’s strengths. As long as you understand this person’s strengths and what lights them up and gives them energy, you will know how to communicate with them. And the thing is, is that leaders must choose to make the time to do things like this to ensure that their people are truly happy and engaged and doing the work that they’re doing by being in their natural strength zone. And if that person isn’t in their strength zone, it’s great when the leader discusses this with their employees so they can help get their butt in the right seat so they can thrive.

Tricia Sciortino:

Yeah. I love that answer. And we talk about that a little bit here about this halo effect when it comes to a person’s skill set. So we love promoting from within. We like to say we were born and bred on that, you know, me being the first one here. There’s this halo effect and we’ve, we’ve stumbled into this problem over the years where somebody who’s really skilled at a job, they do the job so well, they might even be the best person at that job, doesn’t always make a great leader because it’s actually not the same thing.

Carrie Fabris:

100 percent.

Tricia Sciortino:

Leading other people who do the job you did is not the same as leading people. It’s two completely different things. And I think it’s very easy to say, well, they’re the best salesperson, so they should be the sales manager. No, they’re just a really great salesperson.

Carrie Fabris:

Well, I will say to that sales teams are especially where I see this issue come up because you take someone who is a hunter and a driver, and then you put them in a farmer role. Right? So they’re hunting, they’re selling, they’re getting the revenue. When they become a leader of people, they’re not the one out there hunting anymore. They’re now a farmer where they are nurturing the hunters and stepping in to support the hunters if the hunters having a hard time with the kill, so to speak.

Tricia Sciortino:

Oh, that is so good.

Carrie Fabris:

So sales teams are super susceptible to leaders being put in a position because the senior leader says, “You’re good at sales, I want you to lead the team.” And then they’re like, doe the headlights of, I don’t know what to do with people. I know how to sell to clients. But managing people’s different, especially when they were former peers. That’s a whole other category. 

Tricia Sciortino:

That’s a whole other can of worms. 

Carrie Fabris:

Yeah, totally.

Tricia Sciortino:

Literally. Yes. I love that. Yeah. That’s such great comment. Especially in sales. Um, so, you know, if we take this to the next level or we flip it upside down, what’s at stake for the leader who is not focused on working to their team’s strengths? What are they, what is at risk here?

Carrie Fabris:

Literally this morning I got a newsletter, of one of the many news newsletters that I get, and Gallup put out this study about quiet quitting.

Tricia Sciortino:

Yes, I just read this. Yes. This is the second time I’ve heard this this week. Yes.

Carrie Fabris:

Yep. The quiet quitting, um, and actively disengaged is like higher. The percentage of people actively disengaged is like the highest it’s been in over a decade. This is all because of the topic we’re also tired of talking about, and that is COVID. Okay. We’re in a post-COVID world. People are languished from just surviving through COVID and everybody handled it differently. So a lot of organizations got disconnected because everyone went remote. The great resignation was not about compensation; it was about purpose. I show up, you don’t see me, you don’t hear me. Why you don’t appreciate me. Forget it. I’m not gonna bust my butt here for hours and hours and hours every day. I’m outta here. Well now people are going back to work, but they’re now having this, this different mentality of how they’re committed or what their drive is.

Carrie Fabris:

And it’s because there was this burnout now for people that stayed, didn’t, weren’t part of the great resignation. People that stayed with their company through the last two years, there was burnout, and the burnout is even more brutal if you stay in a state of frustration at work. So I tell people when I do workshops and when I coach people on strengths is you will know that you are playing to your strengths if you look up and you’re like, “Is it five o’clock already? Where did the day go?” because you’ve been in your zone of genius. You are being blocked from using your strengths when you’re frustrated. So an achiever who just wants to mark things off their to-do list and get things done. If someone or something, or some process is in their way and they can’t mark that thing off, they will be frustrated.

Carrie Fabris:

And then if you’re uncomfortable, not frustrated, but uncomfortable, likely someone is asking you to do one of your non-talents. So I think that when it comes to what’s at stake as if a leader is not, uh, paying attention to this as I think people like to work with and for people they like and they like to do more of what lights them up, aka use their natural strength. So if they’re not doing this on a daily basis and the leadership’s not noticing this, they’re going to burn out. They’re gonna get lost in a lack of purpose amongst all of the growing frustration. How many times I’ve coached people and they’re so frustrated and I look at their strengths, I’m like, “Well, here’s why.” Your top four, just based on what I’m hearing you say, you have not been able to play to your top four talents. No wonder you’re mad. And so that’s not really, sustainable for wellbeing overall, like mental, emotional, physical, and it will lead to attrition.

Tricia Sciortino:

It’s such a great answer. And any, all of that so greatly affects the business at so many levels. I mean, replacing people is exhausting so many levels and expensive, so many things. So keeping great talent happy and working in their zone of strength or you say zone of genius is important to just organizational health and, and honestly organizational financial health, you know, the cost of turnover, all of it, it, all of it. So that’s, I love it.

Carrie Fabris:

Yeah. At its core, strengths is a communication tool. And what’s the, you know, trust and communication. Trust and communication. These are the two topics I hear the most that are missing from teams and organizations. And they’re not that hard if people will just talk to each other. People will just get to know each other.

Tricia Sciortino:

Imagine that. I love it. Great advice.

Tricia Sciortino:

I also love that you talk about leveraging this at home. You talk a little bit about leveraging your strengths at home and your personal life. So I’d love it if you talk a little bit about what it looks like to leverage strengths at work and apply them to your personal life.

Carrie Fabris:

Yeah, great question. So your strengths are your strengths. Okay. It’s really, it’s who you are, again, that nature and nurture. And it’s really about applying them in both settings. So for example, if you’re an activator, which is someone who takes thought and puts it into immediate action, you can do this at work by initiating a project, initiating a meeting, doing something work related, you also can do it at home. And if you’re like me, who is an activator and a very busy full-time working mom of two, you can use that activator talent to get the family out of the house on time, her, the cats, and be like, let’s go. Let’s go. We’re gonna be late. Let’s go. That is my activator superpower at home. So it’s all about just using your talents personally and professionally. And it’s just, again, it’s about that awareness of having them, what to call them, how to aim them for that near perfect performance and playing to them in a productive manner, no matter the environment. So it’s a personality assessment. It’s not necessarily a personality assessment at work. It’s, but this is something I love that you asked this question because a lot of people take this at their company, with their company. And so I think it’s great to just, just remind people and say, no, this is who you are. So use this at home.

Tricia Sciortino:

Yeah. It, it reminds me of something somebody said to me years ago, actually a doctor of mine, that said, “For somebody who’s made a career off of delegating, you suck at it at home.”

Carrie Fabris:

You’re like, “Dang it.”

Tricia Sciortino:

I feel like this responsibility to be all the things at home, do the cooking and the cleaning and the dishes and the laundry, and I’m the mom to plan the trips and because I am an activator, so I activate everything at home. But I’ve also learned to be a great delegator at work. But I’ve never learned, I never carried it over to my personal life until that person said that to me, “Your whole person has learned how to do this. You need to leverage it at work and at home.” And I was like, yes. That’s so true.

Carrie Fabris:

Thanks or saying that to me and highlighting that blind spot. Yeah, because all of our strengths have blind spots. They do.

Tricia Sciortino:

Yes, yes, yes. And we’re talking about the whole person.

Carrie Fabris:

I don’t think you’re alone in that, though, Tricia. I mean, all of us working moms have, we’re we’re all guilty of that.

Tricia Sciortino:

For sure. But it was just — somebody just shot it straight at me in those exact words, and I was like, “Okay, that’s it.” So let’s talk about your recently published book, which by the way I read in is fabulous, called All In.

Carrie Fabris:

Oh good. Yes.

Tricia Sciortino:

Which focuses on working moms, creating what you call a juicy life. And there’s a ton of insights in this book, but if there was one principle that’s most important to us, understand when it comes to playing to our strengths as it relates to your book, what would you say?

Carrie Fabris:

Yeah. So quickly just like for the listener to understand the full title, and then this might actually, so my answer might resonate a little bit more. So it is All In: A Working Mom’s Unapologetic Quest for a Juicy Life.

Tricia Sciortino:

Underline the unapologetic.

Carrie Fabris:

Yes. So I would say that, you know, the one principle is that, kind of talking to the working mom listening right now, you are stronger than you realize if you will simply put yourself first once in a while. So, we must put ourself first every now and then. And I’m not talking about being maliciously selfish. I’m talking about self care and being unapologetic about it to some degree by not asking permission of others to take care of you. Like my story as you read, I was investing in my husband who was an entrepreneur doing a startup. I was investing in my kids, I was investing in everybody but me. And I was like, hold on a second. Like, it’s kind of my turn because when we are not taking care of ourselves and we’re not putting that mask on first, I mean, how many of us hear that on a plane and we don’t, we ignore it, right?

Carrie Fabris:

But when we don’t have this mentality and we are full-time working moms, we get fried, we’ll get resentful, we’ll get angry, we’ll get sad and on and on and on. And many moms working moms especially have the mom guilt, which is why you’re, you don’t delegate at home. You have this guilt, oh, I’m working all day now. I need to be mom and I need to do all this stuff for you. Right? Like, it’s real. But when we are just not thinking about ourselves and giving time to ourselves, then we’re not really doing a service to everybody else around us. Right. We simply have to take care of ourselves first in order to take care of everyone else. So when it comes to strengths, many times we project our strengths outward to everyone else. So I might get you activated, I might maximize you, I might, you know, ask for input from you.

Carrie Fabris:

But what we, what we can do is again, know these strengths, have knowledge of them, and then point them or aim them rather inward towards yourself. I mean, that’s the key to living a juicy life. As you read in the book, like the whole part two, I’m a maximizer. Part two of my book was me maximizing me, but not asking people’s permission. It was like this, I gotta do this in order to have a juicier life. And in this case, juicier is more lively, more vivid, happier, more full of joy. That’s what it means when we do something up.

Tricia Sciortino:

Yeah, I love that. And I love giving yourself permission to do the things that make you feel joy. Because there’s also this, not that we’re gonna get into this whole conversation, but there’s also this recognition that it’s actually not the job of others to make you feel joy. It is actually your job. So giving yourself unapologetic permission to your point to do the things that bring you joy. I love it.

Carrie Fabris:

Yeah. Jack Canfield, he’s the Chicken Soup for the Soul Guy. And one of the best books I think anyone can their hands on is his book Success Principles. And chapter one is you are 100 percent responsible for yourself. Like only you can control what you say, do, think, feel. I really, I love talking to people about the whole concept of no one can make you feel a certain way. And of course we walk around blaming, “You made me feel this way, how dare you.” Yada yada. We actually choose the emotion that we wanna tie to something that someone has said to us or something that someone did. That is a big concept that a lot of people miss and don’t wanna acknowledge beacuse it’s so much easier just to blame somebody else versus realize that you’re actually not taking care of you.

Tricia Sciortino:

Yeah. That’s another episode also. So now there’s two follow ups for sure.

Carrie Fabris:

I’m happy to come back as as many as you need. Maybe we should start a series.

Tricia Sciortino:

I know. It could be a series. I love it. Yeah. Oh gosh. So as we tie it all in a bow, what is one thing you’d encourage every leader right now to go and do that can help them unlock the strengths of their team? If there was one actionable thing they could go activate on, what would that be?

Carrie Fabris:

Call me and I’ll help you.

Tricia Sciortino:

I love it.

Carrie Fabris:

I’m not kidding, but that’s not that’s not the answer I wanna give. I would say that it is one way that I’m of course gonna talk about is taking the Gallup CliftonStrengths. You can go onto their website, purchase codes, your team can take it and have a great workshop and talk about it. The reason why I kind of jokingly, but not jokingly say call me or someone like me, like a certified coach that does the things that I do, is when you bring someone in who is an, has an expertise around this language, it will take you and your team to the next level. Um, there are multiple facets around all these awesome talents. And, and you can, like, you and I can have our activator side by side, but our reports will read totally different words because of the other talents that surround it.

Carrie Fabris:

So I would just say that if you really do want to embrace this, use an assessment to do it. I’m of course gonna recommend CliftonStrengths. And the reason I chose this tool versus DISC, Myers-Briggs, Enneagram, which are all so fabulous as well, is I didn’t want 16 boxes or four letters or nine numbers. This really highlights how unique we truly are. I never have the same conversation or workshop twice. And so it really does highlight our behavioral and personality DNA. So get your hands on some CliftonStrengths assessments for the team. Have a team building event around it to talk about how everybody shows up with their strengths, where you have things in common, who is the only one in the room that has a talent and why should the rest of us listen and things like that. They’re super fun to do.

Tricia Sciortino:

Excellent. Okay. So, but seriously, if somebody wants to get in touch with you, where can, where can we find you? Where can a listener find you?

Carrie Fabris:

Oh, sure. Yeah. So, very easy carriefabris.com. So as long as someone knows how to spell my name, F as in Frank, Fabris is like fabric, but with an S instead of a C. Um, carriefabris.com, and that’s on my website and you can send me a note through the get in touch with me or contact form.

Tricia Sciortino:

Okay, Carrie, this has been an amazing conversation. I thank you for being with us today. Would you mind hanging around and answering one more question I have for you about what it’s like for leaders to go all in, in experiencing life?

Carrie Fabris:

Yeah. I’m happy to.

Tricia Sciortino:

All right guys, you won’t wanna miss it to hear that clip. Subscribe to our email list and we’ll send you a link to our bonus content. Or you can visit onenextsteppodcast.com where you can find a link in our show notes.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

What a great conversation between Tricia and Carrie. I definitely feel inspired to think about how I’m leveraging my strengths both personally and professionally. Thank you so much for tuning in for this week’s One Next Step. To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe on Apple Podcast or follow us on Spotify. And if you’re ready to start accomplishing more and juggling less, go to belaysolutions.com. For more episodes, show notes and helpful resources, visit onenextsteppodcast.com.