Top tips for inclusive leadership, with Nils Vinje

Jackie: Thanks for tuning in to Diversity Beyond the Checkbox Podcast. My guest today is Nils Vinje. Nils is a leadership coach, speaker, author of the 30-Day Leadership Playbook, podcast host and consultant. Thank you so much for being here.

Nils: Jackie is, it is absolutely my pleasure. I'm so excited to be with you speaking here.

Jackie: Absolutely. Well, Nils, I always like to start by, you know, tell us a little about yourself, your background, your family, your identity, whatever you'd like to share.

Nils: Yeah, absolutely. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Been a West coast, person most of my life. And now live in Phoenix, Arizona and have had the good fortune to go through a lot of UPS down sideways in my professional career. You know, I literally tried, have tried everything from being a software engineer, which I was absolutely terrible at, to being a Xerox sales rep on the other end of the spectrum, which I was equally as terrible at that role too, and I struggled for years, Jackie trying to say.

I know I have great skills. I know I can connect with people, but I have absolutely no idea where I fit in the professional world. And that was a big part of the, you know, the first third of my career and you know, I made some significant changes, some of which we'll talk about today, but there was a major shift that happened.

It was probably one of the most pivotal in my life, which was around the element of taking control and really doing what I call becoming the CEO of your career. At the point at which I made the decision to change and become the CEO of my career, then everything went up into the right, after I took control and I no longer let anybody else, my bosses, my companies, my family, peers, whoever it is, determine where I was gonna go, what I was gonna do when I took the reins.

The game changed, and that was only, the only sad thing was that it took me 10 plus years to figure that out, but once it did, then it launched me into incredible places, wonderful opportunities. I've been a consultant in the customer success space for almost eight years, which has been amazing.

I've been a leadership coach for over 10 years and run a program called the B2B Leaders Academy, where I get to work with managers and directors and B2B businesses to help them build incredible leadership skills. So I'm very fortunate now at this point in life to have gone through all the turmoil I did to be able to share my passion and my expertise in a way that the entire world can consume. So that's a little bit about me.

Jackie: I love that Nils. You know, becoming the CEO of your own career and of your own life, right? There's so often we let you know outside pressures or just the status quo or what we think we should be doing, confuse our real passion. And it doesn't give us the opportunity to really explore. What we might really enjoy, what we might fall in love with, what we might be really good at, because we're doing those things we think we should do.

And certainly that applies to, you know, the young folks that I'm talking to that think they have to have their life figured out coming out of college. Right? And that's not the case. so I love that it's, it's so important to just take control. It's a little scary sometimes,

Nils: Well, that's the number one thing and it equally applies whether you're first fresh outta college, even if you're in high school. You know, it's never too early to start thinking about this. I was never even introduced to this concept. It never crossed my radar until one Saturday morning in grad school.

And that was, that was the starting point. And I was nearly 30 years old by that point in time, and so, it applies at any point in your life. And I think, you know, if we look back at most of society and structure and you know, how we're brought up in school systems and education systems and working environments, it's really all about serving the needs of whoever we're working with, right?

In school, we're there to do what the teacher tells us. In college, same thing. In grad school, same thing. In work, we do it there to do what our boss tells us. And so the concept of like taking control, that the fact that you have the ability to do this, whether you're, you know, early, mid, or later in career, doesn't matter.

It's always there and that's the most fascinating thing that I've found. But it absolutely a hundred percent can be scary and that's okay. It doesn't need to, you know, be some big monumental thing where you have to answer, what's the purpose of my life, all in one statement, right? It's just about looking at the, reality that you're living in from a slightly different perspective and saying, well, if I was gonna make the choice of what to do to feel fulfilled and to contribute at the highest level to myself, my family, the companies I work for, the clients I work with, what would I do? What would I invest in? How would I become a better person? And that is when the real power comes to take shape, because you're the only one who can make that call.

Jackie: Absolutely, absolutely. Nils, you're a coach, you coach professionals on becoming good leaders, strong leaders, inclusive leaders. What are some of the mistakes that you made moving from individual contributor to leader?

Nils: Yeah, so this is a, Okay, so one slightly different approach that I had that is different than vast majority of people out there when they transition from individual contributor to the first time they're in technically a people leadership position. The, the result of this, or the, the way I got to this was a little bit by, you know, luck and circumstance, but I actually had, by that point in time, gone through grad school and got in an MBA in management and organizational behavior before I ever actually became a people leader.

So I'm the exception to the normal rule, which in most companies, you know, anybody listening probably has either been through this or known somebody been through this or maybe even done it with somebody on your team, is we promote from within and we promote from within. And then say, Okay, you're now a manager. Go figure it out. 

And oh, by the way, you should find a mentor somewhere in this thorough world. They just swim out there, and you should find a mentor. You should read some books, and that's kind of the extent of most of the leadership development that I've come across. So my transition from individual contributor to manager was drastically different because I spent two plus years going through a graduate program on how to learn about management and organizational behavior. So I understood things at a fundamentally different level than most people when they go through transition. And it was a big part of my early success when I got into that management position.

I actually went from individual contributor to manager and then director, and then to VP in two and a half years. And the re what I attribute that to, was of course there was great opportunity in the environment, but what I really attribute that to is the fact that I took a structured approach to developing my leadership skills.

It started with my education. It started with investing in myself going through grad school. Now, I'm not saying you have to go through grad school to make this transition. It would just happen to be the passion area that I finally found after looking all over, as I mentioned before. And so having that foundational, skills.

Understanding how organizations function, understanding what's really behind management and leadership from a, not just philosophical perspective, but also a practical perspective gave me a massive leg up and I was promoted extremely quickly as a result, and when I've seen others in the situation, the biggest challenges that people face is just making that transition from IC to manager.

It's actually one of the hardest anybody will ever make, largely because the focus and the back to control. When you're an individual contributor, you control everything, your output, whether or not you exceed expectations, meet them, don't meet them, et cetera. It's a hundred percent within your control. When you become a leader you're not in control anymore. The individuals on your team are in control of their output, but you are responsible for ensuring that they perform at a certain level and your team delivers X, Y, Z, right? So you lose that element of control, you lose that element of focus on yourself, and now all of a sudden, your whole job is to make somebody else look good.

And that is the fundamental biggest challenge that people, regardless of if you're a manager, director, vp, I've seen it all through the stack, have trouble getting over and sometimes they never do. So it's is, you know, there's so much wrapped up in that Jackie.

Jackie: Wow. You know, such good points you're making. It's, it's a tough transition and you're right, we're not educated between, right. We, we earn our opportunity to lead because we're great individual contributors, but there isn't that that pull aside, right, where we're being instructed as to how to move from individual contributor to leader.

So that brings us to the B2B Leaders Academy. So I, I wanna talk about that. What is it, what kind of people become members? What are some of the benefits of membership?

Nils: Absolutely thank you. So it is a membership and it is provides a structured approach to growing and developing your leadership skills. The people who join and who get the most value out of this are managers and directors inside of B2B companies who want to grow and develop in their role. And they are either, you know, it can be first time managers, can be experienced managers, directors been doing this and running teams for five, 10 years. 

There's no one right, Perfect amount of experience because what I do is take all of the incredible experiences I've had from my MBA, being a leadership coach for over 10 years, working over a thousand hours with leaders one on one to help them work through the biggest leadership challenges and break all that down into a structured process to follow step by step.

And if I can impart and empower leaders with tools that they can integrate into their life, then results happen every single week, and that's part of the fun, right? This, you know, one of the biggest challenges with leadership development, and you and I have talked about this offline, is that the old way of leadership development is really, you know, you go off into a seminar or a training thing and you spend three or five days locked in a room and you know whether it's virtual or physical.

And then you come back to your job and probably was a good chance you forget most of it within a week or two of when you went there. It was a great experience, really cool experience, but the long-term impact of the skills that you learned doesn't always stick around because we're trying to do too much in one shot. So I blew apart that model and said, Okay, if I was going to coach a large number of people, how would I take them and lead them through a process over a long period of time so that we could ensure that change happened and that is was the basis of this. 

So we have training content that is available on demand to integrate into the leaders' lives. We have weekly small group leadership masterminds where groups of leaders get together to discuss the topics and the most pressing challenges they have. And we have a worldwide group that are part of this. So you can get perspectives from any different type of, background experience, different company size. And then we have monthly checkpoints to make sure that you're staying on track to making the progress that you set out to do in the area that you chose to focus on.

So that's a little bit about the B2B Leaders Academy. If you wanna check out more, go to b2bleadersacademy.com.

dot. 

Jackie: Love it. And you know, you said something Nils about having an international membership and being able to get perspectives from other leaders around the world, which I think is so important because we're a global society. We work with international companies, either we're part of an international company or our clients are part of an international company.

So understanding how to be an inclusive leader and a global leader is important. So I, I love that those perspectives are, are very important.

Nils: It's fascinating also, Jackie, to see with this worldwide group, one of the most common things people walk away from our weekly small group leadership mastermind saying, when we do a little debrief at the end and kind of take aways, one of the most common things people say is, I'm so glad that I'm not alone. And isn't that one of the things that we as leaders want to know more than anything else? Because you're sitting there thinking, Am I the only one who thinks this or am I the only one who struggles with this? Or, how come I can't do X, Y, Z? And when you hear from a peer leader, could be in a completely different company, completely different industry, completely different size and stage of leadership that they're in.

But when you hear from somebody in Dubai or in Egypt or in Australia or in Africa, or in the UK or wherever it, and they're going through the exact same challenge, it brings us together, right? And that is that inclusive piece. And when you hear perspectives of how other leaders in other parts of the world approach these challenges, you can't help but be inspired and know that you're not alone, and know that there is support and there is a way to get help and to get you onto the next step.

Jackie: Absolutely, absolutely. So Nils, you're also a customer success coach and a course creator. Share with us a little about the customer strategy method and what are the five things your customer strategy must have.

Nils: Oh yes. So the two areas of my world that I, you know, love and have built my entire business around are customer success and leadership. We've talked a lot about the leadership so far. So on the customer success side, this has to do with everything that happens post sale in a B2B, SAS business. And it was the individual contributor role was in the customer success field that I mentioned earlier.

I was a customer success manager and then it went from to director to vp in two and a half years in the customer success field, and then decided to go out on my own. And fun fact, Jackie actually started the very first customer success consulting firm that ever existed in the entire world.

Jackie: Wow.

Nils: In January of 2015. So this field was very, very new and it only came as a result of the SAS model taking shape thanks to Salesforce. And all of a sudden this customer success industry started to appear. And I was very fortunate to be in San Francisco getting into that role at a very, very early stages of it. and have been able to be a part of the growth of the industry overall. So I have a deep, deep passion for the field of customer success for the people in it. And my consulting work has to do with this, what I developed the customer strategy method. 

And there are five things that your customer strategy must have. And Jackie, you worked with tons and tons of companies. Right? And I'd be willing to bet that you could tell me that every company worked with, always had a sales strategy, right? And they, and they always had a product strategy and they always had a marketing strategy and they always had a whatever engineering, you name it, there's a strategy for it. But when I ask companies, well, great, tell me about your customer strategy.

They look at me with this long blank stare and they're like, oh, we've got a support team. We've got a customer success team. We've got sales. We sell our customers, and then we try to upsell them more. And I'm like, Okay, well, yeah, those are, those are great things. But in the world of SAS and recurring subscriptions,

Jackie: Yes.

Nils: everyone has more choice than ever.

And so we have to ensure that we deliver value consistently over time so that we ultimately renew our customers and help them expand. And that's really what the five things is all about. So number one is the element of being prescriptive. You had to prescribe the experience your customers are gonna go through long before they actually go through it.

And there's a lot of psychology here and it's kind of the underpinning of the other four areas. Number two is a well-defined fresh start. Lots of people call this onboarding. I like to call it fresh start because there is no greater enthusiasm, openness, and engagement that you'll have than when you're working with a customer right at the beginning when they sign up.

Number three is what I call an engaging middle. So this is where the largest amount of risks and challenges I've seen across the years of consulting happen. Everybody can focus on onboarding. So we, you know, sell a customer. There's a very defined onboarding plan. We've got a project manager assigned to it. We get them through the steps and poof, they're live with our solution. And then it's like, what do we do with them now? right? I'm sure you've bid on the receiving end of that. I'm trained what now? Or you're trained what now? 

So the engaging middle really picks up from where the fresh start ends and carries on in a cyclical process all the way through the entire life cycle with that customer. But the number one thing is we have to continuously add value to this customer over time, and we have to do it in pre-defined, very strategic ways. And when we know what that is it's easy to execute. When we don't know what that is, this whole area, post onboarding, pre-renewal looks like a giant black hole, right?

 number four is the defined milestones, and milestones just marked progress. They're absolutely 100% just checkpoints. And if we know what the milestone markers should be at a very, you know, mapped out version of what an ideal customer's experience is with us, then we can measure whether or not they're on track or off track.

Jackie: Right.

Nils: it, 

So that measurement piece becomes key, but not just measurement of anything. It's measurement of defined milestones that we know if they hit those milestones, they're going to be a successful customer. And I view that in the same way on the leadership side, there are milestones.

That's why we have a checkpoint every single month, is that if you hit that checkpoint every single month and we work together over the course of a year, two years, three years, I know exactly how much progress you are making over that period of time. And so do you. Right. So that element of being prescriptive is number one, the well designed, fresh starts number two, the engaging middles number three, the milestones, number four. 

And the last, number five is the transformation. And this is a lot of art and science here, but nobody ever buys a solution without expecting a transformation. They are here, they to go there. Straightforward, right? But when I ask customers and companies how they define that transformation, I get a lot of vagueness.

And my job is to eliminate that vagueness and get them to absolutely concrete, very specific list of checkbox items that if a customer does those things throughout all these other steps that have laid out, they will be a wonderful customer, they will renew and they will expand. That is ultimately what the five things your customer strategy must have, is all about, and there's the core foundation of all the consulting work that I've done over the last almost eight years.

Jackie: Wow. That's, that's so incredible because, you know, we, we all start with onboarding, right? And, and for the most part, we’re pretty intentional about being good at that, right. But the engaging middle, that's, that's often where the communication drops off. You get a little off track with what the expectations are.

And so that is such an important piece. And then defining those milestones throughout it's, you know, you need those two pieces together to make progress and, and be able to retain that, that customer

Nils: That's right. And, and that, and without, you can do each one of those pieces in isolation, but unless they're all together, you're just gonna have kind of a hodgepodge of things, which I see. You know, sometimes people do great in onboarding and then they do nothing in the engaging middle. Like, well, let's, let's tie these together.

Let's set expectations in onboarding for what's gonna actually happen in the engaging middle. Then when we get to the engaging middle, we're just fulfilling the expectations that we already set, and it makes everything a whole lot easier.

Jackie: Wow. Such great advice. Nils. Let's talk about your book, The 30-Day Leadership Playbook.

Nils: All right. We both got it.

Jackie: Tell us why you wrote it and what we're gonna gain through reading it.

Nils: Absolutely Jackie and special bonus for your listeners. You can get a free digital copy of this bestselling book, Thirty Day Leadership Playbook, Your Guide to Becoming the Leader You Have Always Wanted to Be. Make that available to your audience. Just go to b2bleadersacademy.com/book. Drop your name and email in. I will send you a free digital copy right away. 

So in this book. What I laid out and the reason why I call it 30 Day Leadership Playbook, this is not about mastering the entire world of leadership in 30 days. This is just the start. But what I did, what I, I laid out the most important foundational elements of leadership, in my opinion, over the course of 30 different chapters.

Each chapter is called a day. So my guidance and recommendation to readers is read one chapter a day, and in 30 days you will know more about leadership than most of the rest of the professional world. I can say that with absolute certainty after doing this for this long, and so what readers are gonna find out is how I broke down leadership, the big, crazy world that is leadership into four main areas. And these are, I call these the pillars of leadership. 

Pillar number one is leading yourself. This is all about everything that you control yourself, and there is an awful lot of leadership and it all starts with you. Pillar number two is about leading others. These are strategies and tactics to use with your team to drive the performance of your team and to learn how to become a coach, to get the best absolute result from a group of individuals. Pillar number three is leading with communication. 

This is all about how to take, how to communicate your value and your team's value outside of your team, oftentimes leaders struggle with being able to talk about their accomplishments or the value of their team in a way that other people can understand cuz they're talking at too low-level detail. And this, I focus heavily on frameworks and presentations and marketing your leadership here cuz if you don't market your leadership, nobody's gonna know what you do.

And then pillar number four is leading with metrics. So how do we use metrics to drive performance and ultimately tie all of these pieces together? So those are the four pillars that are cover in the book. And again, 30 chapters is very quick read, easy to digest, have wonderful reviews on Amazon, and did earn the best seller rank, when it came out.

And, you know, just been a, a wonderful journey. And these are a lot of the concepts that we start with in the B2B Leaders Academy, and then we go deeper, we layer on the community elements as well.

Jackie: Yeah, and you know what Nils, what I'll say is, you know, I really enjoyed it because it, it is an easy read and some of the things that you mention in the book seem pretty simple, but you just don't think about it until you're reading it and you're like, yeah, that makes sense. So I, I enjoyed it. It's, it's a great read.

You know, it's definitely something that a leader, no matter how busy they are in their, their day, can fit in that time to get a chapter read and just understand one of those perspectives a day for, for 30 days. And I'll tell you, it has already improved the way that I lead and think about leading. So it's a, it's a great book.

Nils: That's wonderful. Jackie, what, what is one thing that you took away that just gave you a little bit different perspective or perhaps caused you to think a little bit differently about what you were doing?

Jackie: You know, one of the things that really resonated was one of the early things was like, don't focus on yourself. And so I. You know, you're thinking about what you have to get done, what you have to manage, and it's, and it's really that time where you're saying, Okay, let's focus on, you know, the employees, the people that are working with me.

Let's focus on these goals that we have together and focus on supporting them, providing, you know, good guidance for them. And it's really that, that switch, right, be between going from an individual contributor to going to a leader and having to really shift that mindset, that mindset of how I, you know, I originally, one of the things that I talk about a lot is that I started to lead the way I wanted to be led, but not everybody responds to that. based on their personality, the way they work, et cetera. And so moving outside of yourself is, is one of those things that's so important. And, and that was one of the early things, aha moments that I had.

Nils: Love it. And that is so perfectly tied in with inclusive leadership, right? Because it's, it's not just about us and it's not just about what we've experienced. It's about the entire group that we are together with and the different backgrounds and perspectives and ideas and thoughts, and 

it's actually the most ironic thing is that the most effective leaders have the least amount of answers, and when you don't have answers, you can be a much more inclusive leader. And it's contrary to what most people think, which is, I was put in this position because I had all the answers, right? And the answer is no, or you may have been gotten into that position, but you will not be successful in that position if you have all the answers you, that is a straight path back to being an individual contributor, which happens.

Jackie: Absolutely. That's true. And no, you know, that's so true. Because, and, and that's one of the shifts I think that's occurring in our society where, you know, as a Gen Xer, when I entered the workplace, the manager often didn't have all the answers, but they pretended they did. Right.

Nils: Mm-hmm. And that was what was expected.

Jackie: Right,

Nils: Its 

Jackie: exactly. 

Nils: okay to not, to not have it.

Jackie: Exactly. And now what employees want is a leader that is transparent and vulnerable and can say, I don't know, or I made a mistake. And, and that being okay that's a courageous leader in, in my opinion.

Nils: I agree. And we actually had a re a conversation in one of our small group masterminds in the academy just in the last couple weeks around. This feeling of having to solve every problem, and it was really interesting to hear, again, different geographies, different backgrounds, different companies. There was some people who had a really hard time knowing that they couldn't solve the problem that their team was experiencing.

This had to do in particular with feeling overwhelmed and just a crazy workload and very demanding schedules, and these things were just gonna continue going. But what was more important in what the group kind of came to the consensus around and all the perspectives was that the team really just wants a leader to understand them and to feel heard, and to feel validated.

And if the leader did nothing but that and never solved the problem, frankly it's gonna keep happening, but they were there and they understood and they validated the people on the team, they would be successful in that situation. So again, the contrary, there's a lot of things that seem like you should be doing one thing, but the reality is you should be doing the complete opposite and, and just accepting that you can't solve some of these things, but you can absolutely hear and listen and see people in a way that they have not been treated.

Jackie: Mm-hmm. And Nils let's stay on inclusive leadership for just a second. Let's start with, what is your definition as a leadership coach of inclusive leadership, and why is it imperative for sustainable business?

Nils: Yeah, so my definition is that inclusive leadership empowers a group of people to come together to feel safe and to produce an incredible output. So it's not about the leader, it's not about the individual on the team, it's about the group together, you know, all coming from different backgrounds, different places, different objectives, different experiences, different ideas, but creating an environment where it's safe to explore all the different possible ways we could address the situations that we have.

And let's face it, there are about 8 billion different ways to address every problem that we face in a company, right? You could go in number of directions, with it, and the leaders who are able to tap into the incredible wisdom of their team. And except that they will put their e their own ego on the side and ask, what do you think?

And how would you approach this situation? And what would you do if you had all the power in the world, or in this company to do, make these decisions? Right? Provides an incredible opportunity to, for people to be inspired. When they're inspired, they're gonna come up with new ideas on their own. Things that they had never thought of, things that they had never been allowed to think.

This was actually one of the pieces of feedback I heard from one of our members in the academy, who went through the coaching module and, and went deep on the coaching, was a newer manager, really was a little bit uncertain at first, and then committed to putting into practice, started asking powerful questions, started empowering his team in a totally different way than he ever had done.

And within just a couple months, his team was showing more inspiration and more creativity and brought more ideas to the table than they ever had before. And in their review of their manager, they gave him the highest marks he had ever had. And the fascinating thing was, the fundamental thing he did was become a coach instead of a manager.

He empowered them to come to the table with ideas. He did not, when they asked him a question, he did not just simply respond cuz he knew the answer. He helped them discover the answer that was gonna be right for them. And all of a sudden, this incredible enthusiasm and ownership just took shape and poof in a very short period of time. Had a completely different experience on the back end. 

So that's why I think it's so important, that inclusive leadership is so important to long term sustained company success. The success of a company is only as going to be as great as the ability for its employees to think and act and come up with solutions. And if you can do that better and you can create an environment where that is fostered, developed, loved, then sky's the limit. If you don't do that and you continue in more of the authoritative, dictatorial kind of situations that we've seen a lot of in the past that I've experienced a lot in my career, then you know the writings on the wall. You know where the end result, where the end is.

Jackie: That's right. Absolutely. So Nils, from your perspective as a leadership coach, you know, and ex just exploring and taking a moment with the synergies between the work I do and the work you do, why does every leader need to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion into their corporate success strategy?

Nils: Yeah. Cause our world is more interconnected now, and it will be in the future than it ever has been in the past. There were times like when we were getting started in the professional world, like my professional world was limited to a geographic area. There just wasn't that much exposure to anybody else.

And it was only a conference call. And if your company happened to be international, maybe you'd talk with somebody outside of your country's borders from time to time, but it wasn't a core part of it. These days, like as a coach, I have clients all over the world. Every single week I'm on the phone with at least five to seven different countries.

And it is fascinating, right? So we have to be able to embrace that ability to, connect with other people, to recognize other people's backgrounds, their other people's behaviors, other people's ethnicities, and just respect where they come from in order to give them an environment where they feel comfortable and want to actually do their greatest work.

So if we provide that environment as leaders, then the teams will do their greatest work. And that's ultimately where we're always after. So it's on us to create that environment. It's on every single leader to make the change if you're not doing this exceptionally well now to improve, to get Jackie's book, to get a copy of my book.

Right, and the two of these together is some pretty powerful stuff and could dramatically change the trajectory of your career because you know that it, the world is getting smaller in the sense that we are more and more interconnected than we ever have been.

Jackie: Absolutely right, Nils. Absolutely. So let's talk about your podcast, right? You're a podcast host and I've had the pleasure of being a guest on your podcast as well. Tell us about the B2B Leadership Podcast and what your goals are for your podcast and, and tell us about some of the guests that you've had or the way that you choose your guests.

Nils: Yeah. Thank you. so it was wonderful to have you on as a guest, one of my all-time favorite episodes for sure. So you can check it out at b2b, letter B, number two, letter B, leadership podcast.com. Take you to the list of all the, all the episodes we've had. We've been running for just about over a year.

Now it's been fantastic and I've had the great chance to interview everybody from directors to, VPs, to C level executives, and to find out how they got to where they are today. It's oftentimes, you know, we see a title, we see, oh, someone's a Chief Customer officer, and it's like, wow, that must, they must be really smart and really important and I can't imagine ever getting to that level.

And we build them up because of this title. And I wanted to peel the layers back around some of those titles and experiences and. How did you get from your very first leadership position to this incredible place where you're running an organization of 500 or a thousand or 2000 plus people? Right. That was the fascinating thing to me, cuz whenever, I'm just insanely curious, especially when it comes to leadership, and I wanted to ask the questions of how do you get here?

And one of the most fascinating things, Jackie, is that every single guest, so we're talking 60 plus.

Jackie: Mm-hmm.

Nils: Every single guest. I've asked the question, well, how'd you get into your first leadership position? So I've had this great base of data of how people got into their first leadership position, and then how they navigated successive leadership positions after that, whether it was manager, director, VP, C level, whatever.

And the number one response with regards to how did you navigate that first, after getting into that first leadership position and figure out what to do, was not, well, my company gave me a wonderful training program. They told me exactly what I needed to do, right? That was 100%. That has yet to be said on the podcast.

I'm the only person who I've talked to who could honestly say that I went out and got an MBA before I got into a leadership position. Doesn't happen very often, right? The number one thing every single leader has said, when I ask, well, how do you navigate getting into this position, how do you navigate leadership, is I figured it out, right?

And the second most common comment after I figured it out is I could have saved a tremendous amount of time, a tremendous amount of relationships, and a tremendous amount of anguish and anxiety if I had just followed a structured path or if I even knew there was a structured path. And that was a big part of why I created the B2B Leaders Academy.

When I was a leadership coach for the first eight plus years, I only worked with senior leaders and executives one on one because let's be honest, they could pay the bill. It was expensive, and I had great relationships with these people that had tremendous success and it was fun. But my ability to influence was very, very small, considering I could only work with a small number of clients at any one point in time.

So when I made the pivot to go from the one-on-one model to create the B2B Leaders Academy, I saw a huge opportunity to take all these incredible strategies that I worked with the senior leaders and executives on, but make them accessible in a structured way to managers and directors. The people on the front lines who are often the most neglected class when it comes to leadership development.

That was the whole impetus. And if, my belief is that if I can empower, you know, even one leader of a team to look at their leadership in a different way, to empower them with coaching skills, to understand how much psychology really goes into leadership and how to master their time and all the fun things that we cover.

If I can empower just one leader to do that, well, then they're going to empower their team, and they're gonna have a completely different relationship with that group. And let's say it's four people. Well, those four people now have a completely different experience at the all the time they're spending at work, which we know is the single largest percentage of your life right now.

They're feeling really good about their life. And guess what? That translates into their relationships with their family, with their spouses, with their friends. And all of a sudden that empowering one person at the manager director level turns into empowering 50, a hundred, 200 thousands of people because they come into contact with this incredible, person who now feels really good about their work and feels valued and feels seen.

Right? So that is ultimately how the podcast is designed to, you know, shed light on how people actually do this, and then say, there's also an alternative to figuring it out. And if you wanna take the shortcut, come join me in the B2B Leaders Academy.

Jackie: Love it. I love it. Now tell us a little bit about, you know, you talked about a structured path that you have through the B2B Leaders Academy. What are some of the tips that you might have for new leaders and experienced leaders, and how can everyone benefit from coaching?

Nils: Yeah, absolutely. So, and I agree a hundred percent. New leaders, Experienced leaders does not matter, because there is no one person out there, and myself included, that has all of this figured out perfectly, right? It is a constant evolution, but there are foundational principles and strategies that absolutely 100% can make a significant difference.

So in the academy, we have training content broken into what I call our modules. And these modules are designed for about 30 days of focus. So my goal is to get someone to say, Okay, the world of leadership is big, however, for the next 30 days, the only thing I'm gonna focus on are these strategies related to this element here.

Let's say it's coaching. Let's say a leader wants to develop their coaching skills and wants to learn what coaching even is, cuz coaching is not what a lot of people, think it is, which is telling people what to do. It's actually about not having the answers and how to do that in an artful and constructive way.

So they would choose that, hey, in this next month of October, I'm gonna focus on the coaching module. Okay, well, they go and then access the on-demand training content where I walk through step by step, how to use coaching skills, things that I've been doing, oh, for over a thousand hours of my clients over 10 years, and broken down into a step-by-step process to follow.

I start with the premise that leaders are busy. They're already having one on ones with their clients or with their employees. They're giving presentations, doing all that stuff. So my job is to give them small bite size pieces, enable them to integrate these steps into the next immediate conversation that they're going to have.

And if they ask one powerful question and that next conversation, all of a sudden the switch flips. And they see that there's a totally different way to have these conversations and that builds a little bit of momentum. And then they do it in the next conversation, and then they do it in the next conversation.

And slowly. And if you focus just on one area, like coaching for 30 days. I guarantee you will have a dramatic difference and improvement when you follow this process. And so that's what the program is designed to do, is to identify one particular area. Don't worry about the whole world, just one area, go deep.

Get the training on that, and then on the leadership mastermind calls, bring the questions, bring the comments, bring the situations with your team to the table, and get the perspectives from a worldwide group. That's how we make a consistent amount of progress every single month, and that's the secret to our structured path.

Jackie: Awesome. Awesome. Nils, this has been such a great conversation. I wanna just ask, what is the message that you want to leave our listeners with today?

Nils: The single most important thing I want to leave your listeners with is every, every single person. This applies across the board universally. Doesn't matter who you are, where you are in the world, background, anything else, you are the CEO of your career. You are the only person who can make the call on what's right for you.

Your parents can't do this. Your boss can't do this. Your CEO can't do this. Only, the only person in the entire world that can make the call on what's right for you is. And therefore you have all the control. You have all the power, but you have to be willing to invest in yourself to achieve whatever it is that you want to do. Cause you're the CEO. 

So if you look at what you would do as CEO of yourself, Right, and think about, well, if I want to go down this path, if I wanna become a leader, vp, CEO, whatever it is, what are all the things that I'm gonna need to learn and need to know? Then make a list and find somebody who's already done that, pay them and take the path that they have been on, and you will drastically accelerate your progression, just like I did when I went from an individual contributor to a VP in two and a half years. 

You can do the same thing, whatever it is, but ultimately it's up to you and it's your choice. And do not, do not ever wait for someone in your company to tell you can or you cannot attend training. Take, get into, you know, a program, whatever it is, if it's gonna benefit you and you're gonna add more value as a result of going through it, do it regardless of what it costs. Be the one to own that decision. Do not wait for somebody else to make that decision.

Jackie: Mm, Such good advice. Nils, tell us again how we can get in touch with.

Nils: Absolutely. So you can get a free digital copy of bestselling book 30 Day Leadership Playbook by going to b2bleadersacademy.com/book. You can also go to b2bleadersacademy.com and you'll see details about the B2B Leadership Academy, and I personally read and respond to all the emails. that come into me as well. 

So nils@b2bleadersacademy.com. Send me a note, tell me about your situation. Tell me that you heard me on Jackie's podcast and I would love to have, you know, understand where you are and if there's a way that I can help you, I absolutely will. So send me an email and get a copy of the book.

Jackie: Awesome Nils. Thank you so much. I've enjoyed this conversation and please look out for some; work that Nils and I will be doing together for content around inclusive leadership. As always, it's been so much fun talking to you.

Nils: Thank you, Jackie. I was always, I had a blast too.