In this effective episode, Ulrike Seminati, Founder & CEO of Empowerel GmbH, shares how she turns leaders into powerful change agents by enabling them to lead and communicate with impact, confidence, and authenticity.
You will discover:
– Why it’s so important to be clear on you you really are
– Your role as a leader in helping others achieve that same clarity
– Why sharing the “why” is not enough
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello Hello and welcome welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast and I am here with yet another high demand coach, that is the one the only Ulrike Seminati. Now in the ever changing world of today, where leaders are required to inspire others, Ulrike a globally operating coach, trainer and consultant brings a wealth of experience as former seat as a former C level executive, to her authentic leadership and impactful communication expertise by blending the latest self development methodologies with her extensive practical experience in leading across all levels of hierarchy, Ulrike enables leaders to establish trust and lead change through effective communication. Now, Ulrike ‘s clients benefit from her pragmatic and user friendly tools that allow them to make lasting improvements in their organizations. And she is here with us today. Ulrike welcome to the show. So excited to have you here. I was nerding out a little bit, as I was researching for this episode, there’s a lot of fun stuff we’re gonna be able to cover here, especially for folks that are leading through change. But before we get there, I’d love to take a step back and say, What were you doing before jumping into coaching and consulting? And how did that ultimately lead you to make the leap?
Ulrike Seminati
Yeah, thank you, first of all, for having me. It’s a real pleasure to be here. Yeah, well, so I had a pretty successful 23 year long corporate career. And I climbed all the hierarchy ladder, I started as an assistant, this nice story either ended, I was a C level executive. And I was working mainly or only in corporate communications, I was leading corporate communications, usually in a global level across cultures, nations from all across the globe. And what I realized is, especially when when I looked really at an organization from this, from this ivory tower perspective of a sea level, I realized that it’s really all about the leaders, that you can have the most glossy and most expensive corporate communication campaigns. But if your leaders aren’t able to translate it to their teams, in their own words, nothing will end. I mean, you can do whatever you want. The only real channel that works in communication, on a corporate level, are the leaders, it’s human to human communication, we now realize that, well, this is really mid thing. I mean, everybody speaks about it for decades. But it’s not working is still in so many organizations, this is a big problem. And even for leaders, they often think it’s the most difficult task that they have. And so I thought, I want to make a change here. And this is here I am. Why I’m doing all these programs with leaders across the globe actually, around, disdain yourself, and still communicating with impact. And how can you bring these two things actually together?
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow. Wow, remarkable. So fast forward, then to today. You’re working with leaders all across the world? And what would you say some of the most important work that you’re doing with your clients?
Ulrike Seminati
I think the most important work is really on understanding, first of all, who you are. And many leaders never take that time, because you are in such a routine of being someone at work. I call it a corporate persona. It’s like a code you put on when you step into the office, even into the virtual office, it’s the same thing. And they forgot really to question first of all, why am I motivated? Is it motivating me at all? And if not, how can I motivate myself in an intrinsic way that really works for me, and that is very, very personal, and maybe has nothing at first sight to do with the actual goal. They can get motivation, a secondary motivation. And I think this is the most important thing that I really want to bring to leaders. And I realize it’s very hard for leaders very hard to not jump right away into how do I communicate to my team? How can I motivate my team, and just to stay a bit with themselves alone, it’s so hard this is we don’t want to look into ourselves as if they think they will discover something that they might not like or don’t want to see. And I always say this the most important step once once you have done that, you can relate to others in a totally different way. But if you never do that, it will always feel like a very painful exercise you need to put a lot of effort in. It’s not coming easy. And you need to make that that first. And I think this is something that I have not seen in many trainings, even during my corporate times. Because quickly people jump into how do I how do I work with my team? How do I lead them actually, instead of leading myself first?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. I found that there’s almost an embarrassment at not knowing the answer, right? Like how you we take a step back and you’re working with successful people, right? It’s not like it’s not the first time around the block. They’ve figured out a thing or two. And yet, there’s still this missing answer to one of the most fundamental questions Who Am I? And then it’s also a little awkward to answer it, right, it can come across as there’s all kinds of self talk that goes around it, either it’s too grandiose and we try to talk ourselves down or it’s not grandiose enough, and we tried to turn it into someone else’s goals. Why is it that you think that we can go and regularly do go so far in our career without answering this one simple question.
Ulrike Seminati
I think it depends on your ambition. And you can go far I went far without answering this question. But it was never happy with my results. So that’s a good sign also to see if you’re not happy with your results, fully, fully happy feeling fulfilled at work? This thing is certainly the missing one. Yeah. And you can go very far, because you can very easily orient yourself have a focus on results, you know, on processes on your performance, for example, on any kind of growth, you can even have some kind of personal growth without actually answering that question. But he will always feel that something’s missing. And that something is not really genuine, really authentic. There’s, it’s like a foundation that is missing, and everything is always relatively stressful, then you will feel like, I don’t know like walking maybe on water, which we can’t do. Nobody feels like, well, we’re there’s no solid ground, here it can, everything could fall apart any minute here. So there’s certain kinds of insecurity that you might feel, because you never have answered that question. And because you always try to come across as someone as someone who’s professional, or very competent in a specific area, or a good speaker, or what have you. And you never actually accept really who you are. And that means that you focuses a lot on yourself, probably a lot on self doubt, even if you might look very confident on the outside. And a lot of energy is lost there. And this energy is missing to connect with others. And in turn, it’s missing as well, to convince others and to create buy in and trust in everything that you actually want to create.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So sometimes, as leaders, we almost at least in the short run, have a vested interest in not opening up a can of worms, right? And so what do you think a leaders role is in we’ve talked a lot about them finding this out for themselves. But if we take it a step further, what is their role in helping their team members to find it out for themselves as well.
Ulrike Seminati
Their role is, first of all, once they understood, step number one, you have to understand yourself, once I have done that, they have a better idea of who the others might be, because they better understand their motivation. So they can understand the gap between their own motivations and motivations of the team members. And they might be totally different. You might be a leader who loves to grow, who lost to perform, will ask to achieve results. But he might have team members who just want to stay in that routine. And they are absolutely happy with that they never made me want to step up into another position, for example. And for many leaders who have that mindset of growth, they will never understand that and I think everybody wants to step up. And he will treat people in a way that they can’t relate to because this one team member that does not want to step up will shy away from saying it because these days, that’s not what people like to hear in the buyer, superior management areas. And I think it’s very important to understand that. And then you can see, you know, other people have just different motivations. Some they’re just so strongly people oriented, that results are really secondary for them in factual results, facts and figures. They want people they want to read and connections with people, that’s what counts and some other people love everything that’s new and understanding these very different ways of seeing the world. And also reflecting on the fact okay, maybe what I am saying here, what I think is super attractive, what I put as bullet points in my email, maybe what that other person actually it’s not only not attractive, it may create resistance, it might create even fear or stress. Because what I’m saying here for them is pure stress. For me, it’s attractive for them, it’s stress. So you need to really think about and take that time and I know many leaders never take the time to like map out your team understand where are they what their motivations are, they may be totally softer on the opposite side than you are. And then you need to help them to to come up with their perspective and to value that perspective, too. And that is actually the big difference. It’s also about seeing the difference, but about valuing it as well, because the other perspective is as valuable as yours. And the combination actually makes the strength of a team.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yes. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. The word that I like to use when working with teams, because it’s hard to kind of wiggle around because most folks will kind of mentally assent to accepting others. I accept that you are different from me now that takes some work in and of itself, right. There’s some understanding that has to happen to get there. It’s a great step in the right direction. But I found it’s not enough and it’s very difficult to sustain acceptance because it feels like it’s coming at a cost to us. And what I’ve found and what I encourage my my teams I work with to do is honor that difference, right? If you can, like you’re saying to value it, not just to tolerate it, but to really value the strength that it brings to a team. And brings me to a similar question comes back to this idea of how do we motivate others? And? Well, the question that I have for you is, why is sharing the why not enough? Right? You have leaders who come in, and they’re inspired by vision, and they think everyone’s inspired by vision. And yes, we need a shared vision. But sometimes that’s not enough. What’s missing?
Ulrike Seminati
Because you will, why is not there? Why? Pretty simple actually, your why is not there. Why if you get away from your organization, because they will communicate, I mean, I did that with my corporate roles all the time you communicate the key methods know why you know why we do this huge change project now. And the thing is, your why is not everyone else’s, why everybody will see it from a different perspective, and you need to give them a hint to find their why. And that is the art actually, of communicating. So as a leader, you need to translate it first for yourself, and then you need to translate it to your team members. And this ideally, at least to the direct reports in an individual way, because they will all need to find a different y and even help them to find their y you know that they see you okay, the Y of the organization is we want growth, we want more profit, we want what have you expansion into a new area or something else like that. But that’s not a why for a team member. They don’t care. Why should they it’s not their company. So we need to find a why for ourselves, and then a why actually for them. And this is why the why. For me, there’s not one why it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. It’s a one size fits all approach does not work in communication across different levels of hierarchy.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And so just how you outline that, and you do it so gracefully, that we might think it’s easy. Oh, there’s some challenges to this. But for leaders, it’s not just about kind of parroting what you heard. It’s not a game of telephone, right? Where it just here’s the thing, go read the statement, and now everyone’s on board with the change. This is a dynamic process. And so what are the unique challenges looking through the lens of maybe an owner or a senior executive? Who has to lead change through others who are actually leading the change? Right, and do it through other leaders? What are some of the unique challenges that that that that senior leader will face? And how can they overcome it?
Ulrike Seminati
I think the biggest challenge that senior leaders face is what they perceive as a difference in speed of execution. Because you will have profiles and people who are very fast, we embrace change easily who go for it, no matter the race that just try it out and just go for it. It’s a player attitude. But you will have the majority of people who do not have that player attitude, the majority of human beings do not have that we are not made like this, because it’s too risky for all species, actually, on a biological level. So quite interesting. But you will have people that you might perceive as slow, especially as a senior leader, if you have a result orientation, then you want two things to be executed quite fast, because you have your own expectations around that. And I think this is the biggest difficulty to understand that those who are not the fastest ones, does not mean that they hinder the process, at least not unlimited long term. Because those who embrace it extremely fast, become very quickly also impatient, and then do not execute any more very well on a detailed level. And they will make mistakes over time because they get bored. Whereas the ones that you have seen like being the snow adaptors where you felt like resistance and you found it’s painful, you will see that once they have been brave to change. And when they found out why to come back through this when they found their way. And when you help them, the process is much faster, yeah, with it on their wives, they will then be in it. And they will be in it in a very steady way. So they will deliver reliably on that over a long term of the long run. And that is very interesting, then as a leader to understand that the slower ones might be your biggest assets in the long term. And but you also need the fast ones, obviously, to get things going in the beginning. And to actually juggle with these two extremes. I think that’s a real art of leadership. And like I said before, honoring both versions in the same way because today we are very much the fast paced thing. Yes, but that means that we jump from one thing to the next we never finish anything. And over time, this would create chaos if you had not the long to slow adaptors who work on the long term. And I think honoring both that is the challenge and it depending on your own profile, obviously. But that is the challenge and but that is also the whole treasure that you have within this diversity.
Scott Ritzheimer
And I love how how you laid that out because he You can’t do it with just one, right. And what we have a tendency to do, depending on the organization, depending on the the leader or the founder, if they’re still involved, I found that we have a bias toward a couple of these styles, right? The ones that either most aligned with us or all we’re most useful to us in the past. And as they leave, they come at the cost of some of these other styles, right? Where if you’re more slow and steady, you’re going to bias toward the slow and steady if you’re more aggressive and assertive and risk seeking, you’re going to bias in that way. And I am yet to find teams that can sustain success without both for any extended period of time. Has that been your experience?
Ulrike Seminati
Yes, absolutely. I think you need teams who have both, because if you have to only to study once, obviously nothing new will ever happen ever studied outside, they will not search for it will avoid it at any price. But if you have only the ones who are very fast, quick adapters all the time, you will never finish anything, it will never ever. So those are they have all doped but on sides and upsides and I think this is important to understand. So diversity is great, as well as you know, the two other areas, which is more result orientation versus people orientation here as well, you need to have a balance in your team. Because pure result orientation, yes, very result driven. But for some people that’s just really too cold as a work environment, and you need that balance. And only people orientation also will not work because then for the slightest little uncomfortable situation, they will shy away from going for it. And then you will never resolve your conflicts and you cannot move forward either. So you need this balance. And this is why we value so much diversity, at least when people speak about teams. Now, managing diversity is much more work than managing non diversity. Obviously, it’s so much easier to manage five clones of yourself. Because you know what they think they always agree with you, you’re always on the same page. But on the long run, it doesn’t really work it will not create new results, innovation or growth at the end.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. So we’re gonna there’s a question that I have that I like to ask all my guests, and it’s this what is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing that you wish everybody watching your listing today knew?
Ulrike Seminati
I think it’s after this talk, maybe not so much of a secret anymore. Rather rephrase it differently. There is no such thing as one reality. It does not exist. Your reality is your reality. And the only reality for you, and not for anyone else on this planet, 7 billion people that we have to have 7 billion different realities. And we always forget that you always think what we see how we see the world through that lens. That is the reality. That’s what’s good or bad, interesting, not interesting, and so on and so forth. And it makes the life easier. But it’s not it’s not true.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I’m reminded of I think it was seven habits of highly effective leader, but he says we see the world not as it is, but as we’re conditioned to see it. And you’re 100% right, and going back to those different styles, we’ll all perceive the world through a different lens, right. And it’s and I found that the real truth sits in the midst of all of them, and being able to bring those together. So fantastic point could not agree more. Now, there’s some folks listening to this and they recognize they’ve gotten out of balance that they they’ve overvalued you know, the the go getters or the results oriented folks and done that at the cost of some of the people orientation and the systematization that’s needed over the long haul. And they want help. So how can they find out more about you and the work that you do where they can work in they get in touch with you.
Ulrike Seminati
So the easiest is probably LinkedIn. You type my name Ulrike Seminati and you contact me there another possibility obviously my website with my sudden very complicated name ulrikeseminati.com but you can get in touch directly via the website as well. And yeah, I do a lot of things for groups for teams for leaders is on an individual level in one on one coaching as well. It’s all across the globe. So I do a lot remote no problem with that. And yeah, can give you really have the keys, first of all to yourself and then how to reach out to others.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. What’s our thanks for being on the show just an honor and privilege to have you here and for those of you watching listening today, you know that your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did. And I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Ulrike Seminati
The ever-changing world of today requires leaders who inspire others. Ulrike Seminati, a globally operating coach, trainer, and consultant, brings a wealth of experience as a former C-level executive to her authentic leadership and impactful communication expertise. By blending the latest self-development methodologies with her extensive practical experience in leading across all levels of hierarchy, she enables leaders to establish trust and lead change through effective communication. Ulrike’s clients benefit from her pragmatic and user-friendly tools that will allow them to make lasting improvements.
Want to learn more about Ulrike Seminati’s work at Empowerel? Check out her website at https://ulrikeseminati.com
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