Matt Cunningham joins me on the podcast to chat about what leading with kindness looks like and how we can do it through conversations that actually produce value. Not only are conversations the key aspect of being a great leader, they also produce understanding for one another. Kindness is the key to these conversations though. Without kindness, we as humans lack empathy for our employees, valueable communication, and relationships that produce far greater results.
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Full transcription below (may contain typos...):
[00:00:00] Matt: [00:00:00] start with kindness, ask great questions through managing the conversational model. So have that skill based, have that soft skills skillset homed to, to the best that you can.
And finally use a product like Waypoint. So make sure that you are set time and goal and space for these people that you're managing and these team members that you're working with to genuinely find out how they're doing.
Keerstyn: [00:00:24] This week on the podcast, we have Matt Cunningham. He is a business coach. who owns Epic kindness, but she, he is also joining forces with our team here at Waypoint. just start selling way point too. really being an influential person within our team. We're really excited that he's joining us. and so to get to know him better, we decided to do a podcast.
not only does he talk about the benefits of simply just having conversations with your team? He also talks about leading with kindness. And talks about why it's so important as a leader, as a manager, as an [00:01:00] employee. And it was simply just a person. In general, we go through some of those ideas that you might have about leading with kindness and if it's genuinely valuable and if it's the way to go. And I believe it is after I hearing Matt talk a little bit more about it. so yeah, we'll jump right in and. get ready to learn about leading with kindness
welcome to the podcast, Matt. I'm really excited that you're here with us today. some background for all of our listeners, Matt Cunningham. Has just joined us, and is working with us, as a Salway point. he is a business coach, who has been in the industry for about 20 years.
So has a lot of knowledge and background. and, yeah. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about yourself and how you got involved in your work and what you do now?
Matt: [00:01:45] Sure. Sounds good. really for the past 20 years, I have spent time helping people be better communicators. I focused on management, management practices and how people generally just don't oftentimes don't know how to manage [00:02:00] people.
They get promoted and they have not had experience managing others. And there's some challenges that come with that and managing people in general has some challenges. So for the past 20 years, I've been a manager, I've been a leader, I've been a business owner and, I've taken a coaching approach as often as I could.
Which is basically seek to listen, find out what someone's trying to say before you try to understand and help them solve. A lot of managers do that really well. And a lot of people don't. So I, I started, gosh, I started about five years ago. I started a coaching business and I am a professional, executive coach and I help managers kind of work through some of those challenges with their people to help them retain them.
Not only that, but. Also too, to just help them in general, as they communicate and have more conversations and better conversations with their team.
Keerstyn: [00:02:51] Interesting. So what were some of those pains that you saw in the workplace as a manager and as an employee? what were [00:03:00] some of those struggles that managers were going through and, yeah.
why do they need this? The
Matt: [00:03:06] biggest pains I saw in general were. Managers, struggling to connect, right? You have a team you're working hard, everybody's doing their day to day, and there's a struggle to engage. There's a struggle to connect to. There's a struggle to help people feel connected to the team or to the company.
So what I, that's the biggest thing. And then inevitably managers are trying their best. They're working hard. They're going through all these experiences. they're getting promoted. They're in meetings and their team members are leaving.
Keerstyn: [00:03:37] Yeah. And why are they leaving?
Matt: [00:03:41] The number one challenge in the U S right now is employees feeling engaged.
They just don't feel engaged. They don't feel connected to the company. They don't feel connected to their leader or their direct hire their direct manager. And they struggled too. Everything is, looks better somewhere else. And oftentimes I think people don't realize [00:04:00] until they've laughed at the grass really was never greener.
Just looked a little bit better. And, yeah, they. They take off and they run into the same challenges because those connections are happening everywhere or those disconnections as it might be. Yeah,
Keerstyn: [00:04:13] absolutely. What are some specific things that managers can do to start upping this engagement rate, start retaining their people more, making the grass actually greener versus having it look a certain way, but it not actually being true.
Matt: [00:04:30] I, the number one thing that managers can do is connect, get regularly scheduled, conversations with their team and keep those conversations. It is truly, a struggle for managers to do that because of the schedules because of the day-to-day work. And I know that people get sent to different events or conferences or trainings, and they learn how to communicate better and they learn some great [00:05:00] skills and that is extremely helpful, but they come back to work and the schedule takes back over and they may not be able to use those.
So the number one thing that people can do is just schedule regular touch basis, regular one-on-ones with their team. And find out how they're really doing. And I'd say the second thing that they can do is make sure that they're understanding what a, a great effective conversation looks like.
Managers oftentimes get so busy trying to solve that. They forget that it's just the person sitting next to them, just like them. And there's, you're dealing with the same challenges. And so understanding what good conversation and communication looks like is key.
Keerstyn: [00:05:41] Yeah. And how do you actually have the effective communication?
I know that some people are like, Oh, I'll schedule the one-on-one, but then they go to, and they're like, what do we actually talk about? what are some good questions or good, scenarios that would, play out in these conversations?
Matt: [00:05:58] That's great. That's a great question. [00:06:00] I, the biggest thing that you can possibly do is get yourself some questions lined up that are open-ended questions.
Start your questions with what or how. Make sure that you're really trying to engage and listen to the answers. but really to answer the question, just get a list half, have some things written down and prepare yourself for what that might look like and there's tools out there. It's one of the reasons I, I joined Waypoint.
Wait points tool on helping people connect and really keep their one-on-ones and setting goals and having a slotted time that you're going to meet with them. All t...
