Accessing Your Massive Untapped Potential With Lynn Thomas

Posted by John Livesay in podcast0 comments

Accessing untapped potential is difficult because you don’t know what you’re capable of. The only way to find out is by challenging yourself. Lynn Thomas, CEO of Thomas Consulting, Inc., joins John Livesay to discuss how you can uncover areas for growth and development. She started as a tax attorney, but that did not stop her from transitioning careers and exploring opportunities, finding what truly works for her. She highlights the importance of emotional intelligence in facilitating your growth to becoming your peak self. The possibilities are endless, and it’s up to you to take the proactive step of coming out of your comfort zone. Find out how you can do that and other advice on dealing with rejection and employee retention.

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Listen to the podcast here

Accessing Your Massive Untapped Potential With Lynn Thomas

Our guest is Lynn Thomas who talks about emotional intelligence as both personal awareness and personal regulation. She has great insight as to when it’s time to leave a job. I’m going to wait for you to find the answers on the episode. I hope you enjoy it.

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Our guest is Lynn Thomas, who’s a dynamic energetic leader with years of experience in customer service and retention. Also, with a proven record selling and sustaining more than 480 long-term clients purchasing best-in-class customer retention, loyalty and experience programs to improve customer and employee retention. Her expertise in creating and executing tailored client presentations and adjusting implementation plans based on relevant information assures client delight. She’s skilled at inspiring others to accept change and adopt new behaviors to deliver extraordinary client experiences and has strong leadership and relationship-building skills. She connects with people instantly and works as intimately as possible in a corporate setting to empower the employees and foster change. Welcome to the show, Lynn.

Thanks so much, John. I’m happy to be here.

Let’s start with your own story of origin. You can go back to when you were a tax attorney at Arthur Andersen or when you got your law degree, wherever you want to start the story.

Growing up, my father loves his job, which I didn’t realize how unique that was. He would come home singing and dancing, having a good day and tell us what was going on. There was this mindset that work was fun that was ingrained in all of us. It’s what allowed me to transition to different careers because as soon as I stopped having fun, my mindset inside went, “This isn’t the right place for me. This isn’t the right job.” I started as a tax attorney at Arthur Andersen. There are aspects of that that I truly loved, but I was getting feedback which is the key way to see what untapped potentials you have. Some people would say kindly, “You’re much more gregarious than we are. You’re comfortable standing up in front of a room talking or speaking.” I was like, “My parents are both speakers. It’s not a big thing.” They said, “Maybe you dress with a lot more colors.”

I got the sense that I was not bad but different. I didn’t hear this as negative. What I got for myself is I loved interacting with people. Not for 5 to 7 years more would I be at the partner level. For me, I don’t mind supporting for being behind the scenes but I’m best out in front or make the greatest impact out in front. I left. I went to Bank of Boston as a private banker, which I loved but in about eighteen months, I boiled it down to five different types of clients. Within about 3 or 4 minutes of meeting somebody, I could figure out which one they were. It wasn’t that challenging. I was recruited over to be a change agent for a division of the bank that was changing. This is an area that had not gone through any change for decades. They want them to change really quickly. The end result was that of the 1,800 people there, 2 people had heart attacks. One had died and was out on disability.

Accessing Untapped Potential: Be willing to go out to the skinny branches, reaching for the best fruit, reaching for the next step.

It was clear they were managing it well. That was great. They acknowledged that but I went out and found somebody who was willing to give a pretty thorough explanation of stress and that amount of stress. Stress is the new age thing back in the late ’80s, early ’90s. I came in and spoke to the head person. I said, “These people are good. They give a discounted rate because they’ve never worked with anybody here. It’s $500.” He said, “No.” I said, “It’s for everybody.” He said, “No.” I said, “I’ll pay for it.” He said, “No.” I remember at that point, the hair stood up in the back of my neck and I was like, “I want to get out of here.” I turned around and I resigned the next day. It was yuck. If this is about using people to get to the corporate bottom line, I’m not part of that. That’s not who I am. There had to be better ways. I knew there were better ways. That’s why I left and founded my own company.

I look back on it like, “Lynn, you gave up three careers.” The end of it wasn’t fun. It wasn’t challenging for me. It wasn’t using all of my untapped potential and some of it being tapped. I was fortunate I wound up working with the gentleman, Scott Jones, who did invent voicemail. He was enthralled with a lot of the work I did. I worked with his company for years. They had gone through a change. They were moving from where they started as a small tech company to a larger company. Usually, when a company moves, production goes down and they couldn’t afford for it to go down. I was working with all the various different teams. I was keeping them all inspired and motivated. I’m encouraging them to embrace the new place and how to make it their own. It wound up that their production has gone up. I was very delighted with the results there. I learned a lot from Scott.

One of the things Scott took away from what I said and took it to another level is doing two things uncomfortable every day. He does ten things uncomfortable every day. He gets a patent about it every two years. People say, “That’s a lot.” I said, “How do you do that?” I’m like, “Does he go anonymous?” I think so. He’s been doing that for years. Those are the source of his a-has or his new insights. Also, what he does is comes up with twenty solutions or options to his greatest personal professional problem every day. When he wakes up, whichever pressing, he forces himself to do that.

The great thing about that is I do it probably twice a week. I’m not as disciplined perhaps as he is. I said, “Scott, why twenty?” He said, “The first 3, 4, 5, everyone’s going to come up with. They are off the top of your head. That’s what we were going to come up with. “You have 5, 6, 7. Up to ten is okay.” When you start getting around 14, 15, 16, you’re combining them. You take a little bit of 3, maybe 5 and 11 and you’re like, “Wow.” The first time I did this, John, I felt this different level of creativity that I tapped into. In school, college, graduate school or law school, nobody ever said come up with twenty solutions.

It’s impossible. You’ll come up with one and you’re done. Let’s double click on some of the things you said here. There are so many great takeaways. The first one is it’s time to leave your job when it’s not fun and not challenging. That combination is the key. Sometimes something could be fun but you’re bored or you’re not having fun and it’s challenging but it’s tedious. When you have neither fun nor a challenge going on, that’s a lethal combo. I had not heard anybody put those two things together as criterion for when you know it’s time to move on. I like that.

[bctt tweet=”Time to leave your job when you are not having fun and not being challenged.” username=”John_Livesay”]

That’s for me. For other people, it may be different but I like to be challenged and I know that will push me deeper into different resources I have and finding the energy. It’s fun to do.

It’s a valuable thing to take a look at and we’ll tie it into EQ. The other thing you said that I like is to do two things that are uncomfortable every day. That could be taking a cold shower. It doesn’t get any more comfortable if they did it. It doesn’t suddenly make it comfortable. One example of that is taking a cold shower. I started doing that and I realize that you get pushed out of your comfort zone and you’re like, “I can tolerate this. Therefore, if anything else happens in my day that is uncomfortable, I’ve already got that muscle working a little bit.”

That’s a great way to do it. I’m not sure taking a cold shower is ever uncomfortable. You may get a little more used to it. Your body is not as shocked but the idea of being uncomfortable, I wish I could say I made this up but I was listening to Tom Peters years ago. He’s, if not the highest, one of the highest-paid consultants in the country. He was talking to all of us in this large audience and he said, “Would you go to work the same way every day, take the same route, the same exits, park around the same place, walk-in with the same people, eat with the same people at lunch, go home the same way, stopped to get the milk or whatever you need to get? At night, you watch the same programs. On the weekend, you hang out with the same people?” I said, “Where the heck you’re supposed to get new ideas?”

That was one of those blinding flashes to the obvious. You’re like, “If I do the same, I’m reinforcing confirmation bias.” What he said is, “Every time I go to the airport, I pick up a magazine I know nothing about. The rest of you pick a magazine you know something about to be comfortable.” I’ve started doing things like that, doing hobbies or things I’m not good at all. I’ve learned different things about myself. Doing two things uncomfortable every day becomes fun. For Scott, he needs no coffee or orange juice. When you wake up and you’ve done 10 years of 10 a day, you run out of them.

He’s like, “What am I going to do?” He’s like jazzed. He’s like, “We got to come up with ten things.” He knows the value of it but it’s his fun way to start the day. The reason we do that is if we stay in our comfort zone, what we all wind up in and it could be an exaggeration but not is a lead line coffin. We die if you stay comfortable. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I advocate if you want to reach new potentials and see new abilities come forth, which we all have, if you stay comfortable, you’re probably not going to find those. I don’t have any judgment on that. It’s wasn’t for me.

Accessing Untapped Potential: You can always learn something from a hardship.

I’m working with an insurance agency out in California. They brought in a new CEO. The first time they’re comfortable, they’re going to fire them because they said they want to be on the leading edge. That’s daring. If somebody said the fruit grows on the end of the skinny branches, that’s where the fruit grows. Sometimes going out there, you may fall. You learn your lessons. You stand there. You wipe yourself off and you climb back up the tree because that’s where life’s happening. Be willing to go out to the skinny branches, reaching for the best fruit, reaching for the next step. Maybe a mistake and you fall. “What did I learn?” Go back. At least for me with what I’m doing is all different types of skills to help clients because I don’t know in any organization what is needed for them to reach the levels of where they want to go and be.

This concept of if we’re not stretching our comfort zone every day that we will be in the same zone. My observation is even if you want to stay in your comfort zone, you can’t. It keeps shrinking if you’re not pushing and growing it. I wanted your opinion on that. Have you noticed that in your own life or others where they go, “I’m not going to learn any new things,” then you’re like, “Not only are you not growing but that comfort zone gets smaller and smaller?” You can’t stay where you are. You’re either growing or shrinking. There is no, “I’ll just stay here and coast.”

What I say when I’m doing a speaking engagement or something is if you do live your work the same way now as you did yesterday, you’re falling behind the crowd. Every day it was uncomfortable to do something new and different. That’s important because everybody’s out there, especially with COVID. COVID has taken us all into amazing uncomfortable stuff. I don’t think there’s anybody that’s been able to escape it. It’s been uncomfortable. It’s produced anxiety, stress, PTSD, grief and lots of horrific situations. It’s not positive but I’m a person who always believes that I can always learn something from hardship, from difficulty. There are always opportunities. There’s something always there.

What I see with COVID is that all of a sudden, the way companies can attract and retain top employees is by giving them almost unlimited development choices. Employees are thinking, “Am I going to be employable in 2, 3, 5, 7 years?” Who knows? The only protection is whatever your job is or whatever your skills are, you have to be on the leading edge, working with those on the leading edge or somehow engaging with them.

People say, “I don’t want to change.” Let’s say, “Let’s be clear. If you don’t want to change, that’s okay.” You’re rapidly becoming obsolete because things are changing. I read somewhere that COVID has accelerated the pace of digital technology for 4 to 6 years. It’s put us in 2020 where we’d be at 2025 and maybe people will feel like, “This feels more like 2025 or what I thought it would feel,” but we’re here. A lot of companies, a lot of Millennials and Gen Z say they are assaulted by the level of technology at some companies. The insurance legacies still hang onto some of that. It’s like, “Just give it up.” You have to make sure you’re giving your employees the best tools, especially those who are technologically savvy. You want them on the best.

[bctt tweet=”Do two things that make you uncomfortable every day.” username=”John_Livesay”]

Maybe you’ll see, “That will make this even faster, better, more robust, deeper or whatever the quality is that they want it.” Listen to them because the people older are not going to probably come up wit6h those ideas. That generation is going to figure out how to do those things. Listen to employees. When I find companies saying, “How do we bring them back?” My newsletter is coming out. I talk about it in that. What I find the best, John, is a series of decisions. Not one decision because nobody knows. Maybe months from now, COVID is going to get worse. Maybe it will get much better. We don’t know.

To make any decision permit, it’s like, “We’re going to start with everybody coming in two days a week. Let’s say Tuesday and Thursday.” Those days that they’re in, give them a reason to be in there. Set up meetings, collaborative and have people socially talking about what they did over COVID. What worked and what didn’t work. How did they deal with stress? Engage in them. I read about one other show telling about a client. It was a high-tech guy but he did is he changed the company. On the whole first floor, he’d put sofas and allow their tables that could come off and they could use. Most people were doing work there as they were talking with each other and there’d be much more productive.

Some people went upstairs after that idea but when people came in, the first place they went was the sofas. It was open and it was free food. He said people are more productive than ever. People want to come in, which he didn’t know what was going to work but he wanted to make it as attractive as possible. Ask your employees what they do like about working at home. Can you recreate some of that at work? Do they like the fact that they can take a break and go for a walk, run some errands, chat with some people, sit down or do yoga? What is it that people are doing? Is it Peloton? Get a few machines around. Who knows? To replace an employee, 300% or 500% of that employee’s compensation and that’s just to get on the skills. It will take 2 to 6 years for them to be as productive. If you have people who are talented, sit down. “What’s it going to take to keep you here? I want you.” If you don’t give it to them, they’re going to leave. You can sit back.

Don’t wait for them to have another offer before you try to keep them, is what you’re saying.

You make it so engaging for them. They’re heard, seen and valued.

Accessing Untapped Potential: If you don’t want to change, you’re rapidly becoming obsolete because things are changing.

That’s what people want. It doesn’t change from childhood when we jumped in the pool and say, “Look at me, mom or dad.” We want to be seen, heard and feel valued. I had an experience of what you’re describing. I was attending an internet marketing party virtually. That was originally in Austin. They started having them in person. He said, “We’re going to take something that we did on the Zoom calls, which is the random breakout rooms where people would meet new people and make it happen here in the real event.” Depending on what your name tag color is a number, you’re going to be going randomly into a corner to talk to people. We found that most people keep talking to the people they already know.

We’re taking a virtual experience where it was random that people liked and recreating it in a real-life experience. That’s an example of what you’re talking about. Figure out what people liked about the virtual and figure out a way to make that new real-life situation going back to the office. I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you about emotional intelligence, EQ because this is one of your areas of expertise that gives you these amazing results of employee retention and productivity. Let’s start with your definition of what it is and what the biggest mistake you see people making with it.

The higher emotional intelligence, the ability that gives you to be able to use your feelings and emotions, understand other people’s situations, use them, harness them, to be the best you can be and your team can be. I’ve been to some organizations where I had a situation where this one woman was not perceived her value to exceed everybody else’s. She was 11, 12, on a 10-point scale. Other managers didn’t value her. She thought she was the best and had great relations with everybody. When she took emotional intelligence, it was low. I’ll call her Harriet. I say, “Harriet, you didn’t come out high in emotional intelligence.” “It’s just a test. Dismiss it.”

I said, “Let me show you what the average of the company was. You’re twenty points less.” “No big deal.” I said, “It’s not a big deal but it’s significant if we look at some of the feedback you’ve gotten from the other managers.” “I’ve been here longer and they’re jealous of me.” She had her story. I said, “I don’t think it’s the whole story.” She was so blinded because she said, “If I’ve said that, I didn’t mean to.” What people don’t get and this is something that took me a long time to get too is I had to take a lot of responsibility for what I say how it lands on who I’m speaking to. She said, “I didn’t mean to hurt them. I don’t mean to hurt their feelings.”

“Because I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, I’m not responsible,” which is so insulting.

[bctt tweet=”EQ is personal awareness.” username=”John_Livesay”]

You should have the feelings you have. It’s invalidating their feelings and then dismissing them because “I didn’t mean to so therefore you’re wrong to have them.” It’s like, “No.” It’s taking the risk. One is people take responsibility for how it lands. If you get feedback regularly, you listen, you interrupt or you roll your eyes. Whatever behaviors people do, many of them are not aware of it so it’s great to give people feedback if they’re open to it.

Emotional intelligence versus personal awareness is the beginning of it. Only 1/3 of us, John, at any moment, know what we’re feeling. You have 2/3 of people not even know what they’re feeling. That’s just the beginning. There’s this thing I use called the feeling wheel. If you Google that, people have about twelve different words through their feelings. “I’m mad, angry, sad, pissed or happy.” The more you can expand that, “I’m annoyed. I’m content,” the wider range of feelings we can experience. One of the ways to increase personal awareness is to become more aware of your feelings. What triggered them? Why are you feeling them? If only a third of us are doing that, there’s 2/3 that has a lot to learn about that. That’s not good or bad.

With COVID, people better be much more aware of the feelings because we may inadvertently stomp on someone’s feelings. There’ll be people that we feel frustration, sadness, anger and do not know what to do with it because those typically didn’t come up much at work. I predict they’ll be coming up a lot at work because they’re going to be missing the old or how they did it the old, not liking the new or who they’re sitting next to, who they work with. This person didn’t come back and they really miss that person. It’s going to take a while for companies to go in that.

That’s personal awareness, then personal regulation, which is that people are able to regulate your feelings internally. You don’t yell. You don’t shout. You’re not abrupt. Any of the ways that I call anger leaks out like, “I’m not mad. Why should I be mad?” “I’m not hysterical. This is not hysterical. Do you want to see hysterical? I’ll show you hysterical.” I can manage that. Sometimes that’s taking deep breaths and say, “I need a moment. I’m triggered here.” Be honest with employees, “Can we take five because I need to go take a walk, I need to go to the ladies’ room or something?” Be aware and vulnerable. We’re going to die with triggers. It’s the way we’re built. For me, managing them, owning them and saying, “This is not appropriate for me to respond because I’m not going to respond from a solid place and happy place inside me or a positive place.” That’s emotional regulation.

Emotional Intelligence 2.0

That’s the area I find is probably where there are lots of blind spots. A lot of people are conflict avoidant and they don’t want to admit it. I apply it to mine. He finally said, “I think I minimize that conflict. It’s about to blow up the company.” He saw it separately as each individual event. I pointed out, “Didn’t you see that in that meeting? Every time you said risk, this person is like, “That’s not a big deal.” You still check it out and you never checked it out.” I forgot about that. He used to get back to me.” “He doesn’t want to take risks and you’re conflict avoidance so nothing’s moving forward.”

We live in our own world. We live in our own brains. We think the whole world is thinking and operating like us. As he became more aware of that, he would hold people accountable and responsible for getting back to him but he didn’t see that. A programmed from childhood is a lot of what gets through our particular activating system in the back and what we think is important. He probably learned comfort zone is not important so I’m not going to pay attention to them. They’re pretty important.

Let’s talk about something in terms of what most people do whether they’re in sales or not, which is rejection. How does EQ come into play with rejection, especially around the feeling wheel? Most people when they get rejected feel either sad or mad. It certainly can trigger previous times when they got rejected. Maybe even in their personal life, not in business life. If a client stands you up or cancels at the last minute, has some flimsy excuse and it’s the 2nd or 3rd time they’ve done it, then if you’re angry from being mad, you’re like, “Why do people think they can treat me like this?” You feel not seen and heard or certainly don’t feel valued. How can someone pull up from that downward spiral using EQ when the rejection stuff is kicking in, either they’re mad and/or sad?

I would say feel fully in a safe place. I believe in expressing feelings in safe ways. The best sound for anger is breaking glass. You can send away for this ball that you can throw it and break the glass. My psychiatrist told me about that. It feels great or yelling in the car safely. It’s expressing it in some way. Sometimes you’re talking through it for myself. If it’s the 2nd or 3rd time, if that happened to me, I’d say, “I have to have some accountability here.” If the person canceled once and had a flimsy excuse the second time. I went back a third time. That’s my motto on my face. I gave anybody a second chance and if they cancel, it’s about them. They didn’t want to deal with whatever I was offering. It wasn’t the right time. They were willing to speak up. They don’t want to say, “I’m a good salesperson or something.” They don’t want to say no.

Let me get that forward. It’s about them. As a salesperson, if somebody says no, whoever at that point was on the phone talking to them as you were talking to them, anybody else, they would have said the same thing. It’s about them. They’re saying no to something. The real question to you, John, is what did they say no to? It takes seven noes to get to a yes typically. They say, “No, it’s not the time. No, I don’t like what you’re presenting. No, I don’t need it.” It’s like, “I hear your no. Could you tell me why?” You may find out it’s not what you’re thinking. Not all noes are equal.

We love to jump to take it all personally. A lot of it has to do with that. Their whole life is out of control. They’re canceling everything. You only experience it on your end. That for me is one way to deal with a rejection thing where I go, “Am I taking this personally?” Also, the mindset of scarcity or abundance comes into play. “Am I putting all my eggs in one basket? If this person doesn’t buy from me or like me, does that mean no one’s ever going to like me or buy from me?” No. They’ve shown you your true colors. Thank you. I get it. I’m not going to keep pursuing this. I’ve got an abundance of people who will show up and do want what I want. I don’t have to get into this downward spiral of believing that things never work out. In fact, the opposite is the mantra that things are working out for me all the time.

[bctt tweet=”Feel fully in a safe place. Express feelings in safe ways.” via=”no”]

If someone’s giving you a true no, that’s great because there’s one fewer prospect for you to talk with. If it’s a true no, you’d investigate it, it’s great. That’s to you. “She’s the best. Let me move on.”

Any last thought or quote you want to leave us with?

I don’t have a last quote but I want to give an example with shirts. If I go and I pick out one blouse, the blouses don’t sell, “She rejected me. Why does she do that?” “It’s not about the blouse.” It’s like, “This is what I prefer that works.” Other ways to untap the potential is to put yourself in unusual, different situations like eating different food. When we were young, every Sunday we’d go eat at lots of different restaurants with all the different kinds of cuisine. My parents would say, “Try it. You’ll like it.” There are very few foods I don’t like. We go to different places to dance, have fun and see all that.

Look upon the world as being curious as a fun place. “Where do I find out new ways to do things, new ways that people handle? What is the new perspective? How can I see this differently?” Ask somebody, “If you were in my shoes, how would you see this?” Finishing with emotional intelligence, the relation management part is the hardest and that’s the fourth quadrant. That’s how you manage. My relationship with my daughter vis-à-vis my relationship with my client. It takes a lot of emotional and social awareness. Sometimes people want to jump into those and it’s very hard to do. I’d say the book Emotional Intelligence 2.0 is a great one. It gives ideas of how you can increase them all. If you think about EQ, you can always increase it. Not like IQ. IQ always increases and easily. They tell you easy, fun things to do. Explore life, have fun. Be like my friend Scott where you wake up saying, “What am I going to do uncomfortable?” Enjoy.

What is the best way for people to reach to you if they want to work with you as a consultant or hire you as a speaker?

My email is [email protected]. I welcome any questions. I can also tell you how to say anything to anybody and make it sound nice. I’ve been told. I’m happy to do that if you don’t know how to say something. It’s possible that you said a lot of empathy over there in however I want to hear it.

Lynn, thanks so much for sharing your EQ, your passion and encouraging us to get out of our comfort zones.

It’s my pleasure. Thanks so much, John.

Important Links

• Emotional Intelligence 2.0
• [email protected]
• Lynn Thomas
• Better Selling Through Storytelling Method Online Course

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