Jun 22, 2021
Nick Smarrelli
But at the end of it, you know, you can't be listening to the reality. It can't be you can't be talking about how fantastic things are when things don't feel fantastic because then you lose all credibility and that's what people want. I think in leadership these days.
I can get really snarky when technology is not working well for me…just ask my family. Chromecast under functioning, the link refusing to load. All of it can seem like a lot. But the biggest frustrations come when the technology that I need for work isn’t WORKING. So, when I call the support desk, I am bringing a lot to that interaction.
My guest today is Nick Smarelli, he is the CEO of GadellNet Consulting and a big part of what his team does is troubleshoot those complex, frustrating tech calls. Nick is talking today about how he keeps his staff engaged, supporting their well-being in the midst of a pandemic, giving them what they need so they can give the customers what they need.
Nick is open, insightful, and has great tips for anyone who is leading through a time of crisis and I anticipate that you will get as much out of the interaction as I did!
First, a little bit more about Nick. Nick joined GadellNet in 2010 after working with Ingersoll Rand. He studied psychology and finance as an undergrad and, I love this line from his bio, “Nick views all business decisions from the lens of blending both humanity and fiscal responsibility to achieve incredible outcomes.” And I think you will hear that impulse in his interview.
GadellNet grew over his 10 tenure, from 4 employees to 150 across three states. GadellNet has also earned honors as an Inc. “Best Places to Work”.
Nick is an ultramarathon runner, a father of three, a spouse of over 12 years, and an avid supporter of the community. Nick has a podcast, “Zero Excuses”, where I had the pleasure of being a recent guest, where he speaks to guests on the power of the human potential – and how to live a self-accountable life. He is currently pursuing his Masters Degree in Industrial Organizational Psychology from Harvard University.
We began our conversation talking about early morning workouts. Nick is often up in the wee hours of the morning to exercise or to get work done, which feel slike a necessity at this stage of life as he is also a parent and a husband.
Liesel Mertes
I was I was a rower in college. I was on the crew team. So I'm no stranger to like the four. Forty five am waiting approval.
- Nick Smarrelli
I'm getting up in the morning.
- Liesel Mertes
Yeah. Were you always a morning person or did you come to that with your like athletic pursuits.
- Nick Smarrelli
I would say I am never been a morning person. I, I don't know if I am right now. Frankly it is not, it is not my default by any stretch. But I think by virtue of athletic pursuits, work commitments, usually speaking, there's just a lot of work to process and I find mornings to be really solid for that. It's again, after having kids, that is my lone moments of reasonably energized solitude. You know, certainly the kids go to bed, but by the time bedtime happens, I'm spent.
- Nick Smarrelli
I'm not enjoying that moment. So carving out that morning space has given me a little bit of of time to have and be, I would say, selfish. That's my selfish time. That's my how. Take care of my body. Take care of my mind. Take care of a little bit of work so that when the kids wake up and my wife wakes up, I'm in a place and they're going to get the best of forty five minutes of me before the cycle starts again with, with kind of a normal workday.
- Nick Smarrelli
So that's, that's really where I use that selfish time because I feel like the rest of the day is kind of committed to your pursuits outside of just myself.
- Liesel Mertes
Totally. Well and I like that turn of phrase and the differentiation between energized versus depleted solitude, because I deeply resonate with that as a parent at this stage of life. Like by the time I'm finally alone and everybody is mostly in bed, although they're never completely in bed, there's always like that bouncy nap. Right. You know, they've had an epiphany or, you know, they want me to look at some bumpe. It's it's not the same as a morning solitude.
- Liesel Mertes
I am. I saw something on your website that I would like to ask about, and it specifically leads into. Caring for people at work, creating culture of care.
- Liesel Mertes
All right, that's helpful for me. I didn't want to do with it on my first attempt at.
- Liesel Mertes
I saw on the GadellNet Consulting website, you talk about your 98 percent happiness score with clients, tell me a little bit more about that and then I want to dig deeper into that number.
- Nick Smarrelli
Yes, well, I yeah, certainly, let's talk about that and a big part of our culture, at GadellNet, that is a lot of, I would say, bilateral feedback. So it's we we adore seeking and identifying feedback. So we always I always feel like every time we bring on a new employee, they're overwhelmed by the number of channels by which we get feedback from our clients, from our teams, from our from our leaders. You know, we love feedback.
- Nick Smarrelli
I think it gives and informs us quite a bit in terms of our strategic decision making. But one of the big things that we implemented was just kind of a casual survey at the end of every single engagement that we have with a client of ours. So we are a 50 percent of the business is a 24/7 help desk. So at the end of the day, what we are supporting is somebody who walks in the door, expects things to work.
- Nick Smarrelli
Things are not working that day. Oftentimes they are, let's say, a controller. They've got a big meeting with the CFO excels networking. So now you've got a lot of emotion that comes into it and they're calling in and they're seeking our help. So we talk all the time, endlessly, frankly, that our jobs are kind of half therapists have IT professionals. So we really kind of try to frame out this idea of kind of client satisfaction, client happiness, because we we really try to kind of throw an emotion at it, because at the end of the day, really what we're doing is dealing with angry people who are frustrated by the system.
- Nick Smarrelli
And as a business leader, it is hard to keep people motivated to do that day in and day out. I sympathize with our front line team sometimes with kind of where their responsibilities are because everybody is frustrated. So the we really try to kind of put a focus on that experience that at the end of the day, in a 20 minute engagement that you have with that person there, just a little bit a little bit better, we kind of do it akin to there's a rock in your shoe, we take the rock out.
- Nick Smarrelli
So we really kind of focus on metrics that tie back to an emotion because we believe that that's the end of the day. We're keeping systems running. But we're we're we've got to acknowledge that that person comes with a whole load of baggage and emotions to that phone call as well.
- Liesel Mertes
Well, I love that awareness of the whole person that you're interacting with. And it makes me wonder, just in an informal sense, I mean, I picture the last year has been hard, complicated. There's quarantine, there's people schooling at home, there's relatives getting sick and the tolerance level for anything going wrong on the system side, I imagine being even lower than is already low bar. Have you have you people felt that on the other side of calls or chat interactions like just a higher intensity of anger or despair or all of the emotions of the people they serve?
- Nick Smarrelli
You're this question is so incredibly relevant. It's painful. So I'll take two steps back and I promise I'll answer your question. But sure. You know, March 2020, obviously, everyone's going in lockdown. You know, the team is getting to X, the number of phone calls, everybody. They're dealing with their own personal crisis. And now they're also dealing with every fifteen thousand clients that are moving back to their homes or to their homes to work indefinitely.
- Nick Smarrelli
Our job at that point is can be tied back to in some capacity saving lives. At the time, you didn't know how contagious this was. We didn't know what it was. But at the end of the day, we are creating space for people to continue to operate, to continue to keep their jobs and to keep themselves safe. Fast forward March 2021 and now really, but it really kind of came back really March 2021 and people are starting to come back.
- Nick Smarrelli
We're in this kind of weird purgatory zone. Some people are being forced back to the office when most of them don't want to go back to the office. Most businesses have stopped hiring in that 12 month period and now the economy is ramping up. So their workload is higher than it's ever been. Couple that now with you know, if you go on LinkedIn, go on Inc.com, you'll see kind of this this mass turnover that's happening seemingly across the board.
- Nick Smarrelli
So people are stressed, they're anxious. They are. This is the last, I would say four weeks have been the most eye opening in terms of kind of our responsibility emotionally to honor the people calling in, because it is it is a different just a vibe now. And it's been it's been interesting as a leader, it's been interesting to receive the feedback, but I don't know what it was where we were fully locked down, that everyone is still feeling this like solidarity of we can do it.
- Nick Smarrelli
And now I just feel like people are just completely spent and burnt out and have just have nothing left to give to the cause. And they're in some sort of like adrenal fatigue at this point. And it's it's manifesting itself every single day to our team.
- Liesel Mertes
And I and they're they're looking to discharge that stress on or to someone or something. And that that can be a big load to carry for the person at GadellNet Consulting, answering the phone. Is there anything that you have found has been really effective in how you train and equip your support staff to really meet that emotional moment? And let me backfill it with an observation of my own, which is I am a USAA insurance client. They do auto insurance, home insurance.
- Liesel Mertes
And I remember being in my MBA program, we did a case study about USAA and just how they encountered that moment because, you know, a little bit like what you do. They're fielding calls of somebody who has just been in a car accident or their home has been robbed and that sense of their presence on the phone as being a business and a valued differentiator in the minds of clients. It strikes me that you're hoping to do something similar. How do you equip people in their training and then in the way that you support them in an ongoing manner so they can keep consistently delivering that to your clients?
- Nick Smarrelli
That is a great question, and we have been seeking avenues with which to provide, I would say at this point we've named it, so that's our first step is acknowledged that fundamentally, I think people people the reason why we hire people that come to our company is they take everything very emotionally. They took a high degree of pride in their their jobs. And because of that, they feel when their clients that are upset, whether it's at us or just at the situation in general, they take it very personally.
- Nick Smarrelli
So for us, we've kind of identified it as this is a this is a pervasive issue across the United States, across all businesses. We support three hundred businesses. We are a business ourselves. So much like last March where you were feeling it, the business itself is feeling it. Plus, we're also now bearing the responsibility across our client base as well. So that was really our first step. There is a series of books that our technicians are offered up.
- Nick Smarrelli
Most of them have read, I would say probably about 80 percent have read it. The talk about kind of being that kind of empathetic engineer and and our team has kind of advocated for it's a light book. It's nice and easy for reading it. And then our last step is our training developing manager is out searching and for finding kind of how do we how do we provide that type of training. So our goal is in the next two weeks, we can have lunch and learn to talk about, you know, when people are feeling this or you're feeling it, kind of how do you how do you how do you how do you deal with it?
- Nick Smarrelli
How do you not bring it home with you after five p.m.? How do you be empathetic to the emotion but then not have it add? I mean, again, these individuals are having eight to 12 phone calls a day to not be burdened with kind of a Lego stack of everyone's problems that are now building up, that you're bringing that home to your family. So we haven't done anything great yet, but I feel like I know somebody that may be able to help us.
- Nick Smarrelli
That's you, by the way, to kind of help. How do we how do we have those conversations?
- Liesel Mertes
And thank you for thinking. Well, it reminds me of some training that I've done throughout the course of the year with the Indiana Primary Health Care Association, because these are all of these frontline people and it's exactly what you're talking about. It's compassion fatigue, this emotional residue of exposure to other people's grief and trauma. And how do we not carry that into all of these other areas of life? Because, yeah, it's really real. And especially when your job is a frontline person.
- Liesel Mertes
What have you done that has really worked over the last year to care for your people in a way that keeps them sustained?
- Nick Smarrelli
So for us, we've hopefully we've done we've done a number of items, one of the key items is kind of start taking a step back. We we we use a tool called Tiny Balls. We're actually in the process of moving now to amplify. But it is a it is a tool that has allowed us to remain connected. If there's one thing that especially as somebody who has my personality, I like to be able to see people's faces and kind of read that feeling of exhaustion or exasperation.
- Nick Smarrelli
And when you don't, you have a hundred and fifty employees in one hundred and fifty different places. That was impossible for us. We really ramped up our efforts around 20 plus questions that really tackled a lot of the key. Emotions during the last 12 months allowing for people to be expressive either directly or anonymously in terms of where that can shore up support, more than that, we've really kind of opened up avenues of communication. I, I if I look at my calendar pre March in terms of my engagement directly with employees that don't report to me or indirectly slightly report to me, I would say that was five percent of my day.
- Nick Smarrelli
If you look at my weeks now, I'd say 30 to 40 percent of my days is talking to individuals across all layers of the organization and kind of hearing their stories and understanding their concerns. It's a big reason why, frankly, we're not pushing people to go back to the office just yet. As much as I would love to see their faces back in the office. The stories that I hear from them are saying we're where we want to go back, but we're just not ready yet.
- Nick Smarrelli
And so for us, we've really tried to take that feedback, share the feedback directly to folks, and then really kind of take action on what we heard. Some of the tools that we've also used that I think are impactful. We created for the last six months I presented our state of the company is a scale we talked about the scale of kind of 10, which is operating on pure overload, pure, pure adrenaline, and then zero is just not getting anything done.
- Nick Smarrelli
And for us, that March, April, May timeframe when everyone is moving remote, we all had to operate at an eight to a 10 and we wanted to make sure that we were operating at a at a zone that was capable for us. We kind of created this whole numbering system that people would use to check in with their managers, because sometimes you just can't name the word or name the feeling. But numbers seem to help. So this numbering system really kind of helped.
- Nick Smarrelli
I would say open up dialogue to people to say I'm feeling like a two right now and saying that they're fine. Me as CEO, there's days I come in and I feel like a two and and that's OK. So really opening up the discussion around it, we've we've had lunch and learns around mental health. We've done training around it. We've we've really we've opened up employees being able to get access directly to therapy that has has I think I forgot the number.
- Nick Smarrelli
We're three to four x the use of that service in the last 12 months now. So we're making sure we're putting money in the places that we're finding to be important. So, you know, I would say, were we the best at it? I would I would I would likely say no. But we really did make sure that the conversation was always open. I spoke frequently to how I was feeling, and it never was with my usual rub of optimism.
- Nick Smarrelli
It was a lot of just kind of really open dialogue around the cell, I feel. And I'm running this company and it's OK that I'm not feeling bullish and optimistic today. That's that's an OK feeling. So. I just think it opened up dialogue and I think it was appreciated by the team.
- Liesel Mertes
I love that it's so important and just for listeners, as I work with companies, I find again and again a mark of differentiation between companies that really can move forward in creating a culture of care or that are stuck in old patterns is members of the leadership team and top level managers being able to give the space for these conversations to be available and not like a one off an aberration, but important and sharing out of their own vulnerability. And I really like what you said, even if the awareness of putting aside what might be like your preferred way of operating with optimism and vision and leadership, when we so celebrate that, especially at top levels and and it is great, it really can help excel and drive a company to growth.
- Liesel Mertes
And yet especially in moments of profound disruption, if that's just where a leader stays, like, I've just got to only, you know, it's like just keep pounding the optimism, Peg. It can really be discordant for people. So I hear that the growth in awareness that, you know, probably was necessary. Was that hard for you the first time that you were like, OK, I'm going to let them know where I'm really at?
- Nick Smarrelli
So I would say without question, I am not. If you look at where I see a therapist and I talk through things as I do, I am I am a classic case of imposter syndrome. I mean, I'm a classic case of often feeling that if I am not acting perfectly and seen perfectly that in some capacity I'm failing. I take into account to too much what people think of me. So exposing that the CEO, which we have been taught since we were kids, are, you know, at the helm.
- Nick Smarrelli
You're you're you're leading the way. My emotions trickle down to everybody else's emotions. If you're optimistic, people will follow you. And the reality was it was so dissonant to how I was feeling and how other people were feeling. We call it emotional intelligence. Call it something else. It felt fake to try to go out there and say everything is perfect, everything is great. Let's continue to move this way. And so, yeah, it was uncomfortable.
- Nick Smarrelli
And it's frankly still is. I don't I don't like talking about where I'm falling short. I think an example is this week I was flying to Colorado. I was landing. I landed at forty five or nine o'clock at night. I was supposed to stay at a state, a colleague's house. And I texted him like, I just don't have the mental capacity with which to not be alone right now. And that was odd. That was odd for me.
- Nick Smarrelli
And he was he was obviously very accepting of it. But to me that was me saying I, I just can't and I can't do it all. I can't come into a house and be in a good mood after being in a good mood all day. That was that was taxing on me. And so I think the last year has really opened up a chance for me to show. I think I learned throughout my career it's OK to not be the smartest person in the room, but it was never OK to show that much emotion.
- Nick Smarrelli
And I think the last 12 months is really kind of allowed me to to show a bit more and to walk away from things. Just say like this is too much for me right now. And being OK with that and frankly, everybody really rising to the challenge when I wanted to do that.
- Liesel Mertes
Thank you for sharing that, what has been one of the most unexpected things that has come out of your vulnerability, whether that is something it has elicited at other people or how you felt afterwards, like has there been anything that you would say, I didn't really want to do this, but this has been good on the other side.
- Nick Smarrelli
So I would say merely exposing if you look at kind of the different aspects of yourself that you tend to not show to others, I think, you know, social media is always gets blamed for this idea of building a personal brand. And certainly my personal brand is zero excuses. I I'm doing these ridiculously long races and look at me. I'm a great dad and that's my personal brand. And the days where I'm not crushing it is quite the opposite of that personal brand.
- Nick Smarrelli
And for me, I think. I've set aside this necessity to always be and I'll use the word perfect, but maybe I'll call it on brand that. It's OK to showcase those those feelings and at the end of the day. That position has not changed. People still don't respect what I'm doing and frankly speaking, have have really stepped up and. Kind of allowed me to do that, and that has, I would say, kind of absolved a lot of the stress of the job because I haven't had to fake my way through it on the days where I couldn't.
- Nick Smarrelli
So like I said, I think it just it just, frankly speaking, just allowed me to have a bit more grace than I ever have of not being this perfect person all the time and. I don't I think it's better and I'll give a story quick, we had an individual who I would say in September, October time frame, came to us and said, I'm all I was off for two weeks. And at one point during those two weeks, I considered taking my own life and we had sent him both my director of HR and myself had sent him a note in the middle of the week.
- Nick Smarrelli
And I said, hey, this is how I'm feeling today. And I was feeling down and our director of H.R. said, hey, take the time, we support you. And that one two punch to him, he thinks saved his life. And he again, I don't mind sharing the story because he shared it with the whole team. He held a lunch and learn on mental health later that month. But he really kind of talked to what the impact of of those programs are on him.
- Nick Smarrelli
So, again, I had the selfish motives of in the sense that it made me feel more comfortable as a leader being true to myself. And then I think for others, it allowed them to do the same thing to.
- Liesel Mertes
Hmm. The powerful effect of those meaningful gestures, I feel like sometimes as we in the face of disruptive life events, they can seem so big, whether that's pandemic or a death or sickness. And we can kind of negate the power of sending out an email or sharing how we're feeling or just sending that text of encouragement and the impact that those gestures can have and do have. Because when somebody's feeling. Suicidal when they're feeling underwater, they're really looking for something to to lay hold of, and if we can offer those things and be, you know, even even just the small gestures, I think that story really shows the power and the impact of those times of reaching out.
- Nick Smarrelli
It's crazy to me, I had a great conversation with my father in law talking about just cuz listen to the podcast then and anything I'm on, he's he's a he's he's my number one fan. So any, anybody has on the podcast, you're guaranteed at least one more guest because of because of my father in law. But he talks about how incredibly different businesses today it is 20 years ago and how know companies like that, but also so many other great companies talk through these things.
- Nick Smarrelli
But you couldn't even imagine having those conversations back then. And to me, I just feel like it's it's really is a huge shift. And I think more and more and more a bigger shift. And I'm hoping people take notice of those companies doing some great things that this is this is the new reality is people if you expect people to bring their whole self to work, there are some parts of that aren't as pretty. And we've got to we've got to honor that, too.
- Nick Smarrelli
And that stuff that starts with leadership and saying if you want people to bring their whole self to them, to things, talk about your family, talk about your emotions, talk about your great talk about your bet. And again, to your point, I can't be a source of doom and gloom. If there are there are times where I have to shine and show and and push through those bad days with a smile on my face.
- Nick Smarrelli
But at the end of it, you know, you can't be listening to the reality. It can't be you can't be talking about how fantastic things are when things don't feel fantastic because then you lose all credibility and that's what people want. I think in leadership these days.
- Liesel Mertes
Well, and in my work as well, I oftentimes and party to that sort of generational divide of this is a different paradigm of doing work and I would definitely say a healthier, more inclusive, less even even if you just want to look at the the dollar cost. I mean, the cost of stress that was absorbed in people's bodies, in their health and their rate of burnout in that prior way of doing things was really high. And it's it is an important, necessary and competitive shift that we're engaging in.
- Liesel Mertes
Yeah. And it's it's what people want. It's the way the world is moving. And I think the pandemic has really highlighted that if we could have played nicely and pretended that everything was OK, all of the pretension of that performance was stripped away in the month after month of covid and everybody coping with that.
MUSICAL TRANSITION
I want to take a moment to adknowledge our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting. In today’s episode, you heard about the mental stressors and the toll of compassion fatigue on workers. And maybe you thought, that is going on for me and on my team as well. If so, let Handle with Care Consulting help. With trainings on coping with compassion fatigue, how to have hard conversations, and how to build empathy in the workplace, we have an offering to fit your needs and help you skill up in empathy. Contact Handle with Care Consulting for a free consultation today and start to put empathy to work.
MUSICAL TRANSITION
– Liesel Mertes
You are a psychology undergrad and currently doing master's work in industrial organizational psychology at and a little local school called Harvard. How does your knowledge of psychology affect how you lead as a CEO?
- Nick Smarrelli
I think people always ask because I have a psychology and a finance degree, so it's almost you've got these you know, you've got the angel on one end and the devil on the other side and it often flips. I'm implying one is one or the other. But for me. You know, it's so funny where people always ask kind of where what do I use the most as finance or the psychology? And I would say finance. I use two percent of my job psychology.
- Nick Smarrelli
I use the other ninety-eight and not the learnings necessarily from university, but more so the study of human potential, the study of. And at the end of the day, most business owners are managing people, we don't I don't run a factory where I've got precision in robotics, where I don't have to kind of honor brain and home and a lifetime of experiences as they bring that to work. So for me, psychology is required. It is it is the you know, you wouldn't have you wouldn't have a manufacturing facility with a bunch of equipment and not an engineer who could fix that equipment or understand how that equipment works.
- Nick Smarrelli
And yet we seem to be OK to have and teach specifically at business schools. I have a very big contention with the curriculum of the business schools. It's so much practical curriculum and not. The people that execute on said curriculum, and I think that for me is a huge mess. So to me, I think leadership is ultimately, you know, you're an engineer of how things work and how if you put two things together, what happens if you put seven people together?
- Nick Smarrelli
What happens? And so understanding team dynamics, understanding. You know, if you bring in this personality, how does that shift things? How do you how do you identify the right talent? I mean, that is all psychology. And I don't care how great your knowledge is of finance at the end of it, it's it's a people game and it's it's such a big part of the job recently. So for me, psychology,
- Nick Smarrelli
Psychology always wins. And I love the study of it, which is why instead of pursuing an MBA, I opted to pursue a master's in industrial organizational psychology is how do I bring that psychological theory back to the business base?
- Liesel Mertes
Well, I like that so much. And even the the framing like an engineer, because all too often it's turfed to H.R. like, well, get a person or a department for that. But how much that misses in the day to day of managing, deploying, you know, optimizing and engaging with people. I you shared a little bit earlier that sense of, OK, I want to lead with vulnerability, but I don't want to be doom and gloom.
- Liesel Mertes
It reminds me of an article I came across. I reposted it and it was like the response was huge of people resonating with it. It was talking about four leaders being able to share without being leaky was the term this author used finding that sweet spot of encouraging vulnerability without just dumping on the people underneath you. It makes me think that oftentimes being at the top is a lonely. What have you found has been important to support your mental health. Where have you found a community that you can, you know, be leaky with that has allowed you to be able to be present for the people you lead?
- Liesel Mertes
Especially over the last year or so?
- Nick Smarrelli
I have been fortunate enough. I have been part of, let's say seven years ago, decided to join Vistage, which is a kind of a CEO group that has been hugely impactful into both business and then kind of just general mental health or kind of finding people that are going through the same problems. And then recently moved from Vistage to YPO, which is the Young Presidents organization here locally in Indianapolis. And also I'm part of the St. Louis chapter as well.
- Nick Smarrelli
For me, it's hard to explain the stress and pressure of being the leader. Everything is big and I often say I get too much credit for the good stuff and I get too much credit for the bad stuff. At the end of the day, everything's my fault. It is a system or a person that I allowed to fail that created whatever problem we're experiencing. And that's that's a hard. Part of the job and then couple that with covid, where you've got two hundred and fifty people that are looking at you whose spouses are sick or spouses are not working anymore and looking at you to make sure that every decision you make is going to ensure that two weeks from now they're going to still get their paycheck.
- Nick Smarrelli
It's it's it's it is lonely. And I think that is a great way to describe it. And my wife is just one of the most supportive people in the world. But it's hard to describe that feeling. It's hard to describe kind of that burden that sits on you. Even on Saturday afternoon when you're not sitting in front of a computer, you're still working, you're still processing, it's still there. There's still a little smelly in my subconscious that's processing all the forty seven things that we're trying to trying to improve on at any point.
- Nick Smarrelli
So for me, finding people that are very much aligned with my values and then finding people, frankly speaking, that are so definitive, my values, that I would say in some capacity force me to either reevaluate or. Double down on the way that I think as a leader, but for me, creating space for me to talk about how hard it is sometimes and how I yearn sometimes to work at Starbucks. And when I leave, you know, there's no emails coming in afterwards or any of those type of things.
- Liesel Mertes
And the biggest mistake you can make is misspelling somebody's name on the correct, which I would never say doing wrong milk.
- Nick Smarrelli
Yeah, it my my ability to learn people's names, they would say, what's your name? And I would, of course, immediately forget it because that is that is my my go to. But but yes that is that's exactly. Nobody loses their job or their house or puts them in a crate in a strange place or I'm not pushing people to complete burnout or all the other stuff that kind of comes along with how do you push people to reach their highest potential but not push them over the ledge.
- Nick Smarrelli
And this is such a fine line. So either way, long, rambling story here, to me, it's it's finding like minded people that you can truly be open with and and truly share the inner workings of how you're feeling, but how the business is doing and and people who just kind of understand what that burden is like. I can't articulate more as a leader is having what that group has meant to me in terms of getting through, especially the last year, but getting through the last 11 years of of of running a definite.
- Liesel Mertes
Hmm. Thank you for sharing, this has been a great conversation. Are there any questions I haven't asked you that would be helpful for me to ask you? Oh, man, we want to share.
- Nick Smarrelli
No, I can't I'm sure I think if there's anything else, that's. That's out there. You know, nothing nothing comes to mind. I'm sure will later.
MUSICAL TRANSITION
Here are three key take-aways from my conversation with Nick…
- As a leader, you need to be consistently making time to get the pulse of your people.Pre-pandemic, Nick said that he spent about 5% of his time checking in. Now, the number is closer to 40% of his time. These check-ins inform GadellNet’s decisions about pivotal work moments like when to ask people to go back to the office. How much time are you setting aside to purposefully get the pulse of your people.
- “Psychology always wins”.I love and deeply resonate with this line from Nick. The way that we train people often doesn’t align with this reality, that leaders spend most of their time managing people. A knowledge, an interest in the inner workings of your people will allow you to hire the best talent, to motivate your staff, and to troubleshoot problems as they come along. Is a deep knowledge of people, of their psychology, a value in your organization? How much is this awareness present or absent in your leadership team?
- There is a particular stress that leaders feel at all times, but especially within the dimensions of a global pandemic.In the midst of these pressures, Nick shares with vulnerability with his team, but he has also found it to be immensely helpful to have an external group that “gets” and understands what he is going through as an executive and can support him along the way. Do you have a group of people that you can be real with and that can help you as you lead?
MUSICAL TRANSITION
OUTRO