The EO Visionary Voices Podcast

Brent (00:02.732)
Welcome to this episode of Uncharted Entrepreneurship. Today I have Jennifer Jensen. Jennifer, go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions in life.

Jennifer Jensen (00:14.091)
So I'm Jennifer Jensen and founder of Authentic Leader and I support leaders in developing who they are and am a coach slash advisor to help them grow in their careers and to become their authentic selves. And so my big passion right now is golfing.

Brent (00:34.734)
Awesome. That's great. Yeah. So this is summertime and you're, know you're, you said you were in Alberta. So this is the time you need to golf because the other half of the year you can't, right? Or you can golf with an orange ball.

Jennifer Jensen (00:45.963)
Exactly.

Even then.

Brent (00:51.086)
Good so Jennifer before we get started though you have Graciously volunteered to be part of the free joke project. I'm gonna tell you a joke. You just give me a rating 8 through 13 So here we go. I Once swallowed a book of synonyms. It's given me a thesaurus throat I've ever had

Jennifer Jensen (01:15.949)
That one I would say is an 11. That was pretty good.

Brent (01:18.516)
alright, yeah, I don't know if I'd give it that high. I was a little disappointed after I read it, but I should read them out loud before I say them. But anyways, good, thank you for that. Alright, so just give us a little bit of your background. I in the green room you told us a little bit about what you did, but tell us about your background and how you got to where you are.

Jennifer Jensen (01:39.618)
So I have 29 years of progressive experience in the corporate world and a lot of those years have been doing project management where I didn't have all the authority but I had all the accountability and had to figure out how to work with teams to get them to do what they needed to do. And through that I started mentoring a lot of individuals and there wasn't really anything out there to support me in the mentorship and how I wanted to do it so that they could truly become great leaders.

and so I wrote a book called Developing Authentic Leaders and did it all in bullet points for the busy executive or individual and did it so that there's 52 chapters so one a week that you could work on to help mentor your team or individual or for yourself just to help you grow and become more effective.

Brent (02:34.699)
That's great. And I love the concept of 52. Well, number one, I love bullet points and I love the idea of having an action item coming out of every chapter. think that's so valuable. I thought a lot of people write a book and they give you some kind of, they give you a thesis and some, subjective ideas to try and not really good action items. So tell us a little bit about some of those bullet points and, get, and even give us an example of, of one of the chapters.

Jennifer Jensen (03:03.444)
So throughout the whole book, it's written...

with key insights, guidance, and then reflections so that you have time to work on something and even with your team to change your style. And the topics are wide range from dealing with your priorities and who you are as an individual to what are key qualities that an authentic leader needs to have such as integrity, vulnerability, humility.

all the way to influencing your team and building your teams, to having vision, mission, and values for yourself and for your team, and even taking the organizational mission, vision, values, and breaking it down for your team so they feel like they're contributing to the greater picture.

Brent (03:56.498)
As you were developing this, there a pivot point that you realized that, maybe there's a better way to do this?

Jennifer Jensen (04:04.375)
Oh, I've had a career of a lot of hard knocks and where I have come away.

from being a sacrificial lamb or from PTSD, from being micromanaged. But through that, heard constantly how my project teams loved working with me because I truly allowed them to be the experts on my team. And so as I had these experiences, I went, this isn't right. We need to change how leaders are leading and be a lot more effective so that it can be overall a great experience for everyone and people will want to stay in organizations.

Brent (04:46.081)
How did you make that a must have rather than just a nice to have or this could be something I could do? How did you kind of pivot that into something that where, this is really my advantage that I have as a leader?

Jennifer Jensen (05:02.6)
It was because of the project teams loved how I managed them. It wasn't like I was dictating. I was allowing them to be the experts. And as I saw that, I knew that there could be a whole business come out of this of showing how other leaders could do exactly that and trust their teams and develop them. And even now I'm dealing with clients who they're not, they're micromanaging their teams. They're not allowing them to be the experts, but as soon as they take a step back and realize what they're doing,

their teams flourish and start to grow and they see a huge rate of decrease in turnover and their employees are much more happy and satisfied.

Brent (05:47.033)
I know in some of the questions that are some of the ideas that you've we talked about earlier. You talked about having performance leadership versus authentic leadership, but I'd like to just propose another style of leadership and that's the transactional leadership. And I experienced that firsthand and in a previous company where the CEO would look at anybody as a transaction and that leadership style was if you don't

If you can't do what we need right now or we don't even have something for you to do, you're out. And then when the thing comes up again, they just hire somebody. So that person is just seen as a commodity that is just needed when it's needed. Is there a big difference in, I mean, I suppose there's always a need for transactional style where you have a need and you have to hire somebody, but it does, it did really ruin the culture of the team when.

people started just getting let go because of no other reason than the leader didn't have a job.

Jennifer Jensen (06:54.904)
my word, it's huge. And I think if organizations started changing their mindset about...

their people and started investing in them, they would see huge ROI increases. Like I'm talking over 2000 % ROI because if you think about it, when you lay off somebody or you don't invest in them and they walk away, you're losing a huge amount of knowledge. You're now having to replace that individual, but at what cost?

And then you have that uptime to get that new individual up to speed. And if there is turnover and people are leaving, well, now you've made a 300,000 to $2 million mistake in not investing in your leaders and keeping them in, which is massive when you could have just spent 15,000 to 50,000 a year, which is shocking to me that more CEOs and CFOs don't recognize that.

Brent (08:00.385)
talk a little bit about the concept of performance leadership.

Jennifer Jensen (08:06.141)
So performance leadership is looking at how the individuals are growing. And you may have some ones that seem like they're low performance, but investing in them and pulling out their strengths and understanding who they are will likely increase their performance because they feel valued and they feel like they're part of something bigger.

And we need to change our mindset as leaders to really understand the strengths and weaknesses and how to drive these individuals to perform because they may have some aspirations that we're not aware of that if we invested in them, we'll see significant changes and improvements in their performance.

Brent (08:50.284)
And do you, I'm gonna ask this rhetorically, but I'm assuming you would propose a trickle-down effect, and I'll give some examples of what I went through. I was involved in a merger, and suddenly I had 110 employees that I was responsible for. And to get to know them all, I set up the ability for them to just schedule a 15-minute meeting, and I wanted to meet with every person every quarter for a year.

And it turned out to be a lot of work, but I also got to know everybody a little bit. And we had team members all over North America, even Canada. And it helped me to understand who they are, what's driving them. But I think over a long term, and especially as you scale, that's probably not sustainable. Is there ways that you help leaders also trickle that down to their subordinates?

Jennifer Jensen (09:47.316)
Absolutely. I think if you're dealing with 150, you may have to, you won't have the time to meet with them quarterly. I think it's amazing that you did that, but at least meet with them once a year and then have your directors or leaders under you. Get them to start to meet with them. And then you're meeting with those individuals, the directors and managers to understand how their teams are growing and what they're doing. And you can do that whole trickle down effect through your management team.

But I think the key is investing in your managers at the same time, because they need to feel supported. And that's an area that a lot of companies aren't investing in, is these up and comers, because they're our succession plan. And don't you want to have great leaders in your organization?

Brent (10:36.396)
Do you find a lot of seasoned leaders are stuck in their ways and as things are growing and I'm just going to throw AI in there, it's hard for them to pivot and change? I should say too, have you heard leaders that say, I'm too old to learn anything new?

Jennifer Jensen (10:53.286)
yeah, I've heard it all. And I've seen it. And even in the oil and gas industry here in Calgary, you see a lot of that with the old boys club. They still have that mentality. They still want to do it the way that they're used to. And being authentic, you're gonna break the mold. You won't fit into the mold that's out there. And so that's struggle. And so with that,

You can, I also see, I'm an old dog. can't teach an old dog new tricks. yeah, you can. And if you want to survive and have a really great organization now, especially now you have to be an adaptive leader where you're constantly changing and growing because you're dealing with five generations in the workforce. Now you're dealing with gender differences. You're dealing with neurodiversity. You've got.

AI and technology moving at lightning speeds like we've never seen before. So yeah, you have to become that adaptive leader in these complex times.

Brent (12:02.539)
You just mentioned the five generations is I feel and this is my only my own experience is that the difference between the younger generation and the older generation has gotten broader and and and I would say the difference in maybe how they how they perceive work a lot of younger people perceive not just money but how their work environment is and can they work remotely and all these other things that were never part of the previous generations

When I was younger, there was never an option to work remotely, right? Now there is. Is it harder for leaders to understand those five different pieces of it rather than just one? It seems like it's more complicated as you go from generation to generation.

Jennifer Jensen (12:51.471)
It is, but if you understand the generations and what drives them, that will support you as you grow. And with the hybrid generation, and I know we were dealing with entitlement and, that I've seen that across all the generations. And as we grow.

and especially with leadership, you have to adapt to each one. But what I'm finding is organizations are starting to do the reverse mentorship. So they're now supporting the older generation and the younger generation are working more one-on-one to understand each other better. And it's becoming very effective.

Brent (13:31.636)
Yeah, that's a fantastic idea is reverse mentorship. know that we do a big in the Twin Cities, we do something called the EO Rally and that there's always mentors that are helping young entrepreneurs grow, but nobody ever thinks about how the young entrepreneurs can help the mentors and being better mentors to mentor the younger people because of what you mentioned earlier. Is there something that you specifically learned to kind of help you unlearn things that were so ingrained?

in you that, I have to change and I need to be more flexible to learn those new things.

Jennifer Jensen (14:08.434)
There's a few. One of the big ones is the myth of knowing it all. Where we're told to fake it till you make it. But I've discovered saying I don't know.

But here's how we'll figure it out. Actually builds more confidence in my team and then pretending to know everything and it shows that I'm focused on solving problems, not protecting my ego, which is a big thing. The other one is the vulnerability equals weakness. That's a total fallacy. The biggest unlearning was around...

vulnerability and I was taught that showing uncertainty or admitting mistakes would undermine authority. But I found the opposite when leaders share their learning process, their team feels safe to take risks and innovate. And the most successful leaders I've worked with are the ones who can say I was wrong about that without losing respect.

Brent (15:05.385)
Yeah, I think it's pretty transparent too when a leader makes a mistake and then either they blame it on somebody else or they don't admit there was ever a mistake that the team knows that that happened. And you're right, they do lose that respect and that ability to trust in the future for that leader to help them lead. Is there anything in the book that kind of summarizes the base points that you cover?

Jennifer Jensen (15:34.864)
Yes, a lot of it because I do talk about vulnerability, humility, building your teams, being open and honest and transparency and also looking at the various communication styles to help you. So there's a lot of great information in there.

Brent (15:53.779)
That's great. So, Jennifer, we are running out of time, but as I close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they'd like. What would you like to plug today?

Jennifer Jensen (16:04.741)
Go check out my website and if you're looking for somebody to help you on your journey and need that coaching or advisory services or even team advisory services, reach out and you can find me at AuthenticLeader.ca.

Brent (16:22.239)
That's perfect. Jennifer Jensen is the founder of Authentic Leader. She is a business coach and leadership coach. Thank you so much for being here today.

Jennifer Jensen (16:31.504)
Thank you for having me. It was an honor and privilege.