Patti Oskvarek Work-Life Balance and Becoming a Better Leader | DFS 309

I will put it back together. It's fine, okay?

And I help managers and supervisors and

others business owners to become better leaders and to live a

more purposeful, balanced life outside of work. And how I got

into this is an interesting story. I was at a networking

meeting many years ago, and I had done a speech or

presentation, and a lady came up to me afterwards and said, You

should be a leadership coach. And at the time, I had no idea

what a leadership coach was, or a coach or anything, and so I

started checking into it, because I was retiring from my

job that I had been in for many years, within about five years.

So I was young, and I knew that I wanted to do something else.

And being a manager and supervisor, I had wished that I

had a leadership coach during my time as a manager and supervisor

and with all the things that went on, to have somebody to

talk to, to have somebody to run ideas past, talk about

situations that were going on in the workplace that I couldn't

really talk to my family about, or friends because, you know,

they don't want to hear you talk about things like that, and the

work life balance part came in because I didn't have any work

life balance, and I wanted to help people with that. I wanted

people to find balance and be able to not work. 24/7, to have

a hobby, to have a spouse, to have a partner, to have friends,

to have just a life, but also be successful in their career. So

that's how that came about. And then being the Reiki part with

the energy healing is my unique way of doing my coaching is when

people are in chaos, they need to have some stress release, and

Reiki helps with that. And that's how it all combined

together. And how I got into Reiki is I had a friend that was

a Reiki Master. And one day, my husband and I went to Sedona,

Arizona, and I said, you should have some Reiki, because he was

his had a lot of stress with his job, and he had this wonderful

experience with the Reiki. And he so for like, a year, two

years, he's like, you need to do that. You need to become a Reiki

Master. So that's how that all kind of wove together, and why

I'm doing what I'm doing now.

I love that, and I I totally get and embrace

the idea of you. You need to plan for your life. You need to

be strategic, blah, blah, blah. I get all of that, but there's

something really magical about something that's presented to

you and you just say yes and step into it. I had someone

recently. I have a degree in French and Spanish. Do I use it?

No, not at all. But did I learn a lot along the way? Absolutely.

And so someone said, you have a degree in French and Spanish.

How'd that work out for you? And I was like, Well, I had a pretty

high up, really great job with the federal government for many

years. I have full retirement and and now I'm an entrepreneur,

so I think it worked out pretty well. And if anybody had said

you're going to go from French and Spanish to the housing

industry to leadership development trainer to an energy

healer, because I do energy work also, like none of that aligns

right, like nobody would draw a straight line to go from here to

there. But that is the beauty of how some of this comes along,

you have to step up and say yes,

yes. And I knew that it was my purpose, because

there was so many managers and supervisors and business owners

that didn't know how to communicate with their employees

or weren't didn't have the leadership skills or know how to

build relationships to with their employees or with others.

So that was one of the reasons why I wanted to get into the.

Leadership part is because I wanted to help individuals that

wanted to be better leaders, and when you have role models that

are not good leaders, you tend to follow those same

characteristics and tools.

Well, you do, and I, I don't think anybody

woke up one day and said, I want to be a leader and I want to

teach treat my people like crap, right? Like I, I mean, okay,

there's going to be a few Yeah. Somebody's going to argue that

and say, Yeah, but mine did, and that's it can be. But I think

most people really want to show up well and do well in the

world, but they had bad role models, and it takes an immense

amount of self awareness to choose a different path, like

these are the qualities I hated. How can I do that differently?

That takes a lot of energy and a lot of work, so having someone

like you in their corner could make that transition a lot less

stressful and a lot smoother. And

you're right. Most people want to do a good

job, and they just don't know how to communicate to get what

needs to get done, but also in a in a way that fires up people to

want to come into work every day and to want to do the job, and

that love their job, and that really makes a difference when

you love your job and you love the people around you too.

It does because people, what do they say? People

don't quit jobs. They quit bosses. It's kind of a big deal

they do. They walk away from the boss because the boss was bad.

Very bad boss,

right? And you want to be that person that

people want to grow with you. If you move up, they want to go

with you, or you transfer, they want to go with you. When you

have those kind of relationships, it makes things

so well run and you can trust each other, and you know each

other, and you know what will work and what won't work in

those relationships.

And it costs more for people who are like and

obviously nobody listening to my show feels this way, but they

know somebody who feels this way, what they miss, the point

that those people who don't want to evolve and have personal

development, personal growth and learn what to do, the point that

they're missing that is the critical point is it costs more

money to attract a new employee than it does to retain the one

that you have. That's right,

and losing a good employee because they have

a bad manager, supervisor, leader, costs the company so

much money in so many different ways, because it's not just one

person leaving, normally, it's a whole team that eventually

leave. Leaves.

It's like a domino effect. Yes, I don't want

to be here if she's not there, well, he's not there. Well, I'm

just going Yes. So do you have any tips or strategies for our

audience on how they can start developing their leadership

skills?

Yes, really sit back and think about your

management style and do your employees trust you and come to

you with problems that they're having with their job. Are they

free and feel confident that if they come to you and tell you

that something's going on, that you will listen and they will be

heard, and they feel safe in doing that and that you two work

together to resolve the problem. When you're in a group meeting,

are your is your team silent and not giving any feedback back?

They're just telling you what? Or are they just telling you

what you want to hear? And there's and they never come into

your office. You walk by them, and they don't say hi. You know,

there are signs that there's something wrong. You. Need to be

self aware of that, and you need to work on those relationships.

Have a 15 minute meeting once a week with you, with each

individual person on your staff, and when they come into your

office, Are they scared or are they thrilled to come in and

know that they're not in trouble or you're you know you're there

to help them, not ridicule them or critique their work. Those

are things that are red flags that something might be wrong

with your leadership.

I was on a team, and we did this trust

exercise, like, what aspect of trust is most important to you?

Is it openness, reliability, congruence, or I never, can't

remember the fourth one. I don't remember why, uh, acceptance,

maybe, maybe that's it. Acceptance, accept me for who I

am and that kind of thing. So when I first looked at it, I

thought, man, reliability is going to be the top of my list.

Like, I want all my employees to be reliable. I want them to meet

the deadlines. I want them to get the work done that. Yeah,

reliability. By the time we got to the end of the exercise. As

it turns out, openness was the most important part to me,

because if you came to me and said, I don't know how to do

this, or I don't know how I'm going to meet this deadline,

then we could brainstorm a solution. But if you didn't tell

me, I don't have any way to know. So I'm going to give one

example, and a lot of the responsibility lays on me

because or lies on me is the right way. What's the right

verb? Because I should have checked in sooner, right? I

should have followed up more, but I trusted my employees a

lot, and this employee. I went to her, and we were, I don't

know, four or five days from a major deadline, and I knew it

was looming. I just assumed, I assumed ass out of you and me. I

assumed she was working on it. And I went up to her, and I was

like, Hey, I just want to touch base on that, because it had to

go through a lot of hands before it left our division. And I

said, Hey, I just want to touch base on that. And she goes, I

haven't started it. And I was like, like, it's due in five

days. And she goes, Well, I didn't know what to do. And I

was like, like, this is a four inch thick binder of information

that we had to comb through to come up with a solution and get

it out of the office. And I said, Okay, step one is to do a

checklist and make sure every piece of the application is

there. 99% of the time they left one little thing out, but it

will stop the clock. So find something that's missing to stop

the clock, and it was like all hands on deck to go through

this. I have no idea why she wasn't comfortable coming to me,

because I wasn't really that kind of boss, but for whatever

reason, she had a fear of telling me she didn't know how

to do something. So I had to start working really hard to

hammer home and reiterate the point that if you come to me and

say, You don't know how I can help you find a solution, like I

may not know how to do it either, which was pretty common,

but I was managing the people, not necessarily every aspect of

the job, so you have to figure out. And I implore everybody out

there, a lot of my audience, even if you're an entrepreneur,

you might have a VA like, how are you showing up? And do they

know that if they just tell you they don't know you're going to

find a solution and not yell at them, because I had never yelled

at anybody. I had never fired anybody, I never written anybody

up. It's not like I had a history of being the bad boss in

this scenario, but it's a big deal. It's a big deal being able

to go to you and say, oh my gosh, Patty. I don't know how to

do this. Like, what do I do with this? And

that's where the communication and trust and like

and all of that come in. That part is that they feel

comfortable saying, I don't know how to do this. Can you help? Or

can I talk to you about it and meeting with them and following

up with them? And that's a great example, and thank you for

sharing that.

So if somebody wants to get hold of you and

find out more about your coaching program and how they

can work with you, how are they going to find you?

Yes, they can go to my website, at coaching for

inspiration with Patty, P, A, T. Ti.com and it has my all my

information in there for them to see. It has videos, it has my

scheduling and all of that.

Oh my gosh, I love that, because we all need a

little more help than we've got. So do you have any final words

for our audience?

Yes, just remember that success as being a

leader is spending time with your employees at work, talking

to them, sharing with them, having them feel comfortable, to

be able to come to you if there's a situation or problem,

and know that you'll work together to achieve and fix it

and solve the problem if there is one

I love that. Thank you so much, and thanks

for your time, Patty, I appreciate this conversation.

Thank you for having me.

I'm Jennifer Takagi with destin for success,

and I look forward to connecting with you soon. You.