Episode 50
The Mission
Jan Griffiths, President of Gravitas Detroit talked about the mission on the Automotive Leaders Podcast
Transcript
[Transcript]
00:03
Welcome to the Finding Gravitas podcast brought to you by Gravitas Detroit. Looking to become a more authentic leader. Finding Gravitas is the podcast for you. gravitas is the ultimate leadership quality that draws people in. It's an irresistible force encompassing all the traits of authentic leadership. Join your podcast host Jan Griffiths, that passionate rebellious farmer's daughter from Wales, entrepreneur, leadership coach, keynote speaker, one of the top 100 leading women in the automotive industry as she interviews some of the finest leadership minds in the quest for Gravitas.
Jan Griffiths:Hello, let's talk about the mission. We throw that word around in the corporate world. vision, mission goals, objectives. Let's focus in this episode on the mission. The mission takes many different forms. Let's start by talking about it at a broad macro level, and then break it down. And I want to give you some very specific and personal examples of what a mission is how I describe it, in my own words, how it manifests itself in my life. And my wish for you is that it will help you and give you some ideas on how to describe your mission, either in your life, your career, in your business, with your function, or with your team. The reason why it's so important is simply mission is everything.
Jan Griffiths:Listen to a couple of the podcast. Earlier podcast episodes that I've done with two Navy SEALs. Nick Norris stands out. And also Clint Bruce, both amazing. Navy SEALs are great guys and great leaders. And they talk about the mission. And you'll hear me in the Nick Norris interview. It's kind of funny, I look back on it now and chuckle because I always thought that Navy SEALs would be really tough, nasty, aggressive guys, and all command and control. And I was so wrong. Nick Norris and Clint Bruce. They're two of the nicest people you've ever met and had a conversation with. But one thing they are crystal clear on. And that is the mission. It's all about the mission. It's all in how we define the mission, the success of the mission, what happens when we succeed, what happens when we fail, putting together a risk mitigation plan, but staying laser focused on the mission. And let's be honest, most of us in our 50s and older when we started our careers. Well, I'll just speak from my own experience, I guess I won't generalize. I couldn't care less about the company mission. I just wanted a career. I wanted money, status, power, all the things that you want. When you start your career in your early 20s. I couldn't care less about the mission, what the company was all about. Just give me opportunity. And I'm in the generation coming into the workforce now. And particularly Gen Z. That's not how they think new. They want to know what the company is all about. What is the mission all about? And how did they fit into the mission. So as a leader, you have to be able to articulate the mission and connect people to the mission. It's not It can't be just something you throw up on a PowerPoint or a mission statement. Throw it on the wall in the conference room ago. There is no you have to be able to talk about it in deep meaningful terms. And then be able to to articulate to each individual person how they connect to the mission, how you connect to the mission, how it all works together. I think back to the podcast episode I did with Jason Stein, publisher of automotive news. And he said the one common thread that He sees with all of the executives that he interviews in the industry is that they are laser focused on the mission. So it's not just me, a lot of people think, same way. My mission as you well know, because I talk about it all the time on social media, and the podcast. My mission is to transform the work experience, I want to break the mold of corporate leadership, and allow authentic leadership to shine through. I want people to feel great about the work to feel inspired to feel invigorated to bring everything they've got to the table.
Jan Griffiths:A couple of weeks ago, at the Center for Automotive Research MBAs conference in Traverse City, I experienced that unique opportunity in your career and in your life, where you're able to bring that mission to life. I stood on that stage and talked about break the mold, breaking the mold of authentic leadership, and yes, allowing authentic leadership to shine through. And it felt great, I felt energized, I was in a complete state of flow. If you haven't read much on flow psychology, just Google it. It's basically that moment in time where you're completely in the zone, you lose sense of your surroundings, you're just completely in tune with who you are, with the people around you with what you're doing. You're being challenged, but not to the point that it pushes you into the realm of being uncomfortable. And I was there, I was really living the mission. And my whole business is about living my mission. And that has taken some twists and turns. Several months ago, I realized that I could take my podcasting experience and my leadership experience to further drive my mission, and help companies develop an internal podcast to drive employee engagement. And it's working really well. Because if you think about it, right, most employees in a company, they don't want to watch videos anymore, because they spend enough time on Zoom and being tethered to their computers, they can't wait to get away from it.
Jan Griffiths:Got a well designed podcast, with good quality audio that has a strategy behind it that's focused on the areas that the culture needs to be focused on for the business that's really all about employee engagement. A well designed, well executed internal podcast can do wonders for employee engagement. If you keep the episodes in or not too long, keep them like 15-20 minutes. It could be meeting executive, it could be a day in the life of somebody on the shop floor, it could be experiencing a new technology, so many different themes that you can work into a podcast, people are much more likely to put a podcast in their ear, when they're going for a walk or working out, maybe doing some household chores, the engagement is there. And then it's person to person, right. It's real. It's a it's a human being connecting with another human being. And that's what I love about it. So my business, and my mission seem to be focused in that area, which I love. We're working with some clients right now. And there's a few more in the pipeline. So we'll see where it goes. I don't know, this is an entrepreneurial journey. It takes twists and turns, who knows. The other way that I'm supporting my mission is to get out to everybody that I possibly can. The meaning of authentic leadership. The podcast is one way to do that. As you know, the mission of the podcast is to interview great authentic leaders so that they can share their stories with you on how to be an authentic leader how those behaviors show up every single day. Get them talking about the reality of it in human terms, so that you can give yourself permission to lead in a more authentic way. That's the mission of the podcast and that hasn't changed.
Jan Griffiths:To supplement that I created a document called the 21 traits of authentic leadership. And I've had some great feedback. I did it real. Here's s a summary of season one of the podcast, and then I combined my leadership experience, refined the document, it's gone through several iterations. And it's several pages long, but it's quite clear and concise. And people seem to really like that. And what I love about it is it gives you a framework to have a discussion with your team about authentic leadership on what it means. And somebody said to me, they said, you know, you need to do a mini course.
Jan Griffiths:A mini course? I laughed, do people really do those things? Yep, they do. So at first, I discounted it. And I didn't want to do it, because it's an awful lot of work. I'm not afraid of hard work, but it was pushing me out of my comfort zone. And so you guessed it, you know what's coming up? Yep, we developed a mini course, first of all, it's how to be a great podcast guest because I really wanted something smaller in scope, to test the tech and to really get a system and a structure that we liked and that people would like. So we've got that one coming out first.
Jan Griffiths:And then we will be sending out the 21 traits of authentic leadership. And I'm really excited about it, because it will give you the framework, you can send it out to your teams, your teams can watch it at their own pace, it's self paced, and it's broken down into 21, bite sized chunks. And then you can decide if you want to have a team meeting around it. If you want a workshop around it, you can take it whatever direction you want. So again, this is supporting my mission. I wish that when I started this business, I could tell you, you know, I am going to achieve X amount of revenue. And this is exactly how I'm going to do it. And I'm going to focus on these clients. Yeah, I think we all think that, but the reality is quite something different.
Jan Griffiths:So I'm on this journey. It's taking twists and turns. If you're listening to this podcast, thank you for hanging in there with me. And I always, always, always want your feedback. So email me at jan@gravitasdetroit.com, it is time to bring Season Two to a close. And I can't believe that this episode is our 50th episodes. 50 episodes, how did that happen? I have received requests and a lot of great feedback from the interviews. And that's great. And I've also received some feedback for the solo episodes. So what I'm going to do for season three is alternate. I've been doing that for the last couple of months. But I'm going to make that the cadence moving forward.
Jan Griffiths:So we'll have a solo episode and then an interview. And as you know, I publish every Wednesday morning, every second week. So every two weeks, there's a podcast coming out. But if you have any ideas or any thoughts, any improvement, please let me know I'd really really love to know. So that's a little bit about mission. I want to take you into a personal story that is very much mission driven. And I run the risk of losing some of you when I bring this topic up. But please stay with me. I want to talk about the dress. And I know you're thinking what the dress, what is she talking about? When I was onstage at the car event, I wanted to get a new dress for the event where I'm going to look my best is nothing shallow about that I'm still being authentic. I'm still being authentic to myself and my style, I still very much appreciate great fashion and design. And I like a fashion designer called Alexander McQueen. If you have never heard of Alexander McQueen, please google him. He's a Brit. And he went to school in London, and that he had a there was a tragic and to his life. But I've always I've always liked his style. It's edgy, it's strong. And he's very much indirect red and black, which of course are my colors. And I've always liked his his clothes. And I was reading his biography because I was fascinated with his story. And I think that's actually a movie out about his life now.And he designs from from the heart. There's no question this man is mission driven, right? And what he does is he designs clothes. He wants women to feel powerful because the women in his life were abused in all different ways. And he wanted to protect them.
Jan Griffiths:So when I eat when I tell you that story, wow, you know, that's that's a mission, right? He wants women to feel more powerful and his clothes, reflect that. And somehow that resonates with me. Well, then there was another little twist to the story. As I'm reading the biography, they mentioned a guy by the name of diaries. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with Welsh slang, dye is that short slang term for David, which is a big name in Wales. And I went to school with a guy called de Reese, who, I realized was a professor at the London College of Art and Design. I might not have got that exactly right. But anyway, he clearly was a leader in his field. And it said in the McQueen biography, that he was running around London in the pubs who diaries. And when I read that, I thought, oh, my gosh, is that the diaries, he was my buddy when I was a teenager in Wales. And so I sent him a little excerpt from the book on Facebook, I connected him with him recently on Facebook, and it was the same guy. So here I am, getting ready to go to CAR off, you know, to the CAR event in Traverse City feeling and excited walking into the store. And wouldn't you know it there, it was an Alexander McQueen dress. It's as if it was meant to be all these things, all the missions came together and aligned. And I tell you that story, not big just because of the dress, but it tells you about meaning when you have meaning behind something, something as simple and seemingly insignificant as a dress. And there's a story behind it, you bring people in to your mission and your story. And I've got a few people lined up for season three in the podcast. To help you figure out how to tell that story. I've got some experts on branding. They're particularly strong on the branding for professional athletes, because I thought that would be a great way to bring this skill set in. So stay tuned for season three.
Jan Griffiths:We're going to take a short break for three weeks, and we are going to move the podcast to a different platform. Podcasts are hosted on different platforms. And it doesn't mean anything to you the listener. But again, the reason I am switching is because the podcast hosting platform I'm moving to is I feel is more mission driven. Right now I am on Libsync, which is an excellent podcast platform. There's nothing wrong with it. And basically what these platforms do is they host your audio files, and then they push it out to all the different places that you like to listen to your podcast on whether it's iTunes or Spotify, Deezer, whatever. So I'm moving from Libsyn nothing wrong with Lipson they never did anything wrong, technically competent, but I moving to a smaller company called Captivate. And what I love about Captivate is they are totally mission driven. They don't know me, I am nothing to them. And I sent them an email early on and gave them some observations on their website. They jumped on it and they said, Oh, yep, no, you're absolutely right. We're going to make some changes. I got on a call with their head of client engagement. And they operate they have a Facebook group on a Friday, Mark Asquith and I love his head of client development. Sam, she's awesome. So again, it's more of a mission driven company.
Jan Griffiths:So when you hear people talking about being mission driven, don't just discount it. Don't roll your eyes. Don't think that it's a PowerPoint or something that you put up in a conference room. It's really getting deep and personal as to what your mission is for yourself, for your business for your team. And then making that mission come to life surrounded in authentic leadership and feeling great about it. So we are signing off on season two. Thank you for your support. Please send me your feedback. I'd love to have it and I'll see you in season three. Have a great one.
19:45
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