Turn Fear Into Fuel with Kimberly Brown
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
Kimberly Brown is a leadership and career strategist, bestselling author, and CEO of Brown Leadership. She is known for helping professionals accelerate growth, develop executive presence, and navigate career transitions.
Characteristics of Effective Leadership Teams
Strong communication grounded in self-awareness, mission clarity, and mutual support.
A team culture that values empathy, decisiveness, and collaboration.
Growth mindset and transparency across roles.
Fear as a Leadership Barrier
Fear is often the main obstacle between a leader and their goals, more so than a lack of resources or strategy.
Fear of success can be as paralyzing as fear of failure.
High achievers may unconsciously shrink their goals to avoid the unknowns tied to success.
Procrastination is often a disguised form of fear rooted in uncertainty or internal narratives.
Reframing Fear: The Courage-Driven Mindset
A three-step framework for using fear as a motivator:
Recognize
Acknowledge the specific fear or limiting belief.
Identify whether the fear is factual, emotional, or a self-created story.
Reconnect with the deeper reason or motivation behind the goal.
Reframe
Shift the internal narrative from fear to empowerment or capability.
Redefine fear as a signal for action, not paralysis.
Replace limiting beliefs with thoughts that emphasize courage, purpose, and capacity.
Respond
Take small, tangible steps that build confidence through action.
Track past wins to strengthen self-efficacy.
Recognize that confidence grows from momentum, not planning.
Applying the Framework in Leadership Scenarios
1. Strategic Decision-Making
Leaders often delay action to seek more data, aiming for perfect clarity.
Reframing involves letting go of the belief that there’s only one “right” answer.
Action step: socialize early-stage ideas, share draft strategies, or make small test moves.
2. Difficult Conversations with Low Performers
Avoidance creates long-term dysfunction, affecting morale and culture.
Feedback is not just correction; it’s an act of empowerment and care.
Action step: schedule the conversation immediately, even before knowing exactly what to say.
Support can include mock feedback sessions or mentorship to rehearse language and tone.
Developing Middle Management ("The Magic Middle")
Mid-level leaders are essential for execution and cultural alignment, but are often underdeveloped.
Traditional leadership programs may be inaccessible, nomination-based, or one-off.
Sustainable development requires scalable solutions, including:
Ongoing coaching (individual or group)
Structured peer roundtables or mentoring circles
Practical support to translate knowledge into confident action
Coaching builds confidence by addressing context-specific challenges and moving individuals from knowledge to behavior change.
Thanks for listening!
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Mike Goldman
Kimberly Brown is a globally recognized career and leadership strategist, bestselling author, and international keynote speaker. As the founder and CEO of Brown Leadership, a premier learning and development firm, she helps mid-career and senior professionals amplify their brands, accelerate growth, and drive performance. Her bestselling book, Next Move, Best Move, Transitioning into a Career You'll Love.
has empowered thousands to take control of their careers with strategy and confidence. She also hosts the Your Next Move podcast where she shares actionable insights on career trusted expert, Kimberly's work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, CNBC, NPR and more. I've met Kimberly a couple of times now, but most recently at an event we spoke at
together and I loved what she talked about all about fear and that's what we're going to talk about today and when I saw her I said I got to get her on the show so Kimberly good talking to you again and welcome to the show.
Kimberly Brown (01:08)
Yes, thank you, thank you for having me. Very excited to be here today.
Mike Goldman (01:11)
Yeah, I'm to dig in. And you know how we always start with the leadership team. from all of your experience, Kimberly, what do you believe is the most important characteristic of a great leadership team?
Kimberly Brown (01:26)
feel like there's a right answer, but I want to go with what I'm thinking about. I know. I know, I know. my gosh, the pressure. And it's funny because I had a training just yesterday with a leadership team, nine leaders at this nonprofit organization here in Jersey. And one of the things I noticed about that team that I feel is missing in a lot of teams is just the level of communication that they had.
Mike Goldman (01:29)
there is i tell i told you if you get it wrong we're just gonna end the interview so i'm praying
Kimberly Brown (01:53)
I think being able to communicate and have a growth mindset are the two things that are generally missing from most leadership teams. I don't know if that's right or it's wrong, but I felt like that's what I wanted to say.
Mike Goldman (02:06)
It's beautiful. I'm going to ask you to dig in a little bit because I think it's an interesting answer is when you say communicate, what does that really mean? There's so many different levels of communication. So a team that's doing it right, what does that communication look like?
Kimberly Brown (02:22)
So I felt like they all had individual self-awareness of their strengths, their weaknesses, their opportunities. So whenever they spoke and gave input or insights, they were able to really articulate their own individual mission-driven team struggles, et cetera. And they communicated well together to help one another. And it felt clear. It felt empathetic. It felt decisive.
And I just love, I love witnessing teams like that because I'm sure you know, like when you go into some of these companies and you see the leadership team, it's like, they don't even feel like, they don't feel like friends. They don't feel like colleagues. It's almost like they're all individual CEOs who operate in their own entity. And I feel like when there's not that level of communication and community in the leadership team, it's really hard for the organization to move forward.
Mike Goldman (03:08)
Yeah, I have seen that. Either they're running their own individual businesses, like you said, they're all individual CEOs or entrepreneurs. Or what I've also seen, and I'm not sure if this is better or worse, they're both pretty bad, is they're not really a team, they're just a whole bunch of the CEO's direct reports. And they're taking orders from the CEO. And that's such an important part, and communication is so important in forming that team.
So thank God you gave the right answer so we can continue the interview. So I know, and as all of you heard in the introduction, you focus on leadership and career advancement, but I heard you talk about fear, and you've evidently put a lot of focus on that, spent a lot of time thinking about it, working on that. Why did you decide to focus so much of your effort on fear?
Kimberly Brown (04:03)
Fear for me is something that I've been working really, really hard on. And I realized that the difference between where I am and where I want to go is almost always overcoming fear. That is the one thing that's held me back. I have the strategy. I have the resources. I have the time. It is the fear of whatever the thing is, whatever the outcome is. And most of time when we think about fear, we're thinking about the outcome being negative. But I've noticed for many professionals, for many leaders, like many of folks who I'm coaching,
The fear for them is also the success part. And I don't think we talk enough about it. I think people hear like, my gosh, fear of success. And they just kind of wave it off. Like, I wish that was my fear. I'm actually afraid of like dying right now. Like that's the real fear or embarrassing myself. But fear of success, I feel like for high achieving professionals, for leaders and organizations, what happens if nothing goes wrong? What happens if the best outcome happens can be just as paralyzing as fear of failing in public or embarrassment?
Mike Goldman (04:57)
I want to dig into that a little bit, say more about that. Why would someone have a fear of succeeding? Isn't that what we want?
Kimberly Brown (05:08)
It is, but I think that people tie their success to other behaviors, other relationships, other outcomes, and they worry about what happens. What happens if I achieve all of my goals? What if I'm not happy when I achieve all of my goals? What if...
I can't find love anymore because I'm too successful and I've gotten there. I've had a lot of women say that. And I think as someone who's dated in the past few years, getting married on Friday actually, thank you, thank you. And one of the things that we always joke about as a woman and women in leadership is that when you're dating and meeting folks, you end up playing a little bit smaller sometimes when you're doing really well in your career and that you don't let the person know everything that you're doing. So there's a fear of being by yourself.
Mike Goldman (05:37)
Congrats! Wow!
Kimberly Brown (05:54)
in relationship with friends, with family, being othered when you're successful. It sounds like there's a lot of folks who when you fail and you don't do well, there's a community, there's resources, you almost know what the next step is when you don't do well. But what's the next step when you reach your goals? What happens then? And that unknown is really, really scary for a lot of folks. So they do what one of my coaches called out that I did, that I've been working on stopping is
they make whatever the goal is smaller. So they know that there's a plan A out there, but they're like, you know what? I'm just gonna cut that in half and I'm gonna do the plan B because that is palatable. I know exactly what happens if I reach it. I know what to do if I don't actually hit that. And it feels much more manageable versus really going for the gusto, going for the big thing. It opens up this new unknown door of possibilities. And that's where like the negative consequences happen that are almost unrelated to what the goal is.
but very deeply related to who they are as a human being.
Mike Goldman (06:52)
It's so interesting and it makes me wonder, if you have a fear of failure, which is most of what we think about, that fear of failure, you probably can identify that. what if I don't see, I mean that you see right in front of your face, but this fear of success, which as you said, I would imagine 99 % of the people would say, what are you talking about? Of course I don't have that. So what's interesting about that one is,
I would imagine most of the people that have that fear have no idea that's what's holding them back. They don't even know it's because of a fear.
Kimberly Brown (07:27)
would say so. Some people who are very self-aware, who are in therapy, they can point out like, I know what it is. But I do think it's this underlying, I had a call today, we're actually interviewing for my team right now to bring on another career and leadership coach. And one of the questions I love to ask is what do you do when a client is not making progress? When you've been giving them all the tactics, giving them all the homework, and they're just not showing up. And now you're like, you're at the point as a coach of like,
Why are you paying me? Because no progress is happening. And one of the coaches said, and I agreed, is like, it's very similar to my process. And then I try and get people closely connected to their why. Like, what actually brought you here? Because you are disgruntled. You don't like where you currently are. You came to coaching for a reason. You came to listen to a podcast on fear for a reason. You came, you wanted to apply for that leadership job because of a reason. There was a why attached to that.
So what do you feel is going to happen that is so bad if you get this? And I think it's really getting clear on what that is. Is it real? Is it actual? Is it factual? Did you make it up in your mind? Is it a story that you're telling yourself? And a lot of folks don't understand the narrative that they've created about what success means. So they just end up procrastinating. And it looks like procrastination to them, but really it's fear.
They're showing up half-stepping like my dad used to always say, half-stepping, you're not doing it all the way. You're taking these little itty bitty baby steps. You're doing everything else but what you know you're supposed to do. And they're like, my gosh, I'm just not productive. I don't know how to manage my time. I'm procrastinating on these things. It's like, no, what's the why? We need to go a little deeper. And that generally is the fear that they need to overcome.
Mike Goldman (09:11)
And sometimes if the WHY is big enough, that's what it takes to get over that fear. You work with all different levels of leaders and most of the folks listening to this are more senior level leaders, not all, but most. Do you find that higher achievers, more senior leaders, do they struggle less with fear and uncertainty because
they built some confidence over their career or is it that same struggle, just at a different level?
Kimberly Brown (09:44)
think it's the same struggle just at a different level. And I think it depends on the amount of leadership development work that they've actually had. I think that in a lot of organizations, you have two crops of folks, most of time at very senior folks who have, they have the mentors, they have the sponsors, they've gone to the conference, they may have coaching. So they could be very self-aware. So they know some of the simple tricks they can do to work on their mindset, to combat the fears, they have folks they can call.
But then you have another crop of folks who are in leadership roles because they were amazing executors and they've just continued to like climb up the proverbial corporate ladder and haven't necessarily dug into the leadership development work. And I think those folks fear is very different for them because they don't have these tools. They haven't listened to these podcasts. That's just not in their realm. They've been really focused on being operators. That's what I call it with my folks is like, you've just been operating. You've been tasked.
execution. And those folks who haven't touched on any of the mindset work with coaching and mentors and sponsors, it does manifest differently.
Mike Goldman (10:46)
Yeah, I would also imagine, and when I think of my own life and my own career, I think it depends how much new stuff you're trying, right? Like I, I want to, reinvent myself every three to five years. I want to do something very different. And you know, I'm going to write a book. I'm going to speak now I'm creating, you know, technology tools. And I think, and it's, it's almost counterintuitive, but on the one hand, the more of that you do, the more confidence you build that you could tackle these things. But
Kimberly Brown (10:58)
of that.
Mike Goldman (11:14)
At the same time, the more of that you do, you're always entering some new place you've never been before. And it can be scary. you're the accounts receivable clerk for the last 20 years and you're doing that day in and day out, maybe there's not much to be scared of. But if you're that entrepreneur or senior leader that is always trying to do new and different things, I would imagine that fear crops up more often, which kind of brings me to the next.
question I have which is, is fear a good thing or a bad thing?
Kimberly Brown (11:44)
I think it's a good thing. I think like, as you heard in my talk, I say, and I'm hoping this is the name for my next book, fear means go. I don't think fear is a bad thing. I think that our body processes it very differently. One of the things I'm doing is really going into the research and the science of fear. And we have the same reaction to getting promoted as we do to being chased by a lion, a tiger, or a bear, like in our body. It physically feels the same.
but it's our mind that we have to train to realize, no, no, no, I'm not going to die. I actually will not die from doing this, but it feels the same, which is crazy to think that we can have that same level of intensity. And I don't think, that's why I don't think it's a bad thing. I think fear is there to, when we think from an evolutionary perspective, fear was there to protect us. Like you need to know to get away from the lion, tiger, the bear, the snake, whatever the thing is that's scaring you to preserve yourself. But I think we're applying that same feeling.
to workplace issues, family relationships, like all of these other things where we don't need to actually be afraid and protect ourselves in that way. We need to be courageous. I teach my clients that you don't, I'm not asking you to be fearless because saying that fear does not exist and saying that you don't feel it, saying that you don't have sweaty palms and your stomach hurts or you get a stress headache, I know I do, I can't tell you that those things aren't real, especially when fear has a physical response for you. But I can tell you that it's time to be courageous.
and we need to reframe our thoughts so that we can take that same feeling of fear and realize that we can translate that to excitement. Let's think about being excited and not being scared that we need to be running.
Mike Goldman (13:14)
Yeah, so it sounds like fear could be good or bad depending on how you use it. If it paralyzes you, it's bad. If it fuels you, it's good. let's, so, and I know, you know, when I heard you speak, you talked about using fear as fuel instead of friction and to your, you just said it, fear means go. And by the way, I love the name of that book, if that's your next book. So how do we do that? how do we use fear as fuel?
Kimberly Brown (13:18)
Yes.
Yes. Yes. Thank you.
Mike Goldman (13:39)
and not friction.
Kimberly Brown (13:41)
So what I shared in that talk was something I call the courage driven mindset framework, because we really want to lean into courage. And the first step of that is to recognize. I think that many times when anything happens, we try and move to action too quickly. And we don't acknowledge the current circumstance. We don't challenge our own thoughts, our own beliefs, our own circumstances. It's like recognizing what is the current situation. Like, are you safe? And most of the time you are.
You are safe, but what is that real fear that's happening and get more closely connected to your why? The next part is to reframe. So the same way I'm saying fear means go, fear doesn't mean run. Like we need to reframe that thought, reframe the core belief that you have that is making you feel scared and reframe it to make you feel more courageous, to make you feel empowered, to make you feel motivated, inspired. And most importantly, especially when we're talking about the workplace, to make you feel capable because you are capable.
to do whatever the thing is. And then last but not least is respond. We have to take action. I teach my clients all the time that your confidence comes from doing. Your confidence comes from taking actions. It's important to track your wins so that you can see, my gosh, I did it this time, that time, this time, and what happened? I did not die. I was okay. Like I have a track record of doing this well. Your confidence is going to come from the action. When you are able to prove to yourself that you are competent,
you're capable that you did not die, and you can recall upon that, that's when you're really able to respond and be courageous. I think for a lot of professionals, we think that our confidence is going to come from the plan. Our confidence comes from the project plan. And I know anyone who's listening who has a paper planner. I say I'm a geriatric millennial. I love a paper planner. I have it right here. I write everything down when I am overwhelmed, when I am stressed.
I will bring out the colored pencils, the pens, the markers. I have the giant post-its on my wall in my office to my left. I have the giant post-its that I'm actually gonna be working on later today. And I can craft an incredible plan. And the misalignment there is that we think that plan is going to give us the confidence to take action. And a lot of times it doesn't because we're gonna keep on poking holes and procrastinating and not being sure and getting a second opinion and benchmarking and all these other popular terms that we talk about.
But the key is to take action and to actually take some steps to prove to yourself like, I'm okay. I'm actually safe and I can achieve whatever the thing is that you are fearful of.
Mike Goldman (16:06)
To make this real, want to go through your, three steps, recognize, the reframe and the respond. And I want to use some real life scenarios from clients that I have that struggle with this, which means I'm sure others struggle with it. And one is, so one client I'm thinking of has a fear of making strategic decisions. They want to make sure
that they've got 99.999 % of the information before they move. And then by the time they've got all that information, if they ever have it, it's too late and they don't get the value they might have gotten out of taking that step. So how would we use this framework if there's a leader listening that struggles to make big decisions and then procrastinates because of the fear of making the wrong decision?
How would we use this framework to combat that?
Kimberly Brown (17:08)
So first, if we start with the recognize, acknowledge, yes, I totally understand that is a real fear. Fear of being strategic and implementing a plan and being the leader responsible for the plan, which many times can feel like if this is successful, it's great and I win. If we lose, stock prices are going down, layoffs will happen, whatever it is. But in the recognize section, one of the things I want them to do is make a list. I want them to track their wins.
When are the last few times you've been strategic and what was the outcome? What happened? People who are very cautious to make decisions, I challenge them in the refrain part and the next step is to think about because you were so cautious, you are generally going to make the best decisions with the most amount of information that you have readily available. We just need to speed up that decision making process and not benchmark again and again and look for more data and reach out to more people. So I want them to track their wins and be like,
What decisions have you made and what were the outcomes? And I promise you, this person has probably made more good decisions and had more positive outcomes than they have negative ones. And even in the negative ones, the stakeholders around them trusted them because of their due diligence. And they know that this person did the best they could with what they had. And it wasn't just a decision where they were shooting from the hip and bad things happened. And it was because they weren't diligent.
I want them to think about what that feels like in their body, recognize that, I'm scared, but we're going to reframe it, like about what does being strategic actually mean? Is the fear failure? Is the fear the recognition that may come? What is, when we reframe that thought, what is thinking strategically and implementing these strategic decisions, what is it going to get them? What is the real outcome that they may be afraid of or feel full of? And I doubt that it's just the plan not going right.
I doubt that's what it is. And then when we get to respond, I would challenge this person, what is the smallest, most minute step that they can take today to start to implement this plan? Even if it's sending a draft, I'm pretty sure this person is known for a good executive summary, a good deck that outlines the whole strategy. How can we start to send this out and start actioning it versus just keeping it in the drafts?
doing another round of research, doing another round of benchmarking. We just want to find that one tangible action they can take to start to test their theory. And for many leaders, this can be as small as socializing it. Because I think when people are afraid of making decisions, afraid of showing it until the final final, they won't even socialize the idea with any trusted advisors or partners. They keep it to themselves until they feel like it's perfect. And that's also one of the reasons why it's hard to make some of these decisions, because you're trying to do it in a vacuum all by yourself.
But if you actually socialize the idea, if you got earlier feedback, you would be able to take action and execute at the fullest scale a lot faster versus kind of keeping it in that document by yourself.
Mike Goldman (20:00)
Yeah, that's such good stuff. And as you're talking, think one way to reframe something like this, and I haven't used your steps because they're your steps, but in the reframing piece, what I've often coached leaders on is leaders that struggle over decision-making believe there's one right answer. And if they give the wrong answer, they're screwed. And for most decisions, it's not one right answer.
There's an answer. You make the best decision you can at the moment, and then you execute the hell out of it. And it becomes the right answer because of your execution. And that may be a way of reframing it, I guess.
Kimberly Brown (20:31)
Yes.
100%. When we think about the right answer, I tell leaders that it's almost like old school math. I remember doing math back in fourth grade with Mr. Ida Resta. I was never a good math student, but he would give credit when you showed your work. When you were doing those long division problems, and I mean the old school way, not the new school way, like my godson is currently out in my living room right now watching and playing video games. I've seen how they do math now with the new kids. I'm talking about
the way we did math, like back in the day, you got credit each step along the way. It wasn't just, you get the right answer? And I tell leaders that when you are diligent, which you are, when you are cautious about making the wrong decision, you are a diligent human being, you're going to get credit for doing the work. And just like you said, it's like taking those steps, seeing where it goes, and the right answer can become what you did because you did all of the steps and you made it work.
It's like interviews. It's in a case interview. People want to know how you think and how you think this could be applied and executed. It's generally not that there is one solitary answer that is the only way to solve a problem
Mike Goldman (21:41)
That's a great reframe. Here's the other scenario I want to run by you that I see probably more often, so I'm saving the best for last, is fear of having the difficult discussion with the low performing team member.
That's one I see. I have had situations, just to drive this point home before I get your thoughts, is, because I work with leaders on this all the time where part of what I do is help them assess the performance of their teams. And they'll take someone who is just low performing, either from a productivity standpoint or a culture fit standpoint or both. And I will say, okay, you know, are we coaching them up or are we coaching them out? Like, what are we going to do?
And they say, well, we got to, I want to coach them. And I'll say, well, great. How long has this been going on? And I get answers like, oh, it's been a couple of years now. And I'm like, a couple of years, and you still think they're coachable? And the answer I get, which I think is leadership malpractice, the answer I get very often is, yeah, because, you know, I got to give them a chance. I haven't really talked to them about it yet.
They've been underperforming for two years or a year or, man, even three months, I don't care. And you haven't talked to them about it yet. So I see that so often. And it, and it's, in a lot of cases, it is that fear of having that difficult conversation. And, and again, and you know, they like to say it's, you know, it's this fear of making the other, you know, how does the other person going to feel? I think it's more a feel of a fear of how it's going to make them feel.
But however you slice it, that's my second scenario. How would you use your three steps to help someone get over that fear of that difficult conversation?
Kimberly Brown (23:39)
So we know the problem, is the wrecking. And first, I just want to say this drives me crazy when leaders come to me and they have not given the feedback. The only thing I'd say that is worse than this is if they've been coaching with you, Mike, and they've been talking about this person for how many daggone months, haven't said it to the person, but then have the nerve to put it on their end of year performance appraisal, and it hits this person in the face like a ton of bricks. That.
I always feel so, so bad because I feel like the performance conversation, these conversations need to happen before. you truly are putting your money where your mouth is, if you truly believe that you want to coach this person up and not out, you cannot wait to document this. Because that's, I don't know what's below malpractice. Are we going to say workplace manslaughter? That's what I feel like it is. Yes. Yes.
Mike Goldman (24:28)
Exactly. It's premeditated murder of the team.
Kimberly Brown (24:35)
100%. That's what it feels like. And I get so upset with leaders. Mike, you are put in this position. The first chapter of my book is called, Serving as a People Leader is not a rite of passage, it's a privilege. Because I believe in how we have a responsibility as leaders, as people managers, not just to be task executors, but to help our employees navigate the world of work and to coach them to do whatever their next thing is. And I think that's where lot of leaders go wrong.
So recognizing here is like, okay, so what is their real fear? Is it the fear of the reaction? Is it the fear that they're going to leave? Is it the fear that some negative, tough conversation is going to happen? Is it the fear of the PIP or having to put it in like the formal HR system? Or is the fear, what does it mean about you to give them this feedback? Because sometimes it's that like, who am I to give them this feedback? But the reality is, is that if this person has been underperforming,
What does that say to the rest of your team? How does this impact? When you have a low performer on your team, and if we're talking about senior leaders, they probably have a good size team. This is not a secret. And I almost doubt that it's a secret to the person who's low performing too. They may know that they're low performing. They can sense that they may not have the respect from you, respect from other team members. So how can we reframe this to truly be a coachable moment to help this person?
And sometimes it's not, when you say coach up or coach out, I think that's the most positive way to look at it. And it's not that we're firing this human being today, but I've had someone sit me down before. I remember early on in my days in finance, so I used to work at a bank. I had my Series 6, what is it, 6, 63, life and health. And like, I was miserable. I was so miserable.
Mike Goldman (26:19)
Well, you said you hated math as a kid and then you worked in a bank. I mean I could have put that together, Kimberly.
Kimberly Brown (26:24)
Oh my gosh. Yes, I
hated it, but I had a great connection. Before that was working in a marketing company, living in New York, making $25,000 a year before taxes, mind you. So that should not even, like it wasn't livable. I was miserable, but I had a friend who worked with bank. got a referral. It bumped my salary up, I think like 10 to 15 plus commission. I love the conversations, love learning about the families, but this pressure to sell.
all the time was so hard. And I remember back then they had like the leaders would be in the next like cubicle and they would listen to you to make sure that you offered the products. It didn't matter if you talked to the person the day before. It didn't matter if you knew their whole financial situation and they didn't need an annuity. They didn't need to talk to a financial advisor. They did not need that credit card or any check-in account. They wanted to hear you offer it. And it would ruin relationships. And I remember this one person came into the bank one day and he's like, I'm so tired of this. I'm gonna close my account. And I was like, sir.
Would you like check or cash? And my manager was like, I was like, check or cash, sir. That's when I knew that job wasn't for me, but I remember that my manager, and that's very unlike me, but I was at my wit's end at that point. I was so over it. I was like, sir, I'm not going to get yelled at today. Check or cash. We could wrap this up right now. I'll bring you right to the teller. We'll close it all out. You can go to whatever bank you want to go to, but it's not going to be here with me. And my manager sat me down and I remember that conversation. This was, I think, like 2000.
nine, maybe 2010. And he was like, what do you want to do? What is truly going to make you happy? And I remember, I tell leaders this story a lot because I'm like, when someone's underperforming, most people don't, they don't want to be doing poorly at work. We spend 40 plus hours a week in the office, like whether it's at home or in the office, like if your job is going poorly, you're miserable.
Like your life is pretty miserable too. They want to do better. So that manager at the time sat me down. He was like, what do you want to do? What's going to make you happy? And how can we help you get there? And how can we make a plan? He didn't put me on a PIP either. was more of like, we agreed on like, what do I need to do? What is my minimum viable product to continue to be here? And how can we put effort toward getting me to my next thing? And for me, it was leaving. That's when I moved to higher education. It got so much better. my gosh. I miss being in the higher ed environment. That's how I started getting
closer to the career work, not the first job after, but the second one landed me in career coaching. But I remember that conversation and I empower leaders. Imagine if you had a team, if you had an Avenger squad. Imagine if your team were the Avengers and you actually knew what everybody wanted to do next. They were in roles suited for not only your goals, but the organization goals and more importantly, their goals. They knew why they were doing it. They were operating in their zone of genius.
That's our goal is to get people in that zone. Now we're all gonna have some things we don't wanna do. So in that reframe, it's thinking about how can this conversation empower this individual to be their best selves and have the most joy possible in their career and then respond by creating the time for this conversation. This action is the most simple, there's only one way out. And that is scheduling the conversation and giving them the much needed feedback, but giving them...
open-ended conversations and really understanding what is the root of the issue with this person. Is it education? Do they really want this job? Do they love it? Do they love it and they don't even know they're not doing poorly? That's one thing that's kind of easy to fix. Are they miserable and don't want to be there and didn't know how to tell you? How can we support whether they want to stay, whether they want to go, whether they want to grow, whether it's a role? How can we build a plan customized to this individual? And that's all through having a conversation to guide them.
to their next best move and make sure that they're happy and successful. That should be the goal of all leaders, that your team are all in roles that are suited for them and suited for you and the organization. And everyone is able to move with as much autonomy as possible and have more joy than less in their role every single day.
Mike Goldman (30:20)
So you said a couple things there I wanna key in on that I love. One, from a reframing standpoint, when you say everybody on your team should be in a role they love, I think the reframing part of that is whether that's in your organization or somebody else's. Like if you've got someone on your team that's not in the right role, and I'm with you, most people that are underperforming, they're as miserable as the leader is, or maybe more. And that's why I use the term
Kimberly Brown (30:36)
Yes.
Yes
Mike Goldman (30:47)
coaching out because it's like help them find something, you know, in a different part of your organization or outside of your organization, help them find something where they could be successful and, you know, if you coach them out, if you fire them, they're probably not going to thank you, at least not right away. So it is a difficult thing, but I think reframing it is a way that you're actually helping that person and you're helping yourself and other members of the team.
Kimberly Brown (30:49)
Yes.
Mike Goldman (31:16)
That's a great reframe, so I wanted to just key in on that. The other thing you said, and you went through it quickly, but I want to stop there, is you said, know, respond, schedule the conversation. Now, I want to key in on that because having the conversation is where the bigger fear lies. But sometimes it's just, all I need you to do today is schedule it.
Kimberly Brown (31:41)
Yes, get it on the calendar.
Mike Goldman (31:42)
Tell them you need
to talk to them, get it on the calendar for tomorrow or Tuesday at 10 o'clock. then you've taken that net, now you're at the point of no return. It's scheduled. But you said earlier, sometimes it's starting with that smallest step, which is just get it on the schedule.
Kimberly Brown (31:51)
Yes.
100%. And if you have a coach, this is, if you don't have a coach, maybe you need one for this. I know I offer spotlight sessions sometimes, because sometimes people have a question they need to go through. Like you need to call Mike, call me, call somebody to model this conversation, call a mentor or a sponsor to talk through. When I'm coaching leaders, so many times we think that they should have the answer and they should have the verbiage and they may not. And it's okay. This is the perfect time. The way we used to do mock interviews, you can have a mock feedback conversation.
to really give yourself the confidence to go through this conversation with ease because giving feedback, this conversation is hard. It is hard, especially if you know you got that person who's a little hard around the edges and it's not gonna feel too good and they may react, they may cry. I don't know the person's personality who you're talking to and you have to make sure you're able to hold space and maintain your leadership, maintain your executive presence during this conversation as well.
So if this may be something that you can practice.
Mike Goldman (32:55)
Yeah, and I've also, I'd say 98 % of the time when that conversation happens, I get two pieces of feedback from the leader that finally had the difficult conversation. One is, oh, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be, is one. And the second one, let's say, even if it went, even if it got ugly, and let's face it, some of them are gonna get ugly.
Kimberly Brown (33:14)
Never is, yeah.
Mike Goldman (33:24)
The response I get back is, I'm so glad that's over.
Kimberly Brown (33:28)
Yes, the anxiety of thinking about doing something, a lot of times is worse than actually doing it. Because we build it up and you still have all the kuddish that a wood is, like all these hypotheticals spinning through your mind. But if you just do it, then you can deal with whatever the consequences are, good, bad, and different.
Mike Goldman (33:48)
I want to shift from fear and ask you one more general leadership question. One of the things I hear from my senior leader clients very, very often is problems with quote unquote middle management. know, that they don't have leadership skills.
their succession planning is tough, I'm not sure I've got the right people, but they always wanna quote unquote train, and I hate that word training, it's like fingernails on a blackboard, but we need to get some leadership training, leadership development, development's a better term, leadership training, leadership development for our middle managers. Now sometimes that's happening, and the real answer is the senior leaders need that, and they need to be the model for the
middle managers, but I guess, how should senior leaders be thinking about developing the next set of leaders within that organization?
Kimberly Brown (34:49)
I love this question. I call these folks the magic middle and it is my absolute favorite place to work because I believe the magic metal is the bulk of the workforce. There are the people that are mobilizing and executing all of the work and the strategy that these senior leaders are building, but they are some of the most under resourced and underdeveloped in most organizations. Some companies, and I'd say some of the best companies may have
some type of leadership development program, but it is targeted. is nomination only. It is a certain amount of people have it and then you don't have access to it. It is one-off training. It is maybe a three month stint, but as these leaders grow and evolve, development for them needs to come at a cadence that is scalable and accessible to more individuals and not just your high performers, not just the nominated path group.
because behavior change, in order to move them from having the knowledge of whatever the skill is, whether it's strategic thinking, succession planning, giving feedback, building teams, whatever the skill is, having the knowledge of what they need to do and having the confidence to make behavior change, that takes time and more time than a lot of leaders expect. And they haven't seen the things yet. A lot of these folks were promoted into their roles because they were phenomenal task executors.
They killed it as entry-level individual contributors. And when you kill it, what happens in organizations? You get promoted and they expect you to just keep on doing the execution because that's what you got hired for, but you're not necessarily getting hired for the leadership skills. The leadership skills haven't been developed. They haven't been fostered. They haven't been tested. So they're learning trial by fire. Hopefully they have a good mentor, sponsor, coach, somebody, but most of them don't. So I think I challenge organizations to figure out how can you develop
a program, a resource, something that is scalable that everyone has access to that empowers your leaders to not only learn and acquire the skills, but gives them the confidence to make behavior change. And many times that's a combination of a few tactics. It could be the trainings, but I'm always like, what is the follow-up that happens after the training? Because when you do the training, they still don't have the confidence. They have the knowledge now, but they don't have the confidence.
So what do these folks need to close that gap between knowledge and action to build that confidence? That could be spotlight sessions of coaching. It could be group round tables. There's so many creative ways to do it that I've seen at organizations. But I think the gap is most of time that they'll do a little spotlight. They'll do a little, maybe a three month intensive if they have that. Or sometimes nothing and they're just expecting these leaders to know what to do.
Mike Goldman (37:32)
Yeah, and I think people default, and I like you talking about a combination of methods, because I see leaders defaulting too often to, we will create a leadership development program. And HR has got to go do that. Half the time, they never finish doing it, and they chase some other shiny object before it's done. And then the other half of the time, well.
probably not half because there's a certain percent where they're actually successful, but another good percent of the time, they actually create the program, but it becomes a kind of a check the box. We did all these things, we put it in the program, and to your point, there's never any thought as to is this really having the impact we want it to have, or is it just we've checked the box and now we have this leadership
Kimberly Brown (38:01)
course, yes.
Mike Goldman (38:23)
development program. it seemed to me it's got to be a combination. There are certainly opportunities for development programs and training, but I think a lot of this has got to come from day in and day out coaching and being a model for people. And I think that's where companies probably fall down most.
Kimberly Brown (38:42)
100%. I 100 % agree with you. believe that coaching is one of the fastest ways to get someone from knowledge to the confidence to action. Because when you have a coach working with you who can sit there and like make sure and talk about your specific situation, because I'm sure, I'm not sure if you feel like this, but I feel like in career and leadership coaching, I feel like people always assume that their situation is so minute. It is so different. They got to talk to you on the side.
They need to send a LinkedIn voice note. They need to message you on Instagram, like whatever it is, because their situation is so unique. No one's ever heard this before. So because of that, they can't take action because my person and how this manifests in my org and my company is so different. When really it's not, that's the secret, because we know it's not. We're going to give you the same advice we gave the other 10 people before, but it feels special because we're just talking to you. And I'm like, we're going to close it out. I'm like...
Mike Goldman (39:26)
Don't tell them our secret, stop it. I'll edit that, I'm gonna edit that part out, that's horrible.
Kimberly Brown (39:34)
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I told all the secrets. I told all the secrets. They want that special fine tune. feel like coaching is one of the few things that does that. But I always challenge organizations, how can we give that? Maybe it's one session a year. Maybe it's group coaching. Maybe it's training leaders in your organization to do roundtables with the leaders once a month. That's in-house. It's not even bringing someone external or using a company. There are so many different things. I know I heard it out of…
Mike Goldman (39:36)
Ha
Kimberly Brown (40:04)
I heard it on a podcast, so it Public Knowledge. Amy Porterfield has a marketing made easy. Well, it's not called it anymore. It's called the Amy Porterfield Show. She just rebranded it. And she created a AI bot where she uploaded all of her favorite leadership books. And she has a custom GPT. And like the custom GPT is if you pay chat GPT 20 bucks a month, you can create a custom GPT. And it allows like her team. She's like, I want my team to source things from things that I would use. Like if you can't talk to me or someone else, like.
There's so many ways now to get your questions answered. Before this call, I had a call talking about building an app for myself and for my people. And one of the things I'm looking at is how can I give coaching at scale and answer questions at scale? And it's like, how do I fill this knowledge base with like my first book, with the second book, with all the podcast material? Organizations have all this knowledge. So how can you package up this knowledge? So there is some place that people can go to get this. It could be AI, it could be an individual, it could be an external vendor. There's lots of different ways.
but we need to figure out, or not we, but the organization needs to figure out how can we give this almost individualized, customized support so we can help these magic middle folks? Because I do agree, when the magic middle is not working, when they are not prepared, when they don't have the knowledge, when they don't have the skill, the rest of the workplace is significantly impacted. I'd say they're probably even more impacted sometimes than having like a standalone senior leader who's not that great, because that's one person.
and they probably manage how many people in the magic middle who need to be doing all the action. You could work around that one bad senior person. You can't work around if you don't have skilled people in the magic middle.
Mike Goldman (41:41)
But imagine if our senior leaders learned how to become better coaches. That's what I want. it's starting to happen. And there are some great books out there that I always recommend, The Coaching Habit. Michael Bungay, Stanier here. I love that book. And he and I have the same publisher. We're both publishing through page two. But that's one of the things I'm trying to do, is get leaders to...
Kimberly Brown (41:47)
and they did it at 100%. Yeah.
I got it over here.
Mike Goldman (42:10)
give less advice and ask more questions so people like this magic middle we're talking about so they can come up with the right action for them. And the questions model a way that they could be thinking moving forward so they become more self-sufficient and they own the answers. All that stuff's beautiful. Well, this is great. Excellent. hey, Kimberly, if people want to find out more about you, Brown leadership,
They want to buy your current book or whenever your new book comes out. I don't even know if you started writing it yet. Did you start writing? You did start writing? Very good.
Kimberly Brown (42:43)
I right after
we were in Nashville, I started writing.
Mike Goldman (42:47)
Beautiful, beautiful. So if people want to find out more about you, your keynotes, Brown leadership, anything, where should they go?
Kimberly Brown (42:54)
So all things about me are kimberlybonline.com, kimberlybonline.com, and all things Brown leadership are brownleadership.com.
Mike Goldman (43:03)
Excellent, that'll all be in the show notes. As I always say, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. Kimberly, thanks for helping us get there today.
Kimberly Brown (43:13)
Any time, thank you for having me.