Lead Smarter Podcast

David Kent (00:01.207)
Hey, Karina, thank you for joining us on Lead Smarter podcast. really good to be able to catch up with you again. I've really enjoyed every time we've got a chance to talk. I really am looking forward to diving into the topics we've kind of covered in our previous conversations, kind of specifically as it relates to remote leadership and uniquely from people I've had a chance to talk to, you have some pretty specific experience as it relates to remote leadership. You've even written books about it. I've had a chance to,

See that you have three best-selling books, which I'm excited to read myself And I'd love to dive in but first of all, just want to thank you for being here if you could give me a little bit of background just for the listeners of your experience as it relates to remote leadership and Even as it relates to writing on these topics, which you know being a best-selling author It's it's no small thing to brag about so very excited to hear a little bit more about your experience as it relates to remote leadership as we dive into this stuff

Corinna M. Hagen (01:00.417)
Yeah.

David Kent (01:00.547)
See you again.

David Kent (01:03.966)
can you hear me still? Karina, it froze on my side. Okay. Sorry, go ahead.

Corinna M. Hagen (01:05.197)
I can hear you. I wasn't sure if you still had something to add to the introduction. I didn't want to interrupt you there. But thank you for having me on your show. I'm really honored to be there. Like we had a conversation prior to this that was just so enlightening for me. so, yeah, thank you for having me on the show. Like you gave the introduction. I've written three books, four actually. not under my name, under a pen name.

And the first book I've came to me, it came to me. wasn't that I had wanted to write that book. I always wanted to write a book. Never thought I would because it felt a little bit too big to do. And then a publisher contacted me and said, hey, it seems like you work remote a lot and like your coaching expertise has to do with remote leadership and.

That's a hot button topic for us right now. This was in 2021 when they contacted me. Yeah.

David Kent (02:09.367)
Wow. I actually didn't realize the crossover of the timing. that one, I know that we've done remote leadership for our own business for years with, on bottleneck and it's been a topic like really exploded for us. And I know that like, there's also like hybrid workforces and things like that. I would love to dive into like from your experience writing the book, could you, could you tell me like, what was the inspiration for you after they've had a chance to say like about your expertise and learn about.

where you really bring your own professional background into that. What was the process of identifying what would be really valuable for listeners, almost like in the height of the pandemic?

Corinna M. Hagen (02:51.598)
Yeah, well in that moment I had a lot to say about remote work and remote leadership because in my own career I had, so I've worked in remote positions not just purely from home, very often I worked for companies that were, know, global companies that had dispersed teams everywhere or my clients were sitting in a different state than I was in and so I would fly in sometimes and then sometimes I would

work remotely and access them. this remote work existed for a long time. We just didn't call it that. You just knew when you rise in leadership and you work for a global organization, you'll have to learn to communicate across technical boundaries, right? Across that geographic distance that you have to bridge with technology somehow and with good communication. So I've had a chance to observe that for many years. And I was...

really eager to get some more freedoms to work from home a few days? How can you do that? You have to be really able to deliver your work in a way that your value is conveyed, clear, and that you can mobilize teams, that you can influence, build connection, even when you're not in the room. And so I've realized that early on, and I've come up against the...

the resistance and the stigma or the rumors and all those myths, all the anti remote worker attitudes early on. And I've been able to overcome them. Even when my direct managers or even my skip levels were not a friend of it and then I found a way to convince them otherwise and I said, we'll actually

happier with you than we are with most people that are working in the office. So I was busting a bunch of those myths, which told me that there's some more to talk about here. And at the same time, I was reading a too from the founder of Basecamp, 37 Signals. And I forgot what they were called. One was called Remote.

David Kent (05:10.273)
Right.

Corinna M. Hagen (05:17.422)
And the other one was like this long title, like 80 hours, da da da, doesn't have to be like that, something like that. Whoever listens to this will probably laugh because they remember the title, it's like a long title. And it resonated with me and I said, you know, that's true. It's just a bunch of baloney that people hide behind being in office because they haven't learned leadership fundamentals.

So they compensate for that by saying, well, you have to be in the office so I can see what you do. Really? So you're wanting to be a micromanager, a helicopter boss, like who hovers over people and watches their every move? And that's going to be good. Aren't you the manager who works through others, who leads through others?

David Kent (06:01.41)
Right.

David Kent (06:08.259)
Yeah. And in that, I was actually going to ask, what would you say most leaders that you've, now that you've really focused and developed expertise, even from the point of an author on a remote leadership, what would you say your experiences where most leaders underestimate about managing remote teams? Where do you see the biggest underestimating factor for people that are trying to figure this out themselves?

Corinna M. Hagen (06:30.946)
That's the golden question, isn't it? Yeah. know, time and time again, and again, I'm talking about coaching hundreds of leaders, over 200 just in the last five years. So time and time again, it's the reliance on technical expertise, knowing, right? Knowing doesn't get you to lead in any fashion, doesn't get you the success you're aiming for. Knowing gets you...

David Kent (06:32.524)
Yeah.

Corinna M. Hagen (06:58.432)
in the door so people go, okay, we'll hire you for the position. Apparently you have the expertise to do it. But that doesn't mobilize teams. It doesn't get you the success that you want in people following your lead. That's communication, that's self-awareness, that's having absolute clarity about what you want to achieve. And sometimes people say they have clarity because they go, well, we have a project plan here, you know? This is what we try to achieve and leadership is behind it and that's why you need to.

do your job. When has that ever worked? So it goes a little bit to the topic of leadership without authority. And that concept, when people finally get a grasp of it, blows people's minds when they realize their title doesn't carry that much weight. How many leaders have you met in life? Probably not many, but think about a leader that you have met, and we all know one.

who had PIDL and still no respect, people weren't following them. Proves the point.

David Kent (08:02.359)
Right. What would you say when you're trying to help a leader become more effective at remote management, what are some of the frameworks that you try to guide them through, especially if they've not done this before? Lots of the people I work with, for example, clients I have, I'm introducing a remote team member for the first time for them. And lots of times that happens with like healthcare, professional services where they're used to.

Managing people locally or they're they're just managing people for the first time they went from being a doctor to owning a practice and now I have to manage team members and manage somebody remote. What would be some of the guidance you would give a leader who's trying to figure out how to be effective at managing people remote for themselves.

Corinna M. Hagen (08:46.318)
Well, you're mingling two big topics together in one. One is going from in-person to remote, and the other one is you just want to address them. We can tackle them both. And the second one is when you become a first-time people leader, as an individual contributor, you're used to recognizing the work, doing the work, and being responsible for the result. As a leader, you're not doing the work.

David Kent (08:49.251)
Sure.

David Kent (08:56.642)
Yeah.

David Kent (09:04.183)
Right.

Corinna M. Hagen (09:15.468)
delegating, what we'll call delegating, but basically you need to convey what needs to be done. When we do it ourselves, we don't have to explain to ourselves the expectations because they're intuitively inherent in us. so that kind of mix that secret sauce inside of us that says, here's how I need to do things. I have total clarity because we understand ourselves. We don't have to explain it to ourselves. But here is another human being.

David Kent (09:40.248)
Right?

Corinna M. Hagen (09:45.112)
who thinks differently, who might not be at where you're at, might have a different style than you have. style of problem solving, but also a style of communication. And so what's clear to you might not be clear to them. And that's where communication comes in. So you have to learn to articulate what exactly you want to get done. I think in our pre-call, I shared with you.

David Kent (10:02.519)
Right.

Corinna M. Hagen (10:13.142)
One great delegation training exercise is go to ChatGBT and tell Jaby, you really want to get good in prompt engineering, you will get good in delegation because ChatGBT spits out what you put in, crap in, crap out. If you have no clarity, then you will get something back that's not exactly satisfying you. So the better you get at setting the parameters, okay.

David Kent (10:23.511)
Right.

David Kent (10:30.403)
All right.

David Kent (10:36.759)
Yep.

Corinna M. Hagen (10:42.23)
I want this, not that. Here's how I the output to look like.

David Kent (10:44.323)
I really love that example. That's a really good example. I've had that conversation with some people as well, like who are just using chat GPT for the first time. maybe, maybe more established leaders. They're not used to that kind of technology and maybe they're not in technology businesses themselves. And it's really interesting to tell them like, you know, one it's easy to use, right? Like chat GPT, it's just like text messaging a friend. But the difference is, is you can't blame them for how they've received your message.

It's a reflection of you and how you communicate, not a reflection of some communication struggle you're having with a person. so it really forces you. really love that, example of like, use that as a way to train yourself to be better at delegating. Cause you're going to see what the input is. And if you get good, if you get good output from chat GPT, you've likely evolved your ability to communicate in a way that will be effective, because it's, it's intended to be natural language. So you'll probably be more effective. Although, you know, there's some things like I know that I've seen recently.

wow. Chat. GBT is sure spending a lot of money on people saying please. thank you. Like that's cause have you, have you seen those messages where basically chat GBT is actually calculating people being polite when they give prompts because it actually creates a burn on how much, servers have to spend trying to process the information, which is not actually needed for the prompt. Like just tell chat GBT what to do. I know that with humans, we probably want to be more human obviously, but I love.

I love the idea of using ChatGPT to train yourself to be more effective at delegating. It is a really good example. And that's relatively new though, right? Like that actually emerged even after the pandemic. Would you say that's part of... go ahead.

Corinna M. Hagen (12:22.382)
Absolutely. Just to your point on saying please and thank you, even, yeah, you can become maybe more effective with your words. You don't need to say all those things, but honestly, in this case, I care less about the server burn, not to say like, I don't care about the environment, you know, what that does. But the please and thank you, I think there's a separate topic in there because we can train ourselves out of compassion.

David Kent (12:39.615)
Sure, sure.

David Kent (12:46.709)
yeah.

David Kent (12:50.549)
Yes, it's-

Corinna M. Hagen (12:50.83)
Maybe watch what you're leaving out there too, even if you know it's

David Kent (12:54.197)
I agree. Yeah, I've, what if my own, so I I've told you, think even when we talked earlier, like one of the things that I've noticed for myself managing remote teams for years, I've, I get ahead of those conversations with new people I talk to. And I say, over communicate. know I do this. It's actually a habit because, I use communication as like my, it's my whole framework. It's our entire infrastructure with remote team members. don't have an office to go to.

And it's, you know, I don't always have ways of showing you what I'm trying to do. So I have to often I have to over articulate for me. I get, you know, it doesn't always sit well with some people. Some people like to be super concise and I, you know, too long didn't read. Right. But I also feel like as it relates to the please and thank you piece.

Yeah, it probably costs chat GPT a decent chunk to do that, but I am not interested in carving that piece of humanity out of my own language. I'm happy to absorb those costs in every conversation I have. So the cost really for me is little in comparison to the return of recognizing and acknowledging the people I'm interacting with as a human that's trying to help me with my own initiatives, right? It's just, it's interesting that

you take that they've that focus that there's a focus even out there and totally make sense obviously that there's a cost but the cost in reverse is not worth it I think to remove it from your own language. What would be what would be some of the other frameworks for in your own coaching that you give to leaders as it relates to communication to be be more effective leaders as relates to communication I know it's a big focus of your own frameworks that you do for your clients.

Corinna M. Hagen (14:34.486)
Yeah, it's a loaded question because I saw much but I would start, know, the baseline would be develop a self-awareness.

David Kent (14:46.337)
Okay.

Corinna M. Hagen (14:46.612)
And because out of self-awareness comes clarity. When you have self-awareness and contextual awareness, things become clear for you. Out of clarity comes better communication and better decision making, more confident decision making. So in my years working with leaders, when they are frustrated with why things are not working, they lack that clarity. What they want is what you just said.

Like, hey, can you give me like a framework on like the five things I need to do in order to

have more clarity or like be more better delegation or have more executive presence or manage what better be, you know, you pick any topic, like give me the five steps. Well, that's an expensive Google search that you just paid for, right? Because the five things that you could do, anybody could look them up. But if you invest a little bit in this conversation and we arrive at a point where you gain the awareness you need, so you can say, I see what's going on.

David Kent (15:38.125)
Sure. Yeah.

Corinna M. Hagen (15:52.214)
Now I have the clarity. Here's what I'm actually after. The framework almost establishes itself for you. give you an example. I had a client recently who said, when I write emails, I always have this inefficient process. She's very analytical. She has a lot of thoughts. there was a lot of company jargon, like all the things we say at work.

David Kent (16:17.761)
Right.

Corinna M. Hagen (16:22.858)
her leadership team told her, and she's a junior, but she said, like a junior but a high potential, and so leadership invested in her and said, this woman will rise. But at that point, she was not getting to the point enough. And so she starts writing the email. She spits out everything that goes through her mind, like, and then this data point, yeah, and then that, and all the analytics that.

David Kent (16:41.74)
Right.

Corinna M. Hagen (16:50.806)
that went into this and what we need to do to drive more revenue or what have you. And so she writes that email and then she starts cleaning it up. And so that process was inefficient for her and she wanted to clean it up.

So then I said, who are we talking to? And what is the intel that you've already gathered? Because your leadership already told you what they would like to see. Why don't we start there? So you keep the end in mind. It's a shortcut to any communication. Keep the end in mind. What do I want to achieve? Who am I talking to? And where do they find themselves? Because that's the hook for you. That's how you determine how you communicate and even what you insert and what you leave out.

David Kent (17:23.416)
Right.

Corinna M. Hagen (17:33.154)
just so you capture the interest.

David Kent (17:33.571)
love what you just described. It's basically you almost described like the framework of developing like marketing messaging, but to your leader to your team that you're communicating to it, it makes a lot of sense because obviously you're needing to think about your audience, how am going to reach them? I love the mention of the hook because it's very clearly it sounds like a marketing message when you say it that way. But I mean, also if you're if you're intentionally trying to make sure that your messages is being received and you're trying to bring

them along with you. I think there's nothing nefarious about being intentional about how you communicate. You're just talking about the effective structures of communication focused inward at your team, which I think is a great framework to think of it around. I know that you help your own clients and your people that you are trying to guide.

with marketing and sales as well. So I love that you have that mix of experience to be able to draw from communications that are effective measurably outside of your organization and taking those communications and measuring the effectiveness internally.

Corinna M. Hagen (18:39.702)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I want to hook into that. You're right, display my cards here. Because I've worked many years in sales enablement and marketing, of course I borrow a lot from that. But I've realized leaders don't think in those frameworks. don't understand. I mean, I read a lot of books on communication, whether that's NLP or marketing communication or on influence.

David Kent (18:43.33)
Yeah.

Corinna M. Hagen (19:09.286)
become part of the techniques that I use. But when you said earlier, what's the framework that you would give somebody? Now the beauty about what I just shared with you, what I did with this young woman, we developed her own framework. We came up at the end with something that works for her. So what's your process of going through it? And by the end of our session together, she had her own framework. It was unique to her. Now you could apply that to other people. There's probably...

David Kent (19:27.693)
Great.

Corinna M. Hagen (19:35.982)
a thousand people who would happily apply this and are getting a lot out of it. You can develop your own. What I'm saying is when you think with the end in mind and you think about the intelligence you've already gathered, you can create your own framework and work and say, okay, what makes me inefficient about it? So I know that just writing down everything and then cutting it down is not working. But if I kept the end in mind, what things should actually go in there? So,

David Kent (19:41.699)
Sure.

Corinna M. Hagen (20:04.812)
You see, now if you keep the end in mind, you stop putting everything in there because you already know your focus. So find that focus. And that goes back to what you said about setting your intention. And that's one of those sentences that clients hear from me a lot. When you want to change the direction that your career or your life is going, be very intentional. Set that intention every morning. And so I share with all my clients, I've coined a term called five by five journaling. And what that means is,

David Kent (20:11.341)
Right.

David Kent (20:33.974)
Okay.

Corinna M. Hagen (20:34.68)
five minutes in the morning and five minutes in the evening or whenever you close your day to reflect in the evening and to plan in the morning. So in the morning you set your intention and you even do this before you go into a meeting like you before you and I went into this call and every time I go into any meeting I set my intention. What's the outcome that I expect of this meeting if there is an outcome to be produced or

How do I need to show up? What's my intention for showing up there? Who do I need to be? Do I need to be like, is this a conversation where I need to be more firm? Is this a conversation where I need to be friendly? And how does that lead to the outcome I want to achieve? So that's something that if a leader started just doing that one piece, that what I call five-by-five journaling, setting your intention in the morning and in the evening, reflecting, did it work?

David Kent (21:08.62)
Yeah.

Corinna M. Hagen (21:31.318)
or did it not work? What would I do differently? That would give you so much mileage. If people just listen to that piece in this conversation, growth is unavoidable.

David Kent (21:39.395)
Sure.

David Kent (21:44.545)
Well, it's I love that you've you've given that framework in this conversation. I know that I'm going to just share from from before we jumped into this call. For example, I also agree that you should be framing your conversations, planning ahead. I tried to do that. What what do you do when a very sharp curveball is thrown?

And you, it doesn't have like, you're about to go in a meeting and it goes in an entirely different direction. You want to obviously be flexible because you want to be able to adapt and take advantage of opportunities that you didn't anticipate with the framework you've given yourself. how do you adapt in a situation that is drastically different from the framework that you've set out with your intention? How do you maintain flexibility in that framework?

Corinna M. Hagen (22:32.681)
Yeah, you know, I'm a friend of hands-on examples. Can you think of a time? Yeah.

David Kent (22:38.177)
I can't. Yes. So for example, before we jumped into this call, you asked me how I was feeling, which was for me, a really odd question. We've, we've chatted several times and I didn't expect that question. And I, I enter conversations with a poker face and intention like laid out ahead of me. And in this situation, when you asked me, I actually had a lot going on behind the scenes. My team member has been

On maternity leave for a long time, I've had some shakeups with work and I typically like to be available when my, my internal team is stretched really thin. So I will draw myself back from my other responsibilities that help build the business so that I can be underneath the hood if I can to help. I guess run the business, help support the team members if they need it. So when you asked me, I just.

I had a pretty deep schedule today and I'm not able to be there for my team member like I like to be. it bothers me and it bothered me at the time. But I didn't want that to disrupt what my intention was for the day. I had have intentions of being on this call with you. I have intentions of having a good conversation. So when you asked me that I had to like say out loud the thing I was dealing with. And I admit I didn't like it.

Corinna M. Hagen (23:54.134)
Hahaha

David Kent (23:54.947)
Because I was trying so hard to be intentional. So that was kind of why I was asking like, when you get a curveball like that, when you're when it doesn't fit your framework that you've you've tried to lay yourself lay out for yourself. How do you maintain flexibility and still maintain intention, I suppose?

Corinna M. Hagen (24:13.654)
Yeah, I'll answer that. But first, I want to ask you, because you almost answered a couple of those questions for the audience if they listen. They can go back a few seconds and listen again. how did it feel to you once you had the space to say it out loud? Because I asked you a question, and then all of a sudden, things came to the surface.

David Kent (24:17.539)
course.

David Kent (24:37.143)
Yep. Yeah. Well, it's because, for example, people ask me like, how's your day going? And I it's like a pet peeve of mine to answer a literal question as if it's just a like a rhetorical one. Like people just say fine all the time. Right. So I don't like to answer what is effectively dishonestly. So I felt compelled by my own like habits to have to answer honestly a question I wasn't really ready to.

So it made me uncomfortable because I wasn't going to allow myself not to tell you the truth. But it also meant that I had to deal with those feelings, I wasn't going to plan. I wasn't going to manage ahead of this call. I was going to manage that outside of the call afterwards at a different time. But if I have to say it out loud, then I have to deal with it then. Or at least that's how I feel like I have to. So it's good because I needed to process it. And I still do, I suppose.

But I...

It clashed with my intention of what I was trying to do. So I guess the clash was uncomfortable, I suppose.

Corinna M. Hagen (25:47.822)
The clash was uncomfortable, but until the clash happened, what state were you in?

David Kent (25:53.475)
It's like suspended animation. I had to just deal with what I had the capacity to and I was suspending what I needed to deal with for another time, basically.

Corinna M. Hagen (25:58.542)
That's a good expression. I like that.

Corinna M. Hagen (26:11.91)
Capacity, ooh, that's a, did you realize what you just said? Suspended animation, I'm gonna borrow that, this is so good, that's golden. Suspended animation, but capacity, because then your capacity is kind of limited, like you had to work with what you had, and I wanna give you, I'm a big fan of analogies, so when those things are revealed, know.

David Kent (26:21.261)
Sure, sure.

David Kent (26:28.874)
Exactly.

Corinna M. Hagen (26:37.686)
Revelation allows you to redeem something. You know when gold is refined, like gets, like a silver, like it gets heated and then the dross flows to the top and then you, whatever floats, you redeem it, like you take it away? And so when you talk about capacity, I'm trying to find a better analogy for capacity, but maybe this will still work. To get to the purity of.

David Kent (26:51.405)
Sure, sure.

Corinna M. Hagen (27:03.572)
of what you need that could be like, you know, your cup is full in a way, like the junk is, is taken away from you. that only happens when you give it that moment where you know actually what's going on inside that undercurrent that kind of runs the system or not runs the system, but impacts it. Yeah. So in setting your intention now and setting your intention has a new meaning, doesn't it? Because if I would share with a leader a tip on like how to get back to

David Kent (27:08.513)
Right.

David Kent (27:21.655)
Sure, yeah.

Corinna M. Hagen (27:33.602)
your best self? so I've, I'll give you a little bit of background. I've worked as a management consultant right out the gate, right after my college graduation. And instantly you're thrown into a ton of work. I think anyone who has worked in consulting or who has worked for law office or who is, yeah, I think attorneys, consultants, bankers,

I think there's commonalities there. You just work a lot and there's high expectation on you and things will happen and nobody asks how your personal life is. You just have to get back on your feet. And the weekend is so short. So how do you recover when you're just so exhausted and you know Monday morning you have to do the grind again? And by the way, on the weekend you have to work about 12 hours too. So your time for recovery is shorter. You have to learn some techniques to get you back.

David Kent (28:05.537)
Yeah. Yeah.

Corinna M. Hagen (28:33.196)
Right? And so one thing I've learned is, setting your attention is one, how do I need to show up? But also what's being asked of me, where am I now? Where am I? Where am I physically? Where am I mentally, emotionally? Like what's happening? And who do I need to be in that moment? What kind of energy do I need to have right now? What kind of mindset will help me to get through this? Because sometimes you can't.

deal with all the other stuff that's happening right now. just having the awareness sometimes helps you and men are usually better than women or at least they're said to be the better compartmentalizers, right? So you learn to kind of say, okay, this one goes in the box because it has to be parked for later. Can't deal with it right now. Right now I have to be here and I have to be strong.

David Kent (29:16.194)
Okay.

Corinna M. Hagen (29:29.886)
But it doesn't, it's not easy, especially when it's something that's very emotional. If it's personal, if it's at work, you might be able to better do this to say, man, I really like you. Like you said, like you said earlier, you know, when you're when you're a new employee, you want to onboard them, you want to be there for them, answer their questions. And, you know, you know, it's annoying, but it may feel less personal.

When it's that your wife says she needs your help because she felt really ill or what have you, or a girlfriend betrays you, something that's really personal and you have to deal with it, it's not as easy to just shut it off. And in that moment to say, here's where I am right now. This has happened. I can't deal with it. But I'm not going to let this part ruin that one.

David Kent (30:25.549)
Sure.

Corinna M. Hagen (30:26.75)
I acknowledge that it really hurts me what my friend has done to me, for example, if that was the case, right? Or the scenario is happening. It really hurts me or it makes me feel upset or whatever that is. But I'm going to park it and I'm going to address it in a healthy way later on, because then I have the capacity, capacity is what you mentioned, right? To actually deal with that. Until then, this cup needs capacity for other things. And I'm going to fill it with

David Kent (30:32.929)
Right.

David Kent (30:45.57)
Right.

Corinna M. Hagen (30:54.388)
all the things that I look forward to in this meeting. Right, so you'll find a new focal point.

David Kent (31:01.247)
Then that was what you had, I think, if I understood correctly, that was what it seemed like you were trying to do for me in the beginning of this was to find something positive that I was looking forward to to help me reframe my focus in a way that was maybe both positive and more productive and helped me realign, I suppose, in a way that I could still have this conversation. I think so. I think so. I think what worked

Corinna M. Hagen (31:21.934)
Did it work?

David Kent (31:28.885)
It's so weird to have this conversation. This is not at all the podcast I was trying to have. honestly, I'm really glad that it's not because this is a lot better. So I think it worked. What really worked was getting out of my head, stopped trying to have very specific questions that were again, getting ahead of the the experience that was happening behind my eyes. And I think that it's just palpable.

And that's kind of what I was actually going to ask you as it relates to compartmentalizing when you're in the leadership position, but you also need a balance being transparent and vulnerable so that people know they can be that as well that you're leading. This is super broad, but you know, we just went through an experience similar to that. How do you find the balance of be the leader and be strong for them when you need to be?

but don't, don't fully mask the, the vulnerability and transparency and, just purely compartmentalized because then there's no room for being human on the other side. I you've demonstrated to me, I can't be human because you're so effectively trying not to be that I, that I'm trying not now I have to assume that is what you want from me because you've compartmentalized everything and you've hidden all vulnerabilities. So I must not be able to be vulnerable around you.

it's a broad question, but I don't know how to, I wouldn't know how to, other than just exposure and practice, I wouldn't know how to tell you without being the expert myself. I wouldn't know how to tell you when to be vulnerable versus when to be, compartmentalizing. And I really loved, whether or not this even answers the question, I really loved identifying a framework to be able to refocus on your intentions, I suppose. if that was what you were saying, but

Corinna M. Hagen (32:58.464)
That's insightful.

Corinna M. Hagen (33:25.514)
Mm-hmm. Well, your question draws a wider circle because in order to determine when to be vulnerable and when not to, part of it is a risk that you have to be willing to take. And then who are you? What are your values? I can tell you that in my life, I have realized that vulnerability is setting prisoners free. That's.

David Kent (33:28.002)
I guess the question.

Corinna M. Hagen (33:51.916)
That's how I view it because once somebody had shared vulnerability with me, there was a light bulb that came on for me. And I thought, wow, other people like experience the world in similar fashions that I do, right? They have the same struggles or the same ambitions. And sometimes we don't get to share in that. Now I have clarity on who I want to be as a person. And I make that exercise almost

like almost every quarter, but like typically once a year, I make sure that I have clarity on whether or not I actually led myself and others through the year in a way that had my authentic self in there, meaning what are my pet peeves? What are my values? What matters in life? Right. Am I showing up in that way? To me, human connection matters. I have

in my early years of my career, I have pulled my hair back, I've worn pantsuits, minimal makeup, trying to kind of remove all the things that would make people think, oh, it's just the pretty blonde girl, like a young kid, what have you. So I would try to strip that away and say, no, we're just focusing on my expertise and what I know. And I would

I would not want to make friends at work. I would try to separate work and life. And that's not me. If you know me, I'm a very connected person. I care deeply about people. Now, that doesn't take away from professionalism, right? But you have to learn to get to that point. Like, what is it actually that conveys?

David Kent (35:36.867)
Sure.

Corinna M. Hagen (35:43.372)
the message that needs to be conveyed, that something isn't working and needs to be corrected, for example, if you have to have a tough conversation. Or that your idea is solid and that they can trust you to execute on that. You can still make that human connection. I would even argue now, in retrospect, it would have helped me more rather than less. And people wanted to make a connection and I would withhold that thinking.

I will break through those walls, I will actually make it happen. And all it did was trying to make me engage in things that would help me take control. And then being controlling just turns me into a monster and that's not who I wanna be. So I had to decide how I wanted to live, but that's my style. Everybody has to decide that for themselves. And then you figure out how vulnerable do you want to be? Sometimes people would say to me,

David Kent (36:22.401)
Right.

Corinna M. Hagen (36:40.054)
I wouldn't have said that in that moment. I didn't want to go there. That's okay. Maybe your advice is solid. Maybe I shouldn't have gone that way. But maybe it's also true that your style is different. You make a decision based on your values. This is me. And I want to be known for who I am. And in my case, I made this choice in that scenario. So a little bit of that is experimentation and coming to know yourself more and more and more as you're

David Kent (36:54.477)
Right.

Corinna M. Hagen (37:07.572)
making those decisions, do I show up more vulnerable or less vulnerable? Stepping outside of your comfort zone a little bit. What do you try to achieve by doing that, right? Are you trying to let somebody come to know you just a little bit more so that they would open up and, so my motto is I create the culture I want to see and that often helps me make the decision, how do I wanna show up right now? So if I show up guarded right now and I'm onboarding a new employee,

David Kent (37:35.671)
Right.

Corinna M. Hagen (37:35.756)
What's the tone I'm setting right now?

David Kent (37:39.427)
It sounds like you've drawn, I think, a lot of themes to this. It almost is like the better you understand the person you intend to be, like who you want to be as a person and who you intend to be as a person. It's almost like having more clarity about the endpoint gives you more ability to be flexible to reach that point, because you'll just know what aligns with getting to this endpoint of what I want to be.

and it will, it allows you to have vulnerable moments and make that decision. What aligns in that moment for the intentional endpoint I'm trying to reach me as a person, what I want for my company and my culture, just having that defined endpoint, which requires it sounds like based on everything you just said, probably a whole bunch, especially like founder led businesses, a whole bunch of like self evaluation because the founder led business.

whether you want it to or not is going to reflect you at whether you compartmentalize it and you only let it reflect parts of you just means you're still going to only you're still going to reflect you just the only the part you've allowed it to. And like you were saying for yourself where you kind of you effectively if I am understanding correctly compartmentalized yourself and only wanted to show the parts of yourself that you wanted to have received I suppose or responded to and you didn't want the other parts of yourself though they were still parts of yourself.

be factored in because you didn't want there to be any sort of like noise that away from the direction it sounded like maybe you thought you wanted to go. But in the end, like the more the less you compartmentalize about yourself as a whole and where you want to be as a person, the more you can flexibly respond in the moment to things that align with who you are. If I understood correctly what you said, I suppose.

Corinna M. Hagen (39:26.786)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

No, I think you understood very well. It's actually interesting to hear your summary there because I realized that, you know, when I was younger, I was trying to to control the outcome out of fear that I would be perceived a certain way. And it became counterproductive in that sense, right. It becomes very transactional. So so nowadays, when somebody asked me, I don't want to say the pendulum pendulum swung all the way in the other direction, but I have bought myself more freedom.

David Kent (39:50.753)
Yeah.

Corinna M. Hagen (40:00.204)
in that sense, with vulnerability. And it works for me, yeah.

David Kent (40:03.735)
You mentioned freeing prisoners. What did you say? Could you repeat what you said?

Corinna M. Hagen (40:09.694)
Vulnerability or transparency frees prisoners.

David Kent (40:14.327)
That's, I love that you didn't explain what that meant. So I had to think about it. It's really interesting because like as I, when you asked me in the very beginning, how I felt, it was, I was holding that back. was like, I was not going to deal with that right now. And when you say vulnerability frees prisoners, it really hits home. That's a, it's an interesting way to do it because it means that by not being vulnerable, I'm

holding parts of myself captive intentionally. And I don't want to do that. So anyways, I love that analogy. I assume that's what you meant. That's how I interpreted it. And you were careful not to describe it before I asked about it. So on that note, I do just want to say thank you for all of this conversation, for the time that you've given me. I know that we've

Corinna M. Hagen (40:51.63)
you

David Kent (41:12.727)
We've spoken even longer than I had asked for. So I really appreciate everything. I am looking forward to talking to you more in the future, specifically as it relates to your expertise in remote team management. Also, I'm looking forward to diving into the books that you've got. I'm going to be receiving those and reading through those pretty soon. So thank you again for your time, for the expertise you're giving the world, especially in a time where people were battling with how do I manage remote teams in the light of COVID.

And now things have even swung in the other direction. And we know lots of businesses are trying to bring people back or let them go if they're not going to. So you bring light to those conversations. You show people that it is possible and that it has more to do with the limitations of leadership than it has to do with people capable of working remotely. So thank you again, Karina. Looking forward to talking to you again and appreciate your time on the podcast with us.

Corinna M. Hagen (42:02.882)
Thank you, David. Thank you for having me.

David Kent (42:04.855)
Yeah.