Amy Waninger: Diversifying Your Hiring Network (Ep. #32)

Wendy Hanson  0:24  

If you are interested in diversifying your network, today's podcast is a must listen to whether you're doing it for networking for yourself or for hiring, you will get so many great pragmatic actions that you can take. And a lot of ahas I think I have a diverse network. And I learned so much today from Amy one anger. Please listen in and make sure that we all have an opportunity to make a difference in the world and in business and in our lives by diversifying, and not always hanging out with the people that look like us, and the folks that we know. So enjoy. I'm so happy that you joined us today for this very important topic. I have a great guest who's an expert in this. So I think we're going to have a lot of very clear takeaways and next actions, things that you can do going forward. So let me introduce you to Amy one. And Amy is CEO at lead and at any level, excuse me lead at any level. She works with organizations that want to build diverse leadership bench strength for a sustainable competitive advantage. She is author of multiple books, including network beyond bias, making diversity a competitive advantage in your career. Amy is a professional member of the National Speakers Association, and a pro see certified change practitioner, which I'm going to ask her about in a minute. Her other credentials include two degrees from Indiana University, and a world's best mom coffee mug. Well, that's a pretty nice introduction. Welcome, Amy.

Amy Waninger  2:01  

Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

Wendy Hanson  2:04  

What's proceed if I'm pronouncing it right certified change practitioner.

Amy Waninger  2:08  

It's pronounced "pro-sigh". And Prosci is one of the you know how HR folks have Sherm right. And the different groups have their have their bodies of knowledge. Prosci is actually the organization that created a body of knowledge for change management. And the course that I went through. I think it was about a week, it was pretty rigorous, with an exam and a whole bunch of practical stuff that you had to be able to do. And basically it says, I know how to manage change in an organization.

Wendy Hanson  2:41  

Great. It's good. I've never heard of that organization before. So that's great to know. Because goodness knows we're all in the middle of change management right now.

Wendy Hanson  2:51  

So today, we're really going to focus on diversifying our network in terms of how do we get different people on our teams, because we know that diversity is so important and strong, but it's the how-tos that I hope we can get to today. But first, tell me a little bit. Why did you decide to write network beyond bias?

Amy Waninger  3:13  

So I actually did not set out in my career to do this work originally. Well, I guess if you go back far enough, I kind of did. But I was working in the insurance industry, I was working in a tech role. And I was volunteering with the employer that I worked for, they had a diversity office. And I was doing a lot of volunteer work with them. Basically, if I showed up and they didn't kick me out, I stayed and tried to do as much as I could. Because this work is really important to me. And I started going to conferences, and I noticed as I walked out of the sessions about, you know, different diversity in aspects of diversity and inclusion. There were a lot of restatements of what I'm going to call in quotation marks the problem. And the problem shows up in a number of different ways, right glass ceilings, bamboo ceiling, systemic racism, you know, homogeneity of the C suite, all these different things that people talk about generational differences, right. But I kept leaving without notes on what I could do about it from where I sat in the organization. And I decided to try to solve for that problem. What can one person in a big company or huge industry do to actually affect change, as it relates to diversity and inclusion, but also sustainability of talent in an industry, even if you're not CEO of a Fortune 500 company, even if you don't have, you know, broad HR policy responsibilities? Is there anything one person can do and it turns out one person can do quite a lot. So when I I uncovered I started doing the research and I sort of brainstorming on this and solving for that problem. I realized I wasn't doing everything I could be doing as one person in my organization and I started to change what I was doing. And in doing so everything changed for me and for the people around me. And I realized that I really couldn't sit on this, I needed to share it as broadly as possible.

Wendy Hanson  5:10  

Can you give me an example? What are one of the ahas is that you had, because I love the perspective of one person can do something, because this problem just seems immense to us. And sometimes when things feel too big, we stand back and say, I don't know what to do. So what was one aha that you had Amy?

Amy Waninger  5:27  

Yeah, so toward the end of the book, the book kind of culminates in this assessment tool that I created. And when I created the assessment tool, which basically became the whole reason I had to write the book, I took my own assessment. And that assessment helps people understand how deep is their network, how broad is their network, and how deep are the relationships within it, I took my own assessment. And I didn't like what I saw. And I realized I wasn't doing everything I thought I was doing, I felt like it was enough to have my heart in the right place. Not much more had been asked to me. But when I started to make some changes, specifically, showing up in places that weren't designed for me, so while I might go to the women's conference, I wasn't going to the conference for for black professionals in my industry, I wasn't showing up at the Asian American events, I wasn't showing up, you know, at the Hispanic mixers and those sorts of things. I wasn't showing up in places that weren't designed for me. And when I started doing that, and I started mentoring people across meaningful difference. When I started seeking out mentors across meaningful difference, that's when things really changed. And that was my aha. And what I learned was, your heart can't be in the right place, if you don't move your feet. I love it, not enough of us are asked to move our feet.

Wendy Hanson  6:48  

Yes. Oprah, when she hears things like that, she says, Now repeat that, again, that's a that's like a tweet. So your heart, if your heart can't be in the right place, if you never move your feet. I love that. Because I think that is, you know, when I reflect back to when we were at conferences live, you know, you may not feel like it's appropriate for you to go to the, you know, the Black Caucus, you know, piece inside of a conference or another group that's different than yours. And how do you see even even online as we're doing many online conferences? Do you see any changes in this, like how that diversity is now being shown is so important that we do these changes at a conference at zoom conference at a real conference?

Amy Waninger  7:35  

You know, it's funny, because I get the same questions now that we're in a pandemic that I got before we were in a pandemic. And the question is always, well, how do I start? Or, you know, what do I you know, am I welcome in these spaces? And the answer is, you're you're as welcome as you make yourself as you put yourself in listening mode, right? Just like women don't want men to come in and mansplain to us at the women's conference, all the things that we're doing wrong in an organization that was not built for us. black folk, Hispanic folks, Asian Americans, people with disabilities, don't want people from dominant cultures or from majority demographics coming in. And you know, white splaining are able splaining or, you know, what they could do differently to assimilate, right? Your job when you're, when you're in the majority, but you're, you're in the minority in the room, your job is to sit in the back, listen and take notes.

Wendy Hanson  8:33  

I love that perspective. That is such a good opening for people to know, that's how you go in you go, I'm here to learn and to listen.

Amy Waninger  8:42  

And yes, and then that's where that's where your mouth should stop. Right after you say I'm here to learn and listen. Right?

Wendy Hanson  8:51  

Yeah, that's it. That's a good point. Because people might not realize that that's where you Yeah, yeah, that's great. And what's your, because you're so deep into this, and you've written a number of books on this subject? You know, why do you think, you know, besides the obvious, why is diversity and inclusion, such a hot topic right now, you know, we know what's happening in the world. And, you know, in the United States, especially, it certainly brings this up, but but what else do you see from your perspective?

Amy Waninger  9:21  

So it's not just what's happening in the United States? It's what's happening in the world. So let's take a micro view. First, if you look at your community, chances are the demographics of your community don't look like they did 50 years ago. Chances are the organization that you work for, is trying to market in places that don't look like they did 50 years ago. They're trying to attract customers, they're trying to attract talent that is different than it used to be. We are also in an increasingly global society, national boundaries and borders don't mean what they used to and we've seen just In the last, what, 14 months, during a pandemic, that that's even been leveled further, right, because now everybody lives in our computer. And when we're talking to someone, we don't know if they're across the street or across the world, right? So there's so much happening and so much change happening around us. The problem is, we've not yet changed the way we do business, we're still trying to hire and market and sell and connect the way our businesses were run 2050 or 100 years ago, and unless we can adapt to these changes, you know, and let's also consider that the whole economy is changing as younger people come up, right, and they are wanting to interact as they become the consumer class. And they want to interact with our companies, and the goods and services we provide in ways that we could not have dreamt of, even 510 years ago. Right? You know, my my kind of go to line is imagine trying to explain to an executive at blockbuster, how Taco Bell is leveraging cloud computing and gig economy to deliver chalupas in the suburbs. Right, you would blow their mind if you went back in time and tried to do that. So you know, or the, you know, you could potentially pay for that chalupa with cryptocurrency, like the whole world has changed. But the way we do business in a lot of industries has not. And that's why this is such an urgent conversation, because we don't want to go the way of blockbuster. We don't want to be left in the dust. We don't want to become irrelevant.

Wendy Hanson  11:38  

Yeah. Wow. Such a good point. But I hadn't thought of it from that perspective, you know, that business has just changed so dramatically. And when we talk a little bit more later about champ what you the assessment that you did you talk about protegees, like learning from people that are younger from you, you're younger than you. And I think that's such a valid point that you're making there that we just, we just don't know what we don't know. And that's really a big problem. If we think we do, we're in trouble. Yeah. And how does unconscious bias come up? As we look at this, and we look to expand our network, and especially in hiring, like trying to find different groups that we want to connect with?

Amy Waninger  12:20  

Yeah. So one of the ways that I explained unconscious biases, it's, it's the decisions we make when we don't realize we're making decisions. So if you think about back in the day is when you went to a conference where there's a, you know, you might be in a whole conference room full of people, you probably went and sat with people you knew, by default. Right. You see, Joanie, you know Joni, from last year at the conference, you're gonna go catch up with her. So you sit down next to her and start talking. Johnny's probably sitting with somebody else she met last year at the conference, because she sat down and talked to somebody she knew. And so as we continue these patterns, we don't even realize we're doing it. If we don't know anybody at the conference, where do we go probably to the people who are dressed like us look like us, act like us come from the same industry, whatever the thing is, right? We tend to cluster in groups of people who are like us, because we're comfortable, we go where we're comfortable. That's what unconscious bias does for us. Right? It keeps us quote, unquote, safe and comfortable. The problem with that is that we tend to make our world so small as a result of it, we stopped making decisions altogether, consciously. But we think we're making really good decisions. And so what I like to tell people is you have to override your defaults, right? Just like if you were filling out a form online, there are some default values, but you can change those. You just have to make a conscious effort to click something different. And that's what I ask people to do in my workshops is click something different, you know, think about Oh, I'm gonna go sit with Joanie. Wait a minute, why am I gonna go sit with Joanie, I can talk to Joanie later, there's a whole table of people I've never met. Maybe I should go sit with them instead.

Wendy Hanson  13:58  

And when you talk about that, at your workshops, what is often the reaction to people because I love your example. Because we've all done that, you know, I've done that many times at conferences in the past, I haven't seen her for a year I'll go sit there, and you don't feel like you're, you're welcome. If you go to a table of people, maybe that don't look like you at all, because you think you're breaking up their group. So what's what's kind of some of the reactions that you get?

Amy Waninger  14:25  

So usually I asked people, how many how many of you are sitting with people, you know, and 80% of the hands go up? And they say, why did you do that? And most people say, Well, I wasn't thinking about it, I just sat down. So if I asked you to all get up and think about where you were gonna sit, would you choose someplace different? Well, probably, right? If I think about that, I need to expand my network. If I think about that, I know somebody who's looking for a job. If I think about, you know, I know a hiring manager who's looking to fill a spot on their team. If I think about, you know, I haven't talked to a customer of my company in a while or I haven't caught up with competitor in a while, or, you know, if I think about it, yeah, I'm gonna sit somewhere different because I need to make an effort, right to meet people who are different. Another thing we can do is look for the people who don't know anybody, right? They're probably walking around with their, you know, their two buffet plates and awkward, you know, for management, right? And they're kind of looking around for a place to sit. And if you see somebody like that, wave them over and invite them to sit with you. Right? The the more lost and confused somebody looks, the more they need you to pull a chair out for them. And that's true everywhere, not just at conferences.

Wendy Hanson  15:36  

Oh, that's so great. That's such a good visual that we should all be able to hold on to next time, we're doing something like this. And hopefully we'll be doing things in person in not too long from now. Yes. But even when you're when you're on a when you're on a webinar, or you're getting feedback on something, to be able to ask for people to, you know, to come up and join things and do something get out of get out of your comfort space. Yeah.

Amy Waninger  16:04  

Yeah, I was hosting an online event. In the fall, the organizers were going to cancel the event because they said, you know, we do this to network. And we're not sure how to do that. And so let me help you. And so I hosted an online event, we did breakout rooms, and we call them virtual tables. And I randomly assigned people to virtual tables where they were in groups of six for just long enough basically to exchange pleasantries and you know, give them some questions to answer. And they came back and they said, you know, this was fun. We were worried we wouldn't get any networking in, but the networking was better. Because we couldn't just gravitate to the people we knew we had to other people. And so you know, there are ways to do this and be intentional, even right now.

Wendy Hanson  16:47  

Yeah. And I think that's all of our responsibility, right to cabs trying to do that and figure out ways to be intentional,

Amy Waninger  16:54  

yeah, only, you know, only if you want your career to be successful. Only if you want your organization to stay relevant only if you want your industry to be sustainable. If you're not interested in any of those things, by all means continue to do what you were doing.

Wendy Hanson  17:09  

Yeah, go sit with the people, you know, and just enjoy your lunch or your meeting. Yes. Oh, good. Okay. That's a very good point. We can't push back on that one at all. Yes. Only if, yes. So let's talk a little bit about recruiting, because I happen to have had a fantastic meeting with someone that I'm coaching, and, and he's on a great sales team, he leads a great sales team. And he said, I just have a rock star team, and I'm trying to bring on some new people. And I said, Well, tell me about your rock star team, what was rock star team, our rock stars, but they all happen to be white men. And those are the people and it's a very specific industry. So sometimes it's a little challenging. You know, I have to give him that to find people that have some experience in this industry. But he's like, I really want to be more diverse. But I'm not sure how to find people, because even they do a lot of searches on LinkedIn. And they're connecting with people that are in their industry. So you know, you've you've written another book on this topic, specifically, I just finished reading network beyond bias. But there's another one you have that specifically about hiring. So what advice would you give this fabulous guy who really wants to grow his team in a very diverse way, but can't seem to find those other places to look for folks for the team? Sure.

Amy Waninger  18:31  

So and I do cover a lot of this in hire beyond bias. But one of the questions that I asked people when they say, well, we just can't find diverse talent, I usually ask, how do you know you deserve diverse talent? And I let them sit with that for a minute? How do you know you deserve diverse talent, because it's just like, if you were preparing a meal, right? If you were inviting people over to your house for a meal, and you fix all your favorite foods, and all your neighbors come over, and then you find out Well, one of your neighbors is allergic to nuts, and all of your desserts have nuts. And one of your neighbors only eats kosher food and you've not accounted for that. And one of your neighbors only you know, eats Hello, and you've not accounted for that. And one of your neighbors is vegan, and you've not accounted for that. You may have prepared a beautiful meal for you. But your neighbors don't feel very welcome there. Despite your best intentions. Wow. Yes. Now if you take that to the workplace, you know, the next time you invite your neighbors over to dinner, they may not come right, because they know that it's really not about them. Right. It's about you and what you like. So if you if you extrapolate that to the workplace, how are you creating a space that's welcoming of people who don't fit the mold of what makes you comfortable? And, you know, a lot of people don't stop to think about that. And then they'll say, Well, I don't want to go places where I'm not you know where I'm not in the majority because I don't You're comfortable there? Well, why do you expect other people to feel comfortable in your space, if you don't feel comfortable in theirs. So if you want to, you know, so people who want to sit in their office surrounded by people that they went to school with, surrounded by people that were in their same fraternity, that they're their same age that play golf at the same club, right? But then they want to kind of like, I don't know, send out a bat signal or, you know, put some beacon out there, this is what we want somebody different. But they're not willing to get uncomfortable or, you know, maybe go sit in somebody else's seat for a while. Why would anybody feel safe coming in there. And so I like to turn that around a little bit. Now, let's assume that, let's say your your gentlemen, friend, we're going to give him a name, let's say his name is Bob, I don't know his name. But let's say Bob has a team. And he's got you know, Frank, and Gary, and Rick, and Steve, and Chad on his team, right? Now, let's say he wants to add five more people to his sales team, because they're really growing, likely, what Bob would do is put out the ads, and try to hire four more people that fit the mold of the people on his team, and maybe one person who is a little bit outside that group. And what that does is that just further, you know, it just it makes the table less inviting right, to that 10th person. But what Bob could do instead is say, you know, what we we recognize that the community that we're selling to is changing, we recognize that the needs are changing. And we really want to take a broad view of this, what does our market look like? And how do we build a team that reflects our market? How do we shift our dynamic or our demographics so that we reflect the market that we're trying to serve. And maybe that looks a little bit different? Maybe that looks like, you know what, we've done a really bad job of hiring women in the past. So our next five hires should probably skew toward women. And we don't have anybody on the team who's not white. So we really need to do some specific outreach to the communities of color. in this industry. Here's where I would tell Bob to start. Number one, you need to show up where you're not in spaces that were not designed for you, you need to go sit at somebody else's table for a while. In every industry, there are women's networks, women's associations, there are associations for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Latin Americans, and Hispanics, there are groups, for LGBTQ folks, there are all of these different kind of microcosms within your industry where people gather for support. Go to those groups, become part of them. Join the black Chamber of Commerce, the women's Chamber of Commerce, the LGBTQ Chamber of Commerce, go sit, where people are discussing, you know, disability and accessibility in the workplace or in your industry, go to these places, and sit and listen. And you're going to find out very quickly, what are the barriers you've created in your own workplace, that make these folks not feel welcome there. I mean, it's really simple. But people don't think of it because they've been so comfortable for so long, they've not had to change, then when you're ready to hire when you're ready to make a space where people feel safe and welcome, right? We call that doing the work, right? Where you kind of examine some of these things that you've been doing in the past, and why they've been so limiting, then you need to reach out to these same organizations, let's say you're in marketing, there are marketing organizations dedicated to

Latin Americans or Hispanics in marketing. In the US, there are organizations dedicated to LGBTQ folks in marketing, right? Post your jobs there, then people know, you've gone out of your way to find them. And not only are you welcome, but you're wanted, as opposed to posting on indeed, or LinkedIn or places where, you know, people tend to get lost in the shuffle, you know, where defaults or status quo is mostly upheld, right? You're coming into their space, and you're saying, Look, I'm being vulnerable. I really want to connect here. And hopefully, by this point, you've already built some relationships, so people trust you.

Wendy Hanson  24:18  

Yes, because that's a big thing that I'm hearing from you, Amy, too, is that don't do this, just when you want to start hiring, start doing it now. You know, go out there now and just speak cuz if you're gonna listen and establish relationships, you know, in the long run, then you could look at diversifying your team. Because your wonderful example I think, in the past, people would have said to Bob would have said to Chad and the rest of the gang, who do you know, who might be good for our team? You know, and one thing we also know too is if you are a minority, if you're like one in 10 on a team, that's different, because we see this with women all the time, you know, If a, if an executive team or a board has one woman on there, she doesn't stand a chance, you know, you have to have multiple people with differences in order to really show up as a group and be able to add diversity. And that one person is really becomes that token person, and they get stepped over. So we have to make sure that we we have more diversity coming in.

Amy Waninger  25:23  

Absolutely. And you know, that one seat then kind of becomes I don't know if you remember the show Murphy Brown, and I'm probably losing some people on this, I remember show in the 80s, called Murphy Brown. And Murphy Brown was like this high power, you know, woman, right, just news woman. And the the kind of the running gag on the show was, every week, she had a different assistant, that assistant spot was always a cameo for some, you know, kind of, I think, like B list celebrity, if I'm remembering correctly. And it got it got to the point where toward the end of the show, I think they were like running out of people to put in their seat. So they put a crash test dummy in her seat in her assistant seat one time. And that's what I always think about these, the diversity seat on your board or on your team, right? You're going to turn through that person so many times, because what you've asked somebody to do is come in and sit and have no voice, right? They're there to listen and learn not to contribute, well, you hired them for their contribution. And but then you tell them, well just sit and be quiet, right until we call on you. And they get tired of being called on. So they leave. And then what happens is instead of being thoughtful about this and strategic and setting a place for them, where they feel welcome, right, you've created a place where they don't feel welcome. So they leave. So you replace them with somebody else who doesn't feel welcome and leaves and now you're just throwing money at this problem, because recruiting is expensive. Right? So then what happens with that 10th seat, it becomes another Chad because you're tired of investing in, you know, Carol or jomar? Or, you know, Stacy or whomever. Right? And so, what we're tired of trying to hire people that don't want to be here, well, it's not that they don't want to be there. It's that they're not getting, you know, they're not getting the opportunity to contribute as fully as they would like. And so then we'll you know, then companies say, Well, you know, they're just not our kind of people. Well, that's not true. And also when they leave, they've probably told everybody in their community. Man, you don't want to work there. Oh, right. Because we all talk everybody talks. And so they know. And so it just becomes harder and harder and harder. But if you're intentional about it up front, it's remarkably easy.

Wendy Hanson  27:39  

Then you have the benefit of them saying this is the place that you want to be Yeah, I have to say I'm very proud, we have recruited an amazing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team and, and they have really keep bringing in more people, which I think speaks well of BetterManager and how they feel like we really are we need to learn and we're trying to make a difference. And we're trying to put on programs that are going to help employers in this whole area. So I think your examples are just terrific. So one last topic that I wanted you to talk about his champ what you have, at the end of your book, we started to talk about that assessment, because those connections I think sometimes people might overlook. So explain a little bit about what champ means because I had talked about the final one protege before because we can certainly learn a lot from 20 somethings these days.

Amy Waninger  28:45

So yeah, so those of you don't know who Murphy Brown is you can Google it. But so I came up with this concept of network like a champ. Because I wanted to be very strategic about my network I wanted, I was thinking about what does a really robust network look like? Who needs to be in it. And the champ framework is an acronym. And each letter in champ stands for a kind of person that you need in your network. So if you're not driving right now, just grab a sheet of paper, the back of your, whatever back of your electric bill or an index card or whatever you've got in front of you. And stack the word champ stack the letters on top of each other like they're going down the page. And so each of these categories, you may have a whole bunch of people, you may have no one. But I ask people to make this a really Top of Mind activity. So the C is for customer. And a customer is someone outside your organization who has a choice about whether or not to exchange money for the goods and services your organization provides. And the reason I'm so explicit about the definition of customer is because there's a trend in large corporations to talk about internal customers. And people get confused about what the mission of the company is. Right your mission. The mission of the company is to bring in more money. For the goods and services you provide, so you know, along with whatever other things they want to do, but that's how you create shareholder value, right? So someone outside your company, so write down the name of a customer, or a true customer that you have a good relationship with. And then I've got all sorts of tips in the book for how to find them if you don't have one, because this is important, right? You want to know how your company stacks up in the in the marketplace in the industry, you know, you want to get kind of that outsider perspective, H is for someone you've hired or helped get a job. And I usually say in the last couple of months, right and last three months, the reason we want to hire or help people get jobs is because if you want a high value network, you need to be a value to your network. And the best way to put favors in that bank is to help people, you know, get their dream job, get a promotion, you know, get gainful employment, especially when unemployment is high, like it has been over the last year. Although it's coming down now. I was gonna call that refer or recommend, but nobody wants to network like a cramp. So we went with hire or help, The A is for an associate, this is your work, buddy. This is somebody that maybe in your company, maybe outside, but it's the person that you're you know, under normal circumstances, you know, you're having a rough day, you might say, hey, let's go get a cup of coffee and talk for a little bit, or maybe something a little stronger after work. Somebody that you really rely on to kind of pace with you in your career. The M is for your mentor. Now, your mentor may be somebody who's formally assigned to you through an association or through your employer. But it might also just be somebody that you look up to. And when you have conversations about you know, what's going on in your career, and they give you advice, you go do it. If you don't even somebody like that, though, think about whose books do you read? Whose podcast do you listen to? Whose blogs Do you follow? Whose social media Do you subscribe to? Right? These are really these are mentors to and we choose, you know, where we consume our advice. So put that person's name in the M space for mentor. And then P is for your protege Who do you invest in? Because you see the potential in them? Not because it's good for you, but because it's good for them in their career. And typically, I asked people, you know, how many do you have? Right, in your in your champ network? So I'll ask you, when do you How many do you have? Do you have all five?

Wendy Hanson  32:21  

I have all five? Yeah, awesome.

Amy Waninger  32:24  

And so typically, if people don't have all five, I'll say, well, where can you go to find those people, you know, brainstorm, or, you know, I've got suggestions in the book for each of those, right? Where you can go to find those folks, because you need all of those perspectives, to understand where you sit in your career where you know, where your company sits in the industry, and how your industry sits in the, in the economy.

Wendy Hanson  32:47  

I love that outline. And for people that might be driving or walking, we will put that in the show notes so that you can come back on this later. Because I think for people that are not, I'm a natural connector. So I really believe in in fine. And if somebody calls and wants to have a conversation about you know, I want to be a coach someday I had one of those two weeks ago, you know, it's, of course, I want to have that conversation and lead them in, you know, give them some leads, give them some information. But some people don't naturally do that the introverts that look at this list might say, Whoa, you know, I don't know who that would be. And we all need a mentor, oh, my goodness, we need mentors, you know, somebody that you can really learn from, and you can ask when you don't know what's going on, like, explain to me what really should be my next steps in this as as you're in a business that grows or an organization that grows. So I love this list. Yeah,

Amy Waninger  33:45  

thank you. Can I speak just real quickly to the idea of introverts? Yes, please. So I get I get this question a lot. in conversations that I have, or in presentations that I do well, what if I'm an introvert, and I don't like networking. And I always tell introverts that, as an introvert, you have a secret superpower in networking. And that secret superpower is, you're the only one in the room who's listening. Everybody wants to talk about themselves. Nobody wants to listen. So you don't have to keep the conversation going other than just to ask a follow up question. Just get really good at listening. And, you know, and I try this I was very intentional at one of the conferences that they went to I didn't. It wasn't it was completely outside my industry. I didn't know anyone there. And I decided that I was going to just ask the best questions I was going to take as long as I could to share anything about myself, and just try to ask the best questions when I met people. And it was so funny, because that was probably the conference where the most people grabbed me and introduced me to someone else and told them how great I was. So they didn't know anything about me, except that I had asked great questions about what were they working on and where did they work and what challenges are they facing and Who were the most hoping to meet at the conference? And what was the best session that they attended? Right? I completely took myself out of the conversation. And everybody loved me there. And it was a lesson for me. And it changed the way I approach networking after that conference, where I just got really curious about other people. And introverts do that. So naturally, they don't even have to think about it.

Wendy Hanson  35:22  

That is brilliant. It's something that we know but we don't know. And, and if you I love that we should all try that, you know, because it's not, oh, my goodness, networking events used to be so painful, even for me an extrovert, because I'd have to sit there and listen to somebody. Yes. And then and you just get seen in a whole different light. So great example for whether you're an introvert and an extrovert, or wherever you are. Go. And listen, I think that's a big takeaway for me on this. Just go listen and learn. It's very important. Wow. So Amy, you have just given us so much great information and your website is incredible, too. It's loaded and packed with information. So if people want to learn more, they want to learn about your programs, your books, what's the best way for them to find you

Amy Waninger  36:10  

The best place to find me? Is it my online home leadatanylevel.com. I'm also all over social media, but my name is kind of hard to spell. So I went with a company that was easy to spell. But if you go to lead at any level calm you'll learn more about me and my business than you probably ever wanted to know. And you know, I offer all sorts of programs live online. I have online courses now that are available to folks individually or corporations. So there's a lot going on.

Wendy Hanson  36:42  

Good and and say and spell your last name if people are connecting with you on LinkedIn, Amy,

Amy Waninger  36:49  

Waninger, w a n i n g e r, and you can remember how to pronounce that by by thinking about you'll be wanting her to come speak at your company.

Wendy Hanson  37:00  

brilliant, brilliant. Okay, good. Well, we will put the ways to connect with you on our show notes after this and I really appreciate your time and and I know this is going to be so valuable to so many people. There was so many great takeaways. So thank you, Amy.

Amy Waninger  37:15

Thank you, Wendy.

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