The show’s guest in this episode is Alexandra Blum. She is business strategist, mother to Max, work mom to 20 rock stars, CEO and long-time leader in marketing. She is born in the UK, Alix lives in Canada and the US, and has built luxury brands in over 15 countries.

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Listen to the podcast here

“Power Skills” – Formerly Misrepresented as Soft Skills with Alexandra Blum

Hey, it’s Melanie Parish and I am so excited to be here with you live today. I’ve been thinking about the loneliness, of leadership. And I talked to people all the time here to talk about this phenomenon, the idea that they, you know, are part of a team, and then they get promoted, or they get hired into a job. And somehow, they’re supposed to represent themselves as knowing what they’re doing and, and it leaves them feeling a lot of loneliness in their role. Sometimes I talk to leaders who are like, searching for feedback when they get into a leadership role. And they keep asking for feedback. And it never quite satisfies the way it did when they had actually a boss who gave them sort of regular feedback. And often, when people are top performers, they get really positive feedback all the time. And then when they get promoted, at a certain level, the feedback kind of just stops, like you’re sort of expected to do your job, your kind of your kind of the grown up in the room, and no one tells you you’re doing a great job anymore.

And if you’re experiencing something like that, it’s a really good time to hire a coach mostly because you get another person to talk to you and to run, you know those sorts of thoughts and feelings up the flagpole and to see what somebody else thinks about what you’re feeling, without going to the people that you’re that you’re supervising or your direct reports, because you don’t want to be having those conversations with them. Because it’s not really the right role for them to be making you feel better about how you’re leading them, it, things start to get kind of wonky when that happens. And still, you don’t want to feel so lonely. And a spouse can be good for that. But they get tired of it, they kind of want to talk about dinner or the weather or the kids after a while they don’t want that role of talking about how your leadership feels to you after a while, so it really does all add up to this deep feeling of loneliness. And it can sort of be difficult to find, think your way out of. So anyway, that’s what I’m thinking about today. And how I can help people with products and services and our leadership essentials programs really great way to help people skill up. So, they feel really good about their leadership doesn’t necessarily get rid of the loneliness of leadership. But it does help people feel good about what they do. So, they don’t feel like they need so much input from others.

And I am super excited about our guests today. Today, we welcome Alexandra Blum. She is a business strategist. She’s mother to max, and work mom to 20 rock stars. She’s a CEO and a longtime leader in marketing. She was born in the UK, and now she lives in Canada. And the US and she’s built luxury brands in over 15 countries.

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Welcome to the show, Alex.

Thank you, Melanie. It’s great to be here.

Yeah, so we are very far from each other, which is kind of fun on a on a podcast that gets sent all over. And yeah, so Well, I’m looking forward to talking to you about all sorts of things. But I want to start, I know that we gave you a little reading assignment to read from the experimental leader. And I thought I might read just a little bit. From chapter two this last week, we’re doing chapter two in our book club series this year that we’re doing. And we were the paragraphs before this, were all about reactive leadership styles, and this is about blank slate leaders. I expect that you will see yourself in one or more of the reactive leadership styles. This is normal.

“As a coach, I don’t encourage people to try to move away from something. For example, if you think I won’t be angry, I won’t be angry, I won’t be angry. You’ll have repeated and affirmed the word angry. Instead aspire to leave reactive behaviors behind and think of yourself as a blank slate become, you’re more curious and open. Watching for the reactive styles in your picture what you want to move toward except the possibility of learning something Being clear and fresh and new? What kind of leader do you want to be?”

Yeah. So, I’m curious what you know what you noticed in this chapter where crosses over, I love talking to leaders about, you know, different parts of the book because you know, nothing is new. And everybody’s got a piece that they see in their own work. So, what was curious to you?

Well, I loved it. And I think that a couple of things come to mind. First of all, yes, I did see myself in a number of the archetypes and, and I think that my viewpoint on leadership and for all your, all your followers is that no matter where you come from in an organization, and you talked in depth about a lot of different examples, and I thought that was great, you know, whether you’re a VP of sales or head of operations, or what have you, and you do exceedingly well in your field or your division, and then you get promoted into a much broader leadership role. So, I think the first thing is, is that, that expression of Know thyself, in order to be able to adopt your blank slate leadership style, which I think is so interesting, I think you need to acknowledge and accept that there are parts of you that that will trip you up in your day-to-day leadership role, and that’s okay. And, but to take the to take the finer points and the superpower skills and realize how you can turn that into being a great leader for your team. The other thing that I the last point I’ll make is, one of the things that I really empathize with a lot of my SEO friends, is that not only is it lonely being a leader these days, but it requires an enormous amount of time and energy to also know the inner workings of your team members, and how they want to be led. And not every team member should get the same leadership coaching. And that adds a significant layer of complexity to being a leader.

I think that’s a great point. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for all of that. I think those are great comments, and really thoughtful comments. And I think that the differences like it’s, it’s like, all these spinning things, like it’s almost like gears, there’s Who are you and know yourself and then know others and who they are? And then what are your strengths? And what are your challenges? And then and then what do they want? And where does what you can give fit with that? And then how do you get to high performance in all of that, as a leader? There are so many different moving parts to this thing we call leadership.

Not Yeah. And then we’ve and then you throw in, you know, this, this gearbox, as you as you described it, and that can be overwhelming unto itself. But then, you know, I tend, for whatever reason, a lot of my senior team at Silver Lining are working moms. And what I’ve learned is that they, they have their own superpowers and as our as do our male colleagues, but leading working moms is also another gear. Yeah.

We were we were just talking about this on our team yesterday. And, and I we have a tiny team, there’s three of us. But we were we have one team member who is engaged to get married, and we have one team member who’s actually I guess there’s four of us. And one has grown kids and one has a child who’s now eight I think, and but she started with me when she had when her child was a baby. And we were talking about how in one of our first calls she was trying to shush her child and I was like you Do not do that, like, let your kid be a kid, I don’t care if she cries, it’s not going to get in the way. Like, it’s fine with me. And so, we were joking that our other team member when she has babies, let them you know, she can let the babies cry when she works for us, it’s like, we’ll just we’ll just go for that ride because babies are babies such a short period of time. It’s such an interesting, it’s interesting to think about how to be a mom and how to how to how to be working.

But you’re an evolved leader, not? I mean, for a lot of your, for a lot of your subscribers, you know, that is not necessarily a mindset that a lot of bosses have. Yeah, I know. So, it’s tricky. And, you know, just in terms of all takes, all take the soft skills, the power skills, as we like to say, embedded in a parent any day. But there are, there are needs that you need to be honest about your business and what your business needs. And then also be honest with your team members as to how they need to set up their lives to be successful within your organization. And I think that this whole notion of work life integration, is extremely interesting. And something that that leaders need to need to acknowledge is that if your environment doesn’t enhance their private life, their life outside of work, you’re going to have a problem. But being honest about how much you can bend and still deliver extraordinary results for your clients is, is something that requires I think, a lot of soul searching.

I think you’ve got great points. And you know, when I talked about my team, and I talked about how we can do family. Weirdly, I’m the one who can’t, wasn’t included in that I couldn’t coach. You know, while I had children, you know, my children are now my, my youngest children are now 17. But I had nannies who were home, who knew like, during the hours, I was coaching, they were not here, like they were not the end, they were not disturbed. You know, they couldn’t come to me during those hours, because those hours were really sacred. But I grouped them together pretty carefully. So, I was available the rest of the time. For my team that works remotely, it’s really easy to just say just make it right for me, like make it fair. You know, if you take an hour off to be with your kids in the middle of the day, then you know, if you’re working remotely do the hour a different time, I don’t care. But that’s not true for every business. Absolutely. If you’re client facing, it’s, you know, that’s a different thing to grapple with. How do you how do you make that work? How do you integrate it, but I do think I do like the idea of work life integration, it’s always been true for me, that, that I worked in order to have my family nearby. So, I love that idea. A lot. What else do you recommend for people as they’re thinking of this idea? Is that something that you work on a lot in your business?

Well, I am a I’m an advocate. I love what you said at the beginning, which is, you know, coaches are something that, you know, leaders that think they know how to lead don’t naturally subscribe to. And I joined a CEO forum, Mackay forums about a year ago, and it really changed my life because I you know, I got a coach. And the coach is tough. Really tough. And, you know, I, you know, I’ve been, thank goodness Touchwood successful in my career and had lots of people tell me that I’m doing great and all this sort of stuff, and then you start your own business. And you’re responsible for a lot of people’s livelihoods. And all of a sudden, all that infrastructure, and all that advice, as you say goes away. So where do you get it from? And a lot of people will tell you what you want to hear but not a coach, as you know. Yeah. So, I’m More focused on that than I ever have been. And I would say that, you know, my, my objective is really to provide an environment where my team can grow, but also where they leave the office every day with their cup filled. And that can be really hard when you have super demanding clients.

Yeah. Well, and, and I think that, um, you know, I learned that this being a solopreneur for so many years, that the value of working on a team, you know, I’m so full of joy that I have others that I get to work with. Now, after so many years of working alone. I love when I have a call scheduled with my team, you know, and they’re doing things, you know, I talked to one of my team members today, and she was like, I’m working on blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh, we talked about that yesterday, and I totally forgot about it. That’s so cool that you’re working on that. And, and I get so I get my cup filled from that. And that was really missing in my work life for a long time was that sense of team. And I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to over the years. And I’ve really tried to get them to see the value that they offer from offering up good team in their workplace. If they can give good team in their workplace. However, they do that if they can create functional team and rewarding team, and a team that does things together. It’s really a benefit that is almost immeasurable in terms of how people feel about their work environment. But so many times, especially if we’re, if we’re still looking at sort of reactive leadership styles, that top-down leader who tells everybody what to do all the time, they miss that rewarding sense of team where people really get to have ownership over cool work that they do. And so, I think that I love that sense of team.

Yeah, I love that I would love to, you know, to also hear what, you know, a lot of other you, your subscribers, think of this, but here’s the quandary that I that I found difficult to navigate through, which is when you went culture is essential not only to productivity, and workplace happiness, but also to the quality of work. And you have an environment now where people are don’t want to be in the office every day. But as a business owner, you have to have an office, you have to have a cultural hub, and a place where people go. But how do you then create culture when not everybody is in all the time. And so, a couple of couple of things that I’ve done with which I asked the team to come back to me and tell me what they wanted to do. In past lives, I probably would have created a policy. And we know that doesn’t work. So, I said, look, if you’re if you have if you rely on certain team members, then at least once a week, be face to face, you know, but be super productive during that time and get everything you need. And that’s going to work to a certain and then everyone needs to commit to at least certain days, you know, versus people just sort of making up their own schedule. But there needs to be collaboration and what works for everybody. But then, you know, as leaders, we’ve got to find new innovative ways to bring our teams together. And I just took my executive team down to to our US office, and we had a lovely couple of days. And some of it was strategy and some of it was hey ladies in Canada, we don’t have Super Target. go to supermarket and do your Christmas shopping. Gift Card.

Yeah, and it’s so interesting, you know, my team’s always remote. And, and we take time, usually it’s about once a month and it’s not any specific time. But often it’s around a holiday where we take time to say what we did Get on a holiday. And we take some time to really dive into just talking. The kind of tell you would do at a water cooler or something and we don’t try to be super productive on those days and it allows us to develop real relationship where we, you know, really care. But my husband’s team, they get together once a week, he’s a professor. And what we’ve noticed is, you know, a lot of them are remote, but they get together every week for a meeting. And so, we’re doing our Christmas party on a Wednesday at noon, it’ll be brunch in at the time, they’ll be together rather than trying to make them all travel a different time. And literally, none of them celebrated Christmas when they were growing up. So, we asked them, their Muslim their Buddhists, their one of them was such was such a religious Christian that they didn’t celebrate Christmas. And, and we said, do you want a holiday party? Do you want to do something in January? What do you want to do? Oh, no, they said we want Christmas. It’s the only Christmas party we go to, and we want Christmas at your house. So, we’re having a Wednesday noon Christmas party for them. Which is super fun. But you know, we discussed so. And they have they have a whole set of traditions that are the traditions they do for Christmas at our house. I love that.

Well, I can tell by looking at your house how it is.

It’s very festive. We live in an 1867 house. So, it’s very festive. Even if we didn’t decorate it’s like the kind of house you want to go to for Christmas. But we do like all the holiday traditions for my childhood, a passing game and there’s like a fun we have a pickle ornament that they have to find in the tree. And I don’t know what else I have no idea. There’s dishes and things and we always make everything whole all. So, we do all our Christmas dishes. Hello. I love our I love our whole wall Christmas party. Yeah. What are you experimenting on in your work and your life and your business right now?

Well, I think that for the first time, I had all our team members do a behavioral sort of assessment, you know, the predictive index type things. And, and I did that because even though I’ve known some of these, I mean, some of some of the silver lining core teamwork for me 20 years ago, you know, but it’s unbelievable how powerful insight around personalities are to create cohesive teams, especially if you’re trying to do that remotely. And so, what I’m experimenting with is team dynamics. And normally, you know, you think, Okay, well that person is strong at that, and that person’s not as good as that. But they supplement the strength there and you sort of build your teams around what people have and what people don’t. And what I’ve learned is that’s actually not you’re missing the point. It’s how do the personalities what type of interpretive skills do you need to give your team members so that they are speaking the same language? And I have found that in some cases, I I’ll be in a meeting, and I’ll watch the team dynamic, and you think people are saying things and you think people are hearing the same things. And they’re not. So, one thing I’m trying to do is coach the team members no matter how junior or senior have what they need to give, and how they need to deliver it to respective team members in order to get the best out of them. And I’ve never done that in so much detail nor made it such a focus. And I love it because I can see the relief on the team members faces that came away from the meeting head nodding but not really understanding what was being asked of them. And, and it just takes away the anxiety. Yeah. And, and I love that. I love that for them. So that’s, that’s a little bit of one experiment that I’m working on?

Well, I think one of the things that surprised me the most after being a coach for so long, is just the suffering that people have as they succeed. And my compassion just grows and grows for people who are trying so hard, and they may actually be succeeding, but they don’t have that sense of success. And so just anything that people are doing in the world that makes me smile, that you’re trying to help them be more successful, because there’s such deep compassion in that for them to feel the success of their actions. I just, I just like that everywhere I see it in the world, it warms my heart.

I wonder from your opinion, in your opinion, how much dialogue is going on? About the resilience that we’ve lost in people, you know, coming out of COVID, you know, headwinds about the economic environment going forward. You know, people are exhausted and tired and fatigued about life. How do you then navigate your way through some headwinds on the economic front?

I don’t know the answer to that. I know that I hear stories, you know, I hear lots I have my client list, and I hear their stories. So I only have anecdotal evidence of you know, a few months ago, as lots of people out on stress leave within there, you know, in the direct reports of the people that I have as clients, which tells me people are not coping well, I don’t have a sense that we’ve got super resilient workforce out there that are just like picking it up and knocking that out of the park, I feel like, I feel like people are really tender. And trying to survive it. I I also feel like anyone who’s got young children has been under siege, like this last three years, like every time they take their kids to daycare, their kids get sick. And then they’re fighting this battle between trying to go back to work and then having to call in sick again, because their kids are back out of work and trying to work remotely and, and like their resilience, I think those that whole group of people has had the same experience. Like, when my kids were young, they could go to daycare with a cold, but that has not been true for lots of COVID. And, and so that whole group of people has had a whole new experience, but I don’t think they have a lot of tolerance from people above them who had a different experience. So, the lived experience of the, their manager, or the person they report to is different than their lived experience, but I don’t think they’re talking very much about it. And so, I feel a lot of friction with that whole group of people. And it’s a huge group of people, because it’s everyone who has children between the age of two and 11 or something, you know, like it’s, it’s just a huge group. And, and so I think resilience in that group is really flagging because they’ve had to homeschool their kids at times. In Ontario, they had another, you know, the sole threat of the strike that happened last the last two weeks, you know, thank goodness, that didn’t happen. But that group has taken a huge hit and their resilience, I think, is really flagging. And then I just think that anyone who’s been in a leadership role, especially a newer leadership role, I believe they they’ve had to grapple with more than anybody ever because they’ve been grappling with new leadership, and all of the challenges of that plus remote work plus COVID plus, changing protocols plus, all of these children that AR N. You know it you can’t it’s really hard not to get frustrated at people who are in and out of work all the time and what to do with them. Because of J care issues and school issues. So, I just think it’s like a challenging time, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. And I don’t think anybody’s patient.

Yeah. And then you and then you have the older kids who are navigating trying to get into university after two years of COVID. And you know, and all that stress.

I hate when 17-year-old. Yes.

I have a 17-year-old too. And let me tell you like, as you know, the moms and the parents of these children are just beside themselves. There’s another monumental milestone that they’re very fatigued children are facing.

Well, they missed high school like artists, high school, they missed, they missed. Every year, they’ve had a shutdown. Every year of high school, they’ve had a shutdown. Again, I’m so glad they didn’t have a strike, because, like, one year, maybe they won’t. And ever, so every year they’ve had a shutdown, they haven’t had a normal high school experience. These are not resilient kids. And they’re trying to get into university with a really spotty history, competing with kids who sat out for a couple of years, who didn’t have a spotty history. So, they don’t look the same on paper, like my kids don’t. I mean, my kids actually look pretty good on paper, but only because, you know, we did everything we could to keep that happening. But they didn’t have you know, my one of my kids is in a school play right now. They didn’t have a school play the last couple of years to do. They didn’t have their there hasn’t been a school swim team at my kids’ school, even though my kids are swimmers for the last three years. So, they just don’t have the things on their resume that they would have had. Had there not been COVID. So, I’m with you. So yeah, sorry. We’re know we’re just on a total diversion. It’s an easy diversion for me to go with you on though.

But CEOs are dealing with it doesn’t matter if they’re young kids or old kids, which were my point, which was, you know, there is not a situation that has not been compromised, especially for your new leaders, that they are having to do even more heavy lifting.

Right. Right. Yes. So, I think that is the I think that’s, you know, what it feels like on the ground right now for leaders. And I think and I think, you know, the financial situation, the layoffs, I I’m still taking them with a grain of salt, I think it’s a really good time for tech companies to get rid of the bottom third of the people that they’d like to get rid of that they can’t get rid of easily. If they don’t do layoffs. I still think that’s what they’re up to. Like, there’s just people it’s hard to fire unless you do a round of layoffs, and they haven’t done them for a while. And there’s you know; it puts talent on the market. And it’s time for a shuffle. I don’t know, we’ll see. Like, you know, there was a shortage right before the layoffs. It’s I don’t know; I’m taking all that with a grain of salt. And I coach a lot in tech. People are freaking out. And other people are like, I don’t know.

I think actually, it’s a great time. I think there’s a lot of talent out there. I’m seeing certainly more talent and I’m I was having a conversation last night at eight o’clock with one of my clients. And I’m switching up one of our one of his team members. And I said to him, I said, I have an opportunity to upgrade talent on your team. And you got to trust me, but that’s what we’re going to do. And this new person is going to come in and places this person because that person is an upgrade. And two years ago, I didn’t have that person knocking on my door. And today I do.

Yeah, I think that’s the opportunity for everybody right now. Look around, check some resumes. See if you want to upgrade your team members, there might be somebody on the market right now. That won’t be in a year and wasn’t two years ago for sure. So that’s but also, it’s nice. There might be jobs available there might be like it’s a good place. You know, you don’t want a housing market where you can’t buy, and you can’t sell. You don’t want to job market where you can’t leave and you can’t get a new job like you know you want there to be room to move a little, so I don’t know, it’s not, I’m not freaked out yet. I think the stock market’s looking for a reason to come back to fly up. I’m, I don’t know, I’m with you. I’m very bullish at the moment for the next two years. But that’s just me. I’m a little I’m a little bright and shiny right now.

I’m with you, Melanie, we’re seeing we’re seeing too and I’m, I’m excited about it. Actually.

I am, too. I’m excited about the future. Um, I do want to talk about like, before, you know, your super fun to talk about talk to you. And I don’t want to miss talking about power skills and what you do. So, can you talk about that for just a few minutes?

Well, you know, we, our business is about building brands, people love, and there’s a lot of a lot that goes into that. But usually, we start by alignment of how the internal culture speaks about the products and services that they sell, and how clear and motivating and differentiating those things are. And we have an expression that to be shining on the outside, you got to be shining on the inside first. And so, we do that for brands, and in almost every case, we’re hired by the CEO of the company, and in many different sectors, healthcare, automotive, luxury brands, hospitality, senior living. And, and then what I find is that it’s, it’s a lot more compelling and a lot less risky, to define how you’re going to win, if you’ve got alignment on the inside, and alignment on, on what you sell, and how you do it, but also alignment with the people that that are going to need to do the selling and marketing of you of your products. So, part of the training, because, you know, when we go in, we find that there are gaps, people don’t actually know what those key messages are about why they work in a place that they work, and why they need to go out every day and believe that what they’re selling to their customers is different, and the best. So, when people are empowered to do that, then the magic happens. So, but often there’s training involved, internally first. And so, part of what we do is we train on the brand, and we train on what it what it all means. But it also requires a lot of these power skill sets training. And, you know, teaching people how to be more empathetic. teaching people how to recognize when one of your employees is really struggling, doesn’t have the resilience that he or she needs in a call center. Because they’re getting braided by customers for eight hours a day. How do you give them the proverbial Flak Jacket, not to take it on. And that requires a commitment by the organization to train these people to handle those issues. So that was actually something that we didn’t start offering. But because I come from the hospitality industry, we took the best practices from four seasons and Fairmont and Ritz Carlton and package those up because I firmly believe after working in the industry for 15 years that nobody does it better. The hospitality and the luxury hotel business can take someone who has never stayed in a luxury hotel in their life and train them to deliver extraordinary experiences. So, a lot of the CEOs and very different industries want a bit of that superpower within their organization and silver lining, you know helps them develop that as well as defining and, and rebooting their brands.

I love that. I think it’s really interesting. I think that’s a really interesting way to look at it. Um, how you serve a client.

And the joyous part about it for the team to go back to, you know, having fulfilling work experiences is that, you know, the client, you become so entrenched and so motivated to do to help the clients succeed, because we’re working at a level that is just so at the DNA level, you know, of the organization. So, you know, I think that sometimes as marketers, we don’t have the privilege of really deeply understanding what makes an organized Asian tick. And we look at what they sell. And there is a massive gap in, in building brands, if you don’t understand what an organization is made up of, and so we have that, we have that privilege.

And on that note, Alexandra, where can people find you?

They can find me at www.SilverLiningmarketing.ca. And I’d love to hear from your amazing audience. Anything I can ever do. We have this mantra at Silver Lining, give more than you get. And so, Melanie, it’s been such a pleasure to spend time with you today. And thank you for having me on your podcast.

It’s really been a joy to get to have this conversation. I love the flow that we’ve had, as we’ve talked.

Thank you, Melanie.

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It’s been great being here with Alexandra Blum today. I’ve loved our conversation. I really want to challenge you to go out and look at your own leadership. Look at your people. Look at where you can infuse. Look at where you can infuse empathy into the conversations that you’re having. Look at where they are struggling, where they aren’t connected to your brand, where you can help them where you can mentor them where you can dive deep with them to help build their resilience in your organization. I hope that you find meaning in the relationships that you build the conversations that you have, and the depth that you are striving for in your leadership. Go experiment!

Important Links: 

• Silver Lining – Website
• Alexandra Blum – LinkedIn

Alexandra Blum

BRANDS BUILD CHARACTER. Alexandra Blum has a passion for developing marketing strategies that drive brand love and generate revenue. Her works has shaped the trajectories of global iconic brands, ranging from The Plaza Hotel and The Savoy to Le Labo, adidas, LVMH, Technogym and BMW.

At Silver Lining, her team and Alexandra specialize in identifying white-space opportunities for brands, creating campaigns that build trust, pique curiosity, instill confidence and forge emotional connections with customers and critical stakeholders.

Guided by the hallmarks of hospitality, they specialize in:
• Brand Development and Communications
• Delivering Outstanding Customer Experience, and
• Creating Engaging and Culturally Committed Employees

Overall, they BUILD BRANDS PEOPLE LOVE.

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