The Human Side of Execution with Michelle Martin

SPEAKER_1 (0:03)

The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

Stephen Sakach (0:17)

Welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here once again with my co-host Tullio Siragusa.

And we've got a special guest who we'll introduce in a moment. So every leader obviously wants a team that can execute, but teams can get stuck when goals are unclear, when collaboration breaks down, when strengths are underused, or when leaders try to force a generic solution onto a very specific team dynamic. And today we are exploring the power of emotional intelligence in business through the lens of leadership, team performance, and the human side of execution. And Tullio, introduce our special guest today.

Tullio Siragusa (1:02)

My pleasure. Our guest today is Michelle Martin. She's a leadership and team performance consultant, coach and author. Michelle brings more than 20 years of experience, improving performance and navigating change in complex environments. Her leadership journey began on the front line and eventually led her to become a national director overseeing fleet operations across Canada for Fortune 250 Company. Today Michelle helps leaders and teams uncover what is getting in the way of stronger collaboration, healthier dynamics and better results.

She uses practical tools and recognized frameworks, but her approach is never cookie cutter. She comes alongside leaders to create support that fits the team, culture and the work they are trying to build. Michelle, welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast.

Michelle Martin (1:58)

It's such a pleasure. Thank you both.

Stephen Sakach (2:01)

Michelle, Tullio kind of mentioned there, uncovering what gets in the way of stronger collaboration and healthier dynamics and getting better results. When teams are underperforming, what are leaders often missing beneath the surface of that?

Michelle Martin (2:21)

You know, I think it's always like easy to attribute underperformance to maybe time or talent or, you know, maybe engagement or something like that. But really what I find that is missing or the missed opportunity is people want to perform, you know, they want to contribute, they want to do a good job. So then that means that they must have a desire, they must have an idea of something that they want to do that they can't. And that's what we're missing. What is that heartburn that they face every day? Or if it's like, if we're asking them to do this thing, why aren't they doing it? And what's that heartburn there? Like there is a problem there. And then when we don't solve the problem, and we let people sit with that, we got to face this problem day in and day out, and there's no hope for it to change. And they're just almost expected to cope through it or deal with it.

Like if that was you, like what would that lead to?

You know, probably disengagement, little, you would be disheartened. You know, you just want to be in it to win it, right? So, and then that shows up in performance issues. So I think the, to summarize that, the thing that they're missing is like, they already want to deal with the problem, but we actually then need to deal with the problem.

Stephen Sakach (3:47)

Yeah, I think the very first show we did on this podcast was about resentment. And so kind of what you're describing there, like there's all these sort of problems that aren't maybe dealt with, right?

And that's just sitting underneath the surface of it all a lot of times. And people, I don't know, how does that impact things? They kind of give up, they kind of are just, you know, skeptical, cynical about things being solved and and then they just end up start punching the clock, right? Like, okay, I'm just going to do my job. Is that how I usually when you're talking about underneath the surface of it all? Is that how kind of resentment plays in part of that?

Michelle Martin (4:31)

Yeah, that's exactly it. Um, so I guess like and then to elaborate. So for example, if you wanted to, um, I don't know, fix fix a goal or to achieve something really then, like how do you then get people like to achieve that thing? How does that tie to what I just said? And it's like, well, what are all the things that are getting in our way?

If we all want to do this, like what's stopping us? And it could be silly things like just even systems are department like priorities, whatever it might be. But can we list that out and actually do something about it? And that's where the work is. Everybody focuses on trying to like achieve the goal.