5 Super Simple Ways To Improve Your Conversations: Lead To Inspire Not Manage

True leadership means inspiring rather than micromanaging, creating an environment where people feel trusted and empowered to bring their best. This episode explores five powerful ways to transform your conversations from controlling to inspiring, helping you become a more magnetic and effective leader.

• Give people your full attention - make eye contact, lean in, and create a distraction-free space when communicating
• Listen to understand, not just respond - use phrases like "what I'm hearing is..." to confirm understanding
• Find common ground and connection points with your team members to build trust
• Acknowledge three wins for every suggestion for improvement to create a positive feedback culture
• Lead with warmth balanced with competence to create charisma that inspires respect
• Inspire ownership by setting the vision but trusting people to develop the "how"
• Focus on behaviors rather than attacking identity when corrections are needed
• Create psychological safety where questions are welcomed and valued

If you're ready to take your leadership to the next level, book a test drive consultation through my website to explore how we can work together through private coaching or the Magnetic Leadership Accelerator.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Inspiring Leadership
• 4:41 Problem with Micromanagement
• 9:15 Full Attention and Active Listening
• 13:15 Finding Connection and Common Ground
• 15:19 Balancing Warmth with Competence
• 20:19 Inspiring Ownership and Trust
• 24:36 Closing Thoughts and Next Steps

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

uh. Tap into your inner power. You got this. Now go get it living up to your full potential. Your energy is magnetic. Big dreams believe in it. Wisdom we seeking it, everything that you're looking for, brought to you by lisa jeffs, the magnetic leader. It's time to soar. Tap into your power of an entrepreneur. Level up, step it up because, I believe, find your purpose. Time to be a magnetic. Welcome to the show Leader. This is going to be a good one. You're going to want to stick around for this one If you've ever wanted to improve your conversations, so you are truly inspiring people and not just managing them or, dare I say, micromanaging them, which I have been guilty of.

Speaker 1: 0:57

If you want to truly inspire the people that you are working with, which ultimately, we want to do as leaders, especially as we move into 2026, 2027, when leadership and emotionally aware leadership is going to be coming more online, this is going to become more and more important. I'm going to be giving you five specific ways to improve your conversations, and these are very simple. A lot of times, they are not taught to us. So if they are not taught to us growing up, or if we've had environments where we have learned the patterns of micromanaging. It can be very easy to want to micromanage others. It's not helpful to the person. In fact, it can be very harmful. Now micromanaging is about controlling. It's about hovering, nitpicking. Remember the first time I had to catch myself when I was micromanaging someone I hired to do a job which I knew they knew more about, but I was hovering over and I was checking things and ultimately what I did was I hindered the growth that I hired them to help me create because I couldn't get out of my head that I somehow knew better. Now, in a lot of cases, I work with a lot of very smart, very capable leaders and people and individuals, and a lot of times they may have the answers that others do not have.

Speaker 1: 2:55

But to lead is not to micromanage, because we are not teaching anybody anything, let alone inspiring. So to inspire them, we are giving them clarity, we are trusting them, we are sharing the why and letting people own the how. I can't tell you how important this is to create confidence in the people that you're working with. And if you're not working with individuals, think about how empowering it is when you're working with your kids or family members or friends and you are instilling in them this level of capability because you trust them and they are running with it, even if what they do is not perfect, that's okay. That's it.

Speaker 1: 3:58

The game here is not to be perfect. Nobody is perfect. Nothing is perfect as a leader. If you are a conscious leader and you are truly awakening to the fact that you are here for a purpose and your purpose is to inspire others, these are five ways that you can improve your conversations, starting today, and the more you practice them, the more they're going to become second nature, and it truly is a gift to the people that you're working with that you can hang up the cap of manager or, dare I say, micromanager and put on the cap of leadership. It is truly a gift to yourself and to everyone that you come into contact with. Okay, so one and I talk about this a lot. I think I've done, actually, all a whole podcast on how special this is and how most people are not doing it, and if you can do it, you are truly changing the game. This is giving people your full attention.

Speaker 1: 5:09

Okay, number one, you're giving people your full attention. That means when you were speaking to them, you are using listening or you are. If you're speaking, you are leaning in, you are making eye contact. Now, for some people, eye contact is uncomfortable. For some cultures we don't make eye contact. So take eye contact if it resonates or not. But if that is something that you want to work on doing, practicing making eye contact when you are speaking, focused by focusing your energy on the person, which means you're not distracted, you are not checking your phone, even if you are looking down, you are still there. You are in that space with that other person. Nothing else is coming in. You can even see yourself in a energetic I don't like to use the word bubble because we're not in bubbles, but we are in a space that's being held and honored. Listen with presence. Number two listening to understand. This is huge. If you've ever done any kind of couples therapy or coaching and you're working on relationships, this is massive. Listening to understand and not just waiting for the space to put in your opinion.

Speaker 1: 6:59

So a lot of times I'll be hired and often I will get a rundown of what the issues are. Now my job is always to go and take that but really assess and do my own assessment and it's often pretty quickly that I can assess what's happening and a lot of times, issues come from the top dip and a lot of times, what is happening is there is a lack of communication. A big part of the problem, where it's stemming from, is nobody is understanding each other, is nobody is understanding each other. Nobody is truly understanding what is happening for the other person. They are making their own assumptions, people are getting frustrated because they don't feel heard and it absolutely starts to crumble. As a leader, one of your number one jobs is to listen, to understand, summarize back to the person when they are speaking to you, so they know and they can feel that, oh, this person truly understands where I'm coming from. Use phrases like so what I'm hearing is da, da, da to confirm what you're hearing is correct and if it's not correct, be open to the feedback. One of the things we absolutely want to do in these conversations is put our defensiveness hat to the side, and this is where a lot of that deeper work comes in, when we work on our inner leader and we work on being emotionally regulated. So when we are in these conversations, we are grounded and we are centered. By the way, if you need help with this, please go and book a test drive consult on my website, or if you're watching this on YouTube under in the description website, or if you're watching this on YouTube under in the description.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Number three is find common ground. A lot of times when I'm working with a leader and they are feeling like they are not connected to their team, or when I'm working with a founder or an entrepreneur and they are saying I want to have more of this feeling like we are all on board together, like we are working as a unit and I'm not just working with people I've hired or my employees, that we are all in a cohesive group. Well, one of the things you can do when you are having conversations and you are moving from managing to inspiring find connection. Find a connection point with the people that you were talking about. It doesn't matter if it's the smallest connection point ever. Connect with a person. People respond to similarities. When a person feels like, oh, this person gets this or oh, this person sees this in the same way, that immediately builds a connection. So, if your aim is to feel more connected with the people that you are working with, be intentional about finding things to connect on. Another thing you want to do when you are finding common ground is to acknowledge what the person you are talking to is doing. Acknowledge the wins, celebrate the effort before you add your view, making sure that this isn't you just picking, picking, picking at everything you want fixed or you want changed or you want done, that you are truly acknowledging the wins, celebrating the wins.

Speaker 1: 11:38

I worked with a leader who was very powerful and she was such a big hearted woman leader. However, there were certain people on her team that she would get very frustrated with, and a lot of this had to do with her own healing. This was her own healing journey. A lot of the frustration and the irritation and the anger was actually built up from something completely different and we did a lot of work with the healing. But before we got to that point, this is one strategy that that had massive, massive help for her, and it was simple, when she was talking to her team, to acknowledge three wins for every one thing that she wanted to change or she needed to remind people of to do different.

Speaker 1: 12:40

I can't tell you how much this will inspire people to show up in a bigger, bolder, more engaged way, that they know that you are acknowledging the wins and the things they are doing well, if all you are doing is telling them what they have done wrong, even if it's in good spirits. That's how you were raised, many of us. I'm a Gen X. I'm right on the cusp of Gen X and millennial. A lot of the experiences I had growing up were not. This is great. This is great. This is great. This is what we need to do differently. It was. Why was this done wrong? This is what you have to do better. That was not inspiring back then. It's certainly not inspiring now.

Speaker 1: 13:36

Now, a lot of people have this very old mentality and I don't think that's going to be you listening to this. I highly doubt that would be you, because these people are typically not the ones that are listening to any personal growth or doing any of the work, but there is a belief system that they have to be really hard, that any form of niceness is going to be taken advantage of and that people will not respect them. Now there is an element to too much warmth being liked and not respected. However, I'll get into that in a second, when we go into to part four, but that is not applicable to what I'm telling you right now. To give three wins, three compliments, three things a person did well, and then bring in what you want them to do differently, what you want them to do better, what you want them to change. That is in no way shape or form being too warm to where you are going to lose respect. In fact, you are going to gain respect. We need to let go of this belief system that if you smile, if you're kind, you're somehow going to be taken advantage of Absolutely not.

Speaker 1: 15:11

Let me go with the fourth, which is lead with warmth, but also competence. So if you've listened to my podcast on charisma, you will have heard me talk about the beautiful combination that Vanessa Van Edwards often talks about in her work of combining warmth and competence. And when we bring these two together, we have this wonderful element of charisma. Now, when we have too much warmth and that can lead to us being liked but not respected people lacking trust Can this person really do the job? However? And now, if we bring in too much competence and, in this case, too much micromanaging, then we can have people that were working with us having a level of respect but, more so, a level of fear.

Speaker 1: 16:24

We don't want that. That is not good for business, that is not good for leadership. That is not good for changing and improving the collective. We do not want people to be afraid to ask questions. We do not want people to be afraid of getting things wrong. What we want to do is create an atmosphere where you lead with warmth, but also have an element of truth and clarity, so people understand the expectations, people understand what is needed from them, but leading in a conversation with a smile, with warmth, with an open heart.

Speaker 1: 17:14

I was watching a leadership video that was created not even that long ago I think it was created in 2025. And the person who was speaking is a very talented, wonderful leader. However, there was one part which I could not have disagreed with more, and it was that emotion has no place in leadership, and she went as far as to say that when an employee showed emotion, she was embarrassed. Now, this does not mean that we want to be emotionally unregulated in our place of business, in our place of work, even though it does happen sometimes, and that's okay. But emotion, everything is emotion.

Speaker 1: 18:08

We need to stop pretending that the world revolves around logic and analytics when people are moved to make decisions through emotions, even so-called oh I'm just logical, I just make logical decisions. I have a lot of people in my life that claim to be very logical and when I look at their patterns, they are extremely emotional. We have to stop pretending that emotions are bad. Emotions are not bad. Emotions are not bad. Emotions are what the human experience is. We, as souls, have come to earth to have an emotional experience. It's not about denying your emotions, it's about understanding them and connecting with others.

Speaker 1: 18:56

So number four is leading with warmth. And don't be afraid to lead with warmth. Don't be afraid to offer recognition. A level of warmth creates safety. I went into another business and one of the things that was expressed to me was that the employees were afraid to ask questions. This is very dangerous. If you have people afraid to ask questions, you're going to be having people doing a lot of things that you may not want them to do because they are afraid of getting something wrong or clarifying something. Questions are especially when a person is just learning and growing and really taking on what you expect from them. If you have a culture where questions are dismissed or looked upon as something bad, there's going to be some chaos there bubbling behind the scenes. I'm going to move on to number five, but four lead with warmth.

Speaker 1: 20:15

Five inspire ownership from people. We cannot inspire ownership from people. We cannot inspire ownership from people if we are micromanaging them. Again, micromanaging completely diminishes trust. Micromanaging says I do not trust you to do this. Like when I was micromanaging the person that I hired to do a job. Like when I was micromanaging the person that I hired to do a job. Why the heck did I fear them if I don't trust them to do the job? Ultimately, control is always fear. We try to control what we fear. So when we are inspiring ownership, we are leading with trust.

Speaker 1: 21:01

We never want to, in a conversation, attack or nitpick a person's identity or credibility. When I see this in a lot of cases, it's simply that a person lacks the awareness and they've come from environments where it's a custom to attack their credibility. We do not want to do this. In any occasion we're dismissing a person, we're dismissing them as a human being, even though a lot of times it's not intentional. So, watching what we're saying, watching our words, really watching the nitpicking If we go deeper into the family. So a lot of the work that I do, whether I'm working with a business, I'm working with an individual, we're working on leadership or we're working on creating something in our business or career.

Speaker 1: 22:03

A lot of times we go back, right, we go back and see what, where are, have these patterns originated from? Not to dig in and not to dive in and stay there, but just to have an understanding. And a lot of us have grown up in households where the mother figure sometimes a father figure, but a lot of times a mother figure in whatever shape or form that came in nitpicked. And I know from my own experience. My mother would often say I'm just trying to teach you. So a lot of times it's not intentionally bad, I'm just trying to teach you. Wouldn't it be great to learn this? Don't you want to learn this? Of course, but again, nitpicking does not inspire ownership, it doesn't truly protect that person's dignity. It's a very subtle way of saying I don't trust you to do this, I don't trust your capabilities, I don't trust you to do this, I don't trust your capabilities.

Speaker 1: 23:03

Nitpicking is a pattern that we can break. A lot of times these things when I go into a business. A lot of times these things when I'm seeing or I'm using my intuitive abilities to really tap in and see beyond the surface, because in most cases, nobody is doing this intentionally, maliciously. These are patterns that are happening and we can change patterns. That's the amazing thing about patterns. But a lot of times these are old stories that a person is just reliving. So we want to set the vision, we want to let them know what the vision is and trust them to develop the how or guide them to develop the how.

Speaker 1: 23:53

You can always correct behavior, but focus on the behavior. Do not focus on the person, their identity, their credibility. This is what I used to do in the school board when I was working with youth, young adults. We don't want to attack the identity. Look at the behavior. Behavior is separate. We are divine whole beings. We are in this journey to learn, to grow, to have fun, to expand, to inspire. We want to improve the lives of others.

Speaker 1: 24:38

I know if you're listening to this, if you're still listening to this after or watching 26 minutes, you're here to be a change maker. If you're resonating with some of the things that I'm talking about in the manager aspect, know and understand. That's just a pattern, so have it. It's just a way of being and if you want to learn another way, start with these If you want to go deeper, head on over, book a test drive consult where we will work one-on-one to really get clear where you're at, where you'd want to go and if what I offer, either through private coaching or through the Magnetic Leadership Accelerator, is good Leader, I love you, I appreciate you and, as always, let's stay connected. Your energy is magnetic. Big dreams believe in it. Wisdom, we seeking it. Everything that you looking for, brought to you by Lisa Jeffs, the magnetic