Hi, welcome to another episode of Unlocked. I'm Skot. Today, we're going to talk about unlocking the potential of people by dealing with this idea of insecurity. And we all have insecurities. All of us. Yes, you too. And these things prevent us from making progress, from unlocking our true potential.
Today, I'm talking to Melanie Pump. Now, Melanie Pump is an accomplished CFO and now author. She just wrote a book called "Detox". It's all about managing workplace environments, toxic workplace environments, through this idea of insecurity and what that has to do with how we build healthy cultures in our workplace. And yes, she is a CFO. Yes, she comes from a finance background, so she talks about what is the ROI? How does this help us become profitable businesses when we invest in our culture? When we address the insecurities in our workforce and help understand how to unlock that potential inside of us all?
So, I'm really excited. This is a really good punchy interview. So, here we come, Melanie.
Melanie, it is wonderful to have you here to just unpack all my insecurities.
Melanie Pump:
Awesome, happy to help you with that.
Skot Waldron:
Yeah, thank you. No, this is really great. I love this topic. You just wrote a book, called "Detox", and it's all about managing those insecurities in the workplace, and what a cool topic. This is not something that I talk to people... Well, as a coach, coaching people, executives and teams, I see them, but it's not something that I talk about on my show very much. So, I love having you here as this thought leader about this idea.
So, let's unpack the book a little bit. Why did you even write this book in the first place? I'm sure COVID, right?
MELANIE PUMP:
Right. Well, COVID gave me the time. COVID gave me the time. But I had, throughout my own journey growing in the workplace, I noticed how my own insecurities impacted my success. But I also really noticed how that changed depending on the health of the work environment. So when I was in a positive supportive work environment, I was able to grow and learn and progress my career and so were the people around me. And then I noticed in these really toxic work environments, all those insecurities that we have tended to get magnified, and that really worked against both the success of the business and the people within the environment. And seeing that big difference that I saw in those two types of workplaces is what drove me to write the book.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay, cool. And the book's out now. It's been out since September. So, super cool for you and the experiences you're having as a result of that. So, let's talk about your journey a little bit. I want to reflect back on that to, what was... Because we've experienced insecurities and others, or in ourselves in the workplace, but it hasn't necessarily pushed us to write a book about.
MELANIE PUMP:
Right.
SKOT WALDRON:
I mean, this was something so profound to you that you're like, "I got to write a book about this."
MELANIE PUMP:
Yeah, yeah. And a lot of it, it goes right back to the beginning for me, because I came into the workplace when I was 21 years old and I hadn't had really any education. I actually hadn't finished high school. I started in an environmental engineering firm where I was surrounded by people with PhDs and master's degrees, so I felt really insecure right out of the gate in my career.
But I was really lucky in that first workplace. I had some leaders who saw my potential and helped to support me to grow and go back to school and received multiple promotions at that one workplace. So to me, I really saw the power of a healthy work environment and the power of a place that helps you overcome your insecurities. So I think that is the driver for me, is I see what can happen when we do have people really supporting us and helping us overcome our challenges.
SKOT WALDRON:
So what insecurities or... Or how do insecurities really keep us from making progress or prevent us from being... On the show, we talk about unlocking the potential of ourselves or unlocking the potential of others, how do those insecurities prevent us from becoming unlocked?
MELANIE PUMP:
Because when we feel insecure, it's about safety. And so, I don't know if you're familiar, which you probably are, the Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a good example of it, because Maslow's hierarchy; the bottom level is that food, shelter, air, and then the next level is safety. And if our need for safety isn't met, that's extremely distracting for us, so we become really focused on ensuring that we are secure. We'll become defensive, we'll avoid any situations that make us fearful.
So if you're feeling insecure, you're not going to put yourself out there and try new things that can lead to growth. So if you're in a workplace where you're really worried about your safety, you're not going to be going for promotions, you're not going to be extending yourselves or taking risks. So that really works against employee growth, and also a company growing as well. Because if people aren't taking, the company's not innovating.
SKOT WALDRON:
So, what types of insecurities do you see out there that are super obvious? We can probably relate to a lot of them? I mean, what are kinds of things that you're seeing out there that are damaging these cultures right now?
MELANIE PUMP:
Well, I mean, the insecurities come back to our emotional insecurities. So insecurities about ourselves and our abilities is certainly a common one in the workplace. And when we feel insecure, we just don't want to do anything that's going to make us feel any worse about ourselves. So, if you are in a workplace where you are, say, in a position that may not have all the skills for, for example, that's going to make you feel quite insecure about exposing the fact that you don't know everything. So you might hide your mistakes, you might be afraid of asking questions because you don't want to highlight that you're not totally comfortable in your role. And that can make people quite insecure at work.
Whereas if you're in a healthy work environment, you'll have a leader who you know is going to support you, even when you don't know something. So, you're comfortable going and saying, "I've never done this before, can you at least show it to me once?" Rather than you fumbling around and trying to figure it out on your own.
SKOT WALDRON:
So, what creates that environment then? So, what's the secret sauce to enable that type of communication to happen? For somebody to feel safe enough to go to that boss? They've just been hired, right, maybe in this new position, they have a lot of expectations put upon them and this company's taken a risk on them, and then they have to come and say, "Yeah, I am not so good at this thing you just asked me to do." What's going to help me have that feeling of...
MELANIE PUMP:
Well, a really important factor is transparency, and that goes both ways. So when somebody is going for a role, going to apply for a role, being clear about what your skill set is and not overselling yourself. Because if you, for example, go in for a role and sell yourself to be better than you are, that you're going to step into that role and you've already made yourself insecure because you've presented yourself to be something that you're not. So, that is on all of us as well to... I really don't like the fake it till you make it approach. I think that can really create a lot of insecurity, because you're going and presenting yourself as something that you're not.
But it's also on the employer as well to make sure that they're really clear about what their needs are in those roles. And also, really clear about what the work and is. Because if an employee comes into a workplace and the job that was sold to them is actually quite different from what they walk into, that's going to automatically make them insecure and make them go into protection mode because the trust is going to be damaged between the new employer and the employee. So, I really recommend transparency. So, being really clear on having that communication and having a lot of clarity, but also ensuring before you go and hire somebody that you really, really know what it is that you need and what is going to be the right fit for that role, so you bring in the right person.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. There's a principle I teach a lot called, the idea of brand heaven. How do we reach brand heaven? And brand is your reputation, it's what people say about us when we're not around. And really, it's just like when we're going on dates, right? If you think about, this is a dating scenario. We're sitting down first interactions, okay, we have a good first interaction. Super cool, right. Then it's consistency in those interactions that are good. But then we get in to the idea of being credible and authentic.
And I think that's what you're talking about, right, is, after we've been on this date for a little while, we've had some experiences and then we get into this, they start to feel real. But if they've said things, but then can't really walk the talk, then they become inauthentic. Then our trust lowers and there's an immediate barrier put absolutely towards building trust going forward.
MELANIE PUMP:
I've compared dating and job interview process many times as well, because there is a lot of similarity there.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah, yeah. They're so similar.
MELANIE PUMP:
And you're making a commitment, so you really do need to ensure that both sides are being authentic, because you're right. If from the beginning, and many companies do this and culture is one of the areas that it happens most often is, people present the company to be a certain way in the interview process, the culture to be a certain way. And then somebody walks in and they find out that it's actually not that way at all. People don't talk to each other, the whole organization is siloed, and it damages that relationship right out of the gate.
And the thing is, is that none of us expect a company to be 100% perfect. So, it is okay to be open even about what the problems are during the interview process, because then the person, just like in a dating process, people can make a decision about whether that is something that they can manage and that they can work with. And if they can't, then they turn it down and they go and work somewhere else and everybody is better off that way. It's better to be clear and open.
SKOT WALDRON:
Is it almost like, I always think about this too. I always think about when you see those commercials where you'll see, I don't know, a Wendy's commercial or something, and then you see the hamburger bun coming together in slow motion, and the layers and the hamburger patty and the fresh green lettuce with the water coming off and the tomatoes, and everything looks beautiful, right? It's like this thing. And then you order a Wendy's hamburger, it's half-smashed and the bun's coming off the side a little bit...
MELANIE PUMP:
False advertising.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah, and it's almost like...
MELANIE PUMP:
Absolutely, yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
And they still put it out there, and we still go, "Oh, that looks good." We still go and buy the thing, and it's still not what we quite expect it to be.
MELANIE PUMP:
Totally. But at least that's a short term commit, whereas with a job, and I have had it happen where I've, from the outside; the brand, the values of a company, and values are really something that's interesting because many companies do put their values out, and then you come into the organization and it ends up not being as it was branded. And that's really disappointing. Like I say, it can really damage the trust and then the performance, because people aren't as committed because they feel like they were lied to right out of the gate.
SKOT WALDRON:
Right. And that is going to create a whole other realm of insecurities, right? And guardedness.
MELANIE PUMP:
Exactly.
SKOT WALDRON:
People putting up walls and saying, "Hold on, this is immediately a red flag." I've just started here, and immediately I'm seeing inconsistencies and things that are not cool.
MELANIE PUMP:
And the thing about insecurity too, is, a lot of it can actually be on a subconscious level. We just feel unsettled. We know that something doesn't feel right. There's a couple things that weren't what they appeared, and that's going to make us guarded then in every interaction. And we may just, if we have ideas or want to ask questions, we may just hold them back because we don't feel safe. And that feeling of safety can just be an underlying feeling, but it will stop people from putting themselves out there and getting as engaged in the culture and contributing as much to the organization, as if they could as if they walked in and it was exactly as they expected it to be, and that made them feel safe and they could move forward and contribute to the company.
SKOT WALDRON:
Beautiful. This sounds a lot like another principle that I teach a lot called self-preservation, where it's this whole idea of when we are experiencing self-preservation, we have this wall up, right? And there's be questions that we ask when we're experiencing self-preservation, or even trying to diagnose the self-preservation of somebody else is; what am I afraid of losing? What am I trying to hide, and what am I trying to prove, and to who? And so, all of those questions seem to revolve around this idea of insecurity, right? I'm afraid of something, so insecurity. I'm trying to hide something, insecurity. I'm trying to prove something, insecurity, right? So, that's really interesting how they revolve around...
MELANIE PUMP:
And I use self-preservation, I use that term all the time as well. And when I talk about it being on a subconscious level, I compare it to... Another term around insecurity is psychological safety, is your work environment psychologically safe? And so, I'll compare that to physical safety, because we all understand that we use self-preservation to make ourselves physically safe.
For example, if there's a fire and you put your hand out, you will instinctively pull your hand away. You'll do the same in an environment that's psychologically unsafe. You may not even totally realize you're doing it, but you'll start avoiding, for example, if there's somebody in the work environment who's a bully, you will instinctively just start avoiding that person, or procrastinating about a task that you're nervous about. Our brains are really amazing when it comes to ensuring that we're safe. And that goes both from a physical perspective and a psychological perspective.
SKOT WALDRON:
So, you wrote a whole book about this. So, break down the book for me, and how is it structured? Is it giving us exercises, or is it about this idea of how the brain works Break it down for us, what it...
MELANIE PUMP:
Yeah. So, I mean, it starts out just talking about what is insecurity and what we've talked about, about how that is at a subconscious level. So, often we don't even realize some of the stuff that we're doing. And I explain what those things are. So; defensiveness, avoidance, procrastination. Going into how those things do impact us in the workplace and limit our growth, but also really limiting the growth of the business. Because I am, my background is in finance. I am a CFO. So it does come back to the bottom line for me. So really laying out, how do these behaviors stop businesses from being successful?
And then, what are the factors that can make an environment one that triggers insecurities? All of us have insecurities, but certain work in environments can magnify them and make us more protective of ourselves. And then, a number of things that we can do, the book is targeted at leaders, that we can do to improve the psychological safety or security of a work environment.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. Now you've just... You know my next question, right?
MELANIE PUMP:
What are...
SKOT WALDRON:
You teased me a little bit on that one.
MELANIE PUMP:
Yes, I did.
SKOT WALDRON:
So, give me just an example of something that these leaders can do.
MELANIE PUMP:
Well, we talked about a couple already. Transparency really is one of the most critical factors to create security, because, humans, we're really uncomfortable with uncertainty. So if we don't know what's going on, we don't know what's expected of us, we don't know how stable the company is, we get blindsided by things; that is going to make an environment quite insecure. That's one of them.
And we've also touched on, making sure people are in the right roles. Because when we're not in a position where we feel comfortable, that creates a bunch of really unproductive behaviors that can actually create toxicity in the environment. So if you have a leader who's insecure, for example, that leader, we know tone from the top how important that is. If you have an insecure leader, they'll do things like keeping people down, not sharing information. So, there's many things that happen when people are not in the right roles. So, those are two of the critical things; make sure you're as transparent as possible, and be really thoughtful about hiring and also promoting people to ensure they're in the right position.
SKOT WALDRON:
Okay. So, when you're to talking about that, the poor recruitment, poor promotion aspects of companies, of what they're doing... So, expand on that a little bit, and how that ensures and helps us have a more secure workplace.
MELANIE PUMP:
Yeah. Well, having a secure workplace requires you to have people in that workplace who are secure, and we are most secure when we're in positions where we believe that we can meet expectations and that we can contribute in the way that the business needs. And also when we're clear on what the business does need from us.
So, if you are placing, for example, sometimes over promotion is a very common thing in workplaces. Of course, I support promoting from within absolutely. But I think we need to do it quite thoughtfully and not promote people as a reward or promote people because we like them or they're good for the culture, because I've seen it occur many times where people get it into positions that they're not actually right or ready for, and that can really work against their feelings of security and actually be quite detrimental to their career, because they get placed in something and they feel like they owe performance to the company, but they're actually just not able to fulfill the needs of the role.
SKOT WALDRON:
And I see that happen a lot in the sense of people being promoted because they're just good at something, right? We're promoted because of our ability to do that thing, that technical thing. But when it comes to managing people or...
MELANIE PUMP:
The leadership side.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. So, then it comes a real problem. Then those insecurities really start to come out. So, they may be really secure at a task, but insecure when it comes to leading their peers, maybe because they've now been promoted and now they're the leader of the people they were part of. So, I've seen that a lot too. Has that been in your experience?
MELANIE PUMP:
And I have, too. Because it's like, how do you reward? And that's actually, that's a broader issue with the business world, because we really put a lot on success being in a leadership role, when not everybody's actually suited to being in a leadership role. So, we do need to make sure that we're also valuing those individual contributors because they have a huge, huge impact on the business as well. You can have a really successful career without being a leader, necessarily.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah, and I was talking to one of the creative director of Facebook Labs. So, it's the arm of Facebook that deals with a lot of innovation tech things, augmented reality and things like that. He wrote a book and was talking about, it's all about becoming from maker to manager, and how sometimes it's okay to not become that manager. Maybe it's okay to stay that maker, right? I think then you look at the leadership of those individuals and say, "Well, gosh, what do I do to help them feel like I appreciate them more?" Because usually people want promotion or people want some way to scale up, and how do I help them feel safe, and how do I feel help them feel appreciated and valued in those types of things, right?
MELANIE PUMP:
And it is difficult, because we have created a corporate world where going up is about leading people, that is supposed to be success. But we need those makers, we need those innovators, and we definitely do need to value it because a company can't be successful if they don't have the people who are innovating, creating new products, and their minds need to be focused on those things.
SKOT WALDRON:
So on that note, let's shift a little bit to that... Well, not necessarily a shift, it's just a talking about the title of these individuals. We put a lot of emphasis on title in our culture, right?
MELANIE PUMP:
Oh, yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
What this title means. And I've seen companies that do away with titles. They're like, "We don't have titles in our, in our company," right? "We do away with that, because we don't want to create a hierarchy here in our culture." So, talk to about that a little. What's your viewpoint on that?
MELANIE PUMP:
Well, and I have thoughts on that, definitely. There's actually a chapter in my book, or a section of my book, that talks about titles. Because I've seen titles become quite detrimental to people's careers, because you do see in small companies, for example, companies give out titles as almost a form of compensation, which can actually really work against people's success as well because it can cause some negativity within the workplace, for example. If somebody sees someone else gets a title, but they feel like they have more experience than that person, for example. And then it can also be challenging when somebody goes to look for a job later.
So if they're in one organization and they give them a C-suite title for whatever reason, but they're really only actually at a manager level, and then they go try to get a job elsewhere, and it causes them an issue to get a position because their skillsets not at that level. So, I've really seen, both from a culture perspective, that it can cause a problem just to give out titles as rewards rather than really ensuring its fits the role. And then, you're not even helping the person that you're giving the title to because then when they go find a job elsewhere, it actually gets in the way because they're not truly qualified for that title.
How do we fix that problem? That's, again, it's a society, corporate world thing that we've created, but it is problematic.
SKOT WALDRON:
So in your job as, as CFO, accountant, and doing the things that you've done, this isn't normally the person I'm talking to, right, about culture?
MELANIE PUMP:
Right.
SKOT WALDRON:
You're normally like, "Listen, just give me the spreadsheets, give the numbers. I'm going to calculate the stuff and I'm going to make sure that we're not squandering resources and making sure we're profitable and all that stuff," right? So, why would all of a sudden this accountant/CFO want to talk about culture? What's that have to do, how does that help us be profitable? Because that's your game, making sure we're profitable. What does that do for us?
MELANIE PUMP:
Yeah. And you're not the first person to say that to me, but it is unusual to have a finance person talking about these kinds of things. So, there's two sides to that. One, I really, really believe in helping people reach their full potential, because if it weren't for leaders doing that for me, I wouldn't be where I am today. So for one, I just have passion about supporting employees to reach their goals. That's one side of it.
But the other side is, is that I genuinely believe that when a company doesn't have a healthy work environment, the company is also not going to reach its full potential. For an organization to maximize their bottom line, people need to be contributing at their full potential, and that doesn't happen when people are fearful and insecure in the work environment.
SKOT WALDRON:
You've talked about defensiveness, you've talked about avoidance behavior. You've talked about as aggressiveness. So, we've kicked up a lot of dust and we've talked about some of the remedies, right? You've talked about transparency, creating safety in the workspace that way. Defensiveness avoidance, passive aggressiveness. How do we get rid of this stuff? I know you talked about transparency, I know you talked about some of those things, right? Is there something I can do today? If I'm listening to this right now, what's an action step I can take right now?
MELANIE PUMP:
Well, self-awareness is the first step, because many of these things, we don't all always realize that we're doing them. And I've had people come to me after reading my book and reading about the passive aggressiveness and defensiveness and going, "Wow. I didn't realize that I was even doing that," because it's common. There's many people who use passive aggressive behavior without knowing it. And then also, categorize others that use those behaviors because they figure that they know they're doing it.
So, one thing that I say is, be really, really self-aware about yourself. So, be really thoughtful about your interactions with others. And then also, pay it back. If somebody is being defensive or passive aggressive towards you, think about, is there something in the environment that's maybe making them feel insecure, that's making them act that way? Rather than actually just categorizing them as a problem employee or somebody you don't want to work with, think about, is there something in the environment that could actually be causing them to feel insecure and driving the behaviors?
SKOT WALDRON:
I tell people, move from critique to curiosity.
MELANIE PUMP:
Yes.
SKOT WALDRON:
Right? Because it's really easy for us to be like, "That person's past so aggressive. Did you see that thing they did? They need to stop acting like that because that's causing a lot of problems in our workforce," right? Instead of saying, "Huh, is there something in the..." I love that. Is there something in the environment? Is there something about their jobs? Is there something about somebody they're working with, that's creating this tendency to want to be passive aggressive, because they're going to have that tendency and it's not going to go away, right? So, how do we address it? And number one, make them aware of it. And then number two, create an environment that doesn't trigger that passive aggression.
MELANIE PUMP:
Doesn't trigger it. Yeah, I guess passive aggressive in particular, it's often because people are afraid of directly saying what they're thinking. So, they use these passive aggressive behaviors, which are very difficult to work with people that are using that kind of behavior. But the other thing is, I do have a fundamental belief, most of us want to do good. We want to contribute in the workplace. We don't want to be creating negativity. So when we are, it is often a reaction to something in the environment. Of course, there could also be things happening in people's personal lives that are driving these kind of behaviors as well. But I completely agree with you, and you're supporting it with curiosity and seeing if there is something that we can do to help the situation.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. That's really, really good. Is there a experience or story, whether personal or from a client or from somebody else, that you have seen just the light bulb go off, and it moved them from this state of insecurity to awareness, then to a state of more security later?
MELANIE PUMP:
Yeah. I mean, I have many examples of that. Where light bulbs have gone on, for me, I did have one employee in particular who had to do a task for me where they were going to record a training video for something. And this was an accountant on my team, and he kept on just procrastinating, procrastinating, and it was really odd. I'm like, "This person's you typically quite a high performer, and why are they doing this?" And I stepped back myself and thought about it, as I've just said with curiosity, why is this happening? And I realized that they were actually really afraid of the task. They were quite insecure. It wasn't something that ever done before. So I went to them and just said, "I know you've you haven't done this for before. If you just give it a shot, you don't need to do it perfect the first time, and let's just give it a try," and remove some of the fear from it to make him comfortable.
And once I did that, then he went ahead and did it right away, and it ended up going really well. But it took me creating some security around that, and making sure that my expectations were clear that I wasn't expecting perfection. So for me from after that and that interaction, I've been really careful, especially when I'm asking somebody to do something that's a little bit outside of the box of what they might typically do, to make sure that I'm creating security around it. Because here was somebody who was a really, really high performer, but still they were using a lot of procrastination around something that went on for a couple weeks. So, I could have just gotten frustrated with that person, but instead, I used curiosity, as you said, and it resulted in a great outcome. Both, he got some confidence about something he could do, and I learned how I need to approach this a little bit differently.
SKOT WALDRON:
Really great experience. That's a really good story. Yeah, because you totally could have come in and just said, "Listen, you obviously are not getting this done. I'm going to bring somebody else in to do this."
MELANIE PUMP:
Right.
SKOT WALDRON:
"And get it done because you're not right." And so, what would that have done to that sense of security for that individual?
MELANIE PUMP:
It would have impacted him. He would've avoided that kind of stuff forever. So instead, he was able to create some security around it, and it was somebody who actually has a great skillset to do training videos.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's really great.
MELANIE PUMP:
It's those things. I worked for a company a number of years ago that had a value that was, "Every interaction matters." And that's what I try to think about now. Everything we do can really have an impact on someone, so that's a really good example about it. If I'd approached it differently, it could have had a greater impact long term on him.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. That's really, really great. And in turn, I talk about brand a lot, and your own personal brand, your own leadership brand. And now, how your brand has been shaped in the eyes of that individual is, "Melanie is for me. Melanie is the kind of person that wants me to do better. Melanie is supporting me."
He's going to go to the barbecue this weekend and talk more positively about Melanie, as opposed to what he could have said about Melanie is, "Yeah, my boss at work totally undercut me, brought somebody else in to do this thing," right? And totally dogged you in front of everybody else, right? And that would've been your brand as associated with that individual. So, we make choices like that every day when we're leading, and when we're interacting with our teammates even, right? And so, I think that that is so valuable to think about how those interactions really develop, those micro interactions are going to really shape perception and build...
MELANIE PUMP:
I absolutely agree, because you are creating loyalty in people. Leading through fear, in my opinion, just does not work. When you treat people well, support their success and their growth, they're going to have your back as well. So certainly, I've been far more successful in my career because I've empowered and supported the growth of the people on my team. And therefore, because I'm not perfect. I'm not perfect, I have weaknesses too, and they get behind me and help me be successful as well.
SKOT WALDRON:
What's that like, having weaknesses? I don't really know what that's like. No, I'm just kidding. No, that's awesome. Yeah, leading through fear is that whole idea of lighting a fire under somebody. "I got to light a fire under that person get them to get move on," right? But what happens when we light fires under people, is they just move over to avoid the fire, right?
MELANIE PUMP:
Or they freeze, or they just freeze. I've seen that too in organizations.
SKOT WALDRON:
It's compliance. You get compliance. So, fear will temporarily fix something, but for the long term, it's not going to last.
MELANIE PUMP:
And you don't get inspiration, and you don't get innovation and new ideas. Exactly. If somebody is working through fear, they're just going to do exactly what you tell them to do. The best teams I have had are not people who do exactly what I tell them to do; they look at it, they see things, they come back with different ideas and approaches and that's how you get excellent performance. You're not really being a leader if you're going just having people do exactly as you ask. That does not lead to the best results.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's great. Yeah. We yet compliance, not engagement. Instead of lighting a fire under them, we light a fire inside them that exactly enables them to go in and build something great. Be great. So, that's fantastic. Really cool insights, Melanie. Where can people get ahold of the book if they want to get a hold of it?
MELANIE PUMP:
Yeah. So, the book is available, the easiest place to get it is on Amazon. You can also check out my website, which is MelaniePump.com. You can purchase it through there as well.
SKOT WALDRON:
Cool. Very cool. And if people want to get in touch with you, they want to have you come speak, they want to come have you, I don't know, look at their finances and tell them... No, I'm just kidding.
MELANIE PUMP:
Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to speak to people. LinkedIn is the best place. I'm pretty active there. So, reaching out and connecting to me there, I'm happy to make connections.
SKOT WALDRON:
Cool. Very cool. Well, hey, good luck with the new book and with everything you're doing up there. Enjoy yourself and have fun.
MELANIE PUMP:
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.
SKOT WALDRON:
Defensiveness, avoidance, procrastination. Those types of ideas are all about insecurity. And there was a lot things that we were aligned with in the idea of insecurity and self-preservation and healthy cultures and leadership and dealing with all these different aspects of what that means for you, and how do you identify these things in the workforce? How do you create an environment that is safe? How do you be curious, right? We talk about this principal a lot, from critique to curiosity, to make sure that you're establishing a place where people can live their full potential, where people can give you everything that you want and keep the people that are bringing the most to the table.
So, this is what we're trying to do in our workforce. It's what we're trying to do in life, even. Building healthy relationships through avoidance of the insecurities and overcoming these insecurities in our lives. So, I'm really, really grateful for Melanie. Get that book, "Detox". It's on Amazon. You can get it there, go to her website. Melanie's got some great, great insights. So, I'm really appreciating her and the thoughts that she shared with us today.
If you want to find out more about me, go to SkotWaldron.com. I've got all these videos posted there. I've got some information about what I do there. You can go to like, subscribe, comment on my YouTube channel. LinkedIn, you can connect with me there. I've got a lot of free resources out there for y'all, all about unlocking your potential, your leadership potential, your communication potential, and the things you can do to build a brand worth following. All right, thank you everybody. This has been another episode of Unlocked, and I'll see you next time.
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