Episode 330: Becoming a Leader People CHOOSE to Follow.

Hey, thanks for checking out the sales leadership podcast. I'm your host, Rob Jepsen, and I have a sales leader who has done it all and now helps other leaders have a massive impact that I know you're gonna love. But first, first, kickoff season's wrapping up, but the real challenge is just beginning. Kickoffs create energy, but leadership, that's all about execution. Listen, I'm doing nearly 20 SKOs this season. the end of every one, the team's totally fired up and ready to go. And the leaders always come back to me and say something along the lines of, y, now we gotta go make it happen. And that's exactly why market leaders at dozens of industries choose to partner with the Jepsen Performance Group. Because execution isn't something you hope for, it's something you most design. And I hope we can help you do that because today's conversation makes it painfully clear. Today, I'm excited to introduce someone who has seen it and done it all in sales, and then seen it and done it all in sales leadership and done it at the highest level possible. And today, she helps leaders worldwide answer what might be the most important question we can answer as a leader. Here's the question. What makes me a leader people would want to follow as we dive into the 2026 selling year? This is something you want to be intentional about because 2026 challenges require 2026 leadership. And today I've got Whitney fairs lined up to help share a blueprint that will help you do this better than you may have ever done it before. Listen, this is a fun conversation. It's gonna go fast and it is loaded with things you can do immediately. So get your pencil ready, get your paper ready, and at the end of the day, buckle up. So you ready? Let's freaking go. Hi, I'm Rob Jepsen and my mission is to help sales leaders everywhere create record setting growth from the companies they lead. I'm here to share the secrets of the world's most successful sales leaders. I don't care how big the company or how big the team. We showcase sales leaders who are taking what the market gives and then some. This show features leaders of teams who are beating their markets, winning at crazy rates, and creating life changing years for the people they lead. The sales leadership podcast is brought to you by Sales Leadership United, the world's largest collection of sales leadership assets. Be sure to check out the all new salesleadershipunited.com fast track your sales leadership development. Gain insights into how other sales leaders are solving challenges Similar to the ones you face and tap into over 400 leadership topics, hundreds of video insights, battle tested leadership frameworks and new material that comes out every single week. Sales Leadership United is the easiest investment in yourself you'll ever make. Head to salesleadershipunited.com use the code Rob at signup and get a free trial on me. Now get ready for some serious insights from sales leaders who are making it happen. And remember, don't worry, we got you. Hello and welcome to the Sales Leadership podcast where high growth sales leaders share high growth practices and tactics. Man, it has been an incredible year and I love the messages that I continue to get every single day from so many of you where you share your stories about how the show continues to help you and in your individual leadership journey. I love hearing from you, I love your stories. I love it when you tell me how much you appreciate the guests that we keep bringing. So please keep those coming. It's why we do it. And today, today I got one that's going to have you sending me another dm. I am really looking forward to my conversation today. Please, please welcome Whitney Ferris to the show. Whitney has been an elite salesperson and sales leader for a couple of decades now. She's someone who has seen it and done it all. After a remarkable career in the medical device world and she's going to share a little bit about that with us. She decided to look on the other side of the curtain. If you, if you're watching on the YouTube channel, you'll see me looking around the curtain. Okay. And see what's on the other side. She started working with leaders and developing leaders and coaching elite world class leaders. Her success and her impact was immediate. And today, today we got an internationally recognized executive coach and leadership expert who helps leaders in organizations of all shapes and sizes create stronger connections, achieve record setting performance levels and ultimately advance faster in their careers. And when this approach speaks to me, most of you that have been listening for a long time have heard me say this. One of my core beliefs is no human being permanently changes a behavior without first changing a belief. Whitney helps leaders find new ways to achieve and perform by first starting with how they think. Her work today is used by leaders in industries worldwide. She's a highly sought after speaker and advisor. And today I'm excited to dive in on an important topic that will help make your next year the best year of your career. If you can't tell, I'm fired up, I'm ready to rock and roll. Let's get after it. Whitney welcome to the show and thank you for joining us. I am so excited to be here. I love being in rooms with high performing salespeople because we're just different. So glad to be here. Well, you got 60,000 of your closest friends joining us today and they're going to be excited. Whitney, thank you for joining us. I'm really excited after getting to know you a little bit before we decided to record. Why don't you just start by saying hi to 60,000 leaders in every industry around the world and tell them a little bit about yourself and your story and how you got involved in leadership development. Well, I've had a passion for leadership since I was very young and I won't tell you the whole story, but I do think it speaks to the need. When you become a leader, knowing your why is important. And so I'm from a small town in the Midwest and I fell in love with the sport of volleyball. Went to a one week volleyball camp. This coach came up to my mom afterwards and he said, hey, which one's your mom? He said to me and I point to her because I just met this guy five days ago and because I want to talk to her, just wait right here. But I could overhear this conversation where he was telling me or telling my mom, hey, I think your daughter could be really good someday, but she needs a lot of training. And I'm sitting there going, I was by far not the best person at this camp. But who doesn't want to go play for somebody or work for somebody or follow somebody that believes in them. I sure did. And so this was a start of a 13 year journey that led to me becoming a record setting D1 athlete. I played volleyball at the University of Virginia. And this coach, he shaped my entire life. And this is why I love leadership. Forget all the, you know, three state titles I won playing underneath him, forget him being the way to me earning a D1 scholarship. All of that, it was a transformation where within me. And here's what's so interesting about this coach. So he coached in high school volleyball, same school for 34 years. The guy won 21 state championships. The people setting the bench oftentimes earn D1 scholarships. Why do people move to come play for his high school? Because he could take high performing people and make them a cohesive team. And so this guy in 34 years had a 93% winning percentage. He just think about that for a second. Think about that if you had that in your deals and it was his ability to build high performers and Then figure out how to make them a cohesive team that really accelerated their performance by working together, by learning from each other, by not just being every man or woman for themselves, but doing it as a group. And that is what set the bar for my vision for leadership. I thought, how he transformed how I saw myself. My whole trajectory of my life based on what I learned in sports, it completely set me on a different path. So fast forward, when I became a leader myself, I had this moment about probably nine months into the job where I had a conversation with one of my people. And the short version of the story is I realized I was not a leader I would want to work for. And that's a hard, hard thing to face, because on the surface, my numbers were exceptional. My team was not revolting. It's this little pieces of feedback that I got. And I thought, this is not who I signed up to be. And I had to figure out how to do the work to become that person. And that's what really fuels me and how I made this pivot from sales to focusing on building leaders. You just dropped a bomb. And what a great introduction. I can't. I can't wait for our conversation. And I hope our listeners are as excited for this is going to go as I am. First of all, I'm going to thank you up front. I'll thank you at the end. I'm excited. You're bringing some energy already, bringing some heat. That, that question that you asked yourself years ago, I hope everybody's asking themselves right now, how do I become a leader that people want to work for? That's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to dive into that. And that's your work. That's your passion. And it worked. You figured it out for yourself, and now you help other leaders figure that out. Before we talk about how, why is that juice worth the squeeze? Why is that a question that every single listener ought to be intentional about how they ask? Yeah, well, you know, I. I'll say it this way. I think so often it doesn't matter if you're the salesperson, the sales leader, the VP of sales. Doesn't matter. We often find ourselves or have at some point. You're not going to convince me. We all haven't been in this place where we are working so hard to drive results, so hard to hit the quota, so hard to win the business, so hard to compete against our biggest competitors to earn trust, whatever it is. And it doesn't have to be that hard. It doesn't you? You can. When you realize that delivering results in leadership are two different things that you cannot misunderstand, then you start to, to lead differently. And I say all the time, exceptional salespeople do more than sell. They lead. They are not only leading amongst their team, but they are leading their customers. And in today's world, customers are surrounded by uncertainty and change. So we think they're buying our stuff. Oh, it's just a small shift from what they're doing now. It's like, this shouldn't be disruptive. No, it's totally disruptive. So our job as sales people is to lead our customers through change. And our job as the leaders of those people and the leaders of the leaders is to understand how to lead effectively. So you retain the people, you, you amplify your results, you create sustainable success and leadership feels lighter. And that's how we have really healthy, long careers. And we don't show up every work, every day at work and be like another day of this. But instead we're looking forward to our ability to impact people in a way that drives results and creates scalability in our business. Because excellent, excellent sales leaders, they are able to do more with the same. The same number of people, the same number of. Same amount of budget. But that is something that is hard to do. It's easy to say, but it's hard to do unless you're. You. You start by developing the leader that's behind the title, which is you. What a great start. Like I'm, I'm where I got these 20 choices that leaders have to make. That or elite leaders make that average ones maybe don't make as well. Choice number two, I've got a T shirt for everyone. I'm wearing it. You got to choose growth over grind. Okay, so true. And it's what you just said. It's not. I'm going to get more by getting every last ounce of sweat out of you. I'm not going to work you harder than we ever did. We're going to help you change and become something that you've never been. But the reason that it's going to work is because you're going willingly. You want that change. You're excited about the journey. You're not like this hostage that's just going or else like I'm doing as a, as a condition of having a job. I think, I think that that's where at least if I'm hearing you correctly, that's what I'm, that's what I'm interpreting that you're saying, because that's why you can do the more with the same is because they actually become more, right? They become more. You're doing, you know, we, we. There's this tendency. It doesn't matter if you're in sales or what type of leadership you're in. Think about the, the evolution of us, right? We, we start as an individual contributors, whether it's salespeople or you name it. And, and we get really good and we get promoted because we're really good at what we do. Then we jump in and we lead a team. And the default tendency is a couple things. One is we don't know what we're doing, so we look around at everyone who's successful and we're like, ooh, I must steal that from that person. Steal that from that person. And I'm not saying it's bad, like you want to observe and apply, but it's gotta be true to you. Otherwise you show up as this inconsistent person and people are like, who am I going to get today in this conversation? Or they were like this, but now they're like that. So we mimic others in absence of, of not having a defined leadership identity, which we can unpack if you want later. So that's one where we're mimicking rather than being grounded in who we are. But then we're drivers. That's why we, we strive for that promotion. So when our people are struggling, we just jump in and do the work. Hey, they'll learn from just watching us. Some people will. But. But that's actually not scalable, Especially when you become the VP of sales and you're leading the leaders, and then you, you can't jump in and do the work for all your directs and then their directs. So you have to learn actually how to effectively lead. And so I have this philosophy where, you know, I have taught leadership. I've. I've done the job of a salesperson. I've taught salespeople and developed salespeople in all of the strategies that we learn for sales and leadership are fantastic. You must have them. And to be an effective leader, a leader, people want to follow a leader that every year can look at the quota and be like, we're going to find a way to do it, and I'm not going to do it by grinding my people into the ground. You have to develop yourself. And it starts with one of the hardest things, which is looking in the mirror and going, geez, despite the fact that I'm crushing the numbers, I'm probably not the person I would choose to work for. I'm not terrible. I'm not mean to my people. But, man, like, when I know something's wrong and they're missing their quota, I'm. I'm. Instead of putting my finger down and pushing on them, I'm going to stop and understand and help them create a way forward. And that's who people want to work for because they come to you earlier. They. They take your feedback and your coaching, and you don't need to be in every big meeting. You need to be in the real big ones. But then your people are empowered to perform when you're not there. That scalability so that we're going to have 45 minutes disappear on us. You got such great depth. I love where you're coming from. I have to ask you a question because you just put me in a hot tub time machine. It took me back when I was like in one of my early leadership jobs, and it took a mentor coming to me and saying, you are screwing this up. You are a leader that, like, you're really good at the job, but you're really bad at leading other people into the job. And you're making people feel like either they're. That you think they're not as smart as you are or not as good as they are, or you're. Or they're just too lazy. I'm like, I don't mean that. And it took a mentor that was willing to come look me in the eye and say, you're not a leader that people want to work for. Did you just figure that out on your own or did it require someone telling you? The reason I ask is I got 60,000 people listening. And I think it's such a powerful question. Maybe the reason I love the question is I remember when I had that moment just like you did. You pointed to that moment as an inflection point in your career, Whitney. Yeah. And did you figure it out or did you need someone to tell you? Because I bet of the 60,000 listeners, a lot of them either have had a similar moment or they need to. Oh, yeah. If you haven't had the moment, I hate to break it to you. And maybe it's not totally broken. It's only kind of broken. Yeah, yeah. But I. But, you know, just like you would expect your people to uplevel every year or up level in certain scenarios, like, are we doing the same? But to answer your question directly, I had the realization on my own. And I think it's, you know, it's part of my personality. I'm such a hard charger. But here's what happened. You know, just, just, you know, I was, I was on this field ride with one of my reps. You know, it's probably like I said, nine months into the job, I had to build this function. So I was part of the ground level of the specialty salesforce. So I had one person and they said, hey, we put this guy on the job and in two weeks we know he sucks, so you got to move them out of the job. And I was like, oh, this is great. So it went from basically demoting somebody and then hiring 12 people and a very short period of time. And so I was writing with one of my best people. I plucked him from a competitor to come over. I had been hiring top talent teams, expanding. We're hitting not all of our metrics, but most and we're doing well. And we were just making small talk in the car and he, he kind of like inadvertently said something like, you know, people always wonder what it's like to work for you. And I was taken back. You know, like you force your smile and you're like, why? You know, some salespeople had asked him, hey, what's it like to work for her? So of course I said, well, now I'm curious, why did they ask? And he said, because you're known for being such a driven, hard charging person and let's be honest, not hitting a goal is not an option for you. So I think there's a lot of people that wonder, do you lead your team like you manage your territory? Remember this is my first leadership role. Yeah. And in that moment I knew, I mean, soul crushing moment because I knew. And it's like when your stomach drops in the back of your head, you're like, oh, oh no. But I didn't say oh no in my head, you know, and, and so I, I thought to myself, if people are wondering that I'm putting off something to your point, I don't intend to put off. But hey, guess what? News flash for all of us. Just because you put the effort in or because the intent is good, it doesn't make it justified. Right? It doesn't. It's just like your person who you're, you're low performing salesperson. It's like, but I'm working hard, I'm doing the sales calls. You're like, sorry buddy, you're not hitting the metric. So something has to change. And, and so we have to expect that same thing of our leaders. And I think that I was so hyper aware because I'm, I'm a perfectionist. I'm super a type. But I had that model for leadership. And in my first sales job, that's a whole nother story. I'm sorry. My, my, my second sales role, I took jumped into a big job and I almost failed. I was, I was borderline on the point of resigning. Cause I was like, I'm not. I took this job too soon, too much too soon. I was like 24. And I had a great leader in that role. And so I had these two models of leaders and I. That's who I wanted to be, nothing less. So what I say to people is, average leadership doesn't have to feel broken. The surface can look good. You're getting positive feedback. In fact, you know when your metrics are good, everyone's like, keep doing what you're doing. And then all of a sudden you get this gut like, oh, is that the best way I could do it? I don't know. You have to pull that thread. So let's. We got. I can't believe we got like 25 minutes. It's gonna. That's all we got left. I want to get into how you become that person. And, and I like your thinking on here. And I want to set the stage for our listeners. They've heard me for six years. Start every episode with people. How'd you get into sales? And would you want to. Did you want to be in sales when you grew up? And the answer is, we've still not in all these years ever found someone said, I want to be in sales. Everyone's accidentally involved in sales, and then we become intentionally successful. Well, I think the same thing happens as a leader. So we find like, so many leadership models persist in organizations because people just do what was always done to them. Well, this is how we do it. Well, this is what someone did with me. So I continue to do it. And so I like that you start with intent rather than default. You already brought it up. So I want to start like. Is that where you start when you're going to say, I'm going to be a leader worth following that? Like, where does intention and identity fall into that? Is that part of the foundation? Yeah. So I created this framework called the Magnetic Leader framework. And you know, the reason why I call it the Magnetic Leader framework is because magnetic leaders attract more of what they want. And by operating intentionally, they are essentially distancing themselves from the things that they, they don't want. So it, you know, there's A little bit of play on, on what a magnet does. Right. But it's true is like when you lead with intention, when, when you stop leading by default, stop giving in to the easy road in the moments you will be shocked at how your results change the dynamic with your people, changes how you're viewed by people that see you, you know, from a distance, like at the sales meetings. And, and honestly, this is so underestimated how you feel doing the job, your confidence amidst uncertainty, the, the composure that you have when everything's blowing up around you in your job. And so there are five components and I'm just going to give you a high level hold on before you do. I want all five. I want them. But I feel like there's one thing you could do that will make our listeners even. Get more from your five things. You got it. You just said that we, we go to defaults versus intent. I can't help but wonder. I bet we have people feel like I'm intentional. Do you have like, here's two or three things, like if this, then you are at default or if this. Do you have anything like that to help self assess before you get to your 5? Because I think more people are default leaders than intent and they just don't know it. And do you have a couple of things that you say if it's like, what's that joke? You might be a redneck. If you might be a default, if you know what I'm saying. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I got two things for you. The first one is perfect. Do you have a set of 8, 6 to 8 core values for your leadership? And don't tell me you have core values in life. I certainly hope you do, but those. Bring those with you. That's great. Also, what is your roadmap as a leader? Who are you going to be? Those six to eight are the things that you are measuring yourself against, holding yourself accountable to, to lead with intention. Okay. The other thing is how often do you find yourself stopping to debate how do I want to proceed in this moment? And I don't mean because you're not confident, because you're being that thoughtful about what is needed in this moment from the business, from the people, from the customer. And who do I want to be? Are you feeling that debate? I don't mean once a week. I mean, you know, at least a couple times a week because that's how we make sure we're not just, oh, yeah, I've seen this before. Okay, go do this. You know, oh, this person is They're. They're doing this thing. I'm gonna give them this feedback. No, you have to stop and really process that. And that's leading with intention. Beautiful. Thank you for letting me say Press fuzz was like Wayne's World. Game off. Game off. Now we'll go back to game on. I want the five things, but I think the fact that you did that will make the five things even better. So thank you. 100. So the first one is define your leadership identity, which is your ability to lead from who you are, not what you know or not who you think you should be. It's those six to eight principles and this whole magnetic leader framework. You can find it on my website, but I run workshops on this. I mean, it goes into, you know, sub models and exercise and activities so that you can actually build these skills. But it will spit out, through a series of questions and reflection, you will define those six to eight things. And there are a mixture of things that. Who you are committed to being like. You know, for me, I'm people first, always. And I wasn't always that way. I always. So many are task oriented. I think that that's what you have to say. If you're not people oriented, what are you? I think a lot of leaders don't realize what the opposite of people orientation is. Is task orientation. Yeah. One's not necessarily better than the other, but you need to know what you are. Right. And you have to learn to see the people as. As humans first and employees second. And that's. And that for me. Let me. Let me tell you why this is a leadership principle. Because I didn't do this for so long, and. And I saw the impact. It's like, hey, this is business. These are employees. We're all here to do a job. Yes. Yes. You want to get the most out of those people. I'm telling you, think about how you lead them, how you treat them. Are they a means to an end, or are they part of the success that you want? And they want people first. Now, I'm not saying that should be yours. I'm giving you an example of something that is deeply important to me, that I hold myself accountable to. Now, another one is assume best intent. For me, I'm giving these examples because I want you to see that this one is grounded in the fact that in moments where people don't deliver, you know, I want to do. Why? What? What? What? You said you were gonna do this. What happened? Why didn't I know? This is a surprise. Like, that's My default reaction, assuming best intent, reminds me I need to shift into curiosity, seek to understand. And, and I'm not gonna get anywhere by being reactive. And so that is, that is something I've set for myself to intentionally say in these moments, which it happens, right? The best people let us down here and there. Miss a mark. Okay. So it's a blend of those kind of two components of the things that you deeply believe and the things that you need to make sure that you do to be the best leader you can be. That feeds into defining your leadership identity and that people first mentality feeds to component too, which is connect to inspire. For so long, I was like many leaders, connection soft. Like, hey, how was your weekend? Good. Your kids? Good. Okay, good. Move on to business. I'm like, I've got 15 business topics for this team call or one on one call. At the end we'll be like, hey, what are you doing this weekend? It's good. You know, if you want to get the most out of your people in today's day and age, you got to know them as people. I want to know what motivates them. I want to know their story and how they got there. When I learned that, I. I figure out what makes them tick. I figure out how I communicate with them. I figure out how to take those moments where they're struggling and bring them back to their story. So connecting to people is so critical and it not only builds your relationship one on one, but it creates this vulnerability in your team where they, they become closer. Now you're going to have your. You're going to have some teams that are dysfunctional. It's not always going to work perfectly, but more or less it will create a sense of camaraderie and closeness to help them. You got to synergize, but it also helps just the whole dynamic of seeing them as people and connecting with them and knowing them, it builds trust. It is a cornerstone of trust. Is connection beyond just the job. I'm not saying you got to go to dinner with them, you know, just to hang out on a Friday. But I am saying understand them. And just like influencing our customers comes from understanding our customer deeply, not just sharing our information. Same thing with our people. You understand them deeply versus just telling them what to do and how to do it. It's. It has a different effect. I think that's a big one. Whitney, why do you think that so many leaders only get to know them superficially rather than deeply? I love that distinction of deeply versus superficially. And I I think that you're onto something. There's research that shows the number one passion factor right now for the employer, employee, workplace is I'm sub, I'm paraphrasing having a leader who gets me. Someone who gets me is the number one passion factor. And so when you said knowing deeply, it reminded me of that data that just hit me, do I get them? Like why do you think that so many don't? Well, I think it's a couple things. The first one is that when we really get to know people and we develop a relationship beyond just like we write their paycheck essentially it makes it harder to get feedback. It makes it harder to, to, you know, if you have to exit them or have to put them on a pip, it makes it tougher because you now you see them as humans, not just as someone who he shows up and does a job. And I just think it's generally uncomfortable. It's like we have this especially, I'm going to just say our generation, the generation that are like the high level leaders probably right now someone's going to hate me for saying that. So sorry but you know, we can't, we grew up in this environment. Preach. Business is business, life is life, Personal is personal. Show up, do the job, deliver, go home, I'm over here. You know, your personal life's over there. And so it's a change that's uncomfortable. It opens up conversations and sometimes you know that, that are you don't think you'd have at work. But hey, if you know your person is struggling with something in their personal life, doesn't it change how you maybe support them, how you coach them, how you show up for them? Yeah. So that discomfort, it's like you don't have to know what to say, just sit in it and listen and then take that information and it's going to inform you in different ways of how you lead and interface with them. But yeah, it's, it doesn't mean you have to have a heart to heart. I mean it's not what it means, but it means over time making these intentional efforts to understand them and to get to know them so that you can be most effective together. Too often I think we only know the business person or the salesperson and we don't get to know the whole person. And that's the way I love to look at is do you know the whole person or is it just the deal person? And so yeah, and I had, you know, I'll go to number three after this, but I had this person. And I was, I was. So I've launched several functions in my, my career and when I pivoted to leadership, I was launching an org health function. CFO of a big Fortune 500 company came to me. We have some org health issues, we have leadership issues. I became known as the problem solver in the company. Um, and so, hey, like, can you help us solve them? So I was doing this job and I had this one person on my team and I asked her for feedback. I regularly ask my people for feedback because whatever we're doing, whether we know it or not, we're doing it. So I'd rather know. And so she said, you know, on our one on one calls, because we don't see each other all the time. She was in our Atlanta office, I was remote. We, you know, most people were in California. She said, I just want like seven minutes to just connect, to have a conversation. And I thought to myself, seven minutes, that's a long time. How about like four? In my mind, you know, because I like, it took me back, but it was like I really thought about that. I mean instantaneously. I said, sure, because you need it. Great. Like I, I want to give you what you need. And so I thought like, as I started to converse with her, I saw how our relationship change. And this is after I'd already known the importance, but I hadn't really put my stake in the ground on the true value of it. And so I started doing it with my other people. Like letting go that 60 out of 60 minutes we're going to be business or 59 out of 60 and that 53 out of the 60 minutes are going to be business. And I'll tell you the, the, the degree to which people follow you. The, the, the way that you know how to, how to work with them, coach them, motivate them, you know, pick them up after they, they failed. It's all, it's all in that seven minutes. Seven minutes once a week. Let's go. Probably worth it. Number three, that your salespeople will love this. Activate your power zone. Okay. I'm a big sports person. I've said that we look at these epic sports performances. We're like, they went beast mode. You know, they got their second win. Whatever the, whatever the thing is, we look at it like it can only be done by the best of the best. False. Not true. You can create a reproducible formula for peak performance and not just delivering a number. But what I mean is being in your best self state, it's Actually, you being at your best, despite the, the email you just got where you lost a deal that your boss that called you that said, oh, you need to do this in this, on top of what you're doing, on top of all of that, we have to find a way to recenter ourselves and being at our best. And it's a practice and a discipline. And I teach people how to do that. Especially for leaders, it's critical. I teach this to individual contributors too. But for leaders we deal with problems with. Right. That's part of leadership. And so activating your power zone is how you create that reproducible, you know, formula for, for. I love that. I love that. I, I, I love the idea that there's a power zone you can tap into. It's like when I hit this part of the field of the play, the field of play, there's something I can tap into doesn't get reserved for the top 1%. There's something I can. Am I hearing you say that? Right? Yeah. Yes, yes, you are. And, and think about it this way. Like, how many times are you in a meeting and you're in a meeting with someone that's really difficult? Maybe customer, maybe it's an, you know, internal stakeholder in the media is just going off the rails. You want to know what exceptional people do? They can, in a moment's notice, re center themselves and be like, all right, that's not good. How do I, how do I, you know, I call it, you have your activators and your depleters, right? How do I pull on the known activators to get me back into a good spot so I can take the next 30 minutes of this meeting and put it back on track? That's, that's the ability to not miss a moment because you can manage yourself and you can be adaptable. Hey, I can feel, I can sense it. I'm like drift into this place. That's not good. I'm falling out of my power zone. I'm past even neutral at this point. How do I get back to a good spot so I can make the best use of this interaction? I love this. I bet you and me could do a show, a full show on each of these five. One on identity, one on connection. This power zone one sounds really interesting though. Maybe it's because I'm also a, like a sports freak, but I do similar things to tap into power areas. I, I don't call it that. I love that. Is there like one tip you could give a bunch of leaders on like how do you even find a power zone? Because I would imagine everybody has a different. A different way to do that, right? Yeah. So think about the last time you were in a meeting. Like, put. Put it in a work scenario the last time you're in a meeting, and you were just crushing it. And I don't mean the easy layup like you wouldn't have the contract signed. I mean, you expect this meeting is gonna be difficult, and you're just. You're firing off cylinders, you feel good, you're showing up well, you know, you walk out of that meeting with so much more than you ever expected, and it just felt rather easy. Not. Not like I just came to you, but just you were flowing. Think about how you felt in that moment. Think about what you did before. Think about the mindset that you had, the inner narrative, the way you're, you know, were you relaxed? Were you calm? Would you feel yourself and you. And then you can, through reflection, create this list of activators. Your activators aren't going to be the same for every scenario, especially personal and professional. Maybe they're different with your team than when you're, you know, presenting to senior leaders, but it's. It's a process of reflection. And I have some questions that lead people through that. Beautiful. Love it. Well, at the end of this, you'll. We'll give people links on how they can find more of your stuff, and I bet you'll have a lot of people interested in that. That sounds really awesome. Let's get to number four. Relentless resilience is to practice relentless resilience because, you know, people think that adversity creates setbacks. I actually believe it grows stronger leaders. And I have, like, I am deeply grounded in the value of adversity. But here's the catch is that you have to have the ability to reframe the adversity's opportunity. Now, I'm not saying that in every situation that you want to look at the adversity and go, man, I'd love to go through that again, like, that's not the case. But I. I struggle to think of a time in my life where if I look at the adversity I faced, and I've had some, you know, I've had a really terrible life. But, I mean, I've been robbed at gunpoint in New York City. I've blown out my ACL twice, you know, in the road to becoming a D1 athlete. Like, I've had some trials and tribulations in all those times. I can Find how I grew, what it created in me. The. The door opened that I didn't know needed to be opened. And so there's an underlying mindset that you have to view adversity as. There's something better on the other side, a lesson, a stronger version of me, a skill that I learned, exposure that I got to to somebody else in the organization. And then. And then I actually give people a process to move through adversity effectively, which really involves kind of, you know, putting your emotions and, you know, to the side for a moment so you can think rationally and move through it. Not. That's hard, Whitney. That is hard. That is easy to say when you're the coach and way harder to do when you're fueled by emotion. Is that fair to say? Yeah. But you can do it a lot. Of course you can. Yeah, of course you can. A lot of the stuff you do is. Is it. This is. This is all stuff again. This whole model, it's about the inner work of us, right? You don't need money from your company. You need to put effort into it. It's practices. Just like, we're out of shape, we go to the gym. How many people are going to be out of shape? January 1st, they're going to go to the gym, they're going to be sore, the workout's going to be hard. This is all the same thing. It's just the internal work for us as leaders. And then the last one is radical accountability. I think we make a mistake so often of holding people accountable and expecting accountability from our team, but not modeling it ourselves. And to me, accountability isn't something that's enforced. It's something that we embody and therefore set the example for what we expect of our people when we do it. Even if it's something simple like we, you know, listen, this is one thing I kind of fall into sometimes is I've had. I had a bad moment. You know, someone's calling me. I'm like, oh, man, I got so seven minutes, and then I can't come for four hours. So I'm back to back. So I pick up the phone and, you know, they have something that kind of irritates me, and I'm. I'm kind of like, yeah, I just. I'm not harsh, but I'm. I'm just matter of fact. And they probably needed me to be a little bit more empathetic because I can see it's like, not great. You know, I'm human, too. So in that moment, it's like I, I, I always remember, like, at the end of the day when I realize what I've done, I always call and apologize. Hey, I want to say I'm sorry. Like, I didn't show up as who you needed me to be. A hundred percent on me. I should have just not picked up the phone if I couldn't have been the leader that I've committed to. That is accountability. Just like we would expect our person to come to us and say, I messed up, help me. And, and so we have to be accountable in, in the ways that we, the standards we hold our people to and sales and who we want them to be. You know, when they're showing up with customers or their peers and that all starts with us. It's just every time you see something that's broken, you gotta ask yourself, hmm, is there something that I'm doing to, to, to model that, to create it, to, you know, to instill it? Like, I say one thing, but I do another because typically they're picking it up from us. I love the model. The five things that makes you more intentional, makes you more magnetic. That magnetic leadership framework is like, it's legit. I love it and I love frameworks. One thing I would tell you, and I didn't mean to interrupt you there, one thing I would say is, so what pivoted me to launching my own firm and doing this work was way back in 2017, I had all these people reaching out to me. Now, admittedly, you know, I was, I was a, I was a high performing female. I did a lot of jobs. I was, you know, knocking on the door of really big things in my career. And so a lot of people had reached out to me, like, hey, how do you do it? Like, you got young kids and you're like crushing it. You got this great brand. And I realized there was this desire for people to get better, especially salespeople. Right? We are hard charging, driven, ambitious people. And in the sales space, I'm not gonna say it's every company, but the companies that I've worked with in multiple different industries, as much as we intend to develop the people and to be great leaders, the business is always, it often wins over, over the people. And so we don't develop them. We don't have that team meeting that's not just focused on how we're gonna close our deals, but how we grow our skills. And, and people want that. They want that because they want to do great work for you. They want to achieve. And so these people were coming to me Asking for me to mentor them. And I looked at my plate and I'm like, this is like, I want to help everybody, but I can't. That's what sparked me going and getting certified as an executive coach. I launched internal coaching at my company. I did it as a side job, like, no pay, just to give back. And I looked at my results, promotion rates, how people were, you know, their performance, evolution of their performance, reviews, the results that they were getting. I coached across all industries, not just sales or functions. And I thought, man, there is something here. People need people who have done the job that they're doing and can give them the guidance of how they develop their skills, be that sounding board. And that's why what my passion is, is to be able to take all these people that are like, wow, that sounds really hard, Whitney. I don't even know where to start. Great. Well, let me. Let me tell you where to start. I mean, if you don't hire me, I can tell you where to start, and then you go do the work. It's infectious. I love it. I'm looking at your model. I'm looking at the five. That last one of accountability, radical accountability. I would imagine it's impossible to be a leader that people want to follow without that. Like, all of these you got to have. But that last one stands out to me as if you're going to expect it without modeling it. You almost default to someone that I don't want to work for. Is that a fair assessment? Yes. I mean, they'll follow you because they have to, but the minute that they're not hitting their quota and they think something's unfair, you know, those are people that get a new opportunity, they're going to leave if they get better, a different opportunity. Like, I see organizations that people. I think of one in particular. The leader of that organization is going to be on in the week after you. I sat at a meeting and I watched this leader stand up front, say, when we hire someone, this company we're hiring to, the last company they're going to ever join. I sat at the back as a guest speaker. I'm like, I wonder if that's true or if that's bullshit. That's why I was like, I wonder. And now that I've gotten to know that company for 13 years, it's true. Like, they create a place that people don't want to leave. Why? Because it's run by people that I want to work for. So I love, like, your model makes sense to me. I love it. It like it resonates with me and, and, and kudos to you for, for creating that and thank you for sharing it with our listeners around the world. That's awesome. We got five minutes. Why don't we take a few minutes and like let tell people a little bit about your organization. How do they learn about it? How do they connect with you? I want to make sure then we'll do something at the very end before we shut down. But I want to make sure you have enough time to tell people how to find more witness. Gonna be a lot of people that will say, rob, you need to get her back on because that wasn't enough time. I already know I'm gonna get that message, just so you know and well, let's do it. Let's do it. And, and so how do they learn more about you? How do they pick up what you're putting down? How they get access to your stuff? I know you got a lot of tools available for people. How do we make that easy? And we'll put a lot of links into the show notes as well. Yeah. So the easiest place to, to go see me in general is my website, whitneyferris.com and like you said, it'll all be in the show notes because people always misspell my last name. So if you don't find me, you spelled it wrong. Check show notes. I did it. You have to say your name. I, I, yeah, but I, I do work both one on one and, and I have coached salespeople as well as sales leaders. Sometimes salespeople are like, I, I need something to get me to the next level. And so I, I will take those clients if I have space. And then I also work with teams. So I, I have a really high impact offering for sales organizations. I call it the sales Performance Lab. And it's an opportunity for sales for salespeople and leaders to get a blend of development in, in, in teaching mixed with real time business coaching. So it's a mixture of, I teach you things that I think are critical to stand out in the sales world and then you bring me deals and we, we kind of rip them apart and we work as a team to elevate them. But a lot of my stuff is custom because you know, I, I want to provide the most value. My goal is to over deliver so I have to, I, I gotta, you know, evolve some things for each offering. But when you go to my website, you can book a strategy call with me. It's, it's complimentary and I can learn more about you, you can learn more about me and if I'm not the person for you, I will pass you on to someone I know that is. But yeah, it's a lot of advisory work, a lot of speaking work. I come in and speak to sales teams and then we work in longer term engagements on the skill development of sales leaders and sales teams. Love it. And we'll have a bunch of links in the show notes to make that easy for people to, to pick up what you're putting down. So we're down to like three minutes left. And if we were to have Whitney unplugged and we were to put you on stage and give you the mic and you were to take two or three minutes, just put a cherry on top like a couple of thoughts. We're starting a new year. Depending on your fiscal year, our job as leaders is to architect and engineer the greatest year in company history. Every single year. Status quo is not okay. Every year's got to be better than last. And I love how you started. We can't just grind our way to success because at some point you can only work so hard and, and burnouts being reported at record levels right now like 7 out of every 10 workers are reporting it right now. What advice would you give leaders like as they go to next year? And I don't care what it is, I want it to be Whitney unplugged. You're thinking about starting a new year high impact leader. Like what advice would you give 60,000 leaders in two or three minutes as you gave them a cherry on top of what has already been a great gift? So thank you. Yeah, well, thanks for saying that. Whether you're a salesperson, but more importantly as a sales leader, know that there's no finish line. We don't arrive. And it's really a continual evolution into the most powerful version of ourselves. Not just in driving results, but in, in, in building our people and creating a culture where people thrive, where they want to come to work. And yeah, like we, I don't mean that they're, they're, they don't think it's hard and it's all happy, but a place where they want to have their career. And so if you don't know what that next level of evolution is for you, I would think about it because that's likely a greater accelerator in the performance of your team than the next sales strategy and tactic. You know, I tell all leaders that your leadership legacy is not going to be on any dashboard slide deck spreadsheet. Your legacy as a Leader won't live there. Those things come and go. Someone will beat it. Your leadership legacy will be written in the hearts and the minds of your people. How you made them feel when they call you and they tell you they're going to miss their number, how they've grown because of the investment that you make in them instead of just coaching to the outcome in the deal and who they've become. Ultimately, I call back to my experience, having my first coach and my leadership, you know, standard, and I'm all in on him because of the transformation in me. And I bet you if we all, as leaders, look back, we can. We can point to two or three people that have transformed us, not just in our results, but in who we are. So go be that person. And if you could just loosen the grip on the results, I don't want you to lose focus on it. Loosen the grip on the. On the strategy and the results and lean in a little bit more, 15% more onto leading at a higher level, leading more effectively. Pick one or two things. I can promise you if you do that with discipline, you will have a better return at the end of the year. Wow. Mic drop. Mic drop. That was so good, Whitney. That time went fast. I knew it would. I had high expectation after meeting you the first time. I knew it was going to be good. It was better than I thought. I'm going to get a lot of messages from a lot of people. So in advance, I want to thank you to our listeners. Her name is Whitney Ferris. She is the leadership whisperer to elite leaders all around the world. She helps people become leaders that people want to follow. And if they want to follow, then you have a chance to actually have influence. Because having influence is when people change willingly of their own free will because they're excited about the journey and with the work that Whitney can do with you and the frameworks that she'll share with you, you can be a leader like that faster than maybe you even think so. Whitney, on behalf of 60,000 people around the world, I want to thank you. I wish you nothing but wild, massive success. I'm going to hope that I can take you up on having around two sometime a couple months from now. And I wish you nothing but just great success and happiness in 2026. So thank you very much and good luck. Yeah, you too. Thank you for having me. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another. So what portion of the sales leadership podcast where we break down that interview and we ask ourselves, why did that conversation even matter? But first, kickoff season is wrapping up. And after working with some of the best sales and leadership teams in the world, one thing stands out. The energy. The energy of a kickoff has been extraordinary. But here's a truth. Kickoffs, yes, they're about energy, but leadership, that's about execution. New goals and new obstacles demand new leadership systems. And that's where the Jepsen Performance group comes in. Listen. We partner with leaders to build clarity, systems and belief that all combine to create inflection points, inflection points in careers, inflection points in teams, and ultimately inflection points in business performance. And if you're like most people we work with, where you need to engineer the greatest year in company history. And if you're ready to move from momentum to measurable results, check out the show notes as part of this this episode so you can connect with us and learn more about what we do. Now, let's get back to the conversation with Whitney. This was a killer conversation. Whitney started this one fast and she never slowed down the concept of becoming a leader. People want to follow a novel idea, but it's a really, really big deal. As we were speaking, it reminded me of one of my very favorite leadership books, a book by John Maxwell. It's called the Five Levels of Leadership. I use it sometimes when we do group training and the organization wants to layer in reading to the curriculum. This book is a timeless one. It's been around for a while, and I find it just doesn't lose its steam or its impact. He's identified five levels of leaders, and they each start with the letter P. Level one is positional leadership. People follow you because you have the position they have to. It's a fledgling leadership level. And when you rely on position, it gives you a little power, but it gives you very little influence. This one is about having the right to lead the team. Level 2 is about permission leadership. People following because they give you permission. They like you. The leader has earned the trust or the respect or maybe both of the people they lead, and you can begin to have influence in a positive way. This one's about having relationships. So people let you lead. If the first one's about the right, the second one builds on top of it and creates the relationships. Level three is where it starts to get interesting for me. Level three is about production. Now, people follow the leader because they can help them achieve a higher level of results and productivity. Yeah, you may have the rights. Yeah, you may have the relationship. But now what I really want is I want that. I want to have those, that ability to have People help me hit higher on the scoreboard. It's about the results. That's where most sales leaders aspire to get to as being a results oriented leader. And there's nothing wrong with that. I've learned that as I work with these five levels with sales leaders, we kind of gravitate to level three, and we stop there. Level four and five. I don't need to regurgitate the book. You can get the book and check it out. 4 is about people development. And I try to encourage leaders to get to level four, because now people turn to you because of who you are and what you help them become. And that means you've become it first. And that's why I liked it so much with what Whitney was talking about. Who are we becoming at this level? People are wanting to follow you because you're good at reproducing. That's what it is. We're reproducing elite leaders. We're reproducing the ability to have influence of people. It's a significant jump in the hierarchy. And when I work with leaders, if you can become a level four leader in the Maxwell scale, that's when you start changing lives in a way more meaningful way. We want to be more than just someone that helps with the results. We want to help with who they become. Level five, he calls Pinnacle, and this one's about respect who you are and what you represent. It's a great read if you like to read. I recommend. I've never had someone tell me that they're angry that I recommended it to them. I've had a lot of people really benefit from that one. But when Whitney started this conversation, I found myself agreeing with her over and over and over again. I want to come back to the way she boils it down to something so succinctly. Why would someone want to follow you? And then how do you become that person? That's where we need to start. If we can have the best year in company history every single year, we better be a 2026 leader for a 2026 challenge. We better have 2026 leadership approaches and connect with 2026 salespeople. It's on us to be that leader that people need to follow for the current objectives that we're up against. I've met so many leaders who tell me things like, well, until I have reporting control, I can't have the impact that I otherwise would have. That's why this is such a really important episode. I believe that learning to lead through influence is one of the most important, important things. We don't want to default back to our rights, you know, because I said so. I've learned that that doesn't work with my children. It for sure doesn't work with, with professionals. And, and that's why I would challenge you to stop and write this down on a piece of paper. If you're watching, on the YouTube, I hope you're watching me write it down. Why do people choose to follow me? Why would someone follow me? Why would they? And if the answer is because I have the job, then we got a lot of work to do. Why would someone dedicate sections of their precious career to work alongside of you or for you and learn from you? What do they get from you? So when Whitney told me she had a framework around this idea that she has called magnetic Leadership, I was really intrigued. And I love it. I love all five elements of it. It's something you should dig into. It's something you should learn from. It's something that you should apply and make your own. I love how it's geared specifically around leading with intent rather than default. Usually our default is not what's going to help people become something. Our default usually is about protection. It's usually about efficiency and it kind of holds us back from becoming what's next. And so I really liked how she kept coming back to, to intention versus default. We default usually to the things we're most comfortable with. And if our job is to create the greatest year in company history and to create new reps, the best reps in our industry, we're going to have to lean into things that aren't just our defaults. We're going to have to lead differently and better than we've ever led. And that starts with us. So her five step framework, you know which, kudos to her. I'm a framework person. I love it. This is a good one. Number one, identify who you are as a leader. Number two, connect so you can inspire. I could spend a lot of time just on connection. I'm one of those believers that everybody communicates, but very few connect. Just because we communicate does not mean we are connected. Number three, activate your power zone. I love this one. We all have different superpowers. One of the things I've learned as a performance coach to leaders is there are no leaders who are weak, weakness free. Becoming an elite leader is not about the removal of weaknesses. It's about the development of superpowers and using them with like, to quote Whitney, again, more intentionality. How do I do that? How do I. How do I use the tools I have more intentionally? And that's why leaning into our strengths is so important, is because it requires us to be more intentional rather than just our default. Four, relentless resilience. That's part of game. And the last one, radical accountability. I love the concept of accountability. I've done 17 SKOs this season. By the time it's all done, and who knows, it may continue to grow. We continue to get people reaching out every week. A very common theme is accountability, and a very common theme that people request is urgency. And what I've learned is most of the time, people, when they think of accountability, they have a definition that I challenge them to change. So in the theme of Whitney's radical accountability, I want to throw out my 2026 definition of accountability. It's taking ownership before there are outcomes. Most of the time when I workshop this, I ask them to write down their definition. Usually, accountability is associated with outcomes. Okay? And when it's about outcomes, that means we're talking about either credit or blame, or we're talking about rewards or punishments. And I'm not necessarily saying that my definition is the only right one. I'm just saying that it's radical. It's, let's not wait till it's either credit or blame, and let's not wait till it's rewards or punishment. Can we start taking ownership of results sooner and sooner? Can we help the people on our team take ownership of results sooner or sooner? Most of the time, we give them a playbook. We'll tell them to run the plays. And then, you know, if it works, they say, thank you. And if it doesn't, they say, I did what you told me to do. Now what do you want? And so I like the idea of radical accountability. And she has her definition, and I love it. Go back and listen to it. I just gave you mine. I think of Whitney every time I share my definition of accountability because I like her adjective, radical accountability. When I'm doing it on a one on one or at a keynote, I have people come to me over and over again saying, thinking about accountability different is a game changer. Whitney's right. Think about accountability different. So as you kick off the year and as you chase new results, I want you to ask yourself, why do people follow me? Write that one down. Have a reflection session with your cell phone. That. Okay. And I'm going to echo Whitney. There is a high desire from people to get better. People want this. They want to work with people. And for people who can help them, man. I have learned that the elite people trade time for money every single time. Or I said it backwards, they trade money for time every time. If you can be the leader who helps them learn in one year, what took you five years, that makes you super valuable. Okay? Growth is so much different than the grind. You can only work so hard. I want you to be thinking about how can you help people benefit from you so they can do more faster. Common theme I'm hearing right now, common theme that I'm using in my speaking and in my training and my group cohorts is how do we thrive versus survive? That I really got connected to that with my battle versus cancer. I don't want to survive anything ever again. I'm here to thrive. And what fires me up is how much that resonates with people that are in these speaking and work sessions or the these one on one sessions. I will echo what Whitney said in her conversation with me today. People want to thrive. People want to ascend, People want to become. And they just need a partner, a leader, a copilot, someone who can help them get there and get there faster than if they had to figure it all out by themselves. So given that, here's my challenge to you. How are you growing as a leader this year? How are you developing your leadership approach and innovation, influence? Who are you becoming? What are you doing for 2026 so you can have 2026 results that you want? You're going to need to be a 2026 leader, not a 2025 or 2024 or 2023 or God forbid, 2019 leader. And we, I have found that we want to have modern results on antiquated leadership approaches. And this has to be a year that you change that. Who are you becoming? How are you developing your approach and your influence? How are you changing as a leader? And I'm going to give one last Whitney quote to end this. So what, here's what she said that I haven't forgotten. I hear her voice in my ears. There is no finish line. We never arrive. We better keep becoming every single month of every single quarter of every single year. So my question is, what's the, the next evolution of you? How intentional are you being about it? Because your company deserves it. The members of your team depend on it. They're counting on it. But most of all, you. You're worth it. You're worth it. So go get it. Whitney, thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate you. I love your approach to what you do. I'M grateful for your insights and your fantastic approach to leadership. Congratulations on your massive success on and on behalf of thousands of leaders worldwide, I appreciate you sharing an hour of your time and some incredible insights. I love your energy. I love your insights. I love the idea of being intentionally anew, a different, a more intentional and influential leader. And I hope our conversation today helps thousands of leaders rethink how they prioritize who they become so they can more effectively have influence with those they lead as people choose to follow them. And I can't wait to show you off at Sales Leadership United because your insights will help create a lot of sales leaders become even better. I hope each of our listeners uses the links in the show notes to connect with Whitney. Hit her up, reach out, tap into our resources. She's an elite leader. You'll be glad to be connected to her. And finally, thank you to each of you, our listeners. The greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with the those you work with. Introduce them to the Sales Leadership Podcast. Please go give us a review on itunes. It's a big deal. It helps more than you think. And you can support the show by checking out Sales Leadership United. Head over sales leadership united.com and check it out. You'll be glad you did. And if you think I can be a good partner for you as you become something new in 2026, use the link in the show notes and reach out to me. I would love to see if there's a way our company can help you out. If you like this message, please share it this week with someone who needs to hear it. Don't ever forget that our job is to create life changing years for the people we lead. So get after it this week because life is short. There's no guarantee of what comes tomorrow. Maximize your today. Be elite, live strong and chase your passions and do your best work so you can live your best life. And don't ever forget, you got this and I got you here. So terrific week. Thank you so much for joining the Sales Leadership Podcast, the award winning Sales Leadership Podcast. For those sales leaders looking to create legendary impact to those they lead, the greatest compliment you can give is to share this show and any of your favorite episodes with your fellow sales leaders, social media followers or other communities you're part of. The Sales Leadership Podcast is brought to you by the Jephson Performance Group. If you want to discuss any of the topics discussed on the show, want to level up your leadership impact, discuss executive coaching services, or even include me at an upcoming event. Hit me up@robetpg.com that's rob pg.com and to those of you working to become a legendary sales leader, I salute you and wish you much success on your journey. Whenever you need someone in your corner, you know where to find them.