Nanci Appleman Vassil  
You don't have to be a therapist, you don't have to be a psychologist, you don't have to be a counselor. You just have to be somebody that just is interested in really hearing what the other person has to say. And I think that we have a tendency as human beings to shut off if it's not the same as us. Like if you're gonna say something that's different. We're I'm different as I want to hear that. I want to I want to understand where I might be limited in my thinking about that.

Jeff Ma  
Hello, and welcome to Love as a business strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business, but we want to tackle topics that most business leaders tend to shy away from. We believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. Hello, I'm your host, Jeff moll. And, as always, we want to have conversations and hear stories from real people, real businesses, about real life and what love and business have to do with each other. My guest today is Nanci Appleman Vassil. She's a highly sought after certified speaking professional, and accomplished business professional with more than 25 years of experience in training, organizational development, and corporate consulting with a focus on coaching and developing managers building high performing teams words that I love. She is the founder and CEO of APLS group, a firm that specializes in facilitating individuals, groups and organizations towards better solutions for increased effectiveness, known for her dynamic style that touches hearts, engages minds and gets an audience smiling. Nanci infuses her presentations with real life examples that are relatable to the audience, and brings teams to a new level of understanding from keynotes, to webinars to workshops, and everything in between. Nanci will get you excited about discovering, learning, and transforming your behavior to increase your influence in the workplace. As part of her commitment to helping others increase their confidence and competence. Nanci devotes her off work time to supporting nonprofits and aspiring entrepreneurs. Nanci, welcome to the show. How are you?

Nanci Appleman Vassil  
I'm terrific. Thank you, Jeff, I've been looking forward to having this conversation with you today.

Jeff Ma  
As am I and you know so much about just even in your intro alone already strikes me as someone that I'm awfully aligned to. And so I'm really excited to see your take on a lot of the things that we talked about frequently here and love as a business strategy. So before we dive into that, I want to just hear from you. And I want to hear about what what are you passionate about what drives you, Nanci?

Nanci Appleman Vassil  
So I'm, of course passionate about song and dance. But that's, you know, hold another aside, because I think, you know, music is very universal. And I think when you get onto a dance floor, and particularly when you do line dances like there is that synergy that happens, it doesn't matter what your the tempo is that you're doing something together. So it's all about community. It's all about a collaboration. And I think from a work perspective, or my life's passion, is really helping people understand their behavior. Like I think I strongly believe and I think you and I've talked about this before that people walk around unaware, just, you know, they're so engrossed in the phone, they're so engrossed in whatever it is that they're doing, that they're not really looking around. And that once I start to look around, I become more aware of how am I behaving? What does that relationship like, whether it's in the workplace or outside of the workplace, and that if we weren't paying attention, then we'd be able to get that love as a business strategy.

Jeff Ma  
Couldn't agree more. This concept of self awareness, I guess, is something that I know I work with people a lot on. And it's it's tricky. Do you have any way that you coach people through self awareness?

Nanci Appleman Vassil  
So if I am coaching somebody, I'm looking at their body language. So if they receive a piece of feedback, and the initial automatic reaction is people will get defensive and say, Oh, no, it's not me. You must be talking about somebody else. And then what I do is I feed back to them what my experience is of just having that interaction with them at that moment. And do it in a way that's not threatening and not judgmental, but more in a way of, Hey, have you considered or this has been my experience, because we're part of this conversation that's going on and this is what I have felt and this is what my reaction is to that. And what I found I find is that it's always in the intent. And the delivery of the messaging, that people start to have those a-ha's. And I think, you know, some of us like yourself, and I have been doing this as part of our life's work for a long time. But for a lot of people, they've just been walking around, not aware, not self aware. And if they've had a bad experience with somebody giving them feedback that the intention of that feedback was that I just want to, you know, nail it to you. And I just want to tell you that you're no good, then people walk into the next experience with that hanging on their shoulders or on their back. And so it's really creating that trusting, you know, I love your and I've said this to you before, but I love this love as a business strategy. Because if you don't love what you're doing, if you don't love as a leader, let's say, you're managing people, you're leading people, if you don't love that it's going to show through. And so if you come with that presence of this is what my role is, this is what my passion is, then I'm going to deliver that message in a very different way. So somebody's going to hear it. Some of the best feedback that I ever got, was from a leader that I worked with for about four or five years. And we were doing an activity and and after the end of that activity, she said to me, Nancy, you're not being congruent. And I was like, what, what do you mean, I'm not being congruent. And she said, your words are saying one thing, and your body language is saying something else. And I was like, wow. And that was one of those aha moments, where I said, I'm not delivering the message of what I want it to be, I'm delivering a different message, because that's what I think I'm supposed to do. And it was quite a self reflection moment.

Jeff Ma  
That reminds me of the exact kind of struggle I face a lot of times with myself is that when I am given feedback about behavior, I tend to hide or shield myself behind my intentions. So if somebody says, Oh, you know, the way you said something in your body language, or something was, was off putting, I mean, like, well, that that wasn't what I was trying to do. I mean, I stepped in here, because I have to do that, because I'm leading this project, I have to be stronger, I have to be more assertive, and you're taking it the wrong way. And, and what I have to remind myself is that behavior at the end of the day is not what I intend to bring to the table, but it is actually what is perceived on the other end of the table. How do you you have a way to like practice or exercise or some way to walk leaders or anybody through that mindset shift?

Nanci Appleman Vassil  
Yeah, so one of the things we do is and I do specifically as well is, is we will ask very powerful, open ended questions for people to do some what I would call soul searching about their behavior. So it's like, okay, well, what's the current state? What's going on? You know, how can you describe what's going on? And what's the desired state? What are you looking for the outcome to be the roadmap to be, you know, there's all that terminology that's out there. And so that gap that's between the current and the desired, which is all about managing change? Is is about how do you want to behave in that? So what are those things that you can do those actions that you can take those behaviors that you can start to implement on a daily basis, that will indicate that people will see that shift? Because what we do know is that whatever our mindset is, is that's what we deliver. And we get the results that we get as a result of that. And so if I'm not getting the results, I can't blame somebody else. I have to say, where do I fit in this? What role Am I playing? What mixed messages Am I giving? If I'm telling you one thing, and yet I'm demonstrating something else?

Jeff Ma  
I want to connect but kind of shift a little bit around, as I think that the struggles because right now as we talk, I'm always thinking about the struggles I've had in myself and also explain to others certain things. And one of them comes down to relationships. When we last talked, we both very much aligned on the importance of relationships. But so often, it's easy to say, Oh yeah, relationships are important. You have to build relationships, but actually giving people tangible ways to approach that in a workplace. can be a little more tricky. Because we have friendships, we have work buddies, we have work besties. And we have these. But that's not always what we're talking about, what is your take on a relationship as it pertains to collaborating at work?

Nanci Appleman Vassil  
So for me, first and foremost, at the base is trust, can I trust you? Can you trust me, I call trust the five letter word of the 21st century. What I know for myself is that I'm an automatic trustor until you prove me wrong, I'm not looking for you to prove me wrong. But if you do prove me wrong, then that then I take into this whole other approach. Yet, I might be working with someone who I have to earn their trust before they feel safe, right. And when we talk about love as the business strategy, it's really about being in a safe environment that allows me to be who I need to be. And so if I think about that, then that's the base, that's that's the, you know, I use the analogy a lot about the house, you know, you need to have a strong foundation in that house, for that for the Florida withstand whatever things that are going on, you then also have to have walls and windows and a roof that really is going to substantiate any kind of weather pattern that may come through. Well, that's the same thing in a relationship in the workplace. So let's say, Jeff, that we don't really know each other, and we're all of a sudden going to collaborate together. Well, we're going to set some ground rules, like what works for me what works for you. And what's what's your preferred style? How do you like to be, you know, dealt with and dealt with is, is not the right word, but it's more like, you know, how do you like to engage? Are you a morning person? Are you an evening person? Are you Oh, don't even talk to me, just send me an email person. You know, so what? So what is that? What are those boundaries, and then we figure out how to work together, I can respect you, which is another part of it, you may not be my BFF forever. But we work well together, because we've established it's not the limitations. It's really just, what's our space here? And how do we need to be with each other?

Jeff Ma  
I think there's, there's people who I've seen, who kind of hear the term relationship when it comes to work. And the natural thing is to start thinking about the people you work with the people that you may, you may be able to relate with, as people who've worked this people who've worked side by side for decades together, and yet I would still argue don't actually have a real relationship. And the reason I see that is because they still withhold feedback from each other. Yeah. And what are the factors that you see that that contribute to people who like, like, I would argue some, they even practice some of the things you say like they know, each other's preferences, they know each other, to some degree from from just familiarity. But what what's keeping these two colleagues that that, for all intents and purposes should have all the trust in the world from what they've been through. But they still are unable to sit down and say, Hey, I don't like what you just said, I don't like this, what why can't they give you sort of that feedback?

Unknown Speaker  
So I think there's this whole thing about vulnerability. I think there's this thing called is that have we established that we're gonna give each other feedback? You know, I'll say that it goes back to what was your previous experiences with feedback, and how that plays into why we don't do it. What's the culture in the organization is feedback, a number one priority, or number three priority in the organization. I mean, I walk into lots of different organizations, and I shake my head, because they preach one thing, and they deliver something else. And I'm not talking about their product or their service. I'm talking about their, you read their vision statement, you read their, you know, guiding principles. And what you realize is that that's all talk. It's for the outside and not for what's going on inside as well. That they're not supporting, giving each other feedback. Like I was very privileged, I worked for the National Training Labs Institute for Behavioral Sciences, known as NTL big leader in the whole movement, about tea groups and feedback and so forth. And we gave each other feedback all the time, like we always knew where we were, where we stood, we could say what we thought and what we felt, and there was no retribution for it. I think to answer your question, you know, why doesn't it happen is that somebody feels like if they tell you that you're going to hurt your feelings, or you might withdraw, withdraw and not want to participate. But you might look to sabotage the project. And what we had before is like if I just keep it under the rug, and I go home to whomever I go home to at the end of the day, and I tell them that I've had a horrible day, because I couldn't tell that person what I really needed to tell them. That might be survival. Yeah, which I don't support. Obviously, I putforth we need to hear it. And we also need to understand that somebody like yourself, or myself, that's been doing this for lots of over time, you may be interacting with somebody, you're collaborating with somebody that this is their first project, this is their first job out of school. And so they don't have as much of that history in terms of that experience. And so it's really understanding that as well. And, and teaching, you know, in essence, we're teaching people just like we teach them how to tell time, where we teach them how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide in fifth grade. It's the same concept. It's just, it's just talking about being honest, being real, being transparent, you know, all those words that are out there. In terms of it. We have long ways to go though, Jeff.

Jeff Ma  
Agreed, agreed. Okay, so walk me through this, you step into an organization, you see values at an organizational level that are inconsistent, you see leaders that are that are behaving certain ways, you see toxicity in all levels of the ranks, you see problems, as far as the eye can see, where do you start? What do you where do you go first? What's your approach when you come and work with these organizations?

Nanci Appleman Vassil  
So if I am facilitating training, or learning events, then and it's always in, it's always in people skills. So you're not gonna you're not going to ask me to talk about anything from a technology perspective, you're not going to ask me to talk. I mean, I know finance. And I know, you know, I know topics, but that's not my strength or, or what I have a passion about. So I talk about those interpersonal skills, how do you have the right conversation? How do you give feedback? How do you listen in a way that's beyond just Oh, yeah, I'm listening. And what I get a lot of times is they people will say to me, because they're not the top level, they'll say, Well, how come our managers aren't in here? They're the ones that really need it. And I said, Well, you know what, they're missing out. They're missing out, because you're getting the opportunity to help change the culture. And then I do give feedback to whoever is my point of contact to say, here's something that I've been hearing from these workshops that I've been doing, that you may want to consider. There was one project that I was on where they were going through massive change. And they brought me in to do some workshops. And every workshop that I did, which was there were about 10 of them. They said to me, each group said to me, you know, you're like the flavor of the month, you're the latest consultant to come in, and give us something and I said, You know what, I don't like being a groupie. I said, so here's what I'll tell you is I will go back to senior management, and leadership and tell them what I've heard over this past week of, you know, 10 sessions. And I said, and the only thing that I can do, where my influence is, is to say, you want to you know, you want to get the greatest bang for your buck, then here's what you need to do. And that group actually did take what we said, and decided to have an all company meeting. And they asked me to come back and just share the survey of this, the summary of of what I heard. And then senior leadership came on and talked about what specifically they would start to do to get that toxicity out of out of the environment. And when the when the session ended, people came up to me and they were shaking my hand and they said, Nanci, I just didn't think you'd be able to do that. And I said, my sarcasm said, Oh, ye of little faith. Right? I'm glad that it could work out. So

Jeff Ma  
yeah, you talked about the importance of listening. And I'd love to hear your take on really just defining you know what good listening, or proper or the correct way to listen is and also if you don't mind, how, how do you practice that? Or how do you put that into play? Yep.

Nanci Appleman Vassil  
So I always like to start off by saying there's a reason why we have two ears and one mouth, we're supposed to listen more than we talk. And for some of us, that's challenging because especially if you're an extrovert, you're not really listening to anything that anybody else is saying. thing. But also Jeff when I was in undergraduate school at the University of Denver, I did a two year research project was another student and the dean of the Psychology Department. His name was Dr. Barnard Spilka. And it was a study from 1947, long before any of us were born, that talked about by a psychologist by the name of Ashe, who said, people just don't listen, it was called The primacy recency effect. They say that. And what we did is supported that study, you know, 20-30 years later. And what we've learned is that people take really the first thing that they hear, and they make an interpretation, because they're not listening all the way through. If you fast forward that to today, where I say we live in an eight to 12 second world, which was really more like seven and a half second. So if you don't get me and Hello, I'm out, I'm already thinking about something else, or I'm thinking about my rebuttal. And in that study, what we found is that the order of the six adjectives that we use, three were positive, and three, were not so positive. And then we reversed it, we had 2000 participants. The first 1000 were like this, and the second 1000 were like this, what we found is that they liked John or they didn't like John, which was a fictitious character, you fast forward to today. And there's so many things that are bombarding us at the same time, so many things we're already thinking about. And then there's all this stuff that just comes at us. So it's a challenge. And what I talk to people about and what I practice as well, is I have to clear my mind, for any activity, any person I'm going to be talking to, that I am 100%, listening to them, that I use some of the things I learned in graduate school from Carl Rogers, who was the known as the father of client centered therapy, which was that acknowledging, nodding, so that the person knows that you are hearing them. The other is to ask the person to say more about it, because maybe it's not clear what they're saying. And instead of just letting them keep going, just say, Can you give me an example of that? Or can you say more about that, so I can better understand it. And then, you know, the technique called paraphrasing back, let me make sure that I've heard you correctly. This is what I heard. And that allows the person that's talking to feel that they're being heard, and also allows them to say, no, no, no, no, that's not what I meant. Let me explain this a little bit differently, or allows them to say, Yeah, and that allows them to say more. Now, you don't have to be a therapist, you don't have to be a psychologist, you don't have to be a counselor, you just have to be somebody that just is interested in really hearing what the other person has to say. And I think that we have a tendency as human beings to shut off if it's not the same as us. Like if you're gonna say something that's different. We're I'm different as I want to hear that. I want to I want to understand where I might be limited and my thinking about that. I you know, I talk, I talk sometimes I tell the story about how I was on a flight from North Carolina to Seattle. And I got bumped up to first class, which was very exciting. And there was a woman next to me. And those were the days where I used to say hello to people on the plane now I just like really just go to sleep. I said to her Hi, how are you? My name is and for five hours, because that was the flight five hours. This woman told me her entire life story and all the challenges that she was going through. And at the end of it, I said, Well, I hope everything works out. And it was really lovely to talk to you. I heard everything that she said to me, what would be the chances that two days later we both be on the same flight back? And I was like hi. And she acted like she never knew me. Oh my. And I thought to myself, Wow, I'm never talking to another person on a plane again. And I'll never get those five hours back. That's what I thought. But I'm known as being a really great listener because I my background and my interest in people and wanting to hear their stories. It's real important to me. I hope I answered that question for you.

Jeff Ma  
You did let me paraphrase back what you told me I'm kidding. Excellent.

Nanci Appleman Vassil  
That was good. That was good.

Jeff Ma  
I think there's there's so much I guess that that we connect on in terms of philosophy, but I use specifically the word love what is the word love in your world? You use it Do you what does it look like or what's different I guess then if you don't go to the extent of using the word love.

Nanci Appleman Vassil  
So I first of all, when I hear you say it, when I hear word when I when I say to somebody, I Love you, it's that there's this warmth, that I feel that there's a connection that I feel. And I love what I do for a living. I do. And I tell the my team and my clients that I love what I do, if I didn't, I'd figure out something else to do with my life. And I would let go of what I'm doing. And I just, to me love is that, that I think of the core, right, really at the base and the core is that and I tell people all the time, if don't jump to another job, just because it's another job, if you're not going to love what you're doing, then you might as well be miserable where you are, and not go be somewhere else and be miserable. I have a strong sense of family. And, and so for me, there's a lot of that warmth and love in the family. And it's not just my personal family, it's my work family, that it's not that I don't charge a price for the work that I do. But for me, it's about the experience, and whether it's something I love to do it feel that I can contribute and have an impact for people. Because if it's just a job, you know, or like people call it a gig, which I can't stand. I call it an engagement because it's a relationship that we're establishing. And if all you want is a gig and you want to one day, you know now you can say you've done it, and I'm not the right person for you. Because if we don't connect in some way, that's not fun for me. I don't you know, I There are many people that I love that have touched me in some way in my life. You know, present and past and future. I don't know what the future holds, in terms of

Jeff Ma  
can you define in your words, what you define as a high performing team.

Nanci Appleman Vassil  
So I think about Bruce Tuchman's model from 1965, of forming, storming, norming, and performing and when, when teams can get to that synergy that you can finish almost finished sentences for each other, that you that the work gets done so effortlessly, because we are collaborating in a way that makes it the best product or service that it can be. I've been on high performing teams before, I've taught about high performing teams. But I think from my own experience, I think my team is a high performing team, a PLS group, that everybody is in positions and functions that they love to do, that they don't see it as a job or as work that they see that they can make a contribution. And I remember when I was at the nonprofit, there was this synergy to get the project done. And it didn't matter what your level was in the organization. We even had the executive director roll up his sleeves and collate papers together. And there was almost like we were singing and dancing as we were doing that, and having some fun as well.

Jeff Ma  
So you mentioned APLA group, talk a little bit about your, your firm, and what your mission is, I guess.

Nanci Appleman Vassil  
Yeah, so um, you know, you pretty much said it in the very in the much of the opening, but how APLS group started. It was formed on July 1 of 2000. I had been laid off twice in my professional career. And I decided that I didn't want to Trifecta like that was just not you know, that training is something that people want. But if they don't see that were turned tomorrow, they're like, well, we'll just get rid of that. And so I just decided was the biggest risk I took was to be an entrepreneur, I had been that person that got the paycheck every two weeks and was very happy putting it into the bank. And so for me, it was like, Okay, well, I have this opportunity to create an organization because I knew I didn't want to do this as a solo, create an organization that espouses the things that I facilitate, and I teach and I talk about, and over time, it has evolved, there's probably about 18 of us, everybody as a freelancer except for me, even my, my spouse, who is the CFO, he, he works three days a week and he plays golf the rest of the time, and that's part of his compensation. So, but we everything that we do is people related. So whereas you know, we're We're a boutique, we could call this a boutique firm Right. Whereas most organizations that would be set up with freelancers, people just come in and do something. And that's it. And then they leave? Well, we have quarterly meetings, we have in person events with our team, we have newsletters that go out to the team, we provide professional development for our, for our team members. Because that's really, if I go into an organization and say, What do you need to be doing? You need to take care of your people. You know, we just had the end of the year. And you know, everybody got a gift bag that, you know, got sent out with a personal note from me talking about the contributions that they've made to our successful year. So that's some of what you know, we do. And so when we come into an organization, we're bringing in years of experience around people development, like we're seen as the expert in it. And I think that, you know, going back to love as a business strategy is that that's what we're providing, is what we're demonstrating what you need to think about doing in order to create the culture. And, you know, Jeff, you and I talked about, like, you know, the words like inclusive and diversity and belonging, and it's more heightened now. But it's always been the case. As long as I've been in the professional world, it's like, if you don't feel like you're belonging, and you don't feel like you're part of it, like you're thinking I'm, you know, I'm just only going to give so much. And so it's really, I think, you know, for APLS group, that's what we do, we will give you all of what we have and demonstrate to you the way in which we think is the is the way the workplace needs to be.

Jeff Ma  
Awesome. Awesome. Nanci, I want to thank you for your time today and joining me and sharing your story as well as all of your your wisdom. Truly, truly thankful for the time you spent with me today.

Nanci Appleman Vassil  
Okay, yeah. And and for me, too, Jeff, I've been looking forward to it. And it didn't it didn't disappoint, as we say. So I would welcome the opportunity for us to talk again.

Jeff Ma  
Absolutely. And to our listeners. Thank you, as always, for tuning in. And I'll always remind you to check out our book, Love as a Business Strategy available in many, many ways, Amazon, etc. And if you can, please do leave us a review for the book on this podcast, subscribe and rate it and tell your friends and with that. I hope you have a wonderful week and we will see you all soon.