The Growth Workshop Podcast
Episode 7 Review - Connections Before Content: Mike Hohnen’s Leadership Advice for Managing Managers
Thu, 15 Aug 2024
We look back at our guest, Mike Hohnen, with his extensive experience in management roles and how to manage emotional engagement for effective leadership. He shares tips to foster true employee engagement and insights into creating a more balanced and engaging work environment that values both productivity and strong relationships.
Hello and welcome to the Growth Workshop podcast. Johnny, what a fantastic conversation we just had with Mike Honan. He's such an inspirational speaker. The energy, again, we've been so fortunate on the podcast recently, having these bundles of energy come and join us and to teach and inspire us and our audience. As has become customary on this podcast, right? Let's reflect.
So what was your key takeaway from the conversation with Mike?
Thanks, Matt. And I echo the sentiment that you shared there. Really did enjoy the conversation with Mike.
And when you've had a deep and meaningful conversation with someone, when you're taking a walk or you're thinking and reflecting that days after some of the points that Mike mentioned to us still ring in my ear and I resonate with, the critical one for me was about how effective leadership involves balancing task orientation with relationship building.
And I then think about my own leadership or my own relationships with clients. And I think a lot of the time I'm task oriented. I'm ticking things off as I go through this list throughout this day. Oh, Friday, have I done my to-do list? Oh, it's Monday morning. What is my to-do list?
So that's really resonated with me because actually indexing more on the relationships that will then help solve challenges or opportunities down the line. As I said, Matt, it really did resonate with me. So thanks for asking that. What about you, Matt?
Yeah, I couldn't agree more, Johnny, with that thought process as you're walking along, walking to the shops or whatever you're doing. And you think I think a lot of what Mike shared with us is so applicable in a business context, but also in a personal context. I think that was the key thing for me. And I asked him about about balance.
And his sort of immediate reaction was to shake his head and say that doesn't exist. And actually, it's about understanding and managing the polarity between. And that applies to what you just shared there as we think about that sort of task orientation and relationship building orientation. But it also, I think,
really comes into play when we think about the polarities in being in management more broadly and not always focusing on the problems to be solved. And I think particularly for those middle managers, it's navigating these polarities, seeing these things as distinct things, but also in your own professional life. And I think that was a key takeaway for me is
Not seeing, not trying to search for this mystical balance that never exists, but just to think about the different polarities and understand and see that. So I think that was really interesting and probably my key takeaway from the conversation.
And I think what Mike shared with us across the board really touched on some critical things in leadership and management and organizational structure and everything we think about. what we're trying to do to drive our teams towards effectiveness, what we're trying to do to create a real sort of supportive culture within our business that drives the outcomes that we want.
And he shared a lot of really insightful bits around that, around focusing on the team's mental being, thinking about employee engagement and thinking about how important those relationships are with your employees first to drive the right relationships with your customers. So thanks again, Mike, for joining us and to everybody listening out there.
We hope that you found it as insightful as we did. And we're really looking forward to you joining us again on our next episode. For more insights, make sure you subscribe. And if you enjoy the journey, don't forget to leave us a review. Your feedback fuels our growth. Until next time, keep up that forward thinking mindset. Goodbye.