From Collector to Leader | How to Elevate Your Career in Debt Collection | Ep. 213

Adam Parks (00:08)

Hello, everybody. Adam Parks here with another episode of receivables podcast today we are here to talk about building saleable skills that you can carry with you even beyond the debt collection industry and really help for self improvement in a professional environment. And for that topic, I've got the perfect guest here today. I've got industry legend Debra Ciskey, who has been living breathing and

just being compliance across the receivables management and debt collection industries here. Debra, thank you so much for coming on today. How you doing?

Debra Ciskey (00:43)

I'm great. I'm great. Thanks for having me today. I'm pretty excited to talk about some of these things as throughout my career, I've, you know, I tried to always develop the people that work with me that, that I'm in charge of, or, you know, that have to report to me because I've always felt like if you, if you don't develop the people under you, then you're never going to be able to move on yourself to something bigger and better, you know, because you're doing their job. I don't want to do that. And so, developing folks is one of my favorite parts of

for me to work with other younger people, people coming up and along. So they can be ready to jump into the next challenge.

Adam Parks (01:20)

I always tell my team I'm trying to hire my replacement. Always trying to grow somebody to replace me in whatever ways they can so that I can move on and start looking at a bigger picture. But Debra, for anybody who has not been as lucky as me to get to know you a little bit through the years, could you tell everyone a little bit about yourself and how you got to the seat that you're in today?

Debra Ciskey (01:22)

exactly.

Okay, well, I mean, I've been in the collection industry since 1980. So that's a long time ago, but I started working at ACA International. I was on the staff there for 13 years. I started in public affairs and ended up running the education department for the last eight years I was there. We, that was back in the days when everything was new. You know, we started doing computer based training, development, and all that kind of stuff. I left there in 1993.

I've worked at three different collection agencies since then and developed compliance programs for them and training programs, that kind of stuff. And then just about a couple of years ago, I moved into consulting role in the industry. I'm with ARM Compliance Business Solutions. Sarah will kill me. And so we provide consulting services to collection agencies and creditors, others that have

have to deal with all the regulatory stuff that's around the compliance requirements and help write manuals and do training and you know we work with startups all kinds of stuff it's really fun.

Adam Parks (02:41)

Well, it sounds like that's been the perfect fit for you is communications seems to be that common thread that runs across everything that you've done from public relations to training to even the development of policies and procedures is yet another form of written communication that is absolutely essential to the industry. But as we were preparing for this podcast, so that we could start talking about some of these scalable sales skills, you had talked to me a little bit about some of the things that have driven you to make this a passion

Debra Ciskey (02:59)

Right.

Adam Parks (03:10)

in your world as you're working with all of these different organizations. Talk to me a little bit about what a saleable skill is for an employee or a team member.

Debra Ciskey (03:22)

Okay, great. So, I mean, there are a lot of skills that we use on the job that aren't directly related to, you know, what we do, the nits and grits of what we do to perform our job, to meet the performance numbers that are out there for us or, however you might think about it. And because you want to excel, you know, one of the things I do is as a kind of on a volunteer basis is I...

I look at the essays that people write when they want to achieve a designation for ACA International. I do that because I'm a certified instructor. I wrote and have given the classes related to those for a long, time. Well, since about 1983, so a long time. And so what I have noticed in reading some of those essays that people write to achieve their designation is that writing skills is an important skill that

A lot of people need to develop on their own. You you write stuff when you're in school. mean, you know, people in our industry, some of them didn't go to college, but they went through high school and they had to do high school level work. But in college, you do have to write more. You learn how to write better. You do research and write papers and essays and all kinds of stuff. But I see so many people that really just need to know how to put a couple of sentences together in a cogent paragraph. For example.

writing skills are so, you so important. so organization of what you're writing is super important to make, get your point across. I mean, when you're writing something, you're usually trying, especially in like compliance to convince people to change something or do a thing a certain way for certain reasons. And you have to organize all that. So it just doesn't sound like here's what the law says. This is what you do period. Cause adults want to know why, why do I have to do that? And so.

So we want to organize our thoughts and put together something that makes sense from beginning to end. Some of the simple things that people should do when they're writing is learn how to proofread your work. It's not done just because you put a period at the end of the last sentence, right? You have to go back and check for typos, check for incomplete sentences, check for sentences that just don't make sense because they're missing a part. Sentences have a subject and a verb and an object and...

Is it all there? And so you have to go back and think about that. And don't be afraid to rewrite. The fact that you've hit that period at the end of the last sentence doesn't mean you're done. You might need to spend as much time rewriting as you did putting your initial thoughts down on paper. I mean, I'm all for writing a rough draft. When you're writing something, your thoughts just flow, right? They just come so fast. I just want to write them down so I don't forget it. And then I go back, organize it, expand upon

the important thoughts, rewrite it. you know, I think some people, because we're in an age of getting things done so fast, everything's by email. let me do that quick and get it right back to you. People don't take the time to do what's really important to really present a good image of them as a worker. We're talking about saleable skills. Well, if you can write a good letter like your cover letter that goes with your resume to a potential employer says a lot about.

who you are and what your skills are. And so, well, maybe head Chat GPT write it for you, but that still doesn't mean that it's good, right?

Adam Parks (06:33)

It

also means that it's easy to identify, right? So those of us that are actually evaluating that type of letter generally have a pretty good understanding of some of the key indicators of artificial intelligence writing.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, you know, a couple other things that just come with using language, right, is, okay.

Adam Parks (06:50)

Well, let me stop you there for a second. I want to go

back and talk about the writing portion of this because I think this is an incredibly important topic for us to cover.

Debra Ciskey (07:00)

Okay.

Adam Parks (07:01)

What's your process actually look like from a creative writing process? For me, it's an outline, a draft, edit one, put it away for a few minutes, come back, edit two, then I am maybe ready to send it to somebody else to review internally. I like to double check things. Now emails and things that are moving at a faster pace depending on the relationship with the recipient.

The person sitting next to me and we're talking about lunch is getting a different email format than we're gonna get, In preparing for a podcast or something along those lines. But what's that writing process look like in your world?

Debra Ciskey (07:26)

Right.

Okay, that's a great question. And what you just said about knowing your audience is key because when you're thinking about what you're going to include, you really have to know who's going to read it. Why is this important to the person that's going to see it on the other end? think about that. If you're writing a memo to the executives of your company, it might sound different than a little note to your supervisor about taking next Friday off, you know, and so big difference. So know your audience and kind of think about what their expectations are of you as a writer.

And elevated a little bit, know, we, so a lot of us work in small companies and we may, we, know the owner of the company because we've worked there for years or he's my dad's best friend or whatever it is. That doesn't mean that you can relax your standards about how you communicate important topics, because maybe that person will get a different impression of who you are and what your capabilities are if you write well. So my process is similar to yours.

I make a very, I make a real loose outline, bullet points maybe. I mean, I can do an outline that has Roman numeral one, Roman numeral two, Roman numeral three. We've all learned how to do that. But you know, I don't, I don't want to squelch my process by, you know, having to stick it into that can, right? Right. And then I'll write that out. Then I'll start the creative process, make sure that I have at least a paragraph that covers each one of the bullet points that I wanted to talk about. And then think about, okay, did I say enough about that?

Adam Parks (08:45)

I'm with you in a couple of bullet points, right? Everything for me is a couple of bullet points.

Debra Ciskey (09:01)

Or did I say too much about that? And maybe I didn't, maybe I said enough, but not in a, in a complete way. What, you know, what is that, what is that person who I'm writing to going to ask about that? What, you know, what question marks are there? And so you want to make sure that it's, it's fully developed ideas that you're presenting. And then I love the fact that you said you put it away for an hour two. I'd really like to put something away overnight and sleep on it and come.

Adam Parks (09:29)

If I can,

100%.

Debra Ciskey (09:30)

Come back, yes, if you

can come back with fresh eyes, but I'll read it over. think it's key to let it sit because you'll then find the things you left out. Like it can be devastating to leave like the word not for a compliance person to write a sentence that says you can do this, blah, blah. And then you forget, but what you meant to say is you cannot. It's devastating because you just gave them the opposite information that you wanted to convey. So, so I do agree that putting something away for some period of time.

get away from it, take a break, drink some coffee, whatever, and come back to it. And then look at it with fresh eyes and think about it the way that your audience might think about it.

Adam Parks (10:08)

If you try and do it all in one shot, find it's difficult to slow down and really understand it. Words tend to blend together and especially somebody with ADHD, I tend to move a lot faster, especially if it's something that's predictable. If I've already read it multiple times, my brain finds it to be more predictable and I'll move a little faster. So separating from it and coming back to it has been a key attribute for me. And I never send something after 7pm. I'll always schedule

Adam Parks (10:38)

emails to reread in the morning or I'll just get up early in reread but I never will send out anything that's been happening after I've been in the office for over 10 hours.

Debra Ciskey (10:48)

Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I love that idea. Very good. I also think in the writing process, sometimes we have to collaborate with other people. And so we want to really know how to use the functionality of like just Microsoft Word and use, you know, that kind of review function where you can, you can redline it. So what was written this remains, but your thoughts are in a different color and you know, people can then just accept or reject your, your

suggestions or your edits and it makes that collaboration process a lot faster because they're not having to go back and figure out what you changed, you know, and so I find that helpful.

Adam Parks (11:24)

I would suggest that for people at all levels of organizations, the reason being is that executive time is generally pretty limited. And if you want to communicate cleanly to your executive team, communicating with them in a format in which they're most familiar, or if you're coordinating or collaborating across multiple people in real time on a document, it's Google Docs or Microsoft or whatever your platform of choice is, is fine. But being able to see those changes in

real time not dealing with document versioning. our marketing company, that was one of our biggest holdbacks, I think, early on was that we were always dealing with document versions and we'd have version 14 and version 25, right? And if you ever wrote final in the file name, that just meant that you were going to go through 24 revisions. But since we've moved everything over to these more collaborative tools and we've trained everybody on how to operate red lines and reviews, it really has

Debra Ciskey (12:05)

yeah.

Adam Parks (12:23)

smoothed out our processes and I think it's really improved the final products that we've been able to create. It's just a much more, it's an easier way for us to take the brain power of everybody involved, coordinate it without overworking it and then be able to roll out a high quality product.

Yeah, I agree. I've done that many times. mean, writing some of these classes that I've put together for ACA, it's not just me, it's myself and three or four other certified instructors and those documents go back and forth. And you you get to kind of see the person's perspective better when you can analyze kind of how that rewrite took place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You mentioned it when we were preparing how it's important to be able to read cursive.

And, you know, I just turned 68 years old. So I've been writing cursive for 60, I don't know, years at least. Right. And so because we learned it in second grade when I was little. And you got this fancy special ink pen because we're never allowed to use ink at that point. And then it's you're in a book. got an F in my writing book one time and that was and I was in second grade. like, my dad's going to kill me. Right. Go home with this F on my

on my writing book, but it was just because I erased something. That was the worst. But especially whether you're doing ink pen. you know, it is important, I think, to be able to read the communications that others send you. And so it's one of those things they don't always teach in school anymore because everyone's learning keyboarding. Right. And so all the teachers are printing. But.

Adam Parks (14:00)

which I can

appreciate, but I write on the whiteboard. There's 500 square feet of whiteboard in my office. I'm constantly at the whiteboard and if someone can't honor, like my writing is very clean and much to the credit of my aunt who was also my English teacher when I was young. And if my cursive was not perfect, I did it again. She called my mom and I got to do that assignment over again.

Debra Ciskey (14:07)

Right?

Well, right.

And as we get into business, a cursive is faster. So if you're trying to take notes on a whiteboard in a meeting or, you know, kind of get things organized however it might work, cursive is the thing. I mean, it's so much faster.

Adam Parks (14:39)

And some

of us tech people are still kind of low tech. I mean, I always have a notebook with me always, always, always have a pen and a notebook because I didn't like taking notes in a on my phone. love the iPad. love my phone. It's all great, but it does not feel the same when you're sitting across from somebody and they're typing on their phone because you really don't know. they paying attention to me? Are they texting and worried about their next meeting or conversation? But when I'm doing it in the notebook, we

Debra Ciskey (14:42)

huh, me too.

Yeah, yeah.

Adam Parks (15:08)

are locked in, you know that I'm focused on what it is that we're discussing and I'm notating it so that I can walk out of there with action items and manage the plan. I just feel like that's an important part of the process. It's been, only 42 and it's been an important part of my life as I've grown through. And I've had some staff members that showed up in their early 20s, able to read it, write it and are fully functional with it. And then I've had a lot of people that have been replaced because they were unable to read the

Debra Ciskey (15:17)

Yeah.

Adam Parks (15:37)

writing on the wall, quite literally.

Debra Ciskey (15:39)

Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's unfortunate for them, but it's, it's not hard. mean, it's almost like figure it out. I mean, and that's another skill I think that people can bring in the workplaces, learn how to figure it out. You know, I've, I've had people tell me, well, I wasn't trained on that. So I can't do that. Well, I wasn't trained on it either, but I figured out how to do it. Well, even before the days of YouTube, you know, when we, when I was at ACA, we got a new computer system and I wanted to learn how to do word processing on it. was,

Adam Parks (15:56)

some great YouTube videos.

Debra Ciskey (16:08)

a CRM system, but it also had word processing. And I'm like, I need to learn how to use this. And there weren't a lot of training classes. There was manuals, right? And so, okay, I sat in my office for literally four days, shut the door and learned how to do it myself. And one of our coworkers who was older, much older than I was at the time, because when I was really in my twenties, came to me and like said, how dare you? I'm like, what do mean? How dare I? She said, I'm waiting until I get trained on that. I'm not going to use it until that.

and somebody needs to just help me, you know, somebody needs to tell me how to do it. I'm like, okay, well, I'm like six months ahead of you now because I figured it out myself. So, I mean, just having, sometimes it takes will and skill to just figure it out. But if you can read and follow some steps, try it out and not be afraid to fail, right, in that whole process.

Adam Parks (16:57)

There's nothing that's impossible. I learned how to code websites on a piece of paper and a notebook. I didn't have a computer and I wanted to learn how to write HTML code. So I got a book from the library and then I would write my website code into a notebook and then I would go to my aunt's house and I would plug it in and I would see if it worked. And then I would, you know, go back to the drawing board and change it all on pencil and paper. And that's really what my baseline was for learning how to write code because 1996 there was not a lot of available

Adam Parks (17:27)

computing power for... you had a lot of money there was not a lot of power

Debra Ciskey (17:30)

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, good for you for going to the library. That's another kind of lost skill. Right. Right. Yeah. Right. So I think people forget if I can't, I can't find it online. What's wrong? I was go to the library. Librarians will help you do it. Find it online. You know, they're great people. So, yeah.

Adam Parks (17:37)

There was no other choice.

I agree

wholeheartedly. So we've talked about the writing portion of it and I think that's just one of the most important skills that we could ever talk about when it comes to a saleable skill for the future. What other skills have you been helping people to develop in the collection space?

Debra Ciskey (18:05)

So eloquence in speech is pretty important too, because again, the audiences that we speak with differ. not, mean, everyone can't be a public speaker. Everyone doesn't want to be a public speaker. But you know, when I was trying to develop some, know, I guess I wanted to be a good speaker because I did a lot of speaking, right? I trained a lot of classes for ACA and this was back when we would go to the place.

Wichita, Kansas, Columbus, Ohio, somewhere, and teach a class of people that came in from all over the state to learn about compliance. I was teaching a lot of FDCPA classes in the day. And if you can be an eloquent

people think, realize that you know what you're talking about. Not only, you you can't, I'm not being very in eloquent right now, but it does help you to get your point. Yeah, it helps you to sound like you know what you're talking about when you can express it in an eloquent way, right? And so that takes practice. You know, I would, I am an overpreparer.

Adam Parks (18:51)

Confidence is king on this page.

Debra Ciskey (19:05)

And so if I'm going to teach a class with somebody I haven't taught with, we'll get together and we'll do a dry run. I really want to know how you're going to talk about this so that I don't disagree with you inadvertently when it's not necessary. Let's make sure we're on the same page about these things and let's make sure we're going to use the same terminology, the same, you know, and come at it from the same kind of perspective. Because if you're co-teaching with someone,

You can't spend 90 minutes arguing with each other, right? Because your student is getting anything out of that. But so I do over prepare. I'll just practice something I'm going to say in my by myself in her room. And now we have the capability easily. You can tape something like on your phone. Listen to it. You know, was my inflection good? Do I sound hesitant? What? You know, how do I sound? And so I think that's really important skill to have. And not only just for public speaking, but

I mean, you go to a meeting with five people and you guys have to make a decision. Well, do you think the person that can't really express their thoughts is going to win? Probably not. And not that it's always a win or lose situation, but you want people to understand and accept your ideas and come to a cooperative solution, something that you've all had input on. I think collectors learn, kind of learn that when they're speaking on the phone with consumers.

You know, you don't want to be a collector your whole career, right? You want to be a supervisor, you want to be a manager, you want to move out to some other industry. you've, you know, when your clients does a certain thing that you love, you think that's so exciting. Maybe you'd to go into that industry. Well, you need to be able to speak about it, read about it, write about it, and in eloquent ways.

Adam Parks (20:44)

When it comes to the elegant speaking and being able to hit all of your points, I always suggest to people, do a lot of public speaking myself. And my, my deep secret is that I can't read on stage, especially numbers. Just can't do it. I don't know why, but I can't read a script on stage if I wanted to. What I can do is I can take 10 bullet points, stand up in front of a crowd and talk for the entire time. So I just try to hit or organize my thoughts.

Debra Ciskey (20:55)

Okay.

Adam Parks (21:12)

and prioritize my thoughts in the order of operations that I want to hit them and then go through the process of presenting it to the mirror or to the teleprompter or the computer, whatever. Listen to myself, listen to how many times I say the wrong transitional words, how many times I say right at the end of a sentence.

Debra Ciskey (21:30)

Yep.

Adam Parks (21:30)

Especially

as I watch the transcripts from all the podcasts and I work through it, it's almost painful to hear myself speak as someone who speaks all the time. So I really would suggest for people that you keep it as simple as you can and don't be over critical of yourself because you are definitely the most critical person of you when it comes to your public speaking or your speech in a meeting. There's nobody else who's being as critical about you as you.

Debra Ciskey (21:54)

Yeah, I agree with that 100%.

I know I used to caught myself saying that's important. It's really important. know, in an compliance world, everything's important, right? And so, and I cut that out of my speech pattern because it's really not meaningful. you know, maybe it's...

Adam Parks (22:12)

got a whole list of words that I'm currently working

on removing and I'm consciously thinking right now about so I don't say them.

Debra Ciskey (22:20)

Yeah, yeah, that's good. So we can all improve, you know, ourselves. you know, and that coming kind of talking about eloquence in speech, the other side of that is to be a good listener. Right. And not just in like you're one of 700 people in a room listening to a keynote speaker. But when you're speaking one on one with a person, to me, that's where it's even more important because we all, you know,

You've come out of meetings, I'm sure, thinking, they even hear anything I said? Because it didn't seem like people were reacting to it or responding to it or answering your questions. And it's because people are not good listeners, I think, in general. being able to demonstrate that you're a good listener is pretty key.

Adam Parks (23:02)

Active listening is something that is an acquired skill. Just staring at somebody is one thing, but actively engaging with somebody who's speaking and demonstrative active listening, I think is an important skill set in a professional environment. Because it

Debra Ciskey (23:18)

I agree.

Adam Parks (23:19)

it's to whoever is speaking at that time that you are actively engaged. That's probably the hardest part of doing podcasts for me is that I can see myself active listening and I have to work through some of those skills that you use in active listening in order to demonstrate to everybody that I am actively engaged in a discussion. And I think that's something that you can carry into any meeting or really any conversation that you have with anybody. Because it would be a great different podcast if I spent it looking down at the floor like this. It just doesn't

Debra Ciskey (23:43)

I agree.

Adam Parks (23:48)

feel engaging and it's not the same thing as when I'm eye eye with you and even though we're virtual, we're still having a very direct discussion. There's a lot of skills there that could use development.

Debra Ciskey (23:52)

Yeah. Yeah.

there's a lot. There's a lot. You know, I think to demonstrate that you're an active listener is key. Like when you can go, you're in a meeting and you can go back and say, you know, a couple of minutes ago, Adam, you said this, and I'm interpreting it two different ways. So can you clarify that for me? To me as a speaker, I'm like, wow, he really is listening to me. And so I'm happy to make this clear for you. And that, I think, builds a sense of community.

with the people that you're working with. A lot of companies have meetings all day from eight to five. At the executive level, maybe at the higher levels, managers are in meetings. so a lot of us are thinking on what's the next thing? Get me out of here, what's the next thing I have to do? But that detracts from being active listener, I think. Yeah.

Adam Parks (24:48)

We shortened

the number of meetings in our organization significantly over the last, I'm gonna call it 18 months. The objective there was to only have meetings that were important in which we were actually conveying something of value.

Adam Parks (25:05)

Now I'm

very quick to end a meeting if we're just looking at each other. If we don't have an active plan for it, I don't care what level of the organization it is. If we don't have an active plan for this meeting and there's no agenda in the meeting invite, I won't be there. I need to know what are we there for? Why are we here? Why are we coming together? And why are we scheduling an hour for something that should take 15 minutes? So it's...

Debra Ciskey (25:09)

Right, yeah.

Adam Parks (25:31)

It's a big time suck at pretty much every organization. And I always go back to, and maybe it's a terrible example, but I worked at a company that was a lot like the office, the television show that we all watched, you know, through the two thousands.

Debra Ciskey (25:40)

You

Adam Parks (25:44)

And every time that there was anything came up, was conference room, five minutes, everybody, we're all gonna go to the conference room now. So like everything is gonna stop. Just not an effective way to keep everybody rolling, especially the larger the organization, the more difficult it becomes. So honing in those meeting times.

Debra Ciskey (25:49)

yeah. gosh.

Adam Parks (26:03)

is you transition to other organizations or other industries throughout your career. That's something that people will recognize, respect and notice if you are able to keep meetings on target. And I don't walk into every meeting with a gavel, but there will be no crosstalk. We're going to get to the point here.

Debra Ciskey (26:19)

Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and you know, that plays right into another skill that I wanted to talk about briefly, and that is having emotional intelligence. You know, when you're in a meetings and you know, you can see things kind of going off the rails. It can take some of that ability to separate yourself from what's happening and say something constructive to bring it back onto focus like.

Hey guys, this really wasn't on our agenda. And I know it seems important to you, but maybe that's a good offline discussion. Let's get back to our agenda so we can have something constructive come out of this time we've spent together. Yeah.

Adam Parks (26:57)

And the bigger

the meeting, the more diligent you need to be in that process.

The more people that are involved, the more diligent you have to be to the agenda. Now, at the same time, I schedule one on ones with everybody in the organization, and I spend time with each department on skill development. And I'll take a we do have quite a few meetings, but they're all with a very specific purpose. And a lot of it is about education and growth as we talk about emotional intelligence. So each department is responsible each month for sharing a new skill that they have learned with the other associated departments.

Debra Ciskey (27:01)

Right.

Right.

Right.

Adam Parks (27:29)

And so in my world, it'll be, for example, something that happens in the graphics department has learned how to use artificial intelligence to do X, Y, and Z. Okay, great. Let's talk to the content teams. Let's talk to the web development teams. Let's bring everybody together and have that conversation on a monthly basis because that way we know that each one of those departments is actively engaged in the process of improving themselves. And that's really what we're looking for, right? They're in that process of bettering themselves and finding

Debra Ciskey (27:58)

Yeah, I really like that. That also reinforces in their mind that learning new skills is important when they need to share it with someone else and help them understand maybe how this can be useful to you. think having sort of that open sort of platform for discussion can be really helpful because sometimes in business, people are stingy with their knowledge. They don't want people to know that they can do a thing because number one, they might be asked to do it too often now because they're an expert.

or they wanna just be the whiz kid behind the scenes that can just come up with something and nobody knows how they did it, but man, it's pretty cool. It really hit the nail on the head is what we needed, right? But I like the sharing environment that you're talking about. I think it makes everybody, high tide floats all boats, as they say. And I do think that that's a pretty important way to develop your team.

I mean, we're individually developing, but our team is developing because we're sharing. We're not being stingy and holding it in.

Adam Parks (28:55)

Part of the objective is even going back to public speaking to give them an opportunity to speak up in a meeting. I mean, our organization has grown pretty significantly over those 18 months and I don't get a chance to spend a lot of time with every person. And this is an opportunity for them to develop their skill set to have that. It's not a big crowd. It's all their team members.

Adam Parks (29:19)

So it's not

something that they're having to get up on stage and talk to a thousand people, but they are being put in a position where maybe they spend a lot of time behind a keyboard. And this is not a skillset that they've spent a lot of time developing. But when they've got some expertise on a particular topic, I do find that they step up and they really blossom. I've seen a lot of pride come out of those discussions in meetings because they learned something new. They were able to share it. They were able to better the entire organization.

Adam Parks (29:48)

And at the end of that discussion, we may have even changed a policy, a process, or a procedure that we were doing based on something that we learned. I like to call it organizational learning because I feel like that's something that gets lost.

Debra Ciskey (29:56)

Right.

Yeah, that's,

yeah, I mean, that's that's the actual thing. I mean, when I was working on my master's degree, took a class in organizational learning and it's, you know, it's, it's a thing. But, the other thing I wanted to say about what you were just talking about is, within the realm of emotional intelligence, it's important to be observant, right? Of your, of your folks that you work, that work for you, that work with you, even those that are

you know, superior to you in the the organizational chart, be observant about, you know, where are they today? What needs might they have? Is something going on? And, you know, if someone's acting a little different or seems a little quieter or all those things, you know, we all have characteristics that we display at work, right. But, you know, it's important to be there for that person and just say, hey, you know,

I didn't see you speaking with your coworkers this morning like you usually do. Is there something wrong? Is there something I can support you in today? Or you look really happy. You must have had a great drive to work. And just kind of people appreciate that. It's like she noticed. She noticed me. That means a lot to a subordinate. Just noticing that.

You know, everyone says, I stand at the door every day and say hello to people. Okay, great. But if you do that every day and you don't do anything else, it's just a thing you do, you know.

Adam Parks (31:25)

In our remote environment and through our one on one meetings, I've really focused on a particular question, which is where do you find joy in your role? Where are you finding joy right now with the job that you're doing? What is working for you? And over, I'm going to say about an 18 month period, I learned a lot about the individuals that are working with the organization. Like all my teammates, I have a much better understanding of them, but I also got a much better understanding of where they want to be.

And I've got a web developer that wants to focus on AI data analytics. I've got people that really do want to cross over to other skill sets and areas. And we've developed some programs and projects to give them those opportunities. So after, let's call it a 12 month period of really kind of deploying this, we did our one on one meetings for Q4 last year, 2024. And the result was everybody has had the opportunities to do the things that they want.

Adam Parks (32:23)

wanted to learn how to do. And now they're having more opportunities. We're continuing to feed them with some additional opportunities to execute on some of those things. I found the whole team engages quite differently when they're given those opportunities. And even the tasks that they were hired to do that maybe is not their real passion.

Debra Ciskey (32:33)

I think that's great.

Adam Parks (32:42)

The quality of those tasks have improved as well because they feel a camaraderie to the organization, a camaraderie amongst their team members. And I'm seeing a lot of cross-training between departments and everybody showing everybody else what it is they do and how they do it. I could not be prouder to have adjusted our culture in a way that enables this type of collaboration across departments.

Debra Ciskey (33:09)

Yeah, I love that. Especially the people sharing their skills with each other because either you're going to get stuck doing that one thing for everybody and not be able to become more creative and more broad. But if you teach someone else how to do it, it's not like now they have a leg up on you. No, it's not. Now they're a collaborator and a team member that can exactly now you can take a day off. Somebody knows how to do that. Right. So I, you know, I think it's

Adam Parks (33:27)

Now you go back up when you're out.

Debra Ciskey (33:35)

As long as people are rewarded for doing that and they see some benefit and it doesn't come back in a negative way sometime in the future. You you've seen it happen. I can't just think of a scenario, but it happens all the time, you know.

Adam Parks (33:47)

It gets used against

you, your passion or your attempt to branch beyond. And then all of a sudden someone saying, why would you waste my time like that? Or why would you waste the company time? I can't work in those types of environments. And I've worked with some great organizations and I've worked for some terrible organizations and I will not manage my team the way that I was managed at a terrible.

Debra Ciskey (33:59)

Right.

Exactly,

yeah, yeah. Yes.

Adam Parks (34:11)

I hope other leaders can pull from that as well. We've all had those experiences and are, at least

most of us have, and being able to identify how you're speaking to people, supporting the people around you. That emotional intelligence has been mission critical for the success of my organizations.

Debra Ciskey (34:29)

Yeah, I'm sure it has. I think that's great.

Adam Parks (34:31)

Debra, I can't thank you enough for coming on and having another chat with me. I really do appreciate, I could just sit here and talk to you for hours. I think we're gonna have to make this a little bit more regular. I'd like to get you back out here again talking with us more about emotional intelligence, training, compliance. I mean, you're just such a wealth of knowledge across the industry. I just can't thank you enough for your insights.

Debra Ciskey (34:34)

Yeah.

Let's do it sometime.

Thanks Adam, that's kind of you.

Adam Parks (34:58)

For those of you that are watching, if you have additional questions you'd like to ask Debra and myself, you can leave those in the comments on LinkedIn and YouTube and we'll be responding to those. Or if you have additional topics you'd like to see us discuss, you can leave those in the comments below as well. And I'm willing to bet I can get Debra here at least one more time to help us continue to create great content for a great industry. But until next time, Debra, thank you so much for your insights. You are just fantastic.

Debra Ciskey (35:21)

You're welcome and thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

Adam Parks (35:23)

Absolutely, and everybody, thank you for watching today. We appreciate your time and attention, and I'll see you all again soon. Bye, everybody.