“It’s Not Personal”: Rethinking Feedback and Collaboration at Work

Erin Wood: 0:00

My husband left his skateboard in the car, so he really wants that back. Oh no, God forbid. I thought you were going to say, I have my husband's skateboards.

Stacey Miller: 0:11

I have to skate all the way home.

Erin Wood: 0:14

Got to leave before dark, oh man.

Stacey Miller: 0:17

How long would it take to skateboard from Bethesda to Baltimore?

Erin Wood: 0:20

I think before sunrise tomorrow. I don't think I'll ever find out Good.

Stacey Miller: 0:29

I don't think it's a worthwhile endeavor.

Erin Wood: 0:31

At that point I'm just crashing with somebody here. I'm taking the Mark train tomorrow.

Stacey Miller: 0:35

Like the people that hike from the bottom of the United States all the way to the top. What's?

Erin Wood: 0:40

that called the Appalachian Trail. Yeah, it runs right by where my parents live.

Stacey Miller: 0:45

Would you ever do that?

Erin Wood: 0:46

No, no, no. Okay, it takes like six months. Yeah, if you're fast.

Stacey Miller: 0:52

I don't think I would ever. I think it's a cool idea. I would never make it. I would die in the wilderness on like day four. I just don't like bugs Same bugs same, or cold or leaves. You don't like leaves, I like to look at them.

Jacki Lutz: 1:07

I don't want to touch them.

Stacey Miller: 1:08

It's a weird thing to not like I like to look at them and not touch them, like I like to hike, but like I don't want to sleep in them and sleep in the leaves.

Jacki Lutz: 1:16

Yeah, like you sleep on the ground and it tends like, yeah, but not in the leaves.

Stacey Miller: 1:21

Yeah on the ground they're crunching underneath you like the leaves are there, you don't know if it's you crunching or like the Blair Witch, it's a real thing.

Jacki Lutz: 1:30

Or a coyote, yeah. Wolf, bear, bigfoot, mm-hmm. Okay, squatch. You guys ready? Yeah, let's do this. Action, action.

Jacki Lutz: 1:44

Welcome to Auto Care ON AIR, a candid podcast for a curious industry. I'm Jacki Lutz, content Director at the Auto Care Association, and this is Carpool Conversations, where we collaborate on today's most relevant power skills. We're all headed in the same direction, so let's get there together. Hi everybody, welcome to another episode of Carpool Conversations. I have a special episode today because it's our first one in our new studio, in our new fancy office, and I have two auto care employees with me to help break in the studio and test everything out. And we are going to cover the topic of collaboration, which is super fitting because this whole office was designed to create better collaboration between the team members. So we're going to kind of dive into that a little bit. But I have with me a familiar face, Stacey Miller, VP of Communications. Welcome back to my show. I'm back. Yeah, she also hosts her own Traction Control, but I've had you on my show. This will be my second time, I think. So. Only two, yeah, no three. We did introverts, yeah, advocacy, yeah, and this will be your third.

Stacey Miller: 2:58

We gotta do more. Yeah, we gotta do more, that's just silly.

Jacki Lutz: 3:01

And then we have Erin Wood, who is one of our graphic designers here at Auto Care Association. Welcome, erin, thank you Making my podcast debut. Yes, this is your first podcast ever Ever. I hope I love movies. I love that. Yeah, because we're a fun first podcast. Plus, you know us really well, so I think this will be a really good group, because how long have you and Stacey worked together?

Erin Wood: 3:24

Eight years I came on. I think I have like two weeks of tenure on you, so you didn't hire.

Stacey Miller: 3:30

Erin. No, we both came in in May, so she was hired right before me and I came into the comms team, you know, fresh as a daisy, and Erin was there and Tom was there and we just have the most incredible talent. I was so lucky.

Jacki Lutz: 3:43

Yeah, yeah, you really. I don't know how much of the team you inherited and how much you built, but it is a very incredible team that you run.

Jacki Lutz: 3:51

And specifically, honestly, because of the collaboration on the team, it's really fun to watch it in action. So we're going to try to talk a little bit about what makes a good collaborative team, like how do you know when you got it, how do you build it, and then, hopefully, some tactical takeaways of how people can become better communicators themselves and you know how our industry can really benefit from better collaboration. Yeah, so, um, let's rock it out.

Jacki Lutz: 4:17

Yeah that's right so to start out, um the new office, oh yeah, it was kind of weird because you know I I work full-time from home pretty much, unless I'm traveling, and I always miss out on the little collaboration that happens within the office. But the old office had, like, everyone had their own little.

Stacey Miller: 4:35

Yeah, it was like an old law office and everybody had their own office. We were all separate. There was this big heavy wooden door and this big heavy wooden furniture and you never knew if anybody was in the office because we were all separated. It wasn't the greatest environment for you know, chatting and talking and having that collaboration and getting together for quick answers, scared.

Erin Wood: 4:55

Walking down the hallway like I was like who's gonna be peering out or like if someone's door was closed, and then you're like some super secret meeting, are they Totally?

Jacki Lutz: 5:08

And as somebody who didn't work in that office. Often I literally didn't even know where anyone was, and I don't get to see people very often, so you kind of have to go on this search party to see who's actually at the office and who's there to talk to. So what's really nice about this office is it really is like wide open. Nobody has offices, but Bill no that's pretty cool.

Stacey Miller: 5:28

It's a very open door, even the offices that anybody can take if they want a little bit more privacy. It's all glass because we wanted more visibility into who was here, who can we walk in on and chat with. And you know, we've only been here like a week or two and it's already so much more open. People are talking, they're jumping in, like it's a totally different environment and it's such a testament to how environments can increase or decrease collaboration in the workplace.

Jacki Lutz: 5:54

Do you guys feel like there's a lot more like Aaron, your job? The reason why I think you're so perfect for this podcast is because one you've worked obviously with me. Aaron's responsible, like it's been a team effort, the graphic team's effort, but Aaron's done a lot of the branding for Auto Care ON AIR, so it's been fun to work with you on that. And then obviously you've worked with Stacey for a while. But you have a job that requires you to just take in a lot of information from a lot of different people and some of its ideas. Some of it needs to happen, some of it doesn't. You kind of have to prioritize everything for yourself and then you have to kind of come out with a deliverable at the end of the day.

Jacki Lutz: 6:33

So do you feel like it's been helpful for you to be in an open environment like?

Erin Wood: 6:37

that Definitely. I think it's two-pronged. The communications team is so perfect for this topic because we work with every single department in the association and not many departments have the same connection. You know they might be working with one or the other or internally a lot, but when it comes down to it, everybody needs graphic design. Everybody needs graphic design and you don't see it as much because when graphic design is really effective you don't notice it. It's when graphic design is bad that it becomes a hindrance to that communication, to those ideas that you're like. That PowerPoint looks a little wacky there.

Erin Wood: 7:22

And that's when you notice your design is not communicating effectively, so it feels like it's really behind the scenes, but we are collaborating with every single department and then to bring it back to the office space. It's so much easier to build on ideas that people bring to you when you're not sequestered. It's easier to tie those little tidbits back together of, oh, you mentioned you're working on this. Well, this could be a tie into this other project I know.

Erin Wood: 7:52

I'm working on, or if this idea gets linked with this department, like we can have a cross collaboration, cross promotion of those ideas. So having a space, it kind of feels like you know with architecture, if you have a front porch and everyone else has a front porch and everybody can like sit on their front porch and have a drink at the end of the night. Watching the sunset, you can say hi to your neighbor, and how are you so much easier than if everybody's like watching the sunset inside their house.

Jacki Lutz: 8:26

Yeah, it's kind of like we. I used to have an old neighbor. We used to actually live in a neighborhood Now we kind of are in the middle of nowhere on a farm but at one point we lived in a neighborhood and all of the houses had pools and I had an older neighbor who would come, you know, come to our fence and talk sometimes and be like it's got to be a sin that we all go into our own pools.

Erin Wood: 8:45

You know, we never go into each other's pool, yes, so this office is our one big pool for the auto care association to throw their pool party.

Jacki Lutz: 8:58

But you know, what auto care association does really well is they just created the environment, obviously, for a great collaboration, but they already you guys already created the culture. I say you guys, I keep forgetting, I work here. We already created the culture, though, like coming in, there was a collaborative culture and a huge part of that we kind of talked in our pre-meeting is just creating an environment where it's a safe environment, where you can have any idea, bring it to the table good ideas, bad ideas, you know and feedback.

Stacey Miller: 9:30

Yeah, I mean we're really lucky in that regard and I love the front porch analogy that Erin made, because it's it's, it is safety right. Like you feel much safer when you see your neighbor on their porch having a glass of wine to wave and say hello, good evening, and it's kind of like that here. And it took, it took a while to build right. Like we've had a changing culture over the past couple of years. We've had some really great hires, we've seen a digital transformation, we had to go through COVID, but like we had to learn and grow through all of these things together in order to create that collaborative culture and create that safe space where it's like, hey, we have people with really good ideas and really good cross-collaboration opportunities. So if we can share those honestly and take the constructive feedback, we're all going to be better for it. We're going to deliver better programs for our members, and that's, in the end, what we're really trying to do.

Jacki Lutz: 10:18

Yeah, and that's something I noticed right away about, specifically about the communications team, because obviously that's I work the most with the communications team and um, it just felt like, you know, when somebody had a problem to solve, like even when I went on um the chat and said, hey guys, we're gonna do a podcast and we need the name, you know, everyone just started throwing out names like good ones, bad ones, whatever, and Jen, who is, I swear, queen of words she just immediately was like auto care on air.

Jacki Lutz: 10:49

Everyone was like yes, you know, but no one. No one was like oh, that, that one though, that you know, so-and-so threw out.

Stacey Miller: 10:55

Yeah, stupid one Cause, you know those.

Jacki Lutz: 10:59

what you would consider like a bad idea can often just kind of help morph into like the good idea you could take a piece of it.

Stacey Miller: 11:06

Yes and keep going. That's my favorite part about this is like iterating on things. When you get the time to iterate on ideas, like you could have a million bad ideas but there are all these little slivers that you can pull out and piece together to make something really good. So you know, when we're giving instruction on, or direction on, a design or a concept or a project that we're working on, like I love being able to tell you guys like think big, like I don't care what the ideas are, but what I care about is that you're thinking about it hard and that you're thinking outside of the box, because we're going to come up with something that's really amazing, that's different than we haven't done before, but that's also more effective than we've done before, because we allow that line of thinking in our work.

Erin Wood: 11:45

Yeah, it helps when you get stuck too, because if you're three-fourths of the way there and you're like I'm really close, but this doesn't quite sound right, someone else might have that extra 25%, and just knowing everybody together is trying to get it over the finish line knowing everybody together is trying to get it over the finish line Because, at least for me in creative work I only have so much I can give per day before I'm, like creative tank strained. I don't know how to make email banner anymore, you know I really have to tap out.

Erin Wood: 12:22

Yeah, so then I can refill that creative tank for the next day and try again. But when that's drained there's no more yeah so if I get 75 of the way, I'm just so grateful to have a team that's not gonna leave me at 75 and just be like it's okay, but it could have been better. You know, I can say this is what I have, I'm stuck because something is still a little bit off and then it's going to click for someone else and they're going to say ah yeah, got it yeah, and that's really nice to have that just dependency.

Jacki Lutz: 12:55

yeah, and I can't tell you, especially now the past two weeks, how many calls I've been on. Obviously I'm stuck virtual, but y'all are in the office together, um, like where I've been on a call with somebody and they'll be like we'll be talking about we have to ask somebody a question. She'll be like, oh, she's sitting right next to me, I'll just ask her real quick and then we can just like move on you know, and be effective and not have to you know, put that on hold and wait.

Jacki Lutz: 13:16

So there's definitely like an effectiveness to it as well. And something else I want to mention I briefly mentioned, but feedback, because that's something that this team does really well and, aaron, you do really well, like you know. Especially, you know, I was actually a graphic designer. That's how I got started, was a graphic designer, and don't ask me to design anything, it's been a minute and I'm self taught so. But you know, it's hard to put your heart and soul into your craft and it's like an art and then to get give it to a client or somebody and then just get a bunch of criticism back for it. Like, obviously there's things that that person should do well to collaborate well on something, but being the receiver of that so much, you receive a lot of feedback and you're always so receptive to it, and it's got to be a part of why you're so successful with your designs is because you take the feedback.

Jacki Lutz: 14:11

It's never like a hard no until you try it and then show that it won't work or show why it doesn't work or something like that. But you can spend, you know days and hours and hours on something and then bring it to the table and then somebody have feedback about you know days and hours and hours on something and then bring it to the table and then somebody have feedback about you know something that they don't like about it and you're always like receptive and that makes your work so powerful, because you take that kind of feedback and you're you get the 360 degree view of all these perceptions of it and not just yours, and it really makes your stuff so well rounded.

Erin Wood: 14:41

Well, thank you. How do you do that? I think it's really interesting thinking back, because now it feels like that's so, so well-rounded school and education, and you think in art-based programs or learning, you present your work and on that due date it's not presentation, it's not test, it's critique, and it kind of sets up this process where you get your work to a point that you think it's finished, you think it's done, you're proud of it, you want to show it off, but that's not the end point. That's opening it up for feedback and that's opening it up as an option to elevate it to the next thing. And so I think having critique be fundamental in any creative process. You know it's inevitable.

Erin Wood: 15:48

I think with communications it's a tricky department because our work isn't static, right. It goes to our consumer, which is people. People are always going to be unpredictable. It goes to our consumer, which is people. People are always going to be unpredictable. So developing kind of a feedback system with feedback or critique, it mimics like who our audience is going to be when this goes live and that's like why we have to be so receptive to getting so many different opinions, because that helps us anticipate what the response is going to be. One person is never going to be able to anticipate what all of this Read everyone's mind Exactly, and that goes back to what Stacey was saying earlier of, just like the diversity of points of view on the team that is going to so fundamental to collaboration and it strengthens the end product and it strengthens what we can anticipate the reaction and response is going to be.

Erin Wood: 16:53

So, in going back to how to receive feedback, it is a practice, something you've got to incorporate into your progress of how you develop a project or whatever it is. I think also trying to center the work in that helps you de-center yourself and not taking the feedback personally, like somebody saying we could increase the hierarchy here or change the color here, or this feels a little moody and I want it to feel brighter, or we're not touching on the biggest takeaways. Those things aren't a reflection of me and my work. They're not a reflection that I'm bad at my job or this. It's just a point of view I haven't considered. So decentering yourself in that and making sure that you know the final product you and the people you're collaborating with have the same goal in mind and it's elevating that the best that it can be and I think just focusing on that it helps me not take it personally, because it's not personal.

Jacki Lutz: 18:07

Yeah, I always bring up this book If anyone ever asks, because I sit in a lot of my videos and stuff. I sit in front of a bookshelf and everyone's like, well, which is your favorite? It's all self-help. And I always say four agreements, and one of the four agreements that you read about in this book they're kind of like you know, vows to live by, kind of thing. One of them is never take anything personally to live by, kind of thing. One of them is never take anything personally, and that kind of feels like it's kind of the advice that you're saying is it's not personal.

Jacki Lutz: 18:31

And I think it's worth mentioning to advice, to feedback givers, and what I always try to do when I give feedback and I'm not I don't always do it, but I always try to say three things I love about it Before I say something that like I would want tweaked or changed. I just think it makes it more receptive and I know when I give. We just did an episode a couple ago with Bill Hanvey and we learned about our communication styles and we both need to hear what do you like about it before you come down on it, you know. So I know that I like that If somebody, if I gave somebody something I worked on, and the first thing they say is you know, can we move this? It's like, did you like any of it?

Erin Wood: 19:13

Like I would immediately think oh, you hate it, like that's the only thing you saw, or even just acknowledging the effort and the labor of recognizing, like this clearly shows you put thought and effort into this. That alone can just be like, okay, I'm not just toiling over in a corner. Like nobody's appreciative.

Jacki Lutz: 19:33

I didn't throw this together, yeah.

Erin Wood: 19:36

So that sometimes just feels good for me as well to hear.

Jacki Lutz: 19:39

Yeah, because it really is both sides.

Stacey Miller: 19:41

Yeah, and it's interesting because as I hear Erin talking, it makes me so proud because I think we've really evolved over time, not just my team, but marketers and communicators in general.

Stacey Miller: 19:54

I think we can, and maybe it's all job roles. We get a little territorial over our job roles and I remember there was a perception that design is not a democratic process or marketing is not a democratic process because we're the experts and we're trained in this and there's a reason why we're in this role. So that would make taking feedback a little harder sometimes for me early on in my career. But the longer I was doing it you kind of realize that it kind of is, and the more that you open yourself to that, the better the outcome is. And the more that you open yourself to that like, the better the outcome. And once you get better at taking feedback, get better at giving feedback, then you receive a lot less resistance, a lot, a lot of the times on the projects and on the collaboration and then, like I said, you have a better outcome. So like unpopular opinion, but I think it is a democratic process and you kind of have to open yourself up to that a little bit, not take, take it personal.

Erin Wood: 20:45

You have my vote.

Jacki Lutz: 20:46

I think you kind of mentioned it, but thinking about the team you're building, that you need to collaborate together, right. And one thing that this team does have is it's very diverse in thought, and I think when you do, when you do that, like the whole point of of diversity or having a diverse team is having different perceptions, right, it kind of gives you that 360 degree view on something and helps you bring a more well-rounded piece to the table that more people will, you know, respond to. And, um, that's a huge part of building a good collaborative team is is thinking about that stuff as you, as you're doing, like what pieces are missing? Yeah, voices aren't in the team, aren't?

Stacey Miller: 21:30

represented here. Yeah, like that diversity of thought is. You know, I just it just dawned on me that we have, you know, people on our team and even in our organization that range from experience levels of, you know, two years to 30 years. Yeah, and I think that's pretty incredible to have an organization that has that much diversity in it but then still be able to collaborate so well and respect each other's thoughts and opinions. And that's part of what makes this collaboration so important. It makes it so effective.

Stacey Miller: 21:58

But I also think we learned a lot of this from the industry, because, you know, our industry is an industry of collaboration. You know what we talk about. What we do as an association at our core is to bring the industry together to collaborate on solutions that benefit all of us, and everybody comes from a different sector, different levels of experience, very, very different opinions, but when you're working towards a common goal, you really see the force and the impact behind that. So, like embodying that here, I think it was definitely getting some inspiration from the industry in order to do that.

Jacki Lutz: 22:31

Yeah, I can see that. So what can we? What advice can we give to people? You know, like you really can't control others, right? Like you want to be able to give other people advice on how to give you feedback, but you know that's not really our business, right? I guess you can only control yourself. So what can people do? To work on this today Like to be a more collaborative team member.

Stacey Miller: 22:59

I'll start because this is like one of my favorite things.

Stacey Miller: 23:02

Honestly, I think you know early on I don't know if you've ever been in a job where you had to shadow someone else you learn like how to do your job and like typically you might shadow someone in your own job role.

Stacey Miller: 23:14

But I think taking the time to learn what someone else does on another team and how they do it and what their day to day is like, can be really eye opening, like not only for you to understand better what they do, but how they work, how to better work with them and just the nuances that come with working with them.

Stacey Miller: 23:30

We're, all you know, siloed in our own work stream sometimes and we have to get done what we have to get done and what we're accountable for. But when you take the time to learn more about other people across the organization and what their motivations are, what are their goals and and like how do you augment that, how do you support each other you become just like a better coworker, honestly, because if I don't know what such and such is doing and they ask for help on a project and I don't really understand the ins and the outs of it, then I might not be delivering my best work to them or my team might not be delivering the best work to them. So taking the time to understand, to ask the questions and not be afraid to ask the questions just because it's a different team or a different work stream and then making sure that you know people in the organization are also receptive to that, I think, is a really big part of learning something new and being more collaborative or creating a more collaborative organization.

Erin Wood: 24:22

Definitely going off of that and being proactive to learn, and sometimes, for me too, I try to be proactive in teaching what I know. And that ties back into receiving feedback where, instead of receiving a piece of feedback and I'm just like that won't work, I can't do that, why would they even say that? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Instead of getting upset or angry, I can use it as a opportunity to explain why that's not typically what we would do, and I have to remind myself like this is what I'm an expert in. I have the background in this.

Erin Wood: 24:58

I have 10 plus years of experience doing this, and somebody giving me feedback from market intelligence doesn't have a bachelor's in fine arts. They don't have, nor should they, nor should they. So, like there are so many learned things and being able to explain, like I understand why you're saying that, let me mock it up and show you, and then I can walk you through why this maybe doesn't give us emphasis on the hierarchy we're looking for, and then, in taking the time to do that, like operating with just patience, really then it's going to make the process smoother for the next time, because they're going to know a little bit more about design principles or things that I don't even think about in my day-to-day work anymore because it's so ingrained in what I do. So I think it goes both ways the looking to learn and then trying to teach without overstepping.

Jacki Lutz: 25:58

Yeah, my previous company did something. They kind of went above and beyond in this way. I used to work for a company that made TPMS sensors and on your onboarding, it doesn't matter what role you had. You could be in pricing, you could be in category management, sales marketing, you could be an engineer, it doesn't matter. You had to go through a TIA training, a Tire Industry Association instructor training, so you would actually go to the garage. It was like almost a full week. Every day you go to the garage, you learn how to change a tire, patch a tire, and they're basically getting you into the environment of your end user so that you can truly understand what they do every day and hopefully give you, like innovative ideas of like, how can you make this smoother? How can you make our product, you know, easy to work with, easier to work with? You know how do we really, you know, extend our hands out to these? End users are the most important people, right?

Erin Wood: 27:02

Yeah.

Jacki Lutz: 27:03

And that mindset you take with you in whatever role you're in you know.

Stacey Miller: 27:08

I mean I'm going to put a call out for members who want to bring us in so we could do more of this. But you know, sometimes we have people go to a member business and learn about what they do. We often visit Dynamic Automotive. Yeah, Shout out to Dwayne Myers and see what his shop is doing for the day. But like doing more of that. I think that's such a great idea.

Jacki Lutz: 27:30

So you're in the hands of the end user and you're really understanding what they deal with on a day to day. I love that. Yeah, I mean I would love to to check out a retailer I guess that's the one that I haven't had a lot of cause in aftermarket one-on-one. They usually or at least they used to when I took it several years ago, yeah, but they used to take you to like various distributors and you could go into the warehouse and see how I mean that's very eyeopening to see a warehouse of a distributor.

Jacki Lutz: 27:53

Yeah, like and how, how. The parts proliferation issue, you know, is unfolding, you know, and you see all these parts on the wall. It's wild, but getting those perspectives is huge.

Stacey Miller: 28:07

I did AutoZone in memphis and it was really cool like they had a whole retail store in there all mocked up and like cool you know, you couldn't take pictures because obviously, like they're working on their strategies for placement, but it was like very cool, because you're walking the shelves of an auto zone but you're inside their corporate building and it was like a really great opportunity.

Erin Wood: 28:25

So we should definitely do more of that Visual merchandising yeah.

Jacki Lutz: 28:29

Yeah, yeah, you know. Another one that I wanted to mention is being a like making sure you're adding value to whatever project you're collaborating on. I mean, there's there's times where I can look back and think like I was kind of a wallflower on that project. You know I'm getting credit for it because I was part of the group but I'd never really raised my hand. I never really asked questions because I didn't want to look dumb or like didn't offer that idea, because I was like no, it's not going to be a good idea. But just remember, like you were chosen to be in that room for a reason, for a perspective that you have, for a skill that you have, and you know not offering those terrible ideas or not. You know offering up those stupid questions. You know they could have missed a very important detail because you know you didn't offer your perspective.

Jacki Lutz: 29:26

So I think there's something there about getting brave you know, stepping out of your comfort zone and talk about things you don't know or try to understand what you don't know, and that might offer some perspective and that also contributes to creating a culture of having a safe space.

Erin Wood: 29:42

Because if you ask a question that you didn't know or you gave an idea that was 50% there but not 100% there, maybe I had the other 50%, Maybe I also didn't know that question that you asked, but I was also scared to ask it. So, it contributes to building that culture.

Jacki Lutz: 30:29

I think it's very relevant for people who are new to the industry, because this industry has a lot of acronyms and then every company has their own acronyms and then customers have their own acronyms, so it's like that's just one thing to think about. But you know, it's okay to have questions. I think it's expected to have questions and there's something in the collaborative process about building trust, and you're much more likely to build trust when they see you trying to understand something so that you can add value, versus sitting there smiling, nodding your head at everything everybody says.

Stacey Miller: 31:02

Yeah, I just thought of a little known fact about Erin that I think we should share. Okay, but it's acronym based. So did you know that Erin has her CAPM? Oh, what does that?

Erin Wood: 31:15

mean.

Stacey Miller: 31:15

Erin. What does that stand for here?

Jacki Lutz: 31:20

You don't give it up Creative.

Stacey Miller: 31:24

Project Erin has a certification. It's a step down from your PMP. Oh, wow, we won't publish this part. Well, wow, we won't publish this part.

Stacey Miller: 31:37

Well, congratulations, erin has a certificate in project management, and I think that's such a wonderful example of going outside of your comfort zone, learning about something else in order to provide value and build trust in the work that she produces with the team, the way that she interacts with other project managers, and she went out of her way to do that. She didn't have to do that, and so now she also serves as a project management lead on our team, which is so incredibly helpful in times where maybe we're a team member down but, like again, increased collaboration.

Stacey Miller: 32:10

She took it upon herself to make sure that you know she could be a designee, and I think that's such an amazing thing to do in the workplace. It inspires me to want to learn more and do more and be able to step in when someone else is out on something else that maybe I don't know. It's such a valuable skill.

Erin Wood: 32:25

And I think we produce so much work on such a large scale that people maybe don't notice or don't realize like we are a small team and making sure that we have those redundancies on the team, so nobody is a single source of failure. Just takes that pressure off of people where it's like nothing bad is going to happen. Go enjoy your time with your family.

Jacki Lutz: 32:51

Yeah.

Erin Wood: 32:52

And knowing that, yeah, we can pick up on that and just make sure we have these redundancies in place so that the collaboration doesn't stop. Yeah, we don't need one person to make it happen. It's everybody on the team, equally contributing.

Jacki Lutz: 33:10

Yeah, but I think you make a good example for a lot of people, because you can always look on the team that you're on or the team that is working on this project and look around and be like what skills are missing or where is the hole, where's the gap, and then maybe that's an opportunity for you to fill that gap with learning a new skill or getting a new certification. We'll figure out what that certification is later.

Stacey Miller: 33:37

Who knows what CAPM stands for Put it in the comments. It stands for awesome yeah project management institute help help, it gets revoked.

Stacey Miller: 33:50

Don't tell dtp. Do you know what this makes me think about? And it's such a silly analogy, but, like, my brain is just like filled with analogies. This is something our culture has just ingrained into us for some reason. But do you guys know what a tough mutter is? Yeah, so like you can do a tough mutter, like those obstacle courses with teams, you don't have to do it alone. And once I went to a tough mutter to spectate cause I was too shy to do it myself and um, I noticed there was a team and they looked like they had some sort of military background and they were, you know, helping each other through the obstacles. You know, there's always like the person who's too weak to climb the rope and then someone who needs to be pulled through the mud. And there was a guy on the team. He was in a wheelchair and they were hoisting him up over the wall, you know, because he couldn't do that part, but every single other part he was able to do on his own.

Stacey Miller: 34:44

And his team was helping, you know, pull him over the finish line. But you could see by watching them what each of their strengths and their weaknesses were. But they were collaborating because they clearly knew, hey, you know, this person is going to need help here, this person is going to need help here, and then they use that knowledge to help get them to the finish line. And it was such a like a beautiful example of this in the real world and like that's like kind of how I think of our team, right, it's like a good analogy.

Jacki Lutz: 35:07

We're so lucky and now I really want to do the tough mudder. Let's go.

Erin Wood: 35:13

I kind of forgot about that team. Tough mud are going. For years I did the mud run.

Jacki Lutz: 35:18

Yeah, um, but it's short. Yeah, like, I feel like it's not it's not.

Stacey Miller: 35:22

We got a name, we got a logo, we got everything.

Jacki Lutz: 35:24

Well, let's go or the torque titans, the torque titans. Yeah, can we change the name?

Stacey Miller: 35:32

I will take that feedback and I will collaborate with you on a new name, because I'm open and I'm receptive to feedback I probably um should have said three things I like about the name you really didn't buy it by your own mantra. You can submit that as a name idea.

Erin Wood: 35:45

I was giving an example of bad feedback yeah whoa. Three things I like about it.

Jacki Lutz: 35:50

I like that. It's auto-themed.

Stacey Miller: 35:52

I like that there's two Ts in it. We didn't use ChatGPT to generate it because this was before ChatGPT.

Jacki Lutz: 35:57

It chat GPT to generate it because like this was before chat GPT, like it was original you had. So long can we?

Stacey Miller: 36:00

have. Yeah, we've had it that long, maybe we can get it.

Jacki Lutz: 36:02

I bet we can get the other two hosts to do it with us. Oh yeah, how to turn your host? Oh yeah, yeah, so it's got to be on air themed. We don't even need a name because that's it podcast peddlers no, no bad ideas.

Erin Wood: 36:18

Sometimes you just have to throw it out there, that's right.

Jacki Lutz: 36:23

Okay With that. Why don't we just go around real quick? And you know, I think humans are capable of taking away basically one thing per podcast. So what do each of you hope that that is?

Erin Wood: 36:35

I think. Going back to talking about receiving feedback, I think the thing that makes receiving feedback easiest for me is just assuming the person giving feedback has the best intention. It helps going back to de-centering the critique from yourself and helps you focus on the work and elevate it to where it needs to be. That is a good one.

Stacey Miller: 37:00

My takeaway is to immediately go find someone that you can collaborate with that you wouldn't normally think to collaborate with. So maybe they're not on your team, maybe they're an executive, but find a way that you can shadow them and just ask hey, how can I learn more about what you do? Because I really like what you do, I like working with you, or I'd like to work with you more, but I just want to learn, and you'd be surprised at the response that you get. People are really willing to be open and share once they are asked.

Stacey Miller: 37:28

It's just like asking is the hardest part but, you would be surprised at what you would learn and be able to use that in your day to day.

Jacki Lutz: 37:36

That's a really good one. Yeah, and mine is almost more in question form for you guys maybe. But you know, when you think of like somebody who you love collaborating with, you know whether it's just somebody who you love to bounce ideas off of, you know, or someone you actually like to like, you're happy when they're on a project with you. You know, like, what are the characteristics of that person, because I know for me, yeah, it's like my husband is usually one person that I always bounce ideas off of. He's not gonna give me three things he likes about it. First, he's going to just be very honest and be like you know, know, you're just going to give me the honest truth, whether it's good or bad, and I and I believe him because he doesn't have much of a filter, it's kind of like whatever's on his brain, that's, that's what's coming out, um, which I respect. That about, about people, and I think sometimes I need to hear the hard truth, you know and and especially when I know it's coming from a good place and it's coming from love.

Jacki Lutz: 38:35

It's not, you know, someone who wants you know bad things for me. It's someone who does need me to succeed in my job. So, um, but yeah, I, I find, I, I, I think it's it's really special to find somebody who will give you that harsh, honest. Megan Moody is another one of those people that, um, she'll just be direct and honest. I almost would argue she's a little nicer than my husband.

Stacey Miller: 39:01

I don't even want to answer this because I feel like I have too many requirements. Because, like, I love collaborating with people who bring fun. I love collaborating with people who bring a lot of logic and they think through the steps all the way. I love collaborating with people who are really good at taking feedback or are just really engaged in the conversation. Like, I get bummed out if I have to collaborate with someone and they don't speak up during the meeting or they don't share an idea or they just don't seem all that engaged into it. But like, if you're talkative, if you're asking questions, it doesn't matter if the questions are good or bad, but like, as long as I know that you're into it, like that's what gets me excited to collaborate with you, because I know that you have an end game in this. I have an end game in this and we're going to work on it together towards that.

Erin Wood: 39:41

Yeah, and I really like collaborating with people who can respect that creative process.

Erin Wood: 39:47

Where, say, we're on a brainstorm call and somebody threw out an idea right there and maybe, like my brain just isn't hitting right, then you know, and maybe, like my brain just isn't hitting right, then you know, and I can kind of pipe in here or there.

Erin Wood: 40:05

But I know that this isn't really where I'm getting the wheels turning and being able to take a step back, come back tomorrow or the next day or whenever I feel like I have the time and space to really think on it, or whenever I feel like I have the time and space to really think on it. It's really really nice for me to work with people that you know. It's like, hey, that either give you the heads up of we're going to be talking about this on this day, noodle on it before then, and then I'll probably have better ideas to bring to the table, or, if it's sometimes, things just come up like I'm not all, I can't think of what CAPM stands for on the spot, but I can research it and needle on it and tomorrow I'll come on the podcast and let you know.

Erin Wood: 40:50

And sometimes brainstorming for me is like that too, where I'm like I need to sit with this, I need to just let the neurons fire about what we're getting at and then I'll come back to you the next day. So it's kind of twofold respecting the creative process, but then also that reliability and like following up and like, hey, you didn't just leave me hanging, yeah so, yeah, that's a good one too, yeah.

Jacki Lutz: 41:16

So I mean, I guess my takeaway would be like, think about the listener, like who do you like to collaborate with and why? And try to pinpoint what those characteristics are and try to mock them. We made your takeaway really long.

Erin Wood: 41:28

I was trying to be succinct. No, it was good, I was hoping. No, that was what I was hoping, because that's kind of something I wanted to mention in the episode and then I skipped right over it.

Jacki Lutz: 41:37

Anything else. I feel like we tackled that thing.

Stacey Miller: 41:40

We manhandled that podcast.

Jacki Lutz: 41:43

We collaborated well, yeah, yay. Thank you guys for being on the show and breaking in our new studio. We have a little bit of design work to do, but we're very, we're very excited about it.

Stacey Miller: 41:54

It's nice and quiet. We can't wait to see more guests in the studio. So the invitation is open.

Jacki Lutz: 41:58

Yeah, let us know if you want to come check it out.

Erin Wood: 42:01

Or join in on the Tough Mudder.

Jacki Lutz: 42:03

Yeah, our team is open, that's right.

Stacey Miller: 42:06

Name TBD.

Jacki Lutz: 42:07

TBD.

Erin Wood: 42:08

Yikes and effective collaboration. You walk away from feeling accomplished, feeling good. And how do you feel right now? Feeling accomplished and feeling good. Thanks, guys.

Jacki Lutz: 42:20

Thanks. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Auto Care On Air. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast so that you never miss an episode, and don't forget to leave us a rating and review. It helps others discover our show. Auto Care On Air is proud to be a production of the Auto Care Association, dedicated to advancing the auto care industry and supporting professionals like you. To learn more about the association and its initiatives, visit AutoCareorg.