Bestselling author, corporate coach, and business guru Jeanet Wade chatted about her business book “The Human Team: So, You Created A Team But People Showed Up!”
Wade’s focus is always on building healthy teams and healthy bottom lines. As the first Expert EOS Implementer in the St. Louis region, she facilitates, teaches and coaches the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to leadership teams at privately-held companies.
In addition, she has developed a reputation for helping clients get traction on their vision by leveraging her experience in marketing, innovation, and management.
Thanks to her passion for people and insights into the basic human needs, Wade quickly became known as the go-to resource for how to have effective, healthy teams that allow the business to harness their people energy and maximize their “Return on Individual.”
Wade was also recognized as one of the “Top 100 St. Louisans” to know to succeed in business by St. Louis Small Business Monthly.
Synopsis of her business book
In her breakout business book, corporate coach and business guru Jeanet Wade distills the essence of team and company success.
The secret sauce to great teams, vibrant organizations, and happy people? Human nature. In a series of engaging and provocative chapters, she combines business research with anecdotes from her career and her executive client sessions, showing how we can attend to human needs by clarifying assignments, showing baseline consideration, and inspiring confidence.
The book consists of personal profiles, cutting-edge research, and the keen insight of a successful businessperson adds vibrance and dynamism to each chapter, which makes it a useful book.
Q &A interview
Define what it means to Jeanet Wade to have an effective and healthy team environment.
In a healthy team environment leaders and managers focus their time and attention on humanity. That’s more than just “paying attention to the people.” It’s being aware that people aren’t plug and play, they aren’t slightly advanced robots, they’re humans. Humans are both magical and messy, and a great human team leader is fascinated by that.
When leaders are fascinated by human nature and committed to meeting the needs that all humans, by nature, have in order to activate and actualize their potential then the humans can put their time and attention into the outcomes they’re hired to achieve. In this environment people are “self-managing” vs “micromanaged.”
This results in psychologically safe and enriching environments that create a space for teams to thrive independently, making the leader and manager more of a galvanizer, coach, and influencer.
Talk to us about the Business-Alchemist… How was it started, what challenges you overcame along the way and how did you become the first Expert EOS Implementer in the St. Louis region?
My original company brand was Jalapeno Marketing and Consulting, “bringing hot and spicy ideas and strategies to the Midwest.” I set out to change the perspective on marketing and strategy services from being simply “communications” to being a more comprehensive view of going to market. In those days I called myself a “general contractor” of marketing, which today would be called a “CMO for hire”.
I focused on business and product model development, “go to market” strategies, target market development, pricing, facilitating internal teams to support the marketing effort, and tactics and promotions.
We did all of this with “sub-contractors” and customized the team to support a client based on the outcomes they desired. It was about focusing on what they really needed vs. what we could sell.
While working on a new business plan for a client project I was asked to join the team as a full-time employee. After one year as an executive at that start-up, I left the organization because we didn’t have a functional, cohesive team that could execute the strategy we had developed. In fact, the team became toxic. My stress levels were through the roof, I gained weight, and my confidence declined.
I created the Business Alchemist brand as a DBA (doing business as) after someone said, “Jeanet and her team are about turning lead weights into gold, like an alchemist for business!” It was a way to differentiate the business from its marketing roots when we added EOS as a service.
We saw the success you had with your book, where you discussed the missing ingredient to team health and company success. Why was this topic so important for you to highlight in the book and how does it connect with your own company and the success that it has seen over the years?
The focus in EOS is on Vision, Traction, Healthy. As an EOS Implementer I was leveraging my past experience in providing motivation and understanding how teams work. It soon became clear that after I had taught the EOS model, tools, and process to the teams they still wanted to go deeper on creating healthy teams at work.
We were getting Traction on the Vision, and the teams were Healthier. But there was always more work to do in order to activate the “people multiplier factor” and create great workplaces.
Writing and speaking on The Human Team may be a passion pursuit from my EOS work but is very much aligned since it’s about harnessing human energy and creating healthy, cohesive teams.
Ultimately, it is a passion project, not because it’s separate from my work with EOS, but because of how much passion I have for the intersection of thriving businesses and healthy humans.
If you can pick three topics of importance that you would hope people take away from your book, what would it be and why? (What do you want them to get out of it?)
First, human beings are fascinating. Getting leaders and managers away from frustrations and into fascination can help them see options and solve issues.
Second, stop doing things to people. Bridging the gap between how people show up (Nature) to what we do to them (Nurture) is critical to activating humans to realize their potential. We must bridge the gap by getting their Needs met first, then we can Nurture stronger outcomes.
Third, people are the key multiplier. Business leaders and managers can get focused on so many things that they believe will make a difference to the outcomes (revenue, profit, etc.). What they sometimes forget is that the business is powered by people, human beings not human doings.
Looking back on your life and career, did you ever envision yourself having this much success and more so now that you have this success where do you see your company in the ever-evolving culture as it pertains to the human connection in business?
I’ve never focused on success. I’ve focused on doing good work, engaging the people I work with, and growing my skills and abilities. I love to be challenged and confident.
The Human Team and The Six Facets of Human Needs, does support my EOS work, but it is a passion project for me. I enjoy the success, but I simply want to help leaders and managers tap into the humanity of their teams and create stronger teams and work environments. I love sharing this message and the framework.
Wade’s bestselling book “The Human Team: So, You Created A Team But People Showed Up!” is available on Amazon.
