Why Leaders Fail to Inspire (And How to Fix It), Ep.69

Leadership is not about authority—it’s about connection. Yet too many leaders unintentionally create environments where employees feel unheard, undervalued, and unmotivated. In this episode of No Limits Leadership, I sat down with Jen Halpern, founder of Soft Sell Coaching, to discuss how leaders can foster trust, build engagement, and balance high expectations with authentic connection. Whether you lead a sales team, an executive board, or an entire company, the key to success is simple: listen, engage, and invest in your people.

Key Takeaways:

• The Birth of Soft Sell Coaching – Jen’s journey from corporate burnout to purpose-driven coaching.
• The Truth About Leadership & Sales – Why the traditional "hard sell" approach is outdated and how trust, connection, and humanizing sales lead to long-term success.
• Great Bosses vs. Toxic Bosses – Jen’s personal experiences with inspiring vs. destructive leadership and the lessons learned.
• The Balance of Compassion & Standards – How great leaders can be assertive without being authoritarian and hold their teams accountable while fostering a culture of trust.
• Breaking the Myth of Sales Leadership – Why promoting top sales reps into management without proper training sets them up for failure.
• Motivation Beyond Money – Understanding what truly drives sales professionals and why leaders need to check in regularly to keep their teams engaged.

Jen also shares practical exercises to help leaders build self-awareness, stronger connections, and more intentional leadership habits—including an unexpected (but powerful) fork-in-hand challenge!

If you’re a leader looking to develop high-performing teams without sacrificing humanity, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you transform the way you lead and sell.

🎧 Listen now and learn how to create a leadership style that blends impact, authenticity, and results.

Keywords

leadership, compassionate selling, sales coaching, corporate culture, trust in leadership, motivation, leadership development, sales teams, authentic leadership, personal growth

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Compassionate Leadership

02:30 The Birth of Soft Cell Coaching

04:10 Navigating Corporate Culture and Personal Growth

05:59 The Impact of Leadership Styles

10:28 Setting Standards and Expectations

13:37 Balancing Compassion and Assertiveness in Leadership

21:49 The Importance of Asking Questions

27:14 Building Trust in Leadership

32:36 The Need for Leadership Development

36:55 Legacy and Impact in Leadership

Transcript

Sean Patton (00:18)
Welcome to No Limits Leadership. I am your host, Sean Patton, and I am so excited to be with Jen Halprin, who is the founder of Soft Sell Coaching. She's an expert in leadership development and sales in leadership, especially around compassionate and relationship driven sales techniques. So Jen, thanks for being here. We met just a few months ago and I feel like we're besties at this point.

Queen Jen Halpern (00:40)
I love it. Yes, we did. We met at a business development conference that one of the reasons it's, this is an opportunity to promote those two sales conferences, business development conferences. They're so unique because they incorporate the importance of, call it compassionate selling or humanizing the importance of being authentic for the purpose of building long-term trusted referral partners. So yeah, I'm all about it.

It was great to meet you and now we're in touch on the regular. I love it.

Sean Patton (01:08)
Yo, YouTube.

Absolutely. Yeah. Shout out to, Catherine Brown and the good humans growth network. I, a good friend of mine and a speaker and presentation coach here in Nashville, name is Bill Gannon. he's been on the podcast before and he, he actually, were having coffee as we do every few months and he said, Hey, I'm going to MC in this conference. know it's down in Houston, but if you can make it, you need to go. I think they're your people.

Queen Jen Halpern (01:16)
That's it!

Sean Patton (01:39)
And it just so happens to have a client down there. So I was able to schedule my, my client session with the conference. And I was so glad I did because like you mentioned the, like Catherine has set up with that good human growth network. I have never been to a conference with the, that quality of, of human or that person. Like across the board, right? Like go to a conference, you meet one or two people. I, I, I connect with this person or that person, that person, but it was like across the board.

Like everyone I met was, you know, it was on brand.

Queen Jen Halpern (02:09)
I love it. Yes. And it happens just for, for your audience. It happens every year in February and in September. So folks have the opportunity to check it out. And Bill Gannon, there's a powerful king also, right? If you need a presentation reviewed, right? He will coach you. Amazing, authentic humans. And that's what I love about this kind of a community when you say your people. Yeah.

Sean Patton (02:25)
He's the man.

Absolutely. So, you know, what inspired you to create Soft Sell coaching?

Queen Jen Halpern (02:35)
I'm going to get vulnerable just right out of the gate. I was a VP of sales for a software company. And I believe that coaching is a natural, coaching is up there with dashboard reporting, with documenting in your CRM. I mean, coaching shows that you consistently invest in your people. And the more you invest in your people, the better they perform. So consistent, repeatable coaching, regardless if they're

older, have more experience because you bring different perspectives to the party. And I was a VP of Sales. I was so honored and excited that I'd been there about just six months. And I came home one night and my daughter said to me, Mama, you say you love your job, but why do you come home so angry every night?

And that's a moment where I, I describe it as a hug and a punch. So I had no idea how I was showing up. Here's my 12 year old kid who's way more observant, tapped into my humanity than I'm even aware, like a deep level of awareness. And it really threw me for a loop. And I talked to my, my hubby at the time and got fam, we had like a family conference. And I said, I can't keep doing this. This is, so that we agreed. I went to my CEO and I said, let's exit.

Exit me. This is not, mm-mm. And that was a pivotal moment because I believe in leveling people up. I believe in the importance of authentic listening and the power of asking authentic, difficult questions, which make people uncomfortable, but that's where change happens. So all of that to say, that led to soft-cell coaching. So leaving corporate for good, I made that decision. And opening up soft-cell coaching. And that's what I do. Yeah, I love it.

Sean Patton (04:10)
What was that decision like for you to say the right decision for me is to exit and do my own thing because I'm not happy in this culture, it's not fulfilling versus do you invest and try to change and sort of change the organization to be the standard that you want? what was that decision like in that experience?

Queen Jen Halpern (04:30)
Hmm

So this was 21 years in corporate America. And one particular opportunity, I stayed at a company for 13 years and through multiple acquisitions and mergers. And it was, as I look back, not with regret, but with thoughtful reflection, I likely stayed there five, six years longer than was probably good for me, for my own momentum and growth.

And part of that is, looking back, I am aware that I started to get cynical. And, and maybe it was, and I love, I've had some amazing bosses and some terrible bosses. But the overarching is that I was feeling more and more and more that I could be less, I could bring less of my gifts, such as coaching people up.

and more of staying in my lane, staying in sort of a box. And that's the best decision I ever made was realizing it's scary. That means how long might I go without a consistent paycheck and without benefits? And walking away from golden handcuffs where you've got a nice salary plus your OTE is very scary. But so is dying early of stress and becoming a person where my kid has to say to me,

Why do you come home angry every night? So all of those things, I was like, when I step away, I'm going in all in 10X, I'm going all in. And that's what I've done now.

I got really lucky because when I left corporate, I had one paying client and I had no idea at the time what a amazing opportunity that was. So that helped. So don't know if that answered the question or that was too much fueled coffee talk. I'll pause.

Sean Patton (06:17)
No,

that was beautiful. There's no right answers here. And you mentioned you had great bosses and bad bosses. What was the difference between those two for you?

Queen Jen Halpern (06:21)
Okay.

What is the level of candor allowed, allotted on this podcast? 100 %? There you go. That's where I was headed. Okay. I'm going to start with a poor example of a boss when, and I was still an account executive, it was in the sales world, in the tech space. And I got a lead for a company that was a viable company that appeared to be a quality lead.

Sean Patton (06:33)
100 % 100 % we can bleep you if we need to.

Queen Jen Halpern (06:53)
that met a lot of our discovery points, right? So I'm reaching out to them and I went to my sales manager at the time and I said, help me with this. Help me make this conversation go from good to great. And I sense that he was annoyed. So I went back to him again and said, help me more. I'm not getting what I need. I don't even know what I need. So help me. Maybe let's role play this. And I was bugging him. And that was the philosophy. And you know,

According to my kids, maybe I can be very strong and sometimes a bulldozer. But I know that I needed help. And I felt unseen, unheard, irrelevant, like that my own sales manager, whose quota depends on my success or fail, was not interested in helping me. Maybe he was busy. Maybe he didn't know how. Don't know. But I would call that a bad manager. Now I'm going to give you an example of a toxic manager and then an excellent

stellar manager. Toxic manager, there's eight of us on the senior leadership team. And we're in a leadership meeting and the senior VP of sales asks one of us for their opinion, did not like the answer, responded to that person and said, Sean, I didn't know you were a fucking idiot. And there was not, he was not joking.

And you could just hear a pin drop. nobody, my memory is nobody said a word for like 30 seconds.

That's a toxic manager.

One of the best managers I ever had, his name is Brent Burns. He went on to be a CEO of some other companies and I believe now he's retired. Brent Burns, he served in the military. I'm always fascinated by how much military service shows up in leadership, in excellent leadership. And let me just tell you briefly, because I know I'm talking a lot, what he did when he, I was already employed, no, he hired me and he was fairly new to the company.

And a couple months later, he was still new and I'm brand new. He called his entire organization in for a meeting at eight o'clock in the morning.

And the point is he called his entire organization in for a meeting at eight o'clock in the morning. At 7.59, he got up and he put a chair underneath the door handle, thereby locking any late people out of this meeting. One whole wall was glass where you could see people walking down the hall. And I remember there were like five or six stragglers.

They're walking up and they're walking fast and they're jiggling, you know, the door does not open. And Brent, had his back, he had his back to the door. And he said, good morning, welcome, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is what we're doing and this is blah, blah. And he's like, now you may have noticed there are some people, da, da, da. My request is when we say 8 a.m., please be here at 8 a.m. if you'd like to be a part of this team. But he said it in such a way with, I will tell you my expectations.

I want to hear your expectations of me and let's live by those expectations together. And guess how many people were late ever again?

Beautiful. That's leadership, in my opinion. He was also the kind of leader that said, OK, Jen, here's a problem I'm hearing. How do you want to handle it? Or I would come to him, because he created that space, and I would say, here's what's happening with my team. I've got two solutions, A and B. What do you think? And he would say, which one do you like? And I would say, well, I like A, because blah, blah, blah. He said, go do it. Let me know how it goes. Let me know what you need from me. Amazing. But he set that expectation not to come in and dump problems, but you're going to have problems.

How are you gonna show up and manage those problems? What's your solution gonna be? How can I help you be a better you? Don't come to me to solve your problems and tell you what to do. Amazing, amazing, amazing leader.

Sean Patton (10:28)
Yeah. You know, before,

yeah, before we get to talk to one, know, I was reminded of, and I may misquote it, but there's a quote by, Colin Powell, with your first story about how your manager couldn't be bothered to help you when you were specifically asking for, you know, support from him and how that made you feel. And I'm sure after that, you didn't bring any problems to him, right? Cause why would you? And, the Colin Powell quote basically says, when your people stop bringing you their problems, you've lost them.

Right. And that's what I thought of with that. It's like, you know, sometimes it's leaders like, why they got to bring, you know, it's like, no, that's your job. Like it's your job to support them. That is leadership. and, and, and conversely, you know, if you're not hearing, I used to say that, bitches, greats complaints go up and solutions come down. And if they stop coming up, you, something's really wrong. it does.

Queen Jen Halpern (10:55)
Yeah.

That's your job, buddy.

Something's broken.

Sean Patton (11:22)
something's broken yeah

Queen Jen Halpern (11:23)
I love that Colin Powell quote. I love that. That's so awesome. It's so true. I heard something recently also, a guy I really like and respect here in Houston, Texas, and he's the CEO, I think his company's now like 275 million. It's a software development shop. He's a tremendous leader. And I heard him speak recently. And he said, Hey, man, if you can't trust your people, they shouldn't be your people. Boom.

shakalaka shakalaka boom boom. was like, mic drop, you're done.

Sean Patton (11:52)
though it's

a foundation of everything. And then I love the second example about, you know, the leader executive who set, Hey, it's 8 AM. And he holds you to that time standard because, I was actually at a conference, CEO life, conference or actually no, sorry. This was a chief executive network, conference. I was at two weeks ago and had a guest speaker and he, he was great. He's a best lane author, but he got his start as a high school hockey coach.

So like, is this guy talking to CEOs? Now he's a university professor, but he's kind of famous because this hockey team in Michigan was literally the worst hockey program in the country. was like out of like 1,324 teams in the country, they were rated 1,324, right? So like the worst, they hadn't won a game in like three years, they're awful.

Queen Jen Halpern (12:33)
Oof.

Bye!

Sean Patton (12:43)
And, you know, he got the job over probably more highly qualified person and he stepped in and said, you know, I think it was here on hockey. He's like, welcome to here on hockey, the hardest working team in the country. And you might think like, you're going to take these kids who've been losing and you're going to lose them all. Right? No one's going to show, I got to work the hardest and we're losing. And what actually happened was the complete opposite. Right? Like everyone showed up for the voluntary workouts. He turned the program around. They came to top 30 program in the country in like three years.

And it reminds me of there is kind of a famous talk by Nick Saban where he says, winners want to be around winners. And so I think it's just such a important aspect of leadership that I think there's got this is going to be a dense podcast. I can't say already because there's I say there's only there's two things as a leader that you can never delegate.

decision-making and cultural development. That's on you. You can't delegate either one of those things. And setting that cultural expectation and sometimes, which it will kind of lead us, this is a nice lead into sort of my next question for you, which is around, especially in sort of this, with maybe generational differences and everything else, but at the end of the day, I still believe that

Queen Jen Halpern (13:38)
Mmm.

Sean Patton (14:02)
people wanna be on winning teams, people wanna be pushed, they wanna be developed, they don't wanna be coddled. And so if you set high standards and high expectations, sure, some people are gonna leave, but more often than not, people are gonna rise to that level. And that's your job as a leader to establish this is the standard and no matter what, I'm holding you to that. And the final example he gave on that was,

He would have his mentors was a hockey coach and he had this kid on the team. It's like one of those traveling hockey teams. And this kid now was like in N H L MVP. mean, top recruit, right? Like, and they were going to this big tournament in Buffalo. were going to drive across Canada, Buffalo, and there was going to be international teams and NHL and scouts and college scouts. They're there bet by far their best player. said, Hey, I don't set, I don't say who's late, who comes the bus schedule does. And.

Queen Jen Halpern (14:53)
Mm.

Sean Patton (14:54)
It was

like 5 a.m. the bus leaves. This kid is like, he's like 5 a.m. close the bus or start leaving. Their star player is not there. He runs up and he's banging on the door to get in and they just left.

Queen Jen Halpern (15:05)
Whoa, wow.

Sean Patton (15:06)
And,

and to your point exactly, you know, it's like, did that was at the beginning of the season, right? Like early season. He's like, but the rest of the season, you know, everyone was 30 minutes early. And so the standards, the standard, and, and I think that space can be hard for some leaders to hold. And so when you work with leaders and especially on sales teams, like, what is that balance between, compassion,

Queen Jen Halpern (15:12)
Woof.

Yeah.

Sean Patton (15:34)
and assertiveness and holding standards.

Queen Jen Halpern (15:38)
So I'm thinking of a couple of specific examples with some current clients. I have one client who's CEO of his software company. And when we were introduced, I said to him, why are we talking? What is it you're looking for? And he was also running the sales organization at the time. So he was like a founder leader, founder led sales leader as well. And I said, why are we talking? And he said, because

I know enough, I have enough awareness to recognize I'm not connecting with my employees, specifically the sales team. And he, his perspective was the sales team, and that, at that stage of their business was the heartbeat of the organization. Like they needed the sales. And first of all, I just pause to acknowledge him for having enough awareness to say, I must be the problem. I'm not connecting with my employee base, especially my sales reps. That's a problem.

if I want to remain CEO and if I want to grow and scale this company. So having that kind of awareness is huge versus someone who has more ego than awareness and may have a, you can't teach me nothing perspective, which I choose not to work with people of that mindset. But so number one is having some sort of awareness. That's the make or break. The second thing is I go deep on how you receive and give and really respond to hard feedback.

Because feedback is not just, I hate when people say criticism. It's constructive, in my opinion. It's also positive, but it's the constructive part that can be hard to hear. So I want to know from my clients, the sales leaders, how do you give and receive feedback? And how do you give and receive constructive feedback? And I want concrete examples of a time when your wife, your husband, your partner, your boss, your underling,

someone at the restaurant, whatever, gave you feedback that really pissed you off. How did you handle it? What did you say? What did you not say? What was your body language doing? Because that's part of my job is to say, Sean, you've already done some amazing things. What do you think's in the gap? And then I'm going to tell you where I think your baby's ugly. And that's what you're paying me for. You're not paying me to be your, you know, you want a best friend? Go get a, go get a Labrador, a Golden Retriever.

Or if you want to be liked, go work at an ice cream shop. If you want to be respected, you have to be able to give and receive constructive feedback and have difficult conversations and manage conflict. And I want concrete examples of those things. Because if you're not coachable, we best not engage. I'd rather you save your money and save both of our time. I'll take your money if you insist, but that's not being a good human, right? If I don't think so.

Part of all that is to say the importance of me saying, and I don't just say it once, I might say it 7 to 10 times over the course of 6 months, is what are my expectations of you and what are your expectations of me? I don't just roll it out one time, because we now have the attention span of even less than a goldfish, like 6 seconds versus 8 seconds or something like that. So repetition, consistent repetition of the expectations and the standards.

that also minimizes surprises. Well, I rolled out the PowerPoint in our kickoff meeting in month 1 of Q1. How could you not know? Well, are they listening? How do you make sure they're listening? Do you pause and say, Sean, what did you just take away from that particular topic? Tell us more. Tell us why. What did you like about the comp plan? What do you not like about the comp plan? But asking versus telling and consistent, repeatable setting of expectations, the standards, it's not a one-time, one-hit wonder all the time.

over and over.

Sean Patton (19:13)
You know, because sales leader.

Queen Jen Halpern (19:15)
Did that even answer?

I forgot what the question was. I just kept going on a good tangent. So keep me accountable here.

Sean Patton (19:18)
Hahaha

Yeah, no, I mean, I think I think you did and I think as a leader when we look at that

Queen Jen Halpern (19:24)
Okay.

Sean Patton (19:27)
how I think you brought up a few things we asked. I asked about balancing compassion and absurdness. And I think, right. And so I think that, you know, being consistent, being clear, you know, people, think the worst thing, you know, people don't hate change. hate ambiguity. And, and so being, being really clear and

Queen Jen Halpern (19:32)
that's right.

Mmm.

That's good one.

Sean Patton (19:50)
and consistent with people allows you to be more assertive. Maybe speak to, or maybe speak to the compassion side of that. What does compassionate leadership look like? Cause I mean, sales is notorious, right? For like, it's competitive, it's driven, it's metrics, it's, and people get into sales because right, like, man, I'm trying to remember, had, was having this conversation with some other coaches. I actually know some clients around it and it was,

Queen Jen Halpern (20:00)
Mmm.

Sean Patton (20:17)
You know, motivating sales team. It's like, look, sales teams get, are motivated, but it isn't my opinion. So yours is your expertise. So tell me how off I am on this, but sort of three, three things, money, public recognition and competition. Like a good salesperson is motivated by one of those. Like that's what I've seen. Like that's, that's, those are the people who want to get into sales. And I think if you have a salesperson who you can't find one of those three, like you can't put them up on a leaderboard and they don't care where they're at or.

You know, they don't care that they're doing, they're, they're doing good. and they have that motive, that motivation to just like, I'm, I'm good at my job or I'm getting better and, and, or they don't care. Yeah. I get my bonus. I hit my commission. Eh, whatever. Like you're gonna have a hard time getting that person to perform in sales is what I've, I've found. So it could be this sort of like cutthroat black and white type of environment, but what does compassionate leadership look like in sales?

Queen Jen Halpern (21:11)
Such a great question. So I agree. It's fair to assume sales reps are commonly motivated by either of those three or some combination.

I would.

It is on the sales leaders not to assume it's any one of those or a combination of those three, but to ask every week, what's motivating you this week? At the end of every quarter, what motivated you this quarter? What's motivating you next quarter? Rather than assuming. And I have a client who said, well, I have a PhD in organizational dynamics and blah, blah, blah. And I know that this is what motivates this person.

And I just kept pushing saying, how do you know? When did you ask? Do you want to be accountable? Let's go ask. When are you going to ask? When are you going to come back to me with their answer? You don't know. We're not omnipotent. You don't know. You're making assumptions. Where else are those assumptions tripping you up? Maybe you're assuming this person's coin operated, but all they want is to earn a monthly lunch with the CEO. Right? Or you said public recognition or atta boy atta girl, or to be team lead, to get promoted.

But you've got to ask. And so I would, I would put that under compassionate coaching or compassionate selling is truly showing your team on a consistent basis that you are invested in their success, which is not words, it's the actions. Sean, we're going to have a 25-minute coaching. That's not about deal strategy or an upset prospect. That is coaching, where I am investing in what's working for you right now and what's not working by asking you.

What, what are you doing well? Where do you think your challenges are? I'm going to share my observation, but we've got a much better chance of you, when you acknowledge it and state it out loud, that that's what we work on and that's what you improve. It's got to come from you. So that's all about, yeah, asking. And so many leaders are so stuck in the telling, because that's how they grew up or came up, versus there's a time and place to tell, of course. But to ask consistently, you're going to get, you're going to build trust.

quicker and that trust when the sales reps trust in their leaders, they perform better. Period.

Sean Patton (23:20)
I think trust is the foundation of all, it's really all of leadership and high performing teams. you know, that's one question I get asked or about a lot is, you know, commanded two different green braid attachments and sort of what makes them, I have whole keynote on like what, makes them different, right? Like different than their play, you know, and other teams and at the foundation of it is trust is, they trust that I'm

Queen Jen Halpern (23:25)
Mm-hmm.

Wow, yeah.

Sean Patton (23:46)
going to put the mission first, but people always, and I'm going to take care of them and not, not accomplish mission at their expense. not take credit, you know, that I'm going to give credit to the team and that we both have mutual trust that if our bonds are work and if we say something's going to get done, it gets done. and so I think that's so important. And I just want to do a call out on one thing you, brought up that I maybe hadn't thought of that I think is important for leaders, which is asking.

regularly, I think you've mentioned weekly or quarterly or monthly about what's motivating you because that does change. And I think about my, my wife who, is a senior sales manager and a tech company. And you know, we're expecting our first child right now and what, what her motivations are right now versus two years ago or a year ago change, you know, what matters and what's going to motivate her at work is different, right? Like life, you know, so it's, it could be.

Queen Jen Halpern (24:32)
changes.

Sean Patton (24:37)
You know, the role stayed the same. The team stayed the same. The metrics stayed the same, but something, if you don't ask outside of life changes all of sudden, actually I'm taking care of my parents. I'm, I've got a sick child. I've got a health thing. I've got whatever else or my, you know, my spouse just exited and now we're millionaires. Guess what? I don't, the monthly commission doesn't mean so much anymore. You're like, whatever that might be. Those types of things change over time. And I think that's really easy to.

Queen Jen Halpern (25:02)
Yeah.

Sean Patton (25:06)
to make assumptions, not just about what original motivations might be to your point, but how that might change over time as life happens.

Queen Jen Halpern (25:13)
Absolutely, because that's it. Life, life. Life is happening. Maybe you hire the kid right out of college and he's in a one-bedroom apartment. Then he starts dating somebody and they want to move into a two-bedroom. Then they get married and they want to buy a house. Then they have a baby. And I mean, never mind the flow. The flow is all, is erratic and such. But you don't know leaders unless you ask. And the second thing I want to add, in addition to asking on the regular to have consistent check-ins, is the importance of sales leaders, of leaders,

to know and acknowledge out loud all the fine points of your team's life outside of work. Like, it is important for me that I knew I wanted to know the name of your son, which is Hudson Tate Patton. And look what's happening right there. What just happened to your face?

Sean Patton (25:58)
Smile, we connected, right? Yeah.

Queen Jen Halpern (25:59)
Yeah, exactly.

You felt seen and heard and I could see that in your face and that took what three seconds? And so I've got a client I'm like, you don't need to learn all these details. Have your virtual assistant reach out to everybody and calendar it and maximize automation, automation and system systematize all that you can so that you, you know, when you do reach out to them each month and say, Hey, happy birthday. Here's a note. Hey, I'm to be in town. Let's go to go to whatever.

you're investing in their success. You're making them feel seen and heard and that will lean into trust and loyalty and people perform better. Yeah.

Sean Patton (26:35)
So what's one, would you say major myth that about sales and leadership that you want to dispel?

Queen Jen Halpern (26:45)
And this is, sales leaders, you've all heard this one, you've seen this, and it may, it may even be you! When we promote a top seller into management, A, you're screwing yourself out of your quota. B, are you super clear that this rep wants to move into management? C, how, what tools and systems and training and coaching are you providing for this person? To step into leadership. It is not the same

to be a rep and then manage eight reps and an $8 million quota versus a $1 million quota. It is not the same. see so many fails. I see so many mid-level managers that don't know what to do. And so they end up job hopping a lot, 18 to 20 months at a time, as opposed to taking the time to really invest deeply. I see that all the time. And often those managers, they regret it. They will bounce around.

And they don't know. It's a, it's a delta. It is a learning curve. It's no longer all about you. It's about them. It's a completely different mindset and operating rhythm. Coaching yourself or coaches, I mean, it's a whole different thing. I would say that's the biggest, and I see it time and time again. Yep. Don't do that!

Sean Patton (28:05)
So I see, I agree with you and it's interesting you bring that up because, you know, as entrepreneurs and business coaches, right? We try different things and one of, and what the market wants is not always what you think the market needs. And so I had an experience because I see the same thing, not just in sales works, although I think it's very apparent in sales works. But almost all

midsize companies that don't have some sort of internal leadership development program, which to be fair, right? Like I, there's a major, you know, fortune 500 company here in Nashville and they have a massive leadership development team, right? Like just learning development team, you know, they got, you know, 12 PhDs and this big, and they're thinking about time and they've got their belt program to level up at each level where they get trained internally. And it's awesome.

Queen Jen Halpern (28:54)
Mm.

Sean Patton (28:55)
And they, but they wanted to bring me in to work with their senior level on, on public speaking and communication. but in, but you go to a company, even a company does 500 million, like 300 million, like, know, there's some people that's a big company in as far as the world or the national nationally, that's still a small or medium sized business, but you might have 500 people. And what I see too is exactly your pro exactly your, your talking about is.

There's no program. It's just the assumption that you're good at this level, so that means you're ready for the next one. And there's no formal program to actually train you to be successful there. And for those of you maybe who are familiar with the Peter Principle, that's what that is, right? You're promoted to the point of incompetence. And man, I just see it so much. so I developed, seamless plug here, I developed an entire curriculum, five levels of leadership.

Queen Jen Halpern (29:29)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

That's right.

Sean Patton (29:47)
what you need to train at each level, self leadership for individual contributors, one-on-one leaders, leaders of leaders, cross-functional operational leaders and strategic leaders. And I put this out and I, at least in my putting out there, there wasn't a huge appetite for it. And I'm just wondering like, what do we do or what do we, what is, it's clearly something that everyone I've talked to, almost like in yourself included, you're seeing it. This is critical.

Queen Jen Halpern (29:51)
Mmm.

Hmm.

Sean Patton (30:14)
to these company successes. Do you see examples of companies investing in it and bringing in like a fractional leadership development program or like what, do we solve this? Because take out just the business success part of it. I have an underlying belief in my business that everyone deserves inspiring leadership. And, and to your point, you've, you've had great bosses, you've had terrible bosses and your life.

Queen Jen Halpern (30:33)
Yes.

Sean Patton (30:40)
at home, your life, your experience of life itself is enhanced when you have great leadership. And I think it's inherent to who we are as human beings. like, what's, what do we do and how, and how do we, how do we get these companies to buy in or is there a solution? Like what do we do to help solve this problem? Like almost at a systemic level.

Queen Jen Halpern (30:46)
Hmm.

Mmm. Oof. Boy, if I could just blurb that right out, we would be on the Oprah Winfrey circuit here. And that's amazing. But a couple things do come to mind. Number one is

Sean Patton (31:08)
Yeah.

Queen Jen Halpern (31:13)
through the more experience I get, the more I'm attracted to companies that support the concept of conscious capitalism, that it's people first, people then profit. That's the kind of leader that I want to be associated with, that I want to work with and coach and grow with them. Because people first, people then profit, both equally important, but in that order. In order to get to the profit, you got to have good people versus

When there's a merger or there's an acquisition, you give me the spreadsheet and let me just X out. These people are all got, these people got to go, period. So it's it's got to, somebody at the leadership level has to believe in the humanity first. And I don't mean that to sound schmaltzy, but it's, I truly believe it's your people drive your numbers. So sales leaders, if you're not investing in your people, why would you expect them to achieve quota or exceed quota? Leaders, if you put your profit first, they know that. So people then profit.

And that's a certain kind of individual. And I like to see if I can get to that as quickly as possible. And if we're not a match, then I will refer you to someone else. But the overarching answer is, I would say, with one human at a time, asking those kinds of questions. What do you do for professional development internally? How do you promote your senior ops person to the COO? What are you going to do? How do you fill that gap for them? Do you give them money to go take a course?

Do you have an internal resource? Do they get to shadow the current COO before they leave? Like what is, maybe they're not even, it's almost like succession planning on some level, but what is your, yeah. And for those that say they got nothing, that's a different conversation if they're willing to have that conversation. I'm thinking of some people that view that as a cost center concept versus a revenue center. You gotta have the belief. The leader has got to believe in it.

Sean Patton (33:02)
I love that because you know, if you're what I say too is if you're, if you don't have an internal program or, know, use a third party or something to level up and train people for the next level of leadership. if you don't,

If you don't have that and so therefore you're not going to develop great leaders internally, then you're going to rely on external hires to come in. And if you tell me that that's the right answer, the majority of the time, what you're telling me is that you're going to trust your competitors to train your leaders better than you can. And it's like, is that a successful business model? Yeah. Yeah.

Queen Jen Halpern (33:35)
Interesting.

And it's at a long-term model, right? Exactly. Or is

that going to help you just go right out of business? Yeah, it's fascinating. I think the one person at a time. Yeah.

Sean Patton (33:48)
I love that. I love that.

What do you hope the legacy will be for soft sell coaching?

Queen Jen Halpern (33:54)
such a great question. And I'm going to cheat. I've got two things that these both happen to be gifts from my daughter. And this sits right on my desk, which is this. She says, Mama, when I saw this, this is you. Talk about filling my love tank right there. I want to be able to continue to, I have two words. Like I remember your words, for 2025, or simplicity and focus. And that's beautiful. My words for 2025 are impact and growth.

Sean Patton (34:07)
Difference maker. Yeah.

Queen Jen Halpern (34:23)
both that I put out to my clients, which I then receive back. So said a different way, and I want to ask you the same question. What words would you like to see written on your tombstone? And for me, it's in addition to loving mother and parent and spouse and friend and all the things, she made an impact and she helped people grow. Yeah. How about you?

Sean Patton (34:43)
Yeah, think similarly, I think I am driven sometimes when I'm working on is to an extreme, but still driven by this concept of

I'm so grateful for the life that I've been granted that I feel an inherent moral obligation to make it matter. And, and to me, I have these, I call my two life maxims, but just sort of my guideposts for life and decision-making, are maximize my experience, my own personal experience of life. Cause I think there's value just in that.

Queen Jen Halpern (34:58)
Mm.

Mmm...

yeah.

Sean Patton (35:18)
And maximize my impact on others. And if I can live a life that's guided by that, those two principles, I think it clears up a lot in, terms of like legacy and decisions, right? Like you're like, do I go left? Do I go right? Well, is this, you know, cause I think it's okay to, cause I wasn't good at this for a long time, especially my time in the military maybe was, and I, lot of veterans, I know a lot of

A lot of people in service jobs, like whether it's like clergy, a healthcare teacher, coach, whatever, they pour into others so much and they don't pour into themselves. And a lot of times it leads to them believing that they're not worthy of that. Like they're only worthy of pouring into others and, no one's pouring into them and they're not pouring in themselves. And, I went down that path, for a part of my life. And so.

How I transition out of the military and doing some more reflection and mindfulness and really coming back to it's okay to do things just because I enjoy them and it riches my life. And for no other reason than just it's the experience of a rich life and fulfillment itself is a worthy pursuit. And then how do we balance that with, but I also feel I have this inherent moral obligation to, to maximize our, our, our impact on others because

I still believe, you know, maybe this is the soldier in me, right? That, you know, the only thing it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. And so I don't think it's okay to just, to your point, it's just profit. It's just numbers. like, is that a life that's, is that the legacy? that, is that what is if, if everyone did that, would the world be better or worse? And so, yeah. So I think that's, you know, I don't know if that was kind of a long answer to your question, but.

Queen Jen Halpern (36:56)
Yeah.

Sean Patton (37:01)
I think that for me it's, know, maybe, maybe it is, maybe it's he, you know, he maximized his full experience of life and he maximizes impact on others. I can, if I can, on my last breath, think back that and know with confidence I did that, I think I'll leave with a smile on my face.

Queen Jen Halpern (37:20)
that's powerful. Good stuff. Good stuff. Who do you follow? Who motivates you?

Sean Patton (37:27)
That's a question. It kind of shifts a bit. I find a lot of motivation in lot of different places and different areas of my life. So I follow a lot of conscious leadership people and books. For like mindfulness and spiritualness, I follow a lot of Buddhist practices, stuff like that. In terms of,

Queen Jen Halpern (37:50)
Mm.

Sean Patton (37:53)
my motivation to keep going. I are just like make a difference. I love Scott Galloway. I, in terms of business, I like Alex Hermosy. I.

trying to think of others. mean, honestly, a lot of my, I'm trying to think of a lot of my motivation, just comes from people in my life. Like not, not necessarily famous people, but just the people around me that, that motivate me. And I try to put myself around people who are also not being apathetic, who are, have similar values and are pushing themselves, but in a healthy way and like from a place of positivity.

Queen Jen Halpern (38:10)
Yeah, that.

Mm. Mm. That's the jam right there. Yes. Super intentional. The older I get, the more I cut people out, which may sound cold, but if it's the wrong kind of person that tolerates me versus supports me and that does not level themselves up, mm-mm. Anybody got time for that? Life is mm-mm. I'm very intentional the older I get with surrounding myself with value alignment that we...

Sean Patton (38:28)
What about you? What about you?

Queen Jen Halpern (38:53)
push. We want to move forward. We drive forward with intent because it fuels us and we see how it fuels others. Super, super, super important. And then you mentioned her earlier, my dear friend, Katherine Brown, who's powerful queen. She reintroduced me, I forgot about this guy, Joe Dispenza, is from mindfulness. And he's got things that are 10 minutes all the way to 50 minutes. And every morning now with my coffee and my eggs,

I am picking something from him and I really step into it. So I'm grounded, I'm positive, I'm worthy, I got this.

I do have a love affair with Oprah Winfrey and I follow a lot of her podcasts and I learned about Mel Robbins through her, she's also, she's a powerful queen. So those, but to your point, yeah, the people that I surround, intentional with who I want in my corner and who's corner I want to be in. Yeah. It's good stuff. What a great, stuff.

Sean Patton (39:34)
Mel Robbins is awesome too. Yeah, she's great.

Yeah, absolutely. So what would be, you know, you've got someone who's a business leader right now and wants to make, wants to make a change. What's one simple way that leaders can, or one simple step that leaders can take today to lead more authentically through connection.

Queen Jen Halpern (40:06)
So I'm going to paraphrase that in GenSpeak, but maybe it is, it is as simple as some tactical homework that could help expand their perspective, because that's often so it can be closed, right? We think we know, we see the world through our lens, but how do I see the world through your lens? As a successful leader, I need to meet each one of you where you're at, not expect all of y'all to meet me. And that's a perspective.

So one thing that I like to do that it may be a quick hit, but it's uncomfortable. There's a couple of things. Number one, for 10 seconds for five days, you, I don't have my phone, I would just demonstrate, but you are recording yourself saying 10 seconds of affirmations in the mirror. And you send that to me. 10 seconds for five days. And if you like it, I like to push, then we move to 30 seconds for five days.

And we keep going. And then you have a whole library of your own affirmations that you can pull up at any time. And that can help psychologically, it can help slowly shift your mindset. Something else I like to do is for seven days, eat with the, with your non, use a fork with your non-dominant hand for seven days for every meal, because it's so awkward and so uncomfortable. And you make a mess.

Welcome to life, welcome to growth, welcome to making a change and stepping into discomfort. And then you look back and you're like, man, I did that for seven days. I rock, I can do anything. And these subtle things, if you do the work, expand your mindset so you can hear others with more authenticity and you can adapt and meet your people where they're at with less ego and more intention. I don't know if that makes sense, but those are two sort of tactical takeaways.

that can help expand your mindset, expand your perspective.

Sean Patton (41:53)
I love it, I love it, super actionable, super tactical and impactful.

Queen Jen Halpern (41:56)
Yeah, I'm about

doing. I love strategy, but if ain't nobody roll up their sleeves and do the doing strategy doesn't happen. You got to have people that do things. So it's the doing the tactics. Love it. Thank you.

Sean Patton (42:08)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Jen, this has been fantastic. And I know when we first started, you're like, man, it's be 40, 45 minutes and look at us. We're past that. And I feel like we could do this for another three hours. if you want to learn more about you and soft sell coaching, because they want to learn more about you, maybe working with you, where should they go?

Queen Jen Halpern (42:16)
to it.

Hmm. Go to my website, softsellcoaching.com. Hit me up on the contact form. It's a very simple, clean, user-friendly website. DM me on LinkedIn. I pretty much live on LinkedIn. And that's amazing. And my cell phone is on my LinkedIn profile. I welcome phone calls. I challenge you, because often people don't anymore. I challenge you to pick up the phone and call me.

Sean Patton (42:45)
All right, well, hopefully we'll get your voicemail flooded here with a bunch of awesome people that want to talk to you. So man, Jen, this has been fantastic. loved, I love learning and getting to know you even more during this time. So thank you.

Queen Jen Halpern (42:55)
Likewise, thank you so much, Sean. Loved it.