Michael Jebber on Leaning In at the Right Place

When I sat down to chat with Michael, his infectious energy and enthusiasm popped out at me. I could tell that Michael loves working with people and relishes having the opportunity to collaborate with a wide variety of people and companies.

This enthusiasm for people is a central part of his message and how he anchors his consulting engagements. When I asked Michael about his learnings, he explained, ”what I’ve learned over the years is that it’s really all about people. People are everything. People make everything move. It’s about building those relationships and giving people psychological safety in the space and the ability to grow and learn in an environment where they can have those ‘ahas’.”

Starting with people is critical because no matter what methodologies, programs, or tactics you try to deploy, they will fall flat if you do not have participation. To make sure you have visibility, the place to start is the participation level of the individuals. Then you can build your program from there.

Michael has seen this step skipped too often and subsequently, all the effort gets wasted due to a lack of visibility of the participation levels of the team. “The two things I look for when I walk into a place are if they have participation and have visibility into that participation. A lot of times they don’t even have that. So they’re trying to be innovative, and they don’t even have participation yet,” according to Michael.

“Keep a perspective and a balance on head and heart along with the briefcase.” That was my favorite quote from the conversation with Michael. He talked about programs that are able to strike this balance and are able to meet the needs of the individuals, the leadership team, and then business KPIs.

In the end, it’s about building and maintaining momentum across the organization. According to Michael, you get there by being consistent and positive. “Make sure that you’re focused on little wins, little things that you can do, giving yourself, and others, a little bit of congratulations along the way.”

About Michael Jebber:
With over 25 years of experience both in the trenches and in senior management in organizations ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, Michael Jebber has worked with companies to provide improvements around product development, executive training, strategic planning, software development, project management, sales, HR, governance and other business areas in both highly-regulated and non-regulated industries. He is currently the Managing Executive and Adaptive Coach at Cardinal 6 Consulting.

Mike’s passion for his work originates from his desire to improve others’ lives through improving their work environments and performance. Mike is very much a collaborator at heart and easy to talk to. He prescribes to approaching life situationally, with context, and with empathy for both current state and the past. He respects others’ knowledge and works to incorporate what he learns from others into his own life. He also enjoys passing on what he has learned, speaking transparently about his own experiences.