Understanding Intentional IMPACT With Patrick Donadio
To be an effective leader who inspires instead of creating conflicts, one must know how to communicate the right way. Here is Patrick Donadio, communication strategist, author, and coach, who presents his six-step process for communicating with intentional IMPACT. Together with Sean Olson, he breaks down his recommended approach to leadership communication, as well as his greatest lessons from his years of being a public speaker. Patrick also talks about what it is like to be a solopreneur and his secrets to leading with intentionality.
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Understanding Intentional IMPACT With Patrick Donadio
Welcome to the new episode of the show. This is the show where you read the real stories of people like you who become extraordinary leaders. You'll learn some valuable lessons from their lives, lessons you can apply to become the best leader you were created to be. When you become an intentional leader, lives are changed. Thank you for joining us. I'm happy to introduce a wonderful man, but a friend that I've known for a while now. His name is Patrick Donadio. Patrick is based in Columbus, Ohio. He is a communication strategist, a speaker, a coach, and an author. Patrick, welcome to the show.
Sean, it's great to see you.
Professional Career And Leadership Lessons
Good to see you, too. I know that you have done shows before and you've actually built your career around speaking. This is not a nerve-wracking thing for you, but we're glad to have you. Patrick, you're so familiar with our show. We start every show with the same question. We want to get to know our guests and understand how their journey and becoming a great leader can help our readers realize they can become that great leader, too. Give us a walk through your professional career and the leadership lessons learned along the way.
Thank you, Sean. It's great to be with you and all your readers. All of us have a story. My story is probably no different than a lot of folks. I grew up in a very small community. All my grandparents came from Italy. I was very fortunate that my grandparents lived next door. I got an inculturation of learning and hanging around older people. I think as a leader, when you get comfortable working with all kinds of folks, a lot of this comes from our previous experiences.
I grew up in a small town. I went to Catholic schools, which meant that I was involved. I was a reader at church. Early on, I had an idea that I liked being in front of people. I remember doing the MC for our eighth-grade program. Part of what I'd like our readers to think about is leadership doesn't start when you start your work. It starts early in your life. You think about where you were, where you came from, what you learned, and all of those things are the things that shape you into the leader you're going to be. I got it. I know we don't want to read about my early journey, but I think getting that perspective is important because I was a student council president in high school. I was in musicals. I was very involved.
High school was great. I loved high school. The thing about being a great leader is finding someone who believes in you. We don't get there on our own. We get there when we have a team of folks, particularly if you have someone who believes in you, and I've had those kinds of folks. I want to share two quick stories and I'm going to jump into my professional career.
I was an athletic football player in ninth grade and I got some injuries so I couldn't play. I liked the sports. I stayed on to be a manager and manager is not a great thing, but I love sports and I knew that I didn't want to let go of that. When I was a manager at high school, the head coach said to me, “I like you and we're going to need an athletic trainer next year. I'd like to send you away to athletic training school.” I said, “I don't know if I could do that.” He goes, “You could do that.” I said, “I've never been out of my hometown.” He goes, “It's fine. You'll be great.”
He sent me to Miami University. I went to a ten-day athletic training program, came back, and became the athletic trainer. What a big impact that made on me to have somebody believe in me, to encourage me to step up. The thing that's interesting, I was a heavy, chunky guy. Once I became the athletic trainer, it changed my whole perspective of myself. I started working out. I lost weight and it was an amazing thing.
Being a great leader is finding someone who believes in you. We cannot just get there on our own.
You hit something key and I want to dive in for a second. It changed your view and so you started to go about that journey to lose weight. What was it about that new role that made you say, “I have to get better?”
I think I felt better. When you're a manager, let's think about it. People look down on a manager. You're the manager. You're not the star quarterback. However, when you're the athletic trainer, I had my own little white uniform. I had a shirt with my name on it. People looked up to me. People were asking me, “I've got this injury.” It shifted the way I saw myself. Once I saw myself in a different way, and this is something you and I know, Sean, that we don't learn in school, it's about the mindset. We could talk about that a little bit, but once I saw myself differently, I began to think about myself in a different way.
I see myself as better than what I am. I'd like, I'm dumpy, I'm frumpy. I never looked at myself that way but once I got that perspective, it shifted a lot of things. I want people to realize being a great leader starts with having people that believe in you who think you have the possibility and the capability of taking it up a notch.
I love that phrase of, “I saw myself differently,” but then you did something about it. You were intentional then at doing something about it. Awesome. Press play, and continue on.
One more quick example. I was in high school musicals and we were promoting one of the musicals. I asked the principal if I could do a quick morning announcement. I did, and it was fun. He said to me, “You did a nice job. I would like if you would come once a week and do the morning announcement.” I said, “Really?” “Just come in once a week.” That's how I got my whole concept about, “I would like to be in broadcasting,” and that concept shifted me. I went to a higher university. I got an undergrad degree in Radio and TV. I did a lot of radio because I got a face for radio.
I use that phrase for myself. Not you.
It’s the idea of being put in opportunities. When I went to college, I worked my way through school, which you can't do now. It's so expensive to go to school. I had summer jobs and I had a work-study program and then I became a resident assistant, which is the students who work in the residence halls. I had some great role models, and somebody said to me, “I think you should try out for the assistant resident director position.” I said, “I don't know.”
As I'm talking about my journey, I want people to realize that the importance of having people who believe in you, and my big belief is once you get to the point where you are, you need to pay it forward and find ways you can believe in others. From there, of course, I ended up going to grad school and got my MBA. It was because one of my supervisors said, “If you're going to start grad school, we have an opening. You could start early because I need somebody to go up and be a graduate director,” and I went with a little bit of encouragement.
Ironically, I liked the university so much that I stayed and worked there for a few years and got very engaged in a lot of committees. I have a good friend of mine named Mark Sanborn and he wrote a book, You Don't Have to Have A Title To Be A Leader. I love that phrase. I think that if you're not in a leadership role right now and you're reading, you're still a leader. I want to make sure we expand that definition of leadership, but to make a long story short, I was chairing a crime prevention committee on campus.
Another person again said, “I'm going up to this association in Columbus for crime prevention. I'd like you to come with me. You're this campus chair and I'd like you to meet this group.” When I went there, it ended up they had an opening for a position and he recommended me. I moved to Columbus and started a job with the Ohio Crime Prevention Association as a program director. My job was we got a $125,000 grant from the state. I had a one-year job, with no guarantee, but I knew I liked Columbus. I wanted to get out of Athens. When I took the job, I had to build this program.
I started from scratch and I had to create these training seminars. It was a big risk. I think it's important that we stretch ourselves. I was single. It didn't matter. I took a leap and I came to Columbus. Sometimes, being an intentional leader also means you can't control everything. You have to be at the right place at the right time.
Ironically, a year and a half later, my boss left and they asked me if I would like to be the director now. I'm was 27 years old. This is very unheard of. I took the job and I realized something important about myself, Sean. I didn't like being the director. I loved being the program director because I was doing workshops. I was traveling around the state. Now I'm the director. I'm in the office and working on budgets and I'm trying to fundraise and I was busy.
That's an important piece, though. Sometimes, getting promoted takes you out of joy.
The good news is I was hiring speakers for our conference. We were a pretty prominent association. We were being asked to go out and speak at other state associations. I got invited to come speak in Arizona and I spoke in New York as a part of my job. About a year and a half into this, it was getting so bad that I didn't want to go to work. I literally would get up and go, “I can’t go to work.” I decided that I was going to quit. I quit my job. This is not the thing I reckon.
I said, “I want to be a speaker.” I know how to speak. I didn't understand anything about the business side. Luckily, one of the speakers I had hired was a member of the National Speakers Association. When we were talking, he said, “Take me to breakfast and I'll tell you a little bit about NSA.” We went to breakfast and I got excited. I quit my job. I went to the speaker school and the rest is history. That's how I got started. At the age of 28, I became an entrepreneur, a broke, poor entrepreneur, but I was an entrepreneur nonetheless.
What's neat about that story, listening to all the different pieces, going back to high school, yes, there were people that were in your path. A couple of thoughts on that is you actually listened to them. You didn't brush it off. You took risks. Smaller risks became bigger risks. This is key as we grow as a leader, but I love this final aspect of the idea that it's like, “I'm going to give it a shot.” We never get anywhere significant without saying, “I've got to try.”
I love this phrase, and I can't remember who said it. I didn't take a risk, Sean. I made a risk. Here's the difference. I had been fortunate that I worked at the university for a few years and I had free room and board and I got paid. I had saved some money. I wasn't a wealthy person, but I had a little bit of money in the bank. When I decided to quit my job, I did some homework. I had to go to the library because we didn't have internet.
We had to have electricity, by the way. We just didn't have internet. I went to the library and did some research and I read that most small businesses will not stay in business past the third year. I knew that I had to be able to hang in there. When I decided to quit, I had money in the bank. I knew I could survive on a mac and cheese for two years if I had to. The idea of when I talk about taking risks, I always like to remind people that it's a calculated risk. I call it to make a risk. You still leap, but you have a little plan.
Speaking Business
You launch your speaking business. What was your initial goal? “From day 1 to 5 years, I want this to happen.”
My initial goal was I wanted to be a national speaker. That was my initial goal. I'm a local person here in Columbus. I was very fortunate that I was introduced to the book called The Power of Positive Thinking by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale. I read that book and it changed the way I look at things. A couple of things in the book that I liked was the whole idea of the power of positive thinking. When I quit my job, it was difficult. I can tell you when I quit my job, my father said, “What are you doing? You got a company car and you got a pension. What are you thinking?”
I said, “I'm not happy.” “I'm not either, but suck it up.” Anyways, my first year, I think I made, I don't know, maybe $8,000. I didn't make a lot of money. I thought to myself, “I want to be a national speaker,” so I started putting little notes on my coffee maker in the kitchen on my bathroom mirror. I'm a natural speaker. I know this sounds weird, but I knew.
That's Norman Vincent Peale in real life.
I knew I had to plant the seed. Believe it or not, after I got some good engagement, I joined the Speakers Association, and things started to take off. Much of what I think starts for all of us, and we know this, Sean, as coaches, is that our beliefs drive our behaviors and our behaviors get the results we want. You can't change your behavior sometimes. You got to do a deeper dive and take a look at your mindset and your beliefs.
Solopreneur
I know you made a conscious choice early on to be a solopreneur. I'm going to talk about this for a little bit because some of our readers are in Corporate America, and some of them are in healthcare and higher education, but there are a lot of solopreneurs here. There are also a lot of entrepreneurs here that have built companies of various sizes. You made a conscious decision to be a solopreneur, and I'll tell you some of his stories that I know about him. He's had over 30 years now doing six figures as a solopreneur, so it can happen. Why did you make that decision and how have you kept that momentum over the years?
It's interesting. I have an older brother. He went to Ohio State. When I was getting ready to look at schools, I said to myself, “I do not want to go to Ohio State.” It's a great school, but it wasn't for me. I wanted a smaller campus. Ohio University at the time was probably one of, I would say, the top three broadcasting programs in the country, but I always knew for me, I liked to be a big fish in a small pond. It's the way I rolled. Ironically, my brother started his own architectural firm probably close to the same time.
I didn't know I wanted to be a solopreneur. Initially, I knew I wanted to quit my job. I could have grown a business, but as I started to learn more from my brother, the kind of work involved and the effort, it didn't seem like it was for me. I love the fact that there's no right or wrong way. We all have opportunities to do it our way. I found that it was more effective if I could do it as a solopreneur. That doesn't mean I had hired some contractors. I had some people helping me, but I never wanted to grow a business with employees. That was a conscious choice.
I know you're doing well. You're developing the speaking. I know we had a transition years ago, but talk about some of the workshops you developed and what you were doing in those first twenty years.
The first thing I did was go out and look for what I call low-hanging fruit. I figured out who were the folks I already knew that I could go work for. Being a past director of the Crime Prevention Association, I went into the area of law enforcement. I spoke for free at the governor's conference in New York. The next year, I told them I'd love to come back and they hired me as a speaker. I went to the Ohio Sheriff's Association. I went to where I was known and what I knew. As I began to grow as an association person, I also did a lot of work for associations.
Early on, I tried to figure out where could I go that would be the easiest way to jump in. From there, I think the best thing I did was join the National Speakers Association because here I was with a bunch of folks who were doing what I wanted to do and were some years ahead of me. By joining NSA, I had folks who shared with me and taught me, and they did what I talked about. They're paying it forward. From going to the meetings, I learned how to sell, I learned how to market, I learned how to close the deal.
Of course, I joined the National Association and then, of course, I got to see the big cojones. I met Zig Ziglar. Ironically, I met Norman Vincent Peale. He was 93 years old. He came and spoke at the conference, and I was like, “This is my idol.” By going to the national level and to see what caliber speakers Zig Ziglar, Stephen Covey, Tony Robbins, I started to see those kinds of folks. A good friend of mine, Nito Qubein, is also a member of the NSA. He's now the president of High Point University.
He’s another person I would call an informal mentor. He said, “You are some of the people you hang out with.” If you want to be a great person, hang out with great people. I think, again, going at the national level helped me get the vision for what I wanted to do. From there, things took off and I started doing some national speaking and I started to hit the market. Probably 4, 5, 6, 8 times a year, I'd be doing some national conferences.
If you want to be a great person, hang out with great people.
The thing that's interesting is that this is a little more than you may want to know, but I didn't get married until I was 35. I was single and I think it was helpful because being single, I could take even bigger risks during my business. I don't have to worry about feeding a family. By the time I met my wife, I'd probably been doing this for nine years, and my business had taken off. I had a chance to actually go as a goodwill ambassador to Japan in 1991 through Rotary. That, to me, was a wonderful experience as well where I got to learn a lot about culture and meet a lot of interesting people. The concept of growing your business is a process. That's one of my favorite phrases. Most people think about events, but most things aren't events. They're a process.
It takes time. One of the things I like that you shared there, like a leadership lesson that I heard in that, we have that word solopreneur, which basically means I'm looking to build a huge company with employees, as you stated, but solo does not mean alone. You had the connections, you had the network and you had the NSA. You were tapping into people and friends. I would even go so far as to say that if you're not building your company and trying to be a solopreneur, there's even a greater need to find those people through networking. You can't do it alone.
Mastermind groups were a very important part of my early career. I'm still in mastermind groups, but a mastermind group, if our readers don't know about that, I know Napoleon Hill came up with the concept of the mastermind group. It’s where you have a group of people who are experts like you. May not all be in your same field and you get together occasionally and you help each other. It is a journey.
Communicating With Impact
I know you had a shift in your business years ago because you wrote a book and that book is called Communicating with Impact. Tell our readers why you wrote the book.
As most people know, if you're in the business as a speaker or even as a coach, one of the best things you can do is build credibility. The other thing I was learning is that I started doing some coaching right before I started the book and coaching is about helping others. I realized that I couldn't help individuals because they couldn't afford to have me come speak to them. If I could come up with a way that I could get people information without having to necessarily come to a workshop, it would be helpful.
The book actually came after the business. Most people were having to book out right away. I was probably two decades into my business before I wrote the book. Here's what I did, Sean. It's a little different, but I was teaching communication classes and presentation skills for years. People would say to me, “Do you have a book?” I go, “No, I don't have a book.” I decided I didn't like to write. I recorded my workshop. I had it transcribed. I had somebody transcribe it. That's how I started my book.
I took the transcripts and then started to massage them and work on them. I didn't even have a process then. I had an idea for a book. To me, the thing that I think makes my book, a little unique because a lot of people talk about communication skills, but not everybody has actually sat down and thought through how can you create a process that people can utilize to help get greater results. That's the piece that I'm proud of the most about. It’s having created this process in addition to the book.
What I like about how you got to the book by recording your workshops, the phrase out there is that everybody has a book in them. The question is how to get it out if it's in there and so yours is a unique thing of you have these workshops you're already doing, you're speaking. You recorded it and brought it all together. I say that because there's so many people reading that are writing blogs, doing short videos, and creating content. Repurpose it, put it all together, make it flow, and have a process behind it, and you've got your centerpiece.
Nowadays, there's so much technology around that makes it so much easier. Even to get my workshop transcribed, it wasn’t like I could record it now, and it’s got to make me transcribe. I had to find somebody to send them a cassette tape. They had to type it and send it back.
Walk us through communicating with impact. What is that process you created?
You're going to love the first step, Sean, because it ties in very nicely with the title for your show because the IMPACT process is an acronym. There are six keys that I've uncovered that are critical for great communications. Ironically, I came up with the idea of a process when I was in Japan because that was staying with Japanese families. Every two weeks, I was changing homes and I would get to the new home and then they'd like, “Would you like some sushi?” I don't like sushi, but I was being nice. “Yeah, thank you.” They would say, “He likes sushi.”
The next home is more sushi. By the third house, I said to my host family who had a couple of young kids, “Do you have McDonald's? I would like to go to McDonald's because I'm homesick.” They were like, “We'd love to go.” They took me to McDonald's. I got the Big Mac, the burger. I got the fries. When I was eating those French fries, I thought, “These fries taste exactly the same as they do in the States.” That's when the idea went off. Recipes and systems are so important. The IMPACT process is a system that you can use. I'll walk you through the six keys. They're very easy to remember.
It's not easy to implement. It's easy to remember. The I is Intention. I love your title. The first step to communication is to think before you speak. What's your intention for your communication? The M is for the Message and the Method. There's a lot of methods you can communicate. We're communicating now if you're listening on audio, if you're watching on video, you can send an email, you can pick up the phone. The M is also the Message. How do you craft a powerful message that's going to achieve the intention? The intention is the core around everything.
The P is the Person. Everybody's different. We've got introverts and extroverts. How do you personalize the message to the person? That's the IMP part or the IM Planning. The ACT part is still the planning, but now you're going to talk about, how do you plan the delivery. The A is Activate. There are two types of activations I talk about in the book. One is Active Listening and the other is Active Engagement. By the way, Sean, I'm curious. I don't know if many of your readers would know the answers to this, but I'm going to ask you this question and see if people at home can also respond. Have you had a formal 60 to 90-minute listening seminar?
Meaning have I executed one?
Have you been to one? Have you done a workshop?
Honestly, I've had ones, not that long. Not like that was the focus. It's been an element of many, but it's never been the sole focus.
I've been teaching this topic for two decades and I asked this question a lot. I ask the audience the same question. Guess how many people respond when I ask if they've had any formal listening skills training?
Probably one, if any.
It's 10% at the most. One time, nobody raised their hand. I was surprised. Active listening, to me, is a very important skillset. We know that as coaches, Sean, how critical that is. That's the A-step, but also the A-step is active engagement. I've been tracking the Gallup studies on engagement and even engagement has been an issue, but even more so now since COVID. How do you engage people physically, mentally, and emotionally? Once you've crafted the message, you want to think about how do we get people engaged in the message.
The C in the IMPACT process is Clarify. The meaning of the message doesn't always come from the sender. You want to make sure that you both get the same message. That's what we talk about, checking for understanding. The last step in the impact process, the T is Transform. I talk about two types of transformations. There's an internal transformation and an external transformation.
What we're talking about is how do you transform your words and your actions into the intention. Everything comes back to the intention. That's a quick high-level look at the impact process, the six keys. Ironically, most people like to look at a book and they go, “That's nice.” Since it was transcribed from our workshop, my book is more like a workbook because every chapter is packed with tips, tools, and techniques. That's the way I wanted it because that's the book I like to read.
Translating To Audience
Listening to the six steps there, yes, it's easy to remember, which is awesome. Difficult to implement. There's a direct tie into one-on-one communications or communicating with your team and things along those lines, especially when you think about active listening and such. How does that same process translate to maybe a cohort, a larger group, like twenty people, if not even a keynote speaking engagement? How do we take some of those same principles and translate it to a large audience?
That's great. I have a workshop called Presenting with Impact where I take the impact process and focus totally on presentation skills. First of all, communicating is communicating, whether it's a face-to-face phone call, email, or even an email, the same things apply. You still want to have engagement in an email. You may not be actively listening, but you want to engage the reader so that they're going to want to respond. When it comes to presenting, the thing I like about the process is that it's a great jumpstarting tool.
In the M-step, thinking about presenting, Sean, I talk about a mind map because a lot of folks have to create content. Sometimes, they get stuck. I've learned over the years that don't start with the opening. People want to do a speech and they go, “What am I going to open?” I had a call and the client's like, “I want you to help me and I'm struggling with the opening.” I said, “Forget the opening. Let's work on the content and we'll come back to the opening.” The mind mapping technique in the M chapter is a great tool to help people create content.
When it comes to presentations, like any communication, there's an opening, there's a body, and a closing. In terms of the body, you create the content. My two favorite areas to do my coaching around are openings and closings. In fact, those are also the two common mistakes I see most often when I coach folks on presentation skills either they have no opening or very poor opening or no closing or very poor closing. You're right on target. The impact process works in both cases, whether it's face-to-face.
Expectation Setting
I know now this is your business where you're still doing public speaking, but you're teaching the IMPACT process. I know you've done it in companies, you've done it in higher education, different realms. For our readers, if they might want to tap into you, why are these organizations reaching out to you? What's their felt need that would say, “We need to bring in Patrick?”
The biggest need is to get results. The word IMPACT wasn't like willy-nilly picked up because when you do communicate effectively, you do make an impact. There's a variety of folks that I work with. One of the things I've been doing, Sean, over the last few years is working with cancer hospitals. Around the country, I think there are, I don't know, maybe 50, 60 National Cancer Institute accredited hospitals and they have to come up for renewal every five years.
The National Institute comes in and they want to see how they're doing. They want to make sure that they're meeting the standards. Ironically, I started here in Columbus, Ohio, with Ohio State, the James, and then when they come in, they have a one-day review where their team has to get up and make presentations about what they've done. Talk about a tough challenge. You've got a position or an administrator. They’ve got to get up and they got 15 minutes to talk about what they've done in the last five years and then they have to take questions for 15 minutes.
Anybody can get up and speak, but if you want to make an impact, it takes a little bit more than that. That's one of the things that I think people bring me in, so that they can have more compelling content and actually get greater results. Most importantly, it can take less time, and they can have more fun because so many people get stressed out when making your presentation.
I know that with a lot of people that we coach and the workshops that we do with Renogize Professional Coaching, there's a lot of communication or productive conflict along those lines. I know companies are always looking for how do we teach this group of people how to have a productive conflict with this nuclear team. How does your program communicate with impact tie in that realm?
In the peace step, of course, we talk a lot about personality styles, whether they are Myers-Briggs, DISC, or Herrmann's Brain Dominance. Ironically, they all go back to 400 BC Hippocrates because Hippocrates was the first person to start to think we're different. I think one of the things that's critical when you're even thinking about conflict is sometimes, this has nothing to do with you. It has to do with you got two people who are different who have to figure out how to adapt and communicate.
People that are different. That's the thing. It's interesting that we're coaching people. We live in a world now where if they find somebody who is different, they focus on it as a negative instead of realizing that's actually some of the richness of life. If we were all the same, it'd be boring.
That's the great thing about what we get to do. You and I get to meet so many different people. I think that the fun thing about being an entrepreneur is that you're not doing the same thing every day. We're doing the same thing, but we're doing it with different people. It's never the same.
Being an entrepreneur means doing the same thing every day with different people. Therefore, it is really never the same.
Leading Effectively
Everybody's unique. That's outstanding. I appreciate hearing that story. I appreciate hearing about the book and the impact that it's having. Patrick, you know that we finish every episode with the same question, and that question is this. What is something our readers can do intentionally today to lead more effectively?
I'm going to jump to the T-step and the IMPACT process on Transformation. I think for all of us, whether you're a regular employee or you're a leader, we all need to continually get better. I have a workshop called the Kaizen Leader, which I learned about Kaizen when I was in Japan. It's a continuous improvement process. My final tip for your readers is that as often as possible, take a step back and ask yourself two simple questions. What did I do well? What can I do differently the next time? Those words are intentional, well and different.
I don't say, “What did I do well and what did I do wrong?” It’s what did I do well? You want to focus on what you did greatly. One thing I've learned over the years, if you want to get a great impact, you got to have great confidence and self-belief. The better you feel, the better you perform. The well part is very helpful. The different part is where you take a look at what can try to take it to the next level. WD on a regular basis. If you want to be a great leader, if you did it a couple of times a week, you'd be surprised at the results you're going to get.
Closing Words
Great tip. WD, well and different. Patrick, it's been great to have you here. Readers, follow up with Patrick or follow what he's doing through LinkedIn or his website. Patrick, thank you for being on our show. Thank you for being a friend and thank you for impacting people with your work.
It’s great to be with you, Sean. Keep up the great work.
Thank you. Talk to you later.