Fit to Lead: 3 Essentials for Enduring Leadership Success

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Hi everyone, and welcome to today’s webinar, Fit to Lead: Three Essentials for Enduring Leadership Success, hosted by HRDQ-U and presented by Bill Treasurer.
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My name is Sarah and I will moderate today’s webinar.
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The webinar will last around one hour. If you have any questions or comments, please type them into the question area on your GoToWebinar control panel. We’ll actually be using that a lot throughout today’s session. So if you just want to locate that questions box on your control panel and just type in where you’re coming from today – I myself, am coming from Pennsylvania and today’s webinar is brought to you in partnership by HRDQ-U and Giant Leap Consulting.
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Giant Leap Consulting, is on a mission to build a workplace courage. Partnering with our valued clients to set bold strategies, build strong teams, and develop courageous leaders. Their aim is to drive out fear, so that everyone can work with more honesty, accountability, passion, and enjoyment. Make sure that you stay tuned for a very special offer for the HRDQ community, from Giant Leap Consulting.
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And today’s webinar is presented by Bill Treasurer, Founder of Giant Leap Consulting, and the author of six books. Bill’s newest book Leadership Two Words at a Time serves as a leadership playbook that any leader can use to amp-up their effectiveness, performance and productivity.
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For the last three decades, Bill has led courage-building workshops for thousands of leaders throughout the world, including for such renowned organizations as NASA, Strength, Lenovo, ebay, Saks Fifth Avenue, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
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You so much for joining us. Bill, it’s so great to have you back.
1:43
Hey, it’s great to be here and great to be with you, again, Sarah.
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I always enjoy the work that I’m able to do with HRDQ-U, and I want to thank all the folks that are patching in today from many different places. It’s always a great thrill to be able to talk about leadership development with you. I’m not going to stay on the webcam the whole time. I just wanted to let you know, I am here. It’s fall in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina where I live and hence me wearing my flannel shirt. Even if it was 70 degrees, I probably have it on just because it’s a really special time of year here in the mountains. All right, I’m going to turn my webcam off and I’m going to go into the slide deck. This is the reason I do what I do, this is my family. This is after the pandemic man. We were just itching to get out like so many of you probably. And we were able to take a trip this past summer to Iceland and so that’s my daughter Abina, she’s wearing the pink outfit, next to me. We call her ‘Bina’. And then my son, Ian, which is next to my wife, Shannon, who is next to my son. Alex, they’re the reason I do what I do. So that’s a little bit about my wonderful family.
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And I want to tell you a little bit about my business, I’ll do this quickly, So I have a company that is a courage building company.
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We help people and organizations be more courageous by driving out fear so that they can get superior performance. So, we consider ourselves the courage building company. We’re called Giant leap Consulting. And we do three different things. First, if you want to put courage in a system, it has to start with bold goals.
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So we work with senior executive teams to set a bold strategy, courageous future, for the rest of the organization. That’s our strategic planning service.
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By far, the best amount of work we do, is, once you’ve developed a strategy, you’ve got to have leaders that carry out that strategy, who are acting in a courageous way. So, we design, develop, and deliver comprehensive leadership development programs. You’re getting a little piece of that today, but many of our programs are two years long in length.
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Some of the programs are as simple as me coming in and doing a keynote. But we do the bulk of the work in that area. We also work with teams.
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We want teams to be able to interact with, interact with one another in a courageous, honest way, and to stay functional together. And so, we work with teams of people, sometimes, teams that might need a little tune up in the form of team building. And sometimes we would work with senior executive teams to make sure that they are aligned, and being good standard bearers of the company’s cultural value system for the rest of the organization.
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So three services, strategic planning, leadership development, and team building today is we also do this. So it’s just a couple of things that we do. This is us working with the Navy seals at the Navy Seal Museum that is a corporate client of mine that we took through the seal Experience, and we can do those kinds of things for teams that might need a high energy experience. This is sort of extreme leadership. We’re also into wearing. Oculus headsets are now doing things through virtual reality. We’re, training and development seems to be going a lot of other things, too, so we do cutting edge kind of training experiences in addition to the traditional stuff here. I can tell you that leadership development works. I’m working with a bunch of groups in those various photos. Their leadership development works, yeah, you’re gonna learn the most about leadership through on the job, right, The, on the job experience of just being in a leadership role, but there is absolutely a place for developing leaders, and teaching leadership, sure, leaders are born, but they are also made.
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And having a leadership development program, to the extent that you can, can help develop leaders.
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I want to let you know, I’m doing this right upfront, is to let you know that …
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DQ U N Giant leap are able to share with you a new program that giant leap has just launched, called the Leadership Essentials Academy.
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It’s got 60 video lessons, eight self paced modules, all sorts of downloads and shareable material, self rated, 360, action planning for anybody who goes through this online experience for guests, including the ex FBI, hostage negotiation, chief team leader, a DEI expert, a Navy seal officer, and a world record holding athlete are guests in the program.
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And at the end of today’s Webinar, we’re going to show you how you can get a dramatic discount if you care to, on to the next, Here’s what we’re talking about today.
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In the time that we’ve got together, I’m going to share with you some context and some background around three essentials of leadership that will make you Fit to Lead.
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Today’s session is all about leadership fitness, in the same way that you might be physically fit, or mentally fit, or spiritually fit. We think a leader needs to have three elements that make up leadership fitness. So, I’m going to share with you about leadership fitness element number one, number two, and number three.
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But first, I’m going to share with you some context and some background, how I came to the conclusion around these three different areas of leadership, fitness.
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All right, but before we go into that, I’m going to ask Sarah to go ahead and launch the poll.
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Uh, unless I’m able to launch it, let’s see. There we go, So we’re good. OK, I’m going to collect responses, have I got it? I have, I launched it. It is launched, isn’t it? Yes. So we have the poll up and running. for us. You can see some streaming in there.
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Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, great. We can give you 15 more seconds here.
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Great. Yeah, and we’re trying to get a gage on who’s here today and what drew you to a session on leadership being fit to lead.
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And so let’s go ahead and get your answers in.
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I say, yeah.
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We have a horse race going on there with, we’ve got a number of different audiences, why don’t you go ahead and tell us what we’ve got?
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Yes, we have 27%, said I’m a new leader and want to learn, 49%, I am an experienced leader and want to learn, learn 9%. I’m not currently in a leadership role, but hope to be at 15%. I’m not in a leadership role, but I’m interested in the topic.
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Alright, terrific, So whatever your reason for being here, I want to make sure today’s session is useful to you.
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Many of the ideas I’m going to share with you are drawn from my newest book, and that’s leadership two words at a time, which serves as a playbook.
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It’s the playbook that senior leaders complain that they were never handed and it is for new leaders. That said, the most gratifying endorsements that I have received around the book have been experienced leaders saying that, Hey, I read it with the eye towards a new leader, but I got stuff out of it, so, I’m hoping that the experienced folks that have shown up today, some 49% of you, that you find today’s session useful, as well. Certainly, for the new leader, you’re gonna get something that you’ll be able to take away with. And, for the folks that are just interested in leadership, or you want to become a leader someday, I think today’s session will be valuable to you, as well. I want to make sure it’s not Bill talking to all the talk, the entire time. So, let’s do, let’s hear from you.
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Let’s start off with the realities. What do you find challenging about leading? So what’s challenging?
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Hey, even if you’re not in a leadership role, what do you think might be challenging? So, go ahead and chat in your answers, in the question field there.
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What is challenging about leadership?
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And I’ll give you a moment, I know it takes typing, right? As a professional speaker, I’m always a little uncomfortable with what I might call dead air. But I know that’s because you’re typing stuff in.
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And Sarah, I’m going to just ask for you to read some of them.
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I’m not able to read them on display.
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Yes, we have. Lucy said personality is mm.
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Wendy said the other leaders not having the same values.
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Sonya said, transitioning from a contributor to a leader.
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Big one, Shaun said: Getting more people motivated Christine said Different personalities that are on the team. And Monique said, difficult staff.
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Any other Steve who said communication skills, Tammi, connect with others.
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Maria said, People learn at different levels. We have so many responses coming in here, a couple more.
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We have Jessica kind of set delegating, Theresa who said management team, not being on the same page, culture as well as culture.
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Some good ones. So I’ll just respond to a couple of those that you read about, Right? So yeah, when there’s a misalignment of values that my values and the other people that I’m working with, baby different. And that’s hard to, sometimes, you have miss misaligned goals that there might be another team, or another division that has goals that are different than your own. absolutely.
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Transitioning into a new leader role from an individual contributor is a huge thing that.
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and I think it’s often underestimated that we don’t record we give a person the opportunity to be in a leadership role, because they really perform well as an individual. And then when we move them into a leadership role, they realize, guess what. It has nothing to do with individuals’ at that point. It’s about you leading a team of people, not just leading yourself. So, it’s hard, that transition motivation, your own motivation. And staying motivated, particularly on the pace that it’s hard, and motivating the people around you, and they are all motivated somewhat differently.
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We talked about even levels of performance, you get some people that give you a consistently high level of great performance. You get other people who give you in a one day, and a C, the next day, you get the un even levels of performance.
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Somebody mentioned delegating.
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It is that number one, knew leader, malty. I see it all the time, I do a lot of executive coaching.
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I coach on a weekly basis.
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I’m coaching at least 10 people during the week, and, and I find that the new leaders really most common struggle, It’s delegating. The one that was mentioned right upfront and it was sort of impute, and many of the comments that you made, is the fact that the personnel so-called different right?
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You moved it to a leadership role because somebody saw you as operationally, or technically, really proficient at what you do. You have certain expertise, and they rewarded you by giving you a team of people.
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Well, you didn’t know that half your job was going to be to be a counselor every day.
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That’s makes your heart.
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Because a lot of it is the You call them soft, But you and I know they’re really hard skills. So you just identified a handful and we can go for a long with the challenges of being in a leadership role. So let’s start by acknowledging right upfront.
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that leadership is hard.
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It is really hard, thank goodness. We have leadership development programs.
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Because there is a certain honeymoon. You move into a leadership role. You have all high expectations. This is going to be great. I’m going to have more influence. I’m going to be able to impact people’s careers. Hey, I might even make a little bit more money but then you get it to the role in the honeymoon’s over pretty quickly. Leadership as hard. Here are some other things that make it hard.
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Your success is now contingent upon the successful output of other people, not just your own individual contributions.
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You didn’t know you were going to have to be a part-time counselor with people, and that is a bunch of your job, is that softer, but we know that it’s actually harder stuff.
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IQ isn’t enough. Guess what? I’m really glad that you’re smart.
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I’m glad that you understand the technical aspect of your job, your practitioner, You’re really proficient, and it’s not enough, partly because of the other point about being a counselor.
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You also have to have emotional intelligence, which, you know, that might not be part of your regular suite of skills.
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Your job is to cause discomfort when you’re a leader, because you have to nudge people out of their discomfort zone because that’s where they grow, progress, and evolve.
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We don’t grow in a zone of comfort, and we don’t put leaders in place two to take us and have us maintain the status quo.
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It’s always about change, it changes by its definition, uncomfortable, and guess what? The drive for results never goes away. I don’t care if you’re a new leader or a seasoned leader.
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People are going to be expecting you to deliver so that you have to learn how to live up to that drive for even more results than you got yesterday. So, leading it’s hard. If that weren’t enough, the expectations that we have on a leader, we want them to be strategic.
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We want them to understand the big picture, to understand the goals and priorities of the organizations, But, oh, yeah, we want them to be really tactical on a day-to-day basis to be dealing with the thing right in front of them. We want them to have high IQ, but we wanna make sure that they have high EQ at the same time. We want to make sure they’re confident have a take charge mentality, know what they’re doing, but we also want them to be humble and to be able to listen to us and involve us.
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We want to make sure that they take risks that are smart and calculated, But we want them to mitigate mid amaze and control risk as well, and we want them to be decisive, but we want them to be inclusive.
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And we want them to be everything, don’t we?
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Not to mention other stuff, like we want them to give us psychological safety, We want Servant Leadership, operational excellence, business acumen, continuous improvement, making decisions, employee engagement, enlistment, All these other concepts to the barometers are so high for a leader that we get discouraged pretty quickly.
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So with all of that stuff that we are expected to provide as leaders, how do you choose what’s essential?
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How do you not get weighed down and subsumed by all your responsibilities and the high expectations that people have on you when you’re in a leadership role?
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My hope is that this webinar that we can lighten your leadership load, I’d like you to for this webinar, and I invite you to consider it after it’s over to think of leadership with three important faces. Let’s call them the three elements of leadership.
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It’s why you showed up to today’s session on leadership fitness, the three elements of leadership fitness.
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First, you gotta be able to lead yourself, are you fit to lead? And I’m going to share some thoughts on that in a moment.
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Second, you have to lead others. Will they follow you? Are you taking people with you?
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How are you removing barriers to their performance, so that they can do a great job?
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Because you’re success is all contingent upon the people that you’re leading, but you lead yourself and you lead others so that you accomplish some task. In other words, you’ve got to leave work.
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You’ve got to deliver exceptional results day after day, and constantly be improving. You have to have business mindedness to lead the work to lead eventually the organization. You do these three things: Lead yourself, lead others, and lead the work.
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You’re going to be fit to lead through the three areas of leadership, fitness.
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Let’s take a quick poll, and we’ll see which of those you found, or you find, most challenging.
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So which of those leadership fitness areas is hardest for you?
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Is it leading yourself?
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Is it leading others?
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Or is it about leading the work that it’s the hardest?
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So let’s check in, and we’ll get a gage on what’s hard about leadership fitness.
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And my hunch is that that the content that I’ve got, I’ve got a little bit more concentration in one of those areas.
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And I think it’ll probably line up with what you think is the hardest thing in terms of those three dimensions of leadership fitness. So we could see the answers popping in, and there it looks like a clear winner for the one that’s hardest.
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And it’s coming in. I’ll give you another, say, NaN.
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4, 3, 2, and We’ll stop that, and we’ll show you the results there, and it looks like the one that’s hardest for you most challenging is leading others.
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And I do have a higher concentration of material dealing with that subject, And leading work. The work itself is hard for many of you, at 24%, but leading others 57%, and then leading yourself 90% of you.
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The good news is you’re going to get a little content for each one of those areas.
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So, let me go in right off the bat, with number one, Leading yourself. So, leading yourself.
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The question becomes: are you fit to lead?
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I love this quote by John Ryan. He used to be the President and CEO of the Center for Creative Leadership. He’s a friend of mine.
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He wrote the foreword to my book, Courage Goes to Work, is also a former Vice Admiral in the US Navy.
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He said, You need to lead and manage yourself before you can effectively lead and manage others.
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Leading yourself requires self regulation.
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So here are three s’s of strong leadership, The three s’s of strong leadership first self discipline.
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Do you use your time wisely?
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Do you have goals in front of you?
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Do you prioritize the work that you have to do?
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Or are you scattered every day dealing with interruptions, with no sense of metering and self regulation?
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Are you one discipline?
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Second, do you do any degree of self exploration?
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Do you know who you are? Have you ever gotten some form of counseling or at least taken surveys to understand your personality? Understand what your strengths are, Understand what your over use of your strengths are. Do you know where you need to improve?
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Do you have any degree of self awareness, super important for leadership and self care?
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You are the machinery that you bring to work every day.
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Are you taking care of yourself, not as a matter of self ish this, but as a matter of self?
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Respect, do you have self care? These are the three s’s of self leadership.
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I want to tune you into this idea of what’s called red lining.
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And so, red lining is an unhealthy, unsafe unsustainable condition whereby a leader, and, or their team are overworked and under resourced for unreasonable amounts of time.
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I was working with a company in Arizona, and it’s a fast growth company. Everybody actually loved their job.
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But a couple of times, a number of people said, yeah, I love this work that we’re doing. We’re winning work from our competitors.
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But I feel like I’m red lining.
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I came up a number of times, and I asked them, what’s red lining?
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And they said, when you’re running way out, your RPMs and you feel like your engine is going to blow up. You’re going really fast and it’s exciting.
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But you feel like at any moment the edge and it’s gonna blow out a lot of people in the post pandemic world. But even in the pre pandemic world, feel, this, they feel like they are out in the red line of stress.
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So, I’ll just ask you this quick question. I’m going to give you a case study, if you will.
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Let’s follow the case study.
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two weeks ago, John, committed to meeting with Rob, one of his direct reports.
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John canceled the meeting twice before, because of work urgencies that just had to be dealt with. Rob asked to meet with John today for career development feedback.
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They’re supposed to meet an hour from now.
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It is a tough time for John.
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He’s overloaded at work, and his boss is pressuring him for better results.
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His boss says that he needs to delegate more, but his team is made up of a bunch of rookies.
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John’s marriage is also very strained.
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His spouse says that he cares more about work than her.
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So the question is, what kind of leader do you think John is likely to be for Rob today?
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Go ahead and just chat in a couple of answers here.
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So here’s, John, twice that already canceled the meeting.
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Sports to meet with Robin, an hour from now.
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He’s super tempted to cancel it again, because I have all sorts of work urgencies and interruptions and is pressure from his boss?
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What kind of leader is John likely to be for Rob today?
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So go ahead and chat in a couple of answers, and, hey, you know, do you relate to this, or you, John?
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Sometimes, do you feel this sense of burden that you might be weighed down by?
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Sarah?
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What are some of the answers that came up on that question?
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Yes, we have a not so hot, this didn’t, not effective, not an effective leader. We have a lot of people saying distracted focused! Right?
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Yeah. These are the kinds of answers that I get a lot of the workshops, where I pose this idea as it relates to redlining.
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And another question that I would ask as a follow-up, and you don’t have a chance in your answers to this, but you could also ask, What kind of leader does John need to be?
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What kind of leader is Rob expecting jaunt to be?
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And then you can put yourself in those scenarios to ask yourself, What kind of leader does my people expect me to be today? So here’s some tips if you sometimes feel like, John, the first is get centered.
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You have to push aside your own distractions, take a deep breath moment, pull in some sanity before you’re able to interact with whoever in a positive way. Centredness.
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Second, ask yourself, Am I prepared to be a great coach?
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Leader or resource today for the people that I’m privileged to lead?
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Then third, switch to service. Don’t focus on your grievances. your annoyance is how the world’s not treating you right.
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Focus on what their needs are.
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The people that you are privileged to lead might need from you.
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So I’m going to ask you to chat in and your answers to this question.
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What do you do to practice self care and prevent red lining for yourself.
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For those of you that practice, and a, hey, if you don’t practice anything, I get it. You’re welcome to share that. Say that you intend to the wish could, but you’re just too busy.
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But if you’ve got a tip for self care, I’d love to hear it, if you wouldn’t mind chatting in your answers to this question.
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What do you do, practice self care and prevent red lining?
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We have Mary Ellen said meditation, as well as tammi.
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Said that they step by step away and take a quick walk.
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Millimeter Sonya, take takes time to get centered, Breathe, take breaks, and mixtures. Makes sure to get outside.
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Hmm, Shaun takes a five minute walk. Kelly likes to run. Rachel forces herself to take lunch breaks.
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Like to have regular workouts.
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Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, Hmm, taken work?
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Yeah, these are your need.
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What was the last one?
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I stepped out taking the time to read every day for an hour from Kimberly.
27:06
Good.
27:07
These are no good answers, right? Like, I’m glad that you’re making yourself a priority. My latest book is called Leadership two Words at a Time, and I want to drop two words with you to think about. That. Is personal fidelity?
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Not as a matter of selfishness, but a matter of self respect. Self care is really a matter of self respect. I loved the ones that you came up with. I’m really glad that you, that somebody is holding an actual meditation to what they’re doing for self care breathing. It’s so important the other night. I fact that went with a walk with my wife, and I was upset about something that I was going off. I was pretty animated, and she stopped in the middle of the road, with our dog.
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And she said, OK, take a deep breath. And I took a deep breath, and she says, No, no, no.
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Take a deep breath, But this time, I want you to close your eyes. And she made me take three deep breaths with my eyes closed, and you know what? I did feel better afterwards.
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Getting outside is great, working out, somebody mentioned absolutely, it’s funny how if we really, really, really in a concentrated focused way stress, our body it relieves stress, causes it to dissipate from us. A five minute walk walking is the lowest impact, highest return activity that you can do. You will always end to walk and gratitude. You may not begin it in gratitude, but you will end or walk gratitude, puts you in a great mood.
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There are a lot of good ideas, and I really, really, really loved the person who said, she takes lunch every day, too many people tether themselves to a computer all day and in fact, eat a subway sandwich at lunch at their computer.
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And that’s a travesty.
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You know anybody who if your work environment if you’re so busy that you can’t get away to have lunch even if it means go into the break room to get away That’s a problem Right so being able to step away and not just be plowing through some of you might do it intentionally. So you can leave work a little bit earlier, But some of you probably do it Because you’re just weighed down with too much stuff.
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Here’s some other stuff to avoid red lining You know manage that calendar. Makes sure that you put some white space in your calendar.
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Don’t even if even if your organization has it so that people can blocked out your time, then then fabricate it put 15 minutes where you say that you’re at some meeting that you’re not.
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So you can at least get 15 minutes a pivot time, so that you’re not just going from back to back bookings, that other people have full control over your time.
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You need to set aside time for yourself. Every day. Small, even if it’s just 15 minutes of sanity checks for yourself.
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Stop over analyzing stuff.
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If you can’t affect change or influence somebody who can make the thing change, The stuff you can’t control and actually do anything about, which often is the stuff that frustrates us.
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Got to learn to let that go.
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Limit your consumption of negative political news, go on a news diet.
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Avoid anger attainment, The media companies do that to you on purpose because it keeps you coming back, they want to get you with your fist in the air, upset about whoever the other side is. Turn that stuff off, especially when you’re going to work every day, turn your radio off.
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Avoid excessive drinking or eating, I know sometimes we move towards comfort food, I’m a big ice cream guy myself. But it won’t help you in the red lighting moments.
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All right, remember, leading should never be joyless about that.
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Leading should never be joyless, so let’s pivot. We talked about leading yourself.
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As we get into the next part about leading others, let me ask you, what do you enjoy about leading? What do you enjoy about leading? So let’s get some chatted answers to this question. So I asked you before, what did you find challenging about leading?
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Now, I know I want to know kind of, why do you do it? Why did you want to do it? What’s the joy about leading?
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So I’ll give you a moment to collect some of your answers for this question.
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Oh, we have some responses streaming in here. Suzanne said coaching and mentoring.
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Mary Ellen said, spending time with smart and wildly creative people.
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Shaun said, Accomplishment of tasks. Sonya said, Working with talented, interesting people.
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Maria says, Teaching people and watching them advance in their careers.
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Kelly said, rather than others, relationship, guiding others. We have lots of responses in here, I’ll read off to more. Let’s see. Denise said, I love to develop talents and Danielle said, Helping others grow and develop. Its great, right? And, and the answers that you’re giving are very consistent with what I hear in leadership workshops.
32:03
And I’ll often in sometimes when we’re starting a two year leadership program, and we’ll have our Kickoff Summit, this’ll be the central question that will ask people, know, there’s a reason that you were drawn to leadership in the first place. And so, much of it, it has to do with creative people that you get to engage with affecting decisions.
32:24
But they’re by far, the most common that we hear is being able to impact people in a positive way for the trajectory of their entire careers.
32:33
There’s probably some leader in your own life who did that for you who saw you when you felt invisible?
32:40
Who took the time to mentor you, develop you and provide you with opportunities, and you’re not only a better professional as a result. You’re a better human being.
32:49
Now you’re a leader.
32:50
and you get to have that kind of impact on others. I ask you the question, because yeah, leadership is hard.
32:56
There’s going to be days when you feel like given up.
32:59
If you can just recall why you got into it and what you’re trying to do and step back and zoom out and remember the answers that you just gave me it’ll make it a lot more bearable good answers by the way.
33:12
All right, so I’m going to move into this P so now we’re going to go into leading others the second area of leadership, fitness, leadership is a leader is successful to the extent that they help others to be successful.
33:29
That is central. It is like a primary foundational rule of leadership.
33:34
You’re successful if you help others Be successful, which is different than when you were an individual contributor now it’s not about your own ambition, It’s not about your own achievement. It’s about how do I get the most out of others by showing up with the best at me on a daily basis?
33:54
It requires psychological safety.
33:57
I know so many of you, if you’re here as part of an HR DQ, you, webinar, many of you were tapped into sort of organizational development or human performance.
34:10
And, you know, psychological safety is probably the top topic right now.
34:16
And in our space of training and development and talent management, it’s so critically important, and many of you know, Amy Edmondson is the one who popularized this notion. She’s a scholar out of Harvard.
34:28
I’ve been writing about it since 2008. When my book on Courage came out, Courage goes to work. So, it’s a central idea, psychological safety. I mean, just think about it, yourself. You need a safe work environment for you to show up as your best self every day.
34:43
The challenge when you move into a leadership role are a lot of people have an old model of leadership.
34:50
A lot of times we, at the very least, eko one of our dominant parents.
34:55
Sometimes it has a lot to do with where we’re at from an authority standpoint.
35:00
And the question becomes, do you really want to lead and coach others to great performance? or do you actually want to rule?
35:09
do you want people to sort of kiss your tail, if you will?
35:12
Are you encouraging people or are you in fearing them making fear inside of them so that they’ll be conscientious enough to get the work done? Do you include a little threat in what you asked them to do? So leading a rally?
35:28
I’m going to ask you a question here on a scale ranging from 1 to 100.
35:33
What percentages of your talents did the worst leader you ever worked for? get out of you? So think about the worst leader you ever worked for.
35:44
How much extraction of your talents on a scale ranging from 1 to 100?
35:49
were they able to activate from you? And I want you to be real on your end answer, that you’re going to chat it.
35:57
Some of you are like, I always give 100%.
35:59
That may be, but I want you to think about the worst leader you ever worked for.
36:04
What if they get at you?
36:05
Go ahead and chat in your answers to that question.
36:08
The good news is, I have figured out how to pop the, the little thing, and I can see the answers when they come up. So go ahead and just type in some numbers there. Scale ranging from 1 to 100. What percentage of your talents to the world, and I’d get some answers coming in some people?
36:23
What percent 60%, 25%, 30%, 50%, 25%, 35%. one person said, 75% at the most on a good day, 20%, 50%, 50% 60. I had one person coming in 85, 40%, zero because they never talk to me or entrusted me to work.
36:46
So, lots of interesting numbers here, right? I’m going to ask you a shift, Separate question now. Separate question.
36:52
Take a pause on your answers, On a scale ranging from 1 to 100.
36:56
What percentage did the best leader you ever worked for? Get out of you?
37:03
And let’s go ahead and chat in some new answers.
37:06
And now, we see some big answers: 98%, 100, and 10%, hundred and 10%, 100%, 95%, 90%, 98% hundred percent, hundred of both, and social interaction hundred. So, one person got 100% out of them, but they had no social interaction.
37:26
And the other person did get 100% of them and social interaction and then 100%, 110.
37:32
So, by far, the vast majority of you said that best leader you worked for got more out of you.
37:40
To me, this is the business case as to why you would not want to in fear people and why you would want to encourage people. And this question has been asked by Jim Causes. And Barry Posner, who some of you know, wrote the Leadership challenge, one of the monumental leadership books of all time.
37:57
And they found that the the bad leader gets about 31% activation of our talents when you ask this question on average.
38:07
And the good leader gets 95%, on average, and many people, including many of you, we’ll say, 110%, even though it’s impossible.
38:19
It just feels like it, because this later, leader is able to elevate our standards at a different higher level of performance than we even knew that we were capable of our self. This is the business case.
38:30
Which would you rather have, as a leader, the 31% activation of your team’s talent, or 95% of everybody being fully engaged and enlisted on a daily basis. So how are you showing up as a Lute leader or ruler?
38:44
creating psychological safety? There’s plenty that you can do. I’ll just give you a couple of tips in this regard.
38:51
The first is, invite people to get in the habit of freely sharing good and bad information with you.
39:00
Ask people to hold you accountable to the team’s high standards and values, and coach them on how to give you feedback.
39:09
So make it normal, but you gotta give them coaching when they have to disagree with you about something.
39:14
Do they, do you want them to do it at private? Do you want them to do it on a day? when you don’t have to go and meet with the senior executives? What would be the way that you’d want them to give you the feedback?
39:26
McKinsey, the great strategy consulting firm calls it an obligation to dissent.
39:31
You want people to be safe enough in their environment, where they can dissent without feeling that they will be meeting with retribution and biting their tongue.
39:41
And then finally recognize team members who have the courage to ask for help or admit a mess up or who point out to the team when it can do better. You want to recognize that and rivet it down and let them know that that’s expected on our team.
39:57
At the very least, you could have a lunch and Learn conversation with your own team and ask them, what would psychological safety look like on our team?
40:07
And get a flipchart out and put their definition to it.
40:11
Alright, here’s stuff that you can also do.
40:14
And this guess who gave me this idea?
40:16
The guy who wrote the one Minute Manager, who’s Ken Blanchard and what he said, I asked him one time I said, Ken.
40:25
No, why is it that there’s even the need for leadership development anymore? Why is it such a challenge and struggle and what can leaders do about it?
40:33
He said, Bill, I think that if each leader, every two weeks or so, which spend 15 little minutes with each individual who reports to them, and it’s gotta be one-on-one time, It’s not in front of the team, And it’s not in your office, could be at lunch, could be at breakfast, could be around the watercooler with you, and that individual person. 15 minutes of quality, attention, And here’s the key.
41:03
It can’t have anything to do with the status of their work.
41:08
It has to be folks focused on stuff like, hey, how are things?
41:13
How are things going on outside of work?
41:15
What’s the best thing going on in your life right now?
41:19
What matters to you most right now?
41:22
What has become clear to you since the last time we checked in with each other?
41:28
None of these are about status, think projects, or where they are uncertain tasks, or why they behind.
41:34
It’s all about them.
41:36
It’s letting them know that you care about them as a human being, who works with you.
41:42
And it’s not about them as a resource to help you get to your goals, because that’s how you develop a relationship and develop a sense that they know that you care about who they are.
41:56
So you also have to teach people to give a rip about their work.
42:01
And you should be looking for give a rip it nus.
42:04
You want to make sure that you’re moving people up the ladder from Hey. I don’t give a rip to all the way to I’m all in on the rips that I give. You want people to give a rip about their work.
42:15
And here are the kinds of things that you have to help them learn.
42:18
And this is up to you leader in these mentoring moments. Not in those 15 minutes, but in other times of your interactions with them.
42:26
You want to teach them to always add value with their work that they’re doing, It needs to make a contribution. You want them to become more valuable, so that the organization’s becoming more valuable. You want them to learn how to face challenges head on, and that that’s an expectation that you’re going to meet with challenges, and they’re not gonna go away. So you have to help them learn how to face them.
42:48
You want them to stay positive in the face of those challenges, and learn to be hopeful about a better future and the work that they’re doing.
42:58
You want them focused on continuous improvement, constantly asking, how can we do better next time?
43:04
Here’s an important one, honing their craft, making sure that they take care in the quality of the output of whatever task they are responsible for.
43:15
You want them to give a rip about their work that they might as well sign their name to what they do, at least metaphorically. So they take pride of authorship.
43:25
You want them to be a team player that it’s not cool for them to talk about other people behind their back or be gossiping. They need to be supportive of the people that they work with and at least respect the people they work with.
43:38
And you have to teach them to be honest with you with each other.
43:44
And to be recipients of honesty, when you have to deliver them, a dose of honesty.
43:49
So these kinds of things will help them develop, give a Rip Agnes, all right, on to the third area of leadership, fitness, and that is leading work.
44:01
What do you love about business, so what do you love about business, not what do you love about leadership this time. I want to know about what about business itself.
44:10
What do you love about it or it just did it for the paycheck. Is there something that you love about business?
44:18
Let’s see what we get.
44:21
Yeah.
44:22
So I see some person said that people helping clients succeed, isn’t that fun to be able to do some work, deliver something based on a client’s need, and have them be really satisfied that you did what they were hope. And in fact, you move them forward?
44:39
Productivity is fun, Knockin stuff out and being accomplished. Being able to know that you did something. Getting stuff done.
44:47
Learning on a daily basis, Being challenged. Meeting with challenges, Accomplishments that you can get a hold of by yourself or with the team.
44:59
This person’s work helps people keep people safe.
45:03
It makes their lives and relationships better. How about that? That sounds great.
45:07
Helping with efficiency, helping people be more effective at what they do, helping people and students have equitable opportunity, isn’t that great?
45:16
Isn’t it great when you’re in a leadership role, and you can create opportunity for others, being successful, accomplishing stuff, taking care of your team and your customers, fulfilling and surpassing goals, solving problems for clients. Great stuff, right?
45:32
Business can be fun. It’s the great adventure of business. It’s a canvas for your creativity. It’s where you get to shape decisions, and have influence and provide a good livelihood for the people that you care about. There’s so much good stuff about business. Here’s four things that you need to clarify for people at the work level. So, we’ve talked about leading yourself. We talk about leading people. Now, let’s talk about leading work.
46:02
You’ve gotta be able to have a strategy, a vision of the future, That’s work that your work is heading towards.
46:10
So a vision for the future that the work is actually heading towards. You need to have a strategy, and your organization should have one. If you don’t know what it is, you ought to go to your leaders and find out.
46:20
So you can communicate to your team as to what are the strategic imperatives that the company is facing.
46:28
Second, you’ve got to let people know why the work of your organization matters. Why should you be prideful about the work of your company or business or organization?
46:38
And how does the work of your team fit into that larger purpose? In other words, why are the people on your team important to furthering the goals of the organization itself? You gotta let people know how their work matters. You gotta let people know what the values are of the organization.
46:58
What are the behavioral, ethical, and performance standards? That guess what everybody in this company is expected to live up to. And everybody on the team that I’m privileged to lead has to live up to an end to.
47:11
So what are the values then pay?
47:14
How does this business make or save money?
47:18
And how does it lose money? And how does our team impact those things? Whether we’re making saving or losing money, people need to understand the levers of the business.
47:29
If you don’t understand how your paycheck is created through the revenue of the organization, and how it makes, or save’s or loses money, you gotta learn that stuff.
47:38
That’s what it takes to have business mindedness as a leader.
47:44
Leaders also have to be focused on critical business concerns.
47:49
If you’re in a leadership role, here’s just eight things that you need to constantly be thinking about, to help you prioritize and make decisions.
47:58
You gotta make sure that whatever the work you’re doing actually does connect it to the mission and then it advances the mission.
48:05
You have to have concern about upholding and reflecting the company’s values and when you or your team or the company is out of alignment with those values, you gotta be willing to call people on it.
48:16
You gotta make sure the work that you are doing lowers the risks for the people and the organization. Somebody mentioned safety. That, of course, should be the super overriding thing of this whole thing.
48:28
It’s not its own bullet point, but we want to make sure that people come home each day, not just in the condition that they went to work, But they come home enhanced.
48:38
We want to make sure that the work we’re doing improves the operations so that people can be more effective in the work they do. We want to make sure the work we do impacts people’s positivity and makes a positive impact on morale.
48:51
Business mindedness also means making sure that we are modernizing the business and not allowing ourselves to become obsolete whether we’re an individual team or the company itself. We need to make sure that the work that we’re doing is somehow connected to our customers. Will it help us acquire customers? Will it help us keep our customers loyal to us with our work?
49:13
Be satisfying to our customers, and yes, business mindedness, and this stuff that you have to carry to the people that you’re leading.
49:21
So that they appreciate these values that we call critical business concern’s, And the last one is profitability.
49:28
People need to, hey, you know, if you’re not good at match managing your checkbook at home, that’s one thing.
49:34
But you need to understand the reality, financial reality of the organization that you work for, and how your team impacts that financial reality. So, we call these CBC’s Critical Business Concerns.
49:48
Here’s the punchline. and then I’m gonna open it up to some questions from all of you.
49:52
But stick around because I also want to share with you what our special discount for you is. Here’s the big punchline for the whole thing.
50:02
If you are fit to lead yourself, if you are fit to lead others, if you deliver great work and you are leading work, remember, you can get exceptional results without crushing people’s souls and it is your responsibility to do that when you are a leader.
50:23
All right, I’m going to give you just a quick, quick display here.
50:29
I told you about the Leadership Essentials Academy, it’s an online program, over 60 videos, eight modules, Guest speakers, including myself, downloadable material, quizzes to keep you on track, ways to plan, and then you can report. You can download anything that you put by input, and a special deal with HR DQ.
50:52
If you use this pass code, first use the QR code.
50:56
All you gotta do is take your phone, show that you’re like you’re going to take a picture of the QR code, and it’ll pull up the website. And then you just put in that QR code and you will get a 40% discount app at that. four day are sat. On the Leadership Essentials Academy.
51:13
We call it Leah and I’d love it if you would just at least at the very least take a do the QR thing pull up your, your photo thing. So you can head over there and take a look at it. Hey, if you think it looks like something that you’re, maybe, your organization, can’t afford a full on program.
51:31
But maybe what you can afford is to invest in yourself, to learn or about leadership.
51:38
All right. So I’m gonna, I’ll give you 10 more seconds on that slide, and then I’ll move off of it.
51:44
5, 4, 3, ooh, wind, and of course, we’ll send you the deck, and these are ways that you get touch with me.
51:55
And come on the webcam for just a minute here.
52:04
Make myself shown again to all of you.
52:07
All right. I’m not done. I’m here to take your questions. I definitely want to hear from you.
52:11
I really dig doing stuff with …, y’all are really professional organization and what fantastic answers you all chatted in today.
52:19
We were in this together and I felt it.
52:22
All right, so let’s go ahead and we’ll open it up to questions now.
52:26
And yeah, go for it, feel free to moderate.
52:30
If you have any questions, type them into the questions box. And then I have been keeping an eye, had a couple questions come in earlier in the session to that I’d like to get to reference it back to people like, you know, being able to take their lunch breaks. And not having time to do that. And Marianne said, you know, does anybody ever have the resources that they need, and then being under resourced and doing more with less than norm?
52:57
So, it’s a good question, right?
53:00
For as leaders, we have to remember, the cavalry’s not coming to save us.
53:06
Right? I love this song by, but, you know, I’m a Big U two fan.
53:09
And there’s a song that Bono has with It recently came out, it says we are the We are the people we’ve been waiting for.
53:18
You have to have a certain degree of self reliance when you’re in a leadership role.
53:21
You will almost be perpetually under resourced.
53:24
But that doesn’t become your excuse to not eat lunch.
53:28
You can be under resourced and still make time for lunch as a matter of personal fidelity and self respect. I used to know that sometimes we get into a little Hero syndrome.
53:38
Things will fall apart, if I, I have to be here, because things will fall apart.
53:42
I knew a president of a company who had that mentality.
53:45
And then it, just, as a matter of he was so Don, that he said, You know what?
53:51
Today, I’ll go into a spin class at lunch. So it took a 90 minute spin class, right?
53:55
So it meant that he came back, and he and, instead of the normal Our took an hour and a half, right, But he was so much more productive in the other part of the day.
54:05
And, oh, yeah, by the way, he’s still had to review estimates with big teams in the construction company, they work for, sometimes at 11 o’clock at night. Every now and then, he’d have to work a week. And so, sometimes we have to do a little bit more for the company than we signed up for.
54:20
Can you give yourself a lunch back that takes an extra half an hour?
54:23
You know, is it really going to be that much, know, of a contribution that your boss is going to be super upset for all the other things that you do and the surface of the company? So, yes, we are perpetually under resourced.
54:35
But we also need to be tap boundaries, and to have self respect, recognizing that when you demonstrate self care, that you will be better for the, you’re going to be more productive for the organization and a better leader. That provides more hope for the organization.
54:50
You’ll add more value, by taking quite a half an hour extra of self care.
54:56
Great, and then the next question here comes back to that 15 minutes of quality time and how it can be challenging in a remote environment. Do you have any tips for them?
55:06
That’s, that’s you know it’s it’s true. Remote leadership it’s hard Some of you may have onboarded a person during the pandemic that you’ve you never have met in person. That’s hard or recruiting people through zoom is really a hard thing. So it’s a, it is a reality. Let me first start by saying, hey, remote leadership is not new.
55:27
Right? Like, we’ve been remotely leading people for 20 years.
55:31
I used to be with Accenture and during the explosive dotcom, boom, we started to do offshore outsourcing. Well, that’s where we’ve really started to lead people with remote teams in other countries. And if you Google remote leadership, you will come up with over a billion results.
55:48
So, by now, you should probably have a lot of tips on, and there’s great books on it, the robot leader by Kevin … barriers when it comes to mind.
55:55
And Wayne Terminal, what I will say is, that, yes, it’s going to take more discipline for you as a leader, it’s going to take more discipline, too.
56:06
Make sure that you are scheduling the one-on-one time in the same way that you used to back in person, and that is to say, Hey, you know, I’d like to meet with you on Thursday for 15 minutes, just you. And I, just to catch up, we haven’t. I know we’ve got to work or really push the work, But let’s get a little connection moment going. And it’s being disciplined about putting those in place.
56:27
Great. I think we have time here for one more question. The question is, Do you have any tips on how to motivate staff are not open to feedback. Don’t think that they need it.
56:36
Hmm, hmm.
56:37
That’s tough.
56:39
That’s a tough position to be at.
56:43
The, a couple of thoughts, you know, come to mind. First of all, that’s going to stop their own growth, right? So let’s recognize the dangers and risks to that person’s own career.
56:56
one thing that I would have you consider is in a one-on-one moment, with them, when you have to give them feedback, that is to say, Listen. I need to clarify my role as a leader.
57:11
Part of my role is to provide feedback, and that is to help you to be as effective as you could possibly be. And as a feedback giver, I’m going to share with you some feedback right now. It’s not to hurt you.
57:25
It’s to help you be more effective in what you do around here, within this culture, because that’s the expectation. And the expectation is that everybody on the team is going to be subject to feedback, and guess what? I’m subject to feedback from my boss and my bosses.
57:40
And, so, now I’m going to share with you the feedback. In.
57:43
Other words, you have to create the expectation that, Look, you’re in your leadership role, You’re supposed to give feedback, and then it’s normal.
57:49
Around here, We’re a high feedback culture, and feedback is the way that we grow, that, we learn, we progress, we evolve, and I’m a recipient of plenty of feedback.
57:58
And that feedback, and, and, and I would also start by pointing out the moments when you don’t, don’t just wait for negative feedback moments. Like, you see them do something really good that you, maybe, you’ve heard on a Zoom meeting, or you heard of the actual in person meeting, and it’s taking them aside, and, say, hey, I just wanted to spend a couple of minutes with say what you, just did there, that piece that you’ve just delivered, that was, like, exceptional. That was really good. And I just want to let you know that I noticed, and I’ll get other people to, like, they. May be a little uncomfortable with that, too.
58:28
The positive feedback, So don’t wait for the negative moments, clarify the expectation of that, a leader as a giver of feedback and that you are a recipient of feedback yourself. And it’s what the expectation of the organization is. It’s a good question.
58:41
It’s a hard question.
58:42
But that person, if they don’t get the feedback, they’re probably going to find themselves may be fired.
58:48
They’re certainly not gonna be as productive as they can be, and there will be a natural organic reverberation from being insulated from feedback from from that person. So it, I hope that you deliver the message. if you don’t. They’re going to get a natural consequence anyway.
59:06
Great, and with that fear, that does bring us now up to the top of the hour, and concludes our Q&A today. Thank you so much for joining us. So, it’s really, it’s my pleasure, It’s great to be with all of you were super engaged. What a great group of folks that we had, you know, participate today, and thank you, as always, Sarah, you do a great job.
59:27
Thanks Bill, yes, and thank you all for participating in today’s webinar. I hope to see you next week. Same time, same place. Thanks, guys. Happy training.