Leaders, Bosses and Bastards

  December of 2016 saw the arrival of the first ever Pacific Women’s Sports Leadership Program, held in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. The event was designed for women involved in sports as administrators, managers, volunteers, employees, or board members. The event was planned and held to empower and enable those women through providing practical tools to address the challenges that women in particular face in the Pacific region. This episode features Jane Livesey and Olivia Philpott, the two women who were the catalysts and visionaries behind making the event happen. You'll also hear from Colin Pidd of Conversant, one of the supporters of the event. You’ll be inspired and encouraged by what happened and learn about plans for future events.   Events are about connections and relationships as much as they are about learning.   Twenty women from around the Pacific came together for the Pacific Women’s Sports Leadership Program. These amazing women were from 13 different sports organizations and brought a great diversity to the event. And though they learned a great deal about how to amplify and expand their leadership, they also enjoyed the connections with others who filled similar roles to theirs. It was a great sense of relief and encouragement to know that they were not alone and that other women are in the region, seeking to make the same kinds of contributions they are. You can hear how the organizers, Jane Livesay and Olivia Philpott saw the women come together at the event and learn how the support and relationships born there are being carried on beyond the event. It's on this episode of Leaders, Bosses, and Bastards.   Women in sports leadership: A growing tribe that is making a difference in the Pacific   When Jane and Olivia envisioned the Pacific Women’s Sports Leadership Program, they had an idea of the kinds of things they wanted to see come from the event. But both of them say that the event exceeded their expectations. They were incredibly impressed by how generous the 20 participants were in sharing themselves and their experiences. Together they all grew and learned, but more importantly, they found inspiration in each other’s stories and perspectives. Participants left the event with encouragement to return to their respective roles and apply their lessons-learned to motivate more women into sports leadership. This episode is a recap of the event as told by its organizers. You’ll be encouraged and inspired.   When women in sports leadership come together, it’s an amazing thing.   This conversation with some of the people behind the Pacific Women’s Sports Leadership Program shows what can happen when people with a vision join together to stir up something more. The women who came together did so to develop their leadership skills through sport and to encourage more women to move into leadership roles for the sake of combating issues such as gender-based violence, gender norms, and gender equality. Their impact did not go unnoticed and will continue to be felt.   The growing number of women in sports leadership in the Pacific demonstrates that change is coming.   Currently, women are underrepresented when it comes to politics and overall leadership positions in the Pacific region. This leadership program is poised to become an integral part of providing positive female role models in the Pacific region. One of the organizers, Olivia Philpott says, "It is important for us to see more women moving into leadership roles, to improve diversity in decision-making, investment in targeted programs for women’s sport, health and well-being, and to provide role models for young girls.” Sport is one of the primary areas in which these kinds of changes will be sparked - and that’s a good thing for everyone.   Outline of This Episode Colin’s introduction to this episode about developing women leaders in sport. How the Pacific Women’s event came about. The ways the PNG facilitated great conversations about women’s issues. The hardest parts and biggest challenges of being a facilitator at the event. Adding color and local flavor to the event. Why the event went so well: the passion of those involved in putting it on. How Olivia and Jane contrast their leadership experiences to those of the women who attended their event. Why the event was so important and the reason its organizers say it was worth the effort.  Resources & People Mentioned Pacific Women’s Sports Leadership Program Connect With Conversant On Twitter On LinkedIn

We’re hearing more and more about including love in the way we lead. This may seem like a new topic in relationship to work, but we believe it is imperative. It’s an approach rooted in the deepest human needs of every person within our organizations. When we can understand the needs our team members have to be loved and fill that need in appropriate ways, there are powerful things that will happen. Colin’s guest on this episode is Anne Shannon, a woman who understands these issues and consults with teams and companies to great success. You can hear Ann’s insights about loving leadership and the impact it has, on this episode. Basic human needs for love can even be met in the workplace. We all have the need for love. Hardly anyone would contest that assertion. But is it something that should even be on the radar in the workplace? Ann Shannon says it should be a high priority for leaders because when a team member has the sense that they are loved and belong, the entire team benefits. Beyond that, clients will be served better when an entire team is a cohesive unit that does its job well. If it sounds strange to you to hear the words “love” and “business” in the same sentence, you may want to hear what Ann has to say on this episode. Is there a gender difference when it comes to showing love in the workplace? The stereotypes would insist that women are better at showing love in a team context than men are, but is it true? There’s not a hard and fast rule. Women may generally find it easier to express love than men but there’s no evidence that men are averse to expressing care for their co-workers, they just show it differently and may take longer to get there. In this conversation Colin and his guest Ann Shannon discuss the powerful impact a healthy approach to love in the workplace can have and how leaders are on the hook to lead the way in expressing care for the people they lead. In the competitive world of sports, we can accomplish much more together than we can apart. An important area Ann Shannon has been working in more often these days is that of sports leadership. Though sport is an area of great competition she’s finding that bringing connections between the competitors, both on and off the field, is producing incredible results that go far beyond the end result of a scoreboard. On this episode of Leaders, Bosses, and Bastards you can hear how Ann is seeing administrators, coaches, and players come together for the good of society and produce benefits to communities and individuals that flow out of their participation in sports. It’s an intriguing subject you’ll enjoy hearing about. Is the idea of inclusion just an excuse to favor some people and make others feel bad? One of the arguments against the idea of inclusion and sensitivity training is that the end result is that people come away feeling pigeon-holed as the “bad guy” in the workplace rather than truly understanding the supposed problem that is said to exist. But Ann Shannon insists that the real point of inclusion training is not to beat up anybody or insist that people are bad, but to highlight the way that real people in the workplace feel about their role and position within the organization, and to help everyone work better together as a result. On this episode, Ann shares how she approaches inclusion training with an aim to enable everyone involved to feel more valuable within the organization. Outline of This Episode [0:12] Collin’s introduction to his guest, Anne Shannon. [1:13] Anne’s history and contributions to the business world. [2:14] The approach Anne has been taking to leadership in sport. [6:06] The things leaders in sports are grappling with these days. [8:45] The difference connections on and off the field make. [9:45] The power of love in sports and in the work environment. [13:00] The impact love has on the contributions people make. [14:30] Is a gender difference seen when it comes to applying love to organizations? [17:40] What is the outlook for leadership and inclusion in the future? Resources & People Mentioned Connect with Ann on LinkedIn Connect With Conversant On Twitter On LinkedIn

Innovation in the workplace is something we all want to see more of - IF we even know what we’re talking about! Today’s guest, Peter Mulford is an expert in both the understanding and practice of true innovation and on this episode of the podcast he busts the myths surrounding what innovation really is, why and where companies need it, and how leaders, in particular, can be notorious for killing it without even knowing it. Are you tired of hearing about innovation in the workplace? You should be. Most of what passes off as “innovation in the workplace” is nothing but warmed-over ideas from the past. True innovation has more to do with understanding your desired outcomes and working toward them without the boundaries typical of growing companies. In this conversation, Mickey chats with his friend and colleague, Peter Mulford about the role leaders play in fostering an innovative atmosphere in their team - and how many of them kill innovation when they’re actually trying to foster it. If you’ve ever felt like your team needs to be more creative but don’t know how to get there, this episode is for you. Innovation is not a thing you do, it’s the discipline of solving problems in new ways. Peter Mulford says there isn’t any mystery about what it means to be innovative. It’s not a quality one person is born with and others are never going to have. Innovation is nothing more than the habitual discipline of solving problems in new ways. Anyone can do it. Anyone can learn it. And it’s up to the leader to ensure that it’s possible even while the company continues to grow. You’ll get insights from Peter’s years of experience in the field on this episode. A company that is trying to scale almost always has a hard time continuing to innovate. It’s interesting to watch what happens to those flashy, “creative, innovative companies” once they start trying to scale. The creativity and innovation often taper off. Why is that? Because the founder who had the creative vision hands the company over to managers who install the systems and processes that enable the company to replicate its success and provide predictability - but those systems and processes often stifle the very creativity and innovation that made the company special in the first place. Peter Mulford has some suggestions regarding how a company can maintain the innovative aspects of their identity while growing, on this episode. The leader doesn’t have to be the one to innovate, but they DO have to make it possible. Many times leaders hear the word “innovation” and break out in a cold sweat. They don’t feel particularly creative and often assume that the job of coming up with the fresh ideas automatically falls on their shoulders. But Peter Mulford says that’s not the case at all. The leader’s job is to enable the culture of the company or organization to foster innovation, to allow the creatives to be creative. When that happens, the company thrives under good leadership and the success of the company increases. This episode of Leaders, Bosses, and Bastards emphasizes how leaders can make that possible. Outline of This Episode [0:14] Introduction of today’s guest, Peter Mulford [3:15] Can you teach innovation to leaders? [7:39] The places where innovation is at risk in companies. [10:30] Can you create a company that can scale and maintain creativity? [16:20] Some of the ways leaders interfere with the ability to be both innovative and effective. [23:40] 3 things Peter leave with listeners for understanding and implementing innovation in leadership. Resources & People Mentioned Connect with Peter on LinkedIn BTS BOOK: Applied Imagination by Alex Osborn BOOK: Playing to Win by Roger Martin Connect With Conversant On Twitter On LinkedIn

  Most of us have been in meetings where the topic of discussion is a particular problem that’s been going on in the organization for some time. Everyone at the table is frustrated and tired of dealing with the same issue - again. But most of the time we walk away from those meetings feeling better because we’ve actually done something. But did we do the right thing that will actually fix the problem? Only time will tell. On this episode of Leaders, Bosses, and Bastards, Mickey talks with his friend Anne Murray Allan about this issue of organizational problems and how most of our attempts to fix them are nowhere near a real solution. They’ll dive into ways you can start to uncover the hidden causes of problems within your organization and why it’s so hard to get there. Blame is always a bad sign of a deeper organizational problem. When an ongoing problem in an organization comes to light yet again, it’s quite common for the blame game to begin. One department says it’s another department’s fault. That department says they didn’t receive all the resources they were supposed to receive, so it’s another person’s fault. And the blame spreads throughout the organization. But blame is usually a convenient way to shirk the responsibility without really digging into the root causes of the issue. When you see the blame game starting you can be sure, there’s something deeper going on that nobody's able to see - yet. Many small problems have a deeper organizational problem at their core. One company was experiencing a discrepancy between its actual inventory in the warehouse and the stats shown in its online sales software. After having accountants look at the problem for a significant amount of time the conclusion was made that someone was stealing from the inventory. Nothing else could account for the shrinkage. Right? That's the conclusion that was made and emotions and tempers ran high as a suspicious eye was turned on employees. But it turns out that there was a very simple and easily fixable flaw in the inventory software. Once it was found and corrected the ghostly inventory discrepancy suddenly vanished. It’s an example of why leaders need to guide the company to patient, in-depth analysis of system problems for the sake of team unity and moral. And it’s the topic Mickey and his guest, Anne Murray Allen talk through on this episode. Is everyone at the table who needs to be at the table to fix your organizational problem? Many times the instinct of leaders is to gather the managers and senior leadership when an organizational problem becomes apparent. The goal is to look at the situation from the top down, assess what’s going on at the lower levels, and pinpoint the place where communication or systems are breaking down. It’s great in theory and it sounds like the kind of thing good leaders should do, but it often excludes the people who are closest to the problem and therefore have the greatest likelihood of having observed the tale-tell signs of its origin. You’ve got to make sure that you have everyone at the table who could provide insight into the issue so that you have the ability to get to the root. And when you do, you have to know how to guide the conversation in constructive ways that uncover the truth. The patience needed to fix organizational problems is a mark of true leadership. Near the end of this conversation between Mickey and his guest, Anne Murray Allen, they unpack how the various types of organizational figureheads - leaders, bosses, and bastards - would handle an organizational problem that arises. As they note, each one takes a particular approach to the problem in an attempt to fix it. But only one - the true leader - handles it patiently, thoroughly, and on a level that gets to the root of what’s really going on. It’s a great conversation that reveals much of why organizations have a hard time identifying problems that arise and provides some simple solutions that pave the way to better discovery and resolution of organizational problems. Outline of This Episode [1:01] The need to take great care when trying to “fix” intricate systems. [4:40] The reality of how difficult it is to pinpoint the real problems. [8:03] Diagnosing the real problem requires deeper questions and a more patient approach. [12:11] The false comfort of leverage points. [18:20] Simple first steps companies can take to assess problems. [24:44] How all this is viewed from the leaders - bosses - and bastards perspectives. Connect With Conversant On Twitter On LinkedIn

You may not use the word “civil discourse” in daily conversation much but you engage in it all the time. It’s the act of talking with others with a goal of attaining understanding. Isn’t that what all of us want from our conversations? The ironic thing is that we often sabotage understanding by injecting the conversation with limiting terms that we don’t realize are coming out of our mouths.  On this episode of Leaders, Bosses, and Bastards Mickey Connolly is chatting with his friend Laura Huffman about the importance of truly civil discourse, why we need to revive the idea in our day and age, and how one three letter word can change the dynamic of our conversations in amazing ways.   Civil discourse is often destroyed by the use of the wrong conjunction.   Laura Huffman explains how conversations go from constructive to destructive with the use of one little conjunction, the word “or.” It’s a word that automatically forces a choice, a decision about one thing over another and as Laura points out, the world simply doesn’t work that way all the time. If you want to learn how to become mindful of a very simple but powerful way you can change the tone and direction of the conversations you have, this episode is for you.   Why force someone to choose when they really don’t have to?   Some people use polarization as their stock in trade. Cable News talk show hosts or reporters, for example. Their job is to magnify the tension in a situation to create a sense of sensationalism that lures in viewers or readers. But that same approach applied in daily life or in the culture of an organization is never helpful. Laura Huffman explains why polarization happens, the mindsets behind it, and the cultural falsehoods that convince us that we should speak in polarizing terms on this episode of Leaders, Bosses, and Bastards. I hope you take the time to listen.   Isn’t civil discourse supposed to actually BE civil?   There are many things that can escalate a conversation from a calm discussion of the facts and outcomes of a situation to a heated debate or disagreement. One of those things is the use of the word “or” instead of the word “and.” In this conversation, Laura Huffman gives quite a few examples of how the use of the word “or” in conversation forces people into a place of choosing when in fact it doesn’t have to be an either/or situation. When Laura opens your eyes to how toxic the practice can be and how often you insert the word “or” into conversations yourself, you’ll be eager to modify the way you approach conversations moving forward. I know I was.   Is it possible to change the tone of civil discourse in the 21st century?   People like Laura Huffman encourage me, simply because of their optimism. Laura is one of those people who believes that human beings thrive on solving problems more than making them. And she believes that the direction our culture has gone when it comes to personal interactions - toward sensationalism rather than fact-based problem solving - is something we must collectively address and learn to improve. She believes that as we begin to notice the small but significant things that downgrade the quality of civil discourse we can begin to make course corrections that will serve our society better and produce long-lasting fruit.   Outline of This Episode [1:19] My introduction of my friend, Laura Huffman. [2:23] Laura’s concern about the state of Civil Discourse and the power of “Or” and “And.” [7:16] How people get trapped in the “And/Or” choices. [9:00] Changing the and/or nature of our thinking can impact every area of life and business. [18:10] How using “and” can change the nature of interactions from can’t-do, to can-do conversations. Resources & People Mentioned Nature Conservancy in Texas Laura Huffman Connect with the Conversant Team: On Twitter On LinkedIn

In this episode, Colin and Mickey discuss the dangers and limitations that come with striving for “continuous improvement” in an age that demands companies change and innovate to survive. Leaders today face the challenge of staying responsible for both the stability of their companies and the capacity for their teams to take risks and invent.Connected leaders must appreciate what is gained from failures and the diversity required to confront challenges so they are better prepared for the changes the circumstances require.   Highlights:   Continuous improvement is a safe way to improve, not the path to innovation that is often necessary in today's business world Great leaders connect with people and with circumstances, revealing new possibilities True leaders balance the stable and dynamic ends of the systems they lead with awareness for what action it is time for now Leaders must create space and make resources available for people to be creative and innovative The economic benefit of failure is learning - leaders must make it safe to fail and learn from that Diversity gives us people that are comfortable with navigating both the stable and dynamic parts of a company   1:17 Mickey: Colin, the last time we were together on LBB you made a very brief comment that we didn’t stay with and I want to go back to. You said something about the age of continuous improvement is over or that continuous improvement is no longer sufficient...Mr. Pidd, what are you talking about when you say “the age of continuous improvement is behind us, passé, insufficient?   2:30 Colin: I think we’ve had many good years, keeping from the 60s and 70s, where it was enough and rigorous, focused, continuous improvement was sufficient. Now I think any business that’s only continuously improving is in decay, it just doesn’t work out. And so for me it’s a provocative statement, a challenging statement.   From Continuous Improvement to Disruptive Invention   2:56 Colin: We know that Samsung started as purveyors of cooked rice, they sold cooked rice to restaurants, and one day somebody said to them, rather than selling us the rice, can you sell us these huge cooking vats that you’ve invented? Now, to move from cooking rice to rice cookers is not an act of continuous improvement. It’s actually an act of disruption, it’s an act of massive invention, and if somebody only had a continuous improvement mindset, Samsung may well be out of business or still be selling rice.   Colin: So it’s not a new notion, but I think what’s occurring now is the speed of change, speed of disruption, is so fast that if you’re not actually thinking about what are we gonna stop doing, if you like, “unlearn” from our previous podcast we talked about, and are you looking for the step-jump, that’s the age that we’re in. It’s the alertness to new possibilities, as opposed to polishing possibilities. Polishing reality.   4:04 Mickey: It’s an interesting statement to say that it’s not that the idea of making things better in a continual way is completely passé, it’s just that it’s not enough anymore, and that if that’s all that you focus on it ultimately leads to decay because you don’t actually have this massive invention of new possibility, disruptive new futures.   The Leader vs. the Manager   4:30 Colin: I live in this notion, and I think you do, too, where a leader is taking me somewhere I haven’t been before and a manager more likely helps me do what I’m currently doing better. So managing a system is all about the continuous improvement and if you lead through continuous improvement you’re also creating a culture that is less likely to be inventive and innovative.   4:53 Mickey: You know I think it really fits with our triumvirate of leaders, bosses, and bastards because in some of the conversations we’ve had up to now, we think of leaders as people who are really connecting with others and with circumstances in a way that reveals new opportunity and new possibilities. Bosses tend to be getting more efficient with what they already know and bastards are selfish so they’re not actually operating out of being connected and if they’re inventing something new it’s quite private and only for them.   Culture Change & Shifts of Identity   5:53 Colin: Continuous improvement tends to mean that we look inside or just on the periphery of our own business. And culturally that’s safe, because I can see what I can do, I can always see the next step. And if you like, it’s a place without wonder. This kind of step change, disruptive shift, requires me and our culture to be really looking beyond ourselves. To be really prepared to be curious and to discover things we don’t even know we didn’t know. Now that, to create an organization where that is the safe thing to do is a huge culture shift. It’s actually a shift of identity. I’m going to have to be somebody that’s a little unsafe.   6:50 Colin: Continuous improvement, and I’m generalizing, is a safe way to improve. It’s step by step. We learn stuff, we get evidence. And that’s all good, I’m really for that. Let’s just take an example. We know that companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi-Cola, we know the sales of their sweet black drink is on the way out. Continuous improvement is not going to help that situation. They’ve got to reinvent themselves.   7:46 Mickey: So in terms of culture change then, the cultures that actually go through some radical reinvention, the attention has to be from the world back to the culture, not from the present culture out to the world.   The Leadership Balancing Act   9:10 Mickey: There are other organizations that, the way they’ve operated up to now must be reinvented because their ability to make money keeps declining, and banks are one of those, for instance. That means that that world has to be reinvented and everybody just trying to get more efficient than somebody else that’s doing things just like they’re doing it is probably not going to be the people leading the reinvention of the financial industry.   9:43 Mickey: So, what do you see? What would you say to a senior executive who has to be responsible for the current paying of the bills, but also needs to be responsible for inventing a future that’s not so badly constrained by the past like banking is today?   9:58 Colin: I think there are two things you would pay attention to. Let’s first say what this is not about. It’s not about betting the house on everything. I mean, that’s madness, that’s crazy. Go to a casino, put all your company assets on something and hope it comes up black or red. That’s not what we’re saying here.   10:41 Colin: We’ve often talked about, what’s the bits of our system, our business that’s stable, that’s predictable, that we know what’s going on. And what’s the economic return from that? So, what is it in a bank? What is it in the Cola industry? What is it in consulting that we know is just true and we know is actually going to create economic value for our customers, our clients, and ourselves?   11:05 Colin: But what’s the dynamic part of our system? Because the way you improve the stable end is, I think, continuous improvement. We continue to polish and do those kinds of things. And what’s our capacity to be nimble and agile and dynamic, that also has the capacity to create economic value for our clients and for ourselves? And I think the job of a leader is to have that in balance. The leader or senior person in a company that’s really just playing it in the stable end of that spectrum, that’s death. Equally, if you’re only playing in the dynamic end, well, you’re gambling. And I’m not prepared to invest in you either. So, it’s just a question of balance.   12:07 Mickey: I think leaders of improvement, one of the things they’ve got to do is manage the stable resources sufficient for people to have the opportunity to experiment, to learn, and to reveal. And that agility, to be able to at the same time take care of the foundational, reliable, “these are ways we pay our bills”, and making sure that people treat just as urgently the need to keep experimenting, learning, and revealing new possibilities so that you’re not just playing out the past until it expires and everybody else around you reinvents.   13:11 Colin: I think you describe a beautiful dance, if you like. Leaders have to dance between things, and I mean that in a really respectful and professional way.   Appreciate Learning through Failure   13:37 Colin: So a leader that’s who is addicted to continuous improvement as their only source of joy, of their place of appreciation, will actually start to create a culture where people only pay attention to small increments, that have this high-fiving of, “we’ve just increased something by whatever”. That is a self-referencing way of being a leader.   14:46 Colin: As leaders we’ve got to also have people getting excited about risk, failing fast, and this notion of stepping into the void of possibility and wonder and be prepared to do that.   15:38 Colin: What are the things in the stable part of our system that maybe we need to think about stopping doing? I know it’s not the historical version of this phrase, but this notion of creative destruction, the 21st century’s version of that is sometimes you have to actually kill a product, kill a service, whilst it’s still doing okay. That’s where you’ve got to start thinking about, what can we take out of our current stable space that allows us invest in possibility and the rapid disrupt of the world we’re living in at the moment? That takes courage. That’s leadership in my view.   16:22 Mickey: I want to go back to what you said about appreciation, because I think, it’s a really interesting question: what do you find yourself appreciating? And if you’re saying that the job of a leader is to balance the incremental improvement of the stable environment and the step-change invention of new futures that actually secure tomorrow for the company, it would be interesting to notice-how much of your time is spent appreciating the unprecedented? How much of your time is spent appreciating people who get a great ROI out of a big mistake? Because we’ve talked before about the economics of failure is actually learning. The rate at which we learn something that makes the failure worth while, that’s an economic advantage. And so in this world you’re talking about where people have got to be willing to fail fast and learn quickly, we better be really good at appreciating the times where people learn something that made a big mistake actually worth it.   17:34 Colin: Absolutely. And recognize inside of that that as human beings we have different appetites for that. I mean it’s another great argument for diversity. It’s that we’re gonna have people who actually do enjoy being in the big, risky space and there’s those who don’t quite so much enjoy that. And they’re both valid positions.   18:17 Colin: As leaders, we’ve got to help knit those people together, to appreciate each other’s difference, and both being prepared to actually not always follow the particular dynamic or the stable dream. That comes back to this notion of identity: who do I become in the face of these challenges?   Orchestrate Diverse Contributions   18:34 Mickey: A leader’s job is to orchestrate the contributions of many. Well those contributions can live very different places on that spectrum from very stable to dynamic and unprecedented. I think that for a system to actually remain viable while continually inventing the future, you better have room for orchestrating the contributions of people all the way along that comfort zone where the people who are happy at different places are likely to be the people who are actually effective at different places on the stable to dynamic spectrum.   19:23 Colin: The challenge for leaders is to ensure that we know where we are on that spectrum at any particular time, on purpose. Is it time to be more towards the stable end? More towards the dynamic end? Should we be more balanced? I’d keep that in mind, as long as it’s conscious.   Looking Beyond Continuous Improvement   19:49 Colin: I actually change what I said at the end of the last time we talked together. It’s not that we’re at the end of continuous improvement. But I think we’re at the end of the age where business liability, real sense of community, can exist if we only focus on continuous improvement.   20:15  Mickey: The rate at which information is exchanged today is so incredibly fast that the rate at which people learn, evolve and invent new possibilities is incredibly fast. Those of us who are protecting the past successes of our enterprise are investing in being further and further behind. I just like what you’ve brought up today which is, it’s both. It’s being responsible for the foundation of our contribution and responsible for the contribution we’ve never fully appreciated, much less realized. And that it takes courage to do both and it takes appreciating a broad spectrum of people and giving them all chances to contribute.   21:11 Mickey: We have to orchestrate the contributions of people who are really at home with things being stable and gradual improvement, and the contributions of people who love being on that wild, wonderous, unprecedented end of things. A leader has got to be at home with all those different expressions. I think a boss tends to have a limited view of how many of those expressions are currently viable, and a bastard just wants people that serve his or her own selfish needs, as we said earlier.   22:18 Colin: I’ll finish with another provocation: I want to challenge this notion of “best practice”. I think it’s dangerous and I think that if you think about it, if we’re really going to jump into the void and really be inventive, then we’ve got to be courageous enough to go, you know what? We can invent for ourselves.

Leaders, Bosses, & Bastards: [Episode Title]   In today’s episode, Colin and Mickey discuss culture change, a once “too soft” topic for business development that has become one of the greatest concerns for today’s senior executives. With the average life expectancy of a company quickly decreasing, leaders that encourage the reimagination of cultural identity are far better prepared to outlast their competitors. Colin and Mickey consider what handling culture change as a Leader, Boss, or Bastard looks like, and which one stands a chance at navigating the quickly changing landscape of business.   Highlights: Most senior leaders today are concerned about the fit between their culture and their strategy In the last 15 years, 52% of the Fortune 500 companies have disappeared The average life expectancy of a Fortune 500 company has dropped from 75 years in 1955 to 15 years today Think about organizations as ecosystems, not structures Culture change requires unlearning old habits that don’t serve our purpose for today Keep people evolving the question of “what do we all care about?”, and bring to that the courage and wisdom it takes to reimagine ourselves The future of competitive edge is going to be speed of learning, speed of reimagining, and speed of re-identifying The Bastard cultural change leader is all extrospective and not at all introspective, acting more often out of fear than malicious intent     The Evolution of Organizational Culture Change   1:31 Mickey: If I look at 10, 15 years ago, when we would bring up the issue of organizational culture, the majority of senior leaders in organizations would dismiss it as soft and they only wanted to talk about the hard business topics of PNL, balance sheet and cash flow. And yet today, in this last year or so, almost every senior executive we talk to has a concern about the fit between their culture and their strategy. What happened that has had this become permissible, even necessary to discuss today when 10 years ago it was dismissed as soft and inconsequential?   2:08 Colin: I think first of all, Mickey, many people saw culture as an enabler, so they would think strategy first, and then say, “well, what does our culture need to be like?” And so, therefore, culture didn’t get changed very much.   2:24 Colin: The cultural change stuff that I saw 10, 15, 20 years ago, was quite mechanical it was simplistic, and therefore, it didn’t work.   2:46 Colin: We’re now changing at such a rate, the acceleration, we’re about to be 7 billion people on the planet. We’ve never done that before. And so we are now in a very new way of being.   3:08 Colin: We are actually in a world that’s much more disturbed and disordered, if that’s the frame we have, than it was 10 years ago. And strategy alone just doesn’t cut it.   3:30 Mickey: One of the things that I read is that in the last 15 years, 52% of the Fortune 500 companies have disappeared. In 1955, the average life expectancy of a Fortune 500 company was 75 years. This year the average life expectancy of a Fortune 500 company is 15 years. What sense do you make of that inside of this interest in how culture is consequential for organizations?   4:08 Colin: Not only have you got that 52% figure, you’ve also got the reverse of that, which is that we are seeing companies begin in a garage, and within 2 or 3 years are worth a billion dollars. So, we’re also seeing upgrowth incredibly fast, and that is remarkable.   We’ve got to stop thinking about organizations as structures, and start thinking of them as ecosystems   4:35 Colin: If you think of an organization as a structure, you can kind of work out A + B = C and you can work out how to make that system work. Once you think about it as an ecosystem, there’s issues of tension and balance and synergies that really are way more difficult to think about and to manage if you want to be a leader.   4:58 Mickey: What are the most essential things a leader might care about if you’re thinking of this dynamic, ever evolving network of relationships that functions like and ecosystem, versus this hierarchal structure that stands still for a while so you can learn exactly how it works?   5:20 Colin: A leader actually has people understand what we all care about, and has people able to reimagine themselves, reimagine their organization, reinvent, reform, and that is an issue of identity, that is an issue of seeing myself in a different way.   The Importance of “Unlearning”   5:46 Colin: So the challenge of that for a leader is not only have you got to help people to learn what’s going outside as well as inside, what’s going on around us, you’ve also got to help people unlearn.   6:02 Colin: Learning is imperative. Unlearning, which is very different to leaving behind, is incredibly difficult. And therefore as a leader, to help people unlearn you have to deeply and profoundly care about them, you’ve got to know who they are, and you’ve got to give them help with what I would call the transition from who you are now to who you need to be, and that requires insight, it requires courage, and it requires wisdom.   Courage and wisdom: The two factors that make great cultures   6:40 Colin: To get courage and wisdom, you can only get it from experiences, you cannot learn those two things. And so what leaders do is they give them experiences that have them begin to discover their courage, discover their wisdom.   7:00 Colin: You have to have diversity. Diversity brings a diversity of wisdoms, and courages. And so you then get this rich melange of extraordinary cleverness that you can take into the future as it keeps being reinvented.   8:40 Mickey: It’s diversity is the source of intelligence and reimagining and strength and wisdom.   7:30 Mickey: It’s very unusual, in my experience, to have people consider that an act of leadership is continually evolving what do we all care about. So whatever “we” there is that explains the existence of a system, of a business, of a nonprofit, whatever it is, how does the evolution of our care call for reimagining ourselves, which is a different way to think than “fixing ourselves”? We have to reimagine ourselves and our enterprise in light of the evolving care.     Essentiality vs. False Simplicity   9:00 Colin: What we’ve tried to do in the past is we’ve tried to simplify. When we are feeling discomforted from the complexity in the world, we race for solution, we race for security, we race for certainty. Leaders need at this point in our time to actually reframe that chaos, reframe that disruption, and start to think about it as multiple sources of information, as multipolarity.   9:38 Colin: So now we’re making sense of the complexity rather than simplifying the complexity. And again that requires different perspectives, different wisdoms, different courages. A leader in that space has to be expansive.   9:56 Mickey: Now when people take a really complex environment and attempt to falsely simplify the solutions to its challenges, it actually is a recipe for deccelerating the evolution of the culture, or getting the culture to actually disintegrate, fall apart. And yet we do it because we’re so desperate to make sense out of everything.   10:20 Mickey: I think of it as a false simplicity, something that misses the real nature of what’s going on in the system and how all the different pieces are affecting each other in an interrelated way.   10:37 Mickey: There are a lot of people that say one of the hallmarks of elegance is simplicity, but that’s when you’re highlighting the absolute essential nature of something, not falsely eradicating the true challenges in a complex system.   11:04 Colin: I am all for essentiality. When you are in the turbulence of disorder, there’s got to be something that you can see that has you feel safe. And what we do know is that when we have complex disruptive systems and somebody comes with what you’ve beautifully described as kind of false simplicity, you get answers like “build a wall”. And what occurs of course is, if you don’t have a leader that cares, if I don’t feel like I’m in an organizational village that matters to me, I would jump for that solution because I am so uncomfortable I am desperate.   12:28 Mickey: That reimagining of ourselves, I think happens more naturally when the essential thing we all care about becomes magnetically clear, that people recognize its legitimacy and are attracted to it at the level of self.   A Lesson in Essentiality   12:44 Mickey: An example of a client who I think has done that with courage and wisdom, here in the United States, one of the big insurance companies is Humana, starting with Mike McCalister and his tenure before he retired and brilliantly brought forward by Bruce Brussard, who’s the CEO there today. They actually renamed the essential issue for the existence of the contribution of their company in the world.   13:18 Mickey: They had to organize Humana to help people achieve lifelong well being. They couldn’t just be a company that worked out paying claims for diseases when it seemed justified. That they needed to shift the whole way that they saw the role of their company in the world for them to have both commercial viability and social viability. And that is, “our job is to focus all of who we are on helping people achieve lifelong well being.” And I think that fits with a kind of essential wakeup call that can have an organization come together and begin to reimagine itself.   14:02 Colin: As human beings we’ve all gone through identity transitions. So we know we can do it. Somehow we want to make sure that we can still do those things inside organizations.   14:29 Colin: How do you unlearn your identity, how do you unlearn things? And you think about that Humana example, which is beautiful, what did the folks have to unlearn?   From continuous improvement to true innovation   14:48 Colin: The challenge of continuous improvement, as good as it can be, it doesn’t typically require unlearning around identity, and you in fact become self-absorbed in simply polishing what you’ve already been doing for a number of years, which in my view explains the 52% attrition rate you talked about in Fortune 500. They’ve lost the capacity to reimagine. And of course, if I’m not being well led, I can only define success in terms of my current identity and therefore I will do everything I can to hold onto the past and polish it to look like it’s new when it’s not.   16:20 Colin: That is a big challenge for many organizations who think that their intellectual property is their competitive edge. I don’t think that’s true any more. I think their competitive edge is going to be speed of learning, speed of reimagining, speed of re-identifying, and that’s why we’re seeing startups beginning in garages and becoming a billion dollars in 3 years. Because they are constantly reimagining, they’re constantly destroying their own intellectual property to find something new.   17:06 Mickey: We’ve always had respect for that saying, “It’s easier to ride a horse the direction in which it’s walking.” The world is going towards the rapid and unhindered sharing of information, and so if we don’t evolve consistent with the direction it’s going, that seems to lack the wisdom you were talking about earlier.   The Leader, the Boss, & the Bastard of Culture Change   17:26 Mickey: When you look at it from a Leader perspective, you said that the job is to keep people evolving the question of what do we all care about, and bring to that the courage and wisdom it takes to reimagine ourselves and that includes being able to unlearn those deeply embedded habits that have become so thoughtlessly identified with that it takes work to even see them, much less unlearn them.   17:58 Mickey: Our chance for being smart about those challenges going way up in the presence of diverse points of view equally respected for all of their different contributions. That allows us to be in this evolving ecosystem where we keep awakening to where the reimagining is called for now, rather than the Boss thing, which I think is more of the traditional approach where you get a project management office and a bunch of instructions that tells people, “you used to act like this, now you’re supposed to act like this, by the way, somebody changed the metrics and rewards and if y’all don’t act that way then we’ll find someone who can.” It’s a false simplification of the issue. It can be well meaning, but it’s mechanical. It does not fit with the nature of being human.   18:53 Mickey: The Bastard cultural change leader is all extrospective and not at all introspective. So the issues are all outside of her or himself. They completely get it, but the rest of us need to change, the markets need to change, the circumstances in the company need to change.   19:30 Mickey: What do they need to reimagine as a human being? What do they need to unlearn? That somehow never seems to be a topic.   19:54 Colin: The Leader is somebody who actually understands that this is a tough time and we’re in it together, and we’re taking time to reimagine ourselves. We’re not going to race, we’re going to do this very well, and then we’re going to accelerate beyond belief. So there’s always the possibility of surprising results.   Fear & the Bastard   10:18 Colin: I think there are many Bastards in our organizations who look like really nice people. They are so frightened that they are holding on to the past and repolishing it...and it actually makes people feel even more insecure, less valid, and lose all capacity to reimagine their identity and their organization.   20:48 Mickey: So you’re saying that Bastard may be more a function of fear than evil.   20:54 Colin: I think Bastard is typically all about fear. In fact, a Bastard in my experience has quite often got the shakiest of all identities. I don’t think there are many malicious people on the planet.

In today’s episode, Mickey is joined by senior Conversant consultant, Robin Anselmi, to discuss the importance apology plays within the realm of leadership, as well as how to gracefully execute an apology rather than bastardize it. Because humans are innately imperfect, as Robin points out, apologies will be necessary, and they need to happen in a way that offers connection and learning. Mickey and Robin lay out the anatomy of an apology that a connected leader should strive for and discuss the opportunities for growth available to individuals and businesses that adopt this model. Highlights Apologies are inevitable, because humans are fallible. You might as well learn to get good at saying them, because they will happen. The anatomy of an apology from a place of connection consists of a genuine and specific acknowledgement of what happened, a responsible promise to correct the mistake and a request for forgiveness. Apology and forgiveness are inextricably linked. If you’re not receiving the forgiveness you want, first examine the quality of your own apology. Illegitimate apologies shift blame; well-executed apologies take ownership of being in something together. If your idea of an “apology” is finding someone who you say is worse than you are to turn attention away from you, you’re bastardizing the collective opportunity for learning and moving forward. Rather than evading apology, why not approach them as openings for conversation, tools for understanding and the roadmap for next steps? The Strength of a Well-Executed Apology 0:45 Mickey: We have with us Robin Anselmi, a senior member of Conversant, a trusted colleague and someone I admire in the way she thinks and the way she acts. Robin’s background is in engineering, at Corning and Capital One, where she provided leadership before she came to us. We love having someone with that technical design who also has a respect for the design of human connection. 1:27 Robin Anselmi: I love being in conversation about the design of human beings and how we work together, and I always love being in conversation with you, so this is a pleasure to spend my afternoon this way. 1:59 Robin: I’ve been thinking about the role of apology when it comes to leaders. Some use apology from a place of leadership and some do it as bastards. 2:25 Robin: Right around now, for those of us who are in the United States, there has been a lot in our media of bad role modeling on what an apology actually looks like. “I’m sorry if my words offended someone,” is not an actual apology. 12:47 Robin: A lot of leaders think that is an apology, that it comes from a position of strength, but it actually causes way more harm than good in our politics, our families and organizations. Correction, Not Perfection 2:59 Mickey: Given that you and I both care deeply about how the quality of connection affects the way organizations perform, what do you think apology has to do with that? 3:30 Robin: The last time I checked, none of us were walking around perfect on this earth. We often say that conversation is the art of correction, not perfection. That’s also true in leadership. 3:55 Robin: For any individual, team or organization to expect to be perfect sets us up for grave disappointment, and it sets up an environment where it’s really hard to raise and resolve issues. 4:18 Mickey: As you and I know, often these things we know to be inevitable about humans, we still try to design our organizations without taking that into account. One of the things that is inevitable about humans is we are going to have aspirations that we do not always stay true to, we will have values we don’t always adhere to and we’re going to have ambitions that don’t always succeed. 4:48 Mickey: One of the things we can absolutely guarantee are occasional bouts of disappointment, so apologies make sense. Apologies Should Not Be a Welcome Surprise—But They Are 5:01 Mickey: You’ve worked in so many organizations and you’ve been an organizational leader yourself. What’s an example of the kind of thing that happens that has you think apology is an issue for leadership? 5:20 Robin: I had done some work alongside an insurance company, and in one of their divisions, they had been doing an upgrade to one of their technical platforms that had involved a large number of people putting in a lot of extra hours. It had not gone well. 5:47 Robin: I was on-site one day when the COO and CTO of that division had an all-staff meeting with 100 people and they said, “We apologize. We got into this without knowing all of the ramifications. We did not predict that it could have gone this way and we did not give you the resources you needed to be successful.” That entire organization was abuzz that these two gentleman stood up, took responsibility and they didn’t blame on anyone else. I can’t tell you how many people came up to me and said, “We’ve never had anyone do that here before. 6:28 Robin: In an organization that had so many problems over a long period of time, those two people were held in extremely high regard. And the regard for them went up as a result of those words: “I am sorry.” 6:48 Mickey: The fact that they were specific about the consequences of the people they were talking to was particularly important. They said, “We did not give you the resources you needed to succeed.” The Three Components of a Well-Received Apology 7:06 Mickey: When it comes to the nature of apology, there are a few things that have been on my mind since you mentioned this earlier. Apology is inevitable, like you were talking about earlier. There are times when our best intentions are going to go unachieved, so we might as well get good at it since it is inevitable. If you’re looking at the domain of leader, apology starts with a genuine and specific acknowledgement of what you did or didn’t do that caused a problem, who was harmed, and how. 7:54 Mickey: Specifics are really important, because if you make an apology generic, it doesn’t land. It occurs to people as inauthentic. It’s pretty obvious to people when someone is saying the words but they’re not standing behind the words they’re saying. 8:27 Mickey: After the genuine and specific acknowledgement, there’s a responsible promise to correct. There were consequences for what went wrong. Like your example: “What resources do we need to provide to whom, by when?” The promise is how people take the apology seriously because you’re actually responsible for the mistake. If you don’t do that, the apology comes out hollow. 9:12 Mickey: Lastly—very few people do this—you request forgiveness. You look at the people who were involved and you say, “Please tell me, if I keep the promise I just made, is that enough for us to be back on track? Will you please forgive this mistake so we can move on together?” 9:40 Mickey: You ask that not only of the people who were damaged but everybody who witnessed the damage. You’re taking care of a network of relationships, not just the people who might have been hurt. 9:56 Mickey: And then, of course, you have to actually go keep the promises. If you go out and execute, then usually things get right back on track. It’s not an accident that some of the most famous and enduring stories in the history of humankind are redemption stories. 10:53 Mickey: People really do want to have us own up to mistakes and move on. Not apologizing wholeheartedly and genuinely causes a deep disease of disconnection. 11:03 Robin: I love the three components you just put together. That specificity provides plausibility. It shows it’s plausible that you are sorry for what happened. Too often our apologies come across as superficial or as a way to get out of a particular situation. 11:36 Robin: Making a promise is recognizing that you have contributed to the mistake. If you say, “I’m sorry you feel that way,” it doesn’t recognize your contribution to the situation. The request for forgiveness is a way of re-forging the community. It’s all of us in something together. The Connection of Apology and Forgiveness 12:22 Mickey: Apology and forgiveness are so connected. I think of them like my eyeglass lenses—concave on one side and convex on the other. You can’t separate one from the other. 12:40 Mickey: I have a lot of experience with hearing complaints: “People just won’t forgive and forget. They won’t just move on.” Well, I wonder if that’s somehow related to the quality of your apology… The real bastards are introspectively impotent. They don’t see that the lack of forgiveness they’re receiving is related to their own conduct. 13:10 Robin: The lack of the apology in an organization sets up a mood of people being afraid to fail and try things out on the edge or, maybe even more dangerously, afraid to talk about failure. 13:33 Robin: That’s how we wind up with cover-ups in organizations. People can’t raise an issue of something that hasn’t gone as planned. Leader who apologize create way more transparency in the entire organization. 13:55 Robin: We hear that word over and over again: “Is the organization transparent enough?” Are you as a leader setting up a mood that allows for transparency? If you haven’t modeled apology or forgiveness yourself, how can you expect others around you to do it? 14:14 Mickey: You just reminded me of a documentary I saw years ago called “Long Night’s Journey Into Today,” about the South African reconciliation putting the country back together after apartheid. In the documentary, there are two different policemen who are asking for clemency from the reconciliation commission. They had proven to be a part of the deaths of seven young men. 14:58 Mickey: One of the policemen got no interest in clemency for how he handled himself, only justifying what happened. The other one was deeply and emotionally feeling the damage that he’d caused. It was extraordinary how his remorse hit the same group of people who rejected the first policeman but supported the second. There are other examples in that film where people were forgiven and caused that kind of connectivity is re-strengthened. And examples of ways people conducted themselves in a way that the community was weakened. 15:50 Mickey: When you’re recovering from death, that takes a lot of forgiveness. But there are people who have been powerfully apologetic, responsible, honorable who evoke that kind of forgiveness. Bastardizing the Apology 16:03 Mickey: I want to go back to the notion of bastards. What do you think is going on when someone is really, wickedly bad at apology and the way they handle it hurts the community instead of helping it? 16:15 Robin: The biggest problem is they do not recognize their own contribution. “I’m sorry you feel that way” or “I’m sorry if people were offended,” are probably some of the most damaging apologies someone can make. It’s a false apology. Shifting the blame back on someone else is a bastard move to make, because you’re not owning that we’re in something together. 16:43 Mickey: It’s funny that you said “bastard move to make.” It is an illegitimate apology. 17:06 Mickey: Especially during the 2016 presidential campaign this year, one of the things I’ve gotten hypersensitive to is all of the times in our lives that we see this achingly bad version of apology: where people think, “I can say I’m sorry, then find someone who I say is worse than me and somehow identifying that villain makes me a hero.” 17:36 Mickey: How do you work that out, rationally? If there’s enough blame on someone else, somehow my behavior is permitted. It’s like they never got that lesson our mothers told us so young that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” 17:54 Mickey: The rampant irresponsibility that comes to mind is startling. The complaints that you might hear from someone who is making weak apologies that have not been well received might have people on his side who ask, “What happened to forgiveness? What happened to forgive and forget?” 18:29 Mickey: I don’t think they realize that this person is getting a response befitting of the way they’re operating. It’s not, “I said I’m sorry; what’s wrong with all you people?!” Go back and examine yourself before you complain about anyone else. When forgiveness happens, it’s important to realize that forgiveness is not approval. Forgiveness is the desire to redeem the past by learning from it and starting over. 19:09 Mickey: The way people interact with us after we make mistakes either calls us to learn and move forward…or not. I know I have dearly needed people to forgive me. I’ve had to learn the hard way that some of my apologies have been irresponsible, blame-filled, justifying, veiled attempts to evade. I’m glad I have people like you around me to not let me get away with that anymore. 19:58 Robin: To be fair, we need each other in that. If we see apology as a way to learn and move forward, does that really change the way we think to approach it? What if apology is really a way to hold up the mistakes we’ve made so we can learn from them as a community and figure out the way to heal and move forward? 20:37 Robin: The apologies that go really badly, we don’t have that opportunity to learn either individually or collectively. There’s no learning in what they care about or what we care about. There’s no way to move forward. 21:03 Mickey: That’s a beautiful summary of the challenge: apology is where things go wrong. We’ve made mistakes, some wittingly, some unwittingly. We’ve caused damage. Take responsibility for it and invite people into a conversation about what we can learn and what I can do to get back on the road to doing things we want to see happen. Then apology is just an occasion for us to reconnect, recommit and go make some good things occur. 21:35 Mickey: I just would like to see people be wholehearted in their apologies, more conscious of this tendency we have to be right and make others wrong and to have an apology yield to that desire to blame. Just accept it, learn from it, fix it and ask for people to forgive. 22:14 Robin: This is the exploration of what it means to be human together. Like I said at the start, being human means none of us are perfect, so learning how to apologize better serves all of us.  

In this episode, Mickey interviews a senior leader of Conversant, Jim Motroni, on his thoughts of why annual performance reviews might actually decrease performance. Leaders must learn hot to be partners for improvement. Learn more about how leaders influence the performance and wellbeing of other people. Working with humans can be unpredictable, but the outcomes are sure to be much more positive through open lines of communication between leaders and the people they work with. Highlights The only people who should care about learning how to influence are people who have ever been responsible for others. So basically, everyone. Dominating in the moment may seem like the easiest possibility, but it means backward growth in the long run that impedes productive aims. The antidote to the misguided use power is connecting people from your own humanity and the humanity of the people around you. The fundamental role of leaders is to create self-supervising, committed people in action. Have conversations as soon as the need is apparent, because the longer you wait, the greater the risk of having an easier conversation turns into a more difficult—or even crisis—conversation. Seek to inspire open, frequent dialogue rather than avoid the difficult conversations.  Instead of punitive assessment measures that may actually hinder growth and productivity, reviews can be an invitation to work in partnership toward collective improvement. The Responsibility of Leaders to Influence 0:59 Mickey Connolly: Today I have with me one of our esteemed colleagues, James Joseph Motroni. Jim and I have known each other for 22 years. It was March of 1994, and in all that time I’ve known you, you’ve had a varied career including being a bank executive and then counsel to over 75 CEOs. Jim is a senior leader here at Conversant, where we work on how the human interactions and big systems affect the quality of people’s lives and the results they produce. 1:56 Mickey: A particular area of interest for you is how leaders influence the performance of other people. 2:10 Jim Motroni: This idea is one of the first challenges I was introduced to when I was in a leadership role. I thought, “There has to be a secret formula for how this happens.” A lot of what we do in business is anticipatable that yields to formula approaches and standard ways of doing things, but the challenge of working with human beings never really changes. 2:50 Jim: Since then, I’ve been a student of what it takes to create great results, but it is a never ending challenge to look at how this happens. I’m in that game from a personal and professional point of view. 3:23 Mickey: It’s interesting that we bring our families into the conversation, because the desire to influence the impact of others is also deeply embedded in the notion of parenting. The only people who should care about this are people who have ever been responsible for others. When we have the responsibility for the wellbeing and performance of other people, we can take that on in ways that are constructive and ways that are destructive. Human Connection as the Antidote to Corruption 4:05 Mickey: In our leaders, bosses and bastards trio of ways of being, leaders evoke contribution. They bring out the best in people and they help them operate at the top of their talents. Bosses issue instructions, which may or may not help someone operate. Bastards issue demands and provide no support whatsoever. 4:42 Jim: There’s something that encourages us to ignore what we know about how human beings coordinate and inspire each other. Something gets lost when we take on authority. When we have power over someone, we can act like the rules don’t apply to us. Sometimes we forgot the basic principles of how humans get things done, inspire others, evoke the best in each other, create the kind of ongoing relationships that can handle increasingly difficult breakdowns. 5:21 Jim: Sometimes we rely on what looks to be the easy way out, which is to be a boss or a bastard. We may put up this veneer of, “I told you to do it, I dominated you or I had authority so I could make you do it.” 5:42 Jim: Those of us who have ever been parents or had parents will attest that sometimes that feels like the easiest way. But that’s one of those times when fast becomes slow. It actually moves us backwards in terms of our long-term ability to turn things out. 6:02 Jim: Leaders understand that they can use authority and power, but they use it judiciously and they use it inside of the desire to grow a relationship and evoke the best of what each person brings to the table. 6:26 Mickey: Jim is the co-author of The Vitality Imperative: How Connected Leaders and Their Teams Achieve More with Less Time, Money and Stress. You just reminded me of the Lord Acton quote that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The antidote to power is community—connecting people from their humanity and the humanity of others. 7:02 Mickey: Senior leaders can create development community around them, where people are free to give feedback, say what they see and report the impact the leader is having (whether it’s positive or negative). If leaders promote an environment where leadership occurs in an open network of relationships and everyone has a right to give their view, that helps us maintain the humility that ought to come with the opportunity to be that influential in the lives of other people. 7:46 Jim: As we work inside of organizations that are attempting to manage that dynamic, part of the structure of how they manage it actually works against that sense of community you’re talking about. I’m referring to the challenge of having quarterly or annual performance reviews. There’s too much time between when we talk about how things are going. 8:17 Jim: One thing we talk about here at Conversant is how we can have conversations early and often that keep us at “Point Easy,” the time when it’s relatively easy to have a conversation to bring us back on track. Community is built piece by piece with frequent interactions. If you try to build it on a quarterly or annual basis, it works against how humans operate. 8:46 Jim: Humans like to be at Point Easy, where small adjustments add up to big adjustments over a long term, and where talking about where we are frequently takes out the sting, fear and disconnection the times when we look to adjust performance. 9:00 Jim: This is adjusting performance and results in both directions: I want feedback from people who work with and for me and I want to give feedback to the people I work with and for. Building community sometimes flies in the face of the structures that we’ve set up in organizations that no longer scale or work for how we work anymore. Inspiring Contribution through Autonomy and Transparency 9:27 Mickey: Over the years that you’ve counseled CEOs, it’s likely really frequent that leaders want to talk about the influence they have over others. What have you found over the years about how senior leaders can inspire the contribution of others and cause improvement without domination? 10:30 Jim: One is to have a sense of how I can connect a person to what our largest purposes are. There is an idea I reflect back on a lot that our colleague, Tom Knighton, introduced me to in a slightly different way: The role of leaders fundamentally is to create self-supervising, committed people in action. 10:58 Jim: If create people that are self-supervising, they don’t need to keep coming back to us. If people are committed, they’re personally inspired and in the game so that when they run into a roadblock, they’re still disciplined and resilient enough to work through it. When they’re in action, people aren’t waiting to be told what to do. 11:22 Jim: If you look at that as a framework for how to create self-supervising, committed people in action, part of it is that they know what we’re trying to do as an organization so their efforts can move in that direction. 11:42 Jim: The second thing that leaders need to be able to do is to understand this unique individual in front of them and what inspires him or her and what support he or she needs to make this work. 12:00 Jim: The third thing is that leadership is a reciprocal arrangement. We are both getting smarter as we work together. I’m as interested in what you see that informs my leadership as I am with my capacity to tell you what to do. 12:20 Mickey: That’s an interesting triad to connect people to a purpose that’s important to the enterprise and one they can admire, to look at how their unique needs are and how that person can contribute to that purpose and to contribute to one another. That’s a pretty good recipe. Open Conversation Rather Than Avoidance 12:24 Mickey: I’m going to look at the other side of the coin. Those are things to be for. I think there are also things to be against and I’d like to look at the relationship between them and see how they apply to each other. 12:59 Mickey: Our friend David Dotlich talks about a senior executive he knows, the CEO of a global corporation who could not bring himself to tell his executive assistant that his personal hygiene was so bad people didn’t want to be in meetings with him because of the smell, which had been going on for months. 13:29 Mickey: That story reminds me of how many things we see and don’t act on. You were talking about Point Easy earlier, and there are so many things we avoid. 13:43 Mickey: I was with some executives last week and I had to manage my own reactions. There is part of their company that is not going well relative to their strategic commitments and the people who can make the difference don’t have all the facts. They don’t want to “be negative.” Senior executives saying, “Well, we could just hurt everyone’s motivation.” Okay, so keep everyone feeling good while the place goes bankrupt… 14:14 Jim: “We’ll be the happiest people in the unemployment line.” 14:18 Mickey: It’s amazing how many people who are sophisticated and successful enough to get into these senior leadership positions who then shrink away from actually having open conversations with people. 14:34 Mickey: What do you say to these senior executives who seem to be otherwise competent but are afraid to actually give their people complete awareness of what is going on around them that might affect their ability to contribute? 15:30 Jim: Part of what these executives are holding as a false equivalent is that the pain of having the conversation is the flip side of the gain we have short and long term. There’s confronting that falsity. And also asking, “How do I have a conversation with this person that forwards what they care about and what we all care about together?” 16:18 Jim: That’s a different question than, “How do I give them some feedback that only hurts them in the smallest way possible?” That’s preparing for a different conversation than: “How do I give them the feedback they need to be effective in their job and satisfied in a way that has them be appreciative of the risk I took and the amount of information they get?” 16:58 Jim: It’s a more sophisticated understanding of the leader’s role than just, “My job is to do the best I can to avoid all possibility of having to stand up to fear.” No, fear and the challenges of it are the natural outgrowth of the position you’re in. 17:15 Jim: Not everyone is up for the level of leadership they’re being asked for. People aren’t always confronting what it’s really going to take to be a leader. It has them shrink from the opportunity that’s in front of them. 17:37 Mickey: One of the things we’ve seen in the nearly thirty years we’ve been looking at how leaders produce the most results per unit of time, money and stress, there are many people who get in positions of leadership and then shrink from the challenges that come with that position. 18:03 Mickey: One of the challenges of being a leader is your job is to get people connected to reality and give them the information they need to know how they’re doing relative to their own desire to make a difference. And then, provide an environment where they have access to all of the people and resources they need to improve. Moving from Formal Review to Frequent Conversation 18:24 Mickey: These are really important, informal conversational skills you were referring to. You can be with someone, can understand they’re frightened and disappointed because the results aren’t good. You can connect with someone on what is deeply important to them and help them recover their whole self, not just the scared part. 18:51 Mickey: There are some skills there. You mentioned earlier the issue about formal reviews and there are some companies doing some experiments to move away from these mid-year and end-of-year formal reviews. They’re now betting the everyday conversations are the leverage point for performance improvement. There was a study we used some years ago that showed formal performance conversations actually decreased performance. 19:32 Mickey: What is it about the formal conversations that doesn’t improve performance and what do you think is crucial for leaders if we’re going to move to this reliance on informal discussion to make a difference in the success of our organizations? 19:51 Jim: The structure that is used for a lot of these conversations actually prevent the conversations from happening. The idea is fill out this form, mark these numbers and somehow handing people the paperwork that’s headed to HR is the review and will cause the change you want. That’s nonsensical. 20:27 Jim: The preparation is great as a starting point for conversations; they are not the conversation. For people to move from annual or quarterly to way more frequent, highly leveraged conversations and discussions, it means a shift in how the conversation takes place so it really is more of a dialogue. It doesn’t depend on written sheets or checking boxes. 21:05 Jim: The second thing is to treat a review as a discussion. It goes both directions. What do you see that I don’t see? Where do I have points of view that I’m interested in getting informed and educated? How can I help shape what I see you doing as a person who works for me in a way that evokes and invites more of what you want to be excited about? Leadership as Partnership 21:30 Mickey: The formal environment creates this spirit of assessment, where you are now called into the principal’s office to be told if you are good or bad from someone who sits on high and can tell the difference. 21:50 Mickey: The reality of doing great work is we’re in it together. The way you’re speaking, it’s we are partners in improvement. Our best day is still to come, not behind us. We need each other because together we see things we can’t see by ourselves. 22:13 Mickey: That spirit you have of someone in a senior executive position an open partnership of improvement that allows all parties to contribute to one another is an act of leadership. 22:30 Mickey: The boss just fills in the forms the way you were talking about. The bastard is just annoyed and wants better people. 22:40 Jim: That’s right. “How did I get stuck with all these losers?!” 22:44 Mickey: “It’s amazing. There were a lot of these at my last company too; they must follow me.” The bastards don’t realize what they are actually procreating. 23:02 Jim: That kind of conversation doesn’t preclude the importance of corrective conversations. It’s not all a “Kumbaya” moment. 23:11 Mickey: Absolutely not. I’ve seen so many leaders do a terrific job of bringing up very difficult issues but they bring them up in the context of a purpose all parties care about, and being there to help the person make a bigger difference in they’re currently making. 23:57 Jim: Where it’s necessary, bad news doesn’t get better over time. What is important for leaders is to recognize that every day they delay moves them from Point Easy to Point Difficult to Point Crisis. 24:18 Jim: How can I engage in the conversation without having to know how it’s going to turn out and without having a clear sense of how I’m going to make difficult conversations easy. Sometimes difficult conversations are just difficult. My strong encouragement is having tough conversations is rarely as bad as we think it’s going to be, but I can almost guarantee you, not having them pushes it to a time that makes it even harder to have an outcome we can all be proud of.

Leaders, Bosses & Bastards: Episode Title What does it take for two very different, large organizations, with very different company cultures, to come together under the same overarching vision? Mickey interviews Bob Johnson, the Chief Executive Officer of Conversant, about all the conversational ins-and-outs that are involved in mergers, acquisitions and major organizational changes. Highlights As a leader, don’t assume that because you know where the organization is headed that everyone alongside you does as well. Smoothly navigating organizational change requires transparent and genuine conversation, showing your people what is happening and what decisions made it happen the way it is. Rather than just issue demands and later let employees know whether they met your undisclosed standards, be open about the needs of the company and offer the necessary tools to achieve those aims. To ensure you’re legacy is that of a leader rather than a bastard, follow up each interaction with the question: “What is the story people will tell about the conversation they just had with me?” Openly focus on what changes your leadership needs to make to benefit the company, and people will naturally begin to ask themselves that question about their own contribution. Rather than viewing organizational obstacles as mechanical or process problems to be fixed, approach them as human challenges that require specific conversations to be had. Navigating Organizational Changes 0:51 Mickey: We have with us the CEO of Conversant, Bob Johnson. Today we want to talk about mergers, acquisitions and other big, tumultuous organizational changes. What makes you someone we should listen to about that? 1:12 Bob Johnson: Well, I’m just a fascinating person, is one reason. But probably the more valid reason is, having been involved as far back as the Hewlett Packard and Compaq merger, I have a lot of experience directly in what is involved when we have two big organizations that have very different cultures and are coming together around what they think is the same aspiration. 1:52 Bob: Since then, I’ve been involved in a number of organizations that are going through mergers or acquisitions, or often just having to evolve and significantly disrupt their business model so they can, in some cases, survive, and in other cases, make a bigger difference. 2:22 Mickey: You were a senior executive with big accountabilities during the merger of Hewlett Packard and Compaq some years ago (Sept. 3, 2001). What were the biggest lessons that you’ve taken to all of these other companies you’ve supported since then? 2:42 Bob: Among the lessons is to be careful what your assumptions are going in—by that I mean: “I assume people see the benefit of two big companies coming together. I assume people will work hard to make this come together as quickly as possible. I assume that they will understand and act upon what we tell them.” 3:10 Bob: What I tell them is they’re merging because there’s a change they want to happen in their culture to have better business results and make a greater impact. While those words sound good, people have a real need to be in dialogue about understanding what they mean. 3:36 Bob: There are a series of conversations that are important that tend to be overlooked, causing rework and slowness later on. Are you involved in a dialogue so they sufficiently understand the purpose of the merger? Then they get to state what their purpose is inside of it as well. What is that intersection of where we’re going with this and what people are together on? 4:02 Bob: Given this change we’re trying to make, let’s be clear what that is and let’s look at our existing culture, behaviors and organization. There are some things we want to conserve, to honor and respect and bring forward. And there are some things we really know we need to change. 4:22 Bob: Change is going to involve our capability building and questioning models we’ve been operating under. Those are examples of phases that sometimes don’t get the attention they need and later on require a lot of work to go back and do better. Listen, Rather than Assume 3:37 Mickey: You were talking about assumptions and one of the biggest assumptions people have is, “Because I understand the reason we’re making a big change, you should be able to understand.” 4:49 Mickey: We frequently see senior leaders who have been involved in months (in some cases, a couple years) of conversations that lead to a major organizational acquisition or merger or divestiture. These leaders have become so intimately familiar with the change themselves that they forget it took then that long to get that familiar. 5:21 Mickey: They talk to other people about it, and as soon as they understand their own voice in their own head, they think they just made the point they want to make and assume everyone else just got it. 5:39 Bob: In one of the mergers, the leader was very clear on why it was important. I was part of a group she pulled together of 80 global leaders to launch this work. Someone raised their hand and said, “I still don’t completely understand what or why we’re doing this.” The leader just blew up and said, “I’ve distributed those plans. You have a very compelling slide deck that describes the path we’re on. I would have assumed you’d read this, and you obviously haven’t. That tells me you aren’t the leaders to do this.” And she left the meeting. 6:35 Bob: She eventually came back, acknowledging that we hadn’t had the sufficient conversations and that we were the people she wanted to be on this journey with. She realized she needed to listen and make sure it was clear. Leaders Respect, Bastards Demand 6:49 Mickey: You can think of it in terms of leaders, bosses and bastards. We say that a genuine, powerful leader is orchestrating the contribution of others, and they’re doing it in a way that people know they’re respected and cared for. 7:19 Mickey: The bosses just leave people instructions. The person you were talking about sounded like that. The bastards don’t even do that. Bastards just issue demands and let you know later whether you met undisclosed standards. 7:57 Bob: Bastards. There are plenty of them and they don’t know it. They would be stunned to think that people thought that of them, because it’s so obvious to them what’s happening. In some cases they just don’t engage. And then they wonder a year later why more progress isn’t made. 8:35 Mickey: And why some of their best and brightest decided to go somewhere else. You made an important point: people who are occurring as bastards are not that in their own minds. It really has to do with extraordinary insensitivity. 9:04 Mickey: On a particular merger, one leader from one side held a meeting with leaders from the two companies. He said, “Let’s get something very, very clear. This keeps getting written about as a ‘merger’. I want it to be clear: this is an acquisition. We have paid $X billion dollars for this company. We’re in charge of what happens next.” 9:45 Mickey: The toxic gossip and the number of people who began to polish resumes that came out of that meeting were extraordinary. That guy definitely occurred to people as a bastard. Writing the Stories We Want to Be a Part Of 10:08 Mickey: So much of the breakdown is people don’t do the patient and time-consuming work to understand who all of the different groups of people are who are crucial to the success of this combination. What are each of those groups’ distinct purposes, worries and circumstances? How do we engage them in conversation to clarify the reason for doing this that is actually sensitive to all of those purposes, concerns and circumstances? 10:46 Bob: Every organization has a story that is in continual motion and continually sharing. The story based on what you shared, is what’s the story about that leader who acted like a bastard? 11:19 Bob: Or do you create a story that has hope and aspiration in it? This is where I think we get in and really make a difference: creating the kinds of conversations you want with different people in the organization, who you know are highly connected to other people, that will generate a positive story. There’s still a lot of work to do, but do we have a good story from the beginning that people feel they want to be a part of? 11:54 Mickey: I love that as a way for really effective leaders to think about how to manage this kind of seismic change. You get a microcosm of that system together and ask, “What is the story that this merger or acquisition is a central moment in?” 12:30 Mickey: Having a positive story is exciting to people, because then the purpose becomes meaningful. Things become clear, in a way that people can share it, because it’s a story not a Powerpoint deck. 12:46 Mickey: Each senior leader in these organizations could ask him or herself after every meeting or significant interaction: “What story do I think people are telling about the conversation they just had with me? And how does that story fit with the story we say we’re writing for this change in organization?” 13:07 Bob: Leaders can take that analogy and think about, “What is the next chapter we want to write? What will it take for that story to be complete, whole, and inspire people to move into the next phase?” Self-Change Leads the Organizational Change 13:27 Bob: The other caution is you might have done a really good job to start, but you let it go. People are always looking for that indicator of where they won’t be allowed to be involved and they’ll get dominated. You have to be vigilant to avoid that. 13:47 Mickey: Be responsible for your assumptions and turn them into clear, open conversation. We spoke about that conversation being sensitive to the purposes, concerns and circumstances of the people you actually need to pull this off. It’s startling how often leaders are not sensitive to that. 14:06 Mickey: A word that gets used so much that it has become trivialized is “authenticity.” How open, transparent, genuine and human are the people responsible for this major organization change happening? 14:29 Mickey: How often are the leaders in an open, genuine conversation with other people? How do we make this something human that we are in together, rather than some formal set of manuals about how things are supposed to be? 14:47 Mickey: At another company we’re supporting and doing significant work, they’re expanding globally at a rate where their underlying processes have to evolve in huge, dramatic and rapid ways. The current processes cannot support the level of growth they’re having globally. 15:09 Mickey: The CEO has been there for the ride for over 10 years—very successful, very well thought of. He shared his concerns with people that the changes they were going through were not just the underlying processes of the company. They had to be changes in how he led. 15:35 Mickey: He was confronting that as an important question that he asked people to talk to him about. He said, “I want to know what you think this company needs from me in the new era that it didn’t need before? And what did it need in the past that it doesn’t need now?” He got extraordinary input. 16:06 Mickey: What happened after that is that people began to ask those questions about themselves: “As the company changes, what changes in me in order to make that successful?” Having someone that senior orchestrate development instead of asking for it from other people—that’s a leader. 16:27 Mickey: That’s someone really eliciting the interest, connection, contribution of others that really inspirits this kind of change. 16:37 Bob: I was in a conversation this morning with the top leader of an organization, who acknowledged that his leadership needs to shift for the organization to be able to have the impact they want. He asked a group of people to give him feedback, such as, “What is the unique contribution that this person and only this person can make?” 17:12 Bob: Part of the conversation from the group that was helping him was they came to the understanding that this change was not just about him as a leader. “This is about us as well.” 17:25 Bob: “However we answer the leadership at the top, what does that say about our leadership and how we engage the rest of our organization?” 17:39 Mickey: That does fit with our definition of leader, contrasted with boss or bastard. The boss would tell other people what they need to do that’s different. The leaders actually demonstrate that the changes in our enterprise call for me to evolve my own leadership. That naturally attracts other people in the same conversation. Make It Easy for People to See The New Direction 18:03 Mickey: It’s amazing to me in how many of these major organizational changes, people do not communicate enough about what is happening, why it’s happening and what criteria we used to decide what to say no and yes to. 18:33 Mickey: I’ve heard some people say, “We don’t have time for all of that.” And yet they end up having time for the disappointing execution and the failed meeting that people walk away from with stories that are not helpful to the future of the enterprise. They come with false cause like, “We don’t have the right people.” 18:55 Mickey: But they just didn’t manage to stay in an open, complete conversation so people could see where we’re going and what we’re doing. 19:05 Mickey: As I was driving in this morning, I was on a four-lane road and in a hurry. I was trying to make sure I was in the right lane for moving most quickly. I noticed that I wanted to change lanes because there was a big truck ahead and I couldn’t see what was in front of me. I had to keep myself from changing lanes. It turned out that the truck lane was much faster than the others, but everything in me wanted to move just because I couldn’t see. That’s what happens to people in these big companies; if they can’t see what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and why we made these choices, then people end up making up all sorts of fearful stories. 19:54 Mickey: Investing in clear, chronic communication, being the source of information versus the subject of worried gossip is a crucial part of change. 20:10 Bob: If you take it back to the leaders, bosses and bastards, I’ve just come out of an experience from the last couple months with a person I’d say is a bastard (“I’m the smartest one here. Just do what I said. Make sure people do what I say and we’ll get where we want to go”). A year and a half later, they’re nowhere near where they need to go. The question he was unwilling to confront was “Why is that the case?” 20:44 Bob: How is happened is that he didn’t engage people. There was no element of co-creation. There was no transparency of the “why” they were making changes and the facts that contributed to them. 21:04 Bob: If you want to shift it, it requires your leadership and your stewardship of dialogue in the organization to shift the story they have about you, the lack of trust they have for you and their willingness to step into something they’ve clearly stepped out of. That’s a huge disruption. 21:22 Mickey: While it took him a year and a half to be open to having that conversation, that shows up on the P&L, the balance sheet and the cash flow. 21:32 Bob: It’s almost like, “What would be an effective transition for you from bastard to leader, and are you interested?” 21:42 Mickey: And what could that mean to the commercial success of the enterprise? Or, if it was not a for-profit, what could that mean for the mission success of the enterprise? Depending on the speed at which people own that something is not working well, what does my conduct have to do with that? 22:07 Mickey: Answering and asking that question is an act of leadership. For him, that the lag time was so long. In your future work with him, I hope he’ll work on reducing the time lag between when things are not going as planned and what his personal role might be in that. 22:29 Bob: In this case, he has been confronted with that and open to accepting it. One of the results of being a bastard is a year and a half of no progress. A leader really opens that up as transparent, invites people in and is interested in their point of view. What’s the possible result of being a leader? 23:03 Bob: In this case, setting a six month timeline of new ways to engage the organization in the hopes and dreams you have for yourself as a leader and them. And he’s in it. But it takes a shift. 23:16 Bob: As you can imagine, people are like, “Is this real?” Engaging Humans, Not Just Fixing Mechanics 23:40 Mickey: You relate to these really large organizational challenges as more human challenges than they are mechanical or process challenges—because the mechanics and the processes are invented and led by human beings. 24:02 Mickey: Most people do financial due diligence and all of this work on making plans that people are just supposed to follow. You actually relate to it more like engaging human beings early in conversation. 24:17 Mickey: You help solve challenges rather than just follow instructions and have them participate in what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. This approach fuels change so well, it’s shocking how many companies don’t do this. 24:50 Bob: Words matter. You’re a champion of that. The distinction inside of what you just described is: leaders who say, “I want you to follow me,” versus leaders who say, “I want you to join me.” 25:10 Bob: Following has a certain set of behaviors. Joining has a set of conversations, invitations and co-creations that need to occur. I know between the impact of being a followed leader versus a joined leader, joined leading gets you a lot further down the road, a lot faster, with better results and greater fulfillment. 25:25 Mickey: That’s a beautiful example of getting more done with less time, money and stress.

Colin Pidd engages Jaap Jonkman, a consultant with decades of executive experience in the financial industry, in a conversation about leadership in the landscape of global finance. They discuss the importance of instilling shared purpose and empathy in organizations ranging from banks to correctional facilities, and the roles that both shared purpose in the workplace and a growing shared economy will have on the future. Highlights The lay of the land in banking is vastly different depending on geography and the strategy each country’s banks used to deal with the 2008 financial crisis, but what stays the same is the need for purpose. Instilling purpose is the future of banking, and it hinges on the ability to relate both to your customers and your employees on a genuine, empathetic level. In order to work toward being a successful banker or CEO, thinking long term and having the bravery to stand up and do differently is what will set you apart and ahead. Catering to customers and making money are not mutually exclusive aims. In fact, the more seriously you consider your customers and employees, the more superior your returns. The bridge between empathy and success in business is matching the purposes, concerns and circumstances of the other party with your own to meet a common end. Purpose is considering what it means to be human, what your opportunity is here and how you live that every day. From the Netherlands, All Over the World 0:43 Colin: With me is Jaap Jonkman, who spent a lot of time until recently in banking and finance. Today we’ll talk about the connection between purpose and empathy, which you don’t usually associate with finance and insurance. But first, Jaap, what made you decide to go into banking? 1:13 Jaap Jonkman: In university, I did economics with the purpose of getting out of the Netherlands as quickly as possible to see the world. I applied to many companies and the one that would send me abroad most quickly was a Dutch financial institution by the name of AMRO. So really, I joined banking because AMRO was the first to send me abroad. 1:56 Jaap: I worked in many countries. As the son of a diplomat, traveling was already in my blood. We went to Pakistan, Amsterdam, Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, Bangkok and many other places. 2:25 Jaap: We came to Sydney and Melbourne after I left AMRO and joined the National Australia Bank (NAB). I spent twelve years with them. The Global Banking Landscape 2:38 Colin: What do you see in banking right now and what is it time for? 3:23 Jaap: Because it’s difficult to see from a global perspective, it’s useful to split up into four different groups. You have American banks. America’s economy is going better than most of the others and what they did in 2008 was very rapidly take all their bad loans, put them into a separate vehicle and start again. You can see those banks starting to move back to the returns that were there before the crisis hit. They won’t get back to the same levels of return since 2004-2007 were quite extraordinary, but they will get to decent levels of profitability. 4:22 Jaap: If you look at Europe, it’s a different story. The countries went to austerity. The banks did not write off all of the loans and kept them on the books. As a result, their returns are dismal at this point. 4:59 Jaap: In the Australia system, there are four pillars so we came through 2008 quite unscathed. Our returns have been high—the highest in the world. 5:18 Jaap: The fourth category is the Chinese banks, which have been lending to a lot of state-owned companies, so it’s very hard to see how many loans are performing and how many are not. China’s economy has boomed, but it’s been a credit-fueled boom over the last few years. Purpose-Fueled Banking 5:51 Colin: As we speak to CEOs of banks all over the world, they talk more and more of this notion of purpose. 6:08 Jaap: Purpose is the future of banks—or at least some of the banks. Without banks, the economy would struggle. As an example, I was running a business bank for New South Wales in Australia and it was such a privilege to see the customers who had built small businesses from scratch. 6:40 Jaap: When we would visit, they were so proud of what they had built and said they owed some of it to their first bank manager twenty years before. When I was feeling down, I would go visit these customers. What is the decision I can make today, the value I can add today, that someone twenty years from now will talk about that silly Dutchman who had confidence in them? 7:30 Colin: Beyond what drives you, tell me about organizational purpose. Is it the same thing, and how do you use it? 7:41 Jaap: Purpose has an economic element to it, and banks play a very important element in that. There are two other elements: customers and employees. 8:01 Jaap: Currently, not just in banks, but in organizations we both work with, customer satisfaction and employee engagement are seen as methods to get more shareholder value. But if you think about purpose, they’re actually fantastic in their own right. If you ask the people who work in an organization, “What makes you tick?” it’s not that we had 12% ROI; it is really that they made that customer leave with a smile on their face or the community they work in is more of a community than when they began work there. 8:36 Jaap: To hold onto all of those elements at the same time is where purpose comes in. For humanity, our opportunity is to live and banks can help us do that. The Respected Banker 9:19 Colin: There’s a bank CEO in Australia who talks about wanting to make bankers more respectable, so people are proud to be bankers. Is that possible? 9:31 Jaap: It’s definitely possible, and it’s very important that it happens. The key question is, what is the timeframe? If you think you have to outperform this quarter or this year, then it will be much more difficult. It’s fun to work for a respected bank. It’s great to be a customer of a respected bank. And it’s great to be the shareholder or CEO of a respected bank. 10:06 Jaap: The first week Paul Polman arrived at Unilever, he went to the different hedge funds. He told them their plan to go longer term and that, while he understood the role that the hedge funds played, he said Unilever was not the right company for them to invest in because they had the longer-term view. There’s bravery in standing up and saying the type of shareholder you’re looking for are the ones who want to be around for the long run, with the promise to repay those returns over that period of time. Trying on the Customer’s Shoes 11:10 Colin: What does it really mean to be purpose driven and customer-centric? 12:01 Jaap: There’s a need to do something that’s right for the customer that’s a very heartfelt and genuine intent. It is perceived as bullshit if people say they’ve looked at the analysis, and to outperform the market, they have to focus on the customer. 12:30 Jaap: The wider view is to come back to purpose. Do you really want to add to your customers or do you just want to make more money? There is room for both. They do not have to be in conflict. 12:40 Colin: What you’re saying is being in community together. 12:57 Colin: That means you have to walk in the shoes of your customer, but that requires extraordinary self-awareness to become empathetic and neutral at the same time. 13:20 Jaap: When we talk about conversation, the fundamental premise we start with is if I have your best interest at heart and you have mine, we will feel that from one another. If I know about what you’re concerned about, what your purpose is and what your circumstances are, and you know mine, then together we will create something. 13:34 Jaap: This ability to step into each other’s shoes is the starting point for creating value. If bankers step into the shoes of their customers or the people that work for them, there’s huge progress to be made. 13:45 Jaap: And vice versa. Customers can be asked to understand the position of the bankers at times. It comes from both sides. You can’t expect a bank to support requests that are not worth supporting. 14:35 Jaap: I was reading a book the other day that talked about three things that define success, one of which was mutuality. These are principles not to live up to, but to live into. How can we, in any transaction, begin this together so it’s best for both of us? 15:14 Colin: It’s not about true altruism, is it? It’s actually what Peter Block talks about as “enlightened self-interest.” You’re self interested, but there’s a connection inside of it. 15:30 Jaap; If you listen to astronauts or people who do a lot of meditation, they say we are all one. So the idea is if 6 billion people are in a bad space and I’m in a good space, how does that feel? Mutuality can bring us together one-one-one, but also humanity as a whole. If banks start thinking, “What is our role in bringing forward humanity?” then over the long term they will get superior returns. Empathy as a Source Hope 16:06 Colin: Besides banking and finance, you’ve also worked in corrections. There’s the balance of issues of safety and protecting people through the notion of rehabilitation. What have you seen that gives you hope around that sector? 16:44 Jaap: It’s such a difficult place to be and comes back to empathy. If you’re in an environment where you feel physically threatened every moment, how do you strive for mutuality? 17:05 Jaap: What gives me great hope is that I’ve seen two expressions. The first one is the therapeutic (over punitive) approach. How can we help people move in the right direction beyond punishing them for what they’ve done? 17:32 Jaap: The other one is people who deal with difficult kids. They talk about trauma-informed learning, which also comes back to empathy. At any point in time, when you have direction with someone, you immediately put yourself in their shoes and think, “Where does this come from?” Instead of taking it personally, you understand the trauma this person has gone through. To step into these shoes takes so much patience, awareness and understanding, and the results are extraordinary. 18:48 Colin: That’s not just going to take a quick orientation program. What are some of the methods used in that kind of organization to get to that point? What can we take from that self-awareness, patience, discipline and courage in that kind of correctional organization into other places? 19:24 Jaap: The word that comes to me is integrity, which comes back to purpose. I’ve never comes across someone who doesn’t believe they have integrity. Everyone has integrity, even though our opinion of other people’s integrity is much easier to be negative about. Integrity is asking, “How do I want to live my life? Who do I want to be as a leader? What contribution do we want our organization to make to society?” 19:58 Jaap: The leaders that have inspired me are ones that have a high integrity in what they are trying to do in life and they way they showed up in every minute. Purpose is considering what it means to be human, what your opportunity is here and how you live that every day. 20:34 Colin: Another thing about working in a correctional facility is if you feel like an island, it’s really hard. But if you’re together, that is a source of integrity and purpose as well. 20:53 Jaap: Absolutely. And integrity is considering what the intent of the collective community is, what the strategies are, and how individuals behave inside that. A Shared Economy and the Future of Banking 21:50 Colin: This whole shared economy—Uber, Airbnb, etc.—what’s the future of that in banking? 21:58 Jaap: With crowd funding, you mean—people coming up with great ideas and other people supporting them? It will flourish. Everywhere we see any sharing going on it seems to work really well. 22:14 Jaap: The only thing I can’t get my head around is (probably because I’m an institutionalized banker after twenty years) is the idea of credit worthiness. There’s so much effort that goes into bank systems to identify what is a credit worthy activity to get into and what is not. For novices to do that on the web…I think there would be a lot of tears. So that’s the only thing I’m not sure if I can reconcile. 22:44 Colin: We also know that if I’m vulnerable with you and I trust you, I’m more likely to be accountable. 22:55 Jaap: Absolutely. Look at micro-financing, for example. People were skeptical about that. 23:05 Colin: What about the future of banking in a more general way? 23:08 Jaap: There will be commercial banks and I think there will also be another breed of banks that have the purpose of adding to society as much as they can. People will make a distinct choice to work there, bank there, and invest there. 23:44 Jaap: You’ll see a sharper delineation between the two, and there’s room for both. The question is where do you want to work, and where do you want to be a customer? 0000

Don Van Winkle joins the show to discuss the primary traits that lend themselves to “good” leaders. First and foremost, Mickey and Don discuss the overarching need for a leader to prioritize the evolution of themselves and the needs of the company, always striving for greater awareness of what both they and their organization will become tomorrow—and how to start working toward that future today. Please forgive the sound quality as the interview took place in a less than ideal location.  Highlights Some CEOs may have inherent traits that lend themselves to leadership, but truly good leading stems from the ability to evolve with the needs of the business. A connected leader should strive to balance confidence and humility, knowing that there is still work to be done and also that their team has the capability to make it happen. The smart CEO exhibits a level of interest in others and personal disclosure that inspires other people in turn. People want someone who will listen and appreciate what they bring to the table and who brings that to other functional areas of the company. The elements of connected leaders are deeply related to the financial wellbeing of our businesses, rather than mutually exclusive ideas. Personal Evolution Exceeds Natural Abilities 0:27 Mickey: In Colin’s absence today, we’ve invited an executive and leader we admire, Don Van Winkle. Don, you and I have known each other for sixteen years. In the time that I’ve known you, you were a bank executive; president of a bank; chairman and CEO of a supermarket organization; CFO and COO of a retail clothing organization; director of a virtual CFO company; and in the last few years you’ve given council to a whole lot of CEOs. 1:33 Don Van Winkle: It’s fairly eclectic, but I’ve never been bored and I’ve always been able to add value. I’m curious how businesses and CEOs work, so it’s served me well. 1:44 Mickey: All of this time you’ve spent working with CEOs and being a chairman, what’s important for you about being an effective CEO? What does a good CEO look and act like? 1:56 Don: We have in our mind’s eye what a CEO “looks like,” how they dress and how they communicate. A lot of people are just born with that, but you can’t rely on it. You have to be able to evolve. I see a lot of CEOs who have the natural attributes, the presence, the smarts, the pedigree, but if they don’t keep evolving and becoming more fully who they are, they end up running into a wall. 2:25 Don: I’ve seen people who don’t necessarily come to the table with all of the natural attributes. But because of their authenticity, compassion, vision and abilities to grow and make hard decisions, they become really good CEOs. The Powerful Combination of Confidence and Humility 2:40 Mickey: This week I was at a company we have a new relationship with that is extraordinarily successful, very high growth and particularly modern, working in the data-driven, internet-rich world. I was with the CEO and he clearly sees that even though he has led this company to massive growth and been there for fourteen years, the company keeps growing into new challenges. He is interested in what is next for him and all of the people that count on him. How do they need to evolve in order to be strategic for the next era of their company? 3:29 Mickey: I’m struck by this great combination of confidence and humility. He’s still open to the idea that there must be something to be better at today that they didn’t need to be great at yesterday. 3:57 Don: Good CEOs are not just evolving, they’re conscious of the impacts of their attitudes, presence, and vision on other people and they have humility about it. The ability to admit when you are wrong in front of colleagues is powerful and way underused. 4:30 Don: If you’re wrong and everyone knows it, acknowledge it so you can move on. This is part of the personal evolution you need to go through in your stewardship of the organization. The days of the “all knowing, I’m in charge, move forward, and just listen to me” methods are way behind us for enlightened, good leaders. 4:55 Don: The conditions are different; it’s a different generation, with different needs. Openness as a Means to More Effective Work 5:58 Mickey: The rate of information exchange in our world today drives a level of dynamic, emerging, wild and unexpected change that requires communication to be open between the senior leadership and all of the other elements. The smart CEO today exhibits a level of openness and interest and personal disclosure that inspires other people to expose. 5:47 Don: If you’re trying from the wrong angle and it’s inauthentic, it will backfire. If your motives and questions come from authentic curiosity, people listen and respond. 6:23 Mickey: When the United States was at war in Vietnam, there was a politician who had to report the deaths and progress of the war almost every day. Someone told him he needed to smile more, and it looked grotesque on camera while he reported body counts with a slight smile. 7:05 Mickey: Telling someone to be more humble, open and vulnerable is too instructive. That’s why I like the combination of confidence and vulnerability. Truly effective CEOs are really clear about where they’re confident and they’re really clear where they’re uncertain and inviting people to participate. 7:40 Don: Several years back, I was the CFO and COO of a sportswear design distribution. When I got there, there was no infrastructure but there were these great visionary artists. I got to put the infrastructure in to include the IT, accounts payable, and customer service. I got to appreciate who they already were and to listen in order to tie it all together and coordinate so everything played off each other well. 8:14 Don: It was my first experience in orchestrating interaction. People want someone who will listen and appreciate what they bring to the table and that brings that to other functional areas of the company. 8:38 Mickey: As in our first episode, the distinctions between leaders, bosses and bastards are down to care and bridge, which you demonstrated in your story. You cared about the possibilities of their business and helped them create a much more effective bridge to where they wanted to go. Investing in the Evolution of Leaders 9:29 Mickey: A question I hear a lot is, “Do leaders ever really change?” Some people say, “No, people are just how they are. Don’t waste your leadership development dollars.” What do you think about investing in the evolution of leaders? 10:18 Don: If you are conscious of what you bring to the table, but you’re aware of what you can improve, you keep evolving. You’re a better spouse, parent, colleague and friend. The CEOs who think they’re “fixed” and are not consciously evolving end up becoming very flat and toxic to their organization. 10:44 Don: Leadership is inspiring the discretionary effort that separates commitment from compliance. Leaders have to be authentic and collaborative to inspire and be respected. 11:38 Mickey: You look at becoming fully ourselves as evolutionary. Is the evolution ever over? 11:43 Don: I don’t think so. If we ever get to the point where I am who I am and that’s all I am, I’m bored. We need to constantly evolve and there’s nothing you can’t refine in the development of yourself as a leader and a human being. 12:12 Mickey: The rate and quality of the evolution of enterprise never exceeds the rate and quality of the evolution of its leaders. Leaders do evolve. 13:31 Don: In terms of evolution, engineers typically are smart, problem-solvers, tenacious, but as CEOs, until they understand and appreciate ambiguity, they can be toxic CEOs. But when they can learn to appreciate that there are gray areas to people and situations and meld that into their other skill sets, they are good CEOs. People do not work like on/off binaries. The Toxic Leader (a.k.a. The Bastard) 14:25 Mickey: What are some of the attributes of a toxic leader? For us, that would probably fit in the “bastards” domain. 14:42 Don: When I was in the grocery store business, I had a senior executive who was insecure—big physical presence, articulate, loud voice, but beneath all of that he was a very insecure human being. His insecurity undermined those he was supposed to be directing. Never put insecure people—those who are not for other people and conscious of their own evolution—in charge of other people, because they have a primal need to undermine their credibility and who they are because they feel threatened. 15:31 Don: They use bullying as a way to get things done. It doesn’t work. If the leader can’t acknowledge where they’re doing well and not as well, there’s no point in engaging. 16:17 Don: I look for people who are genuinely interested in the development of other people A true leader knows they are going to do well if the people around them are thriving. 17:13 Mickey: Last time we talked about the stories we leave in our wake. How do the stories that are told about a leader when he or she is not around affect their capacity to lead? 17:41 Don: A lot of entrepreneurs are people who did not fit well in the traditional corporate world, but the skill set that got their startup running will not take them to the next level. If they’re either unwilling to bring in the right level of management or talent or change themselves, they lose trust because they’re not willing to extend themselves through other people. I work with one individual like this; he’s predictable, not evolving. A fine human being, but he wouldn’t let people in. 18:31 Mickey: This would be an example of a toxic story about that person’s leadership. The story goes something like, “Really a wonderful person, used to be really valuable and no longer relevant.” Evolving to Support Mission-Critical Results 19:06 Mickey: What do these different aspects of leadership evolution have to do with mission-critical results? 19:31 Don: People need to know and respect your basic intelligence in vision as a leader and at the same time appreciate that you acknowledge who they are and what they bring to the table. They can see through your whole perspective that you’re more collaborative, but you’re not a pushover. Good leadership is a function of being intellectually curious about who the human being is that is delivering that skill set and desiring to bring out the best in them. A leader shows how they play off another individual and they look to you as the hub between them. 21:06 Mickey: I know you did a lot of commercial lending. Did any of this come into play when you were deciding who to give money to? 21:30 Don: Banking is a lot of technical analysis; you’re looking at numbers, so it’s very objective. This side is very subjective. You have bankers who do it totally by the numbers and bankers who understand and can feel whether “this is a good guy.” But you have to integrate those two. 21:51 Don: You see such a wide variety of executives that you start to identify patterns. How they treat people and who they hire tells me volumes. Are they just flushing as much cash out of their organization and minimizing taxes, or are they truly thinking about building a balance sheet that’s more financeable and stable over time? 22:39 Don: To your question: absolutely. You have to get to know the subjective side and overlay that with the objective. 23:38 Mickey: There’s something important about that notion of: “Great leaders evolve.” I love that when you make decisions on where to risk capital, that you take into account the rigorous financial and technical analysis and the social awareness of who is going to execute all that. You have the elements of connected leaders deeply related to the financial wellbeing of our businesses. 24:34 Don: “The fixed man for fixed duties” is a threat today. It’s no longer relevant, but we still have some of that fixed man for fixed duties mentality. The people I look for now are very adaptable, curious and learning. Connected leaders know their peripheral vision—their view of the world—keeps expanding hugely by aligning with other people who have skill sets they don’t have. 25:17 Don: Great CEOs not only create an environment, but they identify and consciously develop a high level of input with the people around them. It’s very collegial and it’s gratifying, both to work with someone who is that CEO and to be that CEO. 25:35 Don: That flies in the face of a lot of information over the years about “what a leader is.” A leader is someone who is intentionally developing and bringing out the best in people, even in a “selfish” curious way, because he or she knows we’re better facing the uncertain world and making the best of it for all of us.  

Despite how many leaders habitually approach cultural change, force is not what is needed for evolution within an organization. Intentional thought and action is needed to effectively co-create the future of any company, starting with examining the stories and patterns we fall into that have us follow purposes that don’t serve us. We must look at the chasm between where we are and where we want to go, with actionable changes in our daily behaviors to get there. Highlights There is no such thing as “no culture” at an organization. Humans and culture go hand-in-hand. Culture change becomes a legitimate concern either when the organizational fails to evolve or when two disparate companies or parts of a company merge together. To effectively lead the evolution of a culture, first ask, “What new purposes cause our culture to be out of date?” Consensus does not allow the citizens of a culture to co-author the future. Co-creation is actively working with people as stewards of the culture. A real steward is willing to tell the truth about the mismatch between the mindless default purpose and the one that we say we want to aspire to. To change the culture, first look at what the stories and rewards are that support the present way of operating. Then see what new behaviors align with the purpose you aspire to. Fish Can’t See Water; Humans Can’t See Culture 0:33 Colin: Fish can’t see water. Just like human beings can’t see air. I’m hearing a lot about culture change and transformation. To some extent, culture is hard to see. I’ve been wondering about this notion of cultural transformation. 1:03 Colin: We play in that space. We help people shift how the work gets done and how people connect, but at the same time we see an enormous amount of waste. 1:27 Mickey: I feel strongly that the whole world of culture change has become over-intellectualized. Every time that happens—when people are more erudite than they are effective—they’re infecting the enterprise with waste. 2:14 Colin: Culture always exists. People say, “There’s no culture here.” Really? That’s like fish without water, human beings without air. 2:26 Colin: Culture is always there. You can be intentional about it or let it be how it is. The struggle is how to be intentional about it. Well-intended actions and thoughts in leadership are dangerously close to causing waste and worry, rather than this beautiful sense of “being” at work. The Two Causes for Why Culture Becomes a Concern 2:27 Mickey: When culture actually comes up as a legitimate or important concern, there are two reasons why. Part of the health of any organization lives in its ability to evolve. When the organization has not evolved consist with its strategy, there is a mismatch between how works gets done and the work that needs to be done now. 3:22 Mickey: That’s usually because the organization has been habituated to protecting its past and holding onto yesteryear without being conscious of what it’s costing them for today and tomorrow. It’s a failure to evolve. Cultures will evolve, if the people in them stay connected to their own aspiration and how they need to live and work in order to fulfill their own dreams. Organizational revolution is an act of desperation for people who are bad at evolution. Culture change is needed when there is a failure to evolve and now the company has to deal with it and accelerate their way through the evolution or putting together two vastly different elements of an enterprise coming together to create a culture that befits the strategic reason for their marriage. 5:08 Colin: It’s an act of morphing the culture. You don’t stop one culture and start another one. You might need a short-term engineering solution, but it has to come naturally really fast. Cultural Evolution as Co-Creation, Not Force 5:32 Colin: A great culture is allowing us to be truly human and the best of who we are as human beings. Culture is not a forcing exercise; culture liberates. 5:49 Mickey: The way that you’re able to lead the evolution of a culture where it’s an act of co-creation instead of force is to start with, “What new purposes now cause our culture to be out of date?” 6:15 Mickey: This question fits both the first category of needing to evolve and the second of merging organizations. If you don’t get to that question first, then culture change tends to be forced. If you actually do the work to reveal the purpose of two organizations merging, what contribution to customers are you now able to make that you couldn’t make separately? 6:54 Mickey: What new possibility are you now able to offer the world together that you couldn’t have separately? We have to take the time to get at what the purpose is that explains the cultural challenge. When you have the people who inhabit the culture who are authors of that new purpose, they will be co-creators of the new ways of working that make that purpose possible. 7:57 Mickey: You don’t want to start without purpose. You’re trying to push a demand for behaviors into people, so you’re taking away choice. There isn’t a purpose holding everyone together, so you’re taking away community. It’s being done to people rather than something they are the authors of, so you’re taking away their opportunity to contribute. Consensus vs. Co-Creation 8:17 Mickey: The idea of culture change—I don’t even like that word very much. Cultures evolve, because their reasons for existing and their aspirations evolve. 8:31 Colin: Cultures will evolve regardless. How do you have cultures evolve on purpose? The notion of co-creation intrigues me, because a word I’m allergic to is “consensus.” Co-creation is not the same as consensus. The challenge of consensus is that you finish with the lowest common denominator that’s very rarely inspiring, even if it’s “collaborative.” 9:07 Mickey: Consensus, like many dysfunctions, has a worthy intention buried in it, which is that we’re all in it together. The problem with consensus is that it does not require people to fully understand points of view outside of their own. To participate in consensus, all you have to do is say whether you like it or not. What is the takeaway when everyone has a power of veto? When you have some purpose at stake, and that purpose guides you instead of the opinions of individual people, you’re looking at what people are contributing that forwards the purpose. Stewards of Purpose 10:10 Colin: Co-creation and consensus are often mistaken to be the same thing, which begs the question, “Does a culture need stewards or is it a naturally fulfilling process?” 10:27 Mickey: There is the overall reason for the existence of a business or a product and inside of that there could be purposes that serve it. There do need to be people who are stewards of that purpose, because with that under the stress of reacting to the demands that are thrown at us everyday, we will lose touch with the guiding intent. 11:19 Mickey: That is when waste gets into the system fast, because people make choices in isolated ways, in “silos,” not conscious of whether they’re helping or hurting the overall purpose. 11:41 Mickey: The stewards are the guardians of what the guiding purposes are that you are going to stay true to and not betray. You are going to have those purposes produce value for your customers, for your investors and your colleagues. There have to be people who are devoted to the purpose and will not compromise. If you don’t have any, then that purpose isn’t real. Changing the Culture Starts with Seeing It 12:14 Colin: I’m reminded of work we did a few years ago with big global sportswear company, and there was a COO there who did think of himself as the steward. He used actors who wandered around the organization and were given complete freedom to walk around anywhere. Every three months, there was a two-hour play back of the culture of all of the things that the actors had seen. 12:54 Colin: The COO’s way of stewardship in the culture at that point was to have a way for people to see the culture. People were gobsmacked. Initially there was denial: “We don’t do that around here.” Then someone in the back of the room said, “Bullshit. That’s exactly how it is.” You could feel the room full of 50 global leaders freeze with horror, and the COO said, “I agree. Bullshit. That is what happens around here.” 13:44 Colin: That was an instance of truth accelerating the future and possibility. If we’re clear about purpose, we’re more courageous if we see something that damages that purpose. 14:50 Mickey: There always has to be purpose running a system or it wouldn’t stay together, but it could be default or dysfunctional purpose. 16:20 Mickey: If you have a system that says it has a purpose and yet the results are inconsistent with it, you can bet there’s another purpose that’s ruling the system. A real steward is willing to tell the truth about the mismatch between the mindless default purpose and the one that we say we want to aspire to. The Stories Told About You 16:32 Colin: Where I see people taking care of the culture, they share stories of those moments where teams talk about what they feel really good about and where they fell over and then distill the DNA of the stories. Sharing stories can be a way more potent measurement of accomplishment than surveys (well-intentioned as they are). 17:30 Mickey: If you see that there’s a mismatch between the way work is getting done today and the way work needs to be done to fulfill a new aspiration, you have to identify what the purpose historically has been. What are the stories and rewards that support the present way of operating? 18:02 Mickey: Everything improves by starting with what’s present. Look at the purpose that is running the place now. Then look at what the purpose is for your future that the current way of working cannot achieve. 18:31 Mickey: As an act of co-creation, the representatives of the system come together saying, “Is that really our aspiration? Are we really here for that purpose?” If so, then what behavior does that new purpose require? You’re creating the culture standing on what your past contributes to the purpose and what you have no been reliable for that is needed today. 19:18 Colin: The challenge is not to see culture as some artifact “over there.” Each one of us is a fractal of the culture. You bring the down the personal. What are the stories people really tell about you when you’re not in the room? And what do you want that story to be? 20:24 Mickey: Focus on, “What new intention do we have?” Find pieces of the system that have lessons inside them that will affect the whole system. Then go make that happen, behaving the way that aspiration requires. Then let the stories unfold from that. 20:46 Mickey: The well-placed accomplishment of a new possibility authored by people who are citizens of the system (not consultants who are brought in to change them) is the fastest way to seed and grow a culture that fits the strategy.

Again and again, organizations are expending way too much effort, while still causing very little positive change to show for their work. More engagement surveys haven’t been the answer, so what is? Leaders need to foster the natural circumstances that make people want to do the work to create measurable results. Learn which key promises to make (and keep) to accelerate vitality and productivity in your workplace. Highlights Many responses to breakdowns in performance assume that people don’t want to do the work, but in reality they’re just disappointed in the impact they’re making. What if wholehearted effort is natural state for humans? And if it’s natural for people to want an environment of community, contribution and choice, then perhaps it’s also natural to create that environment. When leaders keep the seven vitality promises, wholehearted effort is a normal part of the work. The promises are: presence, empathy, purpose, authenticity, wonder, timing, and surprising results. Cultivating authenticity is based in truth: giving it, receiving it, and holding true to what you stand for. Wonder is about resilience and being tough enough to hold possibility in the face of unfriendly conditions. Too Much Effort for Too Little Return 0:13 Colin: G’day, hello, bienvenue, ni hao. Nice to be here, Leaders, Bosses and Bastards. Mickey, what’s been on your mind? 0:21 Mickey: Many things. What I’ve really been thoughtful about is how much effort we keep seeing in companies per unit of result. 0:35 Colin: Smart thing to talk about. We’re going to spend time talking about waste, value, what the difference is, and what causes one or the other. 0:44 Mickey: I want us to get into where we see a lot of big organizations unhappy with the results they’re producing and how much time, money and effort they’re putting in. Most culture change initiatives take way too much time and money per unit of impact. Change management in general has way too much time, money and stress for the rate at which positive change occurs. 1:16 Mickey: Most leadership development investments are so weak in terms of their return on investment that it has to be source of frustration for a lot of people. We see performance systems management, measures, a lot of effort, and yet not a lot of deeply satisfying results. Massive amounts of money that has been put into assessing, understanding and explaining employee engagement—compare that with how satisfied people are with their ability to cause employee engagement. 2:02 Colin: We’re not saying these aren’t good things to pay attention to. We’re saying: are we paying the right kind of attention? 2:11 Mickey: I mention these because they’re all places worth our attention and that people we know and admire care about. But the way we’ve gone after change management, culture change, leadership development, performance management, employee engagement means we’re spending too much time and money per unit of impact. 2:37 Mickey: If you want to take waste out of organizations and repurpose those dollars (and time) in a way that’s more beneficial for investors, for customers, for colleagues, we have to take those areas on and look at them because they’re places where huge time and money is expended. People Don’t Fear Hard Work 3:01 Colin: I want to clear a bias: I don’t think people fear hard work. People don’t mind putting in discretionary effort. So it’s not about lack of resilience, it’s about saying, “What are the conditions that help me thrive at work?” 3:28 Mickey: That’s related to employee engagement. If you ask people why they care about employee engagement, they’ll talk about discretionary effort. We actually have found that’s a natural state for the vast majority of people who work in organizations. People enjoy giving wholehearted effort. 3:50 Mickey: The problem is not that people don’t want to do the work. That’s why a lot of responses to breakdowns in performance are really off, because they’re not dealing with the truth. It’s usually that people are disappointed in the impact they’re making. Not only don’t we mind effort, but we love to be tired from a worthy cause, having given all we have and seeing a brilliant result. The stress that comes from continually expending huge amounts of energy and not getting a result is what fatigues. 4:33 Colin: If you go back in history, we had satisfaction surveys, commitment surveys, and since the early 90’s we’ve had engagement surveys. They’re well intentioned people trying to understand something about the nature and conditions of work that have us be at our best. 4:53 Mickey: As well intended as that all is, there are some habits that have come from those surveys. One habit is thinking that spending money on surveys is the same as investing in employee engagement. That’s turned into a frequently thoughtless habit. 5:15 Colin: It’s a habit we’re now seeing in more organizations than we used to that have decided to no longer do, because they’re not actually returning anything. Those surveys become a small problem solving exercise rather than creating a great place for work. 5:38 Mickey: Still, people are out there spending a lot of time and money assessing something rather than causing it. We should notice that one does not necessarily take care of the other. What’s flawed about various tests that say whether people are wholehearted, for instance, is that many people relate to it by thinking, “I have to change something in people for them to be more wholehearted.” What if people are already wholehearted and what do we have to do is stop the things that interfere with that? 6:25 Mickey: That’s something that intellectually people can get pretty quickly, but not practically—in terms of how most of the big organizations that we go into run, their habitual way of operating. What Links Community, Contribution, and Choice to Surveys 6:43 Colin: Let’s talk about how we might change that habit or what can be done that has us pay the right attention to creating value in organizations. Last time we spoke, we talked about the notion of community, contribution, and choice: “If I feel like I belong, that people have my back, like my contribution is valued, and I get excited by what I’m contributing, and I have a place to make smart choices for myself in service of my community and what we care about, then I have a sense of vitality and wanting to contribute.” What’s the link between community, contribution and choice and what we’re trying to achieve with engagement surveys? 7:25 Mickey: That leads me back to something we said last time: We believe most large organizations are being run inconsistent with the nature of being human. 7:38 Mickey: It’s natural for people to come together and for them to feel safer and more satisfied together than they do separately. That’s where community arises naturally. And as we were talking about a moment ago, people love seeing a high return on effort. They loving seeing they made a big difference, and that’s contribution. And people love being treated like they have the dignity of making choices and being trusted that they are here for the community and making a valuable difference. If it’s natural for people to want that environment of community, contribution and choice, then perhaps it’s also natural to create that environment. 8:18 Mickey: What we’ve looked at over the last 10 years are the ways that people inside of organizations operate that help or hurt that natural state of community, contribution and choice. If you want to see whether engagement is present, all you have to do is check whether people feel a sense of belonging and trust in one another, whether they’re pleased with the difference they’re making, and whether they’re doing the work out of their own love for the work rather than out of obligation. If that’s all there, don’t worry about engagement. Just go help them do good things. 9:11 Colin: Think about your own experience at work and what was there for you and how people were to you. Think about when you’re in a conversation with a boss or a colleague and you’re actually in a real conversation because you are present with each other and you’re in the work together. Being together and present is basic. The Vitality Promises 9:42 Mickey: That is the first of the seven vitality promises. Last time we didn’t specifically mention those promises. 9:55 Colin: These promises are conditions that leaders promise to create. 9:57 Mickey: You named the first promise, which is presence. We’re fully with whom we’re with in the present moment. We think of presence as awareness without prejudice. When you have so much of yourself given to this moment and the people you’re with, your awareness of what is happening is rich and clear and heightened. You bring openness, a lack of prejudice, and curiosity. Presence is a promise to be fully present rather than being distracted, fragmented, annoyed and biased. 10:38 Colin: The limit of prejudice is empathy in the sense that if I am truly in your shoes I am aware without prejudice. 10:45 Mickey: Which is why empathy flows from presence, and it’s the second promise. The first promise is presence; everything starts there. And if you’re fully with another human being, you get pretty quickly they want to be understood and valued and for someone to appreciate “what it’s like” for them. There’s an extraordinary body of research over the past fifteen years where people have taken what we’ve previously believed to not be business, but “soft stuff,” and we’ve found out it’s actually affecting the P&L, the balance sheet and the cash flow. 11:35 Mickey: To say “I don’t have time for empathy” means, “I don’t have time to understand the motivations, desires, and capabilities of the people I work with.” If you say that out loud, it’s irrational. Especially in an environment where you have less supervision, there are people who are working under their own recognizance and separated from their formal supervisors logistically. They really do need to be understood and the more people are fully respected, understood and appreciated, the more it’s natural that they give that effort. 12:22 Mickey: Let me go ahead and say the rest of the seven promises, so I don’t belabor them and they come up naturally. Here are the seven promises that when leaders keep these promises, wholehearted effort is a normal part of the work: presence, empathy, purpose, authenticity, wonder, timing, and surprising results. 12:38 Mickey: The first is presence, which is real awareness without prejudice; the second is empathy, which is appreciating the purposes, concerns and circumstances of others; the third is purpose, that people have a reason for work they find important, inspiring and useful—why we work, not just what we do; the fourth promise is authenticity, that we live truthfully with one another, which we’ve found accelerates success through contribution; the fifth is wonder, the promise that you keep an environment of possibility, creativity and openness to curiosity; the sixth promise is timing, to help people get the most out of every moment while learning to answer the question, “What achievement is it time for now?” and putting resources behind that, so instead of doing everything you do the things that make a difference; and the last promise is surprising results, giving people the support they need to surprise themselves making the difference they want to make. Those promises are all keep-able promises and they give rise to this natural state of community, contribution and choice. 14:16 Colin: Are the promises learnable or are they just inherently true? 14:22 Mickey: There are things that I think are inherently possible for everyone, but we are not present enough in order to be true to the nature of them. For instance, everyone wants to be understood, so that means we probably have within us some capability of empathy. But if we’re not conscious and present, we don’t bring it to bear in the right moment. All of these promises are learnable, and they’re “wake-up-able.” For the vast majority of human beings, these promises are part of our nature and we just need to be awake enough to actually cause them. The Three Facets of Authenticity 15:57 Colin: This morning I was buying coffee early and I bumped into the CFO of one of Australia’s larger organizations. He was talking about this notion of purpose, how it was taking so much time and how he was okay with that. What intrigued me is that he saw the commercial value in what would take a one or two year process, and he also said, “We needed a poet in the room.” 16:30 Mickey: There are things that have gone missing for a couple of generations in the way that we design supervision of employees in large organizations. Right now we’re working on taking the waste out of organizations and getting the design of work to be more consistent with the nature of humans. The nature of humans includes the poet and the kind of longing and joy and sadness that everyone experiences all the time. The poets aren’t afraid of any part of being human and neither should an organizational leader. 17:16 Colin: David Whyte, the poet, talks about how great poetry is the truth. It’s undeniable truth. As you said earlier, the truth accelerates success. What’s that about? 17:40 Mickey: “What does truth mean?” is a question that’s big enough to not ever trivialize by finishing the answer. There is telling the truth: are you saying things as far as you know them to be true? There’s also being able to hear the truth. Another part of authenticity is, “Am I able to put aside my own bias, preference and prejudice to allow the truth to touch me?” It’s extraordinary how with our own ears we can pervert what is said to us, to help us avoid harsh truths. A third form of truth is staying true to something. Authenticity is telling the truth, it’s hearing it, and it’s adding to it. 18:33 Mickey: There are so many things we see inside of big companies that are tried but never authenticity devoted. “Oh, we tried that purpose thing. A purpose-driven company, yeah, one or two quarters we stayed with that.” Even when we ask what they did those one or two quarters, their efforts are not wholehearted. There’s a failure to be true to something. 19:02 Mickey: When you’re talking about authenticity, you have to—minimum—include those three things: being able to give the truth, receive the truth and stay true to something. 19:12 Colin: That’s important. I have seen way too often that people sometimes use truth as a weapon—colloquially called “front-stabbing”: “I’m telling the truth and it’s tough, but you have to suck it up.” It’s brutal, and it’s not the kind of organization you want to be in, even if you want to hear the truth. 19:40 Mickey: This notion of front-stabbing has been very hot of late. When you front-stab happens, that is telling the truth of my perspective without being willing to hear yours. You have to have both. Front stabbing is making you responsible for dealing with my opinion. 20:10 Mickey: If you’re a real leader of community, whether you have a formal position or not, causing people to gather together and assemble stronger together than they are separated, then one of the things you’re really good at is telling the truth in a way that actually connects with what is valued and legitimate for the other. 20:33 Mickey: We’ve done a lot of work in this area, and there is a real art to being able to tell a connected truth rather than attacking truth. Wonder 12:45 Colin: What you’re saying is truth has to have empathy with it and the other promises we’ve been talking about, because they’re so interconnected. Some of them you’re reasonably good at naturally and some of them you have to work at, but the one for me that I really delight in is wonder: this notion that you can play with the possibility of a different future without evidence to start with, delighting in the childlike notion of, “What if we did this? How about that?” We’re seeing such rapid prototyping, experimentation and disruption that without wonder you’re going to lose your advantage. 21:40 Mickey: Wonder is a strength for me. Most people when they talk about possibility or creativity or wonder don’t speak of it in the domain of strength—and even toughness. Are you tough enough to wonder in the face of unfriendly conditions? Who can wonder well enough to turn disappointment into return on investment? 22:18 Mickey: Wonder is extraordinarily important. As we said earlier, these promises are not “soft.” To those that say they are: I would invite you to have a cup of coffee with me so we can discuss it. 22:31 Colin: Wonder in an act of oxygenation. It enlivens your work and all of the sudden a way forward appears to emerge. 22:47 Mickey: Let’s look at where we started this conversation: we see way more wasted effort than we are willing to stand by and not do anything about. We see all of these organizations with people trying really hard and ending up disappointed. Some questions that would be really good for anyone who is listening to think about are: “What’s interfering with my sense of community, belonging and trust? What’s interfering with my natural desire to contribute? And what might be in the way of me expressing a choice rather than an obligation?” 23:52 Colin: That picks up the last two promises, which are “What is it time for now?” and “Why shouldn’t we always be in the presence of extraordinary results?” I’ll come back to something you said at the beginning: the question is, “What are we causing?” Pay attention to moments of, “What did I cause just then, just now, and yesterday? What do I want to cause tomorrow?” Think about cause rather than engagement.

Connection isn’t just a convenient by-product of results. Rather, high levels of connection within an organization actually help shape the results. When people within a workplace feel a sense of community and the possibility to make a valuable contribution, the need for supervision and added accountability decreases. In this episode, Mickey and Colin begin with the question of how the quality of connection informs the outcomes and the methods needed to take along the way to get there. Highlights If a leader’s purpose is to liberate possibility in your organization, that’s borderline impossible unless you feel connected. Any time you find extraordinary performance, you find a sense of solidarity or connection. Supervision costs go down as connection goes up. Part of what makes us feel connected is when we understand and respect each other’s purposes, concerns, and circumstances. Connection is not just a good moral practice; it is an intelligent and highly practical way to achieve accelerated results. A method without purpose is just a fantasy. The tension between the purpose and results is what reveals a connected method. The Quality of Connection 0:13 Mickey: We’re talking about how the quality of connection shapes the quality of results. First of all, do you think that’s valid, and if so, what has you say that? 0:32 Colin: I used to define leadership as “a leader takes me somewhere I haven’t been before” and “a manager helps me do what I’m currently doing better.” I no longer think that’s a good definition of leadership. 0:51 Colin: In this world of disruption, emergence, prototyping, innovation, often the leader doesn’t quite know where we’re going yet. The act of leadership is an act of liberation—the liberation of spirit, energy, and emotions, with purpose and with some boundaries. 1:12 Colin: If a leader’s purpose is to liberate possibility in your organization, that’s borderline impossible unless you feel connected. If you are only concerned with results and winning—there’s nothing wrong with that, by the way—you’re not liberating anything. 1:47 Mickey: It starts out with a sense of something deeply human: being connected. When we research great performance, one of the things that people report over and over again is a sense of community: a group of people large or small who are in something together, shoulder-to-shoulder, and connecting emotionally. People really feel like it’s “we” doing something “we” are proud to do together. Any time you find extraordinary performance, you find a sense of solidarity or connection. 2:40 Mickey: Where people suffer and say the work is not worth it, always they’ll talk about feeling excluded, isolated, judged, something that has them feel like they are not a legitimate member of a larger whole. 2:56 Mickey: Ask yourself, is that the case when you think of some of your best, brightest, most enjoyable accomplishments, was there a sense of connection with people? And where disappointment loomed large, was there disconnection? 3:18 Mickey: When we look at the last thirty years of talking to people about the nature of great results, we keep seeing this. If you look at disconnection on one end of a spectrum and connection at the other, people producing results per unit of time, money, and stress are always ways on the end with connection. People who say the work is brutally hard, debilitating, and not worth it, they talk about disconnection. 3:52 Colin: Some years ago I was talking to a bunch of volunteer firefighters around the world. In Australia in particular, bush fires (you call them wildfires) are a challenge. The firefighters made truly extraordinary contributions, saved lives, and saved property. When you asked what was going on for them, some things become apparent really quickly. 4:31 Colin: The firefighters felt like they belonged; there was a connection, to the level that they didn’t even need to talk about accountability, because they trusted each other so much. The firefighters felt so connected that they knew someone had their back, which meant their capacity to make smart, brave choices brilliantly enhanced. 4:56 Colin: The leaders understood that this purposeful connection of being together meant that people just knew what to do. There was no need for lots of “role clarity.” Purposes, Concerns and Circumstances 5:27 Mickey: As you know, we’ve seen over the years working in hundreds of organizations in 150 countries that when people feel connected, there tend to be three ingredients in the connection. If I feel I can have the same trust in you that those firefighters had that enabled them to be this extraordinary team under extraordinary circumstances, I feel these three things. Part of what has me feel connected to you is that you understand and respect my purposes, my concerns, and my circumstances. 6:10 Mickey: Those three things are human, because we found them in all of these different languages, across all of these different countries, and different industries. They all feel like you understand and respect their purposes that they admitted to wanting to make happen, concerns of what they’re worried about and don’t want, and what their life is like; that’s when people feel connected. 6:39 Mickey: It’s not feeling sorry for people. No, it’s actually being aware of these ingredients of their lives: their commitments, their concerns, and their circumstances. Those firefighters had to have had a deep appreciation of those things for one another. 6:59 Mickey: Once you trust that we’re connected to those three aspects of life, suddenly we’re in something together. We start to say: “What are our purposes, our concerns, our circumstances?” People start to naturally care for their part of the larger whole. 7:20 Mickey: Something any new leader would be really wise to do—whether they’re a new supervisor or in a team or a new senior executive in a large enterprise—would be to really get interested in who the people are who count on the quality of hit or her contribution. Who are the people who are relying on, “I’m going to make a useful difference”? 8:00 Mickey: You first have to get a sense of what the network of people is that you are here to serve. Then, ask what are those people’s purposes, concerns and circumstances. This is deeply practical. The Cost of Over-Supervision 8:09 Mickey: You were talking in our last podcast about how there’s an economical justification for caring. Supervision costs go down as connection goes up. That shows up in the economics of a business. 8:26 Colin: I ask clients, “How much does supervision cost you?” You see this look of horror on their faces, because the first answer is, “I have no idea.” The moment you say, “What might it look like if you cut the cost of supervision by 30%? What else might those people be doing?” The potential for change is massive—another act of liberation, if you think about it. 9:05 Mickey: Just think what the costs are of the positions that have some significant portion of their time dedicated to just watching other people work. I’m not saying there’s not some necessity—there’s an aspect of connection there and seeing the whole system well enough to help the rest of us be connected to the different parts of it. However, there’s a whole lot of checking that would be unnecessary if people were completely connected to where we’re headed together. 9:39 Mickey: They know what their piece of the contribution is, and we trust each other to take care of our part of the contribution. This ethic of connection is intelligent—it’s not just morally preferred. 9:48 Mickey: When we are connected to each other and the thing we are mutually serving, we use fewer resources it takes to make it happen. There’s something innately attractive to people about coming together to make something happen. But the if the “coming together” part is weak, and you’re still trying to instruct people to make it happen, your costs go up. 10:18 Colin: How the hell does a CEO of a 45,000-person company help people become better connected? Because I know your answer isn’t going to be, “Get the Communication Department to do it for you.” I also know that while we love the idea of a token “walkabout” throughout the company, “G’day, how are you” and all of that. That isn’t the way to connect people. What would your counsel be to this CEO? 10:58 Mickey: The first question I would ask is one that I’d recommend they take on in every venue they’re in the first sixth months of their tenure. “What do you need from me, without which you can’t succeed?” 11:16 Mickey: Ask that of your direct reports. Ask that in much larger groups. Let people know that you are looking at how to design the deployment of you to the best of their advantage. Just having that as an abiding concern and continue to gather information about will be a source of connectivity. 11:44 Mickey: Then you sponsor other people, asking the question in their place. A question that can occur to people as arrogant but is actually deeply humble is, “What can only I provide that the people around me need?” 12:04 Mickey: I’ve had some people say, “What if there’s nothing?” Well, then I question the need for your job. There must be something uniquely important in what you do. In the context of what other people need in order to succeed, it causes a natural inquiry into the practicality and benefit of being connected. Purpose, Method and Results 12:27 Colin: Let’s go to the other side of this. The quality of connection is what shapes extraordinary results. Sometimes people think the results are just a consequence. But it strikes me that results actually help people get connected. When we’re looking for that surprising moment that is part of a result, it’s actually a dance between connection and results; it’s not that one creates the other. 13:03 Mickey: In terms of connectivity, all of this can sound strangely simplistic. There is a journey from purpose to results, and what maintains the journey in the middle is the method. At the purpose level, it’s why we care and for what important reason we do what we do. What is the whole calling for us to even be in action? The result is the measurable evidence of the difference we intend to make. The tension between the purpose and results is what reveals a connected method. 13:53 Mickey: A mistake that a lot of leaders make is they think method is the source of connectivity; however, if you don’t go back to purpose, what is it that holds together in community in the domain of why we should care. What is our reason for doing this? If you don’t have purpose, then the adherence to method is rote. Not paying attention to purpose dishonors the deep love people having for being in something together to make a worthy difference. 14:52 Mickey: You need all three (purpose, method, results) to make a difference. We need the important reason we are in action. We need some measurable evidence of having made the difference we intended to make. Then let that tension help us arrive at a method that’s appropriate to that purpose and those results. Method without purpose is a fantasy of connection, and actually a recipe for disconnection. Engagement and Connection 15:04 Colin: I am increasingly disillusioned with measuring engagement. Often we measure engagement, thinking there is connectivity. Engagement surveys often give interesting and important data, but being engaged and being connected aren’t actually the same thing. 15:32 Mickey: How do you differentiate the two? 15:34 Colin: You can come into a workplace and be engaged and love the piece you work on, and that’s it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you are connected to the whole of the system and the community, enabling you to be cleverer together than apart. 16:00 Mickey: So you could be deeply engaged in your particular, individual work and find that gratifying and interesting. But there’s another order of engagement called “connected engagement,” where not only are you engaged in your own work but seeing how it contributes to all kinds of other people’s work. What you do ends up rippling into a network of contributions and helps other people get done what they have to get done. 16:31 Mickey: Connected engagement is the ongoing appreciation of the network of giving and getting in a community trying to do something really great together. You keep being conscious of what you got, what that allowed you to give, and what it allows other people to give. 16:53 Mickey: One reason I like what you said about getting disheartened with the notion of engagement is that we’ve lost the vitality of the notion. Engagement has become something to measure and how much money you spend on engagement and whether all of that measuring has changed it. When we measure, we lose the source of engagement. 17:18 Mickey: Where people are deeply connected to their reason for working, they’re deeply connected to the community of people they’re working with, and they have a line of sight to how they’re going to produce amazing results so it’s not all a leap of faith. Engagement will naturally be high, because you have a community of people making meaningful differences they enthusiastically choose to make. I promise scores will be high. 17:50 Colin: In fact, you don’t even need to do the scoring because you’ll see the manifestation of the difference they’re making in the results. 17:58 Mickey: That’s right. A lot of times people start to measure engagement as a way to understand why things aren’t going as well as they would like them to go. 18:04 Colin: A lot of measuring is not badly intended; it’s well intended. The sense is that that they don’t feel like they have engaged people in the workplace, so they’re trying to figure out what is going on. But they’re not often looking in the right place. 18:22 Colin: Notice connection and what you’re causing by connection, even in your next meeting. Ask these questions: “How well connected are we as we begin this meeting? How connected are we as we finish this meeting?” 18:42 Colin: Next time we talk, I’d be interested to explore the promises are that a connected leader needs to make for people to want to be connected. 19:10 Mickey: Being a connected leader does require conscious attention. As part of our conversation next time, we can look at what it is that pulls for disconnection that is in the natural design of being human that we have to be conscious of and respectful of to cause a connection that is more powerful. What connection holds us together when fear and worry and looming rips us apart? 19:43 Mickey: We can get to that through what you just said: acknowledging the promises that we must consciously make and keep in order to have connection be a bigger influence. 19:56 Colin: We certainly hope you feel more connected than you did before the beginning and that we’ve spoken to your purpose, concerns, and circumstances.

Leaders, bosses, and bastards: we all know them, we’ve been them, and we’ve probably been all three at some point in each of our lives. What sets a leader apart from a boss or a bastard? Mickey and Colin dive into the distinguishing pair of features that lead in conjunction with one another: care and sense of direction—neither should be mutually exclusive and both can result in extraordinary economic value. Highlights The labels “leader,” “boss” and “bastard” are triggering across cultures, because you’ve met all three and it’s possible for each of us to be all three at the same time. The connection we have with one another affects both the enjoyment and the productivity of work. It’s economically rational to care. It actually saves time. In terms of business results, caring creates extraordinary value. People don’t fear change; people fear failure. People are not fatigued with change. They’re fatigued with badly organized and designed change. When people feel endangered it is often because they believe people in leadership don’t understand their situation. They begin to question the direction of the organization. Care is not “touchy-feely.” Care is noticing where the organization might risk squandering a chance to profit from the talents of its people and addressing it in a timely way. To move from bastard to leader, change your focus from deciding that everyone should see what you see and think understanding that everyone has different things to give. If you care enough to cause the connections that allow the organization as a whole to build a bridge together, you will produce a measurable impact with less time, money, and stress. The Origin of Leaders, Bosses and Bastards 0:06 Colin: Thanks for joining us. “Leaders, Bosses and Bastards,” are you Americans so rude? 0:16 Mickey: We are, in many parts of the United States, masters of rudeness. In other places, we are much more decorous. But I think everybody has something get triggered when you hear those three words: leaders, bosses, and bastards. Ah, I have known them all. 0:37 Colin: Have you been them all? 0:39 Mickey: It’s early in this. I didn’t want to get to the self-flagellation so quickly. Yes, there is evidence and there are many people who could testify that I have been all three. And you, sir, have you found yourself leader, boss and bastard, or are you somehow more cleansed? 1:01 Colin: Well, I like to live in denial, but I think of course it could be said. It’s interesting, but the phrase is the truth of many of our experiences as being led by some people. 1:21 Colin: I was really fortunate to be part of a really significant study in the early nineties. Here in Australia we went to look at organizations and why people would want to do more than the normal and breakout, with a really smart guy called John Evans. When subjects talked informally about what leadership was like around them, those words came up again and again and again, as if they were truth. 1:48 Colin: I began to realize, the words were true. There’s something about them that spoke to everybody. I loved it from that point: that you could categorize people, and once you really get underneath it, play with what it’s about. What makes a leader, what makes a boss, what makes a bastard and what’s the differentiation? The confronting reality is that you can be all three. 2:15 Mickey: There’s something to revere about images that seem to resonate across cultures, across time, across generations, because they are a window to something truthful. When so many different people laughed, they had this smile of recognition, followed by some painful reminiscence when they kept hearing those words or same them for themselves. 2:44 Mickey: That’s what opened the window to: if this is so reliably a trigger, what’s the truth of that? How does it work? What has somebody show up as a leader in my life–somebody who I’m grateful for and we’ve gotten to a place where we might not have otherwise arrived at? 3:06 Mickey: Or a boss–somebody who seems rich with instruction. Or a bastard–somebody who I can’t tell cares a whole lot. 3:17 Colin: Well, they care about themselves, quite often. It’s careless, it’s not all that altruistic. 3:23 Colin: The other thing too as I began to pay attention to this language and this notion, which on one level does sound so unsophisticated, the more I looked at it, I thought, “There is some depth here.” A leader could be a bastard for one person, a boss for another person, and a leader for somebody else. You could actually be a leader, boss and bastard at exactly the same time, for different kinds of people. 3:59 Colin: That starts to do your head in, when you start to think about how you can become better at leading and less a bastard. The Art of Connection 4:06 Mickey: That brings us to the reason we even care about this “Leaders, Bosses and Bastards.” It’s a large, lifelong, pretty-darn-rich-so-far investigation into how the connection we have with one another affects both the enjoyment and the productivity of work. 4:36 Mickey: It could be all three, because I could be well connected to you, distracted and semi-connected to somebody else, and completely disconnected from a third. Do the same thing, and that difference in connection gives me radically difference results. 4:54 Mickey: One of the things I hope we get to with some enjoyment and a little rigor is, “How do you keep managing that quality of connection?” so I’m not accidentally a bastard when I thought I felt so “leaderly.” 5:20 Mickey: If you ask people, “Who was someone in your life who made an enduring difference? Whether they would call themselves a leader, you know they provided something that was a leading edge for your life that you still thrive on today.” Some of the things we’ve arrived at that create leader, boss or bastard, they report. 5:53 Mickey: Because this is so resonant, so archetypical, and it seems to get the attention of a lot of different people, you and people you respect looked into what explains that these archetypes seem to resonate so quickly. The Balanced Need for Direction and Care 6:13 Mickey: You got to something I find to be both simple and really productive. What organizes our thinking to be able to tell, “Am I occupied in the bastard spot, boss spot or leader spot at a given moment, with a given set of people?” 6:40 Colin: Where you saw a leader who had a sense of direction, a sense of movement, and where we’re going, but was disconnected at the heart level, the care level, people were interested in the direction but were still observers of the direction rather than participants. 7:18 Mickey: Also, tentative about the direction. They respected it, it made sense, but they didn’t find themselves wholeheartedly pulled into it. 7:28 Colin: That’s what I call a good boss–a kind hearted he or she who’s thought that out; however, when we saw a boss who actually understood “who I was”–not just what I could contribute–the need for detail on that sense of direction could be a lot less. 8:00 Colin: When you think about that given the world we’re in, into prototyping and emergence where there often isn’t the detail, with sufficient and the right kind of connection or care, you can live inside that complexity and keep moving and enjoy it as best you can. The boss just needed a shift of adding care into the equation. 8:29 Colin: In other words, it’s economically rational to care. It actually saves time. It’s not some touchy-feely crap that nice people do. Just in business results terms, caring creates extraordinary value. 8:58 Mickey: There’s something innately human and needed about being connected as human beings who deserve to be heard and understood. That’s in this care domain. And in that other domain you talked about, there is this sense of direction, of destination, and some notion of how we might get there–not all laid out in perfect detail, because as you said, we go through these cycles of discovery and we can fill out our plan as we live our way toward it. But all care with no semi-pragmatic understanding of how we might get there, that can cause damage too. 9:50 Colin: When we first began playing with this notion, we had four categories, which were: leader, boss, bastard and silly old bastard. What you just described is a “silly old bastard,” which is the person who cares with no sense of direction. In the end, that decays. You get dithering, paternalism, and there’s no growing up occurring. 10:22 Colin: The sense of direction without any sense of care, that’s boss-like. You can’t fault it in the sense of direction, but you don’t liberate the capacity to live inside complexity. All care without direction is dithering and patronizing. In the end, you want to go somewhere else because you want to make a contribution. 10:50 Colin: We know from your research, if there’s not a place for me to make a contribution, then I’m actually tired and withdrawn. Looking Forward with Care and Destination 11:03 Mickey: In the work we’ve done with senior leaders using horses, one of the early things we want them interested in is to care about what it’s like for the horse. You have to learn to speak “horse” and how the horse processes information, thinks, and feels. That’s the care part of the equation. Early on, people are enamored with how if they connect well with the horse that way, the horse actually becomes less resistant and more cooperative. 11:49 Mickey: The next thing we add in is to create something to do with the horse. The earliest thing we do is to have somebody take the horse away from the herd and have them walk to a distant tree. What would happen is these people who were all caught up with feeling for the horse would start looking down on their horse. What would happen? The horse would stop. All you have to do is lift your head up and look at the tree, and the horse can feel the sense of direction and destination. 12:31 Mickey: Now you have those two together: care for the animal and a bridge to your destination. Fear of Failure, Not Fear of Change 12:42 Colin: What does that look like in strategy terms? Let’s take it inside an organization, because I don’t think everybody wants to think of themselves as a horse. 12:55 Mickey: I think of it mostly when there’s change in an organization, when you get new senior leadership coming in, a new CEO, chairman of the board, other significant leadership turnover, or when there’s a major divestiture, an acquisition, or merger. When there’s significant change in a business both direction and care come to the fore. A lot of people say that people fear change, but I haven’t found that to be the case. People fear failure. 13:33 Mickey: If the change threatens their ability to make a useful difference and be valuable, people get very resistant. If you want people to thrive in the face of change, they need people who care about what it’s like for them to go through it, and they also need something to contribute to. 13:55 Mickey: Maybe in the early days we don’t know the next three years, strategically; however, we do know we have to integrate our IT systems, we do know we have two completely different and incompatible management systems, etc. There are some things we do know. Let’s take those on and we are going to in the next 90 days take the best from each and build our new system. 14:32 Mickey: Treating people with dignity (that’s the “care” aspect) and giving them a job to take care of (the new system) gives them momentum and a chance to make a difference. In that, you discover a lot about the future. 14:48 Mickey: Almost all strategy now is emerging. It’s not known ten years out, but we always do know something. If you give people that destination, but they don’t sense you care about creating an opportunity for them to contribute to, you drop the care part. If you get people together and tell them how much you feel for them going through the tumult and change, but you don’t give them some place to go to, then you’ve lost the bridge. There are just cycles of that. We do what we need to meet the known objective and let what we learn keep illuminating what the strategic opportunities are. 15:36 Colin: You just alerted to something else that sits inside of that. And I agree with you; I hear a lot of people say, “Our people are change-fatigued.” And I don’t think people are fatigued with change. They’re fatigued with badly organized and designed change. Transformation, done well, can be invigorating and enjoyable. And it can be tiring, but name one thing in your life that you’ve felt good at that hasn’t been a little bit of exhaustion. Why Followers Seek Answers about Direction 16:15 Colin: And the reverse is true in thinking about it from the other side. If you’re taking care of leading people and you’re getting lots of questions about detail, that’s also a signal of insufficient care. 16:32 Colin: The number of times I get asked, “Can you come and help us with role clarity?” But when I hear that again and again, the first place I look is not is there insufficient information, but is there lack of care causing that request. 16:50 Colin: It’s very difficult to ask for care. You can only ask for information, for clarity of direction. So the asking for care can come in the form of “I want more information.” 17:10 Mickey: This notion of care deserves more than just shallow consideration. It’s not just the personal and emotional concern for another human. It’s also concern for the situation they’re in. If people don’t think that I really understand what they’re in, how it works, what its opportunities are, what its risks are, they experience that as a lack of care and it will have them feel like they’re in danger. They’re endangered because someone who has power doesn’t understand their situation. 17:47 Mickey: That will have me ask questions. I want assurances about how the future is going to go, because I can’t count on you to know what I’m actually in, so maybe you can give me more detail on where we’re going. Care is caring about the conditions, the circumstances, and the people who occupy those. 18:08 Mickey: It’s amazingly inconsistent with the nature of being human, to act like clarifying the plan can in any way make up for having a connection with people in which they feel respected, included, and regarded. 18:38 Mickey: People are also constantly looking for “what’s the path forward?” We need both. We need care and the destination. We need the path and care for the people who are trodding the path. Care and Confrontation 18:57 Colin: It’s an interesting challenge here, because care is scary. You can read books, you can work out how to use Gantt charts and all of that, but the care thing can be confronting. 19:16 Colin: “I’m introverted. I’m not someone who has high emotion. Does that mean I’m never going to be a leader? Is it impossible because I don’t have those things?” We’re not asking we become teddy bears, are we? No, in fact care can be confronting. 19:30 Mickey: Three months ago, I saw a relatively new CEO, who is in his first six months. The question is, “Who’s actually running this company going forward?” Some people were going to leave and some people were going to stay. 19:57 Mickey: There was someone that the CEO thought was really talented and had a whole lot to give and he was getting in his own way with his apparent disregard for view of others. Intellectually brilliant and he keeps occurring to other people on the executive team that if they ever say anything inconsistent with his point of view that he’s disinterested. 20:32 Mickey: The CEO sat him down, in an act of care, and he said, “There are two things I want you to know: you’re one of the more talented people whom I’ve met in my thirty year career; and you are one of the people most at risk of not making it through the transition of this company. I want us to talk about that, because if you don’t make it through, it will be us squandering a chance to profit from your really unusual talents.” 21:13 Colin: That is a beautiful act of care. That’s not “touchy-feely, blah blah.” No, this is about 21:28 Mickey: It’s not to be shallowly understood, this notion of care. And also, what you said earlier about change—it’s so difficult to discuss change because there are so many hackneyed things said about it. There is no question that life itself is dynamic, and just about the time I think I’ve got it all together and things are working brilliantly and beautifully, something in the conditions changes. 22:10 Mickey: We know that life is dynamic; it’s constantly moving. Do we help people profit from that movement, actually enjoy that movement, keep discovering new things we can do given the movement? It takes both–care and bridge–to be able to do that. If you don’t have both, you end up having people who don’t engage in the change as a chance to make an even bigger difference. 22:41 Mickey: Organizational revolution is an act of desperation for people who are bad at evolution. What you said hit me—this care and bridge duality is important to be able to lead evolving enterprise. No Care, No Bridge, All Bastard 23:03 Colin: Let’s take this thing with bastards: I say “bastard” and others say, “b—.” Bastard is the identity and act of no care and no bridge. 23:17 Mickey: There are people who get trapped in a way of being that is demand without care or bridge. Usually the way you find out what is important to that person is after you do something wrong in their eyes; you lack that information ahead of time, so you are constantly in danger of being a disappointment. 23:54 Mickey: A bastard is a person who has their own ideals and notions of what great looks like, but they don’t actually do the work to work with people. If they did, those would be shared ideals, which would be an act of care. And they don’t do the work to have a sense of the journey and know if they’re going to be on that journey with others, it will be shared. “No, I’m just going to sit over here, with my right to judge.” 24:27 Colin: I used to report to a CEO who I think fits pretty much in this category. In many ways this person was good at care and actually was brilliant at seeing the future, but was very inconsistent, around the “care” piece particularly. 24:54 Colin: I began to know this person was a bastard and I didn’t want to be there anymore, because he would walk into a meeting and the first thing that would go through my head was, “I hope he’s had a good day.” The moment that’s gone through your head, what is the capacity for anyone else in that room to be brilliant, smart, brave, connected? Zero. 25:14 Colin: He was only connected to his own circumstances and fears. 25:19 Mickey: There are a lot of people who occur as bastards, who in their own minds just think of themselves as having very high standards. Frequently, it’s people who don’t stop and consider that maybe they have some abilities that are unique to them. Making a Measurable Impact as Leaders Rather than decide we should all see what they see and think what they think, maybe understand we all have different things to give. If you care enough to cause the connections that allow us to build the bridge together, we could produce some amazing things. 26:01 Mickey: That’s what I care about as we go forward in our podcast. The thing that we’ve both lived our way to caring about is proving you can produce bigger results faster but managing both care and direction. 26:29 Mickey: I like what you said about the economics of care. Caring actually has economic benefit, as does helping people clarify the bridge to where you’re going. This is about making a measurable impact and doing it with less time, money, and stress than a boss or a bastard. 27:00 Mickey: What’s the leader doing? Getting a lot more done with less time money and stress— 27:05 Colin: —for themselves, as well as for others. And if they happen to have a family, it will include their family, by the way. There’s a whole lot here about wellbeing that we don’t even want to get into today. Please email info@conversant.com for questions or feedback