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Mar 13
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847: How to Enhance Your Team’s Greatness through Coaching with Sara Canaday

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Sara Canaday says: "Anyone can be a good coach. … with the right tools, understanding the core skills that it takes and how to sharpen them."

Sara Canaday shares the essential skills that help managers level up their leadership and engage employees.

You’ll Learn:

  1. The surprisingly simple principles of coaching well.
  2. The two types of coaching and when to deploy each.
  3. A step-by-step guide to coaching effectively.

About Sara

Sara Canaday is a leadership strategist and award-winning author who helps arm professionals with the practices and strategies they need to make the critical shift from informed to influential, from doer to driver, and from manager to leader.

When she’s not speaking or working with her clients, she’s cheering on her son’s football team or hiding new shoe purchases from her husband and 20 year old daughter.

Resources Mentioned

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Sara Canaday Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Sara, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Sara Canaday
Thank you for having me back. I’m glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to hear your wisdom about coaching but, first, I need to hear the story. You became a Cupcake Wars judge which was a longtime dream of yours. What’s the story here?

Sara Canaday
Oh, yes. Well, okay, so before anybody gets too excited, I didn’t actually appear on the Food Network show by the same name but what I did do is, for my birthday, I had my husband recreate the show right here in my home. So, we invited, I want to say it was, eight couples, and part of the invitation meant you had to show up with a homemade, not store-bought, from scratch cupcake with a Texas theme, or something that’s inspired from the year of my birth, the year I was born. And so, these cupcakes were going to be judged on taste, theme, and presentation.

Pete Mockaitis
And how many people did you get to sign up for this punishment, Sara? “Show up with some work and I’ll judge you.”

Sara Canaday
Every single couple came with cupcakes. One couple’s daughter ended up making them, they admitted it to me. Some couples had a blast doing this on their own together and were extremely competitive, I couldn’t believe it but, nonetheless, I got to sit and taste eight different cupcakes and judge them. And so, hey, I may not have been on the actual show but recreating it was just as good if not better.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, fun, I’m glad that worked and good birthday memories there.

Sara Canaday
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Way to do it up as opposed to just like, “Oh, I guess we’re going to go to dinner…”

Sara Canaday
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
“…for my birthday.”

Sara Canaday
We did something different.

Pete Mockaitis
Nifty. Well, let’s hear about your latest book Coaching Essentials for Managers. Any particularly surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made while putting this together?

Sara Canaday
Well, nothing extraordinary other than I’ve had people tell me that it is a really good handbook more than just a book. It serves as a guide. There’s a lot of how-to’s in there. There are powerful phrases you can use to kind of get you off center under varying circumstances of coaching. There’s a coaching prep sheet that you can use before a coaching session so you can feel more confident with the process.

And then there’s a myriad of actual scenarios that you can read about so that if something similar happens, you have a way to navigate the conversation. So, it is a book but most people tell me it’s like a nice handbook, like a guide.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, what’s the main idea or key takeaway or thesis here?

Sara Canaday
Well, I think the main idea is that anyone can be a good coach. I think we used to think that a good coach is somebody who’s really charismatic, and they know how to be uber patient, and they just have this knack for more of a counselor-type approach, and that’s not true. Again, with the right tools, understanding the core skills that it takes and how to sharpen them, anybody can pursue coaching today.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And we talked about the book title there says, Coaching Essentials for Managers: The Tools You Need to Ignite Greatness in Each Employee. You say anyone can coach. Any thoughts for non-managers in terms of, are there particular skills or tips that you think would be resonant for those folks who don’t yet have direct reports reporting to them?

Sara Canaday
Absolutely. In fact, I am working on a course right now for LinkedIn, and the title is Peer Coaching, and it derives a lot of the same applications and concepts and skills from leadership coaching. So, the very types of attributes and formulas that work for leader-to-employee coach also work for peer-to-peer coaching, and that’s becoming a really growing trend in corporate today.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And so, with peer-to-peer coaching, is it sort of like we switch off in terms of, “Okay, you coach me then I coach you”? Or, how does that go down?

Sara Canaday
That’s exactly right. And it can be a pair, a partner, of coaches but oftentimes it’s a group of about four or five people together that peer-coach each other. And so, there’s a streamlined approach, certain questions are asked, “Bring your latest challenge to the group,” and everybody gets their turn, and then peer coaches are listening not to fix – this is the hard part, it’s just like a leader with an employee – resists moving to fix-it mode right away.

But they’re listening to ask the right questions so that that person that has a challenge can put more structure around their thinking so that they can reflect on what exactly they want to have happen, and then they move in to potential solutions based on what they’ve already tried, based on what the potential roadblocks are or facets that are part of the issue.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I’ve had really cool experiences with peer coaching. I did the first course in the Co-Active Coaching, the CPCC folks, and I was amazed at, okay, none of us were coaches yet, certified. We’ve done the first course out of, like, six, I don’t remember, and yet folks are having these wild breakthrough conversations with tears and whatnot, it’s like, “Huh.”

To your point about anyone can coach, it’s true. It doesn’t take a superhuman with crazy almost psychic-like empathy skills but rather it’s just, hey, you’re paying attention, you’re equipped with a few tools, and you have just a modicum of patience and good listening and discipline and humility to not try to make the mistakes that really shut down a conversation that’s going somewhere, and away you can go.

Sara Canaday
Yeah, it is amazing. And it’s hard because, for leaders especially, and any high-achievement professional, we’re wired to fix. And coaching, you have to sort of sit on your hands because you want right away to say, “Oh, either that happened to me,” which isn’t very helpful. It can be but to say, “Oh, that happened to me and this is what I did,” it doesn’t let the person you’re coaching reflect on their particular situation because what you did to solve something may not even be applicable or work for them.

And you have to just be patient with asking the right type of questions, open-ended questions not yes-or-no questions because you won’t get anywhere with those. So, absolutely, anybody can do it but it does take discipline because of the way we’re naturally wired.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And can you share with us what’s at stake, or what’s possible, or what’s at risk if we are coaching well versus not well or not at all, or being coached well, or not well, or not well at all?

Sara Canaday
Yeah. Well, this is interesting because when I was writing my book, I did a lot of research around different statistics because I wanted to compel readers about the advantage of coaching.

Pete Mockaitis
As many businesses would start, yes.

Sara Canaday
Yes. And so, there are numerous studies that show that well-coached individuals are higher performers, are more productive, and they’re more engaged. Now, that seems to be a benefit for the leader and the company, but from the employee’s standpoint, there were other studies, Gallup being one of them, that found that when employees were well-coached and they felt like a leader had their progress and best interests in mind, that they were much more loyal and they didn’t feel that they had to look elsewhere to grow and for opportunities.

And I think that latter part is probably what’s going to get people’s attention because, right now, we all know that retaining talent is a challenge. And what studies have found, multiple studies, is that what people want more than a larger paycheck is the idea and the feeling that they’re progressing. And let me just say, that progression doesn’t necessarily mean an advanced position.

And I say that because I think that’s why leaders tend to hesitate to do what I call developmental coaching, which is more about, “How do I help you get more of what you want and do more of the work that you want to do?” Because I feel like, “Well, I know there’s no position for me to advance them to, so why am I going to start this conversation if I can’t promote them?” But nothing is further from the truth here, in that those conversations aren’t strictly about advancing and getting a new role.

They’re about sharpening new skills. They’re about maybe getting a broader network, being introduced to more people. Maybe they’re about taking on a project where they can shine a light on something other than what they typically do. So, there are a lot of things leaders can do to help people feel like they’re progressing.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so let’s hear about that. We talked about developmental coaching. You say we’ve got two types. We got performance coaching and developmental coaching. Can you expand upon what each means and the difference between them?

Sara Canaday
Of course. So, performance coaching, for many people, they think in terms of short term. It’s any conversation that points towards helping the employee improve their performance, meet performance expectations. Whereas, developmental coaching is more future-oriented, and that serves to help and support an employee who wants to grow and develop.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And so then, do you recommend both or one under certain circumstances versus one is more appropriate for another context?

Sara Canaday
I absolutely recommend both. I think a natural cadence with a leader and an employee, or peer to peer, is there are going to be situations that call for both. If you’re having regular one-on-one meetings with your employees, sometimes you’re going to talk about missing a deadline, and what may have caused that. And so, that’s performance coaching.

But other times you’re going to circle back to, “Hey, I noticed that in your individual development plan, you want to get advanced knowledge in Excel, you want to learn how to do pivot tables. Where are we on that? How can I help you?” Two different things but both are scenarios that are perfectly within the realm of happening to the same individual in the same month.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then you’ve got a five-step model we’re going to chat through. But, first, could you share with us are there any key guiding lights, fundamental, essential principles that we should keep in mind if we think, “Yeah, coaching, that’s something I should do more of or I’d like more of”? Are there some must-remembers before we dig into the one, two, three, four, five of the five steps?

Sara Canaday
Well, I think it’s a little bit of a mindset shift because those of us who are in corporate for years may have seen coaches or coaching reserved for individuals who weren’t performing at their best. So, instead of it being a positive, it was almost a negative. So, that’s number one. Now, coaching is, in some cases, reserved for those who are being groomed for the next level. So, it can be absolutely a positive thing.

Also, performance coaching, to me, does not include corrective action, so I just want to make that clear. If you were to read and go through any of my literature on coaching, some people may think, “Okay, what’s the deal here? This sounds a little too soft.” Well, that’s because I’m assuming that this is not corrective action. You’ve not coached the person multiple times before on an issue. You’re not to the point where you need to think about whether this is even the right fit for the person or whether they need to move on. So, coaching is not corrective action.

Coaching is a conversation. At the heart of it, that’s what it is. And it is a way for you to partner with the employee and discover mutually what the issue might be, and then co-create potential solutions to rectify, to close gaps, to move forward.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Got it. Understood. And so then, you’ve got your five-step model for coaching. Can you walk us through each of the five steps?

Sara Canaday
Yeah. The first one is what I call just assess the situation, and that can happen before you even have the conversation. So, whatever data you have, let’s say it’s performance coaching, let’s say you have monthly reports of somebody in a call center, and you’re able to see from the reports how many calls they’ve taken, how many calls they kept in queue, what was their hold and wait times, whatever it is you’re measuring, and/or you’re collecting feedback from others who are on a project team with that individual, or somebody has come to you with feedback.

That’s part of the assessment but it doesn’t end there. You’re continuing to assess it at the first conversation because one of the first things that I always recommend is that you get the employee’s perspective of the situation. Even if you feel like you understand it, you know it, it’s pretty clear, I would say give that person the opportunity to share their perspective.

So, the question goes, “How do you think that meeting went yesterday? Tell me about the project. What’s new? Do you have any concerns? Where are we on this initiative? Is there anything that’s making you uncomfortable?” So, you’re starting to get their perspective so you have the entire picture instead of jumping to any conclusions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. So, that’s one, we assess the situation and then, two, we generate ideas.

Sara Canaday
Generate ideas, right, and this is the co-create part. I think this is another reason maybe leaders hesitate is because they’re like, “I’ve got a multitude of things happening, I’m not sure I’m going to have the exact answer for what’s plaguing this individual or what’s keeping them from meeting these goals at my fingertips, so I’m a little intimidated.” Well, you don’t have to have the answers.

You simply ask the person, “What could you have done differently?” You might have ideas but that’s how the conversation continues. Or, you say, “What might be missing? What’s keeping you from showing up as your best self or for meeting these metrics? What do you think is keeping you?” And even if they don’t have any idea, you come to the table, “Do you feel knowledgeable about the products that you’re selling? Do you feel that you can manipulate all the platforms within a given phone call? Is that what’s plaguing you here?”

So, you come up with solutions together of how to move forward, to get the performance on track, or to help the person feel like they’re progressing.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And to your previous point associated with not leaping in and saying, “Oh, this happened to me and this is what I did,” you also talked about co-creating. How do we do that dance associated with we’re not jumping in and doing the idea generation, we’re prompting them? How does that work?

Sara Canaday
Yeah, and I’m glad you asked me that because I will say that true coaching that uses what you have heard as the Socratic method, which is asking question after question, “So, what did you do? So, how did that make you feel?”

Now, I’m going to go on record here saying that if I were to be graded as a purist on coaching, I probably would not do very well because I think there is a point at which once you’ve asked the questions and the person has explored, and you can tell they’re really kind of at a loss, then it’s okay to step in with, “Hey, are you open to hearing what I think might help?” or, “Are you open to a suggestion about how to move forward here?” And then it’s perfectly okay to give your suggestions.

I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m just saying don’t start there. Give the person an opportunity, but then it’s perfectly okay to say, including, “Here’s what’s worked for me in the past.” The point I was trying to make before is that we tend to get caught up in the story, and that’s what I mean by, “Oh, that happened to me,” or, “Oh, well, why did you do that?” “Oh, and then what did he say?” because then we start going backwards and we spend too much of our time in the story and not enough time moving forward in the coaching process.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then the third step, develop an action plan, how is this done?

Sara Canaday
Again, together. More than anything, you encourage the person, once they’ve decided how they’re going to move forward, “Great. Who can be of most help as you do that? Can you think of anybody who can help you with that?” or, “When do you think you’ll want to have this done by? This has been on your individual development plan, I see here, for eight months. If you want to get it done this year, let’s put an aggressive timeline in here. What do you think of that?”

So, again, you’re holding them accountable for their own action process but you’re giving them some nudges, some support, and you’re challenging them at the same time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then the fourth step is provide support. What does that look like?

Sara Canaday
Yeah. So, anything you can do, if you can introduce them to somebody who knows a particular skill or can help them get exposure to a project that has more of the type of work that they want to be doing, then make the connection. If you have access to budget that can be given to them to take on a course, if they need to spend more time with you going over some of their decks for presentations because you found out that they go into too much detail, again, not necessarily a performance issue, maybe a career development issue.

Smart as a whip, know their stuff inside and out, but maybe they’re used to delivering presentations to technical-only professionals, and you want to help them present to non-technical. So, maybe it needs more of your time to go over some of their presentations and give them feedback. Any way you can support them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And the fifth step, follow up?

Sara Canaday
Yes. And this is like anything else, it’s like having an accountability partner. This is why the peer coaching works so well. You are the person that’s going to help to ensure that there’s follow-through but it also shows on your end that this wasn’t a gratuitous conversation, that you actually do care, and you are going to move forward helping the person see that these things happen for them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Sara, can we maybe do a demonstration roleplay in which you coach me about a thing?

Sara Canaday
Certainly.

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s say I find myself procrastinating on processing my email inbox, and I’ve got a backlog that piles up, and I don’t like it and other people don’t like it. So, where shall we begin?

Sara Canaday
Yeah, and not probably an uncommon scenario, especially as people’s projects get, you know, we get more projects and they get exponentially bigger. So, I think I would start by saying helping you be more open with what may be going on, “So, tell me how the projects are going,” and that’s when you can say, “They seem to be fine but I feel like people’s expectations of me maybe are not the typical what I’m used to. I feel like things are falling through the cracks.”

Again, I’m just going to explore, “What do you think might be going on?” And that’s when you can say, “I feel like my inbox is always full. I can’t keep it up.” My question would be, “So, what kind of organizational productivity system do you have? Do you have a certain cadence to how you handle your emails? Tell me about how you organize your work.”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure thing. So, I’d say, “I use the Superhuman email app. I do it when I have a free moment in between things and that’s maybe the extent of my organization in the email world.”

Sara Canaday
Great. Well, for most of us that may have worked to a certain point, but when we get under pressure or when the workload is even more heavy, those moments are fewer and far between, and we find ourselves behind. So, what could you do differently? What do you think you could do differently if just reserving for when you’re free to get to those emails? Any other thoughts about what might be helpful for you?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I suppose real time needs to be allocated for them, and the amount of time that they have been getting has been insufficient to bring it to zero. So, one way or another, I guess more time needs to go there. I guess I’ve just been reluctant to do so because it’s not interesting and I’m not sure it’s going to be value-added relative to the other things I can be doing.

Sara Canaday
Well, I see your point. We get a lot of emails that aren’t necessarily germane to what we’re doing right now, and it can be frustrating. But if you were to do that, what would that look like? Would it look like in the mornings? When are you at your best, most productive, most efficient?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is in the morning, and I guess I’m wondering if email deserves my best or I should give it time that is my worse, or middle ground. We had Carey Nieuwhof on the show talk about either sort of green-zone times, yellow-zone times, and red-zone times in terms of your energy, attention, focus, motivation, oomph going on.

And so, yeah, that gets me thinking maybe I need to figure out, “Hey, email doesn’t deserve my best time but it needs some time, and so here is the time in which I am medium-functioning in terms of I can be motivated enough to answer these emails but not feel like I’m casting my pearls before swine, or wasting the most precious gold of the day on sort of the administrative feeling matters but still reach that inbox zero which feels so freeing, and feels like I’ve got a lot of mental space when there’s not a big load of emails waiting for me.”

Sara Canaday
Yeah, I hear you. I’m with you on that. I am almost too distracted during the day when I know my emails are piling up. There’s this anxiety, this anxiousness that I know it’s there. And so, I’m all for using your most productive time early in the morning.

For example, I know some people do their best writing or their best strategy-thinking, but I like your idea of at least giving it the medium productivity action so that you can get through it, and you can get through it efficiently but that it also leaves what energy you do have left for the day without that that being that sort of taxing feeling that you’ve got this hanging over your head.

And let’s not forget, you’ve got other people who, for whatever reason, may be waiting on your response for their own production. And so, I would just say think of that, too. You may see this low-value administrative but there may be a couple of key emails in there that need your attention and that others are waiting on. And so, from that standpoint, I think it’s important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah. So, that makes sense to me in terms of it might not be my number one thing, but other people maybe their number one thing is hearing from me so they could proceed. So, just in terms of being a good citizen and team player, I can sacrificially and generously do that for them in the hopes that, hey, we all reciprocate and it works out for everybody.

Sara Canaday
Sure.

Pete Mockaitis
So, yeah, I’m thinking maybe 4:00 p.m. might be a good time to put in half an hour a day on the emails, and that should probably get us close to zero if I’m doing that with consistency.

Sara Canaday
Great. Pete, when do you think you can start that?

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, probably today.

Sara Canaday
Wonderful. Why don’t we reconnect in a couple of weeks? I’ll be curious to see how that’s working for you, and happy to help you if it doesn’t seem to be moving the needle forward. We can maybe come up with other solutions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Good deal. All right. So, there we have it. We assessed the situation, we generate some ideas, we developed an action, we have some support – thank you – and the follow up. Nifty. So, any reflections on your end on the roleplay?

Sara Canaday
One thing I always say as a primer to coaching is that you have to know your employees, and there has to be some semblance of trust and rapport. You can’t skip that when you’re coaching. In fact, I tell a story of trying to help somebody better connect with their project team, and I did what I tell people not to do, and I jumped to the fix-it mode, and I said, “Well, why don’t you start meeting with them individually?”

And that suggestion failed miserably because, A, I didn’t ask her for more questions, but, B, she didn’t know them very well. And so, when she started asking questions, there was almost a kind of look on their face like they didn’t trust her or they weren’t sure what her…

Pete Mockaitis
“What are you trying to pull here?”

Sara Canaday
Yeah, “What’s your M.O. here?” So, this is just a good place to bring up that we’re just doing an on-the-spot, we’ve known each other through professional as colleagues through the years, but we don’t work together. I don’t know what makes you tick on a daily basis necessarily. And so, I would hope that that conversation was a little more refined based on knowing you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, okay.

Sara Canaday
I could’ve said something like, “Oh, yeah, Pete, I know how much you like those emails.” It could’ve been funny, but it would be a way to build rapport and get you to see that I’m just not going to be rigid about getting your emails done. I’m going to try to approach this in a way that works for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. Okay. And then I’m curious, when it comes to coaching, any super favorite questions, words, phrases that often yield goodies on the other side?

Sara Canaday
Most of them are open-ended, for one. If you asked, “How is the project going?” “Good.” You’re just not going to get much, right? But if you’re really conscious of asking, “Okay, so what might make you more comfortable with this solution?” that kind of question, you can ask individually or to a group that you’ve just announced a new project or initiative.

And, to me, that gets the meeting after the meeting out in the open, or it gets your coachee to tell you something that they would’ve walked away saying, “Ugh, easier said than done. I knew she was going to suggest that.” But if you asked that right then and there, then you’re peeling back the onion layers and you’re getting to more efficient information.

Maybe you say, “I don’t necessarily see it that way. Can I tell you why?” That’s very different than saying, “I don’t agree,” because you’re putting the person at the defense. Whereas, in the other case, it’s a little disarming. You just don’t see it that way. It doesn’t mean it’s an indictment against them or their idea. You just don’t see it that way, “And can I tell you why? I want to offer another kind of angle here.” So, those are just some examples of open-ended questions.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, tell me, Sara, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Sara Canaday
No, other than the book has several pages of good, powerful phrases or questions. So, they don’t always have to be a question. It could be, “Tell me more,” which is not a question. But if anybody is interested in those types of tools, the book is full of them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Sara Canaday
My favorite quote is “Please be responsible for the energy you bring into this room.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Sara Canaday
Well, this probably has to do with coaching and it has to do with leadership, but it was done by the Journal of Economic Psychology, and there, there were a group of researchers that wanted to study the optimal strategy for goalies, soccer goalies, and blocking penalty kicks.

And what they found, after watching hundreds of videos and speaking to expert coaches and goalies, is that when goalies stay in the middle of the net, they block the ball 33% of the time. When they move to the left or the right, it goes down by half, 14% on the right, 13.3 on the left. Point being is that we, as leaders, as professionals, I think, sometimes mistake motion for meaning, and we have a bias for action.

I get it. I’m a work in progress on that. And that study, to me, sort of highlights this idea that we would really benefit from taking more pauses, more pauses to think strategically, more pauses to coach our employees, more pauses to reflect.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Sara Canaday
Favorite book, it just came out. It’s called The Chrysalis Code: Becoming the Type of Leader Other People Want to Follow by my good friend and colleague Ron J. West.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Sara Canaday
We talked about this the last time. I’m going to say it again. LinkedIn, huge tool for me. And then I’m going to throw in a few personal ones that save me time. Amazon, I don’t know what I would do without it, it’s kind of scary, because when I need something, I don’t have to run out to OfficeMax or fill my day with errands on top of work. My fingertips right there. And, similarly, Instacart, which is not everywhere but a lot of places. And I can imagine, with three kids, this would be a boon for you, but getting my groceries delivered is hugely helpful.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit, something you do to be awesome at your job?

Sara Canaday
Well, it’s a word that I didn’t know of until, I think, a year or two ago, and I read about it in one of Adam Grant’s posts. And, apparently, I’m a precrastinator. So, it’s the opposite of a procrastinator. I actually do things really far in advance, and that has served me very well because I guess my years in corporate, I knew that fires would always have to be put out. And so, when I have the time, I would get projects done early so that I wouldn’t feel as overwhelmed when things popped up that were not planned.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate; folks quote it back to you often?

Sara Canaday
I mentioned one earlier that I think resonates with leaders, which is this idea of mistaking motion for meaning, and that’s probably the key one lately. Ever since COVID, I think, I find that people are just…they have no buffer time between any of their meetings, and no time to actually make connections and put things together, and be creative and innovative.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Sara Canaday
I’d point them to my website, SaraCanaday.com, and there’s no H in Sara, and Canaday is just like Canada but with a Y at the end. Or, LinkedIn, of course.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Sara Canaday
I do. I would say make one final or baby step toward this idea of coaching. It doesn’t have to be, “Okay, I’m going to coach somebody.” Pick a meeting this week where you’re just going to intentionally ask an open-ended question, or you’re going to intentionally paraphrase so that you can actively listen, “So, what I’m hearing you say is…” or, “Let me see if I got this right.” So, those are the things that are really important in coaching. So, just pick one aspect of coaching, and pick a meeting where you’re going to try it on.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Sara, this has been a treat. I wish you many good coaching sessions in the future.

Sara Canaday
Thank you. It’s been a treat to be here.

Mar 09
0

846: How to Elevate and Empower Teams to Reach Their Full Potential with Robert Glazer

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Robert Glazer says: "Organizations should focus on making their people better, help them build their capacity holistically."

Robert Glazer shows how to build your team’s capacity and empower them to reach their full potential.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to cure exhaustion in teams.
  2. The simple trick to making difficult conversations easier.
  3. How to influence company culture without a leadership position.

About Robert

Robert Glazer is the founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners, a global partner marketing agency and the recipient of numerous industry and company culture awards, including Glassdoor’s Employees’ Choice Awards two years in a row.

He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal, USA Today and international bestselling author of four books: Elevate, How To Thrive In The Virtual Workplace, Friday Forward, and Performance Partnerships.  He is a sought-after speaker by companies and organizations around the world and is the host of The Elevate Podcast. He also shares ideas and insights around these topics via Friday Forward, a weekly inspirational newsletter that reaches over 200,000 individuals and business leaders across 60+ countries.

Resources Mentioned

Robert Glazer Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Robert, welcome back to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Robert Glazer
Thanks for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to get into the wisdom of your book Elevate Your Team but, first, I got to hear, it’s been a couple years since we last chatted.

Robert Glazer
It’s been a pandemic.

Pete Mockaitis
That it has. Tell me, any particularly wild adventures, learnings, surprises in your life over the last couple of years?

Robert Glazer
It’s just been such a supply and demand see-saw that it’s been nothing like my career. I’m someone who likes to plan long term, and in the business and think two, three years ahead, and it’s just been three to six months is kind of as far as you can look. I would say the biggest thing was we were a fully virtual team for 12 years coming into COVID, and we hit it at times and it wasn’t something that we were really public with, and then it’s just everyone was like, “Oh, you’ve done this. How do you do this?” I ended up kind of writing a book around it.

So, that was a little bit of a whirlwind going from sort of keeping the fact that we were fully remote a little bit on the downlow to sort of becoming an exemplar and speaker and author around it. And, by the way, I just talked to a large company this morning, I mean, two, three years later, people still haven’t figured out what they’re going to do with this, and it’s pretty interesting to me.

That and figuring out the strategy where they kind of have a strategy but they haven’t supported it. And this company was saying they have all kinds of rules for remote work that no one has actually read or adheres to.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, totally. And I remember even before the pandemic, there were debates in terms of, “Oh, so and so is moving, and they want to move work remotely,” and they’re like, “Oh, well, we don’t allow that.” Like, even then I was sort of, well, I’d been working self-employed remotely for a long time, and so I thought that was really a head scratcher, like, “If this person is excellent and they want to stay working for you, I think you should accommodate that.” That’s my bias.

Robert Glazer
So, here’s my favorite thing, and I was doing a keynote yesterday morning, and I have this slide that I used for a long time and I wasn’t going to use it, but it was David Solomon of Goldman Sachs in January 2021 saying that, or January 2022 saying that “Work from home is an aberration that they’re going to cure as soon as possible, and it’s like this horrible thing that needs to be fixed.” A week later, Goldman announces the best quarterly earnings in the history of the company with everyone working remote.

So, now they forced people back in the office, Goldman’s earnings come out last week, they’re the worst in, like, 20 years and they missed earnings. They’re down 60%. It’s a disaster. It’s just so funny. It’s like what actually…well, does it matter where and how people…Now, look, I am not a, “Everyone should be remote.” I think if you’re Goldman and you’re pitching an IPO, I think that people should come in for that pitch. But if they’re crunching the spreadsheets for 16 hours getting ready for a thing, like, did they need to come into the office that day for that?

But I do think there are things that you need to be in person, you need to be in the office, so I’m not an absolute on it, but I thought the paradox of those two, like statements and results, were really interesting, telling people the thing that was an aberration was the thing that just made your company the most money in its history.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Robert, that’s what I love, your perspective, you’re juxtaposing things, bringing together connections, distinctions, wisdom so it’s a hoot to be chatting again. And you got another work here, it’s called Elevate Your Team. What’s the big idea here?

Robert Glazer
Yeah. So, I wrote the book Elevate, it was about this concept of capacity-building and how to use that to make yourself better and help train leaders, really, to be better. And a lot of the stuff that we were doing over the years, I realized was the same framework around, “Well, how do you take that same capacity-building framework to an organization? So, what does it look like for an organization these days?”

And, look, it’s better to be lucky than good, and this book is coming out when the playbook of just burn through people and grow your business is just not going to work anymore. People are too tired around, “How do you grow a business on the backs of your people?” And by growing your people, I’m not saying, “We want to grow this business, and it sort of chews out people.” So, it takes that same spiritual, intellectual, physical, emotional framework, and says, “How do you apply these principles to the organization rather than to the individual leaders?”

Pete Mockaitis
And so, for folks who didn’t catch the last interview, I recommend you do. But could you give us a bit of a refresher? We talked about capacity and building, and capacity-building, can you give us definitions of synonyms for what we’re talking about here?

Robert Glazer
Yeah. So, capacity-building is just a method. I always say that the long definition is the method by which individuals seek, accept, and develop…seek, acquire, and develop the skills and ability to perform at a higher level. Simply, it’s how you get better. I think it’s a process of how to get better and there’s four pieces.

Spiritual capacity, which is understanding who you are, and what you want most, your values and the standards you want to live by. Intellectual capacity, which is about how you improve your ability to think, learn, plan, and execute with discipline. That’s kind of your personal organizational operating system. Physical capacity is health, wellbeing, and physical performance. And emotional capacity is a few different things. It’s how you react to challenging situations, your emotional mindset, and I think the quality of your relationships.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, in order or a team to flourish, well, I won’t steal your thunder, but it sounds like is it fair to say your thesis is you got to be building this capacity, growing in these domains in order to flourish as a team, an organization, a business without…?

Robert Glazer
And a human, yeah. So, the take on this that I have that’s a little different is I think organizations should focus on making their people better, help them build their capacity holistically not to just be good at their job today or the best robot for the assembly line, but how do you make them better at work and better in all aspects? At the same time, better father, mother, spouse, otherwise.

Because I think a lot of the things that people struggle with in work or a lot of their growth areas are the same outside, particularly with people working from home. It’s not like you wake out of bed cranky and tired and exhausted, and jump into work and are a totally different person. You’re going to be the same person. I find people that are organized and disciplined and have routines at work have them at home. They tend to really go hand in hand.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, could you share with us in terms of what’s the state of team capacity-building these days? How are we doing with these principles, generally speaking?

Robert Glazer
I don’t think well because I think that people are really burnt out, and they’re burnt out from two years of a global pandemic and the bounce back and all the changes, but that one implies that a lot of these things are out of whack. They’re not clear on what they value and what they bring to the organization. I think one of the things that make people stay and interested and growing as an organization, whether it’s intellectual, a lot of learning and feedback, and they’re seeing how they’re growing an opportunity.

We know people’s physical capacity is very diminished right now, so how can the organization help that, not hurt it? Like, how do you get people a break and some rest and get them recharged? And then again, I think that, particularly now, where you’re in an environment, again, where you have some layoffs and otherwise, psychological safety, becomes a big part of that.

Like, I know leaders struggle with, someone said to me yesterday at a keynote I was doing, one of the questions was, “Look, our industry, rough time, bad year, probably some layoffs, otherwise. Like, what do we tell people?” I was like, “Well, tell them the truth. Tell them where your parameters are, where you need their help, what you’re going to do. Communicate with them well because there’s going to be another company that are going to tell every people everything is fine, and it’s not. And they’re really going to lose the trust of those folks.”

So, I think people, when they know the truth and the reality, they’re happy to stay with something. I think it’s when they don’t feel like they’re being told the whole story that you have problems.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, could you share with us a fun story, a true story, with regard to a team who really saw a cool transformation when they did this capacity-building stuff, they took it seriously, they implemented some goodies, and they saw great results?

Robert Glazer
Yeah, I’ll give you some individual examples. So, one of the things that we do with all of our leaders is that we…and I’m going to give you two examples, I think from spiritual and intellectual, to talk about. We help our leaders figure out their personal core values because our belief is there’s no acceleration partners type of leader. The best leader is going to be authentic, and we want to help them figure out what do they value, what are they good at. Like, what are the natural things?

And the first time we did this, and people figured these things out, they actually kind of wrote it up, they went back to their teams, and they said, “Look, I really learned all these things about myself. This is how I kind of show up as a leader. This is what you can expect from me. This is what I need from you.” And three to six months later, we’d measured their performance before that offsite and we did all that and after, and really everyone improved dramatically. I just think their connections to their teams went a lot higher.

Again, example of intellectual capacity, learning feedback, so we will do a training where we model fake conversations between employees and their managers, kind of rip from the headlines. So, we’d sit down and say, “All right, Pete, you’re…” so the crowd knows both sides of the story, the crowd watching this, but we give you a narrative, “Pete, you just started today, you made some mistakes in the first couple months, but you think you’re doing great, and you want to get promoted.”

And then there’s Carly on the other side, and Carly has a card that says, “You meet with your employee Pete, and you just don’t think he’s going to make it. He has not the right attitude. He’s made a bunch of mistakes. He doesn’t seem to be getting it, and you need to sort of, like, let Pete know that this might not be the best place for him.”

And then we watch people have that conversation, and there’s a lot of platitudes, and there’s a lot of dancing around, and now you see why people aren’t on the same page. And we say, “Freeze,” and then we have the team all comment in, and I say, “How many people think that Pete knew his job was on the line?” And 20 people watching will say, “No,” and then I was like, “Okay, what are some different ways you could’ve approached?” and then we’ll have them start the conversation again.

And, again, this is just the thing, “Why do these conversations go so poorly all the time?” Because people don’t know how to do them. And why do they dread? They haven’t practiced them. This is an actual law and order practice, having very common difficult conversations that managers are going to have. It’s not surprising that people aren’t good at something, that they haven’t been trained on, and that they haven’t done before.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s just keep rolling. Physically?

Robert Glazer
Yeah. So, physically, look, I think you’re putting your money where your mouth is on this in terms of one of the things that we did was we’ve done a couple of fitness contests where… Most companies say they want something and then they incentivize another. They incentivize never leaving the desk, and, “We’ll get you food and we’ll get you your vaccine shot without having to get up,” or all this stuff.

We have said to people on a couple of things, “Hey, we will cover, we will reimburse part of your vacation if you actually take seven days off and don’t communicate with everyone, and actually unplug.” So, we’re again aligning the incentive to that behavior. Similarly, we’ve had fitness challenges where people break into teams during the work day. They have to step aside a half an hour to do anything from walking, to yoga, to meditation, to working out, and the teams get a point and the teams compete, and I think the winners got sort of an Apple watch.

So, again, very different viewpoint when the organization is saying, “Hey, we’re actually compensating you, or paying you, or valuing things that are designed to give you more time, and pay attention to your physical health and make the workplace part of the solution, not part of the problem.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And emotionally?

Robert Glazer
Yeah. So, example, we’ve always had this employee TED Talks at our organization at our AP Annual Summit, and one year, we decided to step it up. There was a gentleman I knew named Philip McKernan, and he had a program called “One Last Talk,” where people get on stage and they basically deliver the, “What is the one talk that you would deliver if this is your last day on earth?” And these were not, like, he doesn’t let anyone escape with, “Oh, three great things to live a great life.” It’s much more personal.

So, we had a bunch of volunteers, we picked four people, they trained for two months, they got up there and gave these speeches, and there wasn’t really a dry eye in the room. These were like deeply emotional speeches talking about aspects of their lives that many people wouldn’t have known. What was interesting though was that over the next day, the level of sharing across the company, like what people were talking to other people about, making connections, “You are I work together for five years, and I never told you that I grew up in a single-parent household, and I find out the same about you.”

It was crazy watching how that opened the floodgates for people to want to connect on a more human level. And I think, again, that level of vulnerability just leads people to better relationships, more sharing, more understanding other people’s perspectives and where they’re coming from. And, yeah, it was a pretty cool experience.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, it sounds like there is a boatload of approaches, strategies, tools, activities, tactics, interventions, stuff you can do to see some upgrades, some increased capacity in each these domains. I’m curious, are there a few sorts of top do’s and don’ts that you recommend individuals and teams and organizations consider as we’re looking to implement some of this stuff?

Robert Glazer
Yeah, I think that, oftentimes, people try to make too many changes at once. I think people are pretty good with change over time. Similar to New Year’s resolutions, I always say, like, I’m a much bigger believer. If I saw a company trying to do everything that was in this book, I would think their success would be very slow.

I think if they picked a couple things, started doing them, getting traction, and then I think that getting that one percent better each day or week, and getting the compounding effect of that, usually works better than rushing into a bunch of things that you don’t have the time or energy or resources to support.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And are there a few starting points that seem just excellent in your experience?

Robert Glazer
Yeah, I guess it depends on the area. I think if we’re talking about kind of a learning culture, some really easy things that you can do to start just getting more discussion or interaction, a book club, a podcast club, or even the CEO says, “You read this book and we get together, and let’s talk about it. Let’s pick a topic, let’s do a book,” that’s super easy.

Reimbursing people for education and learning experiences, I think that’s something that you can do right away. There’s also feedback, like really working with teams on teaching them how to give feedback, what’s good feedback. So many of these things, I think, we just, again, think that people know how to do.

One of the examples I love and I used in the book is that Scribe, which is a book company that does a lot of self-publishing books, so they actually teach their customers on how to give feedback to their team. And they say something like, “Look, saying you hate this cover is not super helpful to our design team. Saying, ‘This cover is off brand for the colors we like and the imagery I want to use, and I prefer imagery that is more X’ is a lot more helpful.”

So, it’s really interesting, like in that context, they’re even teaching that, how to do feedback. So, yeah, there are so many ways for, I think, companies to improve, but I think focusing on opportunities to learn and learn together is usually a pretty easy one of them.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that notion about design feedback because I always feel ridiculous when I’m sharing my feedback on designs, and yet designers seem to really love it. I was like, “This font makes me feel like a child.” They’re like, “Oh, that’s excellent.”

Robert Glazer
That, actually, right. Well, at least they know.

Pete Mockaitis
I was like, “Really? I feel nutty when I say that out loud.”

Robert Glazer
At least they know what you don’t like about it. That’s fair on that.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. All right. Well, there’s two things you kind of touched upon that I think are really juicy, and I’d love to hear all the great, your favorite tools for them. First, let’s talk about exhaustion, when folks are just tuckered out.

Robert Glazer
They’re toast, and if you think they’re going to come in and work 80 hours a week, even if they wanted to, I think they’re toast. And I actually think it’s happening more at the leadership level. The leaders carry the water in that first year in COVID, and they have the kids they’re worrying about and the sick parents, and their teams. And then I think, eventually, carrying all that water has really impacted them, too.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, if you’re good and exhausted, where do you recommend that we start?

Robert Glazer
Yeah, look, it seems counterintuitive when there’s a lot to do but try to give people some real breaks, whether that is the weekend, whether that is their week vacation, whether that is not worrying about emails at 6:00 o’clock after night. One of the tools that I’ve used for years, and, look, France and some places have taken them to the extreme. I think you’d go to jail if you email people after 5:00 o’clock.

But sometimes, like on a Saturday morning, I love to clear out emails from the week, and I learned when I was CEO that if I wrote someone an email on a Saturday, they thought they needed to respond. And I was often doing stuff after hours because that’s when I had time to doing it. I wasn’t looking for a response, that wasn’t the expectation. So, I learned to just use delayed delivery.

And so, anytime I write something outside of kind of normal hours, I delay until 8:00 o’clock the next work day. The side benefit of this is you can look really awesome and be productive at 8:00 o’clock in the morning when…

Pete Mockaitis
“Wow, Robert has given me six emails within…”

Robert Glazer
Yeah, you can do 7:58, 7:59, 8:00, 8:01, now you feel like a slacker in the morning. But I think people really appreciate that, particularly when you are a leader and you’re emailing other people on your team, they don’t know the priority. People tend to assume that everything is important, and not that just you felt like writing the email to them at that time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, or I had a cool idea, and I wanted to get it on paper. And while I was there, how about I copy/paste, send?

Robert Glazer
That’s the other thing I do. I keep a notepad for everyone I meet and I take that cool idea and I put it in the part of the OneNote, and, in that way, I sit down and talk about the four ideas as well so they’re not getting bombarded with ADD at different points of night and day.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Okay. So, exhaustion, real breaks, whether that’s guidelines on the email timing or expectations, clarity that we’re not doing stuff over the weekend, or that week vacation is true and real.

Robert Glazer
Yeah. And, look, model the behavior. So, I’m a leader, “I’m going on vacation this weekend. If you need to reach me by an emergency, here’s the thing.” Put it on my autoreply, “Don’t email from vacation.” Because people will do what you say. This is the same over parenting. People will do what you say not what you do. Sorry, they will do what you do, not what you say. I got that backwards.

And that’s where I think it’s really important. If you tell people, “Oh, it’s fine to take a vacation,” but then you say you’re going on vacation, you’re out of office, and you’re emailing all week, what they take away from that is that it’s not okay to take a vacation.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I remember when I was an intern, like I got the memo in terms of one the one side, the recruiting teams wanted the interns to have a truly fantastic experience so they go back to their university, and say, “Oh, my gosh, you got to work here.” But then there’s your actual work team, and they wanted useful stuff from you that brought things forward and served the client.

And so, I quickly learned, “Oh, in order to do well here, I need to completely ignore the preference of the recruiting team that wants me to not work much, and work as much as necessary to advance the stuff and have things look great for the team I’m working with. Okay, don’t listen to them. Do listen to them. Got it.”

Robert Glazer
And, look, this is the exact point, is that everyone figures this stuff out because the culture values it implicitly or explicitly. And it’s not like anyone told you this, but you very quickly figure out the rules of the road and what you need to do, and that becomes the default point and behavior. Then you think it’s normal and you teach it to the next person.

I literally had a friend, I think in five years, the people he worked for never let him have a vacation without calling him or bothering him. Like, there are just so many reasons why that’s wrong. It’s actually even bad for the company. Like, give the person a break so they actually feel refreshed in coming back. I think you should want people to have a life outside of work. They will do better work.

Pete Mockaitis
Yup, agreed. All right. Now, let’s talk about the folks having difficulty with real conversations, and you say, “Of course, it’s to be expected. They don’t have training or practice very much in that domain.” What are some great first steps to developing that skillset?

Robert Glazer
Practice. I think, I mean, we collect a lot of podcasts that talk about certain topics, “Hey, how do you have this sort of conversation? How do you have a difficult employee conversation?” I remember when I interviewed Patty McCord at Netflix, who’s sort of was part of their whole culture and the culture deck. She talked about when she was training people to do changes in jobs or whatever, she told them to call their own voicemail, say what they were going to say, and listen to it three times.

Just even some basic rep and practice, talk to other people, there are very few things that when you do it for the first time, have never practiced it, it’s going to go well. I think when you think about, in sports, no one does that. In business, we do that all the time. I wrote a Friday Forward about being a speaker at a conference, and I was sort of the general speaker and there was a subject matter expert after me, and I had checked the timing beforehand, I’d met with the AVP people, I had looked at the thing, I had that on my computer.

He came in with three times the amount of slides as the amount of time, didn’t set up AVP, someone had to do his computer. He had great content but he got pulled off stage because he never went through a dry run or practice, or it just doesn’t really work well to do things for the first time, and do them on stage. You should practice anything that you’re going to do.

In fact, someone was saying, our sales team, one thing that we could do better is, when we go into some big pitches, and we did this years ago in front of an important one, it was like we practiced the whole thing an hour beforehand. And what we noticed was we had some awkward transitions, “Oh, no, Pete, you take that. No, I’ll take that.” And we worked those transitions out during the practice, which having not done it, we would’ve made those mistakes in real time.

Pete Mockaitis
And when it comes to the practice of difficult conversations, it’s tricky because, okay, there’s a person, there’s an issue, and we got to talk about it. And, yet, if I want to practice it with them, it’s sort of already the performance…

Robert Glazer
Well, you got to practice it with other people, not with them. But you could practice it with your manager, you could practice it with a peer. Again, you could practice it with yourself. You could sit down there and record it, and be like, “That sounds not good.” Or, again, you can learn some tools that you can use. So, here’s one that I learned, and I learned through all those trainings.

We know the sandwich concept, right? And if you watch it, it’s so awkward. Like, when someone starts a praise, then I’m going to deliver the real thing I want to say, and then wrap it with praise at the end. And you confuse people, and they’re like, “Wait, wait. Am I being reprimanded?” because it’s like two positives and a negative, but negative was the real reason why you were having the conversation.

The last time I had to have one of those really difficult conversations, I actually picked up a cue from someone else, and I started by saying, “Hey, we’re going to have a really difficult conversation, so I just want to let you know that.” That just totally changes the demeanor to me fumbling around for a minute, and being like, “Hey, Pete, what’s going on?”

So, again, but I had to learn that. I learned that from someone else, I learned that that was a best practice. I applied the best practice and it was difficult but I think it went about as good as it could go. And the other benefit is if you know how to do these things, then you don’t lose nights of sleep beforehand on it.

Like, this is the whole point on capacity. Capacity is not more. When you think about intellectual capacity, it’s like if you have a better operating system, if you know how to do it smarter and faster, it should be less energy. If I had 20 of these difficult conversation things, and I walk into one, it will cost me a lot less energy and grief and all the stuff, like, I will know how to do it. That, to me, is the definition of capacity because it’s getting more done with less resources, not more with more resources.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Okay. So, Robert, this is cool stuff, focus on the organization, the team, the leader level. If we find ourselves individual contributors who would like this stuff to be happening in our organizations but isn’t, what do we do?

Robert Glazer
Yeah, look, you can become a leader in the organization with different ways. So, again, a perfect example, just because you’re an individual contributor does not mean you couldn’t start the book club, or the podcast club, or a class, or help start a fitness competition for everyone at the organization. So, yeah, you want to honor individual contributors who don’t want to be leaders.

I think there’s a difference between wanting to be an individual contributor and not have a big team, and wanting to be a loner and not care about other people at the organization. I think, actually, what would make an individual contributor stronger is the more connection they have to the company overall. So, I think they should look at these things as opportunities.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Robert, anything else you want to make sure to mention?

Robert Glazer
No, the one other thing I will mention is when we talked about the spiritual capacity and the core values of helping your team understand their core values, in Elevate, I did not have anywhere to point people to do this. And so, we started building it out over the years. We started doing it with our team. I turned it into a course.

There’s some information on that in the book but, also, if you go to CoreValuesCourse.com, if you’re interested for yourself or for your team to figure out, “What are our core values?” there’s an actual process that’ll take you through that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds fantastic, and I want to hear more about it. What does the process look like?

Robert Glazer
Yes. So, it goes through a bunch of different behavioral-based questions to figure out, “In different environments in your life, where are you successful or not successful?” And I think when you answer these questions, and you ask to start to pull the answers together, you start to see some pretty consistent themes around where you show up and are highly engaged, and where you are disengaged. And it starts kind of setting the foundation for what your personal core values might look like. And then it gives you kind of a process to suss those out.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Cool. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Robert Glazer
“What the wise man does at the beginning, the fool does at the end.” I’ve always liked that one.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Robert Glazer
I was reading about the Dunning-Kruger Effect recently, which was pretty interesting. Dunning-Kruger says that the people who understand something the least often have the greatest overconfidence in their knowledge on the subject. And so, it’s an interesting study in organization or otherwise. Sometimes the loudest voice on something is often the most uninformed.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Robert Glazer
Well, I love Atlas Shrugged is one of my favorite books. The book I give to a lot of people is a book called Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me).

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love it.

Robert Glazer
It’s sort of the definitive book. I have it on my desk here on cognitive dissonance. And I interviewed the authors recently. I think cognitive dissonance is so prevalent in everything we do every day, and just understanding that is a huge competitive advantage.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Robert Glazer
I don’t think I could live without this tool called SaneBox, which takes your email, filters it out, lets you snooze it to come back. So, it just keeps a lot of email that you don’t need to read out of your peripheral vision. And I remember one time my subscription expired, and like, 300 emails dropped back into my inbox, and I almost had a panic attack. Like, that’s how you know a tool is valuable to you.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Robert Glazer
Well, I like brewing French brew coffee, and it takes five or ten minutes, so I try to time some…I like the concept of habit stacking. So, I try to do something else during those five or ten minutes I wouldn’t do, whether it’s writing in a journal, or stretching, or otherwise, because I can tie it to doing that every day. So, I like the concept of stacking a habit, like something you’re already doing with something that you want to be doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that you’re known for, folks are always quoting this Robert Glazer gem?

Robert Glazer
Friday Forward, I think, is the most popular of all time, it’s called the “BS of Busy.” And I think there are some things in there around many of us are busy or just saying that as an answer to everything, and we really need to understand it’s not a great answer to, “How are you busy?” when someone asks. So, I think we need to move away from being busy to being productive and being fulfilled, and so I’ve talked about that a few different times.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Robert Glazer
Yeah, so everything of mine, Friday Forward, books, podcasts, everything is at RobertGlazer.com, including the new book. If you want the shortest path to the new book, it’s EYT, like “Elevate Your Team,” EYTBook.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Robert Glazer
Yeah, the final challenge I think would be figure out what is most important to your organization today, and then see how you could be helpful to it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Robert, it’s been a treat. I wish you much luck and elevation.

Robert Glazer
Thank you, Pete.

Dec 08
0

823: How to Collaborate Smarter with Dr. Heidi Gardner

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Dr. Heidi Gardner reveals when, why, and how to collaborate optimally.

You’ll Learn:

  1. How to stop overcommitment and overcollaboration
  2. How diversity makes for better collaborations
  3. How to overcome the barriers to collaboration 

About Heidi

Heidi K. Gardner, PhD. is a Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School, and was previously a professor at Harvard Business School and a consultant at McKinsey & Co. Named by Thinkers50 as a Next Generation Business Guru, Dr. Gardner is a sought-after advisor, keynote speaker, and facilitator for organizations across a wide range of industries globally. She is the co-founder of the research and advisory firm Gardner & Co. and the author, alongside Ivan A. Matviak, of Smarter Collaboration.

Resources Mentioned

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Heidi Gardner Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Heidi, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Heidi Gardner
Thank you so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom when it comes to collaboration and doing it smarter and better. First, I want to hear, you’ve actually got to experience a little bit of an inside view of an interesting slice of history. You worked with the German Ministry of Education during the post-reunification time, helping reform their English curriculum. Any interesting stories from that era?

Heidi Gardner
So, this goes way back. It was the year 1995, I believe, and I was a Fulbright fellow living in a town, a city, called Dassel, Germany, which was basically smack in the center of what had been the DDR. And at that point, it was a pretty rough time to be living in the former East Germany in the sense that a lot of young people had cleared out, they had moved to West Germany in order to seek better economic opportunities, better job prospects.

And I was there working inside the education system, I was teaching in the Gymnasium, which are the high schools, and teaching in some of the technical programs and things, and I was also doing a lot of teacher-training and education curriculum reform. And it was a fascinating time to be there and experience this sort of change.

What I realized at the time is that, because of people’s relative isolation behind the Iron Curtain, there were so many things that they hadn’t been exposed to intellectually, culturally, that I had taken for granted, and I saw that as a real eye-opener for me. I had known that, of course, growing up in the States in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but to experience it firsthand and to be with people, explaining things that were very basic and very run-of-the-mill to me, which were fascinating to individuals who hadn’t experienced them previously.

For example, the idea that everyone in my family had their own car. It was an incredible eye-opener to them that that was actually pretty normal where I came from. And the idea that we would have bananas day in, day out, that was kind of the cheap food, things like that that I learned to appreciate more by living in that kind of environment.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s beautiful. Thank you. Okay. Well, now, let’s hear a little bit about collaboration, and you’ve seen a whole lot of different environments, some in which people are grateful to be in, and some very much not so grateful. Could you share any particularly striking, surprising, counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made about collaboration from your work and research here for so many years?

Heidi Gardner
Absolutely. So, when we’re talking about collaboration, we’re not just talking about run-of-the-mill throw-a-team at every problem. We’re talking about the term we call smarter collaboration, which is starting with the end in mind and being hyper-intentional about how you bring people together, which particular kinds of experts do you need, when do you need to bring different people in so they contribute different perspectives that, collectively, allow the group to be something more innovative, more profitable, more productive, somehow better and tackle more complex issues than any of those people could’ve done on their own.

And what was surprising to me as we’ve been studying this over the last 10 plus years is how many mistakes people can make with something, which is a relatively straightforward process like that. One of the big mistakes that people have fallen into recently, sort of a trap, if you will, is the belief that if collaboration is good, more is better.

And so, what we see is a phenomenon of what we call overcommitment or over-collaboration, that people are joining many, many, many teams, or getting drafted onto different projects, or being asked to join the committee or the taskforce or the initiative, and people are stretched so thin that converse to the intentions, the intentions were, “Hey, let’s make the most of this great employee we have,” but the opposite happens.

That person gets stretched so thin that they end up doing fairly similar work project after project after project, and they don’t have the time to engage deeply, and they don’t have time to stretch their skills, and they don’t have time to really learn and think about how they could improve what they’re doing, and they also typically don’t get great coaching or mentorship along the way. And it’s been really surprising to me how common that problem is overcommitment inside lots of kinds of organizations.

Pete Mockaitis
The problem of overcommitment, I have seen, felt, heard that from my own firsthand experience as well as that of many others I’ve worked with. I’m curious, what is the fundamental root cause of overcommitment? It just seems like it’s almost ubiquitous in terms of professionals have too many emails, too many meetings, too many projects, and it’s just a cluster in a lot of organizations and a lot of professionals’ work lives. So, what’s behind this and how do we fix it?

Heidi Gardner
I see two kinds of root causes and both of them, I should say, stem from really good intentions, and that’s why it’s oftentimes hard to find a solution for it is because people are trying to do the right thing. So, in one scenario, you have the idea that “We’ve got these people who are really great at some specialized area and we want to make the most of them, both because they want to be challenged and because we, as a company, are paying a lot of money for these specialists, and so let’s really make sure we deploy them where they can make the most impact.” That’s the intention.

But, as the person’s reputation grows inside the organization, more and more people want a piece of that thing, so they’re like, “Oh, let me go grab Jane for this project. Let me go grab Joe, this expert,” and Jane and Joe keep getting tapped again and again and again for all of these different pieces of work, and that’s when we run into that problem of overcommitment. But, again, it stems from good intentions, “Let’s make the most of their skills.”

The other scenario is maybe even more pernicious. There is a very strong, credible research-backed reason to believe that when teams comprise people with very different kinds of backgrounds, and life experiences, and cultures, and a whole variety of different categories of diversity that that team has the potential to outperform. Very true.

Pete Mockaitis
Potential.

Heidi Gardner
But oftentimes what that means is that people who fall into particular categories, if you will, inside organizations that are underrepresented, the demand for them exceeds the supply for those individuals. Think about it in gender terms. This is happening in a lot of corporate boardrooms right now where they say…

Pete Mockaitis
“Hey, you’re a woman. Get on our board, too.”

Heidi Gardner
Yes, exactly.

Pete Mockaitis
Just like that. Okay.

Heidi Gardner
Absolutely. And they’re all looking for the same women, “Oh, well, we need a woman who was the CFO of a Fortune 500 company who has this kind of background and this number of years of experience.” And guess what? There aren’t just that many of that particular kind of person. And those individuals end up getting tapped again and again, in this case, for corporate boards or inside organizations. I worked with, for example, a lot of professional service firms. There just aren’t, empirically speaking, that many black women partners in professional service firms, and everyone wants their perspective and their wisdom and their experiences on their teams.

And so, those individuals are just pulled in so many directions, both, in the case of professional services, on client-facing teams but also on internal initiatives, like hiring, and recruiting, and employee engagement, and diversity and inclusion committees, and all of these places. And this is the second way that people get over-tapped and overcommitted.

And in both of those scenarios, managers and leaders with good intentions need to take a step back and look at the system. It’s not a set of individual choices. It’s a whole bunch of choices that systemically, collectively add up to trouble. And what we recommend, you asked for some solutions, first of all, and one probably I’ll keep coming back to in the course of our conversation, is get the data.

There is data that exists somewhere at some level in every company or organization that shows what people are working on and how many different ways and directions that they’re pulled. And there needs to be a person or a department, depending on how big the organization is, that keeps an eye out for this problem of overcommitment.

We studied it in a biotech company, for example. They asked us to come in because they had dropped a major ball, and figured out way too late that some of their best scientists were pulled in a thousand different directions, and when something really went wrong in one project, there was nobody to cover it.

So, this biotech asked us to come in. We took a look at the data and we started by asking them, “How many projects does every scientist like this one work on?” And they said, “Oh, probably two or three,” and they were right to some degree. Most people worked on two or three projects at once. But when we ran the numbers, we found that there were some people working on seven, eight, even eleven projects at once.

And those people who were most over-stretched also happen to be relatively new joiners, and so they didn’t know that that wasn’t normal, a normal workload, and even if they suspected it wasn’t, they were trying to make a good impression in their first months or year at the company, and they didn’t raise their hand and notify anyone that they were just way too overstretched. And so, one of the solutions is collect the data and figure it out, empirically, what’s happening.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, when you said took a look at the data and ran the numbers, when you say collect the data, that’s kind of what I’m curious about is how robust is the tracking and recording of this sort of thing in organizations? In my experience, the answer is not very, so you kind of have to go build that from the ground up, or I have seen some pretty cool enterprise-wide systems that capture that stuff, although sometimes they’re gamed and not being accurately reported.

So, when you talk about the data and the numbers, I just want to get your sense for what are the systems and platforms by which that is readily obtained versus how are you building it from the ground up?

Heidi Gardner
So, the best data, I think, is not reported for this purpose because, you’re right, it’s either garbage data and people don’t get around to doing it so at the end of the month, they kind of make a guess.

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, my timesheet. Yeah, typical report.”

Heidi Gardner
Yeah, exactly. Or, they game the system for whatever purposes they think works best for them. So, don’t collect data specifically for this purpose, besides it’s just one more admin thing that nobody wants to do. But there is a wealth of data inside many organizations that’s collected for other purposes that can be mined for these sorts of insights.

So, the obvious one is in professional service firms or other kinds of sales or project-based organizations. There are actually ways to track, say, on distribution list, or who’s submitting to certain expense codes, or who’s billing their time to certain files. There are lots of ways that are lots of data sources that are hidden in other kinds of repositories that can be mined for this.

In the biotech company, for example, they have to file a lot of paperwork for grant applications and compliance reasons, and those were actually brilliant project rosters. And so, if you’re creative, you can take a look inside databases that are capturing data for other purposes, and figure out who’s working on how many different things. Again, expense codes are a great one.

Another way to do it though is through a whole variety of platforms now that capture, essentially, network clusters inside firms. And so, you can see you have to make some inferences but you can see that if there are the same eight people emailing each other with similar subject matter, etc., or the same people in certain Teams groups in Microsoft Teams. Or, you can mine calendars for the kinds of meetings that people co-attend. And you use de-identify data so that you’re not actually snooping in what Joe or Jane is specifically doing but you’re looking at patterns. And the patterns are more important than any single individual.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s clever. I like it. Whether it’s from the emails or from the calendars, or from the expense codes, even if no one is judiciously carefully tracking where each hour of their day has gone, you can see what’s that involvement looking like and where and zeroing on some stuff. So, such a fun project on the, I guess, enterprise-wide scale. I’m curious about individuals, if we’re zooming into individuals and teams, what are some of the top do’s and don’ts you recommend they can start right away in terms of getting better collaboration?

Heidi Gardner
So, team leaders are, ultimately, responsible for the health and wellbeing and outputs of the group. And so, it starts with the team leader, first of all, getting some clarity on the degree to which each team member is already committed to other pieces of work. And perhaps even before composing the team, seeking out individuals who are not the usual suspects. Because if I need to think about project X, my mind will jump to certain people who have a reputation for doing that kind of project well or a piece of it.

Well, what if I went to that person, and instead of asking them to join my team, ask them for a recommendation of somebody whose competence they could vouch for who isn’t quite as busy as they are. Now, this hinges on people knowing the skills and quality levels of their colleagues, but especially on their willingness to let somebody else kind of take their “spot.”

And this falls to top leadership to make it a priority that says, “Busier is not better. Doing quality work is better.” But if there’s that kind of culture where people are willing to make referrals, the team leader should be asking not always the usual suspect but perhaps approaching that person with the strong reputation and asking for a referral to somebody else, maybe an up-and-comer, maybe somebody who’s new in the organization, maybe somebody for whatever reason, doesn’t have as widespread of a reputation but is still fully capable of doing the job.

So, get the right people on the team, make sure once you get the team together that you understand not only how many other pieces are they working on, but on a pretty granular level, “Where are we going to have some friction in the calendar?” This sounds like Project Management 101 but it’s astonishing how often this piece gets skipped.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Heidi Gardner
And once the leaders of the team understand that particular team members are going to be under really severe pressure at certain points, then it’s a question of rerouting the work, of approaching other leaders of teams and asking for some flexibility. It’s not leaving it up to the individual, and I think that’s a big problem in many teams, is that individual members feel like they either just need to suck it up and deal with it, or they’ll be perceived as not capable or strong, or that it’s up to them to kind of work the politics and figure out whose project to prioritize.

And that shouldn’t be the job of those individual team members. That should be something that the leader takes on his or her shoulders. And so, there’s an awareness there, there is a willingness to intervene when necessary, and I think everyone in the organization has to create the context where people feel comfortable raising their hand, and saying, “I’m overstretched. I’m not unwilling to do hard work and lots of work but, right now, the degree to which I’m spread across, taking that hard work and spreading across too many different initiatives is unproductive.” And that’s what we need people to identify.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, bringing some of these bits together, could you share with us a fun story or two of a team or organization that was having some disappointing collaboration, and then what they did to change things up and the cool results they gained from doing so?

Heidi Gardner
So, there’s a great experience I had working with the executive team of a huge global electronics manufacturer. And we were asked to work with them because they were really struggling on innovation as a company, and leading innovation as this executive team. So, my team and I worked with 35 top executives. They were the senior president of a certain division, or of a geographic area, or of a product line, or chief-level officers of functions.

And with them, we conducted a psychometric profile. So, we’ve developed this tool, this online tool, which allows people in just 10 minutes or so to complete a bunch of questions, and it provides them with real insight about their natural tendencies. All else equal, what kinds of problems are they drawn to? All else equal, how do they prefer to operate, in a group, or individually? Are they risk-seekers or risk-spotters?

And you might think, “Oh, we all know this,” but actually, we tend to have some blind spots. And so, what we did with this group from the electronics company is we gave them all this profile, this Smart Collaboration Accelerator, and, first, we shared with each individual where they came out. Then what we did is we analyzed the group, all 35 of them, to see what their collective profiles were.

And it turned out that 33 of the 35 were extreme risk-seekers. In other words, they were motivated not to miss a single opportunity, but there were two people on their team who were risk-spotters. They were the kinds of people who weren’t motivated to take opportunities. They were motivated not to fail, not to make mistakes, not to have anything blow up.

And when we revealed with this data, these were mostly kind of engineers and very quantitative people, and we could put the numbers in front of them that said, “Just on that one dimension, here’s what you look like as a group.” There was a bit of kind of nervous laughter and then the, “Ha-ha, do you think that’s why the regulators are crawling all over us and so forth?”

And then one guy kind of raised his hand, we were in a virtual meeting, he raised his hands on Zoom, and he said, “You never effing listen to me.” He’s like, “I’m that risk-spotter, and I keep telling you that we have these problems that are coming up, and nobody ever pays attention.” And his colleagues said…they kind of laughed, and they said, “Yeah, we hate listening to you. You’re such a downer.”

But it revealed two things to them. First, it revealed to them that they were, in fact, incredibly biased on that dimension, and that they were steamrollering the outlier. Rather than making the most of the diversity in that team, these two individuals who could have helped highlight some real problems before they emerged and blew up, they were majority-ruling and, basically, going with what everyone else who were these risk-seekers decided was better for the company.

And through this kind of conversation, it was like, “Well, all right, we need to make the most of the diversity on the team. Even when you don’t like to hear it, they’re probably telling you something really important. And, oh, by the way, if you’re one of those risk-spotters, you probably need to learn to raise issues in ways that those people can understand what you’re talking about, you’re not just shooting down every idea.”

But what was powerful as well is that the group then realized that, because they were so similar on multiple dimensions, there was something really flawed in the organizational processes that meant you kind of had to be one of these cowboys in order to make it onto X Co. And they looked back at all of the succession planning and everyone coming through the ranks, and they figured out that they were more or less weeding out people who didn’t fit the mold at most rungs of the organization.

And it was a very powerful experience for them, again, once they had the data in front of them, they could visually see how skewed they were in certain behavioral terms that it wasn’t productive for them and actually signaled more root-cause problems throughout a lot of their systems and processes.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful, and a pattern, I think, we see quite often. I’m thinking about administering the Myers-Briggs type indicator to many groups, and it’s almost like folks are closeted, it’s like, “Yeah, I’m secretly an introvert, but it doesn’t feel like that really works here, so I put on my extrovert hat around the sales and marketing deal-maker-y people and do that, or I prefer sensing in terms of like getting to the real facts of things as opposed to always imagining these cool possibilities and ideas, and I get called a wet blanket and such.”

Heidi Gardner
Exactly. And what we have worked with groups on, and this can be corporate boards that are a dozen people, it can be functions and departments and business units, what we can do when we help people understand their own natural tendencies is to figure out how to use those as a strength, “How do you bring your voice into the room, especially if you’re the outlier? But, in any case, how do you interact with other people? How do you raise concerns? How do you spot opportunities? How do you engage with people and keep them motivated in ways that are really authentic to you?”

Because I think that is a problem where oftentimes people feel that they have to fit in, they have to mirror somebody else who’s already successful there, and they, of course, are facing a huge burden then because, by not being able to be themselves, it’s really quite painful and draining, but the organization loses out.

There are huge amounts of research showing that when you have people who are genuinely different from one another and can play to their unique strengths, they’re more innovative, they’re more likely to spot both problems and opportunities, they’re better able to customize and tailor solutions to complex problems.

And so, that feeling of needing to fit in, whether it’s how you look and dress and sound, or what kinds of problems you’re attracted to, not being able to foster diversity and true inclusion in terms of bringing those people’s diverse efforts into the room and valuing them, that’s a real process loss for a lot of organizations.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, thank you, well-said. Well, tell me, any key things, Heidi, you want to make sure to mention in terms of top do’s and don’ts for collaboration before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Heidi Gardner
Well, one of the most important things I think when an organization is embarking on this journey of smarter collaboration, they say, “Okay, I get it. We need to really leverage all of the different perspectives we’ve got. We need to break down some of the barriers and the silos inside this organization. How do we get started?”

And we have done research with well over 10,000 senior people across organizations around the planet, and we know there’s five, six, maybe seven common barriers that come up from one place to the next. But what’s unique is…or not unique probably because there’s not an infinite combination. But what’s different for each organization is the prevalence and the importance of those barriers.

And so, for example, one of the barriers is competence trust. If I’m going to bring you into my special cherished project, I have to believe in your competence. I have to think you deliver high-quality, on-time on-budget, that you’re actually really good at what you do, but it’s not enough. Another kind of trust is essential, that’s interpersonal trust. Even if I think you’re a guru but if I think you’re a jerk, I’m still not going to work with you. And so, we know that interpersonal trust, or lack of it, or lack of competence trust, those spring up in most organizations.

But, depending which one really matters, which one is really standing in the way of people working across silos, that is the factor that needs to determine what course of action you take. Because if you’re trying to generate greater competence trust amongst employees, you’re going to go down a path of maybe learning and development, and helping people establish some curiosity in what other people do, and helping people hone their elevator pitch so when they’re talking to somebody, they can describe in compelling ways how they add value to problem-solving or whatever. But if you need to fix interpersonal trust, you need to go down a completely different route.

And so, the point of this is anyone looking to improve smarter collaboration in their organization, they have to start with a database diagnostic. They have to have some objective way of figuring out what stands in between them and really effective collaboration, and then make sure that the solutions they’re developing are tailored to those problems.

Because, all too often, we have worked with leaders who say, “I know exactly what’s wrong here,” and, actually, most leaders are pretty biased in their views of what goes on inside the organization. Nobody refuses to collaborate with the CEO, go figure. So, they don’t see that it’s a major problem, and they don’t understand how their position of authority and a whole lot of other things actually skews their perception of what stands in the way for an average person inside the organization. So, I would say find ways.

We have a toolkit coming out. We codified a methodology to do this after five or six years of doing it ourselves. We’ve now created a toolkit that will be published by Harvard Business Press as companion to our book, where people can use this methodology. We tell people in a very step-by-step kind of way how do you collect the data, how do you analyze it, how do you draw conclusions from it, how do you present it back to executives, and what do you do about it. And I’m hoping that that’s what people use in order to really create and craft a collaborative solution that will drive the kinds of outcomes that we know are advantages of smarter collaborations.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Heidi Gardner
My favorite quote is the one that we used as the dedication in our new book. We’ve dedicated the book to our two daughters Anya and Zoe, and all of the smarter collaborators of their generation. And the quote we used is, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” And that quote really resonates for us in this rush, rush world wherein sometimes we feel like taking shortcuts, and, “It’s just going to be better if I crack on and do it myself.” And that works some of the time, but if what you really need is a great solution, if you really want to go far, finding ways to engage in smarter collaboration is absolutely essential.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Heidi Gardner
One of my most recent favorite studies was done by Dr. Randall Peterson who’s a professor at London Business School, and he engaged in a very ambitious study of corporate boards.

And so, these individuals, board chairs and independent directors participated in his research and went through this rigorous methodology where they helped him understand in very objective ways what were the dynamics inside the board.

For example, he found that boards that are truly inclusive of women have much better and very different styles of problem-solving and conflict resolution. So, for example, boards that are very male-dominated tend to vote and to cut short discussion and majority rules, and it stamps out dissent and curtails the discussion of unpopular options or opinions. Whereas, boards that are more inclusive of women tend to talk things through in a more substantive and holistic way.

And fascinating discovery is that boards, therefore, with more women on them and where women’s opinions and contributions were more valued, actually were linked to significantly less shareholder dissent. Now, shareholder dissent is something that every corporate board cares about because if their shareholders are creating formal actions saying that they don’t have faith in the way that the board has operated, that’s hugely problematic for governance.

And Dr. Peterson’s research was able to link the way the boards interacted with the gender composition with that very important outcome. And it was a first, not only in the corporate board space but also in helping us understand why it is that gender inclusion is so powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Heidi Gardner
I’m going to go way back to a book that was incredibly eye-opening for me. It was called The Russians by Hedrick Smith. And I read this book when I was 15 or 16 years old, so that was in the mid ‘80s, and it was the height of the Cold War. And I had only ever thought about the Russians as a block of people, sort of the Commies, the bad guys. They were featured in all of the movies as the one that Rocky wanted to pummel, or the idea that the US hockey team had to beat the Russians.

And I read this book as part of a summer program that I was about to attend, and it opened my eyes to the idea that the Russians weren’t a monolithic block. They were humans just like all of us Americans. And although it’s incredibly simplistic conclusion, for me, having grown up in Amish country in Pennsylvania, where it was not the most open society or community, and we looked at anybody who was foreigner with a fair degree of suspicion, humanizing the “enemy” was incredibly powerful.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. Okay. And can you share with us a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Heidi Gardner
Well, I have to go back to the Smart Collaboration Accelerator. It’s not just because we developed it. It’s the psychometric tool that’s science-backed, and it has helped so many organizations and teams and leaders fulfill their potential. It’s incredibly powerful. And we’ve now got 150 people around the world, accredited coaches and professional facilitators and consultants who are trained up in using it. And we are bringing the power of those improved dynamics and self-awareness to create smarter collaborators in a whole range of industries and generations.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Heidi Gardner
It’s hardly novel but exercise is my favorite habit, particularly walking. And I walk as much as I can, even conduct most of my internal meetings and some of my external ones from my treadmill. There’s a fair amount of good research that suggests that walking helps to stabilize some of the rhythms in the brain.

There’s a great deal of research that shows that walking is related to expansive thinking. And I didn’t know the research when I got so into walking, but started holding walking meetings with colleagues, and with family members, and with a whole variety of people where we would try to hash through different kinds of ideas. And now when I get to a new place, walking is the first thing that I try to do. And if I am stuck on a problem, I get on the treadmill.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Heidi Gardner
One nugget that came out of our research, we did a study of how smarter collaboration benefits individuals. And, initially, it looked as if people who had bigger networks were better off. And as we dug further, we realized that bigger isn’t better, better is better. And we can now quantify what it takes to make a better network in smarter collaboration terms, and it means accessing a variety of different kinds of not only experts but people who think really differently about problems and about solutions.

And it also means keeping ties open, at least to a small degree, so that you don’t need to be constantly in touch with people. They don’t need to be your best friends in order to contribute a brilliant idea, but they do need to be just warm enough that if you ring them up, or drop them an email, or however people communicate, that they’re going to respond and they’re going to help you solve that problem, or they’re going to give you their own nugget that will help you break through.

And that idea that people don’t need big networks, introverts make brilliant high-quality networks, and they don’t need to be the life of the party. So, the idea is better is better when it comes to forming a network, and the diversity is really key there.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Heidi Gardner
Our website is GardnerAndCo.co, and we have all of our studies and our books up there. And speaking of books, our new one Smarter Collaboration has just come out, and we encourage people to take a look at that as well.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Heidi Gardner
I want people to take a few minutes every week and just reflect on whether anything has surprised them. This is a question I ask my executive participants in programs at Harvard. I teach at the Business School and the Law School at Harvard, and, usually, by sort of day three or four of a program, I ask “What surprised you about being here on this program?” And often people are stumped but then the ideas start to flow.

And what we realized is asking about surprises forces people to confront what they have taken for granted or what they had expected. And I encourage people to stop every week at some point and just look around and say, “What has surprised me in the last few days?” because that will challenge us to think about what we do take for granted, what we had expected to happen, and it will raise our antenna up to being more curious about the world.

It will prompt us to ask better questions or engage in conversations that might take us to places that we weren’t open to hearing before, or we might tune in to a different kind of podcast, or a different news station, or new source that we would, otherwise. And if we seek out surprises, I think it really opens our mind. That will be the challenge I’d offer up to people.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Heidi, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun collaborations.

Heidi Gardner
Thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure.

Oct 27
0

812: Bill George on How Emerging Leaders Can Succeed Today

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Former Medtronic CEO and current professor, Bill George shares foundational principles for excelling as a leader in today’s world of work.

You’ll Learn:

  1. What a “true north” is and why it’s so critical
  2. The top three distractions leaders must overcome
  3. Powerful questions to clarify your purpose

 

About Bill

Bill George is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Medtronic.  He joined Medtronic in 1989 as president and chief operating officer, was chief executive officer from 1991-2001, and board chair from 1996-2002. He is currently a senior fellow at Harvard Business School, where he has taught leadership since 2004. 

Bill is the author of: Discover Your True North and The Discover Your True North Field book, Authentic Leadership, 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis True North, Finding Your True North, and True North Groups. He served on the boards of Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil, Novartis, Target, and Mayo Clinic.  

He received his BSIE with high honors from Georgia Tech, his MBA with high distinction from Harvard University, where he was a Baker Scholar, and honorary PhDs from Georgia Tech, Mayo Medical School, University of St. Thomas, Augsburg College and Bryant University.  

Resources Mentioned

Bill George Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Bill, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Bill George
Thank you, Pete. Glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to be chatting with you. And I’m fascinated, you’re a bit of an interviewer yourself. You’ve chatted with 220 of some of the finest leaders of organizations. I’m curious, what’s been the most surprising and impactful theme that’s emerged for you from those interviews?

Bill George
Well, first of all, let me say I did the interviews, Pete, for my book True North and I’ve got the Emerging Leader Edition out now. I truly aimed it at your generation of leaders from Gen Xers to Millennials, to Gen Z because I think it’s a different time to lead today. I think the good news is that people believe that being authentic is the way to lead. That’s a huge change from when I was CEO at Medtronic when it was all about charisma and style, leadership style, and all those things because, now, it’s much more real.

And so, I’m really excited to hear that. And that’s in all the leaders, I interviewed 50 leaders for my new book, and that’s what they’re all saying. So, I’m thrilled to hear that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Authentic, that sounds like a good thing. Tell us, what precisely do we mean by authentic, authenticity, authentically if we use these words a lot?

Bill George
Sure. It means being genuine, being real, being who you are. And I think, for a long time, when I was growing up, you had to be something different. You were expected to emulate Jack Welch or be a different person than you are, and I think that’s a big change. And I think we realized, part of it comes with being, well, just to be vulnerable to admit your mistakes, being human. We all are and we all face similar challenges of trying to lead an integrated life and have a good career and a good family life, like you have. This is very critical.

And so, I think people today don’t want to work for a phony, they don’t want to work for a jerk, and they want to work for somebody who’s authentic and is real. And that’s what they’re saying, and I think one of the reasons a lot of people are quitting their jobs is because they’re working for the wrong boss or somebody they don’t admire or don’t respect.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, then can you tell us, what’s sort of the big idea or main thesis behind True North?

Bill George
True North is before you can lead other people, you have to learn to lead yourself. And I think, today, the new book is really saying, “We have a different challenge we have today than we did 30 years ago, and we need new generation leaders to step up. We need to open the door and let younger leaders take charge,” because we’re leading through a series of intersecting crises, and today you have to be an inclusive leader, you have to have a clear set of values, you have to have a purpose for your leadership. That wasn’t true in the past.

And so, I think a lot of the Baby Boomers don’t get that and they don’t really know how to lead people. And so, that’s why I wrote the book to encourage younger leaders, like yourself, to take charge, and I think it is about time, and the challenge is there. I have no question about that, people are ready. But this leading in crisis is a tough thing because, look, we have multiple intersecting crises right now, and your generation, frankly, has been through one crisis after another, and you know how to cope with that, so.

Pete Mockaitis
And I have a feeling we could spend a whole interview talking about these intersecting crises, but I can’t just let that lie. What are these multiple intersecting crises that provide the backdrop context for us?

Bill George
Well, I think COVID is the first crisis we had that affected everybody, maybe World War II, but that’s before our time, but it affected everyone. And I think it’s had…there’s a huge post-COVID psychological effect. People don’t want to go into the office, they want to work from home, they want to work for a sense of purpose, they want to work for an organization that’s inclusive. There is a big change taking place.

But, in addition to that, we’ve got the fallout from Russia’s attack on Ukraine. We haven’t seen a war in 77 years like this, and where an aggressive attack like that took place. And there’s, of course, that’s driving inflation rates up to a record high, 9%. We haven’t seen that in 40 years. And we’ve had the so-called Great Resignation, but we’ve got 11 million jobs open right now and only 5 million unemployed, so this is a huge change.

And so, leaders, having to cope with these changes and figure out, “How do we get people to come together?” And the new attitude today, employees have agency, that’s what I write about in my book, that we’re going through an employee revolution. Starbucks is an example. Here’s the quintessential employee-focused company. Now, they got 160 or 200 stores, they’re applying for unionization. Why? I think they’ve lost touch with their own employees.

And so, I think we’re facing enormous changes and we need people to understand these changes and know how to lead through them.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, when we say true north, what precisely do you mean by that?

Bill George
True north is who you are. It’s your most deeply held beliefs, the values you live by, the principle you lead by. And I think most people understand what that is. They get pulled off course of their true north. It’s also where you find satisfaction and joy in your life. And don’t we all want that? Don’t we all want to say we work for a clarity of purpose, and, “I can be who I am, live my values. And, at the same time, I can find real joy and satisfaction in my work”?

We spend a lot of time at work, we should find it. And I think a lot of organizations just see work as drudgery, just drive people harder. It’s not going to work. And so, that’s your true north. And then, once you know your true north, then the key is, “Can you find an organization where you feel aligned, that their mission and values align with your own?”

Pete Mockaitis
And could you give us some sample articulations of a true north? In some ways, it sounds like it’s felt and known and experienced, and I imagine it also can be articulated and communicated. And, yet, there is a distinction, it feels like, between, “Oh, this is our mission statement. It’s a bit different.” Could you unpack that for us?

Bill George
Yeah, I think your true north is basically your moral compass. And if you think about that, and we see something like Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook, a brilliant guy, but he has no moral compass, so he can’t decide who to let on his site and who not to have on, or what damage they’re doing to offset the good. So, I think true north is your moral compass.

Now, I think when you understand, “Why are we leading? Why are you spending all this time being a leader?” Really, you need to have a clarity of purpose, and that’s what we call your north star. That’s your constant point in the sky. My north star is to help people reach their full potential, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do since I was in college, across every organization I’ve worked for, and teaching now at Harvard Business School. So, I think if you have that sense of your true north.

Now, here’s the problem with that, Pete, is that people get pulled off course. They get seduced by money, fame, and power. And these are the three great seducers. And so, I think it’s important to stay grounded in who you are and not let to get entrapped by that. We’ve seen a lot of people that happens to them, it’s a real tragedy. But I think, again, why would you go through your life without a sense of purpose? And so, that’s your north star, and having that understanding, what it’s all about.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, Bill, I’m just curious. Have you chatted with Mark Zuckerberg and discussed his lack of moral compass? And how did that conversation go?

Bill George
No, I have not chatted with him. I’ve read tons of things about him, everything he said, and I don’t think he’d want to chat with me because he’s only interested in driving more people to Facebook, and, frankly, what’s happening, they’re being driven away right now. The young people are all moving away. Some people or older people who are still on Facebook, they don’t use it anymore. 

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, just because…I want to stick with this for a second, because, well, one it’s a bold statement, “Mark Zuckerberg has no moral compass.” And, two, it’s something I think we can relate to, it’s like, “Oh, people know what Facebook is and who Mark Zuckerberg is.” So, what would be some examples of, if Mark Zuckerberg did have a moral compass, what might that potential articulation of a north star look, sound, feel like? And then what might be some decisions that would naturally follow from that?

Bill George
Well, he wouldn’t have founded a site that sells your private information, that’s where it starts. If, say, you’re consulting a therapist, you may not want that sold or you may not want requests from a lot of therapists. There are certain elements of privacy, and I think a lot of people, when they sign up, don’t realize that that information is going to be sold and you’re going to be profiled down to your eyebrow. And so, that’s one thing that’d be different.

And you wouldn’t let a lot of people on the site, you know, I know people who have committed suicide because of they’re so abused on the site. And so, you would keep those people off, you would say, “No, you can’t come on here. We’re not going to have hate speech. We’re not going to do all those things. We want to have a friend site.”

And so, I think he’s kind of lost sight of all that. Now, he’s going to go to more of like a TikTok, short videos, celebrity videos, stuff like that. But I don’t want to just pick on him. There are a lot of other people that have tried to lead without a clear sense of true north. Some of them, like Elizabeth Holmes is going to jail. Mark Zuckerberg is not doing anything illegal. I just think that he’s going to lose it, and he’s got a long way to go. And I think he’s a young guy, he could do a lot of good for the world, too.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so you mentioned your true north is to help others realize their full potential. Could we hear some other examples of people’s true norths that really do inspire, they guide their decisions, they provide a sense of satisfaction and joy in life when they’re in alignment?

Bill George
Yeah, a lot of people, and, of course, in Medtronic, we’ve got a lot of people in healthcare and a lot of doctors devote their whole life to try to heal people. Nurses, too. Anyone involved in healthcare is committed to that. I know people in our community, like Tim Welsh, I’m meeting with later today, who’s vice chairman of the largest bank in this area, a US Banc, and he’s got 26,000 employees.

He’s totally committed to help you have a more secure financial future. If you need a mortgage, he’s going to help you find a way to do that responsively, not like we did 10, 12 years ago when everything collapsed. And he really wants to help people, and he’s been calling them up during COVID and scheduling, and saying, “How can we help?” because a lot of people are hurting. They get payday loans and things like that, and a lot of the poor people being taken advantage of. So, he’s totally committed to that.

Now, I just mentioned payday loans. A friend of mine, John O’Brien, that’s in the book is a former homeless man. His whole commitment is financial literacy for the poor so they won’t be taken advantage of in their own communities. Those are a few examples. But Mary Barra is really committed to changing General Motors, from fossil-fueled cars to electric cars. And she’s shut down all development of anything that’s not electric car. And by 2035, they’ll be out of fossil fuel cars altogether.

So, she’s a woman, in 41 years, one of my former students, and just very passionately committed. And her role is to try to help contribute to climate change by converting the automobile industry into electric cars.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, it’s interesting. As I reflect upon the north star, the examples that you share, some of them feel very broad and applicable in all spheres or domains of your life, like, “Helping others realize their full potential.” You can do that with a spouse, children, etc. as opposed to financial literacy for the poor or no-fossil-fuel cars in this organization. It seems like sometimes they can have a more broad or narrow flavor. Is that accurate and fine?

Bill George
Absolutely, yeah. And I don’t think just saying, “Hey, I want to change the world,” is really…

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, too broad.

Bill George
…living by a north star, and that’s too broad for me. But I think you want to understand, like, “What do I do?” I mentor people, students at Harvard Business School, all the way from MBAs up to CEOs, and I’ve been doing this since I was in college, not just CEOs, but that’s what I do. I’ve been doing it. I’m not some kind of genius in medicine. At Medtronic, we have a lot of other people who invented things, and my whole idea was to build an organization where people are performing at their peak.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Well, so I want to try one on with you, since I got the almighty master of true north here, Bill George.

Bill George
No, not almighty. Just another guy trying to stumble through the world.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we’ll say a leading expert in this concept, then. So, I think that truly resonated for me. It started in my career but I really am seeing it with my children as well, and it really does provide me with joy and satisfaction, even a rush, a thrill. And my articulation goes to discover, develop, and disseminate knowledge that transforms the experience of being alive. And that’s a little bit wordier than help others realize their full potential, but that’s really what I mean pretty specifically.

Like, I get fired up when I hear about a thing, it’s like, “Whoa, I never knew that, and that’s awesome.” That gets me going, and I’m excited to share that with other people. And sometimes I’m discovering it and curating it from others, and sometimes I’m kind of figuring it out, cracking the code, and developing it myself, but that gets me going. Would that count as a true north or would that be an adjacent or subsidiary concept?

Bill George
Oh, absolutely, it is. It sounds like you’ve made, what I call in the book, the-I-the-we journey. So, it’s not just about Pete being the biggest man around, the most important person. It’s about you really are trying to share this with other people, and get them fired up and excited. And I love your energy.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Oh, thank you.

Bill George
You not only have a passionate to your work and go quit and sit out on the beach. And I hear about people quiet-quitting. What is a quiet quitting? Look, if I hate my job, quit. Go do what you love. How would you like to spend your 40 years or 30 years of your life doing something you hated? Why? You only live once.

But, no, I love your passion for it. And, yeah, you’re helping other people. Hopefully, with this podcast, you’re helping them realize what they want to do in life and what kind of roles they want to have. Like, the reality is, Pete, we spend more time at work than anything else. And shouldn’t you be able to claim some joy and satisfaction with it? And, at the same time, shouldn’t you be able to have a complete wonderful family life?

You said you have three kids; I spent a lot of time with my kids. I don’t want to work for a job I don’t have time to see my own kids. That’s really important, and have a good marriage and a good life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so this true north business sounds awesome. Can you tell us, if folks are struggling with that a bit, like, “Oh, that sounds really nice for Pete and Bill. They’ve got a handle on that. I have no idea what mine might be or how I’d articulate it,” any strategies or approaches for zeroing in on it?

Bill George
Yeah. When I say you’ve got to be who you are, go back to your life story and think about who are the people in your life, your parents, school teachers, coaches, scout master, whatever? Who had the greatest influence on you? And how did they influence you? Who did you look to them? What did you learn from them?

And then think about some you don’t want to think about or I call the greatest crucible in your life, the greatest challenge you ever faced where you kind of felt like everything was stripped away, all the pretense, and everything else. You really have to figure out who and what you are and what you wanted out of life. That happened to me. I lost seven elections in a row in high school and college because I was too eager to be a leader. I was a kid that was trying so hard to get ahead but I didn’t realize leadership is all about relationships.

It’s funny, some seniors at Georgia Tech told me, they said, “Bill, you’re moving so fast to get ahead, no one will ever want to work with you, much less be led by you.” And they were right, it was all about me. That’s why I said you made that the-I-the-we journey, but I hadn’t made that yet. It was all about, “Have you seen my resume, man? Look at this. Here’s my GPA and here’s all the organizations I’m a part of.” I didn’t get it, so I had to make that transition back then.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so we talked about crucible, the hardest times. Well, you mentioned the pandemic mental health situation, and that I think many people might point to that, and say, “Well, yeah, that’s probably the toughest thing I’ve been through in terms of a crucible.” And so, how do we interrogate, investigate, explore that life experience, like, “Yep, I lived through the pandemic. I was sad, lonely, deeply depressed, and it sucked”? How do we turn that into some insight?

Bill George
Well, you have to reframe it. You’d start with that, “Yeah, it sucked. Who wants to be sad, lonely, and depressed?” Come on. So, now, “What my life gives me joy and where do I want to spend my time? And how do I want to do that? And who are the people around me that care about me and I care about them?” Call it your support team, “Who are the people around me I want to be with?” Why would you spend your life not just be lonely and depressed or with toxic leaders?

I worked for organizations with toxic leaders that wanted to manipulate me, and I felt like I had to put on the armor to go to work every day. That sucks, as you say. That’s not how I want to live my life so I had to make a change, that’s when I went to Medtronic. But I would say to people, figure out what it is and then go do it. It’s your life. You only got one life to lead, and that’s what I’m talking about in the book, is trying to say, “How do you do that?”

We talked about having an integrated life. I remember there was a time in my life, Pete, when I was traveling 70% of the time, and I was under stress all the time, I would, myself, and I was under a lot of pressure. And, finally, I looked myself in the mirror, and say, “Hey, this is not worth it. This is not what I want to do. And I’m not working for the man to make money. There’s got to be more to life than this.”

And then it was hurting my family, my marriage, my kids. When I made the change at Medtronic, it all turned around because I felt like I was working for a purpose, to restore people to full life and health, and can motivate an organization, help develop leaders in the organization. So, everything turned around then. And so, I encourage people listening to this, figure out, what do you want out of life? And you don’t have to follow what somebody else wants for you. You’ve got to be your own person.

Pete Mockaitis
And I believe that you had a practice at Medtronic that we had a guest speak about, and it’s amazing, associated with that, I believe, tell me about this. Is it true that you had an annual company event where, for an hour, you took to stage multiple families that were people staying alive because of a Medtronic device? Is this something that you did?

Bill George
Absolutely. It’s more like two hours.

Pete Mockaitis
There you go.

Bill George
And probably, so in the December, you speak all the Christmas party, I changed it into the holiday party. It wasn’t really a party, but that was the most meaningful day of the year. Everyone said, “This is kind of, I figure out, why I’m doing what I’m doing.” You even find them in the accounting department or in the IT department, “Now I understand why I’m here.”

This woman gets up and says, “See my little girl? She wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Medtronic.” Or, a guy gets up and said, “I’ve got your product, and I’ve got a new life.” Or, there was a young man that really influenced me, a young man named TJ Flack from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He had cerebral palsy from birth, and it’s not curable, but he got a Medtronic drug pump and it’s changed his life. And he patted his belly, his stomach, and he said, “This is my friendly ally. It saved my life.” Totally, I remember calling him back when I was retiring 12 years later.

And he came in and he said, yeah, he had a good job now. He’s not going to be a superstar but he has a family, a marriage, kids. He’s got a life and before he had no life. And so, that makes you feel it only takes one person, if you feel like you helped one person’s life. so, yeah, there are a lot of tears when people talk about these things but pretty exciting.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Bill, yeah, absolutely. I’m sort of tearing up a little bit right now, and I wasn’t even at these meetings. But a podcast guest, Don Yaeger, Episode 371, four years ago told me about this, and I was like, “Wow.” So, just hearing the story about it happening is something that is enough to stick with me. And, here you are, Bill George, the man behind it.

Bill George
By the way, Don Yaeger is an awesome guy. He is an incredible motivator and he inspires me. And that guy, one of my students, get in my class, get in my courses, and he’s gone out and carrying it out, and he’s doing it now, but, yeah, he’s fantastic.

Pete Mockaitis
And I think another thing I love about that is you realized you had to make some changes, and that didn’t mean, “Ah, I’ve got to quit my job. Got to leave Medtronic,” but rather it was an internal shift, which then flowed into practices that reshaped your context to be more awesome for everybody.

Bill George
You’re a very smart guy. That’s exactly what he did. He had to reshape the context. If I went to production with Medtronic, I’d said, “Pete, how are we going to make 3.91 a share? Can you help me?”

Pete Mockaitis
I’m inspired.

Bill George
They know how to do that. Yup, they know how to make a quality product. I remember a woman told me, she said, “Mr. George, I make a thousand heart valves a year, and I can tell you that if for you, 99.9% quality is fantastic. If I have one defective valve, someone is going to die and I can never live with the fact that I caused someone’s death.” And she’s a woman who didn’t have any direct reports. She went in training classes on quality of how to make a heart valve. So inspiring.

She’s simply, “You know, when I get home at night, you know what I’m thinking about? I’m thinking about those 7,000 people who are alive in the world today because of the heart valves I make. That’s what gives me pride.” Now, this woman is never going to be rich but she’s rich in her inner heart, and she’s got a great one, I bet, but she’s not going to be rich.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, so, Bill, this is a lot of inspiring stuff. And if listeners are saying, “Yes, I want to be that kind of person who makes positive impact in these ways,” what’s the day-to-day, step-by-step practices, processes, conversation stuff we do to get there?

Bill George
It’s hard work. I mentioned processing your life story, processing your crucible. A lot of people don’t want to do that. Studying. We talked about Mark Zuckerberg. How do people go off course on getting seduced by money, fame, and power? I’ve seen very, very successful people do that, and they kind of lost it. They didn’t live in Hendersonville, they went to New York, okay, and they want to be a billionaire. I’ve seen people literally do that and lose their way and wind up in jail.

But I think, then, you have to think about, “How do I become self-aware?” Self-awareness is the key to anyone who wants to lead. You have to be self-aware about yourself, because the hardest person you literally have to lead is yourself. So, then I think you need to practice. I happen to be a meditator but you need some form of introspective practice where you put all the electronics away, take 20 minutes, and really reflect on, “How did I show up today as a leader? What kind of person was I? And did I find fulfillment? Did I find joy in what I was doing? What kind of day was it?” and do that every day.

And the next thing I would recommend is surround yourself with some truthtellers. They’ll tell you what you don’t want to hear. They’ll hold a mirror up to you, and say, “Bill, look how you showed up today. You were kind of too aggressive and pressing people. Relax a little.” And you need those truthtellers in your life. So, I believe in 360-feedback, I believe in having people around me that tell me when I’m getting off track, and they help pull you back. Boy, you get off track your true north, it’ll help pull you back, “Why am I worried becoming CEO of Honeywell? I don’t even love the mission or the purpose? I’ve got leave, okay. Does it matter if it’s a much smaller company? No, I want a life.”

And so, think about that. Or, I used to have students tell me, Pete, these are 26-year-olds, 27-year-olds. “I work a hundred hours a day when I was trying to get into business school,“ hundred hours a week, I mean. And, man, that’s great, I said, “Really? How do you have a life? You can’t have a life and work a hundred hours a week. And, by the way, what are you doing? Why are you over it? If you’re going to be a leader, you got to learn how to delegate. Let other people do it and stop trying to take over everything.”

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. Well, so I also want to get some of the don’ts, there you go, like don’t try to take over everything. Any things that you recommend that we stop doing, as we want to, if we want to make progress on this journey?

Bill George
Well, I think stop trying to look for fame, recognition, power over other people. Your job as a leader is to empower people. And stop trying to be, like, command and control, and, “I want a title. I want to be manager or supervisor, director, or vice president, senior vice president, CEO.” That’s where I got caught up in that trap, and that’s not a good trap to be in. I just want to do it. I really find joy.

By the way, then you will get to promotions because the people around you are saying, “This is a person I really want to work with, I want to be led by.” So, you build those relationships. And so, you want to stop chasing the brass ring, so to speak. There’s nothing wrong with being well-paid and making money, but how much do you need?

Elon Musk is worth $250 billion, which I can’t even conceive of. I can’t conceive of what it’s like to be worth a billion. But does he give any money away to help other people? No. Why not? What’s he going to do with it all? You can’t take it with you. So, I said that I feel blessed enough to make money. I did well, very well at Medtronic so we give it away about half our net worth into the grants from our foundation. But I’m not trying to brag. I’m just saying share it. Share it around.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. That’s beautiful. Well, Bill, now I want to zoom into the particular specific interactions you have with people that you’re leading, you’re influencing, you’re interacting with. Are there specific words or phrases that you’ve really found magically helpful along this journey or pretty toxic and have chosen to abandon?

Bill George
Yeah, if you want to lead, create an inclusive environment with a sense of belonging. And I think that’s really important. Don’t be exclusionary of other people just because they’re different than you. Accept people for who they are, and then reach out and help other people. Let me give you an example of someone I interviewed.

Alan Page, who just played for the Minnesota Vikings, Hall of Fame football player, National Medal Award of Honor, he said, “I’m not about football. I’m about helping everyone get an education.” So, he took the money he got from the Hall of Fame, created a foundation, others would give into it, to help kids who wouldn’t otherwise go to college, not the A+ student but the kids who wouldn’t otherwise go to college to go.

And he’s done amazing, he sent 7700 kids to school that otherwise wouldn’t go on and got into college, whether it was a four-year or two-year vo-tech, they got through, and that’s what he takes pride in. And so, somebody like that is I really admire. You could say, “Oh, he’s a big man, he’s a big football player.” No, he doesn’t look at himself as a celebrity. He just said, “I’m a guy who’s just trying to help other people.”

So, that’s why I commend you when you talked about your own purpose, you make that I-the-we journey. But if it’s all about me, it’s not going to end well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Bill, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Bill George
Yeah, I want to mention the fact that today, everybody talks about diversity, Pete. I think it’s not just about diversity. It’s about creating an organization that’s inclusive, so I feel fully included. I don’t feel different like I’m out of step here because I’m a man or woman, or my religion, or my race, or my sexual identity, or national origin. Accept me for who I am. Just let me be real.

And I think that’s really important. And I think that’s what good leaders today do. You can’t help people reach their full potential if you’re judging them by their gender or color of their skin or religion. So, I think creating an environment where everyone feels a sense of belonging is really…we have a new idea in the book that I’m very excited about. Instead of being a command-and-control leader and telling you what to do, the leader is coach, and think about coaches you’ve had.

A coach isn’t going to be your six unless you feel your cares about you. I think of the coaches I had when I played high school and college sports, and my coach really care about me. And can that coach really challenge me to be my best? And so, it’s an acronym we use in the book, but I think that leadership is changing so there’ll be more coaches to help people, and be challenging, and say, “Hey, you didn’t give us your best game today. You can do a lot better than that. Here’s where you can get better.” You can get out there and help people. So, that’s, I think, a big idea.

And, finally, I think leading with a clear sense of be a moral leader with a sense of moral compass. That’s not a religious term. That’s a sense of, “We know where this person stands. We know what his or her values are, and they are not going to be moved off it,” even if you disagree with them. We don’t have to be the same but they have clarity about who they are and what they stand for.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, you said there’s an acronym. What is it?

Bill George
C stands for caring about people because people won’t follow you unless they know you care about them. O is organize people in their sweet spots. Think of a sports team, not everyone can be the quarterback or the point guard. You got to get people where they’re using their greatest abilities. And then the third, or the A is align people around, like we’re talking about Medtronic, a clear sense of mission and purpose, or purpose and values.

And then the second C is challenge people. Challenge people to be their best. I had a student who played for Coach K, Mike Krzyzweski at Duke, and he would say, “He seems like a great value. There wasn’t a day when he wasn’t at my face, yelling at me about why I can’t be better.” And then, finally, the H is get out and help people. I think business executives spend too much time in their offices, sitting in meetings, going over their PowerPoints charts, looking at numbers. You’ve got to get out there with the people, and that’s where the action is. So, that’s the idea of what it means to be a coach.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thanks, Bill. Now, let’s hear a favorite quote, something you find inspiring.

Bill George
There was a Buddhist monk man, who just died recently, named Thich Nhat Hahn, he said, “The longest journey you’ll ever take is the 18 inches from your head to your heart.” And by that, he meant is to be a leader today, you can’t just lead with your head. You’ve got to lead with your heart, with passion, compassion, empathy, and courage.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Bill George
Well, I can tell you about a breakthrough, Pete, is the work that’s being done, taking ideas from meditation and how neuroplasticity changes people’s lives, and now you can mold your brain as a result of it, and you can overcome the kind of anger parts and move into a kindness, more compassionate kind of person through these practices. And this have been studied with fMRI by Richard Davidson at Madison. Brilliant work. He ought to get a Nobel Peace prize, or a Nobel Medical prize for this.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Bill George
I’m reading a book called Younger Next Year, and it’s how you stay young by staying healthy and taking care of yourself by exercise every day, eat healthy, get some sleep, and relieve your stress. And I think if you begin to do those four things, you’re going to live a lot longer.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Bill George
I hate to confess it but I use social media and I use a computer a lot because, now, an awful lot of work is done remotely. But for whatever bad things you see, I can reach a lot of people. I’ve got a quarter a million followers on LinkedIn, and I can have dialogues with people, and I try and respond to every comment that people make. I can’t get them all but I sure try. And I think it’s a great tool to reach people. So, the negative things I said about Facebook, something on LinkedIn just gives me a great source of networking with people that I maybe never met in person.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Bill George
For me, I think I mentioned to you, it’s meditating every day. I just got back from India from a meeting with his holiness, the Dalai Lama, last week. I got back on Sunday. And, man, I was exhausted after a 35-hour trip, and I had to meditate to kind of regain, overcome jetlag and get my health back.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with people and they quote it back to you often?

Bill George
I didn’t make this up, but, “Be who you are because everyone else is taken.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Bill George
Yeah, be authentic and, yeah, that’s what I try to do and share with people. Follow your true north.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Bill George
Yeah, you should read the Emerging Leader Edition of True North. It’s my best book, I believe, and I’m very excited about it because it takes all these ideas that we’ve been talking about, and you’ll find it a great guide to leading a more fulfilling life.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Bill George
Yeah, you only live once. Make a difference in the world. Whatever money you make, you can’t take it with you. Make enough money to have a good life and take care of your families. But do something where you’re really have an impact in the world, a positive impact. You can leave a mark, so that when you go to your grave, people will look and say, “Here’s a person that really had a positive impact in my life.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Bill, thank you. This has been a treat. I wish you much luck in following your true north.

Bill George
Thank you, Pete. Thank you for having me on. It sounds like you’re already following yours, so thank you.

Oct 24
0

811: How to Lead Positive Change and Grow Your Influence with Alex Budak

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

 

Alex Budak shows you how to initiate change at any level.

You’ll Learn:

  1. Why you don’t need titles to be a leader 
  2. The five influence superpowers
  3. How to build your leadership skills–one moment at a time 

 

About Alex

Alex Budak is a social entrepreneur, faculty member at Berkeley Haas, and the author of Becoming a Changemaker. At UC Berkeley, he created and teaches the transformative course, “Becoming a Changemaker,” and is a Faculty Director for Berkeley Executive Education programs.

As a social entrepreneur, Alex co‐founded StartSomeGood, and held leadership positions at Reach for Change and Change.org.  He has spoken around the world from Cambodia to Ukraine to the Arctic Circle, and received degrees from UCLA and Georgetown. 

Resources Mentioned

Alex Budak Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Alex, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Alex Budak
Hey, Pete, thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to be chatting about changemaking, Becoming a Changemaker, your book and expertise. Could you kick us off with a particularly inspiring example of changemaking that you find extra touching personally?

Alex Budak
There are so many. I spend my days surrounded by inspiring changemakers but I’ll tell one story. This is Ibrahim Balde, he was a student of mine in my class at UC Berkeley. He took the class as a freshman. And one of the things I teach in my class is be the ex you wish you had, be the friend you wish you had, be the leader you wish you had, be the mentor you wish you had.

And so, at Berkeley, as a black student, he felt like there wasn’t enough community, not a lot of resources, and so on office hours, we talked about that. And so, in the class, he decided for his changemaker project, he would start a small little pilot program, just a small way to find ways to better support the black community at UC Berkeley.

Over the four years, he was at Cal. The idea grew and grew and grew. And by the time he graduated, it turned into its own standalone startup. It’s called Black Book University. And what I love about it is that we often think that changemaking has to be this big ambitious initiative, and to be clear, Ibrahim was very ambitious, but it all started with a simple idea, leading from where he was, and saying, “Hey, I think that things can be better for myself and for my community.”

He took action and he kept taking action again and again and again, until it got to the point where it’s now a scalable startup that’s gone beyond Berkeley to other universities as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Interesting. And so, is he running that startup? Or are other folks at the helm? Or, where is that now?

Alex Budak
Yeah, he’s the co-founder but he’s got a team around him, but he continues to be involved. And I think it’s super inspiring to see the way that he’s taken the idea and scaled it.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay. Well, so then that’s one discovery right there, is that we can start small and it doesn’t have to be super dramatic, and it’s just one step at a time. It grows. It’s cool. Can you tell me any other noteworthy, counterintuitive, or surprising discoveries you’ve made about changemaking from your work and research?

Alex Budak
Well, here’s the thing, so I, of course, teach at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, but I think the way that we often teach leadership, especially at business schools, is kind of broken. We often like tell the story of the single heroic leader. So, maybe we talk about Lech Walesa scaling the wall, we talk about Steve Jobs pulling the iPhone out of his pocket, and those are important and inspiring moments of leadership to be sure, but so often we see those acts of leadership, and many of us can say, “Well, I’m not actually as outgoing as them. I’m not an extrovert. I’m not charismatic like them. Is leadership for me?”

And what my original research shows and what my experience teaching changemakers around the world shows is that each of us can be changemakers. I think we need to stop thinking of leadership as an act.

Alex Budak
So, here’s a fun one to believe that I found in my research, it’s that leaders might be scarce, but leadership is abundant. There might only be one CEO, only five vice-presidents, but all of us can practice leadership from where we are. We need to start separating acts of leadership from titles of leadership and start seeing that each of us can lead change from wherever we are.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. That sounds good. All right. Well, then that kind of sounds like the big idea for the book Becoming a Changemaker: An Actionable, Inclusive Guide to Leading Positive Change at Any Level. Or, is there another core thesis you want to put out there?

Alex Budak
Yes, so the red thread that drives through all, the beating heart of this book is the theme of inclusivity. In the book, I tell the stories of over 50 different changemakers, ranging from a sales associate at Walmart who fought for equal parental leave between both associates and executives. I talk about social entrepreneurs. And I tell the story of a guy who’s just really passionate about composting and wanted his whole team to start composting.

And so, I think that’s the crucial theme, is that changemaking is for all of us. And then, of course, in the subtitle, it’s this idea it’s not change-thinking; it’s changemaking. And so, that each of us can find that sense of agency to lead change from where we are.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so zooming in to the level of professionals who are looking to make some changes in their workplaces, what are some of your top tips or your do’s and don’ts for how we go about making that happen?

Alex Budak
Yes. So, your listeners might be looking at this, and going, “Cool. Changemaking. Sounds interesting but also sounds a little bit fuzzy.” And I get it. So, I set out to do the first ever longitudinal study looking at, “How do changemakers develop over time? And what are some of the key characteristics that the most effective changemakers have in common?”

And I went into it just with curiosity just to say, “Can people develop as changemakers?” and the data are conclusive. Absolutely, yes. We’ve also started to see themes. Things emerge that the best and most effective changemakers do. Now, the one that stands out above all others is this idea of being able to influence without authority.

We often think leadership is about collecting as much power as you possibly can, and then telling people what to do, but we find that the most effective changemakers are those who practice influence. But, again, I think the way that we teach influence is often not really the right way to go about it. It can often feel kind of sleazy or transactional. It’s like the reciprocity effect. Pete, I do a favor for you, then you feel pressured to do a thing for me.

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m sure you’d do the same thing for me, Alex.”

Alex Budak
Exactly. And I want to think about how we can influence more sustainably and for the long term. And so, based on the research, based on my experience, coaching, mentoring, advising changemakers, I drew up what I call my five influence superpowers. These are ways of influencing that are sustainable and for the long term, ways of bringing others into your change efforts. And I’ve seen it working with changemakers, middle managers, senior managers. These are ways you can get other people excited about your change efforts. So, I’ll go through them quickly so we can get a sense of what these five influence superpowers are.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, let’s do it.

Alex Budak
The first is empathy, so being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Patty Sanchez wrote in Harvard Business Review, finding that one in two C-suite executives, when they’re leading change, they don’t take into account how people on the frontlines will appreciate that change. It’s crucial, before you lead change, that you understand, “How might others appreciate that? Are they new to the job and scared trying to make sense of how things work? Are they overwhelmed and overworked? Where are they coming from when they get this change?”

It’s not enough to just be right. How you influence makes a huge difference. I think empathy starts to unlock your ability to engage people in that change.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And so then, we take into account how others are impacted, how they’re feeling it. Can you share with us a tip or two or a tactic or approach to get a better view of that?

Alex Budak
Here’s a super popular one which ties into the second of the superpowers, which is safety, making it safe for others to be part of change with you. So, I’m at UC Berkeley, that’s a big bureaucracy. And, as you can imagine, there’s a lot of people who are a bit hesitant to pursue change efforts. And so, one of the things I’ve learned is to lean into empathy, so understand where they’re coming from and get that maybe they’re a bit more risk-averse than I am.

And so, I go to them and say, “Look, I know that this is a risk you’re taking to come along with me, but here’s my promise. If this works, I promise you will get the praise. And if it doesn’t work, I promise that I will take the blame.” That’s a small way you can make it safe for others to be part of your change efforts. That’s all rooted in, first, empathizing with them and understanding where they’re coming from.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And the praise and blame, I suppose we can talk about safety. There’s a number of dimensions. So, one is the social consequences, I guess is the word, associated with how something goes down, if it’s a smashing success or a disappointment. So, there’s the social bits. And then I suppose, to the extent that there is, I don’t know, re-work or extra time, money, effort that has to be applied to fix, to undo, to re-jigger whatever you’re changing, that you’re willing to make it safe for that person by volunteering to be on the hook for all that.

Alex Budak
Yeah, that’s right. You’re finding ways to support them and getting the resources that they need. And that really ties into the third influence superpower, which is vision, which is that when you’re bringing in a lot of different people together along on your work, it’s so crucial that they feel how they’re part of the larger mission.

I like to talk about vision as painting a picture of the future that’s so compelling that people can’t help but want to be part of it with you. And so, part of your job when you try to influence folks is to find ways to help them see how this one little thing that they’re doing, which might feel so tangential, it’s actually core to the overall work the organization is doing. So, leaning into that vision, helping paint that picture, and helping people see that it’s not just busy work. That this busy work is actually leading to something much more meaningful and bigger than themselves.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And what’s the fourth?

Alex Budak
The fourth is relationships. So, this is the classic example of something that is a long-term play. You can’t just try to parachute in and build a relationship and then jump out. But if you honestly get to know people over time, you’ll unlock so much ability to influence and bring them into your change efforts. I think about a buddy of mine who was recently raising money, running a race to raise money for a rare disease that had infected a loved one.

And when he asked me to support him, I was very happy to do so. I jumped in at the chance. But if you asked me, “Alex, where would you rank this disease, and you’re ranking the most important diseases to solve?” It wouldn’t be in my top ten, not that it’s not important. Just it’s not on my radar but I was so happy to support him because of our relationship. He’s such a good guy and I wanted to be there with him.

And that’s a good example of where relationships make a big difference. Someone might not be completely sold on your change effort, but if they’ve seen that you’re a hard worker, you’re competent, that you often have great outcomes, you know who they are as a person, you care about them as an individual not just as a worker, that unlocks their ability to come along with you on your change journey.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And the fifth?

Alex Budak
Fifth is passion, and here’s where authenticity matters because you can’t fake passion. I’m super passionate about helping people become better leaders and stronger changemakers. But imagine I were at Haas and teaching accounting, not that that would ever happen, but if I were trying to teach accounting, my passion just wouldn’t be there because it’s not authentic to who I am. But if you’re truly passionate about a change initiative, lean into that passion.

There’s often pressure at work that we have to sort of be buttoned-up and be very serious all the time, but if we’re truly passionate about a cause, and I find that the best and most effective changemakers often are, sometimes it comes from a personal experience or a vision that they have, but lean into that. Don’t be afraid to share with people why you care so deeply about this, why you’re willing to commit your time, your energy, your resources to investing in it, and other people will feel compelled to be part of something that excites you as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, those are great principles. I’m curious about what are some common pitfalls, traps, mistakes, things to not do as we’re trying to provide empathy, safety, vision, work or relationships and passion? What should we not be doing?

Alex Budak
Yes, and this is one of the great tensions of being a changemaker is that we have to hold these multiple polarities at once, that we’ve got to have the sense of urgency because, if you look at our world today, so many things are calling for change. But also recognize that change takes time, that change doesn’t happen overnight.

I love the words of Matthew Kelly who wrote in the book The Long View that we tend to overestimate what we can do in a day, underestimate what we can do in a month, overestimate what we can do in a year, and underestimate what we can do in a decade. And so, sometimes as changemakers, especially new emerging first-time changemakers, we have this great sense of urgency, which, again, is kind of a helpful instinct, but we tend to want change to happen overnight immediately, and then we tend to give up quickly when it doesn’t come, when we don’t start feeling that traction.

And so, I think it’s crucial as changemakers, when we try to influence others, that we play the long game. You might get a no the first time you try to influence someone. You might have to change direction. You might find that, “Well, hey, I thought that passion is the superpower I would use, but I tested it out and I found, well, actually, vision is really what’s inspiring people to be part of it.”

You’ve got to have a bit of that longer-term view here, I think, especially when it comes to change initiatives, and be willing to test and iterate these superpowers to find the one that works for the right person at the right time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then I’m curious, you have something you call the changemaker index. What is that and how do we use that to help us grow?

Alex Budak
So, the changemaker index is the research that I mentioned just at the beginning of this interview. This is the original longitudinal research looking at, “How do changemakers develop overtime?” If your listeners are curious to take it, you can actually go to ChangemakerBook.com/index and you can see for yourself what the questions are that we asked, and you can see what your greatest strength as a changemaker is. You can be part of the data, part of the research, and get some insight on what you do best as a changemaker.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, now I’d love it if we could just hear a couple more examples in terms of going through all five of these principles. Like, someone wanted to make a change, ideally in a professional context, and then we see, “Oh, here’s how they had some empathy. Here’s how they conveyed that things were safe, here’s the vision, etc.”

Alex Budak
So, a favorite case study I talk about in the book is Jon Chu. Jon is the director of the film “Crazy Rich Asians,” a wonderful movie on its own and also important, in many ways, because it’s the first major American motion picture in over 50 years that had an all-Asian American cast. And so, as he’s putting together this film, he said, “Okay, there’s one song that I need for this amazing emotional final scene of the film. It’s got to be the song ‘Yellow’ by Coldplay.”

Yellow, of course, is often used as an anti-Asian slur, and growing up in the Bay Area, he said that that song changed his whole perception, his whole identity on what it meant to be Asian-American, so it’s clear he had to use this song for his film. Only one problem. Coldplay was the biggest band in the world, Jon had his people reach out to their people, and he got a big fat no. So, this is the…

Pete Mockaitis
So, it’s like, “It doesn’t matter what kind of licensing or royalty or whatever dollars, we’re just not interested in having our song used in this fashion.”

Alex Budak
Just got a big no. I mean, maybe they were concerned about the implications of the term yellow for a movie, or maybe they just didn’t want to share it with an unknown director at the time. Who knows? So, there Jon Chu was, and he had no authority over Coldplay, to be sure. The only thing he had was influence. And while Jon has never taken my class at Berkeley and, as far as I know, he hasn’t actually read my book, he put into practice all five of these influence superpowers to an amazing end.

So, he had no connection to Coldplay, but he figured what could he do. Well, he could write a letter to them. So, he wrote a letter and it’s the most influential letter I’ve ever seen. So, let’s take a look at how he used those influence superpowers in practice. He starts with empathy, and he started in a counterintuitive way. You could imagine, if you’re trying to convince Coldplay, you come in hot. You come with, “These are all the reasons my movie is amazing. These are all the reasons you should support me.”

He actually goes counterintuitively, he goes, “Look, I’m an artist too, and I get it that you probably get a lot of these requests each day, and you’re probably inclined to say no. I get it. As an artist, you probably are scared of attaching your art to someone else’s. I get it.” What a refreshing way to use empathy. Imagine how many people are pitching Coldplay, and going, “Here’s why I got to use this.” But Jon Chu put himself in Coldplay’s shoes. He understood they must get tens, dozens of these pitches a day, and goes, “Okay, I get where you’re coming from.”

From there, he started building a relationship. Of course, he didn’t have an existing relationship but he used the tool of vulnerability to start sharing a bit about himself. He talked about how, growing up, the song changed his life, changed his outlook, changed the way he thought about what it meant to be Asian-American, talked about the impact that their song had on him as a person. He was revealing a bit of himself, his own personality, his own experiences as a way of building that relationship with the band members.

From there, he pivots into passion. So, he talks about the impact that their song could have on an entire generation of Asian-Americans, saying that he wants all of them to have an anthem that makes them feel as beautiful as Coldplay’s words and melody made Jon feel when he needed it the most. It’s clear he’s not faking it. It’s clear he really, really means it with this song.

And he used his vision. And what I love here is that he makes it clear he’s not just trying to get any Coldplay song or just being able to say, “Hey, look, check out the soundtrack. I’ve got Coldplay on it.” No, he’s got a particular vision. He talks about that final scene in the film and how the song would be used over what he calls an empowering emotional march. He paints the picture for Coldplay so they can understand how he would be using their song, not just so it’s a Coldplay song, but in a very particular artistic fashion.

And then, finally, he ends with safety. So, at the time, of course, he’s an unknown director but he does what he can to make it safe. He mentions how the film had received some early accolades, and also how it’s based on a bestselling book. So, he sends off this letter directly to Coldplay, and less than 24 hours later, he gets the approval. He gets the okay from Coldplay, “Yes, you can use our song.”

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. Well, Alex, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Alex Budak
So, I want to put forward this idea of micro-leadership. It’s a new concept I put forward in the book. And, like we talked about, where we need to separate acts versus titles. I think it’s crucially important that we, as leaders, break leadership down into its smallest meaningful unit, which I call a leadership moment.

And so, my belief is that we have these leadership moments that appear before us dozens of times per day, little moments when we can step up and serve others in a meaningful way. It might be in a meeting, a colleague has been quiet for the most of the meeting, and you say, “Hey, we haven’t heard your voice here. No pressure, but would you like to share your perspective here?”

Or, maybe it’s having the courage to say no when everyone else on the team is saying yes. Or, maybe it’s been willing to stay late and help a new colleague clean up after their first event. These are all small little leadership moments. And my challenge to you is can you practice what I call micro-leadership? Can you seize these moments that are in front of us?

So often we wait for someone else to give us permission to say, “Okay, now you can go be a leader.” But, instead, the lens of micro-leadership is a lens of agency. It’s your ability to step up and lead from wherever you are, when these moments appear before you, to take them, to seize them, to take that opportunity and to make things better for those around you.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Lovely. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Alex Budak
So, my favorite quote and one that’s, I think, inspired me in my career, and I read it when I was eight years old and it stuck with me. So, my favorite changemaker is Jackie Robinson, and he has a quote, which is, “A life is not important except in the impact it has on others’ lives.” And that’s always really stuck with me about, “What could you be doing with your life to have a positive impact on those around you?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Alex Budak
So many of them that I love, but one that I’m a huge fan of is Italian researchers looked at entrepreneurs who are in an incubator in Italy. And so, these are people with startups, people with ventures, and they only did one simple intervention. The only intervention was they took half of them and they taught them the scientific method, so hypothesis testing, and they saw what happens as a result.

Here are the findings. Those that had learned the scientific method were more likely to pivot, so more likely to change directions, make a strategic switch, and also more likely to generate more revenue. So, why is that? The way I teach it in my class at Berkeley is that when leading change, when we’re leading anything new, we tend to put so much of our own identity into it, and when something doesn’t work out, we feel like a failure. It makes us scared to take chances because we know, “If this doesn’t work out, well, that reflects really poorly on me.”

But think about a scientist. A scientist in a lab has a hypothesis. When she tries a test and it doesn’t work, she doesn’t say, “Oh, I’m a bad scientist because it didn’t work out.” No, she goes, “Okay, cool. I learned something from this, and now I’ll try another experiment, and another, and another.” And what we find is that when this is applied to entrepreneurship, or I would say changemaking, more broadly, it helps us take the sting out of failure because we just lean into our curiosity, we say, “I wonder if…” “What would happen if…?” And that allows us to be more creative, to take more risks, and to not take things so personally.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite book?

Alex Budak
Tons of books but my favorite, I think, one that I just re-read for the first time in a few years is a book called Life Entrepreneurs. It’s by Gregg Vanourek and Christopher Gergen, and it’s all about how you can use the tools of entrepreneurship not to scale a business or a nonprofit but to build a life that you want, to build a meaningful life. I find that really moving, and it’s a book that I read just as I was beginning my own changemaker journey and one I return to every few years for a bit of inspiration.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Alex Budak
So, I love the tool Superhuman which is an email client. Complete gamechanger. I think all of us spend more time in our email inbox than we would like, and this app truly lives up to its name. It makes me superhuman when I’m sending tons of emails. You can set reminders. You can delay emails so I’m not sending emails at midnight. Just a super, super tool and well worth it.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Alex Budak
Walks. I’m a big believer in taking walks. My wife and I have a 22-month-old at home, and so you can imagine life is pretty crazy. But she and I both prioritize making sure that each of us get a walk at almost every night. Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I listen to a favorite podcast, like this one, or sometimes I just walk without anything in my ears. And it’s an amazing way to get a little bit of physical activity, get a little bit of space, a little bit of fresh air, and a little bit of time to yourself. And so, that’s a habit that I cannot imagine doing without.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; you hear them quote it back to you again and again?

Alex Budak
I think the way I start my Berkeley class, the way I start my book Becoming a Changemaker is with the words, “The world has never been more ready for you.” And that’s my fundamental belief, which is that there’s never been a better time than right now to go lead a positive change. When you look at the world today, there’s all too many challenges, all too many barriers, all too many injustices. You look at the work world, there’s all too many things that need to be changed. But I believe there’s never been a better time than right now for each of us to step up and become changemakers.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Alex Budak
So, love to connect with you. Find me on LinkedIn, which is my main social network. Check out the book at ChangemakerBook.com, and my personal website AlexBudak.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Alex Budak
So, here’s my challenge to you. Based on the research I shared with the Italian researchers, go out and fail at something. Go try something. And even if the risks are that it probably won’t succeed, go give it a shot. Use that scientific method and put yourself out there. I think you’ll find that, like lots of my students when I give them this challenge, they’ll find that failure isn’t fatal. And sometimes, even though we’re sure we’ll get rejected, we actually get a yes. So, my challenge to you is to go practice some failure. Go put yourself out there and see what happens as a result.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Beautiful. Alex, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun in your changemaking.

Alex Budak
Thanks, Pete. Really enjoyed the conversation.