Pod: Pod here today. I’m joined by Helen Souness, who is the chief executive officer for our RMIT online , RMIT being one of Australia’s oldest and most successful universities. She is an experienced leader in the global digital marketplace sector. Having worked for such great brands as seek.com and Envato, Etsy and now, or RMIT.  We discussed what it’s like to become a CEO for the first time and how her experience has helped her to scale leadership teams in different organizations around different countries.

We talk about why psychological safety is important, not so much to build up trust in teams, although it I’ve seen it does that, but to allow you as a leader to receive feedback and to allow you as a leader, to understand the impact that you are having on your team and then day four, how do you lead that into a constructive conversation for everybody?

We discuss how someone who is so big into relationship building, how they are managing COVID and the various different ways she’s using technology to scale relationship in a time where people are really missing the social contact of being together in the same office. And we also discuss what I call male pale and stale leadership, i.e., all command and control style, or why that has given way to skills such as listening, learning, being fully transparent, which often are skills that are often in abundance  within female leaders, and how this opens it door to servant leadership and indeed in her case, extraordinary innovation.

In our introduction, people will have heard me introduce you, but let’s talk about  RMIT, the university, you know, it’s one of the quite achievers in the Australian educational landscape, you know, set up in 1887 as a working man’s college, became a university in 1992 through a whole series of mergers and acquisitions.

And now has campuses in Victoria. Barcelona and various relationships across Asia Honda thousand students, 11,000 staff, 41% international students. Wow. That’s a success story on itself. And then you joined three years ago to head up the online education part of our MIT. Tell us about that part of the organization and what you’re doing there.

Helen: Yeah, look, it was an amazing opportunity because our MIT does have the DNA that I believed we needed to really attack in Ernest the need for updating of skills for lifelong learners, as we, as we call out how students. So the adult of the working adults who. No longer, you know, you get a degree and you’re set for life on your education.

Things are changing too fast. Technology is changing too fast, so we need to upgrade our skills constantly throughout our careers. And I really felt there was a lot to be done in that space, especially when I actually, as part of the interview process started taking online courses and thought naughty.

They have not brought the best of digital skills to education yet when you look at the user experience. So.I became very excited about it. And I thought then, and that certainly proves the case that our, my team was a university to do it with because it had that, I mean, it was formed by the working association to meet the needs of the city.

  And it’s been in the DNA ever since. I mean, it’s, it’s Royal Melbourne Institute of technology given the oil because of its research on a bomb technology in the second world war with industry. Yeah. That’s, that’s, it’s very deep in the DNA. So we were tapping into something that was there and very strong in the brand already, but then we’ve really brought industry and to the online education experience really brought the best of digital skills.

To building that experience with the wonderful educators of our MIT. And yeah, it’s been a very fun mission for the last few years.

Pod: Now you said a few things I want to double down on the straightaway is you use the word user experience and given your background, which bill covered, I’m sure over the next half an hour or so user experience has been a large part of the years you focused on.

Can you tell me a bit more about education sector and then the digital user experience and how you’ve been able to navigate that and maybe even transform that over the last number of years.

Helen: Yeah, it’s a, it’s a fascinating one because you know, she and I, as a digital person for 15, 20 years in digital experiences, is that users all that you test everything you do and you, you AB test, ideally you see, you know, we do controls and you understand exactly how you improve your experience incrementally and then big leaps of testing.

That’s a very different. Attitude for an educator whose view as the student must do the work to learn. And it’s proven in the research that a student must engage in and do certain things to get a learning outcome that the teacher is not responsible for that two worlds collide in a very interesting way around.

You know, user testing and so on, but I think we are finding a really, a great course to navigate there. Yes, absolutely. A student needs to make the effort to actually acquire knowledge and skill new skills, but. We can make everything around that experience and that effort as easy as possible. So this is what we really try to bring to, to education.

It’s not all on the student. We make it as frictionless as possible for them to acquire those skills and have all the support. So very human support. It’s not a mood. It’s not a go learn on your own. We have success coaches and teaches all the way along in all of our short courses and. Postgraduate programs and, and yeah, bringing the best of those two skill sets together has been one of the biggest challenges of my career, but also one of the most satisfying, because they’re both needed, you know, you need to make it as easy as possible as supported as possible, but yes, the student also, you know, we need to assess that student and make sure they’ve made the effort to acquire that new skill.

So it’s a fascinating mix

Pod:I remember when I first started doing online courses and you mentioned the word move to note, the notion of the summer stuff put online and a lot of it for free originally. And it was so exciting, but I started my own experience was you get excited in the first two or three sessions, and then the tension level just drops off and drops off.

And I’ve no idea how many courses I’ve started and not finished yet. What why you’re talking about is as a human behavior teacher relationship experience, that is equally important to the digital experience to make these learning viable. Is that right?

Helen: Yeah, absolutely. And we had a hypothesis at the beginning that even in our short, you know, very industry skill focused courses, we needed a start date and an end date, and we needed people to support that learner and engaged in social learning aspects between student and teacher and between students themselves.

And yes, MOOCs get single digit completion rates where. Getting well, the majority of our students in every course through and, you know, so it had in best practice now. So, you know, the hypothesis is proven, correct that actually you need some support. You need to belong to a cohort to, to really feel committed to this learning experience.

Cause there’s moments where it gets hard, especially for working adults who often have kids full time jobs, deadlines, and work. It’s a really challenging process for them, but. Know, we’re getting a lot of them through most of them. Sorry. I

Pod: love what you said there you’ve, you’ve, you’ve stated close to the DNA of the original university, which was to serve the needs of the city or the people in the city, either working people.

And what you just said there is, is, you know, when you’re really busy mom or dad who doing some education in their own time, they’ve got to feel part of something. Otherwise the temptation just to drift is just far too big and, and the competing commitments are far too huge.

Helen: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we have the, you know, the perennial learners that just, that is their, that is their hobby people that get through.

But most of us, we need, you know, good planning. Some of our success coaching is all about how are you going to find the time let’s look at your week? Where are the slots? How do we commit all of this as part of helping learners succeed?

Pod: So the education sector in Australia is, is I think is in our second or third largest export.

Marketing for the country. So our reading port and sector, how has the online division of our MIT gone over the last three years since you came in and took it over?

Helen: I’ll look, it it’s been an amazing ride in my team. We’ve tripled our revenue and more than tripled our enrollments. We’ve created some new portfolios.

So the short courses was really in an Australian first to build short courses with industry. A lot of private sector was really active. Of course, Sierra and university were the ones. Taking that market, you know, Versity’s were a little slower into that space and that’s where we’ve, I guess, innovated over the last few years, it’s been an amazing ride, came in with a, what was it?

A ragtag team of 20. Gotcha.

Pod: Okay. That’s a big growth.

Helen: I really, from the best digital companies, as well as the best universities, so real, you know, trying to in everything we do bring together the best of education, the best of digital.

Pod: Sounds like you make an education sexy again.

Helen: That would be great.

Pod: I have no doubt about that.

Let’s jump to your role as CEO because when you and I were chatting before this call, a few days ago, one of my realizations was, this is your first time. As the complete CEO, you’ve had a lot of leadership roles, which we go through in a minute. But as your first time in the CEO role, what’s the, what was the transition like for you stepping into this and knowing that you were in charge of growth and you’re in charge of growth full stop.

This is the buck stops with you. Yes.

Helen: Yeah, look, I I’ve loved it. And I’ve been incredibly lucky to have amazing support from my board, which I think is incredibly important to have great teamwork between CEO and board to make it work. In fact, You know, my chair is the vice chancellor of the university. He comes from tic in the U S a lot of his career, as well as education roles.

So he understands taking risks and it’s been just an incredible partnership with him as my, I guess, boss and with the whole board. Definitely the buck stops with me and we have taken a lot of risks. I mean, you don’t have accelerated growth without taking risks, taking bits that you don’t know pay. But I think the fact that my board has always come on that journey being prepared to go.

Yep. Great. We learned something from that, the less successful prizes and. You know, really celebrate our wins with us has made that just an easy transition actually. I mean, it’s sure there’s a pressure to owning the numbers, but there’s also an incredible buzz too. I mean, the numbers and making a lot of the calls and being empowered to do so.

That’s what I’ve absolutely loved about it. So yeah. Lucky, lucky, easy transition in many ways.

Pod: Bye. Well done you and the board for, for taking the risk, but I’m, I’m really intrigued by a sector that. You know, in many sense that would be considered to be a conservative sector and sense of education’s been around for a long time.

And here you are going to the board taking risks. Can you walk us through, what is the conversation or the thinking passion or the preparation for you as a CEO, going into the board with here’s what we want to do. Here’s a risk that we’re taking. Here’s what we don’t know. Can you back us up? What’s that like for you?

Helen: I guess in so many decisions that there is absolute unknowns on a university, doing some of the things we’ve done for sure. And even in the university products, the accredited postgraduate products, we’ve created products as I call them so many educators, don’t like that word, postgraduate programs that are the Fest in the world.

So we’ve taken risks even there, you know, a post-graduate. Caucasian in product management and other future of work type roles that have never been done before, will they work? And there’s all those data and not just data. Look at tail light in other sectors to look at, as we call them in the private sector.

In the short courses space. Yes, we were taking a risk for us university to credential, but. The private sector was getting, you know, $80 million of funding per company to do this sort of course, and getting amazing traction and usage. So I think much of what you’re doing has never been done. There is taillights.

There’s the skills shortage data in the market. There was a burning need so long as you then do good work to produce a good quality product that is going to be fit for purpose and get the students through to the learning outcome. They would calculate the dress, I guess, is what I’m saying. There was always some data, as well as the unknowns.

I

Pod: read a quote from bill Gates in an interview or a post when I was actually blog, he wrote a few weeks ago, he said the two most important questions in his career that he regularly asked himself who else has done this or solve this problem before elsewhere. And how do I learn from them? So I’m guessing what you’re saying is the taillights is, is that you say you’d like it as is the evidence left behind from someone else solving a silver similar problem.

That’s where.

Helen: Yeah, absolutely. I think some of my best career advice was steal with pride, with ideas. I think lots of, lots of innovators are actually curated ideas, not originators of ideas. I, I have no pride on that fact.

Pod: I mean then from the mindset of the leader, like if I think about the notion of curating ideas elsewhere, it goes to a sense of.

I then therefore can’t have all the ideas like this. There’s a lack of ego in that sense. He could talk some more about that in terms of how you’ve either evolved that prior to V or I was never there maybe to begin with.

Helen: Yeah, look, I think that’s never been a problem for me thinking I have all the ideas.

I’ve had a career of making a lot of special moves, you know? More marketing product strategy and the benefit of that. I I’ve loved picking up different skills and different functional areas, but the other benefit is you actually never become a machine. I have no reliance on expertise. I’ve moved industries.

I’m constantly in learning mode and maybe that’s a freedom because. I, I don’t mean to hold on to expertise. It’s about listening. It’s about talking to the experts for me and bringing people together around ideas and, and opportunities. Seeing white space in markets and, and grabbing it doesn’t matter the market to me.

Um, it’s about, you know, listening, testing, driving into white space and market. So. Yeah, I have the benefit of no

Pod: you have given us though, is a absolute, beautiful insight into the mind of an innovator, which is to start with a hypothesis, look for why space in the market. Then we’ll go to use your phrase, find the taillights from other markets or other people. Start experimenting learn quick. And where you go that that’s that’s.

If I break it down to what you said, that’s, that’s the sort of expertise in itself. And then you’ve you brought in, uh, a skill set of listening and learning alongside them.

Helen: Yeah. Yeah, that, that would be the, well, that would be the expertise. You know, I have to get us, however, I made such dramatic changes of industry.

And I might, to me, what I do is always the same, which is what, which is spot talented people. They’re talented in, give them free. And in that, bring them together, galvanize them around a higher purpose. That’s what I do. I watch the numbers constantly while we do that, you know, I that’s, that’s my skill set.

It actually doesn’t change by industry or the content.

Pod: It sounds like that’s the core content of a future course. RMI MIT

Helen: leading through disruption. Yeah, I hate these negative words we use for the world we live in because it’s disruption, but it’s massive opportunity rates. So it’s all about mindset, isn’t it? Yes. So

Pod: let’s jump to something you, you touched a few seconds ago on this, the role of CEO and the chair and the relationship.

Now you’re an interesting position that you are a CEO reporting to a board and a chair. You ought to sit on a board and have C and I have sat on other boards and CEOs reporting to you. I’m interested in that. How does this two sides of the question? How does the CEO really helped to build the relationship between them and the board and likewise, the opposite.

How does the board help the CEO so that therefore the both levels of leadership are working together.

Helen: You know, at its best. And I’m, I’m incredibly lucky because my board that I said own is also an incredibly collaborative, supportive space between CEO and board. It feels like very much a team working on problems together. And that’s how my board I report to feels like. So I’m in a very lucky place. I know it’s not always the environment that you find yourself in, in a board.

How have we created that? I think full transparency, radical transparency about numbers. And, you know, a board meeting is not a performance to me. It’s a problem-solving session in both in both of these environments, I’m working in different roles. And you know, when it’s that, of course it has a governance aspect and, uh, you know, Holding to account aspect.

Of course, that’s, that’s part of your legal responsibility as a director and my responsibility as a CEO to, you know, report back and show the progress against goals. And so on, of course, there’s that formal piece, but much more in the atmosphere and in the working relationships is to play to everyone’s strengths and.

Uh, ask for input on problems, you know, and to hide problems, not hide that problems. And I think that sort of transparency and the environment in the boardroom really helps, you know, us be all conscious of what, what are the knowns, what are the unknowns and where are we taking risks versus, you know, and, and how much are we prepared to risk?

So I find that, and, and the second part of your question as to the difference in the roles, Aye. I think in a sense that it’s a collaboration as similar roles in your all great minds in a room, trying to try to crack them. But what I find as a board member versus a person that drives the business every day is the leavers are big, but you don’t pull them very often.

So in some senses, You know, every day as a CEO, as a running, anyone running an operation, you’re tweaking, you’re, you’re, you’re adjusting constantly. Right. And, and there’s a thousand things you’re doing. Whereas I think as a board member, there’s only a few things you do, but they’re very big decisions, you know, it’s a yes, no, on a big investment or it’s an, all the thinking and decision making that goes into that, or, uh, You know, when to raise money or, you know, they’re big, they’re big lasers.

And so I think what I. What I feel the difference is is, is you have to be very careful on when you pull those leaders. You know, it’s not, it’s not about just having an opinion in that room. It’s really, really carefully considering all the elements and all the possible consequences of moving a lever and being very conscious that you shouldn’t move down for the sake of it.

That it’s largely down to the management team to make all the little tweaks. And, and if you’re pulling a lever, you really need to think about it carefully and consider all the options and perhaps not be. It’s a slower thought process, I suppose, go slow to go.

Pod: coming to mind. As you were describing that in terms of how, how does the director stay abreast of everything they need to stay abreast of, but subtly, subtly encouraged or nudge as opposed to, as you said, pull big Libras on a regular basis. So again, it goes to a very mindful relationship in terms of the more transparent you can be together.

The less leverage you have to pull on, on, on regular basis. Yes.

Helen: Yeah. Was going on to my first board. It was a not-for-profit for many years. I was at seek and I consulted one of our board members at seek. And he he’s a very wise, very experienced board member. He’s written and government’s books put it there.

And he’s said it’s as important when you don’t speak as when you speak. And I think that was, you know, like sort of hit me like a clunk of yes. It’s, it’s not a performance. It’s, it’s really adding value when you open your mouth and maybe it won’t add value. You don’t need to pick up every point. Yeah. I think it’s a very mindful process actually.

Pod: That’s there’s a lot of wisdom in that comment. You don’t have to speak every time. Yeah. Right. Right. I love that. We hope you’re enjoying this episode of the leadership diet. Feel free to hit the subscribe button on whatever podcast player you are listening to this on reviews on iTunes and Spotify are greatly appreciated.

I want to jump to leadership teams. I know that M you you’ve already said to us, but our MIT, the organization has grown enormously in three years of being there. And in a previous role that you were in as the country head for inverter and another digital marketplace business, you also developed and scaled a leadership team there.

Can you talk us through the way you think about teams and the way you think about scaling teams and the experience you’ve had in that space?

Helen: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what a privilege, both of those roles invited. It was actually, it was global. It was the market places globally, and those times really didn’t have the executive place.

So it was very much just the hitting massive scale up at, in Barstow. And there wasn’t, you know, there wasn’t even a marketing team or product in yet, so really was able to design and then build. And hire most of the team and my T only one person was already there. It is now my executive seven. So it was go.

So it’s an amazing privilege and quite a, I suppose, responsibility for the coaching you have in the future. I always think the people you hire today, company, you have in three years time, you know, it is an incredibly important decision and your leaders of course at the time and the pace for everything.

So. Yeah, I guess one of my lessons on it do it very, very carefully. I mean, I took my time and I really put people through a lot of paces when I’m hiring senior roles, you know, case studies and meeting a lot of people and so on. So just incredibly important decisions, looking also at the mix of the team.

So that’s the beauty of doing it, you know, over a year, say. Building most of them exerting. Yep. You really can. And of course, when you replace people later, as, as, as you have smaller gaps, really looking at the mix across the team and that there is the black hat and the yellow and so on, and all the ways that you diversify thinking in that team and then galvanizing that team together, I think that is actually the hardest bit finding I find hiring.

Talented people are really rewarding process. I think pulling those talents together and making sure it’s a team is the most challenging thing about running the exec team and really being able to invest in that time together, you know, go away for a couple of days together. And some of those things are the other thing I would say has always paid off, you know, Relationship trust, really knowing each other and being able to call each other robustly and then call me as well on disagreements or, or behaviors is the most powerful kind of practices I’ve heard.

Pod: So does this, these three things are out. I would like just to go back and double dip on, because I think there’s some inherent wisdom there that sits beneath it. The notion of. You said, I put people through a paces and case studies, et cetera. Now, if you’re hiring someone for an exec team, they’re already are talented.

They already are technically strong. Otherwise they wouldn’t even be in your interview room. So what are you looking for when you’re doing something like a case study? Is it that the way they think is the way they approach? Is it, is there something you’re looking for that may be less obvious to the person doing the case study?

Helen: Look, yes, CV’s  are always  strong rIght,when you’re looking at senior roles, but capability in Executive is often less so, in my experience.

 Let’s say it’s a tech director, you’re a CTO.

A lot of strong CVS in technical skills. I’m not even the person to test technical skills, but I am testing the Exec skills. So how well can you translate your technology strategy into a company strategy.

How can you participate as a decision making body in Exec?

How much did you understand your user needs when you were building that technology that I actually think is often not apparent in CV’s, been hard to get an interviews, and that is the stuff that makes a great executive.

Their ability to communicate okay.

Their strategy and link it to the company goals and mission. Their ability to communicate full stop their self-awareness on mistakes they’ve made. So it’s never a case. So of course it’s never about being right. Yes. But the horsepower in the process of getting to the answer and being self-awareness and exploration.

Of their decision-making process and getting there that is really worth testing because that’s an, a good exac or a good functional person.

Pod: I always have, we both seen great functional leaders promote an exec team, and then they flounder because they, they, they just keep doing their functional role and then that’s all they know how to do or even want to do sometimes.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you said if you wanted to go was taking time to go away and really get to know each other. Now there’s, there’s always commentary about that notion of spending time to get as religious team and getting to know each other. What are some of the benefits you found over your experience of scaling different types of teams?

Because you’ve, you’ve invested that time in getting to know each other.

Helen: You know, one of the, one of the fundamental things for high performance to me, and I know proven in research, I’m sure you have plenty is, you know, a feedback culture, for example. I think great feedback and really robust feedback requires trust to be in place and psychological safety to be in place first, before you can hear it.

And before you’re brave enough to give it in any direction, you know, up or down. So I think that the key thing is that you build relationship and that, that builds knowledge of each other and, you know, awareness of each other’s. Hot buttons and so on, which helps you, you know, work well together. But fundamentally it’s about building trust so bad.

You are in a safe enough place with each other to be able to be really robust. And if that trust isn’t in place, I think, I think you’re pussyfooting about, um, the heart issue. So on the, they always say no, and you know, I’m just going to have to bulldoze them or go around them. No, we need a conversation around why you saying no?

And you know, How do we make this work better, be more positive engagement? You know, whatever the situation is, you need that trust and look, you know, I love my food and wine and, and I think you’re sharing these things. Is part of being human and, and, you know, enjoying life together is a really wonderful way to just get out of the transactional and into the relationship that is so important to making teams work and fly.

Pod: Somebody has said up front that people might have skipped over. You said psychological trust being placed. For me to receive feedback and for us to be brave enough to give it, but you start over to receive feedback. Most people want to talk about feedback. Oh yeah. I need to get courageous on how to give it.

And they underestimate how hard it is to receive it. And yet that’s where you started.

Helen: Yes. Now I’ve got an incredible chief student experience. Officer has been a coach and she has a great technique where we all sit around in a circle and. Gifts, one of the people feedback and I’m actually the worst. It takes, especially positive.

I just find that excruciating sitting there and hearing good things I’ve done. I just, I just want to dive in a hole. So yeah, I’ve learned that about myself through that teammate. It’s really hard to receive, especially positive.

Pod: So G given the success, you’ve had our last three years, it sounds like you’re getting lots of excrutiatingly positive feedback,

Helen: made lots of mistakes, too.

Pod: I’m interested in someone who is so relationship oriented and as long as I’ve known you, that’s certainly one of your over. Traits is that you’re, you’re a huge believer in relationship building. What does it mean like as a CEO working during COVID, where you don’t have face-to-face and you, you are relying on video based technology relationships.

And of course, as I said, our fund Melbourne being. And an elongated locked down process. What’s that been like for you? And I suppose there’s two aspects of the question. One is the CEO in terms of the role of CEO and how you keep the organization together. And then two, as the person that’s Helen, who was a very relationship oriented person.

Helen: Yeah. Well, Yeah, everyone knows. It’s, it’s really challenging to keep the social connection in the same way that you can. I just, the thing I missed, absolutely the most is walking the floor. As I used to at least twice a day, I had gaps in my diary to just walk the floors and chat with whoever was around and set.

You know, you can read faces, you can read body language, you can see a team’s looking tense with each other. That I can’t, I have not found a way for a place. I’m doing a million things, everything from a weekly video where, you know, sometimes yeah, it’s a business update, but sometimes actually I’ve done an update on, you know, resilience and what I do to stay mentally strong through.

This time or it’s about my reconciliation journey with indigenous Australia, whatever the topic, just lots of communication. That way we have a coffee related system that we get randomly matched on Slack with people across the business for a cup of coffee. We do that anyway, but we’ve really upset and I’ve created a CEO roulette where I just bring six people from across the business and we just chat about what’s worrying us.

What’s exciting us, whatever. And these. Just trying a million things basically to keep that informal relationship happening and the cross team, what I’ve found, I don’t know about you, but teams themselves have actually, in some cases got stronger. They’re doing daily stand ups. They’re, they’re looking after each other.

Their communication is constant and strong, but the cross team collaboration is a nightmare because you don’t necessarily meet all the time. And so those spontaneous connections are getting weaker and weaker. And so I’m just doing a million things, but I have not been able to replace the walk, the floor.

I just haven’t. And I miss it. Yes,

Pod: I bet. I bet. And I like, I’m hearing the same thing from many organizations and need some of the ones that are working in myself. The intact teams have found many different and sometimes hilariously innovative ways of staying, staying in touch. And I suspect that’ll become part of their.

Normal way going forward, because it’s been so fun on many, many levels, but the cross functional teams that would just meet in the corridors or in, in a whole of company meeting or in the canteen or coffee shop or whatever, that’s, that’s gone at the moment because there was no reason to meet. And so, yes, there’s I saw somebody that he said to me, the sense of who am I, part of, I’m definitely part of my own team.

I’m definitely proud of this big brand. Cause I know I am, but who else is in the brand assignment team? I don’t know any more. Cause I haven’t seen them in six months and that’s the product is missing.

Helen: Yeah. Yeah. And for newbies and that’s just another whole conversation that we’ve had 20 new starters and they’ve never, they didn’t even interview in the office.

They really don’t know what our culture is. So trying to give them a flavor of that. I’ve done, you know, old photo montages of parties we’ve had because we’ve always had a great party. Culture celebrate success can culture. And, you know, we’ve actually gone back to some of those things. I mean, you know, just to or talked about the things that were missing from the office or recently, which caused a gorgeous conversation with, you know, the goofy things that actually kinda mess economists and so on.

Just trying to give me a visa. The fact we don’t take ourselves too seriously. There is there Israel connection and a lot of fun being had and interim be done. It

Pod: will be heading again again. Absolutely.

Can I share the topic completely. You have had an, any career in the digital world and particularly in marketplaces in digital worlds, he worked with some of the biggest brands seek who were on the largest Korean marketplace companies in the world. And certainly in, in Australia, um, and Vata, we mentioned a few minutes ago in terms of digital graphic design, and then those kinds of areas at sea, of course, the international crafts organization and our MIT.

I’m interested in two things I’m interested in. Your own leadership and how that has evolved over those roles as he transitioned into bigger and bigger roles. And I’m interested in how does someone be very successful in the digital world consistently across different brands and different companies like you have.

So maybe let’s start with the leadership evolution for me. Mm mm.

Helen: No, it’s always so very, very the actual progression. I mean, it’s had its periods of acceleration. I think going from marketing to inviter my first GM role in massive growth and a huge amount to be done, you know, building a team from scratch while, you know, sort of, we used to joke LaMer laying the tracks while the high speed trains running was certainly a period of massive acceleration and handling, uh, a board and so on.

And so the first time. Yeah. In many ways it’s felt a natural progression. So I’m not sure what to say. I think, you know, you accumulate skills over the years. And I did a lot of lateral moves. I did product strategy marketing, even in marketing, at seek. I was doing a lot of extension projects to prepare for GM.

So I, I ran product there for while I moved to them to an agile methodology, which required working deeply with the tech team. So I was already. You know, the best career advice I ever got was if you do the job you want, if you want to be a generalist manager and you’re in marketing, start doing other projects.

And that’s exactly what I did. And so in many ways I was already, I had quite a few of the muscles, I suppose, having moved around a lot, I’d done strategy, et cetera, pulling them all together at speed. Was, you know, certainly a, a challenging time. And probably the hardest thing was, was getting enough relationships in place with that much speed and so much to be done.

That was probably, that was the hardest thing because I do, I always tend to have with bosses. Everyone around me, you know, my best operating style is a strong relationship to then be able to push things pretty hard. Cause I do push things pretty hard. I’ve always worked in high growth, so that requires a lot of forward momentum and you may be able to come with you and you can’t be busy footing around.

So. Yeah, that’s PR that’s probably the most challenging periods, but in many ways, a natural transition to, you know, it’s not as hard

Pod: as it sounds. Well, I think of what you said, Helen. You’re, you’re, you’re on a consistent learning path. You, you enjoy learning. So you, you, you also keep a very open mind and, and, and you seek either projects or roles or areas to lean into and learn from.

Have you, have you changed any part of your. Thinking patterns or leadership patterns over time, as you have learned new roles or moved into bigger roles. Hmm.

Helen: Oh, mature and needing to be in self-management. I mean, I think that is the biggest journey. You know, if you say 10 years old, what are the muscles that have developed itself moderation, observing myself, recognizing this isn’t working.

Adjust rather than continuing to use web style, for example, you know, so for example, I’m a passionate person which serves me well, you know, I’m, I’m really committed to my end users, to my team. That’s a really strong and good muscle, but it’s a dangerous muscle in some debates because it gets to being a bulldozer and a conversation to being too.

Or at least appearing emotional in a conversation, which might not serve me in some environments. And so, so moderating, knowing this is a strength, passion can be, you know, in a team meeting, it can be as passionate as I like that in a boardroom, not so much. You know, it looks smarter. I let’s, let’s make sure I’m giving space to the whole room, et cetera.

So I think myself moderation has been my biggest journey and it’s constantly still my work. Yeah.

Pod: Have you processed that you now use regularly to either proactively remind yourself to amplify or to quieten down because of the environment I’m going in. I’m just trying to wonder how do you moderate yourself compared to when you didn’t.

Yeah. It’s

Helen: it’s, it’s, it’s hard to know, isn’t it? Cause you build over time, but I think, I think slow down. I think I, I slow it down. I stopped speaking, you know, and as soon as you realize this, there’s a talking and I must admit I’m not so disciplined about that. In my working team. So, you know, there’s a lot of talking over each other at times we’re working on it.

But certainly if I’m in a high stakes, you know, board or meeting with some of the heads of college at the uni, some of my really high stakes industry partners, and there is. Talking, you know, agitated talking or talking over happening, I’ve learned to stop, you know, that’s that is, that should not be happening.

Right. Slow it down and need to change the pace. And I need to change my pace. Even speaking slower. Yeah. Some of those, yeah. Self-management techniques. I think those are the main ones

Pod: I probably use. I think there are great examples. And certainly that, that board member that you took advice from when you were at seek about moving into your first board role and his, his, his, I think it was a, his, you said, um, gave you advice in terms of you don’t always have to speak.

That’s a real wisdom there, and I’ve certainly noticed over the years as leaders get more experienced. And they move into senior roles. They get far better at picking. And when, when do I add value or when do I let, just let it go. Or as you said, when do I slow down the conversation? Which means I’ve got to slow down my speaking, which then helps the whole conversation slow down.

And it’s a really powerful technique, but it requires awareness to begin with. And then the act of process of moderation as you’re doing. Yeah. We’ve been developing those, uh, to great effect over the last number of years.

Helen: Always a journey, but I’m working on it

Pod: maybe before we come to a conclusion soon, I wanted to jump into what might be a big topic.

I must have surely see where we go to buy notice one this year that you’re very passionate about, and that is let’s use the term gender politics for that, for the want of a better term. And I’m sure I’m sure it is a fry better terms than that one. But I noticed an article that our MIT put out reset. It was last week.

The advice to women to lean in, be more confident. It doesn’t help and the data shows it. And it’s a really interesting article that effectively says, you know, women who express a higher, strong sense of achievement, motivation. I a yes, we can get X done. Don’t necessarily get the same rates of promotion as, as men might do.

Tell us more about that and then tell us some of the views you have in this area. Cause I know it’s something you think a lot about.

Helen: Yeah. Look, it’s a dangerous one. I, I, I loved it. Oh my God. Yes. Like, you know, is it about women changing or is it about unconscious bias? You know, in my early career I was told I’d never make an exec because I was far to expressive.

Pod: I know

Helen: what they say. I know I’ve got a slightly quirky personality. I didn’t look like this boys at the exec table at the time, you know, in my career, there was often no women in the, in the leadership team, but is it about, is it always about you changing your personality or is it about recognizing the strengths of diversity and.

Understanding that it doesn’t necessarily look like you and truly deep work on unconscious bias. Is it, I mean, everyone needs it. I need it for, for the areas I’m blind to culturally. And I thought it was very interesting research on that front. That. We need to be really careful. Of course, I’m a big believer in feedback culture, and I’ve needed a bunch of feedback, including perhaps to tone down my quirkiness in some environments, not to say that there isn’t very valid feedback in most feedback.

But do women need to change or do our environments need to open up to different and diverse styles? And there’s amazing power to that. Diversity, you know, the thrusting sort of command and control old style management is actually a thing of the past. And women were often prejudiced against for being maybe soft or empathy or, or bringing their teams with them.

You know, the research has caught up with us on this actually command and control is not the most powerful servant leadership is the most effective leadership style that looks different to thrusting, you know, commanding control to style. And guess what? Women are really good at it. They have a natural desire to serve people and natural empathy.

And so. It’s such important work and, and one that I, I think we’re all on a journey on culturally with diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. It’s not just about gender. We miss out on a huge number of talented people and the best they can give. If we don’t understand that unconscious bias and yeah, it’s alive and well today it’s alive

Pod: today, but it’s, it’s, I think it’s a really timely article that came out from our MIT and this, given that over the weekend, just in our denim was reelected back into New Zealand.

And she certainly is someone who would suggest by her own words that she doesn’t want to portray a. Trusting type leadership style. And in fact, the word kindness is a huge part of her own way of thinking. And certainly she has a one product appears to be a landslide in New Zealand. And if you look at the way she led join some big crisis, not just COVID, but also in the cross church massacre, extraordinary sense of empathy and strongly sense of listening to understand.

And that’s been validated by the New Zealand people by looks of it in terms of the recent election.

Helen: Yeah, and it’s not WIC, whereas blunts that might’ve been perceived, you know, to show emotion too. It’s actually strong and look how strong she was on COVID. She locked down that country that hardest in the world.

I think, you know, old fashioned judgments of some of these strengths need to change. And I think, you know, with such a polarized person that brings people together and galvanizes a nation at a time where you could have had a polarizing. You know, step in the wrong direction, shootings like that and, and hate crimes.

You know what an extraordinary

example,

Pod: ma’am, I’m always a bit reluctant to use politics as, as a, as a way to look for from leadership lessons, because it’s such a different environment to the one that you and I would normally operate in, but certainly you can see a whole lot of different versions of leadership applying today in terms of how countries and, and different leaders are using COVID or, or.

Crimes like massive presence sets on how leadership is being portrayed. I would agree with you. Two sentence version seems to be very positive and very successful in terms of, of, of a good outcome for everybody. And in that regard, it actually underlines going back to the very first conversation we had today.

And underlined rarely the lateral moves you’ve made has forced you to listen well and learn well from other people and galvanize people around. Here’s the problem we’re trying to solve. And how do we do that together? And how do we learn from each other as the starting point that goes back down to a lack of ego and the thrusting male leadership in his historical sense is full of ego.

And I think once your support, your aligning you today is innovation requires a lack of ego and an amplified version of learning and listening.

Helen: Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t say I have no ego. I think to lead into back yourself, you need some to stand on that stage and say, we’re going this way, crossing your fingers behind your back, you know, Joan confidence.

But yeah, that balance that balance for sure.

Pod: Brilliant. And then I got two questions to bring our conversation to a close today. The first one that I ask everybody and do the second one I ask everybody is the first one is given all the wisdom you’ve accumulated. Now in your life, what would you tell the 35 year old version of yourself?

Helen: I would say, don’t worry. You will have a child and you will be a CEO panicking about boats,

Pod: I think would apply to a small number of people.

Helen: That’s brilliant. Yeah,

that would give me. Is don’t hold on too tight. My husband does rock climbing and says, there’s literally a phenomenon where you hold too tight to the rock and it fatigues your hands. And I think it is the most beautiful. And you can drop, you get so fatigued. And I think that is a beautiful analogy for leading and so career goals and everything, but yes, have them.

Dare to know you can do anything, but don’t hold on too tight. Just a soft touch is more

Pod: effective. I think. Brilliant. And you may know I’m a huge music fan, so I’m always intriguing to people’s views of music and their, what attracts them. What would be your favorite song or favorite band?

Helen: Got the risk of getting a label over my head.

Helen Reddy died a couple of weeks ago, so I’ve got to say I am warm. I don’t, I watched me grow in numbers too big to ignore as I spread my loving arms across. I got to go with that

Pod: one. Well, we’ll definitely have that in the show notes. We might even have that in the, uh, as we exit the show today, Helen, it’s been a pleasure talking to you again.

Thank you so much for making time. Congrats on the amazing success at our MIT for you and your team. Thanks, Amanda. Appreciate you being here.

Helen: Awesome. Great to speak with you, Patrick.

Pod: Hope you enjoy that conversation with Helen from a coaching perspective, Helen has raised, I think, some great topics to take away and reflect upon the first one is. That struck me at least is the amount of lateral moves she has made in her career. Going from law, into marketing, into product development within the digital sector, into GM roles, across a graphic design industry that she had never been in before into craft design and marketplace.

And now into education. She told us that that taught her to never hold on to expertise. And in fact, her expertise became one of listening, learning and curious. My own career was autistic similar in that I moved across many different sectors, originally working in cardiac surgery, intensive care hospitals and units in London to what I’m doing today.

And I would also agree with her that when you move careers across different industries, you are forced to listen. To learn and to work with curiosity. So I suppose the first question I have for all of us listen today is how do you expand your own sense of curiosity into areas that you’ve never worked in?

What can you learn from other roles or other jobs or other functions, even in your own organization that you haven’t worked in before? What can you take from that? How can that amplify your skills? The second thing I took from our Cole and conversation with Helen today was the whole notion of innovation.

And we quoted a question that bill Gates says is his most important question. I E when solving problems he looks for, who has done this before elsewhere, what can we learn from them? Alan talked about. The fact that she moved careers meant that she had to learn quickly from other places and bring experience from other places with her.

That’s why she outlined the notion of starting with a hypothesis in terms of our marketplace hypothesis, looking for trail lines or clues from other people who have solved similar problems elsewhere, sometimes in different sectors and curating those ideas from elsewhere. Looking for some white space in the market to potentially play in experiment and look for what’s the best user experience I can offer.

In this white space in this sector and then experiment and innovate. And the success she’s had in many different markets has been consistent over a long period of time. But in this example, she talked about RMI T tripling his revenue in a three-year period and expanding his team from a team of 20 to over 230.

So clearly something is working right. So the question here again is what can I take from elsewhere? What problems am I trying to solve at the moment that potentially somebody in a different sector, different industry, a different city, a different country, a different team has solved before and how can I go to them to figure out what they have done?

Not that I might actually copy exactly what they’ve done. But I can learn as to how they figured out what to do, and maybe those principles might apply and how I’m trying to solve my problem. So how do I go elsewhere? Indeed. In a previous episode with Dr. Paul Lawrence, he talked about different levels of thinking, and he said that a second order level of thinking means I would always go elsewhere to figure out who has done what, before, how I can learn from them.

And that’s a basis of innovation.

Helen: Okay.

Pod: the third thing that she talked about is scaling teams. And she gave us a great example of how, when she’s hiring for the executive team, she is less interested in their day functional expertise, because if they wouldn’t be in the conversation with her. Without that to begin with, she’s far more interested in candy, extrapolate their functional expertise and apply that across the executive team to think like an executive think at an enterprise level.

My experience of working at many executive teams over a 15 year period now is that a lot of executives and a lot of executive teams. Fail to raise their potential because some executives are still operating as a functional technical leader, as opposed to an executive leader. And Helen told us that her success in at least two different organizations in scaling global leadership teams was because you took an inordinate amount of time to make sure that the perspective person she was hiring was able to work at an executive level.

As opposed to just their functional team.

Lastly, can we talk about a servant leadership? She really amplify the notion of diversity and thinking in a diverse way and looking for quirkiness, which means if someone is in your group, Your team, your perspective team, and they don’t quite fit in that might be because they are diverse in the way they’re thinking or the background that they’re bringing all this sense of personal quirkiness.

So how do we expand ourselves to welcome that? To open the doors to diversity and diversity way of thinking, as opposed to automatically, uh, maybe con consciously having a bias against what doesn’t look like, what we’ve always done. Certainly in my own life, I continually strive to try to understand folks who think very differently to me, just so I can understand what I don’t understand.

Doesn’t mean. I always agree with the points of view, but I’m still trying to learn how people think differently. And then therefore, where does that land? It doesn’t always work, but it’s certainly a practice worth cultivating. Thank you for listening to another episode of the leadership diet. We hope you enjoyed it.

Head over to www.thedishofdiet.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast to our blogs and retrieve the show notes. From each episode. Every show note has links to whatever resources were mentioned by our guests, including their favorites. Song or band. And the best way you can support this podcast is by subscribing and sharing it with your colleagues and friends.

So they can hear the insights from our guests as well. Thank you.

Eduardo: Thank you very much for having me.

Pod: It’s great to see you again. Now this is a, an interview at leaders about leadership and I, ain’t going to start in a very different place with you, many people dream of taking a 10 month sabbatical, but few people realize that yes, you held a CEO role when you decided to do just that.

Tell us how to someone arrive at a decision to take 10 months off and travel the world.

Eduardo: It was a very intense decision. I think the main reason to get there was the CEO drums, a very demanding job. So, from the emotional perspective, there was some tiredness that were between four and five years. From, at some point I realized that taking a break and having more time with a family would be a great way to reenergize.

Also, from the job perspective, I felt like it was probably adding less to the job. Over the years. So, helping a new person take that position would probably be the best thing for the company. So, there was some soul searching, some work with my potential successors, some discussions of the company that the investors and we got to this good plan.

So I had a somewhat long. It took me six months to get ready to go. In the meantime I started dreaming of the trip, but it was a very good experience.

Pod: Very courageous thing. You’ve just admitted there. The idea that you recognize that maybe you were adding less value and then maybe it’s time for you to vacate the role and that same time be very honest and transparent with the organization so he can get a successor in place. It seems like a very transparent conversations you had leading up to your decision to vacate.

Eduardo: I think. I read this great topic that the higher up the hierarchy chain you get, the more importantly is the self-awareness.

I think self-awareness can disrupt a lot. So this idea that you keep thinking about what are the key next steps for the company and how can you help with them or important and better understanding? Capital’s business was one of the good things I think, added to the business, but at some point the execution.

For the steps ahead was just something that I think I could help with, but it was probably not the best person.

Pod: I’m still intrigued by this because when you and I were chatting earlier, you were talking about the Italian word for Saturday and how David’s sabbatical came out of that notion. So when you and your family decided to go on sabbatical, what were you hoping to do? And then what did you actually.

Eduardo: I think the two key elements we’re looking for was to spend more time as a family. So to have more time, have your kids is now 10. The other one is eight, so they were a year and a half younger.

And I just want the truth to have time with them. But I knew that if it was to be just inside the house with probably not have great experiences. So doing this in some place that could create new conversations, that experience was key. And the other piece was actually getting to know the world, getting in a seven and nine year old to travel between countries, different languages.

Different cultures was a very energizing thing for me to help them do so I really enjoyed it. So I think those were the two key things I trying to get out of it.

Pod: And where did you guys actually get to over the time

Eduardo: we began in South Africa, we roughly spent a month per country, a little bit less or more in different countries, but we began in South Africa, Thailand, Vietnam, ship ban, Hong Kong, China.

And then we came to Europe beginning with Italy. And Portugal and Spain

Pod: amazing. Now, since you’ve come back, a lot of the world has gone into lockdown and many families have had to do education at home. Whereas in your case, you took it on the road, you and your wife took on your education of your children while you were traveling.

What was that like?

Eduardo: It’s a lot harder than I expected. And I think my respect for teachers didn’t increase over time. I had this plan that I researched a little bit, the idea of homeschooling. I got some ideas out of it. And I thought that just being with them and meeting my passion should them. Cause they really liked to learn what would make it work.

Anyway, that was the part I worked was that I thought that having a few books, especially your math and Portuguese, cause they really wanted them to keep the speed with just the math mindset, being good with numbers and dealing with them and reading and writing. I thought those were key and it’s not just taking books be meaningful.

What I learned over time is that. Because I had two kids at different rates with different books, the whole notion of a group discussing the same topic never came up. So I was trying to teach to kids and different types of content and it really didn’t work out. Having frustrated kids just saying that there’s not.

That was not a nice, they will not energize by. It was very, it very

Pod: imagine kids learning away from other kids is also more difficult either. there’s the social context of kids learning together often and accelerates the learning. I would imagine.

Eduardo: Yeah, we had this ideal that we’ll get them to learn through kids.

The only place that really worked was in Italy. Where they did go to an Italian public school for about 10 days and they loved it. They still talk about that experience. It was the last 10 days before vacation. So they got to experience the feeling of leaving the last year and be happy with vacations.

Pod: When you look back now at that extraordinary family event, what’s been the best experience you took over those 10 months from a family point of view.

Eduardo: I think the shared experiences, the notion that we’re a special family, And there was this connection between us, where we can think of what it was like in Thailand, where we had this big house with a pool.

On the other hand in Vietnam, we had this very small apartment where the rats watch the round, but it’s just safe. And we went through all of them and things were well. I think it both created a strong bind and a sense that we can cross each other, that things are going to be all right. And I think during the pandemic is probably helpful for us as a family to have gone through so many things that just feel like another being experience.

Pod: Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. So when you look back now and I’ll jump back into your corporate career in a few minutes, but when you look back now, is there any insights that you’ve created or gathered or fell into over that 10 month period that is now helping you in your leadership role?

Eduardo: Yeah, I think the key, I got this idea that I would read about the kosher in each country and stop by.

So I have this book collection about the different countries, and I probably read more than half of those 10 books about Japan, about China and engage them this and try and see in the streets and in the restaurants. And they experienced rehab. How the sculpture of salt Lake, I think got me a lot more sensitive to the culture topic overall, and now moving to a different country, leading people from different countries in Portugal, but dealing with presentence Portuguese.

And there’s a merit that just coming by Argentinians being able to manage them all, both. In looking at in the lead roles and then specific needs, but also getting assessed some cultural issues in my reading affects some of the things that come by and portrait in Brazil, even though Portugal colonized Brazil, there’s a lot of difference between the two camps.

I think it’s the sensitivity to cultural issues is really helpful.

Pod: Does broaden the mind just from the experience alone. But I think what you were saying to us as you, you went through that experience very mindfully in order to make sure you were aware of different cultures, not just experienced them, but to learn, how to, how you lead through them later on, which is what you’re now doing.

Eduardo: Yep. And now I’m reading more good books on actually measuring the difference between cultures in different countries. And it does map wild idea that. Asians are very different from Westerners. And I think our mind has that, but once you get into the details, there’s a lot more nuance. Interesting.

Pod: And of course there’s a huge history of Japanese selling in Brazil. So that’s how I’ll see a culture you were familiar with. But I would imagine going there and living there for awhile would have given you a more intensive understanding of the Japanese culture.

Eduardo: And Japan is a great journey. One of the things is I think most people when gadget, Tokyo, or interesting about the cities in Japan, you get the sense of everything is so clean.

Everything’s so neat. The stuff they produce is so small and then with care, everything is so nice. I even heard this description from other Brazilian person that had the experience and said, it feels like a different society, a more evolved one, but then I got to understand more that. The importance the group has in Japan is higher.

On the other hand, that means individual have a little less leeway. They have a little less space and looking at the trade-offs was a very interesting way to see the culture.

Pod: Fantastic. Fantastic.

So let’s jump back into your role right before you left to go on that fantastic sabbatical. When I first met you, I think you had taken on the CEO role of Cathal in Brazil. And for those who don’t know, Catho is the largest marketplace in the employment sector in Brazil, similar to organizations like seek or indeed, or those kinds of organizations.

And you had joined Catto after you had been working in Google in California. So I’m interested in your first role as CEO, you came into Catho, you had a lot of product leadership experience, but now suddenly you’ve taken over a sales and marketing organization and product experience. What was that like for you stepping into that CEO role?

Because if you think back to your first couple of months, what was that like for you?

Eduardo: Is very challenging. I think there’s so many areas. I was very comfortable with tech world. I can product breezy. I think strategy was effective and I have been discussing strategy through product for awhile, but having somebody who was much stronger in strategy than me was a new thing.

And leading that person is a big challenge, but I think this stretch got much larger when you think of people overall. So the HR function. And legal and finance, 10 sales and marketing.

 I think the key challenge for in general management  is how do you manage somebody who’s usually better than you at what they do? How can you add value to your conversations? How can you help them as a leader, if they probably have a better sense of most of the things in their day to day activities. And since we’re talking about senior leaders, not only they are better, they know they’re better! So it’s not like it’s an easy conversation…

they feel like, Oh, I’m glad you’re helping me. If you don’t ask, it’s actually getting their way. They tell you to go away and. Doing that within having a force, respectful conversations and deciding how to work together. And when to say, even though, better, that’s what you’re doing. I need you to be a little less good in marketing, because from the company perspective, for example, marketing might become less important over time.

So I think. The challenge of managing senior people in different functions. I think that was the key lesson and a very challenging, I loved learning about it. I think it’s a topic I really enjoy, but it’s a big challenge.

Pod: You said two things that are really important, one is the functional technical expertise or that leader in terms of strategy or marketing or sales.

And how do you add value there? And then also, how do you get your mindset around? I’m leading someone who is. Far better than I would ever be in this function. And they know that and I am their leader. So how did you overcome that challenge or what was the transition for you as you overcame that? I think the

Eduardo: key learning is first get the right people.

On the bus. There’s a book that’s using this question. I’m loving it. Just get the right people on board. Even though you might have people who are very strong at specific function, they don’t like the mission. If they don’t think the values don’t match, if they’re just not energized by the direction you’re taking, you probably need different people.

So helping those people, self-select either helping them understand this is not the role for me or telling them that you’re going to look for somebody else so that the people selecting, I think was a key function. The second one is just culture. Even though the people function has the role of telling the company about culture and defining the, but the mission of kosher what’s the mission of this company.

What we were looking for was a joint exercise. So I had support all of those leaders in the same room and discuss until we got to agreements on this is what we’re energized you will after. So I think most finding the right people. Creating this joint sounds through culture mission, and then getting down to the financial details.

How aggressive can we be? Is this too much? Is this about right? And we had strong budget conversations every six months or so. I think those were the exercises that created more of this joint value

Pod: for the group and Eduardo. When you look back now and yet you think of that period, you were there. how long did it take you to shift from being you’re new in the role, learning the role, recognizing that these folks are far better than I am in these areas too, when you started becoming comfortable in actually, my role is not to be the expert in the area.

My role is to help guide this whole team and I feel comfortable in doing that map.

Eduardo: Oh, just take your last sentence. I think it took me about 10 years to be comfortable with a CEO role. And since there was five hasn’t happened yet, I think the CEO role was just there’s this other book that I really like, which is.

The CTO position is unnatural. Usually people who get to this position, I used to really perform well at everything they do. When you do products, you research, you read books, you experiment, you try back and forth. You do a lot of those things several times before you need to find your mission, then you make a lot of mistakes, but it never gets you to meet again with the same group.

So you have less. Repeating directions on the same topics. And the senior role has a lot of changes over time. So when some things are working well, we get close to this and you might fire a senior manager and take his position for awhile, which is great for your children. And a little bit more about that specific function, but you’re probably not going to be great at this.

And this sense that you’re doing a bad job is both intimidating and frustrating. And then you find that neither. You got more GoPro and then something else exposed and you’ll say some other problems in return again. So this continuous discomfort, I think is one of the key elements of the CEO job. Yeah.

But I think overtime and the date at the end of the first year, I was probably feeling less. Like I don’t even have an 18 year if I’m doing the right thing, probably the end of the first year felt like a change, but I think the speed of learning. Didn’t diminish for the first three years. And from my perspective, I really like learning.

So the idea of going to all those different functions, for example, taking the key sales role in one of our business units was a big challenge. I suddenly had to drive a lot of people, but instead of just helping their senior manager to decide what to do, I was actually helping figure that out with them.

Yeah. So I think the first year, the sense of. I might not be the right person for the role starts to go away or on the second year and gets back to and change experiences all over. But I think it probably 10 years, it’s still uncomfortable during this. Maybe when I get to this training,

Pod: we hope you’re enjoying this episode of the leadership diet. Feel free to hit the subscribe button on whatever podcast player you are listening to this on reviews on iTunes and Spotify. I greatly appreciate it. One of the common themes from all the interviews I’m doing for this podcast series. But indeed the last 20 years of the work I’ve been doing anyway, working with executives is the folks who are most successful most often recognize that leaning into learning is the only way to continue to be successful.

And most CEOs that I’ve ever met or worked with recognize that the day they stop learning today to become ineffective in their role. Now, as you quite rightly said, at different phases of your role, there’s different types of learning. And if someone departs from a vacancy, you got to take on their role for three or six months, suddenly you become a deep, functional expert in that area, or at least better than you did before.

But the idea I’ve got in with a learning mindset is probably one of the most, I think, important accelerators of our success in any role, but particularly CEO role. And it sounds That’s what you brought to it is, it was, how do I keep learning and learning different things over as over time as a role progressed?

Eduardo: Yeah, I think learning is key. And I think that part was probably my, the part of my DNA that really worked well with the role. The part is really hard. I think, to balance with this humble CEO. That we would admit in front of a thousand people. We’re not sure what we’re doing, but we’ll try those two or three things.

If it doesn’t work out, we’ll figure it out. We’ll let you go next. That type of the size of newness when you’re leading a large number of people just as a work. So being able to communicate what you don’t know. In a way that doesn’t create fear or gets people paralyzed. I think that’s harder. And I think that was a tougher lesson for me, because in the beginning it was natural for me to tell people from other functions like finance or legal, we don’t really know what we’re going to do, but it will work out.

And finances

you need specific members to put in budget. We need to tell investors how much revenue you’re going to have. And I’m saying, but nobody really knows those numbers. And they saying yes, but we need to come up with the best possible answer. So the learning process of both not knowing and recognizing where we don’t know.

Deciding when and how to express what we don’t know. And when to just communicate enough, she got to comfort the other company. I think that was one of the key. Key elements of the learning process. Yeah.

Pod: Yeah. Given your background before Catho, you worked at Google in product development and of course would have had a lot of experimentation as you were developing different product areas and knowing that a lot of those ideas would naturally fail.

brought that very open, transparent embracing of. Experimentation and naturally talks the organization yet, but we don’t know everything. We’ve got to have a go see what happens. And as you said, that inspires confidence in not many people. How’s the people sitting in front of you having spoken to a lot of people in the last six months, the pandemic has also brought out the exact same learning for many leaders.

How do you instill confidence into the organization about an issue that the whole world knows that we don’t know the answer to it yet? it’s a very different, difficult scenario to get. But communicating with a sense of confidence seems to be the overarching strategy that does work, which I think you said you learned over time as you.

Eduardo: Yeah. And I think, especially with the pandemic and with that experience, what you can communicate with certainty. And I think in the pandemic tele employees overall, we look at people first, but are you going to take care of our own? And that is not going to change over time, but we don’t also going to work from home from the office, but we will make it a safe environment.

I think this type of certainty helps clear things up a little bit. Because there’s a lot. We don’t know. So focusing on what is not going to change, I think helps set those apart.

Pod: You said a few seconds ago steady in front of a thousand people. I think he said to me, once that catheter had employed a thousand plus people and you and your team took a strong view of how do we develop.

Culture, not just for the sake of it, but as a strategic leverage and leverage for the organization, what you do and what were you hoping to achieve by doing that?

Eduardo: I think it has several challenges and I think one of them was the market in which the company in the past was changing deeply. The key members for the company was marketing and mass marketing.

Which is getting a lot less effective over time with both the internet and social media people watching less TV and more YouTube. So a key lever was starting to work less and less for time. And the way you do marketing is a lot of money. And a few people’s thinking. the way you do communication in the internet world is a little bit of money spread out across a lot of people.

Also the marketing, even digital marketing was less of a strong lever. So we just had to be a lot smarter, usually through. Technology development to help people find jobs and help employers find those people. And just going deeper into the topics, the needs, the conversation just required more brains, just more brains with autonomy and ability to think, and then required a big change in culture.

It was a very interesting journey in understanding that diagnosing what were the more, the deeper elements, deciding what to communicate and the process to get there. And that’s the point that became clear the key elements to change a culture. We’ll be strong leaders across the organization. So just having me talk to a thousand people that things changed won’t work.

We need their leaders in several different layers of command. I hearing that message and living that change and the culture change is this interesting process on one hand, what you’re saying really resonates with you. You really like it, but some people don’t like it. And do you need your help to make a decision between leaving the company or deciding to experiment something they initially don’t like, and then bringing more people on board to get more momentum change.

And that doesn’t really very interesting part of the journey

Pod: three-year period that you were leading that change. What did you notice and tell the organization and of aware that go from and where did it end up before you left?

Eduardo: I think some of the milestones we expected. And we had them in a nice chart, communicated this across the executive team to set expectations.

Most of the milestones happen. So the first one is people didn’t even know we were going through a cultural change and then we told them about it. At first, they didn’t believe us. So we need you to start taking actions for them to believe this. And then when they started believing something was going to change and they had to make a decision, do I adapt to this?

Or do we give up? We went through all those elements. I thought it was gonna be clearer at each element, but it was personal. Get the concepts behind it, but it’s a very gradual change. So at some point, just look back and realize that we’ve gone through that. Now that I look back every bus, for example, everybody clearly understood change had happened.

People were fighting against it, but no one was involved anymore.

And then as you look at members like churn and people leaving the company, and I started thinking, this is wrong. And you suddenly realize maybe some of those other people that were naturally inclined to leave and just fighting churn is the wrong thing to do at this time. But dealing with the loss of people who might be talented.

It’s hard. So having prepared yourself for this strong mindset of this is part of the consequences of the cultural change was a good thing.

Pod: And then as you said up front to you, you came to conclusion that the role and you are no longer suited for each other. And in sense that you believe that you had done what you could do in an hour needed someone else or a different style of leadership or background to bring it somewhere else.

How long did it take you to get to that conclusion?

Eduardo: I think it grew on me over time, so I can really put a finger on when it began. But I started realizing my energy was a bit lower slowly. I was living a little bit, a little less than what we were doing and realizing it was not adding as much energy as much insight as I used to.

And I started becoming less excited about the monster. And doing a bit more soul searching. I think the conclusion was I expected a very big change value into the market. I expected a very big rewrite of the business, and then we, Didn’t really work out. There was a great business ahead. But with lots of last spring pension, and I think the ring was mentioned is probably what I’m more passionate about.

And when it became clear that the size of the invasion was smaller and it was more about just keeping the business in a good shape and working through the financials and getting the sales or marketing people should keep executing well and probably a bit less energy on innovation technology and still some emphasis in that, but less excited about the future.

And that doesn’t mean the company is solid and has a bright future. It’s just less, as you said, me and the job, we’re less inclined about each other at this point. And then as I realized that, because it was less excited, I would be energizing people less. I would be adding less to every job candidate that I would be.

Pitching to come to the word, I would be just putting less specialists. I realize having somebody else with more of that profile was probably a good thing to do in those six months. I still think of the key elements of reinvention that would be in our future. And I think that thought process was really good for the company.

But already having the cited, the steps, I think

Pod: ordinary, open. And as I said before, courageous, answer to that question about, and I really appreciate that because I’ve seen so many times leaders staying too long in roles for a range of reasons know. Often fear-based as in, I haven’t got somewhere else to go to, or, I can still do this cause they still need me or whatever the answer is.

So for you to sit there and realize I’m not as passionate about this role as I have been, and indeed, maybe I’m no longer the right press put as role. I don’t think it’s extraordinary courageous place to come to, or importantly, the way you. Helped your successor to come on board. and then take a sabbatical is a, it’s a great place to be.

My experience is people who take sabbaticals are usually either from artistic type backgrounds, musicians, artists, et cetera, or academic type backgrounds. Leaders often don’t do this yet. Yet. It is a really great process to pause, rest, rejuvenate, and come back into the world with a fresh perspective, which is what you’ve done.

Eduardo: I’ve met a few other people doing sabbatical. And I realized there’s this idea of a long-term trip that is quite attractive to a lot of people. People tend to think that it’s very expensive. One of the interesting insights is you spend less money traveling. Like I did. Then we actually live in, so of course you’re not making money.

Then the guest flow is negative only, but I can spend less money. I think the courage for people is something that would push people for just making the most out of life, just rethinking life and making sure that. Whatever you do, you’re passionate about you really want to do it. And the sabbatical was a great way to

Pod: so you’ve come back into the world. you’ve joined a Brazilian startup organization. you’ve moved to Portugal to help expand that organization into his first country overseas. Tell us more.

Eduardo: So after 10 months or realizing. The energy out of the trip, the excitement for the new country was diminishing and we’re feeling more like we need to saddle where’s the anchor that we lower the anchor.

And then going back to Brazil was a good thing. But we had decided that not living in Brazil anymore was Charlie. We’re going to be. And then we started specing living in the country where at that time, which is Portugal, we actually stopped first thought of doing this in Italy. And then in Portsmouth, I got stronger.

And then I saw that maybe if I were to look for a job in Portugal, the country might not have as much opportunities for somebody with my profile. And then I also looked into Spain and began actually doing job interviews and networking with people through different sites and having conversations. And then I had a dinner at the house over the next boss from Google, and we just chatted about this.

And then he connected me to this startup. When I found four different colleagues from Google for investing in the startup and he just made the connection because he has been talking to them as well. And it really clicked what they wanted us to help. Sure open a tech hub, meaning an office to have tech talent to build technology for Brazil.

There isn’t. This is just the Pelham for when Brazil is the finishing. There’s just so much investment. So much people doing great stuff in tech is diminishing and then opening new talent pools is a good thing. Because for Brazilians at this point, coming to Europe is a natural green, both from the political perspective, from the economy perspective, from the violence perspective.

But a lot of people want to come here, but coming to Portugal is hard. And then having your Brazilian company. In Portugal is a great way to attract some of those talents because we really care about diversity. We don’t want to be a isolated group of Brazilians doing stuff in Portugal. So we’ve been hiring also intensely for Portuguese people, Europeans, overall.

Starting to get Indians in the fray because they also like it. Honestly, if there’s a Martian that speaks some English

Pod: is his effort hard to become a tech hub in Europe and developing a lot of incentives for companies like yours to go in and operate from Portico.

Eduardo: Yep. I think several countries have been thinking about this. I think work’s going to be a specialty. Good job. Being, working to a mechanism called tech visa will help people from that background come and work here.

And honestly, the country is great. The amount of days of sun in Portugal is almost legendary. People in Europe really understand this well. So the idea that you can come and live in a place with great weather and where the cost of living is not so high and have a very nice lifestyle and still work with something you’re passionate about.

it’s been a really easy pitch to deliver to candidates. We’re also thinking of. Side of this, which is the actual international expansion for logging. And I’m also, I think the previous CEO mindset really helps me on this because on the one hand there’s tech, but there’s also financial role in investment and a lot of people.

And if we do get to open operations here, It resembles a little bit more of the old job in balancing different functions, which I’m very comfortable with. And then the key question is can we be position in a strategic way in Europe because our strengths will keep working here in Brazil. I think helping the company answer that question is something I can really help with.

And if that works then coming to Europe and maybe other companies, something that I try.

Pod: So from a leadership perspective, Eduardo, you’re in Portugal, you’re heading up, as you said, not just the product side, but the various parts of the organization as it expands in Portugal. And then across a year from there, what are some of the leadership, learnings or insights you’re taking from your role in Catho or indeed your role in Google before Catho to bring into this role?

Eduardo: I think my own passion about. Big shingles is something that there’s the self-learning had passed away. When the speed of transformation, the managed my passion was not there. The speed log is going through is we are growing 400% a year or a year, so it’s almost sad. It’s a neck breaking speed. It’s a really strong speed.

I learned to relate to that. and I’m learning to cope with this in such a way that I can have a well balanced lifestyle and deliberate, great results within that environment. I think that is the mix between the two experiences. I think the other thing that really came from Castro and so much strategy learning is asking important questions.

And I think I’m helping the loyalty team goes through some of those. Of course, some of them are really well answered, but figuring out how do we deal with a lot of the challenges that we had? Are we positioning ourselves as a costlier? Are you going to be the fastest company delivering parcels? What role do we want the gig economy to have within us?

Is this the only approach we can take it? I think there are several strong questions running around and I think it can bring a lot of insights from those.

Pod: So for a hundred percent, a year on year, that’s a super Sonic speed growth that’s beyond scaling. How does a leader stay abreast of themselves in terms of their own ability to be ahead of the curve from a leadership point of view?

So you don’t slow down that growth. as in, don’t start down by mistake.

Eduardo: It is hard. I think there was a mix between choosing some areas and in those making sure that you help leaders in those areas think well about what they’re doing, choosing which areas are not going understanding the detail because there’s just too much going on.

And creating a good trust within the exact group so that in whatever you’re not doing, you are comfortable, somebody is doing, and this is really needed. And you’re going to hear about it. So choosing your battles, choosing where to put your energy, I think is key and focusing on people. Of course, if other people will be struggling with that speed.

Helping them specially find expectations. Especially more junior people would have an expectation of, I need to learn everything that’s going on. it hasn’t happened yet, so maybe I need to put more effort into this. It’s just a bad mindset to be in because there’ll be suppressed or dying. So helping people cope with this and getting them cleared.

Areas of scope to work with and assured them within the state, they can be great employees.

Pod: Are you planning your next sabbatical yet?

Eduardo: But when we first landed in Portugal, I had the discussion with the family that, okay, let’s do this every four years. I would just find out this new thing. And then we weren’t.

So this, and then I travel again. But I think what we were learning after renting the first house and all discuss, buying a house for us. Emotions of not having a place might not work as well when the kids are older. I think the agent’s ritual was probably especially strong, but let’s see. maybe take another break would make sense.

Pod: Fantastic. I’ve taken a sabbatical myself twice in my career, the last time being within the last 12 months. And I can absolutely verify you come back refreshed with fresh points of view each time that I’ve done it, at least so I can sit. I can certainly see Hawaii. Loved it and why you’ve benefited from it

coming to the end of our conversation. I’ve got two questions for you that I ended up all of my interviews with given the wisdom you’ve accumulated, particularly in the last 12 months year, have your sabbatical, what would you now be telling the 35 year old version of you

Eduardo: that is so hard? I think one message.

And I would like to get through, as things are gonna work out, don’t get as anxious on the other hand. I think if I were, if I identify I’ve listened to this too much, maybe it wouldn’t work as hard as, and then things would turned out badly. But I think we all have, I think, especially with the pandemic, I think our brain has this tendency to writers.

Think everything’s going to go wrong, where I go to die. Or this is just an illusion nothing’s going to happen. I think those are like flaws in the brain. And I think that is really in the big screen. So putting your energy in understanding the details and where to get things, I think this is what I’d like my twenty-five new version to do more course.

There’s some days I’m just the wrong person for the job. And I Sri myself that I could really do the job well. I seen for something. I would like to have at that point, or I heard this a few times for a few different people, but I would like to have was more depth. And this the other one is just especially thinking about capital 40 more energy in figuring out what are really the key elements for the company.

I think there was less understanding. Of what means the company be as good as it was, and even less about what were the steps I have since the market was changing so much. I think putting more energy in those questions I think would have made things improve faster and more in the right direction.

Pod: Brilliant. And I remember having dinner with you in Sao Paulo once where we ended up discussing music over red wine. What would, while I remember what you said at the time, but what is your memory now of your favorite band or your favorite song?

Eduardo: We did this great exercise in the family because birthdays were really getting hard with a, grown-up having so many people over and then it would begin this joke and reach each future birthday.

You. Which was a song and the assembling would record that. or pieces of the song. And then one of the words they give to each watch that they knew for the family. And then people usually the same nights States. And this last August, when I turned 44 and the son was a Brazilian West. So it’s a bit hard for you to relate to it, but it’s from a guy called  station.

And the key element is I’d rather be the cost of metamorphoses. Then you’ll have a very specific opinion about everything. I can really relate to that message today.

Pod: So you’d like to be in a constant metamorphosis, then stuck in one specific opinion in our point of view. Fantastic. you certainly having met him more advisees yourself are changing or evolving, adapting, whatever the right word is, going from Brazil to California, back to that, around the world and out to Portugal.

Fantastic Ivana, fantastic. To catch up with you again, it’s been far too long. I love to hear that you’ve done that sabbatical and more importantly, the end of you and the family have had a huge benefit from it. And you’re bringing that into your next role. Thank you for sharing that with us today.

can we take from that in conversation with Eduardo? For me, there’s four things that stood out that I’ve been thinking about since I spoke to him on the line to Lisbon. One is the benefit of a sabbatical. I know I mentioned in my interview with him, I’ve taken two in my own career and each time. Take the idea of taking it was one of trepidation and nervousness and coming out of it, it was one of absolute gratitude and feeling of refreshment and regeneration of ideas and indie creativity.

It is difficult when you are in a corporate life to consider taking a sabbatical yet outside of corporate life, it happens regularly, both in the artistic industry and in the academic industry. So I was certainly encourage any leader who was feeling tarred, burned out, even considering whether they’re in the right role or not to look at the idea of a sabbatical to take the family away for a while to enjoy it.

To generate new perspectives and to come back feeling refreshed and generating new opportunities for you.

The second one that struck me talking to Eduardo was the idea of learning to lead others who are technically very strong. And indeed they know they’re very strong and they know they have expertise in their function that you, as their leader may never have. So how do you as a leader offer value? the first step is to not try to over engineer reasons for you to be a good leader that rarely works.

The second step is to find out what are the leavers in their function that you need to understand? So you can ask powerful and guiding questions of them to help them decide parts of their role or parts of the function that might need your help with. The second thing with that is to look at what’s the broader culture you’re trying to co-create across your team and how do you help them in that regard?

And third, of course, which is normal for any leadership role is how do you break down barriers, open doors, or clear the way for them to be as good as they can be, or to have decisions made for them or to enable their work.

Eduardo: Okay.

Pod: the thing is communicating with confidence. Eduardo talked about his learning, having come out of Google, where his role was to experiment and move into areas that there was a lot of ambiguity about and being comfortable with that. So when he moved into his role as CEO of catheter and had over a thousand people in his building, addressing them with a sense of ambiguity didn’t work.

And so his learning was when is a time to communicate that we are now experimenting and we don’t know where we’re going first is when as a time to communicate in order to instill certainty. And indeed during times like a pandemic, when there is no certainty, what can you communicate to give certainty?

Such as jobs will be safe, or we are here to help our people or whatever information you can actually relay that will give a sense of certainty. So the question I suppose, for the leader is what is the scenario in front of me or what type of communication is needed from me in this scenario? Is it to encourage experimentation with a lack of understanding of what we might achieve or indeed is a certainty.

And how do I achieve that? Thank you for listening to another episode of the leadership diet. We hope you enjoyed it. Head over to www.thatisshoulddiet.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast, to our blogs and retrieve the show notes. From each episode, every show knows, has links to whatever resources were mentioned by our guests, including their favorite song or band.

And the best way you can support this podcast is by subscribing and sharing it with your colleagues and friends. So they can hear the insights from our guests as well. Thank you.

Julia: Thank you so much, and we’re excited to be with you

Pod: again, it’s been a couple of years since we were being in each other’s physical company, but we’ve kept up to date on various zoom and other video calls over the last couple of years. Now, the listeners would have heard of my introduction to you already, but currently you’re a professor of leadership in one of the major MBA schools in France.

You’ve been a honorary professor in SBS and Sydney. You’ve had an associate professor role in China, and have been nominated on the top 40, under 40 business professors in the world. So I’m guessing, a thing or two about leadership given all of that.

Julia: Oh gosh. Yeah. I would hope so, but yeah, it’s a topic I’m very excited about.

So from a practitioner side, so being a leader myself, but also training leaders. Yeah, like big corporations or smaller businesses, but also looking at it from the research perspective. yeah, I’m just, I’m very excited about the topic because I think, yeah, a lot of things go well or go badly bad leadership.

Pod: You made some time for us today because a lot of different topics as a subset of it, it should be. I know that you cover lots of different areas, particularly in your teaching part of your role. But today I want to talk about probably three different areas. Let’s start with cross cultural leadership and you are German background.

You’ve worked in different parts of the world, and you’ve written about cross cultural leadership. I’m interested, first of all, as a lay person, living in different countries. What were some of the things you noticed as the differences that really stood out for you as you moved from continent to continent and culture to culture?

Julia: So for me, what makes it exciting to explore a different cultures is when I have the chance to do more than just visiting a place, it’s also a great opportunity, especially if we now are in these times where you can travel. But if I can live and immerse myself, into our culture.

For me, it really starts with a little things, you move to a place and you need to start to settle in and just understand, okay. So where do I get groceries from and how do they do this? And where can I get that thing? So for me doing that and by figuring out the. The small processes.

This is where you meet people and that’s where you, yeah. You start to understand how things go differently. And I think it’s very easy to fall into the trap of going, but this is different how I do it. I’m used to it, but just trying to remain open and see, Oh, why and how? And so not only the watch is different, but yeah.

Why are people doing things in different ways? Yeah.

Pod: It’s funny you say about, noticing wants different and trying to stay open. I had a sudden flash of memory, as you were talking about me and my mom bringing her to London for the first time. Now this would have been 30 years ago and bring her to a Chinese restaurant in London for our first time ever.

And she got really upset cause they brought the tea up front. As they do in old Chinese restaurants, as opposed to an Irish restaurant, which the last thing you do. And I kept saying, why don’t you just listen? Cause it’s different. And she couldn’t, she was really upset that the tea came first and that last as it did in her own town.

So you’re right. The idea of staying open and just noticing what’s different as opposed to why it’s wrong is it’s probably a good starting point for any overseas adventure, couple Hubba from your leadership. you and I both have done a lot of work in cross-cultural leadership. What do you notice are some of the common pitfalls or patterns that leaders fall into that makes their overseas adventure less exciting or less successful than they would have hoped?

Julia: I guess I think it goes on to the point we just made it. So it’s coming from your perspective. So you are used to. Giving or receiving feedback in that way, or you used to, starting a conversation with lots of small talk or no small talk at all, and then you start, doing that because that’s like logical for you.

And I guess, yeah. That’s where a lot of the pitfalls can happen. just talking about feedback, feedback is, so I find it so different. Different ways of approaching it from the different colleges. in some places I worked, there you go, like very direct and, telling me negative.

And if I only tell you positives, then that’s fine. Where is it now? It would be a total effects and you can’t even. Directly talk about it. You would have to talk maybe more about something else, like a movie or something that you can related to, but not that directly. I find that very intriguing and I only means I have not figured it all out.

I think they’re all of course, books or models or purchase that can help you to prepare a little bit better. But again, I think, only once you’re there and you’re merged yourself and if you want to learn and stay open circuited, I think that’s where the beauty happens.

And yeah, for me, actually, it’s funny because the most happiest moments in my life, besides of course, My husband and my kids. And so when you really are in that new space, I just love that. I just love hearing that, but having said it also comes, it’s not only like an app there’s of course also the downs, because we want to struggle.

You going to fall down. You want to get frustrated in them. That also goes with it. But yeah.

Pod: It sounds like you’re saying that, there’s a honeymoon period. When you go into this overseas country as a first time for all of this telephone, the adventure, the learning, they seen the new things, seen the new phases and new customs.

And yet you need to have a, some sort of a learning mindset, or certainly a fair degree of curiosity to jump into, trying to understand why things happened the way they do, as opposed to why they don’t happen the way you were used to somewhere else. And then it talks about openness for feedback.

Julia: Yeah, the best chances I always had was when I was able to meet people who wanted, to also learn more, about me and where I’m coming from and, making friends.

And then if that friend takes you within their cosmos that’s, of course. Yeah, that’s amazing. If you wish you can do that instead of just staying, tried to stay in it from an outside perspective, but that’s not always possible, but yeah. I met some wonderful friends. So while I was in China, I met Sarah.

I don’t know if she’s going to have a listen to this, but she and I, we really, yeah, we hit it off very well. And so we went out and that was a great way because she took me to different places and from food to, other activities. So that was really cool.

Pod: when you’re teaching in the business school, in Sydney and indeed again in China, and now you’re in France, is there aspects of leadership that you’re teaching that are uniquely different to those environments? Because leadership in itself, there’s a lot of general topics that are saying no matter where you go, but what, imagine there’s some nuances that are specific to the region that you’re in.

Julia: Yeah. So most of the classes I teach, I would say mostly is. Is on the executive level. And often we have really quite a mix of different nationalities. So it’s very mixed. I would always love to go more into the different cultures perspectives, but often, you’re so short on time. So you just try to, there’s so many things from encounter.

If leadership people can bring in the expertise and experiences and if they can share it, I guess that’s the best way. To learn. And I’m also, I’m very, I have a very, I would say hands-on approach. So I like people to try things out because I think that’s also how we can learn and make sense of things.

Yeah.

Pod: Makes sense. Now you are known for many things in terms of your writings, you’ve written in the economists and the HBR. And a whole raft of academic journals or course, and you also have done a Ted talk. So I’d like to jump to the content or the subject matter of your last Ted talk on indeed your last HBR article.

And it’s around a study you’ve done in leadership coaching as an leaders, coaching their teams and their colleagues, their direct reports. And I was the, I was interested in the fact that you did some video analysis. During this study, which illustrated perceptions that the members of the project had versus the reality.

And then what that showed for you. So can you talk us through the premise of this study and some of the implications that emerged from that?

Julia: Yeah. So the TEDx talk I did was about, yeah, the KOL question about can leaders coach, or can they learn and how do they, how did they, how do they learn that?

Yeah, I was always very intrigued by it because I, as I worked as a consultant, then helping organization, I saw lead school, improve their coaching skills very quickly, but. It was always a question. how were they Jewish and why doesn’t happen? And so I wanted to look more into that. So we started this quite large study with collaborators and we asked people to courage someone else for five minutes and we video type these into actions.

We’ve thought giving any further instructions on how to coach. And we did this because that’s actually what we see right now in practice. A lot that, organizations. I catching up on the idea that coaching might be good. It might work. So we’re blessed is that I want you to just coach. So just go and coach and so we want it to directly get that sentiment.

And what we saw is what I call is more, a type of motivation or micromanaging. So when you tell,   Leaders to coach everyone, most often we see people  do this motivation. But they still are telling people what to do. Sometimes they are hiding that  behind closed questions and they say, don’t you think it would be a really good idea if you look at it this way?  And we have, we help leaders and we walk them through one at a different skillsets.

What can you use? So we came up with nine, nine to 10 core skills so far and how they can learn it. Once they see it, see the evaluations, we let the video’s evaluated by peers, but also by coaching experts and we’ll have use of training. So we give them the feedback and once they see and they understand that coaching is actually more about empowering others to come up with their own answer.

And that creates so much about movement and people that, solving things and coming up with bright ideas once they understand that. That’s when I think the clique or the ship happens. And so we do that again. Coaching is at the end of them off the training again, when we let them get evaluated and then we see they improved so much, but they also able to look back at the first experience and go Maybe when I was doing that was not coaching. I find it very intriguing from several angles. So first of all, yes, we can learn to coach and they can learn it quite quickly. So that’s really impressive. sound skill is that easier to develop than others, but they can do it. They can absolutely self-reflect and, but we also see that somehow we have maybe still this notion in our head that yeah, coaching.

Within organizations is you have to be this much inventing coach, which they’re that a sideline of a sports soccer field.

Not always. But it’s not always the best way to achieve the goals.

Pod: let’s just double down what you’ve said. So the program has a starting point where leaders are asked to code as they would normally would that’s recorded. then they receive feedback from their own colleagues, as well as folks who are experts in coaching.

And then you lead them through a process of maybe on learning what they’ve learned or what they already knew. But he has some skill sets such as listening, open ended questions, et cetera, and then go again and compare and contrast that to my own experience of watching leaders learn to coach that once they jump into that, a few things happen.

And I clearly agree what you said. First is a realization of, I think my role used to be telling people what to do, or if I can tell you what to do, what is my role? So I’m confused about what my role is suggesting, and I believe that coaching then is. Yeah, a hyped up motivation way of telling people what to do.

And is that what you call micro-managing and a motivation?

Julia: Yeah. first of all, I absolutely agree with you. So a lot of leaders that I worked with, I didn’t say well, but if I’m not telling people what to do, then I’m not needed. Like what’s the whole point. First of all, we have to say they out of course, situations where you have to be direct.

And there’s no point in coaching somewhere on that. So I want to make that clear as well. So coaching is not the solution to everything, but they are lots and lots of situations where if, instead of telling somebody what to do. If you help them think it through, it’s so much better, it’s not more motivating for them to come up with their own lens, but it’s also better for you because they might have ideas that you never even thought about.

SLAs. I think, if we come up with our own process and way, it’s much more likely that we actually do things then yeah. Just following instructions. Okay. For this and this and this. So I’ve seen that.

Pod: It’s a few things there that I think are really worth underlining. One is, as you said, they’re all identity.

I thought my role was to tell you what to do, and if it’s not that they’ll pass my role. And of course the answer is roles evolve and the more senior you get these different levels of doing and doing director level stuff may not be useful at a more senior level. So there’s the role does evolve as the job involves.

And indeed as complexity arises. You can’t keep doing what you’ve always done. You’ve got to find different ways. But I think the second thing you’ve just said about time, I’ve always been fascinated by leaders who have jumped into and embraced coaching type skills, come back and say, the paradox is I actually have less.

I’ve got more time coming back to me now because people are figuring out stuff that I used to have to get involved with, which allows me to spend more time elsewhere in a more strategic sense. So there’s a time involved upfront, too. Learn the skills practice, the skills, deploy the skills, but time comes back almost in a payback process.

Julia: yes, absolutely. Because if you are always the person who solves everything that people will keep coming and you create almost like a bottleneck where, you know, nothing moves without you saying something. Having said that you, of course also. We to be clear when you want people to come back and check in with you and when not.

So we’ve also done a study on an ethical issues around leadership coaching and having the boundaries is also one thing, because if you just say, go whatever and do whatever you want and never, then you’ll also of course get that. Yeah. But yeah. Agreed. So it’s what is my role as a leader?

And the time is third. Her life I’ve come is actually not from the leaders themselves, but, I’ve also heard expert coaches. So executive coaches saying while we have totally against leaders coaching, because, you need to have two years of training before you can coach someone. And so that’s the other thing.

So it’s more about, leading this, shouldn’t be doing this because I don’t have the whole thing. And I always say to that, Of course, it would be great if everybody could do it two year process, but I think there’s a space and room for both types of coaching, more the, the professional lunghi the executives or external coaches.

And, but wouldn’t it be nice also if we have more leaders. who listen more? Who can ask better questions, who, give good feet. Wouldn’t that be nice? So I just think, because we can’t achieve perfection, shall we just stop and not do anything? I think it’s much more, better to work with the skills that you can improve in a shorter amount of time that also inform about.

What are the limitations of approaching some ethical issues that of course is also necessary.

Pod: I remember one CEO say to his exec team, this CEO is a big fan of coaching and indeed in their own private life had done some extracurricular training because they were so interested. But I remember when they were bringing in a program to their organization and the CEO said to her team, and I expect all of you to be good at budgeting, but don’t expect everyone here to be a forensic accountant.

Likewise, I expect all of you to be good at coaching, but don’t all of you to go. You don’t need to go in and become a professional executive coach, but it’s a core skillset as part of your role. and that made a lot of sense. There’s some fundamentals that elevate your leadership to be more impactful.

Which your Ted talk and with the HBR study, what kind of reactions have you had from folks who are thinking about elevating their skills and are maybe using your information or your studies as prior to their decision-making process, are you finding it’s helping people to lean in more and more into the notion of being a better listener or being a better question?

Asker.

Julia: Absolutely. I got actually wonderful feedback. So it was a lot from practitioners. So people like individuals who were saying, Oh yeah, we’re trying to do this. It’s so nice to see this. Now, then I had others saying. Oh, yeah, I think I have micromanaging. I thought I wasn’t, but now that I listen to this and so well, but no, this is exactly what I’m doing.

and then I had also people who are trying to be checking in it champions in terms of moving coaching across the organization. Want to establish more coaching cultures. So they approached me and asked, how do I do that? And we won an organization and level because I’m already doing it there. So yeah,

Pod: linked to your Ted talk in our show notes.

But I noticed this morning, I looked when I really looked at again as almost a hundred thousand people have watched it. So it’s certainly. making traction, around the place that people are searching and watching it. So we hope you’re enjoying this episode of the leadership diet. Feel free to hit the subscribe button on whatever podcast player you are listed to this on reviews on iTunes and Spotify are greatly appreciate it.

Let’s move on to a different topic. You were recording this in the end of September, 2020, the world is still in the midst of a pandemic and it’s gone up and down in different parts of the world. What are you noticing from where you’re sitting in terms of how leadership is showing up during the pandemic or how people are eating during a virtual digital type world, as opposed to a very tactile face-to-face type of world.

Julia: So from where I spending, I don’t know if it’s, if you can hear it, but they end the background noise.

This is how leadership shows up in the world of independent accounts. But that is for people who have, or will have children. we’ve been thrown into just. Deep end of trying to organize it all. so you have the occasional, popups in zoom calls and, we see lots of funny videos about that.

And then, the biggest difference I guess, is that leadership has also moved into the digital space for a certain amount of time. It was completely online for most people. not everyone again, but for most people. So I think. Oh, both sides struggled, but also explore opportunities in that.

Which means how can how can you be? can you even show empathy what’s happening with Zhou fatigue? I feel very isolated. No, I feel too much monitored. So I think you have all these extremes coming in and. Yeah, it’s about trying to find the opportunity in this, because we see organizations saying while we don’t want to return completely to what it was to be.

And you also hear individuals saying, I always think we have the three groups. We have people who say, no, I really want to go back. And I, yeah. I find that too isolating. Then you have people who say, yeah, actually a mixture would be nice. So having a little bit of. Of digital work and then you have the other extreme.

We said, no, absolutely. Either. There’s no point in me going to work anymore or yeah. Why can I not do it from home?

Pod: It’s gonna be really interesting as we go forward, because I know team cohesion is one of your areas. And if you have a team that has historically been an intact team in the same building, or are relatively the same.

Presence of each other to have some people say, no, I’m never going back makes, their way of working far more difficult than previously. So it’s been interesting to see how teams do grapple with questions of how we work together and does a face-to-face process enable cohesion. As much as we thought relative to hybrids are or are completely virtual.

did you have any sense yet as to what’s going to emerge for that

Julia: seem that it’s Gord, if teams can refresh once in a while face-to-face interactions or at least let’s say w what is the most closely tourists, say a video call having said that we also have all these other issues coming up, the questions around system.

Inability. is it really feasible to fly everyone in from everywhere? So sustainability, not only in terms of being I am in, but also of all of our time. So yeah, I think we have to find our way, or certainly if there is something about, we as humans, even if it is with a mask on, but that’s the other question.

So we now have, for example, In France, you have to, you have to wear your mask. So for any interaction where we have somebody else in an office, so then the question comes well, is that them better? Because then I concent you a face or is it then maybe better if I can see your face, but then I’m at a computer screen, but at least then I can see, and read your facial expression.

I think it’s just the path where some lead just asks. Cared about, I think is just like going there because there are so many emotions coming in. only from that move from face-to-face to virtual, but also riff the pandemics. So many things got out of whack. and then there’s this whole question.

maybe if I don’t talk about anything or I don’t address anything or we just go, great, let’s go to business. Maybe that’s better, because I don’t want to go there. So I think there’s also a whole big question of. but I haven’t, nobody taught me how to do this. How do I deal with all of these, emotions coming in or maybe not coming in, but what do I do then?

So that’s another big topic.

Pod: you’re right back to where you start. As I E you move into a new country, you’ve got to. Keep your eyes open and stay curious. Cause it’s nothing lucky experienced before and it feels like it’s wrong, but it’s not, it’s just different. And then how do we adapt to that?

So ma maybe there’s something from a leadership perspective of approaching this pandemic way of working through the eyes of the next pallet. This could be an adventure. Hopefully it is, but it’s starting different. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong. But I it’s certainly different. Yeah. Yeah. I’m I’m sorry.

No, it’s just all the things that you’ve two you’re talking about. And I’m also noticing leadership teams who are in cities are in lockdown. And of course, each city around the world is in various States of that. But the cities are in lockdown are far more tired for, I would say even exhausted. Some leaders are like yourself yet.

They have their one-year-olds. and three older, five and 10 year old around the house, and many leaders are experiencing the other, their partner and kids are sharing the wifi for various webinars and SKU webinars, et cetera, as they’re trying to leave their company. And eventually a exhaustion does kick in.

So there’s a question Mark around sustainability. I think of a physical health and attention span, as well as all the other sustainability factors that you’ve referred.

Julia: Yeah, but I think at the same time, again, there’s also opportunities in that, because it doesn’t make us more approachable and more human, if you know about, me and my personal life, and then I’m also dealing with lots of balls in the air and yeah, I think there’s also a great opportunity to maybe learn more about each other and yeah.

And then create better work. So I don’t think it’s all. Then it’s all negative. Having said that I absolutely agree. There’s a whole new question around, being and, avoiding burnout and what can we do and how can we, how can organizations really support their employees right now?

Pod: Speaking of get to know each other a bit better. We’re coming to the end of our conversation. And I wanted to pose some questions for you as to how we can get to know you a bit better. I said a few minutes ago you were ranked in the top 40, under 40, which means you’re still very young, but given all the wisdom that you’ve accumulated in your, let’s say, short life given the title of top 40, under 40, given all the wisdom you’ve accumulated, what would you be telling the 30 year old version of yourself now?

Julia: I think we stress ourselves through situations or circumstances that we can’t change. And I think, sometimes it’s really good. So I would advise my younger self to, just hang in there and wait, and things will change also to see, of course always finding, the best. in the situation.

So sometimes I feel when we have a problem, we have as humans, the tendency to focus on that problem. And what’s not bored, but out of every situation does I say and your door open. and of course, if you look back, you know what happened, but when you write in it’s become, you can’t really see it. So I think that for sure, Yeah.

And just to, and enjoy the little murmurs because everything I find, the older we get, and I don’t know if it’s true or not, but for me it was at succeeding out. And once you have kids, it’s even more, it goes quicker and quicker. Yeah. At the same time I feel that, I’m also happy. I made a few United half decisions in my life to go for the things that you really want to do, and that makes you happy.

And. I had some great job offers in Germany and I decided I’m going to Australia because, I wanted to do at that point in time. So I think sometimes it’s scary, but I see best. It always turns out if you stick to you about values. And of course again, is this pick 12 because sometimes our circumstances are differently and we have to do things that we don’t want to do at that point.

Of course, you have to take that into account, but yeah, I’m following your values are following what makes you happy and giving yourself the time to figure that out. And I find it’s like all building on it on itself. So I, when I was younger, I always thought, Oh, I have to make a decision. And that is the decision for the rest of your life, what you’re going to do.

that you can build things. And I guess I often did not go with the classical way, in a sense. So specializing very early on. I think I made lots of different moves, whether that was from more the practitioner world to academia, to back to combining both. But in the end of the day, I think you also then create.

a profile that might distinguish you from others. And it always depends on what people are looking for in that moment. So I encourage, I heard to my younger self, but that’s what I encourage my students. Or if I coach people I’m yet to really also. What think about that.

Pod: I love that.

Yeah. So I’ve been asking this question for about 10 years of almost anybody I meet and I have to say almost all the answers fall into a small group of themes. One is worry less and breathe more. Yeah, just breathe too, is, take more risk and be courageous. And three is when you make mistakes, go back to your values and your sense of purpose and just recalibrate and carry on.

And it seems to be a broad, almost universal set of themes of wisdom. Accumulated seems to fall into those areas. Or, if you get those areas right, the rest of us take care of itself. Given your background growing up in Germany. And what was your favorite band or song when you were growing up there?

Oh, this is

Julia: really bad. Now my ass would always tell three. I have the worst music taste. So apparently I have, but I actually think that a lot of people have my music tastes because I’m very much mainstream in the chops. I love, I guess I do have in a way, a soft. But for four. Okay. Everybody closed it. Yes.for the Backstreet boys, because when I was 18, I had to, I had an amazing opportunity of flying to New York and interviewing them for it for a German music channel.

Pod: I did not know you do that. There you go. I’ve known you for a long time. I didn’t know that part of your history. I’d say that’s exciting.

Then the last question, Julia, I’m giving you and your prolific researcher and writer. what areas are you looking into going forward in terms of your leadership research? Is there particular areas or topics that you’re interested in are you’ve started delving into that? We’ll be waiting about in a few years’ time.

Julia: I guess one part is for sure, what does this whole digital space doing for us in terms of, work, changes the way we work with each other. But another area I’m very intrigued with is this whole notion of empathy. And I really like, what, the New Zealand and prime minister. So she, she said something that’s so great.

The squat, I think she said, I don’t know the exact quote, but it’s something along the lines. I can be, I can be strong and I can have empathy at the same time. And I absolutely rebel against that image of just because I’m a leader. I can’t show empathy and I think I will hold. yeah, a notion of leadership is hopefully also changing in a way, that it’s not only the super charismatic leader out there, but there’s yeah, there’s a.

There’s a room for yeah. The empowerment of others and showing empathy. Absolutely.

Pod: in empathy, because this word is bandied around quite a lot. Why do you think that’s going to emerge or is already here as an important consideration for leadership?

Julia: Yeah. so as we just talked about this whole concept of, yeah, you can be vulnerable and you can be strong and you can do not worry.

You can leave in that way. And for me, it was also an, a ham moment when, so when I did the TEDx talk, I was actually, yeah, almost six months pregnant and I was debating with myself. Do I, make it very obvious because couldn’t. You couldn’t, I wasn’t showing so much, so do I, and I stop reef, I’m pregnant and I didn’t.

So I I think I hinted, edited a couple of times, but you could interpret it in different ways, but, so I got lots of, genuinely positive comments and people engaging in it. And when I got also somebody saying, she is breathing heavily, That means she’s nervous, which means she can’t be a leader.

and that was very interesting to me because I had, my little boy maxi pushing it. Actually, I really have difficulties breathing because you, I don’t know any one of you listening, if you weren’t

Pod: pregnant. Yes. And we’ve heard Maxie, are you on today? And he’s not quiet.

Julia: So in weeks that we’ve of course, You’re quiet. you have lots of ethylene going through your veins when you walk into a room and you don’t really see the audience, you just see that there are hundreds of people, but it’s all black because you have the camera on yourself. So of course, yeah.

Anyway, so that makes together, I had difficulties breathing, but I didn’t address it. That’s not the whole point. I think I didn’t want to address it because again, I think. I just wanted to be seen as everybody else. So it was doing a talk and everybody else who might be leading or not leading or whatever.

And, but it is interesting that we still seem to have, this combination of. Thinking in our head that, yeah, I do have to be a shortened way as a leader. You can never show vulnerability. You cannot show and let’s just assume it is, nervousness. You can’t, you only have this one way that works.

And then yeah. So then this whole debate started, I saw it like, no, she was not breathing. No. Interesting. Yeah. What do we have to do? yeah. How can we change the picture and what is the, what is it today? And, yeah, I don’t know. It’s a whole, it’s a question, but I never answered to it because I’m also very, I’m always very protective of everyone.

Not me. I’m very

Pod: predictable. So I didn’t

Julia: want to, I was thinking I should I say something

Pod: I think were as a fascinating topic on that the notion of this strong charismatic leader is a still part of our society. And we know that on the political stage is certainly part of our society, but it seems to be losing its cache and it seems to be devolving in attraction overall.

And I think that. What we’ve learned from the pandemic, if nothing else, into the lens of leadership, the notion being able to connect with people and rarely reach across the zoom cameras of the world, into each other’s lounges and living rooms to understand what is your reality as you’re trying to lead at home?

That was my reality. And certainly leaders I’ve worked with who have been most successful in this year and leading their organizations do portray vulnerability, do share stories of where they’re struggling and are not trying to portray themselves as being some extraordinary, strong person managing some of that.

No one’s ever managed before. So I think you’re absolutely right. Empathy will emerge as a very strong characteristic for leadership as it evolves into 2021 and beyond. Julia, thank you for so much for making time for us, your writings and readings and Ted talks have been very helpful and educated for lots of us, including myself.

I’m gonna include some of those notes in our show notes, but where can people find you or where’s the best place to find you, if they want to find out more about what you do.

Julia: Probably LinkedIn is easiest to connect with me. I’d love to hear from people.

Pod: Hope you enjoyed that conversation with Julia. I’m thinking podcasts are useful and they add value, but they become more useful when you do something about what you’ve learned or what you’ve listened. And I think there’s. Two, maybe three notions that are useful to take from the conversation with Julia and deploy them into your upcoming weeks.

The first one is to observe yourself as a leader over the next couple of weeks. And as you are coaching your colleagues or your team, just observe to what degree are you listening to them? Versus to what degree are you listing for the conversation to allow you to step in which you’re already predetermined answer number two, to what degree are you connecting with other people it’s very easy to connect on a transaction level.

We do it every single day. It’s very easy to connect via video meetings, such as zoom or teams or whatever other platform we’re on and to be doing two things at once, looking at the camera and answer emails quietly on the keyboard. So just observed yourself to what degree are you connecting? When are you doing that?

And where are the personal connections that allow you to move the relationship forward? Lastly, for anyone who wants to read more, I’ve put some links to the Harvard business review article and other articles that Julie has written in the show notes and also linked to Michael Bungay, Stanier his book, the coaching habit, which is another useful resource for this topic.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the leadership diet. We hope you enjoyed it. Head over to www.thedishofdiet.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast, to our blogs and retrieve the show notes. From each episode, every show note has links to whatever resources were mentioned by our guests, including their favorite song or band.

And the best way you can support this podcast is by subscribing and sharing it with your colleagues and friends. So they can hear the insights from our guests. Thank you.

Josie: delighted to be here. Thank you.

Pod: You have just published a new book called Big little shifts, a guide to complexity, organizational change, and adoptation. And I want to jump into that in a few minutes, cause I know there’s loads of really interesting topics for us to delve into and get our minds around.

But before we go into that, I want to jump back to your original career. Am I right in remembering you were the first female finance analyst in the Mitsubishi car company in South Australia.

Josie: Actually Chryslers- by the time Mitsubishi had taken crisis over, I’d moved into the finance industry. So yeah, that’s how old

Pod: And I remember you telling me once, you, did you, I think you did all the original coding by hand originally, or was some the strap planning.

Josie: No, it was on cards. we used to you probably not familiar with the word comptomotrist?

Pod: No,

Josie: I’m not. No. So in the old days, I really feel like grandma now, there used to be banks of women.

Actually. They were women in the Comptometer room and they would sit there with adding machines, doing all of the calculations that our computers do now.

Pod: Wow.

Josie: And so we would draw up these huge sheets, 13 column twenty-five column sheets of paper with pencil on them. In case we made an error and they would check.

Or they would actually do the computations. So we, computers were just emerging at that stage. And, I was the only one that had coding experience at all because I was a young whippersnapper from uni.

Pod: And,

Josie: I could code in basic it just enough to do, some arrays and some computing that was actually coded onto cards.

That they had to run at night because it took the entire capacity of the computer to actually run these spreadsheets effectively.

Pod: How far we’ve come in a relatively short time when you think of competing speed and everything else. And I would imagine that early background of you, you had an economics education background as well, that shaped your thinking around systems I’m imagining, but to tell me more.

Josie: Yeah, Crawley economics, does tend to encourage you to think in systems think more broadly than just small parts. Although macroeconomics in its traditional form, doesn’t actually extend the system out into our physical resources or the natural world. It stops at the limit of the social world. and there are macroeconomic series now, like modern monetary theory and the doughnut economics that actually extend our economic thinking out.

into the planetary resources that we have as well, but certainly then that didn’t happen. But, it did facilitate a way of understanding that this is connected to that. And if this goes up, that might go down

Pod: because it sounds is the fundamental way leaders often have to make decisions is understanding the interconnectivity between different relationships.

Josie: No, I think that’s right. And, when times are really stressed, it’s really natural for us to, really reduce. We get like tunnel vision and we tend to reduce the field of vision, I think, and we lose sight of some of that interconnectedness in our stress. And so to hold that, interconnect that broad vision open is a really great tray for, Why is leaders to possess?

I think

Pod: right now we are probably emits maybe the most complex time of certainly of our lives, but certainly from a leadership perspective. And I thought it might be useful just to really a common understanding, what is complexity? what is whole ism and reductionism, the butterfly effect.

Some of these terms are often thrown around that some of us may or may not even know. So maybe let’s just start there and then we can jump into the whole notion of how you apply it. So complexity holism reductionism share with us your wisdom, Josie.

Josie: What is it? Okay. How many days do you have? so complexity is shorthand for complex adaptive systems, and these are actually computer models designed to understand the behavior of living systems.

So they’re connected, but they’re not the same. So we often use complexity and living systems as interchangeable terms. Holism is connected to, living systems and complexity. By virtue of the fact that if we want to understand a living system, we have to develop the capacity, the capability to actually see the whole, the relationships between all the parts.

What were we just talking about? If this goes up that goes down, this influences that influences that, but when it becomes really complex, like in our Metro systems and even in our social systems and coronavirus is just an ideal example of this. The uncertainty is so high in these systems because of the interdependence between a large number of variables that we can’t predict what’s going to happen.

And, planning fall short. As a way of understanding how to make progress in the world. So planning is actually, and strategic planning like I used to be involved in is really, it comes from an understanding of the world where the world is a lot more certain and it’s predictable. And this is often referred to as Newtonian paradigm champion developed by sir Isaac Newton in all of his brilliance.

and I’m certainly not saying that it’s wrong. What I am saying is that I think it’s been incorrectly applied to different types of systems. So there are actually different types of systems. There’s not just one system. Okay. And then you Tony and paradigm, which has at its heart and understanding. That the universe is actually a clock.

that was a phrase that sir Isaac Newton used. And if we could just understand all of the nature of all of the paths we could understand the whole. So another way of saying that is that the hole was no more than the sum of the parts and we can break the whole down to parts to understand it, and we can break it down to parts, to resolve problems.

With the whole machine as well. And we see this approaches deeply inculcated into our society and into the way we run our organizations. The idea that, there’s an equal and opposite force and that’s one of Newton’s first laws, wasn’t it? that idea applies in our organizations. We think if we push hard, we’ll get a big impact, but it’s not necessarily the case.

Another example of the Newtonian paradigm at work in our organizations is the very way we structured them in hierarchies. And then we take a plan and we cascade down through the organization and we give little bits to different people. And we assume that if we can hold them accountable for their bid and everyone does all of their bits, then suddenly the whole plan will have been delivered.

Pod: Which sounds perfect in this strategic planning session, when you put your lovely PowerPoint together, I go, here’s our plan for next three years or where we go?

Josie: I can tell you the basic problem with that because I learned it when I was 25, a long time ago. You can write beautiful plans. That never get implemented

Pod: exactly.

As well as many of us have found that to the detriment.

Josie: So I wrote lots of them.

Pod: so I think what you’re saying here is that the original notion from Isaac Newton, which was based on a mechanistic notion that everything is connected. And once you understand the connections, you can then manage the whole that affected what he was saying.

And what you’re telling us is that was far that might’ve been fine in a new era. Gone by, but it’s really not fine today. And starting was never true. Anyway,

Josie: it is certainly true that way of operating holds it works for things like bikes and buildings and bridges. As long as you don’t have people nature

Pod: involved in isolation,

Josie: but people are actually living systems and we operate differently.

We operate by fundamentally different rules, if you like. and I think we’ve incorrectly. We certainly didn’t intentionally. We just assume that all of these systems were the same and that the same rules would apply. But it turns out that nature is telling us something different now. And, so the world has always been interconnected.

It’s always been interdependent. It’s just that now the pace of change is so much greater than the number of people on this world are so many more. It’s just in my lifetime. For example, the population on earth has doubled more than doubled. so humans are now living in a global niche where we used to live in small geographic niches before, and we’re learning how to live in this much larger niche.

Now.

Pod: I read about, and it’s often used in explanation around complexity and it is called the butterfly effect and the idea, meaning that a butterfly flaps their wings and somewhere, and then causes something dramatically different elsewhere. Can you tell us, what does it mean if a leadership perspective,

Josie: first of all, it was developed by scientists to try and explain the interdependence in weather patterns.

And, the basic butterfly effect was exactly, as you’d mentioned, that you can have a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world, and it produces a hurricane or a tornado on the other side of the world. Or not because it is inherently uncertain. And so it might produce. A hurricane, but it may not either.

It may just be the flapping of wins. It’s actually about the interdependence between all of those weather patterns. It might include the temperature of the oceans. It might include the strengths of the winds. It might include another tornado appearing somewhere else. It is inherently uncertain and unpredictable.

And we can’t control. And so socially that shows up in phenomenons, such as Greta Thornburg, for example, as a school girl of 16, deciding she’s not going to go to school on Fridays. And she’s going to sit outside the parliament. Then some days she gets a little bit of attention and she’s a assertive young woman and she speaks her mind. Now we’ve got students all over the world captured by her words  that is inherently uncertain and unpredictable. You couldn’t predict it. Similarly. the Arab spring was triggered by, one Twitter, one tweet that laid dormant for about three months before it came to surface again and went viral.

And there’s that word went viral. That from nature viruses are the epitome of interdependence and, just taking off exponentially and illustrating to us that a very small change somewhere can produce a change. Much greater advocation. And that’s really what the butterfly effect is trying to tell us about.

And we’re living through it right now,

Pod: as you’re talking, I’m thinking about, I’m province, of course, AOA and interdependent reaction happened that could have happened at any time in the past, but happened. Spontaneously we imagine, but then that causes extraordinary impact all over the world and not, no one could have predicted that to the degree that had happened.

We obviously have had predictions that it can happen. And we also know bill Gates has predicted that in his Ted talks, but how, and when no one would know that.

Josie: No, that’s right. And certainly, those that study pandemics had wanted to just September last year, I believe that another pandemic was probably imminent, but they didn’t know where or when, but we should get really for, so it’s the uncertainty that’s.

The real issue here.

Pod: And that brings me to this topic emergence because obviously what we’re talking about leadership year, and as you quite rightly said, there’s a certain amount that leaders can plan for. And a certain amount of planning is redundant because no matter how much plans you do, it’s not going to happen.

And then as the whole thing that just comes out of the blue, it emerges from nowhere. What Josie and you experience, what do leaders need to be mindful of are tending towards to observe the emergence tubs thereof was coming out of left field or unexpected, and then how to attend to that from a leadership point?

Josie: that’s a really big question, I think. so first of all, I think I’d say that emergence is actually happening all the time and we’re largely unaware of it. And I think within our organizations, I’ve become more and more aware of the structures within our organizations that are mechanistic in their origins that actually dampen.

The possibility of emergence within organizations. So it’s not that the Mo the emergence doesn’t happen. and there are various things that emerge from living systems and adaptation and change is one of them. so it’s not that’s not happening. It’s just that it gets dampened by the structures that exist.

And essentially these are structures of control of different types, processes, and systems that are trying to. Control to create the conditions for certain predetermined outcomes to occur. And when we dampen the conditions for emergence, we might be able to control sufficiently to obtain those predetermined outcomes, but we do so at the expense of the abundance of possibilities that exist.

If we removed the controls. So most people within organizations I believe are unaware of how wasteful. Our current structures are in some of my work. For example, I’ve seen organizations doing twice as much work with the same number of people when we’ve finished doing our work within the organization.

So that suggests. Almost a hundred percent increase in productivity, which is almost unheard of isn’t it. Like I wouldn’t go out advertising that because I can’t say what we did actually, cause that was a whole organization with a focus on something at a pure point in time. and I don’t know how long it’s been sustained for either.

But there is an enormous cost to control, which is at the heart of the Newtonian paradigm. And it’s at the heart of most of our management and leadership teachings within MBAs. it’s all about managing scheduling, controlling, structuring, getting people to do is meant to do. and it’s only more recently that we’ve started introducing notions of, working to people’s strengths, which are a natural.

Force within the complexity of people, I think, engaging with their passions, which are another natural force. And then there’s research to suggest that when people do that, they are a lot more creative. They have a lot more persistence to continue with a problem and their creativity. this is actually the source of innovation.

I believe it’s not in processes and systems. We put in place it’s in the way we create an environment for people to work and to experience their work

Pod: point there, the notion of releasing control to cliche, being here to unleash the power of the creativity of the person or the organization, and then that releases innovation, et cetera.

What’s the tension between looking for creative outputs through innovation relative to chaos.

Josie: That’s a great question. and chaos doesn’t insure ensued.

Pod: And that

Josie: that’s the amazing thing, because you can take away those structural controls, but there are still forces of cohesion that are working within a living system.

So the example I often use is that an Oak tree doesn’t spontaneously turn into a dark. It has the DNL and it’s going to remain an Oak tree. So within an organization, we can think of the lived. organizational values, vision and purpose as the organization’s DNA. And we can generate cohesion within the organization by connecting each employee to that DNA.

So can they bring what they care about? They’ve got their own complexity and their own values and their own picture of what’s. Can we bring that into the service of the organization by actively connecting them to the vision? And I don’t know about you, but when I work in organizations that I ask people, what the organization will vision is, they go.

Oh, it’s over there somewhere, it’s on the walls. It needs to be a lot more active than that. and we, we work in the space of engaging people to actually co-create the vision and the purpose. And that’s not scary either because these visions are remarkably consistent around the purpose of the organization.

And I think that’s because people know the environment that brings out the best in them. And.

Pod: I’ve just finished, a series of interviews. I think it’s about 25 for leadership team. So stakeholders of the leadership team internally and externally, and this is a very successful allegation on many levels. However, they are now moving to a different phase of their gestation and what’s become really clear is that the mission, the long-term mission, the long-term reason for being in the organization for the organization is clear because they have a history, but the vision of where they’re going to now on the current journey is very unclear.

And the impact of that throughout the organization is, and this talks to your point, is a lot of wasted effort on people doing different things, because they are unclear and therefore they’re doing their very best of course, as best as they know how. And so the big call out from these 25 interviews, I’ve just concluded.

Get clear. As a group on the vision for the next five to 10 years, get clear, therefore on the boundaries that we are operating within. So therefore then we can become as innovative as we can, as opposed to dispersing your energy everywhere, which is causing a huge amount of extra work.

Josie: Yeah, I’d agree with that.

I think getting really clear on the purpose and when I use the word vision on using it slightly differently than many people would be imagining. I think because the talk of vision we help organizations create around their purpose is how do we want. How do we want to experience this organization and how do we want others to experience it in the future?

So the difference is, if I can use, an example, a metaphor, perhaps if we were trying to plan a house together, for example, and then we have an argument over how many bedrooms it’s got to have and what the shape of the Bush might be and what color the tiles would be, or the iron cladding or whatever it is.

That’s a very physical. Vision, it’s almost a big goal. That’s the type of vision we are used to setting, but in a world where we can’t predetermine the outcome, that type of goal doesn’t serve us very well. And it’s really just one possibility in a really abundant future possibilities. There are all sorts of things that could emerge in five or 10 years.

So if we develop a vision of the house, we want to live in that set the level of cool we’d like it to be safe and secure. We’d like it to be hospitable. We’d like it to be airy and open to the environment. We’d like it to house a certain number of people. That’s much easier to agree on and it leaves the flexibility of the tangible outcome to emerge into the future.

Does that make sense? So I’m using vision in a slightly different way. And I think when we use a vision like that, it can be a cohesive force. For people that enables experimentation to see what helps. And I think that is very necessary. we don’t, we can’t predict what’s going to happen, so we have to work it out on the run.

and it still gives us. A guiding light though. And the guiding light may shift around a little bit, but it is possible to run an organization like that. And, for a period of time, the organization that I did, my PhD research in actually had such a vision. It was on one page, it had half a dozen vision values around it, and they used to put their initiatives inside the circle.

With those values on the outside and an understanding of the story that went with those values and how they related to the vision. And they would say which initiative actually serves all of these values at the same time and the are ones that got funded.

Pod: why that would align everybody to the purpose, to the long-term vision, to the immediate action, to the decisions on funding, our resourcing, or allocations or priorities, et cetera. And, it’s initiatives are ticking a lot of the boxes, not all the boxes and kitty that they become. Part of Asians very quickly.

Josie: So in the Newtonian world though, our strategic plan. So usually four strategic pillars, and then we put projects underneath each pillar, but they’re actually not interrelated. They’re not working together in a, like an ecosystem of projects connected by anything, but this way, all of these initiatives that are actually connected by the vision.

And, there are a lot more powerful because of them.

Pod: I love that. I love that. We hope you’re enjoying this episode of the leadership diet. Feel free to hit the subscribe button on whatever podcast player you are listening to this on. We’ve used an iTunes and smarter. I greatly appreciate it. So when the big chefs cook was coming, I was thinking, Oh, this is something worth delving into.

I’m sure there’s going to be great nuggets. And sure enough, there’s a huge nugget, which is the metaphor of leader as gardener. I’d love you just to walk us through some of the thinking around that and how you’ve put some, it’s not just a one-line metaphor, there’s actually a whole lot of stuff that sits within the metaphor as to why you use that.

Josie: it goes back to understanding the way living systems actually work. And for so long, we’ve understood, our leaders as people who have to be strong and decisive and out front and with all of the answers. But if we understand the world as a living system, then it is, it becomes clear really quickly that knowing answers is just not possible.

And certainly one person knowing them is even more impossible. so there’s a lot of learning to be done, learning how to. Interact with different parts of the systems so that we can influence the outcomes that we’re seeking. And we may not get what we’re seeking because the rest of the world’s all trying to influence outcomes too.

So that’s another area of emergence where an outcome emerges. But if we understand that the world operates differently than we thought it did in that linear, predictable, consistent, certain manner. If we say no social systems and living systems don’t operate that way, they actually operate differently.

Then it makes sense that if we want to influence those systems, we would think differently about the qualities. Of the people who are trying to influence them. And it’s actually delving into the understanding of how living systems operate that give us some of the ideas around what are the qualities that we might seek to nurture within ourselves as people who might be wanting to influence that system.

One of the very first things we observed when we start thinking down this track is that we are all a part of the system. None of us inherently more important than anyone else. So we all have an opportunity to influence and there’s this line that’s become very popular. through Ron Heifetz’s work that leadership can come from anywhere.

And that’s the first thing. Any one of us can be a leader, but it’s not a position of authority. It’s actually a choice to make a difference. And so that’s the first thing. Then we start thinking about, if we can’t actually predict the outcomes, then it takes a great deal of humility to actually work within these systems.

You have to be humble enough to say we don’t know. we can’t predict, no is actually an interesting word. Isn’t it? If you speak to someone like Tyson, younger Porter, who’s just written the sand or I was talking to him about, living systems, complex systems as well. And I said, we don’t know.

And he said, don’t be stupid. Of course we do. We can’t predict what the outcome will be. Knowing is a different matter. There are different ways of knowing there’s more than just thinking to know something. So sometimes we do know, but there’s a different way of knowing

Pod: and our heritage might give us different insights and ways of knowing to that than that.

Right?

Josie: Yeah. I think of systemic practice, the art of actually influencing a living system. If you like, as a very embodied practice, we feel things where our whole body’s gathering data about the info about the system. At any one point in time. So there’s humility as a quality there’s trust, but you’ve actually got to trust the system to be able to work it out.

if we, if, as the person in authority, we can’t know the answers in the way that we produce traditionally want to predetermined outcomes. Then we have to trust that the people in the system that we’re going to and saying. How will we deal with this? We have to trust that they are going to be able to do it.

Not only trust our own resources, but trust everyone, else’s resources, their intuition, their willingness, their contributions to trying to work this through.

Pod: which of course is the antithesis to control. if I’m looking to control and even if it’s overt, couldn’t, as I say, as in subtle control, I may not be overt about my intentions that does diminish trust.

and of course, as you and I both know, and everyone who’s listened to this one, now it’s easy to feel, not trusted by your leader. straight away when your leader doesn’t trust you through their actions and through their behavior.

Josie: Yeah. Trusting is so important. Isn’t it?

Pod: Absolutely.

Josie: And we know from the research into organizations that the public has lost its trust in so many institutions over recent years.

And how do we re rebuild that again? How do we earn people’s trust back once it’s lost. And then there’s qualities like patients that are so important, in most organizations, if you put your feet up and you rest your head back in your arms and you have a little think about things for a while, people walking past your desk are likely to think you’re slacking off.

In action.

Pod: In one of your writings, you tell a lovely story. Alan Malala, from who, when he was the CEO of Ford at the time, I think he might have been new to his role at the time, but it really epitomizes the notion of being patient and allowing the, the change to occur to tell us that story, because that really piss him off is what you’re talking about here with

Josie: patients.

I don’t know Alan personally, but I heard him speak at a conference and he was relating, his first few months on the job as the new CEO of Ford. And he’d come from Boeing, a very successful company and Ford was losing a lot of money at the time. And, so there were clearly problems, right? It was learning, losing millions a day.

And, he set up this agreement with his executive team to have a traffic light report when they got together and even getting the executive team together at the same meeting at the same time was a novel idea apparently from around the world, because of all of the different time zones. They agreed that they would all come with their traffic light reports and they would have a look at each other’s reports.

And if there were any yellow or red issues, they would work on them together. So the first team meeting came along and everyone turned up with all green traffic lights. this is interesting. So who I did for the second week, they’re still all green and he’s still losing money, hand over

board. What are you doing? I’m waiting. I’m waiting for my executive team to actually admit that there’s a problem. eventually one of the executives turned up with a red light on his traffic light report and he assumed. That by doing. So he was about to be exited and, ushered out of the meeting and out of the organization because that’s the way things had been dealt with in the past.

And Alan made sure that, he, that didn’t actually happen, that he drew that person closer to him physically and emotionally, I assume. And, he ensured that the team all rallied round. And they offered him support and ideas, and they made sure that he had the people resources to actually resolve the issue.

And within a few weeks, the issue had been resolved. But what struck me most about this story was not only his nerve to actually wait that out and not rush to action. But he waited with good purpose. Like he knew why he was waiting. He was waiting for his executive team to do their own internal work around, coming to terms with a new way of working and also taking responsibility for what was really going on.

and he waited and they must have been wondering what he was going to do. but he just waited. He had the patients and when the moment came, it was like one of those moments of truths that we used to read about in, was it Northwest airlines? I think, it was a moment of truth for him and he acted and he made sure that person.

Was, supported in order to do the work that they needed to do. So it transformed not only that person’s approach to work, but the entire executive team. And then you could imagine how that would have rippled through the company as well.

Pod: No. What I love about that story that illustrates, patients, as you quite rightly said, and also the distress courage on behalf of Alan as CEO to stand.

By his own principles, but on behalf of that executive who on the third week showed up and, historically speaking would have been fired or punished or whatever, but had the courage to do it. But the other part about Israel that I really love is Alan didn’t necessarily put that executive on a pedestal for, behaving like.

the good executive, you’ve got everyone else to come around and help them. So he introduced teamwork straightaway as the new way of working together. And I think that learning would have been, the secondary, but brace subtle and interconnected learning for that leadership team that they were forced into it.

And did it really well for a number of years afterwards.

Josie: Yeah. Yeah. And there’s this, lovely term, from. The Dow is from the Chinese culture. Actually, Wu Wei is called. It’s doing without doing. and I just laughed that this idea of you can do something. I actually know rushing to action. I not pushing it forward by not being forceful.

Actually, those things can actually be. Counterproductive to what we’re trying to achieve.

Pod: That’s right. It’s so starting as a parent, it’s been, one of my learnings is to, over the years of the, how not intervene in between the, the gripes between the five children and they eventually work it out themselves and go right there you go doing that.

Doing.

Josie: So much self-awareness doesn’t it to actually hold yourself back.

Pod: Absolutely. Absolutely. so you talk about humidity, trust patients. You also talk about vision and awareness as system, and then there’s the six one that you talk about, which I really love that the deafness of touch and it goes to, I suspect the. That the masterful way of leading and, the subtle ways. And there’s a lovely story telling your book, I think is based in Adelaide, there’s a building project and it really illustrates how someone’s difference of touch through a lovely question or posing of questions transforms the whole way of that particular group and how they led together.

Josie: Yeah. So I’ve been working with this group for awhile. So we had been practicing the art of listening for the assumptions underneath compensation. And, we’d been trying it out on each other for a year or so and developing the capacity around this. And we had also been developing an awareness. it was actually an organization that was trying to deliver more sustainable outcomes for its community.

So it was a local council. And, so we’d been practicing, listening and practicing, interacting with each other and practicing that, being that interacts with each other in a way that opens up possibilities rather than closes them down. And I think importantly, this small group had actually developed good relationships with each other within the small group where we’d been practicing that too.

And there were, several of them at this meeting of senior managers where they were talking about, developing the central business district at the half of this local municipality. One of the team members, one of the group that I’ve been working, we just sat back and sit down, wonder what would happen if we didn’t keep calling it a central business district, what would it be like if we called it a central people district?

And just, just really generally logged it on the table and then stepped away from it and left it alone. Didn’t argue. Didn’t persuade didn’t force. Just left the question there. And it provoked this incredible conversation that spread right throughout the organization, up to the elected members and into their strategic plan from one little question delivered in.

If I don’t know, is there any real right way, but it was certainly an effective way. It was, it was not pushing a solution. It was asking the question.

Pod: Which really goes back to your piece on humility is I can’t remember who said to me once, but some wise presidents said to me once a great idea should have no owner.

It should just stand on its own. But most of us want to own the great idea. Therefore, that’s why we put a forward as our solution. Whereas I think what you suggested here is. This person had great deafness of touch to go. Here’s the thought let’s just put in the middle and then see what happens from a life living systems, growth perspective, and a sounds like that really took off as a core notion.

Josie: And I think, and there were other people in the room that sort of saw what was going on and understood what was going on. So they were able to back this initial move up as well. And one of the things that’s intrigued me is that. the way we mix colors, we can put, blue and yellow together and we get green.

And that’s what we’re aiming for in these dialogues. I think, and I put yellow on the table, you put green on the table, suddenly we’ve got blues and that fantastic. We don’t have to just stick to the yellow or the green. So it’s when it mixes together that we actually get the richness of what’s possible.

Pod: Yeah, there’s a leader I used to work with, who I always watched and told this person is extraordinary masterful at shaping conversations and shaping outcomes without the group realizing that the group usually ended up in a place where the leader had thought they might, I suggest, but it wasn’t pushy by his behalf.

And one day I just stopped and said, what are you actually doing in the room? And what he would do is like this example that you suggested. He would put in some ideas or some thoughts are more often not a profound question. And then when the group went to a breakout, FIPSE charting type exercise, he would always go to the group that wasn’t working on, the thoughts that he had put into the room, because his view was they need to shape it.

Then it’s theirs. Whereas if I’m in that group, I’m going to shape it the way I said it originally. And invariably, the group ended up assuming that the profound question or idea, it was a good one. They ended up shaping it almost to where this person thought I would get to, but it was theirs came from them at that point.

So he had very definitely put into the group, walked away. So the group could then shape it. I throw humility in a lack of attachment to it. And assuming that it was a good version of what they wanted, the group then owned it and shaped it in a way they went. Whereas I think most of this person’s peers wanted to be in the conversation so they could get stuck into an attached to it and then, and effectively control it.

So it was a real, a lack of control, a real trust that the group will shape it properly. And they’ll end up where it’ll end up.

Josie: And I think we can achieve a lot with a deft touch, doing much less than we imagined we have to when you’re trying to control people. And

Pod: the mere fact that you believe you can is it is stressful in its own, right?

That’s a war that’s taught us in 2020 that there’s a free, it’s not a free to use which I really love. And that is. Different levels of doing. And I think what we’ve just talked about leaning into this is sometimes, doing requires a lot of effort, but sometimes doing requires deafness and less, of doing and has a different impact.

Did John tell us more about that?

Josie: perhaps an example is the way we go about trying to influence peoples or even control people’s behaviors at work sometimes. we want certain things done. So we use rewards and punishments, carrots, and spit sticks most often. To achieve what we’re trying to achieve.

That’s a fairly, I’m gonna use the word gross, but I don’t mean gross as in sickening. it’s a blunt instrument if you like, it does work, but it comes at a cost because you’re actually missing people’s discretionary effort, the things that they do, because they want to do.

A more subtle form. There might be actually a more subtle approach might be, aligning particular work with the, as we were talking about earlier with the strengths and passions that people have now, that’s the more subtle that’s the more deft approach to getting outcomes. Does that make sense? The difference.

And then an even more subtle approach might be becoming aware of the assumptions that people hold around. What they’re good at, what they’re not good at. how we do things around here. What’s achievable. What’s not, one of the things that I’m always fascinated by is the idea that many people come to work.

And this has been proven in mind. Experiences that many people come to work with a belief that their personal values aren’t welcome at work, but they have to take the method. And if you can, if you can encourage people to actually bring them with them, then you get a whole richness of the whole person at work, rather than just a part of them.

And that’s a deft infant intervention too, but it’s not the sort of intervention that we’re used to where it’s, if you behave like that, we’ll punish you. or if you behave like that, we’ll reward you with a bonus. that’s a lot courses sort of intervention. You can align with what someone wants, or you can have a conversation around them about what they believe that they may not even realize that they believed it.

And you just do this tiny little thing and you get an enormous outcome from it.

Pod: That’s the great thing about valleys is most of us don’t fully understand our own values until they’re compromised or they’re forced to address it. Or someone actually asked a question about it and then it becomes to light.

That’s for sure. And as you said,

Josie: like they change yes.

Pod: Yes. Say as a 50 year old man, my valleys today, Different to 20 years ago. I mean my core buddies probably haven’t, but what’s important to me now is very different to what I was. Josie, I’m interested in, what are you noticing with leaders you’re working with in terms of how are they learning?

These principles are how they apply these principles and those that are applying them. What’s the impact they’re having in their organizations as leaders.

Josie: Do you know the expectations that most leaders have around their own ways of operating and what other people expect of them? Are so strongly Newtonian that is actually really hard to share some of these ideas, but, like there’s a great deal of trust that needs to be developed in order to consider the possibilities quite well.

Having said that, The MBA is a starting to teach this sort of thing now. and that makes it easier. the younger generation are certainly a lot more open to it, I think. and it makes sense that if you are in a position of higher authority in an organization, you’ve got more risk. if these ideas aren’t.

Aren’t successful for someone that there seems to be more at risk, but one of the gorgeous things about working in living systems is that the same principles. Apply at every level or subsystem within the larger system. So you don’t actually have to bet the farm to try these ideas out. So one of the ways that you can start experimenting with them is just to reflect on your own behavior and what works for you and to raise your awareness around that.

Most people tell me that they don’t like being controlled by others.

Pod: That’s right? Yes. They forgive him due to somebody else. Yeah.

Josie: And that they actually perform better when they’re not. So we can start there and work outwards, I think. And then, we can actually just start to experiment with teams that are willing.

so if there is a team leader and a team that is willing to experiment with the way it’s working to see if they can work better and produce a better work environment and most are willing, you’re not, then you can experiment at that level and you can gradually work it out. The successful people can build some trust in what they already know to be true, actually, but we have been taught to distrust it.

Because of that older paradigm letting and it’s, with Corona virus, I think it’s really clear that, that older paradigm is disappearing more quickly. even in the mood to work from home. Most leaders and organizations have experienced. I won’t use the word strengths and even that’s not quite wrong.

They’ve experienced a more constructed cultural merging because the purpose became really clear. Crystal clear and everyone was acting on it. And from a living systems perspective, I would say that they generated greater cohesion within their organizations because the purpose was really clear for a point in time and everyone was really connected to it.

many organizations have talked about how their cultures have actually been enhanced by, The pandemic and coronavirus and that working from home has taught them that they can trust people to work hours. And in fact, I’ve had clients, Reflect on the fact that they’ve had to try and stop their people working such long hours, but they’ve been working from home and they’d been working perhaps 12 hour days.

And they can tell that from the

Pod: interactions with the

Josie: students and the emails, and they’re actually trying to get people to reduce their number of hours rather than do their number. So it’s just not true that people won’t do the work. If you’re not watching them like a fall. so we can observe this.

And I think now is a time when we can really build on some of these ideas of living systems to help prepare organizations, to be more adaptable, continually adapting into the future, being able to adapt to the pandemic once. Great. But we’re going to have to go on doing this.

Pod: I love what you said about experimenting.

Cause that’s a word I use a lot in all the work I do because I find that the notion of experiment allows us to make mistakes and allows us to learn from it and allows us to try out our hypothesis and to prove it right or wrong or whatever. Whereas if you say change the behaviors as that can be very difficult sometimes.

And so the notion of experimenting. During COVID, but everyone had to, there was no choice and we’ve learned a phenomenal amount as a result of it. And as you quite rightly said, a lot of it leaders have learned that, either the trust they had built up has been validated or they can trust the people more.

And there were surprise and it’s a very welcome surprise. but they were forced experiment. I think what you’re telling us now is. COVID forced us to experiment because we had no choice now, how do we take that experimentation muscle that we’ve been building and then keep applying it over and over again and see what naturally emerges and watch for that.

Josie: Yeah, because one of the qualities of living system is that it naturally adapts when it needs to. That’s one of those emergent qualities. if you can organize. An organization, according to the principles of living systems, you’re actually building in the capacity to be naturally adaptable when it’s necessary, right.

Throughout the organization, they may be adaptive patients that are different in different parts of the organization. And that’s an anathema to us when we think of Newton Newtonian paradigm, because the change has to be uniform the same and at the same time, So we’re at the organization. But actually that’s not the way natural systems work and you can have an adaptation in one place as peculiar.

Because of the circumstances and it makes sense in that particular location and not in another, and, or it might be at a different time because one place is ready at a different time. it, it enhances the adaptability and that this will actually become a strategic imperative that we can develop strategies as we’ve known them in the past, but it will need to be underpinned by an adaptability.

And I think. Developing that adaptability is becoming a strategic imperative and it fits so well with the work that Henry Mintzberg did back in the 1990s around emergent strategy, because that’s what strategy will become as we move forward, it will become a lot more emergent from different parts of the organization.

And then it can be institutionalized when it’s ready.

Pod: Josie. I need to bring this to an end are coming to an end. I’ve got two questions that I ask everybody in all of my interviews. And I love to pause and to you. One has got nothing to do with our interview. And one has the first one is what’s your favorite band or to our song?

Josie: Oh, wow. I think it probably, this is embarrassing probably takes me back.

Probably takes me back to John. Lennon’s imagine. I was a real Beatles fan when I was a kid. I can remember crying the day that they broke up, but I just love the sentiment behind John Lennon’s imagine there’s no. No borders, no differences between us. it’s such a, utopian song, but it’s great to imagine that this really

Pod: appeals.

None of them embarrassed by that song was the first one I ever learned on the piano. So there you go. You brought back memories for myself. And then last question, Josie, given everything we’ve talked about, given everything that you now know, what would you be telling the 35 old version of yourself today?

Josie: I think it would be, there’s no real rules. I used to think there were rules about how I should be and they are there’s cultural ones, but no one cares if I break them. And so I would be telling the 35 year old me, just to have a goal and to forget about all of my self doubt and.

All of my beliefs about what I can do and what I can’t do, because the more I do, the more I find out that he can do it. And so I don’t mean that there’s no legal laws. What I mean is that there are no rules about what you can do or can’t do in terms of your own capacity and your own potential. And. And I’ve nowhere reached my own potential and I don’t believe any of us ever do, but just to go on having a triad it and keep experimenting and trying things out.

But the world has not stopped spinning when I got it wrong.

Pod: That’s a lovely sentiment turned. I suspect many of us wish we had taught ourselves that a long time earlier than we actually did. Josie. Thank you so much for all that you’ve done and all that. You, all your research and all your contributions and thank you for making time for us today.

Really enjoyed hearing all of your insights. It’s

Josie: a real delight to talk with you. Thank you.

Pod: I hope you enjoy that conversation with Josie McClain. She certainly brings a whole wealth of knowledge to every conversation around complexity and particularly in relationship to leadership. Before I move into that. I’ve had a lot of people contact me over the last few weeks and how much they’re enjoying the end of episode seven, such as this.

So thank you for all of those contacts and reach outs and feedback. Glad you’re finding that. Helpful me. When I think about George’s conversation, a few things jump out at me as being really worthwhile to spend some time thinking about our noting about. The whole idea of living systems. There’s a huge body of knowledge around that.

And I certainly found for myself, I went back into some old readings on leaving systems and I find this a really useful reminder. So for anyone who is either new to living systems as a whole philosophy of knowledge, Or who hasn’t read about it recently, this might prompt you to do a revisit and look at some of the principles of living systems, such as adaptability, such as patients, such as humility, et cetera, and see how that might impact your thinking of leadership during times of complexity.

The metaphor of leader as gardener raised some lovely traits that are not new in any way in terms of leadership, but are very useful than how Josie gathered them around the metaphor of a gardener. And as does strike me that humility is one of the most underestimated and probably one of the most strategic.

Quantities of effective leadership during times of complexity, not because humility of itself or in itself, but because humility does allow or enable us as human beings and as the leader to be more open-minded to ask questions such as, how could I be wrong in this situation? Or what am I not noticing in this situation?

Or who can I ask? Questions or advice from in this situation and, keeps the open-mindedness on a high alert as well as staying to the edges of the conversations and looking for alternative opinions that might be useful. So the question for all of us always is, how can I be more humble or direct questions such as, how could I be wrong here?

Or who else can I ask information from? Might be useful questions to increase our levels of humility.

Josie: Okay.

Pod: The other metaphor of a deft touch. I really like that idea because it talks about mastery. It talks about effortless as opposed to effort team, and she outlined three areas. Where leaders can increase the sense of deafness of touch. One is looking at the strengths of your team and how do you allocate work or ideals of, strategy towards folks.

Who’ve got different strengths in different areas too, is how do you help? Aluminate the assumptions that your team are carrying with you and with them into different conversations. And lastly, how do you use powerful questions as a way to force bigger conversations? In a way that’s different to you just giving your opinion.

So there just three ideas that Josie brought that I think are worth while playing with. Lastly, for me, the biggest thing that came out of this is this notion of experimentation as a muscle. I love the idea that COVID has enabled almost all of us in all of our lives to experiment in ways we haven’t done before.

And adaptability is a trait of living systems. I, when we’re forced to, we can adapt very quickly. So how do organizations keep creating environments that encourage adaptability and encourage experimentation and encourage innovation? And not just have to resort to pandemics or external market changes or competitive her emergence as a reason to experiment with, to actually make this a lifelong and a work long process.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the leadership diet. We hope you enjoyed it. Head over to www.thedishofdiet.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast. To our blogs and retrieve the show notes from each episode, every show note has links to whatever resources were mentioned by our guests, including their favorite song or band.

And the best way you can support this podcast is by subscribing and sharing it with your colleagues and friends. So they can hear the insights from our guests as well. Thank

Josie: you.

Welcome Liz.

Liz: thank you very much for having me Pod,

Pod: first of all, 120 episodes of your podcast and in podcasting world, that’s almost 10 years worth of content.

Liz: Thank you. Thank you. I was congratulating myself on when I first started on getting to 10 episodes and now where, I passed a hundred and almost at 120, as we record this

Pod: well done, I think that’s probably exciting. And a noble accomplishment. Let’s jump to the notion of an executive assistant. It’s one of the roles that is often deemed to be a core role in a team are often delegated to bare administration support. And dare I say it, the second.

The second delegation doesn’t help anybody, particularly president their role, you own the business, my ear career. What do you hear from your clients as being their frustrations as they’re trying to support leaders that they’re working with?

Liz: I think the top frustration would be that it’s a high stress, low control.

Role. So because you are managing by influence, but because effectively you have very little control over, what’s actually coming at you as an individual, but your. Basking in the stress that the leader has coming at them and therefore flows on to you. I would describe that as the biggest frustration that your ability to be proactive is constantly under pressure because of the high stress, low control environment that you’re operating within.

And you have to be comfortable with being in that environment to thrive.

Pod: And the notion of low control. that’s really interesting one. So because the role of executive assistant is really an enablement type role. It enables a leader to do their role more efficiently and more effectively get low control doesn’t mean low influence, it can be a very influential role.

Liz: Absolutely. And the EAs that I see that really are operating at that highest level have. Actually taken ownership of the fact that they do have a seat at the table by the factor of being that EA to the leader. And they actually need to step up and claim that seat at the table, not in an, certainly not in an aggressive way.

But in an, in a way that, speaks to the fact that they, that the leader has confidence, trust and confidence in them, that the leader has designated them as somebody that does have their ear and does have the ability to actually have an influence on things that need to happen and need to be executed.

So it’s. It’s taking on an active role rather than a passive role,

Pod: which I’ve into how executive assistants can really help leaders. Let, maybe let’s just dial back a little bit. What’s the difference in your eyes between secretary or say a personal assistant and an executive system? Is there a difference and if so, what are they?

Liz: I think. Way that I look at it, I’ve developed something called the EA competency model and that’s actually driving at the heart of that issue because I think there is a confusion out there. And when I talk to some HR professionals, for example, they have the perception that. an EAs or a diamond doesn’t that you can fill a seat.

If an EA was to suddenly not be available for their leader, that they would be able to slot anyone into that role. But I would suggest that’s a fallacy because the competencies that I see it as an. describe it as quadrants, that EA competency model and at the very top, in terms of, if you think of the axis as functional competency and strategic competency as the X and Y axis that the order taker is at the very bottom is the bottom left.

And that’s what I would describe. As in some cases it would actually be the PA somebody that is. Very reactive that is taking instruction is not using initiative is not expected to use initiative. so for example, if you’ve employed somebody off shore, in the Philippines or somewhere else, then you are going to have to accept that person is very much an order taker.

They’re not, they have limited. strategic competency. They’re certainly not going to have the capability to be able to predict and anticipate your needs. Whereas somebody that’s at the top. As what I described as a linchpin pin assistant is somebody that has. High strategic competency and high functional competency.

So they’re extremely capable in terms of efficiencies, but they’re also extremely capable in terms of their strategic competency and their ability to see around corners. And that is where linchpin assistance or what I would define as the ideal.

Pod: I love that notion of see around corners. And if I go back to your earlier comment about some folks in organizations say to the role of VAs dime a dozen, that may well be at that as you’re describing the bottom left-hand corner.

So there’s someone who’s reactive, who too does the admin support, who does what is being asked of them was sitting the leaders I’ve worked with who have really excellent executive assistants. They do have that ability to see around corners. They do have the ability to save time. They do have the ability to prepare in advance for presentations or team meetings, et cetera.

And they certainly manage calendars judiciously on behalf of the leader because of that notion, being able to see around corners. I love that notion of linchpin. I think it really describes the idea of executive system for a senior leader, at least in our organization. When you are working with executive systems and in your business, you do both coaching and training.

And then a whole lot of speaking around this space, what are some of the things you get executive assistants to think about in terms of how they can move towards that notion of being more linchpin, like in their service?

Liz: I describe it that for you to actually spend more time and be more.

Present in that linchpin quadrant, it’s actually about developing what I describe as your power skills. And I call them power skills because they’re, we call them that they’re actually what we often describe as our soft skills. But I described them as power skills because for an executive assistant, they are, they need to be your soft skills on steroids.

They really need to be the thing that powers you to be able to deliver in your role as a linchpin. And so they’re the classic things that you would think about in terms of soft skills. So they’re influencing skills, managing up negotiation skills. Communication skills, listening skills, all of those sorts of things.

And I’ve got 10 of them that I’ve identified as the key power skills that really enable EAs to show up as linchpin assistants. When I’m talking to AIS, when I’m speaking to AIS, when I’m coaching AAS, I describe it as what I call the knowing assistant framework. And it’s made up of five things. So there’s the knowing yourself component.

There’s the knowing your leader. There’s the knowing your job. There’s the knowing your power skills, and then there’s the knowing your organization. So I look at it and I. Train and coachee in a holistic way to be able to say that these, all of these pieces are important. And if you can focus on developing and then being supported in terms of your development around all of these elements, you will be able to show up.

Differently and add more value in your role.

Pod: Let’s jump to one of those 10. The notion of knowing the leader diet is all about leadership and effective leadership. How can a executive assistant who’s been in the organization for awhile, they let’s say they inherit a new leader. So a new CEO comes in or a new business leader comes in. What can that executive system do to really get to know the leaders?

Preferences are styles of thinking or behavior patterns more than just the obvious by observing it because over time he can observe that. But how can the leader, how can the executive system accelerate that process? So they know the leader say within a month, as opposed to six months,

Liz: I have a concept called.

Three PS, which I encourage all the, to adopt when they take on a new executive new business later. And that’s about understanding their preferences, their pet peeves and their priorities. So that is a, an intentional conversation. And it’s not just a, one-off, it’s a conversation that you set the frame, the foundations for the relationship from the get-go and then some cases that might actually begin when you’re interviewing for the role, but certainly in the, at the very least, it happens immediately when you commence the role.

and you commence that relationship and in the same way, as we think. Think about a leader having a fast start. and the first 90 days being important for the leader, I encourage AI’s to think about having that intentional conversation with the leader about what do you want to see from me in the first 90 days?

And what can. I understand what will help me to be able to execute those things. What do I need to know about you? So I have some, some feedback surveys that I get the EAs to sit down and actually do with their business later. And sometimes what I, this is not always in an ideal world. This would happen when you first.

Start in that new relationship. But a lot of the EAs that I work with have been working with their executive for a while and have actually when they come to me or when I’m brought in to deal with them, they’re actually the relationship has broken down somewhat and the leader or the executive assistant.

Has said, I think we need to do something here. And so sometimes that activity is actually retrospective, but something as simple as sitting down and having a conversation around the three PS is a very good place to start. And actually I think at the heart of it, it’s actually being comfortable asking questions.

And again, that’s something that. AIS that are operating, that are already at supporting business leaders that are the CEO or the country manager might already be comfortable with that. But I find with the EIS that I deal with that there is an innate hesitancy around asking questions. I for fear of looking like you don’t know what’s going on and B there is this perception and I’ve heard it from a lot of EIS.

A lot of VA’s believe that they would like to be seen as, having some sort of magical powers, some sort of mystical  wouldn’t we all that they can predict without actually. Asking questions or seeking to understand, but I’m a big exponent of the whole Steven Coby seek first to understand. And in order to understand, you’ve got to ask questions, you’ve got to be comfortable asking questions.

So one of the things that I do as part of the knowing your boss, part of the framework is actually worked through. How do I ask good questions? How do I ask questions that are going to get an, asking open-ended questions? not asking compound questions, seeking to clarify, restating things back to the leader, to make sure that you’ve understood correctly and then drilling down.

The other thing that’s important to say is that none of this, the idea of the knowing assistant framework is not to add a layer of any sort of onerous layer to the relationship in actual fact when it’s working well, it’s actually something that feels. just natural and organic. It actually builds the relationship and the questions and the clarification’s become a natural part of that relationship.

It’s not something that feels forced or, in any way difficult.

Pod: I think what you’re describing the area is the fundamentals of dialogical process we had in a sales role leadership role on this case and exec assistant role, which goes to lubricating the relationship for better outcomes.

Liz: Yes, but what I find with AIS is that they can struggle with confidence. To actually advocate for themselves. So if we loop back to your first question, which is about the frustrations, one of the frustrations that I do hear a lot is in terms of that feeling, that they. Because they don’t have control that they don’t have the ability to speak up when they need to, and actually advocate for themselves.

So it’s one thing to advocate for your business leaders needs. It’s another thing to advocate for your own needs. And so it’s all around that, confidence to advocate for yourself around. Setting boundaries around communicating back to the leader when something’s not working well.

Pod: We hope you’re enjoying this episode of the leadership diet.

Feel free to hit the subscribe button on whatever podcast player you are listening to this on reviews on iTunes and Spotify. I greatly appreciate it. Let’s jump to the leader then. Cause they, the leader, obviously from a power dynamic perspective and an authority level of perspective is the more, let’s say the more senior person in that relationship.

Therefore there’s a little bit of an onus on how the leader can seek to optimize to a relationship in my own experience. I’ve been, Astounded over the years as to how little time leaders can spend in, again, you quote Steven coy, sharpening the saw as opposed to cutting the tree. So the relationship here with how do you optimize it?

What would you say to them? Or one or two key questions or ideas that they can put into the conversation that will then lead to optimizing the whole relationship?

Liz: the first thing I would ask them is. To think about their, how intentional they are around communicating with their EA. I did a survey, which has I continued to seek input into.

So now over it’s around 250 responses are, and one of the questions is around how business leaders actually. Connect and, update have conversations with their EAs. Do they have a daily update? Do they have a weekly update? Do they have no update at all? And it’s really interesting how so many, the large proportion continues to be that the conversations that.

The dialogue between the leader and the AI is ad hoc and spontaneous. It’s not planned and scheduled. And if it is planned and scheduled, how often that conversation is pushed aside for something that is perceived to be more important. So that would be my first. The thing that I would suggest is that even though you might feel that this spontaneous ad hoc communication is working just fine for you, I would challenge that may not necessarily be giving you the greatest leverage from your executive assistant.

And it’s sometimes. Having those, dedicating that time and having that time block of time in your diary is going to mean that there’s space. That you might not otherwise be making available in terms of your mental energy for your AI that you might benefit from? I think the other thing that also is relevant to is it in this current environment where we’re a lot of us are still continuing to work remotely and.

We don’t have the benefit of those normal, spontaneous, tiniest, and ad hoc conversations that would happen if we were together in the office, being intentional around your communication is relevant across. Your across the board in terms of the way the leader is showing up, but very much in terms of being intentional around your communication with your AI is something to think about.

Pod: Okay. So first thing there is given the leader always has. Busy diaries schedule 15, 20 minutes, whatever the number is, but on a regular basis, as opposed to ad hoc, which is to both share, what’s come up in a diary, but also to give maybe some enabled the EA to see around the corners as to what can happen.

Liz: as we said earlier, when we’re talking about the three pays, and one of those is the priorities. So if we thinking about what are the big rocks. We know, we might’ve had a conversation around what the strategic priorities are, but they may have shifted and there might be nuances there yeah. Is actually not across.

So again, one of the things that I find with EAs that I coach and train is that not all of those EAs pre-vis they don’t necessarily, there is an assumption. In some organizations and in some relationships that the EA has other more important things to do or more pressing things to do than to sit in a meeting with their executive.

But if possible, particularly those meetings that do. Pertain to the big rock priorities. I think there’s real value to be had in exposing your AI to those meetings. So that they’re actually hearing, not just the conversation, but the dynamics of the conversation and the nuances that go on in those meetings that.

Then not able to read between the lines when that’s been communicated in some other format.

Pod: I think that’s a really insightful comment. There is, some of the most effective, CEO level leaders or just business level leaders that I’ve worked with over the years, they actively have an executive system to helps in those meetings.

And it may well be that they’re. Supporting the leader and the exec team along the way. So there is reasons for him to be there, but one of the outputs of that involvement is as you say, they pick up the nuances of the priorities and strategic rocks. They also pick up the timeline of those priorities and.

The enablement of that means that the exec assistant often looks at the diary of a leader to make sure the diary leader is aligned with the strategic priorities, which means they become judiciously guarding of that leader’s diary to make sure that leader is focused on the priorities. Is that something that you’ve noticed.

Liz: And if we’re talking about, one of the power skills that I talked to EAs about is assertiveness and assertiveness skills is, it is a balancing act. I describe it as a Seesaw that you’ve got assertiveness in the middle and you’ve got passive at one end and aggressive at the other, and it is a constant.

Act of balancing in the middle and it’s about respectful communication. So if we’re talking about protecting the leader’s time and protecting the leader’s priorities for the EA, what that actually looks and I’ve actually coached EAs around, this is actually being able to have assertive conversations with whether it’s other people in the leadership team, other stakeholders to actually push back.

On requests for time to be able to communicate with them, that you are understand that this is important to them, but that it does not work for the leader at, in the timeframe at that point. And that is a skill and a competency that’s really important for an AA to develop so that they can, assertiveness then leads on to their ability to be influencing.

Without authority and getting, earning respect by being able to have those tricky conversations with people about protecting the leader’s time and energy.

Pod: Great. Speaking of time, one question that I’ve regularly encouraged the leaders I work with. who have a good relationship with their executive assistant or who’s about to hire, an executive assistant.

And the question is, if I give you full control of my diary, how would you send me 10 hours a week? And I’ve always been astounded as to the answers that come back, that the leader often didn’t expect as the leader expected all, they will cut stuff out of my diary, but in fact, What has happened is the executive system is I can take stuff off you.

I can do this on your behalf or in advance for you, et cetera.

Liz: Absolutely. I’m dealing with an AI at the moment. that is actually happening in action in this current environment where. We’re working remotely, whether, the leader is very focused on doing a weekly communication with the, an Hans communication and the leader was investing time in their calendar, into meetings, working with the comms department about that.

What that was going to look like for the week reviewing the script. Walking through the various points, interacting with multiple people. And that was taking up time in their calendar. And the EA was able to see that I, it actually was taking up time in the calendar that the leader. Didn’t need to be involved in that it could be done completely, separately that she could actually have those conversations because she knew what the key things were that needed to be communicated that week.

She had already had that conversation. She was already aware and across those things. So she was able to feed all of that back into the comms department with the leader, not being involved in it. Font doing a final scan and potentially picking up a couple of things, but effectively taking out what effectively was two hours a week of the leader sitting down with various people to get that script.

And that process executed. The other thing that I would say is a really simple way of finding time for the leader and giving them space that they might otherwise not even be, it might not even have on their radar is rather than blocking things in one hour blocks in the calendar, blocking them in 45 minute blocks so that you’re immediately gifting them with the 15 minutes.

That they can have to have time for something else that they want to focus on in that 15 minutes. But it also gives other people a very clear indicator. It sets boundaries with other people that this leader does have 45 minutes available for me. I need to communicate with them what I want to communicate in that 45 minute block and that the AI is actually.

Enforcing this hard stop in terms of creating a pattern in the diary, that there is no expectation that it’s an hour meeting, that it’s a 45 minutes slot and you need to get done what you need to get done in that 45 minutes.

Pod: I love that idea and it ties into a white paper that we have on our website called the daily habits of exceptional leaders, which came from a study a number of years ago that I was involved with.

But one of the outputs of that study was there’s many things, but one of them was that the really exceptional leaders have a very strong notion of managing their diary. In this case was two 45, 50 minutes, but I eat less than an hour, no matter what, that was. One thing, the second thing was they didn’t go to meetings unless there was an agenda.

Already pre-prescribed. And when I interviewed the leaders who are deemed to be exceptional in this group, one of the things I noticed was this is a very subtle comment, but it came through and through that, once they realized for them to be efficient, the time. And scarcity time was the most important thing in their life because they’d been paid to think if they haven’t got enough time to think there really are, they’re working at a level too low for their role.

So the time of the meetings became really important. Hence your comment about 45 minutes, the ongoing two meetings that only if there’s an agenda in the invitation, cause then we know what we’re here about. So we’re not wasting time. But to your point, they delegated the policing of that to the executive assistants because that person was best placed to do that.

it’s just off today. It sounds like for the leader, because again, they have the authority in this relationship more so than the other person, if they were just to take that simple notion of. Walking through here are my priorities. Here are my preferences here, my peeves. And then how can you help me maximize my diary?

So I have more thinking time that will be a great conversation.

Liz: Absolutely. And I think it would be, it would open the door. Two other conversations, because I think one of the things that AIS respond really well to is the leader actually giving them the sense that the leader is interested. In their input and in their observations.

And I describe EA’s as little hinges that can swing big doors. And I think that is something that business leaders, and often HR, don’t fully appreciate. They do see them as a commodity, as a replaceable commodity. Whereas, I see them as little hinges that can swing big doors. And if you strengthen those hinges, by investing in their power skills,  by investing in, the things that are going to help them be effective, not just efficient, you’re going to be building stronger little hinges that can swing much bigger doors.

Pod: that is such a metaphor to finish this conversation on well done.

There’s a level. That I finished all my episodes with the same two questions. So I’d like to put the same two to you. If I could. The first one being now that you have accumulated all the experiences you have and the wisdom that comes with that, what would you tell that 35 year old version of yourself today?

Oh

Liz: my goodness. We’ve got another hour to have this conversation. What would I tell? I would tell the 35 year old me that. You know what I would tell the 35 year old me that I am. I am just great as I am, and I don’t need to be anything else. I just need to be more.

Pod: And your favorite song, what would that be?

Liz: Goodness. Over the rainbow. Oh, yeah. Cause I used to sing it when my daughters were little. I used to sing it to them to put them to sleep.

Pod: Fabulous. Certainly put a link to that song.

So for anyone who wants to know more, my EA career.com is a website to go to. And anyone who wants to listen to a podcast, and they’re specifically oriented to the work of executive assistance, ‘Being indispensable’ is the way to go. These blades. Thank you for joining this morning. So good to have you here.

Liz: Thank you for having me

Pod: hope you found that conversation with Liz. Helpful one or two nuggets and maybe one or two questions to ponder for me. As I said in that interview at Liz, I’m often astounded how little time leaders spend with their executive assistant. And if Liz is right in that, a great executive assistant is a little hinges, swing, big doors, then putting small bit of structure into the relationship, or at least a conversation can only be helpful.

Her notion of three P’s. What are your preferences as a leader? What are your priorities and what are your pet peeves to my mind is a similar conversation as to a new leader, assimilation conversation that a leader often has with their team. The relationship between the leader and executive assistant is often a far more personal relationship then between the leader and their direct reports, not always.

But often these and therefore help being the executive assistant who sees your diary every single day, knows what you’re up to, helping them to understand what are your priorities, your preferences, and your pet peeves can only be a good conversation. The other question that emerged in that interview, which I’ve often used with leaders to ask of their own exec assists and to, which is if I was to give you complete control of my diary, how would you save me time?

It’s a great conversation to both help them develop in their ability to help you, but it often surfaces really unexpected outcomes and often very useful outcomes. So that’s certainly a question to consider in your next conversation. Lastly, I think the, this conversation for me surfaced again, the importance of aligning your diary with your strategy and your priorities, and really looking at how do you set up your meetings?

The daily habits of exceptional leader study that are referred to in that interview. And indeed, as a white paper on the website for you to go and look at, if that’s of interest made it really clear that in that particular study exceptional leaders, number one, only take invitations to a meeting. If there is an agenda or the decisions to be made are outlined.

And B their meetings typically are less than an hour. So typically around 20 to 25 minutes, or as Liz said, 45 to 50 minutes, and that often is enough. So how do you help your exec assistant to understand your preferences around your diaries and to make sure that your diary is aligned with your key process?

Lastly this whole podcast series is aimed at senior leaders, but senior leaders are only as effective as a team they have around them. So maybe it might be worth considering sharing this episode with your exec assistant, who knows what conversations are thinking patterns might emerge as a result of that.