Rob:
00:00:00
I remember I was in a Facebook group.
Rob:
00:00:01
It wasn't one I'd paid for.
Rob:
00:00:02
It was, like when you look at things.
Rob:
00:00:04
They were like, you can earn, I can't remember what it was, a hundred
Rob:
00:00:08
grand or 10 grand a month or whatever it is selling your knowledge and
Rob:
00:00:12
you don't have to be an expert.
Rob:
00:00:13
I remember this girl.
Rob:
00:00:14
And she was like these people are posting and she's 22, 23, 24.
Rob:
00:00:20
She go, Oh, I found it.
Rob:
00:00:21
I found my niche.
Rob:
00:00:22
I've been on dating apps.
Rob:
00:00:23
I'm going to teach people dating.
Rob:
00:00:25
Next thing is, Yeah, this system works.
Rob:
00:00:28
I've had my first sale, it was just before Christmas and she's
Rob:
00:00:31
given me eight grand in savings.
Rob:
00:00:33
She's gonna clear the rest by January.
Rob:
00:00:36
Yay me!
Rob:
00:00:37
Now I can have a great Christmas.
Rob:
00:00:39
You don't know what you're doing.
Rob:
00:00:40
Yeah.
Rob:
00:00:41
That's crazy.
Rob:
00:00:41
I think there is a lot of, there's so many people that I think are disenfranchised,
Rob:
00:00:46
disenchanted with corporate work that they want to work for themselves.
Rob:
00:00:50
And there's all these people who are giving them the shovels and
Rob:
00:00:53
going you don't need to know this.
Rob:
00:00:54
You don't need to be an expert.
Rob:
00:00:55
You just do this and this.
Rob:
00:00:57
I think there's a real problem.
Rob:
00:00:59
There's a lot of people and I talk to people and you can tell when someone has
Rob:
00:01:03
deep knowledge and when they're don't really know what they're talking about.
Rob:
00:01:06
The typical thing is used to be in relationships is, we were at a breaking
Rob:
00:01:10
point, we sorted it out, now we're happy, now we'll teach you how to do
Rob:
00:01:14
it and now in leadership it's been, I was a failing manager and I turned
Rob:
00:01:18
it around and now I can teach you.
Tony:
00:01:19
As if everybody's in exactly the same situation with the same toolkit,
Rob:
00:01:23
yeah.
Tony:
00:01:23
Doing the same job.
Tony:
00:01:24
It's it's crazy.
Rob:
00:01:26
I think it's very difficult for a company for someone who's looking for
Rob:
00:01:30
training, how do you know someone who's good when it's something because you want
Rob:
00:01:33
someone else in, you can't really judge.
Rob:
00:01:36
I don't know if you've ever read the the art of war.
Rob:
00:01:38
Yeah, I love
Tony:
00:01:39
the art of war here.
Rob:
00:01:41
We're reading that now for our book club.
Rob:
00:01:42
Did Michael suggest it?
Rob:
00:01:44
I think so.
Rob:
00:01:44
I put up four books.
Rob:
00:01:46
I put up the art of war.
Rob:
00:01:47
Is it one of his favorites?
Tony:
00:01:49
I'm working with him on my book, right?
Tony:
00:01:51
I told him how inspired I was by it many years ago when I was in football and how I
Tony:
00:01:55
could apply it straight away to different areas of the game that I was doing.
Tony:
00:02:00
So we've had dialogue around it.
Tony:
00:02:01
That's why I'm asking.
Tony:
00:02:02
I know that he's in the book club with you.
Rob:
00:02:04
Yeah.
Rob:
00:02:04
I put up four books.
Rob:
00:02:06
I put up art of war.
Rob:
00:02:07
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius Nietzsche's Good and Evil Ethics, or whatever it is.
Rob:
00:02:12
Can't remember the last one.
Rob:
00:02:13
No one voted for the last one anyway.
Rob:
00:02:15
Nietzsche got one vote and Art of War got three and Marcus Aurelius got two.
Rob:
00:02:20
So it's a very short book now,
Rob:
00:02:22
I've just started to read it again.
Rob:
00:02:23
I think I was a teenager when I first read it.
Rob:
00:02:25
He's telling the parable, a Chinese parable of a family of doctors and
Rob:
00:02:29
he said he's the best known doctor.
Rob:
00:02:31
He said my oldest brother is a brilliant doctor.
Rob:
00:02:33
He said he can see the spirit of illness before it forms.
Rob:
00:02:36
And so he heals it and no one talks of him.
Rob:
00:02:38
My elder brother is a great doctor.
Rob:
00:02:41
He can see the earliest signs and he can catch it before it's
Rob:
00:02:44
taken root and he can solve it.
Rob:
00:02:45
Me, I perform surgeries.
Rob:
00:02:47
I sell new potions.
Rob:
00:02:48
So word gets around and everyone thinks I'm great.
Rob:
00:02:51
That sums it up, isn't it?
Rob:
00:02:52
I remember in mediation training, if they don't even notice you're there,
Rob:
00:02:56
that's when you've done a good mediation.
Rob:
00:02:57
But it's really hard to do that.
Rob:
00:02:59
Cause your best work no one's going to recognize it.
Rob:
00:03:02
And if no one's going to recognize it, it's really hard.
Tony:
00:03:04
I brought that up yesterday with someone which was.
Tony:
00:03:06
When you are selling leadership development, for example, or some
Tony:
00:03:11
sort of training to an organization, especially in the coaching environment.
Tony:
00:03:14
An organization takes you in as an executive coach or a performance coach.
Tony:
00:03:18
HR need to somehow measure the intervention, measure the
Tony:
00:03:22
value of the intervention.
Tony:
00:03:24
Of course, sometimes those conversations are so deeply personal that you as
Tony:
00:03:29
the coach and the individual who's the recipient of the interaction
Tony:
00:03:33
can see the growth and feel it.
Tony:
00:03:34
You're going through it together.
Tony:
00:03:36
They're progressing really brilliantly.
Tony:
00:03:38
It doesn't immediately manifest.
Tony:
00:03:40
As an outcome for the business, but it's long term value is it's
Tony:
00:03:45
almost really difficult to manage.
Tony:
00:03:47
It's really critical to have a three way dialogue when you
Tony:
00:03:49
start those types of things.
Tony:
00:03:50
Me, the organization and the the coachees or the trainees or whoever
Tony:
00:03:55
they are, and absolutely agree what the terms of the engagement are
Tony:
00:04:00
and how it's going to be measured.
Tony:
00:04:01
Because it is one of the hardest things.
Tony:
00:04:02
How do you measure what is to a large degree intangible.,
Tony:
00:04:07
I've had 10 sessions with this guy and I feel so much better.
Tony:
00:04:10
I am much more, whatever those things might be.
Tony:
00:04:15
We know, and they know that they're in a better place when they come
Tony:
00:04:18
to work, they're more robust, they're more resilient, they're
Tony:
00:04:20
more focused, whatever it might be.
Tony:
00:04:23
It might not necessarily translate to somebody being able to go,
Tony:
00:04:26
Oh, we've had An upturn in 3 percent growth for that reason.
Tony:
00:04:30
So it's a really difficult one, but it's a very real challenge is to have
Tony:
00:04:33
some metrics that really get clarity with the organization and the people
Tony:
00:04:38
who are the recipients of the value exchange to try and quantify what
Tony:
00:04:42
good looks like through that service.
Tony:
00:04:45
I've done a fair bit of work around that.
Tony:
00:04:46
I was reading something before I jumped online.
Tony:
00:04:49
It was Gallup's latest paper, they're always researching
Tony:
00:04:52
this, that and the other.
Tony:
00:04:53
And I think the quote was, I'm just trying to find it here.
Tony:
00:04:56
People surveyed across the world, said that hope was the biggest factor in
Tony:
00:05:01
what they wanted from their leaders.
Tony:
00:05:03
I'm thinking that is such a difficult subjective, impossible
Tony:
00:05:08
to quantify, meaningfully.
Tony:
00:05:10
Like how do you measure?
Tony:
00:05:11
How if you're on a leadership team, do you create a sense of
Tony:
00:05:14
hope in the people that are there?
Tony:
00:05:15
For me, it immediately says, what the hell's going on in your organization that
Tony:
00:05:19
people are crying out for a sense of hope?
Tony:
00:05:22
That's the first thing that it says to me.
Tony:
00:05:24
There's something about the survey itself which feels a little bit
Tony:
00:05:27
like an intentional misdirection.
Tony:
00:05:29
It's almost like this, these people that are trying to sell to the needy want a
Tony:
00:05:32
solution to sell more of their business.
Tony:
00:05:34
And this person's got the solution.
Tony:
00:05:36
I think that sells the self selling to people that are not selling.
Tony:
00:05:40
It's a much easier sell.
Tony:
00:05:41
Going back to this idea of hope, it begs the question, like what's happening within
Tony:
00:05:46
the work, what problems are going on in there that even a driving somebody to
Tony:
00:05:50
respond like that what's happening at managerial level that is dysfunctional?
Tony:
00:05:54
That people are feeling like that, toxic environments, blah, blah, blah.
Tony:
00:05:59
What are they doing by measuring somehow in an arbitrary way?
Tony:
00:06:03
We're going to survey you.
Tony:
00:06:04
I don't know how they've asked the question, but they've jumped, they've
Tony:
00:06:07
landed on this 60 odd percent of people put hope at the top of what
Tony:
00:06:11
it is they want from their leaders.
Tony:
00:06:12
How do I work with that?
Tony:
00:06:14
It's not a primary metric, right?
Tony:
00:06:15
How do you turn that subjective, intangible metric
Tony:
00:06:19
into meaningful practice?
Tony:
00:06:20
It heartens me to a degree, because that's the kind of, that sort of wishy washy
Tony:
00:06:24
stuff says what's the real problem here?
Tony:
00:06:27
Let's go and actually uncover it.
Tony:
00:06:29
Let's do some diagnosis.
Tony:
00:06:31
Let's work out what you want.
Tony:
00:06:33
Do the fundamental Diagnosis at the bottom, not the subjective
Tony:
00:06:36
stuff, more let's get some data around what's actually going on.
Tony:
00:06:39
And then see where the gaps are, and work strategically with the organization
Tony:
00:06:43
to say here's the gaps that have been identified, which is the priority
Tony:
00:06:46
right now, and let's start to try and close that and let's do it in this way.
Tony:
00:06:50
Let's do it with these people for this number of things, working on these
Tony:
00:06:54
things, and this is what the upside should be after doing that work.
Tony:
00:06:58
And there might be a little bit of coaching for person A, B, C, and D
Tony:
00:07:02
who've been identified as, whatever it might be, stressed or so on.
Tony:
00:07:05
I'm reading this, on the one hand, getting annoyed about the subjectivity
Tony:
00:07:09
of it, and the fact that I feel like I'm being given some numbers that I
Tony:
00:07:14
can't quantify, it's hard for me to and I'm not a mathematician either,
Tony:
00:07:17
so it might just be me not getting it.
Tony:
00:07:19
But I'm thinking 60 odd percent of people put hope at the top of the
Tony:
00:07:23
things they want from their leaders.
Tony:
00:07:24
It's that's telling me a whole host of things about problems
Tony:
00:07:28
that need to be identified.
Tony:
00:07:29
That the organizations need to get a grip of, and maybe that's the message.
Tony:
00:07:32
Having just articulated all that out loud, maybe there's something to address there.
Tony:
00:07:37
And we know there's a massive addressable market for leadership development.
Tony:
00:07:40
We've had that dialogue in the week and last week with Clark, the whole
Tony:
00:07:44
idea of leadership, I think it means different things to different people.
Tony:
00:07:47
So what is it that they see?
Tony:
00:07:49
I see leadership as a skill, not as.
Tony:
00:07:52
a position or a hierarchy.
Tony:
00:07:54
You practice leadership.
Tony:
00:07:56
You can lead at home, you can lead at school, you can lead when you're
Tony:
00:07:59
out and about, depending what circumstances you're faced with.
Tony:
00:08:02
People need some sort of help, you can step in and change the
Tony:
00:08:06
dynamics of what's going on.
Tony:
00:08:07
There's a ton of stuff around that.
Rob:
00:08:09
My original research when I Studied psychology measuring happiness
Rob:
00:08:13
self esteem, locus of control, extroversion, optimism with happiness.
Rob:
00:08:18
I've spent years looking at how do you measure relationships?
Rob:
00:08:22
It is all subjective and that's the problem.
Rob:
00:08:24
If you went back 50, 60 years, the world was objective because it was a factory
Rob:
00:08:29
you can point to there's a machine everyone can put everyone knows what a
Rob:
00:08:33
lathe is, a machine is a screwdriver.
Rob:
00:08:36
What we're now dealing with is more abstract things you can't measure.
Rob:
00:08:40
What is leadership?
Rob:
00:08:41
What is hope?
Rob:
00:08:42
What is happiness?
Rob:
00:08:43
What is a relationship?
Rob:
00:08:44
We have different ideas about them.
Rob:
00:08:47
I think language is quite important not for the words themselves,
Rob:
00:08:50
but there's a thought, there's a way that a word has come up.
Rob:
00:08:54
The origin of the word still imbued in the way that we talk about it.
Rob:
00:08:58
So manage was to handle, so that was about handling cattle.
Rob:
00:09:03
Whereas leading is more guiding, which is more humane focused thing.
Rob:
00:09:06
Even though it seems pedantic, my personality type on Myers Briggs is the
Rob:
00:09:11
most logically precise, so I'm quite pedantic about how you think about things.
Rob:
00:09:17
S or N?
Rob:
00:09:18
I N T P. N, yeah.
Rob:
00:09:19
Yeah.
Rob:
00:09:19
Going back to looking at, I think in terms of performance I was looking at all
Rob:
00:09:23
kinds of ways, how do you do performance?
Rob:
00:09:25
And then I said surely it's going to be like a return on investment type thing.
Rob:
00:09:29
I was looking into that and I found that companies do use that return on the cost
Rob:
00:09:34
of the people, in performance terms, but it's a backward measure, isn't it?
Tony:
00:09:38
Yeah.
Tony:
00:09:38
It's a lag indicator because the there's market forces as well that
Tony:
00:09:42
can have a bigger impact than any work that you're doing internally.
Tony:
00:09:45
Lag indicators make sense.
Tony:
00:09:47
People that look for results.
Tony:
00:09:49
It's like football, the team lost.
Tony:
00:09:50
Therefore we all feel bad.
Tony:
00:09:51
The coach needs to be fired.
Tony:
00:09:52
That's on one day.
Tony:
00:09:53
Next week we beat somebody in the crowds, happy, optimistic, and
Tony:
00:09:56
feeling great about the future.
Tony:
00:09:57
And we're all cheering for the manager again.
Tony:
00:09:59
It's like none of it factors in the reality of what's actually going on.
Tony:
00:10:04
That reality is not just on a sort of macro level, it's honed
Tony:
00:10:09
right into the individual.
Tony:
00:10:10
So on any given day, you could have 10 people just turn up
Tony:
00:10:13
and just not feeling at it.
Tony:
00:10:14
You can be prepared the best you possibly can and just turn up feeling, call
Tony:
00:10:19
it biorhythms, call it what you want.
Tony:
00:10:21
You just feeling off your legs, feel heavy.
Tony:
00:10:23
There's no reason.
Tony:
00:10:24
You're as fit as you've ever been.
Tony:
00:10:25
You just not, you don't have the mental clarity.
Tony:
00:10:28
There's something just out of balance, which may be in that moment is really hard
Tony:
00:10:32
even for the individual to understand.
Tony:
00:10:34
It's where's my legs today?
Tony:
00:10:35
All of that stuff happened to me, I'm managing a women's team.
Tony:
00:10:39
We're going really well.
Tony:
00:10:40
On the weekend.
Tony:
00:10:41
We had one of those shock results where we were beaten 1 0.
Tony:
00:10:43
They had one chance at the opposition in the whole game.
Tony:
00:10:46
We dominated the game.
Tony:
00:10:47
But the behavior of the team the lack of composed, the lack of normalcy about
Tony:
00:10:52
what I was observing was an indicator that way more than half of the people
Tony:
00:10:57
were just having an off day and that, people say, Oh, where's the leaders?
Tony:
00:11:01
You hear all these pundits saying, where's the leadership on the pitch?
Tony:
00:11:04
All of my leaders were on the pitch, but they just couldn't
Tony:
00:11:08
find it in themselves to do it.
Tony:
00:11:09
That's life.
Tony:
00:11:10
That is life.
Rob:
00:11:11
That's my biggest takeaway from Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and
Rob:
00:11:15
Slow, was about regression to the mean.
Rob:
00:11:18
I remember playing golf.
Rob:
00:11:20
I was winning by quite a bit and I was playing someone who was much better than
Rob:
00:11:23
me and we were having banter and I was like, the longer it goes on, the more
Rob:
00:11:27
it's going to, it's going to level out.
Rob:
00:11:28
And Kahneman was talking about how people misread statistics.
Rob:
00:11:32
He was saying, basically all the people in the city.
Rob:
00:11:35
Most of them, despite their huge bonuses and statistically it's been proven that
Rob:
00:11:40
there are no more than if you had a monkey for just picking out randomly and he
Rob:
00:11:45
said this to he was talking to a manager.
Rob:
00:11:47
He said you don't have to give them that bonuses like that.
Rob:
00:11:50
And he's oh yeah we need talent.
Rob:
00:11:52
And he just completely misread the statistics.
Rob:
00:11:54
Regression to the mean I had never thought of it, so someone like Man United, they
Rob:
00:11:58
buy someone like Alexis Sanchez done brilliantly, or someone's had a great
Rob:
00:12:02
season, they pay top price for them, they never perform like that again, because
Rob:
00:12:06
they were having a random outlier season, and then they regressed to the average.
Rob:
00:12:11
Just to go back to the hope I found that article and I haven't read it
Rob:
00:12:16
obviously, but I think that goes to what you say leadership is.
Rob:
00:12:20
That leadership is creating capacity.
Rob:
00:12:23
Because then I think that's what people are hoping for.
Tony:
00:12:25
That's a great insight.
Tony:
00:12:27
I love it when there's different perceptions of the
Tony:
00:12:30
same piece of information.
Tony:
00:12:31
If I think about, if you go back to your analogy of.
Tony:
00:12:34
Everybody knew 60 years ago what the job was, they were putting a peg in a hole on
Tony:
00:12:39
a fixed sequence as many times as possible to be as productive as they could be.
Tony:
00:12:44
And they had somebody like monitoring that and keeping them
Tony:
00:12:47
to time and task and so forth.
Tony:
00:12:49
The managers were militantly going about their business.
Tony:
00:12:52
So that's not leadership, right?
Tony:
00:12:54
That's just do your job, you know how to do it.
Tony:
00:12:56
Do your job, do it to the best of your ability, blah, blah, blah.
Tony:
00:12:59
Easy to measure, tangible, technical, simple, and not always simple.
Tony:
00:13:04
Like a surgeon is the same thing, just on a more life and death.
Tony:
00:13:08
But again, it's not leadership, just a highly skilled guy
Tony:
00:13:11
doing open heart surgery.
Tony:
00:13:13
It's not leading the team.
Tony:
00:13:14
They're all highly skilled as well.
Tony:
00:13:16
He's just really focused on getting this thing done.
Tony:
00:13:19
It's when you've got a group of people who've come together to, it might
Tony:
00:13:23
be a sales team to hit a new target 20 percent increase on last year,
Tony:
00:13:29
which had never been done before.
Tony:
00:13:30
So they've got some historical data that says this is our ideal customer.
Tony:
00:13:34
But then they're going out to new market, maybe with new product.
Tony:
00:13:37
And they're trying to hit a somewhat irrational growth target because
Tony:
00:13:40
no one's ever done it before that requires leadership because in the face
Tony:
00:13:45
of that, you've got people's hopes.
Tony:
00:13:46
You've got people's ambitions.
Tony:
00:13:48
You've got people's needs.
Tony:
00:13:49
You've got people's motivations and for each of those people in the
Tony:
00:13:53
sales team who are going to be a part of this growth towards something
Tony:
00:13:56
that they've never achieved before.
Tony:
00:13:58
The sales manager he's dealing with all of those hidden things, he's dealing
Tony:
00:14:03
with values, whenever we talk about values or shared sense of purpose or
Tony:
00:14:06
motivation, or, things that are on the inside of all of these different people,
Tony:
00:14:10
that's fine if they're just doing a job to get what they know how to do done.
Tony:
00:14:15
But if it requires new capacity, if we're going to have to grow together
Tony:
00:14:18
through this towards something bigger, I think then a leader needs to come in
Tony:
00:14:22
because that quest towards something that's never been done before.
Tony:
00:14:25
You start the football season.
Tony:
00:14:27
You think we're going to be mid table team.
Tony:
00:14:30
The stretch might be, can we get into Europe?
Tony:
00:14:32
Let's say it's never been done before.
Tony:
00:14:33
It needs a lot of leadership to understand everybody's intent towards that goal.
Tony:
00:14:38
The person in charge might go, I've got a vision for getting into
Tony:
00:14:42
the, into Europe, or I've got a vision for me in this sales target.
Tony:
00:14:46
And for me personally, it means I get a huge bonus and my family can go
Tony:
00:14:49
on holiday or whatever it might be.
Tony:
00:14:51
But for everybody, then it's about what do they want?
Tony:
00:14:53
That's different from what I want in how we go after this.
Tony:
00:14:56
What's important to them in the way that we do it that I need to be aware
Tony:
00:15:00
of to to ensure I can create the optimal environment for them to be successful.
Tony:
00:15:06
There's nothing fixed about any of that.
Tony:
00:15:08
It comes back to the relationships that you're talking about, really understanding
Tony:
00:15:11
the people, meeting them where they're at.
Tony:
00:15:13
So if I think that my leadership style is autocratic or democratic or whatever.
Tony:
00:15:18
I've given myself this box, I've done some sort of survey that says
Tony:
00:15:22
this is the type of leader that I am.
Tony:
00:15:24
That's okay on a two dimensional piece of paper, accept that's the start line.
Tony:
00:15:29
That's maybe where I'm most naturally suited, but it's
Tony:
00:15:32
way more granular than that.
Tony:
00:15:33
So then we start working together.
Tony:
00:15:36
I need to start shifting.
Tony:
00:15:37
I need to start dialing up the heat sometimes to create a bit of conflict
Tony:
00:15:41
or mitigate conflict before it happens or diffuse conflict when it's blown
Tony:
00:15:46
up because nobody saw it coming.
Tony:
00:15:48
So I need to start turning these and that's what score does.
Tony:
00:15:51
It gives you these five dials that you can start to intentionally Adjust
Tony:
00:15:56
in small amounts to be able to move, to play with, move towards you to
Tony:
00:16:01
make sure We're doing it together.
Tony:
00:16:03
And he'll also say, here's the peg in the ground for the group.
Tony:
00:16:06
So if we're going on this big innovation journey and the team really is only
Tony:
00:16:10
moderately wired for innovation as a start point, we might need to recruit
Tony:
00:16:13
someone, we might need to take periods of time where we dial up our intentional.
Tony:
00:16:18
process to, to innovate, which is going to be draining and
Tony:
00:16:21
challenging for us, but let's do it.
Tony:
00:16:23
Let's set time aside to do it.
Tony:
00:16:24
Let's give ourselves time to recover from it.
Tony:
00:16:26
It's those types of things.
Tony:
00:16:28
So when you're building new capacity and you're asking people to stretch
Tony:
00:16:32
outside their comfort zone to grow, then that's going to have an impact on them.
Tony:
00:16:35
They'll be fearful of it.
Tony:
00:16:36
Sometimes there'll be resistant to it.
Tony:
00:16:39
Sometimes there'll be overly enthusiastic sometimes.
Tony:
00:16:43
Leadership happens when all these things are starting and
Tony:
00:16:45
everybody's doing it differently.
Tony:
00:16:47
It's complicated and I think that's where we're at this growth
Tony:
00:16:50
when people are growing towards something that they've never
Tony:
00:16:52
achieved before, it needs leadership.
Tony:
00:16:55
So it's even the leader saying I've not done it either.
Tony:
00:16:57
We're in this together, but I'm going to try and navigate.
Tony:
00:17:01
I'll take accountability for this.
Tony:
00:17:03
And in doing so.
Tony:
00:17:04
I need to be bloody good at connecting with people and helping them on that
Tony:
00:17:09
journey, because I need to grow as well.
Rob:
00:17:11
That's interesting because I come from a completely opposite end of things.
Rob:
00:17:16
I come from the individual.
Rob:
00:17:17
So for me it's, It started with happiness.
Rob:
00:17:20
Yeah, understand people.
Rob:
00:17:21
What do people need?
Rob:
00:17:22
And most of that is relationships.
Rob:
00:17:24
Then it's people need relationships.
Rob:
00:17:26
People need and this is what we were talking about last week.
Rob:
00:17:30
And where Clark was saying that people need to be better followers.
Rob:
00:17:33
In a sense, but I don't think people should follow blindly.
Rob:
00:17:36
I think people in order to be happy, you have to have something to contribute to.
Rob:
00:17:43
It's like Emmanuel Kant said, what was it?
Rob:
00:17:46
Someone to love, something to hope for and something to do.
Rob:
00:17:49
If you start with an individual needs to grow.
Rob:
00:17:52
So they need to grow personally.
Rob:
00:17:54
There's a point where we have to join with another.
Rob:
00:17:57
We join romantically because we want to be more.
Rob:
00:17:59
And our identity shifts from being Us to be from being me as an
Rob:
00:18:04
individual to being us as a unit.
Rob:
00:18:07
That's Is the shift of that identity where when you stop being an individual and
Rob:
00:18:13
you start Seeing yourself as the team.
Rob:
00:18:15
That's when the team build.
Rob:
00:18:17
So that's where I got into that.
Rob:
00:18:19
This is where the link from if you're going to be in a relationship,
Rob:
00:18:22
you need to join as a team.
Rob:
00:18:23
You are still the individual, but then it's a bigger circle that
Rob:
00:18:26
you are an individual, you are the relationship, you are the team.
Rob:
00:18:30
All of that is about the relationship.
Rob:
00:18:31
But the key to the relationship is keeping communication going.
Rob:
00:18:35
And the key to keeping communication going is to manage conflict.
Rob:
00:18:39
Being able to disagree without having a drama, as I call it.
Rob:
00:18:43
And then when I looked at it leaders.
Rob:
00:18:46
often don't have confidence because they're scared of conflict or
Rob:
00:18:49
often because of the relationships because they don't feel worthy.
Rob:
00:18:52
And I feel that they need to have people behind them.
Rob:
00:18:55
And I think that's where you build the relationship.
Rob:
00:18:58
But it's not just about having good one to one relationships.
Rob:
00:19:01
It's building an identity for the team.
Rob:
00:19:03
It's building a culture that people come in, if you look at Manchester United
Rob:
00:19:07
It's the best example of a worse culture.
Rob:
00:19:09
You get great players go there and be average because something happens in
Rob:
00:19:14
that whole culture that lowers everyone.
Rob:
00:19:16
So I think it's when you can build that communication when you can
Rob:
00:19:20
build the relationship so everyone individually feels they've got
Rob:
00:19:24
more to gain from being part of the team than from being an individual.
Rob:
00:19:27
That's when they're united.
Rob:
00:19:28
That's what I call being a unifier.
Rob:
00:19:30
When you can articulate that, then you have the authority to hold people
Rob:
00:19:34
accountable for their performance, for their standards, for their values.
Rob:
00:19:37
The natural next step is that you then have to look at Now, by that level what
Rob:
00:19:43
you're already doing should be easy.
Rob:
00:19:45
You should be able to do it in half the time or a quarter of the time, because
Rob:
00:19:48
you've removed the friction points, now you've got capacity and now you
Rob:
00:19:52
should be looking at what's the bigger challenge for, how can we do more?
Tony:
00:19:56
I don't think we are coming at it from a different end.
Tony:
00:19:59
I think we're just using different language to articulate it.
Tony:
00:20:02
So everything starts with the individual.
Tony:
00:20:04
That's why I think profiling has its value.
Tony:
00:20:06
Where I think profiling fails is when it's too rudimentary or it's
Tony:
00:20:10
too low resolution, so if you think about a four box matrix that a
Tony:
00:20:15
quarter of the population fits in one of those boxes, it's not new.
Tony:
00:20:18
It's not granular enough.
Tony:
00:20:19
The real world is dynamic.
Tony:
00:20:21
It shifts all the time.
Tony:
00:20:22
So if I'm a high D in disc or I'm an ENFP, extroverted feeling, enthusiastic type.
Tony:
00:20:27
So help me understand how.
Tony:
00:20:30
Because I put myself in this team and I put myself in this team over here.
Tony:
00:20:33
I still that type of person, if you like, but it's going to be different.
Tony:
00:20:38
And I need to understand how to play differently.
Tony:
00:20:40
There's an adaptation tax.
Tony:
00:20:42
If I'm too far out of my comfort zone for too long, I'm paying too much tax.
Tony:
00:20:47
I'm getting stressed.
Tony:
00:20:49
Burning energy.
Tony:
00:20:50
We need to teach people how to understand the tax they're going
Tony:
00:20:54
to have to pay to go and achieve something, to go and work with someone.
Tony:
00:20:57
It's difficult to work with this person over here.
Tony:
00:20:59
So if I'm the manager or the leader of that situation or that
Tony:
00:21:04
relationship, I have to move first.
Tony:
00:21:06
I have to learn to move, make those adjustments in order
Tony:
00:21:10
to build that relationship.
Tony:
00:21:11
My job as the leader is to help that person.
Tony:
00:21:14
I want them to come with me, but there's a friction there, there's a tension there.
Tony:
00:21:18
I own that.
Tony:
00:21:19
I have to make the first move.
Tony:
00:21:20
If they're the stronger leader, they can make the first move.
Tony:
00:21:23
They can try and make the reparations.
Tony:
00:21:25
That's okay too.
Tony:
00:21:26
So I think we are coming at it from the same place.
Tony:
00:21:29
It's that understanding that for each of these, I think about a model and you
Tony:
00:21:34
would have researched this a lot with all the work around happiness and stuff.
Tony:
00:21:37
So we talk about a strength based culture where everybody's
Tony:
00:21:40
playing to their Strengths.
Tony:
00:21:41
It just makes sense, right?
Tony:
00:21:42
We go to work, it's effortless, we could do it all day, we're doing things that we
Tony:
00:21:45
love because we're in our natural habitat.
Tony:
00:21:48
Now the chances of that being perfect for most people, most of the time, is zero.
Tony:
00:21:53
Chances are there's going to be, in any given day, you're going to
Tony:
00:21:56
be Pulled around a little bit off because of the environments that we're
Tony:
00:22:00
in is constant change, fast moving demands are going through the roof.
Tony:
00:22:03
Costs are going up, external to work, all of that sort of
Tony:
00:22:06
stuff, new job opportunities.
Tony:
00:22:07
It's a moving feast.
Tony:
00:22:09
So in spite of all that, how do we ground ourselves in this
Tony:
00:22:13
thing with that shared sense of purpose that you're talking about.
Tony:
00:22:16
I've got friction with this guy, how do I understand what
Tony:
00:22:19
a day in their life looks like?
Tony:
00:22:21
So what's genuine empathy?
Tony:
00:22:23
It might not be natural for me to do that, but if I want to
Tony:
00:22:26
help, if I want to understand them, I need to be able to do it.
Tony:
00:22:28
And then it's about the frequent high quality conversations that
Tony:
00:22:31
we're going to have to grow that.
Tony:
00:22:33
So when you were talking about that once the friction has been flattened,
Tony:
00:22:38
then the team's got new capacity.
Tony:
00:22:39
That's exactly what I'm talking about.
Tony:
00:22:41
I think to be able to lead people towards this thing to grow.
Tony:
00:22:45
So that is growing together in my world.
Tony:
00:22:47
It is and it happens in public.
Tony:
00:22:49
It happens because we're in shared spaces.
Tony:
00:22:52
where people's underperformance is exposed and how the manager speaks to that person.
Tony:
00:22:58
Is it appropriate or not?
Tony:
00:22:59
Is it safe?
Tony:
00:23:00
Are we working in a place where we can express ourselves and be open to failure
Tony:
00:23:05
and failing quickly and moving on from it?
Tony:
00:23:07
Or, is the person in charge not allowing that?
Tony:
00:23:10
Because.
Tony:
00:23:11
They haven't found that within themselves yet to do it.
Tony:
00:23:13
Lots of problems, whether it's the person in charge is lack of confidence or lack
Tony:
00:23:17
of vulnerability or lack of being able to create those spaces that are absolutely
Tony:
00:23:22
critical to unity as you will call it.
Tony:
00:23:24
That's where I think leadership development becomes massively valuable
Tony:
00:23:28
to an organization, and it's not about are you a situational leader
Tony:
00:23:32
or are you a transformational leader?
Tony:
00:23:34
It's bollocks, really.
Tony:
00:23:35
If you love process and you like action and you like perfectionism
Tony:
00:23:39
and you like to do that.
Tony:
00:23:41
Okay, that's fine.
Tony:
00:23:42
That's great.
Tony:
00:23:42
To what degree?
Tony:
00:23:43
How much are you able to express that on a day to day basis?
Tony:
00:23:46
So you're basically assessing.
Tony:
00:23:48
Are you more stressed than you could be?
Tony:
00:23:49
Do we need to change, what is it?
Tony:
00:23:51
Job environment fit?
Tony:
00:23:53
Do we need to make some tweaks to your environment in order to allow you to
Tony:
00:23:56
play more at home, more of the time, but that was a million things, but I
Tony:
00:24:00
do think we're on the same frequency.
Tony:
00:24:03
I just think we're coming at it with different language and
Tony:
00:24:06
from different experiences.
Rob:
00:24:07
What I mean is that I think you started with, here's this team.
Rob:
00:24:10
How do I get them to work together?
Rob:
00:24:12
Yeah.
Rob:
00:24:12
Whereas I started with, here's this individual, it started with, how do
Rob:
00:24:16
they, how do we get them to go to the gym regularly, what's stopping them?
Rob:
00:24:20
And then it's about stress and then it's about how does someone be happy?
Rob:
00:24:23
So I'm looking more from the employee whereas I think most leaders are like you.
Rob:
00:24:27
They're looking at how do we get this group?
Rob:
00:24:29
And I think that's unimaginably.
Rob:
00:24:29
complex to look from there.
Tony:
00:24:32
Yeah, I think there's always two sides to it though, Rob.
Tony:
00:24:34
So let's say you are now the manager of a team.
Tony:
00:24:37
So you're already the manager of a team.
Tony:
00:24:39
That's your team.
Tony:
00:24:40
You've been going along quite nicely.
Tony:
00:24:41
And there's a need for new capacity.
Tony:
00:24:44
So you bring in two recruits who are really different.
Tony:
00:24:46
So you then work in both sides of that, both ends of that spectrum,
Tony:
00:24:49
where you've got this team that's now ticking along quite nicely.
Tony:
00:24:52
You're now introducing two new elements to it.
Tony:
00:24:54
Two new egos, two new personalities, two new skill sets, two new sets
Tony:
00:25:00
of drivers and needs and wants and all of that kind of stuff.
Tony:
00:25:03
And the whole equilibrium that you've built is now in a state of flux.
Tony:
00:25:07
So you've got two tasks.
Tony:
00:25:09
One is to grow that relationship with these new people and to integrate them
Tony:
00:25:14
into the status quo towards a new capacity because it will be different because there
Tony:
00:25:19
will be tension and there will be more leadership required to get through that as
Tony:
00:25:26
efficiently and effectively as possible.
Rob:
00:25:28
Okay.
Rob:
00:25:29
So we talked about, yeah, how you define leadership.
Rob:
00:25:32
What element of leadership have you seen managers most struggle with?
Tony:
00:25:36
I think there's a big hole in communications.
Tony:
00:25:38
It's the thing that needs to happen most frequently.
Tony:
00:25:42
Therefore, there's more chances to get it wrong because how you speak to
Tony:
00:25:45
one person It's not necessarily going to be effective with how you speak
Tony:
00:25:48
to another so i'd say communication.
Tony:
00:25:50
I've done so much work now with leadership groups.
Tony:
00:25:53
Because they've come through the schooling that they've had and the training that
Tony:
00:25:57
they've done and the education and all of that, I don't think any of it's really
Tony:
00:26:00
served their needs to understand who they really are and therefore they turn
Tony:
00:26:06
up with the persona that they've created to, to help themselves get through the
Tony:
00:26:10
day because they haven't really grounded themselves in their true identity.
Tony:
00:26:15
So there's a gap between the job that they're doing and
Tony:
00:26:17
the person that they're being.
Tony:
00:26:19
And they need to close that gap and actually reverse it.
Tony:
00:26:22
Start with who am I being?
Tony:
00:26:23
Because once, once I can define who I'm being in those moments then
Tony:
00:26:28
I can start to become authentic.
Tony:
00:26:30
You can become authentic.
Tony:
00:26:31
You'll feel more confident, but one of those challenges is they're
Tony:
00:26:35
not okay with being themselves.
Tony:
00:26:36
They've got fears and insecurities about who they are, so they quash
Tony:
00:26:40
it down and out comes this ego boss.
Tony:
00:26:43
It might be the over nice guy, it might be the overly vigilant person
Tony:
00:26:47
that's micromanaging, it might be the the overly demanding one that's
Tony:
00:26:51
that nothing's ever good enough all of these things come out which, which
Tony:
00:26:55
might be strengths in the right place.
Tony:
00:26:57
But become massive derailers because they're not regulated properly, because
Tony:
00:27:01
they're not grounded in reality.
Tony:
00:27:03
They're just the myths that we've created for ourselves, that we
Tony:
00:27:05
need to be the person choosing to be because we think that's what we
Tony:
00:27:08
need to do to get through the day.
Tony:
00:27:10
So none of it works as a consequence.
Tony:
00:27:12
There's a disconnect and people are looking for it.
Tony:
00:27:15
Then we talk about the people that you're dealing with are also in the same boat.
Tony:
00:27:18
They're coming to work with the same needs wanting to be met subconsciously.
Tony:
00:27:21
They're not thinking about it.
Tony:
00:27:22
They're not all psychologists going to work wondering how they can have
Tony:
00:27:25
the needs met, but we're all on that.
Tony:
00:27:28
Whether we know it or not, that's what we're doing, right?
Tony:
00:27:30
So if the leader and the manager gets a real sense of who they are,
Tony:
00:27:34
they can really start to help people.
Tony:
00:27:35
They can really start to manage themselves through the challenges that they've
Tony:
00:27:40
got, but also really help other people.
Tony:
00:27:42
And that's a game changer, right?
Tony:
00:27:43
Really contributing beyond just getting the job done.
Tony:
00:27:47
They're helping people become more effective and in their own life.
Tony:
00:27:51
So there's those two things.
Tony:
00:27:52
I think communication at one end, which is at the pointy end.
Tony:
00:27:55
It happens all the time.
Tony:
00:27:56
I did some work once when I first stepped out of football, was working in the
Tony:
00:27:59
rail depot I was Mancunian working in a Allerton rail depot in Liverpool with
Tony:
00:28:04
all these Evertonian shift workers, so I was way outside my comfort zone.
Tony:
00:28:07
I was doing a standard work project, Completely different world to me.
Tony:
00:28:12
I was in there to improve the standard work procedures across five
Tony:
00:28:15
different sets of shift workers.
Tony:
00:28:17
It was my project to qualify as a lead practitioner and
Tony:
00:28:21
the manager was in his office.
Tony:
00:28:22
These guys are all under these diesel trains, putting new brakes on, changing
Tony:
00:28:26
the oil, doing all of that kind of stuff.
Tony:
00:28:28
The manager didn't come out, didn't ever speak to them.
Tony:
00:28:31
They had boards that had the status of different jobs, red, green and amber,
Tony:
00:28:35
rag, things, whether, how far they were along the process, what parts were
Tony:
00:28:39
missing, all of that kind of stuff.
Tony:
00:28:40
But this need for frequent high quality conversations that we've just talked
Tony:
00:28:44
about this wasn't happening because this guy was sitting in his office.
Tony:
00:28:49
Maybe said the door's always open if anybody needs it, but just didn't
Tony:
00:28:52
engage, that's probably the best example of this sense of a lack of
Tony:
00:28:57
certainty about who they are and what, who they need to be in order to be,
Tony:
00:29:02
to achieve, and this place, Northern Rail were in need of, real leadership.
Rob:
00:29:07
That, that reminds me, I was a trainee cinema manager for a while.
Rob:
00:29:10
One of these big cinema multiplexes.
Rob:
00:29:13
You had to do a little bit of everything.
Rob:
00:29:15
And I was doing that and I was then in the office.
Rob:
00:29:18
And I noticed one of the problems they had was poor customer service.
Rob:
00:29:21
And I noticed that it was like 16, 17 year olds.
Rob:
00:29:25
And all the managers would be in the office and they would come out
Rob:
00:29:29
now and then, bark at them about something and then go back in.
Rob:
00:29:32
And I'm like, this is wrong.
Rob:
00:29:33
There was a new manager and she was only like 21, 22.
Rob:
00:29:36
She'd come in, been a usher at 16, worked her way up and
Rob:
00:29:40
she was a first time manager.
Rob:
00:29:42
Most of the staff were going off with the other manager to this big new complex
Rob:
00:29:46
and she didn't want to deal with them.
Rob:
00:29:48
So really bad culture.
Rob:
00:29:50
And I was like, this is wrong.
Rob:
00:29:51
So I went to her and I said we're getting bad customer service
Rob:
00:29:54
because the staff aren't happy.
Rob:
00:29:56
The staff aren't being managed.
Rob:
00:29:58
They're just being able to do what they want and then they're being shouted at.
Rob:
00:30:02
Anyway I had to put together a report to the area manager and
Rob:
00:30:06
just got all the staff in the room and just go how do you feel?
Rob:
00:30:09
What's the problem?
Rob:
00:30:09
What do you want?
Rob:
00:30:10
And the others were like, Oh no, this isn't going to work.
Rob:
00:30:13
You're they're going to ask for more money.
Rob:
00:30:15
They're going to ask for everything.
Rob:
00:30:17
Then they're just going to be more pissed off.
Rob:
00:30:19
It wasn't, better uniform they wanted, but they didn't really actually ask
Rob:
00:30:22
for money, where about 23 things.
Rob:
00:30:24
But it was this whole thing of the managers just sitting in the office.
Rob:
00:30:29
And then I became like the outcast.
Rob:
00:30:31
I was still learning.
Rob:
00:30:32
They would try and set me up because I'd upset things.
Rob:
00:30:36
But yeah, I've been thinking a lot about what you say because
Rob:
00:30:39
you say it in a different way than I've ever thought about it.
Rob:
00:30:41
The adaptations we make there's a cost to those adaptations.
Rob:
00:30:45
And I think the more we can communicate.
Rob:
00:30:47
My whole idea is that you don't change, but your identity changes.
Rob:
00:30:52
So you're still the same person, but it's just that in order to join with others, we
Rob:
00:30:56
need to be able to resolve the conflict.
Rob:
00:30:58
We need to be able to reveal who we are, which means we have to know
Rob:
00:31:01
who we are and then be able to be vulnerable to explain that and to
Rob:
00:31:05
understand who someone else is.
Rob:
00:31:07
So I see there's skills of relationships, conflict and, but then there's the
Rob:
00:31:12
foundation, which is a longer bit of having the character and the strength
Rob:
00:31:17
in order to be able to do that.
Rob:
00:31:19
So one is distinguishing between management and leadership.
Rob:
00:31:22
I
Tony:
00:31:24
would equate it to the difference between technical challenges,
Tony:
00:31:28
which have got a known capacity.
Tony:
00:31:31
What the job is to be there can be complicated thing, like building an
Tony:
00:31:34
aircraft, really complicated, but it's got skilled people that know how to
Tony:
00:31:37
build it, managers come in to just make sure it's getting done to the standard.
Tony:
00:31:42
I guess it's related to optimizing the way that technical tasks are completed,
Tony:
00:31:47
are they done in the right time?
Tony:
00:31:48
Are they done to the right standards?
Tony:
00:31:50
All of that.
Tony:
00:31:51
So I don't see that as leadership.
Tony:
00:31:52
The job is known, the capacity to do the job is known.
Tony:
00:31:56
Available.
Tony:
00:31:56
Let's just manage process.
Tony:
00:31:58
There may be some standard setting.
Tony:
00:32:00
There may be some I don't know, goal setting or stuff like that, but there's
Tony:
00:32:03
nothing that requires us to grow together through, through something.
Tony:
00:32:06
I'm not articulating it very well, but I see it as getting the job
Tony:
00:32:10
done when we know how to do the job.
Tony:
00:32:12
I see that as management.
Tony:
00:32:13
Whereas leadership, when you're talking about an adaptive challenge, which is a
Tony:
00:32:17
challenge that we haven't faced together, where people are looking to someone to
Tony:
00:32:23
when people are saying, how do we do this?
Tony:
00:32:26
What are we going to do here?
Tony:
00:32:27
Help me out.
Tony:
00:32:28
Then it requires.
Tony:
00:32:30
Let's let's work together.
Tony:
00:32:31
Let's build some new capacity.
Tony:
00:32:33
Let's set our stall out for how we're going to achieve.
Tony:
00:32:36
Let's be prepared to fail.
Tony:
00:32:37
When you're a manager, I don't think you're in that space of growing capacity.
Tony:
00:32:41
You're delivering against a set of standards, whereas leadership is the
Tony:
00:32:44
standard hasn't even been set yet.
Tony:
00:32:46
What is possible here?
Tony:
00:32:48
That's the visionary side of it.
Tony:
00:32:49
But it's not just that it's if there's a new vision that we're all starting
Tony:
00:32:54
to point towards, it's then about mobilizing people to get there and
Tony:
00:32:58
they've all got a different start point.
Tony:
00:33:00
Here's this new ambitious project that we're all pointing towards.
Tony:
00:33:03
How do I feel about that?
Tony:
00:33:04
What do I think about that?
Tony:
00:33:05
What do I want against that?
Tony:
00:33:07
Where does it fit into my personal set of values or needs?
Tony:
00:33:11
So the leader has to understand that and has to pull that together,
Tony:
00:33:15
has to redefine how this collective is going to meet this challenge.
Tony:
00:33:19
That requires public learning.
Tony:
00:33:22
It requires collaboration.
Tony:
00:33:23
You're dealing with values, motivations, emotions it's,
Tony:
00:33:27
and you're dealing with that.
Tony:
00:33:27
As a manager you're interacting with it.
Tony:
00:33:29
I don't want to confuse it, as a manager, you're having lots of maybe
Tony:
00:33:33
tension and conflict to deal with.
Tony:
00:33:35
But they know how to do the job.
Tony:
00:33:36
It's just getting the job done.
Tony:
00:33:37
The tension is likely to be misunderstanding or personality
Tony:
00:33:41
clashes or stuff like that.
Tony:
00:33:42
That's human nature is playing out in all of this stuff, but it's when we've
Tony:
00:33:46
got to grow together where we've, none of us have have tackled this before we,
Tony:
00:33:51
it becomes a much different challenge.
Tony:
00:33:53
So I'm trying to really get into the shared values to find a purpose to really
Tony:
00:33:59
understand people get in their shoes.
Tony:
00:34:01
And I might do that as a manager.
Tony:
00:34:03
When I'm showing some leadership characteristics that showing the types
Tony:
00:34:07
of behaviors that lend themselves to good leadership, it's just that in those
Tony:
00:34:11
situations, they don't need leading.
Tony:
00:34:13
They just need to do their job.
Tony:
00:34:14
Whereas where I go to be accountable for something that no one's ever done before.
Tony:
00:34:19
That's a completely different leap as a manager.
Tony:
00:34:21
I know what the results are that I'm going for and I know that these people
Tony:
00:34:25
can do the job so I can start to manage that and then, whereas this other
Tony:
00:34:31
thing, oh, that's going to test us all.
Tony:
00:34:33
Let's work out how we're going to grow together through this.
Tony:
00:34:37
It's a completely different mindset.
Rob:
00:34:39
Put it crudely, it's business as usual for a manager.
Rob:
00:34:42
It's maintaining stability, maintaining performance.
Rob:
00:34:45
Whereas leadership is more like pioneering, breaking new
Rob:
00:34:48
ground, conquering new Yeah, and
Tony:
00:34:51
uncertainty as well.
Tony:
00:34:52
So a manager might start to show leadership when the ground shifts from
Tony:
00:34:56
underneath them, when the way that they did things is now going to be different.
Tony:
00:35:00
So they go from managing what was a process and a fixed way of doing things
Tony:
00:35:04
to suddenly the business has changed, has pivoted, said we're now going to do this.
Tony:
00:35:09
We were building aircraft seats.
Tony:
00:35:10
We're now building aircraft engines.
Tony:
00:35:11
Like now there's a whole host of new learning to be done.
Tony:
00:35:16
I used to know everything about what needed to be done.
Tony:
00:35:19
I could help people through it and help manage the team through it.
Tony:
00:35:22
Now the business has pivoted and now I'm starting to flounder.
Tony:
00:35:26
Then it starts to become A leadership challenge.
Tony:
00:35:29
Because if I'm feeling that what are these guys feeling, then I'm starting to
Tony:
00:35:33
understand what new capacity do we need to build together to meet this new challenge.
Tony:
00:35:37
So it can shift from one to the other.
Tony:
00:35:39
I see leadership more as I think I said at the beginning As a practice
Tony:
00:35:43
than as a definition, you're not either a leader or a manager, you can
Tony:
00:35:48
demonstrate leadership as a practice when there's a new challenge to be met.
Rob:
00:35:53
What comes to mind as you're talking is as things are changing,
Rob:
00:35:56
for example, like bringing in AI, everything's changing.
Rob:
00:35:59
So managers are having to lead more and more as it becomes more volatile.
Rob:
00:36:03
Yeah, for sure.
Rob:
00:36:04
Okay.
Rob:
00:36:04
Who would be a great public example, a great leadership that you've seen.
Tony:
00:36:08
I'm cheating a bit here.
Tony:
00:36:09
I've been delivering a course for Harvard edX for the last couple of years, and
Tony:
00:36:13
they use Martin Luther King and Gandhi as two great examples of leaders where
Tony:
00:36:17
they had no formal authority, and yet they mobilized millions of people towards
Tony:
00:36:24
a new vision for, a big adaptive change.
Tony:
00:36:27
Changing the whole world for the people that they were speaking to.
Tony:
00:36:31
They were able to demonstrate great leadership without any
Tony:
00:36:34
authority whatsoever over the people who followed them.
Tony:
00:36:37
So I think they're really good examples.
Tony:
00:36:39
In terms of, what tends to happen, I think people will look to the great
Tony:
00:36:45
authors, the just trying to think.
Tony:
00:36:47
Who are the great manager books?
Tony:
00:36:49
The classics that always get thrown up.
Tony:
00:36:51
Even if you said the Virgin, Richard Branson, for example, right?
Tony:
00:36:54
Richard Branson, clearly a visionary, clearly entrepreneurial, blah, blah,
Tony:
00:36:58
blah, and has led this growth of a massive company from nothing to
Tony:
00:37:03
pioneering, all of that sort of stuff.
Tony:
00:37:06
So somewhere in that there's got to be great leadership.
Tony:
00:37:08
But I think what tends to happen is people then go Let's look at all
Tony:
00:37:12
his characteristics and then pull, extrapolate them from the story and define
Tony:
00:37:18
leadership as that or who's the GE guy?
Rob:
00:37:21
Jack
Tony:
00:37:21
Welsh.
Tony:
00:37:22
Yeah.
Tony:
00:37:22
So Jack Welsh, right?
Tony:
00:37:23
World renowned builder of massive company.
Tony:
00:37:26
Lots of mantras and leadership, iconic leadership lessons.
Tony:
00:37:31
Again, extrapolate Jack Welsh out, in this reductive way and
Tony:
00:37:34
go, great leadership is this.
Tony:
00:37:36
I'm not so sure that you can have all those characteristics and not lead.
Tony:
00:37:41
I just don't think it's a set of characteristics that those people
Tony:
00:37:45
have achieved great things and probably demonstrated throughout that
Tony:
00:37:50
process, lots of great leadership at times, and probably failed lots too.
Tony:
00:37:55
Yeah, I think the idea of a Gandhi or Martin Luther King, and
Tony:
00:37:59
whether you like them agree with their politics is irrelevant.
Tony:
00:38:02
They were able to mobilize people with no authority over them whatsoever.
Tony:
00:38:06
And they were able to have such a clear vision and a profound way
Tony:
00:38:10
of articulating that vision and to corral a group of people with a shared
Tony:
00:38:15
set of values and a shared purpose.
Tony:
00:38:16
I think leadership lives in that space where you're connecting
Tony:
00:38:20
with people at that level.
Tony:
00:38:22
That's not about doing stuff.
Tony:
00:38:24
It's about who are we being together?
Tony:
00:38:25
Who will we be when we get there?
Tony:
00:38:27
It's a completely different journey.
Rob:
00:38:29
Yeah.
Rob:
00:38:29
Okay, just one more question.
Rob:
00:38:31
And what advice would you give to a new manager leader?
Tony:
00:38:34
Know thyself.
Tony:
00:38:36
And it's not an easy thing.
Tony:
00:38:37
People talk about soft skills all the time.
Tony:
00:38:39
It's the hardest thing for people to do because they haven't really taken the time
Tony:
00:38:44
to do the work to understand themselves.
Tony:
00:38:46
It's easier for a Guy in his fifties, like me.
Tony:
00:38:49
The process is the same, but if you're in your mid twenties and you go into
Tony:
00:38:53
management, you've only just fully formed as a young man or a young
Tony:
00:38:56
woman I would say don't fall into the trap of trying to be be something
Tony:
00:39:01
that someone else says you should be.
Tony:
00:39:03
Try and really get under the skin a little bit more to understand why
Tony:
00:39:08
you're doing what you do, what are the values that make you who you are.
Tony:
00:39:11
And start leading through that and you'll find yourself in a really good place.
Tony:
00:39:16
Might not be in the job that you're in at the moment, but you find yourself
Tony:
00:39:18
in a really good place over time.
Rob:
00:39:20
Yeah.
Rob:
00:39:20
That's such a trap that every time there's a new book I can remember it
Rob:
00:39:24
was like all the American companies tried to be like , Japanese companies
Rob:
00:39:28
and it's just transplanting things that worked in one dynamic and thinking
Rob:
00:39:32
they're going to work in everyone.
Rob:
00:39:33
It's like Jack Welch, everyone was fire your bottom 10 percent every
Rob:
00:39:38
year and and then when he left the whole thing collapsed because he'd
Rob:
00:39:42
been massaging the figures for years.
00:00:00
I remember I was in a Facebook group.
Rob:
00:00:01
It wasn't one I'd paid for.
Rob:
00:00:02
It was, like when you look at things.
Rob:
00:00:04
They were like, you can earn, I can't remember what it was, a hundred
Rob:
00:00:08
grand or 10 grand a month or whatever it is selling your knowledge and
Rob:
00:00:12
you don't have to be an expert.
Rob:
00:00:13
I remember this girl.
Rob:
00:00:14
And she was like these people are posting and she's 22, 23, 24.
Rob:
00:00:20
She go, Oh, I found it.
Rob:
00:00:21
I found my niche.
Rob:
00:00:22
I've been on dating apps.
Rob:
00:00:23
I'm going to teach people dating.
Rob:
00:00:25
Next thing is, Yeah, this system works.
Rob:
00:00:28
I've had my first sale, it was just before Christmas and she's
Rob:
00:00:31
given me eight grand in savings.
Rob:
00:00:33
She's gonna clear the rest by January.
Rob:
00:00:36
Yay me!
Rob:
00:00:37
Now I can have a great Christmas.
Rob:
00:00:39
You don't know what you're doing.
Rob:
00:00:40
Yeah.
Rob:
00:00:41
That's crazy.
Rob:
00:00:41
I think there is a lot of, there's so many people that I think are disenfranchised,
Rob:
00:00:46
disenchanted with corporate work that they want to work for themselves.
Rob:
00:00:50
And there's all these people who are giving them the shovels and
Rob:
00:00:53
going you don't need to know this.
Rob:
00:00:54
You don't need to be an expert.
Rob:
00:00:55
You just do this and this.
Rob:
00:00:57
I think there's a real problem.
Rob:
00:00:59
There's a lot of people and I talk to people and you can tell when someone has
Rob:
00:01:03
deep knowledge and when they're don't really know what they're talking about.
Rob:
00:01:06
The typical thing is used to be in relationships is, we were at a breaking
Rob:
00:01:10
point, we sorted it out, now we're happy, now we'll teach you how to do
Rob:
00:01:14
it and now in leadership it's been, I was a failing manager and I turned
Rob:
00:01:18
it around and now I can teach you.
Tony:
00:01:19
As if everybody's in exactly the same situation with the same toolkit,
Rob:
00:01:23
yeah.
Tony:
00:01:23
Doing the same job.
Tony:
00:01:24
It's it's crazy.
Rob:
00:01:26
I think it's very difficult for a company for someone who's looking for
Rob:
00:01:30
training, how do you know someone who's good when it's something because you want
Rob:
00:01:33
someone else in, you can't really judge.
Rob:
00:01:36
I don't know if you've ever read the the art of war.
Rob:
00:01:38
Yeah, I love
Tony:
00:01:39
the art of war here.
Rob:
00:01:41
We're reading that now for our book club.
Rob:
00:01:42
Did Michael suggest it?
Rob:
00:01:44
I think so.
Rob:
00:01:44
I put up four books.
Rob:
00:01:46
I put up the art of war.
Rob:
00:01:47
Is it one of his favorites?
Tony:
00:01:49
I'm working with him on my book, right?
Tony:
00:01:51
I told him how inspired I was by it many years ago when I was in football and how I
Tony:
00:01:55
could apply it straight away to different areas of the game that I was doing.
Tony:
00:02:00
So we've had dialogue around it.
Tony:
00:02:01
That's why I'm asking.
Tony:
00:02:02
I know that he's in the book club with you.
Rob:
00:02:04
Yeah.
Rob:
00:02:04
I put up four books.
Rob:
00:02:06
I put up art of war.
Rob:
00:02:07
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius Nietzsche's Good and Evil Ethics, or whatever it is.
Rob:
00:02:12
Can't remember the last one.
Rob:
00:02:13
No one voted for the last one anyway.
Rob:
00:02:15
Nietzsche got one vote and Art of War got three and Marcus Aurelius got two.
Rob:
00:02:20
So it's a very short book now,
Rob:
00:02:22
I've just started to read it again.
Rob:
00:02:23
I think I was a teenager when I first read it.
Rob:
00:02:25
He's telling the parable, a Chinese parable of a family of doctors and
Rob:
00:02:29
he said he's the best known doctor.
Rob:
00:02:31
He said my oldest brother is a brilliant doctor.
Rob:
00:02:33
He said he can see the spirit of illness before it forms.
Rob:
00:02:36
And so he heals it and no one talks of him.
Rob:
00:02:38
My elder brother is a great doctor.
Rob:
00:02:41
He can see the earliest signs and he can catch it before it's
Rob:
00:02:44
taken root and he can solve it.
Rob:
00:02:45
Me, I perform surgeries.
Rob:
00:02:47
I sell new potions.
Rob:
00:02:48
So word gets around and everyone thinks I'm great.
Rob:
00:02:51
That sums it up, isn't it?
Rob:
00:02:52
I remember in mediation training, if they don't even notice you're there,
Rob:
00:02:56
that's when you've done a good mediation.
Rob:
00:02:57
But it's really hard to do that.
Rob:
00:02:59
Cause your best work no one's going to recognize it.
Rob:
00:03:02
And if no one's going to recognize it, it's really hard.
Tony:
00:03:04
I brought that up yesterday with someone which was.
Tony:
00:03:06
When you are selling leadership development, for example, or some
Tony:
00:03:11
sort of training to an organization, especially in the coaching environment.
Tony:
00:03:14
An organization takes you in as an executive coach or a performance coach.
Tony:
00:03:18
HR need to somehow measure the intervention, measure the
Tony:
00:03:22
value of the intervention.
Tony:
00:03:24
Of course, sometimes those conversations are so deeply personal that you as
Tony:
00:03:29
the coach and the individual who's the recipient of the interaction
Tony:
00:03:33
can see the growth and feel it.
Tony:
00:03:34
You're going through it together.
Tony:
00:03:36
They're progressing really brilliantly.
Tony:
00:03:38
It doesn't immediately manifest.
Tony:
00:03:40
As an outcome for the business, but it's long term value is it's
Tony:
00:03:45
almost really difficult to manage.
Tony:
00:03:47
It's really critical to have a three way dialogue when you
Tony:
00:03:49
start those types of things.
Tony:
00:03:50
Me, the organization and the the coachees or the trainees or whoever
Tony:
00:03:55
they are, and absolutely agree what the terms of the engagement are
Tony:
00:04:00
and how it's going to be measured.
Tony:
00:04:01
Because it is one of the hardest things.
Tony:
00:04:02
How do you measure what is to a large degree intangible.,
Tony:
00:04:07
I've had 10 sessions with this guy and I feel so much better.
Tony:
00:04:10
I am much more, whatever those things might be.
Tony:
00:04:15
We know, and they know that they're in a better place when they come
Tony:
00:04:18
to work, they're more robust, they're more resilient, they're
Tony:
00:04:20
more focused, whatever it might be.
Tony:
00:04:23
It might not necessarily translate to somebody being able to go,
Tony:
00:04:26
Oh, we've had An upturn in 3 percent growth for that reason.
Tony:
00:04:30
So it's a really difficult one, but it's a very real challenge is to have
Tony:
00:04:33
some metrics that really get clarity with the organization and the people
Tony:
00:04:38
who are the recipients of the value exchange to try and quantify what
Tony:
00:04:42
good looks like through that service.
Tony:
00:04:45
I've done a fair bit of work around that.
Tony:
00:04:46
I was reading something before I jumped online.
Tony:
00:04:49
It was Gallup's latest paper, they're always researching
Tony:
00:04:52
this, that and the other.
Tony:
00:04:53
And I think the quote was, I'm just trying to find it here.
Tony:
00:04:56
People surveyed across the world, said that hope was the biggest factor in
Tony:
00:05:01
what they wanted from their leaders.
Tony:
00:05:03
I'm thinking that is such a difficult subjective, impossible
Tony:
00:05:08
to quantify, meaningfully.
Tony:
00:05:10
Like how do you measure?
Tony:
00:05:11
How if you're on a leadership team, do you create a sense of
Tony:
00:05:14
hope in the people that are there?
Tony:
00:05:15
For me, it immediately says, what the hell's going on in your organization that
Tony:
00:05:19
people are crying out for a sense of hope?
Tony:
00:05:22
That's the first thing that it says to me.
Tony:
00:05:24
There's something about the survey itself which feels a little bit
Tony:
00:05:27
like an intentional misdirection.
Tony:
00:05:29
It's almost like this, these people that are trying to sell to the needy want a
Tony:
00:05:32
solution to sell more of their business.
Tony:
00:05:34
And this person's got the solution.
Tony:
00:05:36
I think that sells the self selling to people that are not selling.
Tony:
00:05:40
It's a much easier sell.
Tony:
00:05:41
Going back to this idea of hope, it begs the question, like what's happening within
Tony:
00:05:46
the work, what problems are going on in there that even a driving somebody to
Tony:
00:05:50
respond like that what's happening at managerial level that is dysfunctional?
Tony:
00:05:54
That people are feeling like that, toxic environments, blah, blah, blah.
Tony:
00:05:59
What are they doing by measuring somehow in an arbitrary way?
Tony:
00:06:03
We're going to survey you.
Tony:
00:06:04
I don't know how they've asked the question, but they've jumped, they've
Tony:
00:06:07
landed on this 60 odd percent of people put hope at the top of what
Tony:
00:06:11
it is they want from their leaders.
Tony:
00:06:12
How do I work with that?
Tony:
00:06:14
It's not a primary metric, right?
Tony:
00:06:15
How do you turn that subjective, intangible metric
Tony:
00:06:19
into meaningful practice?
Tony:
00:06:20
It heartens me to a degree, because that's the kind of, that sort of wishy washy
Tony:
00:06:24
stuff says what's the real problem here?
Tony:
00:06:27
Let's go and actually uncover it.
Tony:
00:06:29
Let's do some diagnosis.
Tony:
00:06:31
Let's work out what you want.
Tony:
00:06:33
Do the fundamental Diagnosis at the bottom, not the subjective
Tony:
00:06:36
stuff, more let's get some data around what's actually going on.
Tony:
00:06:39
And then see where the gaps are, and work strategically with the organization
Tony:
00:06:43
to say here's the gaps that have been identified, which is the priority
Tony:
00:06:46
right now, and let's start to try and close that and let's do it in this way.
Tony:
00:06:50
Let's do it with these people for this number of things, working on these
Tony:
00:06:54
things, and this is what the upside should be after doing that work.
Tony:
00:06:58
And there might be a little bit of coaching for person A, B, C, and D
Tony:
00:07:02
who've been identified as, whatever it might be, stressed or so on.
Tony:
00:07:05
I'm reading this, on the one hand, getting annoyed about the subjectivity
Tony:
00:07:09
of it, and the fact that I feel like I'm being given some numbers that I
Tony:
00:07:14
can't quantify, it's hard for me to and I'm not a mathematician either,
Tony:
00:07:17
so it might just be me not getting it.
Tony:
00:07:19
But I'm thinking 60 odd percent of people put hope at the top of the
Tony:
00:07:23
things they want from their leaders.
Tony:
00:07:24
It's that's telling me a whole host of things about problems
Tony:
00:07:28
that need to be identified.
Tony:
00:07:29
That the organizations need to get a grip of, and maybe that's the message.
Tony:
00:07:32
Having just articulated all that out loud, maybe there's something to address there.
Tony:
00:07:37
And we know there's a massive addressable market for leadership development.
Tony:
00:07:40
We've had that dialogue in the week and last week with Clark, the whole
Tony:
00:07:44
idea of leadership, I think it means different things to different people.
Tony:
00:07:47
So what is it that they see?
Tony:
00:07:49
I see leadership as a skill, not as.
Tony:
00:07:52
a position or a hierarchy.
Tony:
00:07:54
You practice leadership.
Tony:
00:07:56
You can lead at home, you can lead at school, you can lead when you're
Tony:
00:07:59
out and about, depending what circumstances you're faced with.
Tony:
00:08:02
People need some sort of help, you can step in and change the
Tony:
00:08:06
dynamics of what's going on.
Tony:
00:08:07
There's a ton of stuff around that.
Rob:
00:08:09
My original research when I Studied psychology measuring happiness
Rob:
00:08:13
self esteem, locus of control, extroversion, optimism with happiness.
Rob:
00:08:18
I've spent years looking at how do you measure relationships?
Rob:
00:08:22
It is all subjective and that's the problem.
Rob:
00:08:24
If you went back 50, 60 years, the world was objective because it was a factory
Rob:
00:08:29
you can point to there's a machine everyone can put everyone knows what a
Rob:
00:08:33
lathe is, a machine is a screwdriver.
Rob:
00:08:36
What we're now dealing with is more abstract things you can't measure.
Rob:
00:08:40
What is leadership?
Rob:
00:08:41
What is hope?
Rob:
00:08:42
What is happiness?
Rob:
00:08:43
What is a relationship?
Rob:
00:08:44
We have different ideas about them.
Rob:
00:08:47
I think language is quite important not for the words themselves,
Rob:
00:08:50
but there's a thought, there's a way that a word has come up.
Rob:
00:08:54
The origin of the word still imbued in the way that we talk about it.
Rob:
00:08:58
So manage was to handle, so that was about handling cattle.
Rob:
00:09:03
Whereas leading is more guiding, which is more humane focused thing.
Rob:
00:09:06
Even though it seems pedantic, my personality type on Myers Briggs is the
Rob:
00:09:11
most logically precise, so I'm quite pedantic about how you think about things.
Rob:
00:09:17
S or N?
Rob:
00:09:18
I N T P. N, yeah.
Rob:
00:09:19
Yeah.
Rob:
00:09:19
Going back to looking at, I think in terms of performance I was looking at all
Rob:
00:09:23
kinds of ways, how do you do performance?
Rob:
00:09:25
And then I said surely it's going to be like a return on investment type thing.
Rob:
00:09:29
I was looking into that and I found that companies do use that return on the cost
Rob:
00:09:34
of the people, in performance terms, but it's a backward measure, isn't it?
Tony:
00:09:38
Yeah.
Tony:
00:09:38
It's a lag indicator because the there's market forces as well that
Tony:
00:09:42
can have a bigger impact than any work that you're doing internally.
Tony:
00:09:45
Lag indicators make sense.
Tony:
00:09:47
People that look for results.
Tony:
00:09:49
It's like football, the team lost.
Tony:
00:09:50
Therefore we all feel bad.
Tony:
00:09:51
The coach needs to be fired.
Tony:
00:09:52
That's on one day.
Tony:
00:09:53
Next week we beat somebody in the crowds, happy, optimistic, and
Tony:
00:09:56
feeling great about the future.
Tony:
00:09:57
And we're all cheering for the manager again.
Tony:
00:09:59
It's like none of it factors in the reality of what's actually going on.
Tony:
00:10:04
That reality is not just on a sort of macro level, it's honed
Tony:
00:10:09
right into the individual.
Tony:
00:10:10
So on any given day, you could have 10 people just turn up
Tony:
00:10:13
and just not feeling at it.
Tony:
00:10:14
You can be prepared the best you possibly can and just turn up feeling, call
Tony:
00:10:19
it biorhythms, call it what you want.
Tony:
00:10:21
You just feeling off your legs, feel heavy.
Tony:
00:10:23
There's no reason.
Tony:
00:10:24
You're as fit as you've ever been.
Tony:
00:10:25
You just not, you don't have the mental clarity.
Tony:
00:10:28
There's something just out of balance, which may be in that moment is really hard
Tony:
00:10:32
even for the individual to understand.
Tony:
00:10:34
It's where's my legs today?
Tony:
00:10:35
All of that stuff happened to me, I'm managing a women's team.
Tony:
00:10:39
We're going really well.
Tony:
00:10:40
On the weekend.
Tony:
00:10:41
We had one of those shock results where we were beaten 1 0.
Tony:
00:10:43
They had one chance at the opposition in the whole game.
Tony:
00:10:46
We dominated the game.
Tony:
00:10:47
But the behavior of the team the lack of composed, the lack of normalcy about
Tony:
00:10:52
what I was observing was an indicator that way more than half of the people
Tony:
00:10:57
were just having an off day and that, people say, Oh, where's the leaders?
Tony:
00:11:01
You hear all these pundits saying, where's the leadership on the pitch?
Tony:
00:11:04
All of my leaders were on the pitch, but they just couldn't
Tony:
00:11:08
find it in themselves to do it.
Tony:
00:11:09
That's life.
Tony:
00:11:10
That is life.
Rob:
00:11:11
That's my biggest takeaway from Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and
Rob:
00:11:15
Slow, was about regression to the mean.
Rob:
00:11:18
I remember playing golf.
Rob:
00:11:20
I was winning by quite a bit and I was playing someone who was much better than
Rob:
00:11:23
me and we were having banter and I was like, the longer it goes on, the more
Rob:
00:11:27
it's going to, it's going to level out.
Rob:
00:11:28
And Kahneman was talking about how people misread statistics.
Rob:
00:11:32
He was saying, basically all the people in the city.
Rob:
00:11:35
Most of them, despite their huge bonuses and statistically it's been proven that
Rob:
00:11:40
there are no more than if you had a monkey for just picking out randomly and he
Rob:
00:11:45
said this to he was talking to a manager.
Rob:
00:11:47
He said you don't have to give them that bonuses like that.
Rob:
00:11:50
And he's oh yeah we need talent.
Rob:
00:11:52
And he just completely misread the statistics.
Rob:
00:11:54
Regression to the mean I had never thought of it, so someone like Man United, they
Rob:
00:11:58
buy someone like Alexis Sanchez done brilliantly, or someone's had a great
Rob:
00:12:02
season, they pay top price for them, they never perform like that again, because
Rob:
00:12:06
they were having a random outlier season, and then they regressed to the average.
Rob:
00:12:11
Just to go back to the hope I found that article and I haven't read it
Rob:
00:12:16
obviously, but I think that goes to what you say leadership is.
Rob:
00:12:20
That leadership is creating capacity.
Rob:
00:12:23
Because then I think that's what people are hoping for.
Tony:
00:12:25
That's a great insight.
Tony:
00:12:27
I love it when there's different perceptions of the
Tony:
00:12:30
same piece of information.
Tony:
00:12:31
If I think about, if you go back to your analogy of.
Tony:
00:12:34
Everybody knew 60 years ago what the job was, they were putting a peg in a hole on
Tony:
00:12:39
a fixed sequence as many times as possible to be as productive as they could be.
Tony:
00:12:44
And they had somebody like monitoring that and keeping them
Tony:
00:12:47
to time and task and so forth.
Tony:
00:12:49
The managers were militantly going about their business.
Tony:
00:12:52
So that's not leadership, right?
Tony:
00:12:54
That's just do your job, you know how to do it.
Tony:
00:12:56
Do your job, do it to the best of your ability, blah, blah, blah.
Tony:
00:12:59
Easy to measure, tangible, technical, simple, and not always simple.
Tony:
00:13:04
Like a surgeon is the same thing, just on a more life and death.
Tony:
00:13:08
But again, it's not leadership, just a highly skilled guy
Tony:
00:13:11
doing open heart surgery.
Tony:
00:13:13
It's not leading the team.
Tony:
00:13:14
They're all highly skilled as well.
Tony:
00:13:16
He's just really focused on getting this thing done.
Tony:
00:13:19
It's when you've got a group of people who've come together to, it might
Tony:
00:13:23
be a sales team to hit a new target 20 percent increase on last year,
Tony:
00:13:29
which had never been done before.
Tony:
00:13:30
So they've got some historical data that says this is our ideal customer.
Tony:
00:13:34
But then they're going out to new market, maybe with new product.
Tony:
00:13:37
And they're trying to hit a somewhat irrational growth target because
Tony:
00:13:40
no one's ever done it before that requires leadership because in the face
Tony:
00:13:45
of that, you've got people's hopes.
Tony:
00:13:46
You've got people's ambitions.
Tony:
00:13:48
You've got people's needs.
Tony:
00:13:49
You've got people's motivations and for each of those people in the
Tony:
00:13:53
sales team who are going to be a part of this growth towards something
Tony:
00:13:56
that they've never achieved before.
Tony:
00:13:58
The sales manager he's dealing with all of those hidden things, he's dealing
Tony:
00:14:03
with values, whenever we talk about values or shared sense of purpose or
Tony:
00:14:06
motivation, or, things that are on the inside of all of these different people,
Tony:
00:14:10
that's fine if they're just doing a job to get what they know how to do done.
Tony:
00:14:15
But if it requires new capacity, if we're going to have to grow together
Tony:
00:14:18
through this towards something bigger, I think then a leader needs to come in
Tony:
00:14:22
because that quest towards something that's never been done before.
Tony:
00:14:25
You start the football season.
Tony:
00:14:27
You think we're going to be mid table team.
Tony:
00:14:30
The stretch might be, can we get into Europe?
Tony:
00:14:32
Let's say it's never been done before.
Tony:
00:14:33
It needs a lot of leadership to understand everybody's intent towards that goal.
Tony:
00:14:38
The person in charge might go, I've got a vision for getting into
Tony:
00:14:42
the, into Europe, or I've got a vision for me in this sales target.
Tony:
00:14:46
And for me personally, it means I get a huge bonus and my family can go
Tony:
00:14:49
on holiday or whatever it might be.
Tony:
00:14:51
But for everybody, then it's about what do they want?
Tony:
00:14:53
That's different from what I want in how we go after this.
Tony:
00:14:56
What's important to them in the way that we do it that I need to be aware
Tony:
00:15:00
of to to ensure I can create the optimal environment for them to be successful.
Tony:
00:15:06
There's nothing fixed about any of that.
Tony:
00:15:08
It comes back to the relationships that you're talking about, really understanding
Tony:
00:15:11
the people, meeting them where they're at.
Tony:
00:15:13
So if I think that my leadership style is autocratic or democratic or whatever.
Tony:
00:15:18
I've given myself this box, I've done some sort of survey that says
Tony:
00:15:22
this is the type of leader that I am.
Tony:
00:15:24
That's okay on a two dimensional piece of paper, accept that's the start line.
Tony:
00:15:29
That's maybe where I'm most naturally suited, but it's
Tony:
00:15:32
way more granular than that.
Tony:
00:15:33
So then we start working together.
Tony:
00:15:36
I need to start shifting.
Tony:
00:15:37
I need to start dialing up the heat sometimes to create a bit of conflict
Tony:
00:15:41
or mitigate conflict before it happens or diffuse conflict when it's blown
Tony:
00:15:46
up because nobody saw it coming.
Tony:
00:15:48
So I need to start turning these and that's what score does.
Tony:
00:15:51
It gives you these five dials that you can start to intentionally Adjust
Tony:
00:15:56
in small amounts to be able to move, to play with, move towards you to
Tony:
00:16:01
make sure We're doing it together.
Tony:
00:16:03
And he'll also say, here's the peg in the ground for the group.
Tony:
00:16:06
So if we're going on this big innovation journey and the team really is only
Tony:
00:16:10
moderately wired for innovation as a start point, we might need to recruit
Tony:
00:16:13
someone, we might need to take periods of time where we dial up our intentional.
Tony:
00:16:18
process to, to innovate, which is going to be draining and
Tony:
00:16:21
challenging for us, but let's do it.
Tony:
00:16:23
Let's set time aside to do it.
Tony:
00:16:24
Let's give ourselves time to recover from it.
Tony:
00:16:26
It's those types of things.
Tony:
00:16:28
So when you're building new capacity and you're asking people to stretch
Tony:
00:16:32
outside their comfort zone to grow, then that's going to have an impact on them.
Tony:
00:16:35
They'll be fearful of it.
Tony:
00:16:36
Sometimes there'll be resistant to it.
Tony:
00:16:39
Sometimes there'll be overly enthusiastic sometimes.
Tony:
00:16:43
Leadership happens when all these things are starting and
Tony:
00:16:45
everybody's doing it differently.
Tony:
00:16:47
It's complicated and I think that's where we're at this growth
Tony:
00:16:50
when people are growing towards something that they've never
Tony:
00:16:52
achieved before, it needs leadership.
Tony:
00:16:55
So it's even the leader saying I've not done it either.
Tony:
00:16:57
We're in this together, but I'm going to try and navigate.
Tony:
00:17:01
I'll take accountability for this.
Tony:
00:17:03
And in doing so.
Tony:
00:17:04
I need to be bloody good at connecting with people and helping them on that
Tony:
00:17:09
journey, because I need to grow as well.
Rob:
00:17:11
That's interesting because I come from a completely opposite end of things.
Rob:
00:17:16
I come from the individual.
Rob:
00:17:17
So for me it's, It started with happiness.
Rob:
00:17:20
Yeah, understand people.
Rob:
00:17:21
What do people need?
Rob:
00:17:22
And most of that is relationships.
Rob:
00:17:24
Then it's people need relationships.
Rob:
00:17:26
People need and this is what we were talking about last week.
Rob:
00:17:30
And where Clark was saying that people need to be better followers.
Rob:
00:17:33
In a sense, but I don't think people should follow blindly.
Rob:
00:17:36
I think people in order to be happy, you have to have something to contribute to.
Rob:
00:17:43
It's like Emmanuel Kant said, what was it?
Rob:
00:17:46
Someone to love, something to hope for and something to do.
Rob:
00:17:49
If you start with an individual needs to grow.
Rob:
00:17:52
So they need to grow personally.
Rob:
00:17:54
There's a point where we have to join with another.
Rob:
00:17:57
We join romantically because we want to be more.
Rob:
00:17:59
And our identity shifts from being Us to be from being me as an
Rob:
00:18:04
individual to being us as a unit.
Rob:
00:18:07
That's Is the shift of that identity where when you stop being an individual and
Rob:
00:18:13
you start Seeing yourself as the team.
Rob:
00:18:15
That's when the team build.
Rob:
00:18:17
So that's where I got into that.
Rob:
00:18:19
This is where the link from if you're going to be in a relationship,
Rob:
00:18:22
you need to join as a team.
Rob:
00:18:23
You are still the individual, but then it's a bigger circle that
Rob:
00:18:26
you are an individual, you are the relationship, you are the team.
Rob:
00:18:30
All of that is about the relationship.
Rob:
00:18:31
But the key to the relationship is keeping communication going.
Rob:
00:18:35
And the key to keeping communication going is to manage conflict.
Rob:
00:18:39
Being able to disagree without having a drama, as I call it.
Rob:
00:18:43
And then when I looked at it leaders.
Rob:
00:18:46
often don't have confidence because they're scared of conflict or
Rob:
00:18:49
often because of the relationships because they don't feel worthy.
Rob:
00:18:52
And I feel that they need to have people behind them.
Rob:
00:18:55
And I think that's where you build the relationship.
Rob:
00:18:58
But it's not just about having good one to one relationships.
Rob:
00:19:01
It's building an identity for the team.
Rob:
00:19:03
It's building a culture that people come in, if you look at Manchester United
Rob:
00:19:07
It's the best example of a worse culture.
Rob:
00:19:09
You get great players go there and be average because something happens in
Rob:
00:19:14
that whole culture that lowers everyone.
Rob:
00:19:16
So I think it's when you can build that communication when you can
Rob:
00:19:20
build the relationship so everyone individually feels they've got
Rob:
00:19:24
more to gain from being part of the team than from being an individual.
Rob:
00:19:27
That's when they're united.
Rob:
00:19:28
That's what I call being a unifier.
Rob:
00:19:30
When you can articulate that, then you have the authority to hold people
Rob:
00:19:34
accountable for their performance, for their standards, for their values.
Rob:
00:19:37
The natural next step is that you then have to look at Now, by that level what
Rob:
00:19:43
you're already doing should be easy.
Rob:
00:19:45
You should be able to do it in half the time or a quarter of the time, because
Rob:
00:19:48
you've removed the friction points, now you've got capacity and now you
Rob:
00:19:52
should be looking at what's the bigger challenge for, how can we do more?
Tony:
00:19:56
I don't think we are coming at it from a different end.
Tony:
00:19:59
I think we're just using different language to articulate it.
Tony:
00:20:02
So everything starts with the individual.
Tony:
00:20:04
That's why I think profiling has its value.
Tony:
00:20:06
Where I think profiling fails is when it's too rudimentary or it's
Tony:
00:20:10
too low resolution, so if you think about a four box matrix that a
Tony:
00:20:15
quarter of the population fits in one of those boxes, it's not new.
Tony:
00:20:18
It's not granular enough.
Tony:
00:20:19
The real world is dynamic.
Tony:
00:20:21
It shifts all the time.
Tony:
00:20:22
So if I'm a high D in disc or I'm an ENFP, extroverted feeling, enthusiastic type.
Tony:
00:20:27
So help me understand how.
Tony:
00:20:30
Because I put myself in this team and I put myself in this team over here.
Tony:
00:20:33
I still that type of person, if you like, but it's going to be different.
Tony:
00:20:38
And I need to understand how to play differently.
Tony:
00:20:40
There's an adaptation tax.
Tony:
00:20:42
If I'm too far out of my comfort zone for too long, I'm paying too much tax.
Tony:
00:20:47
I'm getting stressed.
Tony:
00:20:49
Burning energy.
Tony:
00:20:50
We need to teach people how to understand the tax they're going
Tony:
00:20:54
to have to pay to go and achieve something, to go and work with someone.
Tony:
00:20:57
It's difficult to work with this person over here.
Tony:
00:20:59
So if I'm the manager or the leader of that situation or that
Tony:
00:21:04
relationship, I have to move first.
Tony:
00:21:06
I have to learn to move, make those adjustments in order
Tony:
00:21:10
to build that relationship.
Tony:
00:21:11
My job as the leader is to help that person.
Tony:
00:21:14
I want them to come with me, but there's a friction there, there's a tension there.
Tony:
00:21:18
I own that.
Tony:
00:21:19
I have to make the first move.
Tony:
00:21:20
If they're the stronger leader, they can make the first move.
Tony:
00:21:23
They can try and make the reparations.
Tony:
00:21:25
That's okay too.
Tony:
00:21:26
So I think we are coming at it from the same place.
Tony:
00:21:29
It's that understanding that for each of these, I think about a model and you
Tony:
00:21:34
would have researched this a lot with all the work around happiness and stuff.
Tony:
00:21:37
So we talk about a strength based culture where everybody's
Tony:
00:21:40
playing to their Strengths.
Tony:
00:21:41
It just makes sense, right?
Tony:
00:21:42
We go to work, it's effortless, we could do it all day, we're doing things that we
Tony:
00:21:45
love because we're in our natural habitat.
Tony:
00:21:48
Now the chances of that being perfect for most people, most of the time, is zero.
Tony:
00:21:53
Chances are there's going to be, in any given day, you're going to
Tony:
00:21:56
be Pulled around a little bit off because of the environments that we're
Tony:
00:22:00
in is constant change, fast moving demands are going through the roof.
Tony:
00:22:03
Costs are going up, external to work, all of that sort of
Tony:
00:22:06
stuff, new job opportunities.
Tony:
00:22:07
It's a moving feast.
Tony:
00:22:09
So in spite of all that, how do we ground ourselves in this
Tony:
00:22:13
thing with that shared sense of purpose that you're talking about.
Tony:
00:22:16
I've got friction with this guy, how do I understand what
Tony:
00:22:19
a day in their life looks like?
Tony:
00:22:21
So what's genuine empathy?
Tony:
00:22:23
It might not be natural for me to do that, but if I want to
Tony:
00:22:26
help, if I want to understand them, I need to be able to do it.
Tony:
00:22:28
And then it's about the frequent high quality conversations that
Tony:
00:22:31
we're going to have to grow that.
Tony:
00:22:33
So when you were talking about that once the friction has been flattened,
Tony:
00:22:38
then the team's got new capacity.
Tony:
00:22:39
That's exactly what I'm talking about.
Tony:
00:22:41
I think to be able to lead people towards this thing to grow.
Tony:
00:22:45
So that is growing together in my world.
Tony:
00:22:47
It is and it happens in public.
Tony:
00:22:49
It happens because we're in shared spaces.
Tony:
00:22:52
where people's underperformance is exposed and how the manager speaks to that person.
Tony:
00:22:58
Is it appropriate or not?
Tony:
00:22:59
Is it safe?
Tony:
00:23:00
Are we working in a place where we can express ourselves and be open to failure
Tony:
00:23:05
and failing quickly and moving on from it?
Tony:
00:23:07
Or, is the person in charge not allowing that?
Tony:
00:23:10
Because.
Tony:
00:23:11
They haven't found that within themselves yet to do it.
Tony:
00:23:13
Lots of problems, whether it's the person in charge is lack of confidence or lack
Tony:
00:23:17
of vulnerability or lack of being able to create those spaces that are absolutely
Tony:
00:23:22
critical to unity as you will call it.
Tony:
00:23:24
That's where I think leadership development becomes massively valuable
Tony:
00:23:28
to an organization, and it's not about are you a situational leader
Tony:
00:23:32
or are you a transformational leader?
Tony:
00:23:34
It's bollocks, really.
Tony:
00:23:35
If you love process and you like action and you like perfectionism
Tony:
00:23:39
and you like to do that.
Tony:
00:23:41
Okay, that's fine.
Tony:
00:23:42
That's great.
Tony:
00:23:42
To what degree?
Tony:
00:23:43
How much are you able to express that on a day to day basis?
Tony:
00:23:46
So you're basically assessing.
Tony:
00:23:48
Are you more stressed than you could be?
Tony:
00:23:49
Do we need to change, what is it?
Tony:
00:23:51
Job environment fit?
Tony:
00:23:53
Do we need to make some tweaks to your environment in order to allow you to
Tony:
00:23:56
play more at home, more of the time, but that was a million things, but I
Tony:
00:24:00
do think we're on the same frequency.
Tony:
00:24:03
I just think we're coming at it with different language and
Tony:
00:24:06
from different experiences.
Rob:
00:24:07
What I mean is that I think you started with, here's this team.
Rob:
00:24:10
How do I get them to work together?
Rob:
00:24:12
Yeah.
Rob:
00:24:12
Whereas I started with, here's this individual, it started with, how do
Rob:
00:24:16
they, how do we get them to go to the gym regularly, what's stopping them?
Rob:
00:24:20
And then it's about stress and then it's about how does someone be happy?
Rob:
00:24:23
So I'm looking more from the employee whereas I think most leaders are like you.
Rob:
00:24:27
They're looking at how do we get this group?
Rob:
00:24:29
And I think that's unimaginably.
Rob:
00:24:29
complex to look from there.
Tony:
00:24:32
Yeah, I think there's always two sides to it though, Rob.
Tony:
00:24:34
So let's say you are now the manager of a team.
Tony:
00:24:37
So you're already the manager of a team.
Tony:
00:24:39
That's your team.
Tony:
00:24:40
You've been going along quite nicely.
Tony:
00:24:41
And there's a need for new capacity.
Tony:
00:24:44
So you bring in two recruits who are really different.
Tony:
00:24:46
So you then work in both sides of that, both ends of that spectrum,
Tony:
00:24:49
where you've got this team that's now ticking along quite nicely.
Tony:
00:24:52
You're now introducing two new elements to it.
Tony:
00:24:54
Two new egos, two new personalities, two new skill sets, two new sets
Tony:
00:25:00
of drivers and needs and wants and all of that kind of stuff.
Tony:
00:25:03
And the whole equilibrium that you've built is now in a state of flux.
Tony:
00:25:07
So you've got two tasks.
Tony:
00:25:09
One is to grow that relationship with these new people and to integrate them
Tony:
00:25:14
into the status quo towards a new capacity because it will be different because there
Tony:
00:25:19
will be tension and there will be more leadership required to get through that as
Tony:
00:25:26
efficiently and effectively as possible.
Rob:
00:25:28
Okay.
Rob:
00:25:29
So we talked about, yeah, how you define leadership.
Rob:
00:25:32
What element of leadership have you seen managers most struggle with?
Tony:
00:25:36
I think there's a big hole in communications.
Tony:
00:25:38
It's the thing that needs to happen most frequently.
Tony:
00:25:42
Therefore, there's more chances to get it wrong because how you speak to
Tony:
00:25:45
one person It's not necessarily going to be effective with how you speak
Tony:
00:25:48
to another so i'd say communication.
Tony:
00:25:50
I've done so much work now with leadership groups.
Tony:
00:25:53
Because they've come through the schooling that they've had and the training that
Tony:
00:25:57
they've done and the education and all of that, I don't think any of it's really
Tony:
00:26:00
served their needs to understand who they really are and therefore they turn
Tony:
00:26:06
up with the persona that they've created to, to help themselves get through the
Tony:
00:26:10
day because they haven't really grounded themselves in their true identity.
Tony:
00:26:15
So there's a gap between the job that they're doing and
Tony:
00:26:17
the person that they're being.
Tony:
00:26:19
And they need to close that gap and actually reverse it.
Tony:
00:26:22
Start with who am I being?
Tony:
00:26:23
Because once, once I can define who I'm being in those moments then
Tony:
00:26:28
I can start to become authentic.
Tony:
00:26:30
You can become authentic.
Tony:
00:26:31
You'll feel more confident, but one of those challenges is they're
Tony:
00:26:35
not okay with being themselves.
Tony:
00:26:36
They've got fears and insecurities about who they are, so they quash
Tony:
00:26:40
it down and out comes this ego boss.
Tony:
00:26:43
It might be the over nice guy, it might be the overly vigilant person
Tony:
00:26:47
that's micromanaging, it might be the the overly demanding one that's
Tony:
00:26:51
that nothing's ever good enough all of these things come out which, which
Tony:
00:26:55
might be strengths in the right place.
Tony:
00:26:57
But become massive derailers because they're not regulated properly, because
Tony:
00:27:01
they're not grounded in reality.
Tony:
00:27:03
They're just the myths that we've created for ourselves, that we
Tony:
00:27:05
need to be the person choosing to be because we think that's what we
Tony:
00:27:08
need to do to get through the day.
Tony:
00:27:10
So none of it works as a consequence.
Tony:
00:27:12
There's a disconnect and people are looking for it.
Tony:
00:27:15
Then we talk about the people that you're dealing with are also in the same boat.
Tony:
00:27:18
They're coming to work with the same needs wanting to be met subconsciously.
Tony:
00:27:21
They're not thinking about it.
Tony:
00:27:22
They're not all psychologists going to work wondering how they can have
Tony:
00:27:25
the needs met, but we're all on that.
Tony:
00:27:28
Whether we know it or not, that's what we're doing, right?
Tony:
00:27:30
So if the leader and the manager gets a real sense of who they are,
Tony:
00:27:34
they can really start to help people.
Tony:
00:27:35
They can really start to manage themselves through the challenges that they've
Tony:
00:27:40
got, but also really help other people.
Tony:
00:27:42
And that's a game changer, right?
Tony:
00:27:43
Really contributing beyond just getting the job done.
Tony:
00:27:47
They're helping people become more effective and in their own life.
Tony:
00:27:51
So there's those two things.
Tony:
00:27:52
I think communication at one end, which is at the pointy end.
Tony:
00:27:55
It happens all the time.
Tony:
00:27:56
I did some work once when I first stepped out of football, was working in the
Tony:
00:27:59
rail depot I was Mancunian working in a Allerton rail depot in Liverpool with
Tony:
00:28:04
all these Evertonian shift workers, so I was way outside my comfort zone.
Tony:
00:28:07
I was doing a standard work project, Completely different world to me.
Tony:
00:28:12
I was in there to improve the standard work procedures across five
Tony:
00:28:15
different sets of shift workers.
Tony:
00:28:17
It was my project to qualify as a lead practitioner and
Tony:
00:28:21
the manager was in his office.
Tony:
00:28:22
These guys are all under these diesel trains, putting new brakes on, changing
Tony:
00:28:26
the oil, doing all of that kind of stuff.
Tony:
00:28:28
The manager didn't come out, didn't ever speak to them.
Tony:
00:28:31
They had boards that had the status of different jobs, red, green and amber,
Tony:
00:28:35
rag, things, whether, how far they were along the process, what parts were
Tony:
00:28:39
missing, all of that kind of stuff.
Tony:
00:28:40
But this need for frequent high quality conversations that we've just talked
Tony:
00:28:44
about this wasn't happening because this guy was sitting in his office.
Tony:
00:28:49
Maybe said the door's always open if anybody needs it, but just didn't
Tony:
00:28:52
engage, that's probably the best example of this sense of a lack of
Tony:
00:28:57
certainty about who they are and what, who they need to be in order to be,
Tony:
00:29:02
to achieve, and this place, Northern Rail were in need of, real leadership.
Rob:
00:29:07
That, that reminds me, I was a trainee cinema manager for a while.
Rob:
00:29:10
One of these big cinema multiplexes.
Rob:
00:29:13
You had to do a little bit of everything.
Rob:
00:29:15
And I was doing that and I was then in the office.
Rob:
00:29:18
And I noticed one of the problems they had was poor customer service.
Rob:
00:29:21
And I noticed that it was like 16, 17 year olds.
Rob:
00:29:25
And all the managers would be in the office and they would come out
Rob:
00:29:29
now and then, bark at them about something and then go back in.
Rob:
00:29:32
And I'm like, this is wrong.
Rob:
00:29:33
There was a new manager and she was only like 21, 22.
Rob:
00:29:36
She'd come in, been a usher at 16, worked her way up and
Rob:
00:29:40
she was a first time manager.
Rob:
00:29:42
Most of the staff were going off with the other manager to this big new complex
Rob:
00:29:46
and she didn't want to deal with them.
Rob:
00:29:48
So really bad culture.
Rob:
00:29:50
And I was like, this is wrong.
Rob:
00:29:51
So I went to her and I said we're getting bad customer service
Rob:
00:29:54
because the staff aren't happy.
Rob:
00:29:56
The staff aren't being managed.
Rob:
00:29:58
They're just being able to do what they want and then they're being shouted at.
Rob:
00:30:02
Anyway I had to put together a report to the area manager and
Rob:
00:30:06
just got all the staff in the room and just go how do you feel?
Rob:
00:30:09
What's the problem?
Rob:
00:30:09
What do you want?
Rob:
00:30:10
And the others were like, Oh no, this isn't going to work.
Rob:
00:30:13
You're they're going to ask for more money.
Rob:
00:30:15
They're going to ask for everything.
Rob:
00:30:17
Then they're just going to be more pissed off.
Rob:
00:30:19
It wasn't, better uniform they wanted, but they didn't really actually ask
Rob:
00:30:22
for money, where about 23 things.
Rob:
00:30:24
But it was this whole thing of the managers just sitting in the office.
Rob:
00:30:29
And then I became like the outcast.
Rob:
00:30:31
I was still learning.
Rob:
00:30:32
They would try and set me up because I'd upset things.
Rob:
00:30:36
But yeah, I've been thinking a lot about what you say because
Rob:
00:30:39
you say it in a different way than I've ever thought about it.
Rob:
00:30:41
The adaptations we make there's a cost to those adaptations.
Rob:
00:30:45
And I think the more we can communicate.
Rob:
00:30:47
My whole idea is that you don't change, but your identity changes.
Rob:
00:30:52
So you're still the same person, but it's just that in order to join with others, we
Rob:
00:30:56
need to be able to resolve the conflict.
Rob:
00:30:58
We need to be able to reveal who we are, which means we have to know
Rob:
00:31:01
who we are and then be able to be vulnerable to explain that and to
Rob:
00:31:05
understand who someone else is.
Rob:
00:31:07
So I see there's skills of relationships, conflict and, but then there's the
Rob:
00:31:12
foundation, which is a longer bit of having the character and the strength
Rob:
00:31:17
in order to be able to do that.
Rob:
00:31:19
So one is distinguishing between management and leadership.
Rob:
00:31:22
I
Tony:
00:31:24
would equate it to the difference between technical challenges,
Tony:
00:31:28
which have got a known capacity.
Tony:
00:31:31
What the job is to be there can be complicated thing, like building an
Tony:
00:31:34
aircraft, really complicated, but it's got skilled people that know how to
Tony:
00:31:37
build it, managers come in to just make sure it's getting done to the standard.
Tony:
00:31:42
I guess it's related to optimizing the way that technical tasks are completed,
Tony:
00:31:47
are they done in the right time?
Tony:
00:31:48
Are they done to the right standards?
Tony:
00:31:50
All of that.
Tony:
00:31:51
So I don't see that as leadership.
Tony:
00:31:52
The job is known, the capacity to do the job is known.
Tony:
00:31:56
Available.
Tony:
00:31:56
Let's just manage process.
Tony:
00:31:58
There may be some standard setting.
Tony:
00:32:00
There may be some I don't know, goal setting or stuff like that, but there's
Tony:
00:32:03
nothing that requires us to grow together through, through something.
Tony:
00:32:06
I'm not articulating it very well, but I see it as getting the job
Tony:
00:32:10
done when we know how to do the job.
Tony:
00:32:12
I see that as management.
Tony:
00:32:13
Whereas leadership, when you're talking about an adaptive challenge, which is a
Tony:
00:32:17
challenge that we haven't faced together, where people are looking to someone to
Tony:
00:32:23
when people are saying, how do we do this?
Tony:
00:32:26
What are we going to do here?
Tony:
00:32:27
Help me out.
Tony:
00:32:28
Then it requires.
Tony:
00:32:30
Let's let's work together.
Tony:
00:32:31
Let's build some new capacity.
Tony:
00:32:33
Let's set our stall out for how we're going to achieve.
Tony:
00:32:36
Let's be prepared to fail.
Tony:
00:32:37
When you're a manager, I don't think you're in that space of growing capacity.
Tony:
00:32:41
You're delivering against a set of standards, whereas leadership is the
Tony:
00:32:44
standard hasn't even been set yet.
Tony:
00:32:46
What is possible here?
Tony:
00:32:48
That's the visionary side of it.
Tony:
00:32:49
But it's not just that it's if there's a new vision that we're all starting
Tony:
00:32:54
to point towards, it's then about mobilizing people to get there and
Tony:
00:32:58
they've all got a different start point.
Tony:
00:33:00
Here's this new ambitious project that we're all pointing towards.
Tony:
00:33:03
How do I feel about that?
Tony:
00:33:04
What do I think about that?
Tony:
00:33:05
What do I want against that?
Tony:
00:33:07
Where does it fit into my personal set of values or needs?
Tony:
00:33:11
So the leader has to understand that and has to pull that together,
Tony:
00:33:15
has to redefine how this collective is going to meet this challenge.
Tony:
00:33:19
That requires public learning.
Tony:
00:33:22
It requires collaboration.
Tony:
00:33:23
You're dealing with values, motivations, emotions it's,
Tony:
00:33:27
and you're dealing with that.
Tony:
00:33:27
As a manager you're interacting with it.
Tony:
00:33:29
I don't want to confuse it, as a manager, you're having lots of maybe
Tony:
00:33:33
tension and conflict to deal with.
Tony:
00:33:35
But they know how to do the job.
Tony:
00:33:36
It's just getting the job done.
Tony:
00:33:37
The tension is likely to be misunderstanding or personality
Tony:
00:33:41
clashes or stuff like that.
Tony:
00:33:42
That's human nature is playing out in all of this stuff, but it's when we've
Tony:
00:33:46
got to grow together where we've, none of us have have tackled this before we,
Tony:
00:33:51
it becomes a much different challenge.
Tony:
00:33:53
So I'm trying to really get into the shared values to find a purpose to really
Tony:
00:33:59
understand people get in their shoes.
Tony:
00:34:01
And I might do that as a manager.
Tony:
00:34:03
When I'm showing some leadership characteristics that showing the types
Tony:
00:34:07
of behaviors that lend themselves to good leadership, it's just that in those
Tony:
00:34:11
situations, they don't need leading.
Tony:
00:34:13
They just need to do their job.
Tony:
00:34:14
Whereas where I go to be accountable for something that no one's ever done before.
Tony:
00:34:19
That's a completely different leap as a manager.
Tony:
00:34:21
I know what the results are that I'm going for and I know that these people
Tony:
00:34:25
can do the job so I can start to manage that and then, whereas this other
Tony:
00:34:31
thing, oh, that's going to test us all.
Tony:
00:34:33
Let's work out how we're going to grow together through this.
Tony:
00:34:37
It's a completely different mindset.
Rob:
00:34:39
Put it crudely, it's business as usual for a manager.
Rob:
00:34:42
It's maintaining stability, maintaining performance.
Rob:
00:34:45
Whereas leadership is more like pioneering, breaking new
Rob:
00:34:48
ground, conquering new Yeah, and
Tony:
00:34:51
uncertainty as well.
Tony:
00:34:52
So a manager might start to show leadership when the ground shifts from
Tony:
00:34:56
underneath them, when the way that they did things is now going to be different.
Tony:
00:35:00
So they go from managing what was a process and a fixed way of doing things
Tony:
00:35:04
to suddenly the business has changed, has pivoted, said we're now going to do this.
Tony:
00:35:09
We were building aircraft seats.
Tony:
00:35:10
We're now building aircraft engines.
Tony:
00:35:11
Like now there's a whole host of new learning to be done.
Tony:
00:35:16
I used to know everything about what needed to be done.
Tony:
00:35:19
I could help people through it and help manage the team through it.
Tony:
00:35:22
Now the business has pivoted and now I'm starting to flounder.
Tony:
00:35:26
Then it starts to become A leadership challenge.
Tony:
00:35:29
Because if I'm feeling that what are these guys feeling, then I'm starting to
Tony:
00:35:33
understand what new capacity do we need to build together to meet this new challenge.
Tony:
00:35:37
So it can shift from one to the other.
Tony:
00:35:39
I see leadership more as I think I said at the beginning As a practice
Tony:
00:35:43
than as a definition, you're not either a leader or a manager, you can
Tony:
00:35:48
demonstrate leadership as a practice when there's a new challenge to be met.
Rob:
00:35:53
What comes to mind as you're talking is as things are changing,
Rob:
00:35:56
for example, like bringing in AI, everything's changing.
Rob:
00:35:59
So managers are having to lead more and more as it becomes more volatile.
Rob:
00:36:03
Yeah, for sure.
Rob:
00:36:04
Okay.
Rob:
00:36:04
Who would be a great public example, a great leadership that you've seen.
Tony:
00:36:08
I'm cheating a bit here.
Tony:
00:36:09
I've been delivering a course for Harvard edX for the last couple of years, and
Tony:
00:36:13
they use Martin Luther King and Gandhi as two great examples of leaders where
Tony:
00:36:17
they had no formal authority, and yet they mobilized millions of people towards
Tony:
00:36:24
a new vision for, a big adaptive change.
Tony:
00:36:27
Changing the whole world for the people that they were speaking to.
Tony:
00:36:31
They were able to demonstrate great leadership without any
Tony:
00:36:34
authority whatsoever over the people who followed them.
Tony:
00:36:37
So I think they're really good examples.
Tony:
00:36:39
In terms of, what tends to happen, I think people will look to the great
Tony:
00:36:45
authors, the just trying to think.
Tony:
00:36:47
Who are the great manager books?
Tony:
00:36:49
The classics that always get thrown up.
Tony:
00:36:51
Even if you said the Virgin, Richard Branson, for example, right?
Tony:
00:36:54
Richard Branson, clearly a visionary, clearly entrepreneurial, blah, blah,
Tony:
00:36:58
blah, and has led this growth of a massive company from nothing to
Tony:
00:37:03
pioneering, all of that sort of stuff.
Tony:
00:37:06
So somewhere in that there's got to be great leadership.
Tony:
00:37:08
But I think what tends to happen is people then go Let's look at all
Tony:
00:37:12
his characteristics and then pull, extrapolate them from the story and define
Tony:
00:37:18
leadership as that or who's the GE guy?
Rob:
00:37:21
Jack
Tony:
00:37:21
Welsh.
Tony:
00:37:22
Yeah.
Tony:
00:37:22
So Jack Welsh, right?
Tony:
00:37:23
World renowned builder of massive company.
Tony:
00:37:26
Lots of mantras and leadership, iconic leadership lessons.
Tony:
00:37:31
Again, extrapolate Jack Welsh out, in this reductive way and
Tony:
00:37:34
go, great leadership is this.
Tony:
00:37:36
I'm not so sure that you can have all those characteristics and not lead.
Tony:
00:37:41
I just don't think it's a set of characteristics that those people
Tony:
00:37:45
have achieved great things and probably demonstrated throughout that
Tony:
00:37:50
process, lots of great leadership at times, and probably failed lots too.
Tony:
00:37:55
Yeah, I think the idea of a Gandhi or Martin Luther King, and
Tony:
00:37:59
whether you like them agree with their politics is irrelevant.
Tony:
00:38:02
They were able to mobilize people with no authority over them whatsoever.
Tony:
00:38:06
And they were able to have such a clear vision and a profound way
Tony:
00:38:10
of articulating that vision and to corral a group of people with a shared
Tony:
00:38:15
set of values and a shared purpose.
Tony:
00:38:16
I think leadership lives in that space where you're connecting
Tony:
00:38:20
with people at that level.
Tony:
00:38:22
That's not about doing stuff.
Tony:
00:38:24
It's about who are we being together?
Tony:
00:38:25
Who will we be when we get there?
Tony:
00:38:27
It's a completely different journey.
Rob:
00:38:29
Yeah.
Rob:
00:38:29
Okay, just one more question.
Rob:
00:38:31
And what advice would you give to a new manager leader?
Tony:
00:38:34
Know thyself.
Tony:
00:38:36
And it's not an easy thing.
Tony:
00:38:37
People talk about soft skills all the time.
Tony:
00:38:39
It's the hardest thing for people to do because they haven't really taken the time
Tony:
00:38:44
to do the work to understand themselves.
Tony:
00:38:46
It's easier for a Guy in his fifties, like me.
Tony:
00:38:49
The process is the same, but if you're in your mid twenties and you go into
Tony:
00:38:53
management, you've only just fully formed as a young man or a young
Tony:
00:38:56
woman I would say don't fall into the trap of trying to be be something
Tony:
00:39:01
that someone else says you should be.
Tony:
00:39:03
Try and really get under the skin a little bit more to understand why
Tony:
00:39:08
you're doing what you do, what are the values that make you who you are.
Tony:
00:39:11
And start leading through that and you'll find yourself in a really good place.
Tony:
00:39:16
Might not be in the job that you're in at the moment, but you find yourself
Tony:
00:39:18
in a really good place over time.
Rob:
00:39:20
Yeah.
Rob:
00:39:20
That's such a trap that every time there's a new book I can remember it
Rob:
00:39:24
was like all the American companies tried to be like , Japanese companies
Rob:
00:39:28
and it's just transplanting things that worked in one dynamic and thinking
Rob:
00:39:32
they're going to work in everyone.
Rob:
00:39:33
It's like Jack Welch, everyone was fire your bottom 10 percent every
Rob:
00:39:38
year and and then when he left the whole thing collapsed because he'd
Rob:
00:39:42
been massaging the figures for years.
