Michael Stewart, for the past 25 years, has consulted to hundreds of organizations ranging from the Fortune 50 to small non-profits. He has partnered with numerous thought leaders and organizations including David Campbell, Marshall Goldsmith, Blanchard, CCL, Covey, Lominger, Korn/Ferry and others. He is known for data driven solutions that appeal to the strategic CEO, the strategic Human Resources leader, and the practitioner.
Michael Stewart’s team of Ph.D. consultants and industry leaders has conducted hundreds of executive leadership programs, coaching engagements, training courses and delivered more than 4.5 million assessments working with organizations in more than 90 countries. His holistic approach aligns the leadership and culture of an organization to better execute their strategic intent
Values are the real deal in organizations, and today, we're diving deep into how they explode in importance and truly shape the workplace vibe. We kick things off by busting the myth that values are just some fancy words hanging on a wall—they're about how we live and breathe them daily, holding ourselves and each other accountable. Our guest, Michael Stewart, takes us on a journey through his experiences, revealing how we can align these values with our organizational goals to create a thriving culture. We dig into the nitty-gritty of balancing individual coaching with the bigger picture of organizational strategy. So, whether you're a fresh leader trying to find your footing or a seasoned pro looking to re-energize your team, this episode is packed with insights to help you step up your game!
The conversation dives deep into the world of organizational values and their real impact on company culture. We kick things off with Michael Stewart, who brings years of experience in leadership development and talent management to the table. He emphasizes that values should not just be some fancy words framed on a wall; they need to be lived out and integrated into the everyday actions of employees. It’s all about accountability—how do organizations ensure that these values translate into real behaviors? We explore how to create clarity around these values, establishing them as the baseline for how things operate within the company. Michael shares anecdotes from his extensive career, illustrating how organizations like Citigroup have transformed their cultures by aligning their values with actions and expectations. This isn't just a fluffy conversation; it's about laying down the law on what behaviors are acceptable and what are not, ensuring everyone is on board and moving in the same direction.
We also touch on the importance of viewing leadership not just from an individual perspective but rather from a broader organizational lens. Michael shares insights into his methodology, including his 4R model, which breaks down leadership into Relationships, Roles, Responsibilities, and Results. This framework prompts leaders to assess their effectiveness not only in driving results but also in how they build and leverage relationships. It’s a fascinating discussion that challenges the traditional siloed approach to leadership development, pushing for a more integrated view that services the entire organization. As we wrap up, we reflect on how leaders can better understand their role in supporting organizational goals while simultaneously fostering the personal growth of their teams.
For anyone serious about leadership development, this episode is a goldmine of practical advice and insights. Michael’s experiences and the frameworks he discusses provide listeners with actionable takeaways that can be applied immediately in their own organizations. Plus, we sneak in some humor along the way, making this not just informative but also an enjoyable listen!
Takeaways:
- Organizational values are not just fancy words on a wall; they must be actively lived out and integrated into the culture....
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
We've seen an explosion interms of the importance of values
inside of an organization. Butvalues aren't just sheets of paper,
the words that hang on a wall.It's really how are those lived out
and how do you hold peopleaccountable to those? And so we are
often building our modelsaround what are those values and
(00:25):
how do we make sure that theyare super clear and that it is kind
of a minimum standard of howthings get done around here.
Hi there and welcome to theStep Up Expert Voices for Leadership
Growth. I'm your host, KentKnievel. Every week I talk to experts
who focus on helping leadersstep up their leadership game. If
(00:47):
you're new to the show, thenon whatever platform you're using,
I encourage you to subscribeso you never miss an episode. One
last thing, as a leadershipdevelopment consultant and an executive
coach, I have a particularinterest in supporting recent internally
promoted leaders. If that'syou, or if you support a leader who
has been recently promoted, Iencourage you to visit my website
at Kent Coach Playbook anddownload a free copy of my 90 day
(01:09):
blueprint filled withpractical advice for you or the leader
you support in hitting theground running and truly stepping
up to their new leadershiplevel. Without further ado, on with
the show. Welcome. Welcome tothe Step up today. Want to talk about
systems and organizations andhow we are of service to the overarching
(01:34):
system organization. It'sreally easy for us at times, especially
folks like me who I'm a soloconsultant, to really focus on individual
leaders. The leader I amtrying to support in their growth
and development and attainmentof their objectives, to really zero
in on the individual, butthinking a lot more and having some
(01:56):
conversations around. But howare we also making sure that we're
in service the broader systemand organization? And with me today
is someone who's verypassionate about this subject is
Michael Stewart, who has beendoing this for a number of years
and I'm not going to tell hisstory for him. So. But I'm going
to welcome you, Michael, tothe podcast and glad to have you
here today.
Thank you, Kent, for havingme. And this is one of the debates
(02:20):
that I often find with peoplelike yourself and lots of consultants
out there of this. Is it aboutthe person or the organization and
who is the customer at the endof the day? Right? We always get
that sort of a question. Andmy journey is I'm not an IO psychologist
like many folks, but I alwayssay I play one on tv. So just given
(02:42):
my background, that's my.
Line.
You know, way Back when, whenI was in my undergrad I thought I
was going to sell robotics tobig manufacturing companies and the
market at the end of the 80swasn't that great for that. And I
found myself in theheadhunting business and then from
there I moved to theoutplacement side of the business.
(03:04):
There's lots of folks werelaying people off and so I trained
people how to sell themselvesbasically and how to, you know, how
do you build those largecontracts. From there I ended up
at NCS Assessments, which mostof what they did was sort of clinical
assessments and they had thissmall group of HR things with David
(03:28):
Campbell was certainly one ofthe authors and one of my mentors
out of there, Kathy Gayaluka,who built the MMPI, certainly renowned
IO person. So those were mysort of trainings out of that I built
that practice area up to be afew million dollars. We then acquired
the Kilty Goldsmith side ofall of their 360 processing. So I
(03:51):
followed Marshall Goldsmitharound for a number of years putting
in large scale leadershipprograms. And then from there I went
to Questar, which most of whatthey did was employee surveys, customer
sat, and I built out theirpartnership practice area where we
built all of the systems andthe processing for Covey and PDI
(04:13):
and Blanchard and oh boy,Ominger and all of the big players.
We probably hit 75.
I was going to say. Irecognize that name.
Right. And then back in 2000,right as the dot com bubble crash,
I jumped off on my own. Andnot great timing, but hey, what have
(04:36):
you? Most of what we did inthe early days was large scale custom
talent management solutionsfor multinational companies. And
so if you think aboutsomething like a scorecard for private
wealth managers, where you'retaking in what's their financials,
what's their 360, what's theirperformance standards, what's like
seven different pieces of dataand how do you put it on one page
(04:57):
or how do you do tracking teamassessment for Pfizer that says what's
the impact that teams arehaving on the outcomes of getting
drugs approved with the fda?So just custom weird stuff. We still
do a lot of that. And thenabout 10 years ago we sort of jumped
into the culture journey. Andwhat I've sort of taken from all
(05:21):
of that is how do you buildthese talent solutions, these behaviors
in a global or a largeorganization that's in service to
them accomplishing thestrategy. And if you think of a company
like Citigroup as one of ourclients, you know, to change the
behaviors, there you know,takes a. It's like turning the Atlantic
(05:44):
fleet command. I was told whenwe first started working with them
that, you know, even A town of200,000 people has a jail. So there's
going to be bad actors. AndI'm like, well that's not a very
good approach. So let's try tochange that and sort of step that
gap game up. Right. And Ithink today Citigroup is probably
one of the least fine bigbanks in the world and trying to
(06:05):
drive in. Here's how weprovide accountability around the
behaviors and expectationsthat they have. So that's a little
my background and journey.
Nice. Yeah. So tell me just alittle bit before we get into our
topic. Tell me just a littlebit more about work effects and what
are some of the major spacesthat you play, so to speak.
So again, probably 60% of ourwork is in again those large scale
(06:31):
custom talent types ofsolutions. And so people want to
do something upside down,purple. And the kind of three big
blocks of what we do is how dowe build the right content, what's
the right things that we'regoing to measure in terms of a survey
or assessment, what's thetechnology that we need to use to
(06:51):
do that with and then how doyou create action out of that? What's
the coaching, training,development that needs to go with
that? And I learned a longtime ago that being in a professional
services business is not veryprofitable. So I'm the only person
that does any consultants. Allmy staff are programmers and project
managers. And then I usepeople like yourself, Kent and others
(07:15):
to go out into kind of theperson facilitation, delivery, training,
types of things. Most of ourclients are probably mid to larger
size organizations where theyhave a good understanding of talent
and what are all of thedifferent pillars that go into those
practices. But I would saygrowing over the last number of years
(07:39):
is maybe the smaller to midsize. Certainly looking at our organizational
culture approach and how do weconnect that to the strategy of a
business.
Yeah, organization of culture.I think that's when you and I first
met. I think I contacted youjust interested to learn more. Would
have been seven years ago orso. Well, so let's get into our topic
a little bit. We had a bit ofa pre conversation talking about
(08:02):
how do we make sure that whatwe're doing is in service at a larger
system and organization topicyou're pretty passionate about.
Yeah. When I fundamentally amlooking at a client and how do we
help it is how do we help themachieve the goals of that organization,
(08:24):
what is their strategy if theyhave one, if they don't have one,
how do we get them one andmake it very clear how do we cascade
that what in an appropriateway so people understand how do they
fit? How does what they do ona day to day basis fit into the goals
of that organization? And howdo we certainly dial that magnetic
(08:47):
attraction of that up? Right.As we dial that up, there's also
going to be the negativeattraction where people don't necessarily
fit and may self select. Andso that's always the lens at which
I view how do we service ourclients and how do we sort of benefit
them. And I think that whenI've worked with a lot of other consultants,
(09:08):
that is not kind of theirfirst approach. Right. Their first
approach is what is the needsof that person or of that small group
of leaders or even leadershipin general. And they sort of get
stuck in that silo. And Ialways try to get back to what is
the business, what's theorganization about, what are they
trying to achieve? And it'salways coming back to in service
(09:30):
of that. And I see a lot ofpeople that again, this is my bias
that they put their training,their coaching, their facilitation
centered around the person andnot necessarily the organization
as a whole.
Yeah. So I know our adviceportion comes later, but this just
(09:52):
gave me two questions I wantedto pose to you and it's probably
an advice type question. Sowhen we think about the typical,
could be a head of HR or headof talent or head of leadership development
who is contacting you oranother consultant, what would your
advice be for those internalHR folks in terms of thinking about
(10:17):
the system, the organizationon the front end, maybe before even
picking up the phone,metaphorically or sending that email
to get in touch with consultant.
I mean we've heard for a longtime is how does HR get a seat at
the table? Right. And I thinkthat to have a seat at the table
they have to truly understandwhat is their domain area of expertise
(10:43):
and how does that enable theaccomplishment of the organization
as a whole. They don't need tobe experts in finance, finance has
that. They don't need to beexpert in sales and marketing. They
don't need to be expert inoperations or supply chain. But what
they do have expertise is, isaround the people. And I think growing
(11:04):
that we're not in, we're in aknowledge worker base for the most
part for organizations. Andhow people think about doing the
work is the catalyst foraccomplishing the goals of that organization.
And that is the domainexpertise of the HR folks. And so
really look at how does thepeople aspect of it and whether that's
(11:25):
leaders, mid level management,frontline employees, how does that
collectively help toaccomplish that and how do they get
that aligned, both in terms ofthe structure of the organization,
but also in terms of the justfundamentally how people think about
doing the work. And I think asthey bring that type of a conversation
(11:45):
forward to the executive teamand play in their domain area of
expertise, but always inservice to, to how are they going
to help accomplish the goalsof that organization, that they'll
find themselves being includedmore and more, if you will, at the
seat of the table.
Nice. So let me flip that alittle bit too, right. Cause you
(12:05):
were saying one thing younotice about other consultants is
they can get really zeroed inon the individual or that group of
leaders that were being askedto maybe come in and either do a
program workshop or coaching.What's your advice to the other consultants
out there on how to zoom outand help their client see where this
(12:26):
sits in the broader scheme of things?
I think it is always it'sasking questions to get contextual
relevancy, that understandingwhat is the strategy of the organization,
where are they not assuccessful as they may want to be
in execution of that strategy?Is it a structural problem, is it
(12:50):
a capital problem? You know,what are the different aspects of
that problem? And most of thetime you're going to find that it's
a people problem, that it'sthe people aren't fully executing
or don't fully understand ordon't have the right skills or the
right behaviors to sort ofexecute that. But I think if you
(13:10):
lean into understanding whatis the context of that organization
and their strategy and whatare the challenges, 90% of the time
it's going to come back topeople, which is I think the expertise
area for consultants. Puttingthe business consultant hat on versus
the leadership consultant haton for a little bit in leading with
(13:32):
that, what.
Led you to focus on this moreintentionally in your practice?
I found that as we focusedmore on that side of it, that the
nature of our programs grew.That as we looked at the full context
(13:55):
of that organization, theother data points that we're able
to sort of capture and puttogether in one place to sort of
connect the dots, if you will,that the size of our projects grew
and the level of impact thatwe had with those organizations grew.
And that's really, you know,trial and error. Certainly that came
(14:16):
from that. But I think that'sreally where that sort of comes from.
Yeah, I think, you know, andwe've, we've had some correspondence
ahead of time too. Right. Andthroughout the years, and I think
we run the risk. Right of, andI probably going to be using some
of your words here, is puttingforward either pretty generic programs
or approaches that mayultimately fall flat. Right. Because
(14:41):
they're focused on reuse ofquote unquote tried and true content.
How have you seen a focus onreally trying to put it in the context,
or as you were saying,focusing on contextual relevance.
How have you seen that changethe shape of the solutions that you're
(15:02):
putting forward?
So I'll just take our sort ofcustom 360s that we do. Right. We
don't really use off the shelf360s. We have one, we use it when
people don't really have amodel. But I think for the executives
to communicate what are theexpectations of behavior, that's
(15:22):
the minimum standard is Ithink the key component to that.
Certainly we've seen anexplosion in terms of the importance
of values inside of anorganization. But values aren't just,
you know, sheets of paper, thewords that hang on a wall. It's really
how are those lived out andhow do you hold people accountable
to those? And so we are oftenbuilding our models around what are
(15:48):
those values and how do wemake sure that they are super clear
and that it is, you know, kindof a minimum standard of how things
get done around here. Andthat's sort of where assessments
sort of come into play. Andthat is making it germane, contextually
relevant for thatorganization. You know, if it's a
(16:10):
fast growing new product typeof a company all the time, innovation
is going to be hugelyimportant. You know, and other organizations,
something around teamwork maynot be as important. If it's a startup
type of an organization,right. There's going to be a small
team, but it's not large team.If we start thinking about what is
(16:31):
the vision for an organizationas you get larger, how do people
really communicate acompelling and optimistic view of
that vision? Depending on theorganization and where they're at,
the different types ofbehaviors and expectations, expectations,
they're going to be differentand how do you make that again germane
for that organization? Wherethey sit today, that may not be true
(16:53):
again in three or four yearsfor that organization, it's going
to morph and change, butreally underline what are those expectations
that's going to propel thatversion of that strategy forward.
So this makes me wonder ifnow's A good time to talk about your
4R model, because I know thatI had a chance to really dig into
(17:15):
that a little bit recently aswell. And how do you. Would love
for you to introduce that tothe listeners and maybe bring that,
you know, into connection withcontextual relevance.
Yep. So some years ago, maybe12, 13 years ago, we partnered with
Mark McCluskey to look at allof the different leadership models
(17:39):
that are out there. So I thinkit was 100 plus different leadership
models. We said, okay, how dowe simplify this? How do we take
all of them into account andmake one simplified sort of a model?
And at the center of that, andas a backdrop, I always use this
model, even when we'rebuilding out custom content, to say,
have we checked the box inenough of these areas? That sort
(18:01):
of covers what we need to docustom side of things. But the 4R
model at the core, at thecenter is really relationships. You
know, that what a leader does,what people do, it's relationships.
How do they build, how do theyutilize? How do they leverage those
relationships? Then they haveto take those relationships and put
(18:22):
it into their roles. Right.They have multiple roles that they're
playing. How do they takethose relationship capabilities and
apply it to the roles withinthose roles? Then you have responsibilities
that there's different typesof responsibilities that you have,
and how that looks and feelsmay change a little bit. And then
lastly, they're ultimatelyaccountable to the results. And so
(18:44):
the 4R model is aboutrelationships, roles, responsibilities,
and results. And again, thecenter of that is what we call the
basic virtues of being aleader. And basic is spelled out
to sort of accomplish what arethose behavior expectations? And
so if we look at B isbeneficial partnerships, how do we
(19:06):
have a win win? How do we earntrust and respect? How do we sort
of get people to serve us? Howdo we create followership? Right.
The second part is aroundaligned emotions. So that's the A
part. How do we make surethat, you know, our emotions are
fitting the situation? Youknow, how do we not let. We ran over
our kid's bike this morningand we take it on the staff like
(19:27):
that's not aligned. And it'snot to say that you can't get upset
or angry or jump on the deskor what have you. You can have outbursts
if it's contextually relevant.Yet again, if it's aligned to the
situation, how do you havesustained determination? That's the
S part of it. How do yourecover from, you know, failures
or challenges that you've had?How do you persist when you're faced
(19:48):
with obstacles, how do youshow lots of endurance to sort of
push through on those things,right? And then the I is intellectual
flexibility and that's around.Are you open to new ideas? Do you
collect information frommultiple sources? Do you encourage,
you know, debate among folks?Do you learn from past mistakes?
Do you change course whenthings are clearly not working? So
(20:11):
that's sort of theintellectual flexibility and the
last one is character. Youknow, do you do the right things
when it's required? Do youkeep your promises and control commitments?
Do you apologize for yourmistakes? Do you don't pressure others
to sort of compromise on theirethics? So that's really the basic
part of buildingrelationships. If you do those things
(20:31):
well, you're going toaccomplish building effective relationships.
If you don't, we call it,you're going to have a hole in your
boat. How big that hole is,you're going to how much water are
you taking on, right? Then youhave to apply those, those relationship
capabilities to the roles. Andessentially you have a current state,
(20:52):
current looking role and youhave a future state of where that's
going to be. You have aninternal, external. So that's sort
of our two by two internal andcurrent state. You're really being
a coach to people, right?You're helping, you're coaching,
developing who those peopleare around you. If I look at internal,
(21:13):
future state, that's about howdo you be a change agent? How do
you sort of propel thatorganization to morph into change?
If I think about future stateand external, that's really being
the spokesperson, what's thestate of the state, where are we
at, right? And then the lastrole is really that future and external
is really being that directionsetter, right? That's what we oftentimes
(21:34):
account to. That person was areally good leader. They're really
being a direction setter. Andwe find that people often over index
on those external sides of theroles and under index on the internal
sides of things. Being a goodcoach, being a good change agent
isn't oftentimes we think ofas being a good leader. But those
(21:55):
are super important. And thenyou have to take those roles and
apply it to theresponsibilities that people have.
And within those there'sbasically five kind of key responsibilities
you need to, you need to setwhat is the strategy, you know, what
is that? That vision if youwill. You need to be able to execute
(22:16):
upon that strategy, thestrategy implementation. You need
to align people, right? Theyneed to come together. You need to
motivate them to go accomplishthose things. And then you have to
have good analysis andjudgment. So those are kind of the
five sort of key responseresponsibilities. And if you do those
well, you'll find that yousort of get the quantitative, qualitative,
(22:37):
the outcomes, the results thatyou're really looking for.
Love it. It's sort of likeleading metrics versus lagging metrics.
Right.
The type of person based ontheir results. And when you're sort
of figuring out who thatperson is. Right. As the intake part
of it, like, okay, are theythe. The crusty person? Like, no,
(22:59):
it's just my way. It's allabout the outcomes. It's about the
results. I don't care aboutall of this foo foo hr. Then we're
going to start with what's theresults? Are you getting the results
that you need? Are youperforming these responsibilities?
So we sort of work backwardsfrom results to responsibilities
to roles, to behaviors. Ifit's somebody that's reading all
the books, studies all theleadership stuff, listens to all
(23:21):
the podcasts, we're going tostart with the, with the, with the
relationship side of thingsand sort of move forward from there.
And so it's whether we'removing left or right or right to
left in that model sort ofdepends on where that person is at.
Yeah. I love that you saidsomething earlier that I wanted to
circle back to, which is, youknow, if you're. You're so many leaders
are focused on the externalpiece that they neglect the internal
(23:45):
piece. And I think you werespecifically talking about developing
the team or leading change.And something that I've. I kind of
keep coming to in bothcoaching and some of the leadership
development work that I'vebeen doing is we put off, or leaders,
you know, put off reallyfocusing on development or say, change
(24:10):
leadership for when thingsslow down. Right. When things slow
down, I will attend to that.And I don't know that things ever
slow down. Right. And so whichis where I have found, at least from
when it comes to coaching,which isn't always that scalable.
Right. But when a company isinvesting in coaching with a leader,
(24:30):
the biweekly or weekly ormonthly meeting with that coach sometimes
is the other than sleeping,the only time that that leader has
sort of the permission to juststop and slow down. So I just was
wondering if you wanted todrill in a little bit more on that.
I come from a perspective ofmaximizing your strengths and delegating
(24:51):
your weaknesses, butoftentimes I find leaders don't delegate
very well because they don'ttrust is maybe too strong of a word,
but they don't have theconfidence in the other people to
perform those tasks in the waythat they would do them or if they
do delegate, then theyoftentimes are micromanaging to do
(25:14):
it just exactly the way thatthey want it done. Right. And I think
that recognizing and givingthe coaching and change agent kind
of approaches to give peoplesmall tasks where they can be successful
in sort of building up thatconfidence and getting them to learn,
you know, what are thedifferent decision matrices and what
(25:34):
are the different componentsthat go into those things? Things
is where they can greatlyexponentially expand the capabilities
of them, their team and theorganization. And that's why I think
focusing on that coach andchange agent role to develop the
capabilities of the peoplearound you is so critically important
(25:54):
for being an effective leader,because that again, it multiplies
your own capabilities.
Yeah, well, and I want to goback to the last thing you were saying
when you were going throughyour model, which was, you know,
you either you sort of takewhere the leader is at, right? If
this is a very results focusedleader, let's start there and work
our way the other directiontowards relationships, or if it's
(26:17):
a really relationship focusedleader, you know, let's work our
way towards, you know, resultsleft to right, so to speak. And I
wonder if you can talk moreabout like how that is sort of the
balance you're trying to findbetween kind of going back to what
we were talking about earlierin the conversation, which is let's
focus on where theorganization, where the system is
(26:38):
going first, right? And sotell me, I just would love to hear
a little bit more about howyou try to leverage that approach
to sort of balance between.
So, you know, as we find outwhat is making this organization
tick, right. What is theirstrategy, what is getting in the
way of their strategy? Whereis the focus effort need to be applied?
(26:59):
Right. So that's sort of thebig picture context, the systems
level approach, as we find thechinks, if you will, of why isn't
it being as effective as itcould be in executing that strategy?
Then we're going to take thisfor our model and sort of apply it
to that. And what we'll findoftentimes is that the effective
(27:22):
relationships in with certainpeople or certain areas are not what
they need to be. That's amultiplier effect, the relationship
capabilities. And when Iparticularly look at the role side
of things that we may findthat people are very focused on,
what is that direction setaside this is what it's going to
(27:43):
look like when we get there,but not as focused on the here and
the now and what needs to bedone internally to make the opportunity
operations flow smoother, tomake the communications work across
the silos much easier, thatthe effort needs to be spent in that
coach and change agent rolemore effectively, taking the relationship
(28:04):
capabilities, applying it tothose roles to sort of break down
the silos, to get the enginemoving inside of that organization.
And that's sort of how we takethe context of the system. What are
the challenges? What are,where are the chinks, if you will,
and apply that for our modelto that. You know, maybe it's. They're
not motivating people enough.Maybe it's in the responsibilities
(28:26):
area. That's, that that's sortof lacking in terms of getting people
to accomplish those things.Maybe it's in the strategy implementation
that they can't break downthis big picture goal into what needs
to happen this month, thisweek, today type of a thing.
Nice. Well, I know I sort ofdipped us into the advice section
a little earlier on our, onour episode here, but I, I'd like
(28:50):
to, I'd like to kind of getinto and start bringing us in for,
you know, our dissent here,which is, you know, I asked you to
prepare a few things that youcould leave the audience with that
they could take some action onor begin taking some action on. So
would love to hear what youhad in mind for that today.
Yeah. So one of the things,and I'll talk about our culture approach
(29:11):
a little bit, which I thinkgives a little bit better sense of
what's contextually relevantfor that organization. How do they
really need to think toexecute upon that strategy? And our
culture approach is a littlebit different in that we divide it
into two sides. One side iswhat we call the healthy culture,
which is the traditionalvalues, engagement, all the things
(29:35):
that are sort of bad to good.They haven't really changed since
Aristotle or Plato in a couplethousand years. What is good is good,
right. Ethics and teamwork andtrust and, you know, capabilities
and innovation and allquality, all those things. Every
organization, they're kind ofthe same. The degree to which they
achieve those is different,but the words are kind of the same.
(29:58):
Right. On the other side iswhat we call our purposely aligned
side of culture, which isdirectly connected to the strategy.
And so if you think ofsomething like customer service,
Right. That's a bad to good.You're either doing a great job,
you're doing a poor job, orsomewhere in the middle. But how
do you really go aboutexecuting that customer service?
(30:18):
Is it world class,transactional or deep customer, intimate?
Where along that continuum doyou need to be? And that's very different.
Right. When it comes to thetypes of people, the types of process,
the types of product, how yougo to market. And so we have sort
of 10 different areas that welook at from that and identify to
(30:39):
accomplish the strategy. Howdo people need to think and what
are the three or four mostimportant sort of areas that they
need to be aligned on toexecute upon that strategy? So that's
how we're sort of getting toin a simplistic, very quick way.
We have our free culture checktool on our website that you can
go through as a team and go,okay, where's our current culture?
(31:02):
Where do we need? What's themost important areas? It's not the
whole in depth conversation,but it gives you a quick slice in
terms of what is relevant forthat organization. Again, how do
people need to think? At theend of the day, what we're trying
to do with leadership is havethem always connect the what, what
needs to be accomplishedtoday, this week, this year, this,
(31:23):
this whatever, this three yearstrategy piece with the how, how
do we need to think about thatso that if it's a sentence that's
describing the what, what'sthe extra three words that describes
the mindset or how we need tothink about that, or if it's a paragraph,
what have you, that there'salways that how. And then taking
your, the 4R model or therelationship or the, you know, responsibilities,
(31:46):
your leadership capabilitiesand applying it to how do you more
effectively connect that whatand how. And our forum model, you
can see that on our website aswell. It's pretty simplified model.
Nice. Yeah. Well, and I'm gladyou brought up culture because I
think that's where we hadoriginally connected some years ago.
So I'm glad, glad you broughtthat up. And it sounds like there's
a free sort of quickassessment for teams on your site.
(32:11):
Usually for the executiveteam. I look at the people who are
deciding the strategy shouldbe the ones who determine what is
the culture needed to executethat strategy. I think in terms of
where is your current cultureat the people who are living that
the rest of the organizationsort of determines what is their
current culture and thenwhat's the delta in the middle? Right.
(32:33):
That's what needs to bechanged in terms of creating better
alignment.
Right. And I think that's onething we had connected on at a sort
of conceptual level years ago,which is there's the culture that
those who are leading theorganization say they want and maybe
have, and then there's theactual culture you do have today
(32:53):
and that is usually told toyou from the bottom up versus the
desired culture, which comesfrom the top down. Yeah. Cool. So
what else?
Well, I think that what Iwould look at is how do you always
get contextual relevancy?That's sort of where we started with
(33:13):
what is the system, what'strying to be accomplished. And I
think designing, implementingthe programs that are addressing
the biggest challenges orneeds for that organization today,
Whether that is, what is theexpected behaviors inside of that
organization, what are thechallenges in terms of execution,
(33:35):
executing that strategy that Ithink that you have to put in play
in things that are addressingthose problems today. And I think
that's where some of thegeneric programs, the generic assessments,
the generic sort of tools outthere sort of fall down. Right? We
oftentimes go, well, we didthis whatever, three months, six
month long coaching thing, butwe didn't really affect change in
(33:58):
that person or we had a shortterm period of change. Where's the
follow through? How do I getthe stickiness, if you will, of those
initiatives? And I think ifyou can make it relevant to solving
the problems of thatorganization and how that person
fits in there, you're going tofind that 80% of the people are going
to be attracted to thosesolutions to those programs, to those
(34:19):
assessments, because it istruly giving them tools, capabilities
to solve the problems thatthey're faced with every day. And
I think the more that you canbe again, what is that system view
and apply the solutions tosolving the problems that are causing,
that are being caused in thatsort of systems view.
So I've had the fortune ofworking for pretty large organizations
(34:42):
and one of the ones that I wasworking with, I feel like the learning
and development group,separate from the leadership development
group really was zeroed in onwhat, where is this business going,
what are the big problems,hurdles, how can they address that?
And I thought they were doingthat really nicely and working in
(35:04):
pretty good concert withleadership development as separate
functions. Data analysis beinga really huge and some level of data
fluency for the organizationwas this big push. You had L and
D coming in with the learningthat was needed, tools, job aids,
whatever that was that, youknow, was needed for people to learn
(35:26):
how to get more fluent withdata. And you had, you know, leadership
development or, and, or talentmanagement coming in and helping,
like how do we make sure thatPeople understand why this is important
and how do we enable ourleaders to lead, you know, in that
way. The reason I bring upthat context is I know you've been
working or saying recentlyyou've been working with a lot of
smaller organizations, right?So they might not have the advantage
(35:49):
of having like these distinct,you know, functions. I think it's
just some good, practical,good practical advice to like, hey,
make sure you're stepping backand asking where the organization
as a whole is heading.
And that's where sort of our10 dimensions help those organizations
sort of pull all that apart.Right? So if we look at something
(36:11):
like decision makinginformation, are you going to be
fact based or is it moreintuition, experience based? And,
and if you sort of set, whatis that add to your example like
your organization or thatorganization probably decided to
be very fact based in decisionmaking. They didn't say it that way.
But here is the data that weneed to use to inform all of those
(36:32):
decisions. So if you can getpeople to align, oh, we make decisions
based on the numbers, thefacts, the details. Right now that
means everybody else goes,okay, well where's the data that's
going to support what is thepoints or persuasion arguments that
we're putting forward? It'sgoing to carry a lot more weight
than a person says, well, I'vebeen doing this for 20 years, I know
(36:54):
the whole market, I know whatthe situation is that's going to
carry less weight inside ofthat organization. So I think being
really clear again about howwe need to think about doing the
work that needs to happen, youknow, if we take another one around,
you know, operationalapproach, are we looking at a high
variation or low processvariation and we're along that continuum.
(37:16):
And what does that reallymean? It means, okay, well we get
five ways to do it or do weget 500 ways that we can do this?
And that really starts to set,you know, what is the principle,
what's the operating system ofthat organization? And I think that's
again, figuring out pullingthat apart for the smaller to mid
sized organizations gives themreal meat to go in and go, okay,
(37:39):
how can we really execute uponthis strategy? What's the most, two
or three most critical areasthat we really need to change or
get aligned in terms of how wethink about doing the work? Again,
it's always connecting thewhat and the how with the leadership
capabilities to sort of drivethat connection.
Yeah, nice. Well, I feel likewe could keep talking for. I feel
(38:05):
like maybe I say this towardsthe end of all of my podcasts and
maybe that says more about methan anything else. But I'm like,
I think we could talk aboutthings from like an hour or so more.
But just to start to bring usinto, you know, our, the final part
of our descent here, how canpeople get a hold of you and or work
effects?
Probably the easiest way isthrough our website, work-effects.com.
(38:28):
it has all kinds of resources.It talks about how we work. It talks
about our leadership approach,our culture approach shows, you know,
our 4R model. It shows theprocess that we use for sort of culture
transformation as well. Andthere's certainly an info and forms
to reach out to us directly. Ican also be found on LinkedIn. I
have quite a big following onLinkedIn and I'll probably be posting
(38:50):
more often on LinkedIn. I usedto post a lot and sort of COVID years
I just sort of go, okay,LinkedIn's too overwhelming now,
but I'll probably be back toposting a lot of things on this.
Nice. That's where I foundyou. I can attest that you're not
hard to find on LinkedIn.Well, thank you so much, Michael.
I kind of enjoyed theconversation here and I think it's
(39:11):
always a good reminder to takea step back and ask, where is the
organization heading? What arewe trying to accomplish and how do
we make sure that we'rebringing a company strategy approach,
your focus into anything.Those of us who are sort of in leadership
or development kind ofconsulting, how do we make sure that
(39:33):
this is aimed at what mattersto the company? I think it's a good
reminder. So thank you so muchfor being here today. I really appreciate
it.
Thank you. And I think thebottom line is without a what, it's
pretty hard. Hard to get to ahow. And so always looking at what's
the what I think is the keypoint out of all of this.
Nice. Well, thank you so much.Well, thank you. And that. That's
it. Appreciate your time andappreciate all of our listeners.
(39:55):
Take it easy.
Thanks, Kent.
That brings us to the end ofour episode. Thanks for listening.
I'd encourage you to head onover to my website, Kent Coach, and
start a conversation with methere or check out my promotion playbook
at Kent Coates Play Playbook.Before you go on with your day, I
ask you please take a momentto leave a rating and a review wherever
you listen to podcasts. Fivestars. That helps put this podcast
(40:17):
in front of more eyes andears. Until next time, take it easy.
We've seen an explosion interms of the importance of values
inside of an organization. Butvalues aren't just sheets of paper,
the words that hang on a wall.It's really how are those lived out
and how do you hold peopleaccountable to those? And so we are
often building our modelsaround what are those values and
(00:25):
how do we make sure that theyare super clear and that it is kind
of a minimum standard of howthings get done around here.
Hi there and welcome to theStep Up Expert Voices for Leadership
Growth. I'm your host, KentKnievel. Every week I talk to experts
who focus on helping leadersstep up their leadership game. If
(00:47):
you're new to the show, thenon whatever platform you're using,
I encourage you to subscribeso you never miss an episode. One
last thing, as a leadershipdevelopment consultant and an executive
coach, I have a particularinterest in supporting recent internally
promoted leaders. If that'syou, or if you support a leader who
has been recently promoted, Iencourage you to visit my website
at Kent Coach Playbook anddownload a free copy of my 90 day
(01:09):
blueprint filled withpractical advice for you or the leader
you support in hitting theground running and truly stepping
up to their new leadershiplevel. Without further ado, on with
the show. Welcome. Welcome tothe Step up today. Want to talk about
systems and organizations andhow we are of service to the overarching
(01:34):
system organization. It'sreally easy for us at times, especially
folks like me who I'm a soloconsultant, to really focus on individual
leaders. The leader I amtrying to support in their growth
and development and attainmentof their objectives, to really zero
in on the individual, butthinking a lot more and having some
(01:56):
conversations around. But howare we also making sure that we're
in service the broader systemand organization? And with me today
is someone who's verypassionate about this subject is
Michael Stewart, who has beendoing this for a number of years
and I'm not going to tell hisstory for him. So. But I'm going
to welcome you, Michael, tothe podcast and glad to have you
here today.
Thank you, Kent, for havingme. And this is one of the debates
(02:20):
that I often find with peoplelike yourself and lots of consultants
out there of this. Is it aboutthe person or the organization and
who is the customer at the endof the day? Right? We always get
that sort of a question. Andmy journey is I'm not an IO psychologist
like many folks, but I alwayssay I play one on tv. So just given
(02:42):
my background, that's my.
Line.
You know, way Back when, whenI was in my undergrad I thought I
was going to sell robotics tobig manufacturing companies and the
market at the end of the 80swasn't that great for that. And I
found myself in theheadhunting business and then from
there I moved to theoutplacement side of the business.
(03:04):
There's lots of folks werelaying people off and so I trained
people how to sell themselvesbasically and how to, you know, how
do you build those largecontracts. From there I ended up
at NCS Assessments, which mostof what they did was sort of clinical
assessments and they had thissmall group of HR things with David
(03:28):
Campbell was certainly one ofthe authors and one of my mentors
out of there, Kathy Gayaluka,who built the MMPI, certainly renowned
IO person. So those were mysort of trainings out of that I built
that practice area up to be afew million dollars. We then acquired
the Kilty Goldsmith side ofall of their 360 processing. So I
(03:51):
followed Marshall Goldsmitharound for a number of years putting
in large scale leadershipprograms. And then from there I went
to Questar, which most of whatthey did was employee surveys, customer
sat, and I built out theirpartnership practice area where we
built all of the systems andthe processing for Covey and PDI
(04:13):
and Blanchard and oh boy,Ominger and all of the big players.
We probably hit 75.
I was going to say. Irecognize that name.
Right. And then back in 2000,right as the dot com bubble crash,
I jumped off on my own. Andnot great timing, but hey, what have
(04:36):
you? Most of what we did inthe early days was large scale custom
talent management solutionsfor multinational companies. And
so if you think aboutsomething like a scorecard for private
wealth managers, where you'retaking in what's their financials,
what's their 360, what's theirperformance standards, what's like
seven different pieces of dataand how do you put it on one page
(04:57):
or how do you do tracking teamassessment for Pfizer that says what's
the impact that teams arehaving on the outcomes of getting
drugs approved with the fda?So just custom weird stuff. We still
do a lot of that. And thenabout 10 years ago we sort of jumped
into the culture journey. Andwhat I've sort of taken from all
(05:21):
of that is how do you buildthese talent solutions, these behaviors
in a global or a largeorganization that's in service to
them accomplishing thestrategy. And if you think of a company
like Citigroup as one of ourclients, you know, to change the
behaviors, there you know,takes a. It's like turning the Atlantic
(05:44):
fleet command. I was told whenwe first started working with them
that, you know, even A town of200,000 people has a jail. So there's
going to be bad actors. AndI'm like, well that's not a very
good approach. So let's try tochange that and sort of step that
gap game up. Right. And Ithink today Citigroup is probably
one of the least fine bigbanks in the world and trying to
(06:05):
drive in. Here's how weprovide accountability around the
behaviors and expectationsthat they have. So that's a little
my background and journey.
Nice. Yeah. So tell me just alittle bit before we get into our
topic. Tell me just a littlebit more about work effects and what
are some of the major spacesthat you play, so to speak.
So again, probably 60% of ourwork is in again those large scale
(06:31):
custom talent types ofsolutions. And so people want to
do something upside down,purple. And the kind of three big
blocks of what we do is how dowe build the right content, what's
the right things that we'regoing to measure in terms of a survey
or assessment, what's thetechnology that we need to use to
(06:51):
do that with and then how doyou create action out of that? What's
the coaching, training,development that needs to go with
that? And I learned a longtime ago that being in a professional
services business is not veryprofitable. So I'm the only person
that does any consultants. Allmy staff are programmers and project
managers. And then I usepeople like yourself, Kent and others
(07:15):
to go out into kind of theperson facilitation, delivery, training,
types of things. Most of ourclients are probably mid to larger
size organizations where theyhave a good understanding of talent
and what are all of thedifferent pillars that go into those
practices. But I would saygrowing over the last number of years
(07:39):
is maybe the smaller to midsize. Certainly looking at our organizational
culture approach and how do weconnect that to the strategy of a
business.
Yeah, organization of culture.I think that's when you and I first
met. I think I contacted youjust interested to learn more. Would
have been seven years ago orso. Well, so let's get into our topic
a little bit. We had a bit ofa pre conversation talking about
(08:02):
how do we make sure that whatwe're doing is in service at a larger
system and organization topicyou're pretty passionate about.
Yeah. When I fundamentally amlooking at a client and how do we
help it is how do we help themachieve the goals of that organization,
(08:24):
what is their strategy if theyhave one, if they don't have one,
how do we get them one andmake it very clear how do we cascade
that what in an appropriateway so people understand how do they
fit? How does what they do ona day to day basis fit into the goals
of that organization? And howdo we certainly dial that magnetic
(08:47):
attraction of that up? Right.As we dial that up, there's also
going to be the negativeattraction where people don't necessarily
fit and may self select. Andso that's always the lens at which
I view how do we service ourclients and how do we sort of benefit
them. And I think that whenI've worked with a lot of other consultants,
(09:08):
that is not kind of theirfirst approach. Right. Their first
approach is what is the needsof that person or of that small group
of leaders or even leadershipin general. And they sort of get
stuck in that silo. And Ialways try to get back to what is
the business, what's theorganization about, what are they
trying to achieve? And it'salways coming back to in service
(09:30):
of that. And I see a lot ofpeople that again, this is my bias
that they put their training,their coaching, their facilitation
centered around the person andnot necessarily the organization
as a whole.
Yeah. So I know our adviceportion comes later, but this just
(09:52):
gave me two questions I wantedto pose to you and it's probably
an advice type question. Sowhen we think about the typical,
could be a head of HR or headof talent or head of leadership development
who is contacting you oranother consultant, what would your
advice be for those internalHR folks in terms of thinking about
(10:17):
the system, the organizationon the front end, maybe before even
picking up the phone,metaphorically or sending that email
to get in touch with consultant.
I mean we've heard for a longtime is how does HR get a seat at
the table? Right. And I thinkthat to have a seat at the table
they have to truly understandwhat is their domain area of expertise
(10:43):
and how does that enable theaccomplishment of the organization
as a whole. They don't need tobe experts in finance, finance has
that. They don't need to beexpert in sales and marketing. They
don't need to be expert inoperations or supply chain. But what
they do have expertise is, isaround the people. And I think growing
(11:04):
that we're not in, we're in aknowledge worker base for the most
part for organizations. Andhow people think about doing the
work is the catalyst foraccomplishing the goals of that organization.
And that is the domainexpertise of the HR folks. And so
really look at how does thepeople aspect of it and whether that's
(11:25):
leaders, mid level management,frontline employees, how does that
collectively help toaccomplish that and how do they get
that aligned, both in terms ofthe structure of the organization,
but also in terms of the justfundamentally how people think about
doing the work. And I think asthey bring that type of a conversation
(11:45):
forward to the executive teamand play in their domain area of
expertise, but always inservice to, to how are they going
to help accomplish the goalsof that organization, that they'll
find themselves being includedmore and more, if you will, at the
seat of the table.
Nice. So let me flip that alittle bit too, right. Cause you
(12:05):
were saying one thing younotice about other consultants is
they can get really zeroed inon the individual or that group of
leaders that were being askedto maybe come in and either do a
program workshop or coaching.What's your advice to the other consultants
out there on how to zoom outand help their client see where this
(12:26):
sits in the broader scheme of things?
I think it is always it'sasking questions to get contextual
relevancy, that understandingwhat is the strategy of the organization,
where are they not assuccessful as they may want to be
in execution of that strategy?Is it a structural problem, is it
(12:50):
a capital problem? You know,what are the different aspects of
that problem? And most of thetime you're going to find that it's
a people problem, that it'sthe people aren't fully executing
or don't fully understand ordon't have the right skills or the
right behaviors to sort ofexecute that. But I think if you
(13:10):
lean into understanding whatis the context of that organization
and their strategy and whatare the challenges, 90% of the time
it's going to come back topeople, which is I think the expertise
area for consultants. Puttingthe business consultant hat on versus
the leadership consultant haton for a little bit in leading with
(13:32):
that, what.
Led you to focus on this moreintentionally in your practice?
I found that as we focusedmore on that side of it, that the
nature of our programs grew.That as we looked at the full context
(13:55):
of that organization, theother data points that we're able
to sort of capture and puttogether in one place to sort of
connect the dots, if you will,that the size of our projects grew
and the level of impact thatwe had with those organizations grew.
And that's really, you know,trial and error. Certainly that came
(14:16):
from that. But I think that'sreally where that sort of comes from.
Yeah, I think, you know, andwe've, we've had some correspondence
ahead of time too. Right. Andthroughout the years, and I think
we run the risk. Right of, andI probably going to be using some
of your words here, is puttingforward either pretty generic programs
or approaches that mayultimately fall flat. Right. Because
(14:41):
they're focused on reuse ofquote unquote tried and true content.
How have you seen a focus onreally trying to put it in the context,
or as you were saying,focusing on contextual relevance.
How have you seen that changethe shape of the solutions that you're
(15:02):
putting forward?
So I'll just take our sort ofcustom 360s that we do. Right. We
don't really use off the shelf360s. We have one, we use it when
people don't really have amodel. But I think for the executives
to communicate what are theexpectations of behavior, that's
(15:22):
the minimum standard is Ithink the key component to that.
Certainly we've seen anexplosion in terms of the importance
of values inside of anorganization. But values aren't just,
you know, sheets of paper, thewords that hang on a wall. It's really
how are those lived out andhow do you hold people accountable
to those? And so we are oftenbuilding our models around what are
(15:48):
those values and how do wemake sure that they are super clear
and that it is, you know, kindof a minimum standard of how things
get done around here. Andthat's sort of where assessments
sort of come into play. Andthat is making it germane, contextually
relevant for thatorganization. You know, if it's a
(16:10):
fast growing new product typeof a company all the time, innovation
is going to be hugelyimportant. You know, and other organizations,
something around teamwork maynot be as important. If it's a startup
type of an organization,right. There's going to be a small
team, but it's not large team.If we start thinking about what is
(16:31):
the vision for an organizationas you get larger, how do people
really communicate acompelling and optimistic view of
that vision? Depending on theorganization and where they're at,
the different types ofbehaviors and expectations, expectations,
they're going to be differentand how do you make that again germane
for that organization? Wherethey sit today, that may not be true
(16:53):
again in three or four yearsfor that organization, it's going
to morph and change, butreally underline what are those expectations
that's going to propel thatversion of that strategy forward.
So this makes me wonder ifnow's A good time to talk about your
4R model, because I know thatI had a chance to really dig into
(17:15):
that a little bit recently aswell. And how do you. Would love
for you to introduce that tothe listeners and maybe bring that,
you know, into connection withcontextual relevance.
Yep. So some years ago, maybe12, 13 years ago, we partnered with
Mark McCluskey to look at allof the different leadership models
(17:39):
that are out there. So I thinkit was 100 plus different leadership
models. We said, okay, how dowe simplify this? How do we take
all of them into account andmake one simplified sort of a model?
And at the center of that, andas a backdrop, I always use this
model, even when we'rebuilding out custom content, to say,
have we checked the box inenough of these areas? That sort
(18:01):
of covers what we need to docustom side of things. But the 4R
model at the core, at thecenter is really relationships. You
know, that what a leader does,what people do, it's relationships.
How do they build, how do theyutilize? How do they leverage those
relationships? Then they haveto take those relationships and put
(18:22):
it into their roles. Right.They have multiple roles that they're
playing. How do they takethose relationship capabilities and
apply it to the roles withinthose roles? Then you have responsibilities
that there's different typesof responsibilities that you have,
and how that looks and feelsmay change a little bit. And then
lastly, they're ultimatelyaccountable to the results. And so
(18:44):
the 4R model is aboutrelationships, roles, responsibilities,
and results. And again, thecenter of that is what we call the
basic virtues of being aleader. And basic is spelled out
to sort of accomplish what arethose behavior expectations? And
so if we look at B isbeneficial partnerships, how do we
(19:06):
have a win win? How do we earntrust and respect? How do we sort
of get people to serve us? Howdo we create followership? Right.
The second part is aroundaligned emotions. So that's the A
part. How do we make surethat, you know, our emotions are
fitting the situation? Youknow, how do we not let. We ran over
our kid's bike this morningand we take it on the staff like
(19:27):
that's not aligned. And it'snot to say that you can't get upset
or angry or jump on the deskor what have you. You can have outbursts
if it's contextually relevant.Yet again, if it's aligned to the
situation, how do you havesustained determination? That's the
S part of it. How do yourecover from, you know, failures
or challenges that you've had?How do you persist when you're faced
(19:48):
with obstacles, how do youshow lots of endurance to sort of
push through on those things,right? And then the I is intellectual
flexibility and that's around.Are you open to new ideas? Do you
collect information frommultiple sources? Do you encourage,
you know, debate among folks?Do you learn from past mistakes?
Do you change course whenthings are clearly not working? So
(20:11):
that's sort of theintellectual flexibility and the
last one is character. Youknow, do you do the right things
when it's required? Do youkeep your promises and control commitments?
Do you apologize for yourmistakes? Do you don't pressure others
to sort of compromise on theirethics? So that's really the basic
part of buildingrelationships. If you do those things
(20:31):
well, you're going toaccomplish building effective relationships.
If you don't, we call it,you're going to have a hole in your
boat. How big that hole is,you're going to how much water are
you taking on, right? Then youhave to apply those, those relationship
capabilities to the roles. Andessentially you have a current state,
(20:52):
current looking role and youhave a future state of where that's
going to be. You have aninternal, external. So that's sort
of our two by two internal andcurrent state. You're really being
a coach to people, right?You're helping, you're coaching,
developing who those peopleare around you. If I look at internal,
(21:13):
future state, that's about howdo you be a change agent? How do
you sort of propel thatorganization to morph into change?
If I think about future stateand external, that's really being
the spokesperson, what's thestate of the state, where are we
at, right? And then the lastrole is really that future and external
is really being that directionsetter, right? That's what we oftentimes
(21:34):
account to. That person was areally good leader. They're really
being a direction setter. Andwe find that people often over index
on those external sides of theroles and under index on the internal
sides of things. Being a goodcoach, being a good change agent
isn't oftentimes we think ofas being a good leader. But those
(21:55):
are super important. And thenyou have to take those roles and
apply it to theresponsibilities that people have.
And within those there'sbasically five kind of key responsibilities
you need to, you need to setwhat is the strategy, you know, what
is that? That vision if youwill. You need to be able to execute
(22:16):
upon that strategy, thestrategy implementation. You need
to align people, right? Theyneed to come together. You need to
motivate them to go accomplishthose things. And then you have to
have good analysis andjudgment. So those are kind of the
five sort of key responseresponsibilities. And if you do those
well, you'll find that yousort of get the quantitative, qualitative,
(22:37):
the outcomes, the results thatyou're really looking for.
Love it. It's sort of likeleading metrics versus lagging metrics.
Right.
The type of person based ontheir results. And when you're sort
of figuring out who thatperson is. Right. As the intake part
of it, like, okay, are theythe. The crusty person? Like, no,
(22:59):
it's just my way. It's allabout the outcomes. It's about the
results. I don't care aboutall of this foo foo hr. Then we're
going to start with what's theresults? Are you getting the results
that you need? Are youperforming these responsibilities?
So we sort of work backwardsfrom results to responsibilities
to roles, to behaviors. Ifit's somebody that's reading all
the books, studies all theleadership stuff, listens to all
(23:21):
the podcasts, we're going tostart with the, with the, with the
relationship side of thingsand sort of move forward from there.
And so it's whether we'removing left or right or right to
left in that model sort ofdepends on where that person is at.
Yeah. I love that you saidsomething earlier that I wanted to
circle back to, which is, youknow, if you're. You're so many leaders
are focused on the externalpiece that they neglect the internal
(23:45):
piece. And I think you werespecifically talking about developing
the team or leading change.And something that I've. I kind of
keep coming to in bothcoaching and some of the leadership
development work that I'vebeen doing is we put off, or leaders,
you know, put off reallyfocusing on development or say, change
(24:10):
leadership for when thingsslow down. Right. When things slow
down, I will attend to that.And I don't know that things ever
slow down. Right. And so whichis where I have found, at least from
when it comes to coaching,which isn't always that scalable.
Right. But when a company isinvesting in coaching with a leader,
(24:30):
the biweekly or weekly ormonthly meeting with that coach sometimes
is the other than sleeping,the only time that that leader has
sort of the permission to juststop and slow down. So I just was
wondering if you wanted todrill in a little bit more on that.
I come from a perspective ofmaximizing your strengths and delegating
(24:51):
your weaknesses, butoftentimes I find leaders don't delegate
very well because they don'ttrust is maybe too strong of a word,
but they don't have theconfidence in the other people to
perform those tasks in the waythat they would do them or if they
do delegate, then theyoftentimes are micromanaging to do
(25:14):
it just exactly the way thatthey want it done. Right. And I think
that recognizing and givingthe coaching and change agent kind
of approaches to give peoplesmall tasks where they can be successful
in sort of building up thatconfidence and getting them to learn,
you know, what are thedifferent decision matrices and what
(25:34):
are the different componentsthat go into those things? Things
is where they can greatlyexponentially expand the capabilities
of them, their team and theorganization. And that's why I think
focusing on that coach andchange agent role to develop the
capabilities of the peoplearound you is so critically important
(25:54):
for being an effective leader,because that again, it multiplies
your own capabilities.
Yeah, well, and I want to goback to the last thing you were saying
when you were going throughyour model, which was, you know,
you either you sort of takewhere the leader is at, right? If
this is a very results focusedleader, let's start there and work
our way the other directiontowards relationships, or if it's
(26:17):
a really relationship focusedleader, you know, let's work our
way towards, you know, resultsleft to right, so to speak. And I
wonder if you can talk moreabout like how that is sort of the
balance you're trying to findbetween kind of going back to what
we were talking about earlierin the conversation, which is let's
focus on where theorganization, where the system is
(26:38):
going first, right? And sotell me, I just would love to hear
a little bit more about howyou try to leverage that approach
to sort of balance between.
So, you know, as we find outwhat is making this organization
tick, right. What is theirstrategy, what is getting in the
way of their strategy? Whereis the focus effort need to be applied?
(26:59):
Right. So that's sort of thebig picture context, the systems
level approach, as we find thechinks, if you will, of why isn't
it being as effective as itcould be in executing that strategy?
Then we're going to take thisfor our model and sort of apply it
to that. And what we'll findoftentimes is that the effective
(27:22):
relationships in with certainpeople or certain areas are not what
they need to be. That's amultiplier effect, the relationship
capabilities. And when Iparticularly look at the role side
of things that we may findthat people are very focused on,
what is that direction setaside this is what it's going to
(27:43):
look like when we get there,but not as focused on the here and
the now and what needs to bedone internally to make the opportunity
operations flow smoother, tomake the communications work across
the silos much easier, thatthe effort needs to be spent in that
coach and change agent rolemore effectively, taking the relationship
(28:04):
capabilities, applying it tothose roles to sort of break down
the silos, to get the enginemoving inside of that organization.
And that's sort of how we takethe context of the system. What are
the challenges? What are,where are the chinks, if you will,
and apply that for our modelto that. You know, maybe it's. They're
not motivating people enough.Maybe it's in the responsibilities
(28:26):
area. That's, that that's sortof lacking in terms of getting people
to accomplish those things.Maybe it's in the strategy implementation
that they can't break downthis big picture goal into what needs
to happen this month, thisweek, today type of a thing.
Nice. Well, I know I sort ofdipped us into the advice section
a little earlier on our, onour episode here, but I, I'd like
(28:50):
to, I'd like to kind of getinto and start bringing us in for,
you know, our dissent here,which is, you know, I asked you to
prepare a few things that youcould leave the audience with that
they could take some action onor begin taking some action on. So
would love to hear what youhad in mind for that today.
Yeah. So one of the things,and I'll talk about our culture approach
(29:11):
a little bit, which I thinkgives a little bit better sense of
what's contextually relevantfor that organization. How do they
really need to think toexecute upon that strategy? And our
culture approach is a littlebit different in that we divide it
into two sides. One side iswhat we call the healthy culture,
which is the traditionalvalues, engagement, all the things
(29:35):
that are sort of bad to good.They haven't really changed since
Aristotle or Plato in a couplethousand years. What is good is good,
right. Ethics and teamwork andtrust and, you know, capabilities
and innovation and allquality, all those things. Every
organization, they're kind ofthe same. The degree to which they
achieve those is different,but the words are kind of the same.
(29:58):
Right. On the other side iswhat we call our purposely aligned
side of culture, which isdirectly connected to the strategy.
And so if you think ofsomething like customer service,
Right. That's a bad to good.You're either doing a great job,
you're doing a poor job, orsomewhere in the middle. But how
do you really go aboutexecuting that customer service?
(30:18):
Is it world class,transactional or deep customer, intimate?
Where along that continuum doyou need to be? And that's very different.
Right. When it comes to thetypes of people, the types of process,
the types of product, how yougo to market. And so we have sort
of 10 different areas that welook at from that and identify to
(30:39):
accomplish the strategy. Howdo people need to think and what
are the three or four mostimportant sort of areas that they
need to be aligned on toexecute upon that strategy? So that's
how we're sort of getting toin a simplistic, very quick way.
We have our free culture checktool on our website that you can
go through as a team and go,okay, where's our current culture?
(31:02):
Where do we need? What's themost important areas? It's not the
whole in depth conversation,but it gives you a quick slice in
terms of what is relevant forthat organization. Again, how do
people need to think? At theend of the day, what we're trying
to do with leadership is havethem always connect the what, what
needs to be accomplishedtoday, this week, this year, this,
(31:23):
this whatever, this three yearstrategy piece with the how, how
do we need to think about thatso that if it's a sentence that's
describing the what, what'sthe extra three words that describes
the mindset or how we need tothink about that, or if it's a paragraph,
what have you, that there'salways that how. And then taking
your, the 4R model or therelationship or the, you know, responsibilities,
(31:46):
your leadership capabilitiesand applying it to how do you more
effectively connect that whatand how. And our forum model, you
can see that on our website aswell. It's pretty simplified model.
Nice. Yeah. Well, and I'm gladyou brought up culture because I
think that's where we hadoriginally connected some years ago.
So I'm glad, glad you broughtthat up. And it sounds like there's
a free sort of quickassessment for teams on your site.
(32:11):
Usually for the executiveteam. I look at the people who are
deciding the strategy shouldbe the ones who determine what is
the culture needed to executethat strategy. I think in terms of
where is your current cultureat the people who are living that
the rest of the organizationsort of determines what is their
current culture and thenwhat's the delta in the middle? Right.
(32:33):
That's what needs to bechanged in terms of creating better
alignment.
Right. And I think that's onething we had connected on at a sort
of conceptual level years ago,which is there's the culture that
those who are leading theorganization say they want and maybe
have, and then there's theactual culture you do have today
(32:53):
and that is usually told toyou from the bottom up versus the
desired culture, which comesfrom the top down. Yeah. Cool. So
what else?
Well, I think that what Iwould look at is how do you always
get contextual relevancy?That's sort of where we started with
(33:13):
what is the system, what'strying to be accomplished. And I
think designing, implementingthe programs that are addressing
the biggest challenges orneeds for that organization today,
Whether that is, what is theexpected behaviors inside of that
organization, what are thechallenges in terms of execution,
(33:35):
executing that strategy that Ithink that you have to put in play
in things that are addressingthose problems today. And I think
that's where some of thegeneric programs, the generic assessments,
the generic sort of tools outthere sort of fall down. Right? We
oftentimes go, well, we didthis whatever, three months, six
month long coaching thing, butwe didn't really affect change in
(33:58):
that person or we had a shortterm period of change. Where's the
follow through? How do I getthe stickiness, if you will, of those
initiatives? And I think ifyou can make it relevant to solving
the problems of thatorganization and how that person
fits in there, you're going tofind that 80% of the people are going
to be attracted to thosesolutions to those programs, to those
(34:19):
assessments, because it istruly giving them tools, capabilities
to solve the problems thatthey're faced with every day. And
I think the more that you canbe again, what is that system view
and apply the solutions tosolving the problems that are causing,
that are being caused in thatsort of systems view.
So I've had the fortune ofworking for pretty large organizations
(34:42):
and one of the ones that I wasworking with, I feel like the learning
and development group,separate from the leadership development
group really was zeroed in onwhat, where is this business going,
what are the big problems,hurdles, how can they address that?
And I thought they were doingthat really nicely and working in
(35:04):
pretty good concert withleadership development as separate
functions. Data analysis beinga really huge and some level of data
fluency for the organizationwas this big push. You had L and
D coming in with the learningthat was needed, tools, job aids,
whatever that was that, youknow, was needed for people to learn
(35:26):
how to get more fluent withdata. And you had, you know, leadership
development or, and, or talentmanagement coming in and helping,
like how do we make sure thatPeople understand why this is important
and how do we enable ourleaders to lead, you know, in that
way. The reason I bring upthat context is I know you've been
working or saying recentlyyou've been working with a lot of
smaller organizations, right?So they might not have the advantage
(35:49):
of having like these distinct,you know, functions. I think it's
just some good, practical,good practical advice to like, hey,
make sure you're stepping backand asking where the organization
as a whole is heading.
And that's where sort of our10 dimensions help those organizations
sort of pull all that apart.Right? So if we look at something
(36:11):
like decision makinginformation, are you going to be
fact based or is it moreintuition, experience based? And,
and if you sort of set, whatis that add to your example like
your organization or thatorganization probably decided to
be very fact based in decisionmaking. They didn't say it that way.
But here is the data that weneed to use to inform all of those
(36:32):
decisions. So if you can getpeople to align, oh, we make decisions
based on the numbers, thefacts, the details. Right now that
means everybody else goes,okay, well where's the data that's
going to support what is thepoints or persuasion arguments that
we're putting forward? It'sgoing to carry a lot more weight
than a person says, well, I'vebeen doing this for 20 years, I know
(36:54):
the whole market, I know whatthe situation is that's going to
carry less weight inside ofthat organization. So I think being
really clear again about howwe need to think about doing the
work that needs to happen, youknow, if we take another one around,
you know, operationalapproach, are we looking at a high
variation or low processvariation and we're along that continuum.
(37:16):
And what does that reallymean? It means, okay, well we get
five ways to do it or do weget 500 ways that we can do this?
And that really starts to set,you know, what is the principle,
what's the operating system ofthat organization? And I think that's
again, figuring out pullingthat apart for the smaller to mid
sized organizations gives themreal meat to go in and go, okay,
(37:39):
how can we really execute uponthis strategy? What's the most, two
or three most critical areasthat we really need to change or
get aligned in terms of how wethink about doing the work? Again,
it's always connecting thewhat and the how with the leadership
capabilities to sort of drivethat connection.
Yeah, nice. Well, I feel likewe could keep talking for. I feel
(38:05):
like maybe I say this towardsthe end of all of my podcasts and
maybe that says more about methan anything else. But I'm like,
I think we could talk aboutthings from like an hour or so more.
But just to start to bring usinto, you know, our, the final part
of our descent here, how canpeople get a hold of you and or work
effects?
Probably the easiest way isthrough our website, work-effects.com.
(38:28):
it has all kinds of resources.It talks about how we work. It talks
about our leadership approach,our culture approach shows, you know,
our 4R model. It shows theprocess that we use for sort of culture
transformation as well. Andthere's certainly an info and forms
to reach out to us directly. Ican also be found on LinkedIn. I
have quite a big following onLinkedIn and I'll probably be posting
(38:50):
more often on LinkedIn. I usedto post a lot and sort of COVID years
I just sort of go, okay,LinkedIn's too overwhelming now,
but I'll probably be back toposting a lot of things on this.
Nice. That's where I foundyou. I can attest that you're not
hard to find on LinkedIn.Well, thank you so much, Michael.
I kind of enjoyed theconversation here and I think it's
(39:11):
always a good reminder to takea step back and ask, where is the
organization heading? What arewe trying to accomplish and how do
we make sure that we'rebringing a company strategy approach,
your focus into anything.Those of us who are sort of in leadership
or development kind ofconsulting, how do we make sure that
(39:33):
this is aimed at what mattersto the company? I think it's a good
reminder. So thank you so muchfor being here today. I really appreciate
it.
Thank you. And I think thebottom line is without a what, it's
pretty hard. Hard to get to ahow. And so always looking at what's
the what I think is the keypoint out of all of this.
Nice. Well, thank you so much.Well, thank you. And that. That's
it. Appreciate your time andappreciate all of our listeners.
(39:55):
Take it easy.
Thanks, Kent.
That brings us to the end ofour episode. Thanks for listening.
I'd encourage you to head onover to my website, Kent Coach, and
start a conversation with methere or check out my promotion playbook
at Kent Coates Play Playbook.Before you go on with your day, I
ask you please take a momentto leave a rating and a review wherever
you listen to podcasts. Fivestars. That helps put this podcast
(40:17):
in front of more eyes andears. Until next time, take it easy.
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