June 3, 2025 • 29 mins
What if everything we thought we knew about leadership was wrong? Jenny Robinson, a successful Kiwi entrepreneur with five thriving businesses spanning three decades, has discovered something remarkable about how true leadership emerges.
When Jenny began her PhD research on leadership, she made a startling realization: despite a century of academic study, we lack a predictive model of leadership. This prompted her to strip away all preconceptions and ask a fundamental question: "What would leadership look like if we didn't know what leadership looks like?"
Her search for answers led her to study natural systems, where recent science reveals something counterintuitive - nature thrives through collaboration rather than just competition. Trees share resources, information, and medicine with neighboring trees when in proximity. This insight became the foundation for a revolutionary approach to understanding how humans lead.
Jenny and her colleague Phil Renshaw were inspired to create "Leadership on the Go" and author "Coaching on the Go," offering practical guidance for implementing collaborative leadership approaches. Their innovative tool "Gizmo" helps teams develop the skills needed for collaborative leadership without the stigma of traditional assessments. Now working across 25 countries in five languages, they've found that groups worldwide consistently identify the same key elements for effective collaboration.
Want to transform your leadership approach? Connect with Jenny on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/leadershiponthego/ or visit www.coachingonthego.co.uk to access the first chapter of her book, featuring a practical lookup table for common workplace challenges and research evidence on effective leadership practices.
BelemLeaders–Your organization's trusted partner for leader and team development. Visit our website to connect: belemleaders.org or book a discovery call today! belem.as.me/discovery
Until next time, keep doing great things!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, well, here we go.
Hey there, and welcome toConversations where today we
have Jenny Robinson, a Kiwientrepreneur with five
successful businessesestablished over 30 years.
The first was established atjust 18 years old, a commercial
radio station, and is stillthriving today.
(00:21):
Now Jenny runs an equallysuccessful tech startup and an
alpaca farm.
Her PhD is in collaborativeleadership and Jenny believes
that we rise by lifting others,which is a quote from Robert
Ingersoll.
Welcome to the show, jenny.
How are you today and where areyou coming to us from?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Hi, dr Kelly, Thank you so much.
I am in the middle of the UK,in the middle of England.
I'm as far away from the sea asyou can get and I'm on my
alpaca farm so little example ofan alpaca being held up for
anybody who's watching.
Um, and I have 16 of them, andthis weekend I will be rolling
(01:08):
up my sleeves and shearingbecause they have to have their
fur taken off and so how, howoften does that happen?
Speaker 1 (01:16):
the?
Speaker 2 (01:16):
first every, just every year, but it will take me
a few weeks to get through thembecause I do it by myself.
Um, I work.
Actually, it's part of the samephilosophy of leadership, which
is they're bigger and strongerthan I am.
I can only succeed in this ifthey are going to not exactly
(01:37):
help, but they're going tocooperate, they're going to
understand what I'm trying toachieve and they have to play
their part.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
This sounds like another book Leadership Lessons
from the Alpaca Farm.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Don't worry, I often use my alpaca to explain my
leadership theories, and I oftentest my leadership theories out
in the wild.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
That's amazing.
Well, I would love to read thisquote.
It's a very intriguing quotethat I have from you, and so I'm
going to read that, and thenwe're going to go into answering
some of the questions that Ihave for you.
Sound good?
Yeah great, all right.
So this is what I have.
When you see that leadership isessentially about relationship,
(02:27):
we also see that the way wename and develop leaders needs
to include their skills as aleader who coaches and look for
leadership in the collaborationbetween and across groups of
people, whether that is formalteams or informal teaming.
(02:49):
A new lens on what leadershiplooks like changes everything
that was like to me when I readthat.
That to me was interesting,because it sounds like that
we've gotten leadership wrongand so what?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
say you about that.
Okay, so I went to universityto study leadership.
I wanted a PhD in leadership.
You know how it is when you goback to study All your
preconceptions get stripped away.
(03:26):
You get told by your professorsto go find the evidence, to go
and define your terms, to go andsearch out what everybody else
has said.
So I went off and I was lookingat all the leadership studies.
There's 100 years of academicresearch into leadership and
(03:49):
what becomes very clear when youstart looking at the research?
We don't actually have a goodtheory of leadership.
What I mean by that is if youthink about a different mode.
So if you've got this infection, you have this antibiotics and
(04:13):
you know that this infectionwill get better.
So that's what a predictivemodel would look like.
We don't have a predictivemodel of leadership.
We have many, many theories ofleadership, but none of them are
to that gold standard, and partof the reason is because we
keep treating leadership as ifit's a single variable so input,
(04:39):
process, output, output and Itherefore stripped everything
back and I said what wouldleadership look like if we
didn't know what leadershiplooks like?
So just take away all yourassumptions, take away all the
(05:01):
knowledge you think we have.
So if you, as I said, we'vebeen studying for 100 years, if
none of that's working, so stripaway that 100 years of
theorizing and start from groundzero, start from fundamentals.
What do you look for?
How do you know?
That is leadership.
And I started by saying, okay,there must be a place where
(05:25):
leadership is evident thatdoesn't rely on our past
theorizing.
And where is that?
So I've just been talking aboutmy alpaca.
It's in the wild.
So you look into naturalsystems where natural systems
have to grow, where naturalsystems have to grow, they have
to thrive, they have to surviveand they have to adapt.
(05:54):
And when you look at nature,the new theories of nature are
collaborative and cooperative.
In the past we used to say youplant a tree here and you plant
a tree here because they'recompeting.
But the new science is showingthat they need to be approximate
to each other because they doshare information, medicine,
water they share.
(06:16):
Now they can't be in eachother's shade, but they can be
far closer together than we everrealized.
But they can be far closertogether than we ever realized.
And the new theories that areemerging in nature show that
nature survives, adapts andthrives when it collaborates and
cooperates.
So I picked that idea up and Imoved it towards leadership and
(06:39):
I said, okay, now I've got someidea of what leadership might
look like.
And I took a video camera intosome very large organizations
and I videoed people as theysolved unsolvable problems.
I'll give you an example.
So the emergency services inthe UK like pretty much
(07:04):
everywhere in the world, I guessthey have a finite budget.
You know that's what they get,yet they have infinite demand.
The demand always exceeds whatthe budget is available.
And I watched or my video camerawatched as people came together
(07:26):
, they coalesced, they starteddifferent conversations, they
began to unpick and unravel andsuggest and move and shift and
then I showed them the video ofthemselves back and I didn't ask
them who is the leader.
I asked them video ofthemselves back and I didn't ask
them who is the leader.
(07:46):
I asked them where isleadership?
So you'll notice, when I wrote,when I wrote to you to set up
our first conversation back inMarch, I always put ship s-h-i-p
in capital letters to remind usthat we're looking at this idea
of everyone's on the ship.
(08:07):
If the ship gets there, we allget there.
If the ship sinks, we all sink,same as organizations.
So I asked them where is theleadership?
And they always said oh look,it's like a dance, it's a bit of
this and a bit of that, and abit of something else and a bit
of something else.
And that really lit me upbecause I began to see that
(08:30):
leadership is cooperative andcollaborative we're.
We're in it all together.
Now some people have differenttitles, they have different
hierarchy, they have differentauthority, but that is different
to leadership.
Leadership is this emergent,fragmented, punctuated, messy
(08:51):
process of everybody, sort ofnavigating to this future,
navigating through big problems.
When you're in a complex world,one brain won't do it.
You need multiple brains.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
That's right, regardless of title.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So what might be theconsequence of redefining the
way that you are defining it forus?
What are some of thoseconsequences that we might find?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, so I want to acknowledge that my definition
of leadership is built on otherattributes of leadership that
are needed, but I was veryinterested in this idea that
it's not me, it's we, and whenit's we, then what matters is
(09:56):
our behavior towards each otherin a way that builds our bonds,
breaks our bonds, strengthensour bonds or increases the
number of our bonds.
So I was really interested inleadership and relationship, and
do we understand, when we'reworking in leadership, how we
are working with relationship,and do we understand, when we're
working in leadership, how weare working with relationship?
And I know that this issomething close to your heart
because you've done systemicteam coaching, which has many
(10:17):
parallels to this.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, and helping teams understand.
I mean, when you are workingwith leaders or even in your
research, what did that evenlook like?
Like how are you coming in andyou're not.
You're probably not saying much, like you said.
You had your camera with yourresearch and then you are
bringing you know the team backin, or the group back in and
(10:42):
having them pinpoint where theysaw.
Leadership back in, or thegroup back in and having them
pinpoint where they sawleadership.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Were these aha moments for them?
Yes, very much so, yes, verymuch so, especially in, for
example, organizations which arevery hierarchical Emergency
services.
They're built on the samehierarchy as the army, the navy.
(11:09):
You know, they have inheritedthis idea of a chain of command.
They need a chain of commandbecause they go to emergency
situations and they need to knowwho's in charge.
But nevertheless, they had theability to address problems in
this emergent manner, usingtheir relationships to
(11:32):
investigate and to understandand to unpick and to explore.
So that was my PhD and the workthat I did.
That got me really excited.
What then happened is a funnierside, but it is a funnier side.
(11:53):
When I started my PhD, theuniversity lined us up in
alphabetical order.
They literally lined us up inthe lecture, lecture theatre.
For three years.
We always sat by name, inalphabetical order, and the guy
I always sat next to was a guycalled Phil Renshaw.
(12:15):
So he's a Renshaw, I'm aRobinson R&R.
We were always together and kindof inevitably, you know, we got
talking and he was the one whosaid to me one day let's write a
book.
I think, you know, we have abook inside of us, and so we set
about trying to write aboutthis concept of leadership that
(12:39):
was focused on raising everyoneup.
You know, we rise by liftingothers, as Robert Angus Sall
says.
And we were really lucky.
We got a great publisher theFinancial Times and Pearson and
we launched just in COVID.
(13:00):
And again we were really luckybecause a couple of people
approached us and said we reallylike your ideas and your book
and, as we're going into COVID,can you think of a way of
working with us in this newonline environment that we're
having to adapt to?
And actually it was from thatthat Phil and I started our
(13:24):
business.
Our business is calledLeadership on the Go and our
book is called Coaching on theGo, and we decided that we would
try and turn this into a seriesof ideas that organizations
could take and use and thinkabout a new form of leadership
which is more agile, more adept,more distributed, more
(13:48):
collaborative.
And so we set about buildingtools and teaching and some
technology that we've got sothat organizations can sort of
investigate this for themselves.
And that's what we've beendoing for the last couple of
years is building a businessthat helps other businesses to
(14:10):
take these ideas and investigatethem.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yes, I know on your website there it says great
leadership achieves great things, right, so tell us a little bit
about that and maybe some ofthe evidence around the work.
I'd love to hear about that.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Strongest evidence comes out of the Chicago School
of Economics and StanfordUniversity, so others are also
looking at this and trying toquantify.
Is this a unique idea and doesit really make a difference?
So the best evidence comes outof a study which is called
something like I've got it here,which is called something like
I've got it here.
It's called the Value of Bosses, and the reference is Laser et
(15:10):
al 2015.
I'll put those in the shownotes for you, and what they are
able to show is that a greatboss can increase the
productivity of a team by about50%.
That's huge, huge right.
Everybody wants that.
(15:31):
So, 50% uplift in productivity,three times the normal level of
engagement and approximately 30%top talent reduction.
So that means that the highestperformers in your team are not
(15:52):
going to leave as quickly asthey would otherwise.
So you've effectively leveragedyour top talent by working this
way.
So that's the value of a greatboss.
Then there's a second study,which is Hoffman and Tadellas
2021.
And they then drilled down intoso what is this good boss, what
(16:16):
is this great boss?
And it's exactly the stuff we'repointing to.
It's exactly the sets of skillsthat we're working around.
We call them coaching skills,but we're not trying to turn
leaders into coaches.
We're trying to say these arethe skills that will help you
with the bonding, so buildingthe group, more relationships,
(16:42):
better relationships, deeperrelationships, so that people
are able to step forward andmake that contribution.
So those two are, and those twostudies, which are by
economists they're not by peoplein the leadership field and
they're not by people in the HRfield, so they're really
(17:02):
rigorous.
Those two studies really helpedus to evidence that this is
worth pursuing.
Now in the meantime, sorry,please go ahead.
No, no, please go ahead.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Well, I also wanted to note about the 10% uplift in
stakeholder satisfaction, andmany times people aren't
thinking about stakeholders, soI'd love to hear, maybe about
that as well.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
There's a lot more evidence about that.
So there's a lot of evidencethat says what happens inside
the organization is directlyreflected back in terms of
levels of customer servicesatisfaction with that service,
reputation, brand awareness, allthese external factors that you
(17:54):
might want to look at.
They are almost directlyproportionate to whatever is
happening inside theorganization.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Excellent, very good, and now would you like to
finish your thought.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Well, my thought was just simply that the way that we
work with organizations is wehelp organizations to look at
this broader concept ofleadership.
So we take groups of people,irrespective of title,
irrespective of hierarchy, alsoirrespective of age or
experience.
(18:30):
We can help each individual tolook at the skills that they
currently have and then we helpthem to build out for themselves
more skills or different skillswhich are focused on this idea
of leadership as an emergentproperty across the group.
But we also look at theexperience of culture for each
(18:57):
individual.
So nobody else is doing this,but it's really important
because, of course, we are notan island.
We are always in relationshipwith somebody else and if you
don't feel safe and if you don'tfeel you belong and you don't
feel like you can make a mistakeand you feel like somebody else
(19:20):
is grabbing the starlight fromyou, then your willingness to
step forward, even if you havethose skills, will be reduced.
So this interaction effectbetween the individual and the
culture and the culture in theindividual is really important
(19:41):
and we now have a way of helpingindividuals, teams, functions
and organizations.
So, all the way up, how oneperson and many people are
interacting and how that'sbuilding culture, but how the
culture is also building them.
So we look at the two together.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
And I imagine that that spans across not just the
organizational culture butnational culture as well,
because when we're talking aboutorganizational culture, we also
have to think about what arepeople coming to that culture
with?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yes, and the way that we're working is from their
perception, not our perception.
So, exactly as you say, it'snot our way, it's their way.
It's for them to say what'sgoing to work.
It's for them to say what'sgoing to work.
It's for them to say what'sappropriate in their culture.
(20:40):
We're working in 25 countriescurrently and we're working in
five languages, and that meansthat we've got to be as
inclusive and as understandingof different norms and different
expectations wherever we'reworking, for exactly the reason
(21:01):
that you say, people, they startfrom a different place.
We've got to start where theyare.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
So let's talk about Gizmo.
Oh, I'd love to.
Let's hear about that, okay.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Well, we were inspired by the paper by Laysa
et al in 2015.
And we ran a series ofworkshops.
I think we've probably donethis more than 600 times now and
I don't want to give the gameaway, because if we've got
people on the podcast whoactually come and do any of this
(21:38):
with us, I don't want tocompletely foretell what we're
going to do, but what we do iswe run an exercise with groups
in the organization that they'rein and we get them to tell us
what does this look like, whatshould this look like?
A bit like the way I did itwith the video, which is it's
(22:00):
not us saying what great lookslike, it's them and we take them
through a little process.
It doesn't take very long andit's fun and then we put up what
they say and then we show themwhat every other group we've
ever done this with and it'sit's like a hand in a glove.
(22:24):
There is very, very littledeviation from group to group
about what they think is goingto help in terms of making the
group more collaborative, morecooperative, more innovative,
more agile all of the goodthings that we want.
Groups, when they're allowed todefine what it'll take to do
(22:47):
that hand in glove, match everyother group we've ever done it
with all over the world and, asI say, I think we've done this
600 times now.
So that gives us a hugedatabase and it gives us a huge
level of confidence to say, okay, that's what it looks like.
So let's put this through ourgizmo.
(23:09):
And the gizmo is we've used theword gizmo so that we don't
suggest it's a test, we don'tsuggest that it's a psychometric
, we don't suggest that it isinvestigating your character.
The gizmo is simply saying whatis it do you do will have an
(23:36):
impact on those bonds, therelationship that you have and
you hold.
And through the Gizmo, weproduce the COTG skills report
and then that opens up thediscussion amongst the team and
across the team about, ok, ifthat's what we do, what else
(23:58):
could we do?
Or what do we want to do lessof?
So it's just do we want to dialit up?
Do we want to dial it down?
And there's 15 dimensions andeach of those dimensions has
been defined through thatexercise that I was talking
about, where we've worked.
It's academically referred to,as you'll know, as inductively.
(24:20):
We've worked inductively fromthe ground up to help with that
definition.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Well, that's exciting , and I know that you are doing
amazing, amazing work withleaders and teams, and it is so
impressive to have learned alittle bit more today and I know
that the audience is at theirpeak interest for sure.
I would love to be able todirect people to connect to you
(24:48):
and learn more about the workthat you're doing, as well as
how they can maybe look intoGizmo Coaching on the Go, your
book.
So tell us where they can findyou.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, great, I'd love them too.
Anybody who is interested incollective and collaborative
leadership you can check me out.
I'm on LinkedIn and I'm JennyRobinson, and you can search for
leadership on the go.
If you're interested in ourwebsite, it's
(25:19):
wwwcoachingonthegocouk, andotherwise you can email me,
jenny at coachingonthegocouk,and I think in the show notes
we're offering a couple ofgiveaways.
One giveaway is going to be thefirst chapter of our book and
(25:43):
I'd like to say just a littlebit about that before I sign off
today.
But the second giveaway is thedata that we have got and
collected around the best bosses.
So we've extracted from notjust the laser paper, but we've
(26:03):
also looked at other researchersand what other evidence there
is in the public domain andwe've literally collated.
We call it a dashboard, but itwill give you all the evidence
for all the work that we'redoing and we're super proud of
that.
So that's the dashboard.
So those're super proud of that.
So that's the dashboard.
So those two are available onthe show notes.
If I can just circle back to thechapter, because I know that
(26:26):
not many people read these daysand a chapter is still 30 pages
of reading and probably morethan 10 minutes of your life.
But from page 23 to 27 in thechapter that we are giving away,
you will find literally alookup table, and I'm super
(26:49):
proud of this because you canrun your finger down all the
problems that you have in yourorganization.
Goals always change Somebodyhogging all the information and
not sharing it, conflict in theteam, having a difficult
conversation, people havingdifferent priorities and not
being willing to collaborate.
(27:10):
So we've literally listed ahundred different problems that
we have seen come up a time andtime and time again.
And then in the middle of thechart, we've said this is what
we think you will need to breakthe situation or to move it
forward.
And then we've got a lookuptable where it says go to page
(27:30):
81, go to page 190.
And I've never, I've never seenanybody do that.
I was so pleased with the ideaof making it sort of like we're
not pretending that sure, wehave huge academic
qualifications, we've done hugeamounts of research, but we
(27:51):
wanted to just make this stuffaccessible and usable and our
tagline is how to lead your teameffectively in 10 minutes a day
.
So everything in our book,everything that we do, we try to
do in 10 minutes.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Oh, truly encouraging , inspiring.
I can't wait to get into thoseand check that out.
Thank you for making it easyfor us busy leaders and also
thank you for being able to givepeople permission to understand
what leadership is, what itlooks like, Because so many
times I feel like people needthat permission for them to move
(28:29):
forward, and if they're notgetting it from someone, then
you know it doesn't go anywhere.
So thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
I appreciate that you know it doesn't go anywhere.
So thank you for that.
I appreciate that, and thankyou, too, because I I see on
your website something that justmade my heart sing you were
born to lead, and that isabsolutely where we're coming
from.
It doesn't matter who you areor where you are.
You have a part to play.
We talk about leadershipbecause everybody's playing
(28:57):
their part, and but that ideathat we don't have to associate
it with power or title orhierarchy Just get in there,
step forward and great thingswill happen, that's right.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Well, there you have it, folks, jenny Robinson.
Thank you so much.
Until next time, keep doinggreat things and we'll see you
soon.
See you soon.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Thank you, bye, bye.
All right, well, here we go.
Hey there, and welcome toConversations where today we
have Jenny Robinson, a Kiwientrepreneur with five
successful businessesestablished over 30 years.
The first was established atjust 18 years old, a commercial
radio station, and is stillthriving today.
(00:21):
Now Jenny runs an equallysuccessful tech startup and an
alpaca farm.
Her PhD is in collaborativeleadership and Jenny believes
that we rise by lifting others,which is a quote from Robert
Ingersoll.
Welcome to the show, jenny.
How are you today and where areyou coming to us from?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Hi, dr Kelly, Thank you so much.
I am in the middle of the UK,in the middle of England.
I'm as far away from the sea asyou can get and I'm on my
alpaca farm so little example ofan alpaca being held up for
anybody who's watching.
Um, and I have 16 of them, andthis weekend I will be rolling
(01:08):
up my sleeves and shearingbecause they have to have their
fur taken off and so how, howoften does that happen?
Speaker 1 (01:16):
the?
Speaker 2 (01:16):
first every, just every year, but it will take me
a few weeks to get through thembecause I do it by myself.
Um, I work.
Actually, it's part of the samephilosophy of leadership, which
is they're bigger and strongerthan I am.
I can only succeed in this ifthey are going to not exactly
(01:37):
help, but they're going tocooperate, they're going to
understand what I'm trying toachieve and they have to play
their part.
That's right.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
This sounds like another book Leadership Lessons
from the Alpaca Farm.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Don't worry, I often use my alpaca to explain my
leadership theories, and I oftentest my leadership theories out
in the wild.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
That's amazing.
Well, I would love to read thisquote.
It's a very intriguing quotethat I have from you, and so I'm
going to read that, and thenwe're going to go into answering
some of the questions that Ihave for you.
Sound good?
Yeah great, all right.
So this is what I have.
When you see that leadership isessentially about relationship,
(02:27):
we also see that the way wename and develop leaders needs
to include their skills as aleader who coaches and look for
leadership in the collaborationbetween and across groups of
people, whether that is formalteams or informal teaming.
(02:49):
A new lens on what leadershiplooks like changes everything
that was like to me when I readthat.
That to me was interesting,because it sounds like that
we've gotten leadership wrongand so what?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
say you about that.
Okay, so I went to universityto study leadership.
I wanted a PhD in leadership.
You know how it is when you goback to study All your
preconceptions get stripped away.
(03:26):
You get told by your professorsto go find the evidence, to go
and define your terms, to go andsearch out what everybody else
has said.
So I went off and I was lookingat all the leadership studies.
There's 100 years of academicresearch into leadership and
(03:49):
what becomes very clear when youstart looking at the research?
We don't actually have a goodtheory of leadership.
What I mean by that is if youthink about a different mode.
So if you've got this infection, you have this antibiotics and
(04:13):
you know that this infectionwill get better.
So that's what a predictivemodel would look like.
We don't have a predictivemodel of leadership.
We have many, many theories ofleadership, but none of them are
to that gold standard, and partof the reason is because we
keep treating leadership as ifit's a single variable so input,
(04:39):
process, output, output and Itherefore stripped everything
back and I said what wouldleadership look like if we
didn't know what leadershiplooks like?
So just take away all yourassumptions, take away all the
(05:01):
knowledge you think we have.
So if you, as I said, we'vebeen studying for 100 years, if
none of that's working, so stripaway that 100 years of
theorizing and start from groundzero, start from fundamentals.
What do you look for?
How do you know?
That is leadership.
And I started by saying, okay,there must be a place where
(05:25):
leadership is evident thatdoesn't rely on our past
theorizing.
And where is that?
So I've just been talking aboutmy alpaca.
It's in the wild.
So you look into naturalsystems where natural systems
have to grow, where naturalsystems have to grow, they have
to thrive, they have to surviveand they have to adapt.
(05:54):
And when you look at nature,the new theories of nature are
collaborative and cooperative.
In the past we used to say youplant a tree here and you plant
a tree here because they'recompeting.
But the new science is showingthat they need to be approximate
to each other because they doshare information, medicine,
water they share.
(06:16):
Now they can't be in eachother's shade, but they can be
far closer together than we everrealized.
But they can be far closertogether than we ever realized.
And the new theories that areemerging in nature show that
nature survives, adapts andthrives when it collaborates and
cooperates.
So I picked that idea up and Imoved it towards leadership and
(06:39):
I said, okay, now I've got someidea of what leadership might
look like.
And I took a video camera intosome very large organizations
and I videoed people as theysolved unsolvable problems.
I'll give you an example.
So the emergency services inthe UK like pretty much
(07:04):
everywhere in the world, I guessthey have a finite budget.
You know that's what they get,yet they have infinite demand.
The demand always exceeds whatthe budget is available.
And I watched or my video camerawatched as people came together
(07:26):
, they coalesced, they starteddifferent conversations, they
began to unpick and unravel andsuggest and move and shift and
then I showed them the video ofthemselves back and I didn't ask
them who is the leader.
I asked them video ofthemselves back and I didn't ask
them who is the leader.
(07:46):
I asked them where isleadership?
So you'll notice, when I wrote,when I wrote to you to set up
our first conversation back inMarch, I always put ship s-h-i-p
in capital letters to remind usthat we're looking at this idea
of everyone's on the ship.
(08:07):
If the ship gets there, we allget there.
If the ship sinks, we all sink,same as organizations.
So I asked them where is theleadership?
And they always said oh look,it's like a dance, it's a bit of
this and a bit of that, and abit of something else and a bit
of something else.
And that really lit me upbecause I began to see that
(08:30):
leadership is cooperative andcollaborative we're.
We're in it all together.
Now some people have differenttitles, they have different
hierarchy, they have differentauthority, but that is different
to leadership.
Leadership is this emergent,fragmented, punctuated, messy
(08:51):
process of everybody, sort ofnavigating to this future,
navigating through big problems.
When you're in a complex world,one brain won't do it.
You need multiple brains.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
That's right, regardless of title.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So what might be theconsequence of redefining the
way that you are defining it forus?
What are some of thoseconsequences that we might find?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah, so I want to acknowledge that my definition
of leadership is built on otherattributes of leadership that
are needed, but I was veryinterested in this idea that
it's not me, it's we, and whenit's we, then what matters is
(09:56):
our behavior towards each otherin a way that builds our bonds,
breaks our bonds, strengthensour bonds or increases the
number of our bonds.
So I was really interested inleadership and relationship, and
do we understand, when we'reworking in leadership, how we
are working with relationship,and do we understand, when we're
working in leadership, how weare working with relationship?
And I know that this issomething close to your heart
because you've done systemicteam coaching, which has many
(10:17):
parallels to this.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, and helping teams understand.
I mean, when you are workingwith leaders or even in your
research, what did that evenlook like?
Like how are you coming in andyou're not.
You're probably not saying much, like you said.
You had your camera with yourresearch and then you are
bringing you know the team backin, or the group back in and
(10:42):
having them pinpoint where theysaw.
Leadership back in, or thegroup back in and having them
pinpoint where they sawleadership.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Were these aha moments for them?
Yes, very much so, yes, verymuch so, especially in, for
example, organizations which arevery hierarchical Emergency
services.
They're built on the samehierarchy as the army, the navy.
(11:09):
You know, they have inheritedthis idea of a chain of command.
They need a chain of commandbecause they go to emergency
situations and they need to knowwho's in charge.
But nevertheless, they had theability to address problems in
this emergent manner, usingtheir relationships to
(11:32):
investigate and to understandand to unpick and to explore.
So that was my PhD and the workthat I did.
That got me really excited.
What then happened is a funnierside, but it is a funnier side.
(11:53):
When I started my PhD, theuniversity lined us up in
alphabetical order.
They literally lined us up inthe lecture, lecture theatre.
For three years.
We always sat by name, inalphabetical order, and the guy
I always sat next to was a guycalled Phil Renshaw.
(12:15):
So he's a Renshaw, I'm aRobinson R&R.
We were always together and kindof inevitably, you know, we got
talking and he was the one whosaid to me one day let's write a
book.
I think, you know, we have abook inside of us, and so we set
about trying to write aboutthis concept of leadership that
(12:39):
was focused on raising everyoneup.
You know, we rise by liftingothers, as Robert Angus Sall
says.
And we were really lucky.
We got a great publisher theFinancial Times and Pearson and
we launched just in COVID.
(13:00):
And again we were really luckybecause a couple of people
approached us and said we reallylike your ideas and your book
and, as we're going into COVID,can you think of a way of
working with us in this newonline environment that we're
having to adapt to?
And actually it was from thatthat Phil and I started our
(13:24):
business.
Our business is calledLeadership on the Go and our
book is called Coaching on theGo, and we decided that we would
try and turn this into a seriesof ideas that organizations
could take and use and thinkabout a new form of leadership
which is more agile, more adept,more distributed, more
(13:48):
collaborative.
And so we set about buildingtools and teaching and some
technology that we've got sothat organizations can sort of
investigate this for themselves.
And that's what we've beendoing for the last couple of
years is building a businessthat helps other businesses to
(14:10):
take these ideas and investigatethem.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yes, I know on your website there it says great
leadership achieves great things, right, so tell us a little bit
about that and maybe some ofthe evidence around the work.
I'd love to hear about that.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Strongest evidence comes out of the Chicago School
of Economics and StanfordUniversity, so others are also
looking at this and trying toquantify.
Is this a unique idea and doesit really make a difference?
So the best evidence comes outof a study which is called
something like I've got it here,which is called something like
I've got it here.
It's called the Value of Bosses, and the reference is Laser et
(15:10):
al 2015.
I'll put those in the shownotes for you, and what they are
able to show is that a greatboss can increase the
productivity of a team by about50%.
That's huge, huge right.
Everybody wants that.
(15:31):
So, 50% uplift in productivity,three times the normal level of
engagement and approximately 30%top talent reduction.
So that means that the highestperformers in your team are not
(15:52):
going to leave as quickly asthey would otherwise.
So you've effectively leveragedyour top talent by working this
way.
So that's the value of a greatboss.
Then there's a second study,which is Hoffman and Tadellas
2021.
And they then drilled down intoso what is this good boss, what
(16:16):
is this great boss?
And it's exactly the stuff we'repointing to.
It's exactly the sets of skillsthat we're working around.
We call them coaching skills,but we're not trying to turn
leaders into coaches.
We're trying to say these arethe skills that will help you
with the bonding, so buildingthe group, more relationships,
(16:42):
better relationships, deeperrelationships, so that people
are able to step forward andmake that contribution.
So those two are, and those twostudies, which are by
economists they're not by peoplein the leadership field and
they're not by people in the HRfield, so they're really
(17:02):
rigorous.
Those two studies really helpedus to evidence that this is
worth pursuing.
Now in the meantime, sorry,please go ahead.
No, no, please go ahead.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Well, I also wanted to note about the 10% uplift in
stakeholder satisfaction, andmany times people aren't
thinking about stakeholders, soI'd love to hear, maybe about
that as well.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
There's a lot more evidence about that.
So there's a lot of evidencethat says what happens inside
the organization is directlyreflected back in terms of
levels of customer servicesatisfaction with that service,
reputation, brand awareness, allthese external factors that you
(17:54):
might want to look at.
They are almost directlyproportionate to whatever is
happening inside theorganization.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Excellent, very good, and now would you like to
finish your thought.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Well, my thought was just simply that the way that we
work with organizations is wehelp organizations to look at
this broader concept ofleadership.
So we take groups of people,irrespective of title,
irrespective of hierarchy, alsoirrespective of age or
experience.
(18:30):
We can help each individual tolook at the skills that they
currently have and then we helpthem to build out for themselves
more skills or different skillswhich are focused on this idea
of leadership as an emergentproperty across the group.
But we also look at theexperience of culture for each
(18:57):
individual.
So nobody else is doing this,but it's really important
because, of course, we are notan island.
We are always in relationshipwith somebody else and if you
don't feel safe and if you don'tfeel you belong and you don't
feel like you can make a mistakeand you feel like somebody else
(19:20):
is grabbing the starlight fromyou, then your willingness to
step forward, even if you havethose skills, will be reduced.
So this interaction effectbetween the individual and the
culture and the culture in theindividual is really important
(19:41):
and we now have a way of helpingindividuals, teams, functions
and organizations.
So, all the way up, how oneperson and many people are
interacting and how that'sbuilding culture, but how the
culture is also building them.
So we look at the two together.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
And I imagine that that spans across not just the
organizational culture butnational culture as well,
because when we're talking aboutorganizational culture, we also
have to think about what arepeople coming to that culture
with?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yes, and the way that we're working is from their
perception, not our perception.
So, exactly as you say, it'snot our way, it's their way.
It's for them to say what'sgoing to work.
It's for them to say what'sgoing to work.
It's for them to say what'sappropriate in their culture.
(20:40):
We're working in 25 countriescurrently and we're working in
five languages, and that meansthat we've got to be as
inclusive and as understandingof different norms and different
expectations wherever we'reworking, for exactly the reason
(21:01):
that you say, people, they startfrom a different place.
We've got to start where theyare.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
So let's talk about Gizmo.
Oh, I'd love to.
Let's hear about that, okay.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Well, we were inspired by the paper by Laysa
et al in 2015.
And we ran a series ofworkshops.
I think we've probably donethis more than 600 times now and
I don't want to give the gameaway, because if we've got
people on the podcast whoactually come and do any of this
(21:38):
with us, I don't want tocompletely foretell what we're
going to do, but what we do iswe run an exercise with groups
in the organization that they'rein and we get them to tell us
what does this look like, whatshould this look like?
A bit like the way I did itwith the video, which is it's
(22:00):
not us saying what great lookslike, it's them and we take them
through a little process.
It doesn't take very long andit's fun and then we put up what
they say and then we show themwhat every other group we've
ever done this with and it'sit's like a hand in a glove.
(22:24):
There is very, very littledeviation from group to group
about what they think is goingto help in terms of making the
group more collaborative, morecooperative, more innovative,
more agile all of the goodthings that we want.
Groups, when they're allowed todefine what it'll take to do
(22:47):
that hand in glove, match everyother group we've ever done it
with all over the world and, asI say, I think we've done this
600 times now.
So that gives us a hugedatabase and it gives us a huge
level of confidence to say, okay, that's what it looks like.
So let's put this through ourgizmo.
(23:09):
And the gizmo is we've used theword gizmo so that we don't
suggest it's a test, we don'tsuggest that it's a psychometric
, we don't suggest that it isinvestigating your character.
The gizmo is simply saying whatis it do you do will have an
(23:36):
impact on those bonds, therelationship that you have and
you hold.
And through the Gizmo, weproduce the COTG skills report
and then that opens up thediscussion amongst the team and
across the team about, ok, ifthat's what we do, what else
(23:58):
could we do?
Or what do we want to do lessof?
So it's just do we want to dialit up?
Do we want to dial it down?
And there's 15 dimensions andeach of those dimensions has
been defined through thatexercise that I was talking
about, where we've worked.
It's academically referred to,as you'll know, as inductively.
(24:20):
We've worked inductively fromthe ground up to help with that
definition.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Well, that's exciting , and I know that you are doing
amazing, amazing work withleaders and teams, and it is so
impressive to have learned alittle bit more today and I know
that the audience is at theirpeak interest for sure.
I would love to be able todirect people to connect to you
(24:48):
and learn more about the workthat you're doing, as well as
how they can maybe look intoGizmo Coaching on the Go, your
book.
So tell us where they can findyou.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah, great, I'd love them too.
Anybody who is interested incollective and collaborative
leadership you can check me out.
I'm on LinkedIn and I'm JennyRobinson, and you can search for
leadership on the go.
If you're interested in ourwebsite, it's
(25:19):
wwwcoachingonthegocouk, andotherwise you can email me,
jenny at coachingonthegocouk,and I think in the show notes
we're offering a couple ofgiveaways.
One giveaway is going to be thefirst chapter of our book and
(25:43):
I'd like to say just a littlebit about that before I sign off
today.
But the second giveaway is thedata that we have got and
collected around the best bosses.
So we've extracted from notjust the laser paper, but we've
(26:03):
also looked at other researchersand what other evidence there
is in the public domain andwe've literally collated.
We call it a dashboard, but itwill give you all the evidence
for all the work that we'redoing and we're super proud of
that.
So that's the dashboard.
So those're super proud of that.
So that's the dashboard.
So those two are available onthe show notes.
If I can just circle back to thechapter, because I know that
(26:26):
not many people read these daysand a chapter is still 30 pages
of reading and probably morethan 10 minutes of your life.
But from page 23 to 27 in thechapter that we are giving away,
you will find literally alookup table, and I'm super
(26:49):
proud of this because you canrun your finger down all the
problems that you have in yourorganization.
Goals always change Somebodyhogging all the information and
not sharing it, conflict in theteam, having a difficult
conversation, people havingdifferent priorities and not
being willing to collaborate.
(27:10):
So we've literally listed ahundred different problems that
we have seen come up a time andtime and time again.
And then in the middle of thechart, we've said this is what
we think you will need to breakthe situation or to move it
forward.
And then we've got a lookuptable where it says go to page
(27:30):
81, go to page 190.
And I've never, I've never seenanybody do that.
I was so pleased with the ideaof making it sort of like we're
not pretending that sure, wehave huge academic
qualifications, we've done hugeamounts of research, but we
(27:51):
wanted to just make this stuffaccessible and usable and our
tagline is how to lead your teameffectively in 10 minutes a day
.
So everything in our book,everything that we do, we try to
do in 10 minutes.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Oh, truly encouraging , inspiring.
I can't wait to get into thoseand check that out.
Thank you for making it easyfor us busy leaders and also
thank you for being able to givepeople permission to understand
what leadership is, what itlooks like, Because so many
times I feel like people needthat permission for them to move
(28:29):
forward, and if they're notgetting it from someone, then
you know it doesn't go anywhere.
So thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
I appreciate that you know it doesn't go anywhere.
So thank you for that.
I appreciate that, and thankyou, too, because I I see on
your website something that justmade my heart sing you were
born to lead, and that isabsolutely where we're coming
from.
It doesn't matter who you areor where you are.
You have a part to play.
We talk about leadershipbecause everybody's playing
(28:57):
their part, and but that ideathat we don't have to associate
it with power or title orhierarchy Just get in there,
step forward and great thingswill happen, that's right.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
Well, there you have it, folks, jenny Robinson.
Thank you so much.
Until next time, keep doinggreat things and we'll see you
soon.
See you soon.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Thank you, bye, bye.
Popular Podcasts
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com