December 16, 2023 • 23 mins
What does it mean to be a great leader? In the thought-provoking podcast episode hosted by William Tincup, listeners are taken on a journey of leadership exploration with Amy Leschke-Kahle, Vice President of Talent Insights and Innovation for ADP. Amy shares her wealth of knowledge and experience, debunking common myths surrounding leadership and providing invaluable insights into what it takes to thrive as a leader.
Amy and William delve into the question of whether leaders are born or made, challenging traditional notions and offering a fresh perspective. They emphasize the contextual nature of leadership, stressing the importance of finding one's own unique leadership model. Great leaders come in all different shapes and sizes. Don't try to fit a mold!True greatness lies in being authentic and leveraging one's own strengths.
If you're ready to challenge your understanding of leadership and discover how to unleash your full potential as a leader, then this podcast episode is a must-listen.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
William Tincup (00:32):
Ladies and gentlemen, this is William
Tincup and you're listening tothe Recruiting Daily podcast.
Today we have Amy on from ADPand our topic is the myths of
great leaders.
I, we've had this on theschedule for a couple of weeks
and I cannot wait to get intothis.
As you know, Amy's a recurringguest because we love her and,
(00:54):
uh, and it's always a fun talk.
So why don't we just, just jumpright into it.
Amy, would you do us a favor andintroduce yourself?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (01:02):
Yeah.
Hi, everybody.
Amy Leschke Karl.
I'm the Vice President of TalentInsights and Innovation for ADP.
William Tincup (01:09):
Now, your title has changed a little bit because
I noticed that.
And so you're, you're, you'reworking more with ADP proper?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (01:16):
Well, I always have, and I think we're,
the new title just kind ofrepresents that a little bit
better and represents thebreadth of work that, um, my
team and I have been doing overthe last couple of years.
William Tincup (01:27):
Perfect.
Perfect.
All right.
So we're going to do some mythbusting, which I love, but what
are the myths?
Let's start with kind of some ofthe, some of the basic stuff for
the audience.
What are some of the commonmyths of great leaders?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (01:39):
Oh my gosh, there's so many of them.
And I, I had to listalphabetical, make list Yeah.
I had to make a list becausethere's so many of them.
And I blame myself as a talentpractitioner a little bit
because of some of the thingsthat I've always thought and
always said and always tried tomake happen.
But I think as so many of us whoare in this world of helping
leaders be better leaders andhelping people do more better
(02:02):
work, we, we've done all ofthose things and yet.
It doesn't feel like the, theleader expertise and the
leadershipiness of people hasreally shifted all that much.
I don't know about what yourthoughts are around that,
William.
You have exposure to probablymore people than I
William Tincup (02:18):
do.
Well, you know, I think one ofthe things that, that I think
this kind of coming out of WorldWar II and coming out of the
military industrial complex, Ithink people thought of leaders
historically of, as, as allknowing.
Because of that model, you know,the, the, the military model is
you don't really question aleader.
(02:40):
You know, a leader says, we'regoing to take that hill, okay,
like that's the, that's the job.
And I think that that modelmight have worked for a while,
although there's probably adiscussion there to be had.
But I think that, you know,leaders don't know everything.
And so I think that the leadersthat I see now that are more
vulnerable is, I like that.
(03:03):
I don't know if that's perfectin every situation, but I like
it when a leader says, yeah, Idon't have all the answers.
In fact, that's why I need youto help me with these answers to
grapple with these things.
But I do think that there for atime, people just didn't
question authority.
They didn't question theirleaders.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (03:26):
I think you brought up a really good point
in that.
How we think about leaders andhow we think about leading is
contextual, and it's personal.
So there isn't a one size fitsall, and maybe that's the first
myth, is that there's some magicbeautiful model that every great
leader fits into.
And of course, there isn't.
If you think about the two bestleaders that you've ever had
(03:48):
exposure to, and if you'relucky, this is a rare thing, but
if you're lucky, maybe you evengot to work for one of them.
They're very different.
Great leaders show up verydifferently.
They act very differently.
They have their own different,you know, in our world, we would
say unique strengths.
Those, those leaders are unique.
And the best leaders figure outhow to create their own unique
(04:12):
model.
They don't try to fit themselvesinto one that, that isn't them.
William Tincup (04:17):
I love that because it reminds me of, I
worked for Sam Walton for anumber of years, and he was the
antithesis of, of being a leaderin the sense of, he, first time
I met him, I said, Mr.
Walton, and he stopped me,right, full stop.
He's like, my name's Sam.
And I'm like, I was like 16, Imight have been 50, 16 years
(04:38):
old.
And, uh, and, and of course I'mthinking to myself, this guy's a
billionaire and he wants me tocall him by his first name.
Like that's set, that startsthis conversation.
And every time I got to see himand work with him, uh, he was
down to earth.
Like we used to call it countrysavvy, but it's, it's just, he
was down to earth at any point.
(04:59):
At any point when you would talkto him, he'd be like, how's your
family?
How's your mom?
You know, I know that you have adog.
How's your dog?
You know, like rarely would itbe about business.
Now occasionally it would, he,uh, he caught me one time in a
Odessa where I'd redone theentire furniture model, uh, and
module.
(05:19):
And uh, and so he, he saw it andhe loved it.
But then he asked, and you know,it was a little bit less about
my dog and my mom and all thatother stuff.
He was like, now, why did you dothis?
I said, yeah, Sam, no one'sgoing to buy a lamp in a box.
You got to light them up.
You got to put them up on thewall.
You got to let people see the,the, the light bulb and just
(05:40):
kind of put their handsunderneath it and all that.
See, and he loved it.
Like, he loved that I questionedauthority, so there was, he gave
me some space, and, uh, and hedidn't, you know, he didn't
fault me for it, and, uh, andagain, there was a business,
there's a businessman inside of,or there was a businessman
inside of Sam Walton, he justdidn't show it to people
Amy Leschke-Kahle (05:59):
all the time.
Well, it's, that's a really goodexample of someone who, if,
let's just say, you tried toemulate him and be exactly like
him, it most likely wouldn'twork the same for you as it did
for him, and yet, that's what weteach.
I mean, you, you as well and I,both of us know and have seen
(06:24):
all the circle models, all thepie charts, all the circles
mushed together about this iswhat great leaders do.
And an interesting exercise forpeople to try is to say, okay,
give me three descriptors of agreat leader.
So it's usually likecollaboration and partnership
or, you know, whatever,communication.
And you can take that thing,let's just say it's
(06:46):
communication.
And say, I want two leaders whoare great at communication and
tell me two really good leaderswho aren't.
Right.
Right.
And once you kind of pose it inthat way and push into a little
bit those common descriptors,those things that we think
everybody needs to be, there'salways examples of folks who fit
that thing and folks who don't.
William Tincup (07:08):
But they can still be a great leader even if
they don't do that particulartrait well.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (07:14):
Absolutely.
And you don't want, I mean, onemight argue communication,
whatever that means, but peopleare going to do that in
different ways.
Or collaborative.
Like think about it this, andyou think about we, um, and we
talk about as well, because weknow the power of being a great
coach, but not every leaderneeds to be a great coach.
(07:35):
Weirdly, some leaders are muchbetter advisors than they are
coaches.
Right.
William Tincup (07:40):
Right.
And that's okay.
It's interesting.
Business schools are the worstat this.
And of course, I can say thisbecause I have an MBA and I took
two years out of my life andearned an MBA, but they teach
exactly what you're talkingabout.
They teach there is basicallyone model of leadership and, and
people don't see themselves init, but they try to then force
(08:02):
themselves, you know, they tryto emulate that behavior, which
is worse in my opinion, becauseit's disingenuous.
Like, that's not who they areand they're not dealing with
their strengths.
They're dealing with a model of,and again, a historical model
that might've worked for somepeople.
And I'll just kind of put acouple of qualifiers on there.
(08:24):
Might have worked, uh, for somepeople, but, but, uh, again,
business schools are horrible atthis.
Uh, I also think that if we getinto the sports world, I think
that, that, that.
A lot of coaches get firedbecause they, they, they're
themselves, they do them andthey're good at doing them and
(08:46):
their model doesn't work.
And the, the, the team doesn'tlet them, they don't give them
enough latitude to lead forenough time to then say, your
model works.
Um, and it's like, you're notcoaching the same way that this
other person coaches.
It's like, yeah, because I'm notthat person.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (09:04):
Exactly.
And we try to force fit someoneinto that model.
And then even think about whenwe kind of rate people or do
360s against those models thatthey don't fit in.
And we do things like, you know,send people to lots of training
to be more collaborative.
And by the way, it's not that weshouldn't be more collaborative.
All of us probably should maybebe a little bit more
(09:27):
collaborative, but only to acertain extent.
There's a difference betweenproficiency.
Like, we need to be proficientat the skills we need to do our
job.
Right.
And being extraordinary atsomething, and extraordinary,
your extraordinariness is uniqueto you, just like mine is unique
to me.
Right.
We can both achieve proficiencyat something, and that looks
(09:48):
very, very much the same for usin the context if we're doing
the same thing.
So take the word.
William Tincup (09:55):
Sorry, Amy.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
No, go ahead.
So take the word collaborativeand something that's coming into
my mind is, is, is, is it justthat it's subjective and that
people have differentdefinitions or is it that or
possibly and or is it that theexpectations of collaboration
have changed?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (10:16):
It's definitely an and.
William Tincup (10:18):
Okay, okay,
Amy Leschke-Kahle (10:19):
okay.
Yeah, it's definitely an and.
And I think again that takingcollaboration is one of those
things that everybody says weneed more of.
It is also again incrediblysituational.
So you may have someone who isI'm going to make this up, a
design engineer.
They're designing, I may knowsomeone who fits this bill by
(10:40):
the way, designinginstrumentation in the water and
wastewater industry.
To a large degree, a lot of thatperson's time is spent
independently, doing independentwork.
And it's not that they don'tneed to be collaborative at a
proficient level, of course theydo, they lean into their
colleagues and they may ask forhelp, or can you please approve
this, or make sure I design thiscorrectly, absolutely.
(11:03):
But in that kind of context,maybe they don't need to be the
uber collaborative person.
William Tincup (11:10):
Right, right.
They need to be.
I was thinking as you weretalking about it, I was thinking
about a fighter jet pilot, youknow, in the midst of, or on the
edge of combat.
You know, they don't, they don'tnecessarily need to be super
collaborative.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (11:27):
Well, and even, and you brought up another
great point, is that what doescollaboration mean today in
today's world of work?
And what does that look like?
And what are the, the modalitiesand the practices we have to be
more collaborative?
It's not necessarily face toface anymore.
Um, and it might becollaborative in a way that, um,
(11:47):
I'm going to almost call itdelayed collaboration.
Right?
So we think about collaborationas being super real time, but it
might be, I lean into a group ofpeople for feedback on a paper
that I've written, and it maytake a couple weeks.
So I think One of the, thechallenges, and we've gone, of
course, down a rabbit hole here,but sometimes the, the, in our
(12:10):
effort to over define something,or an effort to define
something, we almost like overdefine it.
It's like going from a, youknow, a pass fail to a 9 point
rating scale.
Like, it doesn't, it just buysyou complexity and confusion.
It doesn't buy you clarity.
So,
William Tincup (12:29):
all right, so we don't go further down this
rabbit hole, because let's,let's hammer a couple other
myths real quick.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (12:37):
Yeah, absolutely.
So, one of the things, we talkedjust a little bit about this,
but we talked about context andyou were talking about leading,
you were talking about, youknow, after World War II,
there's a difference betweensupervising, managing, and
leading.
So you think about, we supervisepeople doing a process.
Right?
Someone is building a tractorand you're supervising them
(13:01):
assembling that tractor toensure quality and to make sure
they're as productive as theyneed to be.
You think about managing.
I don't like to think aboutmanaging people.
I don't like that term, likemanaging people.
Again, it feels very inhuman tome.
We manage work and manageprojects.
I don't think we manage people.
(13:21):
I mean, who wants to be, I don'twant to be managed.
Oh no way.
I think we lead people.
And the hard part around whenyou think about the supervisor,
manager, the leader, is thatthose often take place in the
same person, in the same daywith the same people that you
happen to be supervising,managing, and leading.
It's not, I'm a supervisor or amanager or leader.
(13:44):
I'm not talking about jobtitles.
Right.
But for all three.
And when do you do which one ofthose things?
And hopefully you spend most ofyour time in the leading bucket.
And not very much time, andmaybe no time, depending on the
kind of work, in the supervisingbucket, and a little bit of time
(14:05):
in the managing bucket to makesure that people are still
directionally going in the rightway, qualities where it needs to
be, etc.
But we want to spend most of ourtime in the leading bucket, and
in the leading bucket where weare doing it in a way that makes
the most sense for us and ourteam.
William Tincup (14:20):
Well, it's nice in those three personas, even
being the same person, if theycan shift out of that persona
and communicate with people,it's like, okay, you know what?
Let me put on my leadership hat.
Let me put on my manager hat andlook at the process, look at the
tech and look at how we're, howwe're doing things.
Or let me put on my supervisorhat.
(14:41):
Like if people were to talk likethat.
And, and be received like that,then I think people would be
able to see the three differentpersonas come together.
Uh, I, I fear whether or notpeople are open enough or even
if they know themselves wellenough.
So if they've, if they've, youknow, done some type of analysis
with themselves and they, theyunderstand that I'm actually
(15:04):
three different people and I'dhave three different personas
and I need to actually do abetter job of communicating.
Those personas to the people Iwork with.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (15:13):
Yeah, and I don't think most people
certainly approach the job ofleading others in that way with
that thought process.
Part of that is because we'venot created a very grown up
environment in which peoplework.
Right.
That's, we've created anenvironment in which we've set
the expectations that first andforemost, your job as a person
(15:37):
on an org chart who has peoplebelow you is really to
supervise.
Right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's the environment thatwe've created, as opposed to
create an environment in which,hey, you've got these people
below you, um, your job is toprovide support guidance and
direction to them.
It's not just supervise them.
Right.
Not to do their work, althoughsometimes they may need help and
(15:58):
sure, but your job is to providesupport guidance and direction
to them.
In other words.
That's right.
Lead, help be a leader to them,and even the word leader gets a
little fuzzy, right?
Because it sounds very woo woo,right?
It sounds like, you know what itsounds like.
It just sounds kind of soft andfluffy.
And not again that we need toover define that word, but I
(16:22):
like to describe it again simplyas providing support guidance
and direction to someone else.
So
William Tincup (16:29):
what do you, what do you think about the
leaders, especially from anemployee's perspective?
Is it, is it, uh, nature versusnurture?
Is it something that leaders areborn with and that have an
innate and natural ability tolead?
Or is it, uh, that they'retaught like by being around
other great leaders?
(16:49):
Like how do, where, where dogreat leaders come from?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (16:53):
I think that is a fabulous question.
In fact, that's one of themyths.
With enough training, someonecan be a fabulous, great
manager, like you, anybody canbe an extraordinary leader.
And this is probablycontroversial, but I don't think
that's the case.
Yeah, me neither.
I mean, we know, we've allexperienced, right, when you
experience.
(17:13):
You know, leading and workingfor someone or whether it be in
a project team or whether they,you report to them on an org
chart, if that were the case,all of the investments that
we've made as organizations, wewould have figured that out by
now.
Right.
And we haven't.
And so not every leader, notevery person is, is set up, if
(17:34):
you will, to be a great leader.
And some of that might, theremay be cases of training.
There's not one root cause, bythe way.
So it might be somebody hasn'treceived adequate training.
It might be they haven'treceived adequate coaching.
Maybe they want to be a greatleader, but they themselves have
not had a support mechanism.
For example, with a great coachto help them figure out where
(17:55):
their own unique leader modelis.
That's a really commonphenomena, by the way, because
we try to smoosh people intothis model.
We don't give them the space tobe their own unique best leader,
and we don't give them theresources to do that.
The other thing that happensprobably most frequently is that
we promote people intopositions, leader positions,
(18:16):
manager positions, supervisorpositions, because they're
really good at their job.
And what happens is we totallyundermine the thing that we're
trying to do, right?
We're trying to, how do we helppeople be more productive?
How do we help them do higherquality work?
How do we help them do moredifferentiating work?
So we take this person who'sreally good at their job.
(18:37):
We promote them into a managerjob.
We take away the work that theylove.
And then we create this reallycomplicated, messy, difficult
set of things that we want themto do.
And a lot of it'sadministrative.
We call that a manager.
You're managing that, yourposition.
(18:57):
And we wonder then why most ofthose folks are not successful
or happy.
So we've removed the thing thatmakes them happy at work and
added a whole bunch of stuffthat they don't really want to
do.
William Tincup (19:15):
I've seen this happen the most.
It happens everywhere in NewYork, but I've seen this happen
the most in sales.
Where, uh, a gal is killing itin sales killing quota.
She's wonderful.
She's just a, a pleasure to bearound.
And more importantly, she'skilling quota and she's a great
salesperson.
And then all of a sudden theypromote, uh, her to a sales
(19:37):
manager or sales leader, and,um, and they don't give her the
tools and resources in which tobe a great or an effective
leader of salespeople.
And, and, and he or she fails.
Because it's not as fun, it'snot what they signed up to do,
and, and they're not good at it,uh, because not, not because
(19:57):
they wouldn't be good at it, butbecause they weren't trained at
it.
And, uh, but I've seen thathappen a lot in sales.
I'm sure, I know it happenseverywhere.
I've just seen it a lot insales.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (20:09):
It happens everywhere.
So let's talk a little bit aboutwhat some possible, I don't even
want to call it a solution, butsome things that organizations
can do to help.
Maybe let's call it neutralizethat particular situation
because it's, we're not going toget rid of that.
There are not enough people whoare passionate about being
(20:30):
people leaders.
To fill all of the open peopleleader slots that we have.
It's a, we know this is a very,very difficult job.
And because work isn't grown up,we end up dealing with a lot of
drama, etc, etc.
It's not always a great thing tobe in that position as a leader.
So, there's a couple things thatorganizations can do, and I
(20:51):
highly recommend that they do,to support How do we help people
at least be proficient?
And so really kind of step oneis let's expect everybody to be
proficient at their job ofleading and managing a team.
If we put them in that position,we need them to be proficient.
Well, what does proficiency looklike?
Proficiency looks like this.
(21:13):
Paying really, really frequentattention to those team members
about near term future work.
Like, what's happening?
We've talked about this, right?
That practice of checking inwith their people really
frequently, super light touch.
And it sounds like, what areyour priorities this week?
Do you need anything from me?
And I want to make sure you'redoing okay.
Those three questions reallyfrequently.
(21:34):
If every manager leader did thatevery week with all of their
direct reports, If they tookfive minutes to do that, that's
what proficiency looks like.
So if organizations clearlydefine the critical few things
that leaders need to do to beproficient inside of their
organizations, that would be thenumber one on my list.
Do that.
(21:54):
And you now at least have anorganization full of proficient
leaders.
And we know from the data thatwhen organizations, when leaders
Have their, um, check in withtheir people every single week,
they're two to three to fourtimes more likely to be all in
at work.
That one simple practice.
So, the second piece of thatpuzzle is to simplify.
(22:18):
So, organizations, HR, highlevel leaders in organizations,
what can you do to simplify thework of managers?
What can you do to takeprocesses that are over
engineered and over complicated,tasks, anything that you can do
to simplify their world is goingto pay back in droves for you
(22:40):
because we've made that job notso great.
It's a lot of stuff that has tohappen, and we know the one
thing that we absolutely needthem to do is to pay more
attention to their people, solet's create space for them to
do that.
I love
William Tincup (22:55):
that.
You know, it's, it's coming upon the hour, and I don't think
we got to like two of yourmyths, maybe three, so we're
going to have to, we're going tohave to do a part two of this so
that we can get to the end.
I would love to do a part two.
Let's do a part two.
So, Amy, thank you so much forcarving out time for us in the
audience.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (23:14):
Well, thanks so much for having me.
As usual, William.
It's been a great, great coupleminutes here talking with you
about hot topics in the world ofwork.
William Tincup (23:21):
A hundred percent.
And we're going to do a parttwo.
That way we can cross these offthe list and then deal with the
other parts on your list.
So save your list so that we canactually do the other parts.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (23:31):
I look forward to it.
Can't wait.
William Tincup (23:33):
Absolutely.
And thanks for the audiencelistening.
Appreciate you.
Until next time.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is William
Tincup and you're listening tothe Recruiting Daily podcast.
Today we have Amy on from ADPand our topic is the myths of
great leaders.
I, we've had this on theschedule for a couple of weeks
and I cannot wait to get intothis.
As you know, Amy's a recurringguest because we love her and,
(00:54):
uh, and it's always a fun talk.
So why don't we just, just jumpright into it.
Amy, would you do us a favor andintroduce yourself?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (01:02):
Yeah.
Hi, everybody.
Amy Leschke Karl.
I'm the Vice President of TalentInsights and Innovation for ADP.
William Tincup (01:09):
Now, your title has changed a little bit because
I noticed that.
And so you're, you're, you'reworking more with ADP proper?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (01:16):
Well, I always have, and I think we're,
the new title just kind ofrepresents that a little bit
better and represents thebreadth of work that, um, my
team and I have been doing overthe last couple of years.
William Tincup (01:27):
Perfect.
Perfect.
All right.
So we're going to do some mythbusting, which I love, but what
are the myths?
Let's start with kind of some ofthe, some of the basic stuff for
the audience.
What are some of the commonmyths of great leaders?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (01:39):
Oh my gosh, there's so many of them.
And I, I had to listalphabetical, make list Yeah.
I had to make a list becausethere's so many of them.
And I blame myself as a talentpractitioner a little bit
because of some of the thingsthat I've always thought and
always said and always tried tomake happen.
But I think as so many of us whoare in this world of helping
leaders be better leaders andhelping people do more better
(02:02):
work, we, we've done all ofthose things and yet.
It doesn't feel like the, theleader expertise and the
leadershipiness of people hasreally shifted all that much.
I don't know about what yourthoughts are around that,
William.
You have exposure to probablymore people than I
William Tincup (02:18):
do.
Well, you know, I think one ofthe things that, that I think
this kind of coming out of WorldWar II and coming out of the
military industrial complex, Ithink people thought of leaders
historically of, as, as allknowing.
Because of that model, you know,the, the, the military model is
you don't really question aleader.
(02:40):
You know, a leader says, we'regoing to take that hill, okay,
like that's the, that's the job.
And I think that that modelmight have worked for a while,
although there's probably adiscussion there to be had.
But I think that, you know,leaders don't know everything.
And so I think that the leadersthat I see now that are more
vulnerable is, I like that.
(03:03):
I don't know if that's perfectin every situation, but I like
it when a leader says, yeah, Idon't have all the answers.
In fact, that's why I need youto help me with these answers to
grapple with these things.
But I do think that there for atime, people just didn't
question authority.
They didn't question theirleaders.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (03:26):
I think you brought up a really good point
in that.
How we think about leaders andhow we think about leading is
contextual, and it's personal.
So there isn't a one size fitsall, and maybe that's the first
myth, is that there's some magicbeautiful model that every great
leader fits into.
And of course, there isn't.
If you think about the two bestleaders that you've ever had
(03:48):
exposure to, and if you'relucky, this is a rare thing, but
if you're lucky, maybe you evengot to work for one of them.
They're very different.
Great leaders show up verydifferently.
They act very differently.
They have their own different,you know, in our world, we would
say unique strengths.
Those, those leaders are unique.
And the best leaders figure outhow to create their own unique
(04:12):
model.
They don't try to fit themselvesinto one that, that isn't them.
William Tincup (04:17):
I love that because it reminds me of, I
worked for Sam Walton for anumber of years, and he was the
antithesis of, of being a leaderin the sense of, he, first time
I met him, I said, Mr.
Walton, and he stopped me,right, full stop.
He's like, my name's Sam.
And I'm like, I was like 16, Imight have been 50, 16 years
(04:38):
old.
And, uh, and, and of course I'mthinking to myself, this guy's a
billionaire and he wants me tocall him by his first name.
Like that's set, that startsthis conversation.
And every time I got to see himand work with him, uh, he was
down to earth.
Like we used to call it countrysavvy, but it's, it's just, he
was down to earth at any point.
(04:59):
At any point when you would talkto him, he'd be like, how's your
family?
How's your mom?
You know, I know that you have adog.
How's your dog?
You know, like rarely would itbe about business.
Now occasionally it would, he,uh, he caught me one time in a
Odessa where I'd redone theentire furniture model, uh, and
module.
(05:19):
And uh, and so he, he saw it andhe loved it.
But then he asked, and you know,it was a little bit less about
my dog and my mom and all thatother stuff.
He was like, now, why did you dothis?
I said, yeah, Sam, no one'sgoing to buy a lamp in a box.
You got to light them up.
You got to put them up on thewall.
You got to let people see the,the, the light bulb and just
(05:40):
kind of put their handsunderneath it and all that.
See, and he loved it.
Like, he loved that I questionedauthority, so there was, he gave
me some space, and, uh, and hedidn't, you know, he didn't
fault me for it, and, uh, andagain, there was a business,
there's a businessman inside of,or there was a businessman
inside of Sam Walton, he justdidn't show it to people
Amy Leschke-Kahle (05:59):
all the time.
Well, it's, that's a really goodexample of someone who, if,
let's just say, you tried toemulate him and be exactly like
him, it most likely wouldn'twork the same for you as it did
for him, and yet, that's what weteach.
I mean, you, you as well and I,both of us know and have seen
(06:24):
all the circle models, all thepie charts, all the circles
mushed together about this iswhat great leaders do.
And an interesting exercise forpeople to try is to say, okay,
give me three descriptors of agreat leader.
So it's usually likecollaboration and partnership
or, you know, whatever,communication.
And you can take that thing,let's just say it's
(06:46):
communication.
And say, I want two leaders whoare great at communication and
tell me two really good leaderswho aren't.
Right.
Right.
And once you kind of pose it inthat way and push into a little
bit those common descriptors,those things that we think
everybody needs to be, there'salways examples of folks who fit
that thing and folks who don't.
William Tincup (07:08):
But they can still be a great leader even if
they don't do that particulartrait well.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (07:14):
Absolutely.
And you don't want, I mean, onemight argue communication,
whatever that means, but peopleare going to do that in
different ways.
Or collaborative.
Like think about it this, andyou think about we, um, and we
talk about as well, because weknow the power of being a great
coach, but not every leaderneeds to be a great coach.
(07:35):
Weirdly, some leaders are muchbetter advisors than they are
coaches.
Right.
William Tincup (07:40):
Right.
And that's okay.
It's interesting.
Business schools are the worstat this.
And of course, I can say thisbecause I have an MBA and I took
two years out of my life andearned an MBA, but they teach
exactly what you're talkingabout.
They teach there is basicallyone model of leadership and, and
people don't see themselves init, but they try to then force
(08:02):
themselves, you know, they tryto emulate that behavior, which
is worse in my opinion, becauseit's disingenuous.
Like, that's not who they areand they're not dealing with
their strengths.
They're dealing with a model of,and again, a historical model
that might've worked for somepeople.
And I'll just kind of put acouple of qualifiers on there.
(08:24):
Might have worked, uh, for somepeople, but, but, uh, again,
business schools are horrible atthis.
Uh, I also think that if we getinto the sports world, I think
that, that, that.
A lot of coaches get firedbecause they, they, they're
themselves, they do them andthey're good at doing them and
(08:46):
their model doesn't work.
And the, the, the team doesn'tlet them, they don't give them
enough latitude to lead forenough time to then say, your
model works.
Um, and it's like, you're notcoaching the same way that this
other person coaches.
It's like, yeah, because I'm notthat person.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (09:04):
Exactly.
And we try to force fit someoneinto that model.
And then even think about whenwe kind of rate people or do
360s against those models thatthey don't fit in.
And we do things like, you know,send people to lots of training
to be more collaborative.
And by the way, it's not that weshouldn't be more collaborative.
All of us probably should maybebe a little bit more
(09:27):
collaborative, but only to acertain extent.
There's a difference betweenproficiency.
Like, we need to be proficientat the skills we need to do our
job.
Right.
And being extraordinary atsomething, and extraordinary,
your extraordinariness is uniqueto you, just like mine is unique
to me.
Right.
We can both achieve proficiencyat something, and that looks
(09:48):
very, very much the same for usin the context if we're doing
the same thing.
So take the word.
William Tincup (09:55):
Sorry, Amy.
Yeah.
Go ahead.
No, go ahead.
So take the word collaborativeand something that's coming into
my mind is, is, is, is it justthat it's subjective and that
people have differentdefinitions or is it that or
possibly and or is it that theexpectations of collaboration
have changed?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (10:16):
It's definitely an and.
William Tincup (10:18):
Okay, okay,
Amy Leschke-Kahle (10:19):
okay.
Yeah, it's definitely an and.
And I think again that takingcollaboration is one of those
things that everybody says weneed more of.
It is also again incrediblysituational.
So you may have someone who isI'm going to make this up, a
design engineer.
They're designing, I may knowsomeone who fits this bill by
(10:40):
the way, designinginstrumentation in the water and
wastewater industry.
To a large degree, a lot of thatperson's time is spent
independently, doing independentwork.
And it's not that they don'tneed to be collaborative at a
proficient level, of course theydo, they lean into their
colleagues and they may ask forhelp, or can you please approve
this, or make sure I design thiscorrectly, absolutely.
(11:03):
But in that kind of context,maybe they don't need to be the
uber collaborative person.
William Tincup (11:10):
Right, right.
They need to be.
I was thinking as you weretalking about it, I was thinking
about a fighter jet pilot, youknow, in the midst of, or on the
edge of combat.
You know, they don't, they don'tnecessarily need to be super
collaborative.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (11:27):
Well, and even, and you brought up another
great point, is that what doescollaboration mean today in
today's world of work?
And what does that look like?
And what are the, the modalitiesand the practices we have to be
more collaborative?
It's not necessarily face toface anymore.
Um, and it might becollaborative in a way that, um,
(11:47):
I'm going to almost call itdelayed collaboration.
Right?
So we think about collaborationas being super real time, but it
might be, I lean into a group ofpeople for feedback on a paper
that I've written, and it maytake a couple weeks.
So I think One of the, thechallenges, and we've gone, of
course, down a rabbit hole here,but sometimes the, the, in our
(12:10):
effort to over define something,or an effort to define
something, we almost like overdefine it.
It's like going from a, youknow, a pass fail to a 9 point
rating scale.
Like, it doesn't, it just buysyou complexity and confusion.
It doesn't buy you clarity.
So,
William Tincup (12:29):
all right, so we don't go further down this
rabbit hole, because let's,let's hammer a couple other
myths real quick.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (12:37):
Yeah, absolutely.
So, one of the things, we talkedjust a little bit about this,
but we talked about context andyou were talking about leading,
you were talking about, youknow, after World War II,
there's a difference betweensupervising, managing, and
leading.
So you think about, we supervisepeople doing a process.
Right?
Someone is building a tractorand you're supervising them
(13:01):
assembling that tractor toensure quality and to make sure
they're as productive as theyneed to be.
You think about managing.
I don't like to think aboutmanaging people.
I don't like that term, likemanaging people.
Again, it feels very inhuman tome.
We manage work and manageprojects.
I don't think we manage people.
(13:21):
I mean, who wants to be, I don'twant to be managed.
Oh no way.
I think we lead people.
And the hard part around whenyou think about the supervisor,
manager, the leader, is thatthose often take place in the
same person, in the same daywith the same people that you
happen to be supervising,managing, and leading.
It's not, I'm a supervisor or amanager or leader.
(13:44):
I'm not talking about jobtitles.
Right.
But for all three.
And when do you do which one ofthose things?
And hopefully you spend most ofyour time in the leading bucket.
And not very much time, andmaybe no time, depending on the
kind of work, in the supervisingbucket, and a little bit of time
(14:05):
in the managing bucket to makesure that people are still
directionally going in the rightway, qualities where it needs to
be, etc.
But we want to spend most of ourtime in the leading bucket, and
in the leading bucket where weare doing it in a way that makes
the most sense for us and ourteam.
William Tincup (14:20):
Well, it's nice in those three personas, even
being the same person, if theycan shift out of that persona
and communicate with people,it's like, okay, you know what?
Let me put on my leadership hat.
Let me put on my manager hat andlook at the process, look at the
tech and look at how we're, howwe're doing things.
Or let me put on my supervisorhat.
(14:41):
Like if people were to talk likethat.
And, and be received like that,then I think people would be
able to see the three differentpersonas come together.
Uh, I, I fear whether or notpeople are open enough or even
if they know themselves wellenough.
So if they've, if they've, youknow, done some type of analysis
with themselves and they, theyunderstand that I'm actually
(15:04):
three different people and I'dhave three different personas
and I need to actually do abetter job of communicating.
Those personas to the people Iwork with.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (15:13):
Yeah, and I don't think most people
certainly approach the job ofleading others in that way with
that thought process.
Part of that is because we'venot created a very grown up
environment in which peoplework.
Right.
That's, we've created anenvironment in which we've set
the expectations that first andforemost, your job as a person
(15:37):
on an org chart who has peoplebelow you is really to
supervise.
Right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's the environment thatwe've created, as opposed to
create an environment in which,hey, you've got these people
below you, um, your job is toprovide support guidance and
direction to them.
It's not just supervise them.
Right.
Not to do their work, althoughsometimes they may need help and
(15:58):
sure, but your job is to providesupport guidance and direction
to them.
In other words.
That's right.
Lead, help be a leader to them,and even the word leader gets a
little fuzzy, right?
Because it sounds very woo woo,right?
It sounds like, you know what itsounds like.
It just sounds kind of soft andfluffy.
And not again that we need toover define that word, but I
(16:22):
like to describe it again simplyas providing support guidance
and direction to someone else.
So
William Tincup (16:29):
what do you, what do you think about the
leaders, especially from anemployee's perspective?
Is it, is it, uh, nature versusnurture?
Is it something that leaders areborn with and that have an
innate and natural ability tolead?
Or is it, uh, that they'retaught like by being around
other great leaders?
(16:49):
Like how do, where, where dogreat leaders come from?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (16:53):
I think that is a fabulous question.
In fact, that's one of themyths.
With enough training, someonecan be a fabulous, great
manager, like you, anybody canbe an extraordinary leader.
And this is probablycontroversial, but I don't think
that's the case.
Yeah, me neither.
I mean, we know, we've allexperienced, right, when you
experience.
(17:13):
You know, leading and workingfor someone or whether it be in
a project team or whether they,you report to them on an org
chart, if that were the case,all of the investments that
we've made as organizations, wewould have figured that out by
now.
Right.
And we haven't.
And so not every leader, notevery person is, is set up, if
(17:34):
you will, to be a great leader.
And some of that might, theremay be cases of training.
There's not one root cause, bythe way.
So it might be somebody hasn'treceived adequate training.
It might be they haven'treceived adequate coaching.
Maybe they want to be a greatleader, but they themselves have
not had a support mechanism.
For example, with a great coachto help them figure out where
(17:55):
their own unique leader modelis.
That's a really commonphenomena, by the way, because
we try to smoosh people intothis model.
We don't give them the space tobe their own unique best leader,
and we don't give them theresources to do that.
The other thing that happensprobably most frequently is that
we promote people intopositions, leader positions,
(18:16):
manager positions, supervisorpositions, because they're
really good at their job.
And what happens is we totallyundermine the thing that we're
trying to do, right?
We're trying to, how do we helppeople be more productive?
How do we help them do higherquality work?
How do we help them do moredifferentiating work?
So we take this person who'sreally good at their job.
(18:37):
We promote them into a managerjob.
We take away the work that theylove.
And then we create this reallycomplicated, messy, difficult
set of things that we want themto do.
And a lot of it'sadministrative.
We call that a manager.
You're managing that, yourposition.
(18:57):
And we wonder then why most ofthose folks are not successful
or happy.
So we've removed the thing thatmakes them happy at work and
added a whole bunch of stuffthat they don't really want to
do.
William Tincup (19:15):
I've seen this happen the most.
It happens everywhere in NewYork, but I've seen this happen
the most in sales.
Where, uh, a gal is killing itin sales killing quota.
She's wonderful.
She's just a, a pleasure to bearound.
And more importantly, she'skilling quota and she's a great
salesperson.
And then all of a sudden theypromote, uh, her to a sales
(19:37):
manager or sales leader, and,um, and they don't give her the
tools and resources in which tobe a great or an effective
leader of salespeople.
And, and, and he or she fails.
Because it's not as fun, it'snot what they signed up to do,
and, and they're not good at it,uh, because not, not because
(19:57):
they wouldn't be good at it, butbecause they weren't trained at
it.
And, uh, but I've seen thathappen a lot in sales.
I'm sure, I know it happenseverywhere.
I've just seen it a lot insales.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (20:09):
It happens everywhere.
So let's talk a little bit aboutwhat some possible, I don't even
want to call it a solution, butsome things that organizations
can do to help.
Maybe let's call it neutralizethat particular situation
because it's, we're not going toget rid of that.
There are not enough people whoare passionate about being
(20:30):
people leaders.
To fill all of the open peopleleader slots that we have.
It's a, we know this is a very,very difficult job.
And because work isn't grown up,we end up dealing with a lot of
drama, etc, etc.
It's not always a great thing tobe in that position as a leader.
So, there's a couple things thatorganizations can do, and I
(20:51):
highly recommend that they do,to support How do we help people
at least be proficient?
And so really kind of step oneis let's expect everybody to be
proficient at their job ofleading and managing a team.
If we put them in that position,we need them to be proficient.
Well, what does proficiency looklike?
Proficiency looks like this.
(21:13):
Paying really, really frequentattention to those team members
about near term future work.
Like, what's happening?
We've talked about this, right?
That practice of checking inwith their people really
frequently, super light touch.
And it sounds like, what areyour priorities this week?
Do you need anything from me?
And I want to make sure you'redoing okay.
Those three questions reallyfrequently.
(21:34):
If every manager leader did thatevery week with all of their
direct reports, If they tookfive minutes to do that, that's
what proficiency looks like.
So if organizations clearlydefine the critical few things
that leaders need to do to beproficient inside of their
organizations, that would be thenumber one on my list.
Do that.
(21:54):
And you now at least have anorganization full of proficient
leaders.
And we know from the data thatwhen organizations, when leaders
Have their, um, check in withtheir people every single week,
they're two to three to fourtimes more likely to be all in
at work.
That one simple practice.
So, the second piece of thatpuzzle is to simplify.
(22:18):
So, organizations, HR, highlevel leaders in organizations,
what can you do to simplify thework of managers?
What can you do to takeprocesses that are over
engineered and over complicated,tasks, anything that you can do
to simplify their world is goingto pay back in droves for you
(22:40):
because we've made that job notso great.
It's a lot of stuff that has tohappen, and we know the one
thing that we absolutely needthem to do is to pay more
attention to their people, solet's create space for them to
do that.
I love
William Tincup (22:55):
that.
You know, it's, it's coming upon the hour, and I don't think
we got to like two of yourmyths, maybe three, so we're
going to have to, we're going tohave to do a part two of this so
that we can get to the end.
I would love to do a part two.
Let's do a part two.
So, Amy, thank you so much forcarving out time for us in the
audience.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (23:14):
Well, thanks so much for having me.
As usual, William.
It's been a great, great coupleminutes here talking with you
about hot topics in the world ofwork.
William Tincup (23:21):
A hundred percent.
And we're going to do a parttwo.
That way we can cross these offthe list and then deal with the
other parts on your list.
So save your list so that we canactually do the other parts.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (23:31):
I look forward to it.
Can't wait.
William Tincup (23:33):
Absolutely.
And thanks for the audiencelistening.
Appreciate you.
Until next time.
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