December 23, 2023 • 22 mins
Is leadership a mythical concept that only a few possess? In this episode of the RecruitingDaily Podcast, host William Tincup invites guest Amy Leschke-Kahle, Vice President of Talent Insights and Innovation at ADP, to shed light on the mythos surrounding great leaders and how to navigate the expectations placed upon them.
Amy is an expert in helping organizations rethink work and approach leadership differently. She shares her insights on the current expectations of leaders and whether they are realistic or not in these challenging times. Organizations have overloaded leaders with administrative tasks and coaching responsibilities, often overlooking their core competencies. Amy emphasizes the need for organizations to recognize the diverse strengths and passions of individuals, rather than forcing everyone to fit into a conventional leadership mold.
While addressing the topic of extraordinary leaders, Amy dispels the notion that there is a one-size-fits-all formula for greatness. Instead, she highlights the importance of embracing each leader's unique strengths and investing in their areas of affinity, creating a more authentic and impactful leadership style. From the power of frequent attention to team members to understanding the nuances of poor performance, their conversation is a wealth of knowledge for anyone interested in cultivating successful leaders.
Join us as we explore the myths of great leaders and uncover a fresh perspective on leadership development.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
William Tincup (00:32):
This is William Tincup, and you're listening to
the Recruiting Daily Podcast.
Today, we have Amy from ADP on,and this is a part two.
So the myths of great leaders,comma, two.
We did this podcast, uh, I thinkit was last week or the week
before, and we didn't getthrough the list.
So we basically said, well, wegot to do a part two.
(00:54):
That rarely happens.
Uh, and, and in my podcast, uh,so I'm really glad to kind of
get to part two.
So Amy, would you do us a favorand introduce yourself and what
you're doing for ADP?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (01:09):
Absolutely.
Hi everybody.
I am Amy Leschke Karl.
I'm the vice president of talentinsights and innovation, and I
help organizations think aboutwork differently and do work
differently, which is why we'rehaving a part two today and
particularly around the veryimportant topic of leaders.
William Tincup (01:26):
So let's start off with, uh, the expectations
of leaders, like what, what,where are we at kind of at this
particular moment in time, uh,as we look for leaders to do X,
Y, and Z, is it Realistic, is itoptimistic, pessimistic, what,
what are, what, what's, when youlook at expectations and
(01:47):
leaders, what do you see withyour, your clients and, and
yourself and across the
Amy Leschke-Kahle (01:52):
market?
Well, one of the things I seecertainly with clients, but also
all of us who lead people,whether we show up on an org
chart or not, by the way, isthat organizations have over
Over expected of leaders.
We've overwhelmed leaders,especially the everyday leader.
(02:12):
Those of us who are notnecessarily super passionate
about leading teams of people.
We love to do our work.
And oh, by the way, now we haveto do this thing called leading
people.
We've put so many expectations,both administrative expectations
as well as coaching expectationsthat.
Most of us as leaders, we wantto do work, but now we've got
(02:35):
all this leady stuff to do aswell.
And a lot of that is not superhelpful, again, for those of us
who are, I'm going to say,everyday leaders.
William Tincup (02:45):
So, where, if I could point blame, uh, assign
blame, where, where, where,where did this go sideways?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (02:55):
Well, I think it's all well, very well
intended.
So no one, like we don't, um,well, for the most part, well
intended.
I think sometimes HR doesn'twant to do things.
And so we point out leaders andsay, Oh, you go do that thing.
But I think for the most part,it's well intended.
And we have this.
I'm going to say unrealisticexpectation that everybody can
(03:16):
be an extraordinary leader.
Like, you know, if we giveeverybody enough training, if we
give Amy enough training, shecan be an extraordinary leader.
And I don't think that's thecase.
And I think that is anunrealistic expectation.
So we've overwhelmed leaderswith stuff to do with tasks,
(03:36):
with approaches, with models,with frameworks that for most of
us.
We simply don't have enough, I'mgoing to say affinity for the
work of leading people.
It's not by the way that we saywe hate leading people and we
all know how important it is,but it's just not a natural
affinity enough for us to go,I'm going to over invest in
(03:58):
being a really good leader.
So
William Tincup (04:02):
are we thinking about extraordinary in the sense
of, uh, say the 1 percent like,like that or, or is it We
shouldn't, we should shoot forextraordinary with some, but not
with all.
Like we should then have peoplethat are just capable leaders,
like competent leaders.
Maybe you don't have to be,maybe you're never going to be
(04:23):
extraordinary.
But you know, it seems likethere's a utility, or could be a
utility if someone is justcompetent in leading.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (04:31):
Absolutely.
And we can gain so much inorganizations by having our
leaders be at least proficient.
I like to use the termproficient, and it's incredibly
doable.
Like getting all of your leadersto proficient is an absolutely
realistic expectation.
And we know from the data andthe research that there's a
really simple practice.
(04:53):
That all proficient leaders do.
You and I, I think I'm sure havetalked about this before, and
that proficient practice ispaying really frequent attention
to your team members.
That just get everyone being ahigh attention leader.
That means once a week, itdoesn't have to be a big, long,
complicated thing.
(05:14):
It's asking three simplequestions.
What is the most important thingyou need to work on this week?
Do you need anything from me?
And I just want to check in andsee if you're doing okay.
Those three questions once aweek we see in the data from
real people doing real work inthe real world is a game changer
when it comes to helping yourteam members be all in.
(05:34):
So if you instill and embed thatpractice, in your organization
as an expectation, that getseverybody to proficiency.
The other thing that that doesis it gives you the space and
the time and I might even saybudget to over invest in those
people who are passionate aboutleading others because we need
(05:56):
them, we want some of them,you're never going to have all
of them.
So it's just like if you were anengineer.
I'm an engineer.
And if you're an engineer, let'ssay you're a mechanical engineer
and you really love designing inCAD, but you also, there's also
this quality thing over there,but you don't really care so
much about being a qualityengineer, but you love to
design.
You can invest a whole bunch oftime and effort and money and
(06:19):
emotional energy into helpingsomeone be a better quality
engineer, but that's not wheretheir passion is.
Right.
Why would we do that?
want to help them be a reallygood designer.
William Tincup (06:28):
It's like we're forcing, we're forcing them to
be something that they're not ordon't want to be or have no
interest into.
How do you, first of all, Ithink ADP follows this, this
proficiency model, or excuse me,the, the high attention because
I think I was talking to anotherexecutive and we went into kind
of his world.
(06:48):
He's like, Hey, miss, I have ateam of six people.
I talked to every single one ofthem every week.
And so he explained exactly whatyou were talking about.
I don't know if he used thequestions the way you did.
I'm like, dude, that just soundsawesome.
I mean, that just, it reminds meof what Jack Welch used to do at
GE with the span of control andjust basically one person should
(07:11):
really only interact with alimited number of people.
Like you can, you can talk to alot of other folks, but
managing, it should be morelimited than that.
But I, I like that model and Ilike those questions a lot.
Do you, do you, with yourcustomers, do you see them
asking, like, how do we knowwe've reached?
Proficiency.
(07:33):
Well, the
Amy Leschke-Kahle (07:33):
beautiful thing about, yeah, the beautiful
thing about technology is we canactually measure it and we can
see that.
So we ask, for example, in ourworld at ADP and with our
clients, every week we ask, eachof us answer a question that
said, did your team leaderconnect with you about your
priorities this week?
William Tincup (07:49):
So we know.
Oh, that's awesome.
It's probably terrifying toimplement for a company that's
never done that.
I could see where people wouldbe like, Oh no, that's, that's
horrible.
But once it's done and it'sritualized, then I think people
get addicted to it.
It's like, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (08:09):
And it's actually, yeah.
And it's not terrifying though,William, because the question
feels so innocuous.
It's like, yes or no.
It's a yes or no question.
It's like, oh, yes or no.
Like, did they pay attention toyou or not?
Yes or no.
Yeah.
But it gives us this data point.
To be able to connect some dotsat a person level from a
researching perspective, wedon't like share all the data
(08:30):
with everybody, but from aresearch perspective, applied
research perspective, we canconnect a couple pieces of data
like how engaged is that person?
How often did their team leaderconnect with them?
What did their priorities looklike?
Did they like working on theirpriorities that week or did they
not like working on theirpriorities this week?
So we can collect this data in afive minute process.
(08:53):
And it's amazing.
William Tincup (08:54):
Is that linked either now or in the future to
promotions and comp andsuccession planning and things
like
Amy Leschke-Kahle (09:00):
that?
I would not link those twothings together.
Okay.
Okay.
William Tincup (09:06):
Why I went down that road is bad managers.
And that's the only reason I goteither my mind went over into
that little dark corner.
It was like, okay, what do we dowith bad leaders?
We got the data now.
And we even might even seesomeone that's, you know, doing
a great job communicating andthen their, their subordinate
(09:27):
doing a fantastic job.
It's like, okay, we, we canconnect these dots.
That's that's how I got therewas bad managers.
So that, that's why, that's theonly reason I brought it up.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (09:38):
Yeah.
And I think it's, it's, it'sanother probably topic for a
podcast about poor performers.
What exactly is a poorperformer?
How do we know?
And the thing that we typically,as practitioners and talent
practitioners, don't do a greatjob at delving into is why.
Right.
Like, why does this person get a2 on their, uh, performance,
(10:00):
however you, we can, we'vetalked about this before, but
why do they get a 2 on theirperformance rating?
And we'll just keep it reallygeneric.
Why?
Is it because perhaps they havesomething going on outside of
work?
Is it perhaps they've got badchemistry with the boss?
I mean, my God, we're humans,right?
Sometimes things we don't gelvery well, and you've got a
really good, very competent, um,well intended person.
(10:24):
Employee, but they're in asituation and work where there's
some, uh, friction, I'm going tocall it friction with someone
maybe on their team or theirteam leader, and we're not
giving them the opportunity todo their best work.
So I think that's why I get alittle like a squeamy when you
talk about that.
I think we.
Make some assumptions around whythings happen, and we don't
(10:45):
really know, and we don't getcurious enough to go dig in and
find out what's reallyhappening.
William Tincup (10:50):
So what's beyond, if the goal is every
leader proficient, and here'show we can get there, and we
have the data to support thosethings.
What's, do you have a, do youhave another level past
proficient?
Extraordinary.
Okay, so we go from proficientto
Amy Leschke-Kahl (11:07):
extraordinary.
Absolutely, and the way thathappens, again, is, I'm just
going to say kind of affinity,natural affinity, I don't know
what else to call it, and youknow those people, I mean, maybe
you're one of them, I am not, bythe way, I am not that person
who has a natural affinity forleading others, it's just not in
me, it's not something that I'vebeen doing, like, I've been
(11:30):
spending most of my career inthe world of leader development,
and interestingly, I'm not superpassionate about being a leader
myself, I'm really interestedabout what does great leader and
extraordinary leader y stufflook like and how do we help
people get there and what I havelearned is that not everybody's
going to get there.
So from a practitionerperspective, one thing I always
(11:52):
guide folks that I work with tothink about is be really smart
and almost like surgical aboutwhere you invest and who you
invest in because you could overinvest in Amy then My, you know,
to try to get me to be anextraordinary leader, but you're
never gonna get payback on thatbecause it's just not who I am.
(12:13):
I am a incredibly proficientleader.
Right, right, right.
We can, it's okay to stop there,like the expectation, right,
right.
That every leader in ourorganization is gonna be
extraordinary or that every.
Um, you know, bank teller isgoing to be extraordinary, or
every podcast host is going tobe extraordinary.
(12:34):
That is completely unrealistic,and we don't all need to be
extraordinary.
That's, that, that's the thing.
When we are extraordinary inour, in those places where we do
have, um, emotional affinity,where we do get really excited
about, over invest in thatplace.
It doesn't mean we don't doother things proficiently, but
(12:55):
helping people steer.
Towards those places that weget, like you can tell, I'm
getting super excited about thetopic.
It's like, we need to be smarterat investing and I don't mean
just money, I mean time andeffort and emotional energy to
help people have extraordinaryand give extraordinary
contribution to theorganizations that they work
(13:16):
for.
William Tincup (13:17):
So I've struggled with this for years in
terms of putting all A playerson a team.
So, A, again, a proficient andmaybe even an extraordinary
leader, and everyone on the teamis a high performer.
It's a talent.
I'm not sure that works.
And I mean, you're, you're aleader in this field, so you
(13:37):
should probably have a more, abetter response to that.
But I've always struggled with,and I say always, over the last
20 years, I've struggled withthis.
It's like, you need to be andsee players on the team.
They don't, you don't, you don'tneed to have all A.
In fact, from a sportsperspective, there's not a lot
(13:59):
of sports teams where all the,all of the team were all, you
know, A talent.
You have to have, it actuallyworked because you didn't have
everyone as a talent.
Like in basketball, there's onlyone basketball, you know, like
everyone's, everyone's got arole.
Uh, not everyone, not everyonehas to be Michael Jordan.
So first of all, tear thatapart.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (14:20):
I don't mind.
Um, I'm going to tear that apart
William Tincup (14:25):
as you
Amy Leschke-Kahle (14:26):
should.
Why do we not have the approachthat all of our teams should be
full of A players?
And to your point, what you justsaid.
The thing that I would tearapart about that is that, let's
just say, um, I'm not abasketball person, so I may get
these words wrong, but let's sayyou've got five people on the
court, that person who's thestar in making all the baskets
(14:47):
and the three pointers and allthose kind of things, that's
great.
They're a highly visible Aplayer, but that person who's
supporting them and ensuringthat they get the ball to be
able to score that, they are a,a, a player in a supporting
role.
In what they do.
So I think the expectation andeven the labeling of we have A
(15:10):
players and B players or you mayeven think about the nine box,
right?
It's like some of those peoplethat are sitting in the middle.
I don't think so.
I mean, yeah, you're going tohave them for different reasons.
But we ought to have anexpectation.
And I think a lot oforganizations actually have
this.
They just don't want to talkabout it in this way because we
don't think about humanperformance as, um, we think
(15:32):
about variation and sometimesvariation is not necessarily in
the contribution we make, butvariation is in the, you have a
skill and a talent and astrengths and, and I have a
different one than you do.
Why, why would we haveorganizations, and I think a lot
of organizations actually havethis, where everybody is up in
that top right hand
William Tincup (15:51):
corner?
I can, I can see that now.
I can, I can see the, the waythat you've reframed it.
We don't need everybody toshoot.
We need them to be good,extraordinary, uh, or proficient
at what they're, at what theydo.
So that, that, that actuallytracks for me.
That makes sense.
(16:11):
Two, two questions.
Traits of the, of extraordinaryleaders.
What have you seen?
Is there anything in the datathat you can look at it and say,
okay, these gals and these guys,they have this, or these, these
five things or whatever it is,is there anything in the data
that says, you know, from thedifference between proficient
(16:33):
and extraordinary is these
Amy Leschke-Kahle (16:35):
things?
It's actually exactly theopposite.
There is no commonality.
The most extraordinary leadersfind their own unique
extraordinary leader modelapproach, and they do that.
Trying to force fit yourselfinto someone else's imaginary
model makes us Not betterleaders.
(16:56):
It makes us more frustrated andprobably not as good of leaders
as we could be.
William Tincup (17:01):
Well, it also could show up as false
positives.
So they, they, they scored wellon this.
So anyway, if we think thatthat's the thing that makes it
an extraordinary leader, uh,that we could spend time, money
and energy and all that otherstuff, trying to make them an
extraordinary leader, andthey're, they're never going to
get there.
And then that creates, likewe're talking about from the
(17:23):
org's perspective, but itcreates.
A whole lot of frustration forthe, for the, for the, for the,
for the leader itself, becausethey, they can't, they, for
whatever reason, they can't ordon't want to reach that level
or that place.
And that can create a whole kindof watershed of problems with
(17:43):
morale and retention and allkinds
Amy Leschke-Kahle (17:45):
of stuff.
It's incredibly limiting toopportunity in the organization,
letting people show up as theirown unique best self, not their
own unique best self, like.
You know, in their entire life,but their own unique best work
self, but helping people tofigure out what that looks like
and how to bring that to thetable and whether this is true,
(18:06):
whether they're a people leaderor not, is, is freeing not only
for the organization, but forthe employees.
Again, think about what, whatthe unique differentiator of, of
every organization is in today'sworld.
It's used to be technology, notquite as much anymore.
It's still somewhatdifferentiating.
It used to be processoptimization, not anymore.
(18:27):
It's the people who are doingthe thing, whatever that is.
That's right.
And we're
William Tincup (18:32):
all unique.
Which it should have alwaysbeen.
But we'll side quest side issuefor a later paired point.
But you're right.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (18:39):
It's the people.
And we're all different andunique.
And if we can help thatuniqueness, that unique, um,
Super secret sauce, I don'tknow, whatever it is.
We all know what that is,whatever you want to call it.
We just need to, if we can pullon that a little bit more and
let that open up and be presenta little bit more in a
(19:00):
reasonable way for leaders,especially people leaders,
that's a game changer.
It's free.
William Tincup (19:07):
You and I grew up with the phrase, uh, cream
rises to the top.
Is it applicable to proficientleadership or extraordinary
leadership?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (19:20):
Um, gosh, is it, I, yes, in a way that,
again, if organizations createenough space for people to be
able to show up and figure outwhat that is for themselves and
not force fit people into asingle model, so yes, but the
(19:43):
cream looks different everysingle time.
William Tincup (19:46):
Right.
Right.
And for every organization andfor every leader, et cetera.
So I was going to ask you, and Istill should ask you about, uh,
assessments for proficiency.
Is there a way to assess whetheror not someone has the capacity
to be proficient?
Boy, you know what?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (20:06):
I don't know.
That's a good question.
You know what, William?
Damn you.
Sorry about that.
I don't know, and I don't knowthat I want to know.
Like, I'm not sure that that'seven a thing that I'm Um, kind
of interested in, there arethings that we can do to help
employees make better decisionsabout whether a people
(20:27):
leadership role is the rightrole for them, but having an
assessment to answer that forus, and particularly relying on
that assessment exclusively.
I don't think is the rightdirection to go.
I mean, there's probablyassessments out there and
they're great and they're fineand they're, they're maybe,
maybe are a helpful component ofa larger question.
(20:49):
Giving people exposure to whatis it, what is it like to be a
people leader if you haven'tbeen a people leader?
We don't know, right?
We say, oh, we've, we've overglamorized this thing of leading
people and it's really hard andit's really draining a lot of
the time, especially when youwere talking about large spans
(21:10):
or especially if you're new andin certain circumstances and
high pressure work environments,like healthcare, for an example,
we, we, if you've not done thatwork before and all of a sudden
you step into that role and itis Um, that kind of an
environment, and you haven't hadmuch support.
(21:31):
Wow.
No, no wonder people fail inthat role.
And so again, I think it kind ofcomes to investment.
Like we don't always invest inthe right places in the right
way at the right time.
William Tincup (21:42):
Jobs might walks off stage.
Amy, thank you again and thankyou for doing part one, but also
thank you for doing part two ofthis.
I think it's a.
I mean, again, we probably do apart three, four, five, and six
and may write a book about it,but thank you so much for coming
on the show today and helpingus, uh, understand great
leadership.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (22:02):
It's always such a pleasure to speak with
you, William.
Thanks so much for having me.
Absolutely.
William Tincup (22:06):
And thanks for the audience for listening until
next time.
This is William Tincup, and you're listening to
the Recruiting Daily Podcast.
Today, we have Amy from ADP on,and this is a part two.
So the myths of great leaders,comma, two.
We did this podcast, uh, I thinkit was last week or the week
before, and we didn't getthrough the list.
So we basically said, well, wegot to do a part two.
(00:54):
That rarely happens.
Uh, and, and in my podcast, uh,so I'm really glad to kind of
get to part two.
So Amy, would you do us a favorand introduce yourself and what
you're doing for ADP?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (01:09):
Absolutely.
Hi everybody.
I am Amy Leschke Karl.
I'm the vice president of talentinsights and innovation, and I
help organizations think aboutwork differently and do work
differently, which is why we'rehaving a part two today and
particularly around the veryimportant topic of leaders.
William Tincup (01:26):
So let's start off with, uh, the expectations
of leaders, like what, what,where are we at kind of at this
particular moment in time, uh,as we look for leaders to do X,
Y, and Z, is it Realistic, is itoptimistic, pessimistic, what,
what are, what, what's, when youlook at expectations and
(01:47):
leaders, what do you see withyour, your clients and, and
yourself and across the
Amy Leschke-Kahle (01:52):
market?
Well, one of the things I seecertainly with clients, but also
all of us who lead people,whether we show up on an org
chart or not, by the way, isthat organizations have over
Over expected of leaders.
We've overwhelmed leaders,especially the everyday leader.
(02:12):
Those of us who are notnecessarily super passionate
about leading teams of people.
We love to do our work.
And oh, by the way, now we haveto do this thing called leading
people.
We've put so many expectations,both administrative expectations
as well as coaching expectationsthat.
Most of us as leaders, we wantto do work, but now we've got
(02:35):
all this leady stuff to do aswell.
And a lot of that is not superhelpful, again, for those of us
who are, I'm going to say,everyday leaders.
William Tincup (02:45):
So, where, if I could point blame, uh, assign
blame, where, where, where,where did this go sideways?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (02:55):
Well, I think it's all well, very well
intended.
So no one, like we don't, um,well, for the most part, well
intended.
I think sometimes HR doesn'twant to do things.
And so we point out leaders andsay, Oh, you go do that thing.
But I think for the most part,it's well intended.
And we have this.
I'm going to say unrealisticexpectation that everybody can
(03:16):
be an extraordinary leader.
Like, you know, if we giveeverybody enough training, if we
give Amy enough training, shecan be an extraordinary leader.
And I don't think that's thecase.
And I think that is anunrealistic expectation.
So we've overwhelmed leaderswith stuff to do with tasks,
(03:36):
with approaches, with models,with frameworks that for most of
us.
We simply don't have enough, I'mgoing to say affinity for the
work of leading people.
It's not by the way that we saywe hate leading people and we
all know how important it is,but it's just not a natural
affinity enough for us to go,I'm going to over invest in
(03:58):
being a really good leader.
So
William Tincup (04:02):
are we thinking about extraordinary in the sense
of, uh, say the 1 percent like,like that or, or is it We
shouldn't, we should shoot forextraordinary with some, but not
with all.
Like we should then have peoplethat are just capable leaders,
like competent leaders.
Maybe you don't have to be,maybe you're never going to be
(04:23):
extraordinary.
But you know, it seems likethere's a utility, or could be a
utility if someone is justcompetent in leading.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (04:31):
Absolutely.
And we can gain so much inorganizations by having our
leaders be at least proficient.
I like to use the termproficient, and it's incredibly
doable.
Like getting all of your leadersto proficient is an absolutely
realistic expectation.
And we know from the data andthe research that there's a
really simple practice.
(04:53):
That all proficient leaders do.
You and I, I think I'm sure havetalked about this before, and
that proficient practice ispaying really frequent attention
to your team members.
That just get everyone being ahigh attention leader.
That means once a week, itdoesn't have to be a big, long,
complicated thing.
(05:14):
It's asking three simplequestions.
What is the most important thingyou need to work on this week?
Do you need anything from me?
And I just want to check in andsee if you're doing okay.
Those three questions once aweek we see in the data from
real people doing real work inthe real world is a game changer
when it comes to helping yourteam members be all in.
(05:34):
So if you instill and embed thatpractice, in your organization
as an expectation, that getseverybody to proficiency.
The other thing that that doesis it gives you the space and
the time and I might even saybudget to over invest in those
people who are passionate aboutleading others because we need
(05:56):
them, we want some of them,you're never going to have all
of them.
So it's just like if you were anengineer.
I'm an engineer.
And if you're an engineer, let'ssay you're a mechanical engineer
and you really love designing inCAD, but you also, there's also
this quality thing over there,but you don't really care so
much about being a qualityengineer, but you love to
design.
You can invest a whole bunch oftime and effort and money and
(06:19):
emotional energy into helpingsomeone be a better quality
engineer, but that's not wheretheir passion is.
Right.
Why would we do that?
want to help them be a reallygood designer.
William Tincup (06:28):
It's like we're forcing, we're forcing them to
be something that they're not ordon't want to be or have no
interest into.
How do you, first of all, Ithink ADP follows this, this
proficiency model, or excuse me,the, the high attention because
I think I was talking to anotherexecutive and we went into kind
of his world.
(06:48):
He's like, Hey, miss, I have ateam of six people.
I talked to every single one ofthem every week.
And so he explained exactly whatyou were talking about.
I don't know if he used thequestions the way you did.
I'm like, dude, that just soundsawesome.
I mean, that just, it reminds meof what Jack Welch used to do at
GE with the span of control andjust basically one person should
(07:11):
really only interact with alimited number of people.
Like you can, you can talk to alot of other folks, but
managing, it should be morelimited than that.
But I, I like that model and Ilike those questions a lot.
Do you, do you, with yourcustomers, do you see them
asking, like, how do we knowwe've reached?
Proficiency.
(07:33):
Well, the
Amy Leschke-Kahle (07:33):
beautiful thing about, yeah, the beautiful
thing about technology is we canactually measure it and we can
see that.
So we ask, for example, in ourworld at ADP and with our
clients, every week we ask, eachof us answer a question that
said, did your team leaderconnect with you about your
priorities this week?
William Tincup (07:49):
So we know.
Oh, that's awesome.
It's probably terrifying toimplement for a company that's
never done that.
I could see where people wouldbe like, Oh no, that's, that's
horrible.
But once it's done and it'sritualized, then I think people
get addicted to it.
It's like, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (08:09):
And it's actually, yeah.
And it's not terrifying though,William, because the question
feels so innocuous.
It's like, yes or no.
It's a yes or no question.
It's like, oh, yes or no.
Like, did they pay attention toyou or not?
Yes or no.
Yeah.
But it gives us this data point.
To be able to connect some dotsat a person level from a
researching perspective, wedon't like share all the data
(08:30):
with everybody, but from aresearch perspective, applied
research perspective, we canconnect a couple pieces of data
like how engaged is that person?
How often did their team leaderconnect with them?
What did their priorities looklike?
Did they like working on theirpriorities that week or did they
not like working on theirpriorities this week?
So we can collect this data in afive minute process.
(08:53):
And it's amazing.
William Tincup (08:54):
Is that linked either now or in the future to
promotions and comp andsuccession planning and things
like
Amy Leschke-Kahle (09:00):
that?
I would not link those twothings together.
Okay.
Okay.
William Tincup (09:06):
Why I went down that road is bad managers.
And that's the only reason I goteither my mind went over into
that little dark corner.
It was like, okay, what do we dowith bad leaders?
We got the data now.
And we even might even seesomeone that's, you know, doing
a great job communicating andthen their, their subordinate
(09:27):
doing a fantastic job.
It's like, okay, we, we canconnect these dots.
That's that's how I got therewas bad managers.
So that, that's why, that's theonly reason I brought it up.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (09:38):
Yeah.
And I think it's, it's, it'sanother probably topic for a
podcast about poor performers.
What exactly is a poorperformer?
How do we know?
And the thing that we typically,as practitioners and talent
practitioners, don't do a greatjob at delving into is why.
Right.
Like, why does this person get a2 on their, uh, performance,
(10:00):
however you, we can, we'vetalked about this before, but
why do they get a 2 on theirperformance rating?
And we'll just keep it reallygeneric.
Why?
Is it because perhaps they havesomething going on outside of
work?
Is it perhaps they've got badchemistry with the boss?
I mean, my God, we're humans,right?
Sometimes things we don't gelvery well, and you've got a
really good, very competent, um,well intended person.
(10:24):
Employee, but they're in asituation and work where there's
some, uh, friction, I'm going tocall it friction with someone
maybe on their team or theirteam leader, and we're not
giving them the opportunity todo their best work.
So I think that's why I get alittle like a squeamy when you
talk about that.
I think we.
Make some assumptions around whythings happen, and we don't
(10:45):
really know, and we don't getcurious enough to go dig in and
find out what's reallyhappening.
William Tincup (10:50):
So what's beyond, if the goal is every
leader proficient, and here'show we can get there, and we
have the data to support thosethings.
What's, do you have a, do youhave another level past
proficient?
Extraordinary.
Okay, so we go from proficientto
Amy Leschke-Kahl (11:07):
extraordinary.
Absolutely, and the way thathappens, again, is, I'm just
going to say kind of affinity,natural affinity, I don't know
what else to call it, and youknow those people, I mean, maybe
you're one of them, I am not, bythe way, I am not that person
who has a natural affinity forleading others, it's just not in
me, it's not something that I'vebeen doing, like, I've been
(11:30):
spending most of my career inthe world of leader development,
and interestingly, I'm not superpassionate about being a leader
myself, I'm really interestedabout what does great leader and
extraordinary leader y stufflook like and how do we help
people get there and what I havelearned is that not everybody's
going to get there.
So from a practitionerperspective, one thing I always
(11:52):
guide folks that I work with tothink about is be really smart
and almost like surgical aboutwhere you invest and who you
invest in because you could overinvest in Amy then My, you know,
to try to get me to be anextraordinary leader, but you're
never gonna get payback on thatbecause it's just not who I am.
(12:13):
I am a incredibly proficientleader.
Right, right, right.
We can, it's okay to stop there,like the expectation, right,
right.
That every leader in ourorganization is gonna be
extraordinary or that every.
Um, you know, bank teller isgoing to be extraordinary, or
every podcast host is going tobe extraordinary.
(12:34):
That is completely unrealistic,and we don't all need to be
extraordinary.
That's, that, that's the thing.
When we are extraordinary inour, in those places where we do
have, um, emotional affinity,where we do get really excited
about, over invest in thatplace.
It doesn't mean we don't doother things proficiently, but
(12:55):
helping people steer.
Towards those places that weget, like you can tell, I'm
getting super excited about thetopic.
It's like, we need to be smarterat investing and I don't mean
just money, I mean time andeffort and emotional energy to
help people have extraordinaryand give extraordinary
contribution to theorganizations that they work
(13:16):
for.
William Tincup (13:17):
So I've struggled with this for years in
terms of putting all A playerson a team.
So, A, again, a proficient andmaybe even an extraordinary
leader, and everyone on the teamis a high performer.
It's a talent.
I'm not sure that works.
And I mean, you're, you're aleader in this field, so you
(13:37):
should probably have a more, abetter response to that.
But I've always struggled with,and I say always, over the last
20 years, I've struggled withthis.
It's like, you need to be andsee players on the team.
They don't, you don't, you don'tneed to have all A.
In fact, from a sportsperspective, there's not a lot
(13:59):
of sports teams where all the,all of the team were all, you
know, A talent.
You have to have, it actuallyworked because you didn't have
everyone as a talent.
Like in basketball, there's onlyone basketball, you know, like
everyone's, everyone's got arole.
Uh, not everyone, not everyonehas to be Michael Jordan.
So first of all, tear thatapart.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (14:20):
I don't mind.
Um, I'm going to tear that apart
William Tincup (14:25):
as you
Amy Leschke-Kahle (14:26):
should.
Why do we not have the approachthat all of our teams should be
full of A players?
And to your point, what you justsaid.
The thing that I would tearapart about that is that, let's
just say, um, I'm not abasketball person, so I may get
these words wrong, but let's sayyou've got five people on the
court, that person who's thestar in making all the baskets
(14:47):
and the three pointers and allthose kind of things, that's
great.
They're a highly visible Aplayer, but that person who's
supporting them and ensuringthat they get the ball to be
able to score that, they are a,a, a player in a supporting
role.
In what they do.
So I think the expectation andeven the labeling of we have A
(15:10):
players and B players or you mayeven think about the nine box,
right?
It's like some of those peoplethat are sitting in the middle.
I don't think so.
I mean, yeah, you're going tohave them for different reasons.
But we ought to have anexpectation.
And I think a lot oforganizations actually have
this.
They just don't want to talkabout it in this way because we
don't think about humanperformance as, um, we think
(15:32):
about variation and sometimesvariation is not necessarily in
the contribution we make, butvariation is in the, you have a
skill and a talent and astrengths and, and I have a
different one than you do.
Why, why would we haveorganizations, and I think a lot
of organizations actually havethis, where everybody is up in
that top right hand
William Tincup (15:51):
corner?
I can, I can see that now.
I can, I can see the, the waythat you've reframed it.
We don't need everybody toshoot.
We need them to be good,extraordinary, uh, or proficient
at what they're, at what theydo.
So that, that, that actuallytracks for me.
That makes sense.
(16:11):
Two, two questions.
Traits of the, of extraordinaryleaders.
What have you seen?
Is there anything in the datathat you can look at it and say,
okay, these gals and these guys,they have this, or these, these
five things or whatever it is,is there anything in the data
that says, you know, from thedifference between proficient
(16:33):
and extraordinary is these
Amy Leschke-Kahle (16:35):
things?
It's actually exactly theopposite.
There is no commonality.
The most extraordinary leadersfind their own unique
extraordinary leader modelapproach, and they do that.
Trying to force fit yourselfinto someone else's imaginary
model makes us Not betterleaders.
(16:56):
It makes us more frustrated andprobably not as good of leaders
as we could be.
William Tincup (17:01):
Well, it also could show up as false
positives.
So they, they, they scored wellon this.
So anyway, if we think thatthat's the thing that makes it
an extraordinary leader, uh,that we could spend time, money
and energy and all that otherstuff, trying to make them an
extraordinary leader, andthey're, they're never going to
get there.
And then that creates, likewe're talking about from the
(17:23):
org's perspective, but itcreates.
A whole lot of frustration forthe, for the, for the, for the,
for the leader itself, becausethey, they can't, they, for
whatever reason, they can't ordon't want to reach that level
or that place.
And that can create a whole kindof watershed of problems with
(17:43):
morale and retention and allkinds
Amy Leschke-Kahle (17:45):
of stuff.
It's incredibly limiting toopportunity in the organization,
letting people show up as theirown unique best self, not their
own unique best self, like.
You know, in their entire life,but their own unique best work
self, but helping people tofigure out what that looks like
and how to bring that to thetable and whether this is true,
(18:06):
whether they're a people leaderor not, is, is freeing not only
for the organization, but forthe employees.
Again, think about what, whatthe unique differentiator of, of
every organization is in today'sworld.
It's used to be technology, notquite as much anymore.
It's still somewhatdifferentiating.
It used to be processoptimization, not anymore.
(18:27):
It's the people who are doingthe thing, whatever that is.
That's right.
And we're
William Tincup (18:32):
all unique.
Which it should have alwaysbeen.
But we'll side quest side issuefor a later paired point.
But you're right.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (18:39):
It's the people.
And we're all different andunique.
And if we can help thatuniqueness, that unique, um,
Super secret sauce, I don'tknow, whatever it is.
We all know what that is,whatever you want to call it.
We just need to, if we can pullon that a little bit more and
let that open up and be presenta little bit more in a
(19:00):
reasonable way for leaders,especially people leaders,
that's a game changer.
It's free.
William Tincup (19:07):
You and I grew up with the phrase, uh, cream
rises to the top.
Is it applicable to proficientleadership or extraordinary
leadership?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (19:20):
Um, gosh, is it, I, yes, in a way that,
again, if organizations createenough space for people to be
able to show up and figure outwhat that is for themselves and
not force fit people into asingle model, so yes, but the
(19:43):
cream looks different everysingle time.
William Tincup (19:46):
Right.
Right.
And for every organization andfor every leader, et cetera.
So I was going to ask you, and Istill should ask you about, uh,
assessments for proficiency.
Is there a way to assess whetheror not someone has the capacity
to be proficient?
Boy, you know what?
Amy Leschke-Kahle (20:06):
I don't know.
That's a good question.
You know what, William?
Damn you.
Sorry about that.
I don't know, and I don't knowthat I want to know.
Like, I'm not sure that that'seven a thing that I'm Um, kind
of interested in, there arethings that we can do to help
employees make better decisionsabout whether a people
(20:27):
leadership role is the rightrole for them, but having an
assessment to answer that forus, and particularly relying on
that assessment exclusively.
I don't think is the rightdirection to go.
I mean, there's probablyassessments out there and
they're great and they're fineand they're, they're maybe,
maybe are a helpful component ofa larger question.
(20:49):
Giving people exposure to whatis it, what is it like to be a
people leader if you haven'tbeen a people leader?
We don't know, right?
We say, oh, we've, we've overglamorized this thing of leading
people and it's really hard andit's really draining a lot of
the time, especially when youwere talking about large spans
(21:10):
or especially if you're new andin certain circumstances and
high pressure work environments,like healthcare, for an example,
we, we, if you've not done thatwork before and all of a sudden
you step into that role and itis Um, that kind of an
environment, and you haven't hadmuch support.
(21:31):
Wow.
No, no wonder people fail inthat role.
And so again, I think it kind ofcomes to investment.
Like we don't always invest inthe right places in the right
way at the right time.
William Tincup (21:42):
Jobs might walks off stage.
Amy, thank you again and thankyou for doing part one, but also
thank you for doing part two ofthis.
I think it's a.
I mean, again, we probably do apart three, four, five, and six
and may write a book about it,but thank you so much for coming
on the show today and helpingus, uh, understand great
leadership.
Amy Leschke-Kahle (22:02):
It's always such a pleasure to speak with
you, William.
Thanks so much for having me.
Absolutely.
William Tincup (22:06):
And thanks for the audience for listening until
next time.
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