September 8, 2025 • 30 mins
Let's be honest...the leadership playbook that worked five years ago is failing spectacularly right now. The world has fundamentally changed, and clinging to the old "hero leader" approach isn't just outdated, it's actively damaging your team. This week, we're ditching the pressure to have all the answers and exploring why getting curious beats being right.
From why self-aware leaders crush those who think they're perfect, to choosing confidence over certainty. We explore why thinking in loops beats linear planning, tackle the self-preservation trap making leaders hoard information, and bust the myth that good leaders always know what to do.
What you'll learn:
• The one question that separates great leaders from terrible ones: "What's more important - being right or solving this?"
• How to use the 70/20/10 planning model when your boss still wants that impossible five-year plan
• Why "seeker" leaders outperform "teller" leaders every time (and how to make the switch)
• The health monitor trick that spots team problems before they explode
• How to set up working agreements that stop you becoming the office firefighter
Our BIZ hosts are Lisa Lie - a former Head of People & Culture and Organisational Coach - and Mamamia’s Em Vernem.
Learna is Lisa’s microlearning app for practical people skills at work. Expert-led lessons to build confidence, solve challenges, and work smarter - in under 7 minutes. Get it on Apple or Google Play.
Sign up to the BIZ newsletter here
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
- Dom Price's FREE Team Playbook
- Learna: 'Make Better Work Happen'
- Learna: 'Tell Stories That Stick'
- Pre-Mortem Exercise
- Health Monitor Exercise
- Andrea Clarke: 'Why Your Skills Have an Expiry Date (And What to Do About It)'
- Loom - Video Messaging Tool
THE END BITS
Support independent women's media.
Got a work life dilemma? Send us all the questions you definitely can't ask your boss for our Biz Inbox episodes - send us a voice note or email us at podcast@mamamia.com.au. You can remain anon!
GUEST: Dom Price
SENIOR PRODUCER: Sophie Campbell
AUDIO PRODUCER: Leah Porges
Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to a Mom and mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hello, and welcome to biz your work life Sorted. I'm
in Burnham and today we're talking about how to be
the leader you always wanted. So, whether you're managing a
team or just trying to show up as the leader
you wish you had, there's this pressure to always be right,
to have all the answers. But our guest today, Dom Price,
flipped that thinking for me when he said that leaders
(00:35):
need to understand their team, not seek to be right.
So today we are ditching the hero complex and talking
about why getting curious might be more important than getting
it right over to you.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Lise thanks him. So today we're joined by Don Price.
Dom spent years helping teams and leaders figure out how
to work better, and he does it with a no
beer style that I love. What I like about Dom.
There's a couple of things to like about Dom, but
what I do like about Dom the most is that
he is not going to give you a list of
best practices. He's actually here to help you figure out
(01:08):
what makes you brilliant, where you trip yourself up, and
how to lead without trying to be the hero all
the time. So whether you're leading a team right now,
or you're just trying to show up as the leader
you wish you had. Dom's got a way of making
you think differently, and I know you'll leave this conversation
with ideas you can put into action straight away. Thanks
so much for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Don mate, looking forward to this. It's going to be fun.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
I was talking to you about this before the recording
and I said, I'm looking forward to the tables turning
the last time we sat down. Yes, you were interviewing me.
Now I'm not interviewing you today, but I have a
few questions.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
You can hit me with them.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
The other reason I'm looking forward to this conversation is
the one piece of advice you gave me. Do you
remember this?
Speaker 3 (01:45):
A few?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I know? Make it stop. Sorry. The one piece of information,
the one I remembered was don't sit on the fence
because you get splinters in your bottmber that yeah, yeah,
so you're not going to sit on the fence today.
I there's no splinters.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
People think not fancitting has been highly opinionated, and it's
that's not true. Highly opinionated can result organ rejection, and
you don't want either of those, right and I never
want to antagonize one with provocation for the sake of it,
and nor do I want to be so mediocre that
everyone just degrees. It's like, what's that nice tension between
what's the action I can take or where can I explore?
Where can I try and where do I find the
(02:21):
unknowns to be a better leader? And that's uncomfortable but fun.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah. So, speaking of being a better leader, you've said
before that leaders need to know their superpowers and their kryptonite.
When you think about that, what does it come to with,
you know, self awareness? Like why does that matter? What
does it look like in action?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
So there's a couple of layers to this. One is
I think the opposite of knowing your superpower and cryptonite
is almost accepting that you're stagnant. The environment that you're
in is static, and if you just continue to do
the same things, you'll be fine. Right, there's this concept
of like business as usual, if I just operate, I'll
be fine. I know there's a lot of leaders I
work with where there was a time when that was true.
The world had a slow rate of change and if
(02:58):
you just did the thing on repeat, you got rewarded
and recognized.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
For oh the good old days, but old days right.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
And I don't believe that's true now. So with leads,
I'm working with them like, how do you find the
thing you're really good at? Own it. I'm not saying
everyone needs to be an extra, you know, jump on
stage and beat your chest, but you need to own
the thing that is your superpower that you're good at,
adds value and do a little bit more of it,
and then find your cryptonite, the thing that is your weakness,
that's your struggle point, and just negate it. It's never
(03:24):
going to be a superpower. I'm over that whole chatter
like make your weaknesses your strength. Bes right, I'm not
going to sign up for any of that Tony Robbins crap.
But I'm like, I'm like, you need to know the
thing that you struggle at so it doesn't become the
crutch that slows you down, that the anchor that stops you.
And then the exercise that I like to do with
people is if that's your superpower and kryptonite today, what
does that look like in ninety days? What does that
(03:44):
look like in one hundred and eighty days? Because the
world around you is moving so how are you moving
at a pace to match that change, Because if you're not,
you're the anchor slowing everything down.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Why do you think that is now more than ever.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
We've managed to go five minutes for that me say AI,
But the world of technology change in AI is going
to fundamentally alter how all of us work. It's altering
business models, it's altering how companies operate, operate rhythms. It's
changing the workforce, reorganizing how teams are Strutgedes' changing everything.
So you're like, Okay, if you're static, you've probably not
got a huge amount of time left, right, You've got
(04:16):
to adapt. And I know you've had the likes of
Andrea on like the power of of adapting it's going
to be a super powerful people like, how do you
do that? Evolution? But how do you do that to
understand an environment where you can thrive? I think there's
been probably a period of time when we've accepted survival
pandemic was about survival, that weren't about thriving. Before that,
economic uncertainty, politics has been times where you're like, okay,
(04:39):
just get through it. We can't do that in the
long run, we can't wake up every morning with buoyancy
and shoulders up going, Yeah, I'm really excited to just
get by. So if we're not going to get by
and we want something better, believe we have agency to
create that. But that is an agency to go. I'm
going to explore an experiment with how I lead, which
is quite different to what I've seen in the recent past,
(05:01):
which is I'm fine, I'm going to get others to change. Yes,
And that's a bing point I think happened already. Not
everyone's accepted it. I think it's happened. So it's like, cool,
if that changes are coming, how do I equip myself
to survive and thrive in this new world rather than
how do I polish what existed in the previous world.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah, because I guess if you aren't aware of your cryptonite,
then you're just going to keep bumping into it every
single day.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Well even worse, you over time put blinkers up so
you ignore it. So it's knowing your kryptonite isn't about
punishing yourself. It's about going that's something I'm not great at,
and I need that to not kill my career.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
I see this a lot at the moment in terms
of people are either in this stage of complete ignorance
of I don't want to talk about it, or they're like, Okay,
I know this is happening, and just sitting in this
mode of I think I'm fucked or I don't really
know what to do.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
The flamingo I'm going to stem ahead of the sand
in the.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Air and hope for the mist Yeah, yeah, someone else
will sort it out.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Right, We'll all be okay, It will will be okay,
and hope last just for a while, right, I'll buy
you a bit of time. But hope is an agency.
Hope is an externality of something in the environment will
change and I'll be okay. Versus that all the leaders
I'm working with right now have way more agency than
they ever give themselves credit for. And when they tap
into that, they're like, oh, hang on, so there's things
(06:13):
I can do. You're like, yeah, there's way more within
your influence and control than you're giving yourself credit for.
Take action there and see what happens around you. You're
leading the change rather than let it happen to you.
And I think in the modern era, that's an active choice.
Do you want this to happen to you because it will, yes,
Or are you going to take more of a proactive
approach and lead through it. Yes.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
I think that tipping point though, is the awareness into action.
Have you seen people navigate that well or does it
require a lot of coaching and a lot of working
it through to find that one thing they need to change.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
I've come to a belief that there's some level of
life experience, and I don't know if it's a work experience,
a life experience something in a lot of the leaders
that I'm working with, they just seem to naturally be
equipped with that. And it's not a thing they've read
in a book that a podcast is listened to. Is
not an inspirational speaker where they've gone wow, apparently on
stage and something that change was happening. Like if not
(07:03):
that it's innate within them, that this belief that they
can evolve, they can adapt, they can change. They have
that agency. So therefore the only thing they need is
the blinkers out Yeah, the awareness to go, what are
the insights where data points here? Matter? Noisy out there?
What's noise? What's signal? Get the signal? Make the change iterate?
They reviewed, did this work? Didn't it If it did,
(07:25):
I'm going to do more of it. If it didn't,
don't do it again. But I'll tell the story. And
they have this this loop, right, and that loop gets
tighter and higher fidelity and better. And when I see
them do it, it looks natural. When I see leader
struggling with it, they actually see it as linear start,
middle end.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Okay, that's really interesting.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
And I don't know when I realized this is probably
in the last few months, but there's feelings I'm working
with the like when will this be solved?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Who's coming to save me?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
What's the answer? It happened with work from home? Is
it four days or is it three? Should I work
from home to I'm like, this desire for a singular
answer is the problem. It's the ones that are like, okay,
so there isn't an answer. Here's the data points, and
here's how I'm going to manage it. And the thing
I'm actually going after is flexibility. And you're like, oh,
you're fine, Yeah, if you're don't have to flexibility, it
might be worked from office, pretty flexible on ours or
(08:11):
something else. Right, Flexibility is the goal? Yes, right? Where
others are? I need a policy and a structure that
says how many days while I work from home? You're like,
that will never be the answer, because the answer will
not work for anyone, let alone everyone.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm thinking back to a time,
like around that time when I was running a flexibility experiment,
and I'm like, it's flexibility experiment, here's what our goal is,
et cetera. And then everyone was coming at me as
a leader, going so if I've got a doctor's appointment
and if this, and I'm like, I can't solve every
scenario here. The word is flexibility. I need you to
(08:45):
lean into this as much as I'm delivering some of
it as well.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Again, if you think, like two ways of solving the problem,
one is a loop, I will never solve it, but
I'll get one degree better, Okay. The other one is
there's a problem, I identify it, I solve it, it's
gone away. It's linear. Yeah, I just don't think the
linear one works anymore. It's the way a lot of
people have been trained. When will there probably be solved? Lisa?
And you're like yeah, never. Yes, Like, if you're about
(09:10):
in a relationship, like when will my relationship be perfect? Never?
You work on it forever, right, And there's eighes, and
there's loads and up to that. And you're like, yeah,
so there's other facets in life where we get this
and then we come to work and for some reason
think it's a uniform and solvable and controllable like a
science experiment. You're like, no, it's not malleable and weird.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Actual it's even worse because of the people, all the
different people problems involved in part of that. That's really interesting.
I think that loop versus the linear, because I think
the linear feeds into this like old school hero complex
that a lot of leaders have had. We've talked about
this before and how it like lingers in a lot
of workplaces. Why do you think it's so persistent like
the hero model? And especially if we were talking before this,
you're saying it's a bit prevalent now one of the
(09:48):
mindset shifts that people need to make around it.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
I mean, you talked about self awareness before. I think
as much as I see a desire for more self awareness,
the reality I see a lot right now in market
is self preservation. Right. There's there's a lot of leaders
at various levels, right, I just feeling more threatened they're
in the compression chamber. They've got young kids and a family,
they've got elderly parents, they've got a lifestyle, they've signed
(10:13):
up for job uncertainty, political pressures, like, they're feeling everything
from all angles and they're in this compression chamber. And
I think we've just taken a lot of certainty away
from them, and their reaction to that is panic self preservation.
One of the weird habits that I see with someone
who's experiencing self preservation. Two that come to mind. One
is information hoarding, So they go into the mindset of
(10:33):
knowledge is power. I'm going to hoard knowledge. Good luck
with that in twenty twenty five. Right, it's ubiquitous and
it's out there. The second one, which I think sort
of taped more into this heroship, is this weird desire
to be right. I said to a leader the other week,
we're going through this problem that we're trying to solve,
people based problem, and I said, what's more important for
you to be right or to resolve the problem.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Oh, that's a great question.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
And it was met with a lot of silence. Yeah,
they swore a lot, and they were like, Okay, everything,
I'm doing is about being right.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
And I was like, okay, wow, what a realization.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
I'm like, do you win? Honestly, deep down, if you're right,
do you win? The ego get some massage, but do
you win?
Speaker 1 (11:15):
You see where it comes from, right, the self protection.
I'll be the hero, and then if I'm the hero,
I have to be right.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
I can then tell everyone I was right.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, yeah, and then they need me.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah. So you think you're creating a loop, but actually
you're extracting yourself from the loop. You're no longer in
the loop, you're not required anymore. So it's a cheesy
thing to say, but we've spoken about this before, the
idea of like here's what I know, here's what I believe,
and here's what I don't know. The hero won't tell
you what they don't know. They'll fill in that gap
with pretend knowledge. So I like to think about the
(11:45):
world in terms of currency, right, So weird models one
gave me years ago. Every business has a currency, every
leader has a currency. And I think we've got a
choice of two currencies in the world right now, certainty
or confidence. Right, hero leaders play with certainty. I'm certain
what the future is going to look like I'm certain
that and that they sound so believable because they've got
this city. They gift you a cloak of certainty. You
(12:07):
wear it and you're like, we have a plan, and
if you just delve on this plan, we've got the
app there you go. Yeah, we all we need to
do now is deliver. Oh, thank God for your wisdom
and your you're excellence. Right, they don't know, they don't know,
they're pretending, right, So certainty in modern business is really dangerous.
The alternative, which is confidence, is what do we know now?
What do we believe and what don't we know? And
(12:29):
the things that we don't know? How can we build
some assumptions and go and validate them quickly so we
get more nons right, We move beliefs into nones right,
and they don't know who beliefs. We keep on edging
everything to the left, and the world carries on changing,
so you never solve it again. You're in the loop,
same same mode in the loop. Yeah, right, but you
get more confident, so you try something. You go from
not to twenty percent. I was bullying a new plan
(12:50):
for a new strategy for my team the other week,
so I was like Okay, I'm going to get it
from nott to twenty. We're with my direct teammates, right,
three really close teammates. You're going to help me get
it from twenty to forty percent.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Right. We're going to share it with a few of
our stakeholders, right, they're going to give some brutal feedback,
some positives, some negative that will get it from forty
to sixty brilliant. We're going to share it externally with
a few of our bigger stakeholders. That gets it from
sixty to eighty. Yeah, and we never get to one hundred.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
No, because you're constantly iterating yeah, yes, yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
The average leader, like you think enterprise leader, you know,
ten're in role. When you say to them you'll never
get to one hundred, they like, get it to one
hundred because they want to hold your account. Get the
plan finalized.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
There's so moments in time, right, get the.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Plan finalized, share it, deliver right, and the finger come
out right. The hero's point, you will do it. If
you just go and do that will be fine. So
they're tellers, right, So that they're tellers, they're not seekers. Okay,
they know, but the leadership style I love spending time
with is the seeker, the one who's curious what might
be or maybe we could try this, or I tried
(13:52):
this before in this work, but we might need to
tweak it. They're open, right, The leader says, I've done
this before. Here's the answer. I'm a Noah.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Is the secret of someone who's more comfortable with the
age of the same plan.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Way more comfortable.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, okay, and then we'll just keep iterating. I don't
understand the h five year plan, like no one knows.
How can you remember?
Speaker 3 (14:10):
The currency of certainty is alive and well in many businesses.
Instead of fighting it, I've had to learn to accept it.
Not my preferred way, but I can't fight that it exists.
That would be me not understanding the true breadth of
the world. Right, So like I have to like whether
I like it or not separate, I have to accept
that that's the currency of some businesses, and if they've
(14:30):
built a five year plan, I have to accept that
and then go, Okay, how can I gently help you
realize that this might not be the case, because if
I can't, I can't help you.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
So, if I'm a leader in a business that's trading
on certainty, and I don't really agree with that certainty
five year plan. What can I do to like gently
nudge them into yeah, another space.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
There's a good game I've been playing with leaders, so
that let's talk about the mistake first. Yeah, okay, the
mistake is the.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Violence wing, right, you've done this before.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Yeah, So you throw your toys in the air, you
bang the table, and you're like, oh, you're all stupid.
You can't build a plan, right, and you have your
little tantrum and everyone's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah right,
and you're like, oh my god. So so you valently
swing and all everyone tells you is you're the maverick.
You don't like planning, you're structured. You would so you've
you've not spoken their language, you've not met them part way, right,
(15:29):
you want to build one hundred percent plan? Yes, if
you were to flip that, what's the lowest percentage you
could build and still get survived? Still survive? Right? So
I did this with an insurance company recently, very risk averse,
very structured, and we're like, okay, eighty percent.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
I'm like, brill it sounds pretty good.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Build the plan to one hundred pcent. I'm going to
let you do that, bring it down to eighty and
then let's save twenty percent for volatility. Right, So it's
not that we don't have a plan. We do, but
we're keeping our eyes and ears open to what's happening
around us. And if we get those insights, we're saving
twenty percent of our capacity, of our portfolio, of our time,
our mental common to load, to adapt and course correct
(16:07):
on purpose. Yes, right on put And they're like, so
they're a bit uncomfortable. They okay, but that's okay because
eight percent of the things are known.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
That is the key, I think. And what you said
is like, pivot on purpose, on purpose, because I think
with time.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Yeah, if you pivot on knowledge but you have no capacity,
then you're stupid.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Yes. The adverse to that is the certainty. People would
see the seekers and be like, you're just changing the
rules all the time.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
You're moving the goal post.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, the gold post all the time. Yeah. Can we
just stick with something, Just pick a plan we want
to come like somewhere in between the onred percent.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
The best answer I've seen so far is seventy twenty ten,
seventy percent kind of knowns here's the plan we think
this is kind of logical. We've done some research. Twenty
percent it's options, right, we think it's going to be
a B or C. We don't know today if it's
a B or C. But here's how we will know,
and we'll pick a B or C. Ten percent We
have no idea, right. The funny thing is people treat
the A, B or C is we must know that now.
(16:59):
Why why make a decision now that you don't have to.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
I think sometimes it can feel like leadership is really heavy.
I honestly feel like it can be a privilege at
times like it's a heavy privilege. It's a heavy privilege.
I loved leading teams and helping people grow and all
of those things. A lot of people, I think, feel
like it's punishment. Right now.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
It's hard. It's harder than it's been before.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, yeah, why is it so hard?
Speaker 3 (17:22):
And we need to be honest about why it's hard.
We didn't train leaders to be leaders. Yes, we weren't
fair on the expectation. I think a lot of them
got missold a promise we've shared before. You know, you
graduate university, you work for forty five years, and then
you retire, and nowhere in those forty five years, did
we talk about reskilling, micro credentials, relearning all the things
that are now apparantly true. Yes, So there's a whole
cohor of essentially middle aged people are like, I thought
(17:45):
I was doing this for life, and now you you
told me a lie, I'm not doing this for life.
And this thing called leadership that you've not trained me
on is really complex and hard. Most businesses is we
promote strong individual contributors with craft skills into leadership and
just assume they'll make the leap. And it's not fair,
like people's skills are their own beast. Probably number one
bane in my life and my career has been the phrase,
(18:05):
so skills and like, they're not soft, they're really hard.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Exactly approaching to the converted here.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Yeah, So I think that that's one aspect. The other
one is we're going through what feels like epic change
re or this desire for productivity, more efficiency. The economy
is tie short term thinking massive change to fundamentally static
business model. So all markets are changing and that's just
putting this pressure on leaders to I think long term
acting the short term. Yeah, okay, be a custodian of
(18:29):
change and change themselves into by others with change a
handle inherent certain and ambiguity and have answers but not
know the answer and they're like, sorry, what today.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
It looks like.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Whils getting married, having children later in life? Right, financial
crises or like cost of living crises, And they're like, god,
I don't know if I signed up for this, Like
what what is this thing? Yes?
Speaker 1 (18:51):
And if you've come from an individual contributor piece and
you're starting to learn around how to manish people in
the mix of that because it is a real craft.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Here's the uncomfortable truth that I don't think is discussed
a lot is most performance management systems reward outputs, and
they don't reward the value you bring when you inspire
and bring together a group of people. They don't actually
reward or recognized leadership. They reward and recognized outputs.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And doing Yeah, did you do the projects?
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (19:18):
That don't really measure retention to people want to work
with you, do they do their best work because they work.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
With you, so the best and it's raretly. The best
performance management systems I've seen, which again are another currency
of business, are the ones that look at what you
achieved and how you achieved it. A lot will go, well,
we can ignore the house you got there.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Oh no, don't pop. When I talk about this all
the time, people get so stuck. I actually call it
visible work and invisible work. People get so stuck on
the what they're doing, the visible work, they forget the how,
the invisible work and all the things that make that
other work so good because of it.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
That is now amplified in a world of data and measurements.
So we're going to metric everything, right, We're going to
put so many numbers in place. We know exactly everything
that's happening. You're like, well, you don't. You can only
measure right and then the things that you can see,
but you can't do it for the unscene. So we're
a senior leader recently slightly controversial. But I said to him,
it's like, do you love your wife? And he's like sorry,
(20:14):
I was like, do you love your life?
Speaker 1 (20:15):
And he's like yeah, I want to know the context
of how this came out.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Yeah, It's like how many times do you tell her?
Do you measure that? And he's like no, but she knows.
He's like, yeah, well how does she know? I've got
a KPI this week, I need to tell you I
love you five times a day every day. I love
you like that.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
That means nothing. You're just telling me because you're kPr
on it.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
So we all have that moment in life where we
asked some one to do something and they did it,
and you're like, I don't feel any better because it's
not that you did the thing is that I wanted
you to do it without me asking.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
It's like when you have to tell your children to
say sorry and they're like, yeah, sorry, Like that wasn't
you just made it? You made it.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
So it's the same in measurements in business. We've got
so busy instrumenting everything and going here's our pipeline, here's
the potential of people that clicked, and you're like, okay, pause,
did anyone like it? Did they feel better? We can't
measure feels.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
So so just take it off the table altogether.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
So if you think about it right now, out like
some of the most important measures. I would love to
find a way of considering a business of feels, sentiment, loyalty, mood, hope.
We can't. So we measured things that we can see,
which I think are often very misleading.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
What could I do if I was a leader and
a team like, I fully buy into this. I buy
into the eighty percent plan. I want to show my
team love. I want to measure these things. I want
to measure the fields and stuff like, how could I
show up differently?
Speaker 3 (21:35):
The best example I work with a relatively large organization recently.
Their problem was some of their teams were very input focused,
like it must be certainly doing the right things. Others
were very output focused. We shipped something okay, and others
were very outcome focused. We had impact. Well, who's the
best out of those three?
Speaker 1 (21:51):
I personally grab tate towards the impact.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
So the answry is none of them. It's trick because
they were all flawed. So the outcome based team really
struggled because they do a piece of work and they're like,
no idea, if that's it's going to have to wait
three or six months to know if that worked. Yeah,
input based team couldn't start anything.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Why could they?
Speaker 3 (22:08):
They have all the inputs first, So once they did start,
they were super fast. They were amazing, paralyzed from the
get go right. Wow. The output team were very busy.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
But not thinking about the bigger picture.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
They're busy stuff. Yeah, so we're like okay, and so
we're trying to work out which one to oxifies for
when someone was like what about all three? What if
they only exist in concert? So we're like cool. So
with teams, we're like, what input measures? Do you need
to know your setup for success? What's the minimum MVP star,
what's the minimum thing? So you need a shared understanding
of the outcome, and you need to know who you're
(22:40):
working with. Anything else you can work out all the way.
Cour what are the output measures, which are lead indicators
that you did the right thing and you're trending in
the right direction. And then one of the outcome measures
the impact you have and that's externally facing. So the
first two are internal, I'm set up for success. I
delivered something. The third one is external. What impact did
I have on another person? I delivered some kind of
value exchange to them. I need to go and check
(23:02):
with them if they received that value exchange. It's not
if I sent it, it's if they received it. Very
different things, right when they have all three? Yeah, Oh,
gorgeous things.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Happen magic same. I think it's interesting, how like just
a simple phrasing word mindset shift can help with that.
Like if I look at your example and I think
about my own leadership style and I was like, very
much do it. I'm like, this is what we're doing.
We're going to do it. Da da da da. And
then when I started shifting language into this is an experiment,
here's what we're trying to achieve. I don't know how
it's going to go, but you're all in on this, right.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
There's a subtle line yeah after the word experiment that
you may or may not say out loud, but it's there.
So the minute you're doing an experiment, it's because you
don't know. Yeah, And when you say that, the whole
room levels they go, which mean you don't know. You're like, oh,
I don't know, but what i'd like to do is
to work through it with you.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yes, I fully changed my leadership style and I reckon
in the space of like three months from going here's
the project, here's what we're going to deliver, and here's
how we're going to do it. Two, it's an experiment.
We don't know. We don't know if it's going to
work because we are all trying to work on it together.
And here are some stages. We actually used your pre
mortem exercise to work through it and go, Okay, here's
what's going to happen.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
What increases our chance of success? What increases our chance
of failure?
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll link to that in the show
notes out of curiosity because I was just talking about
some mistakes that I've made. What's your biggest leadership mistake
that you've made recently?
Speaker 3 (24:24):
I try and avoid giant ones by doing lots of
small ones. I alternate between wanting to be an individual
contributor and a leader. I keep on finding myself in
leadership positions, not by accident, it's kind of on purpose.
But then I'm like, oh, I really like just getting
on and doing the work. I'm always playing with that
tension with my team. Recently, there's a whole of examples
where I thought I was role modeling stuff to them
and they were just picking it up. And then when
(24:46):
we sort of met in person, we had a chat
as like I was not clear that that was my expectation.
I've made some assumptions. So I think my leadership thing
is I default to thinking that people like to learn
in the style I like to learn. Therefore, my style
of learning is hey, put something out of the universe.
I'll try to pick from A and from being, some
from CEE, and I'll build my own version of it.
(25:06):
And so I put some stuff out there and just
wait for AB and C to happen, and then it doesn't.
And that's because all my team think can learn differently
than me. And that's not a bad thing. I've done
that on.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Purpose, actually a really good thing.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
And so the challenge I have is we work in
a fully distributed team. So my team has spread across
the US, Europe and Australia. We have no times on overlap,
so we have no team meetings. Wow, we haven't had
in the three years we've existed. Wherever you are in
the world, every Monday morning, you record a loom three
high acts from last week. What you did the weekend, family, friends, kids, whatever, Yeah,
and what are the three highlights you're expecting this week?
(25:38):
So we don't have a meeting, and that's good for
the day to day operations. I'd forgotten about the need
of that umbrella, the overarching connection, the purpose. How do
we think about like longer term macro level impact. I
had that for myself and I assumed that I'd shared
that I didn't check if it had been received.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Ah See, there's like the absolute point in that I
didn't check up it's being.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Received, I broadcast I do. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah. Hey. So, for someone managing your team right now,
what's one thing that could walk away from and try
this week that would help them lead more effectively in
the current environment.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
I'm going to give you two very quick ones. If
you're in a firefighting situation, you think something's wrong, but
you don't know what. There's an next size. We've published
this in our team playbook. It's free online. You don't
pay anything called the health monitor. Eight areas of a
healthy team. And so instead of going through actions and
status and boring things, we're going to do with this
health monitor eight areas of a healthy team. Use your
thumbs healthy not so good.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
To him to do this. I heard her talk about
this recently.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Yeah, right, yes, and you do that with the eight
areas that documented, and then cool, let's pick one area
we want to improve on as a team. That's great
if you honestly don't think you know the answer and
you want to bring the team along, right if you
think you know the answer. One of the most common
areas right now that are coming up are social contracts
in the team and across teams. Right. So a lot
of the tax people pay is my team's fine, but
(26:55):
we struggle when we were deping out on other teams
and they're a pain. You're like, you all work in
the same organization. We have an exercise called the working agreement,
which is your social contract for how you're going to work.
The reason I mentioned it is whenever you form a
new team, everyone arrived for the assumptions. I've got my
way of working, you've got yours sits scott heres, and
we just meet. We don't agree them. We just bring
(27:15):
our own ways of working and we create this weird
Frankenstein hybrid. That's crap, right, So, like, instead of that
been that, let's agree with social contracts. How and when
are we going to meet? What do we meet about?
How do we make decisions? How do we escalate? How
do we communicate? What is our rhythm and cadence? And
then let's work on it.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
It's amazing how many people skip best it?
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Can you get busy right? You end up in the
whack a mole. And it's because we reward the firefighter
and the firefighter is also the fire starter. You walk
around your org, there's someone they've got a badge, employee
of the month. We've got a cape in the drawer.
There's normally got a bottleriskip in the drawer as well. Right,
they're like, oh my god, look at fire. They put
the cape on, fly in, put the fire. You're like
Jason every time, just you're so quick with the fire response. Jason,
(27:55):
start the fight, Jyson. Jason needs fires to survive, right,
And the reason we do that is there's immediate recognition
there was a fire. You put it out. Fireproof is
you're like, there's no fire today. How do I reward you?
Maybe there wasn't ever going to be And if I approved,
So the working agreement players going like, let's just get
our social contract of how we're going to work together,
and let's do less thrashing and more prevention.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
I imagine it avoids a lot of the blame game
then too, because.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
No, no brings it to the full. Yeah I'm still blame.
You just do it three months earlier. So we're just
going to have it now and avoid the time wasted. Yes,
you put the argument.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Forward, not even the time way. So let's talk about
the stuff you can't measure.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Frustration, politics, meeting. Do you think I'll have without you
to make you feel bad?
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Like your face like you're doing now kind of frustration.
This has been so good, don I think we could
probably talk for another two hours, but we won't. I
think for a lot of people listening, leadership can feel
like this massive, overwhelming responsibility. And what you've reminded us
is that it's actually about small, intentional choices here along
the way, made over and over the loop that you're
(28:56):
talking about. So if you're leading a team right now,
maybe this week it's about being a bit more curious,
or letting someone else step up, and just noticing your
own kryptonite in action to change everything overnight. What you
want to try this week could be the thing that
they actually remember you for. I think it's also worth
remembering that the leader you always wanted was not perfect.
They just showed up in a way that made you
want to do your best work. And that's what we're
(29:18):
hoping for you. When you listen to this episode.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Just go to buck yourself.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Just go and give a try. Yeah, thank you, Dom,
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
That's tiving me.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
So leadership is just small, intentional choices made over and over.
Start with this one thing this week. Be more curious,
let someone else step up, or notice your own kryptonite
in action. The leader you always wanted wasn't perfect. They
just showed up in the way that made you want
to do your best work. That's something we can all try,
starting right now. If you like this episode, please share
(29:47):
it with someone stepping into a leadership role or struggling
with it right now. You can always follow us on
our socials. We're on Instagram at viz by Mama Mia.
This episode was produced by Sophie Campbell with audio production
by Leah Porges. Back yourself, lead with curiosity, and we
will see you next week.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Bye.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on
You're listening to a Mom and mea podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hello, and welcome to biz your work life Sorted. I'm
in Burnham and today we're talking about how to be
the leader you always wanted. So, whether you're managing a
team or just trying to show up as the leader
you wish you had, there's this pressure to always be right,
to have all the answers. But our guest today, Dom Price,
flipped that thinking for me when he said that leaders
(00:35):
need to understand their team, not seek to be right.
So today we are ditching the hero complex and talking
about why getting curious might be more important than getting
it right over to you.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Lise thanks him. So today we're joined by Don Price.
Dom spent years helping teams and leaders figure out how
to work better, and he does it with a no
beer style that I love. What I like about Dom.
There's a couple of things to like about Dom, but
what I do like about Dom the most is that
he is not going to give you a list of
best practices. He's actually here to help you figure out
(01:08):
what makes you brilliant, where you trip yourself up, and
how to lead without trying to be the hero all
the time. So whether you're leading a team right now,
or you're just trying to show up as the leader
you wish you had. Dom's got a way of making
you think differently, and I know you'll leave this conversation
with ideas you can put into action straight away. Thanks
so much for joining us.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
Don mate, looking forward to this. It's going to be fun.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
I was talking to you about this before the recording
and I said, I'm looking forward to the tables turning
the last time we sat down. Yes, you were interviewing me.
Now I'm not interviewing you today, but I have a
few questions.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
You can hit me with them.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
The other reason I'm looking forward to this conversation is
the one piece of advice you gave me. Do you
remember this?
Speaker 3 (01:45):
A few?
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I know? Make it stop. Sorry. The one piece of information,
the one I remembered was don't sit on the fence
because you get splinters in your bottmber that yeah, yeah,
so you're not going to sit on the fence today.
I there's no splinters.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
People think not fancitting has been highly opinionated, and it's
that's not true. Highly opinionated can result organ rejection, and
you don't want either of those, right and I never
want to antagonize one with provocation for the sake of it,
and nor do I want to be so mediocre that
everyone just degrees. It's like, what's that nice tension between
what's the action I can take or where can I explore?
Where can I try and where do I find the
(02:21):
unknowns to be a better leader? And that's uncomfortable but fun.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Yeah. So, speaking of being a better leader, you've said
before that leaders need to know their superpowers and their kryptonite.
When you think about that, what does it come to with,
you know, self awareness? Like why does that matter? What
does it look like in action?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
So there's a couple of layers to this. One is
I think the opposite of knowing your superpower and cryptonite
is almost accepting that you're stagnant. The environment that you're
in is static, and if you just continue to do
the same things, you'll be fine. Right, there's this concept
of like business as usual, if I just operate, I'll
be fine. I know there's a lot of leaders I
work with where there was a time when that was true.
The world had a slow rate of change and if
(02:58):
you just did the thing on repeat, you got rewarded
and recognized.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
For oh the good old days, but old days right.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
And I don't believe that's true now. So with leads,
I'm working with them like, how do you find the
thing you're really good at? Own it. I'm not saying
everyone needs to be an extra, you know, jump on
stage and beat your chest, but you need to own
the thing that is your superpower that you're good at,
adds value and do a little bit more of it,
and then find your cryptonite, the thing that is your weakness,
that's your struggle point, and just negate it. It's never
(03:24):
going to be a superpower. I'm over that whole chatter
like make your weaknesses your strength. Bes right, I'm not
going to sign up for any of that Tony Robbins crap.
But I'm like, I'm like, you need to know the
thing that you struggle at so it doesn't become the
crutch that slows you down, that the anchor that stops you.
And then the exercise that I like to do with
people is if that's your superpower and kryptonite today, what
does that look like in ninety days? What does that
(03:44):
look like in one hundred and eighty days? Because the
world around you is moving so how are you moving
at a pace to match that change, Because if you're not,
you're the anchor slowing everything down.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Why do you think that is now more than ever.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
We've managed to go five minutes for that me say AI,
But the world of technology change in AI is going
to fundamentally alter how all of us work. It's altering
business models, it's altering how companies operate, operate rhythms. It's
changing the workforce, reorganizing how teams are Strutgedes' changing everything.
So you're like, Okay, if you're static, you've probably not
got a huge amount of time left, right, You've got
(04:16):
to adapt. And I know you've had the likes of
Andrea on like the power of of adapting it's going
to be a super powerful people like, how do you
do that? Evolution? But how do you do that to
understand an environment where you can thrive? I think there's
been probably a period of time when we've accepted survival
pandemic was about survival, that weren't about thriving. Before that,
economic uncertainty, politics has been times where you're like, okay,
(04:39):
just get through it. We can't do that in the
long run, we can't wake up every morning with buoyancy
and shoulders up going, Yeah, I'm really excited to just
get by. So if we're not going to get by
and we want something better, believe we have agency to
create that. But that is an agency to go. I'm
going to explore an experiment with how I lead, which
is quite different to what I've seen in the recent past,
(05:01):
which is I'm fine, I'm going to get others to change. Yes,
And that's a bing point I think happened already. Not
everyone's accepted it. I think it's happened. So it's like, cool,
if that changes are coming, how do I equip myself
to survive and thrive in this new world rather than
how do I polish what existed in the previous world.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah, because I guess if you aren't aware of your cryptonite,
then you're just going to keep bumping into it every
single day.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Well even worse, you over time put blinkers up so
you ignore it. So it's knowing your kryptonite isn't about
punishing yourself. It's about going that's something I'm not great at,
and I need that to not kill my career.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
I see this a lot at the moment in terms
of people are either in this stage of complete ignorance
of I don't want to talk about it, or they're like, Okay,
I know this is happening, and just sitting in this
mode of I think I'm fucked or I don't really
know what to do.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
The flamingo I'm going to stem ahead of the sand
in the.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Air and hope for the mist Yeah, yeah, someone else
will sort it out.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Right, We'll all be okay, It will will be okay,
and hope last just for a while, right, I'll buy
you a bit of time. But hope is an agency.
Hope is an externality of something in the environment will
change and I'll be okay. Versus that all the leaders
I'm working with right now have way more agency than
they ever give themselves credit for. And when they tap
into that, they're like, oh, hang on, so there's things
(06:13):
I can do. You're like, yeah, there's way more within
your influence and control than you're giving yourself credit for.
Take action there and see what happens around you. You're
leading the change rather than let it happen to you.
And I think in the modern era, that's an active choice.
Do you want this to happen to you because it will, yes,
Or are you going to take more of a proactive
approach and lead through it. Yes.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
I think that tipping point though, is the awareness into action.
Have you seen people navigate that well or does it
require a lot of coaching and a lot of working
it through to find that one thing they need to change.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
I've come to a belief that there's some level of
life experience, and I don't know if it's a work experience,
a life experience something in a lot of the leaders
that I'm working with, they just seem to naturally be
equipped with that. And it's not a thing they've read
in a book that a podcast is listened to. Is
not an inspirational speaker where they've gone wow, apparently on
stage and something that change was happening. Like if not
(07:03):
that it's innate within them, that this belief that they
can evolve, they can adapt, they can change. They have
that agency. So therefore the only thing they need is
the blinkers out Yeah, the awareness to go, what are
the insights where data points here? Matter? Noisy out there?
What's noise? What's signal? Get the signal? Make the change iterate?
They reviewed, did this work? Didn't it If it did,
(07:25):
I'm going to do more of it. If it didn't,
don't do it again. But I'll tell the story. And
they have this this loop, right, and that loop gets
tighter and higher fidelity and better. And when I see
them do it, it looks natural. When I see leader
struggling with it, they actually see it as linear start,
middle end.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Okay, that's really interesting.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
And I don't know when I realized this is probably
in the last few months, but there's feelings I'm working
with the like when will this be solved?
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Who's coming to save me?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
What's the answer? It happened with work from home? Is
it four days or is it three? Should I work
from home to I'm like, this desire for a singular
answer is the problem. It's the ones that are like, okay,
so there isn't an answer. Here's the data points, and
here's how I'm going to manage it. And the thing
I'm actually going after is flexibility. And you're like, oh,
you're fine, Yeah, if you're don't have to flexibility, it
might be worked from office, pretty flexible on ours or
(08:11):
something else. Right, Flexibility is the goal? Yes, right? Where
others are? I need a policy and a structure that
says how many days while I work from home? You're like,
that will never be the answer, because the answer will
not work for anyone, let alone everyone.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, it's really interesting. I'm thinking back to a time,
like around that time when I was running a flexibility experiment,
and I'm like, it's flexibility experiment, here's what our goal is,
et cetera. And then everyone was coming at me as
a leader, going so if I've got a doctor's appointment
and if this, and I'm like, I can't solve every
scenario here. The word is flexibility. I need you to
(08:45):
lean into this as much as I'm delivering some of
it as well.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Again, if you think, like two ways of solving the problem,
one is a loop, I will never solve it, but
I'll get one degree better, Okay. The other one is
there's a problem, I identify it, I solve it, it's
gone away. It's linear. Yeah, I just don't think the
linear one works anymore. It's the way a lot of
people have been trained. When will there probably be solved? Lisa?
And you're like yeah, never. Yes, Like, if you're about
(09:10):
in a relationship, like when will my relationship be perfect? Never?
You work on it forever, right, And there's eighes, and
there's loads and up to that. And you're like, yeah,
so there's other facets in life where we get this
and then we come to work and for some reason
think it's a uniform and solvable and controllable like a
science experiment. You're like, no, it's not malleable and weird.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Actual it's even worse because of the people, all the
different people problems involved in part of that. That's really interesting.
I think that loop versus the linear, because I think
the linear feeds into this like old school hero complex
that a lot of leaders have had. We've talked about
this before and how it like lingers in a lot
of workplaces. Why do you think it's so persistent like
the hero model? And especially if we were talking before this,
you're saying it's a bit prevalent now one of the
(09:48):
mindset shifts that people need to make around it.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
I mean, you talked about self awareness before. I think
as much as I see a desire for more self awareness,
the reality I see a lot right now in market
is self preservation. Right. There's there's a lot of leaders
at various levels, right, I just feeling more threatened they're
in the compression chamber. They've got young kids and a family,
they've got elderly parents, they've got a lifestyle, they've signed
(10:13):
up for job uncertainty, political pressures, like, they're feeling everything
from all angles and they're in this compression chamber. And
I think we've just taken a lot of certainty away
from them, and their reaction to that is panic self preservation.
One of the weird habits that I see with someone
who's experiencing self preservation. Two that come to mind. One
is information hoarding, So they go into the mindset of
(10:33):
knowledge is power. I'm going to hoard knowledge. Good luck
with that in twenty twenty five. Right, it's ubiquitous and
it's out there. The second one, which I think sort
of taped more into this heroship, is this weird desire
to be right. I said to a leader the other week,
we're going through this problem that we're trying to solve,
people based problem, and I said, what's more important for
you to be right or to resolve the problem.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Oh, that's a great question.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
And it was met with a lot of silence. Yeah,
they swore a lot, and they were like, Okay, everything,
I'm doing is about being right.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
And I was like, okay, wow, what a realization.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
I'm like, do you win? Honestly, deep down, if you're right,
do you win? The ego get some massage, but do
you win?
Speaker 1 (11:15):
You see where it comes from, right, the self protection.
I'll be the hero, and then if I'm the hero,
I have to be right.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
I can then tell everyone I was right.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, yeah, and then they need me.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah. So you think you're creating a loop, but actually
you're extracting yourself from the loop. You're no longer in
the loop, you're not required anymore. So it's a cheesy
thing to say, but we've spoken about this before, the
idea of like here's what I know, here's what I believe,
and here's what I don't know. The hero won't tell
you what they don't know. They'll fill in that gap
with pretend knowledge. So I like to think about the
(11:45):
world in terms of currency, right, So weird models one
gave me years ago. Every business has a currency, every
leader has a currency. And I think we've got a
choice of two currencies in the world right now, certainty
or confidence. Right, hero leaders play with certainty. I'm certain
what the future is going to look like I'm certain
that and that they sound so believable because they've got
this city. They gift you a cloak of certainty. You
(12:07):
wear it and you're like, we have a plan, and
if you just delve on this plan, we've got the
app there you go. Yeah, we all we need to
do now is deliver. Oh, thank God for your wisdom
and your you're excellence. Right, they don't know, they don't know,
they're pretending, right, So certainty in modern business is really dangerous.
The alternative, which is confidence, is what do we know now?
What do we believe and what don't we know? And
(12:29):
the things that we don't know? How can we build
some assumptions and go and validate them quickly so we
get more nons right, We move beliefs into nones right,
and they don't know who beliefs. We keep on edging
everything to the left, and the world carries on changing,
so you never solve it again. You're in the loop,
same same mode in the loop. Yeah, right, but you
get more confident, so you try something. You go from
not to twenty percent. I was bullying a new plan
(12:50):
for a new strategy for my team the other week,
so I was like Okay, I'm going to get it
from nott to twenty. We're with my direct teammates, right,
three really close teammates. You're going to help me get
it from twenty to forty percent.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Right. We're going to share it with a few of
our stakeholders, right, they're going to give some brutal feedback,
some positives, some negative that will get it from forty
to sixty brilliant. We're going to share it externally with
a few of our bigger stakeholders. That gets it from
sixty to eighty. Yeah, and we never get to one hundred.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
No, because you're constantly iterating yeah, yes, yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
The average leader, like you think enterprise leader, you know,
ten're in role. When you say to them you'll never
get to one hundred, they like, get it to one
hundred because they want to hold your account. Get the
plan finalized.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
There's so moments in time, right, get the.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
Plan finalized, share it, deliver right, and the finger come
out right. The hero's point, you will do it. If
you just go and do that will be fine. So
they're tellers, right, So that they're tellers, they're not seekers. Okay,
they know, but the leadership style I love spending time
with is the seeker, the one who's curious what might
be or maybe we could try this, or I tried
(13:52):
this before in this work, but we might need to
tweak it. They're open, right, The leader says, I've done
this before. Here's the answer. I'm a Noah.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Is the secret of someone who's more comfortable with the
age of the same plan.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Way more comfortable.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Yeah, okay, and then we'll just keep iterating. I don't
understand the h five year plan, like no one knows.
How can you remember?
Speaker 3 (14:10):
The currency of certainty is alive and well in many businesses.
Instead of fighting it, I've had to learn to accept it.
Not my preferred way, but I can't fight that it exists.
That would be me not understanding the true breadth of
the world. Right, So like I have to like whether
I like it or not separate, I have to accept
that that's the currency of some businesses, and if they've
(14:30):
built a five year plan, I have to accept that
and then go, Okay, how can I gently help you
realize that this might not be the case, because if
I can't, I can't help you.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
So, if I'm a leader in a business that's trading
on certainty, and I don't really agree with that certainty
five year plan. What can I do to like gently
nudge them into yeah, another space.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
There's a good game I've been playing with leaders, so
that let's talk about the mistake first. Yeah, okay, the
mistake is the.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Violence wing, right, you've done this before.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Yeah, So you throw your toys in the air, you
bang the table, and you're like, oh, you're all stupid.
You can't build a plan, right, and you have your
little tantrum and everyone's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah right,
and you're like, oh my god. So so you valently
swing and all everyone tells you is you're the maverick.
You don't like planning, you're structured. You would so you've
you've not spoken their language, you've not met them part way, right,
(15:29):
you want to build one hundred percent plan? Yes, if
you were to flip that, what's the lowest percentage you
could build and still get survived? Still survive? Right? So
I did this with an insurance company recently, very risk averse,
very structured, and we're like, okay, eighty percent.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
I'm like, brill it sounds pretty good.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Build the plan to one hundred pcent. I'm going to
let you do that, bring it down to eighty and
then let's save twenty percent for volatility. Right, So it's
not that we don't have a plan. We do, but
we're keeping our eyes and ears open to what's happening
around us. And if we get those insights, we're saving
twenty percent of our capacity, of our portfolio, of our time,
our mental common to load, to adapt and course correct
(16:07):
on purpose. Yes, right on put And they're like, so
they're a bit uncomfortable. They okay, but that's okay because
eight percent of the things are known.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
That is the key, I think. And what you said
is like, pivot on purpose, on purpose, because I think
with time.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Yeah, if you pivot on knowledge but you have no capacity,
then you're stupid.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Yes. The adverse to that is the certainty. People would
see the seekers and be like, you're just changing the
rules all the time.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
You're moving the goal post.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, the gold post all the time. Yeah. Can we
just stick with something, Just pick a plan we want
to come like somewhere in between the onred percent.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
The best answer I've seen so far is seventy twenty ten,
seventy percent kind of knowns here's the plan we think
this is kind of logical. We've done some research. Twenty
percent it's options, right, we think it's going to be
a B or C. We don't know today if it's
a B or C. But here's how we will know,
and we'll pick a B or C. Ten percent We
have no idea, right. The funny thing is people treat
the A, B or C is we must know that now.
(16:59):
Why why make a decision now that you don't have to.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
I think sometimes it can feel like leadership is really heavy.
I honestly feel like it can be a privilege at
times like it's a heavy privilege. It's a heavy privilege.
I loved leading teams and helping people grow and all
of those things. A lot of people, I think, feel
like it's punishment. Right now.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
It's hard. It's harder than it's been before.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, yeah, why is it so hard?
Speaker 3 (17:22):
And we need to be honest about why it's hard.
We didn't train leaders to be leaders. Yes, we weren't
fair on the expectation. I think a lot of them
got missold a promise we've shared before. You know, you
graduate university, you work for forty five years, and then
you retire, and nowhere in those forty five years, did
we talk about reskilling, micro credentials, relearning all the things
that are now apparantly true. Yes, So there's a whole
cohor of essentially middle aged people are like, I thought
(17:45):
I was doing this for life, and now you you
told me a lie, I'm not doing this for life.
And this thing called leadership that you've not trained me
on is really complex and hard. Most businesses is we
promote strong individual contributors with craft skills into leadership and
just assume they'll make the leap. And it's not fair,
like people's skills are their own beast. Probably number one
bane in my life and my career has been the phrase,
(18:05):
so skills and like, they're not soft, they're really hard.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Exactly approaching to the converted here.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Yeah, So I think that that's one aspect. The other
one is we're going through what feels like epic change
re or this desire for productivity, more efficiency. The economy
is tie short term thinking massive change to fundamentally static
business model. So all markets are changing and that's just
putting this pressure on leaders to I think long term
acting the short term. Yeah, okay, be a custodian of
(18:29):
change and change themselves into by others with change a
handle inherent certain and ambiguity and have answers but not
know the answer and they're like, sorry, what today.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
It looks like.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Whils getting married, having children later in life? Right, financial
crises or like cost of living crises, And they're like, god,
I don't know if I signed up for this, Like
what what is this thing? Yes?
Speaker 1 (18:51):
And if you've come from an individual contributor piece and
you're starting to learn around how to manish people in
the mix of that because it is a real craft.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Here's the uncomfortable truth that I don't think is discussed
a lot is most performance management systems reward outputs, and
they don't reward the value you bring when you inspire
and bring together a group of people. They don't actually
reward or recognized leadership. They reward and recognized outputs.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And doing Yeah, did you do the projects?
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (19:18):
That don't really measure retention to people want to work
with you, do they do their best work because they work.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
With you, so the best and it's raretly. The best
performance management systems I've seen, which again are another currency
of business, are the ones that look at what you
achieved and how you achieved it. A lot will go, well,
we can ignore the house you got there.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Oh no, don't pop. When I talk about this all
the time, people get so stuck. I actually call it
visible work and invisible work. People get so stuck on
the what they're doing, the visible work, they forget the how,
the invisible work and all the things that make that
other work so good because of it.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
That is now amplified in a world of data and measurements.
So we're going to metric everything, right, We're going to
put so many numbers in place. We know exactly everything
that's happening. You're like, well, you don't. You can only
measure right and then the things that you can see,
but you can't do it for the unscene. So we're
a senior leader recently slightly controversial. But I said to him,
it's like, do you love your wife? And he's like sorry,
(20:14):
I was like, do you love your life?
Speaker 1 (20:15):
And he's like yeah, I want to know the context
of how this came out.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Yeah, It's like how many times do you tell her?
Do you measure that? And he's like no, but she knows.
He's like, yeah, well how does she know? I've got
a KPI this week, I need to tell you I
love you five times a day every day. I love
you like that.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
That means nothing. You're just telling me because you're kPr
on it.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
So we all have that moment in life where we
asked some one to do something and they did it,
and you're like, I don't feel any better because it's
not that you did the thing is that I wanted
you to do it without me asking.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
It's like when you have to tell your children to
say sorry and they're like, yeah, sorry, Like that wasn't
you just made it? You made it.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
So it's the same in measurements in business. We've got
so busy instrumenting everything and going here's our pipeline, here's
the potential of people that clicked, and you're like, okay, pause,
did anyone like it? Did they feel better? We can't
measure feels.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
So so just take it off the table altogether.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
So if you think about it right now, out like
some of the most important measures. I would love to
find a way of considering a business of feels, sentiment, loyalty, mood, hope.
We can't. So we measured things that we can see,
which I think are often very misleading.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
What could I do if I was a leader and
a team like, I fully buy into this. I buy
into the eighty percent plan. I want to show my
team love. I want to measure these things. I want
to measure the fields and stuff like, how could I
show up differently?
Speaker 3 (21:35):
The best example I work with a relatively large organization recently.
Their problem was some of their teams were very input focused,
like it must be certainly doing the right things. Others
were very output focused. We shipped something okay, and others
were very outcome focused. We had impact. Well, who's the
best out of those three?
Speaker 1 (21:51):
I personally grab tate towards the impact.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
So the answry is none of them. It's trick because
they were all flawed. So the outcome based team really
struggled because they do a piece of work and they're like,
no idea, if that's it's going to have to wait
three or six months to know if that worked. Yeah,
input based team couldn't start anything.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Why could they?
Speaker 3 (22:08):
They have all the inputs first, So once they did start,
they were super fast. They were amazing, paralyzed from the
get go right. Wow. The output team were very busy.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
But not thinking about the bigger picture.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
They're busy stuff. Yeah, so we're like okay, and so
we're trying to work out which one to oxifies for
when someone was like what about all three? What if
they only exist in concert? So we're like cool. So
with teams, we're like, what input measures? Do you need
to know your setup for success? What's the minimum MVP star,
what's the minimum thing? So you need a shared understanding
of the outcome, and you need to know who you're
(22:40):
working with. Anything else you can work out all the way.
Cour what are the output measures, which are lead indicators
that you did the right thing and you're trending in
the right direction. And then one of the outcome measures
the impact you have and that's externally facing. So the
first two are internal, I'm set up for success. I
delivered something. The third one is external. What impact did
I have on another person? I delivered some kind of
value exchange to them. I need to go and check
(23:02):
with them if they received that value exchange. It's not
if I sent it, it's if they received it. Very
different things, right when they have all three? Yeah, Oh,
gorgeous things.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Happen magic same. I think it's interesting, how like just
a simple phrasing word mindset shift can help with that.
Like if I look at your example and I think
about my own leadership style and I was like, very
much do it. I'm like, this is what we're doing.
We're going to do it. Da da da da. And
then when I started shifting language into this is an experiment,
here's what we're trying to achieve. I don't know how
it's going to go, but you're all in on this, right.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
There's a subtle line yeah after the word experiment that
you may or may not say out loud, but it's there.
So the minute you're doing an experiment, it's because you
don't know. Yeah, And when you say that, the whole
room levels they go, which mean you don't know. You're like, oh,
I don't know, but what i'd like to do is
to work through it with you.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
Yes, I fully changed my leadership style and I reckon
in the space of like three months from going here's
the project, here's what we're going to deliver, and here's
how we're going to do it. Two, it's an experiment.
We don't know. We don't know if it's going to
work because we are all trying to work on it together.
And here are some stages. We actually used your pre
mortem exercise to work through it and go, Okay, here's
what's going to happen.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
What increases our chance of success? What increases our chance
of failure?
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll link to that in the show
notes out of curiosity because I was just talking about
some mistakes that I've made. What's your biggest leadership mistake
that you've made recently?
Speaker 3 (24:24):
I try and avoid giant ones by doing lots of
small ones. I alternate between wanting to be an individual
contributor and a leader. I keep on finding myself in
leadership positions, not by accident, it's kind of on purpose.
But then I'm like, oh, I really like just getting
on and doing the work. I'm always playing with that
tension with my team. Recently, there's a whole of examples
where I thought I was role modeling stuff to them
and they were just picking it up. And then when
(24:46):
we sort of met in person, we had a chat
as like I was not clear that that was my expectation.
I've made some assumptions. So I think my leadership thing
is I default to thinking that people like to learn
in the style I like to learn. Therefore, my style
of learning is hey, put something out of the universe.
I'll try to pick from A and from being, some
from CEE, and I'll build my own version of it.
(25:06):
And so I put some stuff out there and just
wait for AB and C to happen, and then it doesn't.
And that's because all my team think can learn differently
than me. And that's not a bad thing. I've done
that on.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Purpose, actually a really good thing.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
And so the challenge I have is we work in
a fully distributed team. So my team has spread across
the US, Europe and Australia. We have no times on overlap,
so we have no team meetings. Wow, we haven't had
in the three years we've existed. Wherever you are in
the world, every Monday morning, you record a loom three
high acts from last week. What you did the weekend, family, friends, kids, whatever, Yeah,
and what are the three highlights you're expecting this week?
(25:38):
So we don't have a meeting, and that's good for
the day to day operations. I'd forgotten about the need
of that umbrella, the overarching connection, the purpose. How do
we think about like longer term macro level impact. I
had that for myself and I assumed that I'd shared
that I didn't check if it had been received.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Ah See, there's like the absolute point in that I
didn't check up it's being.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Received, I broadcast I do. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Yeah. Hey. So, for someone managing your team right now,
what's one thing that could walk away from and try
this week that would help them lead more effectively in
the current environment.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
I'm going to give you two very quick ones. If
you're in a firefighting situation, you think something's wrong, but
you don't know what. There's an next size. We've published
this in our team playbook. It's free online. You don't
pay anything called the health monitor. Eight areas of a
healthy team. And so instead of going through actions and
status and boring things, we're going to do with this
health monitor eight areas of a healthy team. Use your
thumbs healthy not so good.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
To him to do this. I heard her talk about
this recently.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Yeah, right, yes, and you do that with the eight
areas that documented, and then cool, let's pick one area
we want to improve on as a team. That's great
if you honestly don't think you know the answer and
you want to bring the team along, right if you
think you know the answer. One of the most common
areas right now that are coming up are social contracts
in the team and across teams. Right. So a lot
of the tax people pay is my team's fine, but
(26:55):
we struggle when we were deping out on other teams
and they're a pain. You're like, you all work in
the same organization. We have an exercise called the working agreement,
which is your social contract for how you're going to work.
The reason I mentioned it is whenever you form a
new team, everyone arrived for the assumptions. I've got my
way of working, you've got yours sits scott heres, and
we just meet. We don't agree them. We just bring
(27:15):
our own ways of working and we create this weird
Frankenstein hybrid. That's crap, right, So, like, instead of that
been that, let's agree with social contracts. How and when
are we going to meet? What do we meet about?
How do we make decisions? How do we escalate? How
do we communicate? What is our rhythm and cadence? And
then let's work on it.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
It's amazing how many people skip best it?
Speaker 3 (27:32):
Can you get busy right? You end up in the
whack a mole. And it's because we reward the firefighter
and the firefighter is also the fire starter. You walk
around your org, there's someone they've got a badge, employee
of the month. We've got a cape in the drawer.
There's normally got a bottleriskip in the drawer as well. Right,
they're like, oh my god, look at fire. They put
the cape on, fly in, put the fire. You're like
Jason every time, just you're so quick with the fire response. Jason,
(27:55):
start the fight, Jyson. Jason needs fires to survive, right,
And the reason we do that is there's immediate recognition
there was a fire. You put it out. Fireproof is
you're like, there's no fire today. How do I reward you?
Maybe there wasn't ever going to be And if I approved,
So the working agreement players going like, let's just get
our social contract of how we're going to work together,
and let's do less thrashing and more prevention.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
I imagine it avoids a lot of the blame game
then too, because.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
No, no brings it to the full. Yeah I'm still blame.
You just do it three months earlier. So we're just
going to have it now and avoid the time wasted. Yes,
you put the argument.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Forward, not even the time way. So let's talk about
the stuff you can't measure.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Frustration, politics, meeting. Do you think I'll have without you
to make you feel bad?
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Like your face like you're doing now kind of frustration.
This has been so good, don I think we could
probably talk for another two hours, but we won't. I
think for a lot of people listening, leadership can feel
like this massive, overwhelming responsibility. And what you've reminded us
is that it's actually about small, intentional choices here along
the way, made over and over the loop that you're
(28:56):
talking about. So if you're leading a team right now,
maybe this week it's about being a bit more curious,
or letting someone else step up, and just noticing your
own kryptonite in action to change everything overnight. What you
want to try this week could be the thing that
they actually remember you for. I think it's also worth
remembering that the leader you always wanted was not perfect.
They just showed up in a way that made you
want to do your best work. And that's what we're
(29:18):
hoping for you. When you listen to this episode.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Just go to buck yourself.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Just go and give a try. Yeah, thank you, Dom,
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
That's tiving me.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
So leadership is just small, intentional choices made over and over.
Start with this one thing this week. Be more curious,
let someone else step up, or notice your own kryptonite
in action. The leader you always wanted wasn't perfect. They
just showed up in the way that made you want
to do your best work. That's something we can all try,
starting right now. If you like this episode, please share
(29:47):
it with someone stepping into a leadership role or struggling
with it right now. You can always follow us on
our socials. We're on Instagram at viz by Mama Mia.
This episode was produced by Sophie Campbell with audio production
by Leah Porges. Back yourself, lead with curiosity, and we
will see you next week.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Bye.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
that this podcast is recorded on
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