Glain Roberts-McCabe is Founder and President of the Roundtable, an organization that helps leaders navigate change, disruption, and growth by building the coaching and collaboration skills required to be successful. In this episode, we talk about the critical behaviors of leaders who are going through a crisis and how to change our mindset towards growth and opportunities to impact people’s lives.
Glain launched the Roundtable in 2007 in order to provide a space for leaders where they can cultivate their leadership skills together. The Roundtable received a Gold Award from the Canadian Awards for Training Excellence in 2014 for its peer coaching and mentoring program. In 2016, it was named the Best External Consulting Advisory in Canada by the Canadian HR Awards.
With over 25 years of experience in executive roles and helping groups of leaders take control of their careers, Glain is a multiple-time nominee for the RBC Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. She also writes columns for The Globe and Mail and Realizing Leadership magazines, and was a former Leadership Guru for BizTV Canada and Arlene Dickinson's "YouInc." She holds a Diploma in Creative Advertising and completed advanced Improv Training through The Second City, and is a volunteer mentor with the Institute for Performance and Learning.
Glain is the author of several books: "Did I REALLY Sign For This?!: #leadershiptruths on How to Drive, Thrive... and Survive" and “The Grassroots Leadership Revolution.”
Glain cites that adaptability, agility and long-term thinking are some of the behaviors that leaders need to cultivate in navigating instability and uncertainty. She says leadership is all about self-awareness, which means knowing our tendencies and which ways we are leaning so that we can find the balance to become effective.
Glain emphasizes that instead of being hung up on the “little stuff” such as performance reports, it is better to step back and find the opportunity now to impact someone’s life. She says it is important to recognize our derailing behavior and to know when our “right approach'' is not working in the current situation.
“Your role as a leader is to keep the team functioning without you,” she says. If you want to know more about how your team can together unpack values that align with your organization, then this episode is for you!
Find out more about Glain’s work at her company’s website: https://goroundtable.com/
Connect with her through LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glain/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/goroundtable
Twitter:@HeyRoundtable
Instagram:go_roundtable
- I'm Celine Williams and welcome to the Leading Through Crisis podcast. A conversation series, exploring leadership in challenging times. I'm Celine Williams, and today my guest on leading through crisis is Glain Roberts-McCabe, who is the founder and president of The Roundtable. An organization that helps leaders navigate change, disruption, and growth by building the coaching and collaboration skills required to be successful. The Roundtable offers group and team coaching programs that emphasize behavior and mindset shifts and create lasting impact. Thank you for being here with me today Glain.
- I'm so excited to be here with you.
- Me too, I love talking leadership with you. This is the thing that we, even before we hit record, we go into slight rabbit holes, so this is... I'm really excited to share this with my audience, and I'd love to hear, you know? Kind of the big broad question, but when you think of leading through crisis or leading through challenging times, what has been your experience with it whether it's personal or with the people that you've worked with? Cause you do work with so many leaders in so many different organizations and industries.
- Mm-hmm, yeah, I mean, it's such a great question. So if I think I stepped back and I think about as leaders, what do we need to be prepared for? What do we need to anticipate and what can you control, right? And especially, when we're talking in the middle of a pandemic, everything feels very out of our control. One of the things that I think we forget when it comes to leadership is that all leadership is situational. So we're in a pandemic right now, that's just another leadership situation. And so for all of us as leaders, we've got certain go-to approaches that have allowed us to be successful. And, you know, cause you know? Like in organizations, right? We're always measuring two sides of the balance sheet. We're measuring what you have to do and how you have to do it. And I tend to work with people who are a little bit more seasoned and experienced. and I always say to them, but what got you to the table? Like, okay, we all, if you're a senior executive, we assume you know what you're doing and you deliver results. And that's just kind of a given, cause if you're not, you're probably gonna be turfed out the door . Where it now starts to get tricky as in the how. How you go about doing that. And so the how, is your behaviors, like what are you known for as a leader? What's your brand, what's your trademark. And I think when you think about leading through crisis, there are some behaviors that really, are useful for you to be demonstrating when you're in a crisis. And there's other behaviors that probably are a lot less useful, right? Just at a more macro level. And then when you get into individuals, it's like, "You know what, I'm kinda good at this behavior, but that behavior I never even kind of think about or go to" And that's where as leaders, we constantly... The analogy I use with people all the time to give them a kind of a picture of this is I always say, you know? If you're a golfer, I am not a golfer, I'm very bad golfer. But if you're thinking about a golf game and you and I are out on, you know? The links and we're getting ready to tee up and I have the junior miss starter set with the two drivers, the three iron's in the one Potter, and you have the Tiger Woods deluxe set with, you know? That weighs 500 pounds and has every single club in it. You are just gonna be more equipped to hit certain shots because you have more tools in your toolkit. And I think about that when it comes to behavior, it's kind of a different way to think about our behaviors, but if you know how to dial up a behavior or you know, that you're somebody who maybe isn't very enthusiastic. But you know how to ramp up your enthusiasm when the situation calls for it, you're gonna be way more equipped to handle ups and downs in leadership, right? So right now, you know? As I think about leaders that I'm seeing that are thriving and surviving well, it's cause they've got a lot of those behaviors that really lend themselves to dealing well in a crisis. Whereas the ones that are struggling are the ones that maybe haven't adapted to this situation.
- I'm curious what some of the behaviors you see lending themselves well in a crisis are.
- Yeah, so this is actually not like Glain Roberts-McCabe figured this out, so we have a research partner that actually does research on this kind of thing. And they did isolate out, I think it's about nine behaviors. Is it a pretty critical for leaders going through crisis? So one is the behavior of being adaptable, right? Like, so you're gonna go into the situation you need to pivot and change. If you're somebody with a very fixed mindset around how things are gonna be done, have to be done, probably you're gonna be struggling. Like if all of a sudden your team had to go work from home and that threw you off because you've only ever, you know? You've got your face-to-face meetings and everything works this way. So this agility, right? This ability to be kind of innovative and pivot and try untested approaches, you're somebody who naturally goes that way. Then this is probably giving you lots of opportunity to try and adopt if you're stuck on that, not so much. Long-term thinking, so being able to plan ahead, being more planful, as opposed to reactive, sort of having a plan A, plan B, plan C. I know for me in the early days with my team, we were literally, you know? Having to be strategic about the next 30 days . And and revisiting, where are we now, where are we now? So it's this combination of looking forward, but then also being able to bring that back and adjust that reality, which is kind of where that more agile approach combined in with a strategic approach. The other one that's so critical is this notion of kind of being the leader and being willing to step up and also challenge authority. Because there's so many unknowns when you're in crisis, right? And so what people are looking for from their leader, from you, if you're that person who's leading is they want decisiveness, they want a decision. And also, especially if you're in the middle layers of the organization, your senior team may not have full line of sight as to what's actually going on with you and your team. So sometimes they, you know? Put out edicts from above that come down, and I think some of the most successful leaders we see is that they're willing to push back and say, "You know what? This isn't gonna work for my team. This is not what my team needs right now". So that's the other one. And then kind of the skills that, you know? Kind of go along with like bringing other people along, being able to persuade people around, you know? "Hey, things are going to be okay". Bringing that optimism to a situation, keeping things keeping people really sort of focused on what they can control. Keeping them really focused on making decisions that are thoughtful decisions as opposed to reactive decisions. And then not being overly emotional about it. Nobody wants to kind of follow in a crisis, the leader with their hair on fire, who's coming out, going, "Oh my gosh, everything's burning". And which isn't, you know? Like I think as small business owners ourselves I know for me with my team, it's this balance of giving them the really hard, ugly truth about what's going on to the business when we're facing everybody shutting down. And everything's stalling with this, but here's how we're going to move forward, and this is what we're going to do. And often I'll see leaders that are less comfortable being transparent, you know? Less comfortable being vulnerable to say, cause I had to say to my team, I really don't know what the outcome. This is my best guess at this time, given the information that we have, right? And so I think there's this level of, within a crisis of vulnerability that leaders need to demonstrate transparency where you don't have to carry it all on your shoulders yourself, right? We have a lot of heroic leadership trying to go on and organizations. That's my observation.
- I agree, and I love that you brought up the transparency and I think I see a lot of... I see a challenge for people in that people in organizations, people on teams, whether it's a big team or a small team, they want the decisiveness. Decisiveness and the certainty from their leaders because they feel uncertain and fearful and whatever it is. And that's not real for leaders when there's a crisis happening. You don't know all the information and finding that balance of being transparent and being able to say, "Here's what I know based on whatever this is, and I'm doing my best but I don't have all the answers or information because everything is changing all the time". Is as important as being seen as the person who has the answers. It's not or the other and a lot of times, leaders lean into one or the other.
- For sure we do, and I think... You know, I think for many leaders and it's been interesting to watch this through COVID, right? I was with a group this week and I would say there's people within that leadership team that lean more one way or the other, with one way, being all about the people concerned for the people concerned for people's mental health, you know? The pressure that they're under right now, all great stuff. And then you have the other side that's really driven by the results. And we just need to get back to work and this pandemic isn't going away and I don't care. People need to be back in the office. And you have both sides, and there were some interesting research done on this, and I'm trying to remember the name of the gentlemen, it'll come back to me. I think his book was called "Social" And he wanted to understand and research, "Is it possible to be a results driven leader as well as a EQ driven leader?" Like emotional intelligence. And in fact, did some research with our research partner on that very fact and you know? Because we always hear, "Hey, to really be successful as leader, you need to drive both". Like you've gotta be thinking about the results and thinking about people. And what I've noticed in the pandemic is that people's big spikes of what their tendencies are, have really blown up. And the interesting thing out of the research was they wanted to see a, does it make a difference? Like if you balance both, well, are you a more effective leader? And in fact they did find out that yes, absolutely. You're more effective if you balance both. Okay, great, so how many people actually, balance results in leadership effectively? And the stat is shocking. Like if you can guess out of all the leaders you work with, what do you think the percentage would be that are good at balancing?
- Oh gosh, I mean, there's a part of me that wants to say it like maybe 15 or 20% max, and I think I'm being very generous.
- You're being very generous.
- Yeah, okay that's what I thought, I was like, I'm just gonna... Maybe I just worked with great, but I was like, "I don't even know if that's true", yeah.
- Yeah, so what they found was that was 0.77%. 0.77%. And so this sociologist was kind of like, why is that happening? Yeah. But bad I'll look it up. I'll put it maybe in the show notes but-
- Absolutely.
- What he found was, oh, Matthew Lieberman. I think that, quote me on it, I think that's his name, Matthew Lieberman. What he found is that it's actually moved in our brain. We have what he coined a a "neural seesaw". So what happens is when we're thinking about results the social side of our brain quietens down, it doesn't go away, but it kind of takes the backseat and then vice versa. So if you're thinking about the people's side, then the results side I kind of quietens down. And the challenge for all of us as leaders, I think, I mean, leadership generally, is all about self-awareness, right? You got to have self-insight if you don't have that, that is such a foundational starting block. That everything else to me sort of is, you know? A bit of a shot in the dark beyond that. But when you've got that foundational stuff inside you know, okay, I tend to lean, my neural seesaw leans more towards results. Then the behavior that you need to consciously pay attention to is the people side, right? So if leaders out there right now leading through crisis and they're like, "Okay, I know my tendency is to lean towards the results", then what I would say was start indexing more towards people cause the results is always gonna be there. You're known as a results driven leader, you will drive results, we don't have to worry about that. But what I would be more concerned about is that you are not at tune to burn out that's happening on your team. Like we know as we're recording this, we're in the middle of this crazy pandemic. Working parents are struggling
- Oh, yeah.
- Like it's bad, and you know what? There's a lot of senior executives that are beyond that part of their career. Not all, but there's a lot that are beyond, or they have a lot of support at home and they're kind of going, "Oh, well, we're still delivering results, I don't see what the problem is". I'll tell you, I see the problem in the white people's eyes. And so what's happening then from that is then you have great people starting to believe that they may need to make different choices about their careers or really stepping back and reevaluating what they want to do. And so that's what I would worry about if you're driving too much results. If you're driving too much on the empathy side, then you're not gonna be, you know? You're paid in a company to deliver results, let's be real. Like you're there to move the product or program or service or whatever, you know, the agenda forward. So pandemic isn't going to go away, you can't keep saying, "Well, we're in the middle of a pandemic and it's really hard on people". You gotta find a way to start creating more balance between that, you know, that side, if that's where your tendency goes. So I think that's the big thing for everybody right now. Maybe who's listening to just to step back and say, which way am I leaning, and am I putting enough energy into you know, balancing out that other half right now, as we're navigating through all of this?
- First of all, that's fascinating, and we'll definitely link the book in the show notes, and I will be getting the book. Cause this is really... This is just really interesting to me. But I can see that showing up all the time in non-pandemic times and just it's so exacerbated right now. And I've had a lot of conversations with leaders talking about either they're seeing their leaders or they are themselves. I work with a lot of heart-centered leaders, right? Very people-driven, being overly empathetic, and leaning so far into it that now everything has to be consensus and then nothing's getting done or decided because that's just where they're at right now and-
- Or they're burning themselves out, right?
- Yes. Because instead of putting it or burdening with their team on it-
- That's right.
- They're taking it on themselves
- Yeah, they're not... They're not getting results. They're exhausted. Their team doesn't necessarily feel great because decisions aren't being made
- Yeah Or they're, right? Like we're working towards consensus, but if no one is really speaking up or willing to make a decision, then everyone's still uncertain. So no one feels great.
- Yeah, 100%, and I think, you know? It's funny cause my own experience, having this really staring me in the face was when I started my own business. When I worked for other companies, and if you saw my 360 feedback, I wasn't like a really mean leader, but I was definitely... You know, my empathy score cause, you know? One of the things that scores you in the 360 tool that we use is empathy, right? So how much kind of, put other people before you and have this sort of person-centered approach. If you're lower on empathy means you tend to be more like results driven, right? I would score in the 30th to 40th percentile, so lower mid range, right? Which meant I would dial it up when I needed to, but my tendency and I had to train myself, you know? I'd come in on Monday mornings, I'd have my team, all hands meeting. I had to slow myself down to say, "How was your weekend?" Cause it wasn't where my brain would go. I had to be very intentional about checking in with people and seeing how they were doing. And when I was under stress, I wouldn't necessarily, and I still don't, I'm not good at picking up those cues. When I started my own business, I wasn't able to pay people very much. I sometimes couldn't bring people on full time. I was so appreciative that people would take a risk to work with a startup business and to work with me that when I got my 360 done kind of three years into it. And I was kind of what was happening to me as I was kind of getting bitter, I was getting frustrated with people on my team, things weren't getting done the way I wanted them to get done. When I got my 360 results, I was scoring like, 90th percentile in empathy because I had swung and super low in feedback because I had swung the pendulum to this point where I was like, "I'm so grateful that you're here and I don't want to have to ask anything of you", right? So I think again, different situations will amp up different behaviors and all of us as leaders, and thinking about and understanding your own sort of go-to tendencies. And I think for me at that point in my life too, I was a lot of sort of revelations about make work a really great place. And I really dove into being a strengths-based leader, and I think anytime you're building new habits and behaviors you can over swing it too far, right? And you've got to figure out how to course correct and find that proper balance. So before I was probably a little bit too results-focused and then I course corrected too much, right? To be too empathetic, and then I sort of back in the middle. But that's what's sort of happening right now, I think with the leaders in, you know? As they're kind of navigating a pandemic. If they had more of a tendency in one way, it's almost like they're amplifying into that, you know? So if I was results-driven before, I'm actually amplifying it into results-driven more now, cause that's comfortable and that feels safe and controllable for me and then vice versa. And to your point, like what I'm seeing with a lot of my clients that are very, very people-centric is man, are they tired, man, are they burnt out? They're exhausted because they are not wanting to burden their teams with all of this, you know? Quote unquote additional work or... Cause people are having to be stretched with some clients so far because they're so busy and there's so much uncertainty.
- Well, and it's funny cause it is that you talked about the control, right? Like the people that are results-driven are like really leaning into the results, because it feels like something they can control. And the people that are very people-focused are really leaning into the empathy because they can control what they give other people. They can control their part in that. And a lot of this comes down to this illusion that we have of control.
- Yeah. Right And I think everyone is struggling with not having control, but I think leaders who are so often look to for the answers for the control for the structure are desperate for their own sense of control. If they're not and not... And subconsciously I'm not saying it's a conscious thing, but I think it's manifesting in these ways.
- Yeah, 100%, and I think... And I think this control piece, I saw somebody had put Maslow's hierarchy of needs on Facebook the other day and I thought, this is really an interesting thing that's happening right now. So they were the pyramid and you know? It all starts with this like stability piece at the bottom. And the point that I think... And this is why it's hard to be a leader, we are going through the same things as everybody on our team is going through. And the reality is right now, even if you have a job and even if you are getting a paycheck, there is so much instability in the world right now. There is so much uncertainty whether it's a pandemic, whether it's an election, whether it's, you know? Changing the environment and climate, like there is a lot going on right now which is affecting that base of the Maslow's hierarchy pyramid for all of us. And I think we're underestimating the toll that's taking. And so I think as leaders we're expected to show up and bring our teams along, and so it's hard, you know? I think sometimes the leaders that I'm talking to these days, I mean, they're really tired because there's so much more energy output that's being required of them. And yet, where did they go to kind of, decompress and sort of process all of the challenges that they're feeling. I know I've always sort of made the joke, everybody says it's lonely at the top. And I always say, it's lonely in the middle on the way to the top. Leadership can be really lonely. And today I think with all the uncertainty and all the pressure and if you are leading and you've got little kids at home and you're trying to make big deliverables, and you're worried about your job, like I'm hearing a lot. I'm working with a few clients right now, and the senior team saying, "Well, people need to be pushing back if they feel they're overloaded". It's easy to say that, but you know what? If you feel like by pushing back, you're gonna put your job at risk, are you gonna push back right now? No, and I was in a conversation the other day where the team's given Fridays off for people. So they'd institute or no meeting Fridays, No time up... But no meeting Fridays. And I've seen other clients of ours have been doing no meetings before 10:00 and no meetings after 6:00 or 4:00. And they've got sort of these structures that they're putting in place and people aren't using them, right? And in this meeting, it was really interesting to just sit and observe because a lot of the people that are were in the more the middle ranks in the organization were saying, "Hey, like no meeting Friday just isn't working for me". And then what happens is, people aren't sticking to the no meeting Friday. And then people are saying, "Well, you're not following no meeting Friday, so that's not fair, I shouldn't be having meetings on Friday". And so they're expressing this concern. All the senior executives and as a senior executive, I've been a senior executive for a very long time. Let me tell ya, you control your cycle . You have a lot more control over your calendar and what you choose to do and what you don't do, cause you've got all kinds of people below you that you can delegate to and move things around to.
- Sure. And all the senior executives we're going, "Well, it's working great for me. Yeah, no meeting Friday and finding that really helpful". And I'm like, "This is the issue", right? Like we've got different things happening at different levels in the organization and people in with well-intentioned things. Like, it seems like a good idea, "Hey, everybody's busy, let's give you blocks of time where you can't do anything". But that's actually control. Like then you're controlling. Like, "No, you can't have meetings on Friday". What if Fridays are my best day to have productive meetings? And now you're telling me I can't do that, and then my team thinks I'm a crummy manager because I need to have a meeting with them on Fridays because of the way our meeting cycle works. So it's like this control thing that we've sort of feel like we have to put in and where we put our attention in times like this, I think we really have to step back and think about that differently as managers and leaders.
- I agree, and I think it's such a challenge to... It's so much easier to make a rule that you think is going to benefit everyone and say, "No meeting Fridays". Cause that's a decision that people can see and feel and run with and it's done. And it's so much easier to do that than to actually allow people to be and do whatever their best self and do what works for them in the situation. Because if you have... Like if you're a parent and you have children at home, no meeting... If Friday is the day that your partner or your parent or someone can take your children, whatever the situation may be, that goes out the window. But no one's saying, "How about you figure out what's gonna work best for you and make that decision with your team".
- Yeah, well, it's funny because, you know? We have a long time colleague of ours, her name's Jody Thompson just wrote a great book many years ago called, "Why work sucks and how to fix it". And Jody-
- Great title.
- Yeah, I know .
- Great title . Yeah.
- Heard Jody and her colleague Kelly, were in HR for Best Buy and they started to see this crazy focus on presenteeism. Like, where if I can't see you, you must not be working, right? And so they created the system, it's a system called the Results-Only Work Environment. And we've partnered with them because I really saw an opportunity right now we're in COVID, every company that told me before, "Oh, well, our people can't work from home, it's not possible, like we need to be in the office. Hey, look, I ran a business, I'd been in the office all my life, but you could have told me that". When I started my business, I had to run it six years virtually. We delivered tons of results virtually, so I know that's not true. Now people are seeing it's not true because their companies are still running when people are not in the office. But what we're fixating on and what people are spending tons of time on is, "How do we get people back in the office?" And it's like, "Why do they need to be back in the office? What if we reframe what an office is meant for? What if we think about the office is just one more tool. that when you need to do work together in a shared space you can go to the office. When you need to collaborate and you need to do that in person, you can go to the office. But otherwise, work where need to work to get your job done. Maybe for you that is the office on a regular-
- Sure.
- Maybe for you, it's in the home office. I think that this focus on time is such a huge issue. And that's why this organization and all the organizations that I'm seeing doing this, like, imagine how many hours executive teams have spent through this pandemic talking about things like, No meeting, well, let's create no meetings zones. so people have boundaries between work. And let's talk about office floor plans and traffic flow and how many people are allowed in a washroom and how many people can get on an elevator and mask protocols, how many? I would love to know the number of hours that have been spent on that versus if we said, "Okay, what's really working well in the way we're working right now? What's less successful, and how can we shift the focus away from time and presenteeism to outcomes?" What if we start talking to people about what they needed to deliver versus where they needed to be when they were delivering something? Am I mean, I just think that there's a big opportunity to shift, but organizations are... We get comfortable, right? Like it's hard to change, and the thought of doing... Even if we know that the way we were working before pandemic, wasn't great, people were burning out and having to do two-hour commutes to get to work. And 60-hour work weeks and tons of rework and useless meetings. This is what we're aiming to go back to? Like, this is such an opportunity for leaders to reinvent how we think about work and coaching. But there's so much time being spent right now on the wrong conversations, I think.
- It's the illusion that if you can see someone in their seat that they must be working. And it is, right? But that's the illusion, it's that presenteeism. And it is hard for... This is a mindset that I struggled with a lot, and I see it in leaders and I have this conversation more times than I would like to, than I really wish I had to. But it's the mindset that, if they're not here and they're not working, my organization, my team is wasting money. That they are getting paid for 40 hours of work and they should be working 40 hours. Are you as a leader getting paid for 40 hours of work? Or are you as a leader getting paid for the outcomes for your ability to bring that team together, to create culture, to get the financial results, to sell, whatever it is? You're not being paid for 40 hours a week.
- 100%, But when-
- 100%, but that's like the old industrial model. where had a punch clock and you got paid by the hour, right?
- Yeah, and it's fascinating to me that leaders, when you pointed out to them, they're like, "Obviously I'm not getting paid for the hours". But they still think that about their people.
- Mm-hmm, yeah, because I mean, yeah. Like if you just shift the paradigm and say, "I'm getting paid $40,000 to deliver these results.
- Yes,
- How I do it, so if that took me theoretically then, if it took you two days to deliver your organization's results, you would get paid $40,000 for two days. What's wrong with that?
- Right. What's wrong? If that's what the value of that work is, then get paid for it that way. But it's like, no, no, we can't. No, no, no, wait a second. Wait a second . Yeah, it can't be that way. It can't be that this person works two days a year for $40,000, and God forbid, that's.... It's-
- That's just a real mind, like that's just a real mind melt and it... But what it requires is it requires leaders to be extremely explicit about expectations and the results that are expected. And therein lies the problem, right? Because you get lack of alignment at a senior executive level, and then it goes down into the teams, then it goes down and, you know? And it just keeps cycling through, so that by the time you get like five layers or six layers below the executive, people are super unclear about what their goals are and what they're supposed to be delivering in some cases, not in all, but like in some cases. Or there's such a lack of understanding. you don't need to be like holding meetings every two seconds to see where projects are at. Like, it should be pretty clear cut. but you see the individuals that are less comfortable with that, less comfortable having expectations setting things, or aren't even really clear in their own minds, what their expectations are, you know? So I think all of this sort of comes back to the building blocks. And then from there, you know? Like we've seen clients who had really strong results cultures go through this pandemic with very little problem. But bigger problems have been like, the social side for people, cause for a lot of people work does have a big social element and that's been a struggle for people. Whereas the companies where there's lack of clarity or a hub-and-spoke kind of leadership where everything had to go through one person or managers were not well-equipped to have direct conversations around expectations. They are the ones that are really struggling.
- People who are struggling are really, in that hub model, that hub-and-spoke model where everything has to go through one leader . Because and I would guess that now more than ever, that becomes with people in... Let's call it remote working. With people in different locations, with all of the unknowns and a lack of clarity and expectations. It's just more chance for bottleneck. It's more chance for things to not get communicated as clearly as we would theoretically like them to be communicated.
- Mm-hmm, yeah, I mean, I think, there's kind of a number of sort of things that don't play in your favor if you've got a certain leadership style, and like that controlling hub-and-spoke is a big one anytime whether you're, you know? Whether you're in a pandemic or not, it's not a great leadership model. Certainly it's not a good model for legacy, and I think as leaders, we all have a responsibility to make sure that when we leave the team doesn't fall apart. Like your role is to make sure that the team can keep functioning without you. And I think it doesn't matter what kind of career you've had if you leave in a team doesn't work well after you're gone, you've failed. That's my bottom line on that, you've not done your job. And so hub-and-spoke is like... Those leaders are struggling, The other leaders are struggling are the ones that are commanding control, you know? Which is kind of maybe a spin on hub-and-spoke. To me hub-and-spoke is like every... All the decisions have to come back to me, command and control as I'm making all the decisions, right? And I'm not empowering my people in team. And then the other kind of the... The leader that's really not doing well right now is that is the leader that we talked about earlier, which is the two empathetic one. The one that's too wishy-washy, that's not making decisions. Who's not holding their team accountable for things, cause they're overusing empathy right now. So those are probably like big three. I mean, there's lots of variations on all those approaches, but again, your strength becomes your biggest liability and leadership and so the more... so every situation you're in, whether you're leading a pandemic, whether you've got a new boss, whether your company's just been acquired, like you name it. There's always gonna be something on the horizon. It's so important that you step back and say, "Okay, so how I approach leadership gonna benefit me in this situation, and how is it gonna be a problem for me?" And in the areas where it's gonna be a problem, what behavior might I need to dial up a little bit more in order to make sure that everything's, you know? Working the way it should be working. And I think the more collective awareness... Like so with leadership, I think it's so interesting, right? Like we sort of tend to look at leaders as these... You know, it's like you as an individual and what do you need to do as a leader on your own. But the reality is we work in teams, I mean, that's why, at The Roundtable is you know, we're very focused on group coaching and team coaching-
- Yes.
- Because it's like, you're a leader, you're working with others and you need to understand how your collective approach to leadership is influencing the organization's culture, if you're at an executive team level. Your team's culture, if you're a leadership team within the function area, you need to have insight around that. And you also need to have insight and understanding of how different people's different approaches within the team create value. Because often where frictions happen with individuals, it's when you know their style and your style and where they get energy from and where you get energy from far apart. And so for leaders right now, as we're navigating through change, like I'm working with the team right now, and they're fascinating team because as a team collectively, when we go back to that "neural seesaw", it's like, are you more results-focused or are you more people-focused? Within that executive team, they are heavily dominated by results-focused leaders. Their energy goes to strep plans, process improvement, you know, all of that side of the balance sheet. And so what's being ignored in the organization right now is what I would say is the EEQ side, the field side-
- Right.
- How are people feeling? And you know, and this team doesn't have a lot of energy to talk about that. Like it's fascinating to watch. And there's a couple of people within that team that do have more of that EEQ people energy, and you see them within team meetings trying to raise these issues, and put it out on the table and collectively there's, you know? It gets overwritten because we're kind of, you know? That's what we do, right? We sort of, you know? The dominant behavior rules, right? The dominant culture rules. And I think at this point with, you know? It's a really good opportunity right now, if you're on a team is to, "Hey, where does our team tend to leave?" So if I think I lean more towards results and not towards people, that's one layer to look at, but the next layer is, "How's my team leaning?, and are we giving enough recognition and encouragement right now when people need that boost? Or are we getting too much of that? And we're not delivering our results collectively, right? So those can be really interesting conversations for teams to unpack together and to figure out, "Okay, how do we create a little bit more balanced?" I'm a big believer in like too... Like when we coach leaders, we always say like, find the big bang for the back behavior. Like the one behavior, if you were gonna tweak it a little bit, it would make a huge difference to your leadership, because you probably don't need to do that much. But if you're really surgical and you figure out the one thing that's gonna make a big impact, well, I feel it's the same within a company culture within an organization. It's like collectively, is there one behavior that this team could do or this organization could do that would really be a game changer for them? And then everything just, you know? Like there's 5 million things you could be doing Let's face it. But if you could move the needle on something, so in this pandemic, what could we move the needle on? If you're too people-centric, maybe move the needle on being more accountable, right? Or you move the needle on being more results-focused in your meeting. So every meeting agenda, you talk about the business results, because you'll be talking about what you did on the weekend. Well, flip it, right? I'm not saying don't talk about the weekend, but first impressions, start with what you need to put people's attention to, right?
- Yeah, I love that. And I think that it's, you know? One of the organizations I'm working with, we're doing that at a culture level is saying like, here's two really important behaviors that we are calling out specifically that... Is we're seeing it like the executive level fairly consistently, but it's not translating down. And it really makes a huge difference. So how do we encourage people? What can we put together that helps people lean into these behaviors? And it will make a big difference in so many ways. And I love that you said to be surgical about it, because I think too often, we get overwhelmed with all of the behaviors I could change and improve. All of the behaviors my team can change and improve. All of the things and there's, to your point, there's always a million. We can all do better, we can all be better. We are all have infinite potential, and if we get stuck in that, then we do nothing.
- Yeah, start with something. Like I just think... And what I've learned over the years is you actually... It's not like you need to do all that much, you know? My husband hates it, I tell a story all the time that he... My husband's, so if you met my husband, he is the opposite of me in terms of how he presents. He's very calm, his voice tends to be monotone. His friends used to joke. If my husband wanted a million dollars, he'd be like, "Oh, I won a million dollars". Whereas like me I'm like Oprah and you get a car, you get a car, you get right? Like, I am like crazed, right? And so he had a job once where, you know? He had to be engaging the public, and I remember he came home and he was really kind of mad about a supervision conversation he'd had. Cause the supervisor said, "You're not outgoing enough. Like you're not engaging clients enough", He's a social worker or he was at the time. "You need to be more out there". And you know, my husband's an introvert, and what he said to me was, "They hired me, they know I'm like this, this is who I am, not some RA RA cheerleader, that is not me. Okay, so I get all of that, right? And this is what I say to people all the time that are given this kind of behavioral feedback. I'm like, "Okay, I get it, but part of your job, it's not just what you have to do, but it's how you have to do it". Two sides of the balance sheet like we talked about earlier. And so the behavior that he needed to exhibit more was this sort of enthusiasm. Well, when you break that down, what does that actually mean, right? So it means things like using vocal variety, which I'm doing right now, ups and downs, highs and lows, right? Bringing energy physically, stand up when people come in the door, right. Very small little things. So my husband does this for a month and I'm dropping him off and he says to me, as he's leaving the door, he's like, "Well, you know, I got my supervision today, and if I'm not told that I'm doing a better job at this, because I've been changing my voice tone and I've been doing this". And anyway, so I pick him up after work, "How did it go? How was the conversation with your supervisor?" And he said, "Oh, she said, I was like a different person. I had completely transformed, right?" All he did literally is two activities were standing up when people came in the door and using vocal variety. People often get so hung up because it gets stuck on, "But that's not my authentic self and I need to be authentic and who I am... I call BS on that because I think, sure you can be your authentic self, but if your authentic self is a jerk, you know? Or your authentic self is not professional, No, you cannot be your authentic self at work. You've got to think about what's required of me in this job. Authenticity to me is about, you know? Finding the place where the values of the organization match with who you are and that connection, so that the natural behaviors that flow from you are already very aligned with what... in line with what the organization is looking for. That to me is being aware of who you are, what you're willing to compromise on, what you're, you know? No fly zone is around how much you're willing to change. And then from there you still are probably gonna have to finesse a bit of your approach depending on the situation you find yourself in, right? But that's not being inauthentic, that's about getting the job done and being professional.
- All right, it's so interesting. Cause I had this conversation a couple of weeks ago. Authenticity when it's used in that way, where you're using it to excuse behavior is a defense mechanism. And so many people use authenticity as an excuse and as a defense, as opposed to an opportunity to... We all adjust our behaviors based on our audience.
- Yeah. We all do, we have to. It doesn't mean we are not living in line with our values or who we really are or who we want to be in the world. Our behaviors enable us to get have the results and impact that we want on those around us. If we use the same behavior all the... If you act the same way you do with your four-year-old as with your boss, That is not... Is that you being your authentic self? Is you playing with a four-year-old your authentic self? Because if you say yes, then are you doing the same? No, of course, you're gonna adjust your behaviors when you're with a different audience. You want to have a great result playing with your four-year-old, so they have fun and you have fun and you want to have a great result with your boss so that you're effective and enjoying each other's company in a different way, cause you're not rolling around on the floor.
- Yeah. It's not inauthentic.
- Yeah, 100%, but people get people really get hung up on that word, and I think you're right. I think you're bang on when you say, you're hitting a defensive nerve with people, right? And they need to justify that "Well, I'm just a straight shooter in this one". No, you called somebody out in the middle of the meeting and you'd be little bum and you made them feel like a jerk. That's not being a straight shooter, right? That's being a jerk and face it, but like we have this, you know? Like we have this image of ourselves and the way we view ourselves. And then as soon as you know? There's a counter piece of feedback or things that like, you know? Then the armor comes up and we have to self protect. But that's why I circled back again. Somebody asked me , if I was being interviewed for a coaching assignment by this group of leaders. And they said, "In two words, tell me what great coaching is all about?" I thought, that's like an interesting question, I've never had that before. But like to me, coaching is just a skill. Like it's just, you know? It's like one of the skills we need to have as leaders. But I said, "Here's my thing, comes back to self-awareness self-insight, self-regulation, just however you want to describe it, like that is the core of anything, right? You can't be a good coach if you don't have good, self-insight.
- Agreed.
- You definitely can't be a good leader, if you don't have good self insight and you can't be a good wife, you can't be a good mother, you can't be a good father. You know, self-insight and understanding yourself and understanding your biases, you know? All of those things, this is a lifelong journey, people. Like, I think a lot of times people put their education down to, you know? they graduated university at the age of 22 or 23 , and they think, okay, I'm now educated. No, no , like, you're not even started being educate. Because every phase that we go through in our life, we can learn and unpack more about ourselves, right? And I truly do think in leadership, we get so hung up on the little stuff like the... I see leaders, hung up on, "Oh God, I got to do performance review. Oh, I gotta report this in the report, oh, I got", like all this minutia stuff. And it's kind of like, let's step back for a second. What's the opportunity that you have right now as a leader to impact people's lives. Every day you're impacting somebody's life. Every day, you're making a huge difference in somebody's life, it's massive. And yet most people don't go into their day thinking about that, they think about, how do they get through their day or what are all the tasks they have to do today. They're not thinking about this awesome opportunity and legacy that they can build, But it's hard to do that. Like if you're not clear on yourself in your purpose as a leader, in your values, and how you're showing up and you know? How can you cultivate that within your team and how can you help somebody else live their best life, if you're not sort of tapping into that yourself? But it's safer on the surface, it's safer to talk about, you know? Business plans we need to implement and all of that kind of stuff but really leadership is this amazing opportunity to change lives. I just think of it that way .
- I agree, I actually I had a conversation with someone last week and he was, and I can't remember the word he used, and I wish I could. But he was talking about how a lot of... When we talk about self-awareness or self-insight, that's not actually what people are doing. They're doing this very surface level. This is who I am, he used a specific word. I obviously just forget it. But this is who I am, and this is just who I am, and this is the way it is type of thing. And they don't actually do the work to have that self insight and to do the self-regulation and to think a bigger picture. And it's funny because you've used the word legacy a few times that I see that showing up, you know? You made the point earlier that your legacy is to have a team that can thrive when you're gone, that's part of your legacy. I would hedge a bet that, and I've heard this so often with leaders and managers, as soon as they step into any kind of, management role, let's call it. Where they're terrified of becoming irrelevant. They're terrified of becoming irrelevant, so they feel that if they are absolutely necessary in the business, if things have to go through them if they hold the information, if whatever it is, that they will never be irrelevant. And they do everything to create that situation, which is the polar opposite of the legacy you're talking about. And it's the polar opposite of that self insight piece. I would hedge a bet, this is what I was gonna say is that, the people who are hanging on and who are terrified of being irrelevant are the same people who are doing that real surface work into self insight. That's like, not even scratching the surface of what self-awareness could be.
- 100%, like, I think there's two pieces in that, that you just like, are really making my brain click. I think one of the things that we do early in our career, when we're ambitious, we take risks, right? We push risks and we'll try things and we're adding value. And then for different people, you know? If they can get to a point where all of a sudden their ambition was to become a director or their ambition was to become a VP. And all of a sudden their focus shifts from instead of striving and adding value to holding on, and maintaining that position. And that is when you put yourself at the highest career risk in my opinion. When I see people getting laid off in organizations, it's not the ones that are adding value and pushing the envelope. It's the ones that played it safe, and checked all the boxes and were good employees. That's who I see being let go a lot of the time. You were a good solid employee, but maybe you weren't adding value anymore because you were so consumed with holding on to the space you have. So I think that's a huge part, and then the other part too, I totally... Becoming self-aware, you're right. It's like the first piece of the puzzle. Self insight, I think it's like to me playing around with this idea, it's almost like when you pull it down a level. And then you understand without awareness, you now have the insight to understand where your growth edges, you now know where it is. And I can remember talking to somebody years ago, who said, you know, cause she'd done all this stuff, her company pay for all of these assessments and coaching and this training and that training. And she said, you know, I became self-aware, I was self-absorbed, right? And that's sort of that pattern of, "Well, I'm a red energy person and this is who I am, or I'm the Myers-Briggs and TJ, and this is who I am. And I often say to my clients, when they've done things like that, Hogan, you name it, everybody has their own favorite assessment in companies. I go, "Okay, great. So now you know all the places you're deficient". Like if you tell me, "I'm hyper red energy", I go, okay, so then you better start working on some green and yellow and blue, because there's going to be leadership situations or you powering through with your red energy is not gonna be helpful to you. If you do not know how, and especially when you look at all of these quadrant models, right? Like just look across the quadrant at what you're not so strong at. For the most part, for many people, that just gives you the roadmap. That's the behavior, pick one behavior in that bucket that you're really not demonstrating very much then. And start practicing that, Because I guarantee you, there's gonna be a time where you're gonna need to back off of that drive, drive, drive energy, and start thinking about people. And if you don't know how to do that, because it's not your modus operandi, you're gonna need... Practice it when it's safe, practice it when it's not a crisis, right? And that's what leaders, I think, you know? Yeah, you can be aware that you've got this tendency and you've got this personality style and you like, you know? You kinda like to do this work in a certain way, but, now how do you turn that really into insight and actually use it as a way to develop yourself and expand your capability as a leader and your confidence. And I think the more you sort of dive into it and look at it, what am I learning growing? Frankly, you become a better coach. You become a better manager because you're really able to see that in other people, and you have more tools in your toolkit to help other people which allows you to build up that legacy of, you know? Helping others and helping them on their path. And it just makes, I don't know, I think it's about... Really embracing leadership for what it could be and not getting stuck in the mud of the parts of our job as leaders and managers that are less joyful, right? Like we've got to all have a higher purpose .
- Yeah, it's... There's has been, I'm not saying necessarily right now, but there's been so much talk about strengths-based leadership and strengths-based models. And I love them and I think one of the challenges that I see come out of people who are really leaning into the strengths-based model is they're not looking at the things that they're not naturally good at and picking behaviors and improving those. It's such a foe, it can be. And I don't know that it's being used correctly when this happens, but I've seen it happen far too often where everyone is just, "This is my strength, let me lean on that. this is my strength, this is what I'm gonna do. That's not my strength, that's not my thing basically". And I love what you're saying, which is great. We need to know what our strengths are and knowing what our strengths are also allows us to see what our weaknesses and opportunities are and improve those in a specific use, that surgical tactical approach, right? What is the behavior that I can use that balances this out for me and not just overly emphasizes the strength part cause that's easy.
- Yeah, and I think again, to me, cause I'm very strengths-based leader. But I think what I do is I really separate out strengths that are skills and knowledge buckets, right? Like when you see somebody who's just got really great strengths in a certain skill area, like they're just really good at, I don't know. Like I've got a colleague who's very, very good at patterning things. Like she's just really good at taking things and sequencing them, and that's one of her strengths. She's she just naturally thinks that, "I'm a great on my feet improvisor, so if you throw a bunch of things and I'm really good at kind of connecting really disparate dots together, and pulling it into something that, you know? Starts to make a bit more sense. So we all have those sort of natural strengths. When we talk about strengths from a behavioral standpoint, my absolute belief now having been in this space for 20 years, is that when we're talking about your strengths and so your approach as a leader, so, you know? Are you that naturally inspiring leader, are you that really deep thought leadership kind of person who's, brings all of the deep thinking to the table. And you're very thoughtful in terms of how you put things. Are you somebody who can really keep your, you know? emotions close to your chest. All of those things that are kind of natural go-to of how we implement our skills, right? Because we can all have you and I could be both great at synthesizing ideas, but maybe how you then communicate those ideas versus how I communicate those ideas. I think you'd be much more thoughtful, and I was gonna say brilliant sounding words. I'd be like, "Wow, we should do this". Or I'd me like, "This is so excitable" So we can be doing the same thing, but it's that how piece. What I know for sure is every... Like, those are your strengths, it's what creates your brand, is what you get known for, it's what people will say about you. But when it's overused, it's gonna be a liability. So my ability to improvise, that's great. And I can improvise, and as a leader, I'm very agile and I let people take risks. And I'm really good at, you know? Supporting that kind of thinking in the organization, And I wanna hear what's new. I'm also though extremely low structure. So what'll happen is, or what used to happen earlier in my career was, we would set our plan for the year, and then I would be in the shower that morning and I'd be thinking about some other idea. And then I would walk in and I'd say to my team, "Oh, I had this really great idea in the shower this morning, and here's my idea. I think we should do this, this and this. And I would do that on a pretty regular basis because I get a lot of energy from that as well. Like I love creating new things, right? And so while I'm all in there doing that, so what does that do for my team? Well, I can tell you what it does for my team. It creates a ton of chaos, because they don't know what the priorities are. They don't know where they should be focusing, right? And so what I had to learn, how to do is to bring more structure, so the behavior I needed to do more of to counter the downside of that overused, innovative, you know? Agile kind of an approach was to bring in a bit more structure. So example, practical examples, so then at my team meetings I always started with, "Here are big rocks, this is what we're focusing on this year. These are our things. As soon as the new idea that I couldn't resist putting on the table, it had to filter through that. How does the tie in, what comes off the plate? So that everybody was staying focused and seeing like, I could connect the dots really quickly to my activities and see how they connected to the big picture. People on my team who are more linear, who are more structured, who were less agile, they couldn't and that's the thing I found with particularly experienced senior executives. It's tough because what you're saying to them often when you look at their feedback and they're told, we need you to be more of this, but your strengths are this, it's usually the dark side of the strength, right? It's one in the same and they don't know what to do with it. They're like, "I don't know where to go with this because I known for this, but now you're telling me I need to do less of it, how do I do that?" And that's the thing, so we always say to people, it's not about watering that part down but it's more, "What can you just start doing a little bit more of?" So for me, because I'm not a structured person, I have to make structure a no brainer, so all my agendas are the same for all of my monthly meetings. I have a cadence with my one-on-ones that the individuals lead not me. our team meetings, I follow the same process every single time So I'm not thinking about it. But then the team, like if you talk to my team and anybody who's worked for me over the years, they would say, "Yeah, lots of ideas on the go, lots of new initiatives on the go, but really clear on where we're going". So the balance of both, and so I think that's where I really separate out like strengths, what do you want to do more of? What can I give you more that's going to fuel what you love to do that zone of genius we wanna get more of the how part of it, how you're doing all those things. You're gonna have strengths there too, but as you go up the food chain , some of those strengths could become liabilities at the next level, and you know? the guru on this is Marshall Goldsmith with his book, "What Got You Here, Won't Get You There".
- Absolutely. And you know? When you read that book, if you're any kind of seasoned leader, I challenge you not to find, I mean, I remember the first time I read, I think there's something like 21 behaviors in there or 22 behaviors. I think I had 16 that I was doing that were derailing behaviors, right? So I think that's the thing that people have to really recognize is that their approach in certain situations is going to be great. Right approach, take it, go for it, do it. But in other situations, mm, maybe you wanna try something else. And that's the practice, right? Practice of that behavior, you know? Like what my husband had to be super intentional about "Let may be more vocal variety, in this situation and stand up in this situation. It feels weird and people say it feels inauthentic cause I'm having to think about it. Well, yeah, you're learning something new. You're in the learning zone of conscious incompetence. You realize you really don't know what you're doing and you're happen to be super conscious about it until it becomes a bit more of a natural go-to for you. And hat's okay.
- Yeah. I think it's a great thing. I think this is a wonderful place to wrap it up. I think it's really powerful. It's kind of ending on the idea of growth mindset and that conscious opportunity for growth, and I love that. And I think it's really valuable, especially in challenging times and our current challenging times the pandemic still. Because little did I know that Six months later, we'd still be talking about the pandemic. That's real. That's a real thing. So besides thanking you, Glain has an incredible book called "The Grassroots Leadership Revolution" Let me try that again, "The Grassroots Leadership Revolution: Build a Peer Coaching Community and Own Your Career". I highly recommend that people check it out, the link to it will be in the show notes. as well, all of your social medias, People can follow you and find you and learn more about The Roundtable, which is an incredible business. And I am so grateful for you for coming on and joining me and having this conversation. It was fascinating per usual, so thank you very much Glain.
- Well, thanks for having me. Always loved talking leadership of with you Celine.
- Same here . Thanks for joining me today on the Leading Through Crisis podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, please take a minute to rate and review it in your podcast app, and you can always learn more about any of our guests at www.leadingthroughcrisis.com.