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Becoming sustainably human at work isn't a small undertaking. It often means letting go of systems and behaviors that don't serve us individually or collectively.
So what do we do? As individuals, as groups of folks, as leaders? How do we carve out space for our humanity while making sure we're not the only ones? How do we thrive in the workplace while not imagining we must be superhuman? How do we cultivate spaces that are generative and healing, creative and extraordinary?
I don't have the answers to those questions. And, to be fair, I don't believe one human can EVER have all the answers to those questions. I'm working through those questions every day.
This podcast curates for you a set of folks with an opinion worth listening to and sharing. So join me as I ask people I admire to share their wisdom with you in accessible doses.
Join me on my quest to become sustainably human at work.
Welcome to What's Leadership?
I'm Liz Wiltsie.
The more I learn about leadership,
the more I'm convinced there's
not a one size fits all solution.
So I am on my own learning journey
and I invite you to join me.
EbonyJanice reminds me that being
open about my journey is important.
Each episode features someone I admire
with actionable insight to share.
So please join me as I
ask what's leadership?
I am thrilled to welcome Carmen
Medina as this week's guest.
Carmen spent 32 years at the CIA you
meet her, you will hardly notice.
She is recognized as a national and
international expert on intelligence
analysis, strategic thinking,
diversity of thought and innovation.
And intrapreneurs in the public sector.
She is the co-author of Rebels at Work: A
Handbook for Leading Change from Within.
Her story as a heretic and change
agent at the CIA is featured in
Wharton School, professor Adam
Grant's bestseller, Originals: How
Non-Conformists Move the World.
Carmen is Puerto Rican by
birth and Texan by nationality.
We're so excited that she's here.
Thank you.
Thank you, Liz, for having me.
Yeah, so let's get to it.
What is the number one channel challenge
that you see leaders face at work?
You know what I want to start macro
and the macro challenge is that
almost everything that they're
being taught or they have been
taught about leadership is wrong.
In my opinion, It's almost like a sham
industry, the leadership development
industry, and it differs from domain
to domain, but there's just a lot about
leadership skills that overemphasizes
the importance of leadership.
Which, I think, given the nature of work
today, that it's so much more fluid.
You can't stop work to have
these leadership moments anymore.
It just doesn't make any sense.
And so I think, you know,
that's the biggest challenge,
the concept of leadership.
The way it's taught, most everything
about it is ill suited if it
was ever well-suited, but it's
ill suited to our world today.
I know that's a way vague answer.
So I'm going to bring it
down to a specific point.
Which is that, If you think about
organizations and corporations,
they tend to value smoothness.
They want things to go smoothly.
Organizations are created to deliver
outcomes at scale and with consistency.
And so leaders get judged.
Even if the corporation never
says it, leaders get judged on how
smooth their team their group is.
And this runs exactly opposite to what
you need when you want to do something new
or you want to innovate because newness
and innovation is almost never smooth.
It's very crunchy, right?
It has ups and downs.
It's uneven.
So that's a specific example
of how everything that
leaders are being told to do.
Almost everything I think is wrong.
Yeah.
So what is your number one sort of tip
for dealing with that in the workplace?
Well, you know, I actually have
three number one tips, cause I, I
thought about it and it's hard for
me to choose among these three.
So the first thing I would say is kind
of the secret, not well understood
leadership, hack is silence, be silent.
Listen more to other people.
There's a great acronym.
I didn't come up with it, but
I just it's like that meme how
old were you when you learned.
Well I was 65, when I
learned this acronym.
Which is, wait, why am I talking?
Wait, and what a great thing
to say to yourself as a leader.
because back to that first point,
what everybody tells you about
leadership is that you're supposed
to set the vision, you know, provide
clear guidance and all this stuff.
And, you know, it's like you have to
impose your will on your employees.
Well, it's a lot more interesting if
you listen to what they have to say.
So I think silence is a
spectacular leadership hack.
Kind of related to silence, the second
one I would say is that when people, when
I was working actively in an organization
and people would ask me what my leadership
philosophy was, I said, conversation.
Conversation is my leadership philosophy.
And if you think about it, silence
should be 50% of every conversation.
Right.
And then the, and then the final thing
I want to say, it's very specific is
that when you're a leader, particularly
if you want to do things differently,
if you want to lead innovation,
You have to realize that the status
quo will control your calendar.
You become a leader and you
inherit all these meetings and
events that you have to go to.
And they all represent what the
status quo is interested in.
So one of my favorite things
to say to leaders is that your
calendar reflects your priorities
and you have to make it so.
Yeah, those are great three tips.
I'm excited that there were
three and not just one.
So what is something that has
impacted the way that you think?
You know, something recent that I read
and there's so much, you know, that
I've read about leadership, you know,
not just books about leadership, which
don't always tend to be that great.
But, just other stuff that
you read fiction or nonfiction
about being a great leader.
But one that is was very recent that
I would have to recommend to people.
It came out in Quartz and it is by an
author named Nora Bateson, B A T E S O N.
She's actually the daughter of, I
think his name is Gregory Bateson.
Who is a famous, very
famous systems thinker.
And it came out in Quartz December
5th, 2018, and the title is It's
Time to Fix Our Toxic Notion
of What Makes a Good Leader.
And it's, you know, it's probably
2000 or 3000 words long, but,
she talks about that, our current
thing, she wants to call leadership.
She wants to call bullshit on our
current concept of leadership.
And, and she actually says that
the very, and I feel this way.
The very, every time I hear the
word leadership, I cringe, I just
go, there's something about what it
connotes now, which is just not right.
Not, not suitable.
And I didn't feel this way 40
years ago, but there's something
about our age, which is different.
So if I were to point to something
that everybody can get access to
for free, I would look up that
Quartz article by Nora Bateson.
Perfect.
So what should I have
asked you that I didn't?
You mentioned that I, co-wrote the
book Rebels at Work and, you know,
my experience as a heretic at CIA.
I know your audience are
Generation Z and Millennial.
And, I have to just quickly, I
have to tell you a funny story.
I about a month ago.
I had my first real long
conversation with Generation Z.
They were like just
getting out of high school.
I was at a friend's house for dinner and
it was a really interesting conversation.
I mean, I immediately felt.
You know, anecdotally that they had a
different outlook from the Millennials
that I'm much more familiar with.
And at some point they started coaching
me on how economies work and I was
sitting there, you know, they were
like, Generation Z-splaining to me
how, how the economy actually works.
And I was, you know, I didn't say
anything, but I was thinking, okay,
I've lived in this world for 65 years
and I spent 32 of them at CIA thinking
about lots of issues like this, but
I'm just going to sit here and listen.
But anyway, that, that
was just amusing to me.
So I think a lot of how, how these younger
people are entering the workforce now,
although the Millennials are turning 40.
Like right now, or next year, this
is the time when they turn 40.
So they're really the, the
mature part of the workforce.
But you enter the workforce and you
think people want to hear your new ideas.
And then you very quickly get the
disillusioned much of the time
when you realize people don't want
to hear your brilliant new ideas.
And so that's sort of my experience of
being a heretic and a rebel at work.
So I wanted to just say very
quickly, some really quick hints.
Number one: if you're the
smart person in the room.
If you think you really know how
to fix a situation, it's your
responsibility to make sure you
have a productive conversation.
So often times you hear someone walk away
and they go, Oh, they didn't listen to me.
They didn't pay attention.
What's wrong with them?
No, that's the wrong attitude.
You need to think.
I didn't do a very good job
of delivering that message.
What could I have done better.
Two, when you're offering up your new
ideas, think about whether or not that new
idea you're offering up is theological in
nature by which I mean, that's heretical
to the very essence of that organization.
Like the internet was a
heretical idea to the CIA.
Doesn't mean that you shouldn't advance
that idea, but you have to realize that
theological change is really hard and
you have to understand, number one,
that is actually theological in nature.
And then the third really quick
hint for, you know, people with
new ideas in the workforce is to
always remember, it's not about you.
And your, you know, you tend to think
it's about you and about your brilliance
and how people aren't listening to you.
It's really about everybody else.
And so the very first thing that
you should try to do is make
your idea, somebody else's idea.
Make your idea community property.
So I wanted to throw those.
I think pretty simple, but
hard to do ideas out there.
It's super hard to do, but
really, really valuable.
And particularly the theological idea.
I think about that a lot.
And being able, just to know when
that's, what you're doing right.
When you're threatening
someone's reality-ish.
That's it.
Great formulation, when you're
threatening someone's reality.
That's right.
Right.
So you have a free
resource for our audience?
Yes, my co-author and I, Lois Kelly.
We have, we run a
website rebelsatwork.com.
It's completely free.
There is nothing hidden in there.
We blog with new content, probably
two or three times a month.
But we have an archive of content
now that goes back years and years
and years across all sorts of
leadership and change agent topics.
And you can also follow us on
Twitter and we have a Facebook group
and they're all completely free.
And, you know, we don't sell chotchkies
or anything at Christmas time during
the holidays, so totally free.
Fantastic.
I know I've, I've looked at
rebels at work obviously.
And there are really great free
resources in there, so, yeah.
And obviously there will be
links to that, in the show notes.
So the last question I have
for you is what is something
that you're grappling with?
Well, you know, learning all the
time is something that's just, I
guess my nature and I was asked
to speak earlier this month at a
software conference in Malmo, Sweden.
And I was like, I was the oldest
person in that conference, I
think for sure by 10 years.
And I thought, well,
what are these people?
Why are they going to want
to hear, listen to me?
And, you know, and in fact, my talks went
well, but that's not the important point.
The important point is what I learned from
them because this was software developers.
And I learned a lot about how
software developers are grappling
with the concept of leadership in
the software field, because software
must be continuously developed.
You can't stop the process to have quality
control that, that, that is problematic.
And so they are working on new concepts
of team management like Kanban and SCRUM.
And I, you know, have always been
grappling with this idea that how,
how does leadership work when you
have to have a continuous process?
And it doesn't really the, the
ancient concepts that we have don't
really work when you're trying to
do something in a continuous way.
And so I grappled with that.
Yeah, well.
Carmen, thank you so,
so much for being here.
This was great.
Thank you, Liz.
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