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[00:00:01] Announcer: This is the Build A Vibrant Culture Podcast, your source for the strategies, systems, and smarts you need to turn possibility into purpose. Every week we dive into dynamic conversations. As our host, Nicole Greer, interviews leadership and business experts. They're here to shed light on practical solutions to the challenges of personal and professional development. Now, here's your host, a professional speaker, coach, and consultant, Nicole Greer.
[00:00:31] Nicole Greer: Welcome everybody to the Build A Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer, and today we have another amazing guest on the show. Look what I got in the mail, everybody. I got this amazing book, The 10 Toughest Leadership Problems and How To Solve Them. This thing is full of practical, applicable things that you need to get your leadership rolling.
[00:00:54] Okay, so I've got Dr. Katie Best with me today. Before I introduce her, let me read her bio. She's pretty impressive gal. So Dr. Katie Best is the founder and director of Katie Best Associates, a leadership development consultancy that works with executives, senior leaders and business owners at companies including KPMG, EY, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Verizon, Oxfam, NHS, and many others. In addition, she is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics. We all need your address. We want to come to London. Okay. Alright. Where she heads the MBA Essentials Executive Education Program and she is a visiting senior research fellow at the King's College in London. She's the author of The Ten Toughest Leadership Problems, a practical, engaging self coaching handbook. All right, so like I said, this is a handbook. So this is a book you don't read and stick it back on the shelf. You got it sitting on your desk and you're using it. So welcome to the show, Katie. I'm so glad you're here.
[00:01:54] Katie Best: Thank you so much for a lovely introduction.
[00:01:56] Nicole Greer: Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. So, um, I, I went to London. I'm gonna say 25 years ago, and I haven't been back, so this is the saddest story ever. But like, I have such fond memories to this day. So, uh, I, I definitely need your address, but you can give it to me later. All right. So.
[00:02:13] Katie Best: Definitely do, and when you come to London, we have to meet for coffee in person.
[00:02:17] Nicole Greer: All right. We will do it. We will do it. Absolutely. Okay. So this book is, is a handbook. It's something that people can put to work immediately in their life. They can read a chapter and then they can start to work. But you, in the very first introduction, you talk about your S.O.L.V.E. framework and nobody loves a framework better than Nicole Greer. I mean, something I can memorize, you know, help me get it in my brain is really helpful. So S.O.L.V.E. is actually an acronym for the steps that I take with each problem. Do I have that right? Absolutely. Okay. Fantastic. All right, so let's work through S.O.L.V.E., and everybody get your pens and pencils ready right now because you're gonna want to write this down.
[00:02:58] So the S is about, in S.O.L.V.E. is State the problem. So talk about why I need to do that first.
[00:03:05] Katie Best: Yeah. So I find that when leaders come to me, they often have a really messy jumble of stuff that's going on. And in a coaching session, they might spend 10 minutes laying out this problem for me. But you can't solve a problem like that. You need something really pithy that you can start to pick apart. So by encouraging leaders to start off by just stating their problem in one to two sentences, and at that point just talking about what they've observed and what the consequences of it are. So for example, my team are really in conflict with one another, and it's meant that three people have left in the last three months. That would be just literally the, the observed problem and the consequence of it, rather than thinking at that point about causes or about solutions. They're for later.
[00:03:54] Nicole Greer: Okay. Yeah. So get it straight, get it simple, get it in your head and then you can stop. 'Cause what we do is if we don't get it laid out, we kind of swirl around it. You know, is this what's going on? Right? So I love that. And you put a quote in here and everybody, it's on page four from General Motors, Charles Kettering. He said, "A problem well stated is a problem half solved." I thought that was a great quote that you stuck in there. I think that's absolutely true. Okay. All right. So you state the problem that you have as a leader, and the next thing you need to do is O in S.O.L.V.E. S-O, open the box. What do you mean by open the box?
[00:04:31] Katie Best: So this is where you're allowed to start thinking about causes. So as a leader, you're gonna get your problem statement, your short one or two sentences, and you're going to start to think about why that might be happening, what is it that's really going on in detail.
[00:04:45] So, for example, if you've got a team who are really disengaged. Why are they disengaged? What's going on? Someone I was coaching this morning, he's got a team of 18 and he thinks about seven of them are really not at the moment engaged at all. So with a problem like that and opening the box, you would potentially be talking to those team members. You would be looking at research that's already been done around what means that people are disengaged what kinds of things cause it. And by the end of the stage, coming to some conclusions around what might be at play, you know, is it that you've got team members who feel they're not being paid enough? Or have you got team members who've fallen out of love with the mission statement of the organization? What is it that's taking place?
[00:05:27] Nicole Greer: Yeah, that's so important. And when you say open the box, you know, the first thing I thought of was like the monopoly box or you know, the game that we played when we were a kid and like the first 15 minutes, like you're pulling stuff out and setting it up and you're like, what are the rules and how do we play? Right? So I love, um, the vision of Open the Box and, you know, I had this grandmother, Katie, she played all the games with me. I'm so grateful. So.
[00:05:52] Katie Best: I love a board game. I, yeah, I absolutely love a board game. Yeah. So good. Yeah.
[00:05:58] Nicole Greer: But I love the idea that that's really what we're trying to do. Because I mean, like, you'll play a game, but you're like, okay, now what's the rule about that? You know, so what's the rule about employee engagement? What's the rule about this or that? So that's so good. All right, so the next thing is the L: Lay out your solution. You say in here, "You'll originate a solution based on the problem you've identified, and you'll make sure it's a solution that looks as though it will work for your context, right, that you did in the open the box. So talk a little bit about laying out your solution.
[00:06:27] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:06:27] Nicole Greer: How do we find that solution and, and what, how do we go forward?
[00:06:31] Katie Best: Yeah. So very often some of the solution will have already come to you when you are opening the box. So you'll have done some reading on engagement. You'll find out that people might not be engaged if they don't buy into the mission. And so you'll know that part of your solution needs to be helping those people fall back in love with the mission of the organization again. Some of it won't have already been revealed, and so then you need to be doing a bit more research, a bit more digging around what can be done to improve engagement or reduce conflict or get people more in line with the strategy or whatever the problem is that you've found at the open the box stage. And often there'll be multiple solutions, so you won't just be doing one thing. You'll need to do four or five different actions to try and S.O.L.V.E the problem statement.
[00:07:17] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. And, um, I just want to poke on something that she said. She just worked it in there real quick. And it was in the last thing, open the box. What do I tell all y'all. That's how we talk in Concord, North Carolina, Katie, all y'all. What do I tell all y'all all the time? Leaders read. That's why I bring you all these amazing authors, uh, to the podcast. And, um, she, she said, you know, based on what you've read. I love that she just like worked that right in there and see, so that's the thing. Leaders, I think sometimes, Katie, what? What's your experience? They're just like, we ought to do this.
[00:07:50] Katie Best: Yeah, completely. They jump straight to a solution without giving any pause to the fact that maybe someone's faced that problem before and maybe someone might have something useful to say about that problem that they faced before. Yeah.
[00:08:03] Nicole Greer: That's exactly right. Yeah, so, you know, slow your roll. That's the other thing I say all the time. Slow down, everybody. Slow down because there's probably some genius laying around out there for you to take. Okay. Then the V: Venture forth! So I love that language, "Venture forth!" So what do you mean by that?
[00:08:20] Katie Best: And also with an exclamation mark. Let's just be clear. Oh,
[00:08:24] Nicole Greer: I'm adding two exclamation points and then I'm putting a smiley. Okay, good.
[00:08:29] Katie Best: Amazing. Um, yeah, so, and the exclamation mark is there for a reason, because I think on one end of the spectrum we've got leaders who just are always acting and not thinking about a good solution. They just go straight to action. But then there's another group who just ruminate constantly and don't actually get on with what they need to do. And so, mm-hmm. It is a reminder that once you've got your solution, you then actually need to apply your solution and you need to take those steps that you think are gonna help solve your problem. But also in this stage, recognizing that once you start to put a solution in place, quite often other stuff will happen. So you might not have thought that by, um, having a conversation about how great the mission of the organization is, that's gonna mean that, uh, three of your team members suddenly want promotions because they realize that they really love it and they really want to stick around.
[00:09:20] So there'll be things that happen as a knock on effect of what you've suggested. Um, and you need to be alert for those obstacles, those changes in direction that happen once you are venturing forth.
[00:09:34] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And well, it's just like taking a walk in the woods, you know? It's like you think you're going down this path and then you come to a crossroads and you're like, oh, I didn't even know I would have this option, or I didn't know that this would pop up. Right? You know, or there's a bear in the woods or whatever. So, um, yeah. And I think the word venture, you know, help me, Katie, doesn't it come from like the same as adventure, adventure. Yeah, I think so. You're on an adventure. You're on an adventure here.
[00:10:00] Katie Best: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, I think of a night on horseback, the big kind of jousting pole, ready to go and do whatever he needs to do.
[00:10:10] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah. And I have this mentor, her name's Anne. And when you start to venture forth as the V says in S.O.L.V.E. from Katie Best. She says, you know, we never know. Don't think you know what's gonna happen. Just, just stay with it. Right? Okay. And then the final thing in your S.O.L.V.E. is Elevate your learning. Oh, and I'm just such a learning geek. I'm just a giant student over here. All right, so what? What do you mean by that?
[00:10:37] Katie Best: So you've done all this stuff to solve your problem, and you'll have got new knowledge, you'll have gained some new skills, you'll have a new network. Don't just put that all back in the box and shut it again, like, don't just return to where you were before. Think about what you can do, what you've learned through the process that you can continue to use. So you might have discovered, for example, in mediating a conflict between two of your team members, that you love that stuff. You might want to go and train to be a mediator and like that, you know? Or you might have discovered by helping a team member out that you want to be your company's mental health first aider. What skillset, what things have you learned about yourself, or what do you want to continue to apply so that this problem was part of a broader career journey or learning journey, rather than just a problem to get over and then get on with things.
[00:11:28] Nicole Greer: Yeah, I love that. I love that. Yeah, so pay attention to what's going on when you're solving these problems. And, I don't know, I can't remember what it's called. In, in the Army, you go into, you go on a mission, you're gonna solve this problem. Um, and then afterwards. They come back and they debrief it and it's got a name. Do you know what the name is? I can't.
[00:11:48] Katie Best: I was gonna say, do you mean a debrief? And then you said debrief, so no, I don't know the name.
[00:11:53] Nicole Greer: I think they have a fancy name, but it is a debrief. But they come back and they're like, okay, well here's how we did the S and the O and the L and the V and so now we're doing the E. I think, you know, and that's another thing, um, because sometimes you're find yourself fixing the same problem twice.
[00:12:09] Katie Best: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:12:10] Nicole Greer: And you're like, wait. I'm having Groundhog Day here. All right. So that's really important. Okay. So that is her model. All right. Did everybody write that down? S.O.L.V.E.? Okay. All right. Now let's talk through the 10 problems. The first one is personal effectiveness.
[00:12:27] Katie Best: Yes.
[00:12:27] Nicole Greer: So how can I be a leader with --here's your SAT Word of the day-- efficacy. All right. All right. All right. So Katie, talk about personal effectiveness. What, what might be the problem there?
[00:12:42] Katie Best: Yeah, so I find that people, uh, expect a lot of themselves or work for organizations that expect a lot of them or both. And this is often about recognizing what's realistic and what's not realistic, both of ourselves and what the boundaries that we put in, but then also making sure that we are doing all the sensible things that allow us to maximize our efficiency. So, you know, not getting distracted by all the beeps and buzzes and bings and whatever's on your phone.
[00:13:13] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:13:13] Katie Best: All of those, all of those, turn them all off. Um, and making sure that we're like really getting ourselves in the best possible place to be able to get into a state of flow and to do our best possible work. So I think the, the problems come as like twofold. They come from ourselves, they also come from our organizations and the solutions are very often about establishing boundaries, both with other people, but also with your tech.
[00:13:40] Nicole Greer: Yeah. I totally agree. And, when you're talking about distractions, uh, I just want to tell y'all a fun story. So I worked with this company, MSC, over here in Davidson, North Carolina. And, Katie, it was a sea of cubicles. I mean, like just so many dang cubicles. Anyway, this poor guy sat on the corner cubicle as you come off the elevator and you like come into the main area where the cubicles were and he's on the corner. What does almost everybody do? All day long.
[00:14:11] Katie Best: Hi Doug. Hi Doug.
[00:14:13] Nicole Greer: Yeah, poor Doug. It was terrible. And so, he was like, I can't get anything done 'cause I can't think straight for more than one minute, you know? So we ended up getting him a sign system. And he would put this little whiteboard up and it would say, good morning. I'm fine. Hope you are too. Keep moving.
[00:14:30] Katie Best: Amazing.
[00:14:33] Nicole Greer: And I mean, you know, so, his personal effectiveness went up majorly after that. So, uh, I love this thing about personal effectiveness and I, and I gotta tell you, Katie, I'm, I, I'm tired of hearing how overwhelmed everybody is. Like, we really need to use those boundaries you're talking about, do you have a example or a thought about putting a proper boundary in place? 'Cause I know when people heard that, they're like, tell me how to do that.
[00:14:58] Katie Best: Yeah, yeah. So I think first of all, it's recognizing what kind of person you are. So one of the studies that I thought was most interesting around this is that some of us are splitters and some of us are blenders. So if you are a splitter, you want your working day to start at, let's say nine, end at five or six, and no work on either side of those boundaries. If you are a blender, then you want to do an hour when you wake up, take the dog for a walk, do three more hours, go to the gym at lunchtime, couple of hours, cook dinner, uh, a few more hours, eat dinner, a few more. You know, and you are interspersing work and leisure. The problem with lots of companies is they're designed for either splitters or for blenders and they don't recognize which we are. So I think one of the first things you need to do with boundaries is get real about what type of person you are.
[00:15:46] If you're a blender, that is absolutely fine, but then where are you getting your head space from? I think it's also about having conversations with managers, and managers being good role models. So if you have got a team, start by role modeling that behavior for your team. I've had so many people say to me, I don't want to be promoted in our organization 'cause I don't want to do the amount of work that my boss does. So you destroy your job pipeline because no one wants your job. So I think unfortunately it's out those conversations and say what you can achieve in the long term. And of course it's okay for you to be a busy week, but that you've gotta come back to that base point of what is healthy and normal for you.
[00:16:32] Nicole Greer: Yeah, I think that's so good. And, um, I immediately thought of a leader that, that is the leader that works all the time, but loves it. So he doesn't have an issue, you know?
[00:16:40] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:16:41] Nicole Greer: But he put on his email for a long time, you know, if this email sent outside of office hours, do not take it as a prompt that you need to return it at three in the morning or whatever. Yeah. And I'll, and I said to him, I said, why don't you just use that function on Microsoft Outlook where you can just send it at 9:02 in the morning?
[00:17:04] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:17:04] Nicole Greer: He's like, I didn't even know that was there. I'm like, okay. You know, so you can do some things that help you be more effective. Right? Because you know, you're talking about effectiveness two ways. You know, like you don't have your boundaries in place and then you've got this leader who is out of bounds. Right. Okay.
[00:17:22] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:17:23] Nicole Greer: All right. So, so good. So can everybody relate to that? And I've never heard of a splitter and a blender, and so thank you for that. I am putting my Katie Best new tip in my pocket. I think that's fantastic.
[00:17:33] Katie Best: There you go.
[00:17:33] Nicole Greer: Alright. Okay. The next problem is decision making. Oh my gosh. And this is overwhelming because how many decisions do we make in a day? It's amazing. How could we use S.O.L.V.E. to make decisions?
[00:17:45] Katie Best: Yeah. I had to do loads of learning for this chapter.
[00:17:48] Nicole Greer: Wonderful.
[00:17:49] Katie Best: Which was great. It was really great. What I discovered was that when we've got problems with decision making. Often what's happening is that exactly that thing that we've already talked about here, which is we're going too fast or we're going too slow. And so matching the speed of your decision to what the situation requires is a really useful thing.
[00:18:10] Also, agonize over that aren't important, so like where am I gonna go on holiday? Am I gonna go to Rome or am I gonna go to Paris? It doesn't really matter. You are probably gonna have a time in both places, so it doesn't need a huge amount of deliberation. You know, should we go on supplier B? If there's nothing much in it, you don't need to agonize over the tiny details, just choose one. Um, and I also really like the principle that Amazon used, where if it's a two way door decision i.e. you can make the decision and if it's not a good one, you can reverse it and go through a different door, then don't worry about it either.
[00:18:49] Nicole Greer: Of course.
[00:18:49] Katie Best: Just make that decision. And again, so often like we over which job to take or you know, what career we're gonna start off in at the beginning of our career. These are reversible decisions. It takes a little bit of time and effort, but they're very reversible. So we probably don't need to stress about them in quite the way we do.
[00:19:09] Nicole Greer: Yeah, so I think what Katie Best just told y'all is you can change your mind.
[00:19:14] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:19:15] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah. And I'll tell you, you mentioned personality, like, you know, splitters and blenders. I think that's probably got a little personality sprinkled in that splitter blender thing. Um, but like also with, uh, decision making, you know, I've been married a long time, Katie, and I'm one of these people that likes the Amazon idea. Like, let's try this. Oh, I didn't like that. Let me try that. You know, I'm gonna be trying on things, but my husband is like, I thought you decided to do X. Are you not doing x? I'm like, no, I'm not doing X. Did you change your mind? And I'm like, yes, I did. So I think sometimes it's weird when people see the different styles, like people who are just toe the line and people who are like, no, I'm trying stuff on. Um, it's probably best to do a blend.
[00:20:01] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:20:01] Nicole Greer: Or look at the scenario, right?
[00:20:03] Katie Best: Yeah, exactly. Fit the context with what you are trying to decide on as to what approach you take.
[00:20:08] Nicole Greer: Yeah, for sure, for sure. And then I don't want to gloss over that you also put in here quite a bit about biases.
[00:20:15] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:20:15] Nicole Greer: So will you just tap on that for a second? 'cause in our decision making, we've got a lot of bias.
[00:20:21] Katie Best: Yeah. We've got so many biases. Blimey. To use a very English expression, blimey. There are lots and lots and lots of biases, like such a wide range of things, you know. We're overly optimistic. We like people who are really similar to us. We use the information that we've seen most recently as a basis for making decisions. I mean, there's some of the more common ones, the list goes on, subject to the, I'm not biased bias, which is the most dangerous bias of all!
[00:20:49] Nicole Greer: That's really good too. I'm going to write that one down. The I'm not biased bias. Yeah. And, you know, um, we really gotta get a handle on the lenses that we look through, especially leaders. Right? You know, you gotta get a real handle on, uh, how you see things and invite other people to give their opinion.
[00:21:10] That's why this whole thing. You know, diversity is so under the gun, but like diversity of perspective is so helpful in decision making.
[00:21:20] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:21:21] Nicole Greer: Right.
[00:21:21] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:21:22] Nicole Greer: And, and you gotta be the kind of leader that bring wants that otherwise everybody's like, oh, I agree with Katie.
[00:21:27] Katie Best: Definitely. You wouldn't really, yeah. Totally. All that strong psychological safety and that feeling that someone really will speak up with a different opinion is exactly what you want.
[00:21:38] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah. 'cause otherwise, if everybody just agrees with you, like, you know, back in the break room 10 minutes later, they're like, this is the dumbest idea ever.
[00:21:46] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:21:47] Nicole Greer: They gotta be careful. All right, so the third problem is influence. Okay. And one of my favorite authors other than Katie, Best, everybody other than Katie Best, one of my favorite authors, um, John Maxwell. He says that, you know, influence is leadership. Nothing more, nothing less, always will be.
[00:22:05] So, um, talk about influence. How can I open my box on my influence?
[00:22:10] Katie Best: Yeah. So people really want more influence with their seniors. That's a big thing. And they also really want to be more influential with their juniors, but get stressed by the fact that now, in most cultures, you can't just tell someone to do something. It makes them cross and annoyed and they don't want to do it. So you have to win their hearts and their minds as to why they're gonna do this thing. Um, and people so often fall back on rational influence techniques. So in other words, using data. Even with the most senior person, generally data isn't the most effective.
[00:22:49] The most effective things are the softer skills, so being really inspiring, painting an amazing picture about what the future's gonna look like, and also just being very nice and likable. People really want to do things for you if they think you're a nice human being, that they can trust.
[00:23:06] Nicole Greer: Yes. Yes. And I think that last thing, you're, you're just laying out there at the end. It's absolutely huge. And I will always say to people, you know, like, it's being user friendly.
[00:23:16] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:23:17] Nicole Greer: You know, like if I call up Katie, she's like, Hey Nicole, what do you need? It's almost like instantaneous that like she's here to help, you know? Uh, that can go just such a long way in your career.
[00:23:27] All right, so that's influence. And so, uh, and y'all we're just going through this pretty quickly, but I want to tell you there's this whole thing on page, uh, 73, 74, 75, 76, um, about increasing the breadth of your influence techniques. So, gosh, I don't want you to miss, like there's a huge worksheet in here really for you to put your head around, um, to increase your influence. I just think it's fantastic. So.
[00:23:57] Katie Best: When I workshops on that, it's such a game changer for people. They come in,
[00:24:01] Nicole Greer: Oh, talk about it.
[00:24:02] Katie Best: People that they feel as though they really more influence with. We go. Do that, the thing that 73, 74, 75, so that you know that if you, if you want to try and be more ingratiating or you want to build coalitions, here's how to do it.
[00:24:18] They walk out of the workshop and they go, I just feel so different. I'm literally now going out there because I get that there's particular levers that I need to press to get people to do things, and they feel really empowered and I love that. And often I'll just do this, it's like a one hour lunchtime thing, and I'll get a message by the end of the day with someone going, I went into my meeting, blah, blah, blah, and this good thing happened because I was using influence techniques, which is just amazing.
[00:24:43] Nicole Greer: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, the old model of leadership, a lot of times people looked at it was autocratic, you know? Yeah. So look that one up, everybody. Autocratic. Which back in the day, it, it kind was that way. Just do what I say, shut up and do what I say. Yeah. Not as I do, that whole thing or whatever.
[00:25:04] Um, but that's dead. That's, that's the thing Katie was talking about at the beginning of this little section that we're talking about on influence, where like people are irritated by that. They're like, I don't need that crap. I'll go somewhere else.
[00:25:16] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:25:16] Nicole Greer: They're out. Okay. Very good. All right, so problem four is individual performance.
[00:25:23] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:25:23] Nicole Greer: Individual performance. Okay. And don't miss that a lot of these problems that Katie's got in here. The first one was about personal effectiveness, the last one was about influence, and now this is about your individual performance. So leaders really have to, um, geez, everybody lead by example.
[00:25:42] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:25:42] Nicole Greer: So talk--
[00:25:43] Katie Best: Definitely.
[00:25:44] Nicole Greer: So talk about individual performance. Talk about that one.
[00:25:47] Katie Best: Yeah. So this chapter's very much about what happens when you've got a team member who maybe isn't performing to the level that you expect or that you've been promised. Um, and so it's encouraging leaders to recognize where someone's performance is weak. So where their open box is really getting down into the data and the evidence about what's going wrong, not relying on hearsay. I think one of the most dangerous things a leader can do is have one team member come to them saying the other person's not working hard and then taking that as fact rather than digging into what's actually happening. But it happens so often. So really trying to work out where the performance is lacking and then thinking about what the causes of that underperformance might be. So is it that they've been over promoted or is it that some training hasn't been provided that they were promised, or maybe they're just completely unaware of what's expected? Or the work pressures too much and there's loads of different reasons. I think this is a very practical chapter 'cause it's kind of going, once you pinpoint the exact reason why someone's performance is weak, then often the solution is quite straightforward. And either they'll respond well to that solution, and great, their performance is turned around. Or they won't, and they'll need some sort of, well, in, in Europe, some sort of performance management program, which might ultimately, six months later lead to their dismissal, but I understand that in the US there is a quicker route if someone's not performing. You can get rid of them quickly.
[00:27:23] Nicole Greer: Yeah, absolutely. And the thing that I think is so good is you say on page 115, you say, "Positive feedback is far more helpful than developmental feedback. Create a climate for performance improvement." Okay, everybody, there's my favorite two words on the planet. Um, I don't think performance improvement should be done once people are already in trouble. I think performance improvement starts. Day one. Day one, it's like, okay, we hired you because we think you're awesome, but here's what we're gonna do to make you even more awesomer. You know, it's like this continuous coaching thing. And I know Katie loves coaching like me. Um, so giving lots of positive, immediate evidence-based feedback, which is Nicole Greer C3, right? What are the circumstances? What is the conduct and what are the consequences of this conduct? Right? So I love that. Yeah. So I love positive feedback.
[00:28:16] Katie Best: Amazing. We're sending each other high fives over the, over the screen.
[00:28:20] Nicole Greer: Okay. We're on the YouTube high fiving. Come over and join us. Okay. Very good.
[00:28:24] All right, so problem number five is engagement and oh my gosh, everywhere we go, the engagement, the engagement, the Society for Human Resource Management, everybody tells us this is a problem. Katie's got an answer. What do you think about engagement, Katie?
[00:28:38] Katie Best: You know, I, I see this really, really often. This has been such a theme in the last couple of weeks for me with different people I've been coaching, and I think where leaders really go wrong is they try and treat the whole team as one homogenous group. You gotta treat them as individuals. That's,
[00:28:57] Nicole Greer: That's right .
[00:28:57] Katie Best: Key lesson here. And you've gotta try and make jobs as interesting and engaging as you can with, you know, a variety of tasks and lots of instant feedback, and a sense that the work really matters to the overall intentions of the organization, the strategy, what the organization cares about.
[00:29:18] And so, yeah. If I could give one thing here, it's, it's look at the individual, don't think you've got a team problem with engagement. Think that you've got 11 individual problems with engagement. 'cause they won't all be coming from the same place.
[00:29:32] Nicole Greer: I love it. Yeah, that's exactly right. And the first thing you say when you open the box is perhaps the job of this person lacks a sense of importance. So I just want to poke on that for a minute because one of the things that I share when I'm working with groups, and I'm sure you do this too, Katie, is like a lot of people have no idea, don't even know what the business does.
[00:29:54] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:29:55] Nicole Greer: Like they've got some job over here in a cubicle like I was saying before, and like they don't understand how their work affects this team.
[00:30:04] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:30:04] Nicole Greer: And impacts, they never see a customer ever.
[00:30:07] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:30:07] Nicole Greer: They have no idea what the customer is doing or how it all works. Or they've got a slight feeling for what's going on. But nobody is sharing with them how valuable they are.
[00:30:20] Katie Best: Yeah. Yeah. And I've actually heard, uh, I remember reading something in Harvard Business Review from one of the CEOs of a big pharma and
[00:30:30] Nicole Greer: Yeah.
[00:30:30] Katie Best: Talking about how in their organization, someone might be doing a really very specific job, but all the photos on the walls are of people who've been saved by their vaccines or treated by some other element of their medication and who maybe are alive who would not have been alive if it weren't for the treatment. Which, it's a great to be in a situation where you can put something like that on the wall, but what's the equivalent for your particular job?
[00:30:56] Nicole Greer: Oh.
[00:30:58] Announcer: Are you ready to build your vibrant culture? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with their strategies, systems, and smarts to increase clarity, accountability, energy, and results. Your organization will get lit from within! Email her at nicole@vibrantculture.com and be sure to check out Nicole's TEDx talk at vibrantculture.com.
[00:31:25] Nicole Greer: All right, so Katie, on page 125, you have A through M, and I bet you if you'd had more time, you could do A through Z. It says, ask a team member to look through a list of motivating factors, because a lot of times leaders think, again, a bias like all team members are motivated by money. That's what everybody always tells me. And I'm like, that's not even true.
[00:31:47] Katie Best: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Completely. I think we all just assume that everyone is motivated by the same thing that motivates us, and it's just nonsense, you know? So I might be motivated by money, but my team member might not be thinking about that at all. They might be completely motivated by wanting to help people or doing a really technically difficult job.
[00:32:11] Nicole Greer: Absolutely. And like we all need money. I mean, heck, we got house payments and car payments and credit card payments and all the payments, but um, you know, a lot of people, they want that thing that we mentioned earlier, like interesting work. They want somebody to mentor them, like that's the stage they're in, you know, is they want somebody to help them. So, um, check that out on page 125. All right, so that's problem number five.
[00:32:34] Let's go to problem number six. Problem number six is teamwork. And, boy, um, there's been a bazillion dollars made people trying to help leaders get teamwork cooking. How can a leader just do this themselves?
[00:32:49] Katie Best: Yeah, so I think the big thing with teamwork is you want to make sure that you've got a team with diverse opinions, with good psychological safety, who are prepared to take risks in front of one another. And you don't want a team with lots of fractures. You want a team that tends to work well as a team. And anyone who says that conflict is good, is totally overstating the picture. It's not good. Like there's a fraction that's not bad. But generally you want a team that aren't outwardly conflicting.
[00:33:28] Nicole Greer: Yeah. And I, and I think the thing about quote unquote, good conflict is the part you're talking about when you say they have diverse opinions. But it's kinda like if, you know, Katie is saying, Nicole, we should do this. And I say, I don't know, we should do that. It, it's not that we don't like each other because we have differing ideas. It's that we're just kind of using our brains, you know?
[00:33:49] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:33:49] Nicole Greer: To throw that out there. Um, uh, but then eventually the leader has to say, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna go with Katie's idea. But then Nicole has enough maturity, emotional intelligence, positive intelligence to go, okay, I'm in. We'll do what Katie wants to do, and I don't go bad mouthing it and have like poor character traits back here.
[00:34:11] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:34:11] Nicole Greer: You know, I I, it's like you have mature adult high quality people. And there's this quote that I heard that Don Shula, he, he, I think he's passed away, but he was like this big, uh, American football coach or whatever, and they asked him that, that he had a whole season totally undefeated, NFL football season. And uh, they asked him, Don, how'd you do that? And he said, oh, I had really good players.
[00:34:39] Katie Best: Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's, yeah, there's such a truth in that. Like you, you've gotta have the right building blocks there, and then as a good leader, you've gotta let them get on with what they need to do.
[00:34:54] Nicole Greer: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So like, they're mature, they get it, they got the skills, you've been working with them one-on-one, you know, that's the engagement problem you're doing great. Okay. All right. I, we had to get to number seven because I don't know what's going on in England, but lemme tell you, in America, this hybrid, remote, come back to work is just all boogered up.
[00:35:17] Katie Best: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:35:18] Nicole Greer: It's a mess. It's a mess. All right, so what do you think about that?
[00:35:24] Katie Best: So it almost wasn't in the book. My publisher was like,
[00:35:28] Nicole Greer: Really?
[00:35:28] Katie Best: It's too zeitgeisty and it's not gonna be a problem in a while. And I was like, I beg to differ. I think we've got this problem, it's gonna be around for quite some time.
[00:35:39] Um, so it went in. But what I think is interesting about it is it's a sum of lots of the other problems. It almost, it's more that it makes the other problems worse. So if you've got conflict, the conflict gets worse 'cause no one can see any body language and everyone assumes the worst of one another. If you've got culture issues that no one understands the culture they amplify because you haven't got all those cues around you in your office about what the culture around here means. So I think lots of it shares commonalities, but what I think also we need to think about is around how, depending on where we are in our life, we will like or dislike hybrid probably differently to other people. I'm not generally into the research on generations. I think we should focus more on what unites us than what divides us.
[00:36:27] Nicole Greer: Oh, I agree. Amen. Amen, amen.
[00:36:30] Katie Best: Yeah. But I do think that there, you know, there's something to be said if you are a young single person living on their own, your mental health-- the research shows that it's just much more punishing for you to be working completely remotely than it is for someone who's living in a busy household. They've got different problems. They're gonna be struggling to get any time and space to do quiet work, but it's, it's gonna have different sorts of impacts. And so recognizing some of those contextual factors and as a leader creating conversations around that and trying to create work environments that support people no matter what they need is the ideal, but whilst also recognizing that some work types just don't work well for hybrids or remote and some work much better.
[00:37:16] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I had a leader during the pandemic, Katie, and his company is a TV station. And they are putting commercials on the air. They do actual production of their own shows that go on the air. I mean, they're very creative and, uh, you know, I was talking to him, I'm like, okay, so the pandemic's over apparently. You know, and he's like, he's like, yep. And everybody's coming back to work. He was just like, there is no way on God's green earth that we can be as creative as we've ever been if we aren't around each other.
[00:37:50] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:37:50] Nicole Greer: You know, he's like, the best ideas happened when somebody's like, buy me a coffee. I left my wallet in my car, you know. And they're having their coffee or whatever and, um, and so he said, I can go back and look at the numbers before the pandemic, during the pandemic, and after. He said, at first everybody was like, Hey, everybody else gets to stay home. Uh, but after they got back, like just, they did so good because they got back in there. So I, I think it depends on the work you do so many different things. Um, but I love what you said about a young person. I think, if I think of myself at 21 years old, I needed to go to work so I could watch a 30-year-old. Do their, how they candle themselves, you know?
[00:38:31] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:38:31] Nicole Greer: I'm like, oh, that's, that's how you say that.
[00:38:33] Katie Best: Yeah. And there's an example in the book, one of the people I interviewed, Jo Farmer, she's the most amazing co-managing partner of a law firm, and she said how she made a deal on the phone and a head popped up from the other side of the divider in the office and went, oh, that's how you do it! That's how you get clients to sign big contracts. Wow. I've never heard someone negotiate before. And she was like, it'd be so much harder to give someone access to that if they were at home. That said, what's interesting is they're a company that really supports hybrid work, but it's, think that's the point. It's recognizing that you lose out on some of that stuff if you're completely remote and if you're in an industry where you need that personal contact, you need to organize it in such a way that people are in on the same days.
[00:39:20] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah. That's such a great story. Oh, I love that. Okay. All right. Problem number eight. Uh, delivering on the strategy. So there's this thing called a vision. This is where we're going people, and then there's gotta be the strategy to get there. So, um, how do leaders S.O.L.V.E.? Don't forget, we have our framework going on, everybody, uh, delivering on the strategy. How do we do that?
[00:39:42] Katie Best: Yeah, and I intentionally made this delivering on the strategy rather than creating the strategy because so few leaders actually have to do the creation, and often that's much less of a problem. It's the what do you do to get everyone in the company aligned to whatever it is that the strategy says it needs to contain. Um, and so I really like, and I shouldn't say that 'cause I came up with it, but I do really like, uh, the idea of thinking about,
[00:40:06] Nicole Greer: Oh, just go ahead and say it.
[00:40:07] Katie Best: There you go. Yeah. I think it's because it resonates really well with people. If you think of Russian dolls, matryoshka, the dolls which stack inside each other. What you need is a sense that every single person in the organization sees their own personal role in the strategy. Then their team's role, then their function's role, then their country's role, and then ultimately the broader strategy. And they're all very much descended from that broader, the big, the big matroyshka the big Russian doll. You don't want them too different or they wouldn't look like a nice unified set of dolls. There can be a little bit of difference, but not too much. And what managers and leaders don't do is spend enough time talking to their team about strategy and about what it is, how the work relates. It just, it goes missing so often, doesn't it? In the rush to do day-to-day work, strategy disappears.
[00:40:59] Nicole Greer: Right. And if we talked more strategy, our tasks would be smarter, they'd be more dialed in. Um, I'll just share a quick story about that. So I had this leader, her name was Mary Beth Marshall. I just thought she was fantastic. She was sitting at her desk and she was receiving all these reports, you know, and she was like, I don't even look at half of this stuff. What the heck is going on? So she got all of us managers in the room and she's like who told you to fill this report out, you know, and, and who told you to send me this and who, you know, this, that, and the other? And we were like, I don't know, we just fill it out, you know?
[00:41:37] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:41:37] Nicole Greer: Like they told us to fill it out and she's like, and so she had a big whiteboard and she's like, these are the five things I need to know from you on a weekly basis. That's it. And like we just reduced the daily task. But what was the strategy? The strategy was to get the VP the information she needs to make her decisions, you know?
[00:41:57] Katie Best: Yeah,
[00:41:58] Nicole Greer: Yeah. So it can be so simple. All right. Now, problem number nine is Nicole Greer's favorite thing, building a vibrant culture. All right, so talk about how we solve culture and value problems. I got lots of ideas about that, but I love your idea. So let's talk about what you wrote in this chapter.
[00:42:14] Katie Best: Yeah, so always nerve wracking talking to the expert, so I'm interested on your take on it as well. But I think for me, what I see a lot in terms of leadership problems with this is having team members and teams who, again, aren't really aligned with the culture or feel as though their values are not reflected in the values of the organization.
[00:42:36] And so you end up with a lot of disenchantment, but also, if people aren't clear what the culture is, they don't know what decision to make in the moment. So if you know you're working for a company where creativity is really valued, you're gonna make a very different decision when a client says to you, "Can you change that document? It's a bit boring." Than if you're working for a company where, um, traditionalism is a key value. You're gonna have a very different client response. And so embodying that culture as much as you can as a leader and instilling that in your team and identifying where there are mismatches is a really important part of leadership and a bit that goes wrong quite often, I think.
[00:43:21] Nicole Greer: I couldn't agree more. And, and I think that, you know, and don't miss the chapter, Problem Number Nine, Culture and Values. Well, here's the number one thing that I think is so important is like, people have these core values, but like everybody's interpreting them differently because of, don't miss, we already said this earlier, biases and all this kinda stuff. We haven't defined what they mean or made it part of our daily conversation, part of our improvement process, part of our employee performance or whatever. So I, I think the value piece is linchpin. What are your thoughts on that? You, you made a point to
[00:43:59] Katie Best: Yeah.
[00:44:00] Nicole Greer: You know, bring values out.
[00:44:02] Katie Best: Yeah, I really agree with you. I saw this so clearly in a law firm I was running a workshop for the other day. Yeah. So they just rewritten their values and one of their new values is legacy. Now when I say that to you, what does that value mean?
[00:44:20] Nicole Greer: Legacy. Well, I would start by defining it in my mind. I'm like, okay, so I gotta do work that leaves a trail behind me, uh, that other people are better off because of my work. Yeah. Like that's how I would kind of go down that path or something.
[00:44:34] Katie Best: Yeah. Yeah. So that's exactly the direction we went in, in the workshop. Everyone was like, yeah, I think this is definitely correct. By the way, it wasn't a values workshop, it was a tangent, which is why I hadn't done pre-research on what it was. And then someone said, I don't think that is what we mean by it. I said, okay, well let's look it up. And we called it up on the screen. They're using it as a stand-in basically for sustainability. So it's an eco value.
[00:44:56] Nicole Greer: Ah.
[00:44:57] Katie Best: Right. But
[00:44:57] Nicole Greer: Isn't that interesting.
[00:44:58] Katie Best: That word, that word doesn't say that to anyone in that room, other than the person who'd been involved in the conversation about how to set the values, which I think kind of tells us all we need to know about what you should be doing versus what often happens.
[00:45:12] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Well, and I'll, I'll just tell you a quick story. I was working with a company up in Detroit, Michigan, and the leader is very strong and very like, tells it like it is, and he is very direct and he's like, da, da, da da. And um, he's like, is it wrong, Nicole, for me to have the culture based on kind of my identity? And I'm like, well, it's not wrong. It's that if you're gonna do that, you have to show up very consistent. And you gotta find people who agree and love that vibe you give off, right? And, and so he runs a company where they put in beautiful like, um, lighting systems and blinds. Like you walk in the room and you're like, blinds up, disco, ball down, lights on, dim, or you know, whatever. He does all that in these fancy houses up in Detroit. And so one of his core values, which a lot of people would think what?! Uh, is "Get sh** done." That's like one of his core values. Right? Exactly. But like, but like, they have t-shirts that say get sh and then, you know, exclamation point t done or whatever, you know, and he really wants that. He wants people to get in, get it done, make the customer happy, and people think it's funny and they love it.
[00:46:25] Katie Best: Yeah. And it's so great
[00:46:27] Nicole Greer: If don't think it's funny, don't work here.
[00:46:28] Katie Best: And you're not. Yeah. But that's so true. Like it should be a sorting mechanism. It shouldn't just be, you can come here anyway and if you align with the values, great. And if you don't, oh well. Like they really should be a recruitment tool and everything else. Also, I love the, it's great when a company has a, has really catchy values.
[00:46:47] Nicole Greer: Me too.
[00:46:47] Katie Best: Which then, Yeah, then you actually remember them. They become useful.
[00:46:52] Nicole Greer: Right. I agree. I agree. Yeah. And I could talk about that for hours, but we, we gotta go do problem 10. All right, this is the last one. Problem number 10. Friends, uh, leading change. Talk a little bit about leading change, which is inevitable.
[00:47:04] Katie Best: Yeah, so all leaders at all levels need to be thinking about this. It isn't a senior leader problem, even though lots of junior leaders I think would like to run a mile when it comes to it. And I think one of the really big challenges is having to get behind a change that you do not necessarily agree with. That can feel really intimidating when you're a new leader. But the need to disagree but then commit is very important. And also making sure that you are separating your own personal emotions and grief about the change from how good it might actually be.
[00:47:46] Nicole Greer: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, I'm a big fan of John Kotter's work at MIT, you know, he's got the eight steps to change. But the, the number one thing I think is important in the change process, and the reason I love your S.O.L.V.E., um, is because you have to open the box and take a peek in before you introduce a change. Like, why are we doing this change? Then being able to state it with the S right state, what the what, why we're changing. I think that's the biggest thing that is not done is the first two steps of your model of S.O.L.V.E.. Yeah. So I think it's fantastic. Great.
[00:48:23] Katie Best: And I think, yeah, ties back into influence as well. I think I make a link back through to the influence chapter because you need all those influence skills to drive the change.
[00:48:32] Nicole Greer: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay y'all, I know that you are soaked from head to toe by the fire hose that is Katie Best and Nicole Greer talking about this book right here.
[00:48:42] Katie Best: Yay.
[00:48:42] Nicole Greer: Yay. The 10 Toughest Leadership Problems by Katie Best and how to S-O-L-V-E, them in caps for a reason people. Okay. So it's been so good to have you on the Build a Vibrant Cultured podcast. We need to have leaders who can tackle these toughest problems. Katie, if somebody wants to get ahold of you, how do they do that?
[00:49:02] Katie Best: So the best and easiest way is probably looking me up on LinkedIn. So it's Dr. Katie Best and I'm right there. Should come up as the author of this book so you'll know which one it is.
[00:49:11] Nicole Greer: Yep.
[00:49:11] Katie Best: And then also my website is www.katiebest.com, so it's K-A-T-I-E-B-E-S-T. And yeah, they're probably the two best ways. And I always love conversations with anyone and everyone, so if anything in here has struck your imagination or you just want to talk about it more, definitely be in touch.
[00:49:33] Nicole Greer: That's fantastic. And I haven't even shared with Katie that my daughter is Katie and the Katies are indeed the best. I'm just saying Yes. Yep, yep, yep. I got a little 26-year-old daughter named Katie, K-A-T-I-E. That's the same way. All right, everybody, uh, I've had the best time talking to London today. I know you've had the best time listening to Katie's accent and all her genius, and so would you please go down and click the like button. It takes a hot second. Just help a girl out. Okay. And then leave a little comment. Katie Best is the best. That's all you gotta put in there. And, um, that will help us get this out to so many more listeners. Katie, thank you so much.
[00:50:13] Katie Best: Thank you so much. It's been great.
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