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Lead The People is your guide to unlocking your true potential as an authentic leader. Hosted by Dr. Matt Poepsel—The Godfather of Talent Optimization—this podcast dives deep into the art and science of what it takes to lead at the next level. With insightful conversations and practical strategies, each episode equips executives, strategic HR pros, and aspiring leaders with the tools it takes to boost performance, inspire teams, and drive meaningful impact. Whether exploring the latest workplace trends or tackling real-world leadership challenges, Lead The People offers an enlightened approach to leadership. Embark on a rewarding journey to become the leader your people deserve—the leader you were meant to be.
Neil Ifill (00:00):
The level of service that you choose to give is almost a mathematical function of who you are as a person and your own expectation. So even if I could give you a list of traits that the new emerging leaders or leaders of the future really should think about, I really would ask people to start with who they are. So if you have to try, that is not really a natural situation and people will see through that. They really should start with the authentic side of you.
Matt Poepsel (00:42):
Most leaders think they understand leadership, but when you zoom in on the manager level, things really start to break down. That's why today we're going to get into what's actually going wrong, why it's hard to learn leadership right now and what to do differently. We're joined by Neil Ifill, author of The Cart Before the Horse, Practical Considerations for Workplace Leadership. I happen to have copy right here. And he brings real patterns from both his experience and his research. Neil, welcome to the show.
Neil Ifill (01:06):
Thank you, Matt. Good to be here, Doc.
Matt Poepsel (01:08):
Now we were actually trying to remember, it's been so long how we first met. We couldn't do it, so I'm not even going to try. I'm just glad to finally have you on the show. It's probably been more than a year or two that we've been connected on LinkedIn. Yeah. Yeah. Well, just to get us established here, I'll ask you this question. When it comes to the environment out there, I know it's changed lately, but what are you seeing out there right now and what are some of the shortcomings that you're seeing when it comes to leadership in general?
Neil Ifill (01:35):
What I think I'm seeing most is that leaders are going through the motions really. There's a lot of turmoil that is out in the world that often filters into what happens in the organizations. So I think a lot of leaders are just going through the motions and just doing what they're expected to do. And in many cases, I see also the power distance between leaders and between people who are not leaders or people who are below them seems to be widening. And a lot of times it may not be that the leaders are doing anything to make that happen. Sometimes the people who are not leaders kind of giving that buffer some air and it's unfortunate that it's happening that way. I don't know if they're waiting something out or whatever, but that's just what I've been seeing. Yeah.
Matt Poepsel (02:20):
Holding on for dear life, I think a lot of times too. And it's challenging because just as you said, the system kind of pulls us apart like iceberg sometimes. So your management style certainly can repel your people, but even a positive management style, even if the employees really get along and enjoy working for the leader, life can do it too. So I think for all the reasons you're saying, I'm seeing the same thing for sure. But I wanted to ask you, Neil, so you felt strongly enough about leadership about what you're seeing to actually write a book, which is something that not a lot of people do. What was it that was going on or what really motivated you, pushed you across that precipice to say, "You know what? I got to write this down."
Neil Ifill (02:59):
So a funny story. The book started out as a joke. Colleagues and I, we would sit for lunch. Sometimes we would go for a walk in the afternoon or whatever. We would giggle about certain things that we were seeing. And this is over many, many years. I'm over more than one job too. I would always threaten and say, "You know what? I will not threaten. Before I threatened, I would always say, someone somewhere is watching us on cameras and we're on some kind of reality show that we don't know because this stuff is not really real." So I said, "I'm going to write a book one time and I'm going to include all the people I know who are in leadership as characters and that should be a fun book or a funny sitcom or something." So that's how I actually started. And then when I had the time to write it, I thought to myself, "You know what?
(03:45):
I'm not going to do that because that's kind of mean to put people like that even if I change the names or whatever." And so I decided to look at myself and see some of the shortcomings that I had some of the matching shortcomings that I saw in other people because people are complex. We're never always one thing all the time. So one day we're a really good partner, we're really good support system for people who work with us or work for us. Other times we walk in and we're in a bad mood and we can be whatever. So I decided to look inward and that's how I developed some of the characteristics that I was looking at in the book that I created some of the characters because the book is written as a fable or a parable that someone said. And then there's a lot of context there that I did research on.
(04:34):
So that's where it actually all started.
Matt Poepsel (04:36):
I'm glad you wrote the book and I'm glad on their behalf that you didn't put them in it in quite that way. But I think what's amazing is that we are wired for stories and you chose to use Fable to make the writing and the thinking because leadership can be pretty heady if you get down to it. I mean, you've studied it at the highest level, so you know how nerdy this can be. It's important, but it sometimes makes it a little obtuse. And I think even the word leadership's a little weighty for some people. So when you use your parable format, your fable format, it makes the storytelling that much more accessible. We can see ourselves in it even though it really came from where I think is the most natural place. You said it came from your own observations, your own experiences, your own successes and challenges.
(05:17):
And I think that makes for a very authentic book. I think you've pulled it off.
Neil Ifill (05:21):
Thank you.
Matt Poepsel (05:22):
Thank you. And I had that question for you. So you have this blend of the observations. You've worked in different organizations, you have your lived experiences in them and you're not afraid to bring that into your work. And you also have these well-studied frameworks. I saw, for example, one of the frameworks you use is one I absolutely adore, which is the competing values framework. When it comes to the different frameworks you chose to put in the book, Neil, what was it about these frameworks? There's so many of them. How do you choose one that you said, "You know what? This was useful enough to me that I want to actually incorporate it into my book."
Neil Ifill (05:57):
I'm glad you asked that. And you refer to studying something at the very highest level and you know, because you also have a PhD, you're doing research, you're reading a lot and you come across these frameworks, zillions of them and everything is appropriate for something, but some are not very simple. Some are really complex, especially when you dig down into them.For example, I taught a couple of sessions one time on adult learning theory and I used one theory called the comprehensive learning theory. I only taught the first part of it because the second part was another layer on top of that framework that made the whole thing really, really complex and it would've thrown everyone off. So when I was doing the research for this book, there were some frameworks that I was familiar with and some that I wasn't that familiar with, but I was able to find in the research, but I found particularly with the competing values framework, it really brings everything down to a very simple way to explain things.
(06:53):
And especially if you saw the actual framework and I put an image of the framework in the book so you could see the juxtaposition of say collaborate versus some other part and you could recognize that and you could see why these are opposite, why this is internal, why this is external. And I don't dig in too much into analyzing the frameworks. I really say, "Well, this can help." So take a look at it and I really want the readers to go out there and do the research for themselves because you could have someone like me who studied a lot of this stuff to tell you what to do, but then I need you to just get a taste of it. You go out there and you find it for yourself and see what makes sense for you and see how you can actually incorporate this into your daily practice or not.
(07:38):
But the whole idea for using the frameworks is really about the simplicity of them. When I talked about Dr. Schein's steps for culture, he says the artifacts really come from the values. It's really come from the assumption. So when you see it laid out that way, then you can say, "Okay, well, I thought I understood culture, but now this gives me something to hold onto. That kind of makes sense to me. " And then I could go look to myself and make it into what I needed to use it how I need it.
Matt Poepsel (08:08):
I think it's so true that some of them are so tried and true because they just really work well or they apply, they generalize really well. And I've always loved studying frameworks too because they do give you a mental model for what can be otherwise complex situations. It's one of those things where you're like, "Oh, interesting. Now I have a framework, a mechanism to look at it, and whether it's process or hierarchy, and there's lots of different ways to break these things down." Leadership's complex enough as it is. And I think when you hand somebody a blank sheet of paper and say, "Leadership go, " they're like, "Oh, geez." It just kind of shut down. And so being able to say, let's take a look at the situation through this lens of somebody who studied this particular thing, it just makes it more accessible to us.
(08:48):
I was really impressed with the frameworks that you chose to pull in there, which was really nice. But I also want to talk a little bit about your working experience because I think what's great is they teach us to be scholar practitioners as they call it the nerds where you're going to go study stuff nights and weekends, but then you bring it back in your day-to-day work. And your day-to-day work has taken place at some larger organizations. I've not had the chance as a civilian at least to work inside bigger companies. We might have a lot of preconceived notions about bigger companies. I might think with so many resources, they probably have these very sophisticated leadership academies and programs, et cetera. But does big company life like that, does it make leadership either harder or easier or just different? What's been your experience at that intersection of large company living and leadership?
Neil Ifill (09:35):
The thing about big company life is that as to why we get departments and divisions and all that stuff in companies, because that top leader can't do everything themselves. So they have to delegate things out to people. And the unfortunate thing with that is that you have people who become specialists. Even though there may be leadership academies, the only way you get to express your ability to lead is through the lens of the department where you are. It can be really quite nucleated that way, really quite tunnel vision that way and you don't really get to experience leadership from every situation. I used to work for a company that manufactured health food stuff, diet products. The folks in the
Matt Poepsel (10:18):
Plant
Neil Ifill (10:19):
Were very different from the folks in the distribution who were very different from the folks in the administrative that was in a whole different building. So the lenses are different in large companies. So those leadership academies are usually created for the top leaders. And sometimes you get the really good programs that come from expensive consultants or maybe you have a business school, they prompted the leadership academies. The top leaders get to attend by invitation or you have to get nominated to attend and sometimes they're really good because the content is always good. The delivery is always good and professional, but it doesn't always filter down to those other people below that. And a lot of the middle managers and the lower end emerging managers, they don't get to be a part of the really good programs in these leadership academies. So you end up with those top people, they'll go there, they'll take the photos.
(11:14):
"Oh, I attended a session with whoever, whatever school or whatever, and there's the professor, and they put it all up on social media, but those people who really need this type of instruction don't really get that. So the others will get maybe some access to some other programs. I'll give you an example. So there was a time I worked for a purely large company and we had, we just took on a new vendor of the curve of leadership development courses and the thing was, oh, we have more than 5,000 courses to choose from. So I thought that was too many. And just casually looking through some of the courses, I saw one on basket weaving and I thought to myself, wow, ridiculous is this. We're not in the business of baskets. Far less, we think baskets. So why are we bragging to people that we have such a wide range of courses for them to take, but some of this is useless.
(12:12):
So it has nothing to do with the business you're in. It doesn't solve any of the problems that you're seeing, but you can say on the shareholder meetings and all that stuff, oh, we have a great leadership academy and there's so many things to choose from. People will never run out of stuff to do. But those guys at the top, they got the good stuff and the ones at the bottom, we get basket weaving.
Matt Poepsel (12:34):
Well, you know that the number one concern, I see it in almost every survey that ever gets conducted in the C-suite. What keeps you up at night? And they say," Lack of leadership capacity in the organization. "You say," Great, do you realize you're giving your people basket weaving? "There's no way. They're like, " Yeah, exactly. If more people take that course, then we wouldn't have these problems. "You're like, " I don't think so. I don't think so.
Neil Ifill (12:56):
"And that's so true and they keep it going. There's nothing wrong with top leaders getting this instruction. There's nothing wrong with that because everyone has blind spots. It's always good for someone to sharpen their tools because every night gets null over time. So it's really good for top leaders, but they have to filter that down to everyone. And unfortunately, and here's another story. Talking to an executive one time, he said to me, " Oh, top leaders don't think that there's anything wrong with them. So they think that development is really for everyone else. With that in mind, you may have top leaders that go to some of these top sessions in the Leadership Academy and they don't even think that they need it. They're just going there because it's a thing to do, but the people who really do need it don't get access to those good programming and then they get some of the other extreme stuff.
(13:50):
So that's the only thing. A smaller organization, you tend to go wider and see things from many different perspectives. If you do have a chance to develop, you can develop in many areas because what you do every day is tangential for that and it's directly related to that. And you can see the downstream activity, you can see what you do every day that goes towards what the company is doing every day. But in some of the larger orgs, it doesn't always work out like that.
Matt Poepsel (14:17):
I'm with you. I think that it's good to give leadership training and you would expect to have a higher investment in executives than you would in managers versus individual contributors, et cetera, but it doesn't mean that we should have zero access or basket weaving access for the bottom of the organization. But I talked to a leadership development provider one time and she said, when I get hired by the executive team and I say, "What's the challenge here?" They point down and they say, "It's the leaders who report to us. They need investment." Okay, great. So she gets them in the room and says, "What's the problem? What's the challenge here?" And they point up and they say, "It's the executives above us. They're not as good at this stuff as they think they are. " And so it's just amazing the perception back and forth about where the gaps are.
(15:00):
But it does bring me to this thought for you, Neil, which is thinking about these first line managers. You and I have talked about these first level managers. And I think that just as to continue the conversation, pull the thread that we're on, why do they get overlooked? I mean, we always look and talk about the future bench strength. We know that they have a very important role. They're managing people who probably manage either revenue or client access, but why do first level leaders get overlooked and get so little investment these days?
Neil Ifill (15:26):
It really might be that they're really busy nowadays. The focus of everyone is to just get through the day and sometimes you have six or seven priorities and you're just trying to get them all done because they do have a culture where making mistakes is frowned upon, not always thought of opportunities to learn. So there's a lot of pressure on low line or maybe emerging managers to just execute. If they're so busy, they don't get to think a lot. But I don't know if that's the reason why they're overlooked, but generally they say I'm too busy or someone above them will say they're too busy for this type of stuff. I really don't know why they're overlooked. These are the backball. These are the ones that make sure that everything gets done. And many years ago I used to teach a class and we would use this metaphor and we would always say that on the ground floor, here are the individual contributors.
(16:22):
They're doing what they're supposed to be doing. Supervisors are walking between the desks. They see what is happening. They see what everyone is doing. So their managers are on a level above looking down, watching the supervisors move around and then the directors are above there looking at the managers looking at them all the way to the CEOs in a helicopter looking at the whole industry. So everyone should be down and they think, okay, well, they're doing it because I see them doing it. But those downstairs can't look up. They can't see what's above them and they're so busy looking down, looking at where they are or what they're doing. They don't have time to even try to aspire, trying to go. So I don't know if that's one of the reasons why they're overlooked.
Matt Poepsel (17:07):
I think it's a big one. Yeah. And it's almost like it's a one-way mirror. So we can see down and a CEO can ask as many detailed questions as they want and get access to whatever tidbit of data in the business, but it doesn't really flow the other way quite the same. The other thing that I think that I've seen a lot too is that a manager sometimes was very comfortable in an individual contributor role. They get promoted into management and they have a hard time letting go because that's where their strength was, their identity, their confidence. So a lot of times I see that if you ask a VP in an organization, "How far out should you be looking in the business?" And they say, "Well, my span of control really should be about six months. I should be planning two quarters out. " And I say, "How much time do you spend doing that?
(17:49):
" And they're like, "Almost none. I'm just fighting daily fires." I'm like, "Don't you have people to do that? Do you not trust them? Can they not do it? Are they blocked?" So when you're doing the job of the people beneath you and that just continues to cascade all the way down, you have this lament of saying, "Well, I can't do my job because I'm not set up to do my job, so I'm kind of doing their job." And you're like, well, and then the first level manager's like, "Well, no wonder I'm being overlooked." It's like everybody's in my business all the time.
Neil Ifill (18:19):
This is true.This is so true and you see it all the time. I've known managers at the executive VP level who will reach down and fret over a word in a PowerPoint deck for days and you're like, "Come on, it's a deck. Can you let them build a deck on their own because they're going to talk about it in a meeting and they're going to have two minutes to talk about one slide on a deck and this is what you're challenging me with because they used the word that you didn't like. "
Matt Poepsel (18:54):
Right. Yeah,
Neil Ifill (18:55):
Exactly. This is why we're sucking all the air out of the thing.
Matt Poepsel (18:58):
And how much energy goes into impression management and self-preservation and it's just like, well, no wonder you don't have time to do your actual job six months from now because you're fretting over that word and you're keeping people from taking basket weaving classes at the same time.
Neil Ifill (19:11):
Exactly. We've
Matt Poepsel (19:12):
Got
Neil Ifill (19:12):
Three levels of people worried about a word.
Matt Poepsel (19:15):
Yeah, 100%. When you think about it this way, we started in the beginning and you talked about going through the motions. How do we know that that's taking place? Because I don't want my people to feel like they're just going through the motions, but I suspect that it's happening for the listeners, for myself, what does that look like? How can I discern the difference between somebody who's busy and doing things because we've put a lot of pressure on them to do things versus that they're just going through the motions?
Neil Ifill (19:41):
The moment you know that someone is going through the motions, sometimes you can tell this by looking at them. They apply the same solutions all the time. It's like a blanket, "Well, we're going to do this. " You see people at the top levels doing that, or we can see something six months down the line that's going to cause us to take a hit in the profit. Let's lay people off. Are there any other things that we can try? There's no imagination, no joy in anything. And many years ago we had a little retirement meetings with someone like a little party in the office. So many people from different levels, because this person had been there for a while, many people from several levels came to just say something nice to them. It was their last day or whatever. And the person who was the top of my org, something that you would call nowadays it was just CEO minus one.
(20:31):
They were on that executive level. They were chatting with me for a little bit and they gave me a conundrum that they were suffering through. They wanted to promote someone. They had one spot and two really good internal candidates. One of them was someone who had been there for a long time. They honestly did deserve to be promoted to it because they had done the work, they had slog through, but they had another person who was younger, who was told of ideas and told whatever and they were like, "Oh, I'm really wrestling with this. " And that person, just because they asked me the question and another person who was standing there, it's not important what answer I gave her or anything, but she was not going through the motions at that point because she said, "You know what? I could apply my same side and true thinking to this to make this decision, but let me put it out to some other people.
(21:24):
Let them know that I'm trying to wrestle with it. Let them know that I'm looking for ideas." She may not have taken any of our advice at all. I don't even know what the outcome of that was. But when you mentioned that what's going through the motions look like, this person wasn't because they were thinking outside the boxes to solve an issue. They don't outsource the decision, but they will outsource somebody thinking for that to help them see things that they couldn't see before.
Matt Poepsel (21:52):
Yeah, absolutely makes sense. And I feel like it's that mechanical response to work where it's like rubber stamp, bang, bang. Of course, you're going to go with the person who's been here forever because that's just how it is. But you told the story there of somebody who was really invested, who wanted to get the decision right, really kind of toiling at their own personal expenses saying, "Ah, there's not an easy answer here. I wish there were, but I'm having a hard time with this. I'm going to open the lens here a little bit to get some other people's take." They're just sweating over here. That's somebody who's invested. That person's not going through the motions, to your point. I like that a lot. That's a great analogy.
Neil Ifill (22:25):
Thank you. Yeah. I mean, I felt for her because she would say all the time, oh my goodness, I get decisions. She used to tell stories about coming from one meeting and going to another meeting and not knowing what they were going to be talking about, but all the gatekeepers would just surround her and give her a download, "This is what's going on and go. " So I know that that bothered her because she wanted to really give thought to things. She wanted to include as many people, not necessarily in the decisions, just so that she was getting help with what she was doing, but really getting us to start thinking about things in a way that a person at her level. So we didn't realize that we were being trained to start thinking about things like that. I could have taken that lesson that she gave me that day that she didn't know that she gave me.
(23:16):
Maybe she did. And I kind of applied that in the way I was thinking about other things. What is the right decision? What is the best decision? Because they're not the same thing sometimes.
Matt Poepsel (23:26):
Yeah. And it's not easy. And the more you matriculate to the higher levels of leadership, the more ambiguous and complex and judgmental the decisions really are and the less we should be using AI to make decisions for us. When you talk about going through the motions, this is one of the things that concerns me the most is the transportation of the old playbook to the new technology. And you're like, well, wait a second, we had an opportunity here to pause and not just go through the motions and have now a machine who can do that at light speed, but to really have some discernment and say, what is really the invested answer here? What is the thing we can commit to? And maybe you can't do that for all parts of your job or your business, but to do what this person did was to say, no, this is a decision that it really pays to sweat the details.
(24:12):
This is a big decision. We're not just going to make it in the way that the playbook might suggest that we always do because everything has changed and what does the business really need? And even though I might have to tell somebody who's been here with us a long time, no, we're going to go in a different direction or tell somebody who's a high riser knowing that they may leave and say, "Time's not right. We're going with this other choice and owning it, fully owning it. " This is the real stuff of leadership.
Neil Ifill (24:42):
Yep, it sure is. It's not contract at any time.
Matt Poepsel (24:46):
It's not. For my listeners who are earlier in their career and they're thinking about, okay, so I'm on this leadership journey. Clearly we can study, we can practice, we can do all these things. If you had to describe knowing what you know about where work is headed, you've seen it at its best and worst, how would you describe for an up and coming leader today what type of leader they should aspire to become? What are some characteristics or traits that you'd ideally see in our future leaders?
Neil Ifill (25:17):
Oh, what a great question. One of the things I used to say to people, particularly in the hospitality business many years ago while I was there, I would say, you know what? The level of service that you choose to give is almost a mathematical function of who you are as a person and your own expectation. So even if I could give you a list of traits that the new emerging leaders or leaders of the future really should think about, I really would ask people to start with who they are. So for example, if you like to be treated respectfully, then that's the leader that you should be. If you're a detail-oriented person, if you're the one who likes to put the IT furniture together, if you're the one who likes the nuts and bolts, then that's the type of leader that you should be essentially the traits that you already have in the good parts, but just being the person you are will always shine through.
(26:15):
I make the point about that you have to choose something that is important and be that. So start there. You could pick up some of the other really good traits along the way, like being a good communicator, doing the what if stuff and looking around the corner. There are a lot of things that you can do. You can pick that up along the way. You have a lot of examples of good leaders around you that you can emulate, but really has to start with you deciding
(26:42):
Who you are because that is the leader that you should be. You cannot fake that. And some people try to fake being ... I've known leaders who are really softies who try to stick being hard, or I know some leaders who try to act like they're really organized, but they're really a mess and you could tell that they're trying. So if you have to try, then it's not really a natural situation and people will see through that. You won't be able to sell that for too long. It won't last. Look at the people around you who you think are great. Maybe you can get a mentor that can help you through that, but as you decide who you're going to be as a leader, but it really should start with the authentic side of you, the things that you fall back on. If you're a terrible person, you're going to fall back on that and you're not going to have a very successful career as a leader, but the best part, can you start there and then you can add all those other pieces along the way.
Matt Poepsel (27:37):
I love that command for authenticity. And I think that in a world where it's easier than ever to fake things and produce workslop and all this stuff, it's the strongest advice that you can give someone. And it takes a lot of trust and it takes a lot of confidence and courage to be able to say, am I enough? And the answer is you are. You can always round out those bits and where you hit your wall, you can always compliment yourself with the right people. This is something that you have to learn as a manager and as a leader that you can do is you actually get to build a team. It's not just you have to cover all the bases. I really appreciate that advice. I think it's as important as it ever is. And I want to do something authentic here, Neil. As you know, you're listener to the show.
(28:17):
I love to have a trivia segment. I got a question for us. Are we smarter than AI? It's going to be a multiple choice question. I don't know the question. I don't know the answers. You and I are a team. We're going to try to get this right. But I always try to draw from the guest background and you and I both studied at Capella University. And I knew that Capella was a star and it was part of some constellation or something, but I didn't know. I had to look this up and actually comes from the Italian for Little Goat. So we're going to get a question about goats. So we're ready for it. The question is this, what is a baby goat called? Is it A, a calf, B, a kid, or C, a pup?
Neil Ifill (28:53):
I know what it is.
Matt Poepsel (28:55):
Oh, you do?
Neil Ifill (28:55):
Grow up on a farm in Barbados, man. I absolutely know what a baby goat is. At B, my friend.
Matt Poepsel (29:01):
It's B. I love it. Okay. So audience, we got a ringer here. If you're playing along at home, is it A, calf, B, kid, C, pup? We're going with B, kid. That is correct. It's the most common term. I love it. I love it. That was a layup for you, deal. You crushed that one. But I have another question I'm certain you know the answer to. Where can my listeners go to learn more about you and about your wonderful book?
Neil Ifill (29:24):
Oh, they can start on LinkedIn. That's where I am. And I comment on things at least a couple times a day. A friend of mine, it is getting me interested each time you need to post more. So I've been posting more things on LinkedIn. I'm right now building a website so that will come on stream soon. I'm on Substack. I got a couple of things written on there. I really need to pay more attention to that. So I'm building some things. I got a YouTube channel coming up and the LinkedIn bulb will have all of that as it comes on stream. And of course I'll let you know, doctor. 100%.
Matt Poepsel (29:59):
I appreciate that and listeners, I'm going to have a link to get over to Neil's LinkedIn in the show notes, you're only one click away from connecting with him, posing any of these great questions. He's got such great experience and a great book to go with it. I certainly encourage you to do that. Neil, thanks so much for being with us today. I've enjoyed our conversation just like I knew I would.
Neil Ifill (30:16):
Thank you, Matt. I appreciate it.
Matt Poepsel (30:18):
I really enjoyed that conversation with Neil just now. He made a couple of key points and I wanted to summarize them for you in these top three takeaways. Number one, tear down the silos. You heard Neil talking about how inside of organizations of almost any size, you can really start to see how there's these silos that get built up and these combinations of this, he called it a nucleus of connections that can take place. The second is giving leaders access to development. We need to make sure we're developing leaders at every level. Of course, we're going to invest more in executives than we do in the middle than we do for emerging leaders, but I think it's important that every level gets some level of development investment. That's important. And the last one was when you talked about matching your leadership strengths to your natural qualities, that's where the real authenticity and power comes from.
(31:03):
So I thought that was my top three takeaways from Neil's conversation there. And I wanted to point out quickly too that the predictive index can help you do all of these things. I've used PI for more than 20 years. I thought I'd share with you a couple of the ways I do the things that Neil just taught us that we need to be doing. The first one when we talk about tearing down silos, I love to use PI’s Team Discovery to be able to create cross-functional teams and to really represent them in the visualizations to be able to show similarities and differences of among groups of people that don't work together all that much aside from their cross-functional work. The second is around leadership development. If you want to get that down to the bottom and remember that Neil was talking about basket weaving, we don't want that.
(31:41):
Instead, PI's coaching guides, that can be a great way for offering self-development and personal development tips for individual managers. And finally, probably the most common use case of PI at all, one of my absolute favorites is when we talk about identifying personal behavioral strengths that we can lean into. The behavioral profiles that come out create so much self-awareness in such a small amount of time. I really think every employee in the organization deserves the gift of self-awareness. It really can help them lean into their leadership strengths, really critical to be able to do that. So that's it for today. Thanks as always for your time. And until next time, don't just manage the business when you can lead the people.