Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the
Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast.
Bonus. There's no book reading
on these bonus episodes. These are
interviews, rants, raves, insights, and other gentle
and sometimes not so gentle audio musings and interesting conversations
with interesting people about leadership.
Because listening to me and an interesting guest talk about
leadership for at least a couple of hours is better than reading and trying
to understand yet another business book,
even that business book that I wrote.
As founder and CEO of Los Global and creator
of the Los Academy, Our guest today is
passionate about creating dynamic organizations and
partnering with leaders to lead in a way that improves
impact and agility with less stress.
His unique leadership disruptor approach improves personal
performance while increasing leadership effectiveness, focus
and clarity. This opens facilitation for alignment
between leader and employees. The
results create healthier, more agile companies, positively
influencing culture and business impact while solving some of the
current talent retentions and attraction challenges many
organizations are facing in the business world today.
And as a side note, I initially met this guest
through my work with the World Ethics Organization. You should go
back and listen to our interview with, Richard Messing, of
the World Economics, Organization or World Economic Forum.
I'm sorry. Not World Economic Forum, not WEF. Sorry. World Ethics
Organization. Not the WEF. We're not interviewing
Klaus Schwab on this on this show today. But
I initially met my guest through working with Richard, and you should go back and
listen to that, listen to that podcast episode. And we
connected offline as a result of that. And,
he gave me some interesting insights about this podcast
and talking about this podcast. And I thought, you know,
hey, it might be really interesting to bring him on as a
guest and introduce him to you as my audience
today. And so I'd like to welcome to the podcast, Peter
Ainley. How are you doing today, Peter? Hey, Jesan. Thanks very
much. I am doing excellent. Thank you. And as you can see,
or as you can hear, you'll be able to see it on the video, the
video version of this podcast later on. But as you can hear, Peter has
a rich British accent, so that makes him sound smarter than
me, which is great. So he's going to elevate the intellect
of this podcast just by talking. It's gonna be
great. So let's just let's just correct something out of there.
Shall we? Go ahead. Yeah. The accent
is they're actually originally South African. But there you go. That's even
better, though, actually. That's even better. Like, even makes you sound even smarter.
Thank you. It does. Like, this is a
Americans fall for the act that we do. We anything that sounds vaguely,
you know, accented and then you put some interesting conversation inside of
that, People are like, oh, oh, that guy's smart.
Okay. It's it's great. Whereas the basic American accent, you
gotta really struggle with that with other Americans. You really do. You have to struggle
with that because they don't they don't trust it. They're like, well, how smart could
he be? He sounds like he's from name your state here.
So Got it. You know?
Okay. So, yeah, we'll open up with that.
And now first question of the day, you know, I read through
your book, and I talked a little bit about our background and how we got
connected. But for our listeners, what is it that
you do exactly, Peter?
Besides having a few jokes here and there on on a podcast? Yeah.
Besides that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Besides that. Yeah.
Well, I work with executives to make their lives just
that little bit easier. Mhmm.
So if you frame it another way, let's get a little more
technical here. Specializing in closing the leadership skills gaps.
Okay. Creating greater clarity, cohesion, alignment
for the executive Tom specifically.
So that they can better navigate the global uncertainty.
A little less stress is always useful, less anxiety. A
lot of them deal with impostor syndrome. So let's try and, you know,
navigate around that one and get that out of the way so that
they can better balance demands for stakeholders, shareholders,
and employees. Employees can be pretty demanding too.
Yeah. So that all
sounds awesome. Let's delve a little bit more into
that. So how did you go from No, I'll frame
it this way. Every time I talk to someone who's in the leadership development space,
I kind of ask a variation of this question and I preface it by saying
this. No one wakes up in the morning when they're 7
and goes, hey, I wanna be a leadership development consultant, coach,
trainer, facilitator, whatever. Nobody nobody does that at the age of 7.
So how did you how did you start in South
Africa and and wind up in this spot? Walk us through a little bit of
your a little bit of your history. Well, that's a
it's a bit of an interesting journey. I will give you a caveat quickly on
this one. Mhmm. I am writing a book with a
bunch of other people, and a story will appear in that
book. Oh. Dot dot dot. Alright.
Yeah. We're previewing the book. This is good.
So the book should be coming out in June or July sometime. So
k. Cool. You can read a bit more about that. But covering that
book, so no, you're right. I didn't think about leadership in any which way,
shape, or form at the age of 7. In fact, I don't think I thought
of anything other than how much more fun I can have with doing whatever
it was at the time of the day. Right. But towards the
end, I'll just set it up. Towards the end of
my high school career, the one thing I wanted to do was be a pilot.
Okay. Wanted to fly. And how that came
about is a is an interesting story. So I spent a lot of my time
traveling. My parents kept traveling back and forth to Europe.
So, you know, I've been in a plane since I was
at Ye High. And so I always wanted the
idea of being a pilot just gave just sort of gave me the
sense of a certain degree of freedom. Something I wanted to enjoy
doing. Couple of challenges in pursuing that career at the
time in South Africa. I won't go into those details. So
I figured, well, I've gotta get something else. I've gotta get at least a degree
under my belt. So when all else fails, I have something to fall back
on. That landed up being engineering,
got a degree and a master's degree then in engineering,
that being potentially the springboard to get me into Europe That would
allow something like becoming a pilot, joining the airlines, whatever,
to become more of a reality. Well by the time that was
done, the need for making money that seemed to have
grown a little bit more on the importance scale.
So went into the engineering world into corporate,
started at the Tom, and systematically over the
next 2 decades worked myself up to, you
know, director and running engineering departments.
Figuring I knew how to do all of that based on everything I observed,
and therein lies a key. And
you're not always feeling, hey, man. You know, this is fun
and exciting. I am empowered to to be this great
engineer, manager, leader, whatever you care to call it. But I always
landed up having run ins with bosses I had. Mhmm. Always had
a different view of things, a different opinion, a different idea,
whatever it was. But it always created a little bit of tension.
Some were more amicable to that that tension, shall
we call it, and were willing to discuss it. Others maybe not so
much. And, eventually this
underlying desire for independence, for
readers, broke me out. I went out on my own with a
business partner, and we went into the realms of consulting in the
engineering space, project management space. And that
was probably where the biggest wake up call to what leadership
really is, what it's all about, and
the importance of doing it right. So you begin to
land. You know, when you're dealing with your own employees,
there's a different dynamic to dealing with employees
when you're part of a bigger mechanism and just another cog in that
mechanism. Even if you're a bigger cog in that mechanism, there's a different
dynamic. Because now you're responsible for people in
a way that, well, their livelihood depends on what you do and how
successful as an organization you are. And then
leaders, when you go to not only lead your own own
people, but lead much bigger Tom, how
do you get things done when these people are just
contracted to work with you? How do you get things done
when you've got a client who's got a number of stakeholders
in a in a given project? How do you get them all on
board? How do you get everybody working in a
synergistic way to affect an outcome.
And that really is where I started cutting my teeth as it were on
on the whole notion of leadership and understanding what was wrong.
The mistakes I was making and the lessons I was learning.
And then just going through the course and going doing other ventures
and all of that, I began to see sort of almost like a began to
see sort of almost like a common theme,
a common problem. In that
well this isn't leadership. And what that person is doing is not real
leadership. Look how they're treating their people. Look look what they're doing
there. Look what they're doing here. So there's this whole thing.
No. But leadership is so much more than that. You can actually get people
on your side who are willing to play ball with you, who want
to work with you, who want to follow you. Mhmm.
But, you know, the more I looked at it, everybody was going to a
job. And as the expression goes, doing the bare
essays minimum to get a paycheck at the end of the month. Right? Mhmm.
You know, no more. So what was the level of commitment? What what
was the you know, there there had to be something more to it.
Mhmm. People just having to go to work just to carve out a living
and exist. Yeah. It seemed like that's the way society
was structured, but it didn't add Tom me it didn't add up.
And I I've always had if I can make somebody else's life better I'm
gonna try and do that. That's my what I sort of I
guess grew up learning. If you're gonna do something do it well and help
people in the process. And over time
I had a through some of the moving around the globe that
I did, I'll end up taking a part time position
with a non profit organization just to re establish
myself back here in Canada at the time.
And there was a classic example of
what I would define as poor leadership. Mhmm. Being told I have
to control everything That is my duty
as the leader of this organization.
No. That's not your duty. Your duty is Tom inspire people
to really wanna be here. And the more people I spoke to
who were in that organization, the bigger the problem I saw.
That was probably the trigger. And
then the final nail or
the push over the edge was 2020
and watching how things transpired in that year. And we
won't dive into that but that was a highlight for me to
see. Man, people don't know how to lead.
It's yeah. So I've got to do something about it. And that's then
what got me more into the leadership development space
and more into working with more senior leaders going after that
market because that's where change begins to happen in any
organization. So that's a a a fourth
version of the longer story you might find in the book. Yeah. It's coming
out in, July or June or yes. We'll sometime. We'll
talk more about the book, later on or or even as we go.
Okay. So I was taking several notes while you were talking, writing
down several things, because there's there's several pieces of that
that I wanna pull apart and I wanna I wanna play off of a little
bit. So.
I guess the first thing is this idea. You you said you wanted to be
a pilot, initially in high school, but then that that
sort of readers, you sort of redirected your your your
focus into the space of engineering. Now
here's what I know about engineers. And I love engineers, by the way. I don't
have a problem with them. We need engineers. We need people who could build the
bridges. We need both engineers and construction workers. We need people who could build the
bridges and who could put them up, right? The theory and the practice, right? We
need them both together. We need the people who can come
up with the idea of the internet and then the people who can actually develop
that thing and, and kind of make Tom, make that work.
I was recently listening to a podcast interview with a guy named
Ian McGillchrist. Fascinating guy in the,
in the neuroscience, excuse me,
philosophy and and book writing space.
And he made a point that I think is relevant to our conversation
here. He said the current society that we live in,
our current ethic is built around a fourth of left brain engineering
ethic. Writers. And this relates to
leadership by the way. It also relates to ethics, which I want to talk
about today as well, because of your work with, with WEO.
But in a in a in a in a
society, particularly a Writers society where we've
sort of reached this pinnacle of and I call it the idea of utility. That's
not the word that he used, but where every idea has to have utility
in order to particularly market utility in order to be
valued. We are throwing away and this was his concern.
We are throwing away all of the right brain stuff, or we're
saying that that doesn't matter.
Now when I now oh, here's where that idea ties together. When I run
into folks with an engineering background Mhmm. They tend
to be some of the hardest folks to sell on the
idea of leadership because they're
convinced that because and I this is how I sort of frame it for them.
I know you're convinced by data. I get that. But you're surrounded by a bunch
of people who aren't, and you have to lead them sort of differently.
Leaders that been something that you've seen in
your experience or am I totally off the mark there?
I'm gonna start off by saying, I engineers, yes,
definitely left brained, technically orientated, 1 plus one has to
equal 2. Fourth. Something majorly wrong.
The challenge from a leadership point of view is a lot of those people
are promoted into position of leadership without actually understanding what
leadership is. Thinking that, oh, well, I'll just do 2+2 and I'll get 4
out of it. Right. And
my from my own personal experience,
data's great if you're wanting to build a bridge.
Right. Okay. But I have not found
2 the same people. Right. Okay. So
2 plus 2 ain't gonna equal 4 at this point.
So you got the human behavioral factor to take the
human psychology factor to take in. And maybe my
brother used to jibe me out, this is going
back a few years, he said, you know, Peter, you shouldn't have done engineering. You
should have been a psychologist. You should have studied psychology.
And, well, maybe there's an element of truth to that because I find human
behavior rather interesting and the psychology behind some of this lot and
why people do what they do and what impacts people not
only mindset but the behavioral aspect of
how does your how does your teenage years, your younger years
impact how you lead later in life? Mhmm. Now
that thought is I I mean, working on developing that fourth, does
that become a PhD in leadership? I don't know, but time will tell.
So right brain being the more creative side,
but also more the people side of things,
is something that is important to develop. Not everybody has it.
Some people are slower at getting it. But without
that aspect of it, without understanding
how you think. So you referring
to any given leader who's turning. How you think, when you
understand how you think, you've crossed a lot of that bridge of the right
brain side of things. So you can start
balancing between left and right brain.
So, I've said this before on this podcast. I'm a
humanities major. I'm one of those annoying humanities major people.
Right? You know, I went to school for art.
I've never used my art degree in any practical
way Tom, like, draw or print, make, or paint and make money
from that. Instead, I took all of the ways
of seeing. That's how I frame it. And I went into
I went into the very, at least in comparison to what I came out
of, the very left brain business world.
Writers? And I can read an Excel spreadsheet and, you know, and actually have
taught Excel, which is interesting. I find that to be amusing. I've taught at
business schools. I know how to do a pivot table. I know all that,
right? But
I always thought that the biggest challenge that we
have and we sort of sort of see this with the with the rise of
what we euphemistically call artificial intelligence. I just call it large language
algorithms, which is the next great frontier. We could talk a little bit about that
today, but I find it interesting that. Or at
least the biggest challenge I've had is dealing with people
who are leaders, who are very technically proficient
at what they do and tend to look at all of the
human psychological stuff as a bug that
needs to be erased rather than a feature that's inbuilt to
to the human experience. And in my
experience, getting them to cross over from, oh, this is a bug,
and if I just put enough resources behind it, it'll be fixed fixed Tom this
is a feature. Now I have to navigate around it because it's not going
away, for myself anyway, and my consultancy, that was the
biggest Rubicon that I had to cross. Does that make sense?
Yeah. And I think it is the biggest Rubicon. Many leaders who come from the
technical background have to cross. Right. So the
others, I think maybe I'm maybe one of the essays
soer ones. By the way, I think. But it it
is a challenge for a lot of people, a lot of technical people Tom become
effective at the human element of business,
leading people effectively. Well, and that becomes
because you mentioned, you know, having commitment. You mentioned,
the importance of doing, doing the thing correctly, writers? Doing
the thing right. And you and I, there were, there were sort of 3
sort of,
prompting. Right. Tom use artificial
intelligence terms. There were 3 prompting questions for you, which were, you know, how
do you get things done? How do you get people on board and what is
real? And I put it in air quotes, but what is real leadership? So
those are all fascinating to me, and I love to be able to pull some
of those apart today. Maybe starting with this idea of how do you get
things done. So if I'm a leader listening to
this, how do you get things done?
Like, if you're talking to that leader, like, you know, what do you
what do you say to them? Like, how do they get things done? Because if
I'm a new leader let's let's look at a new leader, not not an experienced
one, not with some life on them. But if I'm a new leader, if I've
been newly promoted into a position, typically, I
might be in a corporate bureaucracy.
Typically, I'm going to be given people that I would not have selected,
necessarily to work with. I won't even real I don't even really wanna have these
people over to my house for a barbecue on a nice Saturday.
And, yes, by the way, I'd like to continue to get paid because I've got
a mortgage. So, you know, I've
got bigger concerns than whether or not these people feel good. I gotta keep the
money flowing in because, you know, inflation's all over the place and, you
know, hey, the baby needs a new pair of shoes.
Right? So for me as a new leader, this is very
practical. This isn't like pie in the sky theory.
This is very practical. So how do I get people to get
things done? How do I do that as a new leader? And not screw up
so your boss doesn't complain? Or fire me fourth my tech
gets cut or right. Or get demoted or you know? Because I like to I
like to say this because I also have I also have ideas about status
in my head, which I've not fully acknowledged, but I do have ideas about
status and my place in the in the social hierarchy, not only of the bureaucracy,
but also of my neighborhood, my community, blah blah blah blah blah blah. I like
my neighborhood, my community, blah blah blah blah blah blah. I like saying that I'm
the VP of x, y, z thing and that I lead a, b, c number
of people. I enjoy saying that when I go to church
or when I volunteer at a local community or or whatever.
Yeah. And that because that just gives me this perception of status
and prestige and hey, people Yeah. We like that. I mean that's
the human nature. That's the ego. We're speaking to the ego at that point. Correct.
So to answer your question, that is the
probably the biggest
Rubicon that that people need to cross is that initial
position of now you've got these people that while you've been told
they report to you, you're very good at what you're doing.
And I'm going to use the term technical here. It doesn't matter what the vocational
aspect of it is, but it's doing, you know, be it an accountant, dealing with
numbers, or being an engineer, fourth or a research scientist, whatever. That's your
technical work. They're good at
that and they get promoted into some form of position, a
leadership position. They now have a bunch of people. The
very first thing that I work with
people on, who are you? As your
as a leaders, you got you got this position that's great. It's all wonderful and
all of that. But who are you? Do you know who you are? Do you
know what trips you up? Do you know what excites you? Do you know what
really gets you going within the technical space or
anywhere else for that matter? Mhmm. But it's un
beginning to understand who you are as a Jesan. Because there's
everybody's got something that trips them up. Every everybody's got some
saboteur that's going to come and, hey, I wanna do this great job. Get the
right metrics for my boss. Hey, you know, I gotta I gotta prove that I
can do this. And something's gonna happen that's gonna screw up. And now your
stress level's just gone through the roof and then something.
So but are you aware of that, what that is?
Are you aware of that trigger that's gotten you there? So now
you're in firefighting mode. On the moment people go into firefighting mode,
it's sort of tunnel vision and everything else gets blurred
and doesn't feature anymore. That's the biggest
challenge. So the more you
become self aware,
the better you're able to now lead. Now what do I mean by that?
When you understand yourself, when you understand the things that
trip you up, when you understand things that motivate you, when you understand
where your strength lie,
You begin to realize that other people have
the same thing. They have their
saboteurs, the triggers that trip them up. They have their strength.
They have their motivators. Oh, well, that means they're not that
different from me. Mhmm. Interesting.
That creates an awareness
that you've got a bunch of other people, not a bunch of robots.
Because I think too many people in that first and I and I
I experienced that in some of my own leadership in the corporate
space. Oh, well, now you report to me. Now you must go do do do
do do. Right. You're not robots.
You can't people do not operate as robots. I had I had
bosses who basically said, well, just go and do this and get that done and
do this and do that. You know, all technical stuff. Well, that's great.
But I if I slipped up, then what?
And, you know, then you got the royal the look, the the speaking
to, the threat, the, you know,
everybody has their own story on that one as you did to me, I'm sure.
But that's I found is the biggest turning. When I can recognize
that the people who are reporting to me now, be they the
chosen ones or the ones given to me, which in as to your
point, is invariably when we are promoted within a corporate
structure, we inherit those people. Mhmm.
Mhmm. But when we can recognize that they're human beings
with the same desires well, with with desires,
needs, saboteurs,
triggers just like I do. Now I can have a
different perspective on how I can go
about getting them to do what they're doing. Now
this doesn't happen overnight. So how do I get people to do
to come back to your question, try and bring this full circle,
getting people to do things. Well, one, they're technically, for the most part,
have an idea of what they should be doing. Writers? 1+1 is
going to equal 2. So just go through the steps that make
it equal 2. But it comes
down to how do I then, and this we're delving into the
depth, starting into some of the depth stuff here is how can I
influence them to make sure that they want to do 1 +1 equals
2? That you use the word
inspire, a duty to inspire. Right?
But I like that the other I word influence a little bit
better because I think a lot of new
leaders and quite frankly, a lot of seasoned
leaders, actually
don't understand the word inspiration.
I think that comes loaded with a lot of Yep.
Ideas about charisma and I'm not a leadership theories guy. I mean, I know what
they are, but I'm not a leadership theories guy. I think that a lot of
that's, well, much of that is noise.
And it's an attempt Tom, by the left brain,
to just structure, a lot of the right
brain chaos that that is seen in in in the leadership space. This is why
there's over 400,000 books on leadership just on Amazon.com
alone, just in the United States search for Get Global,
because almost everybody. And I said this in my book on leadership,
almost everybody knows leadership is like pornography. Almost everybody
knows what it is when they see it and they know what it is when
they don't see it. Jesan. And so there's 315,000,000
people in, in, in the United States, roughly, And
that's 315,000,000 different versions of what leadership is. Sorry.
It just it just is. And so theories are an attempt to sort
of pull all that together and and sort of systematize that. And that's why many
of them fail at the individual level.
But I say that to say this, I think people hear the word
inspiration and they think that that means that you have to have charisma as
a leader. Whereas influence means you actually
have a skill set there. And I take that influence and I
take the definition of influence from Robert Cialdini. You know, this idea
that, okay, influence is part of persuasion
and influence is a skill set, whereas persuasion is the ability.
Right? And if I could merge those two things together, anyone can get a skill
set. Anyone can learn how to ride a bike. Some people will ride it well.
Some people will ride it poorly, but anyone can ride a bike
within their own physical capabilities, right, to ride a bike. Right. So,
the same thing with leadership, same thing with this idea of influence versus inspiration.
But you put the word duty next to that. Why do people have a
duty to influence or a duty to, as you said,
inspire?
When so the the the reason why I use the word
duty because we're when we get promoted into a position of
leadership, there is an out well, there's responsibility.
And depending on where you are, there's authority that comes with it and all of
that. But that renders you and using the word
duty is you have you have a a a
group of people who now in the corporate structure
report Tom you. Mhmm. There's a group of people who are looking up to you
for guidance and fourth, quote, leadership.
They wanting direction. They wanting
to feel significant. They're wanting to
experience something of value and have a sense
of importance. Mhmm. No different to you in
that position of leadership coming from above you.
So there is an inherent duty when you have been given the
responsibility to guide people, to guide
them well. Yes, we spoke about
inspiration. You're right with the word influence. Influence, I mean
ultimately leadership is about influence.
Influence can happen in 2 essays, though. 1
is inspiring, the other one is not. One is positive the
other one has a negative impact. It does,
one you can get people to rise to the occasion as it were. You
get people behind you, behind the cause, whatever it is. And the other one they'll
do, I mentioned earlier, the bare minimum just to get
paid at the end of the month. Mhmm. And that is that is the effect
of influence. Inspiration leaves people feeling excited about what they
do. And that,
I believe, is also falls under the banner of
influence, getting into the detail of it. Influence
you as a as an influencer, as a leaders, influencing people,
your goal is to inspire them to do what they're doing, to
do what they're doing technically well.
Now does that mean I have to entertain people? No.
Like, am I required to be like Taylor Swift, who I
didn't know who I did not know who that person was until
literally a year ago? Like I had no clue who that person
was. And I was happy in my life. I was fine. Like I was I
was continuing to exist. I continued to eat 3, 3 meals a
day, roughly. I continue to breathe. I continue to live at my house.
I continue to love my kids. Like everything was fine. And then all of a
sudden, this person popped up and now I'm like, I've gotta know who this
person is. Do I have to entertain? Because I
think a lot of leaders confuse
that idea of of in of of being of influencing or being
an influencer. Because, you know, social media is filled with people
who are quote unquote influencers. Writers? And really they're just
they're just Glorified entertainers? They're lower they're low
rent versions of Taylor Swift. Do I need to be a
low rent version of Taylor Swift for my team? Do I really need to do
that? No. Okay. Alright.
Thank you. Thank you for freeing me from that. No. I don't
believe you're a mint. I some people's personality
might lend itself to being a little bit more entertaining.
Right. But not necessitating being an
entertainer. Entertainer. Right. Yeah. Okay. Well, I
but I do. I think a lot of leaders because of the and this gets
to sort of how our leadership culture has
disintegrated, I think, is probably the best term over the or
atomized. Maybe let's be more a little more friendly has atomized over the
last, you essays 20 years. I think it's atomized over the last
25 years. And I think that part of that,
or my theory on that, and let me kind of run this by you a
little bit. My theory is that when the commercial internet got
turned on in 1989 and the Berlin wall came down,
those were 2 events kind of
like, similar to Woodstock and
Apollo happening in 1968 that
that were that were what I call thunder
clap events, except one we recognize as a thunder clap
event, the fall of the Berlin wall. But one the
other one, we didn't. We didn't hear the thunderclap go off because it's
boom, took a while Tom to hit us. Right?
Yep. But both of those events
began the heralding of the decline of what I call mass leadership.
So the if you look at the leaders of the 20th century, they led big
things. They led big bureaucracies, big company big companies,
big civic organizations. Big was the thing. Mass was the
thing. Get as many people and think of IBM, right? Get as many people
as you can working at IBM. Get as many people as you can working
at Lockheed Martin. Get as many people as you can working at any of the
great 20th century brands, Pepsi, Coke, whatever, right?
Fourth so Books than Pepsi, probably. But get them turning.
You know, people will will follow because they're a
generation that came out of World War II. So they're going to follow. They're going
to say, yes, sir. They're going to salute and they're going to be dutiful little
readers. They're going to go, and they're going to be happy with 3 hots and
a cot in their neighborhood. And it's going to take a while for all this
to kind of fall apart. And it did begin to it did begin to atomize.
It began to disintegrate, in the late sixties and going into the seventies
and the eighties, but there was still enough power underneath of that idea of mass
leadership to push it through even into the early
2000. But as the Internet became more powerful, this is my
theory, as the Internet became more powerful and as the ability
for me to connect with Peter or Peter to connect with
somebody in India or somebody in India to be able to connect with
someone in Russia. As that individual connection
became more powerful, Now we moved from
mass leadership being the thing that was being prioritized
to the space where we are at now, which is where I
believe individualized leadership is the thing that everybody's looking for. And
that's really hard if you're still working in a corporate bureaucratic
structure Tom understand. Understand. I think it's hard to understand. I think it's hard to
accept. So when I talk to not
new leaders and not veteran leaders, but leaders who are sort of on their path
to being veteran leaders are kind of in the middle. One of their biggest frustrations
is, well, I've got all these people and they want to bring their whole selves
to work. And let's say I got a team of 20 people. Does that mean
that I need to be a different person for all 20 of these people? And
I say, yes. That's what it means because their
phones are set up with social media that caters to
them. And their dopa, their dopaminergically
being goosed to want things individually their
way. Just like if you show me the front of your iPhone leader,
mister and missus leader, your phone doesn't look like mine. You're being
dopaminergically goosed in the things that you like, but you don't
have that. I love to how you framed it as self awareness. You don't have
that self awareness, that hardheaded empathy. Instead, you want
the math thing because it's easier for you. Not
easier for the people you're leading. This is my theory.
Yeah. And and and you you've got a valid point there in terms of the
mass leadership thing being something that
came out of the world wars back in the, you know,
forties. Yep. That came to an end. Corporate took off,
especially when you look at North America. Europe had to rebuild.
It there was that sense, I am the leader. Do
as you're told. You know, yes, sir. And off you go and do it.
Mhmm. I think that's also
a remnant of the industrial age when
it took off back in sixties whenever. Mhmm. And
you got because at the beginning of 19th century, the whole idea of automations
and and production line efficiencies really took off. I
mean, that was Ford's Henry Ford's,
doing Big idea. Yeah. Big idea. Yeah. Bringing that to fruition.
And there is a sense whenever something
big and new comes along, while it may it
needs some mass leadership, it needs somebody very powerful,
very strong to push it through, to
pull it through. Distinction between push and
pull. Yep. And then, you
know, when you essays the Internet came along, you gave people a lot more access
to the masses that made communicate intercommunication
between individuals a lot easier than doing the old
snail mail turning, and you only knew a handful of people. You wrote a letter
to me anyway. Right. So we now get exposed
to a lot more information. Did that drive
the individualization aspect of
people? I'm gonna say I don't think it did. I think what it did
is it brought it to the surface. Okay. Okay. I think
we've all had the individualization turning, but Sorrells
norms dictated. No, you do as you're told, because this is a corporate
structure and you go to work and every, that's just the way it is. And
if fourth already accepted that, But it's interesting to observe from
about the 19 sixties onwards that began to bit by
bit break down. Right. And
the Internet was almost where a momentum took
off Mhmm. Because of of what it what it ushered in.
So I don't think it's necessarily new. I just brought to the
surface something that is inherently there. And then the
generation, so the millennials, Gen z, gen z's
now, well, they've grown up with these things in their hand the whole time.
That's what they used to, you know. Social media feeds.
Right? But now they have a very different awareness to what
we had when we were teenagers. Mhmm.
Well, and you you well, and you mentioned the generational differences. I wanna talk a
little bit about that too because I do think well, I think a couple of
things. So we're having a massive generational
turnover. Right? So the baby boomers Yeah. Are are are
dragging themselves, kicking and screaming out the door. There is a lot of kicking
and screaming going on, but Yes. They are they are they are dragging themselves
out the door. Now they're not leaving succession
plans because they don't trust Gen Xers, and there just aren't enough Gen Xers as
a generational cohort globally or in America.
They just start the numbers just start there. You know, the 13 I'm part of
that generation that was fourth between 1960 1980. There's only,
like, I think, 25,000,000 of us. That's tiny.
But I do know with the Gen X's though,
they're part of the challenge with the gen x's is they're looking after those
baby boomers extracting themselves out of the workforce. Correct. Right.
They're not only are they looking after the baby boomers, but we're also raising gen
Z. And, and we had to
do, we didn't do battle with the millennials because we were just like,
all right. Let's have to accept the message.
Writers. Well, and there's just so many of them. There's 80 there's 80 some odd
million. Like, what are you gonna do? You're really gonna go into a street war
with 80,000,000 people? Like, give me a break. Come on. It's just easier to just
shrug and go whatever. Okay. But I
think that in that generational turnover, I do
think that, we are in the midst of and this is a
larger idea that I explore on this podcast. We're in the middle of
in the United States anyway. And also I think in Canada Tom, although I
think it's a little bit harder to see in Canada. We're in the middle of
a or we're at the end of a historical
cycle. We're at the end of a historical seculum cycle, an
80 year cycle. Yep. And at the end of an 80 year cycle, there's always
chaos in the last 20 to 25 years at the end of a at the
end of a cycle. But then on the other side of that is a new
cycle that starts sort of like winter going into turning, right?
And this is from the ideas of William Strauss and Neil Howe, The fourth
Turning. I really bought into that sort
of idea because I think it explains a lot of this generational
the generational differences narrowly in leadership, but also communication and a whole lot of other
places. Because and this is why I bring
this up because I think. Gen Xers who
in general are in their mid forties to touching on their early
sixties now. Are people who
are going to have to lead in that in the
next spring. But unfortunately, a lot of us,
because we've just been surviving the last 25 years and adapting to
chaos that has basically just been going on
since, at least in my life, chaos has been going on since 2,001, since
September 11th happened. Like, bagged. That was the beginning of chaos, and it's just been
chaos year on year on year on year on year on year. You get
into a certain sense of adaptability as a leader. Yep. And there's
always another brick, not shoe. There's always other brick that's dropping.
And so when spring comes, you don't believe it. And you're the cynical
old, Sorrells, ladies, but you're the cynical old guy
leader who no one wants to listen to because now there's spring
and there's hopefulness. And I think millennials sense
that something else is coming as a generational cohort, but they don't have the words
to describe it. And then you've got Gen Zers, or, yes,
Gen Zers, who are, number 1, scare the hell out of millennials, which
I find to be amusing. But then number 2 right. I just laugh. That's just
Tom makes me giggle. That makes me giggle. But but then
number 2, in Gen Z, you see a
split between folks who
they don't want to return to mass leadership, but they don't
know how to describe their need for leadership. And then you've
got the people who are just very just very individualistic, and
they're just gonna they're just gonna run on the thing they're gonna run on. And
they have no time for the other the the mass folks. They just don't and
so they just don't talk because they understand how the Internet works because they were
born in it. And they understand how social media works, so they just they just
don't engage. They used to go in for their own silos. There's an individual thing,
and they're just gonna drive. They're just gonna drive. They're just gonna drive. They're just
gonna drive. I've been I've met a lot of Gen z ers who are very,
very strong workers and very, very good team players,
who do who refuse to make any
on a Tom, they refuse to give pushback to other Gen
Zers who are engaging badly or who are behaving badly.
And then you've got Gen Xers who are trying to lead these teams fourth older
millennials who are trying to lead these Tom. And they're like, I
don't know what's happening here. And we see
this sort of in the split between, folks
who I'm just gonna use the the public example.
Folks who are very loudly,
promoters of DEI in various
organizations and cultures and the and everybody else who just sort sits quietly by and
just kinda hangs out. Yeah. I think that is
definitely something that is appearing
to be very prevalent. Where you've got this divide
between those that are vocal. They're pushed. They're
more engaged, they're dynamic, versus those who are more
complacent, quiet, get down, they do their thing. And it's not that they
don't work or anything. But there's that divide.
But I do wonder though Tom your point about the internet. Did
the internet create this
distinction more definedly? Did
it really bring it to the surface? Something that has always been there
generation to generation to generation? Because it speaks partly to
people's personality. Some people are quieter, withdrawn people.
Mhmm. Others are more loud in your face. It's
their fundamental personality. Yeah.
Okay. Some people argue you can change your personality. However,
is that any different to what the the baby boomers
were when they were the age of the mania. But
it wasn't societally,
the the perception was different. Right. Yeah.
I I think that's the thing. Writers? So so history doesn't
repeat. It just echoes. Right? And
so boomers have now taken on the role
that the World War 2 generation, the couple of World War 2
generations, both the silent generation and the generation that fought in World War 2 because
there's a split there. But, you know, they've now
taken on the role that those folks took. But
because I think of the Internet and the applications built on the Internet,
I think you're correct. The the The cultural
disintegration that took place around those structures
has allowed those structures to be the institutions, Tom be the new
that's what everybody,
I think, is trying to figure out. Right. And I don't think there's a good
that's what everybody, I think, is trying to figure out. Right. And I don't think
there's a good answer for this. I think we're all kind of grasping for what
the answer is. And I I I'm and I think this
is where leadership comes in because I think fundamentally at the end of
the day, and this is how I run my consultancy
leadership toolbox, and this is how I do, you know, you know, not
only this podcast, but also coaching and book writing and
all that. I fundamentally believe that, and you talked about self
aware, I frame it as the intentional application
of effective leadership practices. Things that have worked as human
beings haven't changed in 10000 years or 6000 years, depending upon what
your number is that you'd like to use. Human beings still need the
same things they needed back when we were rubbing 2 sticks together turning to make
a fire. Correct. None of that's changed. Yep.
The the circumstances of the environment may have shifted
around, but the basic needs are the same.
And that's why we do this podcast in the way we do it because you
could find out some of that stuff in old books versus the brand new
shiny business book. And that aspect, you know, so coming back to the
whole leadership thing in the context of this, nothing has changed. Human beings are
still human beings. They still have their fundamental needs. And
whatever those are, but we all have them. What I
think has shifted is the rate of change of technology
Mhmm. Is something that a lot of people might be
struggling to stay on top of, keep up with.
Mhmm. Right? You've got a lot of baby boomers who quite
frankly are struggling to wrap their head around anything and everything Internet
related email and forget social media on top of that. That's just
another headache to learn. The the millennials and the
gen, gen z's, well, that's natural
for them. They just get it. But when they are 20,
30, 40 years from now, what technology
that they are having to deal with and its rate of change
Right. Are they going to be experiencing the similar sort of struggle
to what the baby boomers today are? And and you can look through every
generation. It has its Sorrells to deal with the change
that is being experienced in society at large.
So let's talk a little bit about artificial intelligence because
this, every leadership consultant who I've ever talked to leadership,
author performance leadership,
project management, whatever. Right. Coaching
everybody's holding their breath.
Yes. Trying to see, just like Peter just held his breath
there, trying to see how these
how these algorithms, a, are going to go to scale, and,
b, disintermediate what we do.
Now I fundamentally am not holding my breath, and maybe that's
just my level of ignorance of the science and the engineering behind it as a
humanities major, but I look at all these algorithms
in their current state, and I think
I don't really have anything to worry about.
Well, then and then you get those people who look at movies
like Terminator and go, crap. What are we in for? You're right. Yeah. Like,
if like, you know, Boston Dynamics, I wish they'd Tom making the robots and then
making the videos that show us the robots that can stand up once they've been
knocked over. Stop it. Has anybody ever stop it, you people. It's
this is what I'm talking. This gets back to my idea about, oh, it's just
a bug, not a feature. Quit with the engineering. Like,
stop it. Stop it. Getting humanoid robots
is not an engineering problem. Stop.
It's actually a leadership problem. It's actually a leadership problem.
No. And are there those people
at the engineer level, at the doer level,
and at the leadership level who want to develop, oh,
we want the greatest AI thing there is. You know, there there is a race,
and you read through all the the literature out there
talking about gen AI and all of that. There is a race to
who can who can create the next best
language algorithm, who can create the next best feature
set, who can oh, yeah. You know, ChatGPT came out
in November of 22. Mhmm. And now we're looking at
well, ChatGPT is advanced with version 4. Now
you can create sound or a person's voice
blank, and you wouldn't know the difference. You can create video. You can create images.
Well, we couldn't do that. What's that? Year and a half
ago, but we came down. So what is the next iteration?
Where is that going? The older generation, I think it does
freak out a little bit. Where can it go? And how, well, you know, what
what's it mean? The younger generation, I think,
is split in terms of its embracing of that. Mhmm.
Oh, yeah. No. This is great. Let's do it. Yeah. Well, hang on. You know?
I mean, I don't know. I'm I'm not so sure.
But is that a feature of this
generation, or is it just a technology
that has got two sides to it? So I
take the posture that or I take the position.
Versus a humorous one. I always think of Marty McFly in Book
to the Future when he goes back to, when he goes in Back to the
Future 2, when he when he's in Hill Valley And, he's
standing there in front of the movie theater, and the 3 d jaws shark comes
out, and he freaks out and he, like, books. And, like, the shark, like, bites
and then because it's the ad for the it's the ad for, like, jaws in
3 d or whatever. Yeah. And it, like, bites him and then it shrinks back
into the into the movie theater. Then he stands up and looks around, and, of
course, nobody else is looking around. They're all like, but when you do it, you
idiot, like, it's in 3 d thing. And he goes he
shakes his head a little bit, and Michael j Fox goes, Shark still
looks fake. He Sorrells walks away.
Yes. So, you know, because I'm a cinema guy. Like, I'm
a movie guy, so I'm like, oh, that's that's so that's the first thing I
think of in relation to all of this. Like, I long I
long ago wrote a a series of blog posts about
how I thought, and and and nobody read them at the time, and maybe I
should republish them, about how Google as a search
engine was going to leap, was going to be the 1st internet
company that was going to escape the internet into the real.
I firmly believe that the I still firmly believe that that's the path they're on.
They're trying to get out of the box. They're trying to get out of the
box of the Internet. They're trying to get out of the box of your
computer or your mobile device because
their stated goal is to collect all the data in the world.
That's their stated goal. Well, there's a whole
bunch of data that's outside of the Internet
that they need to get to if that's their stated goal. And so if
you just look around. Everything
that I am surrounded by that you're surrounded by, you have a bookshelf in
your office. I got a bookshelf in my office. You've got computers, You've got your
your biometrics. You've got your your book fourth bio your your actual biology
of your body. That's all data. Right? These are all data points.
Yep. We don't think of the world in that kind of Tom. But if you're
Google, that's how you think about the world. And so you gotta get out of
you gotta get outside of the box you're trapped in.
And I think the large language algorithms, that's the next step. You talk about
voice, you talk about video, you talk about images. I think
the next step is try to get that out of the Internet and
get it into the real world, kind of like a
reverse sort of matrix kind of idea.
Do I think that that will be a good thing or a bad thing? We're
going to talk about ethics here in a minute. We can have that conversation,
but I do think at a practical level, it is being looked at as a
engine engineering problem to be solved. Yep. Versus
a versus something that
probably should be left alone.
And I do think that's the next step. I do. I do with those large
English. I think they're going to escape the Internet. I do. I think they're going
to escape the Internet. They're going to be walking around the real world with us,
which is going to create all other kinds of complications, that
we, in our postmodern conception of
reality, don't have the words or the
ideas to wrap our arms around, but I think
a lot of pre modern
societies had the words and the language to wrap their arms around.
I sometimes frame it as postmodern problems have pre modern
solutions, but we don't wanna learn any of the pre modern solutions because
we're too sophisticated for that.
Partly because we are stuck in when we were that
age and wrapped our minds around what
was then postmodern. Writers, exactly. Yeah.
These are just thoughts I have in my head about about artificial intelligence. I'm open
to being I'm open to being wrong. You know, maybe it will all be
paradisiacal and and awesome. And, you know, the algorithm will give me
everything that I desire. We'll build our own gods Tom paraphrase from
Google Gemini. Yeah. And I think you
what you've just said there, I think, is the key thing from a leadership standpoint
Mhmm. Remember is that well, there's still
you and I around. There's still all of our employees around. The
human factor. Mhmm. If we take the human factor out of this
from a leadership as a leader in
embracing AI, doesn't matter what you're doing with
Tom. Mhmm. You're just embracing it.
Leadership is fourth humans. You don't need to lead
an AI model. You do not need to lead a robot. You just give it
defined instructions, and it does because it has no emotion. Instructions, and it does because
it has no emotion. Right. Human beings have
emotion. They have reason they have the ability to
reason. That's where leadership is
key. And you cannot you cannot take leadership and the human factor
and separate it and bring AI into a place.
Right. Right. Yeah. I often think of Star Trek. I mean, the next
generation, like data. Data was an Android. And
when data was driving the ship, the ship was driven by artificial intelligence.
Correct. So it's a machine driving another machine. But you still had
human beings walking around inside of that machine dealing with each other.
Exactly. And that's the thing we mustn't forget is there's always a
human factor in everything that we do. Right. And
leadership will always deal with the humans. Okay. So let's talk
about dealing with the humans. Let's let's move fourth maybe this
fourth of technical sort of algorithmic conversation to to more maybe
more of a human one.
All things I struggle with as a leadership
guy. And maybe you can help me out with some of this. You can help
me walk through some of these areas,
because maybe you're seeing the same thing. So
I am on a mission to make people competent.
Okay. Because I think that the decline
in competency you talked about 2020, I think a lot of things happened in
2020. A lot of people were given and I'm going to use the
broad term people, but I actually think it was leadership teams and organizations
and cultures were given permission. They were granted permission
to let competency slide because we had a public
emergency fourth perceived public emergency.
And so when it perceived public emergency, every, the
discipline kind of falls apart because people
are in panic mode. Writers. And the longer
that emergency was allowed to continue, rightly
or wrongly, the fourth the discipline
around competency loosened up and loosened up and loosened up. And
now we're in a situation where we can see
incompetency all around us. But to stand
up and say that is looked at as
being disagreeable or being the dirty end of the stick. And I'm actually I've I've
recently had a had a.
Business interaction around this space, which is kind of why I'm thinking about it. So
importantly, right now, I recently had a business interaction around this space
with a third party client that we do some work with without
going into names or the specific situation. But
but basically, we've decided to
end our relationship with that third party client because of
incompetencies on their part that were not in evidence before
2020. I don't think that
we're alone in seeing this as a firm. I think
this is everywhere. I think people can see this everywhere. I think we can see
this most notably in the decline of customer service when we go into retail.
Like we can see this. So how do we as leaders
ensure competency? By the way, another example of this, when the bridge
in Baltimore, was hit by the cargo ship,
tragic accident, took a lot of people's lives,
you know, essays all the caveats. Right. And I read
a story because this drove me crazy. This drove me over a cliff
where the engineers were estimating that it
would take 10 years to rebuild that bridge.
And I thought, is that because we
don't have competent enough people to put up that bridge
Or is that because and I kind of went on a little bit of a
rip on this on LinkedIn? Or is this because we we have
people who have overemphasized empathy
and underemphasized being disagreeable? Because sometimes
you gotta be disagreeable to put up a bridge really fast so that commerce
can continue. Right.
And so this, this idea of competency versus empathy, or maybe if it's, maybe
it's even competency versus agreeableness. I think this is something
else that we're struggling with on the human end. And I think that
leaders are struggling with this most most importantly right
now. Or of wanting to
avoid some form of conflict disagreement.
And instead of utilizing conflict to come up with a better solution,
everybody just apathetically says
Right. Want fourth doesn't get involved fourth, you know, there's
various ways that apathy can manifest itself.
Which leads to more incompetency because
iron sharpens iron. To paraphrase Tom to phrase phrase that, a horary old book of
the bible. You know, iron sharpens iron. Right?
And so how do I get better? How do I become more competent?
Well, it isn't through avoiding the conflict, and and maybe it's because
I'm a conflict management guy too. Like, I don't avoid conflict. Like, it's fine. Like,
let's let's have an argument. Let's figure it out.
We can disagree without being disagreeable. Exactly. I
think that's one of the challenges that exist is people are not willing
to to put their view on the
table for the fear of creating an argument. Well, I've got other
things to do. I'm not gonna say anything. I mean, the reasoning can
be can be a myriad of things. I think
you're right that 2020 was a divide, a threshold in
in some ways where competency was allowed
to slip. Mhmm. Because, oh, you know, well, they,
this, they, that, whatever. Does that
mean as leaders we should be less competent leaders?
Does that mean we should just allow people just to
sink back Tom sit back, to
withdraw from becoming the
best they can be? Because that's one of the things a leader
should be doing, is working with it
their employees to be the best they can be. How else do you
get a successful organization? How do you how else do you get the
best product on the market? Well AI might seem to
be the antithesis of this where there is but
it's the newest thing on the block. So everyone's dung ho about it.
Everybody, oh, this is thing. You know, let's go go go go go.
I mean, we thought of the Internet, you know, 2020.com Tom all
of that lot was a class at 20 2000, sorry, not 2020,
you know, the whole Tom era. Mhmm. Are we seeing that
again? And everything else is being allowed to be to
slip in terms of its competency Libby? My question is,
who's slipping on its competency at that point?
Is it the worker, or is it the leader?
Always and it always one contingent not an easy contingent,
but as a result of the other. Well, if leadership is
fundamentally relationally based, which I do believe it is,
only remember exchange theory tells us that, but also
just the practical ways in which we see
leadership developing, but in our own lives tells us that this is a
relational act. And so I think the
the the team member or worker or employee, or however you want
to frame it, gets emotional cues
from the leader and the leader gets emotional
cues from the team member. And now we're in this now
they're they're book they're all in this hot house, right, of
emotional turning. And to your point earlier, if the
leader isn't self aware enough, they could easily
be drawn into, I think
they could be drawn by the siren song of
becoming undisciplined in certain areas. Yep. Very much
so.
How is how do I as a leader I'm going to ask you this fourth
a conflict management guy, because I think I know what the answer is, but I
want Tom, let's see what your answer is. So how do I, as a leader
manage conflict effectively, in particular,
I'm on a diverse I'm leading a team of diverse people, a team of always
people have always been diverse. But I'm leading a I'm leading a team of diverse
people post 2020,
post I'm gonna go here, post George Floyd,
writers? Post all of that. Writers. And now we're into a space
where particularly in the United States, I don't know how it is in
in Canada, but particularly in the United States where,
diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are being
pulled back, by major corporations,
but pulled back in the sense that they are being repackaged and put in different
spots to avoid government regulators and to avoid law
the law looking at them.
But on the ground, and I'm hearing this from real people working in real corporations
on real teams, this kind of stuff is still happening. You know? And and by
the way, this kind of stuff, meaning the trainings that divide and fragment
people based on identity. Right? The
the ways in which people are labeled and put into their own little
boxes based on their sexual orientation or their
racial designation or their ethnic background. We're also
seeing in the culture in the United States increasing pressure being
placed on organizations and corporations from the outside
around geopolitical moments that are
occurring, as in the Ukraine, Israel versus
Hamas, da da da da da. Right? These these external social and political
pressures are being paced on leaders and on Tom. Well, on organizations first,
and then it filters down into leaders and teams. And then we throw into,
then we throw ESG into there where corporations are
being.
What's the word I'm looking for? They're being
no. Yeah. I coerced.
Okay. Yeah. No. That's the hard word, but it's probably the right one, are being
coerced into following along with with mandates from
governmental entities that
in very many cases don't match what's going on in the real world that they
could really see. Okay. So you've got these you've got these these things that are
pushing on on organizations, which then in turn push on
leadership, which then in turn push on teams. And at a at a
very practical level, leaders are looking at their diverse
teams, and they're asking the question, how can I
have a conflict here to grow in competency when there's all
these to paraphrase an overused word fourth to use an overused word? There's all
these triggers all around, and I feel like I'm walking into a
landmine every time I talk to, you know, my 14 people.
How can I have an honest conversation with them? I'm just trying to not hit
any landmines. What do we say what do you say to leaders like
that? Because I I have an idea what the answer is, but what do you
say to leaders like that who who may who may be asking those kinds of
questions? Maybe I look at things slightly a little bit differently.
Sure. Yeah. Maybe. Conflict. I will put I will put it
that. Conflict isn't a bad
thing. I mean, I I think society has placed this,
oh, conflict is bad. Oh, you got to avoid it. Yes. You got the Jesan.
They are People have the personality trait that are conflict
avoidant. Mhmm. Conflict.
I mean, when book at the root word of conflict, I
mean, it goes back to we had the conflict between this
nation and that nation. That's where it was
armed conflict. Somebody had to die. Somebody had to there had to be a winner
and there had to be a loser. That is our
presumption as to what conflict constitutes. So
leader has conflict with team team there. Somebody's got to lose. Somebody's
got to win. That's just the way it is. Whereas
if you look at conflict, and maybe conflict is the wrong word to
use, maybe we need to create a new word. That just a thought
that popped into my head right now. But,
you know, it's a points of view.
You you have a different point of view to I,
and Mary has a different point of view yet again.
Does Tom mean everybody's point of view other than mine
is wrong? Well no. Now you're potentially creating
conflict. However, can I learn something from your
point of view and Mary's point of view and
John's point of view if we were to share our
points of view so that we
understand why you have that point of view and you
have that point of view? We have a much better
understanding of everybody around the table
and can therefore come up with a much better solution
to the challenges that we are facing. As opposed to
viewing it as conflict
between on a Tom. It's conflict on a
team between leader and employees or and their team or
if I wonder, looking at the origins of
the word conflict, if we're using the wrong word.
Maybe we're using the wrong word. I I'd be open to the idea we could
use a different word, like disputes or disagreements, maybe.
Disagree. Differences of opinion.
Yeah. Yeah. I'd be, I'd be open to using a different word. I think there's
also, so we, we demand, we are increasingly demanding of
our leaders, without really
getting a response by the way, from them, which I also think is driving average
people nuts. And they don't really know why, but
we are asking our
leaders. And increasingly, I
think the term is demanding of our leaders that they have
epistemic, they possess epistemic humanities.
Doctor. Yes. Doctor. In a way that we weren't demanding of them, as we were
previously talking about a few minutes ago, we weren't demanding that
of them during the mass leadership of the 20th century, because there
was just trust there. Right. Yeah. We just trusted
Henry Ford to, you know,
create a business. And if he had epistemic humility
or if he didn't have it, that wasn't what we were looking for. We
were trusting in his competency to build Ford Motor Company
fourth we were trusting in
Steve Jobs to build Apple, or we
were trusting in whoever, you know,
even our presidents. We were trusting our presidents to lead the country.
Mhmm. With the breakup of trust
and the United States is still a high trust society, more so than
most societies in the world, even though that trust has
declined. With the with the decline
of trust in leadership, we are
asking our leaders to be more epistemically humble,
and our leaders don't know how to ask, and this
is this is where where the and the disagreements really begin to occur, I
think. I don't think leaders understand how to ask their teams
to exhibit more epistemic humility.
Right. And you I think you've got a valid point there. And I I
wanna bring around from a different tact to this is what we
mentioned earlier on. When you
understand who you are.
When you understand who you are, other people on your team have
needs, have desires enough are
fundamentally human beings like you. Is that where we're
coming at from the need for this level of humility
and understanding that leaders we demanding of
leaders to have. Because it's not just the humanities. It's an understanding. But
you cannot gain an understanding without seeking
information in order to understand.
Right. So all we're
asking our leaders without actually saying it, oh, you gotta
be more humble and blah blah, all of that lot, Find
out more about the people on your team. When you
look at this great resignation that 2020 kicked into high gear
Mhmm. It brought what was brewing underneath to the
surface. And that and what that fundamentally
simplistically phrased was, I'm an individual. I have needs
and I want to feel valued. What are you gonna do to what what
contribution do I make to this organization other than
to be a number on a leaders, and I get paid basically on to do
to put 2 nuts and bolts together. You know, very simplistically.
But it it it serves a point. People
wanna feel valued. And our leaders,
what is being demanded of leaders is to see their people as
human beings. This comes back to the human
factor I mentioned. Is that what we're demanding?
Maybe we're phrasing it again wrong
and just using the word humility. What else is there? Being human.
What is human what is a humanity perspective in the
context of this? Well, I think so
if I'm sitting the essence of what leadership is, you mentioned a moment
ago, it's relational. Right. Relational can only exist
between 2 human beings. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.
So if I'm sitting around let me make this very practical. So if I'm sitting
around a table with fourth members of my team,
right, I, as a leader of
that small Tom,
am resuming, for lack of a better word, that the
people who are coming to this table with their opinions and their
ideas, are the best people
to be sitting at that table. I'm presuming that even before
I start having a conversation about a, about a problem that we need to solve
or a project we need to start. Writers?
I think where the frustration for leaders comes in and which is
probably why they they're not evincing the humility necessary in
all Tom. And by the way, I think it I think it's easier to evince
that humility the smaller and smaller the team is. Right?
So True. If if you got 4 to 6 people, there's
nowhere to hide. There's nowhere to hide with your ego.
There's nowhere to hide with being incompetent. There's nowhere to
hide with having with having the ability to not face conflict. There's nowhere
to hide with a lack of self awareness because everybody can see that. Now,
but now when you go to scale, when you go above Dunbar's number,
writers, when you go above that number of folks, now there's plenty of places
for the leader to hide. There's also plenty of places for the team member to
hide. Don't get me wrong. But there's plenty of places for the leader to
hide their own incompetency, their own fear,
their own lack of of humility. So I think
that if I'm on a small team, I
have to trust that those people are the right people. But as the
team gets bigger, the trust level falls.
Yes. That is that is invariably the
perception of what happens. Not that it doesn't actually happen.
But trust all because, well, I'm just 1 or 20, now
30, now 4 whatever number of people. Right. You don't
because the leaders in at that junction not able to interact
with the individual. He's now interact
or she is interacting with a a mass. The
mass. Yeah. Right. So there's that mass concept.
Again, therein lies the problem. So how do you deal with conflict
at that point? How do you deal with all of this?
The bigger the team, the harder it is to
find fourth get agreement across the board and the
commitment to to whatever is agreed. Mhmm. Absolutely.
Does that mean that the team is too big? And
I'm gonna I'm gonna challenge it and say that the answer is yes. It is
too big. Yeah. Because reality is how many people can you lead?
Oh, you can't go above double digits. I I think
you can. I think I think your ratio is 1 to 8. 1 to 8?
1 to 8. And I think you're really and I think you're really pushed it
at that point too. Absolutely. So, you know, if you get 10, you're you
I've gotta be really, really, really, really good. Right.
And that's another conversation. But, you're right. Tom might be
it's it's about where when you look at all the literature and you look at
the almost anecdotal evidence.
Mhmm. You know, my own anecdotal evidence
suggests I can't leave more than 8 people. Right. I
well, there's enough examples going back that
you can see that. I mean, even biblical examples, you can't more than
about 8 people. Really, it's a small number of people. So how
do you structure? Because at that point, when you've got a small group of people,
you can deal with the notion of conflict fourth the word using the word
conflict and what that means. Because you don't have as
many diverse opinions and you don't have people rallying behind
and and creating, factions. That's the
problem with larger teams. You create factions. Mhmm. And And then they start
in then you get the infighting that goes on, and you'll never reach a resolution.
So how do we so if I'm if I'm beating a large
corporation, or even just a small
a small one. Right? Like, 5,000
employees. Right?
What is the best way to construct a
leadership ecosystem?
Well, the first is creating the the high level, the
executive team leadership ecosystem. That's the
first one that needs to exist because from everything else flows.
Mhmm. So embrace
now I'm gonna use the word conflict again, but embrace that
within utilize it to get
understanding and get agreement and
then commitment. So you're cohesive around that. Everybody
agrees to it because everybody understands it. That
example of leading and creating that alignment within that
executive Tom, is what each one of those leaders then
takes to their immediate Tom. And it fosters the
same process. That's the I mean, this is ideal. Absolutely. I get
it. Mhmm. But you gotta start somewhere.
So you start with that executive team and let that flow through.
Now there's a concept known as customer driven leadership. Mhmm.
And that's and and the premise there is is that the
CEO is serving his executive team. The executive team is
serving the next level team that exists and so on and so forth till
you get to the frontline team that is serving the the customer, the clients.
Mhmm. And that service. So you're taking the traditional pyramid and you're inverting it.
You're inverting it. Yep. Okay. So
you're serving, serving up. And if you really wanna take that Tom
any degree, you're serving fourth clients to serve their clients and
so on. But but when when you look
at that model, I am here as CEO, I'm to serve my
executive team. How do I do that best? How do I
create the alignments, the cohesion? How do I get them all to
commit? Now there's a number of different elements you've got to deal with on all
of that. There's trust factors you've got to know. You really want to know who
the individual is, what motivates them, what drives them, why they,
what trips them up, what sabotages them, all of these
things. The more you know about them, you understand. Oh, now I
understand why Shazan did that. Mhmm. Because of
that, because this factor, that factor, what it is. Now
I have understanding, I can give you some empathy.
The moment that is, now you suddenly feel more inclusive. Now you feel,
okay. Now I I don't feel like the enemy. I'm trying to do things. Now
you know why I'm doing whatever. But now there's understanding.
Hey. How can I support you? Now you get other people on the
executive team that can support you too, and that goes
all the way around the table. Yep. People then have a different
perspective of, oh, this is what leadership is. If I don't do that, wow. Aren't
that? Okay. Now can I do that with my team? Because that's what I want
on my team. So that the executives are taking it one level lower.
And so that goes down throughout the organization.
Yes, the bigger the organization, the heck of a lot more work it is, but
you gotta start somewhere. Right. Right. And and and what
else are you gonna do with your with your life? Like, really, like, what else
are you gonna do? Okay.
Let's turn and talk a little bit about ethics, because you mentioned the word
alignment, and I love that word. That was a, that was a key word, in
our consultancy for many, many years was
we are going to help managers and supervisors, the
much put upon middle managers, get alignment
writers with their teams, with themselves, with the culture.
Because what we were seeing, what I was seeing was misalignment all
over the place. And misalignment of course leaders
to fourth maybe misunderstandings lead to misalignment. I don't know.
Which invariably leads to miscommunication, which invariably
leads to the the word we keep using, but we need to find a better
one for, what I call false conflict or fake
conflict, conflict that doesn't need to doesn't need to happen.
And by the way, I think a lot of this misalignment
in organizations and cultures post 2020,
has occurred because of that that loss of that
loss of of the of the tightening of the discipline, the the more fourth apathy,
right, in the system, which has allowed space for misalignment
to to to be all over the place, and in
general has allowed false or fake conflict. And I,
and I do think fundamentally that most of the conflicts that we have around
identity inside of our cultures or inside of organizations are not
real conflicts. That's not that's not real. That's not what
it's really about. It's about wanting to be seen
fourth it's about wanting to be recognized fourth honestly, and I think this is
a lot of it, it's wanting to redress
grievances that are individualized to that organization, to that
team, to that culture that were never addressed previously.
Absolutely. To an individual's satisfaction. Might have
been addressed to the organization or the corporate culture satisfaction,
but not to the individual's satisfaction. Because the
individual is never seen. Well, and and because
and because this goes back to the tension that I said about having our cell
phones, We live now. This is the thing that's happening on the other
end as it when I go to work, I'm
part of a mass. Right. But when I look at my phone, I'm
not. There's a tension there.
Writers. And no organization right
now, not even a government,
is not anywhere on the globe that I'm aware of. Maybe Canada, it's
different. Writers? Maybe in Europe, it's different, but no organization,
no government I've heard of is addressing that tension
and is seeking to solve that. No. Because
it's there in lies the biggest one of the biggest problems with leadership, and
that's your ego. Right. Well, and it works for me, right,
to have that tension. No. There you go. Now you now you hit
on something there. Yes. It does work.
Because it keeps people in line. Right? It keeps them you know, they're gonna keep
coming to work. It's it's like a fish with a it's like a fish with
a hook in it. Right? Like, you're gonna you're gonna keep turning on it. Eventually,
it's gonna become your your meal. Yeah. It keeps
working as long as everything else falls in line with it.
Right. Except the problem except one of the problems is as
misalignment then occurs between the individual and the organization,
the individual feels comfortable becoming more apathetic and less
competent at their work. And now the domino falls
into incompetency. And now we're gonna talk about
unethical and unethical behavior. Now the door opens to unethical behavior.
And I think a lot of this false conflict falls underneath the realm of unethical
behavior. I'm not saying the grievance isn't genuine. I
wanna be very clear on that. But I think the behavior
around the grievance is unethical. I don't think it's ethical for you to
do a a sit in like what recently happened Tom Google.
I'll just use this as a big public example. I don't think it's ethical for
you to do a sit in in your boss's office because of some political thing
that's happening that has nothing. You could talk
all day you want about Google doing research for the Israeli Defense Forces.
If you're a developer in some other part of Google
and you're not working on that project, it has nothing to do with you.
Right? Right. Hey.
So why am I sitting in the office of some vice
president protesting to free Palestine?
My short answer is gonna be, and probably not the most popular answer, is
that your ego Tom satisfy you says I
can do that because I have a right to do that. Well that's nothing but
an ego talking. Right.
Right. You have an opinion and you believe your opinion is right
and they should and others, whoever others are, should not
be doing that because I said so. 1 of the biggest problems we have
post 2020. Well, and and Google has now respond
not responded. Google. Well, yeah, Google reacted or
responded. But by turning those 20 people.
Yep. And I think that that's probably the correct move for
Google. I'd fire those people. Those, those people you, you want to protest
if it were, if if if I'm the VP and you're in my office
and you have nothing to do with this and you don't work over here, or
even if you do and you haven't brought this
grievance to me directly, instead, you staged a protest and you've
put a flag out and you're chanting, you are fired.
Pack your box up and get out. There is the
you're at I I I don't disagree with the move. I will say
this though, and this is a caveat to that to me saying I don't
disagree with the move, is that
did and and this comes back to the size of teams that we mentioned
earlier. Did relevant leaders,
were they aware of those
individuals, those 20 individuals motivation,
what would trigger them? Maybe completely
separate from a work issue as to why they did it. Sure. But
you have to ask from a leadership perspective, you have to ask the
question, what did leaders do or not do
that precipitated that action,
those actions of those 20 people? Well, and I'm going to and by the way,
before I before I fire you, I'm going to sit down every single one of
those individual 20. I'm going to sit them down individually,
and I'm going to say I'm not firing you for protesting. That's not
why I'm firing you. I'm not firing you for executing on free speech.
Not doing that either. I'm firing you because I
failed.
To recognize what your motivations were in the internal Google
chat, the internal version of Google Slack, basically, that's running
around and fomenting all of this. And because I failed
and my boss isn't going to fire me, but I have the capability to fire
you. The consequence of my failure falls on you.
You have a good day. Pack up your boxes. You're gone. Interesting ethical
question. Right. This becomes an ethical
question right now. The only way,
the only way that conversation actually works though, because I'm fairly
sure that VP or those VPs that fired those 20 people didn't have that kind
of conversation with those folks. I'm fairly sure that's not how it went. I would
agree. The only way that works is if
myself is the VP doing the firing
goes to my president and my books, and
I say to them, Jesan. The fact of
the matter is we have this Google internal Slack
channel that's proven to be a real problem, and it's been a
real problem for a while. We thought it would allow people
to blow off Tom,
around their their political progressive activist
tendencies. And that has not proven
to be what this tool has done as a result of
this tool, not turning, which
we did put in for ethical reasons, at least initially,
it has failed to work. And this is what I'm saying to my boss
because it's failed to book. Now we have to fire these people.
But that failure is actually on us. So
what are we going to do to fix this? A, so it doesn't happen again,
but also B, what are we going to do?
So that I don't have to be placed in a position of leadership
failure? And I have to go
fire another subsequent 20 people for showing up for something else tomorrow. Oh,
and by the way, because I'm an ethical leader, I'm gonna take a 10% pay
cut on this this year. Just gonna put that on the table. Tom my
boss is, of course, gonna go, oh, no. No. You don't have to do that,
like, 10%. There has to be some book. There has to be some
skin in the game as Nicholas Nassim Tyler would say, from all of us on
this. And by the way, me voluntarily putting that 10% on the table, that puts
pressure on you. And I know that's what it does because this is the chess
game we're in. And now you look like a fool if you don't take that
Tom right. So this is the chess game we're gonna play. So I'm gonna push
you into a position where you have to address this, number 1. But also
number 2, you have to look like you've got skin in the game in an
ethical way. I'm going to guarantee
you that that did not happen. I would guarantee that too. Yep.
How do we get ethical leaders to be
right to engage around this to to
engage in these spaces ethically and to to have those kinds of
conversations, not necessarily with their teams, which is interesting,
but with their bosses ethically. Because
ethics rolls uphill and the fish such as it were rots
from the head down. Yeah. And
that's it's one of the I'm gonna go so
far as to say it's it is a systemic issue. Mhmm. In
that as you climb the ranks in a corporation, especially the
larger ones, you get sucked into the politic
the political shenanigans and
maneuvering that goes on because it is the only way to maneuver.
Mhmm. And and that
kind of then necessitates that you put ethics on the back burner
Mhmm. If you don't dismiss it altogether.
Because your ambition, driven by your ego,
is to climb the rank and not to be held responsible
for that. There's an interesting
book, Jako Wilnick,
Extreme Ownership. And it's about the Navy SEALs. And I the
to me, this is the quintessential example of what
what does need to happen. Mhmm. Leaders need to take
ownership for everything that goes wrong even if they're not the ones
who did it. Mhmm. But it is their
team who failed at something.
They, as a leaders, needs to take ownership fourth. What does that mean? It
doesn't mean you take and everything falls on your head and, you know,
oh, book. You know, I'll take the pay cut. I'll take this. I'll get fired.
All my team stays untouched. Now that's not what that means. Mm-mm.
No. It means you take the responsibility for what happens,
and you work with your team to find a
solution. What failed? How do we correct it? What do we
need to change? What is the system, the process, Whatever that needs
to happen. So that this does not happen again.
That's taking extreme ownership on the leaders part to initiate that
action. It's not to be the one
to, to beat yourself up because of it. No.
That's not what it means. And I think a lot of leaders miss
that component of leadership because it's
it's very interesting. When when a leader were to do that, the influence
they have over their team Mhmm.
Is completely unspoken, but is so powerful that
in fact is more powerful than the spoken at that point.
I'm glad you brought up Extreme Ownership because we've talked about that book on this
podcast. We've actually added a conversation. We'll be releasing that,
later on this year, with another gentleman around Jocko
Willock's book. We facilitated that book in our
consultancy, and information from that book combined with another
book called, the Oz Principle, which is about how you how
you scale up accountability. Because Jocko does an excellent
job of describing what ownership looks like, at a at an
individual and at a small team level. There are challenges when you
go to scale with that, though, and his book doesn't address any of those, but
the Oz Principle, does. It addresses it very,
very well. And so we've actually combined those 2 books together and
gotten some really interesting insights out of it, particularly around alignment,
because. The, the misalignment around
ownership is this. So again,
I'm leading 6 people, writers? Cause I can't lead more than that. Can't lead
more than 6 to 8. Writers? Those people are
loyal to me because I'm exhibiting ownership,
in every single sphere of influence that I
touch, which of those 6 people are, fourth 6 to 8 people are working
for me. They're all in my sphere of influence. Thus to your point, I'm
responsible for everything they do, and I'm responsible for
everything they don't do. Now I'm effectively aligned.
And by the way, I tell them this. I don't hide it from them. I
don't, I don't I don't I don't,
obvious skate on it. Right? I I actually tell them this is
I say it out loud. I'm I'm I'm in I'm not in charge of
saying I'm taking ownership over the whole team. I'm taking
ownership over these projects. Now what
that means is when you fail and eventually at a certain point, you will
on something, I'm going to take ownership of your failure because it will be something
that I didn't do that allowed you to fail.
But it also remember I talked about that epistemic humility that has to be
on the part of both leaders and followers. I also need
you to take ownership of everything in your sphere of influence if I'm gonna do
this. And and that's the absolute key thing because if I as a
leader take leadership, you as my
direct report, I'm gonna put it that way. Mhmm. You take ownership for what
you are doing with equally your Tom. Or even if it's
only just you, you need to take ownership for you. Right.
Okay. So now we're doing this. And I'm one team of
4 to 6 people, 6 to 8 people in a much
larger organization of 25,000 people. But my team is rocking and
rolling. My team is clicking. We're getting
stuff out. We're behaving competently. We're having
disputes, but they're not driven by ego. Our part
of whatever the process is that we own
is humming. And because it's humming other
teams where it's not humming, where there's misalignment
on all those other teams and fake conflict and done it and all the Jesan
and that organization of 25,000 people,
all those other teams are jealous of us and are angry.
A resentful, claim that I've
got some Svengali mind control over my 68 people
that makes them loyal to me. I've heard this, right? And really, it comes down
to human jealousy. Absolutely. You know, and we
don't talk a lot about that because we think that we're podcast. And again, this
is one of those postmodern problems that require pre modern language to actually
describe. And so and
so let's let's call jealousy what it is. It's it's jealousy. Right? It's envy.
Right? It's the green dragon. Okay. Well,
as a result of me being good with my 6 to 8 people,
I am then offered another position. I am given
now 2 teams of 6 to 8 people, because if I could do
a well with 1, of course I could do it well with 2,
And then I could do it well with 3, and then I can remake the
whole culture. This is the ego now getting involved in this. Right?
Yep. How does a leadership me wrap this idea up with a
question. How does a leader check their own ego? Because
Jocko talks about this in his book, Check Your Ego, right?
If I've got my 6 to 8 people humming along, how do I check my
ego and just stay with those 6 to 8 people? Check my
ambition and just and just stay with those 6 to 8 people ethically? How do
I do that? That is a very interesting and a very difficult
question.
It's it comes back to your humility factor for 1. Mhmm.
But it requires that understanding of
self. Mhmm. Now
could you take on, for the sake of the example,
another team of 6 people? Mhmm. You could do
that. And ego doesn't really step into
it. Maybe it says, well if I can do that, I could probably do it
with them. Let's give it a go. Reasonable response.
The question is, do you have enough insight into yourself
when you begin to see I am struggling to do this with
team number 2. I
need help. Mhmm. Whatever that means.
Mhmm. Right? And that is that level of self
awareness because, yes, my ego can take off. Yeah. Can do it with 2.
I can do it with 3. I can do it with whatever number. Bring them
on. Right? Because we feel invincible. Look at this. We've got this. This team is
running perfectly. I'm not overly stressed. It's easy. I can
add more to it. That's the ego
talking. There's no two ways about it. I'm
not saying you can't do 2 Tom of sex.
The question is, are you aware enough to know that you are
doing the same with team number 2 that you did
with number 1 and are not sacrificing
team number 1 for the sake of team number 2. Yeah.
Mhmm. Yep. And that it does take self
awareness. That's not you know, do you
can I train that into somebody in 6 months?
Probably not. Right. That takes a lot
of self initiative as well. I can give you the foundation, but
it does take you doing a lot of the work. Yeah. And
being able to objectively evaluate, there
might be that so your boss in that
sense then. Mhmm. What's their involvement
in all of us? So that brings the the question of
going up the tree, going up the ladder as
to how do we put the checks and balances in.
So how do how does my boss's boss and so on take
ownership of what's going on? How do we go to
scale with this? How do we go to scale at that point? Because it
does require just because there's this pocket in an
organization that's doing really well. It's thriving. It's it's going
gangbusters, and is the envy of everybody else.
The question is why? Mhmm. And are other
people book in the in the horizontal,
but as well as the vertical structure in the in the organization at that point.
So the pyramid above it. How
open are they and how willing are they to learn? And you know, now you
turning in a whole lot of other dynamics into that. Do we
want to replicate this? And there's the question of how do you scale?
How do you scale that? And that is always the challenge
but it requires self awareness to begin with. Otherwise,
you're not going to get there. One of the solutions that
I've had to give folks at a practical level is,
and I, a very occasionally when I'm working with
bureaucracies, whether they're governmental or corporate, it doesn't matter.
You'll get the leader in there, who is that leader who's got their
team aligned correctly. Right. And they've got ownership
and they're exhibiting these traits. And it's a small team,
usually no more than 10 people. And they're, you know, and they're, and
they've got even, they've even had talk to people cycle in that they've been able
to turn around. Right. And the
other leaders who are who are pair not parallel, but
who are vertical, who are on the same vertical, the peer group Tom
them. Had this recently
happened as it called as just as just as recently leaders about 9 months ago
with a group I was working with that they will
say, okay, well, x y z Jesan.
Let's just give her a name, Victoria. Of course, Victoria's team is
working well. Like they're hyper loyal to her. Like we can never
replicate that on my team.
Fourth we'll get the question, which I love. Well, Jesan, you
talk about alignment and accountability and ownership, and
that's all well and book. But you don't understand
that team over there led by that person is gonna send me
someone Tom, and then I'm gonna have to deal with them.
And the answer I always give, and let me tell, tell, let me, let me
find out what you think about this. The answer I always give when that question
comes up is this. I say, Okay, well, there's a very simple solution to solve
this problem. And you're not going to like it. It's simple,
but it's not going to be it's not gonna make you happy. Do you wanna
know what it is? Everybody goes,
grumble grumble grumble. Okay. This is not gonna make them happy. Like I I tell
you, it's not gonna make you happy when I tell you what the solution is,
but it is simple. I said, here's what you do. You do an invite
only meeting. Of everybody who's at the same peer group.
There's, like, 25 of you in this room, invite only meeting. Not fourth boss doesn't
get to show up and your subordinates don't get to show up. It's the 25
of you on a Saturday morning. You lock yourselves in a room in person for
3 hours and everybody figures out how to get aligned.
And everybody cries and you get to an agreement, you figure out how to get
aligned and how you're going to lead your teams and nobody gets to leave the
room until everybody's aligned.
One Saturday, you could figure it out. And committed. And
committed. That's right. One Saturday for, like, 4 hours. You could
figure it out. And everybody all of a sudden has nothing to
say. Yeah.
And because because the challenge is getting you all
as peers aligned because what you've done, and you don't wanna
say this out loud, is you've carved out little
kingdoms where you like your
toxicity and you like your unethical behavior and you like
being jealous of this thing that's working well. And by the way, even the
person who's turning extreme ownership in
the Jocko Willock fashion over there, 4 to 6,
6 to 8, whatever number of people they've carved out their
own little sinecure.
And, yeah, I am. You see that up and down every organization,
right? And so you want Tom you want to you want to fix that problem
of misalignment. You all have to get aligned.
So that when subordinate a goes to
Tom B, They already know what the deal
is. They're not escaping. They're going to
the same deal over here. But the 25 of
you won't spend a Saturday getting together because you're too
busy fourth I don't wanna spend my Saturday or I'm not getting paid for this,
or at the bottom of it, I'd like to just have this chip to complain
about, which I really think is a lot of it.
Absolutely. A lot of it is, well, if I've got something to beef about and
put somebody else down, it makes me feel better about myself. Right.
Because I don't wanna deal with me. Who why would I wanna deal with
me? Heck no. Me, I'm the I'm the worst person to deal
with. It's me. You know? No. People don't wanna do that.
And that but and and to your example, get together on Saturday
morning, all that level, nobody else above below.
Oh, do
I'm supposed to go there? I'm gonna put my stuff on the
table? Yeah, it's it. Yeah.
It puts you on the spot and people don't like being put on the spot,
but they will pull up very quickly, but they don't do anything.
Right. It's the sad box. So pushing that fourth idea is
brilliant. It works, but it has to be pushed through.
Right. Yep. Yep. Alright. So we're rounded
the corner here. We've had a good conversation. This has been this has been an
excellent conversation. We're rounding the corner here. I wanna ask you a couple
of other questions. Talk a little bit actually, just talk a little bit
about, your work with, World Ethics Organization and sort of how
you came to be involved with those folks and what do they do,
and how do they impact how does ethics
overall is a maybe a not even a
philosophy, but a practical level. How does that get inserted
into, into organizations and into cultures through leadership?
Well, how I got involved with, Richard and the
WEO came about through another conversation I
had with somebody else who was involved with Richard and Jesan the ethics,
and in general. Mhmm. And, we just got a conversation
about it was leadership related. And I said, you know,
one of the biggest things that's missing in in in in leadership,
but universally what we're seeing in the world is
is is an act of ethics. People are not,
either not aware, and the younger generation has that problem as aware as awareness
turning, but the middle generation, say fourth your gen
x's and partly your millennials, ethics means, oh, well, I
have to sacrifice something. And, well, I can't do
what I want and whatever else. You know, they're they're all in
that vein. But he but this person said to me, you need to
meet Richard. So Richard and I had a
conversation and Richard then shared with me the change
agent program. Mhmm. Went through that with him.
And I said to him, Richard, you need an organization
that takes ethics on at a global
level much like now we mentioned
the WEF at the writers at the beginning. I'm just gonna throw it out here
to finish it off and essays, well, you gotta compete with that because we've gotta
put ethics on the table. And he said, yeah. We started that last month.
So oh. Oh.
Hey. Well, they you know, I said Sometimes I'm behind the curve.
Yeah. I said, see, Paul, do you wanna come and join us? I said,
sure. Well, let's let's see this. You know, maybe I can give my 2¢ and
help you guys get off the ground and whatnot else. And that's what I spent
a year and a half doing as sort of in a more of an advisory
capacity. And yeah, I've got yeah. I mean, it
it's ethics
is one of those missing ingredients now more than
ever that leaders need.
Because we understand the fundamental dilemma of
human nature. Mhmm. We are so driven, you know, we've used
the word ego. It's about me. Mhmm. What can
I get? What what doesn't matter who suffers,
but it's about me. What Me. Mhmm. And and
I'll I'll leave it there. But ethics essays,
it's not about me. It's about how is
what I want to do going to impact others.
If it's going to be a positive impact. If it's gonna be any an uplifting
impact. Well then potentially it is good. It is
ethical. But if it's gonna have a negative impact
and and really hurt people in whatever which way,
then is it really a good idea? And that
in a nutshell is the problem with ethics today.
It has become so many leaders. And,
you know, I'll I'll I'll I'll call the
elephant in the room on this one then and essays, yeah, just look at government.
It's very classic. Mhmm. The ethics isn't there because it's driven
by my ego because what I can get. Right.
And we all know what the I can get is. Right. So
do we need more of that? Do we need examples of leaders exhibiting
ethical behavior? Yes. And that's the goal of the WEO.
To get those conversations ethics going so
that we instill the awareness. Oh, my
ego can be detrimental to to you and to the people on
my team. Oh, is that a
good idea? Yes. I might get this in the moment,
but I might pay for it tomorrow. Consequences
of unethical behavior. You know,
people don't look at this anymore. They don't see
the the the the notion the the not the notion,
the, the cycle of action,
reaction, consequence. There's always for every action there's a reaction. It
doesn't matter which way shape or form you look at it. So an ethical
action is going to yield potentially success. An
unethical action. I might get a moment to
re satisfaction out of it, but the long Tom,
yeah, you're gonna pay for it. It's just a question of when, not if.
So can can we instill in leaders?
I turning this in through, I weave it into my academy, is the ethical
obligation duty, coming back to that
word, that leaders have that their
actions are measured against an ethical standard. Now
everybody's got their own ethical standard, and the WAs are looking at addressing some
other. How do we bring, you know, this group's standards and this
group and this group, the diversity of these groups into 1 and
and figure out, you know, there is a standard of ethics
and establishing that. So when we're not
Yeah. Yeah. And a standard of ethics that
because I took Richard's change agent course as well, and
I've I've I've had some engagement with the
w e o. Probably needs to be more significant.
I'll admit to that.
I think we, we, we have to
say fundamentally that an
objective standard outside of our subjective experience does exist.
And that we can know that objective standard. It's not cloudy.
It's not unknowable. It's not
mysterious. And I think we can say, we know what the
standard is, primarily because we're not
primarily, but we know what the standard
is because evidentially to make up a word, in
the material world that we built in the 20th century,
the results Tom your point about choices have
consequences, the results of choosing to behave at an
unethical standard can be seen in the deaths of a 100,000,000 people in the
20th century. Mhmm. They
can be seen in the results of world wars, 2 of them.
There were just massively catastrophic events outside of the other 100,000,000
deaths. We can also see
in real time the decline of, and this is something we've talked about on this
podcast a lot, particularly last year, decline of meaning,
particularly meaning among you talked about younger generations,
particularly meaning among younger generations, particularly young males, the
decline of meaning in the amongst young males in the West, which
is to my mind, more of a catastrophic
event overall for civilization
than anything having to do with the changing climate, quite
frankly. Because if we can solve for the turning
crisis, which I do think ties back to ethics,
we can solve for all of these other things. Agreed. But we
have to admit, not agree, just
admit that there's an objective standard outside of our subjective experience.
And unfortunately, we have 150 years of people
convinced through education and entertainment and other means that there is
no objective standard, or even if there is, we can't know it. And
so once you say there's no objective standard, or even worse, once you say we
can't know an objective standard, now you've,
you've pulled up all of the gates and you've opened up all the fourth.
And unfortunately for us, it's the gatekeepers of
education, the gatekeepers of government, the gatekeepers
of entertainment, who are the ones busiest pulling up the
gates and saying that there is no standard fourth that we can't know it for
150 years. Correct. And so
this is a massive problem that is of our
own making as human beings, particularly human beings in the West,
But it is one that we can solve because we created it.
We can solve this problem. Any problem that we've created, we can solve. It's just
what do we do to solve it? And I see the World Ethics Organization as
part of that solution. I definitely agree with you. It is part of
the solution. And, yeah, I mean, Richard,
keep going. I'm in support of his work, what he's
doing. And, yeah. And that's why that's one of the reasons why I
bring ethics into the to the whole notion of what
leadership actually is. Yep. Yep. It's almost like it's
one of the 3 legs of the 3 legged stool. Yep.
Okay. So to wrap up here, we're a podcast that
obviously believes in the power of great books of the past to teach
us lessons, and to lay the foundation for the
future fourth us. So what are some great
book? Not necessarily business books, but what are some great books? And
we talked about extreme ownership and talked about a couple of other books on the
podcast today. But what are some great books that have led to
where that have led you to where you are right now? You have a bookshelf
there. You're a literary guy. I see Never Split the Difference there. I
see Chris Voss hanging out over there. So I know
that book cover. I know that one. But, of course, some
and I suspect you probably also have some Nicholas Nassim Taleb on there and maybe
some Daniel Kahneman, who just recently just
recently passed away. But there were some books that were
some great books of the can of the Writers canon that which is kinda what
we focused on in this podcast that have led you to where you're at now
with, with LOS Global? I I
you can't go without mentioning some of John Maxwell's
stuff. I he's got a ton of books out there. He's
got some valuable insight. It needs, in my opinion, it
needs to be mixed with a few other things to really round it out. He's
very good in in what he's got. And
then Ken Blanchard, and he's got a couple of books that
focuses more on servant and situational leisure, which is an
important aspect of it. And it it brings
depth to some of John's material as well.
You know, just looking at some of the books. An interesting book, you know,
we spoke about influence and inspiration earlier. In influence,
there's a book called Growing Influence. Okay. It was
a as a as a novel. Mhmm. You know,
interaction between, a senior retired
CEO and a young aspiring, leader
in an organization keeps getting overlooked. Yes. She's female and he's
male. And so it brings some of those dynamics, the sexual
the gender dynamics into the, Internet. But
it's I think it's very well written as a structure.
How can you build your influence? So especially the younger
leaders, newer leaders, how can they establish some level
of influence? That's a very good book. There is a
book, lead when you when you're not in
charge fourth know, because you can be
a manager, but you're still not in charge. Mhmm. You know, you
you can have a position within an other than the work
of be in an organizational chart, but
you still are not in charge of anything. You still so how can you
lead in that? Because a lot of people there say, well, I'm I'm not a
leader. I'm just manager Joe. No. Well, you're a leader because
you you are in a position where you're required to lead
yourself first. That's the first one. And the second one is you do
have a few people that you are to that you influence.
Mhmm. However that so how do you do that? Yeah. So there's that one I
found very useful.
Yeah. Looking at some of the other books,
Brene Brown has got some good stuff on leadership, but she gets
very into the the philosophy, the psychology
of it all. Useful anecdotes. I mean, there there's
some she's got some good stuff. But I'd I'd say that's more for
the more the more
experienced leader. Mhmm. Okay. So that that'd be more for
them. I mean, it's leadership.
What's it called? Developing the leaders within
2.0. That's John Maxwell. That's a good book.
Oh, from an executive
perspective, The Advantage is a good book, Patrick Lancione.
Mhmm. Okay. Yeah. Of the team. Those are all some
of the good you know, it's the whole reason why you got
podcast is because, you know, I can read all of these books, but it's gonna
take me a long time. And, you know, a lot of the stuff that I've
shared with you and you shared is the culmination of a lot of reading we've
done. Right. So, you know, those are just a handful of books. But
the reading that I've done, and I've done reading beyond that, you
know, books about I'm gonna I'm
gonna go into the realms of even abuse when you understand
how easily people can verbally and emotionally abuse someone
else. Mhmm. Powerful book on leadership to understand how it
happens because gaslighting is a big issue in
leadership. Mhmm. That how you know?
Now you're aware of it. Now you can put a stop to it. You
can help somebody who's doing it to do
it less. Mhmm. Aware of it in turn. You
know, those sort of things. So I think there's more
It's you you said not just business books, but that's that's
another realm. It's how do you communication
styles. Mhmm. Heck, what does that do to
impact your communication with your
spouse? Your kids, your friends that you
never act with in work because they don't work in the same company as you
do. How do you interact with that and how does that impact your leadership?
So how do you communicate? Understanding your communication stuff. Things
like that. And I I some of the things that I do
with with, people that I work with with leaders is something called
bank, b a n k. Okay. Crack you
crack the code or you and understand how you communicate.
Mhmm. What your style of communication is. Understand that other people
have different ones. Now you know how to communicate with them. Yeah. That goes into
the books of, you know, Robert Cialdini. You mentioned that about influence and
all of that. There's so many books on communication.
What else? No.
What about good what about good fiction? Because we do we do we we do
a lot of classical fiction on this. Like, we just came off a month of,
we just came off a month of the Russian writers, right? So we read Turgenev
and we read Tolstoy, and we read, we didn't
read Dostoevsky. We're still trying. I'm still trying to wrap my arms around the writers
carom resolve enough to be able to pull. And there's stuff in there. Just you
gotta. You're you're you're a bigger man than me. Are you? You well
well, War and Peace is 1400 pages. We just got through part 1 of it.
And where are we where we where we where myself and my cohost,
and this is the most one of the most recent episodes we dropped this month.
I think it was episode 104, I think.
But, we, we determined that one of the big things you can
learn from the beginning of war and peace, because it opens with a party, is
how to communicate and what and how Tom engage in appropriate
networking etiquette when you're a business leader. Oh, and how to
evolve, and you use this word, how to evolve the
drunken shenanigans, you call political shenanigans, but the drunken
shenanigans of organizations and cultures so that you don't get, you know, well, so you
don't have to go off to war and fight Napoleon in, like, 18/12 because
that sucks. Yeah. It does. Well, I mean,
fiction books, I haven't read in in recent times, I haven't read a lot of
fiction books. I'll be honest with you on that one. I sort of Sure. I've
gotten lost on that. But to your point
of fiction, because of the depth of research
that is done to create a book of fiction.
There's a lot of anecdotal type
lessons we can learn from them, I think. How, oh this
happened, this happened. Oh that gives me an awareness
of a certain situation. Mhmm. That in a business book
I may not have got again because it was never mentioned. Right.
Yeah. I read, I've read, the one book that's
that's sort of coming to mind is, Barnhofer.
Oh, yeah. Okay. Yep. You know, and it's yes, it's a biography.
But it's interesting to see how he
led himself, granted through the eyes of Eric.
Eric Metaxo wrote the book, but it is interesting to see how he
led himself and how he chose to interact with other
people. The humility, the grace,
things like that, powerful lessons for leaders.
So yes. Bonhoeffer was one of the probably top fourth
theologians of the was produced in the 20th century,
along with, GK Chesterton, CS Lewis, and Francis Schaeffer.
Those are probably your big four of the 20th century.
At least that came out of both the Protestant and a Catholic ethic,
writers Should she get GK, Chester, Tennessee as Lewis were, were
in that we're in that space. And so,
okay. By the way, we'll be
covering Bonhoeffer on the podcast in,
I believe August or September.
I'm going to be looking at some of his writings. I'm personally
fascinated by him, just as
a person. I don't know because of the level of
the level of commitment he had. To talk about leading yourself,
the level of commitment he had to
continuing to engage in
no continuing to walk down a path
where the clearing and what was going to fundamentally be
at the end of that path. I think he understood better even than the
people around him better than his friends.
And there's a lesson in there for the leaders in Bonhoeffer's
life, in understanding human nature,
understanding the knock on effects of patterns that have repeated throughout
history. That way you're not surprised
when you wind up in the place where you were
going to wind up that. I think Bonhoeffer was the
least surprised that he was executed by the Nazis.
I think probably the the even the Nazis were surprised they executed him, but
he wasn't because he understood
the nature of the thing he was fighting against.
He understood the fundamental nature of human evil,
and that is something I think that the postmodern mind, which has banished
evil, even the concept of talking about it, other than in
a political context, of course, which is the only place we can ever have any
kinds of theological conversations is in a political context, which
is really too bad because it's way too narrow a context for such
conversations to happen. The postmodern mind struggles
when it when it faces evil.
And we're seeing that currently in our geopolitical moment that we're in right now in
the west, vis a vis Israel and Hamas,
but we're also seeing it in our own individual lives.
And when evil does show up, the postmodern secular
materialistic mindset has nothing for that.
Mhmm. Bonhoeffer had a solution for that because he
understood other things about human nature. Yeah. And so was unsurprised
when human nature showed up. So he's a fascinating character.
Just quickly, you mentioned CS Lewis. Yes. You're talking about fiction
for a moment. The other book that Sorrells that I
found rather interesting and maybe it needs a couple of reads
to really get it out is the Lord turning Sorrells, which
is Tolkien, who was a contemporary of CS Lewis and
was actually very strongly influenced by CS Lewis, which is interesting. But
he's been as a result of that influence and where that
led is when he wrote the Lord of the Rings series. And
you see leadership and the challenges of leadership.
And it's a small group of people. Right. The interesting part,
right, like we said earlier, and being able to lead and
how the different people led
different aspects of that
journey in that story. The most interesting
part of the Lord of the Rings is in the beginning of
return of the king. The 3rd book and Gandalf shows
up, at,
at, gosh, it's not fourth door. It's,
Boromir's father, the king who was looking through the, the, the looking
glass and could see basically had basically,
he saw evil. He saw the face of evil. He saw the face. Yeah. And
he and he lost his mind. Right? And
Gandalf was unable to save him.
Right? And at the same time, you have his son Faramir,
who he does not honor, who's trying to lead the people and trying
to mount a defense against the forces of Mordor
and is getting no help whatsoever from his father. Who's supposed to be
the steward of Gondor. Right. Who's supposed to be that king.
And so, and even the name, the steward of
Gondor. I mean, come on. So you've got, you know, you've got the steward of
Gondor. You've got turning Theoden. Those are 2 different leadership
examples there. And you're right. I I had a conversation recently
with somebody about Tolkien, CS Lewis, and and sort of their
how they came Tom. How they came
to having how they came to writing the way that they
writers, And, you know, they were both heavily influenced,
obviously, as their entire generation was by the impact of World
War 1 and and just the killing fields of Europe and and just
the Psalm and just all the things that they saw. But with
Tolkien, interestingly enough, Tolkien and Lewis had the
same experience, but pulled slightly
different lessons from that that you can see in their writing if you're
sensitive to that. So, yeah, we, we've covered abolition of man,
by CS Lewis on this podcast. And we've also covered,
all 3 of the Lord of the Rings books that we've covered The Hobbit, it
will be going back to them, again, not this year, but next year, we'll be
going back to them again, and diving in with a, with a guest
co host who I think is going to bring a certain level of passion to
that conversation because he's deeply engaged with those books, at at
multiple levels. So, yeah, there's so much you can learn from leadership. I
one of the things I'll say to folks is, you can learn more about emotional
intelligence from Sense and Sensibility than you can from Daniel Goleman's emotional
intelligence. But read them both together. Read Goleman and then read Jane Austen, and
now you've got it. You've got emotional intelligence. Now you understand it. Pretty much. That's
that's a good way of describing it. Yeah. So, well,
let's let's close with this question. I I was I ask everybody when they when
they come on Tom podcast, what would you like to promote today, if anything? Well,
thanks fourth that, Janssen. And we host as
LOS Global, we host VIP, so
invitation on the executive leadership fourth. Nominally once
a month, every 5 books, depending on, on
schedules and that. And we cover, insights
that are relevant to leaders today.
And I'll often have either some of my team on that and we discuss
it and bring the audience in, or I bring in other experts to to
talk about a particular topic that's current on that. So I'd invite people
to that. The website is a simple, you know,
Sorrells global.com/home.
Come along, you know, it's an it is invitation only. So go to the
website, fill in the form, you know, submit your your your
invitation request. Not your application, your invitation request.
And you know if it's a fit, you know, well yeah, you're welcome to to
join us and join the conversation. So I'll leave that as
my phone number for the, for the podcast. Thank you. Awesome. And
we will have a link to that site so you could fill out that
invitation request, and maybe you can join, this, this
global fourth, put on by Ellis Global and Peter Aimeli and his
team once every 5 weeks, once every 4 weeks or so. But
we'll have that link right there in the show notes below the player
that you are listening to. And, of course, watching this
podcast on. We'll also have links to all the places where you
could find Peter Angley, and LOS Global LOS Academy,
in the show notes as well. We'd encourage you to connect with him
on LinkedIn. He is on LinkedIn. He's pushing out content on there as
well. And so like and share if you liked what we were talking
about today. Once again, I would like to thank Peter Ainley of
LOS Global for coming on the podcast today. And with
that, well, we're
out.