- Speaker #0
I had a friend who was a graphic designer who teaches graphic design, and he was talking about talking with his students who will say, is this, you know, what's the best font or what's a good font or, you know, what's the best font for this? And he said the most profound thing that I have just, I think about all the time in business. He said there is very rarely such thing as the right font or the best font. He said, you just have to make sure it's not the wrong font. Because if it's the wrong font, it's distracting or illegible, or it's not doing its job in some way, or it's drawing all the attention to it. If you have anything even vaguely close to not the wrong font, it's probably fine. And that's not to diminish the value of really great decisions. But the reality is, we cannot know what's going to be. a great decision and what's not. You need to do the very best you can to rule out super bad, unfixable decisions. But 98% of exquisite leadership and management and strategic guidance of a business is trusting more in your ability to just decide, act, and then course correct.
- Speaker #1
Do you struggle to make decisions? Do you find yourself getting lost in the details or the reverse and spending too much time on the big picture and missing out on the all-important day-to-day? If so, then decision support and facilitation might be something worth exploring, which is convenient since that is exactly the wheelhouse of today's guest, Jodie Hume. After a 15-year career as the COO of a growing architecture firm, Jodie. shifted gears and over the last 10 years has made a real name for herself providing on-call decision support and facilitated leadership conversations for startup founders, entrepreneurs and leaders. Jokingly offering services like the business confessional or business couples counselling, Jodie provides an invaluable service that brings clarity, coaching, support and a way out of indecision for leaders the world over. And today we'll be discussing, among other things, why this indecision is such a common challenge for leaders, loads of strategies and tactics for untangling yourself the next time it happens to you, as well as Jodie's insights on leadership, why the most common advice isn't always that helpful, and more. So if you've ever wanted to get better at making decisions, or just get unstuck when you can't, then this is the right episode for you. And don't forget to visit all of the links in those show notes below or to the side, wherever it is that you're watching, to learn more about Jodie and, of course, to come and join my online leadership community, Integrity Leaders. More about that at the end of the show. Welcome to the Leading with Integrity podcast. Leadership Talk with the Modern Manager. With your host, David Hatch. Well, it's wonderful to have Jodie on the show with us today. Welcome to Leading with Integrity. Really looking forward to getting into some of the really interesting and important topics that we're planning to cover today.
- Speaker #0
Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, well, it's good to have you. And yeah, I'm going to throw you in at the deep end, really. We'll start off with you introducing yourself. Tell the listeners a bit about your background, your career so far, what you do today, and what gets you out of bed in the morning, really.
- Speaker #0
Well, this morning it was this podcast because it's very early here in Baltimore. That's such a white job.
- Speaker #1
I'm glad we can help.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So my name is Jodi Hume, and I have been... In some ways, I have been doing this work that I'm doing now since I was five, but I will get to that in a second. I certainly, though, did not in any way, shape or form plot my course towards this work. Not at all. I am a third generation entrepreneur. So I was around these kinds of conversations my entire life. I didn't really put that together as it connects to what I do now until very recently. But that is absolutely a big thread in the fabric of what I do. And my mom. owned businesses or ran organizations my entire life. And she involved me in her decisions and conversations since I was tiny. We would talk through, she was very big on decision-making as a skillset. And so she would have us think through things. It was just kind of what we did and that and sing four-part harmony. Like those were our family things. So I've been around the grappling of entrepreneurs, making decisions and then remaking decisions because that decision didn't go the way you thought it might and the uncertainty and all of that's like literally my entire life. But that was not something I was like, and that's what I want to do. So I was a psych major. I thought I was going to go into counseling. I started an architecture firm right out of college because I needed a job. That's about as much career planning as I put into it. And I loved it there. Architecture was fascinating to me. I started off as the receptionist. It was a very small firm. We had about eight people. And I loved it because I am both right brain and left brain. I have a high emotional intelligence, but I'm also very data analytically oriented. And architecture does that dance. And I ended up staying there for 16 years. I took over. First, they signed me to marketing. And then I... Basically, that's where I discovered I'm great at making things better. So I slowly took over. They just wanted to be architects. So I just started making different parts of the business better. And eventually, I became the COO. But here's how that plays into what I do now. That 16 years, not only was I on the leadership team and helped. We grew that business from 1 million to a little over 10 million, from like 8 people to close to 50 people. But... every single Monday I was in and then actually started facilitating our leadership team meeting, which was the print, the four principles and me and the finance guy, which is where we made every decision. So it's back to decisions again. That is where we talked through every single thing in the company. I still don't know why they didn't just have me give the marketing report and then asked me to leave. I think they probably just never thought of it. Cause I'm 23, you know? But it was better than any MBA I could have possibly had because as we grew that company through every stage of like, I almost think it was like business puberty along that path from eight to 50 people. It's like a business suddenly changes and what you were doing before that worked doesn't work anymore and you have to fix things. Then you break things and then you have to fix them. So eventually I knew that that's what I wanted to do. So I studied facilitation and coaching. And- Coached for a while. I left about 12, 14 years ago to do this exclusively. So now I facilitate leadership team conversations. And then the one-on-one work that I do is more like facilitation than it is coaching. I am facilitating that conversation an owner is having in their head. So I form it in on-call decision support. I do very few regularly scheduled sessions. It's, hey, do you have a couple of minutes? I have to figure this thing out. And it's all this fundamental belief that entrepreneurs know their business better than anyone. And especially if you're doing something in the tech world where you're creating something that hasn't existed before, there isn't this map. You need orienting skills. And that's really my sweet spot is that discernment and diagnostic of what is the real issue here? Is this a human personal issue or is this like an operational? spreadsheet issue and then once you discern that and diagnose that then you jump in to the actual problem but that initial piece is my favorite part okay interesting so yeah starting work at five i'm sure there's laws against that's
- Speaker #1
probably probably i mean yeah yeah well there is that i guess yeah and business purity that's a that did make me laugh i was muted so nobody heard it but i was laughing out loud at that one I might have to make that the episode title just for the joke value. Anyway, maybe not. We'll put some thought into that. This idea of decision support, I really like the way that you frame that because when you think about it, particularly for a founder and tech kind of driven environments and those sort of founder-led businesses, I think anyone who's worked in one of those environments will have seen the founder grappling with a decision. And if you're not inside that circle from the outside, that can be a really frustrating experience because a lot of people in that setting and that sort of business have quite high knowledge already anyway. And it can be frustrating because it's like, come on, just make the decision. There's only these many options. Just pick one and let's go and figure out if it works. And if not, we'll come and do another one.
- Speaker #0
And I also laugh sometimes because if you aren't in that inside circle and as you go up, that circle gets smaller and smaller. Even if there's a leadership team, there are some things that... only the the primary founder CEO can figure out that they have to decide. And I always kind of laugh when the perception is that when I have been on the inside of that, when I have heard the options that there were, because I think sometimes people don't understand or don't, I don't mean don't understand in a patronizing way. They don't have line of sight to, therefore they have no opportunity to understand. all of the variables that have to be considered. Many, many times there are these unintended consequences. Something might seem like a great option, but if you could see all of the entire landscape, you would know that that absolutely looks like the very best first step, but then 32 things happen that would make it a terrible decision. And so often when I have seen the larger team react of like, oh, this was a terrible decision, I so badly wish I could be like, you should have seen the other four options. Like this one isn't great, but the other options were way worse. And so it is, but it is harder to have that empathy. It's empathy and trust. And like I said, just the simple, very factual component that if you can't see all the things, then yes, it does seem like decisions are weird or they shouldn't be that hard. And- To be completely fair, it is also true that some leaders are just very bad making decisions, like slow. So I'm not saying that when someone is not getting about making a decision, that it is always because there's this very valid reason. But that's part of why I do the work that I do is to help eliminate the friction of someone getting bogged down in a decision or in a process like that.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess there's two ways to be bad to sit on there with divisions. You're either bad at making the decision, the process of doing it, and you just end up putting it off and putting it off and, you know, holding your breath for that perfect decision that will never be found. Or you just make bad decisions.
- Speaker #0
So the funny thing is, though, okay, there are absolutely some quantifiably bad decisions. But I think one of the biggest risks or one of the biggest... potholes that people get stuck in is widening that circle of what counts as a big as a bad decision far larger than it actually is um i had a friend who was a graphic designer who teaches graphic design and he was talking about talking with his students who will say is this um you know what's the best font or what's a good font or you know what what's the best font for this And he said the most profound thing that I have just, I think about all the time in business. He said, there is very rarely such thing as the right font or the best font. He said, you just have to make sure it's not the wrong font. Because if it's the wrong font, it's distracting or illegible, or it's not doing its job in some way, or it's drawing all the attention to it. If you have anything even vaguely close to not the wrong font, it's... it's probably fine. And that's not to diminish the value of really great decisions. But the reality is we cannot know what's going to be a great decision and what's not. You need to do the very best you can to rule out super bad, unfixable decisions. But 98% of exquisite leadership and management and strategic guidance of a business is not going to be a great decision. is trusting more in your ability to just decide, act, and then course correct. Because you are going to course correct. The more adaptable you can be at, like, we made a decision that wasn't quite right. Let's fix it. Obviously, I always have to feel these little side caveats. You have to be extremely cautious when that is jerking other people around with you. You're not like, oh, let's reorganize the organization this way. And it's a week later. Oh, wait, no, let's organize it this way. That is. not what I'm talking about here. But that's actually more of the point is you make these small incremental changes wherever possible and then course correct.
- Speaker #1
Yes. I was going to say like sometimes the best decisions in inverted commas are the ones that aren't permanent and you're always open because as you were saying earlier, you know, 32 things might happen after you made the decision that you could never possibly foresee, but they change what you need to do or they change the nature of that decision. So having that flexibility. And again, yeah, I agree with the caveat. I think it depends what the decision's about, doesn't it, to an extent? How severe is the impact?
- Speaker #0
It does. My marketing person wants me to do a call-in show, but not a call-in. I would totally do a call-in show in a heartbeat. That's hard to do logistically. So she said, well, we'll just have them send in a question. And I was like, no, hard no, because the value is in the next two or three or four questions I ask because that first question could bifurcate into you know 32 different answers depending on the answer to the next couple of questions because it depends on the question and then it depends on the very specific circumstances um but you said something a minute ago oh it'll come back to me in a minute I had a you said something really profound that I wanted to kind of clean up it anyway
- Speaker #1
I'd love to know how common you think this problem is because something I've seen a few times over the years is and maybe it's a symptom of not enjoying the process of decision making or just not being very good at that but once a decision is made it's treated as though it's now set in stone. That's it. It's done. I don't want to hear about it anymore. The decision's made. We're moving on.
- Speaker #0
I always laugh. I feel like how much of it's like well, it depends. both things are true at the same time, but this is actually kind of the point. You have to lean into and become comfortable with the fact that part of the reason that leadership and guiding a startup is hard is because in almost every single scenario, two seemingly almost opposite things are going to be true at the same time. And your job is to become an expert discerner of where it applies. Because to your point... sticking to it making a decision and then acting as if you have no more ability to morph that decision like it is written in stone and therefore so it is written so it shall be is hugely problematic but also so is being super fickle and and people not being able to have any kind of internal gps about what they should do because you change your mind so often which often shows up as them having to check in with you about every little thing because they can't know what you're thinking. Both of those are problematic. You need to be somewhere in the middle, but also sometimes you have to swing to those two edges. Sometimes you just have to make a decision and stick with it. But to your point, I think more often than not, people are so afraid of seeming fickle or there's a bunch of different, afraid of how it looks that they made a wrong. holding onto this idea of it being a wrong decision instead of leaning into something that is very, very, a path that is very well-trodden in tech, which is that mindset of beta testing something, of the MVP. If you think of decisions as like, what is the MVP for this decision? How can we test it? It's not always an option. Some things you just have to decide and jump into and commit to. But- where and get your team thinking like, hey, we're going to try this thing. Is it working? Like, especially when you're small, the bigger you get, the less opportunity. If you have a 400 person company, you can't be like, we're going to try this, this, this policy and we're going to check it. You can, but it's just, it's a lot harder to move that. But if you have less than, I mean, I don't know where I'm going to put the number, certainly less than 10. Definitely less than 20, more than 20 to 30. You have to just be a little bit more cautious about how you roll these things out. But you can, when your company is small, build in this expectation that there is a higher commitment to getting it right in the long run than there is to being right. with each individual decision. We're going to start and then we're going to talk about it. And if it's not working, we are humble enough to fix it in service of it being better for the long haul of the company. And one last thought on this is one of the tricks that I use with my clients to help them be more decisive or have clarity. It's not even being decisive. It's having clarity about what's right. If you think about the company as another person, almost. You personify it as like, what does XYZ need? XYZ needs this policy to work for both the company and the staff, or this XYZ needs to have the money that's coming in be plenty that we have what we have to do with and that everybody's getting compensated. That's what they need. And so it... It elevates the conversation. So instead of feeling like person against person or idea against idea, you've now elevated it to what does the company need? And then you have to like... solve the puzzle of how all the people get what they need inside of that. But that is always the North Star to be looking at.
- Speaker #1
Having spent a lot of time myself in small businesses and a couple of startups, and I've worked with a few over the last five years or so as well, I feel like, and you can correct me if you think this is wrong, but I feel like the smaller the business, the bigger that circle should be for decision making. And I say that because when it's a small team, everyone's involved in nearly everything usually. And at the very least, they can see the decisions being made. And it's very easy to isolate people in a way that you don't want to.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I am a giant believer and supporter of transparency and inclusion. I do make a slight distinction, not in any really clear way, but between like, there does have to be a decider. Like there is a risk of it being sort of decision by committee. I absolutely think that getting information from every place in that company, everyone, you want their insights. They see things you don't see. They're involved in parts of the business you're not involved in. So you want to hear from everyone and you want to genuinely consider their perspective. Sometimes you still have to decide. I think of this, I use a lot of metaphors from parenting and dating and relationships in business, because it just helps kind of lock in something that can feel a little fuzzier in business. The only parenting advice I ever give is don't take anyone else's parenting advice. And that is not to say that there isn't enormous wisdom to gain from books and TikTok videos and friends and all these things. Listen, kind of cull through it, absorb it all, but then you know your kids. better than anyone and you just have to decide. And all those people you talk to might not like your decision, but you have to decide. And so there is that, in part because when it's small, if a founder gets too used to anything that feels like, I have six people and part of my decision is I want them all to be really happy with and completely supporting this decision. That is unsustainable. You will never, there is no decision or situation where 25 people are all going to be like, yes, every time. So you do have to build a skin of some portion of these people are not going to like my decision. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad decision unless it is. And that is my job to figure out the difference between the two. But back to your question, there is no reason to make leadership by making air quotes. leadership, this like tiny circle, it actually makes leadership so much harder because you're trying to make decisions with less information. You're doing it in a vacuum or just much smaller group that as the company grows a little bit, also they are less in touch with what's really happening on the ground. But there's also this thing that when people are involved in decisions, they are less likely to resist them, even if they don't like the answer, even if they don't like the decision. If they were part of it, if they saw the process, if they saw how you got to, they see your scratch paper and not just the final answer, they have more capacity to be like, I don't love it, but at least I can see why that was maybe the answer they picked. Versus if they just see that final part, they're like, what? in the world were you thinking so there's that but then there's also something that my architecture firm was exquisite at doing which was because they involved us not the entire firm maybe always but as you know they named some of us associates and senior associates we were way too small to have that many like titles but this part of it they involved us in bigger leadership conversations you Not necessarily in the decision, but they'd say, hey, what do you guys think about this? How would you handle it if it was up to you? And then they would go make their decision. Because they did that, we were learning to think like leaders. We were learning to think not just about our own job and our own little silo and our own little project, but how to balance all of the other stuff. I mean, we went to off on a retreat one time and they always had some little project. for us to do when we got there. And one year it was, if we have this much for bonuses, how would you guys distribute it? Which... A, gave them insight into people in the firm that maybe they didn't have insight to. Like they were surprised at some people we did or didn't give larger amounts to. And they're like, oh, I thought that person was. So that was a great conversation starter. But also it was building that skill of our realization that, you know, like there's that tiny part of you who's like, oh, we're the senior associates. We're the associates. We should get this big fat chunk. But then having to be like, but. we want to build and create more levels. So having to think in that multifaceted way of balancing all the things you have to think about, we were learning those skills through being involved in the decisions. And because one thing I hear leaders who haven't done that all along the way really grapple with is frustration that their people don't think like owners or that they don't think about the bigger picture. And I'm like, well, do they see the bigger picture? Because if they can't see it, they can't possibly think like that. So I'm a big fan of sharing what is shareable, trusting that people, if you ask them and they give you their opinion, that doesn't mean they expect you to do what their opinion is, which is a fear people have. If I ask them and they say they want this and I don't do that, then they'll be mad. I'm like, oh. But not asking them at all doesn't exactly solve that problem. It really doesn't.
- Speaker #1
No. And there's a few fundamental concepts of leadership that I think we've touched on here. I mean, trust, you've mentioned already. Transparency, I think, is one of the best ways to achieve trust. But I do agree with you. There is a line to be walked when it comes to decision making and how much transparency there is versus input to the decisions. Although again, having said that, so you can't make decisions by committee, that is a trigger phrase for me because whenever I've heard that as an employee, it's usually an answer argument to, could I please be involved in the decisions a bit more? And you're just like, okay, I get that, but... Yeah,
- Speaker #0
that gets weaponized in a way that...
- Speaker #1
It does, which doesn't mean it isn't true, but you know.
- Speaker #0
Again, it's the... You can... there's a difference between, and I'm struggling, like I can sort of see it in my head. I'm struggling for the words here. There's a difference in decision by a committee. Like, first of all, you don't just vote, you know, it's not that. What I think of as decision by committee is the bad kind, the kind you do want to avoid is where it feels like, it's kind of what I was saying before, like everyone has to be totally happy with it for it to work. That is, That is fantastic when and if that can be the case. I'm not against that. But that is a bar that is, it's just unsustainable. And even, and I think this is what can be tricky to, if you haven't been in it and see it, when there's four or five or seven of you, it's hard to, like, maybe it is fine to want to have an expectation that everyone feels good about it. We are the founding, you know, we are the foundational part of this company. We should all feel good about where it's headed. I'm not exactly against that, but it can just be tricky. I mean, imagine if you start off that way and then you have eight or 10 people and you're still kind of aiming for that, how it feels for everyone in that company who was there when they were little, when you're suddenly 15 people and you cannot hold that line anymore and trying to change culture is so much harder. than thinking about it way ahead of when you need it and saying like, what's the healthy balance of this where we always want to get people's input. I, I, I work with companies who have never backed off. I mean, they're 40, 50, 60 people have never bought backed off on getting feedback. They do. They have 84 different ways that they get feedback in so many different ways, but they it's not possible with that many people. I mean, imagine you have eight people in a room just trying to decide where to go to dinner for an evening is like impossible. Like somebody has to just be like, okay, I think it's this place half the time. But it's just thinking about all of those variables. But any company that isn't... getting people involved in at least talking through what the options are. I think that's maybe like the teasing apart the variables. Deciding is a very like pinpoint moment. The decision point, if you're drawing this kind of timeline is like if you're doing a Gantt chart, it's more like the little star of a thing. It's a boom in the timeline. Everything leading up to that there is no harm in having as many people involved as possible up into that point. And if there's almost no decision to be made because it's so clear that the vast majority in this, it actually sort of dissolves the need for a, air quotes, decision. That's the beauty of having people involved. But if there comes a time where it's not clear what to do, where there's not an obvious turn left or turn right. Someone has to decide. And that is the point where I think it gets more risky having really large groups of people trying to decide when there just has to be a decision.
- Speaker #1
Yes, I think like so many things in life, it's a question of balance, isn't it? And finding that happy medium. Because I think, I mean, kind of answer to your point about the small early stage of a business. I think it could also be super damaging if right from the start, there's a single decision maker who... here's no other opinions. And then the bigger the business gets.
- Speaker #0
Also unsustainable.
- Speaker #1
Again, so there's that happy medium to be found in this. I almost think like if you've got to have a decision and everyone's happy and everyone's agreed, then actually that's a bad thing in any situation because it means you are less likely to have taken alternative viewpoints and considered other options. And there's that problem of groupthink isn't there that's well established. And yeah, I think you almost want there to be at least one person offering that dissenting view. and that's good.
- Speaker #0
Yeah absolutely I mean and that is you know not to go off a totally different tangent but that that ties back to this other piece of you know there's a lot of debates and and I go back and forth on this of you know I do believe hiring for fit from like a culture and a vibe and a pacing you know there's so much about like how you work together that's vital to So having someone who's a cultural fit and you can teach the skills, like I do, I really support that philosophy. And you have to be a tiny bit careful that you're not creating some version of an echo chamber or, I mean, if you think about the various, like some people are great at ideating and coming up with and bouncing all over. And then some people are great at getting stuff done, like the rigor at the end. If you have a bunch of people who are all like, oh, ideas, ideas, ideas, that's really fun for those people to gab on, but you are going to struggle as a company because you don't have those people who have the yes, but vibe, which can be really frustrating in a meeting. That person who is really skilled at always imagining every obstacle that might come up, it can feel sort of Eeyore-ish sometimes. I am someone who, I'm not... pessimistic in that way, but I am someone whose brain is wired to kind of do both at the same time. And one of those is immediately identify all possible unintended consequences. I don't get stuck on them. So I'm not like always like, yeah, but that won't work. But my brain is always like, okay, here's five things that might happen. How do we navigate around those? Like, drive some people crazy that I'm like, we have to think about this. We have to think about that. They're like, can't we just move? And I'm like, And here's the beauty of it, though. On my own, when I don't have someone for decision support to bounce a thing off of, someone who is a little bit more, just make a decision. It doesn't matter. Keep going. I will get super indecisive because left on my own, my obstacle identification just creates a bunch of detour roadblocks of, oh, oh, oh, and I can get paralyzed. versus a guy that I sort of do a lot of, we're not officially business partners, but we do a lot of things together. He's just a, just do this, just do that. Like he just makes snap decisions. Without me talking things through, he can be a little rash about things and not think about something super obvious to me that he probably should have thought about and he could have saved himself a lot of hassle. But that goes back to what you're saying. That's another reason that having a lot of different voices is a lot of different things. is really useful. It can make it harder from an interpersonal standpoint sometimes, but if everyone thinks alike and no one has a dissenting opinion, that is probably going to create some... other problem in the company down the road because you're not getting those broader perspectives.
- Speaker #1
Absolutely. And I think that's why tying it back to trust and the culture of the organization as well. I think you can afford to do that in the right way a lot easier if you know you have trust with and from your people. And I think a really good way of doing that in this context and for the decision-making is right from the start, as soon as they're on board to that. organization you explain this is how we make decisions this is what your role in that will be this is the level of transparency we offer in as much as we can obviously there's always going to be something that's confidential like you know i'm not going to give you everyone's name and address and phone number for example because you don't need to know that and it's you know you're not allowed to know that but it's yeah it's in setting that tone that context from the start i think and then building that trust consistently throughout and you will get to a point and i've seen this this phrase, I've stolen it from social media posts, but it's, you get to that point where you're leading by consent instead of consensus. So I think consensus, yeah, I can't take credit for it. I did steal it from the internet. Consensus, I think is what we're talking about. It's like, it's the ideal, it's the aspiration. It'd be lovely if we could have that all the time, but actually I think it's unsustainable. It's probably unachievable in the first place, let alone unsustainable. And if you do achieve it, you probably don't want it because it means, as we've heard, the group thing. problem, the yes men vulture, all of that sort of problematic stuff for your business. Whereas doing it by consent, where you've done it in that right way, you've got the trust of people, they know that they will be heard on it, they can contribute their inputs, and then they trust you to make that decision with all of the available information.
- Speaker #0
Well, and the other thing too is, and I remember actually this thought specifically hasn't bubbled up until just now, but so I'm glad we're chatting, but the more you do it, then the less people need their exacting thought to be enacted every time. Like if you ask me once a year what I think about something, and then you don't take my thoughts, or it feels like you didn't take them into consideration, like nothing I contributed shows up in the decision, then that's going to feel very untrustworthy, or at the very least futile. Like why did you? It's like when my teenage daughter says, You're like the red or the blue? And I say red. She's like, I'm going to get the blue. I'm like, of course. Why do you ask? I love it though. It cracks me up. There's that. But if you're asking me, if I am involved in this much more like drive by happening all the time, like, hey, what do you think about this? Okay. And there's these small little things happening all the time. The likelihood that I am going to feel, I'm even going to notice, it's probably like a percentage thing. If it's one out of one in a year, if you ask me a thousand different things, am I going to notice if 300 of them don't go the direction I thought? Probably not. So it's creating, again, this fabric, this culture of getting insights. And I think the other thing, too, is for people to remember, getting everyone's input doesn't have to mean a formal. thorough process of getting input. It can also just having, it can also just be, I mean, I'm completely making this up, but if you have these like all hands meetings of some kind and you're like, oh, by the way, we're looking at healthcare plans. If someone has strong opinions about that, feel free to weigh in. Just making the fact that the decision or the process is going on, making that transparent and then giving people the option of weighing it, because not everyone cares about every single thing. You can also exhaust people by involving them in stuff that they don't have any interest in being involved in. I mean, I see this on topics of communication all the time. I will regularly hear people in the same conversation say to me that they, you know, don't hear about everything they need to hear about. No one tells me this, or I didn't even know about that. And then 30 seconds later, we'll complain about how many emails and Slack messages and all this stuff they get that it's just overwhelming. And I'm like,
- Speaker #1
okay.
- Speaker #0
So it's that same kind of vibe. You don't have to bring them in to sit through every meeting that doesn't involve them, but it's more just being like, hey, if anyone cares about this, hop in like like and if you don't that's fine too that is enough transparency to um At the architecture firm, we would say to people, here are the topics we're going to be talking about at the retreat. Because the four principles and then the associates and senior associates would come for part of it. But the principles would go away for a week, an entire week to do a retreat every year. And they would go through huge strategy things. And so they would say, hey, we're going to be talking about what kind of projects we work on. Or we're going to be talking about how we structure, whether we do a team structure. inside the organization or whether we do based on portfolios or like whatever it is like we're going to be talking about this thing if you have thoughts on that weigh in and those who did did it doesn't mean we brought them to the retreat to sit there and participate in the conversation so it's just about like right sizing and
- Speaker #1
and and being transparent at the right level yeah i think there's a lot about mode of communication as well because i think you know I mean, the all hands one is the classic example, isn't it? And where the leader walks in and says, if anyone has thoughts on this, speak now, if you ever hold your peace. Half of the people in the room will be too nervous or too worried about how they might be perceived if they say it in front of the whole team. So they're never going to do that. The leader will walk away from that thinking, well, I gave everyone the opportunity, nobody said anything, so they all agree. And that's very much not the case. So you've got to have those other avenues open as well, whether it's doing the rounds.
- Speaker #0
make of that day and just talking to everyone one-to-one or it's like message or email or whatever it is you bring up a really important point i just like to throw in because i i learned this in my facilitation training and it is one of the most valuable things i have learned in like managing and growing people but that is where i learned that some people are verbal processors and some people are internal processors and so from a facilitation standpoint they teach you to not just ask a question and then have people jump in because above and beyond, even, even aside from the parts like confidence and feel like that's a whole other level that keeps people from jumping in or feeling like they're going to look stupid or, or just being something more personal they want to share. There's a million other reasons that becomes problematic, but just looking at the neuroscience of it, even if they're super confident, some people just need a hot second to think and get and gather their thoughts because they process. internally. I am a verbal processor. So I actually have to talk together. It's happened a couple times on here while I'm talking. I'm like, oh, my thoughts just came together while I was speaking. My husband is an internal processor. When we first started dating, if I was like, oh, I have this issue and dah, dah, dah, dah, he would just stare at me with giant eyes and be completely overwhelmed. And I'd be like, why aren't you saying anything? I learned in this. And so what you do in facilitation is say, okay, I'm going to, not for every single thing, but periodically throughout the session, I will say, okay, we're going to talk about this. Take a second. Here's 30 seconds, 60 seconds, jot down anything you think about this topic, ideas for this or problems we're having or whatever the question is. I give people that amount of time. And then in that context, rather than have them just jump in. I say, we're going to go around the room and each person's going to say one thing. And then we'll go around again if we need to, or we can hot topic in whatever's left over. If you have a burning thing that gives people a second to chime in or to think about it. In your context, on the all hands, you might say, hey, this is a thing here, four or five avenues that, you know, you can talk to your supervisor. You can put it in this private channel. Here's an anonymous channel that we have on Slack. You have to think through, like, where are the barriers that somebody might have a problem with? problem. You know, just to round out the husband conversation, what that looked like for us is I learned to say, Hey, I have this thing. I'm going to tell you about it at the, I'm going to make it as brief as possible. And then I need you to say something, but what you can say is, can I think about that? And, and then, but then I do need you to come back to me. Like, I don't, I don't want to like hound you about it. And it was, it was life changing because sometimes he would immediately be able to say like, oh, let's just do this thing. And sometimes he would say, can I think about that? I'm like, absolutely. I was totally fine with that. And then a day or two later, he'd come back having had time to process it. So it's just honoring the biology of a person so that you can get their best. Because I will tell you this, when I do that thing in a facilitation, you get 30, 60 seconds, and then without fail, some of the most profound and substantive stuff. comes from the people who needed to think for a second, as opposed to the me's in the room, who have just been like, here's 10 thoughts that popped into my head immediately. That's great, but it doesn't mean those are the best thoughts. So giving people space to process and then also providing avenues that account for not just fears and confidence, but also confidentiality and also power dynamics. Like that is just another thing to always think about. If there's something someone needs to say that they know someone above them or even someone up here with them is going to take issue with. that diminishes the likelihood that they will just chime in with that. So those are kind of the nuances to increase the value you can get out of transparency, the likely that you will make it more of an electrical circuit instead of just a one-way thing. Like transparency isn't just out, it's also back in.
- Speaker #1
Really great advice there on how to handle it as well. So you've preempted a follow-up question already. Well done. Yeah. I mean, I really like... particularly the giving people time to think because yeah i mean i i swing back and forth on it i think the majority of the time i'm probably more of the introspective and i need to put a bit of thought into it i'm one of those detail-oriented people but i feel like even the verbal thinkers like you if they're given a day to think about it they'll come up with even more ideas and perhaps hesitate to say better ideas but you never know there isn't um and it's probably even unfair for me to say they're
- Speaker #0
better ideas. What I have noticed when I do that in a facilitation is I just noticed how grateful I am that I did it because something would have been lost without, because I know for a fact they would not have chimed in with it. They didn't have the time to come up with it. And it would have been a lesser quality conversation without that insight. And I am just always so grateful I learned that little trick, that I learned that fact about how the brain works because I am not a scientist. all of that insight would have been lost if I hadn't known that people simply just need a second to think. And so.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's definitely so much value in doing that. That's any meeting, any leader, any manager, start using that today. Definitely. Right. Well, we've gone on some lovely tangents there and we've barely covered any of the questions. So I'm going to bring it back to some of the questions if we can. I think we've talked a lot about the process of decision making and the ways that we can become more effective at doing it and transparency and inclusion, all of those excellent things that are very important for the leader or manager to do. What we've not really touched on yet is this problem of getting stuck, of indecision. So let's start with what do you think are the top causes for that, that founders and leaders, managers just get stuck and they can't make a decision? Yeah.
- Speaker #0
So one of them we've a little bit touched on, which is the verbal processing aspect of it. If you are a verbal processor, there's, let me back up one step. One of the sort of leadership myths that drives me crazy or just sort of like bad leadership platitudes is the like, it's lonely at the top thing. It is absolutely without question true that the higher up you go and the larger the company gets, the fewer people that you can talk to. to for a variety of reasons. It's not just confidentiality. It's not just, it's confidentiality, it's lack of people who understand all the pieces. It's just appropriateness. You can't, you know, you can't say certain things, as you were saying, you know, you can't, you can't kvetch about someone to like a lower person. Anyway, it's just, there's a lot of reasons that it is true that there are fewer people that you can talk to about some things. However, And this is back to a neuroscience thing. If you are a verbal processor and you don't have someone to talk things through with, you are primed for indecision. You are almost set up to fail for that because it's not a luxury. It is a need. And so the vast majority of my clients are verbal processors. And they know that if they don't have someone to talk it through with, they have trouble finding their own. their own clarity in their own head. I mean, it's funny, there are some calls that I do where my part in it is actually quite small. I'll ask a question here or there, I'll redirect, I'll point out something maybe they didn't notice in what they said, like there's a connection between something. But what is really happening is just they have a space to say their words. And it is a neuroscience thing. For whatever reason, as a verbal processor, I could talk to the air, it doesn't work. I could talk into a voice recorder, it doesn't work. I need another person there. Even if they're not doing much of anything, I'm just telling them the story. And all of a sudden my brain goes, and I understand my own thoughts. So recognizing if you're a verbal processor, if you find yourself without someone to talk things through with, stop imagining that's a luxury or some kind of like failure. It's just a fact. It's math. It's like a formula. You need that. go get it. You have to have someone to talk things through it. So that is one place I see big indecision. The other one is imagining there are right answers, getting too hung up. It's not even perfectionism. It's just imagining that there's a right answer and also trying to take two big of steps. So one, like I'm sort of talking about both things here, the indecision and also the sort of solution or the salve for the indecision. which is often when people are really just flummoxed about what to do, they're trying to figure out a whole thing. And so I think of decision support much like when I was at the architecture firm. I mean, pretty much everything that wasn't architecture was under my purview, but the level one IT support was one of those things. We had IT guys for the really advanced stuff, but I was like the first person like, have you tried turning it off and on? kind of stuff. But that process of IT troubleshooting, if you think about it, is all about isolating the variables. It's like, oh, I can't connect to the network. First, let's swap out the cable. Is it the cable? Okay, it's not the cable. Try logging into a different computer. Is it your profile? Is your profile that's messed up? So you have to find the tiniest thread of that fabric and put it somewhere you can be like, okay, it's not that thing. Now, what else could it be? That is exactly one way to get out of indecision of like, I'm looking at all of this and it's just too big. What part do I know about? Like, okay, I know this part is a yes. I'm solid on that. Can I act on that? Or is there some other piece I have to know before I can act on that? And by chunking it down, it can relieve a lot of indecision. So sometimes it's just, you're looking at too much at a time. Some of the more nuanced ones that take a lot more teasing apart is trying to think about two things. Either you're also incorporating too much time in it. I know scale is super important for a tech company. I'm not going to pretend it's not. However, you cannot build, like sometimes you have to start with things that are unscalable. to work out how a thing works and then deal with the scalability of it later. I have never seen indecision and struggle like trying to also incorporate scalability right from the beginning when you are teeny tiny something. Like a lot of times just a manual process to make sure you're on the right track, then figure out how to automate it or scale it or whatever. So time and recognizing where you are in the process, not trying to look... way ahead and solve a high school problem for a first grade issue. You have to come back and say, what's just the basic first grade issue of this? And let's fix that first. That one. And then the other one is just the people stuff, like trying to solve too many variables at once. Getting hung up in all the personalities is something that drags down a decision. You can't ignore them. You have humans that have to like... be motivated to do things. It absolutely matters, but it absolutely complicates things and becomes a really... So again, you have to separate the variables, decide what the decision is, then weave back in the people part. So over and over again, separating the variables and looking at them separately before you put them back together is probably the number one strategy that I use with clients.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. I mean, I so agree with you about just needing that. friendly ear not even the shoulder to cry on is it it's this just the ears that someone who will listen that's something since i've been in a solo brunner not sure i like that word but i'm thinking another one that's something that i really felt the loss of especially during covet as well um which led me into networking which i hadn't really done before because i kind of hated it and then i discovered doing it online is a lot different and much better so that's what i do But it's exactly that, it's having access to that friendly ear who just, they don't necessarily have to have the answer do they? Just sometimes they ask a well thought through question because they want to know the answer but it makes me think about it in a slightly different way. get to an answer that I probably wouldn't have found without them. And it's that value of mentorship, of coaching, of facilitation, all those kind of the roles that others can play in your business, even if you are a business and one. And that is...
- Speaker #0
Curiosity. Curiosity is a powerful... They don't have to know your business or your company. If they're just curious and will keep asking you questions, sometimes the weirdest questions because they don't know anything about your company. Or they'll ask something that might, they're like, well, can't you just do that? And you're like, oh, yeah.
- Speaker #1
Why didn't I think of that?
- Speaker #0
That's actually really smart. Because sometimes you know too much. You're so in a, I don't know if I heard this or made it up, but it's been so long that I've used it. But. This work is often like watching someone else parallel park a car. You just have the benefit of being like out here. And so you can see it has, it doesn't have any indication of their ability to drive or any of those things. It's just, I have the benefit of not being so involved in it that I, I know all the things because all the things are confusing and they weigh you down. And sometimes you need someone who isn't just.
- Speaker #1
drowning in all the details of what a thing is so that they can make a cleaner a cleaner uh awareness for you yeah it's just a different perspective isn't it I guess is the way to sum it up but it's you know they they I mean the driving metaphor is good because it's called a blind spot for a reason it's because you can't see it so you need someone else to look at and and tell you what it is don't you yeah logically anyway absolutely yeah As for it's lonely at the top, it is a cliche, but it is also true. And I will confess I use it quite a lot, especially in marketing.
- Speaker #0
I don't disagree that it is true. I disagree with, I get irate about it feeling like a sentence that has a period at the end of it, rather than a comma and then another clause about what you're going to do about it. Like, it is lonely at the top. Therefore, I need dot, dot, dot. It's when it is said as a sentence, as if you were just supposed to accept that and muddle through with it feeling that way. I will not bore you with the details, but the science behind entrepreneurial isolation and what it does in terms of business success and also mental health, which then immediately affects business success. is daunting. It is, it is, um, it's a huge problem. Um, and there've been a bunch of studies about founder mental health. I mean, it is, it is, um, I don't, I know people already have an innate sense of this, but the statistics of it are, are terrifying. Um, the, like they're two and three times likely to have major mental health issues, to have substance abuse issues, to be hospitalized, to consider or try suicide. Like it is, it's not okay. And a lot of that comes back to isolation. And it's, that's why I get so fervently like fist poundy about it is that is, that's, it's not okay. And so we have to find, because it is true, we have to find solutions for it. We have to find ways that there are places for those conversations to go. Seth Godin has this quote, like, If you have a problem you can't talk about, now you have a second problem. And I think founders feel the weight of that. So I am determined to eliminate those second problems.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I mean, I see it not just for founders. I think for leaders, almost at any stage of their career, but definitely at both ends. When you're doing it for the first time, it can be so isolating because you feel that pressure. I don't want to be seen to need help with this. I need to prove myself. The whole failure and weakness whole conversation there. And again, there's a mental health aspect of that too. And then obviously at the other end, when you're the founder or the CEO, again, like you're that high up, you don't want to be seen to have to ask for help, even though you need it. And I totally agree with everything you said there. It is a problem and it shouldn't be, because how simple is the solution? it's not easy necessarily but it's pretty straightforward isn't it it's just find someone to listen
- Speaker #0
Well, especially, yes. And also it comes back to the transparency conversations we were talking about. That makes people feel less isolated. When you have a really good, thriving, healthy, functioning leadership team who you're also relying on, that makes people feel less lonely.
- Speaker #1
So on the subject of leadership myths, I mean, you've mentioned the one that bugs you the most, at least in the way it's used. One that I think is very related that is regularly in my top three of leadership myths I hate is this assumption that the leader has to have the answer or an answer, right? And that's so relevant to decision making as well, because the pressure we put on ourselves to what I'm the leader, I have to make the decision. I have to know what the answer is. And so often that, and I've ranted about this before, the listeners are probably fed up of hearing about it from me. But when you're in that mindset. and it's so easy to get stuck in that mindset, it becomes less about what the decision is and just about the fact that you have to arrive at one. So you just come up with whatever the first thing is that occurs to you, right? That's it. I've made this decision. I've done my job. Brilliant. Move on. And it so often ends up being the wrong one or a bad one or a less good one than it might have been.
- Speaker #0
Well, and it's also just missing the entire point of leadership. What you just said reminded me of the thought that I lost five seconds ago because they are deeply related. I don't know where we got it twisted, imagining that leadership is like a solo, any kind of solo thing. It's the opposite of being an individual contributor. It is not about having the answers. Not only is it about asking the right questions, but leadership is quite literally coordinating help, coordinating other people's actions. activity and brains and insights and whatnot. That only comes when you ask for help, when you ask questions. Again, it comes back to what you were saying, you know, back to the like, ultimately leadership absolutely involves making decisions and guiding and setting the strategic, you know, making sure that the strategic pathway is clear so that people can. have an internal GPS about where you're headed and don't have to check in about everything. But this weird thing about we're supposed to have the answers, that we're doing it all alone, that we're not supposed to have questions or uncertainty, that we can't ask for help. I think I said that one already. Those are the opposite of leadership. It's so profoundly paradoxical that I don't know how we got it that messed up. Like the best. I have worked with amazing leaders. These are people who not just that I respect, but have had amazing business results, sold their companies for like bordering on unicorn stories. Every one of those people doesn't go it alone. They don't imagine that they have all the answers. They are not afraid to ask really stupid questions or to look like they don't know what they're doing, both to their staff as well as to investors. other CEOs, they are the first to raise their hand and say like, hey, I'm trying to figure this out. You know, what do you know that I don't? They're the first to raise their hands to people and say, what feedback do you have for me? Where am I messing up? How can I be better? Like sort of dropping this weird perception that leaders get to a certain point and suddenly they are like these infallible oracles that sit on a mountain and just somehow know. is not only harmful to them, but it's also hard for the people who work for them because I think people forget that leaders of any kind, whether it's the founder or just like the immediate supervisor, they still need to hear that they're doing a good job when they're doing a good job. Because that's the other thing that happens. The further up you go, and certainly when you start your own thing, you don't get performance reviews a lot of times. You don't... you don't get to hear where you're doing a good job. I mean, people will sometimes chip. I mean, sometimes it's also as bad when you don't hear where you're doing a bad job. Like people are less honest with you. And I hear people craving that they, they usually they're wanting to hear where they could be better that they talk about. I don't think they even realize how much they want and need to hear where they're doing a good job because that you can build on that. Like, what do I need to be doing more of? Because they stop hearing that a lot of times. So I a thousand percent agree with you. That is my, that is the number two on my list is. Imagine that you have to have the answers.
- Speaker #1
There's a lot to be answered for in this particular myth, and with a couple of the others actually, in the way that leaders are portrayed in popular culture. You're saying like, where does this paradox come from? I think it's a few things, and we could get into like the leadership theories, and we could talk about autocratic leaders, and a very old-fashioned approach to it, and you know, sort of like industrial revolution sort of mindset. as opposed to information revolution, which is where we are now. And not understanding that fundamental shift is, I think, a big problem as well. That's perhaps part of the root cause for this. But if you think about the average person, when they become a leader for the first time, what reference points do they have about how leaders behave? It's the one they've worked for or the ones they've worked for, who usually will just be repeating what they've seen, not necessarily, if they've never had any training on how they're just doing it. And then it's popular culture. It's how a lead is portrayed in the films we watch, the TV, the books we read, the stories we hear, the examples like Steve Jobs, for example. So he, in his case, you know, he had this really clear vision about the technology and about his company and the services and the way it was going to work, which is great. But what everyone forgets is you read the stories about what he would like to work for. He was that pretty classic autocrat. who you know very demanding not very nice to some of the people he worked with and that big is forgotten and for someone like him it's fine i think because he had that great vision so that's what he succeeded at and that's why he was hyper successful but if he didn't have that vision and he behaved that way as a leader he would never have heard of him yeah and then another example so there's some of the stories you hear about um jeff bezos in the early days of amazon so everyone looks at him now and thinks well he's that kind of old crowd and he doesn't But actually, in the early days of Amazon, he was packing books himself for Christmas because, you know, they weren't going to get done otherwise. How many leaders have you ever encountered who would go and they'd be at the coalface because they would need it. That was where their effort was best spent.
- Speaker #0
I mean, well, my clients, a lot of them, but I'm very picky. I work for work. Well,
- Speaker #1
work for, though, not with. Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. So here. Yes. And I think one quick thing on the autocorrect, the sort of the blend of decisions with vision. One just like thing I want to toss in is when you have a vision, the more visionary your vision is, when you see something other people can't, increases the times where you might make decisions that other people think are crazy. But the clearer you are on your vision, and if your decision is in alignment with your vision, the less you have to be attached to having buy-in from other people. So a lot of the examples we have used in our conversations here were more like internal decisions that affect employees, like I mentioned healthcare, or how we do things. Those kinds of decisions are one kind of decision. They're sort of how much transparency you have and whatnot. When you are making decisions that fall into that stratosphere of the direction of the company because of vision, that is where there's less room for anything even remotely consensus-y. Because you should have a lock grip on, no, we're doing this and I know you can't see it yet. You stick with me. I'm going to build so much trust that you will trust that I know where we're headed. Those decisions sometimes will be quite unpopular. And that is part of your job when you're holding a vision that other people can't see. That's sort of a thing. But yes, that is what people, back to what you were saying, most people who are leading anything have had very little training. Now, maybe they were on athletic teams or maybe they led a Girl Scout tribute or whatever. They have had some experience, maybe. But I think the thing we forget sometimes, and we don't have to go like way psychobabbly here, but... Often what you are up against is how someone was parented. If they had very authoritarian parents, then the only thing their body knows is, I have to be, people should be afraid of me. Not necessarily afraid of me in the office, like they think you're going to harm them in some way, but that fear is how you control people. And when you control people, that's how you get results. There's a huge portion of the population who have only ever seen that form of leadership, and they just simply have never seen a different kind of leadership. You always, in all the things we talk about, it's not anyone's job to dive into the deeper psychology and attachment experiences of each individual employee and figure these things out. But you absolutely need to be aware of them. Sometimes when someone is acting in a way that seems just incomprehensible to you or just weird, why do they react like that? Why are they so hung up on this? thing. Like, um, this is a very quick story. I was working with another coach who is a dear friend now, but we were both on this team. We actually were both facilitators, sorry. And we were both facilitators for this company. And I'll be honest, she was annoying the bejesus out of me because she had to know everything. Like, she's like, well, what, how are we supposed to do this? And I am much more of like a build the plane as we fly it, figure out as we go, like. unless there's a reason to know exactly. I'm like, well, we're just, we're making this thing. This thing has never existed. So let's just figure it out. And she kept wanting certainty in a place where there just wasn't certainty. It hadn't been done yet. And I was getting, I have a lot of patience, but I would serve at the end of my patience on this thing. And I got a little bit snappish and it was so interesting to me. And I've thought of this every time I want to get snappish with somebody. She paused and she like took a deep breath. She said, I'm sorry. I know I'm doing this thing that I do where I like absolutely need to know. She's like, but I grew up in a house where if I even rolled down the car window without asking, we would get in like major trouble. Like we always just like, so I am just, I'm just kind of wired to try and figure out what the rules are so that I don't get in trouble. Like that's how it feels. She goes, and I know there's no way to get in trouble here, but I just, I can feel myself doing that. And I know that can be a lot sometimes. And I was like. Thank you for saying that. You didn't owe me that. But it certainly made our working relationship work better. Nobody owes anybody those stories, to be very clear. I'm not saying you have to tell people your life story, but I keep that in my head every time I start to get irritated with someone. In whatever circumstance, I'm like, okay, there might be something going on in their programming that I can't even guess because I didn't have that upbringing. I had a very fly by the seat of our pants. My parents never planned anything. So that's what I was used to. I know for a fact that is very annoying to other people, like my children who like to plan things out. So just that awareness that not only are we swimming upstream against cultural norms for leadership and lack of leadership or management training, but people have had childhoods and also past work experiences. that have colored their ability to trust and assume your best intentions you they may have just come from another company where a leader or the boss would say one thing but if you trusted that they would hang you out to dry the next day like they have had experiences that you don't know about so it's just yet another thing you kind of have to keep in
- Speaker #1
your awareness no it's a really good point actually particularly on the parent side of it you I hadn't thought of that. Yeah, so thank you. And yeah, I mean, one last thought I'll offer on that, that whole area actually is that kind of ruling by fear thing. It is interesting to me from an academic point of view, but also quite upsetting from a being a person point of view, like how often people even today inflate fear and respect, because they are very different things. And one definitely doesn't lead to the other.
- Speaker #0
No, they do not. And, but for most of our, I mean, for, for generations that if not centuries, I mean, it is an important to remember, this is a relatively new awareness about how humans actually work and fear is not that effective, especially from a neuroscience standpoint. There's some real biology that happens when people are afraid, like anything you do that kicks someone into a fight or flight. you lose access to their prefrontal cortex, which is the super smart, nuanced strategy, visioning priority part is gone. So there's that, but it's a newer thing and it's not well modeled yet. So that is like as a leader, if you can model it, which often means narrating it and making sure people realize that's what's happening, people can start to trust that that's trustworthy. worthy. Like if you've only seen fear as a technique, then you're looking for what do I need to be afraid of, which reduces trust. it's a it's a again it's a circuitry of building a culture that you want to have absolutely leadership heroes well i hate to say i've totally lost track of time um i've got another call
- Speaker #1
in like 10 minutes um i'm going to skip to the last question because it's my favorite one and i can't leave without asking it so it's called leadership heroes So the question is, if you had to pick one person, it could be anyone, so alive or dead, past or present, real or even fictitious, who, in your opinion, would perfectly embody leadership, who would that person be and why?
- Speaker #0
I would say it was a past client of mine. So I won't tell you his actual name, but it's a past client of mine who I worked with for about six or seven years. I know that I was also helpful to him, but I learned. so much from him. There's so much from him that I have woven into future client work. And some of those things were, he did a beautiful job of, he was incredibly firm. He had really high standards. He did not let people get away with stuff, but he held those high standards with an enormous heart. And he never left, this is the way I thought of it, he never left his heart in the other room to do the hard things. He did the hard things with his heart raw and exposed. And what I mean by that is when he had to let people go, no one likes that. It's not fun. I would go as far as to say, if it doesn't bother you to let people go, you need a good hard look in the mirror. That is also not okay. But I find that a lot of people to get through that experience will sort of disassociate. You know, they're like, I'm just going to go in, I'm going to do the thing, I'm going to get it done and and then I'm going to get back out again, which is even more traumatizing for the other person because that doesn't feel good. He would go in with all of him and have these conversations and it was gutting for him. There was I he's been where I know for a fact that in 20 years of leading this extremely large, wonderful company, it is never not just gutted him. to have those kinds of conversations, but he does it. And he doesn't protect himself from those feelings and that, that also expands. The other thing I learned from him was dissolving this concept that like, if someone is leaving either because they want to leave or because you need them to leave that, that ha that this has to be this, like, treat it as if it's a betrayal. Like, like a lot of companies almost treat that like they caught you stealing or something, which if they caught you stealing, that's a different thing or like something that truly is a breach of trust. But for situations where it's more just, it's not a good fit. I saw him have the conversation with someone like, Hey, this kind of isn't working. You know, do you agree? Do you not agree? Like, where are you? Let's take the next month or two and get someone in here, make sure we know what you're doing, help you find another place. That's a better fit. Like he held it in this. I care about you too much. to watch you struggle in a place that's not a good fit because you deserve to be someplace where all of your wonderful strengths are, there's a light shined on them and you get to feel good about your job. And so it was just this like very different way of looking at things that I watched people thrive and everything in his culture worked the way people aspire to. And it's because he had this commitment. He didn't view culture as like a thing you put on a poster. He viewed it as happening in every single conversation, in every single day, in every single way. And he had the commitment to show up that way every day, as opposed to imagine you just tell people something and they're supposed to do it. And he modeled it. And I think about him a lot when I think about my advice for leaders.
- Speaker #1
I love that story. I think the bit I will pull out of that, I think is perhaps most important as a lesson for leaders is that word care. Because that is, again, and it goes back to pretty much everything we've talked about in the context of leadership today, doesn't it? Is that fundamental part of leading, putting those people first and actually caring about them. To use your phrase, like if you can't care about the people you're leading, you need to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror and think about whether you should be leading them.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, 100%.
- Speaker #1
And off the soapbox, I get. Well, Jodie, I'm so sorry I've run out of time because this is such a great conversation. I could have kept going for at least this long again and been happy about it. Thank you so much for a lovely chat today. It's been great meeting you. Loved hearing all your stories and insights on leadership and in the decision as well. If any of the listeners would like to learn more about you, what's the best way for them to do so?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, so you can go to atthecore.com forward slash gift. And on that page, you can just go to atthecore.com and you can read about me. But on the slash gift page. There's a number of things. I keep adding different things, but there is a place there to just book a connection call. If you're just that is not a sales call, I will not discuss with you like working together on that call. It's just an opportunity to sort of test out what it's like to have someone to process through a decision with. If from there you want to chat about working together, we can have that as a separate conversation. But it's not one of those bait and swish free calls that I'm like, and here's my program. So I do also, though, for someone who does actually want to just jump right in, there's I believe it's a 50 percent discount on my individual sessions. And then there's just a couple other resources and whatnot there. I can never remember what I've thrown on the page. So I keep adding to it.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, that's a good sign, though. Yeah. Lovely. Well, I will pop that link in the show notes so everyone can find it easily. And that's it. End of episode. Thank you so much again. Have a great day.
- Speaker #0
You too.
- Speaker #1
Thank you for some really useful advice and insights there today, Jodie. It was a thoroughly enjoyable conversation. I totally lost myself in that conversation, in fact, and we overran once again. Sorry, listeners, if you're on a tight schedule. And listener, another reminder to visit those links in the show notes in the episode description to learn more about Jodie's work and perhaps reach out to her directly. Take her up on that offer of a free call if you feel you might benefit from her guidance. And anyone who's ever... got stuck with a decision, I'm sure would fall into that category. And if leadership itself is something you're struggling with, and you'd like access to learning, resources, and even some one-to-one support from me, then do please pay a visit to www.leadernotaboss.com. Click on that green button and sign up to join the Integrity Leaders online community. It's for new leaders, first-time founders, and learner managers. And if you join today using promo code halfoff24, you'll get a 50% discount on your monthly membership for as long as you remain a part of the community. And I look forward to welcoming you through the virtual doors very soon. Thank you for being with us today. I hope you'll join me again next time. That's all from me today. So until next week, be a leader.
