The Leader Learner Podcast

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Check-In Question:

• Do you think it's appropriate to cry at work, and when was the last time you cried at work? 

Big Ideas:

• Is appropriate the right word to refer to having emotions at work?
• Judgment behind the work appropriate
• Permission to have the full range of emotions, even at work
• How criticism brings up a sense of threat, even if we don't consciously think of it
• The importance of specific feedback, so we know what to do differently or more of
• Negativity bias
• What makes feedback appropriate, useful, or adequate? 
• Imposter syndrome
• Knowing what triggers us to get defensive
• How style interacts with purpose/vision, from a tactical perspective
• Clarity up front about your style
• Turning threats into opportunities
• Making our methods/styles into a differentiating factors (USP)
• What are people's expectations before engaging in a learning space?
• Is the feedback touching the core of who I am, or is it more tactical? 
• Looking at making abstract ideas more actionable
• "Our judgments are the tragic expressions of our unmet needs" ~Marshall Rosenberg
• Bias coming from expectations
• Respecting and honoring other people's feedback and their stories, rather than explaining away or defending their perspective
• Letting some feedback float away in the distance
• Looking at the needs behind people's feedback
• How are we prioritizing feedback? Is the feedback in line with our values? What feedback are we holding on to, and what are we letting go? 

References:

• No Hard Feelings by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy
• Big Feelings by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy
• Brené Brown's discussion of creating observable behaviors for abstract ideas in the book Dare to Lead
• Marshall Rosenberg and Non-Violent Communication
• Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown

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Check-In Question:

• Would there be more or fewer people leaving their jobs (divorces)  if people could read each other's minds? 

Big Ideas:

• The importance of candor in organizations
• How we do candor matters
• The culture of candor matters - sometimes labeled a non-team player if point out mistakes
• Safety as it relates to communication styles - direct/indirect
• Our own relationship to threat and how it relates to psychological safety
• Two people can be on the same team, and one can feel safe and another not
• The company needs people to feel psychological safe
• How we receive candor matters
• The stories we create about our sense of safety, versus the reality of our safety
• Our personal agency when it comes to being safe at work
• Rules of engagement for our candor for both the giver and receiver
• Scaffolding to our candor - meeting people where they are
• Balance candor with empathy
• Having the conflict about the issues, NOT the people
• Bridge the connection and the work together 
• Not just what we do, but how we do it
• Is how we treat each other more important than what we do? 
• Seeing our employees as not just rational beings, but emotional beings as well
• It's not about balance, but counterbalance. Yes/And rather than Either/Or
• Do our ideas about our company belong to us or our company? 
• Interplay between voice and silence within an organization
• Silence as a sign of psychological safety - hearing people think in silence, space between contributions shows listening
• Having a seat at the table doesn't mean having a voice
• Collective intelligence - equal time of speaking is one of the factors
• Increasing psychological safety also increases collective intelligence
• Psychological safety as an outcome, there is no formula
• Honoring people's voices without forcing their voices

Resources Mentioned:

• 'The Fearless Organization' by Amy Edmondson
• 'Principles' by Ray Dalio
• Google's Project Aristotle

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What kinds of things you'll learn about us:

• What we individually create in our work, and what for
• What makes Theresa happy about her work
• The company Vincent would want to change 
• The artist/band Theresa would take with her to a deserted island
• The book Vincent would read for the rest of his life
• Theresa's most badass leadership moment 
• What Theresa would do with her one magic wand
• The leadership lesson Vincent keeps having to learn again and again
• How Vincent is like his father
• Theresa's key to a happy professional life
• Who Theresa would have dinner with if she could
• How Vincent reads so the info stays alive
• What brings Theresa a sense of awe
• What makes Vincent a reader

Resources Mentioned:

• Karpman's Drama Triangle
• Kristin Neff on Self-Compassion
• Brené Brown
• Elizabeth Lesser
• Jim Kwik - Brain Coach

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With Guest Suzanne Lee from Straumann Group

Big Ideas:

• Intimate relationship between leadership and learning
• Leadership is an invitation to tomorrow that is better than today
• Perform for today, transform for tomorrow - learning and listening is at the core
• Learn faster than the environment is changing
• The I, the We and the It -- learning must happen on those 3 dimensions or you leave others behind
• Learning is a mindset, not a tool, process, or life hack
• Change is speeding up, so must learn faster than the change so we don't get swallowed up
• Taking responsibility for our workloads
• Learning as a value, so I make it happen no matter what is on my plate
• What am I okay with not doing perfectly
• Don't bother with time management hacks, be okay with not getting things done
• Intentionality of own growth, team growth, and individuals on teams growth
• How to reconcile performance with learning and what's on our plate
• Even within a system that won't help you keep your boundaries, if you have a discipline of reflection and perspective-taking, you can focus more on transform
• Create the space and time to reflect and learn
• Reject victim stance
• If not intentional, life takes over
• Learning on the job, not in the job
• Learning will get pushed to the bottom if it is an additional task
• If learning is a business priority to do your current job better, it's not a separate task
• Integrating the learning and reflection into the work as you do it
• Learning not as an additional to-do that no one has time for
• Challenge transforming from doing to learning -- great at perform, not so much at transform
• Building in micro-moments of reflection
• 70% of a learning organization is about the culture and leadership, not the tools
• Unless it is seen around them, they won't do it on their own
• Immediacy bias -- focus on today, not the future
• Persist in the struggle because it shows you are onto something - trust the process
• Debate the topic not the person
• How move from hub and spoke model, to a community of practice where we are all accountable 
• Leading more from behind than right out on front
• Curiosity and coaching mindset rather than advice giving
• Bounce your worlds with others
• Shared accountability

References:

• Unleashed by Frances Frei & Anne Morriss
• 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
• The Power of Giving Away Power by Matthew Barzun

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Vincent starts off with a story….

Big Ideas:

• Don’t take employees monkeys, or it turns into a zoo
• Employees need to keep their own monkeys
• Leaders and managers are not necessarily the same
• It’s exhausting and unsustainable for a manager to take everyone’s monkeys
• It’s natural for managers to take things off people’s plates. They think it’s their job. 
• How are we supporting people’s transition from individual contributor to management? 
• What is the role of a manager? 
• The shift from owning your work, to overseeing the work of the individual contributors work, without taking it on
• Role of the manager is to make obstacles go away (organization, finances, resources, team dynamics, psychological safety, recruiting, etc)
• Manager to focus on the conditions - preparing the space by removing obstacles, and putting things in
• Creating the conditions for competencies to be built
• Should we let employees fail?
• The relationship between failure and trust.
• Creating the culture and context for failure is important
• Not taking on the failures of individual contributors as our own failures - accountability infection
• Fail fast, fail early, fail often
• People are already failing. Are they doing something with it? 
• As leaders, help them through the failure.
• The emotional response to the words we use, including fail
• How are leaders talking about failure?
• Naming emotions and experiences so that we can have power over it
• Looking at our fail points ahead of time, so we can pivot sooner
• How we keep persisting on to avoid failure even when it’s the wrong path
• Looking at our fail points allows us to know whether the risk is worth it
• Doing more of the same strategy doesn’t work if it’s the wrong strategy
• Test, Assess, Act
• Agile working, sprints, and retrospectives
• Using the scientific method and testing hypotheses
• What have I done? What will I do? What are my obstacles?
• Agile working - product management and scrum master

References:

• The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey by Ken Blanchard
• The Leadership Pipeline by Ram Charan
• Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
• Taking Smart Risks by Doug Sundheim
• Trust Matters by Ken Blanchard

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Check in Question:

• Do you believe criminals can be truly rehabilitated in prison? 

Big Ideas:

• “You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.”
• Fear of people who are different than us
• The costs of the advice trap that leads to dysfunction in teams
• Advice is personal and the transfer of it doesn’t alway flourish in another context, or with another person
• Best practices shift based on context, and means that there is only one.
• We don’t live in a linear world, so there can’t be a best. 
• Advice creates demotivated advice receivers and overwhelmed advice givers
• Advice creates a short term solace
• Advice is everywhere and we all seem to like giving it out
• Is sharing of information giving advice? 
• Sometimes the expertise and advice is wrong for you
• The power of the scientific process (randomized trials)
• Selling your idea as “THE” idea
• Is the problem the assumption behind the advice and not the advice itself?
• The importance of drawing out the ideas of all people, and being attuned to why they aren’t sharing their ideas
• The person who talks the most often has the “power” in a situation.
• Are we willing to share our voice and have power dynamics shift as a result?
• How to hold power? Being worthy of power.
• Power with people versus power over others
• When we interact with people who want our advice and expect to receive it
• The people who want to be told what to do, and the people who love to tell others what to do
• What about the cultures where giving advice is a natural part of life because it is a passing along of knowledge? 
• What’s the middle way?
• Is advice giving a way to exert power over others
• The intention behind the advice giving has many nuances
• The dynamics of the relationship matters when it comes to advice giving/receiving

References:

• The Advice Trap by Michael Bungay Stanier
• The Unforgivable (movie with Sandra Bullock)
• Adam Grant
• Elias Porter – 6 Listening Attitudes
• Chatter by Ethan Cross
• Quiet by Susan Cain
• The Power of Giving Away Power by Matthew Barzun
• The Karpman Drama Triangle
• The Wisdom of Coaching
  
  

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With Guest: Tames Rietdijk, founder and former CEO at Business Forensics

Check in Question:

• Did you ever play hooky or cut class in school?

Big Ideas:

• Learning as a way of life
• Balance between “living the life of my knowledge, living of the knowledge of life”
• Would lose perspective if I focused my learning on only one area
• Living of the knowledge of life is learning from the signs and your interpretation 
• Sometimes your environment doesn’t always allow you to transform you into who you want to be
• Not using the knowledge of the past to inform the future
• Learning through experiences and reflection
• Putting myself out of my comfort zone to apply what I am learning from books
• The range of people’s opinions from failure to success
• Learning from the feedback of others that is the opposite of the feedback you would give yourself
• The importance of looking at your drivers (sometimes they are hidden)
• The habit of relearning 
• The importance of seeing the business world from the inside, rather than studying it from the outside
• Letting go of people who may be super productive, but who give feedback in a critical manner
• The power of silence
• The sense of reassurance and certainty that comes with data and numbers
• Supporting people to learn and understanding that people’s experience and maturity shifts how they learn
• The difference between mentoring and coaching and how to apply them with those you lead
• A sense of autonomy matters
• Critical and conscious thinking and the importance of being mindful of your own assumptions 
• Recognizing your own assumptions and beliefs, so that you based your decisions on facts
• The older you get, the more knowledge you gain, and the more experiences you have, yet the more stuck you are in your assumptions.
• Thinking your assumptions are the truth makes it harder to step back from them
• Experiencing the knowledge so that you internalize your learning more
• The training triangle between participants, trainer, and knowledge

References:

• Gary Vaynerchuk

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Check in Question:

• If you could spend a whole day with any one person, who would it be?

Big Ideas:

• Learning from anyone through their experiences
• Thinking that one has potential doesn’t commit to anything, but believing that people have the keys to their own happiness and that you are equals
• Seeing your children as your teacher, rather than you as their teacher.
• Equalize the relationship to reduce status/rank, and exploring how the relationship shifts when we relate to them with more equity
• Children not as spongers, but as mirrors.
• Start looking at those who we thinking can’t teach us anything, to teach us something. 
• Shifting power dynamics so we are all on the same level
• Stepping down the pedestal, and/or inviting people up onto our pedestal, or giving ourselves permission to step up
• Moving from calling people patients to clients to create more of a partnership
• Fitting in, being liked, and societal shoulds being the drivers away from who we are, and our authentic selves
• Balancing group dynamics with personal needs
• Tension between who we think we are and what the group needs - finding the “right” group
• Transparency about who you are as a leader and asking team to hold you accountable to being who you are
• Which comes first, trust or vulnerability? 
• Creating relationships where there is more reciprocity with intention
• In a “help relationship”, both parties are helping each other
• Not needing to be someone special to support other people and have a special role in their growth and/or learning
• Finding mutuality in our relationships

References:

• The Carl Rogers Reader
• The Conscious Parent by Dr. Tsabary Shefali
• Gedankenexperiment
• Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
• Marc Brackett researcher
• Social Identity Theory
• Non Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg
• Healing Circles Global
• Time to Think by Nancy Klein
• Mary Parker Follett

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Check In Question:

• If you only had 24 hours to live, what would you do? 

Big Ideas:

• “Living is learning to die”
• Having a “north star” that is worth dying for (a just cause)
• Sinek’s belief that businesses are focusing on money, not on a cause.
• How to transition or connect a non-“sexy” business to having a just cause?
• Our “just cause” shouldn’t be tied to a service or product, so we can have “existential flex”
• How do businesses measure success? Financial, Social, Ecological?
• An infinite game isn’t about winning. The goal is to keep playing.
• Winning and losing is short-term, fixed mindset.
• Can you be competitive without winning? 
• In the infinite game, the rules are consistently shifting.
• The business shift toward business as a result of ideas from Milton Friedman
• The shift in pay scales between employees and CEO’s over the last several decades
• Reciprocity and giving it back
• How we latch onto ideas and how ideas can change
• Is making money the primary purpose of business, or the secondary?
• Move people up the hierarchy of importance in business
• Moving away from doing business for the shareholders, and focusing on the employees and their contributions
• Imbalance in how we measure financial success with regard to employees and shareholders.
• How to do capitalism different? Who defines capitalism? 
• The constellation mindset rather than a pyramid mindset
• A small amount of investment from a large amount of people can tip the scales
• Thinking of our business as hunting (short term) or farming (longing)
• People want to feel valued and a part of the journey
• The importance of cultivating relationships as farmers

References:

• The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek
• The Power of Giving Away Power by Mathew Barzun
• Adam Smith
• Milton Friedman
• Gravity Payments 
• The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist
• Podcast between Simon Sinek and Matthew Barzun

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