The New Leader with Ian Daley

Welcome to The New Leader Podcast. I’m your host, Ian Daley. Today we’re going to talk about Creativity in Leadership – why it’s important, and how leaders can be more creative.

Today’s guest is Ron Tite. Ron is a speaker, and the Founder and CEO of Church+State, a Toronto-based marketing agency. He’s also the author of Everyone’s an Artist (or At Least They Should Be), published by HarperCollins in 2016. Ron has been an award-winning writer and creative director for brands such as Air France, Evian, Johnson & Johnson and Intel, to name a few.

In this episode, we look at:

Ron’s first experience as a manager,

the definition of a true leader,

his biggest win and biggest loss,

the importance of creativity in leadership,

his favorite streamlining tools and how they make work more efficient,

and a lot more.

I hope you enjoy this one.

My real first management role was my very first job. Like most comedians and creative directors, I did a Phys. Ed. degree. My very first job was helping launch the National Executive MBA program at Queen’s University – the Queen’s School of Business.

There I was, a Phys. Ed. grad. I didn’t know how I got there, but being an administrator and a manager in a School of Business, launching a video conference Executive MBA program, was not something I spoke to my high school guidance counselor then.

I landed in this place because I was there as a summer student. The Director of it said, “You’re smart enough to really understand where we have to take this. You’re a good enough team player that you can build trust with people and rally people around a shared cause. You’re competitive because of your athletic background, but you’re not too competitive, like you’re not a jerk about it.”

When we talk about leadership, we talk about direct reports. But the reality is, with this outsourced world, with this gig economy, and with these fuzzy lines between roles, where people are inside your organization or outside your organization, they’re a contractor, or a freelancer – whatever. All that stuff goes away now.

True leaders are the ones who can rally a group of people around a shared purpose. Sometimes those people report to you and sometimes they don’t.

Why Creativity is Important As a Leader

The key aspect of creativity is when somebody stops and asks themselves,

“Hold on a second. What if there are no rules?”

The complete opposite of creativity is doing things the way you always do them, and that’s the way a lot of leaders operate. There’s a set of rules, and you follow the rules.

Here’s the 5-step plan to leading people.
This is what you do on a daily basis. You do an HR-mandated 360 review. This is how it goes; this is the document you use. These are the things you say.

And you do that, and it becomes efficient. You guarantee quality. You all follow the same steps every single time. It’s an assembly line of leadership.

And there are people who have built their careers with no absolute brilliance, but with an absolute commitment and discipline to following the rules. There are things you do, there are ways you dress, there are things that you say – and if you just follow those rules, you’ll do very well.

The problem is that pretty much in every aspect of leadership, pretty much in every single category on the planet, all those rules have been thrown out the window.

We are now in a situation where there are no rules. We’re seeing entire categories being completely disrupted simply because of outside disruptors who are solving the problems the establishment can’t, or won’t. And the reason they are solving these problems is because they’re not following the rules.

Links and Resources

Connect with Ron: LinkedIn

Visit their website: https://churchstate.co/ | http://rontite.com/

Everyone’s an Artist (or At Least They Should Be): How Creativity Gives You the Edge in Everything You Do by Ron Tite, Scott Kavanagh and Christopher Novais

The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television by George Carlin

Slack

Evernote

Scrivener

ICONIC: How Organizations and Leaders Attain, Sustain, and Regain the Highest Level of Distinction by Scott McKain

All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel by Anthony Doerr

Welcome to The New Leader Podcast. I’m your host, Ian Daley and today I’m really excited to have Joanne Shields with us. Joanna is the co-founder of StarFish Learning Inc, as well as a talented facilitator, designer and consultant. She specializes in enabling organizations and individuals to excel through the application of powerful learning experiences.

Joanna has worked with many leaders over the years as a consultant, and brings with her insights that I know you will find a lot of benefit from today.

In this episode, we are going to look at:

• what separates the best leaders from the rest,
• how to stay on top of it all without drowning in a sea of distractions (e.g., email, social media),
• planning and discipline,
• setting boundaries, and
• productivity and enjoyment.

I hope you enjoy this one.

I had four direct reports – two of them were younger than me, and I felt like I could connect with them. I felt like they were at a similar age and stage to me. The two older women, I was terrified of. I thought there was no possible way they were ever going to learn or listen or be led by me.

I would say my real strength, and what I focused on as a new leader, was understanding that I would make mistakes, and being transparent about that. I worked collaboratively with all of my staff to co-create and understand how I can best support and coach them. Although I will say I was probably not a very good coach back then; I probably did a lot more telling than asking.

But I do think my intention really was to connect with them at the head level and at the heart level. I believe that if you ask them, even today, that’s what they would say, that I had a real desire and intention to help support them and to help them grow and develop their potential.

My biggest failure probably is not being willing to have tough conversations early on.

I think that’s very tough for leaders, especially new leaders. We always want to bring the positive side, the supportive side, the collaborative side to our discussions. But I really believe that what we don’t talk about and what we sort of gloss over can get in the way – not only of performance, but also the relationships that we build with our people.

If I had to give a piece of advice to a new leader, I would say find a way to approach those tougher conversations. There’s lots of good reference material out there – Fierce Conversations, Crucial Conversations. And do that in the spirit of development and support.

As we always say, you need to be firm with the problem and the actions that are going to be taken clearly state your expectations. But also be sensitive to the people side of the issue.

I think that if I had learned that earlier on, it probably would have saved me a lot of grief.

From what I’ve seen, from the leaders that I’ve worked with, there are a couple of things that stand out. The first one for me is the whole analogy of being the kingmaker, not the king.

How do we really equip our people to reach their potential? Challenge them, but don’t stretch them beyond reason.

How do we give them opportunities to grow and develop and to really shine in the organization and with their customers?

I think great leaders know how to do that. They know when to ask and when to tell. They know when to be giving a lot of direction, and when to be giving a little bit of direction. But at the end of the day, I really feel like they get tremendous fulfillment, and really get very jazzed up when their people do well.

And I think that’s authentic.

Links and Resources

Connect with Joanna: LinkedIn

Visit their website: http://www.starfishlearning.com/cms2/

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time by Susan Scott

Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan and Al Switzler

Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't by Jim Collins

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier

Hi, this is Ian Daley. Welcome to the pilot episode of The New Leader podcast.

This is the podcast where you’ll find practical, actionable advice for new leaders, or those who aspire to move into leadership roles. You’ll learn directly from those who walk the walk as they share their leadership stories, struggles and successes.

Today our guest is Chris Spurvey, founder of Chris Spurvey Sales Growth Consulting Inc and co-founder at Dockridge Digital.

Chris spearheaded the growth of Plato Consulting to the point it was acquired by one of the largest management consulting firms in the world (KPMG). In the process, he sold over $300 million in consulting services.

Following the acquisition, Chris turned his focus to helping other “non-sales sellers” find a way to grow their revenue in a consistent, stress-free manner. He published It’s Time to Sell: Cultivating the Sales Mindset, founded Make Sales a Habit University and today is a growth advisor to business owners and their management teams throughout the world.

We talk about his background, his experience as a manager, becoming VP at KPMG, his biggest win as a leader, following your intuition, and many more. We even touched on the practical applications of psychology!

I hope you enjoy this one.

What was the first 6-12 months like for you as a new manager?

When I think back to them looking at me, and me looking at them as their leader, I never stopped to pause and “think” through their eyes, and that is the most important aspect in my opinion in terms of how to actually motivate and inspire and get people to act in a way that is going to progress them and also benefit the organization.

We, as leaders, need to be looking through the eyes of the individuals we are leading and think about what is exactly going to motivate them. Think about not only the business side of it, but also think about their personal lives.

They’re coming at their jobs through their own bodies and as a new leader, we – I know I did – never really realized that. We look through our own eyes.

We look at the individual, and we think about what’s going to benefit us as individuals – that’s the initial reaction.

At the base of it is an individual who has a heart and a mind, and ambitions and motivations that are exactly the equivalent of yours – they’re just a couple of years behind you or me as a new leader at that point in time.

So I would suggest making sure always pausing, to think through the eyes of the individual you’re leading.

What would you describe as your biggest win from the people aspect of helping a consultant land a big client?

This guy Ed in our local office, who at that time was a senior consultant, came to me and said, “Chris, I am really struggling with this idea of going out and selling and finding new clients.”

The more I dug into that, the more I realized that he had a really negative view as to what sales is. He saw sales as being something pushy, which many people do. It’s the stereotypical used-car salesman type of mindset.

What I did with him is I helped him identify some unique gifts and strengths that he had, and I reframed sales around that couple of unique strengths.

After talking to him for a half hour I learned that he is a very curious individual. He actually has a website that he manages and monitors in his spare time. This was a user forum for Mustangs.

As I spoke to him and saw that curiosity and problem solving ability I said to him, “When you think about it, when you go in to meet a prospective new client, if you go at it from the perspective of being curious about who they are as individuals, and then try to diagnose and solve their problem, sales will just happen naturally from that interaction.”

I remember it specifically, because about a month later he landed a $250,000-dollar contract and now he is, I believe, a manager.

I inspired him and got him to see sales through a different lens and I was able to have him see it, but also wrap it in the context of his daily job.

And so even without a new model, image and new tactics and techniques that pertains to sales and now he’s excelling in the organization. So that’s one of the wins of working with those consultants, reframing and working around this topic of sales.

If you follow your heart, your heart will very rarely lead you astray.

Not to get too woo-woo for that matter, but we have higher faculties, and those higher faculties are perception, intuition, our will, our reasoning factors and so on.

We have a tendency to live through our senses – sight, smell, taste, touch, etc – but we have these higher faculties like memory that we should be trying to develop.

The one key factor that I believe a leader needs to hone in on is their intuition and that’s really being able to tap into what your heart is telling you, and follow that intuition because I believe it will rarely lead you astray.

Links and Resources

Connect with Chris: LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram

Visit his website: http://www.chrisspurvey.com/

It’s Time to Sell: Cultivating the Sales Mindset by Chris Spurvey

The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga