The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 63 - Leadership

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: Well, have I got a doozy today.

Pete: Ooh.

Jen: My nearly ten-year-old daughter has a whiteboard in her room...

Pete: Yes!

Jen: ...(which she loves, P.S.). And totally unprompted, she ran to her whiteboard the other day and grabbed a pen and wrote at the top of the board: "What makes a leader?".

Pete: [laughter] What?

Jen: And I would like to spend this episode unpacking what she wrote next.

Pete: Yes! Yes, yes. What can we learn from your brilliant daughter? I love it. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Okay, so let's just first offer a little bit of context. I don't think I've spoken in depth about my daughter, except maybe on the first episode when we were talking about fear, back in Episode One.

Pete: Way back when.

Jen: So obviously, she's my daughter, which means she has to live near my bookshelves. [laughter] Which means what she sees around the house are lots of books on leadership, and personal development, empathy, etc. So this is already in her consciousness. But what I was surprised by was the array of answers that she gave herself for what makes a leader. So to set us off, what I'd like to do is read some of this to you and then would love to hear if you think she is on the right track.

Pete: If she's got a book. Let's figure out if she's got a book.

Jen: Okay, so...right. So at the top of the board, it says, "What makes a leader?". Then, in the middle of the board is the word "leaders". And then she circled it and did like a word cloud, I guess, where she connects the dots between the word "leaders", and all of these other words that I'm about to say. So each one of these is in its own sort of cloud bubble, pointing back to the word "leaders". And this is how she defines a leader. Ideas. Thinking before you act. Caring. Kindness. Forgiving. Upstanding. Saying sorry, and meaning it. Behavior. Attitude. Confidence. Inviting. Making up (which, I think she means apologizing). Sharing. Changes of behavior. And helping others.

Pete: Oh my gosh. This is your ten-year-old daughter?

Jen: Almost ten. And then there are two other sections of the whiteboard, which I might as well call everything out right now and then we can just dig in. So, on the bottom left hand of the whiteboard, she wrote, "Positive self talk". And then underneath it she wrote, "I can't do this. This doesn't make sense. I'm not good at this.". And then she wrote a bracket and on the, to the right of the bracket she wrote, "Yet!". So she turned "I can't do this" into "I can't do this yet". Or, "This doesn't make sense, yet. I'm not good at this, yet.".

Pete: Oh my goodness.

Jen: And then on the right...I know it's crazy. On the right-hand side it says, "Mistakes. Oops. Redos. Always help us learn more.".

Pete: [laughter] What? I just can't even fathom the intellect, and the brain, and the creative genius, you know, that your child has. It is wild. So...I mean, I have so much to say about all of this, but like, just to call out how amazing such a whiteboard is, and how many delicious noodles there are in this whiteboard. One of which is, I mean to me, I hear her like, she's doing the Imposter Two-Step in that corner of the whiteboard that you mentioned. Where it's like, "I can't do this.". But I'm saying back, "I can't do this, yet.". Like that to me is, she's doing the Imposter Two-Step. It's wild.

Jen: Yeah. Well, I gotta give credit to our teachers for that because I believe that that self talk has been imparted by her wonderful fourth grade teachers.

Pete: It's so wild. So prior to seeing this whiteboard, if you were to talk about the same...like, if you were tasked with the same thing, which is to create a word cloud of things that a leader does. Do you think that you would come up with something similar? Are there any glaring omissions? Are there any things you hadn't thought about that are on there?

Jen: There are definitely things on here I hadn't thought about. And there are things that I, I think I would add. What's funny is when I do my keynotes, if I'm doing a leadership keynote, I will open by asking two questions of the audience, and getting them to engage in a conversation with me. One is: "What is a leader?". And that is something that's really easy for people to answer. They will call out things like a coach, a mentor, a guide. And then I'll say, "What is leadership?". And then it falls silent. And then eventually, people will start piping up with actual behaviors, and actions that people take. And it seems to me that my daughter has been able to combine both of those questions into one idea. Which is sort of cool.

Pete: Wow. Yeah. Yeah, that's really cool. And it dawns on me, when you were reading those that so many of them are around emotional intelligence. What some would in the past, some people would refer to as "soft skills", but that what I like to think about and other people have started calling "real skills", which is things like care. Things like admitting if you make a mistake, and having people's back. Like, I got a lot of that vibe out of the whiteboard that your brilliant daugter did.

Jen: Yeah, and what's, what's interesting is...and maybe I'm learning something from this almost ten-year-old. I've often equated leadership and vision. That there is a prerequisite to be a futurist. But that is not present in her definition of leader, and makes me wonder if I've been putting too much pressure on my own definition of leadership to also include being a visionary. I mean there is certainly, by her definition, if you are emotionally intelligent, if you help other people, if you care, if you are able to be self aware enough to identify your behaviors and change them, then you would fall under her definition of leader. And I, and I like that because I think it, it opens up the possibilities of who really gets to step into a leadership role in their own life.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And that you don't have to be someone who is going to "change the world" in order to be a leader.

Pete: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Okay. So, this is like my number one learning on leadership in the last two or three years. Which is that leadership is a choice. That leadership is not something that someone bestows upon you. Being a leader is not something that you have to get permission for. Leading is not something that you go to university and get a degree in. That leadership is a choice, and takes many different forms. Whether it's leading a team, or whether it's leading a business, or whether it's leading yourself. That all of these things that we think about when we think about leadership are choices, they're postures, and they're practices. And so we get to choose whether or not we wish to be a leader. We get to choose whether or not we want to develop a posture of practicing leadership. And I could rant about this for a long time. But I just want to pause there, to say my number one learning on leadership in the last few years is that it's a choice.

Jen: Yeah, when I do my keynotes the way I typically express it...and maybe I need to rethink the way I've been calling out leader. But leadership I define as a, as a set of disciplined and practiced behaviors. That leadership, by your definition, you know, is a choice. And we get to choose our actions. And we get to choose our behaviors. And we get to choose how frequently we implement those actions and behaviors. And a leader is someone who is self aware enough to make stronger choices about the way they behave, and the way they act. What I have perhaps been too small minded or exclusive about...I've often talked about a leader as someone who's able to identify a future state that others would be willing to follow them to. And that future state doesn't even have to be, you know, ten years down the line. It could be, you know, the end of this afternoon. But that a leader is able to communicate what they see in a way that others would voluntarily follow them there. But I wonder if that is too exclusive. And I might need to rework my definition a bit. Thank you to my almost ten-year-old daughter.

Pete: I wonder, like on that...I think about this in a couple of ways. One is that the, the version of the future that a leader might be heading towards or painting, or the vision, in your, in the case that you used, doesn't have to be original. It doesn't have to be their own. It doesn't have to be that they see something that no one else can see. It could be that they are reemphasizing an existing, existing vision. Which could be a company vision. Or it could be that they are championing someone else's cause, but they're leading a small group of people, in their own way, towards that cause. So I think, I think it is important to have a, a general direction. That a leader has an idea of the direction we're heading. But that it doesn't have to be in their own unique direction that no one else has thought about before. So I just want to say that out loud.

Jen: Yes. So I think what you're saying is that there's a difference between a vision and a visionary.

Pete: Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Jen: That you can borrow someone else's vision. You don't necessarily need to invent it.

Pete: Absolutely. And you have to. Like, if you think about the way a really good business runs...if you've got a business that has a vision, then each leader is hopefully buying in to and in service of said vision. And they can interpret it slightly differently for them, but that we're all working towards a similar vision, in some sense. Which is different to, to your point, a visionary.

Jen: Right. I love this. I sort of wish she was here chiming in on this conversation.

Pete: So it's very timely, in fact, because I think about...I've been thinking a lot about leadership, and leaders in the last, well, in the last couple of years, to be honest. But like recently, so I wrote, I wrote a blog post about this just last week, around the two ways to lead that I've just been noodling on. And so I would start by defining, like I define leadership...I've blatantly stolen this from Seth Godin. My favorite blog post of all time of his was about six months ago, about leadership. And in it, he describes leadership as being: intentionally creating the conditions for others to choose new actions. So, leadership is about creating conditions for others to choose new actions. And so I was noodling on and building on this further, because there are leaders out there that have existed in the past and present, who actually do that, but not in a productive way. So some use fear, some use dictatorship, and some use uncertainty in order to create conditions for others to choose new actions. So they might say, "You have to do this, or else.". And so you create fear and uncertainty. And that's not super productive in my mind. I think a more productive way to lead is through generosity, empathy, and care. And so these leaders say, "Here's where we need to go.". (So this is the vision that you and I were just talking about.) "This is the vision. This is the direction we need to head. What do you think is the best way to get there?" And empowering the people around you to choose new actions. Empowering them to help you pick a certain path, or pick their own path, all in the pursuit of the direction and the vision. And so that's the noodle I've been thinking about recently.

Jen: I love that.

Pete: And I think...I mean I have a, like, if I was to do a word cloud, I would have other things that I would talk about, like your daughter, in terms of things that I think leaders do.

Jen: Yeah. Like what?

Pete: I would have that leaders create brave and safe spaces. And this is probably a whole separate episode around what that looks like. But to me, a simple, easy to understand definition in my head of what a safe and brave space looks like, is one that we can co-create together. Regardless of who you are, regardless of where you're from, regardless of any number of factors, a brave and safe space is one that is co-created. And so, this to me is why the idea of leading with generosity, empathy, and care is so important. Because it's, "Here's where we need to go. How do you think we can get there?". It's co-creating that version of the future, that pathway. And you do that, I think, through creating safe and brave spaces where people feel like, "Oh, I belong here.". So I would definitely have they create safe/brave spaces where people feel like they belong. Which is a little wordy for Cate's whiteboard, but I'm going to throw it out there.

Jen: What you're describing is psychological safety, as coined by Amy Edmondson.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: She's written some amazing books on it. Simon Sinek wrote a book called Leaders Eat Last, which is essentially all about this idea of psychological safety, and creating trusting spaces.

Pete: Exactly. Exactly, exactly. A couple of others to throw out there, I would have up there is...a good friend of mine, and friend of the show, and amazing changemaker in Australia, a guy by the name of Mark Dombkins, who has a not-for-profit called Forever Projects, who is doing some amazing work in Africa. And he talks about the idea of disseminating culture, as opposed to disseminating information. And that so many people in organizations that he's experienced, who might think of themselves as leaders, they disseminate information. They lecture. They tell you everything that they think they need to tell you, as opposed to- let's disseminate culture. Let's empower the people that we have to create the change that we seek to make. So, I love this idea of disseminating culture as opposed to disseminating information.

Jen: Hmm. I've never heard someone articulate it that way before. Love that.

Pete: He is, he is brilliant. I have so many more. But I want to stop and say the final one, at the moment. We've talked a lot about generosity and care, so I'm not going to shout those ones out. But the other one, I think, is- a leader ships. A leader puts work out there. A leader nudges things forward. (We've done episodes on that recently.) That a leader shares their work, gets feedback, and ships, and iterates. They ship. They don't perfect. They don't hide. They don't not share their work. And I think that is a really important distinction of a leader.

Jen: Yep. That's all I've got to say about that. I agree with you.

Pete: I didn't mean to turn this episode into a rant, but I love thinking and talking...

Jen: No, I love it.

Pete: So, thanks. Thanks, almost ten-year-old daughter. [laughter] For the inspiration.

Jen: I just want to add one thing to her word cloud.

Pete: Please!

Jen: I just want to add one thing to her word cloud, which is- I believe that a leader adopts an optimist's mindset.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: That leaders believe that things can be better.

Pete: Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Jen: Okay, so what have we learned here today?

Pete: We've learned...I've, I've learned a lot. I've learned that apparently almost ten-year-olds think about leadership in ways that not even you and I think about leadership. Which is amazing, and gives me a lot of hope for the future. We've talked about what are the conditions that leaders create, a lot. Which is around creating conditions for people to choose new actions. What else did we learn?

Jen: Well, I think what I learned is that everyone deserves a whiteboard where they can download whatever's on their mind, so that their mothers can brag about them on their podcast.

Pete: [laughter] So remember, leadership is a choice. And having a whiteboard is also a choice. Get yourself a whiteboard and do some noodling. That's what I'm learning. Get a whiteboard and do some noodling.

Jen: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.