TKP Insights: Leadership

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/1e6fc3c5f8d977a3

Welcome to the Knowledge Podcast. I'm your host, Shane Parrish.
The goal of this show is to master the best of what other people have already figured out.
To do that, I sit down with people at the top of their game to uncover the useful lessons that you can learn and apply in life and business.
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Check out the show notes for a link.
Over the last five years I've been lucky enough to speak with some of the most incredible people in the world.
When I listen to past episodes, one thing that stands out is how well the insights from these conversations stand the test of time.
They're as relevant and insightful today as when they were originally recorded.
And in a world that encourages a treadmill of perishable information, it's worth revisiting wisdom that doesn't expire. So a few times a year, we'll go back to earlier episodes, some of which you may have missed, some of which you may have forgotten, and pull out some timeless gems around a single theme. The theme for this episode is leadership.
You'll hear from Jim Collins who defines leadership and examines history.
to see how context dependent good leadership really is.
Then leadership coach Jennifer Berger shares.
the practical insights that separate average and great leaders.
Randall Stuttman from the Admired Leadership Institute discusses the importance of giving feedback.
Something he says everyone knows how to do, but in reality they get very wrong.
It's not enough to give feedback.
How you do it makes all the difference.
Cat Cole, the president and COO of Atletic Greens.
Talks about the importance of doing right versus being right. The challenges of leading a business in
different cultures, and a unique heuristic for accepting criticism.
Alan Malale, the former CEO of Ford.
Will teach us the elements of his working together management system.
That helps you lead any team through principles.
And empowerment.
And finally, Diana Chapman, co-founder of the Conscious Leadership Group, teaches us some crucial advice about running a team.
the importance of unrelenting candor and how teams can more effectively make decisions.
It's time.
to listen and learn.
From episode sixty seven
Here's Jim Collins.
I I don't know if someone else can make someone a leader.
I don't know if you can teach leadership, but I'm pretty sure you can learn it.
I and I think that distinction is key. I think it's very arrogant to say
that you or I or anyone else could take someone and I'm gonna teach you leadership.
But
I've watched people learn it.
And I think a big part
of what it takes to learn it. There's kind of
Two things that would would let me highlight one for the moment.
Embracing the idea of seeing what has to be done.
And then
Exercising the art
of getting people to want to join you in getting it done. But it starts with clarity of something's got to be done and I am not going to be a bystander.
So when I look at, for example, the the school principals that I
That I studied.
I I know this one superintendent, let me just tell you this story who sort of grew into a leader takes over a school district.
Sees that that school district f had kids.
from previous years before this person was in charge.
Uh what you're not really in charge, but was superintendent where there'd been low graduation rates. A whole bunch of kids had not graduated from high school.
And he takes one look at it and says, This is just wrong.
Somebody's gotta do something.
So you would think, Well then great.
That person is gonna lead people to do what's necessary to increase graduation rates.
But here was the extra leadership step when you recognize something is just wrong. Something's just gotta be done. Somebody's gotta step forward. I can't be a bystander, right?
He looks at it and he says
We have to take responsibility for the kids.
before I was superintendent who didn't graduate.
And we're gonna go find them.
And we're gonna create a program to bring them back into the schools.
And we're gonna make sure that they get out with their high school degree.
I'm going to take responsibility to make sure that happens for the kids.
who were here before I was even superintendent.
And I'm gonna walk down to a building in this town.
And I'm gonna say, we need space for this. You have an extra floor in your building.
You need to help these kids because somebody's got to do something. Will you join me and give us space so we can bring them back and get them their degrees?
So what is leadership?
Eisenhower put it his leadership is the art of getting people to want to do what must be done.
It's an art form, and everybody is a different kind of an artist. Some are painters, some are sculptors, some are orators, some are good at like just getting the right people together around the table. Some are good at admonition, some are really good at asking a right question, right? There's different kinds of art.
But it's an art.
And you learn from others, you don't copy them. You you get your own artistry of getting people to want to join you and not being a bystander about what's gotta be done. Those people are coming over the hill. Someone's gotta do something.
Those kids didn't get their education. Someone's gotta do something.
This product has incredible potential. Someone's got to do something.
And you infuse that in folks to be able to to do that. That is, I think, where the real start of the leadership begins. Uh hey.
We got this computer, we made it for ourselves.
Somebody's gotta do something.
to bring this to a whole bunch of other people because it's so cool.
We can sit here and think it's cool.
Or we can do something. And I think that's the seed bed of where the leading really begins. Second.
One of the people and I think yeah, I've actually asked him if I could write this, so I think I can share this story.
uh one of the great four star general officers fellow named uh general Austin
who really had a profound impact on me when I
Venture off to West Point and
And he held the chair two times after me. He was actually the most recent chair holder for uh the class of fifty one chair.
He was one of the only four star generals to come out of his era.
uh his class at West Point. Uh he might be the only one, but certainly one of the only ones. Ended up with a very storied career, spectacular leader.

And he told me the story about part way through his career.
He uh he was worried a little bit about, you know, promotions. Is he getting promoted fast enough? His career, right?
And one day you just woke up and changed.
And he said
I'm not going to take care of my career anymore.
I'm gonna take care of my people.
And the moment I did that.
Everything changed.
'Cause they wouldn't let me fail.
When young people come to me asking I'd like some career advice, my first response is let's just stop asking that question.
What have you done for someone else?
How can I be useful? Yeah, how can I be useful?
How can I take care of my people? Take care of your people, not your career.
And and then General Austin ended up as a spectacular leader. And I think those two sorts of things, if you're sort of thinking about seatbits of how we would help young people grow into the leaders that our world desperately needs in all walks of life.
It's one.
Don't be a bystander. See what has to be done.
And someone's gotta do something. And if you feel someone's gotta do something, then you can exercise the art of getting people
to want to do what you see must be done with you.
The second is
Stop taking care of your career.
Start taking care of your people.
And if you do that.
then they won't let you fail.
So I don't know.
If I
Entity, you know, yeah, I certainly couldn't like make somebody a leader.
But I think people can learn it.
And I think that's kind of some of the catalyst and the leavening of the bread.
Based on what I've seen.
And I'm really optimistic. I mean I think that
If I stand back and I look at the young leaders that are coming up, the ones I met at West Point, a lot of the ones that I've that are on my research team, young people that I meet in life.
We live in an era when it's easy to
for people to feel pessimistic. I
I absolutely reject
I am incredibly optimistic.
And my reason I'm optimistic is because what I see in the leadership capabilities of the generations that are coming.
And I think we'll be in very good hands.
One more question about leadership because I just can't help myself, but like how much of leadership do you think is contextual?
Or as somebody we think of as an exemplary leader in one situation.
would be uh mediocre or
below in another situation.
So
Obviously there's a contextual element to everything. And I think that's something you talked earlier about about even decision making, was this idea that
There isn't kind of an isolated perfect universe. We don't we don't live on a Euclidean grid and
And there's context, and there's certainly social context. Uh we know from social psychology that
Yeah, almost everything is
is affected by social context and you never know how you're going to behave or how you're going to react in any given situation until you're there. And that's why we should always be very humble about our own
sense of ourselves knowing that we'll always act in a certain way, because you actually don't know under certain pressure. So you should be very humble about that.
So context matters a lot. That said, uh, I think what the evidence very clearly uh shows me is that
I can see leaders who learn how to be effective.
across very different kinds of contexts. And so for example,
Uh let's take Eisenhower, phenomenal example.
You're supreme commander of Allied Forces. Before that, you were relatively undistinguished major. You were brought up by General Marshall and so forth.
But you'll being a five star, which there've only been
five five star generals, I believe, in the
History of the US military, but being a five star general is a very different leadership context than being president in a political system.
And now but what's also interesting is along the way, he also went to be a president of a university and really struggled there. So what you have with Eisenhower is you've got uh two wins and one which was not as much of a win, which is the presidency of the university. What does Eisenhower's case show? It shows number one
that two very different contexts he could be enormously successful. He was successful in both military and presidential.
But in a university setting he was less successful.
From episode forty three.
Jennifer Garvey Burger.
So much of leadership ability is about how other people
experience themselves in your presence.
Right. So a great leader
has a presence that makes other people bigger.
I was
Yeah, the
Um
A client who's a chief executive
of a big company.
And I was with him a couple of weeks ago, watching him as he met with people and as he
at his meeting and
The way he speaks to people.
brings out their goodness, right? You can see people actually
Kind of
Can you grow in his presence?
they feel more comfortable to take risks, they feel more comfortable to say a thing that maybe
uh is controversial
They
Date.
have more room to play. And you can actually watch it kind of physically happen in their bodies. They stand a little straighter, they look them in the eye, they smile, they've got this kind of resonance.
That I think a truly stupendous leader brings into the world. And and are you differentiating this between
a charismatic leader as we're kind of taught and this sort of
amplifying leader that you're you're kind of talking about. Or do I have that wrong?
No, you're totally right. A charismatic leader, when he walks into the room or she walks into the room, makes you feel good about her.
Or him, right?
Like I walk into the room and I'm a charismatic leader and you think
Wow. And you think about that person.
A great leader, I think.
You are that l great leader walks into the room and you feel bigger.
Like you don't think, wow, what a great leader. You think, wow
I'm willing to say this thing. I feel more comfortable in my own skin. I'm just having ideas I haven't had before. Like a great leader makes other people better.
And I think that's the
fundamental difference between
Kind of the charismatic heroic image of leadership that has gotten
uh that has been a help for us.
And also a hindrance for us as a human race for a long time.
And the kind of leadership that we need now, the kind of leadership that the world is calling for from us now.
Which is not about having one person and following that one person.
But having someone who can create the conditions that make us all better.
Because uh
Bigger, smarter, more creative, more moral.
Just better.
I wanna come back to the variable uh are there any other variables, but before we get there, why why is it different right now? Like what has changed that causes the maybe the type of leadership that
is required going forward is not the type of leadership that maybe we historically got us to where we are.
I think the world is just so complex, Shane, right? That
Yeah.
It used to be that if you had a really smart charismatic leader
That person could know enough about the market. The market was gonna be similar over time. That person could predict things pretty well.
And that person could say, Let's go that away and be
pretty sure that that away was good. And so we talk about leaders with these strong visions and, you know, all that kind of stuff.
Right now, like who knows?
Right? Who knows what's gonna happen next.
Anybody who tells you they know what's gonna happen next with the media
Or
with professional services firms or in the tech industry or the insurance industry or whatever.
Like those people are a delusion. We don't know what's gonna happen next. The thing that we know is it's gonna be different from now.
And so we need a different kind of leadership to lead us into the unknown and to and that sort of leadership needs to help other people be bigger because we need more collective force of leadership than any one human being can hold.
Okay, I I I wanna come back to that and uh I think we can explore that when we talk more about complexity and the Kineffen framework a little bit later in the conversation.
So going back to the variables that you would kind of look at to assess leadership ability.
The amplification is one. What are the others?
I think a leader needs to have
Uh real curiosity about the world.
Right, a curiosity about other people's perspectives. A leader who feels certain
cannot be learning from other people.
So the more sure you are as a leader about exactly what's right and what's wrong, exactly where you're going.
The less open you will be to hearing that you're wrong until it's too late.
Whereas a leader with
um more curiosity, more openness to other people's perspective, which can be totally cultivated, right? You don't have to be born that way. You can you can achieve that with effort.
Um, a leader with more curiosity about those things is much more likely to be able to pick up
on little signals that make a big difference before bad things happen.
Like
History is

Filled with leaders.
who were told in whispers that there was disaster ahead.
And who were so certain about their own
Yeah.
that they marched into disaster headlong.
Right, a a curious leader listens to whispers.
And begins to make sense of them, not necessarily to believe them all.
But to know that there's something going on to be attuned to.
Okay, th th that makes a lot of sense. So amplification, curiosity, uh not being certain about
th their own beliefs, I guess. But that that that also
conflicts with what we think of as leadership. I mean when we look at political leaders
Um, you know, they do amplify, but they're you know, I don't know if they're curious, but they they appear very certain when they're up there debating that they have all the answers. I I can't remember the last time I heard a politician go, I don't know.
And they're asked a variety of questions from like healthcare to budgeting.
And they seemingly have all these answers.
How do you look at that?
Um with trepidation.
Um
I I think that this world of
I mean particularly in politics.
But the
The world of the soundbite has not been our friend.
Right, the
The sound bite that tries to
Put in oh
A sentence or a phrase.
Um
the complexity of an actual issue.
Is
Necessarily misleading and partial.
And the more addicted we get to sound bites and the more
Hyped up we get by them.
then the more simple our leadership will be, as opposed to the more complex. It it takes
It takes a little bit of effort and a little bit of slowing down and a little bit of breathing to get your head around a really complex situation.
You can't do it instantly and you can't do it in a sound bite.
And so
That's why we have these like
Bizarre challenges.
these days about this super simplistic problem solving.
That
in a complex world just tends to create bigger and bigger problems.
From episode ninety six.
Randall Stepman.
So feedback's really difficult because, you know, um there's no question that what we say
And mostly when we say it.
is pretty contextual.
Like no one would ever be able to come up with a universal that says always say this in this situation or always do this. And even when
the timing of things really is is very precise to what's happening, what already happened, what's gonna happen, and so forth. So but when we st when you study really fabulous leaders, what you learn is that the universal of feedback is how they carry messages. So how do they offer criticism?
How do they offer feedback? What are some of the things that they do?
that are very specific. And then you start to learn things that once you hear them, you naturally start to subscribe to a view that says, ooh, there, there's something there. I can do better at that.
That's a really uh important part. The other piece is is when I when I look to the practical literature of feedback.
what you generally get is some useful ideas, without any question, but but they don't have that universal applicability where I can practice them and they work all the time. So I don't become very masterful at them.
So it's the difference between um what I normally call technique and routine.
So so feedback is the classic area that that occurs in. And that is, so let's just say that I subscribe to the idea.
that um I should ask you for permission.
for me to give you feedback.
Yeah.
I can see the conditions by which that would be a good idea or not a good idea. It speaks to relationships and power and all kinds of things. So I like the behavior. Um it's a it's a fairly broad piece of advice that's given inside there.
But it doesn't work in all situations. There's a lot of cases where you shouldn't ask for permission. There's a lot of cases where you've given people feedback over and over again, they haven't acted on it.
Um, there's cases where um in situations you'll find yourself in where people wanna deflect and uh and wanna resist the feedback that you want. So asking for permission, they'll they'll never find the right time or energy to do that uh in the like.
A routine is something you do because you want to be that person. That's the kind of way that you want to give feedback as an example.
You want to commit to that this is and so you master it, you do it all the time in all the feedback that you give.
And you become masterful at that piece.
And you do it on a on a consistent basis, people come to know it as part of your style, so they don't see it as out of the ordinary.
And and now you become more and more skillful at it until it's almost second nature and it becomes a habit.
So we're after trying to teach leaders how to move things to routine and not do them for the point of technique.
So can you give me into one? Yeah, give me an example of one of these behaviors.
Let's take the idea of of balance.
The simple balance. And and and and by the way, you know this one. This is in your head. I'm just gonna be very specific about it.
Okay.
And and it's gonna take me a little little while to really unpack this one because it's got a lot of different pieces to it, but I think you'll find it rather fascinating.
So so no surprise.
Um we all have a natural and intuitive um understanding.
That negative information carries a lot more impact and weight than positive information.
So even when I think you've done a lousy job.
I'll normally start it with some throwaway like, oh, that went pretty well. Like, yeah, you really worked hard at that. Like, oh, you know, the audience seemed to really like like that one piece. Um, the you know, you'll start out with some softening of the blow.
All right, because number one, you you want people to hear you, but number two, you naturally know that if you go negative to start with that people
withdraw, they shut down, they don't they react, they do all kinds of things.
So so naturally what happens is we start to offer feedback. Most feedback and criticism, most of it other than praise and flattery and so forth, has has a negative tinge to it.
And so not all not all not all of it, but a lot but more of it, when you when you're trying to improve people's performance, you're giving them at least constructive criticism around try this differently, do this and so forth.
So because we know
that the negative and the positive are very different and because we know the negative is overweighted.
called the negativity effect, by the way, not my research. We naturally buffer almost everything we say on a scale. We start with a little bit of positive and then we offer a little negative, and then we then we get to our negative.
Now, if I do that consistently, if I give you one little positive and then I give you my four criticisms, the balance is is is is not there. It's actually out of bounds, right? So so let's take an example of of uh of that just real simply.
Let's just say let's take a the idea example of a presentation.
I'm just gonna make regul make it up on the top of my head. But let me give you two two pieces of feedback presentation.
Right. So my first feedback goes, Hey, the presentation went pretty well. I think the audience was engaged, but listen.
You know, your slide in the deck uh slide ten, it was like not this not really understandable. And slide fifteen confused everybody.
You know, I didn't think you tied the introduction to the your conclusion, so you lost people when at the end. When you got to Q and A, you started out okay, but
Boy, you were really flaffing on the second
a question and your answer was really weak. And I thought the audience was not as responsive at the end as they should have been.
across the presentation.
And you're thinking, wow.
Okay. I mean
R really? You thought the thing went okay and that the audience was fairly engaged? Like
I don't remember that, but I remember you just you just crapped a lot on everything that I just did. And I don't hear much of that, by the way, but let me give you a different one.

Uh different view. Let me give you the same feedback but in balance.
So the individuals instead the leader says to you.
Listen, I think the the audience was was engaged across your your presentation. I I think it went pretty well.
I want to tell you that uh I never saw slide eight before and I thought it was masterful. I thought you took something really
complex and made it simple. I thought when you reached uh before you got to QA, when you reached your main point,
Um, I thought that you hit it hard several times to the point where it resonated with the group.
I think they were excited to get to QA to ask you questions. I thought you started out QA really well. And I believe that your answer to the fourth question, which was the hardest question of all, around like why we do what we do, you you just hit it out of the park.
Now let me be critical on the other side.
Okay. You know, your slide five was was indecipherable. We gotta do something about that. Your slide ten, like, really made took something that um was was
uh complex and made it even more complex. I didn't think you tied the introduction inclusion nearly strongly enough.
I thought when you got to the Q and A, your second answer to the second question was really flat footed and really left people wanting. And I think the or the overall people could have been a lot more engaged if some of those things were fixed.
That's an example of the difference between feedback in balance versus feedback being totally out of balance, because I don't know anybody that wants the first one.
There are a lot of people that don't want the second one either, by the way, but if you really want to get better, you want the second one. And you can deal with the balance of it.
So now what is what did we learn? I'm not telling you anything yet. I haven't told you the behavior yet.
So the behavior is not just about being in balance.
It's about how you're in bounds.
And when we study the really best leaders, the best leaders on the planet, the most admired leaders in everywhere, they all do the same thing.
They all start positive, just like we all do intuitively when we're going to be critical.
But they're positive.
Use as vivid.
Elaborate.
And as um detail.
as the negatives are going to be.
And they generally
match in terms of number.
So
If I'm gonna give you five criticisms.
I probably need to have three or four or five.
Really positive things.
But they can't just be at a level of vividness or detail.
That is not
equal to what I'm gonna do in a second. So if I'm gonna focus, I'm gonna start positive and I'm gonna go as as deep into that positive.
As I can.
And then by the way, if if I tell this to leaders all the time, they'll say, Well, I have five criticisms, but I only have one.
really good positive that I can focus on.
I well, first of all tell them stretch yourself, right? See if you can come up with two.
Right. But more importantly.
They're only ready to hear from you.
Two criticisms right now.
Because the only way to keep that in balance.
And again, it doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be two to two or three to three, but it needs to be slowly or
are somewhat imbalanced to do so.
Now
What I also think is interesting about that behavior is
When you become masterful at it, you practice it all the time. There is no criticism.
That you can't give that's in balance.
None.
And the balance is not about what you say, it's about how
And again, starting positive, how detailed, how vivid, how elaborate are are you in the positive.
As well as the negative.
But let's look at a different aspect of the balance issue, which I think is equally fascinating, which is
All relationships.
are in balance, either in positive or negative because
Almost everything that a leader says

reports to them or works with them.
is either positive or negative. There's not a lot of neutral. And that's true with teachers and and students. It's true with parents and
Children.
Okay, where the power relationship exists. It's almost everything. So
So I'll leave it to people like John Gottman and other people to talk about marriages, because the same thing would apply to marriages, but let's just talk about leader relationships, how quickly they can get out of balance.
Every time I talk to you, I'm focused on trying to get you to be better, but in the process, I'm giving you negative feedback. I'm giving you criticism.
I I yeah, I might spike on a couple of things that that I say are positive, but I'm out of balance. And so what happens is
When you have a relationship.
That it has
Almost always negative information, negative feedback versus positive.
Then what what happens is
People would draw.
They basically stop listening.
Or they react. And so, you know, I I can't tell you how many leaders I've dealt with in my life who will say
I have a team member, or I have a child in my life.
And every time I say something, even before I get it out, they they're defensive, they're counter arguing, they're right, and and and I know immediately it's because they feel
as if their relationship with that person is out of balance, that they have to defend themselves because the the equation is hugely negative to positive. And so they're they know a criticism is coming their way and they're bracing against it, which is why they're counter arguing or they're turning off or they're sulking before you even finish.
Where they shake their head before the you you even get the the whole idea.
And so any time a relationship is out of balance.
negative to positive in terms of the general feedback and criticisms that are offered in that relationship, you're gonna get, you're gonna have that evaluative climate.
And it's gonna go hugely negative. Now
The opposite is equally pro problematic, by the way, especially with children. You can have relationship that is really, really positive. All you say is positive stuff, but there's very little negative, so it's out of balance that way. And most people would say to me, Well, how can that be a problem? It's a problem because what happens is
When I do offer a piece of criticism, or somebody else does.
People freak out.
They they they're not ready for it because they've only heard positives.
Several examples. One of my favorite examples is I sat down with a leader who had gotten 15 years of positive performance reviews, got a brand new leader, and that leader was
Fairly critical.
And that leader in their first review gave them a very honest, what I thought was an honest and fair review.
But they couldn't see it as honest and fair because they had been used to so much superlative.
For so many years from so many leaders that were not courageous enough to be honest with them.
That
They absolutely
went catatonic when they saw this particular feedback, which I thought was just objective. Um, that happens with kids all the time, too.
You want to really prepare children for success.
you have to give them a nice balance of feedback.
positive, negative. Again, doesn't have to be perfect.
Um, but too much positive makes it so that people get alarmist when they hear negative, and too much negative means people defend themselves on a good basis. You and I can do better.
by striving to be more in balance in our relationships.
And then when we are going to be
Um specifically in a critical moment.
trying to make somebody better with feedback.
We need to start positive and make that
That positive set of remarks.
be as vivid and elaborate and as detailed as the negative is going to be.
That's a behavior.
that you'll find that almost everybody that's great at feedback.
Athletic coaches that are fabulous, dance instructors.
Leaders we've studied in corporates and the like.
They all s tend to do it in some form or another. They're in better balance than everybody else, which is why people accept their feedback a lot differently.
You and I could start doing that better tomorrow.
We could look at any of our relationships right now and say
Which of my relationships is out of balance?
Which ones do I have more negative to positive, more positive to negative? Am I am I in balance with my marriage? Am I in balance with my kids? Am I in balance with all each of my team members?
And then we also had the ability then to say, okay, tomorrow I'm gonna be um preparing to give you some feedback on something that just happened.
How do I prepare myself? What are the positives and what are the and how do I describe them vividly? Let me, I don't have to rehearse, let me get ready to be in balance so that I can practice this and make this a natural part of my leadership.
That's a behavior.
That
we consider an admired leader of feedback.
From episode one seventeen
Cat call.
When I was in Argentina
Uh with hooders.
I was nineteen.
And it was only the second opening I had led.
Fully.
And I get down.
To Buenos Aires.
And
Of course, the franchisee had gone through training and
We had a menu and specifications and equipment.
that they were supposed to have for the business.
And I
I get down there and they had done everything we told them.
Bought all the kitchen equipment.
Almost identical menu as in the US.
And as we started training the cooks.
It became apparent that there was a problem.
They were
Disgruntled
Saying
This food is bad and
I can't believe we have to do this. And at first I was like, What's going on?
I realized by talking to the cooks and the trainers that we had brought down that
That
Argentina.
I would then learn is the beef capital, one of the beef capitals of the world.
And we had an embarrassingly low quality ribeye steak sandwich.
That we were requiring them to cook on a flat top grill, which was an abomination.
In Argentina.
In the US, if you want a steak sandwich, you take a ribeye, you slap it on a flat top grill, a little bit of olive oil, sear it, how do you want it cooked? Medium, medium well.

Texas toast sandwich with some cheese and onions, and there you go.
It it was it was so
viewed as so low quality that it was insulting.
There.
Not only the choice of
the the beef, which should have been alternatively hyper local source to
might be of the quality that is expected even in casual dining there.
It was the equipment. It was that it wasn't on open flame.
And I remember that fork in the road.
Where I thought, What do I do?
I'm here representing the company.
These are the franchise standards.
They clearly signed up for it. They bought it.
It's here.
Do I just tow the line and say nope?
Sorry.
This is the menu.
Get over it.
Or do I listen?
And take that feedback and make a decision to change.
Oh, by the way, this is before iPhones were really prominent and I think I had a pager at that point and we were still using fax.
To communicate.
any changes. So it was very difficult for me to communicate with the corporate office.
And so I didn't have the permission.
Or the experience with such a situation to know
Exactly what
I should do.
But I sat down with the franchisee.
And I said, uh, here's all the criticism.
And there is a pattern. It's not one offs. There were many other things, like having beans on the menu. Baked beans are really popular in the US. At that time it was considered a poor person's food, a pauper's food in Argentina. And if it was on the menu, it meant you were a lower grade.
Restaurant.
And so there were many of these situations that were clearly the result, now I can say of us not having deep local cultural knowledge.
And so I talked to him about it. I was very honest about the struggle that I'm hearing it.
I believe it.
I want to do something about it.
I understand it has financial implications and I don't even know if it's going to be approved.
And he looked at me and he said, Anytime it's one of my favorite pieces of advice.
Any time.
You are criticized.
Assume first it's correct.
Just allow yourself to digest that.
And then respond.
And either you will
You will reaffirm.
That the criticism is not correct and you can focus more on the why and a productive relationship.
Or you realize there's at least some grain of truth.
And you will work intensely.
To address that issue.
And it was so helpful and so inspiring.
Because
The right thing to do.
For the customer.
And the employees, not necessarily the head of marketing of Hooter's restaurants at the time, who probably would have said no if I had asked.
The right thing to do for the right people.
the right stakeholders was to make the change.
was to get in a new piece of equipment that was a flame, you know, an open flame.
piece of equipment on which to cook meat.
Allow the franchisee to help us locally source better cups of meat.
Make some changes, take beans off the menu.
Do a few things differently, reprint the menus and
open with that new menu.
And that's what we did.
Is there an example where you ever did that and you get in trouble after? Oh, I got in trouble for that. The head of supply chain and purchasing who managed the food specs.
He let me know that that was not my job.
Um that I was out of line.
that this is not I do not own this brand.
And do not have the right.
To make these changes.
I mean it
It made me
Teary.
You know it like
I'm a young employee and I thought I was doing the right thing and I had some reinforcement from some executives, but the one who's like approving the specification sheet and
Who by the way, when I come back to the US, I need to keep working with
was angry.
What
Audibly angry.
Luckily I leaned on the vice president of training, her name's Cheryl.
And I remember calling her and I was upset.
And I felt comfortable being upset.
With her.
And I was like, I'm so sorry, you know, I thought I was doing the right thing.
I know you support it, but this
Other executive is
Really upset.
And I don't know what to do.
Because I can't I'm down, I'm down here, you guys aren't. I can't undo this decision that I still think is the right decision.
And just, you know, allies and advocates and mentors and all the words you want to use are so important, she said.
Don't worry.
He's just crotchety.
He'll get over it.
You're doing the best you can.
We'll get better at this.
As we do more of it.
The company was growing and I was caught in the crosshairs.
of the company growing faster than it was ready.
To grow, um, and having those human centered executives can really keep top employees kind of in the game.
Despite the fact that
They're causing friction. And because I was the one going into these countries, I was known
For friction. You know, I got to the point where after I did it enough, I was mature enough to go look
You guys need to be better at this, right? I'm down here dealing with this reactively.
And then when I became an executive at twenty six.
now running these departments.
I had the drive and the
The mission.
To get much, much better.
proactively.
As a result.
From episode one fifty one
Alan Malale.
And think about
A a Venn diagram.
Another circle. Just like the one life lies work.
So you draw a circle.
And that's the working together management system. Is what's inside the circle.
So at the top.
Play a circle. That's his principles and practices.
Then put another.
Circle, going around to the right.
And put another circle and put governance.
process in there. Then put go down a little further and put another circle.
And put leadership team.
Then go
Start going back up, put another circle and it says creating value roadmap.
Then go one more.
Your last circle then is business plan rebuke.
In the
Bottom of the circle.
Put
Our culture.
And we'll we'll put this diagram on the website for the show notes so everybody can just pop up and see it. Yeah. That's great that you're gonna do that because uh
It's a it's a gift. And we worked on it forever.
to describe it like this.
And so again
When you look at these five elements
And you can see how they work together to create this this environment.
So we covered the principles and practices.
In the managed in the governance process, that's the way we manage the overall business. So that includes our our
Yeah.
All the shareholders, the stakeholders.
the board of directors, the leadership team.
Uh
and then the process of the creating value roadmap and the business plan review.
The one you look at
The leadership team
Remember
The word leader.
is inside leadership.
So it starts with the leader.
'Cause you can imagine if you don't have a leader
that is actually committed.

the this uh character and scales.
That
It's gonna be very hard to
have this operating system.
And these expected behaviors.
So
The things that y that are clear there is you're gonna include all of the stakeholders.
you're gonna coach and facilitate
As opposed to telling everybody what to do.
You're gonna be leading with humility and love.
And service.
And courage.
And discipline.
And resilience and civility.
Authenticity.
Meaning
That your behaviors are aligned with your beliefs.
And your values.
And also
positive mindset.
And you're gotta be responsible.
For
The working in the management system with zero tolerance.
for violing it. So everybody is that's that's our job are these things.
And then your performance and your continuous improvement.
uh in your lifelong learning.
Then when you move over to the creating the I roadmap.
That's the
Strat for example, the strategy of Boeing was the night
A complete family of vehicles that
uh can go point to point nonstop all around the world safely and efficiently.
to get people together or Ford.
uh Henry Ford was opening the highways to all mankind.
Two compelling visions.
And now what's the strategy
For accomplishing that.
That's that so that deals with the product.
The process of doing it.
The people
And the working together.
A strategy.
Then going up to the business plan review.
Okay, well we have the strategy now, we have the plan.
Now every week
We're gonna go over.
The vision, the strategy, and the plan.
The red deal is agrees and the airs need special attention.
Then we're right back up to
operating with those principles and practices.
I love it. It is it's self reinforcing, uh, and there's natural feedback loops in it. What
What's the leader's role in that system? The most important thing.
is to hold the team themselves and the team
uh responsible and ca and accountable for following this process. All five of those elements.
We just gotta follow the process.
And so holding ourselves accountable for that.
On the other is leading by example.
I mean I started out as a engineer
working on on commercial airplanes.
And
As you
Uh, asked to take more and more
uh service.
As you move in that direction, what I
what I found just'cause of who I am and what I learned at Boeing on on
Large scale.
Uh
projects and systems integration is
Is that
You're gonna move to the place
Where you're facilitating
And your coaching.
Because somebody
Has to keep getting us aligned.
Like if we have a new issue on the strategy, well, we need our special attention meeting to deal with that.
And so
As you get to the place where you're on this leadership team at this level.
Yeah, responsibility for a large portion of the organization like engineering and manufacturing procurement.
But you're really
leading.
with aligning with the rest of the team.
And you're facilitating and your coaching.
with your team.
I always have like maybe
twelve or thirteen people reporting to me, which a lot of people
Always wondered how I did that.
Yeah.
I had to have
Every discipline
need to be on that team.
Because if not.
And
If you have the haves and the have nots on the leadership team, they gotta keep explaining to the people you haven't around the meeting out what's going on.
As opposed to
Everybody's being there.
And
Now everybody is leading with an example.
where everybody in the entire organization reports to one of those people.
So you're not leaving anybody
Yeah. And if you follow this discipline.
it really doesn't make any difference how many people you have there because
When you do a business plan review, you run it on a very tight schedule.
And you'cause you're gonna be there again next week. So you're looking for the changes.
Offers to help.
And you can be back together next week.
So that's the most important thing about the leadership team.
Yes, uh
Is the B
And the do.
Who you are.
And
What you do.
You know another neat thing about that.
Uh Shane is that
Because this is so visible.
On the behaviors.
And the process is so reliable.
Everybody
keeps moving forward with their beliefs and their values, the things you can't see.
You can't see those, you see their behaviors.
And and everybody tells me this that no matter how they arrived
However they grew up, what their train was that
Things that went well, the things that
We're horrible.
In their live.
That once they join this environment.
And UA.
And you have these expected behaviors.
And then the right expected behaviors.
And you start acting this way.
then you start being this way. So gradually
your mindsets and your beliefs and your values
They all start to move this direction.
That's why that authenticity word is so big.
Because if you look up the definition of authenticity
Three circles again.
Yes.
Yes, the alignment
Of who you are and what you do.
between your beliefs
your values and your behaviors. Now we can see the we can see the the behaviors.
But when I when
We see those behaviors.
And you're doing that over and over again and you're living that way.
Well, what happened to those values and beliefs? They move in a really positive direction. And that's what
People tell tell me saying that
Like what
We
They're off a program where they they they're they've moved on to something else.
And when I see'em they say that wherever they have gone
If they can't see
The fundamentals.
Um working together.
a system, the process and the behaviors.
Then
They make a judgment call really quickly.
And and if they don't see a way it's gonna happen.
They move on.
Because once you it's like you said earlier
Once she felt this way.
And once you are appreciated this way, you're never gonna go back. It's like
Uh y you're never gonna tolerate Grendel's mother or Grendel's extended family down there in the the swamp. Once you once you've seen the light
Once you felt the heat the warmth.
Of operating this way.
Uh, you're never gonna go back.
Make sense.
Yeah, totally. Uh and to your point about r the actions becoming who we are. I mean, we are what we repeatedly do.
Exactly.
There's something that you said earlier I want to come back to, which is you said everyone is a leader just by being who they are. What did you mean by that?
Well
It gets back to the be and the do, but especially
You
the R you see that with their behaviors.
Like let's just take humility for example. Like so three questions that that we asked.
So you can see that.
You you know.
When you ask those three questions of yourself about who you're meeting.
Right away that tells you
Who that person really is.
And how they and how they operate.
That's why we've always started
Always started.
uh with the behaviors.
And
But having a process
that you're following where you have to
You have to exhibit those. You can't hide from'em. You can't just not participate.
So
You have a mechanism now where you have to participate.
And now your decision is
Are you gonna do it with these behaviors or not?
And if you don't
Um you're gonna meet some interesting people.
And you're gonna get a chance to decide again.
So
Uh I think it
The working in management system.
Pulls together the B part.
And the do part.
And everybody
eventually gets to see both of those either aligned.
Or not.
And the working together management system isn't just for organizations. I believe you and your wife use a version of this at home. Can you can you tell me more about this?
H how does it apply at home? My wife just walked uh by and
And uh
But she walked by, so I
They all they all the kids, they all um
They all think this is so
So fun, but uh
Nikki and I have been married, I've mentioned, for fifty two years and we have uh five
Darling children.
And when
They started to come along.
I was at Bill, you know.
Um
program management and
And lots of people.
And
I'm watching these
Seven people now.
Yeah.
And so I said to Nicky
Uh
I don't
Yeah, we this is
In very uh
Uh more complicated with our
size of our family, we need to do a business plan review every week.
And she goes.
Alan, this is not Boeing.
This is our family.
I waited for a week to to
Reflect on this.
And that all made sense.
And then
That's why I said the next week.
Okay.
What if we have a family meeting every week?
What you said.
Well
What would we do in a family meeting?
I said, Well
My suggestions and I welcome yours.
Would be after we come back from mass.
Uh on Sunday morning.
That we have an agenda.
Uh for our family meeting.
The first agenda I would propose is that
All of us, including you and me.
We go around the house, we pick up all of our stuff.
We take'em back to our cubby.
Or back to our room.
Because after a week.
With seven people.
Living lives.
It looks like a bomb's gone off in that house.
Mm-hmm. And I didn't sign up for a compelling vision of picking up the house every every week.
And neither did it.
Any of the participants.
She's okay, I like makes sense, I said.
She said, What next? I said, Well, then everybody ought to
Excuse me, we'll go back to our room.
And we'll pick up the laundry.
And we'll take it down to the laundry room.
And with five children we usually always had uh two washers and dryers'cause you want to get that stuff done.
Or that's all you're doing the whole week.
And that's not a compelling vision again for our family. Yeah.
So
We'd do all the laundry together, then everybody would bring the laundry down.
Double down on the kitchen table.
And they would all sort.
The socks and everything else.
Because
It's not a compelling vision to sit there by yourself and try to sort all these things for everybody. I mean, it's impossible.
Plus it takes a long time.
Sorry.
That's done in like five minutes now.
Then they take their laundry back to their room.
And then they come down with their calendar.
Insane the calendar.
Little loose like notebook or wires down the end.
They're in kindergarten, Shane.
They're in kindergarten.
And they got the calendar. And they sit around the round table.
And then
Uh we go around the room and every member of the family
uh describes what they're going to do this next week.
And also identify.

they need our help with. So they do they need uh taxicab service, do they need cheerleading service?
Um
Are they
Uh got T shirt.
Prepare teacher conferences, whatever.
And so we all write down things that we can do to help.
I'd take it back.
uh the things I'd sign up for.
I would take it back and give it to my assistant at B she'd build it into the counter like we mentioned.
And so it's just my integrated life. I've just integrated my life, right?
um along with the rest of those circles in the integrated lie.
And then uh the
So that was great. And then the next agenda item was
We would.
Just reflect.
On
Uh the behaviors.
That we've agreed to.
'Cause we agreed to a compelling vision for the family that had us all growing and contributing and making a difference in service, kinda like what my parents did to me.
And so
Uh we go through those any suggestions for improvement, including the behaviors.
That was really interesting at the first because
They were they got they were pretty aggressive when they were younger about
Uh well you you
You said that you were gonna pick me up after football or
Or pretty soon they
We also
uh worked on the how you do how you say that and how you give that feedback it's because you want to do it in a positive way. And so they got really good
At that.
But we went through that. Any clarification there.
That was a family meeting.
And so every
Every time we're together, and they're all grown now.
We'll get together.
Once or twice a year.
And every time we're together
Uh especially after a drink or two.
Most of them will bring up.
Things that happen in the family meetings.
And I mean, they're so funny. When you look back at the things that were going on.
Oh.
One one of the family meeting uh principles was that if you're gonna do something
That could embarrass
The family.
Or
Make us really proud.
Either way.
You have to tell us ahead of time.

Can you imagine that, Saint? So
Uh
They didn't s share everything that they would do that would embarrass us.
But they sure thought about it because that was a principle in practice.
And so
when we reflect on these when they got older.
Oh my gosh, it was so fun and it was so funny.
Yeah, th sometimes I couldn't tell whether they really enjoyed it or whether they thought this was a hassle in
So
I would say to them.
You guys.
If you didn't really enjoy the family meeting, why did you
Why did you always keep coming to it? You never missed one. Never.
Never.
And one of them says Dad, do you remember what the last agenda item was?
On our family meeting.
I said, No, I don't. I said
You handed out the allowances.
Of course. Of course we had to come to the family meeting.
And now every one of them
Same.
Every one of'em.
is running their version.
of a family meeting, a business plan review.
Uh every week.
From episode one hundred thirty
Diana?
Chapman.
I just think
People don't practice nearly enough candor.
I think people are withholding so many
opinions and stories about one another.
And
So we're not getting the feedback we need to be able to be more present in the moment.
in which we can make those decisions.
Can we just tell each other our stories that we make up in our heads about each other? Because
It's about you.
And it's good to know what stories people make up about us because
My experience is there's almost always a gem in every story.
That somebody has about me and
From presence I always
Ask the question.
Not is it true what you're s what you're saying about me, but how is it true?
How is it true?
Um that I'm
Yeah, not as effective as I could be, or how is it true that I'm
Not
listening that or how is it true?
So I'm
Asking teams to tell each other their stories more often.
So that they can see how is it true and then learn from that.
to be able to grow and be more effective in their decision making.
It is is there sort of like tips and tricks that we can learn to
As a group.
Um because often groups are the the the body making decisions, whether it's a
preferably a person, but the group has to work together and in order to get the best information
You need to be able to be honest about um
About things are there.
How do you form that in a group? How do you encourage it?
I like this practice I I use with teams a lot called fact and story.
I'll say, let's say Shane, you and I are on a team and I say, um
Shane, the facts are that um you led a podcast between the two of us.
Um earlier today.
And then I would say here's a story I make up about that.
In my hopefully I'm holding the story with curiosity.
Um and so I you know, I'll say I m you know, I make up a story that and then I tell the story.
But I can s I as a
Team member.
If I can put a fact in story, it kind of helps the person relax a little bit to go, I it's just a story and it gives them a little
freedom to speak more candidly to one another.
And so I've done this before where I just come into a team and I say
We're just gonna go around the circle.
You have to pick a different person each time.
And you know fact and story.
And we'd maybe do three rounds of that.
And each time you pick somebody new on the team.
And reliably I get
feedback that that may have been one of the best practices they've done in a long time, that they learned things that had not been learned. Elephants came out.
People got valuable feedback.
And they realize like we don't
Give any time and attention.
to being able to reveal these stories in a way that lets us all
evolved. And so they all said like
the decisions they were making about we they had a big decision to make about whether they were gonna
um sell the company or not.
And that's one of the reasons why I was in there. There was a lot of debate going on. And so I just said, let's do fact and story around.
And it wasn't even necessarily around whether we sell or not. It was just around each other.
And some of it was around that topic.
But at the end they had such clarity about whether n w knowing whether to sell or not once they did that. And I think
They felt more comfortable with the decision because they had challenged each other.
Sory I make up is you are more concerned with money.
than you are with the well being of the company. Like that was one of the stories that came out.
Um
Because the one somebody who wanted to sell
You know, they were saying I think you're and so to be able to
Recognize oh
that's a perception you all are having. Well let me clarify why I do think this is in the best interest. And it's not just because I want.
So we wouldn't have known it. We wouldn't have been able to even have that conversation if those voices hadn't come out. So fact and story is one of my favorite tips to teach.
Page teams.
I love that and it comes back to something we talked about right at the start. And and it seems to actually be cropping up throughout the entire conversation, which is making
The invisible visible. Yeah.
'Cause the story I'm telling myself is completely invisible to you.
And the way out of this story to a better outcome is to start making what's invisible visible so I can
Course correct. So you can understand me more.
I do think that's what I'm
That's
Since I was a kid, I would
be nervous because I would say, like, doesn't everybody see this stuff? But we're all tr they all look like the parents all trying to make this invisible and it's not invisible to me.
And so I think that's been my whole life actually. And just getting that aha hearing you talk. Like my whole life has been
I relax more when we make the visible.
Or the invisible visible. I I it feels like
A friendlier world.
Um, it feels like we can do something with that. We can't
We can't
Grow with the invisible.
Thanks for listening and learning with us.
For complete list of episodes, show notes.
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Go to fs dot blog slash podcast.
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Until next time.