Why Great Leaders Shift From PERFORMANCE to PRESENCE | J Israel Greene Part 1

Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast. We feature inspirational stories from people who dedicate themselves to helping others. Here is your host, Alan Pavloski, everybody.

Thanks for tuning in. Welcome back to the Legacy All Stars podcast. I am your host, Alan Pavloski. Today's guest is Jay Israel Green. Jay Israel Green is the founder and chief culture strategist of Mosaic Works, a culture strategy and leadership development firm. His work centers on helping organizations shift culture through intentional leadership moments, guiding leaders to move from reactive leadership to grounded, human centered presence that builds trust, psychological safety and long term impact. Today we will discuss the concept that leadership today isn't just about vision, execution or results. It's about presence. It's about how leaders show up in moments of tension, uncertainty and human connection. My special guest today helps leaders slow down just enough to lead with intention and courage and to understand that culture isn't built in mission statements, it's built in everyday moments. Today we're exploring how legacy is shaped not by titles or outcomes, but by how leaders choose to connect, listen and lead when it matters most. Iz, welcome to the show. Good to see you, Alan.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it and looking forward to the conversation.

Absolutely. I've been looking forward to this for quite some time since we first connected. I want to start with an important question about your core philosophy. I want to go right to it. What does moving from performance to presence look like in day to day leadership?

Jumping into the deep end right off the bat, Right in, right in. For me, it is about the moments that matter and it looks like leaders getting out of what I would describe as prove it mode. We always go through these different modes throughout our day and going in from prove it mode to what I would describe as be with people mode, and that's less about managing, you know, what people think about you managing the impressions and more about managing impact. And you're listening to understand and not to reload to say what you're going to say say the second time around. So we have to understand that we aren't performing leadership. You know, we're really practicing it in those moments. And I say we because this is something that even in my practice and in my coaching, I have to remember to model and do so. Presence, it sounds simple, but it's actually radical In a world that rewards being busy over really being human.

Yeah, absolutely. I always tell people, my staff and other people that, you know, what other people think of me is none of my business. And I try to live by that. And I think my sanity is much better as a result.

Yeah, and it's hard sometimes, you know, we miss those moments for sure.

Why do you think capable leaders struggle with this shift from, you know, to really focus on presence?

The biggest reason, I believe, is that performance gets rewarded early. You know, you come in on time, you, you produce 101 widgets when, you know, 95 is what's required of you. You hit the numbers and suddenly you're promoted. And you know, it's about titles, promotions, gold stars, and we reward volume. But then we elevate the people and don't give them any of the human tools to actually be effective in their role as a leader, as a manager. And the average, if you think about it, there's a, a stat that says the average executive spends about three quarters of their day dealing with people. And the same study, it's from Stanford, it shows that 87% of a person's success is driven by people knowledge, and only 13% comes from product or technical knowledge. So even in that situation, organizations, they still invest heavily in product, process and performance and very little in what I call the critical skills. And, and this is what we used to dismiss as those soft skills, even though they're anything but soft. So when leaders are asked to shift from performance to presence, it feels a bit risky. And that presence requires slowing down. It requires people, when they do slow down, to not feel like it's dangerous when you're being rewarded your whole career for the output. And then on top of that, nobody really teaches leaders how to sit in what I would describe as discomfort.

Yeah.

And we teach them how to PowerPoint it. But to be able to sit with that discomfort for a bit, that's the, that's that growth zone, so to speak.

Yeah. Boy. One of my favorite concepts from business school, you just triggered it in me, is Peter Principle, and that is that, I mean, this goes along with what you're saying. You know, people get promoted, promoted, promoted, and then by the time they get to that next level, they're not competent to perform that duty that they're being asked to perform because they haven't been given the tools along the way. Do you ever comment on the Peter Principle or teach that in your coaching?

Not by name, but the concept of it, we do. And it's so frustrating because people, they want this role, they want to get promoted, and then you set them up for failure because you're not giving them any of the tools to be able to succeed. And you know, as you think about how do you interact in those Moments of stress, those moments of tension. And how do you show up? And it's important to really equip the individuals for that.

Yeah, for sure. Let's discuss how leaders can avoid leading through tension and resistance, because I know that's something really big in your world. What causes leaders to become reactive?

For me, I believe that if I had to put it in a word, it would probably be fear. I say that I think it's the fear of losing control, the fear of losing credibility or being exposed. And if we're being honest, a lot of leaders are quietly walking around with this imposter syndrome. There was a Korn Ferry report came out either last year or 2024. The older I get, the years kind of start bleeding into each other.

Yeah, tell me about it.

But this study, it found that 71% of CEOs experienced symptoms of imposter syndrome. And then I think the number was roughly about 65, 66% of senior executives report the same thing. So the problem is we don't normalize that conversation. And instead, leaders start putting on this armor because they feel like they have to show up. In a way, the armor is there to protect their credibility. The armor is there to make sure no one sees the cracks. And when leaders feel threatened, their nervous system takes the wheel, and that's when curiosity leaves the room, and then that defensiveness comes in and it grabs the mic. So in those moments, the need to protect credibility or control, that far outweighs the ability to just simply be human. And that's usually when that reactivity shows up. Sure.

How can leaders stay grounded under pressure? Can you give us some tips on that?

The biggest piece I think is, you know, if I had to frame it, it would be pause before you pounce. And it's literally, you know, a breath buys you choice. And this is something that I teach a lot of leaders in. The coaching that we do, grounded leaders, they learn to notice what's getting activated in them before they respond. And that's that emotional intelligence in action that you kind of spoke about in the beginning as we were chatting before this. That pressure doesn't just reveal character, it reveals regulation. And you've got to take advantage of that moment to just take a breath, take a beat, and pause before that response is there.

I find in practice that that pause definitely helps me get a better outcome. If I get an email or something that feels personal or offensive, I try to make it a practice. And frankly, my wife has pushed me to this practice, so I got to give her credit, pushed Me to the practice of, you know, taking a pause, taking a breath, and then slowing down my reaction and thinking about what the intention was coming from the other side. Because oftentimes the intention of the person that was giving the message might have been clouded by whatever they were going through at that moment. And so I always find that, that taking a breath and taking a beat is really important.

Yeah. And when you think about our days and how we navigate, we go through with so much baggage, for lack of a better word, that we carry, and that comes into the room with us. And you can sometimes feel when people walk in the room, all the lights go off in the room. And then on the flip side of that coin, you can feel it sometimes when people walk in and they just light up the room where they've had a great day. So we carry that with us and we paint that picture with our brush stroke of, you know, the colors that we've had influence us throughout the day. And that's how that picture is shaped all of a sudden. And it's to no fault of the person that we're interacting with, but we bring it with us. And it's not even sometimes about the day, sometimes it's about previous experiences that we have that we have to be cognizant of. And once again, that goes back to a high level of self awareness and understanding what triggers us, what are those pressure points, and to be able to let those go. And in that moment, that breath, that beat that you're talking about, it allows us to, you know, deregulate. And I talk a lot about the ladder of inference, you know, what assumptions am I making here? And walking back down that ladder.

I like that. Could you give a little more granular detail on that concept? Because I really love that idea.

Yeah. So the ladder inference basically identifies these rungs of a ladder. If you think about how fast you move up the ladder and each rung means something different. But it really starts off at the base with about observations and, you know, what is true, what do we observe, what do we see, what do we hear? And the higher up we go, depending on how quickly we go, we associate our assumptions. We paint, you know, all of a sudden this picture with our beliefs, what influences us. And we start creating this narrative in this story, not based off of the observations, but based of the assumptions that we apply to something and then the decisions based off of that and the whole idea and the concept is to slow down going up the ladder and to come back down and making sure that we are really going to the observable facts and not really adding context to something based off of that experience. And far too quickly do we just climb the ladder? We make the decision based off of the assumptions. We tell ourselves this story. So let's say that you and I are communicating and you don't respond to my emails in a timely manner. In my mind, if I've got some baggage where maybe I've had a boss ignore me and then there was something tied to it, I may think that you're doing the same thing, and that's not exactly what you're doing. You could be out sick, you could be in a meeting or any number of things, but all of a sudden, I've tied this. These pieces to it that are my experience and my emotional baggage.

Yeah, I mean, manage your expectations is a good policy as well. You know, people have lives, people have things they're going through. And so I love that. Thank you for sharing that. About the latter concept, you have spoken about how culture is built in everyday moments. Can you share an example of a small moment that shifted culture?

Yeah. This is something that I wholeheartedly believe. And we have to really be cognizant of the moments in which we show up. And one of the things that I witnessed that has stuck with me. I watched a leader follow up. We're in a team meeting and something took place in a meeting, and they fired back at this young lady. And it was a tough meeting where, you know, he was quite curt and to no fault of the young lady, that he was curt too, and on the team. He came back, we had the team meeting the following week, and he says, you know what? I've been thinking about how I handled that situation and I missed the mark and I apologize. And he apologized to her in that moment in front of the entire team. So what mattered most of that is that he didn't pull her aside and say this privately. He owned it. He owned it in the next team meeting in front of everyone. And that moment told the whole team that accountability wasn't a behind closed doors type of thing and that it was safe to be able to name mistakes in real time. And it wasn't a long message, but it fundamentally shifted how safe people felt being able to bring up the hard, difficult things.

Wow. I mean, those moments can be really underestimated, right?

Yeah. And it may not mean a lot. A lot to you, but to the person that's on the receiving end.

Yeah.

I mean, it's extremely valuable.

I mean, I think it makes sense that if the Infraction or the mistake was in public, then the correction should be in public as well, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, I believe the goal of any good leader should be to create culture where people feel safe to speak up. Can you give me some details about what behaviors shut down that dialogue? Yeah.

So the biggest ones, I think, is behavior such as thinking about the moments and how people show up and where they fear or they fear being retaliated against. So how people respond to them whenever they bring up an idea, it can be shut down via that method. Defensiveness, being interrupted, and that classic move of explaining instead of listening. People notice these patterns faster than the policies. And I recently completed some equity and inclusion work with an organization. And the feedback from the employees, it was honest, it was thoughtful, it was respectful. But when it was shared with the executive team, the response was immediately them being defensive. And the energy shifted from listening to understand to, well, who said that? And what they were trying to do is be able to track it back, not to necessarily correct it and get more information, but because they felt like, okay, well, you know what? That's not my experience, so it can't be true here. And what we have to remember is that an open door doesn't mean much if the honesty gets punished on the other side of it. And when honesty has consequences, people will choose silence every single time. So it's important to keep that in mind.

Sure. That brings me to kind of another dovetailed question here. What does psychological safety look like in practice?

I would say that it looks like people disagreeing without disappearing. And what I mean by that, it's when that feedback is offered and it's offered respectfully, you know, want to make sure that I throw that caveat in there. It doesn't come with a career risk. And just to be clear, you know, the psychological safety doesn't mean you walk into your CEO's office and announce you've got some feedback. You flip over a table and start cussing folks out. That's not courage. That's unemployment. What it does mean is that people can speak up, they can challenge ideas, and they can raise concerns without fear of retaliation. And there's, you know, as we talk about psychological safety, we bring a lot of data points to this. I've got my lean Six Sigma. One of the things we talk about is in God we trust, all others must bring data. So we're constantly throwing data out there, and that's a Deming quote. But there's Google research that shows teams with high psychological safety, they outperform other teams by as much as 27%. And more importantly than that is that people stop carrying this stress home like it's this unpaid overtime. So psychological safety is paramount for organizations and they just don't realize it or put enough emphasis on it.

Makes total sense. Let's talk about inclusion as a leadership practice. And again, you and I have had this discussion before. You know, inclusion for me is a smart way to operate a business because you get a diversity of opinions, you get a diversity of cultures represented in your organization. It just helps the business grow. But let's talk about this. What is the difference between talking about versus embodying inclusion?

That is a wonderful question. And for me, I think it moves from that performative check the box talk mentality. So I would describe doing inclusion is simply checking the boxes. You know, you do a little bit. It's a flavor of the month and then you keep it moving. Whereas embodying inclusion is checking yourself. You know, and it's not a program, it's a posture that you carry and that you keep up. Inclusion shows up in who you trust, who you interrupt, who you invite into the decision making conversations, asking, you know, who needs to be at that table? That's how it's done and that's how we have to think about it and really be asking ourselves in all of those scenarios, well, you know, who else needs to be here at this table? What other voices have we not heard?

Hi, this is Alan Pavloski from Legacy All Stars. Today's episode is part one of a special two part episode. The remainder of this episode can be found. Next week it will be published and you can find it in the same place as you found this one. I hope you enjoy the show.