Season 11 Highlights and A Big Announcement | Episode 175

Foreign.

Hey, I'm Ben Morton and welcome to this final episode of season 11 of the Ben Morton Leadership Podcast in which I have hand picked five of my favorite moments from the last 13 episodes. These end of season highlight episodes allow me to expand upon the original conversations, adding even more insight, depth and flavor to help you on your leadership journey. But before we get into the five clips that I have for you today, I've got some big news about the future of the podcast. So this show started as a lockdown project back in late 2020. Now I've recorded over 174 main guest interview episodes. There's at least the same number of shorts, and this year we've also added in the Leaders Kit Bag episodes. I've absolutely loved producing the podcast, providing information and insights to help you be a better leader. And it's been a genuine privilege to have some amazing conversations with some incredible leaders, MD CEOs and some of the absolute leading thought leaders from around the globe in leadership and neuroscience psychology. You name it, I've had the pleasure and privilege of speaking to them on this show and it's time to take a break. This will be the last full length episode that I record and share with you for the foreseeable future. The Leaders Kickback episodes are going to continue those six minute bite size episodes where I'm featuring on one specific aspect.

Of leadership and very much giving you.

Some tools, tips and tactics. They are going to continue as normal, as will the short. I'm going to keep sharing a short.

Every week, which if you're new to.

The show, they are just a little three to four minute clip. Again, one of my favorite clips taken out of some of the longer form interview episodes I do. So both of those will continue the Leaders Kit Bag and the shorts. But these full length interview episodes are going to pause for the time being. It's likely the show will return in some format in January 2025, but that is all to be decided.

There's lots of new and different ideas for the future of the podcast that.

My team and I are currently mulling over. So if you want to make sure that you hear when we are launching this show again, there are two things that you can do. Wherever you happen to be listening. You can click on the Follow or Subscribe button. That way you'll continue getting notifications about the Leaders Kit Bag and the shorts, but you'll also get notified when the main episodes return. And the other thing you can do to stay in the loop and up to date is sign up for my two weekly email newsletter. If you do that, you definitely find out what is new and happening with a podcast as and when we make these decisions. You can do that by heading over to Ben Morton.com and the sign up links are very easy to find. So that's the announcement out of the way. Let's dive into the first of my five favorite clips from the past season of the show. The first one is talking about the very best way to get promoted. And this clip comes from my interview with andy Lightfoot, the CEO of Space NK. From episode 166. Andy shares how he really stumbled upon his winning formula for getting promoted, which is the exact opposite of of what 99% of people do when they're trying to get promoted. Here's the clip.

So the really senior guys would get in a room and go, oh yeah, I've heard of Andy, he's done some good stuff yet he gets my vote. And it would be almost a sort of old boys club blackball system. So what they purportedly was and what it really was, and if you assume that that's how promotions happen in any company you're in, then if it's better than that, then you'll be all right. If you act with that mindset, how I reacted to that was right. How do I get in front of. How do I brown nose the right person, right? Say it how it is. How do I brown noise the right person? How do I get invite in front of that VP and impress him with some projects? I'm going to pick my projects based on what they're involved with or not my interests, not what I'm good at, not my passion. So you sort of, you're working yourself pretty thin trying to cover off and impress all of these people who don't even know you're trying to impress. They don't know or they certainly pretend not to know. They don't really care because they're looking across the whole organization. Also there's a bit of they've had to go through the process. So there's a bit of that, well, it was tough for me, so I'm going to make it tough for you attitude as well.

Layered on.

Now the change for me was when I flipped it and I said, well, what if I don't be that person? What if I become the person that can get the person beneath me promoted? So I become the conduit, right? So there's all these blocks that exist within this organization. It's super hard and I had to go through the process I think three times, which means three years, there's only one time a year. So this is pretty punitive. Someone says, no, some manager that you didn't impress in the right way, you've got to wait a year. So having been through it and, well, failed it twice, succeeded the third time, I had a pretty clear blueprint of what you needed to do. So I just made it really transparent for teams and I became like, if you want to get promoted, go and work for Andy. He's in a pretty tough department and it's, you're going to have a year working hard, you'll get the outcome. And that reflected incredibly well on me above. So instead of thinking, well, how am I going to impress the teams above? It was completely reversing it and saying, well, let me make this easier for the people trying to come through, let me forge a path that others can follow. And actually that massively benefited me and I can genuinely say that isn't why I did it. I didn't do it going, I've got this master plan. That one made me look good. It was like, this is a really tough process and there's some really good people. That's one way I could try and make it tangible for people listening of, yes, I can give all the hypothetical advice, but actually, you know, doing something for others reflects really, really well on you. Even you know, whether it comes to the right place or not doesn't matter. If you now go away and do that because you think it will get your promotion, that's also fine. But you do it genuinely, do it properly, help people beneath you, that is more notice than any project you can do of some guy that you've got to impress in another department.

Yeah. And building on what you've said there, it strikes me that the approach you found, the probability of getting a promotion as a result of doing that has got to be more than 50 50. It also strikes me that the old approach of who do I need to impress? How do I brown nose them? It strikes me that at best that's probably 50, 50, because in trying to impress those people and take it on the projects that maybe don't suit your strengths or passions, you're not going to be playing at your best.

I absolutely loved that clip from Andy Lightfoot. Mainly because when you actually pause to think about it, what he said there is so, so obvious. We've all probably seen or maybe worked for those leaders who are just all about self promotion. I certainly have and I know how I felt working for those leaders and I know how inclined I was to work hard for them, which wasn't very inclined at all. But it is so obvious. As I say, if you look after your team, then your team will absolutely look after you. But the opposite is true. If you are just looking out for yourself, then you will very quickly find that no one is looking out for you. Interesting food for thought. Okay, the next clip I've picked for you from season 11 comes from episode 167 and my interview with Erica Sinner, the CEO and co founder at Directory. Now, what you're about to hear emerged as a real theme in season 11, and that is this topic of empathy or empathetic leadership. So here's the clip. Have a listen. Great.

It's all well and good talking about empathy and empathy led leadership, but that's not going to help me hit my number and keep the shareholders happy, is it? And it's normally a rhetorical question, right? Because they think they know the answer. Like based on your experience, what you're trying to create and build, and the messages you're sharing right now, what would you say to those people?

I would say it is clear to me that their leadership has let them down multiple times and that they haven't been a part of a culture where it is truly a culture driven by empathy. I think a lot of companies can believe empathy is, let's do some work, happy hours, let's do a gift exchange, let's do a secret Santa for the holidays. And to me, you know, culture really is how your employees are feeling on Sunday night. And that is measured through the one on ones and the conversations that you're having and how open they feel to talk to you about when they are struggling, when they need help, when they, when they're overwhelmed, but also to appreciate the moments to know, hey, we have a light week this week. I understand your daughter has a recital on Thursday. You should head out and go try to catch that and we'll get back together on Friday. And so now you're starting to really build trust with them and helping them see that you see them as more than just an employee. But you've also, in the hard times, rolled up your own sleeves to say, how can we help? Either me help you or let's get other team members to help you. And when you really start to act like a team, and I imagine you feel this in the military too, right? When you know each other, have your backs that you can count on each other, then the question in my mind doesn't even come up in terms of how am I going to hit my numbers with all of this empathy discussion? It's more of, gosh, I don't know how I would have met all of my numbers as well as enjoyed my family, took that family vacation, you know, right. There's going to be busy times, there's going to be times when we're overwhelmed and that's life and that's work and that happens both in professional and personal lives. But when you really do operate as a team and you take a moment day to day to live these practices, to me it feels like this is why I feel like culture cannot just be a buzzword, is critical to the success of the organization, to meeting your numbers, to accomplishing your deliverables.

So there was so much that I loved about that whole episode. So do go and check out the full episode. But even that tiny little clip that I shared with you has got so much gold within it. The piece around how empathy really can help you hit your numbers and build a high performing team was fascinating for me. And it's often not what people expect. I think empathy can be seen as the opposite of strong leadership or almost not compatible with effective leadership. But as Erica highlighted there and is proving day in, day out in her business, that is simply not true. But the bit I really loved from that clip was how Erica spoke about and described culture. That is how do your people feel on a Sunday night as they start thinking about going to work on Monday morning? So a little question for you to ponder here. How do your people feel on Sunday night before going to work? Do you know how they feel? Do you care? And so what? Okay, next clip I have for you is an absolute cracker. This is from episode 169 and my interview with Kate Williams, the CEO at the incredible organization One Percent for the Planet. Here's the clip I've got for you.

We have a really amazing member Maine beer company based here in the US in Maine. As the name suggests, they joined when they were pretty small and they've grown quite a bit with us. And one of the things that they do is internally they talk about their success in terms of the amount they are giving. So in terms of their 1%, instead of like most companies do sort of saying here's our awesome sales number, it's just math, you know, it's not, there's, it's just a different way of talking about the same thing. But you know, thinking about it and talking about it differently kind of changes everything. And I think that's the power of the 1% of revenues is like, it's the real math. And if it places some focus, whether or not you take the approach that Main Beer company has taken. But, you know, in your financials, in your planning, in your strategy, you're going to have to know, you know, follow that 1% through. And that creates some awareness, some commitment to how do we want to align those dollars with what we're trying to do across the company. And that's one of the things we're really intent on is helping companies to kind of rethink philanthropy from being this end of year. If we have something left over, we'll kind of give it to, you know, a nonprofit that we learn about in the moment. And that's, you know, we have very thoughtful companies. So I'm not saying people aren't thoughtful before they come to us. But it's a spectrum. And many of us do fall into thinking about philanthropy as kind of separate from the other things that we're doing. Whereas what we have learned and what we really share with our companies is, no, no, like, you get to make philanthropy a key lever in your overall strategy. So if you're trying to address climate change or if your business is focused on a new product and you're trying to eliminate plastic, you can have your philanthropy be part of that. Not just something that's like separate and different, or it can be something that helps you to tell a different story about what you're doing. Because some companies, that's going to serve them better, it's more about creating connections or creating different stories. So we really love it when our companies kind of get rolling and really figure out what they're able to do with the 1%. And it just creates this incredible momentum toward integrating it into their overall efforts as a company.

So what did you think of that clip? I'd love to know what's resonating with you. So do drop me a line on social media and let's start the conversation. For me, though, the insights around motivation in that clip were huge. And motivation is something I get asked about all the time, whether it's in my leadership training programs, one to one coaching with executives, or after I've given a big keynote presentation on stage. And if you actually stop and think about it, there will be many, many people in organizations who aren't particularly motivated by helping in the company to hit its financial goals or drive shareholder value. Yes, there might be some who are motivated by that if they've got a particularly large stake in the organization or a particular large bonus that's up for grabs. But even then, not everybody is motivated by a financial bonus. Right? But if you have got people working for you who care about the planet and their local community and they realize that the more successful the company is, then the more it's going to give to those sorts of charities, then, wow, that is an incredibly powerful motivator. And suddenly you've got this massive upstream lever that you can pull and adjust to massively increase the motivation of the people in your organization. So not only are you doing good for the planet by becoming a 1% for the planet member, as I am, but you're also driving profitability within your organization. Okay, so we're on to the next clip I've got for you. And this one is from episode 174, and it's my interview with Kate Sikora, the UK managing director of of Noble Studios. Again, we come back here to this topic of empathy and how we can use it, how empathy can help us to make some of those really tough calls that we have to make as leaders.

Here's the clip for the people maybe sitting there thinking, yeah, this is great.

Ben, this is great, Kate.

But so I've led with empathy. I've really tried to understand the position of someone in my team, and what I've heard is their position is the complete opposite of mine. Like, then what, what do you do? Then when you've really tried to understand their perspective, but they just see things completely different and what they think is the right direction is completely different to yours, then what do or did you do?

Well, I think then it's a culture, then you're talking different things. I think at that point, then you kind of have to remove the emotion and the empathy from it and just decide whether or not that person's the right, right culture, right thing. Do they have the same values as you? Because assuming you've built values under your business and you've got business values that you hold true most of the time, you should all be rowing in the same direction. If you, you know, there's going to be nuances to that. There always is. But for the most part, I would expect that you would. You would all be heading relatively in the same direction. There wouldn't be anything major. When I hear that, I immediately go to a place of are they the right person and in the right seat? If they're the right person, they might be in the wrong seat or they maybe they're not the right person at all. And you just need to straight analyze that and decide Whether or not they're the right fit, because that sounds also like a distraction. If somebody's taken that much of your time, they are also taking up valuable time from you that maybe shouldn't. That it's just if it's too hard, it's not working. I don't know if you've read Traction. We are attract. We do do traction, our agency, not, not to, you know, we do it religiously, I suppose, but we do a lot of. Of the methodologies in there and the people analyzer tools actually been really handy in those moments of, I say conflict or tension where something that's been going on for too long, like it sounds like that one. I know it was a hypothetical example, but been going on for too long and you're really still not on the same page. And you're not, you know, necessarily ever going to get there sitting down and just doing the people analyzer tool and applying it to that, that one individual helps create clarity because the chances are if they're. They are probably feeling like it isn't the right thing either in, in that moment as well.

You know, I'm really glad we landed on that question.

It's good to hear, hear your take.

Because I think empathy is something that's been spoken about much more these days in leadership over the past few months. Had a lot of conversations about it on the podcast, but I think there.

Is still a percentage of leaders and people out there who hear the word.

Empathy and think soft.

It's all very, very nice.

It's perhaps too much about the people, not enough about the, the business and the numbers. But it's really nice that hearing you sort of answer that question, leading with empathy and coming from that place doesn't mean you can't still make tough decisions.

Right.

About people. But what it does mean, I guess is, and then when you have to make those tough decisions and have tough conversations, you can still have them with empathy and see the human being in front of you rather than being quite brutal about it.

Yeah, exactly. I mean they're not, we're not always going to be the best fit. You're not going to always do the right, make the right hiring decision. You're not always gonna. But so long as you can lead with empathy in that moment and create a plan that's empathetic, but act in the way that's gonna have empathy for the rest of the business and everybody else that's on that in your world and in your business, that thinking about it that way as well, you know, you don't have to just have empathy for that, that person in that moment, everybody else that you're also, you know, growing and nurturing and, and, and leading essentially.

There you have it. Another clip that brings us back to this topic of empathy and empathetic leadership. As I said earlier, empathy can be looked at by some as a synonym for weakness or being soft when it comes to leadership, but it's absolutely not. Empathy and strong leadership aren't incompatible. Rather, they can and should be thought of as two sides of the same coin. As that conversation and clip with Kate Sikora has just shown. If we are going to have to let somebody go from our team or organization, perhaps because they are not performing in terms of their deliverables what they're paid to do, or maybe it's because of their attitudes and behavior, we can still do that in a way that demonstrates empathy and sees the human being that's in front of us. Because no matter what's going on, I really do think it is very, very, very rare that somebody comes to work each day actively trying to be difficult or disruptive or a pain in the ass. If we're going to use that phrase for very few people, that's just not their intention. So if somebody isn't performing or if their behavior is significantly off base or at odds with those that we expect in the organization, there must be something somewhere that is going on that's causing them to react in that way. We might have an idea what that is. We might have no idea. So we really can, and I believe should still look to have those really tough conversations that we sometimes need to have with people in an empathetic way, where we do see the human being that's in front of us. Because as I always say, and this goes to the very heart of what I believe it means to be a leader, is that every single person we lead, the good people and the less good people, every single person we lead is the most important person in the world to somebody else. And how we act, what we say, what we do, how we behave, doesn't just affect them Monday to Friday, 9 till 5, it has an impact on how they are when they go home. So we should always try our best to lead from a place of empathy. And to Kate's point there, like, if we are failing to tackle those difficult conversations, which, let's face it, many of us do from time to time, then what empathy is that demonstrating for the rest of the organization or the rest of the people in our team, by ignoring the poor performance Ignoring somebody who's not hitting their, their numbers, their objectives, then what's that doing to the rest of the team or the organization? It's probably putting more pressure on them. If we're ignoring poor attitude or behaviour in somebody, what is that doing to the rest of the team? It's probably making their life more difficult and uncomfortable and actually it's starting to lower the overall standards across the organisation. So by not acting, we are not having empathy for everybody else. So hopefully you're starting to see empathy. Taking an empathetic approach to leadership isn't about being soft, actually it's about being tough. And now for the final episode in this end of season finale, which comes from episode 170 and my interview with Jeff Webster, the co founder at Hunter and Gava Foods. Now, this clip is on a completely different theme, but it's one that I get asked a lot and I often wrestle with, which is really how do you decide when to keep going and when to quit? Now that could be keep going with a business idea, keep going with a particular project that you really believe in versus when to call it a day. Here's the clip.

It's that intuition piece that comes with the attributes of an entrepreneur or business owner. You develop this intuition, this gut feeling. Does it pass a sniff test? You look out for these signals. I'm not sure you can put it onto paper. It's not a formula. Yeah, we live in such a way that everyone expects a formulaic response to be able to do it. A checkbox of doing something. But I think that's part of the magic. Yeah, the magic combination or magic formula that makes up the attribute set of people like us who run businesses or lead businesses. I don't have a good answer. Sometimes you just feel it's the right thing to do, or sometimes you feel it's not the right thing to do. Just like animals have, you know, we observe animals in nature, they got a sixth sense. We can learn from wolves, for instance, how they can sense that animals that they're looking, you know, the, the prey they're looking, they identify. There's almost a relationship between the wolf and the prey. Yeah, the prey sometimes even commits itself to that process because it knows it's the weakest one in that herd. Does that apply to us as humans? Probably. But we look to like the peer reviewed scientific literature and say, well, is that evidence based? Oh, no, it's not. We. Some things you just can't study. Some things you just can't put your finger on and determine and Define. So I think intuition is a, is a big thing and listens, listens that gut feeling. But then there's also some. The sunk cost fallacy too. Right. You can come back to that and be like, okay, we've put so much into this, so we must keep going. But you've already put so much into it anyway, that's gone. There's a reason. It's a cliche, but I love, I love it. There's a reason the rear view mirror is so much smaller than the, the windscreen in the car. Right. It's important to look going forward. So yeah, I think sunk cost fallacy informs a lot of our decisions and listening to our intuition as well.

Yeah, I think, yeah, it's really interesting hearing you say that and almost you're helping me formulate my own answer to this as well. I think part of it is probably due as well that if you are a entrepreneur or entrepreneurial minded. Right. You get a lot of people with real entrepreneurial spirit who work within big organizations.

Like my wife is one of those for sure.

I think one of the distinguishing factors about those sorts of people is probably a slightly higher risk appetite. So you're probably willing to keep pushing a little bit because you see the potential upside if it does work out. But then probably the flip side is as well and not necessarily because people deliberately hide it and talk about it less. But there will always be stories where you pursue a goal and it doesn't work out. Right. But the nature of our world is people tend to hear about the stories where you kept going, you kept pushing it and it come good. But I don't hide them. But I don't talk that much online about all the various projects where I've kept going. And they've been an utter failure commercially, although there's very little I view as a failure because you always learn in examples from it that you can apply next time or to the next similar project. But I guess reality is not all ideas do work out, do they?

Absolutely not. And yeah, we, we try to frame it as fail fast or learn fast. That was one thing. Or is taught early on.

Yeah.

In our journey by, by another mentor talking about fail fast, what does that actually mean? But we see every, every quote unquote failure as a learning opportunity as long as you learn from it. Otherwise it's the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.

Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, learning opportunities are all around us at all times. We live in a society now where things are at such extremes. You either see the huge successes. So you got the success bias. And I think more so recently you've also got the, the failure bias as well. So you've got two ends of this spectrum. So people only ever see the real successes or the real failures. And you don't realize there's like many rungs along in that spectrum. So you can create a fantastically successful business that may not be at the far end of the success spectrum, but you're going to achieve wonderful things. When we first started our business, friends and family said, well, you know, who's going to buy that, that mayonnaise? There's, there's plenty of other mayonnaise out there. Who's, who's going to buy that product or someone else is going to do it. And it's only because they're dialed into Dragon's Den or the Apprentice and see these far end of the spectrum, these extremes, they don't see all the other options available. So I think that puts a lot of people off actually embarking and harnessing their entrepreneurial spirit as well.

So perhaps rather unhelpfully, my conclusion after having that conversation with Jeff and reflecting on it a great deal since is that there probably isn't a simple way to decide when to keep going with an idea and when to stop. It's more gut feel, it is more intuition. And yes, there are some data points we can, we can look for to help us make those tough calls. Certainly when I started my business, a piece of advice I heard was to write two numbers down in a notepad. One was the amount of my own cash I was willing to spend and burn and put into the business. And as soon as I had hit that figure, if there, if there wasn't really clear signs that the business was going to succeed, I would call it a day. And the other was a date. Literally beyond this date. If I couldn't see clear signs that the business was going to be viable and succeed, then I would stop, because the danger is otherwise. You just keep saying to yourself, just spend a little bit more. I'll just give it another three months and see what happens. So that certainly helped me. But the, I think the big insight that I got from, from Jeff and realized myself is that sometimes there will be projects that we continue on with and we should have called it a day much sooner. And the reality is we just don't hear about those quite so much. People don't post those on social media and talk about them on stage that much, and perhaps they should. So there you have it. Folks, that is the end of season 11 and it's also the end of the podcast for now. So as I said at the start of this episode do please hit the Follow or Subscribe button so you can continue getting the leaders kit bag and the shorts that will continue on indefinitely. So if you hit follow or subscribe you'll get those. You get notifications about those. And do also head over to my website@Ben Morton.com where you can sign up for that newsletter that I mentioned at the start of this episode and get heaps of other free leadership resources to help you on your journey. Other than that, if you are looking for some leadership training, an executive coach or somebody to speak at your next conference or event, do please get in touch. I'd love to be of service and you can contact me directly@chatn morton.com that's it for now. Thanks for listening to the show for however long you've been listening. I really appreciate it. Look after yourself. Look after those you've got the privilege and responsibility to lead. And until next time, lead on.