162 - Courage to Leap & Lead with with Dr. Jennifer Nash - part 1

You've got courage to leap, courage to lead.

Be brave and be bold. Let it roar.

Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting.com. where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now, here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. How are you today? This is your favorite podcaster, of course, right? CB Bowman. And let's not forget my husband's last name this time, Ottomannelli. How about that, right? Hey, today I have the pleasure to interview my new BFF, Jennifer Nash. Doctor, let's not forget that. Dr. Jennifer Nash. So Jennifer, welcome.

Thank you so much, CB. I'm so excited to be here, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation today.

Okay, well, get ready. Hold on tight.

I'm holding on. Sort of like a hands up.

Here we go. We're gonna have a good ride. And by the way, don't get nervous if the dog barks, the cat walks across the screen. It's all good. Everybody who listens to this podcast knows we keep it real.

It's the only way to be.

Yes. Have a drink of water, whatever. It doesn't matter. You know, you wrote this amazing book called Be Human, Lead Human. What does that mean?

It means that the former idea of leaders having to have all the answers and be the superhero that saved the day, and everything revolved around that leader having the the ultimate power and control is no longer valid in today's world of work. You know, we need leaders who can act with courage and be vulnerable and show that they have a human side as well as being the hero that everyone looks at them as.

So I want to talk about that. I also want to talk to you about your courage. The first thing that comes to mind when I hear that is hogwash. Leaders just don't have the capacity or capability to be, quote unquote, human. They can't show vulnerability. They can't show emotions. Not— and I'm not blaming them totally. I'm saying, you know, our laws say— Now, here's a good example. Costco. Everybody knows I'm Mrs. Costco, right?

Yes, I love Costco.

So when I was in New Jersey, I was very close to the manager at my, my Costco, and one of the cashiers was sick, and I noticed it immediately because I knew all of the kids there. Yeah. I said, what's going on with X? And he said, she's been out sick. And I said, well, how's she doing? And I actually knew the reason she was out sick.

Yeah.

And he said, you know, CB, I can't ask. I said, what are you talking about? He goes, it's against the law for me to ask how she's doing. So I said, but you're so personable. And he was. He said, I know, and I would love to know. So I hear from Her coworkers how she's doing, but I can't ask directly. Now let's start there. Being human means caring about the other person, their soul, their likeness, their— and I don't mean what they like specifically, although that could be part of it. But in a situation where somebody's been out ill, You can't ask how are you doing? How then can a leader be human?

Yeah, you know, that's interesting because I wonder if those are self-imposed, like unwritten rules of culture that he is abiding by, or that maybe he set in place. I don't know. My first inclination as a leader would be, how can I help? You know, how are you doing?

What's wrong?

Are there ways that I can, you know, how can I help make this an experience where you feel like you come first and the output to the organization comes second when you're feeling better, right? That is an interesting comment to me, and I would really want to dig into that with that leader and ask him, where is that coming from?

It was a guideline that he was given in terms of— so it really goes under the umbrella of confidentiality.

Mm-hmm.

And so when you mix up confidentiality with caring and all that stuff, it all gets very convoluted. Now, I'll give you another example. My neighbor Who works for gov— that gov, um, has COVID, and her husband and her child had COVID. And so I was talking to her from a great distance across the yard the other day, and she said her boss said it's fine if you have COVID to come in even though you just wear a mask. And I said, what? Oh, now interesting, CDC now says if you quarantine for 5 days and you still have it, wear a mask and you're fine, you can go out. So that GOV is following, you know, CDC, and we're now having a flare-up of COVID Yeah, we are.

It's very significant.

So And I know I rolled the two together and they may not be related, but to me they're related in a sense of caring for the employee. You know somebody is sick, you're telling them to come to work. And then in the other case, you know somebody is sick and you can't ask how they're doing.

Mm-hmm.

How does the human factor factor into these things? As, as an example of leading human.

Yeah, you know, I think so. For a leader, you know, they always have choices to make, right? And they have that internal GPS that is telling them what is the right thing to do, what are my options here if I want to abide by these, you know, PII information or HIPAA information, or if I can't ask the employee directly how they're doing, you know, what are some ways that I can show them that I support them as a human, right? So that could be just a question that they ask. How can I best support you right now?

That's it.

They're not asking about how they're sick. They're not asking to divulge, you know, medical information. They're simply providing an option for that person to say, you know what, here's what I need right now in this moment.

That is phenomenal. I love that. I love that. And you know, if I had a manager who said that to me, I would be fine with that. Fine.

Yeah, because, you know, some people may not want to divulge, and that's fine. That's their— that's their absolute right. And respecting that boundary for them would be a way that you can also show, you know, that you're being human and being a leader at the same time. So if it were me, I would be, you know, wanting to provide that support, showing them that I care about them as a human being, and making sure that I equip them with the tools and resources, financial support, whatever it is that they need in that moment to help them get back to where they're being at their best and living their best life. And then they can go forward and, you know, go above and beyond or produce or whatever it is that I'm needing them to do from an employee standpoint.

I absolutely love that. I remember when I was on a sick leave of absenteeism and— no, that wasn't the right way to put it. I was out sick and I worked for a Fortune 500 company and every single day they called me and I felt so harassed. It just made the situation worse, right?

Yeah.

So I could see where government stepping in and saying, you can't do that, you can't stress, you can't harass people, um, is a godsend, really. But as I said to you, that, that boundary— and I love how you put that, you know, asking, how can I support you without any stuff attached to it, you know, no ulterior motive, just— How can I help? Yeah. Yeah. So tell us some of the things that you've seen in writing your book. And I know you're a researcher. Some of the egregious things that you have seen in leaders who are not— who are not trying to lead human.

Yeah. Oh, CB, that is a very long list.

Maybe I should have given you a warning.

I don't know if your listeners could hear that big sigh. But man, that is a long list. You know, and it's, it's, I think we do, we, we do what we know, right? And I think for leaders, part of what they do is what they have learned from the leaders that came before them. So, they're role modeling the behaviors that they observed. You know, just as children, right? We learn to emulate. We learn to mimic. That's how we learn. And so, it's the same in the workplace. You know, when a young professional comes in and they see the managers and leaders around them behaving in certain ways, talking in certain ways, you know, giving direction in certain ways, that's what they start to adopt as normal for themselves.

Hmm.

And so, you know, when I start to talk about this list of, you know, egregious things that I've noticed, you know, with leader behavior, Part of it is because we're emulating what came before us. And I think a way to sort of break that cycle is to, number one, be aware of that. And then number two, what are the behaviors that we want to emulate instead? Right? What are those human behaviors that we can emulate instead? So for example, if a leader has some feedback to give you, right, there's different ways that that leader can approach that, right? There's different ways that they can conduct that interaction. So one of the more egregious ways would be, you know, oh, let's say that you're going to take your employee out to lunch, you know, at a busy New York City restaurant in the middle of the day. And then while you're at the table, you start to, you know, let them know very loudly about the things that they were doing wrong and the consequences that that had.

Mm-hmm.

You know, that's a pretty, that's a pretty negative way to provide some feedback. Not only was it done publicly, but it was also done in a way where it was embarrassing, you know, for the employee to be admonished like that in front of, you know, a whole crowd of people in a busy New York City restaurant at lunchtime.

Yeah.

So, you know, that's an example that I would bring up as, you know, here's an egregious leader behavior that, you know, in retrospect, this leader could have chosen to approach that differently. You know, they could have done that in private where it was just a simple conversation across a desk to say, look, here's something, here's an example of what happened. Here's what didn't work well with that. Here's what I'd like to see differently going forward. It could have required a certain amount of emotional self-management on that leader's part to not be yelling At his employee in front of everyone in a New York City restaurant. So, you know, that's just one example of this behavior. And somewhere along the line, you know, this leader learned that it was okay to behave that way. It was okay to deliver feedback that way.

That brings me to a really good point. You know, I've heard recently 2 women I know that were in horrible marriages, and their moms were in horrible marriages. And my husband said to me, well, how does that continue? And I said, you only know what you know.

Yes.

But then here comes the question, and I think it's the pivotal question. If you only know what you know, how do you have the courage to learn what you don't know? I mean, how do you— how do you know that you're doing something wrong? Because, you know, I've been in corporate. I spent a lot of time in corporate.

Me too.

And as a Black woman, yeah, it was not pretty. And you start to wonder Not only when, how will people learn to behave differently? You start questioning whether or not it's you or them. And, and you're right, people learn from their predecessors. So how do they know that they are doing something wrong? And then how do they have the courage to make the change?

Yeah, so I will say, like, one of the things that struck me when I was doing the research for my book is that there is typically a 15-year gap between when someone is promoted to be a people leader, a leader of people, and when they get leadership development training for that role. I mean, it's a massive gap, CB. So knowing that, we have— there is no shortage of opportunity for organizations to shorten that gap.

Totally.

How do we bring that to people earlier in their career so that they can learn that there's a different way? And, you know, that is part of what I wanted to illustrate with my book. There is a different way. There is a better way, a more effective way to lead that honors humanity and brings people to the forefront. I think the second part of your question Around how do we help them gain that awareness that there is a better way, right? Um, I think some of those things are, you know, are they curious about the world around them? Do they have that natural curiosity where they want to be lifelong learners, they want to continue reading, they want to develop themselves? Some people do.

But here's the thing, and sorry to interrupt you, I Do you think that corporate America is wrong in the fact that they continue to promote these people? So they're actually rewarding—

Yes.

The bad behavior because they're producing.

Yes, exactly. It's a systemic issue as well. It's not something that is just isolated to, oh, well, if we can just have this person learn something different, then everything will be fine. It's not that. It's the entire system that has been created around that that reinforces the behaviors being reinforced, if you will. So, so often, like you said, I would see someone, if they were a challenge in their current role or they weren't performing where they needed to be, the person would be promoted out of their role into another organization or into another department So that they weren't a problem anymore in that particular organization's unit, right? And that happens so often because there wasn't anything in the system that really helped people shift behavior, that helped them learn how to shift behavior and develop different habits. And as you know, finding courage to change something that is status quo, it's nearly impossible in an organization when the The system is designed to eject the outlier.

So how do we, as researchers, as authors, as consultants, as coaches, say to an organization, please look at our body of work, please embed our body of work into your organization? Please bring us in to consult, to talk.

Mm-hmm.

The courage to do something.

Yeah, you know, I, you know, this is something that I face as well. You know, we are in the same space. We're working and trying to help people become better leaders and be their best human selves. And I think at the end of the day, um, what I have seen, and you tell me what you've seen as well, um, Organizations respond to numbers and they respond to results. And so what I have found that works is, you know, I often tell a story about how a leader came in and transformed an organization and got the bottom line and top line results and delivered that increase in stock price and delivered that increase in engagement scores. Oh, and by the way, you know, they did it with a pretty unique system of working together. For example. So that often will get attention. But if I came in and I approached it the opposite way, where, oh, I've got this really cool framework that helps leaders be more human and helps organizations be more humane and attract talent, it's not as strong of a business case or value proposition. And so what I've found is that it works better, even though that's counter to me and how I operate, to show that there's a return on that investment in this way from a financial perspective. And then that has their attention, and then it trickles down into the, into the human element.

The sad part is that we're talking about behaviors.

Yes.

And it's so hard to quantify behaviors and tie it to the bottom line.

Yes.

I've always felt, coming out of marketing, that when I see consultants and coaches doing this, With the exception of you and I. Where do they get these fuzzy numbers from? Because, you know, how can you prove this? There's other factors. And that's, you know, that's me hardcore marketing, right? Well, did they consider the competition? Did they just— did they consider that the brand image changed?

Right.

And on and on. Bottom line, the behavior shifted, right?

Yes.

But can you say concretely that that shift in behavior was not tied to your competition going out of business or something like that? It's, it's very hard. And a good, a good leader and marketing person will say to you, these numbers are fuzzy.

Mm-hmm.

There is no direct correlation to changing behavior to increasing profits. Now, if you then— if they're honest and say, well, we lost 25% of our staff and we had to pay recruiters and we had to pay a startup curve and et cetera, et cetera. They get a little bit more hardcore in their numbers, right? So, but it's sad that we have to go to that point to say, be more human, have courage to be more human.

Yeah, it is, it is. You know, it, it takes me back to, you know, Taylor, right, where Taylor was, you know, one of the first management consultants And he did time and motion studies to figure out what was the most efficient way that someone could perform a task. And he really started— his heart was in the right place. You know, he wanted to maximize profit for the organization and he wanted to maximize income for the worker. And so he, you know, he started out, you know, from an operational efficiency standpoint, studying these things. Well, there were a lot of unintended consequences of that. And I think one of those was that it removed the humanity from the equation.

Absolutely.

And it focused the priority on the numbers, optimizing efficiency, optimizing productivity, all the Ps, right? Process, prioritization, product, process, procedure. And we haven't really recovered from that. And that was over 100 years ago.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a case of do what you know, do what works, and bring the courage to be human and create change.

Yes. And you know what's so interesting is that for all of the negative things about COVID one of the silver linings was that it forced the human element to the forefront.

It forced me to change.

And I loved that. And look what's happening now. There is this like, we are going back to status quo. We want people back in the office. And then we still have these elephants in the room that we're not talking about. That's a power and control and trust issue.

Yes. But people are saying that, look, fear has set in.

Yes.

I can fight this bravely right after COVID. Because I had a whole force behind me, right? Now people are starting to seep back in on their tiptoes because they're looking at their bank accounts.

Yes.

And what's happening is leaders are saying, ah, we got you again, we can go back to what we had before, you're in our clutches. Instead of saying, hmm, I think there was a lesson here that we learned We need to pay attention because if this happens now, what's going to happen in the next wave of pandemics? Because we know it's coming. And are we prepared? It's like I said, I was in a group in Marshall— no, it wasn't with Marshall Goldsmith. It was with another group of people. And this was a group of— in a breakout session.

Mm-hmm.

And I was with 5 white men. This is right after Floyd. And they started saying, CB, we're so sorry for what you're going through. And I said, hold it. First, you don't know what I'm going through, although I appreciate the sentiment. But we never saw this. We never— I said, take a deep breath. If you scratch your glasses and you put them on, eventually you don't see the scratch.

Mm-hmm.

Now, if you drop your glasses on concrete and they shatter, you will see that. What we have with the killing of Floyd is your glasses have been dropped on concrete.

Mm-hmm.

So now the question is, while I appreciate your sentiment, what will you do now and what will you do tomorrow? Well, the answer is written for us. What we're doing tomorrow is we're sort of pushing that aside and forgetting about it and going back to where we were, with the exception of a few key people, right? We always return, it seems, to where we are with very little movement forward.

Mm-hmm.

And it's sad because people like you and I, we work so hard To push the change, and so I had a conversation with somebody we both know who I won't mention who said the problem with talking about courage to leaders, being human to leaders, is you're saying that they're wrong when in fact they want to hear it's the employee. That's wrong. So, okay, but that's not the case. We need to take the polishing cloth, shine up a whole thing, a whole communication, and make it from the get-go what it's not.

Yeah, yeah.

How do we do that?

Yeah, I—

the numbers that you said.

Yeah, I think that when you look at the unit of analysis, when you're talking about behavior change and you're talking about you want broad-scale change, it has to start on that individual unit of analysis. It has to start with the person, with that leader. So I'll give you a story. So I was working, I was working with one of my clients And he, every session, every coaching session we would have, he would tell me how, you know, the people around him weren't doing what they wanted, what he wanted them to do, how, you know, they just wouldn't listen to him because he had the right answer and it would just save them so much time if they would just do what he said. And, you know, he's literally pouting as we're talking.

How often do we hear this story, right? It's them. Okay.

And so, you know, and he, and he's yelling at me as well, right? And I'm as kind And so, you know, I listened, you know, for a couple sessions, and finally I said, look, you know, I'm noticing something here. Would you mind if I bring this up to you and, you know, share what I'm observing? Oh yeah, yeah, bring it on, bring it on, right? And this person was a very, you know, very military kind of person, you know, very, you know, proper and, you know, all of that, right? And so I said, look, I said, you're yelling at me. Like, in what world is that okay? We're both adults. Why are you yelling at me? I'm not your child, and I don't work for you. You know, and on top of that, totally unaware, completely unaware, completely unaware. And I said, by the way, if you're acting like this at work, where else are you acting like this?

Whoa, Jennifer, you hit hard.

Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't hold anything back.

And so necessary.

No. And, and so all of a sudden, CB, there's silence. And I could feel like the energy shift, you know, and I looked up from— because I was taking a few notes, I looked up from my notes and there are tears streaming down this person's face, just streaming down this face. And so I said, yeah, I see that that is, you know, touched a nerve. Tell me about that. What's going on? And so in between, you know, him grabbing some Kleenex and, you know, blowing his nose, he says, I just realized that the way that I am showing up at work and treating people at work is exactly the way that I am treating my wife and I'm treating my children. And he said, I'm a blank blank, you know, fill in the blank, and everyone knows it but me. I said, oh, well, so now that we have this awareness, what do you want to do with that? And that was a couple years ago. And, you know, I got actually a message from this person, you know, recently that said, you know, thank you for changing my life. Thank you for keeping my marriage together. Thank you for helping me develop a better relationship with my children. And oh, by the way, I'm showing up differently at work now. And I got that promotion that I've been looking for.

The work you do is so hard. And thank God you had the courage to do the work that was needed with him.

Yeah, and it took an immense amount of courage for him to get to that point where he was willing to basically look in the mirror and say, oh my gosh, like, This isn't how I want to be. This isn't how I want to show up. This isn't the impact I want to have on the people around me in any area of my life.

And you know what? I'm curious to know what was his childhood like?

Yeah, well, that's yeah, that was a yeah, that was a factor.

Yeah. You know, I want to get to your life, but I want to say to you—

Yeah.

A colleague of ours wrote a book about warriors in the workplace, where his theory is that people like this are not respected. And it's really not respected, not understood, more not understood, um, that it's really a warrior mentality to win.

Mm-hmm.

And we need to respect that. What is your feeling— and I'm not quoting, by the way, but general speaking— what is your feeling about How does that work with being human?

So are you saying that, like, wanting and desiring to win and being human are mutually exclusive, or seem to be?

I don't think they are.

Yeah, I don't think they are either.

I think that the idea of, uh, respecting a warrior Mentality or behavior in the workplace, which comes from the military, does not translate directly.

No, I don't think it does. You know, I was reading, um, I was reading, it was something like the, I don't know, the principles of leadership from the Army. And I don't know, I was reading it a while ago. I was just, um, I was taken aback by how much of that, my— how much of that language, um, that I had then observed was replicated in the workplace, right? Just like sports terms and sports analogies. Everything was like, everybody was talking about things in sports language when I entered the workforce, and I didn't understand that. It was just so confusing to me.

Yeah, it's, um, well, the whole term leadership comes from the military.

Yes.

And so we've just passed that around from The Art of War, you know, generation after generation after generation. And I've tried to, um, I've tried to reconcile with the idea of this warrior spirit being one that is respected. And I think it gets confused with leadership. I, I think that being a warrior does not directly mean that you're a leader, and being a leader does not directly mean that you're a warrior, because part of that aggressive behavior can be put to rest still getting your point across and still leading.

Sure. It's a, it's a choice, right? It's a choice in how we exercise those behaviors. We can choose the action and we can choose the behavior that we want to employ to realize that action. And I think part of also what's happening now is that, you know, there is a distinct shift in the role of a leader, how we're defining leadership, and what that looks like. It's evolving for this new world of work. And perhaps, you know, back in the 20th century, command and control worked fine.

fine.

Things were less complex. You know, it was a simpler world in some ways. And I think now, if you think about the leader as, oh, command and control, people have to be controlled and told what to do. And we saw from COVID that autonomy actually worked pretty well. Productivity was a lot higher during COVID Yeah. And actually, employers recognized that. So, how do we look at the role of a leader today? What is it evolving into? And how do we help people become aware of that shift when maybe they haven't even thought about that before? You know, what does leadership look like?

From an employee perspective or a leader's perspective or both?

I think both. I think both. You know, I hear so many stories still about leaders that, um, feel like command and control is the right way. And maybe if you're on a battlefield and people are dying, that, that applies. Yeah, I'm not sure that workplace is a war.

Do you think it comes out of the leader being afraid of losing control or losing the ability to direct people or losing the ability to lead people, and then their ability to report back to the board or What, what is the basic underlying causation of this behavior other than you do what you've learned?

Mm-hmm. You know, I, I think one of the, one of the top things that pops into my mind is there is a desire to not look weak.

Mm-hmm.

That's the first thing that comes to my mind. And I think so often in this, in our culture in the US, we view, we mistake kindness for weakness. We mistake caring and compassion and empathy for weakness. And when the system around us prioritizes winning, you know, you win, ergo, the other person has to lose. Results are measured and evaluated in a way that doesn't account for these other factors coming into play.

You know, I was just thinking there's a new show, second season on, called Special Forces. I don't know if you've seen it. It really, really brings the military— well, it's based on the military training.

Special Ops. Yeah.

And when you see the dehumanization of people, it's actually one of my favorite new shows because I think about my dad having been in the military. And I think, no wonder why he didn't know how to communicate with his kids. When you have to be— you're sort of stripped of any form of humanization. It's fight or flight.

Mm-hmm.

And when I then— now I'm talking to you, think about all the other shows that are on TV. And this is, you know, TV, whether we like it or not, is a learning. It's a university, right? Um, The Bachelorette, it's always fight or flight. You know, all of these Popular shows.

Yeah.

There's nothing on TV that I can recall right now that emphasizes human leadership and courage.

Yeah, we don't have many examples of that, do we?

No. Let's raise our hands to be the first.

Yeah, let's, let's create a TV show about that. I think that would be awesome.

Absolutely. There used to be Undercover Boss, which You sort of touched on it.

Yes.

And that was a great show until they started making it wonky. But, um, there is just so much to be said for good leaders that we don't talk about. So I want to stop here and then restart because I'm afraid we're running out of time for the first part, and we'll do part 2 and talk about you.

Oh, okay.

Okay, audience, stay tuned for part 2 of my interview for— with Jennifer. This has been so eye-opening, and it does leave us with the question of how are you being human in your role as a leader? What is it that you're doing based upon what Jennifer has just shared with us And her book and my book. How is this affecting you? How is this affecting your leadership? And by the way, leadership doesn't just mean in the office. It also means at home. This is CB Bowman with Dr. Jennifer Nash. Stay tuned for part 2. Bye now.