Challenges of the C-Suite with Dr. Sim Sitkin, Episode 35

Hello everybody, this is CB Bowman Live Challenges of the C-Suite. So you know it must be Tuesday because I'm here, right? And by the way, we have a rock-solid season coming up for you starting with our guest today, so don't miss me on Tuesdays and Many Thursdays. So what are you guys up to? Hey, send me a note right in the chat because I don't hear from you enough and I want to hear from you because, you know, I miss you. You're my peeps, right? So here's my secret today. I don't have a good secret for today. Let me just think about this. Other than I am talking my husband into getting his booster shot for COVID, and that's going to require some trickery. You women know what I'm talking about, right? Yeah. So listen, we're gonna have a fun show today. Sim is a riot. I don't know if he's gonna let you see his funny side, but I love Smart men who are also funny. Oh, I think I'm supposed to say smart men and women who are funny, so let me put in that correction right away. So without further ado, Sim, please introduce yourself.

Hello everybody, I'm Sim Sitkin. I am, um, The Szechevsky Professor of Management in the business school and the public policy school at Duke University, and the founder and president of Delta Leadership.

Oh, okay. We have one person that wrote in named Alex. He says yes, but I'm not sure what Alex is talking about. Oh, I know what Alex is talking about. The difficulty of, you know, we won't say that again. I'm going to get into so much trouble in this show. So give us the name of your company again.

It's called Delta Leadership. And, and it provides training, it provides coaching. We have a 360 leadership survey that's, that's widely used. We've got a model that all of this is based on called the 6 Domains of Leadership model. And, and we have a bunch of other educational materials. We have instructional games. We have cases that can be used for teaching, various kinds of articles about leadership and management.

Okay. Whoo. All right, let's start at the beginning. Are you ready?

Absolutely.

Tell us about you when you were a child that led you down this path.

Well, let's see. When I was a child, I was very tall. I've only gotten shorter with age.

I warned everybody he is a riot. It happens to all of us. I—

well, I think, I think that, um, when I was a child, I, I guess what I would say is I was, I was, um, always a little bit irreverent. I always wanted to really understand the rules and understand the norms so that I wouldn't inadvertently violate any of them. But when change was required, I actually knew what the system was that I was working with. And so even from a fairly young age, I viewed social events and our social system as a system. And that's why I ended up studying organizations. I started out in psychology and in education and educational change, And slowly shifted to social services and government more generally, and then to business. And, but my interest was always in really understanding how organizations and the systems worked so that we could really improve them, not only in terms of the performance of the organization, but so they were really good places for people to work and for their clients as well.

So Sim? This sounds very professional. Did you ever get into trouble as a kid? Come on.

Of course I did.

Okay, let's talk.

So, you know, so as it— well, I'll give you, um, I'll give you an example.

See, our audience likes the dirt on our guests.

Did the guests like the dirt?

Oh yeah, because you know what? It relieves them, allows them to get rid of it, spill it out, share it, and have fun with it.

Yep. Well, actually, so, um, I guess what I, what I would say is, um, I always really liked school, for example, but I wasn't— I was not always the best performer in school. Because if I was really interested in something, I did really well in it. And if I thought it was kind of a waste of time, I did enough to get by, but I didn't do more. So I didn't have the best grades. I only got into one college out of all the ones I applied to, which people are surprised at because I've been very successful academically.

You're at Duke University. Talk about the top of the top.

Well, so, you know, I had a very good undergraduate education, but I only got into one school. And I did a little better with the master's programs and doctoral programs. My master's was from Harvard and my doctorate was from Stanford. So I had more options at that point. But I think the key was that I always looked for input and ideas, but I didn't feel that I had to follow them necessarily. I took them as input to then figure out what I thought. And that's been true in my work as a manager and executive. And then more recently—

Recently.

I say recently, in the past, what, 30 years? In my work as an academic and consultant. That, that I'm always looking for what, what are the pieces that others may have missed that would really help. And when you coach somebody, the same thing is true. You're not helping them by just repeating back to them what they already know. What's helping them is if you can help them see pieces or patterns that they wouldn't have otherwise seen. And I did that even as a kid. I didn't know I was doing it when, when I was a kid. Now, when you say getting in trouble, For example, I grew up in the '60s. And so that was a time period where a lot of teenagers got themselves in all kinds of trouble. The one thing that I always think of in those days— so I know when executives come and speak in my class, and let's say we're having dinner the night before, The thing that I— it always surprises me, but the thing that most impresses them is when they found out I was at Woodstock.

Hot dog!

There are lots of people who claim they were at Woodstock. I was actually at Woodstock, you know, and I, I woke up one, one morning to hear the famous, um, Grace Slick saying, good morning, people. Um, so, I mean, that's an example of where But you can get into what John Lewis called good trouble, not necessarily bad trouble. And I think the key is to know when and when not to sort of push boundaries. And as an example, so we, my friends and I went to Woodstock, but we weren't examples of people who were all covered in mud. Because we brought a tent with us that had a floor. So, so, you know, once we went into our tent, we were dry and comfortable. The good news was, you know, your clothes when you were outside were wet and muddy, but it was a place where you could just take your clothes off before you went in the tent and nobody blinked an eye.

Nobody took your clothes?

Huh?

Nobody took your clothes?

Nobody took your clothes. Your clothes were too wet and muddy for anybody to want to take them. But anyway, so, so, you know, that's an example of, of the kinds of things that I did that people might not be aware of.

So let's call it what it is. You were a conservative rule breaker.

Um.

Not so conservative?

Not so conservative. I was, I was selectively conservative as a rule breaker. In other words, I think, I think my view is you don't want to break rules just because you're acting out or because that's how you claim your identity. You want to break rules because you're actually accomplishing something important when the rule is getting in the way of that accomplishment.

I love that. I love that. I think I strongly fit into that category.

I suspected that was the case.

Well, you know, I'm a military brat, and so I had to walk the line.

Yeah.

And my mom was actually stricter than my dad. And but when I went out on my own, I said, forget this. I— okay, I've got the proper rules of etiquette and growing up. I didn't get into trouble. I came home and I stayed in my room and I drew little cartoons or studied. I was— I'm a visual person. But man, once I left the house, I said, okay, it's time to grow up now and have some fun. And so I did it slowly, like an inchworm, right? And now at this point in life, it's like, oh, hell breaks loose.

Once we pass a certain age, yes, it doesn't really matter what other people think so much.

We earn, we earn that right. Clearly.

Yeah.

So now, how did you get into Duke? Tell us a little backstory. Clearly, you had good grades in grad school. And—

Actually, I don't think— I don't think anybody has ever asked me what my grades in grad school were. What they care about is, especially when you're coming out of a PhD, They don't care about your grades. They care about whether the research you've done adds up to something that might be important. They also care about, and this is where it helped me that I had a background in education, they care whether you can teach. And so I had a background in social services and education before I started moving more into the business side of things. And so teaching was something I always loved doing from a very young age. I mean, I started teaching When I was a freshman in college, even. So, so, you know, I started really early with that.

And, um, what were you teaching then?

Well, this is an example of where I don't necessarily follow rules, that I think it was— I don't remember if it was my freshman year or my sophomore year, but I started a center at my college which was for training public school teachers. Now, who was I to be doing that? And I got volunteers among other students to volunteer to teach in the schools. Now, this wasn't a credential. It wasn't— but we had a center and we brought students in and trained them, and we brought teachers in for various kinds of workshops and things. And I worked with some of the staff at the college. And part of that was, I remember, like, team teaching in the evening college with one of my professors. And I had— there was someone in our class in the evening college and their child was in something we were doing during the day.

Wait, wait, let's go back. What were you teaching teachers?

It was about pedagogy. It was about educational psychology. It was things, things like that. And I wasn't always the instructor, but sometimes I was. So, you know, I continuously— and I don't remember if we've talked about this before, but I'm a big fan of what people later called failing forward, that you just keep trying things that are really beyond your reach, but you learn really fast from it. And you just have to have the confidence and the openness to try things. And recognize that if it doesn't work the first time, as long as you're not hurting somebody by that, you can actually develop really innovative, interesting ideas because you're not already schooled in the old traditional way of doing things. So one of my areas of research now is on what we call stretch goals.

And that term brings me way back from my days at General Foods.

Right. And people today either hate stretch goals or love stretch goals, depending on what their experience in their organization has been. And most of the time it's really done badly. So most people hate it, but it wasn't really well understood.

Let's, let's explain to the audience. And the reason why that is, is that they, at least for people of color, they were used as punitive methods to lead you out of the organization. So the stretch goals were set so high and so aggressive—

You're doing it to set up to fail.

Exactly. Exactly.

Right. And the other reason that it can be so badly used is that people forget that when you're pursuing a stretch goal, the odds of success are actually low. And so now you put your best people on a stretch goal and it doesn't work out. And you say, see, they must not have been as good as I thought. As opposed to being realistic about what the risk is involved. So what we've been doing in our research—

What was accomplished out of that risk?

You've got— yeah, what I— in some of my early research, I referred to intelligent failure and unintelligent failure. And intelligent failure was failure you could learn from. Unintelligent failure was either, why were you so stupid that you took this on to begin with? It was really not a good idea. Or it was something where you already knew the answer. You didn't have to do it to find out, but you couldn't learn from it. And so, you know, as a scientist, intelligent failure is what we do all the time. It's called experimentation. But you've got to design the experiment so you can actually learn from it. Yeah. And that's true in our lives. And so for me, I found Because I'm a pretty good talker, that I got myself into, into trouble because people thought I could do things that I really wasn't quite ready to do yet. And then I had to figure out how to do it. And so all along, I've kind of been doing that. You know, early on, I was doing this teaching. Later, I, I started my own consulting firm when I was way too young to be giving anybody advice. And then I went into government because a friend of mine took over a state agency. And I was running a division at, again, too young an age to be in that position. But I think as long as you have the confidence to take the risks and learn from failure that I described, And you also have the confidence to realize that if you're doing a good job, you're going to surround yourself with people who are a lot smarter and more experienced than you are, and then you better listen to them.

But you said the operational word, which is confidence.

Yeah.

And few people have the confidence to hire or surround themselves with people that are better than themselves. Yeah.

But why would you want to spend your life not surrounded by people who are better than you? That's such a pleasure.

It's called ego.

Okay, let me, let me pick up something from, um, um, Mike Krzyzewski, the Duke basketball coach, who also has attached his name to the chair that I hold and to the center that I run, um, at Duke. Um, but Mike has a really interesting perspective on ego that, that I've always remembered and repeated. So people say to him, you know, you get the best basketball players from all over and you try to assemble them into a team. How do you get them to leave their egos at the door?

Mm-hmm.

And his response is— I love it. He says, the last thing I want is for them to leave their egos at the door. I want them to have big egos in the room so that when we face something difficult, they've got the ego to step up to it. However, The key is their ego has to be big enough to include all of the rest of us inside it. Their ego is not about them. Their ego is about us. Their ego is about the mission. So they're confident, they're strong, they, they recognize what they bring to it, but it's not at the expense of putting others down. It's, it's if you do really well, I feel great about it because your success is part of my ego. My ego is about how we all are doing. And so that's a different way of thinking about ego strength.

It's very different. But I should say, and it actually helps me to understand the many comments that I hear. My husband is a jock, closet jock, whatever. And I really am not a fan of sports. And—

But it's never too late to learn, by the way.

Thank you, Sim.

I won't tell your husband.

It's all right. Oh, he knows. He keeps trying, right? Even buys me the t-shirts and the hoodies and everything. But, but one of the things I never could quite understand deeply is when they're interviewing a player and they're always talking about the team. And you know that these guys have big egos because you see the other sidelines that are in the papers, you know, dated this many women, bought this many cars, has this many houses. I'm like, it doesn't connect for me. And you just made it connect.

It's exactly the same thing we were talking about before of wanting to hire and work for and be around people who are as good or better than you.

Yes. Yeah.

You take pride in the group you're part of and that you're able to learn as much from them as you're able to share with them. Well, in sports, great teams are often not composed of the individual great players. Sometimes they are, but only when those players view the whole as really what it's all about. And they take pride in being part of something whole like that.

So, so, Sim, since this is Challenges of the C-Suite, let me just ask you, because this is a great question. Do you think that there is a lot of failure for leaders in the C-suite because they don't understand this version of ego?

Yes, I do. That I think that the more you rise in the organization, the more you should be in a position to not have to flex your muscles all the time. The more you are in a position where you have to be skeptical of being flattered all the time, the more you have to make it about others. Now, by the way, that doesn't mean You shouldn't be strategic. And sometimes it has to be about you. Sometimes you're the personification of the organization. Sometimes the organization has stumbled and you've taken the hit a couple of times for the team. You really need to not do that right now to build up your sort of capital.

So how do you know when to and when not to?

I wish there were a really simple equation. Life would be a lot easier if we had simple equations for complex things, and we do for some. I think with this, the general rule of thumb that I would use is, if you're so great, why can't you afford to give away credit? If you're so great, why can't you make it about them when it's good? If you're so great, why can't you take the hit when there's a problem? It's, you know, that don't internalize the press essentially about you. Don't internalize the flatterers. Keep focused on your job. And the more you have that capability, whether it's called human capital or idiosyncrasy credits or fame or whatever. The more you have those things, those are tools you can use to solve the problems of the organization and to build up the people in the organization. It's kind of like if you've accumulated money, what's it for? You should be using it for positive accomplishments, not just to hoard it. And I think the same is true with power and fame. And I think a lot of times, Being in the C-suite goes to people's heads, and either they they they let that happen because they they feel like they're faking it and they're afraid they're going to be discovered, or they feel that they really are better than everybody else, and that they have. And in my view is, if you're really better than everybody else, what do you have to go around? flaunting it, why aren't you just using it and making everybody else better and feeling better about themselves? So I do think often when leaders act badly, there is an underlying insecurity and vulnerability that those around them are not addressing. And the leaders themselves should address it. But I think those of us around those leaders, whether we're coaching them, or were support staff to them, were advisors of other sorts, that when someone's behaving in a bizarre way and you see that person that's a talented person, they have all these capabilities and opportunities, ask yourself what they're really afraid of. Why do they feel so vulnerable? Why are they being so defensive? And a lot of times to get people to open up and relax and actually do the work itself, It's providing them with that security so they know they're respected, that they can trust other people. They understand the situation that they're in. Sometimes they don't recognize really how much they're respected. And so if they don't think they're respected and they don't think they're deserving, a lot of times they'll go for fear or they'll go for the Hail Mary pass when they're not in the right position. To do a Hail Mary. Is it okay to use a sports metaphor? Sorry, I didn't want to.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's part of our stretch research, by the way. And when we use it in various programs, the idea is to really understand when should you go for a stretch goal and when shouldn't you? When should you go for incremental goals? When should you play it safe and go for steady, you know, slow and steady? Um, because a lot of times people go for those stretch goals for the same reasons in the C-suite, that they're— it's all about ego. Shouldn't be about ego in the negative sense.

Yes.

It's not about ego in the positive sense of I'm confident, I'm strong, I'm capable enough. That's the ego. Now the question is, how do I use that to make the world a better place.

Okay, so let's break this down a little bit more. We are now in a period of the Great Resignation. This is following the 5 pandemics that the United States has been through. I think 2 of the strongest influencers, pandemic influencers, have been COVID and social justice. And so what we're faced with is people saying, I'm done with this. I'm done with the fact that my company didn't think to take care of me when my life was at risk.

Yeah.

I'm done with my company treating my friends and colleagues like third-class citizens. I didn't see this before. I didn't understand it before. But now I have this new awakening.

Mm-hmm.

Now, leaders are saying, or being told, that they need to be much more empathetic, They need to be considerate. They need to be collegial, etc., etc., etc. We have a serious disconnect right now in the United States. Is it because of? And one more factor: the law. The law says you can't ask personal questions anymore. You can't pat somebody on the back anymore physically. You can barely shake hands with somebody because it could be harassment.

Right.

Now, you take these 3 elements and you say, okay, leaders, go and do your job. And— oh, one other element. People are making more— some people are making more money on unemployment than they are working. And they've had the opportunity, and/or they've had the opportunity, even if they were not at the level of that income bracket, to say, oh, I can work from home. And now let me just really sit back and take a look at what's going on.

Mm-hmm.

in my career. What is causing this great breakdown? Is it all the things I mentioned? Is it none of the things I mentioned? Where are we going with this?

I think it's all the things you've mentioned. And there are some other things I would say that there's— there are 2 other aspects of the Great Resignation. We're resigned to certain things in addition to what you said. So one of them relates directly to what you said, which is, so when— if people are making more money on unemployment than they were working 1 or 2 jobs, the problem is not with the unemployment. The problem was that we weren't paying people enough before. And so I think what the Great Resignation often— what it refers to is what you were talking about, is that With the pandemic, people had the opportunity to take a breath and take a step back and say, is this really what I want? Is this— am I really being treated fairly? Might there be other opportunities? So I think that's much more the driver than the fact that they would get some money on unemployment. I don't think that's unrelated, but it's— that's not the driver of this. Because people get unemployment, have always gotten unemployment, and that didn't lead them to massively start leaving their jobs. I think it's that people could step back and one, see that they were not living necessarily the life that they wanted to live, that it was way out of balance. The other thing is with the pandemic, you saw the lower economic part of society sinking and the higher economic part of society soaring. And people would look at that and say, I don't want to watch TV shows about millionaires' houses. I want someone to let me have a living wage.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, one second. I'm going to push back on that one because I think that the pandemic was more of an equalizer than we realized. Yes, the lower economic level had difficulty getting good healthcare. But death is death, and it hit the higher level as well.

That's true. I was just talking about the economic part of it. Because the Great Resignation that you were talking about is really about quitting jobs and feeling like the economic system needs revamping. Right.

Okay.

And you're seeing companies starting to respond to that. The question is whether it will continue, whether it will spread, but I think certainly in the United States, if you travel around the world, people expect to pay more to go out to a restaurant and eat and to have the servers not be dependent on tips but getting more of a decent wage. When they pay for goods that they go They don't go to a super discount store where workers were paid next to nothing to produce those goods so I could get it for 50% off or 75% off. And so in the US, we're expecting the pressure of the economic system to work in such a way that it pushes wages down or leads to automation so that people lose their jobs entirely. And that we can get bargains as, as a result of that. I think what the Great Resignation is related to is people stepping back a little bit and saying, hold on a second, maybe that's not really what I want.

But wait, wait, wait, wait. I love this conversation. Here's, here's the other part, though. And I don't have the answer. When you're in Europe, And your service at a restaurant, you expect to pay more for the service at the restaurant. The restaurant, it's a vicious circle because you're paying more, but you get better service, right?

Not necessarily, actually. Not necessarily, because the people in in in Europe, I once left a tip for a waitress. In, in Europe because she was just a fabulous waitress. She literally came running out after me as I left the restaurant and gave me back my money and said, I make a good living. I'm not your servant. And I said, I'm shocked. I was just trying to say thank you because you were so wonderful. I didn't mean to insult you. It's a different way of thinking about it.

Well, okay, when you put it that way, yes. And, and what I'm trying to get at is, is, is that— how can I word this— is that because they're paid better, the service is better?

But the service isn't necessarily better, because in many cases in the US, the service is, is as good or better because they have to be attentive to get that tip. In Europe, they don't have to be attentive to get that tip. Now, that doesn't mean the service is worse, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's better either. So I'd like to switch a little bit and talk about a different kind of Great Resignation, which is related to this, but it's a completely different angle.

Mm-hmm.

Which is— and this brings us back to the C-suite. in that I think there's been a great resignation over a number of years among corporate leaders.

Yes.

And the great resignation is saying, you know, it's so hard to both focus on making the most for my shareholders and at the same time taking care of my employees and taking care of our clients and our customers in a way and being mission-driven, that's just so hard. Okay, I'm going to resign myself to just focusing on us making as much money as we can, and on the other things, I'm just going to get by.

Yes.

So I'm just going to treat customers so that they're not up in arms. I'm just going to treat employees so that they don't leave, and so forth. And I think that's another kind of great resignation that we need that has sort of surfaced when you read things like what's been happening at Facebook. That I think it used to be— now, this was not across the board, but it used to be when you got into the C-suite, you had a sort of community responsibility. C could stand not only for chief, but for community. And it was like you were the one who was the steward of the organization. You were the one who was the steward of the mission and the norms and the standards and the responsibility to society. And it wasn't just— the easier job is just to make money. And so I think just as we want to bring people back to work, by giving them more balance in what they need. I think we need to bring our C-suite executives back to the work that used to be part of that job, which is to say, yeah, it's really tough to juggle profits with employees, with customers, with societal mission. But the reason you're in the C-suite is because you're up to it to do the tough job. And don't resign yourself to doing it in an easier way. Take on the mantle of that tougher job. And by the way, this is part of what we teach in Delta Leadership and at Duke in terms of what does leadership really involve. It involves the notion of if you're a leader, you don't have to be in the C-suite. Wherever you're leading, you have to ask yourself, Am I balancing and taking seriously all of these various constituencies and responsibilities that I take? If I'm going to lead, that's part of what I'm taking on and saying that that I'm a leader. And and by the way, it's just as as much of a resignation because I also spent a number of years in social service and government sectors. If you're in those sectors and you say, we can't worry about whether this is an efficient way to operate and so forth, we're mission-driven. You want to be sustainably mission-driven. It means you've got to run an organization like it's as serious a business as a profit-making business. It's just the profits are going back into the service, but you still want to be sustainable. And I think whether it's you're just focusing on the profits or you're just focusing on the mission and you're saying, I can't deal with all of it. That's resigning yourself. So that's the Great Resignation. And I think we need to encourage our leaders to not resign themselves to that, but to recognize they're up to the task of doing more than that.

You know, there are a lot of points that you said that I agree with and a lot that I don't. And it's not that I don't, it's that I could see a different perspective. And, and so, yes, there was a time where the C-suite meant something very different, much the same as the presidency of the United States.

Yep.

You know, I think of when Barack was president, Mr. Obama was president. I just did it myself. You would never call him the prez, right?

Right.

You would never openly trash our president. You may have a different political view, but not to the point of, you know—

I actually, I actually don't think that's historically correct.

Well, you're not agreeing with anything I'm saying, so let me finish.

That's why I like you so much. We have fun disagreeing as well as agreeing.

But I just think that generally speaking, there was more respect for the office of the president before. There was dirty laundry. There will always be dirty laundry in any aspect of politics or otherwise. I'm not naive to say that that's not the case. But I think that we didn't take it to the extreme that we're taking it to as we do now. Now, with corporate, We had some good leaders at the top, like we've had some amazing presidents.

Yeah.

It doesn't matter what your political view is. You know, America is a survival country. We will survive different viewpoints. But I ask myself, at what point did the breakdown of the corporate the C-suite level start to demolish? Was it with Tyco and Enron? Was it greed? What was it that started the Great Resignation? Because it just didn't start with, uh, okay, I have to report numbers to the board.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, that's why you're paid the big bucks, to make sure those numbers are there and correct. But something else happened along the way, and that's the part I think I'm disagreeing with you on, but I'm not sure.

I, um, I wouldn't disagree with what you just said, except that I think if you go back in history, um, the United States— all of the good things about the United States and all of the bad things about the United States You can trace all the way back.

Absolutely.

And, you know, it is not like during the Industrial Revolution corporations didn't behave badly.

Oh, they did.

You know, it is not as though if you go back to the way— well, the origin of the terms yellow journalism and muckraking, you know, you can go way back to the beginning of the country And it is not as though politicians were treated with respect all the time. It is not as though business leaders always acted in the public interest. But there were many that did. And there were many that— and you're right also, I think, that the office of the president, the degree to which corporations have been held in high regard and financial institutions have been held in high regard. They change over time. You know, during periods of time, the church— you know, one indicator that—

Yes.

That people have said you can tell what is the most important institution in a society by where are— what are the tallest buildings. And so when the churches were the tallest buildings, that was the iconic institution. When government buildings were the tallest buildings, that was the iconic one. When financial institutions built the tallest buildings. So, you know, we've, we've cycled through a lot of this historically, which to me means the seeds are there for us to reclaim the best of ourselves. Now, the seeds are also there for us to go with the worst of ourselves.

Yes. We have to be careful about that.

But we do have that best of ourselves there. And resignation, on one hand, can be a sort of nonverbal kind of protest.

Yes.

That's the kind you raised originally, where in a sense employees are voting with their feet just as customers vote with their pocketbook. The corporate one that I mentioned is an example of where When we put certain kinds of, I think, unfortunate pressures on C-suite, but leaders throughout the organization, we can get these dysfunctional versions of the ego where the ego is focused on a silo mentality. If it's good for my company, then that's all that matters. If it's good for my department or my team, that's all that matters. You know, everything can be burning down around us, but if we're okay, I'm not going to go help others. Or we can really ask, wherever I am, how can I make it better more generally? Now, that doesn't mean I neglect my job. It doesn't mean I neglect my silo, if you will. But it means that's not all I'm there for. I'm there for more. Now, by the way, the last piece which is really outside— I'm not going to go into detail on this, but it's outside what we've been talking about— is I think the third great resignation which is going on, and it's related to the pandemic, but it's also related to politics, is I think there's a real danger in the US but also around the world that people can resign themselves to societies going in a direction that they don't want it to go, but they feel they're powerless to do anything about.

Oh, yes.

And I don't think we can afford the luxury, regardless of, you know, where we are on the political spectrum and so forth. We can't afford the luxury of just saying, man, things are really bad in this way and this way and this way. There's nothing I can do about it. We all have to find ways we can do things about it, whether it's joining groups, getting involved in politics, solving the problems that we see or solving some of those problems with the organizations that we're part of. I think all 3 kinds of resignation have positive sides and negative sides. The bigger resignation I was just talking about is also us taking a collective breath in for the moment and just then letting it out and saying, you know, I need a moment. We've gone through a pandemic. politics has been crazy. I see all of these problems in the world, whether it's with climate or whatever. I need to take a moment. Okay, we take the moment, but then we've got to reengage. Just as corporate leaders and government leaders maybe need to take a moment and say, we've got to be sustainable, we've got to strengthen what we are, but then they've got to reengage in more of the complexity. And I think Hopefully workers will be able to reengage again as we provide the kind of support that's needed for them to fruitfully reengage.

Yes, and yes. And there's another part. The other part is a feeling of There's nothing I can do about this. I'm not going to take time off to step off the world. And I don't mean that literally.

Yeah.

But I'm going to focus on my silo only, because that I can do something about.

And I think that is, that is perfectly legitimate. And sometimes that's all that one can cope with.

Yes.

Right? You've got to be realistic. But I think it's also a matter of asking ourselves, could I do just a little bit more? Or, um, if I'm doing this, is that allowing someone else to do the other things? Or am I just either assuming if I do this and I'm happy with that, that other things will somehow magically be taken care of? And they're not my problem.

Yes, that's really what I'm saying. Yeah.

And I don't— and I don't think we have the luxury. Now, by the way, it's perfectly fine for people to say, I don't want to be a leader, I don't want to be responsible for influencing other people, I don't want to be responsible for solving big problems. Well, can we solve a smaller problem? You know, can there be a family in my community that's in need And I can make sure that I help them be a little less in need. That's all I can handle. Okay, I'm making a difference. So deciding where you'd make a difference is, I think, an important— am I looking— I walk into a meeting in the days when we walked into meetings in our offices. I walk into a meeting and I see there are certain people who are sort of being excluded from the in-group. Do I take the extra effort to go over and include them? And the higher my status, the more I should feel responsible for doing that because I can actually make a difference.

I like how you're putting this because— I love how you're putting this because we often think of making a difference has to be grandiose.

No.

It could be a small thing.

Yes, small things add up.

Just be observant. And then my advice is be observant and then select what you feel you want and can contribute to. Right.

And you've got— just as you're trying to be, in a sense, kind to the world and to other people, you got to be kind to yourself.

Oh, yes.

And you can't— it doesn't help if you burn yourself out. It doesn't help if you're now taking your corporation and you're trying to be a do-gooder and all of that. And as a result, the whole corporation goes out of business. That's not helping, right? But, but it's, it's a question of asking, do I have a little bit more bandwidth than I might think? Is there something I could stop doing and it wouldn't really matter, and it's not even something I enjoy that much, um, and do a little something else? And by the way, we get tremendous enjoyment out of helping other people.

We do.

So why don't we take advantage of that and get a little more enjoyment?

We do. Hey, I see that we've got a question that comes in from Beth. And how are we doing? We don't have much time. Oh my God, how did we use up this time so fast? Okay. Beth says, how do you coach people to be better stewards and leaders?

Ah, so actually, there are 2 things I would say. One is, we have a very particular approach to leadership. And one part of it, which applies both to how you help others be leaders and how you help coaches coach leaders, is one of the biggest things I think is overlooked, and it applies to all the kinds of resignation we've been talking about, is do I really understand the people I'm trying to lead or the people I'm trying to coach in their terms? Do I respect them in their terms? And just because I do understand or respect them, it's not enough. Do they know that I do? How am I letting them know? The second thing is, if I really understand them, have I understood what about this complex, crazy, threatening world that we're in that they may not grasp that I do? There's something we call contextual leadership, and we have a responsibility in leading others. And by the way, coaches are leading those they're coaching to help them. I call this the sense-making function of leadership. It's interesting, as we've measured this around the world, societies all over the world, different kinds of organizations, different levels, every single group we've worked with Contextual leadership is the lowest performance rating that people get.

So for our audience, define contextual leadership.

Think of it as making sense of the world for those you're leading, helping them understand why do we do things the way we do, how— why are we structured, why do we have the rules that we do, where do they fit in and where does everybody else fit in, what's our strategy. How do we have a shared sense of identity when we have a diverse group of people? So helping people understand what we do, what their place is in what we do, and what others' place is in what we do. And so that is universally the lowest rated. It's rated highly in importance but low in performance. And it's just people don't explain. And the more power you have, the less you explain when you actually need to explain more. Now, the last thing I would say is we're about to launch a program at Delta Leadership based on our framework. And this— we have a 360 instrument that measures this framework. And we're developing a coach certification program For those who are interested in learning about the framework, there's a self-guided kind of approach. And then for those who are interested in becoming certified coaches in our 6 Domains of Leadership framework, there's the program that's going to be launching next month to help people get that. And so we've been working for 15 years on this framework, and it's— It's really quite comprehensive and it doesn't— it complements a lot of the other leadership frameworks that are out there. So this coaching certification could be a complement to others. But that's how we do it. We try to get people to focus on the things they typically overlook. Understanding is one of them. Understanding the situation as well as feeling understood. And I think in today's world where we're so highly polarized, having us lead across these polarized divides. The framework would be very helpful in some of these things. How do you build trust with those you disagree with? How do you come to some agreement and make sense of things in a way where we're not arguing about what the facts are, but we can actually grapple with what's real? I think we need stronger leadership, and a lot of people in leadership positions need, um, more directed, um, and engaging and applicable, practical coaching.

They need a roadmap. They need a roadmap.

Absolutely.

So, so here's my putting you on the spot. Will you come and talk about your new program to the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches?

Sure, I'd love to.

Gee, I have a contact there.

I have, I have had some recent engagement with that group as well, as you know. I would be happy to do that.

I would love to have you come and talk about contextual leadership and what you're doing to identify it and how can we help because At ACEC, we support coaches in being enterprise-wide business partners.

Yep.

And to be able to help our clients understand the importance of this kind of communication.

Right.

Because they're used to the sort of do what I say communication.

Yep.

And not out of meanness, but for the sake of time and making money. I don't have time to explain it. We need to make money. I know this will work. Do it.

As you know, I've probably heard this many, many times. But let me just say, I think the key there is what you're describing is the appropriate exercise of authority and management roles. It's inappropriate for the leadership part of their role. And there are 3 different things that in the ideal world, they dovetail and they really reinforce each other. But it's— so it's not, do I give direction at the exclusion of inviting people in and influencing them, or do I influence them? And, you know, ideally these things will work together. But a lot of times it's an either/or. And sometimes this gets back to our earlier conversation. If you're going to lead rather than direct, if I'm going to try to influence you, if I have the authority over you, do I have to beat you over the head? If I just clear my throat, you're going to listen to what I'm going to say. Why not leverage that as a tool to then be able to lead you rather than to boss you around?

Because there's confusion in terms of whether— what comes first, the chicken or the egg? And so as a result, I think leaders just pick a side and stay with it.

And by the way, the chicken and egg metaphor is a great one because they both come first depending on where you're starting. You can start with leadership, you can start with authority. One, one either births the other or it doesn't.

Oh, we're gonna end the show in agreement. That's not gonna be good. We won't be able to have part 2.

There you go. And by the way, I did have to point out that one reason it worked so well is that your fingernails and my glasses match.

And my other glasses. Your glasses match my other glasses.

Yeah, there you go. There you go.

I love that you were aware of that. That's fabulous. Well, we've run over. Oh, actually, we have— now we're right on time. Yes. This has been such a great conversation. I want everybody to go and reach out to Sy and find out about his— the 6 domains of leaders.

6 domains of leadership. If they, if they look up Delta Leadership, And go to the website, you can see there's a variety of things there, including a bunch of materials. And we have a book on the 6 Domains of Leadership and a bunch of educational and coaching support materials there.

Can you— I know we're running late, but can you just tell us what the 6 domains are?

Sure. The foundation of it— there are 3 foundational domains. We have it in the shape of a triangle or a pyramid. The 3 foundational elements are personal leadership, where you need to let people know who you are in order to have credibility in terms of your capabilities, your authentic style, your values, and so forth. The second is relational leadership. So do you convey to them that you understand them, respect them, that you care about their welfare, and that you'll treat them fairly? And the result of that is trust. The third is contextual leadership, where you're trying to convey to them a coherent picture of how things work, why our identities are shared, and out of that comes a shared sense of community. Building on that is inspirational and supportive leadership, where inspirational leadership is not about them thinking you're cool. But rather about you getting them to raise their aspirations. And you do that by expecting excellence and innovation and by conveying enthusiasm and optimism. And then supportive leadership is not about making them just so feel so secure that they're lazy. The goal of supportive leadership is to get them to take initiative. And how do you do that? You make sure they know if they put in their best effort, they're going to be protected. And they're going to be taken care of, that you give them honest feedback about what their capabilities are and are not so that they know how to take that initiative appropriately. And then the last piece is responsible leadership that sits at the top. And the effect of that is they internalize a sense of stewardship. And the way you do that is by conveying to them How do we balance competing interests, long-term, short-term, employees and customers? We talked about financial and mission-driven. How do we— how can I as a leader act as an ethical role model? And how can I demonstrate this broader sense of responsibility so that those I'm leading will internalize that and they themselves will feel that sense of stewardship? Those are the 6 domains. Personal, relational, contextual, underpinning, inspirational, and supportive. And then the capstone is responsible leadership.

This is good stuff. Can you just spell out the website so people can jump on it?

Delta, D-E-L-T-A, leadership, one word, dot com.

Dot com. Okay, deltaleadership. Really good stuff. I encourage you to look at it. Beth is asking about contextual. We answered that. Is it that part of your model that you— is that— I need my other glasses. These are my show glasses, and I can't read with these. How do coach people believe? Is that part of your model that you teach? I think I think she's talking about contextual. Yes.

We teach all of these things because, because the model is behavioral. It's not based on traits. It's not based on position. It's, it's behavioral. So if you have or do not have charisma, you can inspire if you know what behaviors to engage in. If you're a great orator or you're not, you can, you can effectively engage in contextual leadership if you know what you need to communicate. To help make sense of things to people. All of these are behavioral, and they can be learned, and you can get better at them. And you can use it— it's very effective in coaching, in diagnosing why leaders hit bumps in the road, why they may even hit a wall, and where the breakthroughs can be. So we have a 360 instrument, and people find it really quite a revelation sometimes. And even if it's something they already knew, it helps them really pinpoint because we have these 6 domains and then within each there are subdomains which I just described very briefly. Within those subdomains there are very specific behaviors. And so people could say you're a great listener but you don't communicate out very clearly, or you're a great orator but you don't listen to me, and you know where you need to focus your attention.

Beth says, thank you, great model. I will go and find more. Great for coaching. Thank you. You know, this is why Sim received the Thought Leaders Award from the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches and the MECO Institute. He's just brilliant, and he's so engaging. We are lucky to know Sim.

Thanks. I feel the same way, and I feel really honored to have been here. And it was really a lot of fun to talk with you, CB, as it always is.

Oh, thank you. I love talking to you. You know, it's so hard to, to find people that you can disagree, agree, disagree, agree, and just go along. And, you know, I learned so much from you in just disagreeing with you. I want to be in one of your classes.

Well, and by the way, the point of leading people is to not get them to copy what you have. It's to get them to be clearer about what they have. And so I think that's what this is all about. We should be leading each other all the time. And, and I think that's what a dialogue like this is all about.

I love it. We've got to do a television show together. This television needs some help these days. Sim, thank you so much. We did run over, and you know what? I don't care. We're 6 minutes over, but this has been so rich in conversation. I'm so appreciative to you for coming on the show.

Thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you. Well, audience, you know, write in if you have any other questions. I will pass them through to Sim or contact Sim directly. He's gonna kill me for saying—

No, that's fine.

Through his website. I won't give out his direct email. Thank you so much. Bye, everybody. Oh, see you next— I'll see you on Thursday. Wait. Yeah, see you on Thursday. I think we're on this Thursday, but you know the story. Follow me on LinkedIn because, you know, I move like the wind, so you've got to keep up with me. Bye. Bye.

Thanks.