Building High-Trust Teams with Isabelle Dumont

Hello everyone! Welcome to the NeuroLeadership Edge podcast, brain science for bold leaders ready to master their mind and own their voice. I'm your host, Claire Hayek. Welcome back! You all know me. I'm a neuroleadership expert and the founder of Mind Soul Purpose Team Building. So, here's the thing. This is what's happening today. Have you ever watched a micromanager crush performance in real time?

Yes.

Well, our guest today, our leader guest, Isabelle Dumont, she did. And she turned that very annoying pain into a strategy playbook for high-trust teams. And she's here to tell us all about it. I would love to introduce you to Isabelle. She has led market-facing activities at startups, fast-growth, and public companies. She is currently an advisor to the next generation of AI-first startups and a CMO at Cybersecurity Canon, a nonprofit CISO network. She was CMO at Denexus, a cyber risk management company, and SVP of marketing at Cowbell Cyber, a cyber insurance company. I mean, we're so privileged to have her here with us. Hi, Isabel, how are you?

I'm doing great. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Claire.

Thanks for joining. I'm really excited to have you here today so you could share with us your experience and your story. So listeners, right now, basically, you're going to leave with strategies on how to replace control with trust without losing accountability. So if you're a leader struggling with micromanagement and you're not really sure how to get out of it because you're thinking, If I'm not micromanaging, nothing's gonna get done, you know? Well, Isabel has her story to share and you know, I'll say a thing or two about neuroscience like I always do to help you throughout the process. So Isabel, let me ask you, I would love for you to share one, I guess like challenge or a moment that you were such under so much pressure that it fundamentally shaped how you lead today. So please tell us your story. We're all ears.

Yeah, I'm going to try to not refer to any specific names, but you can basically experience micromanagement in 2 different ways. One is you are being micromanaged by your manager, or you are micromanaging your people. And that's probably some of the things I did when I was an early manager and didn't get the results I wanted. But not that long ago in my career, I already had a couple of decades of experience. I found myself reporting to someone who was micromanaging every single item, not just for me, but I saw it, saw him doing it for my peers. And it almost like I saw that killing any kind of motivation, initiative. Hard work that I was doing, but I also saw that in my peers. It was just like, okay, why do we even want to take an initiative if we know that everything is going to be overwritten by our common manager who already knew how things were to be done, how he wanted them to be done? There was just like only one way to do everything. Hmm. I never thought I would experience that that late in my career.

Okay. And so how did that shape basically how you lead today? I'm assuming that must have done something to you in a way that pushed you maybe to change or not even change and go, oh God, I'm never doing that. If I ever manage teams, I will never do this for my team because I don't like how I felt.

You know, one of the key words that, that I've heard from several managers is keep in mind How you make people feel when you have an interaction with them. That's what they're going to remember, not necessarily the action item or anything, but how you're going to make them feel. Are you going to make them feel better or worse or motivated or demotivated and so on? So that's kind of, to me, that's a little bit the first principle when I enter into, into a discussion with someone.

Right.

The other part is I wanted to, it really helped me rethink how I would manage teams moving forward. And really have that red line as like, oh, I better not micromanage people moving forward because I know what they did to me. And I certainly didn't want to do that to other people. So the way I addressed it is, you know, I, I really had to think about it really hard. And it required a lot of hard work because the way I did it Is I managed to get ahead of that micromanagement boss all the time. So I would, I would, I would give him things before he would ask me questions.

Wow, that must have been exhausting.

That was exhausting until I was able to gain his trust. And, you know, guess what? He was completely exhausted because he had to micromanage 6 or 7 direct reports. So yeah, I mean, I had to get him to Going through a couple of projects was like, I'm ahead of the game. I know what I'm doing. This is what I'm going to do. Here's my plan. Here's what I'm going to do. Here's the results we're going to measure. And after a while, a while, it was like, oh, okay, maybe, maybe I can, I can let you go and give you more, more room.

Yeah. So this is, this is what we observe a lot in, in, in actual mental fitness training. As you all know, I'm a neuroscience certified coach and we talk a lot about The controller aspect in leadership. We all have saboteurs. And one of the common saboteurs that we see with leaders is the controller. Because leaders feel they have— they need to take control of things. To a certain extent, it's a good thing. But when it actually causes a toxic environment, it causes stress in your team, stress on you.

Yeah.

And on others. And you said it, Isabel, you know, your own words. He was probably just as freaked out and as stressed as everybody else around him. It's really not serving that control, you know, saboteur. It's really just completely not working for you. Your brain at this point is working against you. It's not serving you. And what it's doing literally in neuroscience terms is putting people in their amygdala. The amygdala threat, like we don't feel safe. Like Yes. The leader is not feeling safe. Nobody's feeling safe. So, look at you. I mean, you know what you did. I mean, that's crazy for you to have to push yourself so much, right, in order just to have some peace and for him to trust you. So, we want to be able to lead from our prefrontal cortex where the CEO is working and just sending all the signals, a nice orchestra. I mean, it's good music playing instead of shutting down and going straight to the amygdala where the stress, anxiety, fear, and go, go, go survival, fight or flight is operating, which causes stress and everything else. So this is why we need to talk about this. And this is why Isabel is here.

Okay.

I would love to learn a bit more about, you know, you said that you had to, you learned this and you said, I'm never gonna do this. So in a way, we talk also about the gift in positive intelligence. It was a kind of a gift. It wasn't nice, but it was a gift because it taught you something and you were able to draw on that. So, Tell us what kind of mindset shift you, you had to do to help you show up differently as a leader yourself post-experience.

Yes, you covered a lot of concepts here, and I'm just going to use a couple of words. It's like, as a leader, you have to create a safe environment for your team, for your peers, and so on. And a lot of it is based on trust. The thing about trust for me is I always look at it, if you don't interact with people, you're not building anything. So you're going to need to proactively seek some projects. They can be small projects. They can be writing together a page on a website, or you can ask them to review something you've done. But I think ongoing engagement is absolutely critical, which is something that many people avoid when they're being micromanaged.

Mm-hmm.

Is, oh, I just try to avoid as much as possible to talk to this person to find my own peace. While you should probably actually do the opposite. I mean, that's, that's one of the things I did. I kind of overwhelmed with like, hey, and it's this and it's that. There was no room to come back. And say, okay, I'm going to dive into this specific task and tell you exactly how to do it. So that's, that's one aspect of it. The other, the other concept is the concept of buy-in. And again, you can apply that both ways, with your manager or with your team. I think when you take the time to have this initial buy-in from people on work that needs to be done, Even letting them define, like, I've done that with my teams, like working on OKRs, objectives and key metrics and key results.

Okay.

It's like, which project do you want to work on this quarter? What do you want to achieve? How do you want to measure it? So you empower them to control everything about their journey as a professional.

Right.

I actually learned that very early on in my career, and I really, really appreciated that someone was giving me— it's almost like the manager giving the employee some level of trust.

Yeah.

That you're going to come with the right projects. And, and of course, I mean, I've managed internal all the way to former CEO. Obviously they don't have the same spectrum of understanding of what they should be doing. So sometimes you need to hold their hands and suggest things.

Which is normal. I mean, there's different levels of it. But I think you said it, Isabelle, that just coming to them and creating that psychological safety around you can express your opinion. You can tell me what you think. You could actually be involved in what we need to do here. It's not just one way. It's a two-way conversation that I'm open. And the diversity of opinion is good. Of course, if you're new, you're learning, then that might actually put stress on them. So, that might work, you know, work backwards.

Exactly.

But the idea, and I think the motivation behind what you're saying is actually the good intention of creating that space where it's okay to fail. There's no bad idea. It's all good. We're working together. This is not me with all the answers. You need to think for yourself as well. Your input matters. I see you. I recognize you, which puts people in their safe, kind of space, not only psychologically, but they just feel they can express themselves. From what I understand, this is what you practice with your team. What have you heard as far as feedback from your team? I'm sure you do, you know, regular check-ins and evaluations. Have you seen or heard any feedback on that? Have they expressed how they feel about it?

Yeah, they certainly appreciated that. They had some control, you know, it's almost giving them back the control into what they were going to do. And I had really amazing surprises in doing that. So, one, one young lady was an intern. She was scared because she— I think she had not gone through that process. And she's like, I'm not sure what you're really looking for. So I was just like, okay, let me give you 2 or 3. examples and then make it your own. And she loved it because, you know, one of the things that's always hard in tech, in, in any company these days is you feel you keep running all day long. Every day is a marathon. And at the end of the quarter, you're like, what did I achieve? Where did I make a difference? So I give them those tools to actually, at the end of each quarter, they were able to measure. And they have something tangible. So it's also, it also had a huge impact on her satisfaction at work.

Okay.

She knew like, hey, we started in January. You gave me a, you put the bar really high, but I did it. And she was like, wow, I was able to do that because you put it in front of me.

That's amazing. That measuring is so important. I often talk about, you know, You need to see what the improvement. You need to feel what the— you need to feel like that sense of accomplishment. That's a huge boost to safety, to behavior where people feel safe, feel open. They feel they can be themselves. Recognition. The brain loves recognition. So, this is great. And it really puts them in their creative brainwaves, which we talk about alpha waves and beta-1, but mostly alpha. That's huge. By doing that, not only you're bringing your stress level down as a leader, right? You're lowering their stress level. You're both operating from a whole different brainwave. Instead of fight or flight, you're in alpha. You're in a creative, strategic, fun. Fun meaning like, I'm actually enjoying my job, right?

Yes.

And then, of course, what does that do? I mean, it just snowballs into amazing things, right? Positivity, performance, productivity, retention, great ideas. People feel they can come forward with their ideas. And even if it's not good, it's okay. It's okay to fail. It's often overlooked, Isabelle. It's a huge problem, quite honestly. And I think more leaders need to understand that for their own sake. If we only think of the leader listening right now, for your own sake, this will help you help yourself and help others. It's not only For your team.

I have the other side of the story where I did that with one of my, one of the most experienced team members in my team.

Okay.

And she came up with ideas that I could not have thought about myself. So she, she helped me stretch and it's like, oh, well, that's a big, big project. I don't know if we can do that, but it's like, okay, I'll support you. She was like, no, I can do that. I want to do that. That's what I'm motivated to do. It's like, okay, I'll support you. So, we both, we were both growing in that environment.

It's a win-win, right? Yeah, absolutely. It's way overlooked. It's way overlooked. People take that for granted. And they think they need to control everything. But you don't actually. It's one way to sabotage your leadership is to be the controller. Or just like tame it down. That's it, you know, bring it in when only when needed, but just way much more fun. It's more pleasant, you know, for everyone, right? So, I would love to know, What do you wish more leaders understood when it comes to teams and steering their teams through challenges, complexity, disruption, change? I mean, there's so much going on nowadays in every single aspect of the workplace, whether it's AI, whether it's politics.

I'm going to say too, I think communication is very important and knowing what Not enough communication or too much communication is.

Mm-hmm.

If a good attribute of a leader to me is being consistent, you don't want, you know, so I would start all my one-on-ones, for example, asking more or less a personal question about, about the team member, like knowing, hey, you mentioned your kid was in a tournament. How did that go? Just, just make that personal connection, but also at the other end, week over week, being consistent. You don't want your employee to wonder which Isabelle is going to show up at the next meeting.

Got it.

So, and it's, it's a little bit of an art form in that you receive pressure from above and it changes every week. And how much do you filter of that, that you push down to your employees?

Right.

And I think you have to be consistent with that, but also tell them, you know, so that would be my number one, communication, really the right amount of communication is important. The number 2, I would say is I do not like companies that say, oh, we're like a family at the company.

Right. Okay.

And I'm like, you know what? I don't need another mother or father. I love mine. That's totally fine. And I'm a grownup, so I'll make my own decision because guess what? Like they try to create an environment of trust by using those words, but the reality, they're going to deceive the employee at some point. You know, every company goes through ups and downs. And when the company goes through downs, you know, the concept of family doesn't hold together.

No, it doesn't. And you're absolutely right. It's one of these things a lot of companies use. I think less and less are using it because Yes. There's a kind of like a meaning when you say family. And some people, it's so personal when you use that word. Some people have great experiences with family, with their family, and some don't. It's like, why would you want to use that word? And I know that they mean well by saying that. But it's more important to say, let's be authentic. We are not a family. But we're going to work together every day. Let's be friends. Let's get along. We need to get along. So, these are the values that are important for us to everybody be able to thrive and be happy and grow and feel that they're heard, recognized, and that you're growing. You feel that you're not stalling at your job. So, this becomes a pleasant experience as opposed to a job. I have to show up. There's no I have to. I want to. I'm excited about. I actually get along with my teammates. I can't wait for our meeting because there's so much creativity.

Yes.

So, that excitement Motivation. That's how you create it. It has to be intrinsic motivation.

Everything you mentioned is like, think about your employee. Do you want them to be happy at work? Guess what the output is going to be? The output is going to be so much better than if they feel, you know, it's so— it's— I don't know how anybody can argue against that. Yeah.

And you're absolutely right. And I think we cannot talk about this enough, Isabelle. I think we've mentioned this so many times on this podcast in different forms. In different ways and forms. But it always comes back to that psychological safety. It's like, how do you motivate? Nobody cares. They just want their pay. They want their bonus. No, people care. You just have to listen and you have to pay attention. And you have to be that leader that inspires and motivates just by being, by acting, not only with words but with actions. Like, be authentic about it. Don't just say the words they want to hear. And then do the opposite or show up as a different person the next time. Consistency, like you said. So that's great. I love what you're sharing, Isabelle. That's so helpful. And I surely hope that our listeners are also excited about this as much as I am. I'm going to be asking you some questions. These are rapid-fire, bold truth. You have 30 seconds per answer. No pressure, right? So you ready?

Yep. Let's go. All right.

Let's have fun with this. So, as far as you're concerned, what is the biggest myth about leadership in your opinion?

That leaders know everything, that they have the answers. Most of the time they don't. So, help them by coming to them with answers or options.

Okay, great.

Next one.

What's the first sign you look for To know if a culture, a company culture, is slipping?

When you start to see people, employees gossiping, you know, it means that there's a layer, there's a little bit of a lack of transparency, or there's not the right channel to provide feedback. And that starts to, you know, diminish the cohesiveness of a company.

Absolutely. And third one and last one, a book, a conference that rewired the way you lead, that really changed the way you lead. Yeah.

So one of the books that I really enjoyed because it speaks to my value of transparency and good communication, it's called Radical Candor. Radical Candor. Okay. By Kim Scott. The subtitle is Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity.

Okay.

Oh, I think it, to me, it speaks to that book specifically speaks to, at the end of the day, we are human. Feedback. That's another lesson I got along the way is feedback is golden. And there's nothing more frustrating when you try to advance in your career and you're not being given constructive feedback, good, bad, or ugly. So you don't know what you need to do next.

Right.

So like, and that comes with being able to receive genuine feedback, but having the other person willing to give it. And that's, you know, that touched a little bit on a little bit of cultural issue here, because I find that sometimes in the US, we like to have everything nice and polished and happy, be happy people, while I'm used to an environment where people just give you feedback. Because that's, yeah, there's a filter and it can be good and bad both ways, but a mix of the two are actually really good.

It's basically the intention of the feedback.

Yeah.

Improvement. And it's for the good. Nothing toxic about it, but this is how we grow. Authenticity. And we have respect and we share and communicate in a good way, right? Whether it's constructive criticism, good feedback. In a way, feedback I find, whether it's Going for you or against you is good feedback. That's that's my the way I see it.

Yeah, it enables you to move forward, to take step to move forward.

That's how you improve.

More of the same, do less of the same, do something different.

Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Thank you for that. So I would like to, like I always do, throw a listener challenge. So this week, okay, I will challenge you to to run a safe to fail. Feedback round with your team. So, what you do is you invite your team. Ready for this? You're gonna invite your team to grade your micromanagement score from 1 to 10. 10 being like top, top micromanager. You get the gold cup of micromanagement. You can do it anonymous or public.

Okay?

If it's anonymous, if they're uncomfortable and you know it's gonna affect things, maybe it's safer to do it anonymously, especially if you haven't established that psychological safety at work. And I would love to hear from you. Post what you've learned, your score. It takes a lot of courage to fail and want to improve. So if you're comfortable with that, please post your key learning from that survey, or you don't have to put your score. Okay, I get it. And the hashtag #SafeToSoar. Safe to soar. Please do tag me, Claire Hayek, on LinkedIn or whatever platform you're using. And you see there's a QR code here. This is all my socials. You see it, I'm pointing at it. So please do find me, tag me. The whole idea is to really keep learning and growing together. And if you've enjoyed today's show, please do subscribe, hit that subscribe button, or follow again, whichever platform you're on. So you don't miss any of these amazing guests that we have, like Isabelle today, and join our newsletter for weekly insights that really deep dives into, into a lot of subjects. Isabelle, thank you so much for being so generous with your time with us today. Your insights were And I don't know if you wanted to say a word or two.

Yeah, I think don't ignore— as leaders, we all need to grow. So carve a little bit of time in your busy schedule to read a little bit about leadership because we're all going to be challenged. There's a new generation of people coming in that might behave differently and so on. So you constantly have to renew the way you operate. So, you know, take the time to read about leadership and get a new idea, you know, on a regular basis.

Thank you so much, Isabelle. Remember, lead boldly, stay human, people, stay human, and turn every challenge into a gift because they are gifts. We'll see you next time and you have a wonderful rest of the day. Take care.