#80: Leadership Development for the Future

You're listening to the Proteus Leader Show with Erika Andersen, where you'll get practical tools and insights for leading and managing and staying ready for the future. Erika is the founding partner of Proteus, a firm that focuses uniquely on leader readiness. A nationally known executive coach and bestselling author, you may already know her as one of the most popular leadership bloggers on Forbes.com. Ready for something you can use today? Here's Erika.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Proteus Leader Show. My guest today is Laurie Maison, the co-founder, president, and chief coaching officer of Sounding Board Inc., which offers a tech-driven, human-centric approach to leadership development. In Laurie's 25 years as an executive coach, she has provided tens of thousands of coaching sessions to top leaders, from Fortune 100 CEOs to venture-backed startup executives. As a go-to leadership development firm for forward-looking companies, including Chevron, Sprint, Citibank, IntelliKeen, and Tapjoy, Maizan and her team develop capabilities that produce immediate positive business results. Maizan packages these strategies in her new book, Leadership Revolution: The Future of Developing Dynamic Leaders. So welcome to the show, Laurie.

Thank you, my pleasure.

I'm, I'm so happy to have you. We've already spoken a little bit before we started recording, and I understand that you're on a mission to bring leadership development practice into the 21st century. You've already talked a little bit about how necessary that is. Yeah, and, uh, I, I know that you're insights are going to be so valuable to our listeners, many of whom are leaders and are just left to their own devices all too often. So, so, you know, let's, let's leap into this. So the first question I want to ask you is, you've said, and I love this, that you see leadership coaching as this era's secret weapon. That's such a great line. Can you tell us more about that?

Yeah, for sure. Um, I think in past At times, people have used a lot of generic kind of out-of-the-box skill training as the approach to develop leaders. And although it can offer some fundamental information, it just doesn't go nearly enough for our current environment. So I think coaching is really the thing, and specifically for leaders, that accommodates all the changing dynamics that we have currently going. It's the the only development approach that's individualized, personalized, completely context-specific, you know, in real time, in real life, ongoing mindset-shifting, behavior-changing, accelerated development practice out there. And so I'm kind of like, why wouldn't people use this? The ROI is just amazing, like anywhere from 200 to 700%, and the impact on development is in the mid-double digits in just like a 6-month timeframe. So there, you know, it has everything going for it. And I call it a secret weapon just because in the past people didn't always want anyone to know they had a coach. So it was kind of like held behind closed doors a bit.

Yeah.

And yet those leaders that had a coach really accelerated not only their development, their impact, but their career path.

Yes. I mean, it would be hard for me to agree with you more. And we've, you know, we, us Proteus and our coaches have been coaching now for 30-plus years, 35 years almost. And we've seen wonderful impacts. The question that we always get, and then I'm sure you get when you say things like this is, but how do you scale it? How, if you have 5,000 leaders in a big organization that you want to help to develop? How does coaching translate into many, many people?

Yeah, that's actually been my mission out there with my co-founders. So, um, I think it scales by having a coaching philosophy, for one, so that all the leaders in an organization get kind of the same focus for their leadership development. They're not just having independent coaches that all think something differently. I think it also really helps to have sets of capabilities and capacities for the organization that you're leading towards. But then really, technology is going to be the winner in scaling coaching. So like, we developed a coaching matching algorithm that creates matches in 95% of the cases. Like, back in the day, you and I started around the same time, and I worked at a lot of large organizations, and the coaching success rate was under 50%. And that was really because HR professionals were trying to, like, source coaches and match the coaches to the leaders, and they didn't— they were just guessing. They didn't have any methodology for that.

Yeah.

So now we have specific methodologies that result in very high-level matching where, like, our, our participants are like, wow, how did you find me the Perfect coach. Um, and then you have technology to really do the engagement management, you know, so that you're really helping people get the most, um, from their coaching. And then you have that technology that shows you all the measurements, you know, the engagement information, the development information, the organizational information. So you can really track the impact of, of the coaching work that you're offering.

Oh, that's great. And then how do you incorporate Group work into your coaching?

Yeah, we have both the technology and the services offering around individual and group coaching. Um, and that group coaching technology is really great because it allows easy scheduling. It allows the sharing of content. It includes a chat function with your group. Um, it has the group video because it's all virtual. So group video function then, and then again, All the measurement and tracking that goes with that.

That's great.

So actually, the group coaching has grown very dramatically over the last couple of years. I think organizations are starting to find out, like, that peer learning with a, with a coach, facilitators, is much more impactful than some kind of online individual education.

Yes. Yeah, we've found that combination of Um, personal, group, online, in person. And, and that skill development, when it's within the frame of an individualized coaching journey, can be great in a group. I mean, if you've— if you're one of a group of people who are being individually coached, but you all need to learn how to delegate better, to learn that as a group can be very powerful.

Yeah, I think it's— it actually supplements even the coach-directed learning because now you have people in your own organization who are sharing their stories and the things they're learning. And it's, it's contextually driven.

Oh, that's wonderful. This is very exciting. So, so then let's go to the dark side. So what are, in your words, the 5 leadership development practices we need to kick to the curb?

Yeah, well, I start out in the book talking about like when I started my career and there really was a very narrow view of what a leader is. And it often came down to a stated number of traits. Where if you have these 5 traits, you'll be a leader. And what I found out is that was completely not true.

Right.

That a lot of variety of styles can be fantastic leaders. And the goal is really finding your strength and your authentic approach. And it doesn't have to be the same as anyone else. And I coached a lot of CEOs and I have not found any of them doing the same thing. And yet Their companies are successful. So one, there's not like a limited set of traits that make everyone a good leader.

A kind of one-size-fits-all definition of leadership.

Yeah. And by the way, most of those were identified in the last century were based on male leaders.

For sure.

Not the diversity of leaders that we have today.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Male leaders in very different organizations that were You know, more static, more vertical, all, you know, yeah, all that stuff.

Yes, 100%. I think the second thing is just only the focus on skill development. You know, the training industry's been there for the last 50 years, and I think most people know the impact can be helpful but not very deep or transferable or exponential. So I think we have to go beyond basic skill development, and that's why we talk about capabilities and capacity. Capacities, capabilities being sets of skills you use together, capacities being the ability to use all those sets in very unique, ever-changing, dynamic environments.

Yeah, I really agree with that. And what we've found in our coaching, especially over the last 10 or 15 years, is that the underlying framing of mindset becomes so important when you're trying to put things together. And the thing that you're talking about, about capacities, Is that how you think about a situation, then that helps you make the proper choices about what skills and abilities you're going to use and bring to bear in that particular situation. So we do a lot of work.

Yes. I mean, my point of view is the best coaching is when people are thinking partners. They're actually helping that leader executive develop a new way of thinking. And then Attaching behavior to that new way of thinking so that there's alignment there lets that behavior stick versus like a rote behavior process where the thinking doesn't match the behavior. Under stress, that behavior just drops away right away.

Oh, I love that, Laurie. I think that's exactly right. When behaviors arise out of a thought process, then they're, they're solid. They have depth. Yeah.

Yeah, I think like you mentioned earlier about delegating and new managers, like it doesn't matter how much you tell a new manager they should delegate if they're still thinking in their head like, I can do it better than them, or I can do it faster than them, or let me just get this done so it's out. They're still not going to delegate even if they know how, because—

Yes.

Thinking doesn't match. Yeah, the behavior.

Totally agree. Okay, so the second, the second leadership development practice is just only focusing on skills. Yeah.

Yeah, got it. I would say the third is, um, getting rid of the old standard 360 assessments. They're again geared towards traits of leadership there that were developed in the last century. Almost all the big assessment companies that I know are out there were developed in the last century. They're often point-in-time, so it's like one time in 1 or 2 or 3 years.

Yeah.

It's a linear rating scale, so that doesn't really measure capacity well. And, you know, in a fast-paced environment, just having that once in a while really isn't that useful. Um, and having, having debriefed a gazillion of those, I find like you get a 40-page report and really you're able to pull out like 1 or 2 things out of that that you can actually use for the development of the leader. So it's a lot of information and work without a lot of impact.

Totally agree. The last thing you said especially, I've seen so many times where people just get this overwhelming deluge of, you know, as you say, 30 or 40 pages of feedback. It's like, what, what does a human being do with that? Nothing. They just put it aside because it's not— yeah, it's not applicable.

Yeah, a lot of those 360 reports up on the shelf in the office.

Yeah.

For sure, not that useful. And related to that, I would say the 4th item is the old-style ranked or old-style performance evaluations. Again, it's like a point-in-time kind of thing. It doesn't take into account primacy and recency effect, where leaders tend to think of the first thing or the last thing that happened, not a continuous developmental path. And I actually think a lot of organizations around 2010 were trying to get rid of performance evaluations, but there wasn't really anything to put in its place. So they kind of started taking them back again.

Yeah.

I heard even ranked performance evaluations are making a comeback, and I'm like, ah, no, that's not good. So I would say those are out, and finding some new ways to create alignment between the manager and their employee and have it be a joint responsibility for the employee's success is the new way to go.

Yeah. And I think that what you just said is critical because often people in organizations try and get rid of something that's not working anymore, but there's nothing to replace it with. So rather than have nothing, they just kind of slop back to the thing that there was before. And I think that's right. I think we all know that What do we want? We want a way to help align, as you say, the employee and the manager with the goals of the organization and make sure that all those 3 things are lined up and that the manager can support the employee to do a better job of doing what the organization needs that person to do while growing themselves. But it's— we don't have— we're not good at that yet.

Yeah, we're not good at that. And there's a lot of research that shows that Promotion decisions or talent decisions are actually not made in relation to the performance evaluation. So it's not really having any tangible impact. It's painful for everybody. And an alignment approach might work much better because the number one reason employees give for leaving a job is their manager.

Yes.

So if they're having a better alignment with their manager, then that Ultimately should lead to less, you know, departures, more retention.

Well, that's good. Yeah. And then what's your last one?

My last one is the one we started with a little bit, which is not using technology. So because we're like the human potential people, the leader potential people, we think it all has to be done by human beings. And I'm a big advocate of human interaction as the catalyst for development. But there's so much that can be automated through technology, and you see that in every other arena, and you just don't see it that much in the people arenas. And it's just very basic, like an HRIS system where you're just tracking. But there's now so much technology around development that I think it's really important for organizations to start to look at the value and impact of that.

All right. So we always promise our listeners practical takeaways. So all, all these people are listening to you now. What can they do to best support their own leadership development, like today?

So for the individual, I really suggest doing a bit of a self-assessment and identifying for yourself what's your big leap. The first chapter in the book is The Big Leap. And at Sounding Board, we use that as a way to start our coaching engagements. And interestingly, what you think your big leap is, is probably not what you think, right? That they— you're thinking of a step. You're not thinking of a leap. So it's really helpful to have a coach to help you identify the leap. And in the book, I get— I give some ways to help identify that leap.

Okay.

Okay. So for leaders, you know, hey, don't just wait for someone to help you or take little baby steps. You, you can make a big leap by yourself or with peers or with a coach. And I would say the other thing is what I think coaches provide often is identifying your habitual patterns. So we're all, you know, kind of pattern-oriented. Our brain is very habituating, and we tend to kind of get stuck in the way we do things, and we might not even notice it. So asking your colleagues, your friends, your family members, like, what are the regular patterns that you see me doing? And then doing a self-assessment there. Is that the pattern I want to do? Is that the pattern that's limiting me? Am I always talking about how I don't have enough time? Like, maybe I need to have a different pattern there, right? So identifying those patterns, even the ones we can't see, and then shifting Yeah.

Great. Oh, Laura, thank you so much. I— we could— we— this could be a much longer conversation, but we always promise short and sweet. So I so support what you and your colleagues are doing. I think especially now is so necessary. And I'm a big fan of millennials and now Gen Z coming into this, the workplace, and they— I really want them to get the kind of development they need to just power our future, right?

Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

And listeners, if you'd like to learn more about the support that Laurie and her team can offer leaders, just go to soundingboardinc.com, her website, where you can also order her new book that we've been talking about, Leadership Revolution: The Future of Developing Dynamic Leaders. And to find out how Proteus also supports leaders to be more conscious and more effective, you can go to proteusleader.com. Click on Topics and choose Accepted Leader. So thank you so much, Laurie.

Thank you. What a fun conversation.

Really fun. Thank you for listening, everyone. And until next time, here's to creating the life you truly want.

We hope you're feeling better equipped to create the career, the business, and the life you want. For more insights and tools for leadership and management, Join us at theproteusleader.com. Have an excellent day. And thanks for listening.