How to be an Agile Leader with Chuck Mollor

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Foreign.

Has thrown so many challenges our way.

If you're leading a team or you own a business, you will know that.

Retaining staff is incredibly challenging.

The Rise of the Agile Leader can.

You make the Shift? Is a new book written by Chuck Moller. It's a guide for the aspiring mid and seasoned C suite leader and executive that introduces a new leadership paradigm and a roadmap of what makes a great leader and what organizations must do to develop great leaders.

I'm so excited to welcome Chuck Moller to the show.

Chuck, a massive welcome to the Lead on Purpose podcast.

James, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I'm really glad to connect with you. I know you're over in Boston there, so if you didn't make the time to connect and share your message, your really important message for leaders out there. It's just massively appreciated and for the leader that's listening right now. Chuck is an incredible author. He's got a book out, the Rise of the Agile Leader and there's no time like the present to talk about the issues that all of us leaders are experiencing post Covid. And some people are still kind of mid Covid. So Chuck, please tell me before we get into what the book's about and the changes that that can help in a leadership leaders mindset. What got you into this journey of leadership and influencing leaders?

No, great question, James, and thank you for mentioning the book. It was definitely a passion to get sort of my message out there. For me personally, I started and my background is in business, so I've been in management consulting most of my career. And like a lot of people, not only did I advance in my career, but I had my trials and tribulations, especially when I got into management, when I went from a high performing individual contributor to starting to manage teams, then start managing practices, starting building businesses. And I remember that one conversation I had in 1999 where my CEO and mentor pulled me out over to the side and said, chuck, you ever had a 360 assessment? And of course I was foolish enough to ask why he's asking. And of course the reason was because he felt I needed some feedback, which I did. So I ended up getting some good feedback, but some pretty difficult feedback. And of course my mature reaction at the time is, well, screw all these people because look at my great results. And of course I was half kidding.

And he laughed and said, look, you be successful, you're smart, you're hardworking, you get results, you care about people, you're passionate, you're strategic, great qualities. But if you really want to get to the next level in your career, if you really want to really maybe be a CEO one day or just have a larger role now, you really need to understand the leadership part of your job, not just the management part of your job. And of course at the time I didn't really want to hear it, but he said, let's go think about it for a week or two and let's get together again. And I did. I think I got back to him within a couple days. And once I got over my ego and got over myself.

I started realizing he was right and I really did need to understand what leadership was for me. And that really started my journey, James, in terms of understanding leadership for me and really investing in that as a profession, as a skill, as a knowledge. And fast forward, I did become a CEO of a global consulting firm a year and a half later. And then 15 years ago I started my own company. And then as you mentioned, two years ago I wrote a book. So.

That'S my story, how I got into this and how I started focusing on leadership.

It's incredible. And I want to chat a bit about you mentioned your thoughts around leadership. What do you Believe about leadership. When you hear leadership, what are the first things that come to mind for you?

I think it's a few things.

Interestingly, the same characteristics haven't maybe changed in 30 plus years. But leadership is so much more complicated today for a lot of reasons. Social media, the pace of change, consumers and how they purchase, the globalization of economies and markets and consumers and employees, virtual hybrid workforce. We can go on and on. So it's so much more complex than it used to be. Multiple generations in the workforce. When I think about leadership, I always think about several things. Inspiration, motivation, vision.

And basically developing others. I think the biggest shift when you move into management or leadership essentially is, and I reference this in my book as well, is you grew up in your life, James, where you're the center of your own universe. And for those of us who have gotten married or with a significant other or have children, we know that the shift occurs that you share that center with another person. And then if you have children, all of a sudden your world flips upside down and your children are now the center of your universe. You know, managing leading is especially the leading part of your job is kind of similar really throughout your career. You're the center of your own universe and it's all about you and visibility and getting results and progressing your career and advancing and getting more money and all those things that you're trying to achieve. When you move into leadership, it's really not about your people, it's no longer about you. And I think to me that's probably the best way I can describe what leadership is, that's beautiful.

And for the leader out there who is very process driven and is not people oriented, for the leader who doesn't get amongst the troops, who doesn't roll up the sleeves, who sits in the corner office, what advice would you have to them? In this day and age where they're, you know, people have options, people are using their feet and they're walking and there's the great resignation. What advice would you have to that leader who's not engaging with their people?

Yeah, I guess the good news, it's rare that happens.

And I know we use the word managing leading interchangeably, but they're really so distinctly different. Right. Managing is really about the day to day. It's about the operational part of your job as a manager. Managing, managing results, people process, getting things done. The leadership, as I mentioned earlier, is really about the inspiration, the vision, the communication, the mentorship, the guidance, the facilitation of dialogue, the developing of people, the developing of teams, the recalibration of direction and strategy when needed.

It's about creating purpose and motivation and engagement of your people. So when you think about those descriptors, you can't do those things in a corner office. You can't really accomplish the people part of your job. And leadership is all about people. And so I get it. I think one of the biggest challenges for a lot of managers there is they say, well, I'm not the extrovert, I'm not the people person. Well, here's the good news, you don't have to be. I'm not the biggest extrovert, I'm kind of like middle of the road.

And yeah, so maybe you're not going to be as gregarious and as warm and naturally as connecting as a highly extroverted person and gregarious person. But there are so many leaders out there that are so effective, being authentic, being who they are, but still finding a way to build relationships, establish trust and connecting with your people. And if you want to retain top talent, or any talent right now for that matter, you've got to create the right work environment. And it's all about relationships. It's all about establishing trust. If the trust and relationships are not there, James, you're not going to have effective team, a focused team, a high performing team, an engaged team and retaining your people. So for all those corner office executives and leaders, which I'm sure they're up to their eyeballs with a lot of other responsibilities, they have to take a step back and say, where am I spending time and what part of my job am I spending around the people part of my job, the strategy part of my job, the vision part of my job, the building relationships and establishing trust with my people part of my job. Because that's critical, especially in the environment that we're in right now had been the last two years.

Absolutely. And when we look at what you were doing with the rise of the agile leader, what are some of the key themes that you were passionate about sharing in there to help the leader, the modern day leader, traverse all of the challenges that have been thrown at them?

Sure. Well, there's a lot of different themes. I think I've got 23 chapters in the book. It's not a 400 page book, so I don't want to scare anybody off. It's like a 200 plus page book. So it's really pretty straightforward reading. But I really wanted to do is provide a roadmap to how to get to the next level for any Leader, no matter where you are in your career, no matter what industry you're in or what part of the world you live in, is try to provide some very practical tools and knowledge and strategies and techniques to help you sort of that throughout the whole sort of, if you want to call holistic viewpoint of how to be an effective leader, whether you're just starting out, you're mid level or you're a senior executive, C level and you're trying to kind of get to that next level of effectiveness. So that's kind of the message of the book. The whole concept of being an agile leader, and I use the word agile, the verb, not agile scrum methodology, which a lot of people know about, that comes out of high technology that really came out of the software development space 30 years ago. So agile in my book is really about the verb and it's really.

And the reason the definition of being agile, it is about not just flexibility, it's about being nimble, it's about being able to pivot. In the world we live in today, we're balancing so many responsibilities with customers, the marketplace, the instability of where things are going is so drastic and changes so often by the time you release a product and I'm talking about any product, no matter what the product may be. I mean you've already got to be working on your next generation of products and solutions because you know that the consumer is already going to want something new and different not far down the road. So as a leader, how that really impacts as a leader we really need to understand.

One of the big themes is where do we spend our time? One of the biggest issues today and Covid just by the way accelerated this is that most leaders are not spending time where they need to. They're too focused on the day to day, they're not empowering their teams, they're not giving their teams enough decision making authority, enough ownership, enough independence and they're not externally focused enough. When I say externally focused, they're not spending enough time with customers, they're not spending enough time looking at the market, looking at the future, looking at their competition, just trying to understand the landscape. And they're not spending a time on self reflection in terms of being strategic and thinking about themselves as a leader. So we often talk about leadership. James is like this, this thing that we do when we have people that work for us, right? But often and yes people go through management training programs, leadership development programs, but people don't realize that leadership is a craft, it's a skill, it's no different than any other expertise that you may have, no matter what role or background that you may have. And if you don't dedicate yourself to enhancing and developing your leadership capability and skills and knowledge through throughout your career, you're not going to stay on top of being effective as a leader. And that's one of my biggest messages in the book as well.

That's beautiful. And why do you think leaders are not focusing their time where they should be focusing? What is it that's stopping them from doing that?

Hey, James here.

I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies on all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in in the show notes.

Yeah, there's a couple of things.

One, they just want one, you know, a lot of leaders just have too much on their plate. And a lot of leaders, especially as they advance in their career, they're used to operating at one level. And we all know the cliche, right? It's kind of like what got you where you are today is not what's going to get you tomorrow. But it's so hard to change that, right? We all operate at this sort of success formula, whether it's sort of subconsciously or consciously, right? We created this formula for success that's gotten to us to where we are in our career. Not just an individual contributor, but often as a manager to even maybe mid level management. But if you don't start shifting, you know what you do and how you do in your career, you're not going to be able to continue to be successful. And the biggest theme of this is where manager spends their time. Most managers are too hands on what I said earlier. They're not shifting where they spend their time. I give an exercise and it's a very simple exercise to most executives that I work with. And one of the exercises I give is very simple. I want people to print out their calendar over the last two or three months. And there's not an executive that looks at me and says Come on, Chuck. I know where I spend my time. I go, do me a favor, print it out. And then, because your calendar is your calendar, your calendar does not lie. And sure, maybe there is going to be an exceptional non typical week in there, but in general, the last two or three months are going to be pretty typical, whatever typical is now. Right? Because the world's changing so quickly every day. And then what I want you to do is categorize your time into buckets like day to day, externally focus with clients, or in the marketplace, you know, whatever the categories are. And there's usually four or five, some people create six, seven doesn't really make a difference. Then start adding up kind of where you spend your time. In 15 years, even going back throughout my career over 30 years, I've never seen an executive or a leader of any level come back and say, I'm not surprised. Most people come back and say, well, I'm shocked. I really thought I was spending a high percentage of my time being strategic or doing the things that are really going to drive the future of our business, by the way, including developing relationships with my key people. Not just people work for me, but across the company, in the marketplace, with customers. And that's where the reality hits. You're not spending time where you need to. And so even though it's a simple exercise, that's really one of the biggest issues today is that executives are so caught up in the day to day, trying to stay on top of everything. They want to know what's happening everywhere. They want to stay on top of all aspects of their business. And the reality is it's impossible. You've got to trust your people. And if you don't trust your people, then you got to make a decision either going to trust them, hold them accountable, or I need to get a person I can trust. And that's one of the bigger issues today is that leaders are just too involved in the day to day. They're not trusting their people, they're not creating the right type of organization so they can actually delegate effectively and be at the level they need to be for their organizations. So that still continues to be the biggest issue.

And you can see it worldwide, no matter where you're working here in New Zealand, Australia certainly see the same challenges. So what's the first step? What's the first step for a leader who wants to make a difference, who wants to start spending their time where it really matters? What could they be doing to start moving that direction?

Yeah, I would definitely suggest that exercise because People will be surprised. And then when you look at your calendar, you have to start with, okay, what can I change? What can I change in my schedule? Where can I start delegating? What meetings do I not need to be at? Most executives, most of us, period, we're a meeting to meeting mode, right? Most of it's on zoom or on teams or whatever the. The technology is. We're on video calls almost all day long. And that's one of the issues. There's no time to do a check in with a client. There's no time to do a check in with one of your employees or maybe a key partner or a peer or another member of the executive team, depending on what level you're at. So you have to start changing where you spend your time. Look at your calendar. What meetings do you start? Because the mistake a lot of people make, James, is and they just start adding hours to their week. And then the next thing they know is, why am I exhausted? And I don't do anything. My family's not seeing me, my friends are not seeing me. Because the problem is you just added those hours versus changing where you spend your time. So not to say that you can't be in touch with some of the day to day, but you have to start thinking about, what do I get off my calendar, where do I start delegating, what do I not be involved in? And then there's decision making. A lot of leaders are involved, decisions they don't need involved in, James. So you got to start with, where am I spending my time using the calendar? Exercise. It's the most practical, accurate exercise out there. And then start changing it by looking at your future week or weeks to say, where do I start shifting where I spend my time, and how do I make sure that I'm adding to my calendar time where I need to be. A lot of people, for example, say James, well, you know, I know I need time to think and time to reflect, and I don't do it. I'll just do it, you know, after hours or before hours. Well, that doesn't happen. I mean, because you got to spend time with yourself. And whether it's exercise or meditation or going for a walk or whatever, spending time with your family and your friends, that's your time. Create time during your day and your week to be able to do that. And most. There's not an executive out there or a leader out there, James, that doesn't struggle with this. So start with the calendar. Start making slow changes, incremental changes. It's really hard to just rip the band aid off completely when it comes to this, but you can start changing. And there's also another aspect of this we forget about. There's a behavioral conditioning that's happened when you spend your time in a very hands on way, involving in meetings, involving in decisions that maybe you don't need to be involved in. What ends up happening is your people around you are conditioned to go to you for things that frankly they don't need to go to you for. So it's going to take time to change their behavior. And you have to recalibrate your expectations and your conversations. And often I've had executives and leaders literally tell in a sort of collaborative way, yes, this is how I'm going to really change how we work together. Sometimes you actually need to have those conversations because people are sort of conditioned to work with you a certain way when you're too involved. So those are the steps I would suggest starting with.

Great advice, really good advice. I recently spoke with an amazing lady who was the EA to Steve Jobs and we talked about his day to day and what his calendar looked like. And she was incredible. And she said, look, one of my roles was to make sure that he had, you know, massage booked in a personal training session several days a week, that, that he had time for meditation, that he had time to leave and go and watch the baseball game with his children. So she was really instrumental in managing his time. So from your experience, how important and valuable is a great ea?

It's funny you say that because I actually mention this in my book.

In the one chapter I'm talking about where you spend your time, especially if you're at the level where you need to have an ea, an executive assistant or administrator to help you out, or a chief of staff, depending on the level possibilities this person have. Every organization has a little bit of a nuance to this, but to get to good to great if you know, if you know the book itself. But to be, to go from good to great as a leader often is about how good your EA is. And if you don't have a person that's managing your account effectively, that's screening out calls, that's screening out meetings, that's rerouting people who are trying to get to you and it's hard to find one. But often it has to do about are you managing expectations, are you being clear about how you want to work together? That takes a lot of communication, especially early on to really kind of feel each other out. And for an EA to Get comfortable with a leader's style, their calendar, their role, their organization, the culture, the nuances of kind of day to day. That doesn't happen very quickly. So it takes time to do that. James. But it's critical. Especially if you have a large, complex organization and a lot of responsibility, it's really critical to have a really, really good ea. It makes a huge difference in one's success and where you spend your time.

And one thing I hear a lot of clients talking about real high performing leaders and CEOs is email. And the email takes up sometimes two to three hours of their day. And so what advice do you have to that leader who's stuck in the email issue and always in email, two to three hours a day. What are some processes you've seen work really well to help them get out of that and into the business?

Yeah, again, it's a combination of having a good ea, because very often an EA is going to respond to most of those emails. Believe it or not. I'm not sure the Steve Jobs EA mentioned that, but a good executive assistant or administrator is actually going to respond to the majority of those emails. And again, going back to my comment earlier about reconditioning people around you, those emails start to get reduced when people realize these are the parameters where you come to me with or you don't come to me with. And it's not about limiting communication or limiting transparency, not wanting to be connected to people. It's actually really getting people to use email the correct way, which is an epidemic around the world. Right. We're all email communication crazy on some level. And now it's no longer even email. Now it's text messaging or instant messaging, depending on the technology platform you're using. So again, I would say it's about having a good ea, especially if you're very senior. For those of us who don't have an ea, then I think it's really going back to when you're getting emails that you feel you shouldn't be getting, how do you nicely and politely say, here's how we should be communicating with each other?

Again, most executives are going to do emails during off hours or at the beginning or the end of their day. It's hard to do it during the day when you're very, very busy. But part of it again is really establishing what I call communication parameters and expectations. So that way you're not spending all day or 200 emails a day. And if you can have someone screen those and respond on your behalf, that's.

A great Great way to approach it. And just think a little bit about the modern environment, like through Covid and Post Covid, virtual teams and hybrid teams have become a real thing for a lot of companies. And there's challenges that come with managing those. Do you have any advice around how we can manage and get the best out of teams that are virtual or hybrid?

Yeah, it's been a focus, no surprise, a big focus for everybody and us as a firm. We've done a lot of work on how to, as managers and leaders, how to manage a virtual and hybrid workforce. And there's no one simple answer. Someone is understanding what's the makeup of my people. Right. I mean, there's some really great people analytics out there to kind of understand the strengths, sort of the motivation and drives of people. We use a tool called the predictive index, or PI, which we happen also to be a certified partner firm. And we use as a firm strategically with our clients. But what's great about tools like this is once you kind of understand a personality, motivation, drive, who they are behaviorally, it also makes you understand, how do I interact with this person? A big part of being effective as a leader is, is being situationally effective. Situationally effective is the meeting. It's the person, right? Because we just can't interact with people the same way. Some people, we need to be, frankly, somewhat subdued when it comes to how we interact. For some people, we can be very assertive. We need to be. So understanding personality and drive is really, really critical. But when it comes to hybrid and virtual, the biggest challenge, there's several. One is that very often managers don't understand their own sort of subconscious biases when it comes to managing people virtually. What do I mean by that? Well, often we have a strong opinion, or maybe not even a strong opinion, but we have a view about whether we want people in front of us or not. And when a person is not in office, and we kind of have an opinion about that, often there are people that don't get those special projects, or they're the people that are included in some meetings because they're virtual. So we have to be careful as managers and frankly any employee of realizing often we sometimes have some biases around people that are in the office or not in the office. We have to be careful about those biases. And are we being inclusive enough? Are we being consistent enough? Are we being fair enough about how we include people and what our expectations are? The other issue often is when some managers, if they don't see the work happening, they're skeptical. They're like, well, how do I know that person's working? How do I know that person's being productive? Now all the research says that people work virtually, actually happen to be more productive and higher performing because they're actually probably working too much. They don't take enough time off. So not even getting to that yet. There's all kinds of challenges which at this point, after two years now, I think a lot of executives and a lot of leaders are already aware of a lot of organizations, which are some of the challenges of burnout and mental health of people who are working virtually. But going back to the manager part of this. So those are really two major issues. The other issue is, as we mentioned earlier, we're often running from one meeting to another, so we're not creating enough time to even just take a breath, go stand up, go for a quick walk, stretch, grab something to eat. So we're kind of burning ourselves out even as managers and leaders because we're constantly scheduling or participating in meetings. So as a leader we have to take ownership and say as an organization to our peers, to the collective organization. How do we start scheduling meetings with at least 10, 15 minutes between meetings so people have a chance to gather themselves, recalibrate, prepare, debrief, whatever it may be. Another issue is as managers and leaders, we don't spend enough time having what I call ad hoc conversation. You know, when we're all in the office, we can hang out at the water cooler or we can get together for a quick cup of coffee in the hallway or in the cafeteria or whatever work environment you're in. You know, we can just walk into someone's office and say, do you have a second? I'd like to chat with you. So we all, we have all these ad hoc opportunities throughout the day that when you're virtual, even hybrid, you just don't have. So as a manager, we have to make sure, and it sounds terrible to say this, but you got to schedule those moments. What are you doing to connect with people without an agenda? Just to check in, how are you doing? When's the last time we, as a manager, we said, hey, I really appreciate you, I appreciate all your effort, your hard work.

All the research shows that the reasons people are leaving jobs is not mental health, it's not burnout, it's that they're not feeling valued, they're not feeling appreciated by their managers. Why? Because managers are so busy doing their day to day and in these meetings they're not building relationships enough, they're not Establishing trust. They're not doing a check in.

And see how that person is doing as a person. And that's probably the biggest change the last two years. James, I'm sorry, I'm going off on this a little bit, but this is great. And I could go, I could talk about this for a long time. It's a big topic. But the other thing I'll quickly say the biggest change in the last two years, honestly, is that, you know, is the line that used to never be crossed, which is as companies, as organizations, as managers, really talking about people, what's going on in their lives. That used to be kind of a taboo, right? Oh, we can't cross that line. You know, it's not really professional. It's not our business. That line's crossed. We as organizations and as leaders and executives now have a responsibility to make sure that our people are doing okay. As people. How's your family? How's your family through Covid? How are they doing? Working virtually, working hybrid? How are you balancing everything? And.

These conversations now are critical. And it goes back to what I said earlier. How do we connect? How do we establish trust, how we build relationships, how do we make sure we care about our people? And the last thing I'll say, celebrations again, it's harder because it's virtual. But how are we celebrating? And doesn't always have to be a major accomplishment, but it's like, hey, that was a great moment, that was a great day. That was a great advancement of a project or maybe even a great win. But are we recognizing and celebrating our people? And that's what people need right now more than ever. And that's if anything I'd be recommending to managers in a hybrid or virtual world right now. It's those things.

Brilliant.

Really great advice. And yeah, you're absolutely right. You can see that people do want to feel heard, they want to feel valued, they want to feel loved. And they also want to feel that the leader has a trajectory that they can go down to grow and to improve and to move forward. So let's say a leader is wanting to connect more, but the leader doesn't have maybe the emotional intelligence that he or she needs to develop the deep connections. What can that leader be doing to heighten their self awareness and start having these conversations and building this connection with their team?

Yeah, I mean, self awareness is critical. You know, if you, if you want to be effective as a manager and as. And be. Be an effective leader, you need to understand yourself first. You need to understand who you are what motivates and drives you, what happens to you under pressure and stress? What's your natural communication style? What's your natural decision making style? How do you naturally deal with conflict? So let me just use conflict for an example here because again, talk about another major epidemic. The corporate world we live in today.

We know about social media, we know about all the challenges of whether it's war or whether it's going on here in the US and it comes to some of the social issues, but the issue of whether you want to call it cancel culture or everything else that's been going on, the failure to be able to debate and discuss and have a disagreement, it was becoming a problem five years ago. Covid just made it even worse. So you cannot have an effective work relationship or an effective relationship.

If you're not willing to put the issues on table and discuss them. So a big part of emotional intelligence is, yes, is self awareness, understanding your style, your strengths, what happens to your pressure and stress. But it's also to be able to understand how to have healthy conflict. And we need to be able to have those discussions. We need to be able to draw people out where they're comfortable. So I'm sure you've heard of the concept of psychological safety. So we have to create a work environment where people feel not only will they be heard, but but they can disagree, they can make a mistake, they can fail. So we have to realize that failure is one of the key elements of success. If we don't make mistakes and fail, we don't learn, we don't grow. And sometimes we become so focused on perfectionism and getting it done right because we're moving so quickly, there's so much pressure to get it right. But we have to also understand what success means when it comes to people individually and collectively. So creating an environment where people can challenge the status quo, they can say why are we doing it this way? Or why aren't we doing it this way? And fail and make mistakes. So creating that work environment, being able to engage in healthy conflict versus unhealthy conflict are so critical and inclusive of emotional intelligence. But the framework, emotional intelligence is all about self awareness, but it's also about the awareness of others. James, you have to understand that person's makeup and you have to be able to navigate your style to be effective in connecting with that person and influencing that person and in building a relationship with that person.

Great stuff. And what do you think's the cost to the leader who refuses to adapt, who refuses to build awareness about others and themselves. What's the cost to them and their company?

Well, I hate to say it, but those leaders start to stick out very, very quickly, and the scrutiny upon them becomes very heavy. And, you know, a lot of organizations best practice today is that, you know, people are getting feedback from not only above, but from below and from their peers through pulse surveys, through 360 assessments. So the leader is not able to adapt to the new world environment. And what those expectations are from the people around them is going to find them in a hot seat very, very quickly or not in a leadership role. So my advice to anyone out there, and there's a fine line that said, look, I get the person or leader that's out there that says, I want to be me, I want to be authentic. I want to be true to myself. You know what, James? I support that herself. However, part of that secret sauce that I talk about in my book about being a leader is can you adapt to your environment?

Can you be situational? That's not compromising your values, that's not compromising your authenticity. It's understanding how to be effective with your audience, how to motivate, how to inspire, how to influence, how to partner, how to collaborate, how to build relationships, how to establish trust. Because if we don't, as leaders, learn how to adapt, we're not going to be effective because we cannot naturally connect with everybody. And look, trust me, I know leaders out there that don't adapt, and their life cycle is getting shorter and shorter as a leader. So my message to anyone out there that's feeling a little defensive right now with this discussion, I feel your pain. I understand it. But you have an opportunity, which is an opportunity to let go of maybe some of those insecurities or defense mechanisms of why you want to stay kind of where you are and recognize there's a brave new world out there that you can learn and embrace and actually, frankly, still be authentic more than ever and be effective and more effective.

That's really powerful. And you mentioned situational, so I'd love to just chat about that for a second. So for the listener that's listening right now, what do you think around situational leadership? When you talk about a great situational leader, what would that leader be doing?

Yeah, well, I'll use the example I was mentioning earlier about, you know, conflict. Right? So. So naturally, there's some people that engage conflict and think it's sort of healthy debate. Right? You know, think about the two alpha personalities that are, you know, blasting each other with their own opinions the two of them feel it's a very natural thing that's occurring. Now. There are people out there that are naturally don't like conflict. They're very conflict adverse. We actually sometimes call people like that passive aggressive versus the other extreme, which is too aggressive. Right. And then there's everybody in between. So that is an example is, do we understand our audience? Do we understand that there are going to be some people, depending on their personality and style and their comfort level, that run away from conflict? And conflict to them simply could be disagreeing or not wanting to voice a differing opinion. So it may not even be a disagreement. They may not want to simply disagree with what the discussion that's occurring in a room, what ends up happening is that person leaves a meeting, doesn't say anything in the meeting, and they start telling all their colleagues after the meeting how much they disagree. Right. And we call that passive aggressive behavior. Right. So that's the challenge. The challenge is, and pick your characteristic behaviorally, is understanding what happens if we don't adjust our style and we encourage people we know that's who they are to speak up. And we have to create an environment where they're going to be comfortable doing that. And sometimes they're not going to be comfortable in a group setting. So sometimes we have to have that conversation with them individually. That's what I mean by situational is understanding the makeup of our people so we can draw them out. Remember, as a leader, our job is to optimize our people, right? How do we create an optimal environment where people can really feel comfortable being themselves? That's part of our job as leaders, is really bringing out the best of our people, creating a work environment where they can be at their optimal best. And often it is understanding what motivates and drives them and what are some of the challenges and barriers to their success based upon their comfort level. Now, part of our job is getting them to be more situationally effective as well. But that's a good example of what I mean when I say being situational.

Thank you. That's great. And for the leader that right now is struggling to recruit really good talent and are struggling to retain really good talent, because I know there's many leaders in that position right now. What do you have to say for them right now?

Boy, that's a big topic right there. James, how much time do we have left? Just kidding.

Three days.

So another area that I've been spending a lot of my time over the last year, especially to no surprise, is culture. Right? And culture is Not a new concept. We know culture predominantly because of country cultures and languages and history and trends and traditions. But culture in organizations and corporations also exists. And often there is an overlaying culture and then there are subcultures, meaning micro ecosystems in every organization, depending on the department, depending on the location. So when you think about rooting and how I'm tying in, recruiting, retaining talent is you have that. Your culture is your brand. Your culture ultimately is why do you want to work here, why do you want to stay here? How are you going to get treated? What are your opportunities to learn, to grow? But what does this company value, right? So ultimately your culture is essentially starts with your strategy, right? Like essentially, why do you exist as a business? What is your purpose? What is your aspired state, what your services and goods and products you're trying to provide in the marketplace? Once you've sort of defined or redefined what is for a lot of organizations and companies, they've been redefining that the last two years because of obviously all the changes in the marketplace. But you got to start there. And that ultimately drives your strategy and then your mission. Now from that is your brand. Your brand is a reflection of your values. What is your values? And you think about that brand.

Think of any organization out there, especially really well known organizations. When you think of Disney, we ultimately think of Disney because of the experience they provide to their parks and to their movies and their characters. There's an experience there and that's their purpose, but it's also their strategy and their mission. Right? From there they create values. And their values are both of external value to their, to their customers, but also an internal value. So any organization, no matter what your business is, has an opportunity to say how we demonstrated a brand for our consumers, whoever they may be, and how do we internalize that brand? So that brand has to be aligned externally and internally. And so by doing that, as you create your values that are your external brand, but then how do you cascade that internally? How you do that is by taking those values and essentially defining them into very specific behaviors. Those behaviors should be observable, those behaviors should be measurable. Those behaviors then get cascaded to every employee so they understand that, yes, your expectation of the employee here is based upon our brand, our vision, our purpose, but also our values which are reflected in our behaviors. And that should become part of the living mantra of every organization. And that ultimately becomes your culture. That culture gets reinforced by all your HR systems and processes. How you recognize and reward, how you hire, how you promote and advance people.

So all those HR systems and processes have to reinforce those behaviors and those values organization. And for some organizations, they have to really think about what do we really mean by our values. We all know the story. A lot of companies make a big deal about their values. They have these big billboards and postcards printed out. It's on their website, in every conference room, and now on the intranet or extranet. But the problem is they're not living them because there's no accountability, there's no way enforcing, there's no way people walking the talk. And especially as leaders, we don't demonstrate those values, those behaviors every day. The rest of the organization can say these mean nothing and essentially means that you don't really have a culture. So your culture, your brand, everything I just talked about, those are the key drivers of your retention and your recruiting strategy. Because if you've got a strong, healthy culture where people feel engaged, they feel valued, they understand what those values and those behaviors are and they're. And they're being lived and they're reinforced and they're being supported with all the systems and tools and processes your organization, that's why people are going to want to come work for you, and that's why people are going to want to stay there.

That makes sense. And going from a toxic culture to a high performance culture, what do you see as being the key differences? So if somebody was listening right now going, huh, what's my culture actually like in the place that I lead or that I work? How would they know that it's toxic versus high performance? And of course there's going to be lots of in between as well. But what would the key differentiators be? If you walk into an organization, you're like, whoa, this is high performing versus oh my goodness, this is toxic.

For me, it all comes down to leadership. How strong are your leaders? Has there been an investment in the development of your managers to be effective at managing and effective at leading? And if your managers are not equipped with knowledge and skills and abilities and they're not held accountable to be effective as managers and leaders and demonstrate those values and behaviors, it's really hard expected for the rest of the organization. That's the thing you'll immediately notice, is that you're going to see really strong management leadership in the organization. There's clarity on purpose, there's clarity on vision. Where we are, where we're going. People understand their roles and responsibilities and how that connects to the vision and purpose of the organization. They understand the macro strategy. But they also understand the microstrategy and communication is transparent, it's open, it's clear, decision making is happening on all the right levels. Organization people are empowered, teams are empowered, people are spending as leaders where they should be spending their time at the right levels. As we talked about earlier, these are all the characteristics of a healthy organization, of a healthy culture. It all starts at leadership. One of the biggest challenges for any organization is what do you do with a top performer, a high performer, a high expert that that's not downstream those right values and those behaviors. Because if you don't address that, that's your first step to creating a toxic environment.

Right.

Because people then recognize that those values, that brand are not being lived. And that's the inconsistency when there's favoritism, when there is inconsistency of behavior and people getting away with the wrong behaviors.

Where have you seen this? So in your experience, where have you been working with a client or you've walked into a company and seen them an amazing, thriving, high performance culture?

Yeah, I mean I don't want to pull out companies and I hate to say in some of the bigger companies, often you see it depending on who's in charge in big companies, you'll see more inconsistency because they're so big. In big companies you have some divisions, departments that are bigger than half the companies in the world.

And why? Because you see some strong leadership in some divisions and some departments and not so strong leadership. The challenge for bigger companies is ensuring that be consistent in how they develop, but also hold accountable their leaders, all their leaders, because that's the key. How do you create consistency across your organization, especially big companies that have offices and people all around the world and have multiple, multiple divisions and businesses and business units. When I walk into a smaller or any company going back to your question, but I just want to make a distinction with bigger companies because you'll see much greater variance just because of pure size. But I do a lot also work with startups and venture capital and family owned companies. And where I see really, really healthy, high performing work environments, first thing that really stands out to me, when that CEO and that executive team, they care, they really care. And people say they care, they want to care, they don't demonstrate that in terms of how they treat people. When you see high performing people realize that the company doesn't care if I'm virtual or hybrid, they don't care if they care about what's going on with me and my family and they're Going to be flexible to support me. They care in terms of how they support us, not only in the last two years personally, but also professionally through development, through learning, through being on task forces, being on innovative teams. A big aspect of high performing companies is their focus on innovation and change. Some companies and organizations, it's a. Don't bring up those words. We don't talk about change here, we don't talk about innovation here. I'm being a little dramatic in saying that, of course, but some people, I'll give you an example. I have one CEO of a very, very well known company, a company that we all know, a consumer products company that's one of the biggest brands in the world. And this CEO did everything to try to create greater innovation. Create innovation teams spoke about innovation all the time, created a new role to drive innovation for the whole company. But as much as he tried, the moment there was failure, when a new product was being released or it wasn't going as well as expected, instead of just tweaking or making some adjustments or recognizing people for their effort, doing a great job, it was a very harsh and negative response. And going back to my commentary about creating a safe work environment, if you don't celebrate people's effort, even if there was a failure, it's hard for people to try again. It just is. So you can't be punitive and slap people on their wrist or.

Demote people.

If they fail. So to be innovative, you have to accept reasonable failure and mistakes. And so this is all tied back into your question. What do I see when I see what are the characteristics of high performing organizations? It's everything we just talked about with those additional characteristics as well.

Beautiful chakra. Thank you for sharing that. And for the person that's listening right now, that is loving what they're hearing and they want to be that agile leader. I'm going to put a link in the show notes to the rise of the Agile leader and can you make the shift? Is the question and the subtitle and that's by Chuck Melara. It's going to be in the show notes so please do go and grab a copy of that or get off Amazon or wherever your nearest bookstore is. And Chuck, before we finish up, I've got one last question for you and that is fast forward many years into the future. It's your last day. You've been told it is your last day here. And a young person that you love dearly in your life asks you a question. And this is the last question that you can actually answer in your life and that is hey Chuck, how can I go about leading my life with purpose? What would your answer be to them?

I think that's a question you have to ask yourself all the time because I think it changes depending where you are in your life. I guess that's the first thing I would say. As you probably guessed, James, I'm not really a short answer person.

I love it.

Challenges. That's a great question though.

I think a couple of things I think I would say to that person. Always be curious. Always ask why or why not or how or what. Always be curious. Always be willing to learn from others and from the world around you. Never stop learning. Always ask am I living the life of purpose that I always dreamed about? What's the vision you have for your life? Are you living that vision? I actually just posted a very brief media post just earlier today and yesterday about this is what is your vision for you, the life that you want to live? What you're calling Are you truly being honest with yourself? You're truly being true to yourself? Go live that. That would be how I respond to that beautiful advice.

I love it. Well Chuck, I just want to say a massive thank you for connecting. I know it won't be the last time that we connect. I'm excited for people to get that book in their hands and start to be that agile leader that the world needs in this post Covid space. So thanks a million for connecting.

My pleasure James. I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for your great questions and appreciate being here today.

Thanks a million.

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