Leader to Leader: Chip Boyle, Part 1

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us here at JLC Media. My name is Ray Jorgensen, and this is a special segment. We have started a series on leader to leader conversations. And I have the privilege today of having someone I care about very much as a friend and now today as a colleague. And he's had a very wonderful life in the world of leadership. And I think you'll like this because we're going to actually explore some of the practical ways we can make an impact as a leader. With that said, let me invite you to give your attention to us for a moment while my friend and colleague introduces himself. Chip, all yours.

Well, thank you, Ray, and thank you for having me this afternoon. I have had varied experiences, both as a follower, as a worker bee, and as a leader. And frankly, the leader part of my experience is my favorite. I am now long retired. I have had a career as a trial lawyer in Detroit and then in Chicago and a very brief career as a state court judge in Detroit area, in Dearborn, Michigan, and here. Now, 10 years ago, retired and have moved down to the lovely, lovely area of South Carolina where we both live. But it's my pleasure to be here today and to participate with you in your podcast to give your listeners and viewers whatever expertise I might have in the subject of how to be a leader, how to deal with leaders, and in many ways, how to follow a leader's directive.

So that's really excellent. And I like that sense of how to follow a leader's direction because it matches the work that our company does. Our company is working under a rubric called conversational leadership. How do you have impactful conversations to ensure alignment in the system? So I think you have lots to teach us. And I love, though I love you as a friend and as a man and how you've treated the people that we know in our community. You are beyond gracious and beyond caring. So I'm so happy to be here with you today. Chip, those of you listening, if you're afraid that you might hear a harsh word or possibly even a profanity, hang up now. Because that might occur, but it only occurs in the passion of talking about real life. And real life leadership issues may not happen, but knowing the two of us, it might. So, moving forward, let's begin with a simple question. At one time, you shared a leadership role in a law firm. If you can go back to that space, what would you have identified as your greatest challenge in trying to lead other attorneys?

Great question. I was late in my career, when I was still in the Detroit area was with a what up there was a medium sized law firm, 60 or so lawyers. And it was part of my responsibility to be on the management committee for the law firm. Five, five lawyers managing a staff of 60 lawyers and a support staff of another 60 people. And I was part of my responsibility was the personnel of the law firm. So I apparently was recognized as someone who got along with people and that's why I was placed in that, in that capacity. Of course, we had a finance guy, I don't know how to spell tax, let alone do tax. So that's why I was shuffled off to personnel. But it is 120 people. It's difficult to deal with 120 different personalities. And if I was to summarize one feeling that I would have to do that, it would be a single word. And that word is honesty. You never get anywhere if you're dishonest with people. You never get anywhere if you pit employee A against employee B by way of gossip. So honesty is the key to being a leader. In that same regard. All of these folks that relied on me, and of course I relied on them. The other key word to leadership, I think, well, it plays into honesty is the single word, integrity. There is no way that my subordinate folks would follow me if they didn't believe that I had integrity. I mean, we see it every day. Today we see our, quote, leaders, end quote, of any stripe, without much integrity. So that's something that I would always hammer home both as a leader and as a follower. I have a very difficult time in following people I don't trust. And how can I ask people to follow me if they don't trust me? It's impossible.

So the two things around honesty and integrity resonate deeply with me and with our little company. One of the arenas that we work in is how do we help people develop a culture where safe space and trust are everything. And when you talk about honesty and integrity, that requires a certain level of vulnerability. I've got to be able to admit I don't know everything and I may have made a mistake and I. So I'd like you to tie together those two things. Trust, integrity, and the need to be vulnerable when working with other people. Talk to me about that a bit, Chub.

Well, you're right. I mean, nobody knows everything. Part of my job also was to interview prospective young lawyers for purposes of bringing them on in the law firm. And I never professed to know everything. My philosophy is, look, if you're going to hire somebody, hire somebody that's better than you because those are the potential leaders. Five years, 10 years down the line, when we're talking about leadership, integrity, honesty, trust, we bring those home every day and we bring them home by leading by example. How could I ask a subordinate to follow a direction or follow a path if I don't show them the path? It's very, very difficult. And that's why I would always hire people smarter than me.

Okay, so that's truly brilliant. There is this sensibility that we just did a series on, feedback, why feedback matters in an organization, and the literature has produced this, and I would love you to react to says that in the boomer generation, like me and a little bit younger than me, we have a tendency to hire people that think like us, look like us, yada da, all that. So when I'm looking for feedback, I have a tendency not to get unvarnished comments. I get feedback that actually matches what I already know about the world. So you just hit something really good. You want to hire somebody smarter than you. And you also, I'm wondering, how would you go about finding people who don't see the world the same way you do? What effort did you put into that aspect?

Well, of course, it's an interview process. I know all about them through their written submissions. I like to be around smart people. And smart people have a different point of view than I do. I have my own point of view. For instance, in a meeting, one of the things we never did in our management, five people management meetings. You can't come into a meeting with a preconceived idea. That's not the point of the meeting. The meeting is to, is to get a solution. So I would always try, and many times unsuccessfully, I would always try not to come in. Preconceived notion on, hey, this is what's going to happen. This is what this meeting is about and this is what we're going to decide. So that's just something that leaders do. I mean, we have five bright people sitting around this table. My opinion could clearly be wrong. And how do you go about flushing out those opinions? There's a lot of ways to do that. Tell us in a meeting setting. One of the things we see every day, and particularly with this little item right here, how many times do you see people in a meeting of five or eight or 12 people with a cell phone paying attention to the cell phone? I mean, it happens all the time. That is a distraction that has to be eliminated. You don't come in there with a preconceived idea, and you eliminate the distraction of extraneous stuff. Why? Because when there's this extraneous stuff, you can't listen. I'm not. I'm a neophyte when it comes to listening. There are a lot smarter people than me that will tell people about listening. Listening is the whole ball game. You can't make a plan without fully understanding what these other five folks are saying. There's something we see every day. We see it in our casual conversations. We see it in our business conversations. How many times do the participants at a meeting interrupt the flow of conversation? It happens all the time when I'm with you and with my friends in a social gathering. And that happens. You've seen it probably 100 times. I would always pipe up and say something like, hold on a second. I'm not even to the comma yet. Let me finish the thought. And what we see, not just my generation, your generation, but I think more so nowadays, we don't let people complete their thought process before someone already challenges the opinion or the thought or the proposal that they're trying to advance at this very moment.

One of the efforts that we have made recently is here we are. The pandemic is changing, but it's still here. And we invite people to think about a few things, and one of them is, how well do you listen and how well do you remove the distractions? You. You just nailed it without us even talking about it. And, you know, Chip, you and I have seen this. Somebody's speaking, and the person that's listening is just waiting for a pause so they can add their idea in. And one of the critical components in ethical decision making that you're on the edge of is how do I listen to completely understand why what Chip is saying before I offer my 2 cents. In fact, we have learned that that idea of trust, safe space, and integrity cannot occur if I don't take the time to truly make sure I understood what you were saying in order to move forward or try another point or offer an alternative position. You know, ladies and gentlemen that are listening, when we started doing this, he was telling me, I don't think I have much to offer. Obviously, he was wrong. He has added so much to this particular podcast today. So I'm going to kind of review a couple of things that he said and then ask him for a piece of advice for those of you that are aspiring to be leaders or that are already in a sitting space. So we got right very quickly to that sense of integrity and trust and those of you that have worked with us know that's the deal. How do we build a space that is safely dangerous, A space where I can actually bring my opinion forward or tell Chip, Chip, I might be working for Chip and say, boss, it didn't work. I screwed this one up. It wasn't built for lack of effort. I gave it a lot of effort. It didn't go the way I expected. Sometimes that is perceived as a career limiting movement or a career ending move. We don't want to say those things. We don't want to admit it. Well, to the points Chip made. If it's safe space, if there's trust and integrity, not only do I want you to tell us what didn't go well or what your thinking is, I want you to aggressively come to that space where you feel it's okay. I really want my leader to know what I did and what happened. Integrity, trust, safe space. These are huge pieces for us that are trying to get good at being better. And Chip knows this about me already. Every day I try and get better. Every day I try and learn something new, add something into that space of practical knowledge that I use when doing a podcast, when working with a client, when working with our team. It is wonderful that you guys took this time, your greatest asset in 21st century's time. Thank you for taking that time to be with us today. Now, the big question for Chip is let's do that space of what would you advise someone to do that is an aspiring leader or someone that's a sitting leader that will enable them to be more and more successful in their efforts? Back to you, brother.

Well, you have to listen to the people who have input. You have to appreciate that their opinions and positions may be different than yours. Then you have to find out why. You have to put yourself in their place and find out where they're coming from and why. You just said something that is tremendous and excellent in that people sometimes can't get the job done. And many times I couldn't get the job done and I was stuck. So what do you do when you're stuck? The best thing that you can do is try to tell your people why you're stuck and let them put themselves in your place. It's the best thing you can do to solve a problem. I see people, I used to, when I was a practicing full time lawyer, I would see people come to me and these are smart people, but they say, I can't do that. This won't work. I have never taken the position that the word can't or the word don't or can't. These are words that we shouldn't be dealing with. We should be dealing with solutions, not problems. Everyone sees the problem, but let's not dwell on the problem. The answer is the solution. How do you deal with those folks that are stuck? Well, you put yourselves in their shoes and you find out why. And then when you do that, the solution usually is evident.

So Chip just offered you something that is emerging in the literature. I read it this morning before I started my daily work and it said, what's the greatest leadership quality you need to develop? Said empathy. Empathy. What Chip just described was how put myself in that position to understand another person's perspective. That's empathy. Empathy. Empathy. Not sympathy. Oh, I'm sorry, this doesn't work. Empathy. Do my best to listen to understand what's going on with you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to us today. If you'd like to reach us, go to go G O J L C gojlc.com we would be honored to have a discovery call with you. If you want to learn more from Chip, drop us a note and I'll hook him up with you guys. That should be a more than interesting set of conversations that I think he could have. You understand now why I find him as an endearing friend and someone for me to learn from. He's a wonderful, wonderful human being. Chip. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Ray, and thank you for having me. Always a pleasure. Anytime I can offer any assistance or insight, whatever little insight I may have left, feel free. Feel free to call on me. Good luck.

Thank you. Thank you. And we all have something in us still. We're still there. So take care, my brother. I appreciate it so sincerest thanks for listening to this episode of the Everyday Leadership Conversations podcast. The Jorgensen Learning center offers a variety of programs for individuals and organizations to enhance their communication and leadership skills. To find out more about programs and upcoming webinars, check out our events page@gojlc.com.