Leveraging Thought Leadership Live featuring Nate Regier

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you are joining us on our LinkedIn Live version of our podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. And today my guest is an old friend, Nate Regier, Dr. Nate Regier, who's got a new book out as opposed to an old book out. He's got old books too, but Nate is the CEO and founding owner of Next Element, which is a global leadership firm helping build cultures of compassionate accountability. He's the co-author of Beyond Drama and the author of Conflict Without Casualties and Seeing People Through. He's the host of the On Compassion with Dr. Nate podcast, writes a blog weekly, and contributes to many industry publications. And he is, uh, also an all-around good guy and friend. So welcome.

Hey, thank you. Good to be here, Peter. Great to be with you and your listeners today.

Yeah. And we see the book is trending really nicely early on, which is always exciting.

Yeah.

Well, let's start with, before we get into the what is Compassionate Accountability, let's get into, you know, this isn't your first rodeo, right? So what has been different about the experience this time in not just writing the book, but we're in the early stages of the launch compared to your previous couple of—

Oh man. You know, this one has been a lot more intense because we've pulled out all the stops. We're doing, we're kind of bringing together everything that we maybe should have done but didn't do last time and really trying to bring it all together.

So we've got a lot of irons in the fire, a lot going on, which is different in terms of how we're launching this one. Also, you know, times have changed since, since my first book was like 2015, I think, and just the way social media has changed, the way we connect with people, the way publicity and reach works. It's just so different. So aside from how this book is just different in terms of its content, that process has been a lot different.

Yeah. So let's get to the content because I think, you know, if ever there was a moment in time in this post-COVID craziness that we're living through right now for something like Compassionate Accountability, your timing's kind of perfect. But let me ask you the silly question. I know the answer to it, but what is compassionate accountability? Because it seems like usually this should be 2 books, how to be compassionate and then how to hold people accountable. And there was always this implied separation of church and state. But you broke down that wall. So talk about that.

Yeah. Well, it's when people see these 2 words together, and we've been using this phrase probably since 2017. And when people see those 2 words together, their first reaction is kind of like, What? Like, those aren't supposed to go together. And then when they see it, it's like, they go, oh, that would be amazing, like, if it was possible. And so the notion is, these are, you know, compassionate is not like an adjective. Let's do accountability, but nicely.

Yeah, right.

And it's really about bringing these 2 things together as a, in unison, working together as a team. And rejecting the notion that the two are somehow in tension, that they're somehow in opposition. That's the biggest challenge that a lot of leaders have is, is like acting as if these two are against each other and somehow you have to choose a side or you have to reconcile it.

Well, and then the subtitle speaks to that, How Leaders Build Connection and Get Results, because often, again, those two concepts would be separated, right? Here's the 10 ways to get results, maximize your this, you know, whatever. And then building connections also. So there's this interesting thematic blend of the hard and the soft, the left brain, right brain, depending on your piece, which, which kind of, I mean, I've gotten to know you over the last several years. That's kind of how you roll, right? So there's—

Yeah, it really is. And, and I'll be honest, my natural tendency, my personality, I tend towards, when push comes to shove, I go accountability. at the expense of relationships, at the expense of connection. But we know that psychological safety helps with results. We know that connection builds trust, which, which increases performance. So it's possible for us to embrace a kind of compassion that actually walks through the tough stuff together and uses connection as an avenue towards accountability. And—

Right. Uses—

and actually, the process of accountability actually builds stronger relationships and tighter connections.

And then if you look at it a little bit differently, compassion in the absence of accountability might be placating or even enabling, right? And then accountability in the absence of compassion could be seen as brutal or harsh or, you know, whoa, why does it need to be like that? So I guess the question— so now that we understand sort of what it is, How does it, how do you, how do you practice it? Right? So if I'm a leader or a manager and say, OK, I dig this, Nate. This makes a lot of sense to me. But I've been the hard, accountable KPI metrics guy, gal. How do I throw a little compassion into the mix?

It starts with mindset. It really starts with shifting the way we see ourselves and other people. We know that mindset matters.

And it's a choice we make, an attitude we have. So we've, We've developed a working definition of compassion that helps us shift our mindset. So in the old days, we maybe thought of compassion as, you know, empathy in action, where our heart goes out to people and we want to go alleviate the suffering. And that's kind of the more altruistic, friendly kind of compassion. But what if you look at it this way? What if we think of compassion as much more than that? And we've defined compassion as the practice of demonstrating that people are valuable, Capable and responsible in every interaction. So those are big words: valuable, capable, responsible. So it starts with a mindset by saying, wait, compassion doesn't just mean that everybody's great, everybody's going to get along. But it says they're also capable, which means we have, we are contributors, we're participants, we're agents in solving the biggest problems. And we have to be in this together. And we're responsible, which means we have to be really careful about Who's responsible for what, so that we can all be responsible for our stuff?

And then I think there's an implication in the way you frame that of respect, right? Because I could hold you accountable, but it doesn't mean I have any respect for you.

Right?

Right.

I could, I could, I could hold you accountable and not care about you as a person, not care about how you're experiencing work. And, you know, we know the research that 70% of engagement is based on the relationship with the leader. And leaders that hold people accountable without also treating them as valuable capable are not going to have employees for long.

So now let's think about this through the lens of what is the application or the derivatives that are in the book that are applicable at the organizational level, right? Because me as a leader, me as a manager, I get it. But how do we, how do we start to think about this and embrace it at the organizational level?

I'm glad you asked, because that was a really important purpose or goal for this book was don't just focus on mindset, which is important. Don't just focus on the individual interactions. You know, a lot of books will be, oh, here's how to have a tough conversation, or here's how to say it nicely.

It's like, OK, that's great. But let's elevate it and say, what if we looked at organizational culture, systems, processes through this lens? And so we have a whole section of the book dedicated to implementation.

Yeah.

First, it's, first, it starts with getting clear about what are our behavior norms? How do we start setting norms for how we're going to be with each other so that we are affirming human value, capability and responsibility all the time? And then we lay out 6 different areas of organizational life where you can apply this lens and look strategically at things like, how are we doing talent recruitment and talent development? Are we developing people in this way? What about the way we look at performance or discipline?

Stay with, stay with the development piece for a minute, because I think there's Certain traits like compassion potentially and charisma, and we can fill in the blanks on some others. There's an inherent belief, which I think is wrong, that, oh, that's just a trait. Nate's a charismatic guy. Nate's a compassionate guy. Now that might be true, but I think part of what your argument is and the capabilities development is, is, well, maybe I'm more compassionate than you are, but it is a capability. And therefore it is teachable. I can develop my compassion.

It is.

It's teachable. It's learnable. We have data from 11 countries, 25,000 data points of research over the last decade showing that you can teach people compassion. They can learn it. They can practice it. And it can have pretty dramatic immediate results in people's lives. So yeah, it is teachable. And I actually dedicate a whole chapter in the section on barriers to this belief that Compassion can't be learned. You know, nobody— yeah, you just have it, right? Or you don't have it. And that's, that's a myth. And anybody can learn it. Anybody can practice it.

So, you know, throw empathy in the mix, real, like someone's either empathetic or not. I love that you're busting this myth of this binary component of is or not, because that's actually an excuse. Yeah. Oh, Peter's just not a compassionate person. Oh, OK. That means he gets to be a jerk.

Right?

Like—

Yeah, I mean, that, you know, I, in my last book, I said, personality is not an entitlement program. OK, we all have styles. We all have tendencies. We all have personalities. That's great. And an effective leader of the future is going to have to reconcile these 2, is going to have to be compassionate and accountable at the same time. The up, the up-and-coming employees, they demand both. They don't want compromises. And so we're going to have to learn how to do it. And instead of resting or hiding behind these things as excuses, we have to learn how to do it and embrace it.

Yep.

So give us just a very, very high-level overview of how— when I say you, it's not just you, it's the tools and the systems and things that you have. How, how would you be teaching a subset of an entity how to be more compassionate?

Well, it starts with really getting a sense for where people are. So we have a diagnostic assessment tool in the back of the book that we created, and anyone can use it on their own. They can download copies from our website. But when we use that with an organization, like a department, a team, we'll bring in a couple other assessments and take a look at, to what extent are the critical behaviors being manifested now? Where are the gaps? Where are the opportunities? And then we do have specific leadership development courses and programs that help build those competencies. And we also can provide consulting on how to incorporate those in Policies, procedures, systems that will then reinforce those concepts and patterns throughout.

And do you want to touch for a moment on some of the benefits or the outcomes? Because I think at some level, people, you know, now that we've framed this, are going, yeah, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. There's not a lot of anti-compassion, anti-accountability people. And if you're listening, you can go tune in somewhere else if that's your thing.

Yeah.

But so what's the benefit? What's the so what?

Sure. So there's, there's 3 areas where I show benefit in the book. The first one is, what does the research say?

So I'm—

a lot of great literature out there showing that Compassion improves leadership effectiveness and improves psychological safety. It improves team performance. We also have a ton of data that we've collected that we share. And there's 4 critical areas: leadership skills, teamwork, personal and professional competence, where they feel like they're more competent as a professional. And interestingly enough, some of the biggest gains we see is in personal effectiveness. They say, my relationships at home are more effective. I'm dealing with, you know, the committee that I'm on at church so much better now.

Yeah.

And then I also have a whole section on case studies. So I share 4 case studies where we've worked with organizations, and everything from moving towards high quality in healthcare, towards reducing turnover, in another situation, towards even dealing with inappropriate behaviors, like disruptive behaviors in a classroom.

Interesting. Thank you. Um, let's shift gears for a moment and move from Nate the author to Nate the CEO of a consulting firm. Yeah.

Right.

So you're, you're obviously CEO, uh, you know, and the founder. And you tell us a little bit about the type of work that the firm does and how the book is partly not just in service of the reader, but the business.

Yeah. No, thank you. And that's, that's been a big part of this book. As a CEO, you know, I'm an entrepreneur; we're a, we're a, we're a small company, but we're always evolving, always trying to, you know, to be relevant. This is the first book we've written that is not about a model, like a training program or a training system. This is a, this is a book that's about frameworks, philosophy, implementation and strategy. And so for the first time, we're really repositioning ourselves to— we can provide terrific leadership development training. We've done that; we've mastered that over the last 15 years.

Yeah.

But we're really starting to say, wait, we also have a lot of collective intelligence on how to see an organization, a culture in it through a different lens and be able to provide those insights and that intelligence to our clients so that they can make more strategic, better strategic decisions. And then also provide consulting where we can help guide, you know, the simplest thing, like, how do you hire for a Compassion mindset? What are the questions you even ask? So we can start providing higher-level consulting now and have increased the breadth of the ways in which we're leveraging all of the collective intelligence and thought leadership that we have amassed over the last 15 years.

No, thank you.

Yeah.

So a little bit of a different thought, and that's this. So the principles, the models, the research, case studies and such are in the book, were written at a moment in time, right? And then life happens, the world happens, different trends happened. And as you're talking, I'm thinking about psychological safety. We're hearing that word as an example far more today than we ever had. Right. And it's just whether it's cultural, whether it's an outcome of COVID whether it's, you know, whatever. You didn't write this book to be a tool for psychological safety, but I think you can argue, yeah, this is a good tool for psychological safety and engagement and turnover. So how do you—

Oh, man.

Yeah.

So, so the timing of this book is critical because of coming through COVID. It The pandemic revealed so many things that were right, so many things that were broken, and it forced us to, to evolve so quickly in a lot of ways. So we got to write this book during watching all of this happen. So yeah, the book actually speaks to things like why so many DEI initiatives stall out.

Yeah.

Because they're, they're dealing with the value switch, but they're not talking about capability and responsibility. And so nobody knows how to have tough conversations around behavior in the context Of DEI, or hybrid work, return to work. This is emerging; it's changing every single day. So we were able to look at these concepts and say, what's evergreen? And what is emerging? So we could kind of, you know, look at the tea leaves and try to look out kind of where are things going. And so there's a lot of that kind of prognosticating going on here too.

Yeah, I think, you know, one, a good litmus test for a piece of thought leadership is throw an issue out at it, you know, and see if it sticks. So as you, as you're talking, I'm thinking about Compassionate Accountability. What might the application be in the, in helping organizations struggling with, you know, we have 5 generations in the workforce?

Yeah, yeah.

So how do they deal with it versus millennials? Like, you probably may or may not have thought of that when you're writing the book. But I think there's an argument to be made there.

Well, look at, look at the image below the COVID right behind me. It's, we chose that very carefully to emphasize there's, there's 2 different forces here, but they're linked.

Yeah.

And they're working together, and we need each other. So when you look at multigenerational, we've written quite a lot on that is how does this apply to getting generations to respect and value each other, but also join forces to leverage each other's expertise towards a common goal? And it goes back to my original definition of leadership, which is herding cats. I mean, sorry, it's leveraging diversity towards a shared goal. And you have, you can't do that without Compassionate Accountability.

Got it. Cool. So any, anything you want to share in terms of some of the things that you're doing around launching the book differently than you did, you know, a few years ago? Or experiments? Because I think the other piece is, when people move into sort of book launch mode, they've got their playbook, but if the playbook's more than, you know, I don't know, a year old or 5 years old or something like that, I think it's healthier to think of it as a series of experiments. And by definition, some experiments fail and some succeed.

Yeah, well, you know, an experiment has been, well, something that we've really done more of this time than ever is ask for help. It's one of the principles in our book is get vulnerable. Don't try to be the expert. Nobody knows everything, but everybody knows something. And so we've asked for so much help. We've, we've, our launch team is massive in terms of people that just care and they want to help. And so we're growing our network of influence and reach by leaning on people. Um, so that's new.

And, you know, let's stay there for a minute because it used to be that there was the author and then everybody else is a potential reader. But there's this group in the middle. So part of the launch group are people that know you, love you, are aligned with your thinking, are fans. And we want people that we know and love to be successful. Typically what happens is somebody's writing a book, they let their friends and colleagues and such know, and they go, hey, that's great. Let me know what I can do, which means that conversation's over. You did a beautiful job of the launch team starting 5, 6 months ago, at least.

Oh, at least.

Yeah. I think it was fall of last year.

So almost a year ago, recruiting people, starting to share with them some of the backstory. Ooh, final manuscripts, right? Starting to get a little bit of behind the scenes. And then slowly but surely doing a little bit of asks. Hey, could you put a book review up? Hey, could you post this on social? And people are not only rooting for you, they're rooting for themselves because team is, hey, I didn't write the book, but I feel like I want this to be as successful. Because I'm part of the launch team. Who wants to launch something that fails? I don't want to be part of a failure.

No. And I think we are— what we're hearing from some people that are so excited to support the book is they're saying, wait, you have given a name to something that has been emerging like that. Finally, the name Compassionate Accountability is something I've cared about and tried to put my fingers on for years. So we've aligned with people who have an abundance mindset, who know there's plenty to go around. We all know we're barking up the same tree. We're all just trying to do it in our own way. So why not help each other and raise the tide?

Yeah. And I think that's the other piece that's interesting is that in this world of authors and thought leaders, it can be a lonely world, right? Writing tends to be an introverted, alone activity. But once you start to recruit friends that are also authors and such, it's not a Coke and Pepsi, right? So you've got, and I know your relationship with the MG100, et cetera. lots and lots of author friends and you're not afraid to lean in and ask for a little bit of help. Because just because I bought Marshall's book doesn't mean I'm not going to buy your book. In fact, it means I have a higher propensity to buy your book. It's cross-referred as well. And I think that's an interesting—

Yeah.

Dynamic today.

Well, I had someone on my podcast, Kristin Neff. She's a really well-known researcher, author in the self-compassion world. And there's some things in my book that I disagree with some of the stuff that she's teaching. So why not have her on? Let's just talk about it. Because the fruit of our conversation, if we struggle together towards bringing more compassion to the world, everyone's going to win.

Right, right. And I love that idea of— because a lot of people would go the other way. Oh, we don't agree, therefore we shouldn't talk. Well, that's stupid, right? So the fact that you don't necessarily see eye to eye on everything is actually the basis of an interesting interview or conversation or dialogue. Because you're going to do it with respect. It's not going to degenerate into, you know, ugliness. Hey, I see the world this way; you see it this way. Bottom line is, whoever the listener is or the reader of that piece is, has the benefit of 2 great minds.

Well, it's the dynamic tension, I think, is where all the transformation happens. If we can stand in that tension, respecting each other, keeping our switches on, amazing things happen.

Yeah, exactly. So what's, What's next in terms of for you, for the business? What do you see?

Oh man, a lot of naps.

A lot of—

I'm still dealing with jet lag from coming back from Europe. So when I get a good 8, 9-hour night, that's going to be my trigger. It's time to start thinking about what's next. But yeah, you know, we're— a book launch is a big event, but it's just one step along the way. So we're really now going to start thinking strategically about our marketing, our outreach, how we're going to, what's going to follow on from this and how we're going to enrich some of those relationships that we have. And, you know, I can't stop thinking about the next book. I got a couple titles already I'm working on. So I don't know.

Said the serial author, right?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, the first one was the hardest. It gets easier. Maybe, I don't know.

Well, but I think, I think yes, and, and the and is From a business standpoint, again, this is the conflict between Nate the author and Nate the CEO. This is an asset that you and the firm spent a lot of time, energy, effort, resources on, and you've got to give it the time to extract the value from it before intrinsic Nate the author—

Yeah.

Ooh, there's 10 other books I want to write because your team will probably beat you silly if you start to go into that before getting the benefit of this. Right?

Well, and this, this, the title of this book is correlating with elevating our overall brand platform of Next Element, which is Compassion Accountability. We, we help build cultures of Compassion Accountability. So everything else we've done falls under this umbrella now. And so it is a strategic kind of flag in the, you know, that we've put in the sand there.

Yeah, excellent. Well, this has been a lot of fun. I appreciate your time. I appreciate you. And I've been fortunate that I got to read this book when it was pre-book, when it was manuscript.

And, uh, well, the feeling's mutual. I appreciate your strategic guidance and all the great things you're doing too. And, and bringing that angle to this conversation, I don't normally get to talk about that. And so it's so important. And I'm sure a lot of authors who, who also maybe are entrepreneurs need to pay attention to those things.

Yeah, very much. Great. Well, good luck with the book and we will talk again soon, Dave. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Peter.