Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em: Exploring the A-Z of management | with Bev Kaye

Sam, Welcome. It is January 2013, 2021, and the world has gone crazy. As my next guest just said to me a few minutes ago, my world, my little world, is doing just fine. My big world is insane. And many of us feel that way. Whether you're in the US looking at politics and you're in the world looking at the pandemic, it can feel a bit crazy. So I want to bring it back down to earth and we want to explore a topic that I think is timeless. It's a fantastic topic. It affects nearly all of us, if not all of us, and that is on management and leadership. We're going to be talking about how you got to love them or you will lose him. I'll explore the A to Z of management here on the show today. Quick recap to those of you perhaps might be first time listeners. The Shortlist is a weekly show that goes out live on LinkedIn and YouTube, is available as a podcast on Apple and Spotify or wherever you find your podcasts. And you can find more about the show@socialtalent.com the shortlist where you'll find a list of all our previous episodes and the lineup of our future guests who are joining us over the coming weeks. So do join us there if you're subscribed subscribing. If you're listening to us on podcast, please do subscribe. If you're watching live, I'm going to ask you to join the conversation as we go on for the next 45 minutes or so. We always welcome our live listeners. You're great. You give us great questions for our guests and comments and we love to call them out and involve our guests in answering them. So please do so today as well. So career progression, I guess for many of us, if you've progressed in any way through your career, typically we think of career progression as an upward, you know, how do we get up, grow to have our own team, perhaps be the boss, manage. And that's typically how we see progression, that it's all about going upwards and this isn't necessarily the only way. And our guest today is going to explore this topic with us because increasingly we read about how, you know, different generations increasingly want more responsibility, they want more challenges. And traditional managers, let's say, and leaders might be feeling like there aren't enough promotions to go around, there aren't enough managerial positions to go around. And I think that is an outdated way of looking at progression and opportunity. But as we've seen with the Pandemic, the world of Management and leadership has been turned upside down and it's really shone a light in the last 10 months on good leadership and poor leadership. And managers are having to really kind of look inside themselves and ask what do I need to do to succeed? Because many bad managers, as described perhaps by their teams, don't want to be a bad manager. I guess most of them don't want to be. They just don't necessarily know what the difference in good and bad looks like. And I want to try and dig into that with our guest today. And our guest is a fantastic guest who's coming back for the second time on the show. Absolutely thrilled to have her. She's joining us from the west coast of the US this morning and it is the fabulous Dr. Bev Kay. And Beverly has written many books on the topic. I first saw her speak a couple of years ago in Philadelphia talking about leadership and she blew me away with just insightful, kind of call them commonsensical approaches to leadership that are timeless, I think. And we can all listen to and learn from Bev. Good morning and welcome back to Social Talent. We have new content going live with bev K tomorrow. That is Thursday the 14th of January. For any of you with a social talent license, you're gonna be able to explore some brand new leadership content and really get into the classes that Bev teaches. But for those of you who don't, and for those of you listening today, we're gonna give you a smattering of that as Bev shares that wisdom. Good morning, Bev. How's life going for you on the west coast of the U.S. how are you feeling today?

Well, just turned on the television and la, where I am is going Covid crazy. The, the hospitals, the ambulances are waiting in front of the hospitals and it is nuts. So I am not leaving this house or this room in my house.

I hope that's the same for all of our listeners and audience. You know, most of us have stay at home orders as the right thing to do. Like I'm joining you from Ireland, which is officially we won something. We're the, we're the worst in the world for Covid cases. Yes, we won the prize this week. We've been smoking.

We're the worst city in the world. So listen, right, this is a good.

Joining of of like minded people. Stay indoors. Listen to the short list. That's what it's all about. Bev, I'm keen to get started and we're going to get stuck straight into the news this week as I'm keen to get your opinions on a couple of articles. Let's go with some news. N. So first up, I really, really enjoyed actually reading this one here. It's from Forbes this week and they published a post called Leaders versus Managers in the Pandemic Era Workplace. For those of you listening or haven't seen this, give a Google to the Forbes article leaders versus Managers in the Pandemic Era Workplace. And it's written by a woman called Eisha White, who is a chro of a large union based in the US as well. I thought this was quite insightful as quite a deep post and it explores something that I have a personal interest in this definition and the difference in language. And a lot of people aren't as fussed about these differences. What is the difference in a leader and a manager? They're the same to you. Bev, before we dig into the article, what is your opinion, before you even read this article, what has been your opinion, if anything, on the difference between those words, a leader a and a manager? Is there a difference?

You know, I know everybody says there is and the difference they say there is is that a leader looks broadly and a manager looks at what's in front of them. And I think nowadays every manager has to be a leader, has to lead people, has to be the example that people want to follow. And maybe a leader might look broader. But nowadays I think even managers have no choice but to look broadly. And in the love of book we argued and argued, my co author and I do we use the word leader or the word manager. And in love we went with manager because we wanted to talk to the person who manages directly, other people. But you know, I personally have a problem with the separation of the words because of that. I think every leader manages and I think every manager leads. So that's just the Bevke way of looking at it.

And I love that. And you're referring obviously to your best selling book, Love or Me Lose Them. And if you haven't already downloaded it on your Kindle or bought the book, I thoroughly recommend. It's a great read.

You can't buy it yet until another week.

Ah, the new edition is coming out, Drew in another week, a week or two. That's brilliant. But I'm sure people can reserve a copy.

Beth oh they. And yes they can.

Yes. And it's interesting because I had this kind of conversation a couple of years ago with our team here when we talked about, you know, building more content for what is traditionally called hiring managers. Right. And you know we had a great guest on last week, Joanna Fendel from Flex who spoke about a really again similarly interesting topic on the difference between performance and potential. And if I was going to contrast two words as well, because we're talking about, we were talking about two words and what they meant and how they were different last week. This week we're starting with two words and are they different as well? I think it's the same. You know, manager certainly is described that Forbes article is more focused on performance, get the job done, meet requirements. Whereas I think what they're saying is the leader goes well above that. And I think that was the argument Joanna was making in terms of the framing of performance versus potential. Potential is, you know, somebody goes the extra mile, but it's also, it can have to take that argument. Someone with potential is someone. We make a manager make a leader. And so I guess you probably want to your point, see both attributes. You need performance, but you also need to bring something else and to try and you know, bring your team up as the article argued, develop them more, you know, expand their horizons and support them. One thing that I really like, Bev, and this is probably more pertinent to this year maybe was the piece that the article mentioned around. Great leaders have an awareness of the kind of the bigger macro environment of their team. They kind of have a sense of what's going on beyond the work. You know, they want to know how is the person coping, how are they dealing with things, what's going on in their life. They actually are the type of person who realize that sometimes it's more important to put time into non work things. Just getting together, having a chat, seeing how people are because that in the long run helps their team deliver more. I think that was a nice kind of piece of insight I really did like from the article. What do you think?

Yeah, I agree. And again, I think everybody is responsible for potential. Like maybe managers even more so maybe that I never thought about this way but. But you know, a manager is the face of the organization to the individual. And if I put my people in a little box like career wise, if they can't see themselves as having a future in the organization in my current world, but I mean in the organization as a whole and as a manager, the thing that will kill potential is if I hoard my talent and if I keep them too close to me, I. I think we want talent in the organization and not everybody will stay. But if a manager holds on too tightly, they could lose that individual for the sake of the whole organization.

I think that's. It's an excellent point. It brings us as nice segue perhaps to our second article, our second news article, which comes from the Be the Business blog and it talks about a look at the management style changes made by successful business leaders. And this article primarily focused on small business leaders, don't get me wrong. But its main argument is that we all have a style and great managers can adapt that style. Do you think that style and what you mentioned about holding on too much, do they correlate? Are there certain styles that lend themselves to holding on and not thinking of the interests of the employee and developing them for the greater need of the company? Is that a thing you've come across in your experience and what is your general kind of opinion on management styles and how they can evolve?

You know, that style feels like the old command and control, like I'll tell you what to do, I'll tell you how to do it. And it is a micromanagement style. And I think now what all the management books, leadership books are saying is that you have to treat each individual as an individual. It can't be command and control across the board. You have to understand what makes each individual tick and we all tick differently. But if I think my manager is interested in me, the human being me, and what I'm going through now and what my desires are for the future, I'm going to stay pretty loyal to that manager. And if that manager opens a new door for me and I go through it somewhere else in the organization, I'm going to remember that that manager. It's like I say, let your people grow, not just let your people go. And I'll remember.

I think it's a really interesting point in terms of that traditional command and control, old style approach. Bev. Right. I was listening to a piece recently. There's a podcast that was talking about management styles and it talked about what is typically considered a male management style, which is the command, the control type. Right. Historically. And then it contrasts that and it uses gender perhaps incorrectly with maybe more female management styles, which the original author was saying lends itself to more the love and stuff. And the author that was on the podcast was saying, hang on a second. There's lots of examples where you see it across genders. It isn't a gender thing. And I thought the great argument was looking at let's say army generals. There's many army generals who obviously do the command and control. It's a very military type approach. But it talked like leaders like Colin Powell and others who I think were much more in the camp of the Loveham camp, who genuinely took an interest in their people and prioritized those things. So even in the military, where you might think there's a leadership style that suits the military, you know, there's tons of examples of great military leaders who have adopted the style that you would probably more. More suggest we should, which is more along the lines of the Book of Love. Would that be fair to say? Yes.

Yes. In fact, let me talk about that word, love. And so the book, this is the sixth edition that's coming out. The book has been around for 20 years. And in 1999, when the first one came out and we talked with our publisher and we said we want the title to say love them or lose them. He said, as a good publisher would, well, do you think in a bookstore a guy would walk in and pull a book with love in the title? And we said, it has to be that word because that one word encompasses any other word we could name. You know, it encompasses be kind. It encompasses understand. It encompasses care about. It even encompasses say hello in the morning, say how are you doing? All of that. And we say in the book it is about love, even if you don't use that word, substitute any other word but punchline. It is care about them, talk to them, listen to them, look into their eyes, even on a screen. And in a time of COVID it's saying, how are you doing? And really meaning it and waiting for the answer. And I'm going to send you Johnny. I don't know where you'll put it out, but 26 ways to say.