#23: Forego Opinions to Focus on Expertise with Joe Topinka

Hi, I'm Sy Wakeman, and you're listening to No Ego, a podcast where we teach you how to ditch the drama, end entitlement, and drive big results in your workplace and your world place. Welcome, listeners. I am so excited on this episode of the podcast. to have one of my very favorite IT mentors on. His name's Joe Topinka, and he is a CIO mentor. He's also author of this incredible book called IT Business Partnerships: A Field Guide. But most importantly, I connected with Joe a few years back. We were kindred spirits in like mindsets, and he has been a advocate, a zealot, a raving fan and practitioner of Reality-Based Leadership for years. And Joe, welcome. I'm so glad to have this conversation with you.

Oh, Cy, it's so much fun to be here. And I'm excited about today's podcast.

Good. I was trying to remember, we first met, I think, was it at an Avanta event?

Yeah, it was. It was right when your book came out. And it was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And then I've been following you around ever since then. Minneapolis, Charlotte, you name it. Watching your stuff in Egypt. I watched that too.

Good, good, good. I love that we're connected. And, you know, listeners out there, I hope that you just really know besides this podcast, we've got so many ways to connect with us on our Facebook Live show, Life's Messy, Live Happy, and all the things we do on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. But Joe and I met at an Avanta event. And folks, if you're not familiar with Avanta, they're an amazing organization that puts on conferences that are by function, so CIOs come together and they plan their own conference by CIOs for CIOs. They do it for CHROs, so check that out because you make the best connections there, and that's where Joe and I met, probably 2010 or '11. But Joe, why don't you jump in? Tell us about yourself, your philosophy, how our philosophies really line up together. Wherever you wanna start, you've got good stuff to share.

Sure. Well, I've been in IT now almost 40 years. In fact, 2018 marks the 40th year, and I've been a CIO for about 50% of that time, which means I've been leading IT organizations for a long time. And, you know, we in IT have always struggled to be— we have this mantra, let's become part of the business. And, you know, we don't think of ourselves as part of the business. We almost have sort of a victim's mindset, and I've had the Really fun opportunity to coach and mentor CIOs and IT leaders from around the country. And I have a couple of people I work with across the globe. And what's interesting about the intersection of my meeting you and what I do is you gave me words and phrases and ideas that were so incredibly pragmatic around what personal accountability means. And so often, The IT leaders that I talk to feel more like they're victims of their own circumstance. And so as a result, they feel like, poor me, we don't have a seat at the table. So your tools, your words, your ideas have really powered my own thinking. And I only wish that I had met you 15 years ago and I'd been armed with this great information and knowledge because it would have helped my career tremendously.

Well, I really appreciate those kind words. And I love bringing to listeners folks that are out there practicing, especially I've had a couple of podcasts now with folks in IT because, you know, it's almost been 20 years that we've been talking about IT needs to be more of a consultant. They need to be more enablers of where the business wants to go. They need to be lifeguards and tell us what's, you know, best, not policemen and tell us, you know, what we can and can't do. And you've been in this business a long, long time, and I know you mentor other CIOs as well. What are some of the key principles that you've really loved from my work or that you've adapted to your own work and applied out there? Are there a couple top of mind that would be the first thing you'd want to teach people when they heard you?

Yeah, you know, actually, I do about 20 keynotes a year, and I was just in Washington, D.C., and I talked about the 5 different personas that you encounter in the workforce. And you're not going to avoid these people, and they're real, and you have to figure out how to deal with them. And I start my conversations off with your definition of personal accountability. And there's great debate. Some people don't like that phraseology, but I love the idea that commitment and resilience and ownership and continuous learning really make that up. And I talk about that from a very personal perspective. And the idea that you go into something, you know, if you want to be part of the business, as we like to say in IT, or you want a seat at the table, then you have to get your mind right around how you go about getting that. your circumstances and, you know, a tough CFO who's emotionally expensive, for example, isn't going to be a roadblock for you. You're going to be resilient, you're going to find ways around it. So I spend a lot of time on that. And one of the things that I've done with my teams is we've, we've created what we call the rules of engagement. And many of them are shaped by the learnings that I've gotten from you and your, your team, Cy. One of, one of the things I love to do is talk about stop bitching, moaning, and whining. And, you know, if you're doing that, you're not leading. So that's become one of our rules. We talk about facts before stories. No more once upon a time, we like to say. And support it, don't debate it. I've had real personal examples of some of these that I can share with you in a moment. But what I've done is we worked as a team and we created 9 rules of engagement. We actually put it on a poster. Now, most of the time when you do these poster things inside companies, they kind of, you know, they become like the program of the day. And what I've done try to incorporate that into our everyday life is every, every week when we're meeting, we have those rules of engagement up on our screen. And our team, we talk about where have we seen these rules embraced and where haven't they been embraced? And what can we do to help those folks around the organization that really are feeling more on the victim side of things and where they're not really, you know, getting their head around how to be a leader themselves. So it's become a real thing. in the organizations that I've led. And I've started to share those rules with other people. And I had one team at the company I'm CIO at now, SnapAV, our tech support team, which is customer-facing. They actually asked, could they borrow the rules? And they've asked me to come and talk about how we got there. So it's a pretty cool thing. It's empowering if you're one of the willing, that is.

I love that. And we all know the best thing to do is work with the willing. But I want to really highlight what you do so naturally. And we do have those meetings where we talk about, here are the rules of engagement, and we have the meeting, and then we don't really keep them alive and living. And so listeners, this was a great tip where you're starting out your meetings with a reflection on keeping those rules visual. So anytime we can get something visual, it bypasses the ego. But then the power of story, having people talk about where they're seeing these rules come to life and where maybe they aren't seeing these rules come to life, but then the blood it's just fabulous of accountability where you're not seeing them come to life. What can you do to be that change agent and make it happen? So instead of saying, I would be successful if only I had a better CFO, or if only the business would give us better notification of when they want to do things differently, it's really saying, how can we make this work? And I love that because then you start to be attraction, not promotion, where if people can tell by the way your IT group is walking through the world that there's something different about them, then that's your best commercial for, you know, you can change your area. Here's how we changed ours. I love that. So a great technique for all of you out there. Use your huddle meetings, use your standups, use your time to begin each meeting with reflection on where you want the rules of engagement to be. So thank you for sharing that. I would love for you to talk about the actual rules and a little bit about what they mean to you, because I know not everybody's going to understand, you know, support, Don't debate and some of those things. So are you willing to go through these rules with us?

Sure. I'll actually give you some real personal examples of how I had to use them with myself. Perfect. You know, as you know, being a human being can be a difficult challenge when you're faced with things and obstacles that really don't agree with where you thought things were going to go. So let me start with facts before stories. A personal example of this, about a year or so ago, we had a shift in our executive team and our new leader who's done a phenomenal job at this company decided that he was going to have a subset of the management team, the exec team meet and have sort of a kind of a leadership team meet every other week. And so he asked me, right now, Joe, I don't want you to be part of that. And my initial reaction was to feel really bad about it. And I caught myself and I thought about support it, don't debate it. And I said, I know I don't feel good about this decision, but in this moment, I'm going to swallow my ego. And I said to the boss, I said, look, I can get behind that. I understand why you want to do it. You want to get your sea legs in this new company. I'm here to tell you that I'm going to support that decision. Meanwhile, inside my head, I was very not happy and very upset about it. But actually, once I sort of uttered the words out loud, I realized something. I realized that I am going to be okay. And he actually came back to me 2 or 3 times over the next week or 2 and said, I can't even believe how you responded to me. It was amazing. So it was So, it was a real-world example of how my own experience was reinforced by the learnings and teachings that you've given me. And I really appreciate that.

When people ask me, and they do, they're like, do you have examples of leaders that you would put up there in the top 10 people that have mastered and really lived this? And you and I get to connect a couple times a year, at least. And I would put you in that category where this is a perfect example that you went beyond your personal preference and you forewent that, that was, you went past that because you trusted what might be better for the company. And that earns us so much credibility and trust in our relationships when people can trust that I'm willing to forego my need to control or my want to be present or my want to be involved because I have a sneaking suspicion if you're requesting it, it might be what's best for the company. And that goes back to that question we ask a lot, like, would you rather be, Right or successful. We have a lot of opinions about whether or not we should be involved. But when we really can get beyond that to what might make the person more successful as a new leader in the company, I'm glad to offer that to them. And then even if it had been a disaster and they needed you to step back in, to step in without I told you so's or don't you ever try that again, but just to say, you know what? I'll give you the space to go where you need to go. And I will always be on the sidelines as a willing participant in anything I can do to help. So that's a fabulous example.

Just to add on to that, you know, a couple of days after that whole event unfolded, he came back and asked me how I was feeling. I shared this with you last week when I saw you. And I said, you know, I don't really think, John, that you really— I think you do care about how I feel. But what you're really asking me is, am I committed to this new direction. And I am wholeheartedly on board. Since then, by the way, I'm back on the exec team. So I— but I didn't say I told you so. But that— and he was very surprised by it all. So that, that's a real-world example from myself.

I love that because a lot of times as leaders, we give mixed messages. Even we go out, we like— we're like, are you okay with the decision? And I love what you said. What we really need to ask is, can I have your full commitment, which is the first step in accountability. Buy-in is is a verb. And it is not my job as your leader to buy you in, especially if you're executive level. It's your job to just come and give that freely. So I'm glad you're back on the exec team, but I am confident that whether you're on it or off of it, you will find ways to support the direction of the company and willingly align. And I know that's a gift for the company, but what did you find in your own, um, peacefulness or your own level of happiness or satisfaction? Because that's the real payoff, I think.

Well, it, you know, surprisingly, and, you know, when you're in the midst of something like that where your emotions are running at, you know, top level, as soon as you embrace the idea that you're gonna, you know, support it, don't debate it, your stress levels go away almost immediately. And I felt relief. I actually felt very positive and energized and ready to go to work again. So it has an amazing impact on on your psyche. It really gets you out of your ego.

I would agree. There's a lot of times when I feel like my ego's hooked. And one visualization I use is if I imagine that the person who is making a decision that really needs my support, and I have a tug-of-war rope where I really wish that was a different decision, I want to debate it. I visualize just me letting go of my end of the rope, not to have them fall on their butts. That's not the visual I want you to have. But just where I don't even pick up my end of the tug-of-war rope. I just don't even engage in that. And instead, just walk towards them and shake hands and let me know, you know, have them let me know I can support them and just really invite them to play a different game. Because in leadership, so often we are mentally wired to get into win-lose. And even when we compromise, it becomes a lose-lose. Both of us lose something. Instead of a lot of ways it becomes a win-win is when Yeah. When I take another approach, not when I get somebody else to give in to me. And so I just, I think it's a really peaceful way to move through the world. And a lot of us, we want to influence people and influence the decision because we have this illusion that we know best and we know how it should be. We have a lot of opinions. But those of us with true expertise can forego our opinions because we don't need to control what's decided. Because we have expertise, we can really make almost anything work. And the real value that we bring to the table, the real value is using my expertise to make it work, not my opinion to try and narrowly define the right way to do things. So I think unless it's ethics or a moral issue or someone's being mistreated, we need to have a lot fewer opinions and a lot more willingness to support, not debate. So I love that engagement. ground rule of yours.

Yeah, I think another example that I could share is facts before stories. And, you know, people invariably want to take a situation in the office. If we're rolling out some new software and our software teams, our testing teams don't like the quality of the code that they're getting and they complain about, you know, the team doesn't really appreciate us, we're at the end of the caboose, they start to tell themselves stories. So we use facts before stories to highlight the idea that, Get the facts first. Maybe there's something more to the story. We like to say, assume positive intent. I call that the human API. And so we make our teams get the facts behind an issue before they actually start to tell themselves that story in their head where they're the victim in their own movie that they've written. And so we pull people out of that. And it's not You know, always easy, but we do. We say, look, I think you're— we use these words, you know, I think you've got your stories first and your facts second. So let's reverse that trend. And it happens so often that we get in our own way. And so I spend a lot of time, you know, on those sorts of issues. And those are very real issues that— and so I love the no more once upon a time, facts before stories. And you ask, you know, you said something in a webinar years ago You know, you have a choice to make. And why do you come into the office choosing to live that life and to choose that level of stress? Try a different path. Go get— figure out, you know, the facts first, assume positive intent, and go help that person out. If they're struggling with something on the software side that might make your life easier, give them that insight, help them out. So that's a very powerful message. And once people hear it over and over, they start to live it. Because if they come to my office and want to bitch, moan, and whine to me about it, they know they're going to get sent back to get some facts before too many more stories are told.

I love it. And what you're doing is you're bringing in leadership, which is helping people use a better mental process. And when people approach work with poor mental processes, they suffer. And it does blow my mind why people would even come back to work when they're believing their stories and what they paint work to be. I'm like, why would you even show up today if it's This horrible. And the good news is, is the same job could be beautiful in just a single minute if you get to the facts, because the facts are never harsher. Our reality is never more harsh than our stories. Our stories are always more harsh. And I love how you create the language so then it's not personal when you need to use it as a course correction. It's just a comment more about the human condition. It's really nice.

You know, Cy, one of the other side benefits of that circumstance that I described where I was pulled off the exec team for that period of time, people around the company kind of looked at you with this sort of, oh, he must be feeling really bad sort of look, that sad puppy dog look with their little head tilted. And they'd say, how are you doing? I'd say, I'm doing great. And the word got around that I handled it well. And it sort of gives you credibility because people realize that you're not caught up in the emotion yourself. You're someone who's safe that you can be approached when there are real issues and challenges to be dealt with, and you're not going to get on some emotional roller coaster ride at the drop of a hat. So it actually gives you more credibility as a leader. And that's another surprising outcome that I've personally experienced as a result of using these great ideas and pragmatic tools that you've given us.

That's a fantastic point because all of us can go through Cy Wakeman's trainings and think, oh, my employees need to ditch the drama. But the reality is, is You've got to walk that walk. And at times you don't walk that walk, you need to self-reflect, recognize it, and just speak it to your team that you fell off the path. But if you want people to come to you, you've got to show them that you're a neutral force, that you are practicing these principles. So when we talk about creating safe workplaces, I'm not talking about creating safety for victim-minded people, but I am talking about creating neutral workplaces where people feel like we can really work on the issue without personalizing it and adding to the You know, Joe, we tend to only go about 20 minutes, but I'm breaking that rule because I'm loving this. I want to hear about more of these rules of engagement if you're up for it.

Sure. Let's— let me see if I can think of a couple. Well, let's see. I talked about assuming positive intent. We have some others that have grown out of the conversations we've had stemming from reality-based leadership. We talk about listening. You know, not formulating your own ideas before someone gets them out. We use the phrase yes, and, and you talk about that quite a bit. So those are examples. We also talk about get out of your BMW. You know, all these sort of interrelate, but it's real. It's really convenient though. Some people ask for permission to just take their BMW around the building one time just to get the stress out. And, you know, I used to think that was a good idea, but I realized You know, that's actually counterproductive and you're giving in to your ego at that time. So we, you know, I used to say, yeah, let's take it around, come back in, let's get some productive stuff done. And now I just say, look, let's just, you know, why don't we just jump out of that right now?

Yeah, let's skip that part. I think you've really realized something that we actually know from some research that, you know, venting, it feels good, but, you know, so does, I always joke, so does crack cocaine. It's like a lot of times we say, Oh, let's just let people vent for a minute, get it off their chest. But the problem with that is it further solidifies a victim mindset. And what we're venting about are things that probably didn't happen because we vent from our story, not the facts. And so I love that you're always improving this by saying, you know, I would let you take a drive around, but why, you know, why not conserve that 10, 15 minutes and just jump right into using some of these ground rules? These are fantastic.

One of the other things we've used is the phrase emotional expensiveness. And we've talked about what that actually means and how detrimental that can be. And I've had some individuals on my teams and inside my teams and actually peers of mine that have been emotionally expensive over the years. And we, and I actually talk about, you know, what does that look like? You know, they, maybe they say no as a reflex, they have coiled anger. You know, they try to get you mad. I say, don't take that wiggly worm. And, you know, you talk about this too, but— When you have an emotionally expensive person on the team, even though they may have high potential, high performance, they tend to create an environment where people, when they need their help, avoid them. They take the long way around. They see them in the parking lot. They wait for them to get out of their car and into the building before they get out of theirs because they don't really want to talk to them. And we talk about how do you actually deal with that? And I've coached my teams to stick with the facts, understand the financials. If you're in IT, usually if you stick with the core revenue drivers and cost structures of the organization. If you can talk about that and how you're contributing to it, you can keep your conversations with those executives that are emotionally expensive on a different playing field and expect tough questions. Expect they're going to get you off your— try to get you off your game. So we proactively talk about those scenarios and how you as an individual can deal with them when they happen. So that's— we talk about emotionally expensive people, and that phrase actually has now you know, infected the organization. People all know what that means, and they've heard about me talk about it within my own organizations, and people talk about it outside of IT now as well.

I love it. And a lot of times it's not how you can change the other person, especially if they're, you know, in a senior position or something, but it's definitely how you can quit enabling that other person by your silence or by you getting thrown for a loop. And, you know, a great technique is that broken record technique where You know, somebody might, you know, start blaming or start complaining or venting. And you can say, you know, the meeting I called today was really to focus on how we can best drive this number for the business. And I know we all agree that that is a strategy we're all behind. So, you know, let's regroup around that. And you may say that 4 or 5 times, but what ends up happening when you won't go with somebody and you won't enable them is you, you start to expose it because you just leave them hanging out there where nobody has confirmed it or enabled it. Mm-hmm. And people, um, like to go where they're comfortable. And if that's no longer comfortable for them, they do get on task. It's a very subtle way to manage the conversation without you having to confront, because confrontation is like a punch in the face of the ego a lot of times. And so it's just managing energy. And, and I love what you do because you teach your people, rather than trying to manage these difficult personalities, managing their energy around these difficult personalities is really how I would sum up

Yeah, and I think, you know, the other aspect of that is, you know, when you're dealing with those individuals, when you say, hey, listen, I really do need your help, and can I ask for your commitment, and what does that commitment look like, and can I follow up in a week to see how things are going, those things really diffuse the negative energy and the emotionally expensive situations. Some— not all the time, but quite a bit of the time. And so that's another set of skills that I think we can all learn from. guardrails that you've given us is the way to kind of engage that person and get them to personally say, yeah, I will help you. I will do these things and I will follow up. And that's a reasonable timeframe. So just asking those questions just pulls people out of their emotionally expensive mindset and into a more rational, calm, business-oriented mindset. So amazing. Again, I wish I had these tools in my arsenal a long, long time ago. Did I just mix metaphors? Yeah, I love it.

Tools in the arsenal, weapons. We'll take it. We all, we love metaphors in The more creative, the better. You know, in, in when people ask me about, you know, how do I change the other person, then I talk about how you can just interact differently with them. And most people will step up to that neutral, calm, no drama focus that you're just asking plain questions that are hard to argue with, you know, can I have your commitment? That's a yes or no answer. And most people know that no is the wrong answer. And, you know, is it okay with you for me to follow up? So many people dread interactions and really have a story around how they can't make a difference and that their circumstances would need to change and that all leaders would need to suddenly get enlightened in order for them to be rock stars. And what you're teaching your people is that you can move skillfully through an imperfect world because our reality is we always will probably have some folks who are more emotionally expensive than we had hoped for or that we like, but that doesn't have to stop your progress. if you've got those skill sets. You know, a lot of people ask me, you know, how long does this take? Like, if they're new to reality-based leadership and, and they really think that a culture change will take years. And, and what you and I have talked about is even just in the minute, you can just, you can really drive different outcomes by being skilled in these techniques and by really living fully this mindset. But what's your experience been? Because you've been called into Quite a few different companies to really fully deploy the power of IT in those companies. You have done, I won't call them turnarounds, but definitely tune-ups in a pretty big way. How long does it usually take you to get people thinking differently?

Well, usually what happens is you get a small percent that are the willing and they're right there with you and they go, yeah, that makes sense what you're talking about. And then it takes, you know, any number of months, sometimes a year, 18 months to get everyone on board. And sometimes, you know, as you well know, you're not going to get everyone there. And what I try to do is work with, you know, the rest of the leadership team to identify who those people are. Those are, as you describe them, those are the people that have decided to leave the organization, but they still show up and get a paycheck. And, you know, when you talk about it in those terms, in that context, light bulbs start to go on and you get more people involved. And so, you know, I usually find that when I come into an organization, it doesn't take but, you know, 3 to 6 months with my own teams to really get energy around this. And the rules of engagement first got developed at Snap when I was there about 9 months. So that, that's when the team, we came together, we had our morale was in that group was the lowest in the organization. And then we used an engagement survey, not the kind of engagement survey you would do, Sy, but we showed up in a negative way. And I started to to think about how can I leverage reality-based leadership as a way to kind of breathe some life into this team. And it worked wonders. It was a remarkable turnaround. This group's a high-performing group now and actually delivered a very innovative technology platform for SnapAV that is actually growing exponentially and really helping the company make a new mark in the segment that we serve.

I love it. It's incredible because it really— I've watched you and I've watched others do this, and you really can make a big difference in 3 months, 6 months, 9 months. And, you know, a lot of folks know my stance on engagement. I love engagement. I especially love engaging high accountables. Um, we've just over-rotated a bit. But what you were able to do is increase your engagement, not by going softer on people, not by coddling them, not by, you know, fixing their circumstances, but actually using accountability as a driver to engagement, which is what we believe. is what really, really works. Joe, I know that you've got this great position in your organization right now, but I also know that, like many of us, you've got this incredible side hustle that is a big part of what you do as a CIO mentor. I want to make sure people know where they can find you because a lot of my listeners are looking for, after they are familiar with my work, who else is out there practicing this stuff, who can be a voice not just for our RBL, but how they've applied it. And you certainly are that in the IT world, also with, you know, engineers and just engineer-like-minded people. So how do they connect into your great work, and how do they find you for keynotes, consulting, mentoring, all that great stuff?

They can just head to ciomentor.com and they'll find me there. They can also hook up with me on LinkedIn. It's another great way to do it. Or you can just email me at joe@cimentor.com. I actually found that domain About, I don't know, 15 years ago. And I was— I remember walking down the stairs of my house at the time and I said, I wonder if that domain is available. And sure enough, it was. So I was lucky enough to grab it so that that's how they can find me.

It's a great domain. You've been ahead of your time, but it's so relevant right now because a lot of us in organizations, especially for my HR listeners out there, when we have people that we want to have mentored in the, you know, the IT organization, we don't often know like who is a sanctioned person that's really going to lead people out of drama and help move this forward. So I wholeheartedly endorse Joe's work. In fact, Joe and I joke about our future together that someday I'm going to— we're going to partner and deploy him out to create a reality-based leadership revolution for IT in the world. Joe, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. It's always a pleasure when I get to connect with you on a regular basis, and I so appreciate I appreciate your calm, neutral, wonderful, quiet wisdom. It's fortunate that we met, and you give me a lot of credit for my principles, but this was already in your DNA long before I came along. I give you— gave you some words for it, but I so appreciate the work you do and coming on the podcast today.

And thank you, Cy, for all you do. You've been a huge inspiration to me, and actually, we use these principles in my family. I think I told you one time We were on a Mexican vacation. I had the whole family rented a house and we actually watched your videos. I made them all watch them.

So— I want to apologize formally to Joe's family that on their vacation, they, they have to watch PSYCH videos. But I hear that often. A lot of people who come to love these principles tell me that their family loves them as well. And I know I've met your wonderful wife. And these are universal principles, folks, that aren't just work principles. They're— if you want a peaceful, happy way of living, Um, I suggest you get really good at ditching the drama. So, Joe, thank you, and I look forward to future conversations.

Thank you, Sy.

Thank you so much for joining the episode today. If you're loving this podcast, just make sure that you check me out on Facebook and Instagram and especially YouTube.