S4E1: Modern Leadership in Challenging Times

Hello and welcome to another episode of the No Ego Podcast. I am shaking it up a bit. We each week get together as a team and try and figure out like what would be the most relevant information to bring to you. And that's why on the last episode I brought in Jackie Ander Egg, a licensed social worker who is a fantastically brilliant person, to talk about some of the mental health effects on COVID and how to keep ourselves We're kind of at the 3/4 mark of this big marathon finish line. And this week I wanted to bring to you a keynote that is receiving just a lot of accolades and was very well received. Energage was doing a Top Places to Work celebration and asked me to just talk about modern leadership in these times, and I did Just that, and people are loving it. So we wanted to make sure that more people had access, and so we're bringing that to you today in the form of a podcast. I hope that you enjoy it, and, uh, I'm gonna be back at the microphone bringing you all new content. So working on that now, so stay tuned. We got some good things in store for you. Enjoy the keynote. I would imagine that you, like myself, have spent a great deal of time on Zoom calls since March. As a researcher and someone keenly interested in human behavior, I've paid close attention to our behavior on those Zoom calls and have been watching for any changes as we Move through these unprecedented times, and I want to report to you that there have been some changes and some concerning changes. If you remember back to March when we were all gathering together, many of us via Zoom, the focus was on how are you doing, is there anything you need, is there anything I can help you with, who can I connect you to, how can I get you what you might be There was a lot of care for one another, and the conversation while we waited for everyone to join was all about how do we come together, make this work, care for each other, and give each other everything they need to serve our clients, our customers, our patients. And what I have witnessed over the last few months is concerning. Rather than reaching out to help, I've noticed that those few minutes on Zoom calls when people are gathering together To wait for full participation. Are not spent checking in and helping one another as much as they're spent talking about these times, colluding and sympathizing with one another. Ain't it awful? Isn't it a disgrace? Someone should do something. We would have done it differently. They needed to have done X, Y, and Z. Here's the switch. Instead of me having agency and reaching out and joining while we come together and move forward, it's a lot of people coming together to critique what's happening, disassociating, acting as if all we have to talk about are how challenging these times are. And I'm here to tell you, these are tough times, these are challenging times, unprecedented times. But I hope to remind you today that these are our times. Yes, they're tough times, but they're our times. When they write the next chapter of how we moved forward and whether or not we built a better workplace and world place, that chapter will be about us. And I'm calling all of you as a leader to stop disassociating and seeing it as tough times and stepping up to this amazing space in which we can identify these as our times. For whatever reason, we are here in this place for a reason. With all of the training and experience that we have to date, this is our moment. As a leader, we need to help people manage energy. So many leaders have been taught that their role is to manage people, and I'm here to tell you, in our research and in modernizing the role of a leader, that leaders no longer manage people as much as they manage the energy of people. And the best role of a leader is managing energy away from why we can't and why we shouldn't have to and why this stinks to what would great look like and how can we create that. It is our role as a leader to manage people's energy away from ain't it awful to what would be amazing and how can we play a part in creating and designing that. And that is the key role for you right now, leading in these times of uncertainty. There's 5 stages that leaders in crisis need to pay attention to, and the first stage is all about safety and basics, all about ensuring our people have what they need. The second stage is ensuring That we're not the sole source of support for our people, that we get them connected in with others doing meaningful work, realizing that they have more resources in their life than they ever knew possible. And then, of course, getting a lot done, immediate innovation, doing whatever it takes to put some temporary solutions in place and make sure we're providing for essential needs of our clients and patients. And then it's our role as a leader to question everything before we add anything back in. We need to question everything and only allow back in that which will serve us, that which has true ROI, because the final stage as a leader is to capitalize on such events like the year 2020 and to design and curate a better workplace and a better workplace. So let me go into depth. Let me go more into depth of the 5 stages I want you paying attention to in times of crisis. First, safety and basics. If you remember back to March when we first had to move quickly to a work-from-home situation and when some of our colleagues and employees were affected by COVID or had little information or had parents in other states they were concerned about, or kids suddenly coming home to be homeschooled. I'm sure that most of your time and attention went to making sure they had what they needed. I know in my business, I was stranded in Mexico away from my team, no flights coming home, but we were checking in with each other, and I was personally reaching out one-on-one privately to find out what their experience of the pandemic and then the protests and then all of the other amplified and activated discussions on racism and social injustice. I was reaching out to find out what their needs were. Have 3 kids at home and only 1 iPad? Let me figure out how to get you what you need and get some laptops delivered or a printer delivered to your home. Have parents in another state that you're not sure how you're going to get groceries to them. Let's use our network to figure out who lives closest and who can do a well check for us. How are you doing emotionally? How are you doing with flexibility and trying to care for all the sudden needs you find yourself caring for? Even what is this revealing to you about the boundaries you set or the ways you over-function? How can you simplify, come close in, just deal with today? A whole lot of mental health support, helping people with anxiety. That's what I was doing in the beginning, a lot of caring for people's safety and basics. But then after you ensure that your people are safe and they have the basics, you need to call them to greatness. They can't stay stuck there. You've got to wean them off of you and your providing the initial stabilization and start to work with them on how they're gonna find some sustainable solutions. And the best way to do that is to connect them with each other, to get them connected in with doing meaningful work with other folks. When we researched resilience, we found out that the most resilient people were those that had the biggest network of positive relationships and asked for help most often. The crowdsourcers, the ones who team-sourced things, who went out and and ask for some brainstorming ideas on what they could do next that would be a better way forward. So the basis of resilience is getting people connected outside of themselves. And so that was the second stage I started to tend to, is connect people. When MD Anderson called and said they had to send their talented research team home home. The researchers were devastated. Not only did they love their research, but stopping it could have impacted their careers and their promotions and their publications, but most of all, their progress towards curing cancer. And while they couldn't be at work continuing their research, we wanted them involved in meaningful work. So we started to connect researchers with other researchers completely outside of their field and asked them to do some peer review and some advising. And what we found out is that innovation skyrocketed. People found meaningful ways to come together and found ways to share from their certain specialty to other specialties that led to incredible breakthroughs. So get people into safety and basics, but do not coddle them or let them stay there. Expect great things from your people. Call them up to greatness and connect connect them. And don't lower your standards. Yes, up your support, but expect that we've got to get the basics done. And the best way to get the basics done is radical simplification. Define what is core, what is necessary. Relieve and take away, cull away anything that isn't adding great value or isn't your core business or isn't serving the needs of your customers directly right now. And that's where all the innovation came from. I know for myself, I got very innovative on how I would set up a quick filming studio in a small Mexico house. I was using laundry baskets and creative lighting with lamps moved all over the place and my iPhone and There came a point though that I realized that it wasn't a long-term solution. I couldn't have my entire office with papers scattered in my living room on a laundry basket turned over. Yes, it helped me get stuff done, but it wasn't a long-term solution, and I had to really look for sustainability. I had to succumb to the fact that I probably needed to rearrange my environment and create an office Out of a walk-in closet and settle in for a longer term. I had to get super fluent, not just in Zoom, but in presenting from unusual situations to high standards. That's that stage: get it done. That's the stage most people are stopping and using hope as their strategy. Now that we have figured out how to survive this thing, let's just hope it ends soon. Yay! There's a vaccine. We might be able to get back to normal. Soon, and my hope for you as a leader is that's not where you stop, because you would be leaving so much value on the table. 2 more stages. First is now that you've radically simplified, do not add anything back until you really question it. Question everything in your lives. Now that I know we can do great training virtually, I won't just jump on a plane and always default to in-person training. Now that I know that people are accepting of more casual dress, I doubt I will ever go back to pantyhose, high heels, and uncomfortable business suits. Those are the simple things, but questioning everything you have before you add it back onto the table. Are the quarterly reviews that your team spends hours on perfecting PowerPoint to update the executives really adding that much value that you want to commission hours unquestioned back into that level of detail? Because the real beauty here is the opportunity we have to capitalize on this pandemic, on the social uprising that we've seen, to capitalize on what's been revealed to us. And part of questioning everything is questioning Ourselves. What has this pandemic revealed to us? Personally, I've had to ask, what does it reveal to me about my relationship with uncertainty? What does it reveal to me— what was all that busyness in my life covering up? What does it reveal to me about how I need to modernize my approach as a leader? Instead of holding people accountable by having them present in the office where I could keep an eye on them, I need to develop new competencies, modern competencies. Rather than holding people accountable, I want to foster accountability. Rather than defining what needs to happen, I want to hold space for other people to share with me how they're experiencing it. Rather than rewarding the knowing, I want to celebrate curiosity. I want— instead of figuring out what side they're on or what camp they're in, I want to help the world understand there are not 2 sides or 2 camps. There's one camp, the one that includes the entire human race on one planet. It is time for us to not just focus on mastery and figuring it out and knowing But also on the counterbalance of mystery. How can we stay in the unknowing? How can we allow the undoing and the unlearning and foster that as much as we foster the learning and the knowing? How can we ensure our teams are impacted but not traumatized by the events of the day? And that is the final stage. How do we curate? A better future? How do we design a better workplace and a better workplace? How do we not let what has happened to us in 2020 go to waste? When leaders manage energy, managing it away from why we can't and why we shouldn't have to, to how we could, it's vital that we also, in that management of energy, teach people to conserve energy. See, when people are faced with an unpreferred reality, They spend an enormous amount of energy arguing with that unpreferred reality, wishing it were different or railing against it. And that's usually an argument that you'll lose, but only 100% of the time. When people feel defeated, like they can't impact current reality, they jump into hoping for a better future where they also feel defeated because the place of their agency or of their power is in this tiny little between an unpreferred reality and a hoped-for different future. That is the space that we leaders need to slide our way into and invite others into. It is a space where we connect an unpreferred past with a different future. It is the tiny space where we have agency, where our choices make a difference. Yep, we needed to survive and deliver in the unpreferred reality. We had to deliver in spite of the facts. But there is a space where now we get to be the bridges through our choices, through our curating, through our design, through our intentions, through our growth, that we can bridge this unpreferred reality to a very different future. And it's a leader's job to manage the, the energy there. What so many people don't realize is your stress or How you come through this year or these times isn't predetermined by what's happened to us. When we study things like post-traumatic stress, when trauma happens, what most people don't realize is the majority of people come through with post-traumatic growth, where they are completely transformed by their experiences. It is vital that we as leaders facilitate post-traumatic growth Rather than allowing post-traumatic stress, we need to find ways that our people can be impacted but not traumatized. And that's our next step. See, it's our role as leaders to help hope make a comeback, to lead our teams in imagining multiple possible positive outcomes. What does 2021 have in store for us? That has a lot to do with us. It's time for us to co-create, to step up and build a better workplace and world place. And I hope you get about the business of doing just that with your team. Glad to join you, and I hope you join me as a leader in unprecedented times, helping hope make a comeback.