Leadership & Problem Solving: A Conversation with Steve Marcinuk, Co-Founder and General Manager of Intelligent Relations

Hello leaders!

I am excited to kick off Season 3 of The Communicative Leader with a conversation with Steve Marcinuk, Co-Founder and General Manager of Intelligent Relations.

Steve is among the humblest of leaders you will ever meet AND among the most talented of leaders you'll ever meet.

Steve is an advocate for constant learning, asking questions of your team and listening (gasp!) and embracing failure.

Enjoy!

Until next time, communicate with intention and lead with purpose.

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Transcript

Dr. Leah OH: 0:00

Today on the communicative leader, we're chatting with General Manager and co founder of intelligent relations. Steve Marcinuk. Steve is a serial entrepreneur most currently embracing AI to elevate PR results. Steve talks to us about the intersection of leadership and problem solving also discusses the importance of listening and embracing failure. I really enjoyed this conversation and I know you will, too. Hello, and welcome to the communicative leader hosted by me Dr. Leah Omilion-Hodges. My friends call me Dr. OH. I'm a Professor of Communication and a leadership communication expert, and the communicative leader. We're working to make your work life what you want it to be. Steve, thanks for joining us today, I'm excited to talk to you about leadership and problem solving. But before we dive in, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and the path you took to get where you are today?

Steve Marcinuk: 1:03

Yeah, so I've actually I've always identified as an entrepreneur, when I was five years old, I was the kid out with a lemonade stand selling lemonade and cookies. Around the around the corner from my house. When I was 1213 years old, I started my first serious enterprise, I was a, essentially a birthday party clown, like doing balloons and magic and juggling. And so that was definitely like in my, in my blood from from a very early age. And then, you know, went to school, studied marketing and all of that, and found myself deep in the weeds of more tech startups and marketing agencies. And around three years ago, someone who's now my co founder and I, we started to get deep in the weeds on on artificial intelligence. And we saw that this whole generative AI, where, you know, computers and AI algorithms would start to write really good text, that was probably going to be a thing. It wasn't really on the radar, folks just yet. But we saw that had some potential. And given my background in marketing and PR, we started with a question of how can we leverage this coming technology to impact industries that we know and love and care about? And that's that was the founding of intelligent relations, which is now an AI platform with a you know, technology and team. We're a startup of about 60 people right now in 15 different countries. That's how that was, was started with the question of how can we use this new technology to impact the PR industry? So that's a bit of a backstory.

Dr. Leah OH: 2:39

Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. And a, I love that you can also see the leadership gene that you've had from early on, and how you've continued to foster that and lean into it.

Steve Marcinuk: 2:53

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say entrepreneurship kind of came naturally to me. And leadership is something that I have continued to evolve into doing something on your own for yourself, is a different skill set from having to get other people to buy into your vision and coordinate and support them in their activities. So that's something that's been an active learning curve that I've learned a lot and still consistently trying to improve on. Yes, thank you for saying that. I feel like I should send you a check afterwards, to talk to managers worldwide and acknowledging their different skill sets. And it's not intertwined that we, we can see there's interdependence, but it is a skill that we can actively practice and always home. So thank you. Amen. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so we know you're the head of operations at intelligent relations and a leader and innovator in the PR industry. And you don't get there without having to pivot to consider alternatives to return to the drawing board. So considering this, what can you tell us about the intersection of problem solving and leadership? Yeah, so I think for me, as I alluded to, it started with a big, somewhat poorly defined question of how do you use AI to positively impact the pure industry? In any time? For me, anytime I have a complex question that's poorly defined, I try to break that problem down into small pieces, and then try to solve each of those pieces independently with really well defined tests. So for us, you know, is like, you know, breaking down what is PR? What is the process of winning media coverage? I know, this isn't necessarily the primary interest of your audience. So I'll give some examples that aren't super, you know, super in the weeds. But, for example, you know, we have to figure out what does a journalist care about? That would be one question, how do you write an email to that journalist like, Hey, I think my teammate My client has something of interest to say, Well, that's it A different problem, how do you measure the results? And so the more you can break down a big, poorly defined question into small pieces, and then to tackle those one by one, it takes, it makes the process easier, and it makes it a whole lot more manageable as well.

Dr. Leah OH: 5:18

Yeah, and I think you do a nice job of showing how much is involved in this process. And the fact that there are steps that are independent, but we have to consider it as a whole.

Steve Marcinuk: 5:32

I think most problems seem overwhelming, because they're either poorly defined or too big to tackle. So it's the old adage, that's kind of unpleasant one, but like the saying is, how do you eat an elephant one spoon at a time, one bite at a time. You can update it to something, you know, visually unappealing, but it is breaking it down and just do an each step one by one. Yeah. Excellent. And I love the length with PR, because I think a lot of times, especially as of late, a lot of folks have started to see leading in a light of PR. And I mean that in the most positive sense and thinking about audience analysis, in thinking about accommodating their own communication to fit the needs and expectations of the audience. And being able to pivot and thinking about that persuasive frame. So I mean, you lean into PR, as much as you want to lean into PR with this conversation. So yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is part of what we're doing for what we're trying to support is getting leadership at different companies to build their own independent profiles, not just you're not just doing it for your company you're doing if you're executive brand building as well. So there is there certainly is that that time, yeah. Excellent. So considering your experiences, what do you see for most formal leaders? So in a minute, I'm going to ask you about truly great leaders. But right now, I want us to think about an A, generally speaking, what do you see most formal leaders do in terms of engaging or managing problem solving? Yeah, so I think the, for me, the the gateway to entry, the cost of admission is being able to have a vision, communicated, and communicate what you're trying to do to get there. I think that's really important, especially, one of the things that we're doing is, we're, we're building under uncertainty, we're in a fast moving industry, there's a lot of moving parts, as you mentioned, we are trying we are, you know, failing and pivoting, or rather frequently. And so being able to communicate that vision to the team of like, this is what we're trying to do. This is why it's exciting. This is why you personally should care. That to me is is fundamental to decent, good leadership, and then being able to communicate for an individual who's in the company, what you know, what their part is, in the bigger picture. Why what you're doing matters, that's a combination of those two things together, allows anyone you're leading to, to be bought in to where they're going and have a sense of autonomy ownership.

Dr. Leah OH: 8:12

For for why, what they're doing matters. Yeah, yes, in love that I always think that leadership is one of these things that can be really simple, and it really should. But we make it really, really hard a lot of times because we put so much into it, and there's so much stock and weight and fear and consequences and glory. But when you strip it down to saying in a vision, and then helping people to see how they're integral to this, I mean, those are two things that any manager can and should be doing. And thank you for calling those to our attention.

Steve Marcinuk: 8:52

Absolutely. Sure.

Dr. Leah OH: 8:54

So we've looked at kind of generally, what managers leaders tend to do. Now, let's think of, in your experience, what are some of the truly great leaders what are they doing in terms of engaging and managing problem solving?

Steve Marcinuk: 9:10

Yeah, so I can speak to things that are probably they're both unique to us in common in a lot of different companies. And that's, you know, leading under uncertainty. And so for me, one of the things that helps to go from good to really great, is communicating around uncertainty. It's not just, you know, having that vision and knowing your part in it. But, you know, I'm an entrepreneur in my blood, I signed up for this, I signed up for the uncertainty I'm very familiar with the fact that things are going to change and whether it's you as an entrepreneur, just someone who has a higher level perspective of everything that's happening in the company. Generally, as a leader, you you know, you have perspective and buy in to a greater level of uncertainty than When your team does, and so one of the things that happens under mediocre or poor leadership is that the folks who are maybe not as high up in the organization, they can very easily feel like jerked around or like the leadership doesn't know what they're doing. We're doing this last week, and now we're doing this other thing. And from your perspective as the leader, it's, well, it's very clear, that didn't work. Now we're going on to the next thing. And you may have it perfectly clear in your mind, why you're making these pivots. But I think getting ahead of that, and communicating to the team, that I would say something, something like this, you know, our goal is to increase the relevance of our pitches to these journalists, for example, we've looked at the options, and the data suggests that this thing we're trying now is probably the most likely to work. So what we're going to do is for the next three weeks, we're going to test that we're going to look at this data, we're going to evaluate it, and we're optimistic that that's going to work. But if and when it doesn't, then we'll go on to the next thing. And just giving people a perspective who aren't used to the rapid changes, or the fact that a pivot might be coming. That perspective allows them to know that, okay, things aren't chaotic in going poorly. This is just the team planning a to z A didn't work. Now we're on to B. Now we're on to C. And for me, that's been very effective in helping our team have confidence in the leadership team, because we've communicated that we're solving unknowns, we're going into uncharted territory. So for me, that's, you know, one big thing I'd focus on is how to communicate around that uncertainty. And it's made a big difference for us.

Dr. Leah OH: 11:39

Yeah, and you hit on this idea, I think of embracing uncertainty as a constant. And I think that helps to take the fear out of it. Absolutely. You know, and I think part of it also is, is being able to say I don't know, as a leader, and I think that our willingness to say I don't know, as leaders, helps to allow our team to say I don't know when to present that many people think that I don't know is the end or a block, or a scary thing. But I don't know is a great jumping off point into creativity and problem solving and getting the best out of your team. And that parlays into the importance of listening to the team, you know, so many leaders go in and they say, this is what we're doing, you're not trying to get buy in, you're trying to get input, if all you're ever doing is telling people what to do. And then saying is how does that sound? Good in line.

Steve Marcinuk: 12:36

I have made notes, you know, everyone, you we have a culture that in our organization, whoever's closest to the problem likely knows what's going on with that problem better than the leadership. So rather than diving in and saying you should solve this in this way, take a minute, listen, you know, you have that culture of I don't know, baked in, I don't know, but let's think about this together, you're probably going to get a lot better input, you're likely to identify small problems before they become big problems. And it's just for me, one of the worst things that can happen in my organization would be that someone just does what I suggest because he's the boss or in a position of authority. And like, you know, you're making a mistake, and you're doing it anyway. Because I said, so. Yeah, that's

Dr. Leah OH: 13:22

the right approach. And my Yeah, yeah, I love I love so much of that. When you're talking about asking people, it made me think this one time I worked in industry before transitioning into higher ed, and it was a healthcare organization. And they were redesigning surgical suites. And so I was in a boardroom with, most folks had MBAs there was one medical doctor was the chief medical officer, but he was a primary care physician. So he hadn't done surgery since his training, you know, three decades before. And I literally was laughing out loud because I thought it was a joke. Like, we can't design a surgical suite. None of us have duct century. If we were involved in surgery, we are under anaesthetic. So we certainly don't have any knowledge here. But you know, it wasn't a joke. They did eventually bring other individuals opinion leaders, those who are doing the work to the table, but I certainly have experience what you're saying. And it's talk about disconnect.

Steve Marcinuk: 14:32

Yeah. And, you know, part of that is as a leader, you know, I think I, first of all, I should not be the smartest person in any room. If I think I am I'm either delusional or have an arrogance. Or I built the wrong team, God forbid. But that's not usually the case. But I think you know, recognizing that you need to get the input from different folks and then also is taking the time to go in and understand each person's role well enough that you can have intelligent conversations about it one hour to manage the process better. But to it also shows a genuine interest in in what they're doing. And they, they feel that. And with that in mind, if you're not, you're not necessarily the smartest, but you know a little bit about what each person does, that, that positions you, I think, where I see the opportunity as a leader is to be the most prepared. And for me, that's that's part of the leadership style that I try to embody, is that I, you know, as I said, I may not be the most qualified in each aspect, but if I'm going into each meeting with a relatively clear idea of what we're trying to get out of it elusive agenda, being the most prepared person going into a meeting is a great way to show respect for your team, and a great way to ensure you're hitting some of your outcomes with the team's buy in. Yeah, I just, it's so beautiful. I love that. And that idea of demonstrating respect, instead of saying, of course, I respect you and showing it, then in many tangible ways, and that's one of them. Sure. You know, we have engineers who were, if we have real AI engineers with master's degrees in artificial intelligence, who will always know so much more about AI than I do. But I've spent a significant amount of time diving into the weeds in trying to do the prompt generation. I'm taking private classes with a tutor to understand the API calls and the structures of these things. And I'm taking little side classes on how to do better project management with certain kinds of engineering teams. And it's making a difference in the team, I'll say, you know, one performatively, it's making the process more effective. But also the team is recognizing that, okay, Steve's trying to level up and good, yeah, he doesn't come from our background. I have a master's in this thing. But, you know, I have trust in him as a leader, because he's, he's he himself is demonstrating growth and investment.

Dr. Leah OH: 16:59

And that helps. Oh, yeah. And modeling this lifelong learning and showing that's part of the culture. And yeah, yeah, so many Incredibles going on, Steve, I'm so excited. I'm just geeking out with your leadership style here. Certainly trying. Really trying? Yeah, yeah, it shows. So we've talked about some of the benefits of embracing the pivot and change. But let's look at the alternative. So what is the cost of ineffective problem solving rather than teams, leaders or organizations?

Steve Marcinuk: 17:37

Yeah, so it's, we touched on some of these these issues. And I think it's, you know, you have a team that falls in line, rather than speaking up and giving their input. And that's a huge loss. That results in learning lessons slower. When you're operating under uncertainty building under uncertainty, it's okay to, to fail. But you do, ideally, I believe you want to fail quickly, and learn quickly, because the more times you can go through that cycle of fail, learn, pivot and try again, you're going to get to a better outcome, you're gonna get to something that works a better outcome sooner. So I think without, without practicing some of these things we're talking about, you're just going to be slow and bouncing around. And you're also, you're not going to get the input you need from the team, to know when you are making a mistake, you're going to be flying blind, and your team, in the best case scenario are your best. To me. They're your best sounding board, customers and clients. Those are the folks who we usually think of as our stakeholders and the people who are, you know, from whom we we learned, but you have a built in group of folks who are ostensibly invested in the success of the company, right? They're working with you. And those are the folks who want to be much better to learn the lesson from your internal team. Before you learn it from someone outside who's like, yeah, you're failing in this, I'm going to enter a contract. Because like, I bet your your associate your analysts probably saw that coming earlier. And so it even has an impact on revenue in most businesses as well. Yeah. And into for thinking about that employee experience as well, if that analysts kind of had an inkling, gosh, I'm not sure or this these tests aren't where I would like to see them. Having built in structures where they know they can report that and should report in they're part of that process. I mean, that culture, that's an organization I want to work at, and that's an organization I want my kids to work in, right. That structure piece, I think is really critical. And a great thing to highlight on because it's something that I'm still very much learning is, is that I have role power, and folks are often afraid

Dr. Leah OH: 20:48

And they love your when you brought up failure, because a lot of people see that as that's a dirty word. We don't say that we don't do that. And what a loss, right? Because as you're saying, if you if you handle fail failure, well, and you fail forward, and something from the literature, you know, the idea, let's figure out what happened here, let's figure out how we do better. Is this truly a failure? Or do we just not meet the goal we set out to go through, and then we make a new plan. And a lot of times as you're saying, then we have innovation, we have creativity, we may have some self efficacy that comes from that was really hard, but we did it. As opposed to saying, Ooh, failure, let's sweep it under the rug or pretend it didn't happen or feel shame for it.

Steve Marcinuk: 21:35

Yeah. If I made two thoughts on that. The one is that it's the fear of failure is deeply instilled in a lot of people. And so I'm still navigating the best way to communicate that to the team. I think that candid communication is a very positive thing in most organizations. But some people, you know that that could be a triggering word. If I were to say, hey, you know, our first attempt at this failed? I don't, that doesn't hit me in a personal way. It doesn't, that doesn't trigger anything in me, but to someone who's looking to us to lead and to provide a certain sense of stability. Does that trigger? You know, I did a bad job does that trigger, the company is going to end up downsizing because of failure. Failure could mean a lot of things. And so it's something that I I'm still learning the right way to communicate that. I don't know if you have specific thoughts on it, but it's, it's perhaps delicate.

Dr. Leah OH: 22:29

It is it is really delicate. And I think a lot of it is, like you said, knowing the audience, I always say even distressing news is palatable, if it is delivered in an audience centered and timely manner. So it'd be mindful of that. So it's not something that comes out later, where they think, oh, that went well. Okay, we're moving on. Oh, just kidding.

Steve Marcinuk: 22:54

Yeah,

Dr. Leah OH: 22:54

I mean, think the more that senior leadership can talk about it, and find ways to even celebrate it and saying this is where we were, but look where we are now, like that, that pitch or that prompt, or the algorithm did not work out the way we thought, but we were able to get here now. So I think just including that in your daily rhetoric as leaders is exemplifying that it takes time, but I think those steps are what can help you to change how others in your organization respond to that word.

Steve Marcinuk: 23:30

Yeah. That resonates, that definitely resonates. I'll say one other thing. It's an exercise, I think, like, I think I'm attributing this properly, from a book Black Box thinking. rituals stints as part of what we do, and also to ask to solicit better input around likely failures before they happen. And so if you can, yes, you know, we said before best case is you, you fail quickly and learn. Even better would be can you fail in advance? Yeah, just Yeah. Get out of the way and skip that step, because that's even better. I love that game changing exercise that I personally love.

Dr. Leah OH: 25:22

So powerful. Yeah, you're right. Failing advanced, like, let's just Yep. sidestep that one. Sure. Sure. So let's see if I have two more questions for you. So this first one, what are two leadership lessons you've learned and you find yourself returning to?

Steve Marcinuk: 25:40

Yeah, so a super practical one, and then the one that's a little bit more abstract. So super practical. Anytime that we have a, you know, human affecting, decision to communicate, we always do that, you know, in a verbal conversation one on one, or in a small group, rather than just sending the email, this could be an offer for promotion, this could be saying you're going to have a new client to manage this could be, you know, a reprimand of some kind. We've gotten that even for client proposals, we have found that so much communication gets lost in written in written transcripts. And we had a, we had a candidate who we, we almost lost, we're gonna give him a promotion. But he almost denied, turned down the promotion, because he had a lot of doubts about what that would mean, and his workload and things. And normally, I would think, you know, many people might think you're, here's good news, congratulations, here's the job description. Here's the more money Yeah, but he had a lot of concerns that if we didn't, you know, set up a call, here's the letter we're gonna send, we want to talk it through and want to hear your feedback before we send it across. That saved us a lot of, you know, quietly upset teammates and lost proposals, because same thing with a proposal. You know, rather than just sending it off and hoping they say, Yes, clients have doubts, they have uncertainties. So you always want to communicate things that affect people in real time in my perspective, that because you're going to get the feedback and talk through objections or challenges as they come up. And then the other thing, if you want to the other thing is just finding the leadership style that works for you. I think I had a lot of doubts and uncertainty around stepping into more leadership roles as someone who's who does a lot of my best work quietly by myself, not in front of people. The kind of leadership that's most visible for people is, you know, loud, authoritative, and very hyper confident all the time in front of great big audiences. And that's not everybody. And I personally, I discovered the Enneagram. That's a modeling tool that talks about different personalities, I started to do some reading on my personality type. And I, I just started to realize and adapt to, well, my leadership style looks more like this. And that works in doubling down on that. I got to cultivate new skills a little bit. But you know, there's a lot of different ways to lead and you find I find them getting more comfortable my own skin as a leader by just embracing that. My style works, too.

Dr. Leah OH: 28:15

Yes, yeah. Yeah, that's so powerful. And I really liked that idea of authenticity and saying, What are my natural gifts and my skills and my tendencies? And how do I harness those, to help others to align others to innovate?

Steve Marcinuk: 28:31

Absolutely, yeah.

Dr. Leah OH: 28:33

Because even work with students and saying, I think I should be this type of leader or when I'm consulting, like, I'm going to try and do that. And that feels like performance I'm going to try and be is not who you are. So we don't want this to feel performative. You want to feel like yourself in this role. So yeah, and your team wants you to feel like yourself. Yeah.

Steve Marcinuk: 28:55

I mean, we're, you know, my wife and I, we have a two year old kid. And we actually had a conversation, it's a different kind of leadership family are leading in the know, we talked about, like, we don't want to be performative parents, we don't want to be, you know, doing this in a way that's supposed to impress others or make people think a certain way. It's, I think it's best for, even in that very different kind of environment. That's not what the kid needs. who's pretending to have Yes, they were figuring that out, too. There's always

Dr. Leah OH: 29:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have learned more since becoming a parent about leadership than all the years all through my PhD, before I had the kiddos and really seeing the impact of it now. So I encourage you to continue to do that because it serves you well. And that's one thing we love on the communicative leader is when we think about leadership when we think about our communication, certainly we can make changes at work that fit us but we become better parents and partners and neighbors and community members as well. Amen. Question for you, Steve. What advice do you have for employees of all levels, ranks industries in terms of embracing the unknown, becoming comfortable with the pivots, and anything else related to leadership and problem solving?

Steve Marcinuk: 30:15

Yeah, so I'd say first, it's embrace the fact that you're going to be off track often embrace for me, it's the metaphor of the airline, the airplane that they say that the airline going from New York to California, is off course 90% 99% of the time, because it's constantly knows where it's going. But it's constantly off track and just recalibrate. It's not a big mistake, giant error, you're just gonna keep going, pivot, adjust know, where you're going to just keep calibrating, that, to me is a much healthier way of framing, you know, am I winning, losing? like, lower the stakes and shorten the timeframe. So if you if you think that something seems like a really big deal, like rather than thinking, How is this decision going to impact two or three months from now? It's like, let's just bring it down like this, this new client engagement seems really complicated. And like, what if they don't like that, focus on the onboarding, just do a decent job with the onboarding. And sometimes honestly, I don't know if a lot of people would agree with me. But for me, lowering the stakes, rather than saying, I have to rock this. And this is going to be great. And you know, sometimes psyching yourself up can help. But sometimes being like, you know, my goal is rather than making this the most happy client I've ever worked with over the next six months, my job is to do an 80% good onboarding with this client. And I'll worry about that. Next thing next. Yes, I can think about all the ramifications of this and take the pressure off, just shorten the timeframe. Lower the stakes, be a little kinder to yourself, and you'll get to the next thing soon enough.

Dr. Leah OH: 32:17

Yeah, exactly. And it frees up like you're saying so much cognitive space, to focus on that first step in a concentrated way.

Steve Marcinuk: 32:29

It's helped me in a lot of situations that otherwise could have felt overwhelming.

Dr. Leah OH: 32:34

Steve, thanks for joining us today on the communicative leader. I've really learned so much from you. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it. All right, my friends. That wraps up our conversation today. Until next time, you indicate with intention, and lead with purpose. Looking forward to chatting with you again soon on the communicative leader.