Best of the Rest: Season 3 Finale

Leaders,

Welcome to the season 3 finale of The Communicative Leader. 

This was a fun one! Why? I got to revisit the thoughtful insights season 3 guests shared with us. 

In reviewing the season 3 episodes, I pulled out ten leadership takeaways and each of our guests speak to at least one of the takeaways. 

Our takeaways include:

1. Embrace a growth mindset
2. Seek feedback and learn from failures
3. Cultivate self-awareness 
4. Foster a learning culture 
5. Be curious and stay open-minded
6. Develop effective communication skills
7. Build strong relationships and networks
8. Continuously update skills and knowledge
9. Adapt to change and embrace innovation
10. Lead by example 

And who do we hear from in this season recap? 

• Steve Marcinuk, Co-Founder and General Manager of Intelligent Relations
• Bob Gaydos, CEO of Pendella
• Brenda Harrington, Executive Coach and Founder of Adaptive Leadership Strategies, LLC
• David Birkam, Graphic Designer at Western Michigan University 
• Aneace Haddad, Executive Coach & Advisor to the C-Suite 
• Dan Joseph, Author and former Army Combat Engineer
• Dr. Ryan Bisel, Professor of Organizational Communication at the University of Oklahoma 
• Ulrike Seminati, Leadership Communication Coach 
• Dr. JP Pawliw-Fry, Co-Founder and President of the Institute for Health and Human Potential 
• Nick Greif, VP, Go-to-Market Strategy & Communications at InStride

This episode is full of insights and pragmatic tips from world-renowned experts.

We look forward to chatting with you again soon in Season 4. 

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

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Transcript

Transcript

00:00:00 Dr. Leah OH

We have had so much fun on season three of the communicative leader we've chatted with so many insightful, thoughtful, visionary leaders, all experts in their own fields. When I was looking at season 3 as a whole and considering what we learned, it really struck me that this season centered around lifelong learning.

00:00:21 Dr. Leah OH

In considering the 10 episodes from this season, I pulled out ten major leadership takeaways and themes. Then we're going to end by looking at lessons that were repeated by several guests. Why? What does this tell us?

00:00:34 Dr. Leah OH

It tells us that this advice is effective. This advice is worth considering, and this advice is what helps these really, really incredible professionals thrive in their respective industries. Let's dive in.

00:00:52 Dr. Leah OH

Hello and welcome to the Communicative leader hosted by me Doctor Leo Million Hodges. My friends call me Doctor. Oh, I'm a professor of communication and a leadership communication expert. I'm the communicative leader we're working to make your work life what you want it to be.

00:01:11 Dr. Leah OH

Thank you for joining us on the Season 3 finale of the Communicative leader. Before we dive into these ten amazing leadership takeaways, I just want to give you a a hurtful thanks for for listening for your support, for being part of a group of people who are working to make their work lives what you want it to be.

00:01:34 Dr. Leah OH

Our first leadership take away is embracing both change and a growth mindset. So, what does this mean? Leaders should have a mindset that believes in potential for growth and development for themselves and their team members. When you embrace this growth mindset, it allows you to approach challenges as opportunities rather than hurdles that we can't possibly overcome and see these opportunities for learning to continuously improve.

00:02:04 Dr. Leah OH

When I thought of this theme, I thought of season three episode 8 with Ulrike Seminati. Ulrike is an internationally renowned leadership communication coach, but she didn't begin as a coach and consultant. Instead, she worked in industry for years, beginning as an administrative assistant and working her way up to the C-Suite before leaving to start her own business. Ulrike talked about the I or being dimension and the we or doing.

Of course, we need to be in the we slash doing dimensions at work often, right? We need to get projects done. We need to develop strong relationships, but to continue to grow, we also need to lean into the I or being dimension. She talks to us about it.

00:02:50 Ulrike Seminati

Here it comes back to what I said. Earlier on is these two dimensions, the I and the we the being the. Doing so focus really on yourself first. Take time for that. Whenever. Yeah, really focuses important. I wish that I was more aware when I was a leader and I wasn't. I was more on a stumbling successfully through my career, more or less driven because I wanted to learn and. Because I wanted to have an interesting profile. And so yes, I tried a lot of new things and that was great.

But I could have done that really differently, because very often I felt awkward. You know? It passed the syndrome in play is not confident enough, but on the outside, everybody thought I was. But I was certainly not authentic and I was losing a lot of power, a lot of energy in that, a lot of worry and anxiety behind the scenes in myself.

And I think many people have and the first thing is really to understand.

Who am I? How do I do? I relate to my job, to what I have to do, and admitting also the things that don't work well where you're not perfect to yourself. I mean, you really admit things to yourself. Many people shy away from that. When I speak to leaders, they have all these also this kind of fear. As if they couldn't function anymore or operate anymore. As soon as they see something which they don't like in themselves, and I think it's really important to get away from that.

You can only win if you look into yourself. Really. And you can only develop like with any project you can only develop something where you are aware what are the development areas.

And so help yourself really to get out of this anxiety, mood and out of this mode of, oh, I just somehow do things and I don't really feel being myself oftentimes by understanding who you are. I think that's the biggest task because when you have done that.

And then comes the second step, and that is really about looking at others and creating just much more awareness about their reactions and learning to be emotionally intelligent and more empathetic, learning to understand what triggers them. Some are similar to me, for sure, but some are totally different.

Why the heck are they interested in that or why are they not reacting to this wonderful thing that? That, yeah, and seeing this as something where you can then grow and really work with that much more deliberately and address it as well with people. The difference is and value the difference is there's no good or bad profile. So, I think it's really about understanding what we always call diversity and we love to have that. That's it.

Understanding first of all who you are.

The others and how can we value all of that? How can we bring these very different strengths together to create synergies instead of trying to push everybody into the same leader shape of being a perfect growth mindset that loves agility? Because that's really an illusion. Some people cannot be that even if they wanted to.That they can't.

00:05:52 Dr. Leah OH

In this clip, Ulrike points out how we're all unique and we have our own path. But through some reflection and intention, we can really start to better understand where we are and once we know where we are, my friends, it's a lot easier to identify where we want to be when we think about this process of change and growth, we have to think about feedback and potential setbacks that may come with it.

00:06:19 Dr. Leah OH

And this leads us to our second major take away of the season. Seek feedback and learn from failures. We know leaders should actively seek feedback from team members, peers, mentors, my friends. Even if you're not in a title position, you should still be doing this. Not always comfortable, so why would I want to do this, you ask? Well, that constructive feedback, it helps us to identify areas for improvement and where we can grow personally. Also, when leaders view failures as valuable learning experiences, it gives us some more data. Another point to understand what went wrong, where IT went wrong and how we can be more successful in the future.

I am not sure that anyone does this better than Steve Marcinek, 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. And for the record, this is not a coincidence, but an outcome. Steve does the work he's constantly learning and ensures he's always prepared.

He will tell you he's not the smartest in the room. I'm not really sure if I believe him, but by being the most prepared, he's able to ask thoughtful questions and provide insightful feedback and advice. Is an advocate for constant learning, asking questions of your team and listening. What else?

He is also an advocate of embracing failure. Here's an excerpt from his episode where he talks to us about failure.

00:07:57 Steve Marcinek

Yeah, if I may, you know, two thoughts on that. One is that it's the fear of failure that is deeply instilled in a lot of people. And so I'm 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. 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 it may. 

My goal is 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 perhaps delicate.

00:08:51 Dr. Leah OH

Steve, in Season 3, episode one, he also talks to us about an exercise he uses from black box thinking where he and his team think about failures before they happen. What does this mean? It means setting aside time to think deeply about what failure could look like.

00:09:08 Dr. Leah OH

And a week, a month, six months down the road. This helps us to raise potential concerns that a team might not have considered otherwise what else? It normalizes the idea of failure or possibly falling short and addressing it collectively and with open arms. What is that do? It removes the shame that many associate with shortcomings or mistakes, and instead acknowledges the collective strength in an organization that acknowledges failure, addresses concerns quickly and fully, and moves on better because of it.

00:09:47 Dr. Leah OH

Failing forward, meaning we take a breath, we review what happened, we reflect on it. Is this really a failure or did I just fall short? Maybe I need to set different goals. This process is one that rests on self-awareness. Dan Joseph, former Army combat engineer and author of a recent book on Leadership and Resilience. Dan helps to exemplify our third take away cultivating self-awareness.

00:10:14 Dr. Leah OH

Self-awareness is essential for leadership and lifelong learning. Leaders who understand their strengths, their weaknesses, their personal biases. You can leverage this awareness to make better decisions, to build stronger relationships and continuously develop as a leader. One way to cultivate self-awareness is through reflection.

00:10:37 Dr. Leah OH

Oftentimes, in order to have the ability, the space to reflect deeply and honestly, we need to take time to engage in self-care. So we have a clear mind, a quieter mind that is open to honest reflection.

00:10:52 Dr. Leah OH

Dan talks to us about perceptions of self-care and how these are changing and changing for the better.

00:10:59 Dan Joseph

Yeah. And, you know, one thing I would say, especially if there's anyone in military listening to this who's like ohh well, self-care. You know, I don't know kind of soft, it's kind of weak. Whatever it is. You know, what's the irony of this, especially people in the military, men and women in the military would never say ohh you maintaining your vehicle this week.

00:11:17 Dan Joseph Maintaining your weapons is weak. Doing maintenance on something to keep it from breaking down.

00:11:24 Dan Joseph That's not weakness. You are investing in something to keep it going. Why aren't we doing that with our brains? With our bodies, with our minds, right? With our emotions.

00:11:33 Dan Joseph

Then I understand that there's. So again, it goes back to the stigma. It goes back to so much. And I understand we don't want to talk about ambiguous feelings and something that's too touchy and feely, but This is why I like the neuroscience. Because if you look at the neurophysiology of the body.

Guess what? Every one of those soft, fluffy, warm, fuzzy feelings has a foundation that's rooted in our neurons in the circuitry in our brain, the lobes of our brain. So, we can do both. We can look at feeling states and we can look at the science. And so, to me, the coolest thing is talking about meditation, but then also talking about Functional MRI's right? Cause you can do both, and that's what I love about modern science is now we're kind of creating this holistic picture and that's how we heal the body, mind and soul. I mean, we're incredibly complex beings and it's important to take care of ourselves on all fronts.

00:12:33 Dr. Leah OH

In this episode, Dan Links resilience, mental health and leadership in meaningful ways. He helps us to see how these are all interconnected and that we've really stunt our own potential when we dismiss the self-awareness or we refuse to evolve, check out season three episode 6.

00:12:53 Dr. Leah OH

If you want to learn more, our 4th leadership take away Foster a learning culture goes hand in hand with self-awareness. Just generally at more of the macro level.

00:13:04 Dr. Leah OH

Leaders should create an environment that values and promotes lifelong learning. They can encourage ongoing education, provide resources for professional development, and recognize and reward a commitment to learning within their teams and the organization as a whole.

00:13:21 Dr. Leah OH

When I identified this 4th leadership take away, I thought about Nick Greif, VP of Go to market strategy and communications at end.

00:13:29 Dr. Leah OH

InStride, Nick's company, is all about learning cultures, but has flipped the traditional educational model on its head. Maybe on its side? I'm not sure, but what I am sure of is that Nick and his colleagues are doing some important, really impactful work. Nick chatted with us about rethinking the traditional bachelor's degree.

00:13:50 Dr. Leah OH

Approach. Why? While a lot of really intelligent, really motivated folks can bring a lot of good to your organization, if we unpack what we assume comes along with the individual who has that degree in hand.

00:14:05 Dr. Leah OH

In this clip, Nick talks to us about the link between skills-based hiring and DEI in the workplace.

00:14:12 Nick Greif

Yeah, I mean, look, all the research shows that diverse workplaces create better outcomes, create more profit for companies, you know, because diversity of experience is diversity of thought, right. And you're gonna get different perspectives that are gonna help you catch, you know, pitfalls you would have otherwise not noticed. And So what we see on the kind of the skills based hiring.

And we're a big proponent, you know, of, of doing this. We actually work with, you know, sort of our corporate partners to help them translate what is currently bachelor's degree required to the actual relevant skills that are needed. So you know, an example of that as we've worked with Medtronic, a major medical device organization.

With sixty of their different job families, you know, looking at skills, taxonomies, doing the external and internal research and stakeholder interviews to figure out, OK, what actually do you need to do these roles successfully and then taking that one line that says bachelor degree required and actually breaking up it's into its components.

What that allows you to do is open up your hiring pool. You're gonna have more people eligible for those roles, which, when it's a tight labor market as it has been the last few years, it's really valuable.

But it's also gonna mean that you can, you know, bring in individuals that maybe otherwise wouldn't be able to join your organization because they're locked out because of that match through argument. And unfortunately, through, you know, the way.

Our country, in its social fabric, or you know, and the struggles that we've had with that, often means that underrepresented groups, low income individuals, tend to have a lower rate of, you know, bachelor degree attainment. And so, you're essentially locking out your organization from a lot of its DEI goals. But the key here is that.

You know, we see this sometimes where companies have DEI goals and they tend to try to accomplish them, or they don't try to. But what ends up happening is they make progress on them, but often at the entry level, and then as you go further up the organization, the organization looks less and less diverse.

So it's critical.

Here at Instride we're not saying bachelor’s degrees aren't valuable, they're incredibly valuable. They're as valuable as they've ever been, if not more so. All the research shows that you're going to get a much greater career progression, more take home, pay overtime. You know, if you have that degree, but should that be the barrier to get in the door?

Or should you be able to have relevant skills that you could have gotten all sorts of different ways to get in the door? And then internally, that company invests in you helps you get your bachelor's degree, helps you get the education you need to continue to move up that career and that career ladder. And now what you've done is you created a workforce that has diversity of thought, diversity of experience and is going to be able to then also be a really strong future proofed talent pipeline.

That you get to mature and grow internally.

00:16:55 Dr. Leah OH

In this clip, Nick also helps show us the importance and impact of a learning culture.

00:17:01 Dr. Leah OH

Our fifth leadership takeaway is to be curious and open minded leaders have to have a sense of curiosity and a willingness to explore new ideas, perspectives and possibilities. Being open-minded allows you to learn from many sources. You can challenge assumptions.

00:17:20 Dr. Leah OH

And adapt your thinking when you find new information. Dr. JP Pawliw-Fry, Co-founder and president of the Institute for Health and Human potential, made this link between being curious and being a thoughtful, effective leader crystal clear.

00:17:38 Dr. Leah OH

He teaches us that curiosity and open mindedness are two skills essential for successfully navigating tough conversations. Why we often work to avoid these or the alternative. We come in upset, right? He says we come in hot and we communicate in ways we didn't intend. And that often leads to a lot of damage. JP talks about this more here.

00:18:06 Dr. JP Pawliw-Fry

Because the brain is trying to protect the body. Because of that reason, we default to protection, not risk. It jumps to judgment based on less than 5% of available information, which is an alarming stat. Because of that, the brain processes incoming information it prioritizes speed over accuracy.

That's interesting. So, in that moment, the brain is going to do everything it can to make sure that it saves the body. So, it's going to prioritize speed over accuracy. It's going to jump to judgment based on less than 5%. And it's in that moment that we can sit there and let's say I'm looking at you or I'm looking at a conversation partner and they have some look on their face.

The brain, its job is to keep us safe, so it's going to sit there and actually jump to judgment with less accuracy than, you know, speed and go. Am I at risk? Hmm. And is that person? Was that what does that face mean, huh? And that's what we can confuse the impact they are legitimately having not legitimately that they are having on us or their intention. So. So there, that's one of the first gaps for sure.

And I think that point is that they're not thinking about us, you know, we're sitting there worried that they're and they're not even thinking of us. I read this. I don't know how many years ago in our Thirties, 40s and 50s, we worry about what other people think of us in our 60s, we stopped worrying about what people think of us. And in our 70s, we realize that we're never thinking about us in the first ones. And so, you know, it's the same idea. So that's one big part which is the first question you asked. The second question that was interesting as well, which is based on what I just said, and again the research you know. We can have different frames for the same situation and so I might see that as.

Let's say I'm new on a team. Let's say I don't have as much experience, let's say. Internally, even I have some insecurities. So there's multi factors. But I'm in that conversation with you and you just gave me some feedback.

Is my job at risk? Is my livelihood, and on and on and on. And you who might have more?

You know, seniority, more experience, more confidence, many more things. More understanding of how business works or doesn't work in how this culture is or isn't, whatever so many factors you might be seeing it as no, this is just.

Business I'm just giving you back. It's nothing more than that. It's nothing personal. So, it's interesting. How again we can construe something as very personal or not personal. And because of that, it's that we can be two different conversations. I think my jobs at stake here, and you’re like, no, I just need to get this done. But I'm not even saying that it that it means we take it into consideration.

Of course it well, any effective leader would. Yeah, but that's just more data, more information. It's not necessarily or it shouldn't be the driving factor in what gets communicated, what accountability gets created or not, what? What kind of listening do you want to really tune into?

So that person and you with them can help manage their brain, manage that emotion so they can hear you. So there's, I mean this is why your podcast is so awesome, is there's so many levels, so many layers.

And this is some of the hardest stuff we do as humans. And so it kind of behooves us to get a little bit better at it.

00:22:01 Dr. Leah OH

JP Leaves us with even more pragmatic communication tips to help us have those tough conversations in his episode about transforming tough conversations.

Also, his advice and expertise are part and parcel with our next leadership take away, developing effective communication skills. You all know this one is near and dear to my heart. His effective communication is crucial for leadership, for developing relationships, for lifelong learning.

When we hone our listening skills, when we practice, clear and concise, intentional communication.

And when we are open to different communication styles to foster understanding and collaboration, we truly are unstoppable.

00:22:50 Dr. Leah OH

Brenda Harrington, a certified executive coach and founder of adaptive Leadership Strategies, left listeners with an important take away. Don't expect your title or lack of title to speak for you in the next clip. Brenda talks to us about moving the title aside.

00:23:08 Brenda Harrington

Move the title aside.

Don't expect your title to speak for you. OK, so we were just talking about influence and I think of leadership competencies as being on a continuum authority at one end influence at the other.

00:23:27 Dr. Leah OH

OK. Oh, I like that.

00:23:29 Brenda Harrington

And so if I am leading by my Title all the, way over on that authoritative side that we're back to that command and control, do as I say.

And you can get things done that way, but it's a very limited source of power.

But when you can move along that continuum and get close to that place of influence, people are with you because they believe in you, they trust you. They like you in some cases that.

00:23:58 Speaker 4

They expect what you're able to do. They line up behind you and come through for you. You know, and I won't say no matter what, but you. But they can rely on you, know you? You can have a higher sense of higher degree of engagement.

Just set the titles aside.

00:24:17 Dr. Leah OH

Brenda also reminds us that we have different leadership and communication strengths and we should lean into them. Consider how to make them our superpowers. She talks about it more here.

00:24:30 Brenda Harrington

Try to focus on nurturing and developing whatever that strength is wasn't yours alone. We all have it, we spend a lot of time listening to people you know, say, oh, you should be more of this and less of that going back to what you said, you know, at the beginning, you know, or you just, you know, should I be a Democratic leader? Should I be a this? Should I be a that you should.

You should be whatever you are.

00:24:53 Dr. Leah OH

Yes. Yeah.

00:24:54 Brenda Harrington

Some people have the gift of of humor and you know they walk into a room.

You know, or they come onto a camera and then people.

Start to smile in anticipation of what they may say. 

They have the word. So you have to find whatever that is that's your own and really develop it and and and nurture it and figure out how to make it work for you. I don't want to be cliche, but how do you use that as your superpower?

00:25:19 Dr. Leah OH

And as Brenda so astutely pointed out, we need to strive to build sustainable, lasting professional relationships. Guess what, leaders that lead us to our next key take away, build strong relationships and network.

00:25:34 Dr. Leah OH

Leaders should invest in building strong relationships and networks. Connecting with others allows for mentorship, knowledge sharing, and valuable insights from diverse perspectives.

00:25:46 Dr. Leah OH

David Birkham is a fountain of knowledge. He's a graphic designer at Western Michigan University and one of my former graduate advisees for his graduate capstone, David dove, head first into a ubiquitous aspect of strong relationship and networks ad hoc teams. As a professional creative David often finds himself pulled into ad hoc teams.

Not sure what these are?  Ad hoc teams are often assembled to address and solve emergent complex organization wide issues. Unlike your traditional work group, these teams are organized to be temporary, and they end up being professionally and culturally diverse. In this clip. David talks to us about knowledge sharing and documentation and ad hoc teams.

00:26:34 David Birkam

An ad hoc team solving A potentially existential problem for an organization, or even a culture problem, a procedure problem, whatever that team is doing.

Is as valuable in solving the problem as it is generating new knowledge for the organization, and often what that means is like generating like procedures, generating project management skills, generating networks and relationships.

Generating new forms of. You know, work practice that you know an organization could pay a consultant to teach them, but they.

Learned on their own through their own people, right? Like even the knowledge of how to operate A-Team like this is valuable to an organization because it's highly likely that organization is going to need in another emergency. That hoc team in the future, right? So like.

The value of how A-Team can create useful documentation or useful ways of sharing its knowledge and whether that could come in a number of different ways. Often I think what people generally associate with a team at the end of the day.

Is they maybe write a report and some recommendations and then any of the team member folks I talked to of course lamented that, well, that went on a shelf and I never saw it again. And I have no idea what that was, you know, but I think.

The research I looked into the literature spoke about, you know, interesting ways that this could be, could be done differently, right? Like a team sharing its knowledge through a live event. You know, I think the end of a project A-Team creating.

Doing explicitly being authors within, you know, a CMS content management system that an organization uses. Whether that's why.

Like, you know, like starting a thread inside of a team, you know, Microsoft team like writing, you know, a document, you know, like having a conversation in that way, creating articles within the help desk, that kind of thing or, you know, like being tapped to kind of like take these lessons and.

Package them into learning management. You know, like creating an ad hoc team module or what have you. You know afterwards like kind of using like more rich media as a PDF to like report out what you've done.

And I think the value of this sort of cross discipline, ad hoc emergency, all these superlatives I've added on to these sorts of themes like right, they teach an organization about its wider self because it's a microcosm of the organization.

If you have people from different departments and different areas and different expertise interacting with each other, you get to see like all those different cultures, all those different, you know, micro cultures of different teams or units like combining or crashing into each other and documenting that or figuring out how to do.

That is a really useful. One of my favorite examples from the literature was journaling. Just straight up like having team members journal their experiences and being able to have that like individual perspective that isn't full of like.

You know, jargon and workies and like the like, it's not about the KPI's or you know all those good you know acronyms we have in the world but like expressing their experience and making that available to people or having those.

Journals be available to other team members, right? As the process goes on this could you know because then you are seeing each other, you're seeing each other’s struggles you're seeing.

Like how? How you know you're all affecting each other.

That's asking a lot of vulnerability from people, like a lot of. You’re asking people really commit to in a workplace, but you know it's a potential start, you know, or the same authors describe the ways in which.

Like, people would kind of do end of day write ups to kind of their immediate team members where you know that way like kind of knowledge is being shared, perspectives are being shared and it isn't necessarily that version of it is in a journal, it's it's more.

Right up thing, but it goes directly to each other as opposed to I think a lot of us have used.

Project management suites where you enter something into a an interface and it leaves a comment and then who is going to read that, you know kind of thing. But if it's structured more as it, it's a direct communication between each other like people are more more likely to read that. So but yeah, knowledge.

Generation and knowledge sharing like there's several ways to approach it. There's more complex ways that I've described here. There's ways of like building databases, and I'm sure as technology advances and.

We have more intelligent digital coworkers, I guess in.

The kind of working with us, maybe those are the kinds of entities that can grab that knowledge and and get more useful things pulled out of it. We already see how, you know, social media does these sorts of things.

With algorithms and stuff like that, like keywords and sentiment and things like that. But yeah, like I mean, having your people.

00:32:52 David Birkam

Pull. You know, document their work or and then be able to encourage them and build into the process ways in which not just documentation but then deliverable and create things that benefit the organization or reward those people by you know.

The folks who teach people.

How to do certain things or let you know, give them a change in their you know their position to where they're more engaged with their colleagues through spreading what they've learned through a process.

That can really benefit an organization.

00:33:31 Dr. Leah OH

As David illustrated in episode four of the season, part of growing professionally and personally is by building these strong relationships and strengthening networks because it leads to more knowledge sharing and knowledge generation.

00:33:48 Dr. Leah OH

This brings us to our eighth key take away of the season. Continuously updating knowledge and skills.

00:33:56 Dr. Leah OH

When we continue to learn right, we know that this world that we're working in is rapidly changing. So, this includes staying updated on trends, new technologies and best practices. This might be through reading, going to conferences, participating in webinars, taking classes.

00:34:16 Dr. Leah OH

Or just listening to your favorite podcasts, Bob Gaydos is the CEO of Pandala, and this season Bob talked to us about earmarking funds every year for employee development, particularly in regard to leadership.

00:34:33 Dr. Leah OH

And what else? It's really important that organizations help employees in this role, not just have this be an employee initiative. Do you want the best team? Do you want more retention? Those are the kind of questions that Bob asks and talks about more.

00:34:50 Bob Gaydos

Here. Well, I've said it a few times, but I'm gonna say it again.

Commit the funds.

It's just nothing more important than that.

Yeah, just do it. Don't tell me that you can't find $2000. Just don't tell me that, OK? I used to say things like this to the employer. Sometimes in this leadership, you just told me that you pay 70% of the health insurance and that that defaults to make it up $50 a week to the employee health plan. Yeah, pay $65.

Then they don't even know you pay 70 or 65.

All they know is what the payroll deduction is and whether that payroll deduction is 50 or $55. They're still gonna hate you.

00:35:33 Dr. Leah OH

Yeah, exactly. 

00:35:35 Bob Gaydos

Might as well make it $55. Yeah, you have the $2000 that you dedicate to a quality benefit that gives you a return. Commit. Commit the funds just.

00:35:47 Bob Gaydos

I want to make something I want to create a benefit that makes my wife will tell the neighbor about it.

00:35:52 Dr. Leah OH

Yes. Yeah.

00:35:53 Bob Gaydos

Because my wife, my, my wife, can't will never tell you anything positive about the health insurance. Or the dental division.

00:35:58 Dr. Leah OH

Our next leadership takeaway is to embrace change and embrace innovation.

00:36:01 Dr. Leah OH

Leaders need to remain open to change, and I know this can be hard and I know that for many of us, the knee jerk reaction to change is to kind of cringe and get small.

00:36:12 Dr. Leah OH

But by actively seeking out opportunities to embrace innovation and encouraging your team to do the same, you become much more malleable, right? You can kind of move with things rather than stopping and shattering and breaking.

00:36:28 Dr. Leah OH

Being flexible and adaptable allows leaders to steer organizations through uncertainty and often capitalize on new opportunities.

00:36:37 Dr. Leah OH

Many times when we hear innovation, we think of technology or new developments in streamlining or otherwise upping our efficiency. But in niece a dad, he shares a story about how innovating and adapting to change can be embracing new practices in a way that we haven't before.

00:36:57 Dr. Leah OH

Aneace Haddad previously was a two-time CEO of tech organizations and now is a leadership coach. And in this clip he shares us shares with us. An example of being adaptable.

00:37:11 Dr. Leah OH

From a recent book that he wrote as well.

00:37:14 Aneace Haddad

A man I had coached around 10 years ago, Managing director of a textile factory in India and it made it into my book with in a fictional manner name changed an industry and all that kind of thing and they were struggling with safety issues. They had had a few fatalities.

I was coaching him, but not on safety. I'm not a safety expert. I'm coaching him on commitment and as a leader and I asked him what? So they had spent millions of dollars on Global Management, consultants and everything to build the dashboards for safety and everything. They then were doing everything you're supposed to do, but it still wasn't enough. So I asked them what? How would you rate your level of commitment to safety from 1:00 to 10:00? He said very high probably a 9. 

And I said, how about your top team said probably an 8 and then the conversation became that maybe people were dying because it was a nine, not a 10.

And then he got angry. He said. I can't be 10 out of 10 committed because I can't be on everyone's back. So I've got 2000 people. They do stupid things.

And then over the next few weeks, he started wondering, what is 10 out of 10 to safety?

And I remember the session when he had had his aha moment. He was really excited to have this, this coaching come. And he started talking to me and he said a few days ago.

We had an event I was walking on the shop floor. An elderly janitor slipped and twisted his ankle.

00:38:54 Aneace Haddad

I sat with him, waited to put my jacket under his head, waited for the safety people to come check him out, he said. All of that was 9 out of 10.

That's what I would usually do.

However, the idea of what would 10 out of 10 was in my mind, so when the safety people said he's fine, he just needs to go home and rest, he said. I decided to get him, take him home myself, get him in my car, drive him home, sit with him and his wife make sure he committed and his wife would commit. He would not be walking on his foot for awhile. 

He said that was 10 out of 10 commitment, so the wellness really looking after really showing empathy and desire for.

00:39:39 Aneace Haddad

And things shifted in the organization because the CEO took it to that level there.

00:39:43 Dr. Leah OH

In the example Aneace shared with us, who really shows how we adapt to change, where we think something is impossible. Of course, it can't be done at a ton. We recognize that when we embrace innovation in whatever way that looks like that, we can achieve in ways we hadn't thought previously.

00:40:03 Dr. Leah OH

Our last and certainly not least, actually arguably the most important leadership take away to lead by example.

00:40:12 Dr. Leah OH

Leaders should model the behavior they expect from others. When you demonstrate this commitment to lifelong learning, leaders inspire teams to prioritize growth and development as well. Leading by example. We're building trust and credibility with our team, and we're encouraging a culture of continuous improvement.

00:40:33 Dr. Leah OH

Dr. Ryan Bisel, professor at the University of Oklahoma, talked to us about the intersection of leadership and business ethics. Ryan has been doing some incredible work in this area for years, and here in this clip, we're going to listen to it in a moment. He shares recent and optimistic findings.

About supervisory moral talk, what is that?

Ryan's going to tell us more, but in a nutshell, when leaders model moral talk, integrating this notion of professional excellence and the highest ideals, well, the more likely employees are going to do the same, what then? A workplace that I want to be a part of and one that I want for you too.

Here's Ryan.

00:41:17 Dr. Ryan Bisel 

Moral talk, contagion or supervisor moral talk contagion is the research finding that when bosses are known for using explicitly ethical vocabulary.

Will then employees are much more likely to voice explicitly ethical concerns, so there's kind of a matching that's called contagion. We live, we live in the era, I think we know this one.

00:41:44 Dr. Leah OH

Yeah, you don't need to define that one.

00:41:46 Dr. Ryan Bisel 

Right, that's right. But in this case, it's kind of a good it's in a good way, contagion in a good way. Just, just as bad things can catch on. Good things can too. As you said, it is an optimistic finding. And with as a as a scholar of organizational ethics, it's really nice to find optimistic findings every once.

00:41:50 Dr. Leah OH

Yeah, yeah.

00:42:04 Dr. Ryan Bisel

Meanwhile, and and it, it tells us that, hey, leaders out there.

This is something we can do and we need to use this vocabulary of ethics, morals, integrity, conscience, those kinds of things that are undeniably explicitly ethical when we do that, it really it puts people's fears.

On note it it calms them down, it it allays their anxieties and helps them when the time comes for them to also.

So raise issues, concerns and aspirations, you know, to give voice to those, those things, they are already feeling anyway, because that's the thing people have moral intuition. They just do healthy human brains do and certainly working adults do. And so, wouldn't it be great if we can capture that incredible resource and use it for input and use it towards better deliberation, better deliberation that and, and therefore better decisions.

00:43:00 Dr. Leah OH

And relatedly, when we think about our final take away leading by example, Ryan leaves us with some more advice that is spot on.

00:43:10 Dr. Ryan Bisel 

I want to leave them with a challenge.

Begin to make the use of explicitly ethical terms in the here and now much more normal, much more normative, much more common, and that takes some intentionality.

As we plan for what we're about to do and as we reflect on what we do. That I would recommend that we don't just talk about was that ethical? Yes. No.

We open up the whole conversation more by pointing people to ethical excellence. You say, you know, is this, is this the most ethically excellent way of going about it? Is this in keeping with our highest ideals? Is this, you know, is this what we're gonna be most proud of in terms of our own integrity in dealing with others?

And when we use those words, we really help people allay their fears. We help really bring forth their dialogue and get their voice involved as well, you know, so I encourage you to invite disagreement. Invite conversation. One of the things we do find too, strangely enough, is when we.

And talk about the body. This is empirical research. Our research is showing that when we when we involve the body and that sounds like a you know, what's our gut telling us on how that went last time? What's our gut saying about whether that was the most ethically excellent approach?

That's going to help, believe it or not, when we talk about what the body knows about ethics, it's kind of a, again, a sidestep to.

We don't need to be moral philosophers, guys. The typical healthy human brain agrees on a tremendous amount. We agree that we don't like people to steal from us and we don't want to steal from them.

We agree that people we don't like you to lie to us and we don't want to lie to them. And so I think some confidence in that, you know, using explicitly moralized language using gut, you know, sort of body referencing language, do we know to be true at.

Our bones. What's our heart? Heart.

Telling us on this this is all gonna be really helpful.

00:45:13 Dr. Leah OH

And there we go, folks. There are our ten leadership takeaways from season three this season on the communicative leader has been a really special, where I am especially humbled by the incredible experts and leaders who are sharing their time and expertise with us.

00:45:33 Dr. Leah OH

I'm going to leave you with three pieces of advice that were repeated often and offered frequently across this season. Some you've heard of some that we've returned to in this finale and others that we might not.

00:45:49 Dr. Leah OH

Of first one across the board, be curious. Kind of think of yourself as a detective when you're having big feelings when you're not sure what to do, as JP told us is that we are usually not sure what our conversation partners actually thinking. Let's get curious. Let's ask some questions. Let's be vulnerable. Be that detective: access as much information as you can.

00:46:17 Dr. Leah OH

#2 read often and read widely. We have heard that advice over and over and over as a lover of books, this makes me so happy. But when we think about it right, this is an easy, clear way for us to expand, to continue, to grow personally and professionally.

00:46:38 Dr. Leah OH

Also, many of our experts, of course, talk about leadership books and business books, management books, time management, project management books. But there are some who also talked about fiction, right? So, reading across the spectrum helps you to better understand different experiences.

00:46:58 Dr. Leah OH

And learn some pragmatic lessons and takeaways. Our last one right, it was our number 10 most important leadership take away that role modeling. So of course, we want to enact the behaviors we want to see. We want to be that positive change that we expect from others and another thing that Dr. Ryan Bisel pointed out that I think is so helpful is remember the power of being the 2nd. So too often you know, we might feel nervous. There might be some apprehension with speaking up and being the 1st to model something or express something. But if we recognize a colleague is doing this.

You know, lending our voice, raising our hand, giving our vote, whatever it is, where we can publicly kind of stand with them is another way where we can be that change we want to see.

00:47:53 Dr. Leah OH

So again, listeners, friends, thank you so much for sharing your time with me. You are unbelievably appreciated, and I can't wait to connect with you more in season 4.