#011 - The Future of Leadership Development

Tiffany Lenz 0:05

are talking about leading in: 2021

Robert Greiner 0:08

Yeah, I was just pulling up my notes here, let's see, I had them in Slack.

Tiffany Lenz 0:15

There was one article I sent you. And the other I read another one that was interesting in the Forbes article I sent you that said fewer than 18% of leaders have the qualities of mind to lead in this current state, a vuca. State, if you will believe that. Yeah. And that article was breaking things down into how we typically invest in when we say, growth and development for leaders, we invest in what they would refer to as horizontal like communication, improvement, conflict, improvement, strategy, etc. We don't, we don't invest in what they would call vertical, which is more like about adaptability and self awareness. And we rarely, if ever invest in the neuroscience of leaders. So with the continued ambiguity, uncertainty, blah, blah, blah, expecting the unexpected, and also lots of more, lots more acronyms we never heard before, there will be a growth, a birth of training, emphasis. Eventually education's certifications, all sorts of things around the neuroscience of leaders

Robert Greiner 1:25

Relates to being able to cope with crises, you think, as a side thread, or what do you think they're

Tiffany Lenz 1:32

being able to cope with constant change, unpredictability, and then the intuition and emotion to cope with the these other fallouts you can say unpredictability, right. But even if I say that to you, you're immediately thinking of the unpredictability of the industry, we didn't predict what I've heard referred to as people blues, we couldn't have predicted health issues, mental issues related to zoom fatigue, we couldn't have predicted that. Not only was DNI here to stay, but it was going to move from being an appendage in organizations to being a driving force, and how that even changes the workforce, we wouldn't have been able to predict how people would build brand new relationships, and hire and fire all remotely. So the unpredictability was always about product, customer throughput. It wasn't even it was barely discussed around this other layer of intuition, emotion, people connection. So the neuroscience piece addresses more of that as a business enabler. And yeah, I think that's the best way, from what I have a little bit I've started to read, that's the best way I can describe it.

Robert Greiner 2:51

It has to be true, right? The only thing I had going for me when the pandemic hit, and we were, and it was obvious to everyone we were in a crisis mode was I made an intentional decision to run into the burning building, and try to help. And there's this fight or flight mechanism, I went from feeling relatively good about my peacetime leadership skill sets. And we had little micro crises over time, right. It's not like nothing ever went wrong. But this massive tidal wave that you had to deal with, and I basically had to learn on the fly. And so I went from feeling really good about where I was at to knowing basically nothing, and having to step up to the curve. And part of what I think we're gonna do a series on this soon, is what's the playbook? What are the things that the skills we can build as leaders to inoculate ourselves from future crises so we can go into them, and other people look at us to help be part of the solution. I just showed up without any of the tools or gear or equipment and the force is on fire. And I'm like, Hey, where can I help. But I want to have all of those things built in, by the time the next one rolls around. Because these once in 100 year events happen frequently, because there's lots of different there's financial crises, and there's health crises and there, there could be 100 different ones in 100 year type events. I will show you two I pulled it up. I don't know if you can see on my camera. So the gray is my These are my how many exercise minutes I had per day. And you can see when the pandemic hit, oh, it fell off a cliff. And the yellow is in this year and I've made like a very intentional decision to basically close my exercise ring my Apple watch every day. But without that intentionality look at that's unhealthy. I'm basically at zero, roll out of bed and walk and sit in my chair and then leave and go to the dinner table and then go back to bed. Like it's just not a lot of activity. And the Add I think that's definitely these sort of second third order consequences. We just don't know. So you're saying there's going to be basically a whole almost industry around this new dimension, this new nuance of leadership, and a lot of that is going to be pointed inward on the leader themselves. Yeah,

Tiffany Lenz 5:08

That's what I just started reading a little bit of. So when I go back and try to compare that it makes sense, right? leaders are always supposed to be looking at the every day, what do I need to accomplish? Today, this month, this quarter, that's going to get me to my annual target, but good leaders are thinking about the longer term. At the same time, everything that I've been reading is around expecting to, to continue to deal with ambiguity continue to deal with change continue to deal with all the complexities that come from everything remote, and expecting the unexpected. And how do you prepare yourself for that, it's more of traditional methods, yet again, being inadequate, like just focusing on conflict management, and just focusing on improved communications isn't going to get you there.

Robert Greiner 6:06

And there's another interesting dynamic at play where we, us as humans, had a trauma. And we are still like, in the ER, in surgery, about to come out of like a successful surgery. And then everything after that we're going to do summer winter of this year into next year. And beyond is the rehabilitation, that you know, that if you have surgery on your knee, or whatever, you have to go and get it back up to proper strength. But we haven't even started that yet. So there's all these ripple effects that are gonna come after we're quote unquote, back to normal. If we woke up tomorrow, and everyone was vaccinated, and there was no more COVID there's a lot of stuff to go and sort out and fix and the economy's got to catch up and all those things. And so we're, we're still, even though we're, what 10 months in, we're still at the very beginning.

Tiffany Lenz 7:01

And lest that seem like a point for mass discouragement, I am hopeful that any sort of reboot, or any sort of like fresh look at things, gives an opportunity to reprioritize on what's really important at the most kind of a tiniest example is you go on vacation, and you leave your inbox for 10 days, the stuff that that rises to the surface after that, that people like messaged you out again, that's really important that I, yes, we are still figuring it out. As far as pandemics concerned, we're still at the beginning, beginning of a new year. And some people already behind and not done a good job planning and behind the eight ball. But there's always an opportunity to take a fresh look and start again. And think honestly and realistically about what success can be

Robert Greiner 8:00

Agreed. And if I'm at the poker table, and I have to push in my chips, I'm definitely betting on what you said, which is the makeup, the skills, the talent stack of the modern leader from today forward is different than it was in the past. And you can't, you're not going to be able to get by just leaning on what we focused on the past and there's going to be we're combining skills more nuanced there the resilience piece that the skill set to go and run into the burning building all and then handling the fallout from all of those things. What do you do when you know someone on your team calls you and has an illness or hasn't been exercising or not taking care of themselves? Or has been isolated for we have our extroverted friends who then really been out of their house in 10 months? That's bad? Who knows what's gonna happen? Yeah, with that. And so I think you have the leadership skill set to be able to navigate these things effectively, because it all boils back down to behaviors are going to have to be more nuanced and take these things into account because we talked about Maslow's. We're not always in that sort of middle layer. Like it's the amplitude, right? That the distance between peaks and troughs across a team in an organization is wider now right? And that's a knows what that's gonna look like.

Tiffany Lenz 9:26

I read another acronym today, I thought was interesting, around what sort of leader will it take for this level of uncertainty change continual ambiguity, etc, etc. And the acronym was spine. It was spiritual, physical, intellectual, intuition and emotion. And in the not too distant past, it was often let's talk about a courageous leadership, courageous. I define that differently. I define that courageous leader, as someone who's willing to engage on all of these fronts. We're so often a courageous leader was just defined as someone who was willing to take big business risks, but big win big kind of thing. But everything you said even about the burning building is captured there in spine, every every thought around, how will I engage with people who are introverts coming to a new level of kind of realization and even contribution, extroverts who are withdrawing in an unhealthy way. physical health, mental health, zoom fatigue, I do that expression people blues, how do I deal with all of those things? Something loses that like loneliness, professional loneliness, is that what is related? The isolation to working remotely? constantly. So it's related to the it's just a combination of zoom fatigue, meeting lots of new people, but not really meeting them, maybe needing to maybe needing to quarantine and what that actually means. So lots of different the that kind of residue, people blues,

Robert Greiner: 11:01

yeah. Which is interesting, because we've never met face to face, just via camera.

Tiffany Lenz: 11:06

Imagine, I feel a bit like an anomaly, making so many new friends at my firm, remotely. But imagine a time a year from now where I'm not an anomaly, where so many people have changed jobs, fully interviewed, and hired join teams everything and never one time shaken hands with someone sat down and and had a meal with them.

Robert Greiner: 11:30

Yeah. And I bet people went out of their way to make you feel welcome to connect with you. Because when you joined it was in that novelty zone. But now I bet even 10 months in like we're, we've gotten use of things I bet. Had you joined today, you would have a different experience, maybe I don't think that's a good thing either, like that intentionality goes away. And I think that sort of will end up magnifying some of the people blues,

Tiffany Lenz: 11:59

I think that's where you get back to this idea. And I do like this acronym of spine because there is an there's an emotional awareness and intuition, more so than say intellectual because of the I'm working my way back up because of the change in the physical relationship. All of those components were not there before. We were working on remote work as one collective team, but it wasn't the norm. But even basically everything. And I don't think it's a bad thing. By the way. That's just my opinion. But it's because I think it opens up a whole different set of opportunities for different demographics in the workforce. But if you believe what's written, which is remote is here to stay to so many degrees, not the extreme we have today. It does take it does create a need for a new norm.

Robert Greiner: 12:46

I'm curious what you think about this, when you're under crisis, when you're presented with a new situation, there's a hard decision at the time, and continues to be to choose to run into the burning building, like we just talked about. Part of this too, is there's seems to be much more of a personal responsibility, personal competence at every level that's required to navigate these situations now, which are more complex. Do you agree with that? Because the onus a lot more on us as leaders to build a nuanced skill set, but you've already to be spine, right, that you talked about. But isn't there also, like an elevated expectation or need, let's say at the individual contributor level, at the individual level, no matter where you are, what you do to start to build up some of that resiliency? I don't what do you think about that?

Tiffany Lenz: 13:37

I 100%. Agree. I don't think I think sometimes as a society, maybe I'm being harsh, but I think we've moved far too much away from individual responsibility, I believe, pretty strongly, you agree with that. But I think there isn't going to be a way for a single courageous leader, especially from a remote from all remote locations, to rally the troops, if you will, to just rally people in the same connected way. I think each individual has to be willing to not just experience the ups and downs. And when they're down, look for someone else to get them out of that they are also going to have to develop themselves. Your boss can't do everything to save you, you are going to have to your HR department can do everything to save you, you as an individual are going to have to go on a different journey that probably does lead you more down this vertical leader development half this neuroscience for leaders

half

so that as an even as an individual, you are understanding what it takes for you to be fulfilled in a new environment. And then you can teach others you can lead by example, the same time you're preparing yourself for the next phase. of your career, but I don't really know how one person, aka the leader can do all of that heavy lifting for every single person

that reports to them,

Robert Greiner: 15:13

This is going to be even more difficult because I just pulled the article you sent, so spiritual, physical, intellectual intuition, emotion, layer on personal responsibility, resilience, which is baked in, those are maybe byproducts of being spine. This is probably one of the harder times in history to do that. What you're saying is, it's regardless of your level, this is more and more on you, you have to build these broader skills, and demonstrate them in more dangerous situations, and then have to cope with the fact that the world around you is not fair. And navigating through that where I think in the past, there's been more protection and sensitivity. There's a broader awareness there. But I think some of that, I don't know, I might go away a little bit too. I'm curious to see how this plays out. Now that you're bringing it up,

Tiffany Lenz: 16:03

I don't know that we know everything. I think that was another theme I took away is anything and everything we can do to be responsive to what emerges. And I don't want to just say emergent leaders, because that also seems a little bit trite. It's like this, there's an emergence, obviously, on the industry front, also on the people front, also on the culture front, also on the team interaction front, that when we use the word emergent, in the past, it was often just based on industry or economics, it wasn't looking at all of these factors. So an emergent a, a strong leader, which again, according to this Forbes article, only eight at the moment, only 18% of people are equipped, which actually, I'm going to look at the positive there and say it leaves a lot of opportunity for people who were probably overlooked before, because they did they fit more of the standard foot, quote, leadership skills. But we're looking for all different holistic changes, holistic opportunities to be emerging, and how we can respond to all of them holistically, not just one at a time.

Robert Greiner: 17:15

So we have just waded into one of my favorite topics, which I don't think we've discussed yet, which is surprising. So have you seen the Cynefin framework.

Tiffany Lenz: 17:25

I have?

Robert Greiner: 17:26

Yeah, so Bruce loves this thing. So if you've talked to Bruce for five minutes or longer, you've heard of Cynefin framework, which I think he's got like a really deep understanding of, I would say mine is much more surface level. But there's some nuance here. So we'll put it in the shownotes. The Cynefin framework is a way to what would you say measure environment complexity, it's a conceptual framework used to aid decision making. And so it's like a sense, make end devices,

Tiffany Lenz: 17:56

I think of it is as very much like getting raising awareness of all contrasting contrasting elements of a situation. And valuating. pros and cons.

Robert Greiner: 18:10

I'm going

to give a really simple overview, you have this sort of it's not even a two by two matrix. But you can think of it as structured that way. And it talks about this like order unordered kind of transition where you start off with something that's simple, and you can do best practice to this is solved problem space, the traffic light is simple, then you get into something that's complicated, where like, it takes an expert to assess, but the cause and effect is known. So like a Ferrari is complicated. If the Ferrari breaks, a mechanic, who knows about fixing Ferraris can go and roughly figure out what's wrong and get it back up and running again, complex, though, is, has that's where the emergent piece comes in. And that's where like I originally went to this when you said the term emergent, that has the opportunity to surprise you. So the weather is an example of a complex ecosystem where you can predict pretty well, but then the farther out in time you go, the further out in time you go, the harder it is to predict traffic as another complex ecosystem. And then you get into chaos, which is really like the house is on fire kind of thing. Now simple and chaos, we're really good at like a chaos we're actually great at, right? We just act and fix it later. So are sort of emergency trigger is totally fine. Navigating the complex and complicated, though, that's really challenging. And I think we tend to take a complicated approach to complex problems. So really, it's like we try to treat them like a framework like Emece framework and plug everything in. And then we wonder why things like GameStop stock happen or the sort of Black Swan events, it's because you are dealing you've been surprised you treated a complex situation, like a complicated situation. One example is like Iron Man. Like the suit would be complicated. Tony Stark, though, is complex, that kind of thing. And so this ability to navigate complexity, to probe the environment to experiment, to see what's out there, and then take that the inputs you get, make sense of them, and then respond accordingly, is a skill set that we don't regularly exercise as humans or as leaders. And I think what the article saying what we've been talking about tying it all back together, we are going to find ourselves thrown into complex situations more and more often. And we cannot take a complicated approach to them. In some of the things you outlined earlier, health, diversity, virtual hiring, and firing all of those things that were, if you see some of the stuff that's being said, in those realms, they're, they're just the simplistic approaches to complex problems, we're gonna have to be able to navigate the complexities much more effectively moving forward.

Tiffany Lenz: 20:57

Good call on the Cynefin framework, I also sent her in on the that emergent piece in that your debts, it really is the difference between probing and analyzing, right? In a complicated scenario, you can look for good practices, you can, you can continue to analyze, and what's around you using the tried and true expertise, which we could loosely parallel that to this, too, when we train leaders, we train them on what this Forbes article, which will also include in the podcast notes, they would call horizontal leadership, we're just going to give you training on better communication. Where complex, the context matters more than almost anything. The past matters so much less when something is emergent. There's a heavy element of intuition that goes into art and science science, not just

Robert Greiner: 21:54

yeah,

Tiffany Lenz: 21:54

it's just not the standard kinds of leadership skills, adaptability, self awareness, being willing and able to collaborate. I wonder, I do wonder, and I don't know. But I wonder if this idea of in our industry, geek in a parachute was the mean, that was used all the time, or you get this kind of Savior, superhero complex, sort of scenario. That is pretty common with chaos, it can also be common with simplified problems that need to be solved, will bring in this subject matter expert that doesn't have a place in a complex environment. Because the answer is unknown. The best outcome is also unknown, and probably not yet even defined. So what good does a superhero do you? Not much, actually, you need a collaboration of really smart people.

Robert Greiner: 22:49

So are we are we going back to the advocating for generalist type model? This is this seems to be going more in that direction, just the the talent stack of the generalist has a different skill set.

Tiffany Lenz: 23:01

What

do you think, Hey, I have an opinion that what do you think

Robert Greiner: 23:04

Certainly depends on the problem. If you're coming in to solve problems, I think there's, then it's obvious, the hard part is going to be convincing people, they're in a complex environment, and that the set of behaviors required to successfully navigate a complex environment are completely different than a complicated environment. So you're worrying about Iron Man suit, and you have to be worrying about Tony Stark inside and behave differently. I don't know that's a tall order. Because this is such a heady, like I got confused as I was explaining it, trying to find the right word, because I can't just point there's no screenshare. Here, I can't just point to Okay, look at this, these quadrants here. And so I think, as leaders also It's on us to around the communication side, the ability to identify to understand when we are in or moving across these different quadrants, these different boundaries, especially in complex and complicated because, you know, like I said, chaos is so easy to tell, it's almost not even worth talking about the ability to identify and then articulate, maybe not the, the lore behind why it is what it is. But why we're going down a specific path, I think is super important. And that goes into the whole emerging mindset that you talked about earlier, this vertical development, mindset, agility, if you have 20 years of experience, and you're an executive, may or you've been an executive for 10 years, and now you're trying to say, grow your mindset to be able to change your approach that's worked for you all these years for decades, and you've been successful with and now and everything's on the line, please go do this different thing. That's a tall order.

Tiffany Lenz: 24:46

Yeah. As you've been talking, I've actually changed my answer a little bit, which makes it a little unfair because you had to go first. I was gonna say, Yes, I think there's a there's some Rise of the generalists, but now I'm going to recant that Say, I think in true collaborative fashion, I think the right answer is both. And I think there is going to be a need one for generalists. But exactly like you're saying, it's a actually a different kind of generalist, it's going to be a more expansive into a lot of these spiritual intuition, emotion, these different skill sets. But I also don't think that with hard to solve problems, we can discount the 20 year veteran, because they have seen a lot of a lot of relevant data, they've seen a lot of relevant outcomes. So because we don't know the outcome, and we are potentially solving for something that has just never been seen or solved before. So before, we're right back in my mind to collaboration, and we need some of both. So the 20 year veterans vote, maybe doesn't count as much or doesn't count more than the generalist. The subject matter experts vote doesn't count more than the other team member, we're really talking about real collaboration. And you mentioned this emergence around diversity. One of my favorite examples of that is some of my dear friends who are now experts in this field and vice president of diversity, those roles didn't even exist five years ago. And now like that emergence in and of itself, like people who are qualified, they had to take this almost as a personal interest and a personal journey for years and years, until it was recognized as something of value. And I think it will, I'm which I am incredibly grateful for, and I know you are too, but not everybody is or will admit that they're not, I'm looking forward to seeing how over time, that sort of leadership itself works its way further and further into the boardroom. And further into the nuts and bolts of how one does business

Robert Greiner: 27:02

The other side of that coin is your experience, decays, like the half life of your experiences is much, much shorter. And so you see the same thing and like surgeons who are who like can identify tumors on scans. And if you go a long time without practicing that it like it, you can't identify tumors anymore. And so you have to keep refreshing that ability. It's I think there's something similar there to where it's Yeah, not only are you in these completely new spaces where a path has been built, forged, very quickly and recently, but also the one the skills that it took you to get, there probably might not be the ones you need to be successful when you are there. And then two that experience, that intuition to case. And so at a minimum, being aware of that and trying to adjust for it control for it is going to be equally as important.

Tiffany Lenz: 27:59

It's a really good analogy.

Robert Greiner: 28:01

This is not even what we planned on talking about today. But I'm glad you sent the article. This is really interesting. That's great. I love this kind of stuff. We it's not like we're when you talk about wanting to do hundreds of episodes like this, you're never short of content, you want to just wrap this one up. And then we can it can be like I see that.

Tiffany Lenz: 28:19

There's something you wrote in here that that is really interesting around how,

like, when

do you just say when you just adopt, adapt and say, Okay, I maybe squandered the first 15% you can start fresh today? Is that relate at all to what we've been talking about? Is there a way that we could bridge that?

Robert Greiner: 28:36

So I'll say, yeah, maybe I see what you're saying, I can't quite tie it in,

Tiffany Lenz: 28:42

I guess I would think of it. Let's that's a very interesting statistic. So let's state that. And then talk more about there's one approach where you could say, I just need to get my act together, I need to bring my team together, forget about the hangover from last year, and pull myself together, set our goals and move forward. And like with without fear, there's an another angle could be, let's accept that. The change we saw is more like what we're going to continue to see. And so instead of just moving forward the way we've always done, we think about team goals, personal goals, from the perspective of a new set of skills that's going to take to thrive. And it's never too late to just start on that. And that's really what we've been talking about. It's less about actually less about the, again, the economic goals and more about building a team with the right elements that then will produce.

Robert Greiner: 29:41

So even though as of today, the year is 10% over so we're 10% for the year. And we're going to record another episode just specifically on that which I think will be there's 15% over is given when it's going to release. So you're saying as it relates to put that aside It may be and there's reasons why your runway evaporates very quickly, and what to do about it. But I think what we're saying here is this might be a good opportunity, given what we've discussed, is to take a step back and re question your personal and organizational goals and objectives to see, should you make an adjustment and it doesn't have to be a step function or an order of magnitude away from what you're doing. But are there some elements of this article around spine, spiritual, physical, intellectual intuition, emotion, and this sort of vertical development that you can start baking in now. And then over time, these things will add up and build up into a more resilient individual organization, things like that. And you still have 90% of the year left, I'm worried to the early half over we'll still be talking about 2020. Like, I'm concerned about that. But yeah, so this might be a good, the same way that healthy software development teams spend a percentage of their time around 20%, paying down technical debt, doing tech uplift, not just 100% features all the time, we might have a similar 80/20 mindset around vertical development, using that term very broadly, to help level up you as an individual, because you're going to need to call them those skills later. This isn't the last crisis we're going to face together as humans. And then what are some things you can do to start putting, practicing what maybe with live ammunition, but not in a war around these dimensions for your organization, so that maybe you're a little bit more resilient or adaptive when the crisis comes?

Tiffany Lenz: 31:33

I like it. Yes. It's interesting, though. It's not an angle. I don't think we're I think we're trying to marry two things together. That makes so much sense when you look at them. But if other people aren't talking about it, then awesome.

Robert Greiner: 31:47

Yeah. And that is more approachable. We said earlier. In this episode, hey, if you're a seasoned executive, and things have been working for you For decades, in the moment, when crap has hit the fan, you may not be as willing to deviate, try new things go take that more complicated probing, sensing, responding kind of idea, this could be a good way to one, practice some some of that muscle memory early or put some things in place in an organization, help your people get leveled up, level yourself up in a way that when it does happen, you're inoculated a little bit. And so I think that's probably the safest way to do it is right now we're in a bit of a lull here, things could still go really bad. I don't personally think that's the case. But if it's not COVID, it's going to be the next thing. And so might as well start, start right now,

Tiffany Lenz: 32:36

unless you're ready to land the plane on retirement. This is applicable to everybody.

Robert Greiner: 32:40

Even then, though, we, I think that the data so if you, if you if you look at 2008, just think of like to stop what the stock market did, you had this massive run up. And then you had a short period of time, where things just day after day, just tick down until it bottomed up, bottomed out. And then it recovered. Again, in a very like macro, it was intense. And it was these things get drawn out. So when you're in them as a human day after day, it seems like forever. But that's like a very macro curve that you might expect, it was just two or three things hit at once, and that, and then there's some crime involved, which always makes things worse. But you can look at that and understand it, there's been a lot of volatility. Even in this massive run up that we've had in the decade plus sense, where it's like more vault, they're much more volatile, things happen more frequently. And so you still get your trendline may look the exact same, but that the the peaks and valleys in between look different. And I think that's true in the market. That's true at work. That's true in life. And so even if you're ready to land the plane into retirement, there's still, I think, some preparation along the same level. Yeah, cuz the worst thing you can do is take like a knee jerk reaction to any of these stimuli. And that just makes things worse over time.

Any closing thoughts on this one?

Tiffany Lenz: 34:01

from the standpoint of infinite game, or abundance mentality? I all of this excites me. I think it just creates more and more space for different clever, creative people to add value, lead influence, I like it. I like it a lot.

Robert Greiner: 34:20

The upside is gonna be much higher, you start making better more resilient, more adaptable, faster moving humans and organizations able to take a punch. Yeah, yeah, the future's bright. I would agree on that.

Tiffany Lenz: 34:34

That's my only thought reading these kinds of things is it actually excites me, it doesn't depress me.

Robert Greiner: 34:39

Yeah. I'm excited to see how we work this stuff on future episodes as well.

Tiffany Lenz: 34:43

You too. Thank you

Robert Greiner: 34:44

Good seeing you today. All right. Bye.