Ep 418: Listener questions about leadership (Part 2)

experience or something they need advice on. Right now, these are more questions that are not related to an individual person, but more related to, you know, what what is leadership going to be looking like or what is important to these particular listeners from a leadership standpoint. And we started it last Monday, We're continuing this Monday, and it'll go

for the about a total of five episodes. The first question I want to answer from our listeners is how can leaders build high performing teams when it seems like there's constant talent shortages and skill gaps? And I thought that was an interesting one because I know organizations who it seems like they are always trying to deal with a talent shortage or a skill gap, and I know other organizations in the same industry that don't seem to suffer from it or don't seem to have those impacted

as much. So there's got to be differences in what they're doing, but they may not always be clear looking in from the outside.

quick moving approach to how we're getting work done. And with that comes the possibility that they're going to get some skill gaps things that your people and the teams are not, you know, they maybe they don't know today or they're learning kind of as things are coming out, and we're seeing this across all different industries, and so the ability of the leader to peek around the corner to see what's going on, to be able to predict

to a degree where things are going. What are you seeing in your industry from the organizations and the idea makers that are kind of on the razor's edge of it, the ones that are really pushing a different approach, a different take, They're utilizing new technologies, they're they're kind of, like,

you know, just shaking up the norms. If you're not aware of that and watching that and then thinking about if we go down this way or if we go down this route, how can I best prepare my team for that, That's where I think you start to see

this massive skill gap continue to grow over time. And that is definitely a part of leadership because even if you're not necessarily in the same role that you have today, in two years or five years, if you're in that same industry, if you're doing that same level of work, if you're elevating yourself in your own career, you're going to have larger responsibilities. You're going to have larger influences on the decisions that are being made down the road here.

So if you can get ahead of it now and think about how are you how are you making sure that you're building skill with your team and that you're building the talent that you need while also being aware of what talent is out there. If you're not doing that, you're going to find yourself in a really tough spot being behind and not having a you know, an attractable offer or value proposition to bring people to your team or your organization.

going to be needed in the future. They're the companies that they they have first grabs at who that talent is because they're the ones creating the things that need that talent to begin with. And so it is what it is. There's not much you can do to be in that group if you if your your role and

your industry is not one that creates those things. But then there's the back group, the one you know, leading up the rear, where they don't even know what those skills are, they don't even know what those trends are, and so all the decisions they are making with regard to talent and hiring and recruiting, and you know, you know, lessening skill gaps are all done from a reactive standpoint. You know, let's let's address a skill gap that's already there.

Let's address a talent shortage that's already there. We're not we're not doing well here. We need to hire some people who can have these skills. It's like, if that's the way you go about this, you're going to be fighting a lo using battle that will become harder and harder to play as time goes on. The sweet spot for a lot of organizations and a lot of teams is the middle ground, which is you know that you're

not defining where things are going. You know that you that you don't have a lot of influence on what skills will be needed from a technological standpoint or or a or an industry standpoint. But you know enough about the industry, and you know enough about who those top players are and what they're doing, and you and you kind of keeping abreast of what they're doing to the point where when when you see something coming, you can

start reacting to it immediately. You can start, you know, reaching out and hiring for those skills, you know, looking for the talent in places where other people aren't necessarily looking yet because they don't have that skill necessarily on their radar yet. You know, that's the place that a lot of organizations should be at, because that's how you get talent before it becomes so such in short supply that you end up, you know, with with people who

don't actually have the skills necessary to to do a thing. So, you know, find a way to get into that middle ground, even if you can't necessarily define the industry. The next question I want to answer for our listeners relates to the importance of storytelling. I like this question a lot. We've gotten something similar to this from probably half a dozen people over the over the last couple of years on why storytelling is important. You know, one of the things that I did when I got my start in

leadership was around storytelling and the importance of storytelling. I think it is a I think it's an invaluable skill to have as a leader, is the ability to tell stories. But I think it's it's still just as important today as it was before that that level of necessity from a leadership standpoint to be able to do this is not going away, it's just getting stronger. Especially in the era of you know, leading remote teams and having to

find ways of connecting with your people. Storytelling is one of the best ways to do that.

not a story in the fact that it's like as a fiction story, you know, it's just this ability to grab people's attention, to bring them along on a journey of maybe learning and discovery and help to say it's not like a great storyteller makes you feel like it's not just about like the thing that you're going through, but that this is a thing that everyone goes through.

This is a thing that we've all had to learn, you know, through From a leadership standpoint, they're great at providing you with different ways of thinking about uh, maybe a situation or a problem or an issue. And they're really really good at considering the language that they use and how they use it.

And then I've seen some not great storytellers, right, They're all over the place, and it's hard to figure out, like where are we going here and how are we looping this back around to the theme or the thing

that we want people to walk away with. So it's been so impactful for me as a leader that I always start any type of strategy or meeting or you know, time that I'm bringing leaders together, I always start with the end in mind and think about, like when they walk away from this, what do I want them to feel and what do I want them to be thinking about? And then how do I tell a story through all of the things that we're going to do to get

them there. So I think it's such an important thing that everybody talks about, we say on the surface, but then when you start to ask people like, well, then how do you tell a story? You know, like, how do you do that? That's where it starts to get a little bit shaky for a lot of people because it takes a lot of thought and purpose to kind of script those things. Over time, you get better at it,

you need to do less and less preparation. But initially to become a great storyteller, you have to take the time to learn how to actually you know, create eight you know, impactful stories.

They have characters, which if you're a leader and you're telling a story, you hopefully you are one of the characters in the story because you're talking about from personal perspective, but there are other people as well. There's a conflict, there's there's something to overcome, something happens you have to overcome, because that's where the leadership lesson comes from. There's a plot, So this happened, then this, then this, then this. There's a setting, so you have to kind of bring people

back to where you were at the time. How you know, how old were you, Where in your career were you? You know, how how many years into your career were you? You know, what have you done? What had you done before? The things that kind of of set the stage of where of where you are. And then it has to have a theme. And the theme basically is the kind of the learning from it. What is the purpose of telling the story. What are you trying to impart upon

the person that is listening to it? What is that theme? And so a good storyteller understands that their stories have all of those things. And I like what you said about you know you become better at it over time. I think the thing that makes you become better at over time is you just have more things to talk about like you have more experience, so you have more stories.

But there are a lot of leaders out there who have a ton of experience, but they've never taken the time to put that experience in the format of a story that can be used to, you know, kind of help the next generation of leaders, or to or to help you know, train or coach or or you know, impart a learning on somebody who's having a difficult time.

They have those stories, they almost don't know they have them, or they have never you know, kind of figured out how to say that in a way that that is impactful, and so they kind of live in their own head

and that's a waste. So if you're a leader, you know, and you don't have this ability or you don't feel comfortable, start looking at some very short stories and what they have in them, and start thinking about things that have happened to you and how you can tell them in a story that is a short anecdote or something that includes character, conflict, plot setting, and theme, so that you can kind of impart the knowledge onto the you know,

the people that you're interrusted with leading. I want to go over one more question in this episode before we end but first I want to go up toward one of our sponsors. All Right, the last question I want to answer on this episode revolves around data and analytics. You know, there are a lot of people out there who are very data driven, They're very analytics driven, and there are a lot of people out there who are you know, kind of driven by the human aspect of

the decision making process. And I think the the the ways that leaders fail are in only looking at one or the of those and not taking into account both. And so the question that I kind of want to talk about here that we've gotten from several people is there are people feeling frustrated that decisions seem to be being made by leaders all you know, from a human aspect side of things, without taking into account actual data and analytics, and that can lead to you know, poor outcomes.

But they don't want to go the opposite route by you know, having the data and the analytics come in there and all of a sudden it throws out the human aspect of it too. And that's a very real fear. It can happen in organizations that see the poor outcomes of making decisions from one side or the other. And then because we are natural pendulum swingers as as a species, you know, we we tend to swing wide the other

way instead of getting it right in the middle. And a big failure could be, you know, seeing the failures from only seeing one side of that and then switching all to the other side and using that first element. I think they're both important.

human aspect of decision making and data and analytics. But there is a balance of the two that you need, and whether you call that EQ and IQ or whatever, it might be, like, there's a piece of this where you need data and analytics and it is the ultimate measurement of the outputs of what you are doing, Like are we doing the things to impact an actual outcome?

At some point you need to have that information. The human aspect, in my mind of that is understanding that there are behaviors and there are approaches that are more likely to get you the data and the analytics that you are looking for and taking into account that there are many times with the data and the analytics on paper may seem like they are correlated in a positive way, but in reality they are two sides of the spectrum here and going, you know, like focusing too heavily on

one of them will have an impact on the other ones. And the human part of that is understanding where and how do we lean into different aspects of the data and analytics to get the information that we need to help us to build the strategies versus sometimes what I think we only look at data analytics and then we make assumptions about some of the human aspects of decisions that were made without spending any time understanding why those decisions were made or what other factors might have been

involved in those decisions. So, you know, I think leaders really really have to become more comfortable and more competent with both of those things. You have to understand the data and the analytics because that's going to be the

ultimate way of measuring the work that you're doing. But you have to be present and you have to be available to be able to spend time seeing the human aspects of decision making that are happening that can be discussed in either adjusted or you can educate people, or you can help to connect the dots between the behavior and the data and the analytics. So it's one of those things where you really have to have both, and as a leader, I think you have to have a

balanced approach in sometimes the balance goes one way. Sometimes you need to lean more into the data analytics when you have people that are making decisions without them, and sometimes you have to lead the other way when all they're doing is you're looking at the data analytics and they're not using any observable behavior as an input for the strategies that you're trying to implement.

stand and saying I'm not gonna I'm gonna ignore the data and the analytics because the human aspect of this is so important that it doesn't matter what the data says. That's never a good thing. It does matter what the data says, it does matter what the analytics say. And sometimes the right decision is one that flies in the face of what that data and analytics say because the cost to the human aspect of the decision is too

great to let the data and the analytics. You know, control or be the final decision maker on this, but not knowing where you know what what the data and the analytics are is a a great recipe for making a decision based solely on the human aspect that ends up having broader and far more detrimental consequences to the business as a whole because you went into it not knowing what that data was or what those analytics were.

It's the it's the difference between you know you you if you if you want to invest in stocks, you know you can. You can read the Yahoo Finance page and and you may not know everything that the that the insiders know, but you make a better decision that way than throwing a dart at a dart board on what to invest in, obviously, and so on. One is, you know, not even knowing what the data and the analytics are is the equivalent of throwing a dart at the dart board to figure out what to invest in.

Having the data and the and the analytics, you know, is the equivalent of you know, reading the the yahoos you know finance page before making an investment, but but making sure that you understand that just because something says something on a bulletput on Yahoo Finance doesn't mean that the outcome is going to exactly what they say. That there are other elements at play here that are that are equally, if not more important, and they have to

strike a balance. So I think they're they're both necessary. But but again, if you if you want to be a leader whose people believe that you have their best interests at heart, you need to know how to articulate your decision making in a way that says the human aspect of this decision making process is very very important to me as a as a fiduciary of the organization and as someone in a leadership role who has a responsibility. I can't ignore the data altogether. I have to take into account.