Leadership Development Priorities in 2024

Coming up on the Leadership Growth Podcast. I do believe we can sometimes put way too much importance and power in the hands of a leader, expecting them to be able to do miracles all the time. It is a fact that a leader can have a disproportionate impact on others, however, it's a fundamental attribution error with the assumption that I can have more impact

than I really can. And we can use that flawed thinking on leaders all the time and say "Oh, every sort of contingency, every sort of risk, every sort of issue, obviously it's a leadership issue." And while leadership can have a large impact, whoa, it can be way overstated. And so the processes and systems and the culture also needs to be looked at and addressed as well. Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Leadership Growth Podcast. I'm Daniel, joined

with my great brother Peter. We're here to take another fun journey into the tools and ideas and topics to help you elevate and strengthen your ability to be a great leader. So, Peter, you ready? Should we dive in? It is, it's great to be here for another episode, thanks everybody for joining. You're in for a treat. Always good topics to chat about. So on that note, Peter, insight of the week.

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What is something that really stood out, maybe a gem, maybe a great idea that you heard from somebody? You want to go first? I'll go first. This last week I was working with a group of leaders and one of the individuals shared what I thought was a really good gem. It was a good idea as they were talking about how to be more cohesive as a leadership team. And he said, "We need to be more focused on communicating with each other and not about each other."

I'll say it again, focus more on communicating with each other and not about each other. They were trying to get away from having these meetings after the meetings. The hallway conversations, like let's just get it out while we're together so we can actually have more effective communication. I thought it was really well put and I thought a gem that could be applicable to a lot of different settings. What I will often tell teams is if you have meetings outside of meetings, you're not a team.

You're not. Teams talk about the real stuff together in meetings together. I'll say together again. Because it just, when you start having all of these divisions, side conversations, and I'm not talking different subjects that make sense to have, no, about each other, uh-uh. What conversations happen in the meeting together? It's so true. But it's not easy to shift

that pattern. And I think it requires every member of that team to assess, is they're about to say something, especially if it is outside the meeting, is this something that would have better said in the meeting? So to break some of those habits, it can be hard, especially if there are some personalities you might just not mesh as well with. You might not understand where they're coming from. Maybe their background's a little bit different, uh, where they're coming. So you try.

But yeah, it's important. Those meetings after the meetings. Waste of cycles, waste of energy. And it's really hard, especially when you like make eye contact with somebody in the meeting or you see eye contact being made and you know there's a lot of things just being exchanged. In that moment. And you're like, okay, yes, we all can connect in different ways. However, if it is about us together moving forward, bring it up now. Yeah. Yep. Okay.

How about you? What's your insight, Daniel? Well, Peter, here's my insight. So I was hearing Dr. Carmen Simon, a lecturer at Stanford. She does a lot of neuroscience research and she was explaining how within 48 hours we forget 90% of what we just heard. 90% within 48 hours? 48 hours, you go into a meeting, you hear a presentation, 48 hours later, 90% of it gone. Not there. That's kind of depressing. Oh, when I first heard that, I was like,

oh, when I first heard that. And you know, that's, it's similar to what you hear in other ways, but you're like, well, that stinks. You know, all of the effort, however, this is what I really liked how it was emphasized, that the 10% though really matters. And you can actually craft your presentations to be based around what the 10% is you want the people to remember. And you emphasize that 10%. You repeat it, you build off of it, and you actually need the 90%

so that people will focus on the 10%. It's kind of this weird idea, if you just say, well, then just emphasize the 10%, then they'll just remember less of the 10%. You need the stuff around it to package it, to frame it up, and you actually need to add a level of complexity to a certain degree so that the brain is engaged and has to work a little bit to go in and figure out, oh, that's the 10%, that's the stuff that

that's going to grab me as well. So the 10%, identifying what it is, framing it up, repeating it, and not getting overly depressed that they don't remember a 50% or 40%. And the better you can connect it to previous knowledge, the more likely it will turn into the 10% retained. That's how our brain is wired. It doesn't know what to do with just novel concepts. The better you can connect it to a previously established thought, it increases the sticky factor,

the stickiness of that thought. - Stickiness. Hence the knowing of your audience so well, so you can like piggyback onto something that they are... - Oh, it's true. Now, you know, the first thought I actually had when I heard that fact was, wow, wouldn't that be cool if that happened to our inboxes? Just after 48 hours, 90%, they just get cleared. There you go, they're all taken care of. - So only the 10% of really important emails remain.

Is that what you're saying? - Yeah, exactly. There you go. Apparently that's a new app we can create. It'll go through it and delete 90% of everything you have in your inbox so it doesn't... Actually, that's probably a fair amount. - Yeah, when you think about it, how many of the messages are you inundated if it's the fluff?

I'm not counting even all the promotional stuff that comes through and the marketing sales stuff, but there's so many of those notices that you're cc'd on or whatever that don't really require anything, but it just fills things up. - Yeah, good point. Great insights. Good insights. Alright, next segment here. Are you ready? - Memory lane. - Memory lane. You guessed it.

Do you want to take us down memory lane, Peter? - I'm happy to, as we were talking about sticky thoughts in our mind. It reminded me... - Good segue. That was really good. - Thank you. Reminded me growing up how Dad always had this little candy bag. This candy bag that he would take to his seminars. And he always

had these buckets full. In fact, it was the red and white little mint candies, the butterscotch discs, the brock peppermints, and there was the red and white and the green and white, the little butterscotch discs, the little hard strawberry wrapped ones, and then they evolved into having more fun. You get some Snickers and Reeses and everything. But he had this bag, and while teaching, as people responded to an answer, got engaged, he'd throw out candies. And it got people

just, they were excited. They were excited to answer. They were excited to participate. And I thought that was so cool. Here's my dad heading off, and he's just got bags full of candy to go to work. I'm like, "How cool!" He's the candy man! - Peter, I so remember going in and Dad's packing for a trip, and I see this bag of candy and I'm like, "What are you taking all of this candy for?" And then eventually I was figuring out he would

throw it at people. Now, what was funny, I don't know if you recall maybe you saw this too. So when I visited and saw a couple of his seminars, and I saw him in action, and he would sometimes huck these things. I mean, or, you know, gentle lob appropriately. And people loved it, and their reactions, they just well, ate it up. Ha. So anyway, however, what he also found was as more focus on health came about, people didn't always eat the candy, but they treated it like a trophy.

So like at the end of the day, they would have like these three or four or five pieces, and they were like, "Yeah, this is what I got. This is because I actively participated and was rewarded." It works! - It is. They would stack them up at the edge of their desk. You know, it's kind of a status symbol. "Hey, I was able to answer all these things." So it's all these things, and here we are adults, professionals. But yet there are little rewards that continue to make an impact.

- Yeah. - You know, at the end of the day, we're just, we're all kids in bigger bodies. There are some of those basics that just never leave. - It's a fact. It's a fact. Reward recognition, that's a good one. - So there's the candy bag. And he was even a monogrammed little bag. He got one over time. So anyway, that was fun to think about. So those, for the listeners, think about what are simple little ways that you can reward engagement,

involvement, activity. You're happy to do some training, things like that. Hey, maybe consider a little candy bag or something like that. - And you know that when people got something, they're going to be that much more likely to remember the comment they made or the point that was being made. Because at this point, Peter, it connects to something they know,

an experience that's reinforcing it. And they are going to remember that moment far more likely than simply sitting and just watching another slide. - And just as another quick tangent on the candy, if you ask Dad, what is the most popular candy? Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. - Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. - Little gold foil, by far the most popular. So he always had to have like three times as many in the bag of that. - Yes, I remember that. That's great.

All right, ready to dive into the topic at hand. - Let's do it. Let's talk leadership. - Today's topic is we're going to be commenting and discussing a recent survey

that Boston Consulting Group came out after talking to what it looks like 7,000 leaders across a hundred different markets. - So it's a look ahead. Trying to look at the crystal ball. - Correct. Top priorities. And what's interesting is they identified four specific behaviors from these survey results that we need to pay most attention to. And they also found so many of these priorities, all come around to leadership development and leadership behaviors, which was

just so interesting. They were saying the area of highest need to act in 2024, the year we're in now, all is around leadership development and identification. So we need to look at leadership development and identifying the right leaders to make it happen. - It really highlights the gap that presently exists in most organizations. They need more leaders. They need better leaders. And it's not as we look through these, we're not going to find technical skill development at the top of the list.

- Yeah. So let's dive into this first one. They identified four specific areas to talk about. First, leadership behaviors themselves. They were describing that the number two topic that was identified in the future importance ranking. So how important something is, is leadership behaviors. However, the number 15, number 15 identified item in current capabilities was leadership behaviors. So number two in importance, but number 15 in actually being able to do it. That is a very large

gap. Peter, is that consistent with what you're seeing? What do you think of this? - Oh, there's a delta there. And it was fascinating when you look and you try and realize where does development, where does leadership development fall in terms of priorities and where does that match in terms of a budget line within most

organizations? How does that development occur? And admittedly it's hard to quantify because there are so many development opportunities that will come forward that don't fall straight under an L&D budget line. Because it's not every workshop and course and other things, but that gap that lack of leadership skills that are being identified that are complained about by other leaders, it's real. I'm finding that across clients I'm working with, across

organizations and industries. How can those individuals improve? And what's really eye-opening is when they realize there's no cavalry coming in to save them. You know, how much of it does fall on the leadership to do that development, to do that coaching, to do that training. I was actually quite, I was happy to see, I was with a group recently and they were complaining a little bit about their direct reports and needing to have

more development there. And I asked the pointed question, whose responsibility is it to develop these leaders? And I was thrilled that they all raised their hands and pointed at themselves, which was huge progress because that's not always the case. Sometimes it's pointing straight over to HR or the L&D department or whatever it is. They're supposed to fix them. No. So, long tangent there, but man, the leadership behavior development's needed.

And this assumption that it's somebody else's issue, whether it's HR or training or all of these things. And yet the reality is 10% of development is actually just that formal kind of training. And it's not the 100% that we sometimes think about. And it's more like the 70% of actual development happens on the job. And that's not the stuff that you need to throw tons of extra money into

necessarily. It's actually helping leaders know how to build and strengthen other leaders and to pay attention and to show with an example of how to have effective conversations, how to be able to lead with empathy and with a sincere desire to help and create a difference and support others while being very clear and providing clear feedback along the way so that people know what success looks like and get direction and reinforcement of the good, the bad, the ugly

in helpful ways so they can then act on it as well. That is what often separates to describe and what creates such a large gap because we believe it's important, but yet we won't always then showcase it ourselves. So what I'm hearing you say Daniel is highlighting if you have somebody on your team that has a leadership gap, it is more effective. Let's say they need to work on their listening skills to not hand them a book on listening

and say read this. But to better yet say hey let's set a couple goals and as we are coming out of team meetings let's meet and let's talk about what we observed. Those conversations are just tremendously impactful. And I take issue with leadership behaviors a little bit and they address it sort of a little later on, but and I don't know what you think of this Peter, but I do believe we can sometimes put way too much importance and power in the hands of a leader expecting them to be able to

do miracles all the time. It is a fact that a leader can have a disproportionate impact on others. However it's a fundamental attribution error with the assumption that I can have more impact than I really can and we can use that flawed thinking on leaders all the time and say oh every sort of contingency, every sort of risk, every sort of issue, obviously it's a leadership issue. And while leadership can have a large impact, whoa, it can be way overstated.

And so the processes and systems and the culture also needs to be looked at and addressed as well. Yeah there are those who are listening to this now and there is the conscientiousness in them that they are now looking in the mirror saying oh I need to do so much more to develop my people. And yes, sure you can try but don't have these expectations that you can fix everything. Then there are other leaders who really do need to be hearing this, who are probably not listening

to this, oblivious. And so that is one of the challenges of talking about this is you don't want people taking it too much to heart where they're now beating themselves up because they didn't correct all of the behaviors that might be problematic in their team. Give yourself some grace, you can only change so much, but are you putting some of those things in place to increase the likelihood that leadership behaviors can be improved? And some of those important ones are just having conversations.

You're reminding me, it's a bit of a spectrum of conscientiousness. Say that again. That was powerful. Say that again. A spectrum of conscientiousness. Because sometimes we forget as we're speaking to leaders, they're not all as conscientious as we would like or committed or as focused or as engaged, other words there that go

along with it. But as you think of the highly conscientious those are the folks who care and they care so much that they will push themselves and they will overestimate their own ability to influence and to then tackle great problems or really complex problems that are really bigger than any one person. They'll keep going at it and you're like, "Hey, that's noble, that's wonderful, chill out a little, cut yourself some slack." So lovely people often model examples that we want to look at.

And then you have this second group along this kind of spectrum of conscientiousness. And this other group, oftentimes they are the well-intentioned but sometimes forgetful. They need more frequent reminders. Subtle kicks, not physical kicks, but little reminders to be able to help them. And more training, more ideas. And they may have gone to a training last year and they were good for a short time, and then they're like, they forget or they get involved in other stuff.

That's kind of the middle ground. There's conscientiousness within them, it just has to be rekindled frequently. Yeah, it's inconsistent conscientiousness. Yes. And then there's the third group along the spectrum of conscientiousness. And they are the folks who don't care. They can have an absence of empathy toward others. Or perhaps they could be so task-focused. And those are the folks that you have to wonder, should they be a leader? Because they

may be amazing individual contributors. Experts in their field, experts in their craft, but maybe they should not be leading others. And we've been asked to coach folks like this. And there is a low success rate regardless of who is coaching, regardless of the situation, because fundamentally there are other aspects in play, especially their conscientiousness, not as high. So anyway,

there you go, the spectrum. So as any of us are actively trying to develop ourselves or others, you can be reflecting how conscientious is the person that I'm working with and to adjust to what you're doing to meet that. I think that's a great way to frame it up and I'd even add another spectrum as you're looking at it. And that's that spectrum of what is motivating the individual. Is it individual achievement or is it mission achievement? Because there are some who are

very motivated by the individual accolades that they get. They want to have that spotlight. They want to be able to be the one who is recognized for all the great work they're doing. And on the other end of that spectrum you have the individuals who they couldn't, they don't care. If they're ever in the spotlight or not, they are fully invested in just helping that team, that organization accomplish its established mission.

And so when you're looking at these two together of that spectrum of conscientiousness with that spectrum of motivation, then you can really help describe some folks. Oh, that's a fantastic, I'm picturing all sorts of great diagrams here. This is a great segue into, I'm going to jump around, the last one that they mentioned in the survey, is

emotional intelligence. And there has so much been written said about emotional intelligence and what it comes down to is how do you manage your own reactions so that you can show up and work with others and that others want to work with you. There's a rapport and what was very clear is that the research continues to build on that when you are elevating in your career, the higher you go, the more important emotional intelligence is as a skill

set. The technical aspects become less, emotional intelligence becomes more, and one way of framing it up is the technical ability can often get you a seat at the initial leadership table. However, if you want to stay at that leadership table or advance, you need to then work on your emotional intelligence and that is the critical skill that often separates bad leaders from really good ones. And it would even help you get an opportunity for higher levels of executive roles.

And that part you're sharing of, it really helps you stay at the table. That's where the advancement occurs. And in the article they really highlighted that ability of self-awareness. How do you regulate or understand how emotions interact with you but then how you communicate that and how you even are able to have metacognition, your ability to think about how you think and recognize that your way of thinking most likely is different than how other people

are thinking. And then have the patience to unpack that, to engage in those conversations together without being so task-driven that you're steamrolling people on the way. -Yeah. So, we've got leadership behaviors, emotional intelligence, and the other two.

The next one really is around organization development which I really appreciate how they frame this up because it's looking at what I said earlier, not overestimating leadership ability, but recognizing what are the processes and systems and the organization design itself and being able to then organize the function, organize what needs to get done, and then recruit and bring on and perform in effective ways. And that coupling in the right approach is a magical, magical thing.

We were in a meeting earlier with a client and I was mentioning how you can take a leader who makes great decisions and put that same leader into a dysfunctional environment or one that is based in fear or not aligned around key decision making and that same leader will begin to make poor decisions. And we see it time and time again and so looking at the bigger organization development and the organization design is critical. Yeah. And what you're really highlighting is this is not boxology.

It's not looking at this saying immediately we need to just restructure the org chart. No, it's looking and saying are we clear on our strategy? How are those clearly connected with our processes, with our systems? And then we start to look at more of what is the appropriate structure and the people in the right seats to be able to do that. And that's absolutely key. The boxology.

Sticks and boxes. It's such a temptation for leaders to go, oh, I'm just going to reorganize and shift things around. It is, and I'm just going to say it, it's a fairly easy way of doing quick action. However, it may not be the right thing to do. Yeah. In some ways it's where you're confusing activity with results. You're feeling like you're making change, you're feeling like you're making progress, but have you really taken the time to make sure and assess that is this

change going to have the impact you need? But to do that, you have to pull up out of the weeds, out of the technical, out of the day-to-day, out of the firefighting, which is so hard. Which is so hard. I don't care what level you're at to be able to pull up and do that. So it does. It's intentionally carving out something that's not going to happen. It does. It's intentionally carving out some time to do that. And so all of these involve intentionality.

All of these four that we're getting into in Change Managements, the fourth that we'll start to talk about, none of these are improved by accident. I mean, in order to develop leaders, you intentionally have to look at it. To build your emotional intelligence, you intentionally have to be able to do some self-appraisal and assessment of what do I need to build and improve. To change and improve your

org design, that just doesn't happen by accident. You have to intentionally carve out and examine, look at what needs to change and why. And then finally, from a Change Management perspective, to do it well, it doesn't just happen on its own. That's fantastic. And you've already begun diving into that fourth area of Change Management. What is so vital, and they were talking about this in the study as well, is inevitably every change becomes personal.

And when we think of organizational level changes or team level changes, inevitably it's personal. And how do we respect and acknowledge the personal motivations, the personal changes, the personal challenges, and allow people time to process, to ask questions, to keep working through this. And the study used a great metaphor of that building of muscle. And that Change Management is a muscle that if it's not actively used, it may need to have

some exercise to keep it functioning. So you need to keep it going, and the more you exercise that muscle of Change Management, the better you can be for yourself and for others, remembering that it's personal and that it takes some time and process to work through things. But critical for this year as a key priority.

To pull back on the thread you were talking on the neuroscience of how we forget 90% of what we're hearing in 48 hours, and as people are coping with change, and they hear news and information, there's also a way in which people cope with that. We pay attention to information that is radically different than our way of thinking. It's highlighted. And we either have that choice of, okay, do I integrate that and assimilate that into what, how I'm thinking, or do I block and ignore of what's

going on. And I think when we're talking change and looking at how change is personal, if that connection is not made and that question is not answered about really what this change is going to do for you at an individual level, you run the risk of people just mentally blocking out that change because they don't know what to do with it, or it becomes a fixation where all they're doing is thinking about it. And all of the worst case scenarios that happen. Are you speaking from experience, Peter?

Have you seen that happen? Oh, man. All of the different scenarios and times. And it can be changed both at a professional and a personal level. You just see that. When you stop and think, our brains are amazing at their ability to generate worst case scenarios. And to head down these tangents of what could happen. So it's looking at that personal nature of change, answering those questions, getting the input so that you're

doing the process properly. Yeah. Without completely disrupting the entire operational template of an organization. Okay, so let's wrap up. As we often do, let's do the lightning round question.

So the question, Peter, is what is the one thing that people need to keep in mind to then be a successful leader this year? What would you say? What's the one thing out of all the, because we've been talking about leadership behaviors, change management, organization development, emotional intelligence. What's the one thing that leaders need to pay attention to, to be able to help them be effective as they are

prioritizing activities this year? I'd say the most important thing that a leader needs to do to be effective is to carve out space and time to be intentional about how they're doing what they're doing. Not just going through and letting the day rule itself, but how do you actually make that time to think how I'm doing what I'm going to do? Am I intentionally going to put attention here or here and when I'm doing this, that means I'm saying no to that. Where you're able to get ahead

of the firefighting a little bit. I think that's the most important thing a leader can do because then you actually have the bandwidth to think about what it is you can do. Yeah, well said, well said. Okay, Daniel. I'm going to pull on the thread. I know you love org design. I know that's something when we start talking that topic. So what is the one one thing you recommend for a leader to do to be effective at performing successful organizational design and development? Yeah.

So here's the thing. Do not overestimate your ability to change everything as a single leader. People can overestimate a leader's ability so much and it can get them into trouble because they over promise or they hold others to highly unrealistic expectations. We are to strive for excellence, yes.

What is also needed is to pay attention and to focus on what is the work itself and to guide and direct and design around that work and to streamline the work to make it as less of bottlenecks and to clarify decision-making rights as much as possible so that leaders can then and all employees, the workforce can then work within the work itself. That, that is what we need to be able to focus on more. That's great advice. So I'm hearing do not advise the leader to act like a bulldozer.

Just get things to change. That method might not be the most effective. A little more subtle, a lot more work for sure. Okay Peter, it's been fun. Thanks for another episode. Hey, thanks for chatting. And for those who are wanting to be sure they don't miss another episode, be sure and subscribe so you can always get the latest episodes. Absolutely. Well, take care Peter. I'll see you again and all of our listeners, see you all again sometime soon. All the best.

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