Carol:
Hello, hello, and welcome back to The People-Forward Leadership Podcast. On this episode, we have another amazing guest, another catalyst in the People for Leader movement. And I'm excited to have him join us today. I'm going to introduce you to Mick Spiers. Mick is the bestselling author of the groundbreaking book, You're A Leader, Now What?: The Proven Path to High Performance Leadership. He's the founder and principal of The Leadership Project, and host of The Leadership Project Podcast, which I had the absolute honor and privilege to be a guest on. Mick is an experienced executive with an exceptional track record developing high performance teams and cultures in large global organizations. His vision is to inspire all leaders to challenge the status quo, and is on a mission to empower leaders with all of the skills and knowledge they need to create amazing teams and work spaces. And with that, Mick, welcome to the podcast.
Mick:
Thank you so much, Carol. It's a delight to be here. Thank you.
Carol:
I'm so excited that you joined. And Mick is traveling and he still may time for the podcast, so I feel very honored and privileged. Thank you so much for that. I want to just take a moment to just jump a little bit in for you to talk about your leadership and executive background and what led you to The Leadership Project, because you have a really vast and diverse background that I think is really fascinating.
Mick:
I spent a long time as an engineer, Carol. And my first part of my career was all in engineering. And I'm going to say there was a big pivotal moment when I first become a leader, and hence the reason why my first book is called, You're A Leader, Now What?. There was a big change that happened. And I've got to say that when I first went into leadership, I made so many mistakes. I was a horrible leader. And when I look back at what I know now about leadership, if I knew those things back then, well, maybe I wouldn't have done a great job because you got to learn by scraping your knees and making a few mistakes. But I made so many horrible mistakes when I was first a leader. And that transition into leadership was something that was a huge eye-opener for me.
In my first leadership role I was a micromanager, I was doing everything. I thought I had to have the answer to everyone's questions. I made all of the rookie mistakes that you can ever imagine. And it was after that period of time when I first discovered leadership and first discovered where I'd gone wrong, that it opened up my eyes. This is going back in 2011-2012, opened up my eyes to the world of leadership and to the world of psychology. And I realized that everything I was doing that had made me successful as an individual contributor was actually holding me back as a leader.
And that started a journey that has really catalyzed where I am now as an executive. I went and studied leadership, I studied psychology. I became a master certified coach myself. But along the way, my career took off. As I discovered that it wasn't about me, it was about the culture that I created or about the environment I created, it was about my people, the rest is history. I then went on to have an incredible executive leadership career where I went on to lead regional and global businesses for multiple multinational companies in the world of urban mobility. That's the area that I specialize in. But the thing that changed was nothing to do with what I knew, it was about how I changed my leadership approach.
Carol:
I love that you started off saying how you did everything wrong before you learned to get everything right. And I think that is such a common struggle of the subject matter expert that has been tapped on the shoulder to now step into a leadership role. Is your experience what catapulted you into wanting to start The Leadership Project?
Mick:
Absolutely. I struggled with that transition. And it was exactly that, I was one of those people as an individual contributor that you said it, subject matter expert. I was the answer to everyone's question. That was what it was. If someone had a question, they'd come to me because I was pretty good at what I did. But the things that made me successful as an individual contributor ended up being the very things that held me back as a leader. And it was confusing. It was confusing because you're getting applauded for these things when you're an individual contributor, and all of a sudden they're a rod for your back. I found that transition very difficult.
Then when I started discovering about the world of leadership, and I would read research from organizations like Gallup and ATD, I would discover that my journey was not unique. A lot of people go through this same trouble, Carol. And you'd find that only one in five people in the world truly love their job and like their boss. One in five. And we spend up to one-third of our life in the workspace, and I found that to be an absolute travesty that we'd be spending, investing our one-third of our time in places that we weren't falling in love with our jobs and with the people that were around us.
If I add a little bit to that, what I do in the world of urban mobility... I'm a very purpose-driven person, Carol. My work that I do in urban mobility, the whole idea is to de-stress the way people get to and from work. What was driving me was the stress of the commute. There's people in the world that don't know if it's going to take them 40 minutes to get to work or more than four hours to get to work. And unfortunately that's not an exaggeration. That's what was driving me from the mission and the purpose of what I was doing in urban mobility.
Then it dawned on me, for so many people, for up to 80% of the people, the stressful part was in the workplace. I decided that what I had to do was also work out this world of leadership so I could share what I was learning with the rest of the world so that they could then create workspaces where people fell back in love with their jobs again. If you're going to spend one-third of your life somewhere, you'd want to make sure it's a pretty dang good place to work. That's what inspired The Leadership Project, was to de-stress the workspace. My day job, let's call it the urban mobility world, de-stress the commute. The Leadership Project, de-stress the workspace itself.
Carol:
That's fascinating. And I think that should be the mantra of most leaders. If you spend a third of your life at work, it should be something that you enjoy doing. How can I make that happen?
You said something that I think is really critical. You said, "The things that I was applauded for as a subject matter expert were the things that were getting me in trouble when I became a leader." And I think you talked a little bit about a few of them when we started the conversation, but could you just pinpoint a few of those that really stood out for you as the barriers that, as you said, were applauded when you were doing great work as an individual contributor, but then when you became a leader became your Achilles heel?
Mick:
Yeah. I'm going to say the number one was being the answer to everyone's question. That was the big one. And there's this dilemma that you get into that when people come to you and they ask you a question as a leader, if you know the answer, your instant reaction is to answer the question because you know the answer. You think, "Oh, I'm going to unlock people's productivity here because Jim or Sally has come and asked me this question. I know the answer. I'm going to tell them the answer and they're going to go off and they'll be productive." But what happens is all you do is create dependency, and you become the choke point for the team and for the business. And you choking there learning and growth. What I discovered was what I had to do was instead of giving the answers, I had to ask better questions.
If someone came to me with a difficult problem, even if I knew the answer straight away, I had to pause and then intentionally go, "Well, what do you think the answer is?" And to try to coach them to find their own answers so that they would become sufficient. And I was also very prolific as well. I was the person that was producing lots of output, so most things fell at my feet. If there was something that had to be done, I was working myself anywhere between 12 to 16 hours a day sometimes. Which was not good for my health as well, by the way. But minimum 12 hours a day, I was prolific with my own output. I was answering everyone's question. If someone had a question on any topic, it was always be "Ask Mick." I became the choke point.
The flip that I had to make was to stop being the answer to every question, stop trying to be the smartest person in the room. Because guess what, you don't have to be. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room to be a good leader and to become a multiplier. I discovered some work from Liz Wiseman. In particular, the book Multipliers, to realize that our job is to create the environment where other people can do their very best work. We're all human beings, Carol. And all human beings are only blessed with 24 hours a day. Hopefully you're not using all of those 24 hours a day working. But you're only blessed with 24 hours a day. And what the discovery that I had was, well, initially if I had seven people in my team, well, now I've got seven times 24. If I have 20 people on my team, I've got 20 people. If I've got 200 people on my team, I've got 200 people.
And my job is to create the environment where those 200 people can do their very best work. And no matter how good you are, 200 people doing their very best work is always going to create something greater than you could have done yourself. So it's that flip from being the epicenter of the team to being the multiplier.
Carol:
So good. So good. I want to talk about challenging the status quo. It's a key call to action that you have in your book, you talk about it in your podcast. And I would love for you to talk about what that means, particularly when you are new transitioning into a leadership position and you feel like you don't know enough to challenge the status quo, or you're feeling the pressure to maintain it. I think you talk about in the book is the common path of mimicking those who came before you. How do you overcome that when you're bright-eyed and bushy-tailed new into that leadership role?
Mick:
Yeah, really good. This is at the heart of the book, but the challenge the status quo goes on in a thread throughout your life, but this is where it needs to start. And if we don't start it there, we'll never break that pattern.
Remember what I said before, that only one in five people in the world truly like their boss and love their job. Keep that in your mind as I say this. The usual situation of someone going into their very first leadership role is a complete roller coaster of emotions. They have the euphoric highs that they've finally been tapped on the shoulder and congratulated. Going, "Oh, you're amazing at what you do." You might be a great nurse, a great accountant. Whatever it is, now you're going to be a leader. And you have this amazing moment where you're proud, your family's proud of you, et cetera. And then there's the thud. And the thud is the anxiety of realizing that no one has actually shown you what it means to be a leader.
And your only reference point becomes to look around you and to start mimicking the behavior of the leaders before you. Now I circle back, only one in five people in the world truly love their job and like their boss. So you're mimicking the behavior of someone that you didn't even like. You didn't like their leadership, and all of a sudden you start mimicking the behavior of leaders before you.
I have an exercise in the book that starts off this whole challenge to the status quo situation. And I call it, building your amalgam leader. Building your amalgam leader is to do a stocktake of all of the leaders that you've had in your career until this point. The good, the bad, and the damn right ugly. And you write down all of the things that you liked. Who were the leaders that did inspire you, that did treat you well? And what was it specifically that they did that made you feel good about yourself, that empowered you? Whatever it was.
And then, all of those leaders that did something that diminished you, that made you feel two inches tall, what was it that they did? And you start writing a list of all the things that you would agree that you would never do to another human being. And what you start doing, is from this amalgam leader picture, you build your own leadership credo that says, "As a leader,..." And you finish the sentence. As a leader, I will never treat someone in this way. As a leader, I will always listen to my team. And it's got to be very personal to yourself. There's no cookie cutter answer here, it's got to come from you. It's got to be authentic and it's got to be something that means something to you.
You create this leadership credo to stop the pattern of just repeating what you saw as a, let's call it a societal expectation of what a leader looks like. Start building your own model of leadership, built on your own values and how you want to treat another human being. That's what I mean by challenge the status quo. Stop just following the bouncing ball and repeating all of the mistakes of those before you, start building your own model of a leader that you would be proud to follow.
Carol:
That's so good. Yeah, build your own model. And speaking of which, the people for leadership framework, that's the essence of what we do in our practice in this podcast. The first pillar is about leader awareness. It starts with developing yourself, developing others, and then developing culture. In essence, that's what we talk about. And this piece that you're talking about and challenging the status quo, building your own leadership model, it sounds very similar to understanding yourself as a leader. What does it mean? What does that awareness you need to have?
I'm curious in order to do that exercise, which I think is a powerful exercise that every new leader should do. I think every existing leader should redo it, should just revisit it in fact periodically to make sure that they're still following their values and following where they want to go. But I'm curious, what do you find to be the most fundamental mindset shift required in that transition? As you're developing that model, you're thinking about shifting the status quo. How do they need to position themselves? What's that mindset shift that needs to happen, particularly when they're in that emotional journey of euphoria to deer in the headlight?
Mick:
Yeah. I'm going to give two, in fact. I'm going to say the shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset is going to be fundamental here. If you were really great as an individual contributor, there's a chance that you've fallen into a fixed mindset. And that is the thought that you're either good at something or you're not good at something. Whereas someone with a growth mindset backs themselves to learn something new, and to learn something new every day. And they go into everything with an open mind to go, what am I learning from this? And I have an exercise also in the book, which is a self-reflection exercise that I've done every day since that time. It's going on for 14 years now. I've done the same five questions, asked myself at the end of every day. What went well today? What didn't go well? What would I do differently next time? What did I learn about myself? And what did I learn about others?
A growth mindset is needed-
Carol:
So good.
Mick:
... that leaders have to learn something new every day about themselves and about their environment, their team. What did you learn about other human beings on that day? And the other one is just the shift that it's not about you anymore, it's about your team. And your success as a leader is going to be about the environment that you create for those around you. How do you lead others and how do you lead the culture? Which I know are your other pillars that you will talk about. That's going to be the determinant of your success. Nothing about you. Your own self-awareness is where it starts, but after that, it's all about your team and it's all about the culture you create.
Carol:
Yeah, so good. Love that self-reflective work. And I'd love that you do it every day. And I agree, I think it's something at the end of the day to just really reflect on your process and your growth and your learning so that you can look at where you are today and compare it to where you will be next year, and to really see what's changed, what's different. How have you grown? Have you leaned into that fixed mindset or have you really established and leaned into the growth mindset? I really like that.
Mick:
It's also the people around you are growing at the same time, Carol. So you've got to realize that this trial and error process, it sounds almost crazy to think that you're in trial and error every day, but that's what it is. You're in trial and error every day because the people that you're leading are also growing. And here's the challenging part about leadership. Leadership, people are more complex than any technology that we have in the world, even AI. People are more complex than any technology that we have. when you're leading people, they are going to do things that you scratch your head and you don't fully understand their behaviors, et cetera.
And what works for one person will not work for another person. But here's the crazy thing about the others are learning and growing as well. What works for that person today won't work for them six months from now, so you need to constantly adapt your leadership to the people that you're leading. To the situation and to the people that you're leading. And if you're not paying attention, you'll just keep on repeating rinse cycle and you won't get any different results, so you need to be quite adaptive in your leadership.
Carol:
That's so good. Because I always say that people are complex and messy. And you have to understand as well that people, although they're in the organization, they still are living in a larger societal context. And how they grow and develop and how they're interacting with their environmental external ecology is going to impact how they are showing up and evolving in the internal structure that you have within the organization. And not only that, we're all developing in our own personal life cycle. Who we were at 20 is not who we'll be a 30. And as we grow and learn, we're going to change. Having this adaptive resilient style is such a powerful skill to have in a leader's toolkit. Because you're right, what worked for them last year is not going to work for them this year. And now we have all these generations in the workplace that's really challenging that idea of one size fits all is getting pushed to the boundary even more than ever today.
Mick:
Yeah, absolutely, Carol. And it is complex, and we need to be paying attention. We need to understand the needs of the people around us. And that those needs are not static, those needs are dynamic and changing all the time.
Carol:
So good. Those needs are not static. I want to talk about something that you refer to in your book. You refer to Glassers choice theory, which fundamentally says that every individual has the power to control themselves and has a limited power to control others. This idea about individuals taking responsibility for themselves and not trying to necessarily control or take ownership of other people's choices. One of the key functions of a leader is to inspire and influence. And I'm curious, in the use of that theoretical framework, how can leaders gain that deeper sense of self to be able to lead and inspire others? They can't control other people, they can only control themselves. How do they leverage that to be really successful in their leadership?
Mick:
One of the things to look at here, and when I look at choice theory. And it doesn't matter which theory you follow, it can be Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It really doesn't matter. But I picked William Glasser's work on purpose because of choice theory and the concepts of the fundamental needs that he talks about. But if you want to do the self-reflective work, you can also do this with yourself. How do you react when someone's telling you what to do? And the answer is usually not very well. You usually dig your heels in and you get resistant, et cetera, et cetera. Choice theory talks about having five fundamental needs that all human beings have.
The need for survival. I think we all understand that. And by the way, can still drive some pretty unusual behavior in the workplace even though there's no saber-tooth tiger at the edge of the cave anymore, survival instinct is still very powerful. And when we feel threatened, we react in certain ways, fight, flight, or freeze. Right? The second need is the need for love and belonging. And that can drive some interesting behaviors around peer pressure and whether people have got psychological safety, and whether they don't want to stick out because they don't want to put love and belonging at risk. The need for power, the need for fun.
And the fifth one is the need for freedom. The fundamental need for human beings to have freedom of choice and freedom from oppression. If you go into your leadership thinking about, "Actually, you know what, I hate being told what to do. I really don't like being told what to do. I want to feel like my decisions matter here and that I have some kind of fingerprint on the choices that we're making as a team and as a business." This is where engagement and empowerment comes in. And you've got to be careful here and make sure that this doesn't go towards manipulation. But the key point is, when someone is fully engaged into their process and they take ownership of it, they will always do much greater things.
If you go into a situation where you know what the team need to do and your instant reaction as a leader is go, I'm just going to go into the room and I'm going to go, "Right team, this is what we need to do this week." Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Off you go. They're not engaged, they're not taking any ownership of that. There's no way. What freedom of choice comes in, is you lay out the problem space and get them involved in finding the solution. And if they find the solution themselves, they get this feeling of pride of, "Oh, I did that, I did that." And then they step in and they lean in and they'll do things beyond your dreams when they take full ownership of the result.
I'm going to come back to Liz Wiseman again. You can probably tell her work has had a big impact on me. She talks about this in the concept of the extreme question experiment. If you are a leader that does this more directive style, the challenge here is to convert everything into a question for an entire day or even just for one meeting. Instead of going into the meeting and say, "All right, team, here are our priorities for the week. By Thursday, four o'clock, we need to have this finished. And Prabhjot, I need you to be able to finish this by Wednesday at 12 o'clock." And you might have a great plan, but no one's buying into that plan if it's just come out of your head.
So you go into the meeting, same meeting, and you say, "Hey, team, what do you think is our biggest priority this week? Interesting. And what makes that important?" So they understand the why of why are we going to do this. "What challenges do you think we might encounter, and how do you think we might overcome those challenges? What do you think we need to do first, and what do you think we need to do next?" Convert it all into questions. And if the plan comes from them, all of a sudden they take great ownership and great pride in their work. That's why I subscribe to choice theory, to get away from directing people and telling them what to do, and give them a say and give them a choice and give them a voice. Because they don't want oppression, they want choice.
Carol:
That's so good. I'm curious though, if you've been... And maybe you've had this experience, both working with clients as well as when you were a leader, of people who may have gotten very used to being told what to do and then you transition and you ask them the questions and they all stare at you, "I don't know, what do you want us to do?" And that may be the process, it just may be getting them used to it. And you don't say, "Oh, well, that didn't work." But what would you suggest a leader does when they try that and they get crickets, and then they're like, oh my goodness, now I need to revert to telling them what to do?
Mick:
Okay, I could almost guarantee you that it's going to happen, and you need to be ready. Make it a conversation. Make it a conversation. Show them that you're genuinely interested in their ideas and that you're going to ask them questions. You want to know from them. "Hey, I've got some ideas, but I want to hear from you." And don't tell them your ideas first of all. Here's a mistake. There's a common saying that it's an African proverb that says, "Learn to be the last one to speak, otherwise you're going to stifle the ideas in the room." The extreme question experiment is not going into the room and saying... Or, the learning to be the last one to speak is not going into the room and go, "Hey, team, I think we need to do this, this, this and this, but I want to hear from you. What are your ideas?"
Well, guess what, it's too late. You've already told them what you think and they're just going to mimic back to you what you say. If you genuinely want them to take some ownership and you genuinely want to hear their ideas, you have to be the last one to give you ideas. You have to create that space. It is a conversation, and you will get deer in the headlights initially when you have these conversations. Where people, if they've been having directive leaders their whole life, they are going to be stuck initially. It's going to take some deliberate practice to make sure you don't go, "Okay, well, no one knows how I'm going to tell them."
You need to take a beat. Hold space. Show them that it's more than okay for them to speak up and give their ideas. Reward them when they do speak up. "Oh, that's a great idea, Carol. Yes. Tell me more about that." Be curious. And they'll eventually find their voice.
I'm going to share another lesson at the same time here, because the same thing will happen with this other one. And that is learning about how they like to be led. We've all heard of the golden rule, which is to treat people the way you want to be treated. But for me that doesn't go far enough, you need to go to the platinum rule, treat people the way they want-
Carol:
They want to be treated. Yeah.
Mick:
And the only way that you can find out how they want to be treated is by asking them. But the same thing's going to happen, Carol. This happens in my career even now. I'm 52 years old now, or 51 going on 52. This still happens in my career now. I'll say to someone, "Hey, how do you like to be led?" And I have people that go, "I've never been asked that." So they may not have an answer in that first meeting. You might say to them, "Okay, well, I've obviously got you off guard by this question today. Why don't you go and think about it for a week, and when we get back together next week, let me know what you think?" Don't just fall into the trap that if they don't know the answers the first time you ask, don't start giving the answers. Hold space, give them time, let them adjust, and you'll see the results will pay off because of this.
Carol:
Yeah, that's so good. I think about that last pillar of developing culture. I call it collective learning. And it's the opportunity where you creating space where people feel valued, where they feel heard, where they feel safe. Really akin to a lot of the psychological safety principles is what I'm hearing you really talk about in creating an environment where it's okay to be able to be comfortable asking questions. Because there may a fear of, what if I say the wrong thing? Or things of that nature. How do you help leaders? Or talk about, I know you have a chapter on culture of the book, creating an environment where people feel psychologically safe while still driving high standards and accountability. How do you help to balance that?
Mick:
Yeah, really good. I'm going to go through two things here. The first one around psychological safety. Fundamental belief that we get, the behavior that we celebrate and reward and we get the behavior that we tolerate. Tolerate is a different topic, and if we get time, we can talk about it later. But I'm going to talk about celebrate and reward for psychological safety. When you're trying to drive a culture where people will stick up their hand and give an idea or ask a question, or admit when they made a mistake, all of those things, you need to show them that it's more than okay to do so. That it's more than okay. And how you do that is celebrate and reward it.
Let me tell you a story. Let's say that you're in a work environment and you're trying to drive psychological safety in the business, and you're looking in a meeting to collect ideas. And you're going around the room and you're looking to co-create. That's going to be the second part of the lesson here. But if you're trying to co-create something interesting and you're trying to collect ideas from someone, let's say this person, Lou, has come up with what you instantly in your primitive brain go, "That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard." This is going to be the pivotal moment of psychological safety right now. If you shut that person down and say that... I don't think many people would do this.
But if you give the impression that's the stupidest idea you've ever heard, do you think Lou's ever going to speak up again? And do you think anyone that sees that interaction is ever going to speak up again? The answer is no. So you've got to pause and go, even if you don't like the idea. "Thank you so much for speaking up, Lou." That's the celebrate. "Tell me more more about your idea." Before you instantly dismiss it, there might be a little nugget of gold somewhere in there. Let them speak their mind a little bit more so they can explain themselves better. Because they might've blurted out something that sounded right in their brain but didn't come out right. Give them space hold space for them and let them share their idea.
At the end of that explanation, if you still don't like the idea, you can still go, "Well, thank you, Lou, it's really interesting perspective. We're not going to go in that direction, we're going to go in this direction, and here's why. But I'm really glad, that was a really interesting perspective that you shared." So you're celebrating and rewarding that they spoke up.
Now, to be able to do all of that, this is where the second part of what I wanted to share around this co-creation space is the work of Otto Scharmer and his concept called Theory U, which is about generative listening or deep listening. To be able to do this, you need to be able to go intentionally in the room with the intention to deeply listen to your team. Otto Scharmer talks about listening across four levels, and the majority of us get stuck at level one.
Level one is just listening to the things that confirm what you already believe. And you only hear the things that confirm what you believe, and you don't listen to the things that might be contrary to what your preconceived idea was before you went in the room. Level two is to listen with an open mind, to be able to take in new information and to understand a different perspective. Level three is to listen with an open heart, which is to listen to the emotion of the situation. And level four is to listen with an open will to imagine a new reality. And if you can do that as a leader and start role modeling that behavior and create the environment where others do it as well, this is where co-creation lives.
If you get a bunch of people in the room that are listening with an open mind, an open heart, and an open will, all of a sudden you can create something that is greater than any of the individuals could have done in the room. But if everyone goes into the room just listening to the things that confirm what they already believe, people don't walk away from that meeting any smarter than they walked in.
Carol:
That is so good, and so true. And it's such a hard... Well, it's a challenging thing to learn how to do, particularly when you are faced with delivering results and overwhelmed with the responsibilities. And you're working with hybrid teams and remote teams and you're trying to corral everyone in. What are some of the ways that you would suggest as a new leader, or even an established leader who is listening to this thinking, "Uh-oh, I need to maybe start implementing some of these things."... What would you suggest that they do to start this process, and where would be a good place to start this process?
Mick:
I'm going to say start small and start with asking better questions. I would start with the extreme question experiment, that would be the one I would start with. Convert your next team meeting from giving direction to asking questions, and watch your team light up. What I find, everyone that I've asked to do this exercise, they usually come back to me, Carol, with these amazing statements like, "Oh, my team is so cool. They're so clever. They knew the answers the whole time and they were just politely listening to me, but they knew what they had to do."
You're going to be pleasantly surprised how clever your team are, but you will have to be patient. Because like we were talking before, Carol, if they've never had this before, it's going to be an adjustment for them. But this is going to be an investment in time that's going to pay off, so you're going to have to be patient with this. You might even get some people say, "I don't have time for this. I don't have time for this method. I just need to get on with this because the results matter, and I've got to hit my targets by the end of this week or this quarter," whatever the case might be. I'm going to rephrase that and say, "Sorry, you don't have time not to." You don't have time not to.
Because if you're in this directive style, you've become the choke point in the business. You are the one that's not multiplying the results right now. The investment that you're making in being more deliberate and intentional with your actions, to be asking better questions instead of giving answers, to hold space for that co-creation, the results that you're going to achieve are at least 10 times greater than what could have been just out of your own brain. It does require patience, but that patience is going to pay off.
Carol:
When I think about... And I would love to get your feedback on this. The thing that's missing in most leadership development programs, and this ability to ask these questions, this ability to listen deeply. The ability to make space and think about, how am I growing and expanding my mindset and helping my team do the same? I would almost say what's missing is helping leaders become coaching leaders, and having them get the skills to do that. I would love your thoughts around that in terms of what role coaching plays into being a really good leader. And in terms of maybe some of the things that are missing in leadership development programs, would you say that's it? And what else would you add to that list?
Mick:
Yeah, I think that is the number one. It's the ability to be a coach instead of being a directive manager. That's the number one shift in my career, for sure. Now, the path that I went was to go all the way with ICF, the International Coaching Federation, and get all of my formal coaching accreditations. You don't need to do that, you just have to have a coaching mindset, which is an elevating mindset to remember that your job there is to elevate the person that's in front of you. Not just to teach them what to do and tell them what to do, but to elevate and enable their learning and growth so that they become the best version of themselves. And all that means, you don't have to go to ICF, although I encourage people if you're interested, it's amazing transformation that you go through. It just comes down to asking better questions. Asking better questions is the number one tip here.
Carol:
Yeah. And definitely, so many organizations are thinking about and rolling out leadership development programs. And I think helping them learn how to ask good questions, all the things that you touched on here. I think probably your book should be a starting place to be able to go through those exercises and get these concepts. And to really expand their thinking about leadership would be an amazing place to start with any leadership development program. And not making it a one and done, but really having something where they can really practice and implement and have support.
Would you say that's something that maybe is missing, is that long-term support that leaders need to develop this? Because it's not an overnight proposition, as we talked about earlier, going from euphoria to deer in the headlight. And you have all of these responsibilities, and having some level of support through that, I have found that's a better approach to really having a powerful and functional and effective leadership development program.
Mick:
Yeah, absolutely. Have a coach yourself. Have the practice of self-reflection every day so that you are paying attention to the lessons that you're learning along the way. If you don't pay attention, you don't grow. Have that practice of self-reflection. And remember that you're going to make mistakes, and lean into those mistakes. You are going to make mistakes, but have a support environment around you where you can. You need an outlet, by the way, because you're going to have days that are very frustrating. That coach can be your outlet. Or you might have another person that is your sounding board, you will need that along the journey as well.
Human beings are complex, and you're going to have days where things don't go the way you thought they were going to go. So having a coach, a mentor, or a sounding board on the journey with you is worth far more than any leadership development program. Now, I've been on great leadership development programs and I've loved them. But having that environment and that learning mindset, the growth mindset, the leaning into the discomfort, to stepping out of your comfort zone to push yourself a little bit further, but always paying attention to what you're learning along the way with a coach beside you is going to be critical.
Carol:
And it sounds like firsthand, because you invested in that type of work for yourself as you were leading teams and developing your own leadership acumen.
Mick:
Yeah, absolutely. My very first executive coach I had, she opened up my eyes. And the way that I see the world, regardless of what I did with leadership, has changed ever since. Best investment I ever made.
Carol:
Awesome. Mick, any last thoughts, resources, quotes, or practical tips or advice you'd like to leave the audience with before we close out for today?
Mick:
I'm going to say, do the work. Do the work. Do the work. Pay attention, do the work around the amalgam leader that I was saying about before. That's a wonderful place to start. Remember that it's not about you, it's about your team and it's about the culture that you are creating. Become a multiplier. These would be the fundamental things.
And the famous African proverb I think a lot of people have heard before, but I'm going to repeat this one as a key takeaway. And that is, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." And the go together, that's what the leadership does. A leader pulls people together around some worthy cause and inspires them into meaningful action, but then creates the environment where they can go and do their very best work. Empower them, engage them, trust them. You can point to the top of the mountain, you can be clear about what you're trying to achieve, but don't tell them how to take every step. Let them discover the best way, and you'll be amazed at the results that you'll get.
Carol:
Wow. Perfect way to end the episode. Mick, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.
Mick:
Thank you, Carol. It's been wonderful. And thank you for the work that you do. I think it's amazing. And around your pillars, around self, around the team, around the culture, it's spot on. Thank you so much for today.
Carol:
Thank you so much. Mick, you have been amazing. And I want to make sure that you get a copy of Mick's book, and I'm going to make sure that I leave the details, the links for his book and The Leadership Project and his podcast so that you can learn more around every great thing that he is bringing to the table with his work in leadership. And that's it for another episode of The People-Forward Leadership Podcast. I want to thank you so much for joining me. And until next time, keep leading people forward. I'll see you soon.
