The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 305: Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall - A Leader's Guide To The Real World (Break All The Rules)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Your entire life is a fabric of many threads, but some of them are made up of weirdly different material, activities or situations of people that seem to invigorate you, that draw you in and lift you up. We call those red threads, and the Mayo Clinic research seems to suggest that even if you have just 20% of your fabric is red threads, that your burnout's likelihood is far lessen, your resilience is far strutely. by if you can be deliberate in finding red threads in life and weaving them into the fabric of your world. That's a noble aspiration and it's built on the idea that you move through life, drawing strength from it or not. And the best thing we can help you with is to help you draw strength from it. Balance has very little to do with that at all.

Starting point is 00:01:01 Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much. for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Text learners to 4-4-2-2-2 in order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world. Text learners to 4-4-2-2. Also doing some cool updates for those who want to be a part of my book launch team. Text learners to 4-4-2-2-2. Now on a night's featured leaders. First, it's Marcus Buckingham. Author of the International Bestseller First, Break All the Rules. He also helped develop the Strengths Finder exam alongside Gallup, which has been used millions upon millions of times. Next, it's Ashley Goodall, a co-author with Marcus' latest book titled Nine Lies About Work, a free-thinking leader's guide to the real world. Ashley is also Senior Vice President,

Starting point is 00:01:50 Leadership and Team Intelligence at Cisco. A few of the topics we discussed during this conversation, why we choose to follow someone. Then techniques and questions to ask in the interview process to make better hiring decisions. And then why balance is not a good aspiration and what we should do instead. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a great one with Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall. All right. Let's bring in both Marcus Buckingham and Ashley. Goodall. Goodall. Good to have you guys both here. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. Thanks, sir. Thanks for having us. It's good to talk to both you guys because of the work you've put out recently. And I want to get this thing kicked off to get start and I'll go with Marcus first. One of the things that I like to study are those leaders who

Starting point is 00:02:44 sustain excellence over an extended period of time. And I know you've certainly been in this world for a while. I'm curious from your perspective, what have you found to be the commonalities among those leaders who sustain excellence? Well, leading is a is obviously something you can get better at, But there are clearly some things that are unique and enduring about the best leaders. And from all the stuff that I've been involved with all the research I've made a part of, it would appear as though two things really stand out. One is optimism. The best leaders have an innate predisposition to believe in that things can get better.

Starting point is 00:03:23 And although there's lots of evidence that things can get worse and there's lots of examples of things going wrong, the best leaders seem to believe that you can still nonetheless look for signs of light in whatever field endeavor you're in and you build, you keep building towards what works, what truly works about a situation and you move toward that. So optimism is clearly a super important part of what the best leaders do. And the other is individualization. You look at the people who really are great at attracting great talents. They're wonderfully open to the idea that each person has something unique that they bring and they don't fight against that. They are open to that and aware that If they're going to really do something extraordinary, not by themselves, but with others, then they've got to be able to pay attention to the uniqueness of other people and bring it to bear in terms of the hill that everyone's trying to take.

Starting point is 00:04:17 So those two things really stand out. Optimism and individualization. I love it. Ashley, what about you and your experience? So a little bit more on what you've seen in the best leaders. And what I've seen is that the way to understand leaders isn't by looking at leaders, actually. is by looking at the people who follow them, because, of course, someone without followers isn't actually a leader

Starting point is 00:04:38 in anything other than name or their own delusions. And so what you have to do is you have to look at the followers and go, why would you follow somebody? Why would you follow somebody? What the data seems to be telling us is that you follow somebody if they give you confidence in the future. It connects to what Marcus was just saying about the sort of optimism into the future or the universal future that we can all be a part of.

Starting point is 00:05:02 And so what the best leaders seem to be doing is creating in the experience of their followers, this sense of confidence, this sense of the world is a little bit more predictable if I hitch my wagon to you, as it were. And fascinatingly enough, what seems to get us to hook on to somebody else is not that they are brilliantly well-rounded or that they're brilliant at everything we think leaders need to be good at, but actually that they've honed a few things to be really, really spiking so that they have a few abilities that are really pronounced that become the fulcrum, if you like, of their own leadership because that's what the followers can see, either up close or from a great distance.

Starting point is 00:05:46 You can see what this person's about. You can see how they're moving through the world. And that great ability is, I think, what creates in the followers that sense of, I'm a little bit more confident looking forward into the world ahead of me. Wow, it's really interesting. I think part of what you just said, we're going to touch on in a second when it comes to your latest book, Nine Lies.

Starting point is 00:06:08 But I first want to touch on the fact that first break all the rules was a book that has had a huge impact on my life as a manager and as a leader. Marcus, that's a book you've put out. I would imagine it's sold a boatload of copies all over the world. And so there's a few topics of that I want to touch on

Starting point is 00:06:26 because one, it's a provocative, of great title, first of all. But in chapter two, you talk about the wisdom of great managers, and there are four keys. And so I was curious, what are the four basic roles of a great manager? So the first thing you've got to be able to do is pick people. You've got to be able to select people. And so we talked way back then about the fact that if you want a great party, you invite great people and the best managers are really, really, really good at looking for talent.

Starting point is 00:07:00 They do seem, as I mentioned, they seem to be aware that people are unique and you don't, you don't bring somebody in and then change them. You bring somebody in and develop them, but that means you're bringing in some more material. So you've got to be able to select well. You've got to be able to focus people. Once you bring them on, you've got to be able to help them know what they need to be doing. So there's the whole issue there around how do they do that.

Starting point is 00:07:20 When I first wrote first book of the rules, you know, 20 years ago, the pace of change wasn't even as fast as it is today. Today we have, that challenge is still there, but it's way harder, given the, the ephemorality and the dynamism of the world.

Starting point is 00:07:35 And in fact, in nine lies, we start to grapple with that a little bit with like, how the heck do you keep people focused when everything's changing so fast? You've got to, then obviously,

Starting point is 00:07:45 once you focus them, you've got to be able to help them, you have to be able to coach them, you've got to be able to help them to take whatever it is they've got and somehow find, some paths to the expectations that you've set. So there's some ability to accelerate someone's capability,

Starting point is 00:08:04 refine someone's capability. And then lastly, of course, you've got to help them beyond that to grow, to take that next step, to find beyond that the right fit into the next role and the next and the next. So those are four keys. We kind of define those way back when as four things.

Starting point is 00:08:20 If you're going to say to a team leader, you've got to be able to do X. what would X be? X would be pick people and then focus people and then coach people and then grow them. You did those four things. You're not going to go too far on. And speaking of the picking part, you've written that talent is more important than experience, brain power and willpower. Can you expand on that?

Starting point is 00:08:46 Yeah, so talent, you know, people often draw distinction between talent and experience or talent and motivation. One of the things that I first wrote about in first book, all the rules, is that if you define talent properly, namely as a recurring pattern of thought or feeling or behavior, that's what a talent is. It's any recurring pattern of thought or feeling or behavior. And in that definition, you can find empathy, you can find individualization, you can find strategic thinking, you can find relationship building, you can find pattern finding, you can find impatience. All of those words that I'm using there, are recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior, which we can call talents. And talents are not created through training. They're not skills that you can test at time one and then teach some new rubric and then teach something at a time two, and their skills have changed. That's not what talents are. That's skills.

Starting point is 00:09:44 Skills can change. Talents are the enduring patterns in a person. And what the best managers seem to be aware of is, you don't create those after you've hired the person. You hire those in and then what you help a person to do is contribute them with great effectiveness and intelligence. So if someone's naturally assertive, you don't make them assertive. You hire an assertive person and then you help them use that assertiveness productively. And probably the best analog to that is dog trainers in circuses. You know, look at those dog trainers or those dog shows they have with dog.

Starting point is 00:10:23 are standing on their high legs or you go to SeaWorld and you see the dog and cat show and the dogs are all doing these incredible things and standing on their hind legs and they're seemingly walking around with trays on their heads and you go to the jog trainer afterwards and you go how did you get that dog to stand on his hind legs in just the right way and the dog trainer goes I didn't I went to all the dog pounds and I looked at the dogs that stand on their high legs naturally and I picked them and then I just told them to do it my way and at the right time And I'm not suggesting people of dogs. I am suggesting there's a lesson there for anybody that's trying to pick people for teams. You don't make them do anything. You find people that do some things naturally, and then you help them to refine that and contribute it in concert with the rest of the people on the team. Really interesting. One more thing on First Bigger-Rollers.

Starting point is 00:11:14 How do we find talent? What's a process? So I'm thinking, Marcus, right now, there is someone listening who is a mid-level manager in a huge company where there's already a culture built. They may have HR partners that help a little bit with this, but they're saying the key to my success is to hire, is to find and hire talented people. That's going to change the arc and the trajectory of my corporate life.

Starting point is 00:11:40 And for that person, and they're saying, well, that sounds great, Marcus, absolutely. I'm all about that. I want a team full of talented people. But how do I do that? What are some of the tactical ways or tips if that person was sitting across from you and you're mentoring them to say, do this in order to make sure your team is full of talented people? Well, I would actually change the question first and go, what talents are you looking for?

Starting point is 00:12:05 Because to say that someone is talented or not talented is a misunderstanding of talent. Everyone has talent. Everybody has talents. The question isn't whether or not you have talent. The question is whether or not your particular talents are well designed to fit the role in which you're currently finding yourself. So the first thing for a team leader is, what talents are you looking for? And that's a good first exercise to think about, first of all, what kind of motivation are you going to want to see from this person? Second of all, what kind of relationship building

Starting point is 00:12:38 talents would you expect to see from this person? And then finally, what kind of ways of thinking would you expect to see from this person? Those are just three broad areas. I don't know what the right answers are, the answers will vary, of course, by role. But you can start with thinking about those three broad areas. And then in terms of talents, the best way to ask about talents, first of all, ask open-ended questions and then shut up. Like, ask people open-ended questions, and then believe what they say. So also ask open-ended questions, keep quiet, and then believe whatever they're saying, believe them. Don't probe. The more you probe, the more they realize that you actually have heard the answer that you want to hear. So don't probe, ask a few open-ended questions, and then

Starting point is 00:13:23 keep quiet, believe what they say. And the questions you're really asking about are appetite questions. You're asking a lot of appetite questions, as in, what did you do in your previous work? They talk about it. And then you say, what did you love most about your previous work? When have you been part of a really challenging team? What did you love most about that challenging team? When have you turned around to people to have confidence in an idea that initially they disagreed with? What did you love most about doing that? And whenever you're asking love or appetite questions, pin your ears back. Because whatever their top of mind response is, is a pretty good clue to where some of their natural talents lie.

Starting point is 00:14:04 Because talents are far more about natural appetite than they are about pure ability. So ask open-ended questions, ask a lot of appetite questions, and then believe what they tell them. they will people will reveal themselves to you really good um this is a great stuff now i want to shits a little bit to nine lies about work the book you guys have written together that i found really interesting again another good title uh and then when i started looking at some of the lies and deep again going deeper until i started wondering wait a second what are these are these guys sure are they sure and so i was excited to have this conversation so that we could go deeper so Ashley, I'll start with you first. I'm going to point out a lie that you guys have written about

Starting point is 00:14:48 and maybe you could expand upon the lie and why it's not true, even though maybe most people initially when they read it or they hear it will say, no, no, that's true. That's true. So let me just go with the first one that I found interesting because of my personal belief system when it comes to this. Lie number five is people need feedback. Now, from a title perspective, I crave feedback. I love feedback. And you guys write that people don't need feedback that they need to excel. And so when you when you say people, it's a lie that people need feedback, what do you mean by that? Well, I suppose you could start by finishing the sentence. People, and the lie really is that people need feedback in order to grow and become excellent. Now, we didn't write it like that because if you look out into the world, I think that's a very strong presumption of the world that.

Starting point is 00:15:42 we live in. And you look at all of the discussion recently about radical candor and fierce feedback and fierce conversations. And there is this belief out there that we should be doing, we should be giving people lots of feedback that is as unvarnished and truthy as we can possibly manage. But the end of the sentence is so that they can grow. What we did is we said to ourselves, all right, what's the science on how a human brain grows, on how a human grows? Does it best under feedback, or does it grow best under some other condition? And you find out a couple of things. You find out very quickly that as soon as I say to you, Ryan, I've got some feedback for you, your brain leaves the conversation. And what I mean by that is your brain is immediately,

Starting point is 00:16:30 oh my goodness, me, somebody's about to tell me their truth of me, and I might not like it. It's there, it's not mine. It's going to maybe conflict with mine. It's a threat. It's a challenge. And so your brain goes into fight or flight mode and tries to exit as fast as it can, whatever's going to happen next. And what we know about fight or flight mode, it's actually in neuroscience called the sympathetic nervous system, is your brain's resources are not in that moment devoted to building new connections, new synaptic connections in your brain. So you're not learning.

Starting point is 00:17:02 And actually, if you look at the science, you discover that that state impairs learning. So it's not just mutual. It's actually sort of anti-learning, if you like. So that's the first thing you discover. The second thing you discover is, okay, under what conditions do people begin to grow? And the first thing you find is that the condition that you discover first is actually give us attention. Give us attention to us. So don't sit me down and tell me your truth of me. Pay attention to me and who I am and what I need. as Marcus was saying when he was talking about talents a moment ago, what are my talents? What are the unique things that make me who I am? So you find out that what people really need is in order to grow, people don't need feedback, they need attention. And then you can go a little bit further than this and you can say, well, attention to what? And we're all very focused at work, I think, on our shortcomings and we're all sort of trying to knuckle down and do the hard yards of getting slightly better at the things that we know in our heart of hearts, we're always going to be

Starting point is 00:18:11 somewhat remedial at. And attention to that helps a little bit. But actually, if you give somebody attention to what really works in them, if you can give your attention and then your curiosity and then help somebody uncover what is going on in their head when they do something easily and effortlessly and with great impact on the world around, that's what leads to growth. That's what leads to excellence. So more focusing on strengths. On what's really working. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, people sometimes go, well, strengths are what you're good at and weaknesses and what you're not and therefore we should focus on the weaknesses and you'll become good at things you're not good at and everything will be

Starting point is 00:18:55 happy. It doesn't work like that, as I've just said. But what you're really paying attention to is not strength in terms of what am I good at, but strength in terms of what am I drawn to? what do I run towards? Where am I, where am I in flow? What am I most energized by? Those sorts of emotional reactions to the work that we do are the raw materials of growth. What about though when you are, it is, it is obvious that you are not good at something. And let's say a manager's listening and there's people who work for them and their people need coaching on areas where they're not doing a good enough job. What about in that case? Well, I think you have to, firstly, you have to be very careful.

Starting point is 00:19:37 Yeah. Whose definition of not a good enough job are we talking about here? Because we're very good at imposing our own models of performance on other people, which is sort of saying you're not very good at being like me. Please be more like me. Well, in this case, let's say in my world that I grew up in in the past, a sales job where you need to sell a million dollars and you've sold $500,000. So you're at 50% of plan.

Starting point is 00:20:05 And what about a situation where it's pretty black and white on performance or lack of performance? Yeah. So there are certain outcomes that we've got to deliver in the world. There are certain outcomes we have to deliver at work. It's never a problem to say, Ryan, you're a half a million dollars short of your goal. Let's figure out how to get you to the goal. It's never a problem to say, these are the outcomes we need. Let's understand how to move towards those outcomes.

Starting point is 00:20:31 But let's take a slightly different example. let's say that you are giving a sales presentation say and the slides are all muddled up and gibberish. Okay, we are not saying that a team leader can't say to you, I can't understand the slides, we need to fix the slides, and even fix them for you or even show you what a good slide looks like in their opinion. But what results from that is adequate performance, not excellent performance. So when I bring you up to the sort of standard model, that's what I'm doing.

Starting point is 00:21:06 I'm bringing you up to the standard model. There's no standard model of excellence because it's different in every single human being. So remediation gets you to adequacy. Sometimes we need to do that, but we shouldn't mistake that from a very different set of motions that gets us from adequate to infinitely great. Interesting. Okay. So one of the other lies number four, I'll go to Marcus, that the myths out there is that the best people, are well-rounded.

Starting point is 00:21:34 And you found in your research that in the real world, you don't find that excellence and well-roundedness go hand-in-hand. Can you expand on that? Well, yeah, the entire premise of the book, by the way, Ryan, is that you've got to look at the real world, not theory world. Yep. You look at theory world and we've got these long list of competencies that every salesperson is supposed to have.

Starting point is 00:21:57 We may, and so frankly, in terms of your example, if someone is 500,000, thousand short of their sales goal, the knee-jerk reaction in most companies is to go, how do you match up to the sales model, which is the particular set of competencies you are missing, and I will then tell you to go get better at this list of competencies. And even if you don't do that, you're supposed to do that. In the real world, that's just useless as an individual, the best sales person you know, does not have all of the required competencies. of a sales competency model. If you look at 15 salespeople,

Starting point is 00:22:36 as a group, they probably evidence as a group all 15 competencies in the model, but it's a false piece of logic to go, therefore, you as an individual should have all 15 as well. You look at the best salespeople

Starting point is 00:22:52 and they're unique. They're idiosyncratic. You look at the best leaders. They're idiosyncratic. You look at the best comedians. They're idiosyncratic. You actually do research. on this and you start measuring their personality traits of people that excel at a certain job.

Starting point is 00:23:07 You take the best nurses in the world. You give them a reliable personality assessment and you discover they do not share the same pattern of personality. They don't. They have really different patterns of personality strongly. And in the world of psychometrics, that means the only thing that predict high performance in a job is total score as measured on a personality test, not patent. We know that in the real world.

Starting point is 00:23:32 Actually, anecdotally in the real world, Ryan, you look at excellent, I mean, look at Warren Buffett, look at Elon Musk, look at Richard Branson, and they couldn't be more different. We know that, and there's no way that anyone in the real world would say, Elon, Charlie more like Warren. It's just stupid. But somehow in theory world,

Starting point is 00:23:52 we've come to believe that leaders that say all should have the same list of qualities. The best nurses should. all have these qualities. And yet, there's absolutely no evidence of that in the real world. In fact, the real world pushes really hard in the opposite direction toward idiosyncrasy, not homogeneity. That's a great point now I think about it. I'm just envisioning the best leaders and coaches I've played for or worked for. And they, no two are the same. They're all different. And if I even, I try to model myself after some of them, but it's usually just bits and

Starting point is 00:24:31 pieces of some of them. I never like one of them, right? And I think that seems to be a good, for either of you guys, it seems to be a good method for as we progress to learn as leaders ourselves is not necessarily trying to copy anybody else, but see what's worked for them. Experiment a bit with it, but then make it your own because that seems to be, if there is a commonality, is that each people lead in their own way based on their unique learnings. Yeah, and I think you said it really clearly, actually. The process of learning, I think, goes something like this. So you watch somebody do something that you're interested in, and you go,

Starting point is 00:25:07 oh, goodness me, that was rather good. What did they do? Okay, I'll try, they did three things. All right, I'm going to try those things. All right, I've tried the first one. Oh, didn't work. Those clothes don't fit me. All right, I've tried the second one.

Starting point is 00:25:20 Medium. All right. I'm trying the third one. Oh, that's good, but now I need to tweak it. Oh, and actually it reminds me of this other thing I'm good at doing, and now I've got it. And it's the moment, the moment of learning is. the moment of connection in our own brains. It's that it's that feeling of knowing that emerges from within. Learning is an emergent experience, not a not an outside in ordained

Starting point is 00:25:44 experience if you like. And so learning is look at people doing things that interest you and see what you can learn from them, but what you can learn from them isn't how they do it. It's how you might do your version of what they're doing. Yeah, Marcus, what you were going to you're about to say? I was just going to say, look at, you know, you look at Bill Belichick, must be one of the best, I mean, must be one of the best coaches in Boston in the NFL in the last 50 years. But if you looked at the coach of the Boston Celtics, who won nine championships, read Albaq, he's a totally different kind of coach.

Starting point is 00:26:23 You look at Bill Walsh, who was so adept at getting the best out of Montana and Jerry Rice. totally different approach to coaching than Bill Belichick. You look at the best coaches and you would go, well, they've all got one thing in common. They seem to win a lot. But beyond that,

Starting point is 00:26:42 they're not carbon copies of one another. And to Ashley's point, if you're just thinking about your own experience, you cherry pick. You do. We all cherry pick. We see somebody something.

Starting point is 00:26:55 We go, I'll try a bit of that. And then you kind of iterate. You go, no, no, no. say, oh, yeah, oh, and then you combine it as you said with something that works for you. That's an intuitive experience that we've all had. And yet, we've codified something else really. Competency models, Ray, are everywhere, you know, in the world of work. And they are tilting away from uniqueness.

Starting point is 00:27:18 And it's a shame. What do you think about comedy? Like, is there a model that you would use? If you were a hiring manager of a big company trying to build a great, awesome team, is what would be your process? I know this is kind of a two-hour. long question probably, but is there a model? Is there an assessment? Is there anything that you say, actually, that one's good. That's helpful. And I know it depends on your organization, but I'm just

Starting point is 00:27:38 curious of what your overall philosophy on competency type testing or assessments would be, or even personality assessments for certain roles. So I'm a, I'm a psychometrician by training, which means how do you measure things that are hard to measure? How do you measure engagement? How do you measure personality? That's where I grew up on. And I grew up, as you know, years, first 50 years in my career were at Gallup doing exactly that. And we've always made, or any psychometrician will tell you that you have to do this, you've got to make a very clear distinction between states and traits. Traits are things about a person that you assume going in, you can't change very much. And states are things that you assume that you can. A trait is

Starting point is 00:28:20 something like extroversion or introversion or competitiveness or empathy. These are things that are patent in a person, I was calling them talents before, and we assume that talents are enduring, and we can build personality assessments that are explicitly trying to provide insight into a person's patterns. States are things like your mood, your sentiment, your employee opinion, skills are states. You can change these. Competencies are a mismash, a mismash of states and traits. What is strategic thinking? What is business acumen? What is goal orientation?

Starting point is 00:29:01 What is customer focus? These are all competencies. And they're all a mishmash of states and traits, which from a psychometrician standpoint, right, is really problematic. Because it means we can't measure them, which we can't. Which means that today, today, in March, April, 2019, we can't prove that people who possess a list of competencies are performed people that don't.

Starting point is 00:29:25 And we also can't prove that people who acquire competencies they lack are performed people that don't acquire competencies they lack. We can't prove that because we can't measure them. So they are all. Every competency model is this utter fabrication of unmeasurable, unbulsifiable lists of desirable things that we can never prove matter. And if we're going to use competencies at all, we should just use them as values and shove them on the wall and talk them. about them as noble aspirations but don't put them into a model don't put them into a 360 tool don't put them into a racing system that's all unfortunately uh bogus wow i wasn't sure if you get emotional but this is i think we hit the spot marcus sorry it's just i love it's when

Starting point is 00:30:15 it's when people it's like we cross the measurement rich ryan and then we do harm we do harm to people there's a lot of harm being done out of really good intention but it's hard harmful to say to someone, you're low on strategic thinking because this 360 says you are, when in fact, provably, it doesn't say that at all. And we end up squashing. And where we see this grow next, of course, is in schools. And the reason I get emotional about it, I got two teenagers who are being upheld against the competency model in schools.

Starting point is 00:30:50 And that's, it's just bogus. And we got to, we got to stop doing it. Ashley, I know you were about you were about the respond there too, but there's another lie that maybe has similar with what Marcus was just talking about when you think about potential is a word that you guys have written about. And I this, this one hit home with me because I had heard from a leader of mine, someone I reported up to in a previous role, that I was labeled as a hypo. And I, and he said it multiple times. And I was honestly in that moment, I had to stop and say, what is a hypo? What does that mean? I didn't know what that meant.

Starting point is 00:31:29 And he said, that means that you have high potential. We think that you have a chance to get promoted and to be a big leader here in this organization. If you keep on this track, you're on. So you have been labeled, literally labeled a hypo. Can you share some of both you guys, feel free to go, but actually, you want to hit it first. Share your thoughts on potential and labels.

Starting point is 00:31:51 of hypo and low po and what your research is shown. Yeah, I mean, your reaction around in that in that story is exactly on point. Potential is another one of these things that we've made up and it's a thing that isn't a thing. And, you know, it's, it's okay, I suppose if you're on the receiving end of being told you're a hypo, but pity the poor person who is told, no, some people have met and they didn't invite you to the meeting. And in the meeting, they've decided that you're a low po. And so we're sort of, we're sort of done with you. You might be running around. thinking that you have a unique contribution to make to this company, to society, to humanity, you might be feeling that you have some talents which the world hasn't yet seen, or in fact,

Starting point is 00:32:35 the world has seen, but we don't think so. We think you're not worthy of investment. You know, we have, we, the company, have scarce dollars to invest in our people. And although we like telling you that our people are our most valuable asset, actually when it comes to implementing that thought, we've decided that some assets are more valuable than other assets. Some people are more valuable than others. We're only going to invest in the hypo's. That's, if you like, the toxicity of this. And it's toxic, again, because it presumes that there are some human brains which in any circumstance we put them in can always grow. and other human brains, which in any circumstance we put them in, can never grow.

Starting point is 00:33:22 That's what we're saying. We're saying, Ryan, you got the, you got the Willy Wonka golden ticket. You lucked out, my friend. You've been gifted with a brain. And where have we put the brain? It's going to do marvelous things. And sadly, there are some other people over there. And if you ask organizations, by the way, how many of their people they designate as hypo?

Starting point is 00:33:43 It's not 50%. It's a smaller number. Most organizations are saying that most people here, 80% or something, they're just washed up. But in fact, you look, again, you look at the real world. A, there isn't a generalizable quality that anyone has ever been able to find that determines whether a brain can grow or not. B, all brains grow. They just grow in different ways, in different pathways, in different directions. And so I think we need to get over ourselves in terms of talking about potential.

Starting point is 00:34:15 and particularly sorting people into those that have it and those that lack it, as though that is any sort of a statement on the real world. And instead, we need to double down on, if people are indeed our greatest asset, then what do we know about each of them, each and every one of them? What have we done to find out where they will grow the most? Under what circumstances will they flourish? If our answer as a company is, we haven't found any yet,

Starting point is 00:34:45 then the answer is the retort is you haven't tried hard enough. I think part of why those exercises happen with the big leaders in a company, and Marcus, maybe you can share your thoughts on this, is there in some sort of planning session. We're planning for the future, a succession planning in some cases, of these are the future leaders and obviously not defending them or saying that they've got that right. And in that moment, you've anointed somebody.

Starting point is 00:35:12 And there's a high likelihood that you could be wrong. but I think that's why it happens. So, Marcus, what would be something, if you're thinking about planning for the long-term success of your company, what would be a better way to do it than to get of this labeling of people as these are the future leaders of this business versus the other ones who we don't seem to think that they are? Well, the beginning point is to know that every single person,

Starting point is 00:35:42 I mean, to actually think the brain, that doesn't mean that my brain can grow to be like your brain. Everyone is unique and each person's brain grows uniquely. But everyone grows and gets better. Everyone can learn and grow and get better. Point one. Point two, there's no point having a conversation where you anoint a few people to be hypo's. There is no such thing.

Starting point is 00:36:03 And you can't really move someone from one position to another and assume they're just bringing this high potential bucket with them. So instead you should deal with the real world. And the real world is a bunch of unique people, all to grow and get better. Should you have frequent talent reviews in which you talk about people? Yes, you should. In those conversations, should you end up labeling people?

Starting point is 00:36:22 No, you should not. What should you do instead? You should ask for each person. And please, let's get rid of the nine box grid. The nine box grid is a fake model overlaid on top of poor thinking. And so instead, we should be talking about each person in terms of ways in which that particular person might grow best, learn fastest. And each one of those conversations is based upon that unique person and some understanding

Starting point is 00:36:49 of which parts about them is enduring and which parts about them are changeable. And if we can do that, think about, hey, what's Ryan really like? What are his most recurring patterns? What we talk about in the book, of course, is that we should replace with the word potential, with the word momentum, that you have some things about you that are enduring. about you, that you take with you situation to situation that we might usefully think of as mass. And then you have some things about you that you've sort of accumulated in your path

Starting point is 00:37:23 through the world, your skills, your experiences, your current performance, and that we presume can change as you keep moving through the world. We can think of that as your velocity. And if you combine mass and velocity, you get momentum. And so each person in the company has momentum, which is made up of some parts of you that are enduring and some parts of you that are changeable. and your momentum can change. It's not like your potential, which is like a,

Starting point is 00:37:48 it's like a label that's at the end of a conversation. We start talking with you about people's momentum. And now we can start talking about its speed now, its direction now, what it comprises of now, and we can start talking about how we might want to change it. So we think the real world shows us that momentum is a much more useful way of thinking about people in terms of their current situation and their future growth than potential ever is.

Starting point is 00:38:22 And by the way, just to jump in there, I think we shouldn't imagine that in a talent review meeting where you're talking about, I don't know, hundreds of people in a few days, that you are going to answer that set of questions with any degree of specificity and utility for every person who you're reviewing, which is to say that a, talent review meeting isn't actually a planning mechanism. It's an accountability mechanism. This is where you signal to all of your team leaders down the chain that it's your job to know these things about each person. Because actually where it happens, where we find momentum, where we understand it, where we point it in different directions, where we help shape it,

Starting point is 00:39:00 is always on the local team. It's always in a conversation between a team leader and a team member. And that's actually the stage for, if you like, development and growth. Wow, there's so much, I could go for hours here. This is great, guys. I have just two quick ones I want to cover. What are your thoughts and either one take it, your overall philosophy or thought process on a question I get asked a lot at the end of a speech, which is work-life balance.

Starting point is 00:39:28 What's your overall philosophy on that? Marcus, do you want to jump in on that one? Yeah, well, we do think the work is really hard. We do tend to think that life is good. and we're told to balance out the work with the life. Work comes out as like crazy. So it sort of makes sense today to go, hey, try to choose the balance so you don't get sucked into work all the time.

Starting point is 00:39:52 And then you can sort of see the intuitive appeal of that. The problem is that balance is a very, very weird aspiration. Number one, it's almost impossible to find that perfect place where you've got the kids balance, the spouse balance, the work balance, the friends, family, all of it perfectly balances. It's such a precarious and, incredibly difficult to find point. So you're almost setting everyone

Starting point is 00:40:14 up for failure. The other thing, though, is if you have a fine balance, the thing that will be running through your head is nobody moves. Everybody stay right where they are. I've just got it. I got it. I got the one place. And so you'd say, just stop. Everybody stop.

Starting point is 00:40:31 Which implies, of course, the balance is not a healthy way to move through life. It's a way of being stationary, of holding everything a bay, keeping the world away from you, keeping movement and process and motion away from you. So it's a very weird thing to tell people to aspire to. And that instead we shouldn't tell people to aspire to balance because it leads to lack of health.

Starting point is 00:41:00 Health is motion. Health is process. Health is moving through the world, whether it's at home or at work, and drawing strength from it. That's not balance. That's finding love. It's finding love in work, love in life, finding those particular, we called them in the book, red threads. Your entire life is a fabric of many threads, but some of them are made up of weirdly different material, activities or situations of people that seem to invigorate you, that draw you in and lift you up.

Starting point is 00:41:35 We call those red threads, and the Mayo Clinic research seems to, to suggest that even if you have just 20% of your fabric is red threads, that your burnout likelihood is far lessened. Your resilience is far strengthened by if you can be deliberate in finding red threads in life and weaving them into the fabric of your world. That's a noble aspiration, and it's built on the idea that you move through life, drawing strength from it or not. and the best thing we can help you with is to help you draw strength from it.

Starting point is 00:42:13 Balance has very little to do with that at all. Wow, that is good stuff, man. The one last lie is titled Leadership is a Thing. And I've read through the different definitions and characteristics and things you guys write about in this. But actually, why don't you take us home on why that is the ninth and final lie? Yeah, and it connects around to a lot of the stuff we've been talking about today. because it goes back to this idea that there's a pre-definable list of things,

Starting point is 00:42:43 a list of competencies or a list of attributes that constitutes what we call leadership. And that, therefore, if we want to make leaders, we should make sure they've got all of the special leadery things, if you like. And the first sort of crack that appears in that thinking is, you know, you go and look, as we said earlier, you're going to look at Warren Buffett, or you're going to look at Richard Branson, or you're going to look at Elon Musk, and you go, oh, my God, they're all different. And then you go, and by the way, each of them,

Starting point is 00:43:09 lacks many of the leadership things. Each of them has got things that are supposedly on the list of things that leaders do that they don't do. You know, you don't have to read the newspaper very far back to find out that Elon Musk is doing all sorts of things that aren't on leadership models. You look at Warren Buffett and you go, well, he's really, really good at buying and selling companies. He's really good at figuring out how to maximize returns on capital. But he's not a sort of charismatic front of the room inspirational leader, or at least he does that in a very different way than anyone else. You look at Richard Branson and you go, okay, he's wind surfing on a tropical island again. What's that got to do with all the things on the model? So the models, again,

Starting point is 00:43:57 you take the models from theory world, you hold them up to the real world, and if you're honest with yourself, you see that they almost immediately fall apart. And so you need a different way of thinking about it, the different way is to say, as we said earlier, that if a leader has no followers, they are not a leader. They are simply deluded as to their job title. And so what you've got to understand is why would we follow? Why would we follow you? What is the emotional experience in the follower that is created by the leader? Leadership isn't a thing. Followership is a thing. You can't measure leadership. You can measure followership. You can measure followership. You can measure some of the things that we experience when we're at our best and that we seem to experience more

Starting point is 00:44:41 in the presence of one leader and less in the presence of a different leader. And what seems to knit it all together is that we follow people who are really good at something that matters to us because it gives us some sense of security about the uncertain world ahead of us. One of the things that one of the very few human universals, things that we all have in common, whether we like it or not, is that we all have a fear of the future. We all have uncertainty about the future. And so we are all crying out to, in some little way, mitigate that or lessen that that fearfulness because we don't know what's around the corner. If we find a leader who's so good at some particular thing that we imagine they maybe can see around the corner for us,

Starting point is 00:45:31 then we're drawn to them. We attach to them. We follow them. So, leadership isn't a thing because actually followership is the thing and what we do is we follow spikes guys this is awesome i really appreciate it and and all of your willingness to give and lend your knowledge where would you send my listeners to learn more about your work online well two places one obviously you can go to amazon and buy the book um the basic cry of the book is twofold one be a free thinking leader don't have doctors don't have preconceived ideas. Look at the real world as it actually is.

Starting point is 00:46:11 That is instructive. And hopefully in the book, you can find examples of that. And the other places they wanted to go and join the conversation, in partnership with Harvard Business Review, we've set up an online coalition of freethinking leaders. So if they go to freethinkingleader.org, they'll find a whole load of content, Ashley and me engaging with thousands of other leaders like,

Starting point is 00:46:36 them, all of whom are super interested in how in the real world can you help people to thrive and give their greatest contribution. Perfect. Well, thank you again, guys, for being here. I really appreciate it, and I

Starting point is 00:46:52 certainly want to continue this dialogue as all three of us progress. Thank you so much for having us, Ryan. Yeah, thank you, Ron. It's been great fun. All right. Thanks, guys. Wow, could you sense the passion and both of those guys,

Starting point is 00:47:08 especially Marcus at a few points during the conversation. He really got going, which was partly a goal of mine to see how tuned up we could get him. And I love the energy and the passion that he brings to this craft of leading and serving others and how to do it better, especially on some of those controversial topics like balance, how to make better hiring decisions,

Starting point is 00:47:34 the high poe, low poe conversation. There's a lot there that those guys were passionate about. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If so, I would love it. If you would spread the word, tell a friend or two, perhaps one, who has never listened to a podcast before. Let him know that this episode with Marcus and Ashley could be very useful. Thank you again for continuing to give me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. I will forever be grateful.

Starting point is 00:48:04 All right. Talk with you next week. Can't wait. All right. Ashley, you still there? Yep. Oh, hey, thank you so much.

Starting point is 00:48:18 I really appreciate all of that. You guys, you guys obviously are in sync, know your stuff, and it's really helpful. So I really appreciate it. Well, and it was lovely to hear your reaction to that as we were going through.

Starting point is 00:48:31 Of course, the way to get in sync is to write 84,000 words about this stuff together. That sort of gets you there pretty quickly, but that was enormous fun. Thank you. Oh, good, good. I can't imagine how many years did it take to get this thing put together between the two of you? Soup to nuts. Well, we started writing in December 2016 with concepts, not with words on pages yet. Yeah. So it was really, that's what, two and a half years ago. But before that, we were mucking around. We've been mucking around with these ideas probably for another year before that as well. So it's been a long gestation. And I think what you,

Starting point is 00:49:09 hear from us is that we've we've been grinding on this for so long that we actually have managed to figure out what it is that we want to say and how. I hope that you're I hope your listeners get a sense of that. Absolutely. I can tell. Did you guys sit in a room together to write or separately or how did what was your process? I'm fascinated by process. What was your process for that? Well, you know, there's a slight complication. So we live on opposite coast, right? Okay. Yeah. So I'm on the East Coast markets on the West Coast. We came together to outline the book to write the book proposal. That was all done. We were just sitting together typing. Then we hold ourselves up in a series of hotels around the country and wrote a bullet point outline of a book.

Starting point is 00:49:53 And the bullet point outline of the book had 30,000 words in it. So it's that that was not like, that was not brief. That was like what's the flow of each chapter. It didn't have the examples. It didn't have the research because we knew we knew where that was going to come from. But it was just the flow of the argument. And then we went our separate ways. And then we just handed drafts back and forth. And we went chapter by chapter. And Marcus would start and send me to me.

Starting point is 00:50:19 I would write on it, send it back to him. And we'd do all of that until we were done. That was how we managed to do it. And it was, by the way, it was enormous fun. And then, of course, once we'd submitted the manuscript and we had editorial comments, then you can't respond to like track changes in work. separately. So then that was a number of weeks where we would just block out a week and hold ourselves

Starting point is 00:50:45 up again somewhere and go through all the editorial and stuff. That's awesome. Well, it's really well done. I appreciate you guys sharing it with me early here. And I'm excited for my audience to hear this one from you guys. I'll be sure to let you know when everything goes live. I'll send a note to your team so we can time it up right around book launch. Yeah, great.

Starting point is 00:51:04 And if you have graphics as well, I can put it out on my social media channel. as well. Absolutely. Give me a nice picture. That would be super. Absolutely. I will. I will. I'll send it over. Brilliant. All right. Thanks so much, Ashley. Thanks so much. Take care of. You too. Bye-bye.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 305: Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall - A Leader's Guide To The Real World (Break All The Rules)

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