The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 441: Liz Wiseman - How To Build Credibility, Solve Problems, & Multiply Your Impact

Episode Date: October 17, 2021

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12  https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Liz Wiseman is the New York Times bestseller author of Multipliers, Rookie Smarts, and most recently Impact Players. She is the CEO of the Wiseman Group, a leadership research and development firm. Some of her recent clients include Apple, Disney, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Tesla, and Twitter. Liz has been listed on the Thinkers50 ranking and named one of the top 10 leadership thinkers in the world. Notes: Habits of high impact players: Learn the game Play where they are needed Play with passion Impact players have a good internal locus of control. They believe they have agency in their life. They believe they are in charge of their life. Liz said, "You have a lot more power than you might think you have." Neil deGrasse Tyson said, "what you know is not as important as what you think." If you aspire to have greater influence, start thinking like an impact player…don't just use the playbook. Adopt the impact player mentality as your ethos. Many leaders commented how much they learned thru the process of answering questions. Teaching others can be one of the greatest tools for learning in the world... Seeking feedback and guidance versus seeking validation. Impact players don't need validation. They crave feedback and guidance so they can continually improve. Say less: Play your chips wisely - Before an important meeting, give yourself a budget of poker chips where each chip represents a comment or contribution to the meeting. Be relevant, be evidence-based, be unique and additive, be succinct. Building credibility with leaders and stakeholders: Some credibility killers? Waiting for managers to tell you what to do, ignoring the bigger picture, tell your manager it's not your job. Some credibility builders? Doing things without being asked, anticipating problems, and having a plan. Instead of following your passion… Be useful. Make a name for yourself by running towards the problems and solving them. Make your boss's life easier. Be useful. Work on what's important for the people you work for… "The Diminisher is a Micromanager who jumps in and out. The Multiplier is an Investor who gives others ownership and full accountability." "Multipliers invoke each person's unique intelligence and create an atmosphere of genius—innovation, productive effort, and collective intelligence." "It isn't how much you know that matters. What matters is how much access you have to what other people know. It isn't just how intelligent your team members are; it is how much of that intelligence you can draw out and put to use." "Multipliers aren't "feel-good" managers. They look into people and find capability, and they want to access all of it. They utilize people to their fullest. They see a lot, so they expect a lot." "The highest quality of thinking cannot emerge without learning. Learning can't happen without mistakes." What do Impact Players do? While others do their job, Impact Players figure out the real job to be done. While others wait for direction, Impact Players step up and lead. While others escalate problems, Impact Players move things across the finish line. While others attempt to minimize change, Impact Players are learning and adapting to change. While others add to the load, the Impact Players make heavy demands feel lighter. Some think you become great on the big stage under the bright lights. But the light only reveals the work you did in the dark. —Jeff Bajenaru An overarching idea: I can be of service and solve problems. The slogan from Kaiser Sand & Gravel; "Find a need and fill it."

I think there's a hard way to get good at receiving feedback and then there's an easier way. So the hard way is to like stay open minded, to take it in, to process it, to thank people for it. The easy way is to stop getting feedback on you and your performance and start getting guidance on your work. Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being your text. Learners to 4422 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands,

other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about my new upcoming book, and you'll receive a first look before anyone, text learners to 4422. Now on to tonight's feature leader. The great Liz Weissman is back. New York Times bestselling author of Multipliers, rookie smarts. And now most recently, Impact Players. Liz, the CEO of the Weissman Group, a leadership research and development firm. Some of her recent clients

include Apple, Disney, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Nike, Tesla, Twitter. Liz has been listed. on the Thinkers 50 ranking and named one of the top 10 leadership thinkers in the world. We discuss seeking feedback and guidance versus seeking validation. Liz shares what the impact players do and what you should do. And then she discusses how you can view uncertainty as an opportunity instead of a threat. And then Liz shares why, quote, follow your passion is junk food advice and what you should do instead. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Liz Weissman. Liz, to start this one, I have to acknowledge something that I'm sure you don't even remember that you've done.

So, because I know this is just how you are. On August 2, 2018, I got an email back from you about my first book. and I sent my first like the manuscript to a number of people who I thought were really good, really smart. And I asked for feedback. And most people, and these are all great people, Liz, but most people write back, looks great, man. Congratulations. Be on your way. And I get it because everybody's really busy. Do you, you probably don't even remember what you said, but I do. And I wrote it down. I think it needs to be acknowledged in front of everybody here as well as anyone listening. And you said, my guidance for you, you need to refocus this book. Focus your source.

You have a primary source, which is lessons from the world's top leaders. And your secondary source is yourself, your own experience as color commentary. You can expand your audience this way. I suspect the book will experience greater success and longevity this way. Second, you said, you need to rename this book. By the way, the title of the book at this time was called the Learning Leader Method. You said, the Learning Leader method is not a compelling name. The Learning Leader is good, but only if that's what the book is about.

Method is boring to me. It's not something I would read. Awesome. Because it's like real feedback, and I loved it. It was a gift. Then on May 1, 2019, you wrote me back again and said, you know what? I really like the phrase on page three, welcome to management. I wonder if that might be a

stronger title. I forwarded that email to my publisher at McGraw-Hill, and they said, that's it. And so I don't know if you even knew that. I haven't publicly talked to you about it. I just thought I should acknowledge you've had a massive impact on my life. And I'm very grateful for that. Oh, well, I'm happy to help play in that. So I'm thrilled. And I have now a confession. And I was remembering the name of your book because we talked about Welcome to Management. I just looked it up and I saw the cover of your book. And then I realized it had that like gorgeous blue burst on it. And then I looked at it.

I'm like, I know. I copy Ryan's burst on my book. And I don't think I did. If I did, it was super subliminal from seeing it years ago. But I'm like, man. Well, it wasn't on purpose. No, I love it. I'm honored.

No, I love it. I'm just glad that you're here. And I'm going to dig into. impact players here as we go because it's the newest work. I know we'll also probably talk a little bit about multipliers and rookie smarts as well during our conversation because we definitely have some fans here live with us for the audio listeners. My friends, leaders within Insight Global are joining us. We're doing this as a live show. It's a lot of fun. And I think it's cool to have like build community by doing it live this way. So Liz, without further ado, I see. I see.

saw that you quoted Neil deGrasse Tyson and when he said what you know is not as important as what you think. And then you wrote, if you aspire to have greater influence, start thinking like an impact player. Don't just use the playbook. Adopt the impact player mentality as your ethos. What would you say is the impact player ethos? Well, the impact player ethos is about thinking about what is valuable to other people. Because we can't really, like I think of impact. Like if I think about as like a projectile, a missile or something, it's like it's this combination of force and accuracy.

And I think a lot of people bring force and they assume that being forceful, assertive, driving hard, working hard is impact. But actually impact is about hitting the right. right target. And so it's about thinking about what is most important, what is valuable. Like in some ways, the ethos is I'm going to figure out what's important to the people that I serve. And then I'm going to make it important to me. I mean, I remember very much coming into the workforce going, here's what I want to do with my career. And here's what I want to do with my talents and skills. And here's what I want. And let me see if I can find some people who will let's

me do what I want and what I find interesting and I fortunately had a boss was like, hmm, like that's not the problem we're trying to solve Liz. This is the problem we're trying to solve. It would be great if you could help us here. I'm like, oh, yeah, I need to make myself useful, not important. And, you know, when we make ourselves, when we make ourselves useful, and I think it is kind of the essence of this mentality. is what can I do that is of greatest use and greatest value to the organization I'm part of, whether it's a partnership, a team, an entire company, a community?

Like, how do I add value to what is most important right now? And when we do that, we make a huge impact. And we actually build a lot of influence, which allows us to end up doing the kinds of things that we wanted to do anyway. You write about passion as well. And this has been thrown back and forth. Follow your passion.

You won't work a day in your life, that type of talk, you know, which I think a lot of people, especially the ones here know that I don't know about that. What about for the person who does, I oftentimes at the end of these episodes ask for some career slash life advice. And every once in a while, somebody will say that, like, find what you're passionate about and just go for that, you know, go for that. And I get it. I know their intentions are. good. What do you think about this passion and find your passion for work versus making an impact versus versus trying to be useful? Well, I have probably an opinion on this that is too strong.

It's like I, the stronger the better. Let's go. Well, you know, I think it's junk food advice. You know, it makes for great commencement speeches. Follow your passion. Do what your passion about. pursue your passion. And, you know, it's sound advice when it comes to picking a vocation and picking a general path in life and maybe choosing what company you want to work for or choosing to start a company of your own. But when you are part of an organization, like this can absolutely lead you down a dead end. And when I, you know, the research I did for impact players was, it was the exact opposite of the research I did for multipliers. Like when I wanted to figure out what great leadership looked like, I interviewed the people who are on the receiving end of that leadership. And so when I

wanted to figure out who, like, what are the most impactful and influential people do? I talked to managers and said, tell me about someone on your team who's like smart, talented, hardworking, but making a normal contribution, like solid versus tell me about people who are smart, talented, hardworking who are doing things of enormous value and impact. And I also asked about a smart, talented, hardworking person who's not making an impact, who's strangely under contributing. So I ended up with 170 of these people considered impact players by some of the top managers and the top companies in the world.

And one of the things they said was it's not like they're pursuing their own agenda. they're passionate about problem solving. They make themselves passionate about what's important to us. You know, manager said things like, you know what, he learned me. This one manager at Target who oversees risk management, she's like, it's like, you know, Evan just figured out what was important to me and asked a lot of questions about how I think and how my boss is thinking and what's important. And he's like figuring out what is what I called the win.

Like what's important right now? And then like bites onto that and stays on that. And so they weren't these kind of passionate pre-Madonnas. It's that they channeled their energy to where there was energy inside the organization. And so it's not like they're not passionate. It's that they're not idiosyncratic. about their passion. One of the examples you use is Scott O'Neill.

I talked to Scott on the show. Really good dude. Be Where Your Feet Are. It's the title of his book. But he started at a very low entry-level job with the New Jersey Nets. And you share a story about how he goes in on a Saturday. And the copy machine, he worked, this is years ago when copy machines were really important. and you needed them in your office.

And there's this broken. And what happens when most people find a broken copy machine is they would just go up another floor or find a different one and go on to the next one. Whereas Scott started taking it apart and trying to fix it. And somebody saw this. Could you share more about that story and why this could be useful for us to know? I think this story captures like both parts of this equation. So it's a Saturday.

He's in there. he's going into work, but he sees the coffee machine broken. He's fixed the copier at his parents, you know, small business. And so he's, you know, down on the ground. He's fixing the copier. He's all, you know, covered in ink toner. And this is back in the day where, you know, this could bring an organization to a halt. And I know this.

I know what it's like, you go in and see a broken copy. You're like, I think I'll go up to the next floor. Like, I'll let someone else fix this. And he's fixing it. And John Spolstra comes into the office, who's the president of the organization. and it's John, right? Because I know there's John and his son. I think it's John Spulter.

And he's like, hey, he recognizes him as one of the new hires in the marketing department. He's like in a marketing assistant or something. And he's like, what do you do? I'm fixing the copier. Well, why? Because it's broken. And he's like, come to my office. And then he's, you know, John starts peppering him this question.

So like, what do you think about this operation? What do you think we can do a better job? And then the question comes to, hey, what do you want to do around here? He goes, well, I want to sell sponsorships. And he's like, great, you've been promoted. You're now selling sponsorships. He's like, when do I start?

He goes, how about now? And he's like, your office will be right down the hall. He's like, like, do you get an office? And I think it captures like it's this orientation of make yourself useful. Like, don't just do your job. Do the job that needs to be done. And right then the job that need to be done was fix the copier. But it's not just this golly shucks, I'm just here to serve, like let me just do all the dirty work in the office.

It's how he got noticed. And that created an opportunity for him. And I've experienced as myself where the more that I in some ways subordinated my will and worked on what was important to the people I worked for, the more. I got to have a say in things. And the more I worked on that agenda, the more I got to set the agenda. And I think it was one of my big ahas studying all of these impact players is that they create enormous value for others. Their orientation, much like the multiplier leader, is totally on other people.

But all of that value they create comes back to them, which is probably not. not, you know, it's not dissimilar to the multiplier leader who focuses on harvesting the intelligence and capability and growing the intelligence of others. But yet in the end, like their, their brilliance is multiplied as well. This seems like it would be obvious. Doesn't it, Liz, though? Because, hey, our company needs something done. I'm going to do it.

And so I guess I think of the difference between a contributor and a contributor. and a high impact player. And you outlined the differences between those two throughout this book. But maybe that's just how I was brought up. I don't know. I'm curious. This seems to me like, well, obviously this is what you should do. I remember when I got my very first job, my dad said,

your job is to make your boss's life better, whatever it takes, man. And so I was like, oh, okay. And so I tried to learn, how could I make his life better? How could I make it easier? What could I do? And in my case, I had a sales job. And I even asked them that. And he's like, well, if you crush your number, it would really help me out because it would make up for some of the underperformance and also, you know, be like a self-learner.

So you could do it on your own. Basically, he just wanted me to do my job and not have talked to me. So we get it done. But it seems kind of obvious. Or maybe I don't know, maybe it's because I'm fortunate to have, have cool parents. Is this, is this not evident to people, is that you need to be focused, others focused on helping them get their work. on. So I think we have this misconception about brand. Like everyone wants to build a brand, but a brand is not something you do for yourself. A brand is the byproduct of a reputation.

And, you know, a brand is what the market says. This is how we experience your product or you. And so you've done a set of things that have maybe built a brand, but you're not around trying to like brand yourself. Everyone's working around trying to brand themselves. And I think what the impact players are doing is they're building a reputation. They're building a reputation as a utility player, meaning, you know, I'm not going to just do my job. I'm going to do the job that needs to be done. You know, they're building a reputation as a team leader. Like, you know what, when the roles are unclear and everyone else is waiting for role clarification from senior execs,

I'm going to step up and lead where I can. but I'm also going to step back and let others lead. So I'm building a reputation as a team leader and a trusted player. You know, when things get really rough and other people escalate issues, I'm going to hold on to those and build support for those. So I'm going to build this. The end of building a reputation as like a clutch player. Yeah.

Someone you can, you know, no look past to, someone you can trust with the ball in the most critical, like, game moments. But they're not out there trying to like build. their me, me, me brand. Matt, Matt, Jay asked here in a chat, when doing the job that needs to be done, do you have advice on making sure it's actually noticed? What do you think about that? We are savvy when we help people see our contribution.

And let me just offer two like sort of visions for this. One would be a great waiter. So like, what does a great waiter do? So like a waiter is a background job. Like they're supposed to take your order, ensure your orders delivered, make sure you're satisfied and they're not supposed to be in your face. So they kind of like stay in the background. They get the job done.

But like what does a great waiter do? Like they're letting you know very subtly what they're doing for you. Like, oh, you know what? I put a rush on your order because I heard that you were going to the theater. You know, is there anything else I can do for you? Oh, you know what? I brought an extra plate because you guys look like you might want to share that dessert. Oh, here's some spoons.

They're very gently letting you know what. they're doing for you. And then the real savvy ones, of course, they do just a little bit of extra on that right before, and I think everyone could probably fill in the blank on this. Yeah, right before they hand you the check. And it's not that they're bragging, showing off. They're not in your face. They're not like doing this overtly. They're just reminding you of what is being done in your service by them. And I think sometimes we need to use some of the practices. of a savvy waiter or the other one that I love is Intel back in how I'm giving the the decade wrong on this was it the 80s that we that they began this campaign you know so Intel produces the microprocessors

so that make all the laptops run so fast but they're like a microprocessor inside a casing inside a laptop nobody knows about it except tech nerds and they have to find a way to create more value associated with their product and they launched this campaign. Some of you may remember it. It's called Intel Inside. And what they were saying is like this laptop that's sitting in front of you, like it's running on this really amazing 46 microprocessor built by Intel. And the ones that have this are more valuable.

And the market charged more for these. And what they were doing is they were just elevating like, hey, there's something you don't see that's valuable that we just want to let you know. about. The other thing I saw, Liz, that I noticed to be in common is the fact that the high impact players yearned for feedback. You write top contributors in your study didn't seek constant validation. They sought guidance, always there. And I found this to be the case. The people who seem, it's just so, it's so backwards. I'll explain quickly. I'm sure you get the same thing. The people who need like the coaching the most or need the most feedback don't seem to

ask for it. It's the ones who are already like the 9.5s, right? They're like right there, but they're constantly seeking, hey, man, how can I get better? What can I do? Can you take a look at this? What do you think? It's amazing to me how that seems to be common. It seems like the research backs this up from my anecdotal evidence of what I've found that people who are or high impact players are always out there not seeking validation, but wanting, wanting guidance and feedback so they could improve. Yeah, it was, they had such a, in some ways, it's a subtly different orientation to feedback. But, you know, first of all, it's they operate on the assumption that they're off target.

And I think it's a good assumption for us to operate on, because I think most of us, like, like, I tend to operate on something like, I'm mostly, I'm doing it right. but I need to look for places where I'm doing it wrong. But, you know, if you're mostly doing it right, I can convince myself I don't really need to look in the corners and the cracks for where I'm doing it wrong. But if you operate under the assumption that the world is changing fast, and usually by the time you're midway through a project, the goals have changed, your targets have changed.

And it's like operating more like a violinist who is starting, it's every performance by assuming they're off tune, you know, knowing that their instrument needs to be tuned before they perform. So they're constantly recalibrating. And it's not that they're always off, but if we assume we're off, we then need to look for guidance on how do I get back on track. And, you know, so I think there are fundamental assumption is that I need to constantly tune the instrument. Second is what different is, what different is, you know, I'm not. And, you know, so I'm differentiated them was not how they received feedback. It's that they beat their managers and clients to it and they asked for it. And I really think even though there's such great work being done

on feedback with radical candor and thanks for the feedback by, you know, so that's Kim Scott's book and Sheila Heen and Doug Stone's book. Thanks for the feedback. It's still hard for managers to do this. And I think we fundamentally don't like the part of giving feedback that feels like we're judging. And, you know, it's like, oh, how do I like broach this conversation? There's no on ramp to that. It's awkward. And how do I initiate this? But the most impactful people are initiating it.

So it's so easy for them to receive this. There's no awkward moment. It's like, oh, I need to sit down and talk with you about this. They're just like, hey, how is that? What can I have done better? you know, did you get what you needed? What could I do next time that was just a little bit better? So there's none of this awkward, uncomfortable like, ugh.

I think too, Liz, as the person who's receiving the feedback, I think you have to be prepared. And this is one of things I've messed up and tried to get better at. So when you seek out guidance or seek out feedback, and please coach me on this, how I respond to the feedback is everything. So if I go to Bert and, hey, Bert, can you give me feedback? on how I did with my speech. And he starts critiquing me like he should,

like I'm asking for. And I immediately get defensive or I immediately start explaining why I did the dumb thing that he told me I did. Well, what do you think Bert's going to say or what do you think he's going to think? He's going to say, Ryan can't take it. No more feedback for him. Or I have to like, he doesn't want to give me fake feedback. So he just won't give me any.

And now I've just ruined a great feedback source because I've proven to him that I can't take it. And so I think we have to, we have to prepare ourselves to take the critical feedback, to pause, to listen, to take it in, to be grateful for the gift of that feedback as opposed to, because I've had this happen to me when I'm on the other end, they ask for the feedback, I give it. And then it's like four excuses in a row. I'm like, all right, it doesn't feel like they actually want it. They got advice to seek it, but then they didn't follow their execution was poor. What do you think about that? Well, I think there's, I'm always looking for the easy way on everything. And I think there's a hard way to get good at receiving feedback. And then there's an easier way. So the hard way is to like stay open minded, to take it in, to process it, to thank people for it. I still find that hard. Really? But yeah. That doesn't see that hard, is it? Well, because someone's telling me like what you're doing well and what you're not doing well. And, then you want to be defensive, like, well, wait a minute, my intent was this. I find that hard. Okay. Here's an easy way.

The easy way is to stop getting feedback on you and your performance and start getting guidance on your work. So here's what makes it easy is you separate out. Like, don't seek feedback for you. And that's how, I don't know, 99% of us think about feedback is I'm getting performance feedback. I'm giving someone feedback on how. how they are doing emphasis on they.

But what happens is when we shift our orientation and we ask for guidance on our work, what it does is feedback becomes information. And it's neither positive nor negative. It's not a judgment. It's like a thermostat. Its job is to calibrate like how hot is it in the room. We know we want it to be 70 degrees Fahrenheit. So we take a read on that.

and it's 68, so we've got to warm the room. No, yeah, we've got to warm the room versus, you know, it goes to, so it's constantly off. And so it's not saying like, ooh, you're too, you're warm. Room, you are warm. Like that is wrong. You are off. It's just, it's giving information to say warm versus cool things. And when we can separate ourselves from our work and invite people to give us information about

our work, it changes entirely. Let's say I do a webinar for our client. And I say, well, gee, how did I do? You know, I'd like to get feedback. Like, first of all, they're going to be like, Liz, that was so great. Right. And if they really had something like, well, you know, you didn't do this well. Versus, hey, you know what? How was that webinar received? Like, what insights can you offer that would make that webinar better next time? Then all the focus is on the output, the purpose. The product, the work. And it's just so easy to sit back and say, oh, yeah, help me make this thing better. Yeah. Liz, one of the things that we all here are trying to do is build high impact teams. A lot of leaders here who have to make the critical decisions of who to hire,

who to fire, promotions, right, all of the team building stuff. And you write, you write in chapter eight about building high impact teams. You talk about the dream team from 1992, the men's Olympic basketball team. The NASA Rover team was a dream team. The Saturday night live cast with Tina Faye and Amy Poller was a dream team. So you mentioned some of these dream teams. I'd love for you if possible to take what you've learned through your research on both all of these other worlds and bring it to this world in the business space of building a high impact team within a company. So let's say we're a mid-level manager. We're not the CEO. We're not an individual contributor. We're somewhere in between. What are some general pieces of

advice you give to that person for how they can start building or rebuild a high-impact team? Well, first of all, I think framing is a high-impact team can be helpful because like a high-performing team, again, all the emphasis is on what people produce. know, here's one of the things I've learned. I've learned it studying these multiplied leaders. I've certainly learned it studying diminishing leaders is that people, I think there's a truth in all of this that people come to work every day desperately wanting to contribute all of their capability and their intelligence. And what happens when they encounter leaders who only receive a fraction of that, it's frustrating, it's exhausting. Like people want to contribute at their fullest. And they

want to do work that is impactful. Like, I don't know that anyone, like, wakes up and says, I really want to be high performing, you know, but I want to have impact. I think it's something that people are drawn to do. And it's regenerative. It's like the regenerative brakes on my car, which is like it's creating energy in that process. It gives back to all the contributors.

And I think when we frame it as building a high. impact team, it's not a concept that like there can only be one impactful person here. Like you can actually have a team where everyone has different roles. And and even everyone has different capabilities. You don't have to be an absolute superstar to be having impact in your work. Like it's not like a team where like, oh, there's only one MVP. Sorry. This person's it.

You know, like yeah, you're valuable, but you're not like the most valuable. You know, you really can build a team. where everyone is contributing at their fullest, doing work that matters, and raising the level of play for everyone on the team. So I think the framing of it, it's important. Like, if you want to build a high impact team, like the fast cheat way to do this is hire people who already have the mindsets of these impact players. And there's a chart in the book that I'll probably put it on the website somewhere, but we looked at all of the mindsets and the behavior. of impact players. And I'm like, you know what? I know that not all of those are easy to develop. So I, I queried the Marshall Goldsmith 100 coaches, a group I'm part of top coaches in the world

and got all of their input on like, which of these are the least coachable kinds of mindsets and behaviors and which of them are the most coachable based on your real world experience. And some of them are pretty easy to coach and develop and teach. Some of them aren't. They're kind of things you, you probably, they're based on maybe early career experiences or things, you know, your cool parents taught you. What are some of each? Oh, okay. Let me give you, give you some of my favorite. First is I think this worldview of do you see ambiguity and uncertainty as a threat or do you see it as an opportunity? Like that would probably be the thing I would hire for. They wear opportunity goggles, right? You say they wear opportunity goggles.

I like that. And it's about opportunity goggles. And what I like about that metaphor is, I don't think many of us like ambiguity and uncertainty. Like I personally kind of hate it, but I like being in it because I like changing it. Like my thing that I just soak up is going into chaotic, ambiguous situations and putting structure and clarity to it. And so I don't like it. I hate it, but I see it as an opportunity to create a framework, to do something useful, to add clarity or simplify a lot of chaos.

This is probably the number one thing I would hire for. The other thing that's pretty fundamental is internal locus of control. And I know, I'll go through each of it because I know it's very fundamental to the work that's done by this group. And it's like, do you, do you think that you are in charge? of your life. Do you have an external look as a criminal meeting other people in charge and I'm acted upon or do I feel like I fundamentally am in charge?

Like if I could give a piece of like unsolicited career advice to everyone, it would probably be, you know what, you probably have a lot more power than you think you have in almost every situation. And I have found that just by assuming that I have control over myself, and that I can influence almost any situation that I'm in, even when I'm sitting across the table from really powerful and intimidating people. I'm like, I have the ability to influence that. Like, I think it's just this assumption of personal power really allows us to do the job that's needed versus just do our job, you know, to seek guidance because we have personal

power to affect that. That's another one. And sort of an orientation, I call it informality, but it's like how do you see the world through a hierarchical lens or do you see the world through a network lens? And that one is a little bit more inculcated. And then another one is, I thought this was so surprising. I'm not sure I completely believe it. But one of the things we found that impact players do is they just make work light. And it's not that they take on other people's work. It's that they bring levity and fun to the work. Now, they're not all comedians, but they make hard things easier by just not creating drama and politics by being easy to work with and just being fun. Like, we like working with fun people. And that is one that according to this

group of coaches is not particularly coachable. I think it's a, a highly underrated skill to bring is when working with others trying to get started doing kind of stuff that I do, I'm like, try to be easy to work with. Like, try not to make it really hard, try not to take forever to respond, like basic things, just try to be easy to work with. It'll get you, get you farther than you may think. Liz, one other question before I open it up here. And this is, this is always on my mind. It has been for the last few years. and that is the fact that this is kind of meta, but the learning that happened

because you forced people to respond, you asked them questions. And you said one of the things that surprised you was that they told you how much they learned through being interviewed by you. And so this happens when writing a book. This happens when giving a speech. This happens when teaching.

This is why I always push leaders to be teaching, to be writing, to be documenting their thoughts, because that's when clarity happens when you're forced to teach others. And you said that you found this when it went through your interview process that they commented to all the time that they learned so much through going through this. So maybe you could take that lens and share how that could help all of us as leaders to put us in the position that we can be learning by answering these types of questions, by teaching, by writing, by sharing with other people.

You know, I think what the leaders learned. So I didn't teach them anything during this interview process. They learned by framing back their own thoughts to us. And in particular, when we ask like, who's someone who's having an enormous impact, they're like, let's say, you know, it's Sandra. Then I say, well, why? Why Sandra? Oh, well, that's a good question.

You know, and then they start to articulate that. And then they're like, well, like what's the difference between Sandra and Meredith? Oh, and they're seeing that they're actually pretty small, subtle differences. But that they make this big impact. And the aha they had is they're like, you know what? I've just like kind of told you what makes a really high value, high impact contributor. And I've never written that down before. Like they'd never kind of articulated their own performance model.

And, you know, it's probably because we get fed, our companies feed us like, oh, here's our competency model, here's our values. So managers don't ever have to think like, what do I really value? What's important? And the other question we ask them, and I do these kind of things just because they're so entertaining to me. but one of the things I insist on adding to this kind of litany of questions was what is it that people do that work for you or around you that you most love like kind of what tickles your fancy

like what makes you love being a boss and they're like really and I'm like again I'm also going to ask you what really annoys you like what what are your pet peeves like what just get your goat you know and and they're like really I get to tell you this and and at first they're like well I don't have any and they're like, well, okay, maybe I do. And then they're just like emoting all of these things. Like, this bugs me when people send me long email notes and they've read the whole thing and they just, they don't even bother putting a summary sentence. Like, they've read it. How hard would it be to write down a summary sentence? Like you could tell this is one of my pet peeves. And so they're like, I've never told anyone that. I'm like, okay, so people are just doing that

over and over and you've never said, by the way, like, it. It makes my job easy when you do this. Like, yeah, maybe I should tell them that. One of my favorite things in the book is like kind of a list of here's things that managers most love. Here's the things that managers most hate. And you want to build influence and credibility, do a lot of the things that they love and very few of the things they hate.

That's kind of the simple answer. Yeah. It makes sense. Liz, I want to open it up and for questions. And Sam is going to go first. Fire away, man. Well, first of all, Liz, thank you for allowing us to join and letting us listen. This has been awesome for our company.

So we all really appreciate it. But the question that I had for you just in listening and hearing, I loved what you said about guidance on work and focusing on the output. I think that's brilliant advice. I think there are, though, those times where you still have to make it personal because there's some feedback for that person that you need to give. So I was just curious to pick your brain on what advice do you have on, you know, really, you know, I loved your phrase you used of the on ramp, you know, how do you go about giving that personal feedback or what's your on ramp or your style there? Well, I don't have to do a lot of, I try to avoid a lot of personal feedback.

And I think what managers can do is just give people feedback on their work. And the frame, it's actually the same. same frame that I would use as a manager that I would use in like receiving it is feedback is information to help you calibrate your work. That's all it is. Because we, you know, like our mental model is feedback is about you and it's a judgment. It's an evaluation of how you're doing. Most of us resist receiving and resist giving that. I don't want to like, who am I to tell you this? And particularly if you're a young manager for years, I was this young manager. I'm like, who might to tell someone 10 years older than me, like how they're doing.

They don't want to hear that. But what I'm doing as a leader is I'm giving someone information about their work. Like as simple as do more of this and less of this. Like this would make the work better. And I think if we can do that, it just like it's easy. It's easy to receive. It's kind of like we're just working on the same. I think like, you know, we opened it with Ryan saying that I had given him some feedback about the book that was helpful.

Like my, if I'm taking myself back to when I read the manuscript and went, I wasn't like, Ryan, I'm going to tell you whether I think you're going to be a good author or not. Like, how would I know this? And why would I do that? Like, I don't have enough information. I'm just saying, here are words on a page and here are some thoughts about what would make this piece of work. stronger. And I think when we can do it, it's like, oh, man. Yeah, I get uncomfortable like if someone's going to give me feedback about me, whether it's great or not. It's just like, I'd much rather be around the work. And I learned this one the hard way. There's a little story in the book that we probably don't have time for, but it's where I think I got a wake up call, which is like, hey, Liz, it's not about you. It's about making the work better. Thank you, Liz. Joe, go ahead. Joey, I'm a regional manager for Insight Global.

And a huge fan of multipliers. I think I've read the talent magnet like 10 or 15 times. I'm really excited to read impact players. And I try to order on Amazon. I can't get it until October. But I'm very excited. And I just want to know how would someone be both an impact player and a multiplier at the same time? It sounds like impact player is like the I'm just going to do this. Or does that person exist? If so, and what would their characteristics be? Well, I think, okay, so this is a super fun question because it's got some texture to it. So when you work like an impact player, you are very much seen as a leader. And it puts you on a very natural path to leadership because you're already leading.

You're leading without a lot of formal authority. So it puts you on that path. But it can be a little bit of a rocky transition to go from being like the high impact player to leader. you really have to realize like, okay, it's not about your performance anymore. Like you've now got to take that the mindset and the mentalities are very consistent with multipliers, but you've got to realize that your scope is now changed and it's about getting impact from your whole team. Like I very much remember going from probably what might have been like a bit of an

impact player mentality to being a leader. And for me, it was a rough transition. It took about six months before I had. the epiphany i'm like i think i wrote about it multiple parts i'm like wow why why am i still here at the office and everyone else is home why am i doing everyone else's work why is all the hard work flowing to me like why am i doing everything that falls between the lines like oh yeah because maybe liz it's not about you and it's not about what you can get done it's about what you can get done on your team and i got some good coaching from a boss it was i was very confused at the time he came by my office

ran and he sat down and he said, Liz, I just want to let you know, I was a new manager, that as far as I'm concerned, you can sit in your office all day and read novels as long as your team is performing well. And I'm like, I didn't quite see the metaphor in this. I'm like, that's like a massive violation of my work ethic. Like he like, why would I sit and read novels? Like that seems lazy. Like, and I was like, what is he saying? What does he mean by that? And, and And then I got the metaphor in what he was saying is it's not about you and your productivity and what you can accomplish. It's about the impact and output of the team.

So I think that can be a really rough transition for some people, or maybe it's just me. But the way of thinking and working are very congruent. It looks sort of like two sides of a coin. Emma, go ahead. if you can reflect back on your career, of course, your own personal experience and then all the incredible leaders you've talked to, is there one or two methodologies that have just struck you and stuck with you, you know, where they could have been a light bulb moment or something you learned over time? Well, there's things that I'm now learning. Like, I don't know that there's been a philosophy

that like has run consistent that we haven't already talked about. But I think one of the things I'm learning that I just had a conversation with a man named Keith Kroc, who was the founder and CEO of Ariba and founder and CEO of DocuSign and just served as the undersecretary of state for the United States and just an amazing, like truly an amazing leader. And he and I just had this really interesting conversation a week ago about like the art of leadership is about what you hold loosely and what you hold tightly. And we all know like the tightly wound leader, which is like, oh, you know, they're like really

intent. They end up micromanaging and it's got to be a certain way. And they're just like, really just like tens and tight about everything. And then we have like the hippie managers who are like, yeah, you know, knock yourself out, be creative, do something useful. But like the art form is like, there are things that you hold really tight to, maybe clarity about what success looks like or values or certain things that just need to be done exactly right. And you're very, very tightly intentioned about it. And then there's other things that you delegate in their extreme and you trust. And it can be confusing to get there because you think, well, wait a minute, there's certain things I'm like so tightly round about. and so things that I'm so open about,

but I think it's knowing which, what to hold tightly and what to hold loosely is, I think part of what I'm learning is what mastery looks like. And that might have not made any sense at all because this is for me like a very like emerging insight. Interesting. Matt, go ahead. We have one more.

Matt Jay. You re-litered in there. Go ahead. Thanks. And Ryan, Liz. Great insights. Thank you for following. your muse and sharing with us. So Liz, I have a team of maybe 15 people and a lot of times I find

that there are several high impact players on the team, but they have to work with many other teams across the organization. And I find my challenge is often protecting them, helping them to stay in that mental state and helping them continue to operate as though they are high impact players and wondering if you have insight on how to protect them and and maybe tug the entire organization along that direction because it's many other teams that they're working with. Yeah, it's such an interesting question because like when I first hear the word protect, I go, oh, yeah, that's good. You need to protect them so that they have an environment to work. But then I go, oh, protect. Protect is one of the ways that we end up accidentally diminishing.

And, you know, when I certainly look back on my corporate experience, I probably over rotated on protecting. It was this like sense of, oh, yeah, and this is true in any large organization, whether it's Oracle or inside global, Procter & Gamble, Google, what have you, is like, there's politics and there's like some nefarious kind of players and forces out there. And it's easy to get into this sense of I need to protect my team from that. And I'm going to create a microcosm, like a sweet little culture inside here where it's like a great place to work. But what happens is we can become like the protective. parent that we become the shield.

And so other people can do good work and can focus, but they don't build muscle that comes from dealing with difficult things. And, you know, they get a false sense of the organization or they feel weak and the manager are strong. So like, I would caution all of us like, when we're in that mode of protecting people, have your your antenna up for how could that be diminishing to your team? My colleague, Sean Vanderhoeven, here at the Weissman Group, he's doing some really fun research on how do how do managers sort of protect, I don't know that he's using that word, but protect people's workspace, like their mental

space to work and like buffer them from distractions, not from difficulties, but from interference, in that space. And I think that's probably a more productive model. Like maybe the thought that I would leave given our time is that I learned this when I was like, okay, let me boil multipliers down. Or like the aha came on like, you know what, I can boil multipliers down. And so for those who haven't read the book, like skip it. And it'll just give you the two and a half word version of the book is what great leaders do

that bring out the best in others is they create an environment that that is, equal parts safety and stretch. Like, you know, there's a lot about creating psychological safety and like a great place to work and all of its inclusion and belonging. Like, that's all about creating a safe place. But we all know managers who are like all safety, no stretch. Like, oh, we love you, put their arm around you, but they never ask you to do anything hard. Like, I just kind of protect you.

Like, this is like a good little team. We love each other. But then we all know managers who are all stretched, no safety. and that's equally diminishing, but like the best leaders are constantly like creating safety, but then stretching people. Like, I'm going to make you comfortable, but it's kind of for the whole purpose of enabling you to be uncomfortable and ragged and hard and make mistakes and be pushed and stretched, but there's safety in that.

And so like the best environment is to create safety and stretch. and if we try too hard to protect, people might have a lot of safety, but no stretch, not as much growth as you could give them. But we could talk about that a lot further and have a really fun conversation. Liz, thank you so much for your time. The book's called Impact Players,

How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and multiply your impact. Just an amazing amount of research done with some fantastic stories. storytelling, highly encourage people to check it out. It comes out in a little bit. Liz, thanks again. And again, I'm so grateful for your friendship and feedback and certainly looking forward

to us continuing our dialogue as we both progress. Yeah. Well, I'm so happy to talk with you and to have lots of positive views of the work that you guys do at Insight Global. And if any of you who have wanted to start on impact players a little bit early, you can get the first chapter by printing the book. And then I could like get you a galley or something if you wanted to start early. So like, wink, wink, contact me.

Thank you. If you like, you're like, no, I'm ready to go now. I bet we have some of those. It's really good. Thanks so much, Liz. I know we're out of time. I really appreciate it. And thanks everyone for being here.

It was really fun to see you all. I like the community aspect of this. It's really cool. Really fun to do that episode, especially alongside a number of my friends from Insight Global and a few other invited guests and clients of the company. I love when we can build community around these ideas and these conversations, and they certainly ask some very thoughtful questions as well. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did a few topics from my notes. Instead of follow your passion, be useful. Make a name for yourself by running towards the problems and solving them.

make your boss's life easier. Be useful. Work on what's important for the people you work for. That's not typically the advice you're going to receive, but I've found when I think about the impact players in my life, that's what they do. They build a name for themselves by being willing to run towards the fire, as Carly Fiorena told me, and solving the tough problems. That's who you want on your team. And then seeking feedback and guidance versus seeking. validation. Impact players don't need validation. They crave feedback and guidance

so that they can continually improve and go from an 8 to a 10 or a 9 from a 10. They constantly want to get better and crave that coaching and feedback from people so that they can improve. And then impact players have a good internal locus of control. They believe they have

agency in their life. They believe they are in charge of their life. As Liz said, you have a lot more power than you might think you have. Very helpful. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Liz Weissman. It will help you become a much more effective leader. You can become an impact player within your organization.

And because you continue to do that and write reviews and rate the show, hopefully five stars on Apple Podcast. you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon. Can we.