The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 449: John Amaechi - The Traits Of Effective Leaders, Excellence Is In The Mundane, & Giving Proper Feedback

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

Order My Book, The Pursuit Of Excellence https://bit.ly/excellencehawk Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12    https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 John Amaechi is an organizational psychologist, best-selling author, and CEO of APS Intelligence Ltd. In 2019, John was recognized as one of HR's most influential thinkers by HR Magazine. John is the first Briton to have a career in the NBA. John is a Chartered Scientist, a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD and a Fellow of the Royal Society for Public Health. He is a Research Fellow at the University of East London and his research interests are effective, inclusive leadership, building high-performing teams and organisational design that maximises productivity and human thriving in readiness for the future world of work. Notes: "Excellence is in the mundane." The hours and hours of work when no one is watching. Effective feedback - If it's not developing them, it's not feedback. And feedback is never cruel. Ask, what can we learn from this? The evidence-based traits he shared about effective leadership "Promises have an enormous impact when kept by giants. And a devastating impact when broken. To keep these promises, unconditionally and persistently, is the duty and honor of being a giant." "You can't be a part-time man of principle." There is a difference between elite teams and a group of elite individuals. We want to build elite teams. Look at how you reward people -- What gets measured, gets managed. Reward people for being great teammates. People must earn and maintain their job titles. Coaching leaders: Start at the end - What does great look like? Introspection - How well do you know yourself? Pragmatic - Measure real progress Introspective work - view yourself critically, but not cruelly "You need people around you to be truly candid and caring." John and his team take an analytical approach - "I have a geek squad and we analyze data." They use expertise to provide commentary on the data Feedback - It must be timely and effective. Do regular micro-appraisals. What made you think of that? What can we learn from this? If it's not developing them, it's not feedback Feedback is never cruel Mantra: "I promise to reject excuses and embrace discomfort." You can't skip to comfort... The Promises of Giants is the product of a lifetime spent observing and studying effective leadership - from accompanying his mother's visits to her dying patients to competing at the highest levels of professional sport, through two decades of management consulting with multinational corporations. These experiences have shown that everyone has the ability to act decisively to influence the world in a positive way. Everyone is a giant to someone...  

Welcome to the Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 44222 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of 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 book, The Pursuit of Excellence, and you'll have the opportunity to read it early. Text learners to 4422. Now on to tonight's

feature leader, the great John Amici, founder of APS intelligence, a professional consultancy. He is a psychologist, a scientist, a writer, a self-confessed bookworm from Stockport. England who made it to the NBA and he's the first former NBA player to come out as gay and much, much more. His latest book is titled The Promises of Giants, How You Can Fill the Leadership Void. During this conversation we cover the difference between an elite team versus a group of elite individuals. Then his researched fact answer to the question. question, what makes an excellent leader with a really cool surprise. I think you'll like this part. And then John shares a better and more useful model to give and receive feedback.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's John Amici. All right, John, it's so good to have you here on the Learning Leaders Show. Welcome, man. Thank you. Really appreciate it. I've told you before that part of my research process is turning to the very back of the book, this current book, The Promise of Giants. I know you've written multiple books, but turning to the very back as well as turning to the very front. And the back is the acknowledgments. The front is the dedication. And this book is dedicated just simply to to mum, right? To mom. I might call her my mom, but you would call her mom from where you're

from. So can you share what made you dedicate this book to your mom? Every book that I've written has been to mum. Many of the papers that I've written that don't even need a kind of a dedication have got one and it's to mum. This one I think is different in that when I first started talking about the book when it was released in Europe a month or so ago, people ask me what's the best thing about the book? And as I reflected, I said it seemed now so obvious that you get to meet my mom because she's there like a guide through the whole thing i i am very honest about the fact that all my wisdom is borrowed it's recombined and maybe that's my gift if i have one but it's other people's brilliance other researchers brilliance and in and in this book a lot you'll hear my mom's voice i hope so

that's why to mom what was your upbringing like what would your parents do for a living where did you grow up and what did they do so i uh i uh i grew up and what did they do so i uh i grew up in Stockport, which is near Manchester, two sisters, my mom. We left America. I was born in America in Boston, in 1970. But we left by the time I was three. My mother escaped a bad relationship with my father. And so we grew up in Stockport with initially living in the same house as my grandparents and then eventually moving out on her own. Our mom was a doctor. and I think we're ultimate middle class family but feeding three kids being a junior doctor

in the United Kingdom is not quite the same as the image of doctoring that I think perhaps Americans have. But I was never left wanting. It was really remarkable, really rich reading life as a kid. My mother read to me when I was young. She encouraged me to read. I'm a nerd, unabashedly a nerd. And I love science fiction.

reading Asimov when I was seven. I love all things Star Wars now. I spent an absurd amount of money on Star Wars paraphernalia. But it was a wonderful warm upbringing with a mum that never let us feel like we were missing anything. And then when did sports start coming into your life? Oh no, I mean sports didn't arrive until I was 17. Really? Yeah, I'm not a sports fan and I'm not a sporty person. So I never watched sport. The first, I was looking at

Rex Chapman's feed the other day. He and I have, well, obviously we know each other, but, and he was saying that his first NBA game was one that he played in. And it suddenly struck me.

I was like, me too. That was the first NBA game I went to was one that I played in, which is, I suppose that's normal, but it feels really weird. But I wasn't a sporty kid.

I love books and pie. Books and pie. Books and pie. This is how you got, still, actually, to this day, is how you get to my heart through books and pie. A good book. Now I'm more of an audiobook person,

but books and pie. And at 17, I discovered basketball because a man on the street asked me if I, well, you know what? He didn't ask me if I wanted to play. Because if you'd asked me if I wanted to play, I would have said, no. He didn't even say I should play.

which I think is what many people do do. They think, oh, you're tall, you should. He told me I'd be great at basketball, and I'd never heard of basketball. Because it's England in the 80s, nobody's heard of basketball. And when he said I'd be greater today, I was just like, that's compelling.

That I can be great. A stranger thinks I can be great at something. And so that's what got me to go to a gym to do my first 40-minute training session. And in that, at the end of that training session, I sat with this new set of people who made me feel really seen and told them, they told me about the NBA and I told them I was going to play in the NBA. That was it. Wow. How tall were you when you were 17? Probably 6'8. Wow. And you grew to 6.10? And now I'm heading back at the other

direction. What was it like then going to college in the States and leaving home to play basketball? So leaving home was exciting and saddening. because this is a proper leaving home when you head to across the Atlantic. And I of course, leaving America at 3, I have no memory of America. So everything I know about America is informed by television. And when I grew up, it was all about Night Rider

and the A-Team. And that's what I knew of America. And most importantly, what I knew of America was the sun always shone. That was the thing. Because any film you watch. Sure. it sounds always shining. So I went to Toledo, Ohio, to high school for one year

because I was not good enough to get to the NBA just after whatever it was, nearly a year's worth of playing in England. So I went to Toledo, Ohio. I arrived at the airport in Toledo, Ohio. And the first thing I realized, when I got out of the small, tiny plane, was how this is hotter than any place on earth

I'd ever experienced. I got there in the summer, Midwestern summer, close, you know, that, well, you know, Dayton, yeah. I'd never experienced this. It blew my mind. The air hit me like a shovel when the door opened. And I walked down the steps and I just thought, how do you, how do you even survive in this? Do you have to stay indoors?

And of course, no. I got into the terminal and I was met by the coach and he talked to me and I realized Americans don't speak English. He talked to me. I had no idea what he was saying. Really? No, not a clue. I've told him this. My coach was a guy called Ed Heinchel.

He just retired last year. That tells you, you know, he's long lived. He just retired last year. And I've told him this many times. When he started, he had a lovely warm smile, big bushy mustache, and he looked kind. And I couldn't understand a word he said. I spent the first week nodding and smiling at him. When he said stuff, I just nodded and smiled.

It's amazing. Wow. Well, I love that. I could go all day on the sports, but you've done so much since then. Just to fast forward that story, you obviously played, got a lot better and had a great career in the NBA. But you've done, it seems even more since you stopped playing. And that's where I want to focus the bulk of our conversation on. Because as you said, that was a chapter of your life, but it seems like not what you were born to do. It was something that you did for a portion of it. I do have one question since my background in sports. What have you taken from your time as an athlete into the world of non-athletics, into the business world? Because now you're working with companies. You have some remarkable clients at your company that you're working with. What have you taken from the court into that world that has been helpful?

So I've done some work with a guy called Fred Caw. Colter, Professor Fred Coulter, he's a researcher here who researches sports and what it teaches. And what he's found is that it doesn't teach much. The people in it teach stuff, but the sport itself doesn't. But in sport, and you'll have to tell me if this parallels any of your experiences, one of the things I learned was the massive difference between a team, of an elite team, and a group of elite individuals. Just this huge difference between what happens when a group of people come together,

and become a team versus a group of elite individuals who are very good individually. And in my 10 years of playing professional sport, I probably was only on two true teams. And the difference was palpable. Hard work felt easier. The difficult stuff felt more purposeful. And no one ever got thrown under the bus. No one ever put their points above a win. I remember distinctly I put this in Orlando with Doc Rivers, his first year.

And there was a game where there was a series of games, six or seven games in a row where I broke my career high. In fairness, my career high prior to that point was like nine points. So the first one wasn't that hard. But eventually it was into the high teens and the 20s. It was just breaking it every game. And somebody asked one of my teammates, I think it's Dalry Armstrong, the point guard. They said, the media asked him. And I saw this interview on television.

he said so you know are you are you worried because you know john's doing this great job at the centre role and obviously that's going to suck a lot more attention to him and a lot more points to him and i'll never forget and he was not a man without flaws but who is i'll never forget he just looked at the he looked at the interview with such confusion he's like we're winning he's like we're going to every single we're going to Pass the ball to John until John can't deliver. And then when John can't deliver, someone else will pick it up. And I just thought that that's so different than that eat what you kill thing that happens in a lot of businesses.

Where if somebody doesn't get their 30 or their 30% or their 30 mil bonus or whatever it is, they won't perform. It's amazing. How do you think now when working with businesses and I think when it comes to building a culture within a company or on a team within a business, is everything, right? Like we have to have that. What do you think is the difference between the, the teams, the elite teams versus a bunch of elite individuals who happen to work at the same company? How do we how do we get towards the former there or build that at our organizations, John, because there's a lot of people listening, probably saying, we got a lot of talent here, but I'm not sure, not sure if we got a team. I think we got a lot of people, but I want, I want that.

like I have the talent now. I want to build that elite team. What are some of the first things you can do? Where does it start? How do we make that happen? Start by making people earn the title. Really? Don't label something.

Don't call something a thing. Because if you tell people you're on a team, it's automatic. You're done. And I know this is a hard one, right? Because we use team for everything, right? Project team, this team, or that team. Make people earn the title and then celebrate that title and help others to realize this is something you both earn

and then have to maintain. Teaming is one of the most energy expensive things out there. Because teaming is the idea, it's in a basketball sense. I've already talked more about sport than I ever thought I would. But in a basketball sense, it's like thinking of defense in basketball. Yes, it is my job to stop my person.

The person in front of me, I have to stop them. But at every second, I have to be looking to the left and the right, and there may come a point where I have to help help to the detriment of my target, the detriment of my goal. That's a team. It says, in order to stop anyone from scoring, I will inconvenience myself. That's the real key. And so you've got to start by telling people, here are the rules of being a team. Yes, there is no, there's no lessening of your requirement to score, to hit your target. But with that comes this responsibility to

challenge and support in equal measure the people around you and do it before they ask. So don't wait until you see so many people, they think they're a good teammate in a business sense because when someone's finally flailing and they're about to fall through the floor, you kind of lift a pinky finger and help them. But real teammates say, I see a problem here already and I'm going to tell you from my experience how to handle this and here's a bit of support or here's a bit of a challenge. Come on now, let's go. And they do it way before it starts. to get critical or acute. That's what you're looking for. In teams, the thing you'll notice immediately is credit and blame is a whole different environment. You don't allow people, individuals, to be

crushed by blame. Internally, oh, you give it to people. You say, Ryan, you let us down today. This is what you did. This is the mistake you made. Internally, there's a fulsome feedback and critique. Here's how you're not going to make it happen again. Externally, when the media comes asking, when shareholders and stakeholders come asking, nope, we screwed up. When they start talking about Ryan and saying, Ryan must have, actually, we all played a part in this and we screwed up together.

Because teams know something that groups don't know, and that's with a team, you can bear the weight of failure together in a way that absolutely annihilates an individual. I think this is what we have to keep reminding ourselves. There are criteria for teaming. It's a perpetual state of calculated selflessness. That's what teaming is.

Can you think of a really good example of this, John? Maybe one that you worked with that you're allowed to talk about or a company where you went in and it wasn't that good. There was some me, me, me, right? Let me get mine. Somebody else got a problem. Hey, I got to keep guard my guy. I can't, I can't play help defense here. Right.

I'm going to worry about me, right? Which we know there are places like that. Can you think of an example maybe that were you or even a story if you didn't help, but you know that where this, transformation was made to where now the culture is an elite team versus just a set of elite individuals. Yeah, we work with a number of large financial institutions and there was one particular, we know the way that they're often their remuneration structures are set up. It's a very eat what you kill. And in order to change things, we went in really boring. Instead of going in with the big kind of cultural, contextual stuff, we said, you know what? How about we look at how

we reward people and what we reward people for are we rewarding people for the behaviors we want so we suddenly realized if you're telling somebody it's enough that you're technically brilliant and your p andl is huge then that's what they'll do because human beings will go lowest common denominator so we introduced some new metrics that would allow people to expand the benefits that they got for inconveniencing themselves we said right every time you are proactively support a colleague, whether it's via email or whatever else, and you let them know a tool or a skill or a connection that enables them to do their job or stop something from falling down, you get a tangential benefit at no detriment to the person you're helping. So it's not

going to come from them because that's not what teaming is. It's going to come to you and it's going to be part of an overall bonus pot. And that's what we did because bonusing is, I know people hate to hear this, but it's bad motivation. It's just going to cost you more and more and more and more to get less and less and less. But the interesting part was once we started shifting to this, people suddenly realized that all they were doing is causing attrition

on the overall pot. And they started to refuse it. They started to say, you know what, I'm getting mine, and I'm finding insights from these people who I never thought could help me because I thought I was helping them, but they ended up helping me. And it was really interesting to watch the shift in people's mentality. It's not that they didn't want to get paid

anymore. It's just they realized there was a new route to getting paid, and it was just the boring logistics that enabled it. At first, it was all about, oh, I can get an extra 10% because I send X, and they suddenly realized there was, in these emails, they were getting rich data, they were getting new insights, they were getting their own back. And, well, one of the other interesting parts

is one of the most cynical blokes in this entire organisation, liked how he was regarded now. He suddenly realized, no one thinks I'm the shark who doesn't give a dammer by anybody. They realize, as I've always, always thought that I'm someone who wants to connect with people and this had been his pathway to that. I think that's that's what I like to see in organizations because in this disrupted world, eat what you kill is not going to get it done. So you're an organizational psychologist.

What made you want to get into this field of work and start? Because you started this business 20 years ago, I believe, right? You launched your business 20 years ago. What made you go to because you could probably have done whatever you wanted when you left the NBA. What made you want to do this? This is amazing. I mean, psychology is, when you think about the work, this piece of the work that you do, with your voice, you change people. In psychology, that's all there is, the only meaningful thing.

With all the technical and other do-dads around it, with all the theory and whatever else, fundamentally it is my presence the ability of me to connect with someone else help them understand that I care enough to learn enough about them to help advise or challenge or support and that always has appealed my mother was a doctor in Stockport

and that's what she that's what she did I always knew that I didn't want to do the kind of blood and guts bit I could never have been an actual what my mother would call a proper doctor I could never have done that because I just couldn't have cut cadavers and all that stuff but I watched how she interacted

with patients I watched how she worked a lot in palliative care and I watched how she would go into these houses in England people visit doctors visit you when you're sick she would go into these houses and they would be so tense

so agitated so awful that even as a seven-year-old going with her I knew that something catastrophic was going on. And I'd watched how she was able to kind of scoop up a room of distressed relatives in her attention and help them realize that they could cope despite the fact nothing changed. And I thought that was the key for me, even as a seven-year-old. My mom hasn't changed anything.

The person upstairs who I've not seen is going to die. My mom hasn't changed anything. And yet she was still able to help people cope. If that's not an analogy for how we are in their most disrupted times, there's stuff out there that's happening to us and there's nothing we can do about it, but I can still help you cope. I just thought, that's magic. That is. So what is your day-to-day like? What do you do on a normal?

You probably don't have a normal day, but what are you doing on a, like if you had to name your favorite day, what are you doing? My favorite day is probably coaching some of the really fascinating. I have a really fascinating cross-section of people that I coach. Some of them are, I suppose, captains of industry, if we're still using that term. Others of them are really fascinating entrepreneurs who are doing things that I don't understand technically. And others of them, facilitated by these characters are younger people who are going to go on to do, I think, remarkable things in the future. So that combination of coaching these different types of people is what I love to do. I don't do as much of it as I'd like to at the moment, simply because I'm doing other stuff.

We have a big analytics part of our business because we're nerds. So breaking down data so that instead of it just being a, why don't you try this, we can actually tell people before we start, this is actually what's going on. Because what you're seeing oftentimes in business, what people see as a problem is a symptom. It isn't actually the disease. It's not the thing that's going wrong. It's a manifestation of the thing.

So when they say, solve our attrition problem, what they mean is reduce that percentage. So it saves us money. But actually you have to figure out why are people leaving? And that's often not just as simple as saying, oh, it's Ryan, the manager, or it's John the manager. It's more than that going on. It's this combination of policy and procedure and presentation

and all kinds of other stuff. Figuring that out first, I love that, interpreting that data. I love doing that too. Advising clients, I love doing that too. There's not much in my job I don't like. I don't like when people don't listen. But about from that, you know.

Yeah. The coaching part fascinates me, John, because I'm giving my background in athletics. I have literally felt why, or I felt the power of excellent coaches. And I felt what the great ones can do is that I may think I am, I can perform at this level. And because of them and their belief and their feedback and their willingness to, at times make me mad at them because they're willing to push that I then perform at this level, right? I'm using my hands to say I'm performing higher. So you do that for leaders you work with. What's your, I'm fascinated like, what's your process like? How do you help people, I guess,

lift their levels of performance? What do the, I love for you maybe to even take me inside. What do the conversation sound like? What's the process? What's it like? So the way I operate is like Nanny McPhee. I don't know if you've heard of Nanny McPhee. She's a fictional character, Nanny, much like Mary Poppins. I'm sure it's a rip-off of some description. But it's played by Emma Thompson in the movies. She's done two of them. And she shows up at families in distress and solves them.

It's all very, and she's a bit magical. So it appeals to me on number of levels. But she has this way of working. Her way of working is this. She says to the families, especially when they don't want her at the beginning. She says, here's how I work when you need me, but don't want me. I have to stay when you want me, but don't need me. I have to go. And that's, that is how I work. And it's not just how I work. I think it's how all helpers of other people, all coaches should work.

We know this right in coaching, don't we? Because we know what happens when a really conscientious coach says, you know what? I've taken you as far as I can take you, especially in the developmental stages. And they say, no, you've got to go here and learn someone else. That's what it is. I should. be redundant is the point of this otherwise i'm not very good at my job that's what i want from a coaching environment uh is in how how this may be a weird question but how fulfilling and enjoyable is that line of your work that part of your work for you it is it's utterly amazing and it's utterly you know this is nothing that you don't know from your experience too but it's amazing to watch people who don't know that brilliant

It's amazing to watch people who don't realize they have skills and abilities that they have either not considered properly or not understood the utility of them in this new environment. You know, I work with a lot of people who are considered non-traditional in a sense. Sometimes it's just an introverted man. How could you be a CEO of a Fortune company? You're an interview. They get told this. They do psychometric tests, which are mostly bollocks. But they do those and they're told, you know, you can't be, it's like, no, here's how you use your skills.

Here's how you're going to be amazing around a board table. And here's what you need to understand about it. You're an introvert. Every interaction you have with people is going to be exhausting. But that's all right. Here's how we'll use this. Here's how you will have a unique advantage, especially in combination with the team. Here's how you're going to select the kind of people around you, not just on raw, blocky characteristics, but to make sure they're aligned with your purpose.

you can build that. It's brilliant. You mentioned before about the introspective work. You can't really do anything if you don't know yourself. And I'm with you 100%. That's why this podcast has been so fascinating for me. I feel like I've learned a lot about myself through doing it and preparing and listening to it and working on it. What are some of the best practical actions a person can take right now, John, if they're saying,

you know, I'm not sure if I'm there or even close to getting there of fully knowing myself and doing enough reflective work. What are a few things that person could do immediately following this podcast to start charting their path to getting more aware of what they're good at, what they're not, what they're more naturally inclined to do, maybe what's something that they should they should give to somebody else to do. What do you, what are, what are, some ways to do that. So viewing yourself critically but not cruelly is the first chapter in the book, right? This is one of the most important things we have to be able to do. If you are not there, as most people are not, that's probably the first stage, right? Remember that most of us,

especially the driven ones, but almost everybody. We spend our entire life figuring out what we're going to do. We do not spend our entire life figuring out who we're going to become. So there's a new mindset needed here to consider if I have I'm 51 this year this this week actually um if if I'm if I'm at this age I'm unlikely if I've not really worked on it to have really done that kind of introspect work so what do I need to do I need to find out if I've got people around me who can inform me about myself and and who will be truly candid because that's that's the care thing the caring thing to do is to be truly candid get people to tell you what they know about you. What, you know, there are a series of questions you can ask.

What is your, what is your most common state or mood? We all know somebody who's never down. They're always bouncing around. It's really annoying to an introvert like me. I need a bit of calmness and quiet. Whereas me, my default state is to be very kind of, oh, what I think other people might consider to be very quiet, very flat almost. It's different for the this, obviously, this is one of the skills you get, right? There's a leader. You learn to flex. So when I'm talking to someone, I don't want people to believe that I'm boring. So I have to, you give a little bit.

How do you respond when you meet people for the first time? What's your, is it cautious? Is it gregarious? What is it? How do you impact the people around you? Have you ever really considered the impact you have? We all know there's leaders who walk around and they pretend that they don't have any. Oh, I'm just like everybody else.

I hate that. I am six foot nine and 26 stone. If I am careless ever around other people, someone's getting hurt. If I throw my arms around, somebody's getting hurt. If I raise my voice as a 6 foot 9, 26 stone, I don't know what that is in pounds, but it's a lot. Black person, especially, the world shakes for people. Do you realize the impact you have on the world around you?

These are the things you talk about. What are your great qualities? List 10. Specific great qualities. Things that really do make a difference. That's the kind of thing that you start this process. This is, again, this is called the Soul in the Dark process. This is a process that I did when I was a kid that I do with lots of my coaching clients.

Now, I need you to understand more about yourself. How do you respond to stress? What mistakes do you make when you're happy? Lots of questions that you can ask yourself. What do you do when you experience extremes of emotion? What makes you feel at peace? kind of questions help you understand this is me and it doesn't mean it's always you we're different in different contexts but if we have this understanding we can be guarded when we need to be we can be

carefree when we want to be it's important you've spent a great deal of time around a number of effective leaders is what i like to call um because being effective is super important um what have you found to be some of the common behaviors and or attributes of leaders who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time. So this is something, again, our nerdy tendency, we've done research on this. And so there's tons of things that we've shown. But here's, this is some of the ones that we talk about. Wow, you have a PowerPoint ready. We, we, this, I just happened to have this one ready. This is the advantage of a virtual camera, right? You can just do anything you want to. This is, this is, we asked this, this right here is from about two and a half thousand C minus one people in the Futsi and Fortune 250 brackets.

We've asked people who are just underneath the top people, what are the characteristics that make great leaders? And here you are, emotional literacy. And this isn't about warm and fuzzies, by the way. This is about being able to respond appropriately to the emotional state of another person. And we're just, we're in COVID, right? We've seen people's vulnerability and fear and anxiety. Our employees, our colleagues won't go back to being robots. So we need to be able to relate to them as human beings with worries about their childcare and their family

and their insurance and whatever else. Approachability. This is an easy one, people think. But one of the benefits that leaders think of increasing your hierarchy is less contact with the peons. But actually what's required is not huge amounts of time but being able to, if you do have time with people, to make it so that you are not frightening

so that you're someone, because approachability is a business prerogative, by the way. If you're the kind of person that people will tell their doubts to, that is a risk amelioration for a business. So powerful. Then there's trust, there's coaching approach, there's just so much stuff here. But these are the kind of things that,

I mean, that's why I think an evidence-based approach is what helps us because we can suddenly realize this is the weird old world that we're in. Oh, I don't know if I, there we go, get rid of that. There we go, I'm back. But these are the things that matter. These new skills are the ones that make a difference. I've actually got two other things.

We ask people all the time, again, this is a group of C-suite leaders that we asked. What were the skills that got you to be a leader? What were the things that people expected of you when you were going to become a leader? And people said that it was this. Some of these characteristics are ridiculous. For the audio only, can you say some of them? It's charisma. It's confidence, its experience, male, ambition.

Wait, who said this? This is what the CEO said. This is what the CEOs themselves said were the thing. And when you look at this. Chrisma confidence, experience, male, ambition, drive, networking, communication, arrogance, gift of gab, qualifications, assertiveness, decisive, connections, focus, strength. Okay, competitive. Exactly.

It's amazing when you look at the list because so few of those things actually relate to a prediction of future moments. But when you look at what they say they need now, this is even, and many of this room would be what many, many people would mischaracterize as crusty old men. You ask them, what are the new, if they want to succeed in this new, disrupted, crazy world,

what are the characteristics? All of a sudden, vision, empathy, honesty, emotional intelligence, compassion, inclusivity, kindness, transparency, collaboration. They know. This is not even me,

you know, the warm and fuzzy guy, apparently. This is them. They know. This is what's going to make a difference in the future. Could you still get the job

with those qualities, though? Or do you still need those other ones to actually to get there? That's the problem, Ryan, right there. That is exactly it.

It was really unfortunate. You sat there with these leaders because of the nature of the fortune and footsy, mostly these were men.

Many of them said, here's the problem. I want to hire and progress people on this basis. And our system and our boards and our stakeholders still think we should be hiring on who's got the loudest mouth, who's got the biggest black book. Instead of these qualities that will make organizations resilient to what's going on.

There was a McKinsey study that talked about how the future world is going to change, the future world is going to change. It talks about the fact that between 2016 and 2030, between 75 and 375 million jobs globally will shift. Between 75 and 300th. In that environment, being the loudest person in the room is not going to solve it. You've got to have skills to manage people through disruption,

even the disruption of learning that their role won't exist in three years, and if you want to be here, you have to transition to this. Can you talk to me more about your evidence, approach, this analytical style, because this is something that as I look to grow in my business and my role, my primary research done is what I'm doing right now, is talking to a really highly competent leader like yourself, John. But there needs to be more, I think. And can you can, so maybe this is just for me, but I think a lot of people could probably benefit from this. What is your approach? Are you constantly having a team out there, building out,

out the analytics databases, doing research, how does it work? Yeah, so we've got a number of things we do at the same time. I have a geek squad. That is my squad of psychologists. And I hope nobody thinks it's an insult because in my organization, that's the highest compliment that can be paid. So my geek squad is always looking, they do a lot of analytic work themselves, but they're always looking for patterns in that.

And if we see an interesting pattern, we'll then ask for the questions. Patents, yeah. Okay, okay. I thought our English, so I thought you might have said patents, but you said patterns. No, no, not patents. Sorry. It's all good. Patterns in the data. Gotcha. And when we see a pattern, we chase it. We call it chasing the rabbit.

We see if it's going to take us anywhere and if it could be interesting. And the good part is that we have this, because of our clients, we've got access to a really brilliant and representative group of people across almost every sector. And so then we can see if there's differences across sector. We can see if there's differences for different strata. That's what we do. That's the one side of it. The other side of it is that there's a ton of really good research out there.

The problem is that when people try and apply it to business, they apply it like an academic. And we know, your listeners know, their business, when rubber meets the road, it's not just a question of, oh, you should make these five changes. Well, you've got shareholders who wouldn't tolerate that. moves. You've got stakeholders or investors or you've got, I don't know, a shifting business environment that wouldn't allow you to do that. So what we're really good at is saying, right, this is what the research evidence says. This is what our own evidence says. Here's how we use our expertise to make, when rubber meets the road, this will work for you instead of just throwing everything into disarray. And I think that's the approach. It's still pure, in a sense, but it's not just saying,

well, you need to pay everybody X and that'll solve the problem. Because that works well amongst the college students that you probably use for the study. It doesn't work very well in a business. It's different from, yes, we can present the evidence. But then I probably were you add a lot of value in addition to the data and the evidence is saying, we've distilled it. We understand how this works for you, our client, and what you can do then moving forward to make a difference, to improve, to solve the problem or problems that they've come to you with.

Am I right? That's exactly it. It's the nothing is more frustrating to, I mean, we've made this mistake because we are nerds and we love the science bit. But nothing's more frustrating to a client, I think, than presenting them with a 30, 50, 150 page document and not saying, what does this mean for me? Where do I start first? What's the low-hanging fruit?

What's the next priority? based on what we're doing with our business right now, what's the highest priority, instead of just here's a random high priority, based on where the business is now, the disruption that it's facing the next 12 months, this is what you do first. And I think that's what people appreciate.

I want to dig into a few more chapters of the book or promises, I should say, of the book. The book, again, is called The Promises of Giants, how you can fill the leadership void, which is really well done. Love to cover too. I'm going to go to chapter three. I promise to be bold and vulnerable.

What does being bold and vulnerable mean to you? I love this. We really struggled. As I was writing this, my extended team, I was going to them and saying, I don't know how I, do I get two separate chapters? How do I do this?

And they were like, no, stick it together. It does work, right? Boldness in and of itself and on its own is reckless. Just boldness, forging ahead, under all circumstances, can get reckless. It can see risk as another thing to just shoot at instead of realizing there are some risk that we want to avoid. Vulnerability on its own can be meek. It can stop you from achieving what you could achieve, what is a stretch but still doable. You bring the two into common purpose. You bring the two into common purpose. and all of a sudden, in terms of a compromise,

you get a middle ground that isn't, because it isn't average. It's always more. It's a stretch but not a break. It's a risk, but it's a calculated one. And that's what I love. The vulnerability part especially is important here because most leaders are trained on bold being the right default, right?

Loud, assertive, invulnerable, omniscient, know everything. It's the worst kind of leader through the times we're in right now. I think it's always been a bad type. But if you've ever seen, have you ever seen the Blue Planet series? I think in America it's voiced by Oprah. And in the United Kingdom, it's voiced by David Attenborough, very famous natural history person. I have it. Blue Planet. It shows underwater stuff. It's amazing. It always does the scene where it shows the big sharks, usually a big white shark, swimming through the water. It's got its teeth. It's a mouth open. It's showing its teeth. And I look that and everyone's like, I'm sure

that's what leaders think of themselves. This big, solitary, amazing top apex predator. Very intimidating, teeth slightly showing. And that's that picture of boldness that people seem to like. The problem with it is though, you can tell even in the picture in the blue planet, they're always covered with these little tiny fish.

They're called Ramora. They've got sticky heads and they stick to the fish, to the shark. They don't do any harm. They just and drag. And there's the problem with invulnerable leadership it attracts the wrong kind of followers oh yeah these fish will dart out when you make when the fish when the shark makes a kill they'll dart out they'll grab some food and then stick right back on that's what that's the kind of follower that

invulnerable leaders attract people who never think they're going to have to contribute never think they're going to have to pay their own way i want a pod to keep to murder that analogy even further i want a pod i want a crew with me every single one One of them who knows they have to work together if we want to get what we want. Every single one who knows that at any moment you might be the contextual leader. We enter different waters. It might be you, Ryan, instead of me, who leads this. And that's the power of vulnerability.

And that's not meekness. That's not rolling over and saying, I don't have any skills or qualities. It's being able to say, you know what? In this particular environment, I think it's you. I think you're the one who has what it takes to lead at this juncture in this context. I don't know this. My geek squad, they're so brilliant. It's stat stuff.

I'm good at interpreting, but I tell them that when they do this work for us, these analysis processes. I'm like, yeah, it's been so long I've forgotten, but that's not the truth. They know this, actually. I never learned some of the stuff that they know. And so I can sit in true marvel of their skill,

and they sit in marvel of my ability to interpret, and we learn off each other this way. I love it. I promise to reflect your potential. This is Chapter 7. I promise to reflect your potential. What does that mean? Oh, this, I know, when I hear the titles like this of the chapters,

I often think people will understand just how weird and esoteric I am, but that's fine. To reflect your potential, human beings do not realize how much they tell the people around them who they are. We tell each other, especially in reality. workplaces. Each one of us knows what it's like to be seen by a leader who immediately makes you feel small or stupid or incompetent or incapable. And those moments we can get seen by a leader who gives you that look that says that what you just did was awesome. You are amazing at this and you know how it boils you with life. This is old science. 1902 guy called Gerald Cooley.

He's a psychologist. He came up in 1902 with something called the looking glass self, which is the idea that our identity, our understanding of what we're capable of, doesn't just kind of percolate inside of us on her own. It's actually made up of how we see ourselves reflected in the faces of the people around us. As leaders, we can do this for people. We can look at our colleagues, we can look at our peers and our direct reports and make it clear with every look, that we see what they're capable of. This doesn't mean never being disappointed.

This doesn't mean never challenging. It doesn't mean never telling people. You're right at the edge of your competence here. Be careful. But it does mean making sure that when you look at people, you elevate their understanding that they are capable, even if it is with a caveat, if you learn, if you study, if you do this,

then you can do this. Because almost everybody's capable of doing something contributory. It's just a lot of people, they're just so used to being seen as a lot of people. widget. And if you're seen as a widget, at some point you believe it. And I think chapter nine, maybe it relates to this. I promise to deliver timely and effective, again, where I've used effective feedback. Share more about the importance of timely and effective feedback. Yeah. This is, this shouldn't have to be a

chapter, right? We shouldn't have to tell people this. It's amazing, isn't it? Here we are in 2021 with workplaces where I have to say, I think the majority of leaders are incredibly poor at giving timely, effective feedback. We, we, we, we live a system called micro appraisal. That's what we like. The idea that you are, you do something. So this is what happened to me with one of my colleagues, Chris. We were in Canary Wharf. It's the business district in London. One of the business districts in London. And they have the big high rises like in New York and whatever else.

And we're in a meeting. And it's not going how I'd planned. And all of a sudden, my colleague is like, can I just say something? And just whispers it. And it's like, yeah, go for it live. And she goes for it. And the moment she starts talking like, this is not what they want to hear. This is wrong.

This is bad. So I'm now formulating how I'm going to recover the meeting. And all of a sudden, a bloke at the other end of the table, slams his hand down on the table and says, that's it exactly. At which point I'm like, of course, is my brilliant colleague. In the lift on the way down, we did little micro appraisal. It's, you know, 40 floors. I don't know how long it took.

But in there, it's like, what made you think of this question? That was remarkable what you did there. Because I didn't see it. And I'll be honest, when you said it, I thought you were wrong. What made you think of it? We had a little debrief. She said, this is why. They said, what can we learn from this? A, maybe we need to, if you're having these thoughts, I'm not having access to them. We need to talk about how we get that before meetings. And that's a little micro-apraisal. It took one minute in a lift. That was it. And then we disseminated that action so that everybody now knew this is something we're doing. A little pre-meat before a meeting to make sure if anybody's got a thought, it comes out in that moment. They can still own it, right? It's not about stealing it, they still own it, but it makes sure it's in the room always. This kind of ability to, you see something, you know it's important, you comment on it, even if it's tiny and fractional, do that.

The last thing with feedback, and I know this has been overly long on feedback, but it's just, I love it. I love it. No. Feedback's critical, yeah. Is that there's, we have this, if this, this model, the effective feedback model, which is, which is in the book, and it's got a bunch of questions that you can ask yourself when it comes to feedback. And I don't think people realize that not everything people say to each other after something's happened is feedback. Just because you're saying something after you saw something doesn't make it feedback. Feedback is developmental. If it's not developing someone, it's not

feedback. If you say to someone, you know, in your workplace, yeah, you know, that PowerPoint was dead good. That's not feedback. You're simply conveying an opinion. I love. I love it. I love that. You know, the way that you took out all the transitions and kept it really simple, that's feedback. You've told them something about how effective presentations happen in your organization, and you've given them that. The most important thing, the most important question in this list of seven questions is, is it cruel? Because feedback is never cruel. This does not mean feedback never hurts, but feedback is never cruel. Think of it as this difference. American football.

Is it called them? I see, I've lived in America so long, and is it called American football? I don't know. Well, where I'm at is called football, but anyway. There you go. So the NFL type football. Sure.

That right there, you can get a concussion doing that. And it's not hard. But the aim of football is not to deliver a concussion. It is to score a goal. Whatever. I didn't play that spot. A touchdown. A touchdown.

You know what? You wouldn't think I lived in America for 30 years. But anyway, I never saw a football game. Anyway, so that's the goal of it. And that's the difference, right, with feedback. Feedback is developmental. You may, at times, cause someone to feel pain. But that's not the goal of it.

Boxing. The goal of boxing is to deliver a concussion, a brain injury. That's the goal of boxing. That's the difference. We're not trying to administer pain, but in the course of development, there may be pain. That's where to really just understand, if what you're hearing is cruel, it's not feedback. I love it. You have time for one more.

I want to cover one more. Absolutely. Yes, yes, yes. I think it goes along with this. Speaking of pain, I promise to reject excuses and embrace discomfort. Say more, please. So I didn't say this in the book and I should have done, but I'm saying it a lot now. Discomfort is a proxy for inexperties.

We feel discomfort when we don't know stuff or we don't know how to do stuff. And the more we know how to do stuff, the less discomfort we feel. You get really competent and all of a sudden you get comfortable. You get really comfortable and suddenly you feel confident and that's how that builds. But people want to skip. comfort instead of realizing that what I have to do is to get good first. And there's the rub too. And this is something from sport too, in a sense, that most people who've played sports at any high level realize that excellence is in the mundane. Oh, it's not in the touchdown you catch

or the, it's not in the three-pointer at the end of the buzz you score. It's in the hours and hours of meticulous practice that you put in doing stuff that was utterly minding. numbingly boring. Embracing discomfort in order to exceed is the idea that you need to recognize that that mundane stuff that usually nobody witnesses, nobody sees you doing it,

that people will take for granted and imagine is some kind of magical skill that you were born with. And you, and maybe only in you, know that it was you in front of your desk, you in front of the research papers, you in the gym.

That's embracing the discomfort. There is no way I could make it any better than that. I'm going to clip that for sure. Thank you, John. This is amazing. I encourage people to get the book, the promises of giants,

how you can fill the leadership void. It's awesome. And I think we touched, we just scratched the surface of what's, what's in this book. So I encourage people to get it. And John, I just want to say I'm super appreciative of the care. Your preparation, you got your powerpoint slides here,

which is the first. By the way, in 400, whatever episodes of these where they actually brought them up. So this will be on YouTube too. So you can watch it on YouTube and actually see John go to work and get a little mini keynote. It was awesome. I really appreciate it, man.

And I don't know if you ever come stateside or if I'm going to be on your side of the pond, but I would love to continue this dialogue as we both progress, man. Let's make sure we do that. Thank you, Ryan. All right. Thanks so much, John. Take care. This is another example of why kidding to have this platform of my podcast is

so cool. I feel so grateful to be able to have a long-form, deep conversation with such a thoughtful leader like John Amici. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. A few of my notes. Excellence is in the mundane, the hours and hours of work when nobody is watching. This part was so true and it has that compounding effect if you're willing to do the work day after day. And day, it compounds over time. Excellence is in the mundane. And then effective feedback. If it's not developing them, it's not feedback. And feedback is never cruel and always ask the question, what can we learn from this? And I love that story he told about the meeting with his colleague when he thought she messed up when in all actuality, she was the reason the meeting went so well.

And they had that feedback session in the lift or the elevator afterwards to deconstruct what went well, why and what they could learn from it. But good, good part of the conversation on feedback. And then sustained excellence. When he shared the PowerPoint slide, if you watch it on YouTube, you can see it, he brought it up. The evidence-based traits he shared from his work, emotional literacy, approachability, trust, coaching approach, supportive, empowering, clarity, and direction, recognition,

and positivity. John has obviously done the work to better understand. the common behaviors and traits and virtues of leaders who sustain excellence. This is why I think he's a valuable person to listen to as well as follow more of his work. 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 John Amici. It'll help you become a more effective leader.

And because you continue to do that, because you continue to write reviews, and rate the show, hopefully five stars on Apple Podcast. You continue to give 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 this soon. Can't wait.