Why Most Leaders Fail (And How to Fix It) | Adaptive Leadership with Dr. Melanie Buford

In this powerful episode of Diversity Conversations, we explore why most leaders fail — and what it actually takes to fix it.

We sit down with leadership consultant and talent expert Dr. Melanie Buford to unpack one of the most misunderstood challenges in organizations today:

👉 Leadership problems are rarely technical… they’re human.

 ✨ “You can’t solve people problems with technical solutions.” — Dr. Melanie Buford 

From adaptive vs. technical challenges to the hidden cost of poor leadership, this conversation dives deep into what truly drives performance, culture, and sustainable success.

Dr. Buford shares her insights on:

•  Why organizations struggle to develop effective leaders 
•  The difference between technical problems and adaptive challenges 
•  How personality, talent, and systems shape leadership outcomes 
•  The role of feedback, belief systems, and emotional intelligence 
•  How social media and modern communication impact decision-making 
•  Why reflection and pause are critical for growth in today’s fast-paced world 

This episode is a must-listen for leaders, entrepreneurs, and organizations ready to move beyond surface-level solutions and create meaningful, lasting change.

🌐 Learn more about Dr. Melanie Buford’s work:
 👉 www.draftanddirection.com

🎙️ Diversity Conversations is a weekly live show where we explore leadership, inclusion, and real-world solutions to today’s most complex challenges.

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Because leadership isn’t about having all the answers…
 …it’s about asking better questions.

leadership development, adaptive leadership, talent development, emotional intelligence, leadership coaching, organizational culture, diversity leadership, systems thinking, leadership skills, workplace culture, personal development, executive coaching, feedback in leadership, business leadership, Diversity Conversations

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:03

Welcome to Diversity Conversations, where we engage in thought-provoking dialogue to identify leadership solutions to today's most challenging conflicts. Stream live each week, Saturday, 9 30 a.m. to 11 a.m., hosted by Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategists and CEOs Eric Ellis and Tommy Lewis. Join us and add your voice to this engaging diversity conversation.

SPEAKER_05 0:32

Good morning, Greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, the United States, and the world. My name is Eric Ellis, and I'm the president and CEO of Integrity Development Corporation, and I'm joined this morning by my good friend and my brother, Tommy Lewis, president and CEO of Make It Plain Consulting.

SPEAKER_04 0:49

Good morning, Eric. Good morning, Tommy. How are you, my friend? I'm doing I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Eric, I've been uh suffering from a little bit of laryngitis this past week, uh, but it did not stop me from taking a vacation, actually an anniversary getaway with my wife here in Tampa, Florida. So good morning.

SPEAKER_05 1:12

Outstanding. Good for you, man. How's the weather there?

SPEAKER_04 1:15

Yeah, well, we when we started the show uh pre-show, Eric, I was outside, had a beautiful uh layout outside the backdrop. Uh it's in it's about 80 degrees, and within 10 minutes, I realized it was 80 degrees outside. And so I've come inside. But it's beautiful in Florida, the entire state of Florida. Uh, we're supposed to get some a little wind, some rain just to cool it down to about 75 degrees, but it's great. And we're here, Eric, in uh Tampa, Florida, uh, to go to eat. There's a restaurant called Burns Steakhouse, and uh it is beautiful. It's beautiful. So it's one of the most renowned restaurants in the world. It has the largest wine cellar in the world for active restaurants. It's called Burns, and we're gonna enjoy this three-hour dining experience.

SPEAKER_05 2:16

Wow, man, that is powerful. Make sure you like the young people, take a lot of pictures of the food and the environment, and maybe we can do some show and tell with our community next week of this amazing restaurant that you're attending.

SPEAKER_04 2:30

Yeah, I'll have to I don't have to send folks down here, Eric. I I don't really take pictures of my food or anything. Uh so not not to be that way, but I I always say if you don't want folks on Instagram, no, no, no. I I I enjoy the moment when I'm present. And I tell my family and friends, say, hey, if you want to go to Italy, if you want to go to uh uh Japan, if you want to go to South Beach, Florida, right? You go.

SPEAKER_05 2:58

Right and enjoy the experience. And that's one of the criticisms that the research says about this generation that too often, if you're too busy photographing it, you're missing the experience. So uh glad you're not missing the experience. Uh Tommy, how was your week?

SPEAKER_04 3:16

My week was good, Eric. We are doing a lot of uh preparing for RFPs, requests for proposals. We're excited about our process to identify proposals for RFPs, create the proposal, the response, and get those out to potential clients. And so the our system of uh uh you know really creating those proposals has been streamlined. And then, secondly, we're still in the process of moving our office. So we're scheduled to move in the next six weeks to our new facility, which we're very, very excited about. And so between kind of purging a few things, um, I threw away some paperwork that I had since 1983. Uh I like oh yeah, I like to hold on to every record. In fact, we're leveraging a uh vendor to digitize all of our paperwork because I'm a paper person. And uh so we're excited about that. So the week has been good, and and then uh yeah, off to Florida. I went.

SPEAKER_05 4:23

Good. I had a uh a good week as well, Tommy. Uh every week's a good week. Uh, I'm grateful for the work that we do. Uh had a chance to talk to a potentially new client that's connected to some of the largest uh corporations in the world that value inclusion and that kind of thing. And so we had a powerful conversation and uh just glad to be continuing to learn and grow. Uh, I think I mentioned last week that I've uh come up with an invention called uh Zero Footprint. Uh and it is uh something that I personally was interested in, you know, as I look at trying to find uh easier ways to do exercise and to work on cardio. I came up with this invention that is uh something that allows you to sort of work on cardio like a bicycle, uh, but also it's combined with a carry-on uh sort of bag so that travelers that go places all the time that they can just have their cardio and their one night outfit in the same clamshell kind of device that they can roll through the uh airport, or you could use it uh from home to office, or there may be even seniors that are interested in it. And so I also had a chance to meet with an uh potential investor who was very uh you know impressed with this uh invention. And Tommy, I love saying the word invention because it is something that I have thought about for decades as an ADHD person who is not an engineer. Uh, you have a lot of ideas, but now uh AI has afforded us the opportunity to now uh work together, collaborate with AI to put together the technical aspects of an inventory. So I'm just delighted at the process. And Tommy, for me, just new learning, new opportunities. Uh it's just exciting. I'm grateful to be alive during this time, and I refuse to have anything distract me from uh the wonderful opportunities that exist in front.

SPEAKER_04 6:42

I'm happy about that, Eric invention. And uh we have a special guest today, but I wanted to say that uh I'm in the hotel here in Tampa, and uh I am using my cell phone this morning to join the conversation. And my cell phone is actually on the table centerpiece, which is uh a flower kind of piece with some branches, and uh I could imagine that uh this is not new, but someone said, man, if there was a device, an invention that could hold a cell phone up uh that was mobile and was a very larger, etc., uh, that that we would invented. So necessity is the mother of invention. And our our our guest today is uh is is a person who I've known for almost a decade. Uh, in my opinion, very lively and spirited, very intelligent person. But uh I have seen uh from afar uh this person reinvent themselves, you know, stay true to themselves, but to continue to reinvent themselves. And before we bring up our guest, Eric, I do want to invite our community, as always, to like and subscribe and keep joining us every Saturday morning. In some cases, for others, it's evening or even afternoon, but every Saturday for these diversity conversations. So I if you don't mind, Eric, I'll bring our guest to the stage, Dr. Melanie Bufer, uh, who is a uh a site for sore eyes and energy, uh a mover and a shaker. Good morning, Dr. Bufer.

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Good morning. I appreciate y'all having me on.

SPEAKER_04 8:30

Absolutely. How how are you and where are you? Are you in are you in a hotel as well?

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Um not in a hotel. I'm actually staying with family. Um I'm in Miami, Florida. So it is, yeah, it's a beautiful morning. I am uh I'm living well, so I have no complaints.

SPEAKER_04 8:54

Now, now are you originally from Florida or tell us a little bit more about you?

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Yep. Yeah, so I'm originally from Cincinnati. Um, and yeah, I grew up in Cincinnati and then I went to college on the East Coast. So I was in New England for let's see, four years there. Um, then I went kind of everywhere. I I did uh stent abroad in Denmark, I did a few years in San Francisco, um, did AmeriCorps service out there. Uh, then I came back and I went to uh I got a master's back on the East Coast in Boston. Then I did uh I was in Middletown, Connecticut. I worked at my own college Wesleyan as a career advisor for a time. Then I came back to Cincinnati and yep, worked at University of Cincinnati as a career advisor again for about five years. Then I went to Minnesota for five years and worked at University of Minnesota and uh then came back to Cincinnati again. So I am um on vacation in Miami at the moment, but I'm actually based out of Cincinnati.

SPEAKER_05 10:05

Melanie, are you connected with the Buford family here?

SPEAKER_01 10:09

I am, yes.

SPEAKER_05 10:10

Yes, that's connected to uh Dr. Odell Owens, who's no longer with us.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Yep, yes, was he very close to your father or yeah, so yeah, so my dad, Calvin, um grew up in Cincinnati and whole families there. I know him very much. Yeah, they're we move around, yeah. Yeah, people tend to know the name. Um, my yes, my my father's brother, Odell was my father's brother, so they were quite close, yes. Right, uh right, yeah, yeah, he was amazing. We were you know super hard to lose him a couple years ago. Um but yeah, my dad is Calvin, my mom is Helen, uh the two of them. Yeah, they they they know a lot of folks. It's cute.

SPEAKER_04 10:53

Oh my and your mom went to Harvard as well, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:56

She did, yeah. So so both my parents went to Harvard, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 10:58

So yeah, yep, and me.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

So it's a whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 11:03

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Um, yep. So my mom, my mom went for business, and my dad went for um, he actually got a joint law and policy degree.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

So it's an MPP J D combo, yeah. Yeah, uh, yeah. Between the three of us, we've hit almost all of their graduate schools, it feels like.

SPEAKER_05 11:26

And that kind of opens up the the sort of the door for uh we love to have our guests sort of introduce them to our community by describing the people and life experiences that have made them who they are today. And so we've already begun some of that work, but if you wouldn't mind just sort of introducing yourself to our community in terms of your family, your upbringing, the values that you grew up with alike.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Sure. Yes. So um I have had a long and winding uh professional journey. And um I'll just give you the present. I am um I at the moment own a consulting company. We do leadership uh consulting, leadership coaching, and talent development for organizations as well. So um I like to say my, you know, my focus at the moment is kind of like spotting talent, you know, finding talent and understanding talent, studying talent, and getting things out of the way of talent is kind of the way that I like to frame it. Um so that's my work right now. Um I spent 10 years in higher education before this. And um then before that, I was uh in community engage, like community activism. I started AmeriCorps and um worked for a number of nonprofits. Yeah. Um it was it's been a cool, I've had a cool journey. Um, I think it, you know, my in terms of my family, um, you know, my family is like super value driven. I think it's easy to maybe say. And um, you know, they they one of the big things in terms of values was just education was huge. Like there was a really, really heavy emphasis on going to school, you know, um, taking school seriously, thinking about how education can really open up pathways um to serve, you know. And I think it was, you know, for for my um sort of my grandparents' level, I think it was really rooted in their um spiritual beliefs that like education was part of their kind of integrated in their spirituality that you, you know, you learn and you serve effectively. And so they did a lot of community engagement, community service. Um, you know, for me, I guess that translated into spending a lot of years in school. Um, you know, uh, just like a number of years that I don't want to count anymore. Uh, but um, you know, yeah, my my parents, you know, spent a lot put a lot of emphasis on education. They wanted me to get out of Cincinnati and um kind of you know travel to other locations to um do do do college and do graduate school because I think they wanted me to just have more expo exposure to other areas, other ways, ways of thinking. They both went to school on the East Coast. And so um, yeah, it was interesting. So I think they for them, you know, education was really important, service was really important, hence perhaps my AmeriCorps term after I graduated. And um, I think the other thing that they might, I don't know if they would say it as such, but I think integrity has been really important for them and and making sure to do the do the right thing, even when it's difficult. And I didn't think that's not something I thought about a lot until I, you know, started working and started seeing that I felt this like strong sense of this is the right thing to do and this is you know not the right thing to do. And that started to come up for me. And I think I am now able to trace it back to family values, you know, that like discerning the right thing can be quite tough, especially today when we have about every message we could possibly be bombarded with in every direction. So um, so for me, those are some of the some of the you know family values that came up, but spent, you know, knew I wanted to go into education, eventually figured that out, I should say, after after graduating. Um, did a like cool um apprenticeship at the National Underground Railroad Freedom uh Center in Cincinnati when I was in high school. That's when folks started saying, you know, you should be an educator. You seem to really like teaching and learning. And um, so I kind of got on that path. And you know, that's that's been the been more or less the story ever since.

SPEAKER_05 15:52

Awesome. When did you uh serve as an intern at the uh Underground Railroad Freedom Center? I was on the board there. Was Odell on the board?

SPEAKER_01 16:01

He was not, no. Okay, um, nope. This was so it's going back a while.

SPEAKER_05 16:06

It's gonna be 2004, I want to say, is probably a board member there. John Pepper was yeah, yeah. Yeah, John Pepper was there. I don't think Ed Rigo was there at that at that point.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Uh, I think maybe so. Okay, I seem to recall he was involved. Yeah, it so I was, you know, when the Freedom Center opened, I was in the the inaugural class of youth docent.

SPEAKER_05 16:29

Yeah, yeah. So we heard a lot about the program.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Yeah, yeah. So we were the first first group. It was very, very cool. Just like luck with the timing. But yes, 2004 to 2005. Um, I did that, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 16:42

Right. If you could also talk about the AmeriCorps experience, because people have heard about it, but I'm not sure very many people are familiar with uh what the organization does and how it affects people's lives in such powerful ways.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

Yep. Uh I could talk about that for a while. I'll keep I'll keep it brief. Um yeah, AmeriCorps is hugely, hugely embedded in our service sector, like the public sector, in so many ways that it is like inextricable from like our social infrastructure at this point. Um there are hundreds, I think hundreds still of AmeriCorps programs and um, or I should say AmeriCorps affiliated programs. So some are kind of directly under the AmeriCorps umbrella, some are more kind of connected or receive funding or are you know connected in some way to AmeriCorps. I did a program called Public Allies, which is um a national program. They have sites all over the country. Um, I actually even now am working with them as a client. I do leadership training for their their ongoing classes and like hugely love that organization, had some amazing connections out of that. Um I did the program in 2010. 2010. So again, it's been a while, but um I did the I did the San Francisco Silicon Valley site. So I was actually on the on the West Coast doing that. And we had 40, uh, 40 of us who were very excited and um wanted to like make a difference and engage in service in a different way. And we all had different majors and backgrounds. Some of us had gone to college, some of us had not. We had all these different experiences, we had business owners, and you know, it was a very, very cool group of people. And our so the structure was a, you know, just this particular program actually places you with a local nonprofit. Many AmeriCorps programs do, but this one was a kind of leadership training model where they actually place you at a nonprofit site. And so you get uh what's called an apprenticeship experience four days a week. And then on Friday you do training that they provide and a pretty large-scale community service project as a team. And so it's sort of a it's a very, very cool design, but you essentially get like a you know high-level nonprofit apprenticeship where you're doing really cool work with a local organization and you get training um to be ultimately sort of geared toward nonprofit leadership. Yeah. And you then engage in like multiple service opportunities or some weekend service and so ton of hours, very intense. Um, it's not for the fange of heart, but it was um just a very, very cool training ground if you want to engage in anything related to public service or um really working with people in any way. So it was it was a very, very cool experience. Um, yeah, I met a ton of people through that and have continued to stay in touch with most of them.

SPEAKER_03 19:50

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 19:51

And that's what I was going to ask with that experience. Do you stay in touch with them? Uh, and I would imagine is is AmeriCorps only in the US or is it global?

SPEAKER_01 20:04

So that you don't quote me, but I'm I'm I think I think AmeriCorps is um US-based. I think it's it's national. There are other programs that are sort of similar. Um, so Peace Corps, for instance, is an international arm where you actually travel abroad and engage in service. AmeriCorps, I believe all of them, all the AmeriCorps programs are local to the or you know, to the US. Um, but again, there are so many different programs. They're all, you know, there are teaching programs and there are sort of like City Year is a related service program. We've got Teach for America, sort of a related service program. And so they're all kind of related and have slightly different structures. But yeah, AmeriCorps, to my knowledge, is mostly well, I should say AmeriCorps, most AmeriCorps programs, if not all, are based in the US. I want to say it's all, but I don't want to get in trouble. Eric, I can't hear you.

SPEAKER_05 21:09

Oh, that's because I muted myself.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 21:13

When people ask you what you do, uh, what do you lead in as you describe kind of the work that you do?

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Yeah. Um so almost to a fault, my work tends to be all over the place.

SPEAKER_05 21:29

It's been like no problem.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

Yeah, it's been a like a lifelong challenge trying to distill what I'm doing into something simple. Um, but I the the one I think binding agent, let's call it call it that, is that I'm really interested in what makes people special and what their unique talents are. And so, you know, the the sort of tagline for the business that I have is leadership development. Um, because that is intentionally broad and includes things like personality assessment. So actually, my like I would it's maybe fair to say my main passion is actually personality science and personality assessment.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:14

Um, I I've spent a lot of time on that. I have uh multiple certifications and personality instrument instruments, and I'm trying to get more. So um a lot of my time is spent on personality theory. And then I have this sort of um second line that's around career development that I've been doing for pretty much every second since I've been working. Um, so I really, really love career development. I love the economy and looking at like economic trends and trying to understand what's happening with work because it's you know, it seems to be changing faster and faster every day. Um then I have kind of an arm um that's leadership specific. This, you know, the kind of third area. And so I do I coach executives, I coach um entrepreneurs who are trying to launch businesses and kind of grow them. And so, like it's kind of leadership, career, personality are kind of my things.

SPEAKER_05 23:17

I love that, I love it all.

SPEAKER_01 23:19

And my yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 23:20

So it's it's it's my question is uh what kind of games do you play with yourself? I I I would imagine that you look at people and you sort of uh does that personality actually fit that career? Uh as you look at leadership development, uh, you certainly can be very helpful for organizations that are trying to understand if they have their leaders in the right places. Uh, my experience is that that's you know, you've heard people say that employees don't leave companies, they leave bad leaders. Uh according to Gallup's work, maybe 10 to 15% are great, and then 25 to 30 percent are good, and then a bunch of average and poor leaders.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 24:00

Uh why is it that we have such mediocre leaders in organizations? And companies, in my view, tend to focus more on the work, products, and services, and they see the people skills, the leadership skills, the essential skills, uh, they don't seem to invest as much uh time in that in that space. How would you what would you say to an organization to sort of help convince them that it's uh it's as important for them to apply operational disciplines, the same ones that they do to work, that they begin to apply those to the people side and the leadership side?

SPEAKER_01 24:42

Mm-hmm. That's a big question, and it's a great question. Uh it's really the question that one can even say. So I think there's I think there's a lot that goes into this. Um one thing that that I might use, kind of a framework that I might use to help talk to someone about this. So there's a fairly simple leadership concept, right? So the difference between technical problems and adaptive problems, and I imagine y'all may have heard this given your work. But, you know, there really are some problems that are more technical in nature. That is to say, that they are, um they may be easily isolated. You can really figure out what exactly is the problem fairly quickly. You can implement, you can throw money at it. You know, you can fund a technical solution or a new technology or shift something very specific and simple in the organization to address it, right? Like technical problems. We we like technical problems because they make sense, they're easy to talk about. They can, we, oh my gosh, we have this new solution and we can just do it and it costs this much money and the problem will be solved. And people are like, yes, this is wonderful. You know, adaptive problems are complicated, they are embedded in systems, they are uh they come and form and grow over time like a snowball, you know. They are um multifaceted, they they're not easily isolated, they they touch different departments and people and they shift our ways of thinking, you know. There are there are challenges that are just much more complex to address, to identify, much less to solve in any kind of sustainable way. And so I think that the bottom line, you know, ignoring all the other millions of complicated factors, the bottom line is that it's people, I think leaders are um chasing technical problems that they that they can feel good about addressing quickly, you know, um, and operational problems to your point. And I think the trickier, stickier, kind of more complex challenges that don't have as clear of a solution, that it actually takes time to design a solution and then implement it, that it like you know, these systems problems are just a little bit more intimidating. And, you know, frankly, people are a people are a system problem. Yeah, people like improving leadership is an adaptive problem, it's not a technical problem. So, you know, you can't throw a one-hour course at, you know, an ineffective leader and expect it to change overnight. And so I think it's just I think people are genuinely kind of stimmied to use a dramatic word, by like what to do about adaptive problems. And, you know, if you study personality, you study social science, it people are very complicated. They adapt quickly to new situations, they have all kinds of coping mechanisms in place. Often they bring uh emotional hangups and you know, pre-what we would call pre-occupations to work. And you know, that it it some of this stuff is deeply rooted, either patterns, they they go back years and years and years, and it takes time to like unearth them again, much less actually change, change them. And so that that takes significant investment, and I think you know that can be yeah, it can be a little daunting, and so it can sometimes just be easier to focus on technical problems.

SPEAKER_05 28:29

Right. I'm gonna let's bring up Terry Cooley's question that he has for you.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

But I am uh uh Yeah, I think uh I think he's asking about AmeriCorps. We got some sound stuff going on.

SPEAKER_05 28:45

Yeah, so let me we since we can't find his whole question, let me ask you a follow-up question on the conversation we were having.

unknown 28:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Melanie. Actually, I can actually uh answer the first part if you'd like. Um, I think, yeah, I think Terrence was asking about uh my AmeriCorps program. It was Public Allies, it's in uh it was actually in NorCal. So it was in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, so it was not in LA. Although I do think there is an LA-based public allies program, I think they may have it there. And um, Public Allies partners with several nonprofits. So I'm guessing they have a connection to at least one organization that works with the foster care system. So if you want to look into public allies, go crazy. It's a it's a great program. And if you have an organization working with foster youth and you want to connect them to public allies to set up an apprenticeship, that is something they will often do as well.

SPEAKER_05 29:39

That's awesome. I'm so glad you can.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

Just some context for that.

SPEAKER_05 29:42

Yeah, Terry Cooley is one of my best friends on planet Earth. We were college roommates. He's in LA, he's a foster dad. He has three boys that uh he's raising and just a phenomenal foster dad. And so I know he's looking at uh ways of maybe connecting them with AmeriCorps, you know, he's just passionate in that way. The follow-up question that I had was given the complexities that you described around leadership and the adaptive uh elements that uh you know that affect that, uh how do you ever get organizations uh interested in even diving into those deep waters? What have you seen as some of the most effective strategies to enroll an organization to try to better understand that element of the work that is happening?

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Yep. Yeah, it's another good question. I think that the so I'm gonna use an analogy, uh, which is school system reform. Okay, just to make it like really daunting. Um yeah, it's terrifying. Quite frankly, it terrifies me. The the people who are out there doing school system reform, like, God bless them, because it is that is truly difficult work. Um, because they're so large and so complex, and children are on the line. I mean, I can't even, you know. Um, but one of the lessons I heard years ago about school system reform is that it it takes time, you know, it's it's truly an adaptive process. And and I think everyone, is this fair to say, everyone who does it knows and goes in expecting that like shifting a school system takes time, money, it has to be multifaceted, it's multi-stage, you have to hit multiple schools, you have to hit multiple levels of multiple organizations. I mean, it's very, very complex work. And I think you know, shifting leadership capacity is what I would call it, is very similar. You, you know, you in order to shift an organization, shift its leaders, you know, change the way that the levels of the organization interact with each other. Even for a small organization, there are a couple of things that I do that are very specific. I love that comment. Um, yeah, that's real. Sorry. Uh yeah, school reform is is a whole thing, and it's um so complex. Whole thing. Okay. Um, but to but the leadership piece. So, you know, a couple things I think really, really help strategically. One is you have to start with research. Like you have to start with some curiosity-based actual interrogation of what is going on in this system and why is it that way? Like that, those two questions take a lot of time. So you so I start all of my engagements, like my recommended structure, and I do think there needs to be structure for leadership shifts. Start with research, start with listening session, like dig as much as you can to try to understand why this, why these leaders are engaging this way. And I think speaking to your earlier question about why bad leadership happens, one of the factors is who are you promoting? You know, like like what capacities do you value and are you centering in your organization and who is is moving into leadership, you know, positions, that that may feel organic and it may be organic, but that speaks a lot to what you then will see from your leaders, right? Like if you value someone who can speak well and convince people of things, for instance, then you know, when you study talent, you know that sometimes people who can speak well and convince people of things may have some gaps around skills that are more about detail, follow-through, you know, like like these things, you know, like um empathy, making thoughtful, well-reasoned, slow decisions, you know, sometimes these skills are, you know, tend to oppose in personalities. So I think part of it is you really have to assess why what's going on and why might that be going on. So I have a whole model for that, just for the research part and kind of the data gathering at the beginning of the structure. Then um, I recommend what I call a hybrid approach. So a combination of training and coaching. You know, it usually getting everyone on the same page with an initial training engagement is really, really helpful so that people can understand what's happening, what we're doing, why we're doing it. We can give people some language for thinking about the process. I usually like to use this comes from my kind of research side, but I like to use a framework. So Clifton strengths can be a framework for shifting leadership. Myers Briggs can be a framework for shifting leadership. You know, there's a lot of different frameworks, but some kind of framework to give people a lens so that they have some language to hold on to and we can begin to have different conversations and see things a particular way. Yeah, it's can be helpful. Then coaching, like individualized coaching, is I think really critical to the process so that people, individuals can actually be seen and heard. The person who's doing the change can get a sense of what where everyone is, not just folks at the top. Um, you start to hear things like, well, I feel like this organization only values X, you know, and then you're like, oh yeah, that explains why X is driving the organization, you know. Um, so that coaching piece, individualized with leaders in particular, can be really helpful. Um, so you usually try to do like, I would recommend a couple of those touch points and then a closing training piece. Um, this is kind of the minimal, but a closing training piece so that again you can present back. This is a concept called action research or community engaged research where you present back your conclusions to the group and let them tear it apart. Because you the last thing you want to do is come in with recommendations that you know have no one has seen but you, and you know, they write like you they may be off base and then it's a mess, and you know, um, give them a chance to have input on the conclusions, and then you close out with some kind of debrief, right? Presenting back, and you I try to leave organizations with some actual data and strategies that they can then pursue, but optimally, like an engagement like that should be multiple months, so yeah.

SPEAKER_05 36:41

That was gonna be yeah, that was gonna be my follow-up question. Tommy, we not hearing you. Tommy, we're not able to hear you.

SPEAKER_01 36:59

Yeah, something's going on with your audio.

SPEAKER_05 37:03

Right. We can't hear you. Yeah. Uh let me ask you this question, uh Melanie, because my my sense is from the work that I do that uh the the kind of solution that you're talking about actually takes time. And uh most organizations are uh uh that's what they have uh lack of is is time. They spend all the time they have on doing the work or delivering the services. Uh, if you don't have senior leadership that really understands the value of this, usually their value uh is connected to a problem. So if they have a major blow-up or problem, then that's when they're looking for people like you and us. But uh do you ever really uh help people to understand honestly the kind, the level of commitment that could be necessary in order to bring about change? I find that uh oftentimes when we do uh training sessions, uh people use them, they see them as events. And so they attend the event, uh, but then they don't do the requisite follow-up that's necessary for any of those skills to be applied. So, what are the kind of clients that you work best with? How do you get a client? I mean, if you if you shared with them what was really necessary, sometimes that just might scare them all away. Uh, their bias around consultants is that we're always trying to live with them forever. Uh, but the fact of the matter is they do need somebody to live with them for a while. So, how are you balancing those things uh as you are uh coming to an engagement?

SPEAKER_02 38:51

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

It's a great question. I think the sort of elephant in the room is um the inherent incentive toward competition in our workplaces. Like there, there is, and I just want to transparently name like capitalism is such that you know organizations are trying to grow and they're trying to compete. And I think there's a there's a fairly reasonable concern about pausing to engage with something complicated. Like I do think that, yeah, there's you know the solution to what you're describing is that you know, you actually do need to take time. It's not you can't just throw money at a problem. There also has to be attention and energy um put toward the problem. And I do think that that, you know, a lot of times people will look at their calendar and they'll say, okay, we can do this. You know, let's even if they genuinely want to do it, a lot of people genuinely want this stuff, but they, you know, they're like, We okay, we have this time to do this, you know. And a lot of them are just trying to initiate the process because they know that if they don't do it now, it's never gonna happen. But then they don't necessarily, they haven't necessarily had the capacity to plan out the energy and attention that it's gonna take, even if they've carved out a little bit of time.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:20

And so I do think that is that has to be transparently part of the conversation. And I think you can, you know, you can be honest in the sense that you can say, you know, we could do it either way. We know we we could do this in a way that's going to be more efficient, but your results may not be as transformational and sustainable as you want them to be. Right. Or, you know, if if it if it's going to be effective, we have to create some actual structure and some space for people to be able to integrate what they're learning.

SPEAKER_02 40:58

Right.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

And because grasping a concept takes this much time, but actually then sitting with that concept takes quite a bit more time. And so that is part of the process. I think it's, you know, being direct with people that this is an engage, this is an investment of funds and energy.

unknown 41:18

Right.

SPEAKER_05 41:18

And attention. For me, I have been working with organizations for over three decades. And there are a couple of things that I see that I think create challenges for them. Uh, number one, I don't believe that organizations they value leadership, the voices of leaders more than the voices of the people. So I think that that's one challenge that exists. Uh, number two, I don't find people in general as being super open to feedback. And so because they struggle with feedback and they have many opportunities to shoot the messenger, uh, I find that that can be kind of a challenge. I just created a 360 instrument with one of our clients. And what I decided to do was the first year, let's just allow the leaders to select their raiders so that it's not them feeling like they were ambushed. They get a chance to select the raiders, which oftentimes uh it gives them some constructive feedback, but it gives them a lot of positive and encouraging feedback. What are you seeing in the space of feedback? Uh are you also seeing this bias toward leadership and away from the voices of the people? How do you navigate uh those challenges in ways that help people to see the value of enrolling in this and investing the time?

SPEAKER_01 42:49

Yep. Yep. Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 42:55

I think that's that's my challenge everywhere we go, right?

SPEAKER_01 42:58

Um, well, here's the thing. Okay, look, I I think the most useful feedback model I have, and it's super simple, is it's it comes out of um adaptive leadership, the adaptive leadership framework. Um it's like High Fitz and Linsky. Uh I don't even know when, I think it was probably like maybe 10, 15, maybe even 20 years ago now. Um, but they there's a model called the first part of the model is observation interpretation. And that two kind of two hit combo to me is like the most useful way to think about feedback. That is to say, what have we seen? What you know, what have we noticed? And what can we, how can we interpret why that's happening? And it's almost like a research. You know, that's why I love the connection between, you know, re academic research even and leadership. But there is like, I think you still With okay, here's what people have noticed, not here's what we think you're doing, here's what we think you're intending, here's what we think this means or will produce. Just what have we noticed, you know? And if you start by trying to separate out the interpretations from what you're observing, it can allow room for curiosity about why someone's doing what they're doing. So, like, I mean, really, the it sounds like what it works. So, like, if you, for example, you know, you see somebody, I mean, this happens all the time. Humans we we we jump so quickly from observation to interpretation. Right. When I practice this with like C-suite executives, they can't, they like they're so used to being able to moving quickly, making quick decisions, you know, being confident. They have to, you know, the pressure. Like it is genuinely hard for people to separate observation from interpretation. So for example, you know, hey, what like they'll be like, well, my um, oh my gosh, the board doesn't trust me, right? They'll just throw that out there. And a lot of the time they're right. But you know, let's if if we if we unpack, okay, what have you noticed that has led you to that interpretation? Because they don't trust me as an interpretation, it's not an observation. So, you know, trying to walk back, well, in in this meeting, they this this one person said X. It's like, okay, what are some possible reasons why that person said X? You know what I mean? Let let's just, for the sake of argument, let's generate some possibilities around why that might be happening. That can often deactivate some of the tension around, you know, oh my god, they hate me. And I, you know, all the kind of spiraling interpretations. And it can sometimes slow down the some of the, you know, for lack of another term, emotional baggage that comes with feeling like you are the person, you know, the leadership is hard. It's hard. So I think that that model can help with what you're describing.

SPEAKER_05 46:18

Let me ask you this, and uh because some comments too.

SPEAKER_01 46:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 46:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Yep. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Yep, belief systems are are a big part of it. And we we have them, you know, and a lot of times we don't know we have them until they're coming out and affecting our decisions. And I I think a lot of the the pace and the pressure of the way we work and the way organizations work, people don't have a lot of incentive to slow down and unpack some of that.

SPEAKER_05 46:47

Right. What impact do you think the way that we're seeing communication happen in social on social media? How is that affecting our openness to become curious? Because what we're seeing right now is the algorithms keep feeding us things that we value. And I was just uh at a uh a bar, uh, you know, a sports bar yesterday watching a ball game. There was a guy there, super nice guy. We were having a great conversation, but all of a sudden, when it went to politics out of the nowhere, he brought up something, it sort of hijacked his entire brain. And so when I think about uh people hearing feedback and deciding if there's any, you know, ability to validate that, it seems like we're so rehearsed today by having our own thinking and stereotyping anything that's not like how we see it. So are you are you finding any impact that that's having on people and their openness to be more curious? And if so, how are you helping them navigate that?

SPEAKER_01 48:00

Mm-hmm. Uh that's another big question.

SPEAKER_05 48:04

Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

No, don't apologize. Great questions. I mean, this is these are again like the questions. I think social media, I think, in my opinion, social media is very mixed. And it's mixed in the sense that I have seen a lot of good come out of it.

SPEAKER_05 48:24

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 48:25

Um, especially for in the way that it democratizes, sort of democratizes access to uh information and people's lived experiences. Like that is is one of its, I think, most profound contributions. Like communities that could not see themselves can now find spaces where they can process things that are difficult. Like that is incredible. Um, and uh all around the world, like with access to people that they would never have been able to connect with. So I think that's incredible. Um, there are many, many downsides and and well-documented downsides to various forms of social media, all kinds of mental health impacts, you know.

SPEAKER_04 49:10

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 49:11

Um yeah, and and we're finally, you know, we're finally seeing some legislation actually try to grapple with that, which I think is is cool. Um in terms of the way it kind of shapes thinking, I think one of the problems is that it because social, you know, social media um platforms themselves are companies and themselves like they are incentivized to grow and to, to your point, like to stay with, you know, they're they're trying to stay with you. They want, they they're designed to be deliberately kind of addictive and try to engage you and feed you dopamine and keep, you know, make you feel good so that you stay engaged. I mean, the way that don't even get me started on the way that like large language models and artificial intelligence engines are trying literally like, and what do you think about that? Like they're you know, it is genuinely hard to break off a conversation with absolutely because you want the answer to the next question, yes, and it and they're they're playing on our our human tendency to personify things and feel like we're being rude if we're just like, okay, I'm gonna ignore you, you know, like the whole thing about people saying thank you to AI engines, which actually I think can be a good practice for us anyway. But you know, like social media is designed to hold you, to hold your attention and really not to give you any space to think or pause or disengage. And, you know, to our earlier conversation, like disengagement is part of what creates opportunities for creativity and growth, you know, like you can't you can't really, it's it's very difficult to effectively learn, reflect, um, grow, think something different if you don't pause.

SPEAKER_02 51:00

Right.

SPEAKER_01 51:00

Like the continuous engagement can be is really it blocks the ability to like reflect. And reflection for most, I mean, most people who study learning know reflection is critical for being able to do anything differently. So I think that is one of the big challenges, is that to your point, like if you're you know, if you're consuming the same thing over and over at that kind of rapid pace and you're not disengaging, you can't really be reflective about what you're consuming. You can't effectively process what you're consuming. It's affecting you, but you're not able to really um come to any useful conclusions or critically think about what you're consuming. And I think that is a problem, like a big problem.

SPEAKER_02 51:38

Right.

SPEAKER_01 51:38

Um, and most of the things that you're consuming are designed to uh get you to do something. They have an agenda, right? They're they're trying to get you either to stay engaged or pay some money or get get scared of something. You know, they're they're they're designed that way. Um, so I think that is really that is really the trap that people fall into. Right. And it makes it really difficult to um, yeah, to to do the things that are difficult but really important for humans to be doing. Critically thinking, engaging in meaningful ways, uh, reflecting and pausing, thinking about who they are in relation to what they're consuming and who they want to be, who they should be, you know.

SPEAKER_05 52:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

Yeah, it's it's it's it's very, very difficult.

SPEAKER_05 52:19

We'll we'll definitely have to continue the conversation. Um I I'm gonna share something with you and then ask you for a solution. So for me, what I've recognized across my consulting career is that organizations are most interested in things that affect business. And so they really aren't uh it's nice leadership development. It's nice to train our people in how to communicate uh effectively with each other, but at the end of the day, how is it affecting the bottom line? And so one of the things that I did uh years ago, Toyota was one of my largest clients. We've trained over 300,000 team members at every plant in North America. Uh, but I came up with uh a tool that I called RAP, respect and performance. And what my uh interest was was in identifying four or five uh questions that we could ask team members on a daily or weekly basis and uh related to the level of respect that I was receiving from my coworkers, the level of respect that I was receiving from my immediate supervisor, and then trying to correlate uh those respect scores with KPIs. Because my sense is that if I could show them a pattern between when respect is high, performance is high, when respect is low, performance is low, then they would be more interested, more willing to invest in something because they could see the cost of it. Um so I want to move from that to ask you your thoughts about that, but to move from that to are there two or three key things that you could say to uh organizations in this decision-making stage that would help them to see the business case for uh doing more leadership and people sort of development.

SPEAKER_01 54:12

Yeah, love that. Um, that's a really cool model. I actually think respect is one of those words that people maybe have the most diverse definitions of, like of all the abstract terms. Like that's a tough one. You know, people have very different ideas about what it looks like to respect someone, right? Um, which makes it so powerful. So I love that. Uh yeah, I think I mean good for you for trying to directly link it to KPIs, and I would love to hear more about that sometime because that is very, very cool. I think it it is it is it can be difficult to measure the impact of people problems.

SPEAKER_02 54:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01 54:53

Um but I do think it can be done. And I think part of one of the one of the words, I guess, you know, I've heard a lot of public service organizations say things about sustainability. Um, and not in the environmental sense, but in the, you know, creating change or launching programs or having, you know, sales campaigns, whatever it is that are actually sustainable. That is to say, that they um don't kind of rise and fall quickly and that they can actually have sustained impact. And I think that's one, you know, you're sustaining your success is one of the things that you need the right people, the right places doing the right things for. Like it is, you know, I mean, there are tons of like Harvard business has all these business cases. You know, any MBA will will take these business cases where, you know, you see something go really wrong for an organization, and sometimes it goes really wrong, sometimes it slowly goes wrong over time. But a lot of those things can be traced to people problems, to you know, uh moments where leaders did not think something through. Or um, I mean, one of the cases I used to teach was the Faranos case, uh, Elizabeth Holmes, in terms of uh perfect storm of how leadership problems can happen. And, you know, the the there are so many ways in which um we think we're logical, but we're actually way more emotional than we are logical most of the time.

SPEAKER_05 56:35

Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 56:36

And and when you don't have a handle on that as a leader, it's a disaster for the bottom line. And and andor, like you can, even if it's not a disaster for the bottom line, the strain on an organization when you have people turning over because some, you know, one of your leaders is is not aware of what's actually driving their decisions and behavior, or um, you know, the you know, the lawsuits that crop up because people are not being responsible with whatever it is, or um, you know, letting a bunch of people go and then needing to rehire them because, you know, they didn't really make a thoughtful move. I mean, right there are so many examples of how um, you know, leadership that's not informed and intentional can derail teams, you know, organizations. I think part of what protects bad leadership is just simply the size and scale of some organizations. They're so big that to really destroy, like you can have engine failure in, you know, on engine four and the ship is still going, you know, and people may even not even know that we have engine failure in engine room four, you know, because the ship is so large, size and scale can really protect, you know, systems themselves can self-sustain even when there's all these toxic elements going on.

unknown 58:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01 58:05

Um, I think you see it more quickly in smaller and mid-sized organizations, which is maybe why they know they need to invest in this stuff and take it more seriously. Um, it can be genuinely difficult to like Toyota is a large organization. I mean, large organizations have the power to um self-sustain when they're doing things right and when they're doing things wrong. They they can, you know, that's structural. So I think part of what you're engaging with is systems, and and the more you can educate people about how systems work, you know, some of what we know from organizational science about how systems work, that can help them when they're trying to make a decision about investing in leadership. Because we have all this research to suggest, you know, all these little ways that systems can be disrupted from the inside when things aren't healthy, right? Not unlike the human body, right? I mean, you know, something goes wrong, it matters. Even if you don't see it for a while, it can really have a uh negative effect on the system.

SPEAKER_05 59:07

Right. Are there any other answer, but yeah. Are there any other comments uh I'm trying to see that our community has weighed in with?

SPEAKER_01 59:15

Yeah, I see them coming in. I got some thoughts. Yeah, that's a cool suggestion. So ask them what it's costing you to stay the same. Yes, and that's a um what is this technique? Spin selling um that's very popular in a number of spaces. But you know, um, yeah, what what is the cost of not engaging with this?

SPEAKER_03 59:38

Right.

SPEAKER_01 59:39

And are you willing to pay that?

SPEAKER_05 59:42

Right, and is that cost? Yeah, and at the end of the day, I have found that we can't force organizations to do anything just like we can't force people to. That uh people have to make a decision that they want to get better, and so it's only when they've made that decision that we can then be more helpful. What I've seen over the years, though, is that organizations tend to value those individuals that they think are contributing to the bottom line and moving things forward. They will make excuses for those individuals, uh, they won't hold them as accountable, uh, and they uh resist pressure uh, you know, to do anything to them. Uh, those people have a lot of power themselves through pouting, through deciding that maybe I this is not a good fit for me. And they're so afraid to let those individuals go that they'll let them sort of silence and harm all the other talents that exist in the organization. So we have, I find that we have to continuously look to design better mouse traps, if you will, uh to find ways of enrolling people in things that are in their best interest. Uh, I think that uh, you know, as sort of the political environments and social environments begin to bleed into the workplace, I think that there's gonna be even greater need as we move forward uh to help people navigate these things in ways, and it's almost like you got to come up with something that's compact enough uh that it's uh sort of a concentrated dose of things. And then uh and and I think that if I tell people all the time that nobody's gonna bring a consultant in and say, tell me everything you think we need to be doing differently. Usually they ask us to come in, there's a small engagement that they want us to do. And over time we build up enough uh confidence, they build up enough confidence in us that they may ask us to partner with them.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:45

How do you see that role of developing your relationship with the client and their confidence in you almost before you even get down to being able to solve their problems?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:58

Yep. Um I have two thoughts, and I actually want to I want to come back to something you said before. Uh, so remind me I had a thought. Uh but the okay, I to the confidence piece and and really what I think is trust, you know, that you they trust. I've heard I heard this and you're gonna love this. I heard this on a YouTube video. Okay. Um, but it was it was an AI created YouTube video, and I'm sure they pulled it from someone who actually should get credit for this thought, right? Um, but you know, it said um part of part of what advisors and consultants need to think about is like will will your client trust you with something important?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:44

And I think that's basically what we're talking about. You know, if you come in, if you come in and you don't seem to understand and value the challenges that they're engaging with, I think that can be, it can be hard to build trust if you don't seem to really like take it seriously and first empathize with how much pressure some of these folks are under. Like I think that that to me is is like the foundation. And then once you do that and you start to really like name and acknowledge the complexity and that people are making often the best decisions they think they maybe can be making, at least several people are, maybe not everybody, but like usually, you know, you see in most organizations, there are a lot of people really trying.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:31

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:32

And I think like acknowledging that, naming that, trying to see the ways in which people are really trying to do the right thing, and that like a lot of these systemic forces, like again, the big C capitalism, right, are kind of bigger than us. Like, like we not to get metaphysical here, but we are all just basically replacing the previous generation, right? Like, like, like we none of us were born knowing all these systems. We we just literally are just a replacement for for these people who were doing it before, who were replaced, but you know what I'm saying? And so, like, I think taking it a little less seriously can be like one way. Oh, yeah, right. You're you you bring in gravitas, this is important, and like this is a little bigger than us too. Like, like, you know, I think both of those can coexist. So that's just a mindset thing.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:22

I like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:23

And then I just have to name, you know, I think I just um taught my public allies class this uh concept. We were talking about data and how to gather data and conduct research in an equitable fashion in organizations, and I had a whole slide on the stages of grief. Okay, okay, because and and honestly, I think the stages of grief, now, while not perfect, but the grief cycle is perhaps one of the most profound like aha's for the world of business, and you wouldn't necessarily think that they're related, right? But they're so related. Like the what when you're talking about having trouble engaging with a challenging leader, right? Yep, those are grief stages. Right when when people are disappointing, right, it triggers grief, you know. And I think a lot of what we're seeing is just the bargaining stage of grief playing out in organizations that you know, we maybe we were in denial, maybe we're still in denial about it. You know, this person, well, they do a good job. And they, you know, usually if you ask questions like, well, okay, they're doing a good job, but are they really? Yeah, it's like, are they really doing a good job? And it's like, well, they get their work done. Do they? Because what is actually their work? You know, you can engage in that whole conversation, but really it's move it's supporting people through the phases of grief. I mean, that's a lot of what good leadership coaching is, at least for me. Is okay, this thing was disappointing. How are you trying to bargain and save the situation rather than moving into what are the by far most painful stages of grief? Anger and depression. You know, like we will we will avoid anger, we will avoid depression, especially depression. But that is really what you have to move through to get to acceptance and actually take action on something. So I think the bargaining stage is just its gravity, it pulls you in and you just want to stay bargaining. And I think it takes a lot of trust for you to want to have a consultant say, okay, look, you're experiencing the grief stages. You are in the I think you're in the bargaining phase. Is it possible that we can experience some anger and depression and then get to acceptance? That's what it's going to take for you to be able to take action on this. And you cannot hold on to everything. You have to let some of your expectations go.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:00

I love this. I mean, uh, you and I could be here for the entire rest of the day talking about this. There was something you wanted to make sure that you came back to.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:10

That was it. The grief stages. Yeah. I what you were saying, yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:14

So for me, and and and I think we're gonna have to come to a conclusion here. Yeah, but for me, uh one of the things I do, I recognize you mentioned trust. I totally agree with that. And so for me, I believe that one of the most difficult, uh, most important decisions a company can make is the consultant that they choose to partner with. And for me, I really believe that you're not gonna know that before you ever hire me. And so, so if you if you do hire me as a consultant to help you with culture change and things like that, then I usually use a four-phase process where I basically give people multiple stopping points where they can pause and ask the question is this still working for us? Uh, do we have what we need now, or do we need to continue? And I start that four-phase process with the first phase being the shortest, so that you can sort of get a sample of what it feels like to interact with us. And then you get a chance to pause, reflect, go off and talk to each other and decide if you're good or if you, because I believe it's in both of our interests for this to be a good fit. And I believe that uh we as consultants have to be careful that we're not trying to enroll ourselves, embed ourselves, if you will, into an organization for the life of the organization. Uh if they if they've got it after a certain point, uh then uh then we uh you know, then we let them go. Uh, what are some things that you do around trust and trying to sort of ramp that up as as quickly as possible? How do you navigate uh between what it is they're asking for and what it is you discover that they may need and sometimes the misalignment between those two?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:06

Yeah. Yeah, you're doing like a whole masterclass on uh consulting here. It's good stuff. I love that trial, that the four-phase structure, that's brilliant. Um, and because I think that these engagements can be simpler in concept than we, you know, as much as the work is complex, right? The trust process is fairly simple and it, you know, it's it's pretty universal. Um yeah, like like people, especially when you tell them, okay, this is gonna take some time and investment, um, you're absolutely right that I've seen consultants do a lot of damage. If if the if the process isn't done thoughtfully, um yeah, it can be it can be quite bad. And so I I agree that, you know, I think that data gathering at different stages can be part of what is really helpful and being able to come up with, even if it's just a survey of some kind, to put down on paper, yeah, like externalize in a concrete way, here's what we're noticing about the process so far.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:11

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:12

Um, you can use that observation interpretation model to do that that we talked about. But you know, trying to find some way. I mean, we do this in um, so I taught, you know, college classes for 10 years, and there was eventually a push to not just gather satisfaction data at the end of the course from students, but actually do what's called early term feedback.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:35

Love that, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:36

And so you're you know, your students are moving through the class, yeah. You pause early, kind of just before the midpoint.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:43

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:44

Because of course, like by the time they give you feedback at the end, it's too late.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:47

So can't do anything with that next year.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:50

And I think, yeah, I think that shows, you know, gathering feedback at the end shows that you care about your work in the future, but it doesn't necessarily show care for the client at hand, right? So I think to your point, like pausing early to gather some early feedback helps you refine as you go and it actually makes your work more effective, too. That they, you know, that it's part of what this action research thing is about, that you actually seek from the community how how not only how is this going in terms of the work, but how does this feel for you? Like that, that I am not afraid to use feeling questions as part of that trust building process. Right. It you know, the the separation of kind of logic and feeling is just such a false dichotomy that has just caused so much damage in in the world of work. Like there's a lot of feelings at play. Like, how is how does this feel for you? And what would help you engage differently or engage more in the process? That is literally a question we ask students in the middle of a college class. And I think it it also applies when you're working with people to try to create change in an organization that they really care about.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:56

Right. As I listen to you, I hope this isn't doesn't offend at all, but I I see you as a relative in some ways. I'm ADHD. I don't know if you're anywhere in that spectrum, but I would say that what you you talked about all the different things that you value and like, and I love that. And you may not have heard anybody talk about the magic of all of those things working together to make you a unique uh uh sort of uh consultant partner, because you have all these different interests and sort of lines, avenues that your curiosity has taken you into that collectively can really be of great service and value to the uh the partners, the clients that you serve. So if you've not heard that before, kudos for all of who you are because I hear it's power and value in this conversation today. Is there anything uh that you want to uh end with? Uh, our community has been uh uh blessed by you. I would say that they've got to go back and view this and slow it down and review things over and over again. And Melanie, I look forward to a follow-up conversation uh with us to talk about the work that we're doing. I'd love to get your uh feedback on some systems that we've designed that uh I'd like you to weigh in on.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:27

Sure. Eric, thank you so much. I um I appreciate you reflecting that back. And uh no one has described that magic as such. So I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:37

It's powerful.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:39

Thank you. I this has been so fun. Um my favorite thing is to talk like theory and concepts and and do some of this. So thank you for the invitation. Um and community comments have been great, like this is really cool. Um, the uh only last thing I might add is um a concept for you to look into. You mentioned ADHD. Um, while I don't have that exact diagnosis, uh, I do think neurodivergence is is has myriad forms, and I'm sure I got something.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:08

Yeah, and it makes us special, right? It's my student. It does.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:12

It does. I would say uh I just want to plug the work of a friend of mine um named Emily Wapnik. Um, I will uh I'm happy to like uh share more about that maybe in the comments or something, but um, there is there's a concept called multipotentiality or multi-potentialites that um Emily kind of coined that term and did an amazing TED talk on this. This has been some 10, 15 years, but it talks about um the tendency to kind of synthesize all of these different ideas and bring um different disciplines in to add value and kind of rapid learn. Yeah. I I love this concept. I've taught it a lot in in college, and a lot of students really resonate with this. Um, I did a chapter with Emily for one of my books. Um, and so there is a chapter on multi-potential multi-potentiality out there. It's a very cool concept. So if you haven't checked it out yet, I think you would love it, Eric. And um I bet some of our listeners would too, because it's a cool, very, very cool topic. Um, so more on that, maybe another day. But yes, uh, thank you so much. This has been really cool.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:21

Well, thank you, community. Uh, we thank you for joining in with us today for this powerful conversation with uh Dr. Melanie uh Buford. Uh I know her family very well. And uh now we are entering the yellow brick road to establishing our own relationship and maybe even having her back as a guest. We want to thank you for joining in today, and we want to encourage you to continue having meaningful diversity conversations. Take care now.