TBC Flashback - Dr. Todd Dewett: License to Lead

You can need a license to do almost anything, yet you can become a manager with “jack squat” preparation and still have daily power over people’s health, stress, and careers. That’s the tension at the heart of our flashback conversation with leadership expert Dr. Todd Dewett, recorded as teams were clawing their way out of peak pandemic uncertainty and still painfully relevant for today’s remote work and hybrid work reality.

• Click HERE for Dr. Todd's website
• Click HERE for Dr. Todd's LinkedIn profile
• Click HERE for Dr. Todd's book, Live Hard
• Click HERE for Dr. Todd's other TBC episode

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Transcript

Flashback Setup And Sponsor

John Broer 0:10

A warm welcome to all of our friends out there in The Boss hole Transformation Nation. This is your host, John Broer, and we are rolling out a TBC flashback today, which many of you know is our effort to pull some really wonderful content from the archives of The Boss hole Chronicles. And we're going back to January of 2021 when we had a great conversation with Dr. Todd Dewett. And it was entitled License to Lead. I've known Todd for a number of years. I actually met him when I brought him in to speak at an event that I was organizing. And since then, it's been great to learn from him and listen to him. And I was just so pleased that early on in the program he wanted to become part of The Boss hole Transformation Nation. And yet he was actually on a second time promoting his book. And I'll make sure to put that in the show notes. But you will find Todd is an amazing speaker, teacher, and leadership expert. And this particular episode, as we were beginning to come out of the pandemic, was a relevant message then, and there are so many wonderful aspects of it that apply today. So let's revisit in this TBC flashback, Dr. Todd Doitt. The Boss hole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode. Todd, it is an absolute pleasure. We are so pleased to have you here. How are you doing? And welcome to the Boss hole Chronicles.

Dr. Todd Dewett 2:02

Well, thanks for having me, John and Sara. Great to see both of you. I'm fine. I'm really excited. I don't know how 2021 can't be anything except better than the last one we just endured. So I'm optimistic and excited, and it's great to see you again.

John Broer 2:16

Welcome, and we're so pleased to have you here. You know, as part of the subject matter expert series, we really want to get your insights about what you're seeing out there. Well, before we get into just learning more about your insights and especially um some of the stories from LiveHeart, one of the things we always like to do for our listeners is explain what Dr. DeWitt's reference profile is. Uh, Todd is a Venturer. And Todd, when you took the assessment from the predictive index and, you know, we sent you your results. Just give us a highlight about your impression and your thoughts about the results.

Dr. Todd Dewett 2:53

I was really impressed. Uh, and I wasn't expecting to be. I mean, I'm just to be blunt with you. Um, so I'm an old school guy with some personality training back in the day that really focused on the giants uh of yesterday that are still popular. And I've seen lots of flavors of assessments out there and uh of different types with different amounts of research backing them up. I I took yours, I was excited too, because I know you and what you're up to. Um, and I didn't know what to expect because it was such an frankly easy, small amount of time put into that that I was thinking to myself, okay, and this is supposed to be valid, but how good could it be? And then the results came out. I was like, I'll be damn, this thing really kind of got me in a very small amount of time. And that was very, uh, very fun to share with you. It didn't take much time to do this. And yet, and I know this because I've been tested on different types of things over time. I know that what it's saying about me, just based on self-reflection and based on a whole bunch of uh assessments over the years, is quite accurate. And that's scary. That and that it's that's really impressive.

John Broer 3:51

We get that a lot. We get that a lot from people saying, What is this wizardry that you presented to me? But uh no, that's good to hear. And and as a venturer, um, Sarah, you want to just highlight a couple of things on the venture and what that profile tells us?

Sara Best 4:05

Yeah, the venture is a self-starter, self-motivator, risk taker with a strong goal orientation. Does that sound about right? Perfect, Dr. Todd. Oh, yeah. And we would say that signature to how you work, uh, you're outspoken, frank, authoritative in terms of communication. You you may not uh have fun or enjoy delegating major authority or responsibility in your world. Um, but the details, yes, the details can be delegated, but you know, the outcome of things is something you're you're gonna watch closely. You are an innovative and creative problem solver. And um, at times you may value your own judgment over others. Would that ever be the case?

Dr. Todd Dewett 4:45

I definitely have confidence in my views. There you go.

Sara Best 4:49

Yeah, but what's great about the venture profile is you're one to drive change and you're not uncomfortable challenging the status quo.

Dr. Todd Dewett 4:57

I think you just nailed it. Didn't uh because I am frank, I would tell you where it wasn't quite accurate. No, that was a really nice summary, for better or for worse. And I'd like to tell all your folks listening uh, you know, it's just useful for people who aren't used to thinking about breaking down personality preferences and such into a vocabulary. It's a useful place to start thinking about why the team does what it does, not because one profile, mine versus yours versus John's, is good or bad, right or wrong. We are different. That's all. Right. Understanding how to articulate that makes it, well, a little bit easier to start working productively together. That's where the value of these tools really comes from. I was really impressed that the tool actually noted the uh time for introspection, because just to use the classic extrovert-introvert thing that gets tested on a lot of these tools. Uh, most people who interact with me go, Todd was a very effective extroverted type of person. Uh, it's not true. I have I'm right on the borderline, often leaning towards introvert. And I have learned because communication is a skill set that you can learn. Yeah. I've learned when I need to be doctor do it, how to do that. That's a skill. But my normal preference, I am as comfortable or more being introspective, alone, thoughtful, quiet than I am on stage. You know what I mean?

Sara Best 6:10

Oh, that's amazing. Yeah.

Stress Makes Leaders Shut Down

John Broer 6:12

Thank you very much, Sara, for that. But one of the things that I think really stands out in my experience with Todd's body of work is your capacity to drive change and challenge the status quo, and specifically when it comes to how people lead and develop other people in that capacity. So, Todd, would love to hear about the work that you're doing around leadership. You've said you've got a story out of Live Hard that you think would be helpful to help people avoid those bosshole blunders. We just want to turn it over to you and tell us, tell us what's going on.

A Toxic Boss And A Brave Intervention

Dr. Todd Dewett 6:44

Sure. Well, I mean, what's going on, I think, is really well known by a lot of us at this point. It is a time people are battling uncertainty. And what we know, no matter what the stressor is, what we know is that people at work under abnormal levels of stress tend to start making certain errors, certain behavioral shifts that are explainable but not productive. Explainable, uh, for example, because we become more risk averse. But is that always useful? Generally, no. Uh, when you're more risk averse than our baseline, it becomes a problem. People notice it, people uh start to hold information more. Managers in particular get less communicative. They start to sit in the office more, analyze their way out of this, they think, and they start to have shorter tempers, less sharing, less use of explanations. All the things we know that are good and healthy in a team for leaders to share tend to become challenged and less common. So, my job as a full-time uh agitator is to people not to do those things. That's that's that's all I do, really. Um, because some people have no managers perfect, no uh full-time speaker educator guys perfect, none of us are. And as a result, when times get challenging, some of our deficits are pronounced. So the story that's in the book, there's actually several, very excited about the book. A lot of people are enjoying the story. Stories, stories just touch people because emotions are every bit as important as logic. So now I was reflecting um many months ago on the last, I had one more story I wanted to put in, and I thought of something. I thought of an old MBA student I remembered calling me one day back when I had a real job, and she said, Um, I'm so-and-so. Uh, you remember me? I said, Yeah, how are you? And she said, Can we have lunch sometime? She worked in the same city where I was still working. And I'd like to uh get your thoughts on some things that are going on with me professionally. And I said, sure. Um, and I was, you know, I'm still privileged to have many of these types of conversations. And so I met her and we had lunch, Mexican joint in the Midwest somewhere. And what she told me was hard to hear, not because it was new, but because I was live in person with her and it was emotional for her, and she started crying while she's telling me this story. This is this is what she told me. She said she works in finance for in this town that was a well-known financial uh house, I'll just say. And the her boss, and she's a newly minted MBA, smart person, and uh her boss was a person from a certain generation who, for better or worse, uh had certain views about men and women in leadership, especially in finance, and was convinced that uh women weren't going to be great leaders in finance and was not shy about saying it publicly in general at a meeting or walking down the hall or to the face of a few women with whom he worked, over whom he was a leader. Uh so she started telling me examples of things he'd said to her uh in earshot of everyone, because you know there's no secrets in Cube Land, everyone hears everything at work, right? Um, or pretty much that's true. And this had progressed over several years. Her feeble attempts to give feedback, like, hey, I'm not sure you're understanding how you're speaking to me, and you don't know that you're being offensive. Those efforts went nowhere and made things worse. How dare you speak to me that way? was the response she got. And over a couple years, uh, she realized uh a few things. One, she was starting to feel broken and not good. And it just it's amazing the power that leaders have to help you or hurt you. It's amazing the power they have every day.

Sara Best 10:08

Yes, yes.

Dr. Todd Dewett 10:08

This is emerging as an area of study because we all know that your mental self, your physical self, your spiritual self, these things are all related and impact each other. We know this, and work is the biggest, almost unexplored in some ways, uh, some negative impact threat to those things. Work is often killing us. Jeffrey Pfeffer out of Stanford put a book out recently that that speaks to that effect. And it's really shocking the numbers uh when you think about it. But it's pretty obvious. We spend so many hours there and we spend them under stress doing things we might otherwise not do. You would expect adverse health things to happen as a result. This woman was giving me her version of that. She had, over a couple of years of failing to write this ship, this relationship with this person, she found herself uh driving slower to work, driving different routes to explore and waste a few minutes before she got to work, sitting in the parking lot before she went in, sometimes in tears, because she had to volunteer to walk through that door and go subject herself to that. She also realized over time that it wasn't just her. So that was a kind of a good thing, but it didn't help that much. It was women in general, a few in particular that were his go-to targets for reasons that weren't clear to her, other than maybe opportunity. Um, and so we talked at that lunch about what to do about that and how to cope and how to talk to her husband who was tired of hearing about it. And then, you know, relationships are fun at work and at home. Uh, and we talked. And it was therapeutic to talk because it's always therapeutic to have a good listener, and maybe someone could help you think about some options to consider, but there was no magic solution to be offered, as is often the case when you meet a bosshole. It's just not the case. There are things to consider, ways to cope, and options to try, all of which have risks and costs. Um, and I didn't feel great because we didn't find a wonderful solution. I gave her some things to think about, which was useful. Um, fast forward many years. I finished writing this book, I remember that story, so I went ahead and I included that, a version of that as one of the stories. And I reach out anytime I put someone in a book and I tell them, hey, I'm you remember that time we talked about the is it okay? And a couple times I've mentioned people by name, and sometimes I keep it generic. This one's sensitive because it's a boss hole situation. Yeah. I don't mention names in companies or anything, but I did reach out because we're connected and tell her um, FYI, you are the person I'm referring to in that story. I thought you'd want to know, and she's so excited. And weeks passed, she's got the book. Hey, I love the book, and she sends me notes back and gave me the final chapter. Uh this amazes me because it's not in the story because I didn't know this had happened.

John Broer 12:36

She finally so wait, that that kind of makes this exclusive. Is that correct? That's correct. This podcast? Okay. I just I just want to point that out to our listeners. We are cutting edge here. So, Dr. Todd, go ahead.

Dr. Todd Dewett 12:48

Yeah, man, you are the first in the world to hear the actual end of the story. Uh, after she kind of went numb and thought, this is my fate and I can deal with it and feel disgusted or quit, which would be a big risk because the opportunities in that town weren't great. It was a smaller town, and she had a juicy, wonderful opportunity. Um, she finally, uh, against the odds, banded together with some other uh targets of this person and did the whole group approach thing, call it an intervention, call it what you want. And after the umpteenth time, they finally, which is uh brave as anything, just brave, frankly. Yeah, they finally, she's not sure exactly why it was this time, the seventh time that you know she had talked to him. He finally somehow opened up and realized that people were not enjoying him, were misinterpreting him, or not, were interpreting him right sometimes and not liking the way he was talking about them and talking about women. And somehow that hit him. And she swears, and I I knew her pretty well back in the day. She swears that that this was a wake-up call for him. And he didn't want the rest of his life to be him aware now, caring for the first time about others really having problems with them that mattered to him at least a meaningful amount, whereas it used to not matter at all. And as a result, he started to change his behaviors towards people. He's not some ideal, there's no ribbon on the end of the story. Right. He's not some genius relationship pro now, but the worst behaviors all went bye-bye. The willingness to be a little more quiet and listen increased. These were massively important changes to this person's behavior. And she swears uh that her and her friends were the biggest explanation for why this happened. Did something else in his life happen? I don't know. But she did have a happy ending, still working there, been promoted several times since I talked to her. Really? I still ahead of her and still a boss of hers, and uh apparently leads people fairly effectively today, whereas uh 15, 20 years ago he was a big problem. How do you like that? People can grow, old dogs can learn new tricks.

Sara Best 14:51

And isn't that the whole point of what we're trying to put out there? Is he, you know, we don't want anyone to change who they are. We want them to adapt in such a way that who they naturally are doesn't hurt other people. Right. We just want to we want to be better at understanding and optimizing the people we're responsible for. What a great story.

Small Behaviors That Build Culture

Dr. Todd Dewett 15:10

Yeah, it really is, because they're they don't all have good endings, and this one does. Yeah. The punchline there, uh, which we briefly talked about offline when we were just catching up, is that it's amazing how people aren't aware of. Now, if they are aware of and they don't have empathy for, that's a different issue altogether. Mostly people lack awareness. Most people don't know this, but uh, most people, for example, who are jerks of any variety uh are meaningfully unaware of their status as a jerk at work. They're just not tuned in to understand that, they're not wired naturally to get that. Uh, and so you have to build awareness. Now, is that easy? No. Does it always work? No, but it is the route forward that makes the most sense. Try and help people reduce the gap between what they think about themselves and how the typical person observing them every day actually thinks about them. Now, which one's true doesn't matter. If you want to get along at work, you've just got to make sure that you close the gap that stands between us in communication so that we can get along better. This guy needed to have that tough curtain pulled back. Um, I'll be honest with you, I've had this happen a million times. Um, thinking just of another example I wrote about somewhere else years ago. A boss told me I was brought in, do some consulting. Hey, we got issues, uh, do it. I got your name from so-and-so. Come on in. One of the first things I did was interview some key managers before interviewing their teams. And the boss, one of the bosses pulled me aside. Hey, I'm so glad you're here. Uh, I mean, I'll tell you what, my team's really not the problem here. Um, we all get along quite swimmingly. And uh, but I'm glad you're here. I can't wait to hear what you uncover around here, et cetera, et cetera. And he seemed sincere to me, and I can smell insincerity a mile away. He seemed like a really sincere fellow. And then I went and I talked to his team. And what I learned, and this is common, not uncommon, what I learned is that there is a gap between what he perceived to be their understanding of life at work every day and what they actually felt about him and about life at work every day. Okay. And they were meaningfully uh unhappy. I'm just making this up as a concrete example about why you have to get down into the details of being kind to people and thinking about them, not just you. Um, his team felt that he was impersonal, distra distant, and aloof. His team specifically mentioned that they couldn't stand how on Mondays he didn't say, Hey, start of a new week, how you doing? Was your weekend okay? What'd you guys do? Anything fun? Uh, they couldn't stand that on Friday he didn't say, Tough week, man, you guys pulled it out. I appreciate the effort so much, man. Do you deserve a weekend? Have a great weekend. He didn't do those little things at the beginning and the ending of a week. And to them, that was very significant. So, what we know from research is that managers tend to get task-focused sometimes in a problematic way. And we know that employees who are not leaders tend to get relationship-focused, vibe, culture-focused in a sometimes problematic way, meaning we need balance and the two groups don't often see the same. Uh, so my job is to give bosses to get over themselves, if you will, and remember that a whole lot of little things that they might not need anymore themselves are still of paramount importance to the people who report to them.

John Broer 18:10

I think that right there is such a critical component because we talk about how organizations wrongly promote individual contributors into a management position, and they're not prepared for it. They may not even want to do it, but what they think is necessary to be an effective manager or supervisor, somehow they abandon what they needed as an individual contributor, somebody to develop, some somebody who will develop me, help me grow, provide guidance. Sometimes just leave me alone because I'm off doing my work, but the right amount of touch, somehow that just vaporizes.

Dr. Todd Dewett 18:44

It's it's funny that you would say that because it that reminds me of an aspect of the story in Live Hard, I was just talking about. It really is, I think it was called a license to lead, if I remember what I titled that chapter. And the the premise was simple. And this is, I mean this genuinely, even if it sounds silly. You gotta have a license in the States and most places to do almost anything. You want to be a doctor, you gotta get your training, got to get your license. You want to be an accountant, you gotta get your training, you gotta get your license. You want to be a taxidermist, you gotta get your training, you gotta get your license. You want to be a kid in a neighborhood selling lemonade to your neighbors in many places. This is in the news all the time, every year. You will see kids get tickets because you have to have a license to sell lemonade in many communities. I'm not kidding, I'm making this up. But if you want to be a leader, a person with a very real impact on others' lives every single hour of the day that they're together, you need jack squat. You need a party and someone with power to say you're now the boss of that group. I find that reality very suspect and problematic. There is not yet a universal agreed-upon leadership credential, and I think that's that's true, and there's reasons for that. But boy, can we do a whole heck of a lot better than we do given the powers that leaders wield every day. That's absolutely that's so powerful.

John Broer 19:59

I was we had a uh conversation with another subject matter expert, and we didn't really talk about this, but one of the things that I thought would be a great question to ask somebody who's being considered for a leadership or a management position is based on the people that you've overseen and for whom you've for whom you've had responsibility, what has your turnover rate been? I mean, quite frankly, she gave an example of where one particular manager was just mean and vindictive and ended up firing everybody on the team. I mean, there was a hundred percent turnover on this team. Well, the likelihood that every single member of that team is really a poor performer or at fault statistically is sort of unrealistic. I mean, what does that say about the manager themselves? I mean, I again I think that's a great point, Todd.

Sara Best 20:50

But you know, it's it's a tall order, isn't it? For you know, to be effective in that leadership role. That's it.

Dr. Todd Dewett 20:57

It's beyond a tall, if people don't see it coming. Wait, wait, you just I apologize for interrupting, you just said a mouthful. Uh people never see it coming. The number one reason people are promoted is because of functional task skill at some level. Hey, they were good accountants, they'd be great at running the team. No, that is completely erroneous logic. It's just it doesn't follow that one is something and thus could lead a team of people doing it. They're very different skills. Um, so I had the unique pleasure of being 10 years in a classroom with MBA students, and I got to watch lots of people go from being non-managers to managers or managers to executives. The leap from non-manager to manager is the most jarring because you just don't know what the heck you're getting into. Uh, and the fact that you were so smart yesterday with spreadsheets and who knows what, uh, or maybe you're an engineer and you're just amazing at understanding how to solve problems dealing with certain metals, or who knows. I heard a million things like that. It means nothing as to how well you can understand and help people do that very thing. Leaving them and doing the job are completely different. Now, even if you're brilliant at finance or great metallurgist or whatever you might be, now communication is everything. Understanding. Self-motivation, motivating others, understanding conflict management, how to engender and manage the process of change we often have to deal with. These now are the core skills that will determine whether or not you're successful, even if you were the best financier ever before your promotion.

Feedback And The Discomfort Skill

Sara Best 22:16

In the world we live in, we talk about the head, the heart, and the briefcase, you know, the whole person. And the research you referenced is spot on. People are promoted to a leadership role because of their briefcase, most often, because of the skills and abilities they have. But we have no way to understand what's in their heart or how their behavioral wiring and their cognitive ability may impact their success in this role. So we we got to consider all those things. I have a question for you, Dr. Todd. When it comes to appreciating or understanding the gap between how I might see myself and how other people see me, you know, there's there's a necessary component to shift that. And it would be feedback. Why is it getting and receiving feedback so challenging for people? Oh, especially leaders.

Dr. Todd Dewett 23:00

I mean, it's a super question, and there's a lot of answers to it. I'll give you a couple of brief thoughts. One is that we all have different personalities that give us different predispositions to understanding its importance, to feeling good about finding it, feeling good about trying to learn from it. We all, some of us love it, some of us hate it, some of us are in between. So that's one that's one thing. And then there's the environment that we're in. How busy are we? Really busy, almost all of us. And then there's how much is that valued and modeled by the systems around us, our boss, our performance management system, et cetera. So all of these are big factors. Uh, all I like to tell people is don't you ever think that you've had enough feedback. I don't want you to get paranoid, but don't think you've had enough. Don't think that you know yourself because your situation's always changing. New clients, new customers, new vendors, new people at work. And that that means the average view of you is always shifting because they see you differently than you see yourself.

John Broer 23:48

And going back to what you said earlier, I mean, I think it was the Stanford Business Advisory Council uh four or five years ago that said, without question, the number one competency for effective leadership is self-awareness. It is absolutely at the top of the list. There are other important competencies, but if you don't have that and you're not willing to seek it out, you will struggle as a leader and a developer of people. There's no question.

Dr. Todd Dewett 24:14

I like to tell people a big part of whether or not you're gonna be successful if you're gonna play the management game is how much you can be okay with being uncomfortable. Because if you want to think about, if you want to think about getting feedback, if you want to think about trying to build self-awareness, if you want to think about having a learning orientation for your whole career, not just for a couple of years, all of those are ways to think about becoming uncomfortable. And if you can gain comfort with but being a little uncomfortable, that is a skill. You can get better at it through practice and through um intentional training. You can do this. That's going to serve you so well.

Reduce Ambiguity And Lead Fairly

Sara Best 24:47

So, along with what you've already shared as powerful tips for managers and leaders, what other things would you suggest? What are top what are the top things on your list for you know preventing bosshole blunders?

Dr. Todd Dewett 25:00

Maybe I'll give you two quick responses to that. Um, thanks for the open-ended thing. Well, but I guess it's dangerous. I'm a professional speaker and you're gonna give me an open-ended question. You're you're brave.

John Broer 25:08

We can we can make this a two-episode podcast, too. Yeah, go ahead.

Sara Best 25:13

One part two.

Dr. Todd Dewett 25:14

Two ideas pop up immediately. The first is a summary from a book uh I wrote that people still enjoy years ago called The Little Black Book of Leadership. And uh one little blurb I put in there was the response to a question. Hey, I get this all the time. Hey, uh, you're supposed to know a lot about leadership. You've been out there for a while. Tell me, I boil it down. What's it really all about? If you just got a minute, what's the one, two, three things I gotta do, gotta know to be effective? Uh, I don't like doing this because I think you should care about a much bigger picture and get it to get some depth. Having said that, here's my answer. You have to strive hard to reduce ambiguity when you're leading people to be fair and to stay positive. To reduce ambiguity is huge. And everything we say, we write, or behaviors we show people, we're either helping them understand something better or we're making them feel more ambiguity. Think of a core goal for any leader to reduce ambiguity through explanation and words mostly. That's just a beautiful reminder. So reduce ambiguity, be fair. I'm talking about a meritocracy. We still struggle with this, that's why I list it, but it should be an above-the-board, transparent meritocracy. That's fairness, not fairness of distribution of outcomes, but fairness of opportunity and fairness in terms of all of us getting a positive work environment. That's fair. And finally, strive to stay positive. Just choosing that perspective and then sharing it with others is a core talk about talk about being healthy. That is a core skill for any leader because it's such a hard job. It has to be a core skill. So that's my first generic, honest answer to what people should do. But then my second answer for you is in reference to this horrible thing we've all been enduring called COVID, this pandemic. Uh, the truth is, I like to be honest, it's one of the things I think I'm known for. But there's no, there's not simple answers. A lot of people in my shoes will sell you simple answers. And I don't like that, frankly. I like honesty. The truth is there aren't a lot of simple answers that are going to help teams who have just lost two members and the budget got crunched, and everyone's worried about being employed next week, et cetera, et cetera. Because so many versions of that, and there's no magic answer for you. I can tell you this, and I love to tell bosses this in the last year. Even if that's true, you can still do good. Number one, assume they are all as stressed or more stressed than you and be open to that. Validate that, find a way to talk about that and to let them know that you're going through it too. If you can listen and not not give that magic answer, which maybe will materialize at some point, but if you can listen and be a person that says, I hear you and mean it. That is invaluable for people going through stress to simply now know that they're not alone. That's a gift. And if you can give people that, that's step one until you actually find the the business answer to some of those challenges.

Sara Best 27:55

Absolutely. Oh, I there's so much, so much in there. It makes me think of the Gallup study that um came out. It was published in April, and I'm sure they've replicated, you know, continued on with the research. But at that time, as the pandemic was really starting to take hold, what employees needed most from their managers was trust, compassion, and hope. Uh, and clarity. You've touched on really all of those. I think too, reduce ambiguity, uh be fair, try your best to stay positive. All of those in their own right require a little bit of effort and work and self-reflection and evolution of self to achieve. But I think in particular about reducing ambiguity, I go back to the reference profiles. There are a few of them, and one of them would be mine and John's, who are less attentive to detail. We are much more comfortable working in ambiguous environments and not knowing what the end result is going to be because we have a lot of confidence uh in our in our approach. So we live in that world, and and I think what you talked about is especially true right now. People do need some sense of clarity, something to kind of you know put their flag in. And we have to adapt. So people like me, in terms of how I communicate, I need to intentionally say less, but say more. Say more in terms of what's the expectation, how are we going to get there? What's the time frame? Um so I appreciate that that's significant. Go ahead, John.

Remote Work Outcomes Over Process

John Broer 29:23

Well, and I think to that point, Sarah, between a venture, a captain, and a persuader, we all are we're we're all really comfortable with the response. We'll figure it out. We'll we'll figure it out, we'll get there. But 68%, I mean, the majority of the people, the reference profiles, that does not work. And so leaders, managers, and supervisors have got to take that to heart and say, even though we're working in remote under remote circumstances and we're not in one office anymore, these people need the communication, need that connection. You are in the people building business if you're a manager, and don't let that slip away. So I have one final question for you, Todd, as we as we think about the pandemic, and I know that the vaccines are coming out. Let's face it though, that the shift toward some sort of next normal is going to take some time. We've had some business owners, CEOs, people in the C-suite say, well, when everything gets back to normal, and immediately we let them know this is a paradigm shift. This this has already happened. What you are thinking of in terms of normal and how things used to be is no longer going to be. How do you see that relative to, you know, executives that are saying, uh, once we get past this, we're all going to go back to the way it was before?

Dr. Todd Dewett 30:43

Well, I think that they fell in love with the simplistic ability to control things when everyone showed up at an office every day.

Sara Best 30:50

Yeah.

Dr. Todd Dewett 30:51

Um, and now that's been disrupted hardcore. And the question is, what's going to happen as we move forward? I'm going to rephrase the um my take on the new normal like this. I think that the they now have an opportunity, the leaders of industry who are trying to imagine what it's going to look like when the virus does get under control. I think they're going to have an opportunity to shift how they view success. And what I mean by that is they very often focus on process as opposed to outcome. Now, I'm talking about one manager with one or two subordinates or a big team or an executive, they all get fall prey to this. We get law saying, here's the way we should do things, the process. Go to the office, use this tool, use this sequence. Sometimes certain work requires rigid methodology. Very true. A ton of office work professional does not, and there's a number of ways to skin any cat. And yet bosses still want to micromanage process. And so what I love to tell them is that your process has been screwed up. That's the virus. The truth is, you need to get better and better and better at articulating the outcomes you're trying to achieve. And if some people using slightly different tools, slightly different methodologies, different processes, different timing, et cetera, et cetera, can get done what you've just defined as what we have to get done. That's a beautiful thing. And you shouldn't care about the process. The time you should worry about remote versus office or a million other process-related questions. How do we do this questions? Is when you're not achieving the outcomes that you wish to achieve. So I actually think this is one awesome weird wake-up call that says where you work isn't as important as whether or not you work well together and you've defined outcomes that you're achieving. And you start mucking around in that process and caring about it, for better or for worse, when you're not able to get done the great things you want to get done. That was good. That was that was good stuff.

John Broer 32:36

Todd, really appreciate it. This has been awesome.

Dr. Todd Dewett 32:39

My pleasure. Good luck to both of you. Hope to be back again.

Closing And Share Your Story

Sara Best 32:42

Yeah, absolutely. Take good care. Stay healthy and well.

Dr. Todd Dewett 32:45

Happy New Year.

John Broer 32:46

You too, man. Thanks very much for checking out this episode of the Boss Hole Chronicles. It was so good to have you here. And if you have your own Fosshol Story that you want to share with the Boss Holt Transformation Nation, just reach out. You can email us at mystory at the Fosshol Chronicles.com. Again, mystory at the Fosshol Chronicles.com. We'll see you next time.