Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
Join James and Coby from Roman 3 as they diagnose issues and prescribe solutions to today's most important workplace challenges.
Diagnosing The Workplace: Not Just An HR Podcast
Leadership Tips: "Yes, if", Listening/Hearing, Balancing Self-Preservation
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Send us a Message! (But we can’t respond, so feel free to email us at info@roman3.ca)
This episode touches on the theme of Developing Leaders.
In this episode, we explore 3 (hopefully) helpful management tips, understanding and dealing with:
- "Yes, if" and "No, but"
- Listening is the willingness to change
- Balancing Self-Preservation
Our prescription for this episode is to consider these elements, both in yourself and the team you manage, if you want to be more successful on your leadership journey.
Past Episode Referenced:
S4 E13: Equality Or Equity — Or Is It Special Treatment?
If you would like to learn more about getting tools for your leadership journey, you can check out our webinar on Confident Leadership on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@solutionsexplained or our Integrity Leadership article on our Knowledge Suite: https://www.academy.roman3.ca/knowledge-suite/integrity-leadership/
Let us know if leadership and management skills are something you want us to talk more about! Email us at info@roman3.ca.
About Our Hosts!
James is an experienced business coach with a specialization in HR management and talent attraction and retention.
Coby is a skilled educator and has an extensive background in building workforce and organizational capacity.
For a little more on our ideas and concepts, check out our Knowledge Suite or our YouTube Channel, Solutions Explained by Roman 3.
Breaking down everyday workplace issues and diagnosing the hidden sickness, not just the obvious symptom. Our hosts, James and Coby.
[COBY]:Did we lose a patient?
[JAMES]:No, that's just my lunch.
[COBY]:Hey, thanks for joining us. I'm Coby, he's James, and let's talk leadership.
[JAMES]:Yeah. So these are a few topics that come up for us in our work with our clients, or when we take on fractional or interim leadership roles. So what I, what I want to kind of explore and talk about today is three things. It's how powerful just the simple phrase of yes, if and no, but are as a leader, trying to navigate so many different priorities and requests. the second one is really the fact that listening is being. Is the willingness to change. I mean, that somewhat self evident, but, we're. We'll dig into that a bit more. And ultimately, how. How do you walk the line around balancing self preservation? We talk a lot. We've talked self preservation in the past from a negative standpoint, as one of the deaths of leadership that if you're too focused on self preservation, it will come back to bite you. but there is a balance there. So those. That's what I'm hoping we can explore in our conversation today.
[COBY]:Yeah, because these are, like I say, these are things that have kind of come up in some of our work, but they're also some of the tools in our toolbox that we pull out when we, you know, kind of like, are trying to figure out how to navigate, tough situations. Because, like, I mean, like, like our, like our work is often walking into uncharted waters and trying to, like, figure out what is the, you know, in this completely unprecedented situation, how does this need to be handled? And that's the nature of the work that we do. So we've got a number of frameworks, tools, tricks, tactics, and that's what, that's why I really like this. This leadership tips format of the podcast is it allows us to kind of like, give you some stuff that works for us or give people some stuff that, you know, m. Maybe they. They kind of do in. They do kind of naturally, but. But this gives them a little more intentionality around, like, thinking of it, you know, kind of like as a, as a tactic rather than just like something that they try to figure out on the spot. So I always look and I think
[JAMES]:the important thing to, like, these are things that we actually put into place. Right? Like, these are tips that we use. It's funny when you talk about, you know, we walk into chaos, like, we we don't get hired when the ship's sailing smoothly. That's been my, that's been my standard line because I mean we are dealing with a lot of very challenging scenarios in with the clients that we're supporting currently. And you know, we often get the boy, I bet you wish you hadn't taken on this project type of comments like well no, actually I am weird and enjoy the chaos. But ultimately this is what we do. Right. We walk into organizations when they are in experiencing a lot of challenging situations, turbulence, leadership, deficits or just there's a multitude of reasons.
[COBY]:Yeah. Or they're trying to do something that they're completely overwhelmed with how they're gonna actually do it.
[JAMES]:So.[COBY]: Yeah. Yeah.
[COBY]:So all right, cool. I think these are going to be fun things to talk about. Let's dig into the first one. the idea of yes, if and no, but.
[JAMES]:Yeah. So this is an interesting one and I think I actually learned this from you years ago. and I think if I'm remembering correctly it all stemmed from like improv which at the time I was like you are out of your God given mind. And I still believe that firmly.
[COBY]:I mean in a lot of contexts that's 100% accurate statement.
[JAMES]:But, but it's, it's actually what's, what's interesting about it because it sounds so simple. Right. and it, it kind of is. But where I've seen this really helpful. so in a, ah, variety of interim roles that we've had, you know, managing the crisis of the organization that we've been brought in to deal with while also managing the, the day to day and the peppering of requests from staff for all kinds of different you know, requests whether it's equipment requests or I want to go to, I want this training or I want to go on this event and it's going to cost this like a flat no shuts things down immediately and leaves people feeling unheard. A quick yes is going to make people happy but could cause a lot of unintended consequences. And so where, this is where I found the yes if and no. But being really helpful is in kind of framing that you know what I have. I want to support people who are looking for professional development opportunities but it needs to be within these parameters. So yes, I am supportive of the concept if it meets X, Y and Z. Oh come Right.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:Because I will support this piece if it hit. Right. So it's, it's just a, it's a, it's A small reframing. But, it also puts the onus back on the individual. And then what I like about it, because it's not me saying yes or no, it's, well, yes, if you can prove these things.
[COBY]:Right. Well, the thing that is, I think why we like to point this, this language specifically is that typically when someone, when someone's in an obvious yes or no situation, they'll obviously just say yes. Obviously to say no. And that's very, very easy. But that's not the majority of leadership roles. Most leadership roles are far more complex, have a lot more nuances in them. The problem is that what we see when we're working with organizations and we're working with leaders and like that is the common response of okay, this is going to be a tough situation. So I'm going to say yes to make them happy, then put a but at the end of that yes to try to kind of like negate some stuff. But what? But. But. And that tends to be the, the normal thing is yes, no and yes, but, which is really just no. and that is where what we come and see. So we try to kind of help shift a bit of that narrative towards yes, if and no but. Because the reality is that but is a. So sorry. So there's a bad habit of yes, but like we like, like we see it all the time when people are like, yes, it sounds like a good idea, but I don't think that we should do it or you know, it's.
[JAMES]:Right, right.
[COBY]:And, and that's.
[JAMES]:You're trying to appease people with a no. Right. You're. It's, it's appeasement. It's a, Oh, if it were up to me, it would be so wonderful to let you do this. But, but unfortunately it's someone else's that's caught. Like it's, it's a really. It's a cop out. And it feels like a cop out.
[COBY]:Yeah, yeah. Because the thing is that, we all know this, but the word but negates the previous part of that sentence. So when you say yes, but that,
[JAMES]:yes, Toby is a great looking person. But, yeah, it, it's. You're right, it works. It completely negates everything that comes before.
[COBY]:All right, Coby.
[JAMES]:So smart bot.
[COBY]:All right, I'm gonna choose to move past that and punish you silently off camera. but, but the reality is that, you know, it's that you're right. It tends to be that we kind of feel like. We kind of feel like our Three options are yes and no and yes but it's a, clear, an easy yes, an easy no and an appeasement tends to be what most leaders have in their toolbox for strategies to handle this sort of stuff. But you're right, the yes if things come from, come from. Again, a bit of that improv background. Because part of it is it's agreement with parameters. Because one of the things that's real that again, a lot of people have heard that they're familiar with improv. A lot of it is, it's good to. You want to say yes and is kind of what's more common to add on to it. But sometimes with skilled improv, people skilled in improv, when everything is an option, you can kind of get lost in the narrative and the stories can get too unwieldy and like that. So people that are skilled at improv are familiar with the yes if pieces because it puts those constraints on what the scene can look like or what the actions can be.
[JAMES]:Still gives you the freedom while creating some lanes to work in.
[COBY]:Yeah. So giving focus. So where we often try to say, you know, we try and teach leaders about the idea of yes if and then on the other side, no, but, can be very, very helpful. Because what's interesting about them is if you say yes, if you're actually creating a bit of a soft no or a bit of a. Or a bit of a very, like a very. A very, focused opportunity for yes, like you're very. And everything. And if you say no, but again, the. The but negates the no and the no becomes actually a conditional yes. Yeah. So the idea of, like you said, can I go on this training? It's yes, if we are still within budget, if the training dollars haven't been spent, if you can free up your schedule without overtaxing people, you're putting that. The parameters around what the. Around around the yes.
[JAMES]:It's an agreement in principle with boundaries.
[COBY]:Right?
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:Yeah. So the idea of but whereas a no. A no but is it's like, hey, can we do this? And the answer is like, well, no, we don't have the budget for this. But if we were to either move these things over, if we were to kind of, kind of like combine some of this training with some of the other pieces, we might be able to use that budget. So it creates that conditional yes saying the well, it's a.
[JAMES]:It's in both cases, it takes a more solution, focused approach, to things. Right. You can Say yes and like you want to be solution focused, you want to say yes if at all possible and it gives you that structure to do so. It also gives you a way of saying no without being dismissive, without you know, while allowing people to be heard and getting, giving them an opportunity to find a solution or a comparable. Right. So no we can't do that. But what if we did this instead? Or what like it gives you, it opens up dialogue where a no shuts things down.
[COBY]:Yeah. And you're right and no but suggests, can suggest alternatives.
[JAMES]:Yeah. Right.
[COBY]:So saying no to this specific aspect. But, but we can look at these alternatives which may be other additional options or continues the conversation while. Right, so, so it's about, it's about setting parameters and setting expectations but also being solution focused. Like the. I've used this recently doing some training around kind of like manager and like senior level recruitment. Whereas I've been training some people on how to like hire at management levels and executive levels, stuff like that. And one of the things that I do teach is the yes if and the no but. So we're looking at candidates. People often think of it as a binary choice, yes and no. But sometimes it's a matter of saying so if there's a person that has a lot of boxes checked but you have some reservations, then that's a yes. If yes, this person could be a good option if we address this, this and this or if we put these things into place, providing those, those additional kind of focuses on where the person can be successful or on the same time. No, but no, this person wouldn't be good for this specific position. But I could see them in maybe these other roles. So if those open up that we could hold on to the applications there or we could or those kind of things too. Right. It's about again not closing the door on, on options. It's about finding paths for them to be successful. So I do think so. There's lots of versatility of yes if
[JAMES]:and no but yeah and I mean it's just, it comes down to practice. Right. If you enter into conversations kind of keeping this in mind, it can be a really helpful tool. it can be. It's, it's funny because it, it's again it is a very simple concept but it can actually be a really good relationship building tool with your team as well. Because there's, there's a natural desire to want to give people what they want. Right.
[COBY]:and think to the optics are pretty. Are, are, are Something that, that is very powerful too because again, it's the idea of, of support and continuing the conversation and not just having that, that, that simplistic binary choice.
[JAMES]:Yeah, yeah. It's, it's a way of maintaining priorities. It's a way of supporting your team, without appeasement, without backpedaling, without feeling like you're just giving in. but it also creates an opportunity for your team or whomever is making the request to come back with a better solution. Right, yeah, this sounds good. If we can achieve these outcomes, puts the onus back on them to come up with a better plan. Right. You're not shutting people down, you're giving them opportunities to grow and meet the expectations.
[COBY]:Right, yeah. And so m. The most powerful time that this, this tool has helped me personally is. I have a very vivid memory. I'll tell a bit of a story of. The story is too long. We can just cut this part out of the episode. but so years ago, I was responsible for leading. So you and I both came from an economic development background. So I was leading an economic development agency years ago and I remember there was. I got, I got this email one day from, from this collection of business owners or this group that was requesting our agency respond to an open RFP for a massive multinational corporation to build a massive expansion kind of somewhere in North America. And it was something like 50,000 jobs and it was like hundreds of acres of.
[JAMES]:It was 50,000 in the first phase. Oh yeah, they were talking.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:I mean, which. Absolutely, yeah. Huge economic spin off and benefits and.
[COBY]:Yes. So, so what's funny was that. But this email was a request to the funder stakeholders, kind of like, the masters of this agency that I was temporarily leading to build, to create this, this, this response. so. And then I was just cc'd on the email. So it's very passive aggressive. but, then I was. Because it was inviting me to a forum to give a speech on our plan for it. Like, it was really like forcing my hand and I was just like, are these people out of their minds because of me? Like one again, business owners sometimes overvalue some of their understanding of economic development and kind of the nuances and impacts and kind of the subtleties and the depth of, degrees. And part of the agency's role is to know things like the workforce stability that could support this kind of huge investment, the land access, all those other kind of pieces. Right.
[JAMES]:And, and well, and the agency doesn't have the authority to, acquire land that's written that would be needed and the economy tax breaks that they were asking for. And I mean the, the population density of the area was like yeah, it just, it was not feasible from the infrastructure.
[COBY]:The, the, the, the, the power grids, all those kind of pieces like that were completely things that were not known to the general public but were things that had to be known in the agency.
[JAMES]:So the region had not invested in the infrastructure to be ready for that level of investment.
[COBY]:I can't imagine any Atlantic Canada I don't think has any place happen, let alone the region that his organization was, was, was working in. So I was invited to this meeting, this public meeting to kind of acknowledge on this pieces with funders there and with the business community, there and the whole thing to announce the plan which was okay. And I, you know, so I get up there and my response like you know, should have been no, you're all nuts. But Yeah, but what I said was yes. If I said yes, we are happy to be a part of a response to this open request. If the expectation is our role is to highlight our region as part of a larger provincial or Atlantic Canadian initiative that we would provide the data, we would provide the conduct, we would provide all the available land, we would all the pieces that would be required to do this and how we would provide those pieces and how we would make sure that our region was highly represented and very competitive as part of this larger ask that was led by a provincial initiative. And most of the funders, most of the stakeholders, most of the partners, a lot of the business community were very supportive of that answer because I said yes with, with constraints.[JAMES]: Yeah. The people that wanted me to somehow, you know, figure out a way for 50000 jobs to come to the small region that we were responsible for.
[JAMES]:50 let's. And not everybody knows what where we're talking like 50000 jobs in a region that pot has a population of around 80 000, maybe 90000 people. Right. Like yes, it would have been phenomenal and huge. But first and foremost we don't have the population for it.
[COBY]:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes. So, but again. But what could have been the death of my reputation, the agency's reputation, confidence in the funders, relations with the business community. If I gone up there and said what I, what I was justified in
[JAMES]:saying, what you wanted to say is you're all idiots.
[COBY]:Yeah, but, but again, but saying no would have been political suicide. But saying yes, if this is what is because Again, part of it was I was, I was like. Because obviously we all know about the lack of sustainable power to the area. We all know we don't have enough shovel ready land. So I was using it.
[JAMES]:Transportation infrastructure.
[COBY]:Yeah. So I used it as a bit of a teaching tool to kind of say these are all the things that were. We were obviously not expecting it to be, you know, that it's only in this place because we cannot support it for all these different reasons. We're saying in a way that they all need. We all know this even though most people didn't. But it's a bit of an education piece at that point but, but it allowed me to say we could definitely play a part in it within certain conditions and that we are more than happy to act. And again I left to a very positive response and it, and it maintained great relationships with all the people that I had to, you know, upon leaving. But it was a very powerful way for you know, me to be able to navigate such a, such a politically, you know, like sensitive and you know, that potentially disastrous situation by just the simple tactic of yes, if.
[JAMES]:Yeah. Okay, let's jump into our next leadership tip.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:So listening is the willingness to change. I think it's again we're not breaking new ground here necessarily. But I think this is an important reminder as much as anything. I think most people are. Probably have heard this or are aware of this anyways.
[COBY]:But yeah, I mean maybe, maybe not because again this is another thing actually it was funny. This actually comes from improv too because part of it is about this is one of those kind of fundamental tenets of the idea that the difference between listening and hearing sometimes that isn't as obvious to people and some of those pieces as well because hearing is like taking in noise and information and just passively accepting it. Listening. And people say it's active listening. But no, all listening is required to be active. Just let's be clear about that. Is it idea of your processing what you're hearing with an openness to having it impact your thought process, your understanding, your opinions. It's. There's an there's an expectation of openness with listening that there isn't with hearing. And that sometimes is one of those subtle things. And not everybody truly thinks about the nuances between those two things.
[JAMES]:Yeah. And I think there's a difference between. I, I think a lot of people would be familiar with the phrase, maybe not have internalized the, the meaning of it.
[COBY]:That's Fair,
[JAMES]:where for me, why I think this is important as a tip for leaders, is that when you are entering into a discussion or any conversation, whether it doesn't, and it doesn't matter if it's, you know, we end up focusing a lot on kind of staff relations and that those pieces. But there's far more applicability. If you already have your mind made up, you are not listening. If you are, if you have decided on the outcome ahead of time, the outcome that you want, and you know nobody's going to change your mind, then you're not entering into a dialog, you're not listening to others, you're just sitting there and hearing what other people have to say so that you can wait for your turn to respond and respond and tell them what you want. Right.
[COBY]:The idea of waiting for your turn to speak.
[JAMES]:Yeah. And listening requires a willingness to be wrong.
[COBY]:Yep.
[JAMES]:And as somebody who has been wrong many, many times, yes, it's, it's not necessarily an easy thing to do to kind of examine your bias as you go into conversations and kind of consider, well, am I actually willing to move on this particular issue? And it's not that you have to necessarily be different at the end, it's that you have to at least be open to the possibility that you could be different at the end. Right? Yes.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:It's not, this is not to say that you have to enter every discussion and not fight for your beliefs and just change based on what other people are telling you.
[COBY]:Right.
[JAMES]:It's that you can have very firm beliefs, you can be a very opinionated person, trust me, I know. you can have very firm beliefs and enter into a discussion with somebody being willing to be proven wrong.
[COBY]:Yeah, yeah. And that, and that really is, is that, is that there's a, there's an openness is an essential element to listening. If somebody has their mind made up, if someone is closed off to alternatives, if somebody is firm and that nothing that anyone says shows, provides anything like that is going to sway their, change their mind, change their thoughts, change their opinions, then they're just hearing you. And that is, I really do think that is a very important distinction. Now I'm going to be, I'm going to make a huge assumption here. I'm going to assume that most podcast listeners are someone. People are people that listen. Because part of why we listen to podcasts, kind of like especially work related ones like ours, is we are, look, we are open to some type of different thought process, some type of different approach. I mean, if you're listening for new
[JAMES]:information, something interesting and curious, that's going to make us change our, the way that we think about things.
[COBY]:And you know what? Maybe that's the term right there is curious. Right. Curiosity, I think is probably what all listening does need to happen. Because if you're curious, you are willing to change because you're willing to add to your information. Adding new information to your perspective is a willingness to change. But, but you're right. What you said is that you don't have to change. It's not mandatory that you change that someone says something to you. You just follow that. It's the possibility of adding to your knowledge, the possibility of broadening your perspective, the possibility of changing your opinion. The idea of giving, of accepting more context, all of that is what listening is. So, which is why one of these I've often pushed back on with people when they talked about active listening. I said, no, all listening is active. I said if it's not active than you're hearing. And that's just the nature of it. That's, those are semantics. But I think this actually might go back to what we talked about in our last episode and we talked about our, one of our favorite leadership folks, Jodee Bock, and the work that she does around, conscious leadership and above and below the line. Because in the idea of above the line is kind of where are you and kind of your mental state. Are you above the line in your open and you're curious and you're, and you're willing, and you're willing to learn or you're committed to learning or are you below the line and you're closed and you're defensive and you're committed to being right? And I think that where you are above and below the line has a huge impact on whether you're listening to people or whether you're hearing people. So above you're listening, below you're hearing. And maybe that's part of this whole conversation as well.
[JAMES]:Yeah, and that's, I mean we could probably do a, another segment on that as a tip if we wanted to, but, your story took up too much time. No, but I, I, I will admit that kind of in the first, the first few times I heard, I kind of was exposed to this above and below the line concept. I was a, ah, little dismissive of it as being as impactful as it can be. Right. but it's often the simple concepts that have a lot of weight to them. and it is relatively simple in concept of if you are open and curious then you know you're, you're in this state where you are looking for new information. If you are willing to change and entering into a dialogue with somebody by nature you are above the line in this vernacular. and I like the parallels there because I see it's always nice when you come across a bit of piece of information that is short, easy to remember and prompts thinking. So being able to ask yourself like self reflective, am m I above or below the line? Is something you can do very quickly that carries a lot of other information along with it packed into it. Right.
[COBY]:as well as am I in the moment, Am I listening to this person or am I just hearing them?
[JAMES]:Yeah, those types of. Regardless of what language, you end up using that type of self reflective activity as you go into conversations and every. It will require active thought until it becomes a natural part of your process. I mean this is how we, we have to practice tips and we have to practice good leadership and the practice takes that conscious effort, until it becomes muscle memory. And eventually it's something that will start to be ingrained and you will find yourself listening to people more. You will find. And as part of as you listen to people and as you're curious, you will start using things like yes, if and no but. Right. Like these are connected. They are relatively simple tips that we see a lot of value in and hope that you will find the value in as you begin to use them.
[COBY]:Agreed. Okay, let's move on to the last one because we could spend a little bit more time talking about this one. which is the idea of balancing self preservation.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:So one of the kind of want to get this kind of state from the very beginning is that you and I, the nature of the work that we do less with our fractional work that we do and the consulting advisory work that we do. But m, a lot more prevalent in the interim work that we do is around the ability to never have to worry about self preservation in the roles that we're in. I guess one of the things we like about stepping in interim world, even though we don't do it a lot, it is something that is a powerful weight off our shoulders that we don't have to worry about our longevity, that we are there for a single purpose. So we don't have to worry because we often say if people don't like this they can just wait us out because we're going to be gone in six months. Or a year or whatever it is. Right.
[JAMES]:So.
[COBY]:So it's one of those things that I think is why you and I are very effective when we step into these roles because we do a lot of transformational change. We do a lot of we do, we do a lot. We do a lot of big hard decisions and have really uncomfortable conversations and we grind out some really difficult. Through some very difficult scenarios.
[JAMES]:We also legitimately make people mad because we start put we Part of what we. When we are brought into leadership, into interim, leadership roles, it's usually because the organization is in very significant turmoil, or jeopardy and things need to change quickly. M. And things need like. Well, things need to change quickly and drastically. So we end up pushing people out of their comfort zone, but because we have to change a lot of stuff in order to keep the organization pointed in the right direction. But what's so valuable in the interim role rather than like an acting role if you had a staff member acting as the CEO or executive director or whatever. The interim is by nature temporary and they can make people uncomfortable and you know, tick people off and wear some of that anger and then take that anger with them so that the next person coming in doesn't have to make everybody upset and then sit in that environment for the next five, ten years.
[COBY]:Yeah. Yeah. I mean especially, you know, yeah, the. The power of having an external interim leader come in during to, to like you say, to. To address the things, you know, have the hard, Make a hard decisions, make the unpopular decisions, have hard conversations, really push you out of the comfort zone, make people angry, and then they leave and they leave the situation much better. But then someone else who's going to be there for the longer term doesn't have to wear all of that baggage it often leaves with the interim leader is something that we, Again, we're not the only ones that do this. But anyone that does this type of work like us knows the value of, of. Of that, of that situation. Why the external approach is so powerful during organizational transformations. And then having, having that transitional leader is, is so such a better option than trying to like couple plans together with acting people internally and people stepping outside their comfort zone and then having, like I say, wear that long term and then they, you know, it becomes so much so difficult because, because when someone is internal and doing that, they also have to worry about preserving their current job and they're going to go back to. And then preserving their relationships and preserving all the, all those kind of pieces where someone that comes in, knows what to do can just get the job done, you know, and try and navigate it as smooth as possible. Knowing the mistakes are going to happen, knowing that stuff is going to, is going to, you know, falter and crack and people are going to be uncomfortable, and then they leave is such a, such a powerful thing when you remove that need for self preservation.
[JAMES]:So let's shift gears slightly away from the, pitch. Like we enjoy the interim stuff and we see a lot of value in it, but we've talked about self preservation in the past as one of the deaths of leadership. And so how do you, as a leader, a, manager, as somebody who is not interim, who is not trying to be temporary in their role, how do you balance that need to not intentionally tick everybody off? even.
[COBY]:You don't intentionally. No, you don't. You're happy to do it, but you don't look.
[JAMES]:No, I don't. I don't look for opportunities to tick people off other than me.
[COBY]:You do that to me, but I mean, I'm stuck with you.
[JAMES]:Well, professionally, I don't look for opportunities to take people personally. Yes. It's, I, I, you seek it out for sure. I seek it out. Yeah. And somehow I'm, I'm still married. I, I don't ask too many questions. I don't want her questioning it.
[COBY]:You just think that's how that's true.
[JAMES]:she's actually been told that before. Anyways, I digress.
[COBY]:Yes, you do.
[JAMES]:so how do we actually make this relevant? And I think there's no one hard and fast rule that's going to work for everybody.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:But what I'm going to caution you or what I'm going to encourage you to think about is that there is a lot of value that comes from the willingness to put yourself on a ledge.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:To put your, when making difficult decisions or decisions that have the potential to blow back in your face. We have seen time and time again the people being incredibly impressed, the reputation, the opportunities that that brings. There, is a benefit to pushing past self preservation and taking on some of those risks, taking, making those decisions that are going to be unpopular or the ones that you know, that are in the right interest of the organization but are probably, maybe it's going to negatively, impact the long serving, very vocal, members of your team. Right. there is self preservation, the balance. There is a, it's a difficult one to, walk internally, and I'll admit that. And it's why I prefer the, interim roles when we have to go that route because then I don't have to worry about the balance and I can just do what needs to be done. but don't undervalue how important and how other people view the courage that that takes internally.
[COBY]:Agreed. And again we, I think we may be painting a picture that we are the, when we step in interim roles. Were the corporate cutters that go in and just like slash people and lay people off and this and this. Oh no, no, no, we're definitely not saying that. What we're saying is, is that when we go into places where often really important things have to happen, the important things have to change. And again, and usually we're, we're up against a kind of like culture of complacency and shaking that up and readjusting it. And again, sometimes, sometimes it's actually far less common than most people would think that we, that we terminate people. Pushing people onto progressive discipline. That's something that we often do. But it's rare that we actually terminate people. People. It's very, very, very rare. Because often we don't have to. Because often it's the matter of putting the processes in place and then adhering to me, consistent with those processes is what we say, when we say those tough things happen. It's usually those kinds of pieces and there is some self preservation on us. We want to make sure that our reputations of, you know, of being respectful and compassionate but also effective has to be maintained too. Yes, but the thing is, is that it's the, it's the idea of. You're right. I've always heard the phrase fortune favors the bold. And I never really understood it until we started doing this kind of work. Because one of the things that I know that, that we've seen is when we leave organizations after going in and doing massive transformations and making unpopular decisions, is that people, even the, even the employees, like the vast majority of employees of partners of stakeholders of shareholders, really miss us when we go because we take such a bold stance on everything. But we also are really, we also focus on risk mitigation. So we don't just arbitrarily make decisions. We make evidence based decisions that can be backed by facts, backed by logic, backed by process. And we, but we, we act on it very efficiently and without, you know, kind of, without a, kind of. We don't tear tolerance stuff or we don't, you know, we don't. I can't think of the term I'm looking for here, but we were Decisive, right.
[JAMES]:Yeah, yeah. And the evidence based piece is an important aspect of it. I think there's one scenario that kind of pops to mind that might give some clarity in terms of like the nature of unpopular dispositions decisions. Because you're right, I don't want to give that perception that we are corporate cotton coming in and just cutting people's jobs gleefully. because that's, that's not at all what we do.
[COBY]:Not at all.
[JAMES]:But for instance, organization that we've supported recently, has a number of long term, long serving staff that had very close relationships with the previous executive director ended up presenting in the workplace, ah, with special privileges, being used to not having to ask permission for stuff. just knowing, well the previous executive director would have let me do it. those types and things that were operationally not wise but the decisions were made out of friendship rather than out of operational need. one of the things that we've had to do is just full on this is done right. It was unpopular, it created a lot of a lot of discussion we'll say. but ultimately I did not want the person coming in after us to have to make everybody mad by changing the rules and getting back to what's operationally required and then have to wear that with the staff for the next five years. right. That's an example. It's those types of difficult the, the decisions that you know are going to be unpopular that do require a bit of courage to enact because you know you're going to get blowback on it and you know that like what happens if we lose you know, in a small team, what happens if we lose four of our longest serving staff because they're upset that they're The perks that they negotiated with the previous executive director that's undercutting the operations of the organization get pulled away.
[COBY]:Yeah, I mean the other thing too is that we see this sometimes with leaders who are too focused on self preservation or too focused on consensus and they move too m slow. So I know there's a number of organizations that we've worked with that didn't have processes in place or didn't or didn't have enough action items on their work because they want to make sure that everybody involved signed off on every single step that they made and they, they had meetings to death and they focused on language of agreements rather than on defining outcomes and outputs and these kinds of things like that too. And then when we've stepped in and we'd be, okay, well, that time is done. Because we've been talking for a year. We're going to do this, we're going to define this plan based on the work that you've already done and here's how we're going to do it and then we're going to try it out for six months and if it doesn't work, will make some adjustments and just pushing on action and even. And, and people were not comfortable with that pace. They were not comfortable with the fact that, that we've always done things here where everything is consensus based. Like, well, then we're getting into analysis paralysis and we've done nothing but talk for a year. So that time's over. Let's try something.
[JAMES]:There's nothing that's going to turn me off faster in terms of like somebody's plan or idea than saying, well, this is the way that we've always done it before. Yeah, yeah, well obviously it hasn't worked for you because that's why we were brought in.
[COBY]:Right. And I think that that's one of those things that we again, self preservation pieces that we go after is we, we tackle those things head on and that's usually one of the canary in the coal mines for us. Right. But the idea of just like again, we've seen good or sorry, we've seen leaders with great potential get stuck on this trap of self preservation and they falter and they worry about consensus and they worry about, making sure that every decision is popular and that's run by every single person and they spin out on agreements, they go back and forth and they don't make the decision to try something. And it can because part of it is their plan is, let's make sure that we've mitigated every possible scenario, every possible risk. We've gotten everybody on board. We don't take a step unless it's completely guaranteed success.
[JAMES]:There's no such thing as a risk free decision.
[COBY]:No. And that's just it. And then, and then this is when they get into the whole analysis paralysis and they don't do anything. Whereas the, the bolder steps of saying, okay, we've done our homework, we've, we understand the risks, we have some plans how to mitigate them as we go, but we are going to try something and then we're going to reevaluate it at a certain point and try to, and then make modifications and continue to go. That is a very different approach that again makes people uncomfortable because there's risk associated with it. But if you're taking it from a risk mitigation evidence based, you know, like you, you have a plan for how you're going to adjust and refine as you go. That is kind of where you can find some of that balance that we talked about before of, of balancing action and change and unpopular decisions and difficult decisions with doing your homework, with getting the evidence, with having, having plan A, B, C, D, impacting good change management protocols where you get buy in for the change before the change happens. These are the things that you do to balance the self preservation role because again bold indecisive actions impact in your role. effective change requires the balance because it requires effective actions with risk mitigation.
[JAMES]:Yeah, yeah. I mean again, there's no one rule that's going to fit every situation. It is a. I mean it's, you're going to have to use your professional judgment.
[COBY]:Yeah.
[JAMES]:But I think what I'd like to reinforce is the benefits that come from being willing to push self preservation to the side strategically when it makes sense. Because those being having the, the moral courage to make a decision that you know is right but not popular gets noticed.
[COBY]:Yeah, absolutely. And, and we can say going in into different environments and being able to be bold. I can tell you that that well thought out, logical. Making the best decision you can based on the information you have available to you. Boldness is always respected. Head and shoulders above timid non action.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:And that's something that I do think people just need to, just need to know for people whose job it is to define that to test those waters. This is what we're coming back to report. You want as people who, who our job it is to test those waters on a daily basis. Our history of work has told us fortune does favor the bold if the bold does their homework and if the bold has a plan. Yeah. So I would definitely, I would definitely leave it with that. The other thing I wanted to touch up real quickly is that.
[JAMES]:Oh, you're not leaving it with that.
[COBY]:No, no, no, you're not. I just had a thought though that a lot of where that boldness can be mitigated is with yes, if and no but. Right. Because I mean when you are kind of bringing forward these ideas, if you're looking at things, maybe it's not always articulating the yes if maybe it's a matter of saying can we do this? Should we do this? Yes. If we have this plan, if we have this evidence, if we mitigate it this way, if we have, if we can articulate our, our, our, our justification for it, then then we do it. Or no, we shouldn't. But if we had ga. If we gather this, we gather this, we, we do this, we ask these questions, we get this information, then maybe we can. And maybe sometimes it. The. The yes, if and no, but can is something that's great verbalizing, but it is, it is a helpful tool for you to look at. Maybe how could you balance self preservation by giving yourself again, that conditional yes or that. Or the, you know, with. With a no, but. Or the potentially, the idea of, of that much more narrow focus of where you could actually play in that role. So there may be some value in trying to use some of that part of it to help with balancing the self preservation.
[JAMES]:Okay.
[COBY]:I think that about does it for this conversation. Yeah.
[JAMES]:Yep.
[COBY]:No, this was, this was good. I hope that. I hope you listening find something of these little tips specifically around hearing and listening above and below the line and yes, if and no. But I think there's enough pieces that you may be able to take something away and maybe it'll help you with your everyday.
[JAMES]:Yeah.
[COBY]:Okay, so that about does it for us. For a full archive of the podcast and access to video versions hosted on our YouTube channel, visit Roman3.ca/podcast. Thanks for joining us.
[ANNOUNCER]:For more information on topics like these, don't forget to Visit us at Roman3.ca. Side effects of this podcast may include improved retention, high productivity, increased market share, employees breaking out in spontaneous dance, dry mouth, aversion to the sound of James voice, desire to find a better podcast…
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