Today's knowledge economy is redefining what it means to be an effective leader. Dr. Wanda Wallace explores this evolving expertise leadership landscape in her book, You Can't Know It All: Leading in the Age of Deep Expertise. She joins me in this episode to discuss how leaders can become comfortable with not knowing everything and find value in their roles beyond their areas of expertise — what she calls “spanning leadership”
Wanda shares her insights on the challenges of modern leadership, including how women are pigeonholed into areas of expertise and not given the chance to advance to broader leadership positions. We also dive into the power of executive presence and self-assessment, sharing tips on how leaders can enhance their influence, refine their communication skills and spanning abilities, and reach their career goals.
Tune in as we unpack strategies for leaders to balance between deep expertise and the adaptability required to thrive in leadership roles!
TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
Learn more in Wanda’s book, You Can't Know It All: Leading in the Age of Deep Expertise! https://tiny.cc/drwandabook
Connect with Dr. Wanda Wallace:
https://tiny.cc/DrWandaLinkedIn
https://www.leadership-forum.com
Connect, Subscribe, and Follow Bernadette and Shedding the Corporate Bitch:
https://pod.link/shedthecorporatebitch
https://www.facebook.com/shifttorich
https://www.instagram.com/balloffirebernadette
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernadetteboas
This episode was produced by Podcast Boutique https://www.podcastboutique.com
Today's knowledge economy is redefining what it means to be an effective leader. Dr. Wanda Wallace explores this evolving expertise leadership landscape in her book, You Can't Know It All: Leading in the Age of Deep Expertise. She joins me in this episode to discuss how leaders can become comfortable with not knowing everything and find value in their roles beyond their areas of expertise — what she calls “spanning leadership”
Wanda shares her insights on the challenges of modern leadership, including how women are pigeonholed into areas of expertise and not given the chance to advance to broader leadership positions. We also dive into the power of executive presence and self-assessment, sharing tips on how leaders can enhance their influence, refine their communication skills and spanning abilities, and reach their career goals.
Tune in as we unpack strategies for leaders to balance between deep expertise and the adaptability required to thrive in leadership roles!
TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
Learn more in Wanda’s book, You Can't Know It All: Leading in the Age of Deep Expertise! https://tiny.cc/drwandabook
Connect with Dr. Wanda Wallace:
https://tiny.cc/DrWandaLinkedIn
https://www.leadership-forum.com
Connect, Subscribe, and Follow Bernadette and Shedding the Corporate Bitch:
https://pod.link/shedthecorporatebitch
https://www.facebook.com/shifttorich
https://www.instagram.com/balloffirebernadette
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernadetteboas
This episode was produced by Podcast Boutique https://www.podcastboutique.com
Contrary to popular belief, expertise leadership is very much alive and needed in a knowledge economy. However, expertise leadership doesn't mean knowing it all and alone it isn't enough to have high impact and to create leverage. After all, leadership is a lifetime journey that requires you to get comfortable, being uncomfortable, to understand the value you bring to any situation and taking the risks needed to have high impact. Our guest, dr Wanda Wallace of Leadership Forum and author of you Can't Know it All Leading in the Age of Deep Expertise, will walk all of us through what is involved in getting comfortable, being uncomfortable and what you need to do first, how to move between not knowing it all and being an expert leader, which he refers to as expertise and spanning leadership, and how your executive presence and confidence drives the impact you make on your team, business and self. Stay with us, welcome, welcome.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Shedding the Corporate Bitch, the podcast that transforms female corporate executives into powerhouse leaders by showing them how to shed the challenges and overwhelm, along with any fear, insecurity, self-doubt and negativity holding them back. I'm your host, bernadette Bowes, of Ball of Fire Coaching, bringing you powerhouse discussions each week to share tips, advice and sometimes tough love so you create the riches in your work and life. You deserve. Wanda, how are you? Welcome to the program? Thank you, it is a pleasure to be here. I'm excited. I'm excited to talk about this whole conversation around how to be okay, not knowing it all. But before we do, I'd love to share with our viewers and listeners a little bit about yourself, if you wanted to share, sure.
Speaker 2:There's so many things to say about me. Sometimes there's a lot to say about me and sometimes I think, geez, I've gotten fairly boring. But one of the most interesting things about me is I live in two countries. I live in New York City and I live in London, and I actually have a home and a residence in both places and I go back and forth between, and that means that I duplicate everything, so I could literally get on the plane without my laptop and still land in the other location and work perfectly fine, crazy thing. Yeah, that's nice though. Well, I love that global context. It gives me a slice of not just one country but multiple places, and London's my launching point for the rest of the world. Most people like to know what I do for fun, what my passions are, what I get really excited about. I love walking and hiking. I love art, particularly doing it, and in fact, there's one of my paintings sitting right up there on the shelf oh cool. And I happen to love horses and dogs.
Speaker 1:Ah, I love horses and dogs too. Horses was my first obsession growing up, and then puppies have become my other one for the last, you know, 20 years. That's wonderful. I love it. Now. Do you have a dog?
Speaker 2:I do not. I have had dogs. But you know, living in two countries, that's true, it's a little difficult for owning any animal.
Speaker 1:So no, that is true, that is very true.
Speaker 1:Well that's fascinating and, yes, that global. You know, having multiple residencies, it must be very exciting and contribute greatly to the work that you're able to do. Yeah, that's fabulous. Well, like I mentioned, we're going to be talking about how to be okay, not knowing at all, but while still having tremendous impact, and it also echoes the title of your book, which is you Can't Know it All. What was it about this subject and what have you found out there that made you drawn to taking this angle in regards to leadership?
Speaker 2:Okay, my first observation was working with women who would get stuck and couldn't advance to that next senior level and not understanding why they were stuck. And why they are stuck is because they are deep experts, great executors, and they're seen as hugely valuable, really important, but they're carved into a box a small box. Valuable, really important, but they're carved into a box a small box and the organization is not going to let them out of that box. They've been there for too long and so they are not seen as having the skills that would let them to step out of that box and lead at a larger scale. And that means they're not seen as strategic. They're seen as practical executors. They're not seen as the inspiring leaders. They're seen as the ones who can. They're not seen as the inspiring leaders. They're seen as the ones who can make things happen and get it done. They're not seen as the broad network you know, where you can tap all sorts of different resources to make all sorts of things happen, smooth everything over. They're seen as the say it like it is, do it, make it happen, and it just keeps them in that box.
Speaker 2:So that's where I started was understanding that this and they're leaders, it's not that they're individual contributors, they're leaders. They're just expert leaders, and their leadership is derived by their expertise, and what they need to be able to do is to step out of that expertise and then to do a thing I call spanning, which is not general management. It is to be able to look across domains of knowledge for which you have some depth but not great depth and still make the decisions, convince people, et cetera, et cetera. That's the trick. All right, now, as I got started on this, I started seeing everybody everywhere. It's not a gender problem. Everybody who begins life as an expert leader eventually reaches that place where they've got to push themselves out of their comfort zone and do something that they don't know enough about. True, okay, very true. So there you go.
Speaker 1:And that is fascinating. But I want to kind of pull it apart a little bit and ask some questions. So you also talk to the fact that expert leadership is getting even more and more and more important, while at the same time having this spanning approach. So how does that go against people's old philosophies maybe around? Well, leaders are generalists. Leaders aren't to be functionally, operationally expert, they're supposed to be general, they're supposed to be more about people than anything. And how does one reconcile all of that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is one of my. It's the hardest thing, because everybody seems to think that you will. Yes, you're an expert leader, and then you stop being the expert leader and you start being the spanning leader. Absolutely not. Life is a balancing act between the expertise-driven leadership and the spanning-driven leadership. Love that and it's. You know, some days you're 90% expertise and other days you're 90% spanning.
Speaker 2:Getting that balance right is what is so difficult. So there will be a crisis and you will need to take a deep dive down into what's happening, and you have to have expertise to be able to take that dive down. But then the secret is can you pop back up? How quickly can you pop back up and let your team carry on with the depth? And then that's a tricky balance, especially in a world that is knowledge driven. So knowledge matters, so expertise matters. Risk carries a high profile and if you don't have deep expertise, you don't really know where the risk pieces are, and everybody wants everything instantaneously. So expertise is still needed.
Speaker 2:I've been saying routinely that I would love to kill the phrase general management, because we don't hire generalists ever. We don't even hire CEOs. If you think about it, if you were recruiting a CEO, would you take a CEO who knew nothing about your industry, nothing about your products, nothing about your technology, nothing about your customers? No, you wouldn't. You want somebody who has some expertise. The question is how much and how much you rely on it.
Speaker 1:So bells are going off in my head around conversations I've had over the months and years about the fine line, though, of an individual, especially a manager, having very deep expertise and then micromanaging as a result of that. So how does somebody kind of play between both of those without falling in the trap of being a micromanager? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:All right. So let's set the stage for this one, and I'm going to set aside micromanagement, because, if I'm an expert leader, part of my job is training my team to know what I know. That is my job as the leader of that team. Okay, so I have to convey my knowledge Now. I can convey that knowledge in a very dictatorial way. I can convey it in a very instructional, let me tell you. I can convey it in a way where I catch you making a mistake and I correct you, and I can convey it in a very human, friendly, helping you discover. So there's many different modes, and all of them probably appropriate on some occasions. The secret, though, is do I leave people feeling that they have some degree of control? And the secret for that is to get myself organized so I know what needs to be done on a particular task and a good way to get it done.
Speaker 2:All right, I need to decide what is mandatory in that task and what could be deviated from. So let's say, I might say that there's a deadline that is not negotiable, and I might say there's some checkoff points on a task that other people are going to interface with. That's non-negotiable, and I might say you know the data set we're going to use. I mean, I might have a whole bunch of pieces that are non-negotiable. So I would start, let's say, with you, and say let's understand what the end goal is and the timeline, and let's understand the non-negotiable components, set out the guardrails, if you will. And then what I want to do is to stop telling and start asking, because I'm going to pull the answers out of you. I know, I know what's going to work, how it's going to work, but I'm not going to tell you I know better, because that's demeaning.
Speaker 2:I'm going to say tell me, how would you approach this, what would you think needs to happen? And I notice you missed something and I'm going to say well, what would you do about this? Where would you put this in? How would you put this in? How would you check for this particular problem Seen in the past? X happens. How will you make sure that doesn't happen? I keep asking, and asking, and asking, and asking until we have a plan that actually I think is a pretty reasonable plan. We put a timeline and the dates and we write it down. It was great, go do. And I might say do up until this point, let's say, with a data set. You know you drew the first cut on the errors and let's review that tomorrow in case I see something or know something that I forgot to tell you about. Right, and I got a touch point. But it's not micromanaging, I'm handing it back to you, it's a touch point.
Speaker 1:That's awesome and I absolutely love you, wanda, because one of my favorite statements that I or I should say comment, not a statement that I make is ask questions, don't make statements, you know. So I absolutely love that you have a similar approach to that. Absolutely love it. And do your managers slash leaders do they find themselves making? I'll call them excuses as far as when they hear that, it sounds very time consuming, very exhausting, very involved, and if so, then how can it be simplified, you know, to ensure that they are able to take advantage of it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, everybody thinks, yes, that sounds great, I like it, and let's all admit that it's extremely hard to do. It's much more expedient in the moment for me to just say do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. But then I have to go police that you did do 1, 2, 3, 4, five, six oh, by the way, 6.5. And that's not any fun and that takes a huge amount of my time and nobody's happy. I'm not happy, you're not happy, not going to work very well. So you've got to get focused on the cost of continuing business as usual. Okay. So, and I say to people if you want to have a demotivated team or you want to keep telling everybody you don't want them to think for themselves, then stay with what you're doing. You'll be fine. If you're looking to grow that capability, if you're looking to have people engaged, if you don't want to have to police, then you need a change in the game.
Speaker 1:Right, I absolutely love it, love it, love it, love it and it love it, love it, love it.
Speaker 2:And you know they, they're there for their people, like you said leadership is about giving them and helping them to excel and and develop and grow and therefore we as leaders have to have more patience. It's it is does require that me, as the leader, sit back and organize myself. I have to organize my thoughts Now. That is not three hours of work, it's probably five to 10 minutes Quiet, focused what is here. So I'm prepared for the conversation and if I have these touch points and timelines, patience is less of an issue, because I know where it's coming. I know I have this moment to make sure we're on track. And more when my manager calls me and says Wanda, what's happening on X, y and Z? I know exactly where we are and what's next and what needs to happen. That's all my manager wants to know is I've got it covered? They don't want the details. So you know it solves a whole bunch of problems and I honestly think if you take the time to organize at the beginning, you save time on the back end.
Speaker 1:And, at the same time, if you can also show the value and the benefit to that other party and to yourself as the manager and leader in regards to doing these steps that seem time consuming, then the payoff is what they should be focused on, as opposed to the effort right now. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 2:Well, I think you get the same amount of effort to get the job done. It's just whether you want your effort up front to get it all structured and organized and get started, or do you want your effort on the middle, policing and telling people what to do, or doing it yourself? At the end of the day, pick your poison.
Speaker 1:Pick your poison In your book and I want to let everybody know. You can pick it up at Amazon, but in your book you can't know it all. You have one chapter that's focused on and I love it because it's very story and anecdotal based. That's a word and one of your chapters is focused on the four challenges. Yes, and could you highlight those four challenges and help us to understand how those relate to the fact that we need to get okay with not knowing it all and recognizing our value and impact?
Speaker 2:Right, I'm probably going to describe this a little differently than I do in the book, because I've been talking about it so much. So the four challenges the challenges are the following If I'm going to try to lead in a different way, to lead in a spanning way, the first thing I have to get my head around. I can't move until I get my head around is how am I adding value? When I'm an expert leader? My value is because of what I know, what I can control, what I can do, what I can teach Okay, my expertise In the spanning space. What's my value? And until you can answer that question, how am I adding value to my team immediately and to my organization as a whole? And typically those answers have to do with I'm training my team, I'm educating my team, I'm motivating my team, I'm connecting my team to outside resources, I'm bringing information to my team, I'm tapping my network to get things done for my team. So until you understand that that's your value, I like to say strategic focus and priority. That's your value. So you understand that you won't make a change. All you'll do is dig in and try to be more and more of an expert. So that's the first piece to understand there is value in this other stuff. It's not just a bunch more meetings.
Speaker 2:Then the second question becomes what work am I supposed to be doing? Because I'm now not doing the work that I just delegated to you, for example, I'm doing something else. What is that? How am I doing? And the job still the work has to get done, but my job is to enable it. But my job is to enable it, not to do it. Enable not to do so. I should be available to help resolve a conflict with another part of the organization, for example, and I'm gonna use my network to do that. Huge value add. But that's what my work is. All right now.
Speaker 2:Third question is how do I know you or anybody else who's on my team is doing the right thing? How is that I don't, or anybody else who's on my team is doing the right thing? How is that? I don't know? I can't check on it in quite the same way. So I have to have mechanisms to be comfortable that you know what you're talking about and that aren't offensive. That's tricky, like I can have you talk through it. I can check that. Other people think that makes sense and makes reasonable, but you know, as so many people will show, we get fooled, we can easily get fooled. So that's a tricky territory. In that one, All right. And then the third piece.
Speaker 2:Once I get through all of those, the final third, fourth piece is really now. I have to change the nature of my relationships because I'm now relying on relationships far more than I'm relying on my content knowledge. So I have to smooth out those relationships. I have to be able to work with a broad range of personality styles very different than me. I have to lean into the emotional side of how people are feeling in the interaction, not just the right, wrong facts. I have to get skilled at navigating the conflict. I have to be able to show that executive presence and gravitas and confidence and a host of other things that we always talk about on the relationship side. They become mandatory in the spanning space. I can get away with limited on all of those if I'm an expert leader only.
Speaker 1:And which one of those four do you find to be the biggest struggle for?
Speaker 2:leaders. I'm going to surprise you the first one. When I get people to understand that they have a different way of adding value and that they can be rewarded for that level of value and that the team will appreciate them for that value, then they're open to saying great, how do I do this? But until you unlock that, you just can't get there. I'll give you an example if this is how story as an example is working and it's in the book Working with a guy who was an expert leader, very senior in his organization and very well regarded, and he finally got that promotion he'd been working for years to do and it put him in charge of his group and another adjacent group.
Speaker 2:He knows nothing about the adjacent group and he needs to stop doing his old job and elevate up. Let somebody else do that old job and then he's going to be the overarching leader for both groups. So this is a very successful, very well-paid, very high-ranking individual who came unglued at. They're just setting me up to get me out. Oh, wow, I used to be important because I was the one doing X, y and Z and now somebody else is doing it. Why do they need me? What's stunning to me at how unglued he came with. How am I adding value? Wow. So until I get that covered, I can't get the rest. And if I, you know, if I get that covered, then we can talk about how you make sure the work is getting done and what you're doing, and then you've got the bandwidth to think about the relationships. I know everybody thinks the relationships are the hard set. There's a skill set like they're developable skills. Yes, yes, when you have your head straight, that that's where you spend your time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the hard part is getting your head straight, Right? Yeah, and it's interesting because so he was questioning. You know, what value does he bring if it's not in the expertise that he has, as opposed to thinking about, well, what is the value that I can bring outside my expertise? Because that's really where you want to take them right To that spanning space.
Speaker 2:That's right. I don't want you to give up your total expertise Remember I said it's a balancing act but I need you to add this extra skill, this spanning capability in heavy measure, to your leadership basket.
Speaker 1:That's what we need prevalent today than it has been in the past? Is that because of just the heavy focus on technology and technical capability and you know kind of specific function that today's business economy requires?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think customers are expecting that when they call somebody, they get somebody who really knows what they're talking about and can go deep to answer questions, whether that's sales or wherever in the organization. That's what our customers and clients are demanding of us. Risk profile demands that I understand somebody who could think through all the potential components of risk that we might not even have seen yet. But that takes an expert Right. If you think about financial reporting, we need deep expertise in order to make sure the financial reporting is correct. I mean, just think that all of that, plus each area in the company, like the market knowledge, is a deep area of knowledge. It's gotten much, much more narrow than it used to be. So we just have all of these pockets of expertise that are required to run a modern organization and you can be a very senior leader Like you can even be in the C-suite in a large organization and still lead as an expert leader.
Speaker 1:Right, okay, yeah, that's fascinating. And again, everyone I left her book. Yeah, that's fascinating. And again, everyone I left her book. How you can access her book? You can go to Amazon or you can go to tinycc forward slash Dr Wanda book. You can't know it all. Because I think it's really, really important, this shift that she's emphasizing, because, again, the expert, leader, micromanager perception, you know, is long in the past and I love the fact that you've moved from the G word I won't even use it to spanning. I love that. Yeah, absolutely. Now. You had also mentioned in this conversation around executive presence and confidence and a lot of people get confused when you know someone says that what is executive presence? What do you mean? What do?
Speaker 2:you mean Wanda, All right, I know that a lot of people get frustrated when they're told that they lack executive presence or confidence or gravitas. There'll be any number of words. Effective communication can't hold the room. Those kinds of words will get said Okay, and that is a judgment that some person has made about you. And let's just label it for what it is. It's a judgment 99% of the time in the cases that I see that judgment has merit. Problem is I don't know what to do about it, because it's a judgment and therefore it's lacking any sense of the behaviors that are driving to that conclusion.
Speaker 2:So if you believe that you're lacking executive presence or have been told that you need to improve your executive presence, then it's likely to fall in one of seven categories that you need to focus on. So let me run through the seven and then that's for each person then to say where do I think I need to put my emphasis? And they build in order. So, number one if you don't look the way we're expecting you to look, it's going to take a knock off your executive presence. And I am not saying everybody dressed the same in an organization. That is not the formula. It's you have to look the part. And the best way to say this is if you were doing a Shakespearean play on stage and everybody was dressed in period costume and you were not, the audience would spend half their capacity, mental capacity, wondering what it means that you're not in period costume, rather than listening to your point.
Speaker 1:I love that. That is such a great analogy. Such a great analogy. So appearance.
Speaker 2:Number two if it takes you forever to get to the point, I have lost attention span and I don't care Now. Granted, some parts of the world are less forgiving than others on this one, but I've got to be able to get to the point quickly and succinctly, so conciseness, so people can follow it. They know what I'm talking about. Three I have to connect to the audience. I have to understand where the audience is thinking and feeling and be able to talk about what they are feeling. It's not about what I'm thinking, it's about where my audience is coming from. And that emotion word in there is mandatory. You can't connect without recognizing the emotion your audience is feeling. You want to talk about it, appropriate to the situation, not act it out. I don't want to be emotional. I want to be able to talk about it appropriate to the situation, not act it out. I don't want to be emotional, I want to be able to talk about it.
Speaker 2:Then we come to the lovely thing of confidence. All right, confidence has two components. The one is what am I doing with my body that is signaling to the world that I either have or lack confidence? So if I'm fidgeting, if I'm playing with my hair, fidgeting. That's a good giveaway that I'm nervous. So there's several, there's a bunch of these. They're pretty easy. Pick up any book anywhere or pick up my book. I'll give you the kind of rundown on those. But those are the outward portrayals. What drives those outward portrayals is what's in my head and that's the mental game. Can I give myself appropriate permission?
Speaker 2:The simple best way to do this, this piece on confidence, is to focus on what I know and what I am bringing to the party, how I'm adding value. Don't focus on what I don't know. So focus on what I do know, what I'm bringing, how I'm adding value. Now you know why challenge number one is so important. Then I'm going to be okay with I don't know the rest of this, but hopefully somebody else does Okay. So that's the confidence game.
Speaker 2:We move past confidence and we want you to be calm, particularly in a crisis. So can you have an outward portrayal of confidence? And then we want you to be challenge ready. So when I ask you a question, do you come unglued or can you handle that question? Can you roll with it? Can you answer it? Do you sound still confident and connected and calm and concise in dealing with challenge? All right, and then we move to the last one, which is really focus. The people who have the greatest executive presence are the ones who can focus in the moment. I don't care what is falling apart around them. They can compartmentalize it, put it aside and focus on the conversation that's in front of them, with a heavy amount of listening. So, as one of my communications experts says, listening is high stakes behavior.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that. Isn't that great? I love that. Thank you, Cheryl. High stakes behavior.
Speaker 2:Okay, I love that so that's the cross Appearance concise, connected, calm, confident, conflict challenge ready and focused.
Speaker 1:I love it, love it, love it. Let's focus on the listening, the very last one that you mentioned. Apart from the fact that listening is a high stakes behavior is fabulous, why is it so hard for people, especially in critical moments, to actually listen?
Speaker 2:Expertise is my short answer. I come to that meeting because I know some stuff and I come to that meeting with a particular point of view on the stuff that I know and I want to find my moment to make that point of view. Oh, I have to set aside what I know, what I believe, and entertain the possibility that I might A not know it all. B somebody else might have a valid point of view and C I might have to change my mind and we're rushed. Add to that with rushed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, add to that with rushed, but the ego is just flying it all over. You know, all I'm seeing is ego in this conversation, that part of the conversation.
Speaker 2:We always think about ego as a negative thing and I don't think about it as a negative thing. I think it's the expertise and my confidence in my expertise and my perspective, my point of view, is a really valid, important thing. But that skill of willing to set it aside conscious about it and willing to set it aside, it's easier said than done.
Speaker 1:Right, right, love it, absolutely love it, all right. So those four challenges led into the seven elements of executive presence, which I also read in your book. Around a self-assessment, yes, and I want you to share about the self-assessment. But, more importantly, why is it so important that you felt that you needed to put it in the book? Is self-assessment for an individual Self-assessment?
Speaker 2:in general is mandatory. Okay, and I'm going to put it this way when you're trying to lead at a larger scale, you're trying to lead in a spanning way. You are working with people who have very different personalities, very different approaches, very different styles, very different everything, life experiences, and you're trying to bring that group together to accomplish something. Okay, that means nuances in how I say or do, my message, for example, or motivate somebody, are going to be essential to get the best out of all of those different styles and personalities. I can't get that right just by sitting back here and saying, oh, let me scratch my head and say, right, here's how I do it, because I'll run into a personality that I don't quite read or understand as easily. So I have got to be able to get feedback. If I can't get that feedback and take that feedback on board, I'm never going to adapt enough to get that nuance.
Speaker 2:All right, and one of the most effective ways of getting feedback is to pull back and say, geez, how do I do this? Is that the only way to do this? Let me evaluate where I am on this scale or on this dimension or on this component and open up to the possibility there might be something else to think about there. And self-assessment is what gets you there. So everybody wants to believe that they're not the expert leader, because expert leader feels like command and control. It is a little bit. It's a nice version of command and control, but it's still a bit of I know and I need to explain to you. So nobody wants to be a command and control leader, so nobody wants to believe that. They're actually leaning on the expertise too heavily and I put the self-assessment in to show people that you are leaning too heavily.
Speaker 1:Nice, hey, because knowledge and awareness, you know, leads to change and transformation, growth and success. Yep, absolutely right. Yeah, I love it, absolutely. I say that a lot. Love it, I love it.
Speaker 2:Good, there is. I have to send you the link to this separately. We have put the assessment online, and so I'll send you a separate announcement for that, if you'd like to share that out with your listeners.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Is it on.
Speaker 2:Leadership Forum? It is not. We haven't put that link there. I'm going to have to send it to you separately because I don't have it in front of me.
Speaker 1:No, send it and we'll make sure that it's included. Absolutely We'll. We'll make sure. Although, everyone buy her book, buy it, go to Amazon, buy her book. You can, right then and there also have the assessment, but what she'll probably be providing is a separate. You can print it out, you can, you know, make a lot of copies and take a self-assessment over time. That kind of thing. That's fabulous. Any one thing that, if our listeners and viewers were to walk away and start focusing and acting on it, what would that be?
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm going to give an unusual tip. But I think there's an unutilized skill. But I think there's an unutilized skill which is look around your organization wherever you are. Think about the leaders that you have worked with. What was it about them that was so special? Why does that person stand out relative to all the other people? Don't give me qualities. Give me behaviors. What did they do that shopping list? It becomes your best assessment, for how am I doing against that list? What do they do that I can borrow and copy? How do they say I don't know, can I do it the same way, or can I do that in a variation on a theme? It just gives you this wonderful starting point to say how do I begin to to approximate that kind of behavior?
Speaker 1:Yeah, sweet, Powerful, powerful, powerful Wanda. Thank you so much. I so appreciate you being here.
Speaker 2:It's a pleasure. Thanks for asking. Thanks for asking such good questions, oh anytime.
Speaker 1:But everyone, please go to leadership-forumcom to learn more about Wanda and the work that she does and how she can support you and your business and your team. At the same time, be sure to follow her on LinkedIn. You can go to tinycc forward, slash Dr Wanda LinkedIn. Or you could just go to LinkedIn and put in Wanda Wallace and you're going to find her. And again, I mentioned her book on Amazon. And again, I mentioned her book on Amazon. You Can't Know it All. I appreciate it. This has been fabulous and I know I took a whole lot of notes, so I'm hoping our listeners and viewers have as well. Thank you again. Thank you, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. What a powerhouse Dr Wanda Wallace of Leadership Forum is.
Speaker 1:I absolutely love this conversation A whole different spin on expertise, leadership and what she also calls spanning leadership and really ensures that we understand what it is going to take for any and all leaders to really expand and elevate and enrich their career and their life. We talked about self-assessment and the critical need for self-assessment. So much, so much we talked about. So I hope you gained as much from it as I did and I would love to understand what exactly you walked away with. So please feel free to go out to LinkedIn and leave me a comment, leave me a question that I can even pass to Wanda, leave me any kind of thoughts or talking points that you walked away from this conversation with.
Speaker 1:We would love, love, love to hear from you and, at the same time, if you do have any questions or challenges that you or your team are having in really embracing being a powerhouse leader, then don't hesitate to reach out and schedule some time with me. Go to coachmebernanettecom. Forward slash discovery call and let's just have a conversation about you and getting you tips and strategies for moving forward. I am honored, absolutely honored, to have had Dr Wanda Wallace with us, as well as all of you, and I will look forward to having you right back here for another episode of Shedding the Corporate Bench. Bye, have a beautiful week.