125: Seeing People as Humans, with Rob Lion

Have you ever wondered why inspiring speeches from leaders don't always translate to motivated teams?

In this conversation with Rob Lion, we discuss how leaders often forget that employees don't necessarily love the organization the same way they do. While executives might focus on purpose and vision, many employees are primarily concerned with meeting foundational needs like providing for their families or maintaining stability. 

This disconnect explains why what works at the leadership level doesn't always resonate throughout the organization.

One of the most thought-provoking parts of our conversation focuses on rethinking onboarding. Rob draws a parallel to vacation: What do you do day one on vacation? You explore, you have fun...

Yet most companies approach onboarding like reading emergency procedures instead of letting employees explore and understand the culture they've joined. This simple shift in thinking could transform how organizations welcome new team members.

Rob emphasizes that culture work and performance objectives must operate concurrently. Becoming too culture-focused can make an organization self-centered, while overemphasizing performance can lead to forgetting employees' humanity. Finding this balance is the sweet spot for leadership that delivers both fulfillment and results.

Dr. Rob Lion is a professor at Idaho State University and co-founder of Black River Performance Management, where the motto is "Work should fuel the spirit, not drain it." With over 20 years of expertise in leadership, organizational development, and performance improvement, Rob is renowned for his innovative, people-first approach. He specializes in creating human-centric, sustainable systems that drive growth and success within organizations.

Learn about Black River Performance Management on their website or connect with Rob on LinkedIn.

Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.

Chapters

• 0:00 Importance of Socialization in Organizations
• 3:02 Introduction to Dr. Rob Leone
• 4:09 Unexpected Career Paths and Possibilities
• 6:10 Defining Compassionate Leadership
• 10:49 Leadership in Polarizing Political Times
• 18:50 Rethinking Onboarding and Culture Integration
• 25:42 Finding Hope in Human-Centered Approaches
• 29:13 About Black River Performance Management

Transcript

Rob Lion: 1:14

Let's capture the element of fun and recognize what the human needs are. And the biggest needs when people are coming into organizations is socialization. Am I going to fit here? It's just like my freshman going to high school he wants to know if he's going to fit in and what it looks like to be a student here. His schedule and his locker location and the rules and policies and lunch break times are really secondary to these other things that relate to acceptance and integration.

Manya Chylinski: 1:49

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chilinski. My guest today is Dr Rob Lion. He's a professor of human resource development at Idaho State University and he's the co-founder of Black River Performance Management. Need to be paying attention to how to find balance between culture and the work that you have to do, and is there a way that we can capture the fun, put that back into the work environment? I really enjoy the conversation and I hope you do too. Hi Rob, how are you doing today?

Rob Lion: 2:38

I'm terrific. Thanks for asking. How are you doing?

Manya Chylinski: 2:41

I'm doing very well and I'm excited to be talking to you today. And the first question I start with what's the one thing that you have done in any area of your life that you never thought you'd do and you were surprised to realize it was happening?

Rob Lion: 2:56

Well, first off this, let's start from right now and move backwards, right. So my wife actually started a podcast several years ago and I am such a late adopter and I didn't like sitting in front of the camera. We would do some webinars and actually my physicality I've trained myself to sit still for the most part, but back in the early days I was in roller seats spinning around as I was talking the production crew was like stop it, knock it off. So I never thought I'd even be on a podcast, let alone be a consultant, let alone be a professor, let alone be successful probably not least likely to succeed in high school, but really stuck in the middle of that bell curve of not really no one really thinking one way or the other right, and me myself not really thinking one way or the other. So there's a whole bunch of things that I never thought I'd be doing and I'm so happy I am doing them and I get to do them.

Manya Chylinski: 3:52

Yes, isn't that just a fun piece of living as an adult, kind of realizing the landscape of things we can do and how exciting it can be to try new things.

Rob Lion: 4:06

Absolutely. Yeah, I think we're built to do great things. It's just we don't necessarily know that and we don't hear those messages. Not all of us hear those messages. Growing up and I know my parents they did the best they could and they did a good job, but those are not things I ever heard. But now I talk to my clients, now I talk to the business partners, I talk to my own children and remind them that, look, we got for the most part. Everything's baked within us. We have the capability, the capacity for most things. We just have to uncover them or develop them and go in that direction. So anything's possible for most of us.

Manya Chylinski: 4:43

Nice, all right. Well, on that note, we're talking about compassion in leadership, and just at a high level. What is compassion and why is it important for leaders?

Rob Lion: 4:57

To me, compassion is the ability and I know this isn't the dictionary definition but when I think about it in terms of organizations, it's the ability and it's the practice of leaders seeing their people for who they are, what they are, and having an appreciation even though they might not understand, but having an appreciation that, for example, manya, you're different than I am and your journey is different, and what you thought about this morning and how you see the world is different than my experiences. And that, to me, is compassion, is recognizing these inherent uncertainties of the people. I was with a big group of leaders yesterday and I was trying to actually relay this message to them that it's easy for us to forget, when we're at the top of the food chain in our organizations, that other people don't love the organization as much as us, or they might love it just as much as us, but in a different way. But also other people are there for different reasons than us. And if I could share a quick little story from a retreat I was running last month, one of the CEOs said well, we just all need to know our why. I said well, I don't disagree with that, but I think that's an oversimplification, so that the leadership level. Sure, we got to recognize that we have higher earnings and because of that we have a different level of privilege and the way we see the world's different.

Rob Lion: 6:32

And for many leaders their life is somewhat organized. It's not necessarily out of control. Well, it'll ebb and flow over time. But our people are not here focusing on the why. Necessarily Our people are focusing on how to live, how to provide for their family, meeting some basic needs.

Rob Lion: 6:54

And actually if you get into this concept of purpose which I think the concept of purpose is really important, and especially for where I am in my career, it makes a lot of sense. I didn't have that appetite for that in my 20s because I had more foundational needs to fulfill. And so if you look at Maslow's hierarchy, purpose is in the middle, if not in the upper third. Hierarchy Purpose is in the middle if not in the upper third, and a lot of our people are dealing with foundational elements at various times in life. So for me long answer, trying to get back to full circle, to compassion it's recognizing that our people are seeing the world through different sets of lenses than we are and their language might not articulate what they're truly feeling, just like our language might not articulate what we're truly feeling or what we're trying to give us direction. So there's a little bit of grace there that we give people to help understand where there are what they need, and so to me, that's what compassionate leadership is.

Manya Chylinski: 8:01

Wow, I so appreciate that answer in all its nuance, especially the piece of we're all coming at this working experience from different places and expecting different things, and sometimes leaders can and this is not an indictment, but leaders can be very visionary and talking about, as you say, the purpose and the amazingness of what we're doing, and that doesn't trickle down because it can't, because those people just aren't in a other people aren't in a position to be able to feel that level of connection to the organization. So I appreciate you focusing on that.

Rob Lion: 8:44

I agree a hundred percent, and this, this, if I could kind of talk about something else that relates to this. This is where my issue is with when people talk about motivational speeches and I say, look, let's be very clear, these aren't motivational speeches. We are all in charge of our own motivation. You can cultivate it as a leader to try to raise my ability to leverage my internal motivation, but really what we're talking about here is inspiration, inspirational speeches, but not everyone's eyes are open and able to accept that. And it might even just accept that speech and it might be really exciting that we're going to do these great things as a company or as an organization, but at the end of the day, I still have to go back and do my job and live my life in accordance to the space I'm in right now.

Manya Chylinski: 9:35

Right, right, the space I'm in right now, right Right Now, we often hear people saying that compassion is squishy, it's a soft skill. What do you say to leaders who counter with that when you're talking about this?

Rob Lion: 9:52

So, if I think back to early in my career, I chased gigs, so I had a lot of those conversations and now I don't. Everything's referral based and what's actually working out, to my benefit and our team's benefit, is that we're we're attracting leaders that believe exactly that it is squishy but we need it. But to push back on that, I can't change anyone's mind really, and so I just hear them out and they share that. Well, I have a slightly different perspective, and not that my perspective is better, because so context is what's important here. But the question is whether or not that the absence of compassion can you? We're good, I'm doing really well as a leader. Our team's great.

Rob Lion: 10:53

And what I share with my own companies I partner with, that I provide services to, is look, we might just be one bad hire away from a disaster, right, and so the work we're doing is future-proofing our culture and our capability as a team to offset those things. And the other thing to think about, too, is when leaders think everything's working out and maybe that they're doing a good job, there might be very little evidence that they themselves are doing a good job. It could just be the chemistry of the group, and so it's really complex, right. And so what I've learned is not to argue anymore.

Rob Lion: 11:31

Have these curious conversations open-minded, I believe, a lot of like leading with love, leading from the heart? And that doesn't fit for everyone, and that's just fine. Someone else could slide into that space, someone else that tough talks and I've seen these people too. I followed them off the stage. They do their tough talk presentation about what leadership is, and then I come in afterwards with a very different angle, and some people prefer that other angle, whereas other people prefer this angle, and so it's just, it's finding our people, right, right.

Manya Chylinski: 12:03

Right, absolutely, and I appreciate you saying that you aren't trying to convince somebody that this is something that they need and I'm at that place as well which is, if this isn't somebody's quality that somebody thinks is important, it's not my job to try to convince them that it is. I want to work with the people who, on some level, already understand that. Maybe they haven't implemented it, but they do understand that.

Rob Lion: 12:32

Absolutely.

Manya Chylinski: 12:33

We're living in, shall we say, interesting times in terms of our social climate, our political environment. How do you think that is influencing leadership styles and organizations right now?

Rob Lion: 12:46

I think it's creating a divide, just as what we're seeing in our political climate. We're seeing a divide of people that are really drawn to what's occurring in our political climate as permission to act in certain behaviors in certain ways, and then others are really pulling back and going the other way, and so I don't think it's helping us much. I think there's a lack of leadership compassion in the other way, and so I don't think it's helping us much. I think there's a lack of leadership compassion in the political climate and sometimes and some of the criticisms we were too compassionate in the past maybe, but at the end of the day, people are people, humans are humans, and there's a level of dignity that we need to respect there, and we can have our differences in opinions, but I just see what's happening is that we have people becoming more polarized because they're either offended by a perspective or feel alignment with a perspective, and that's what's going to be really tough, and I think it's going to be really important for us to figure out how to select candidates to fit our organization, and that's why I spent the last year on a sabbatical actually looking at what's. What are some of these fit factors that can enhance the quality of the fit in the organization as it relates to our cultural identity, because we're going to pick up some people that are from a different camp and they're not going to integrate well and and this is, you know, this is my testament for culture work, right, like we need to know who we are.

Rob Lion: 14:19

It's kind of like think about young version of yourself, or at least I'll speak from my, you know, pre pre-marriage I didn't know myself very well, I thought I knew myself well, but then I get married and then it doesn't work out, and so after a, a divorce, it's like I need to do some self-work, I need to figure out, I need to, I need to, I need to harness my voice a little better, work on who I am and then actually kind of raise the standards for that next opportunity, that next relationship, that next relationship. But but I don't think people necessarily think about these things in terms of organizations, and I think that's where we really need to be is like who are we as an organization, what do we believe, what do we value? And then how does that belief in value, you know, flow straight into everything from free, higher screening in terms of making sure that we're very clear on what we expect and how we practice and who we are as a culture, all the way through the exit of the organization.

Manya Chylinski: 15:20

Right. It's interesting. You brought up your younger self I think about in terms of me in the working world and the corporate jobs I had early on jobs I had early on. I thought so little about what does the organization believe, what do they care about? Early on, it was this work is interesting and they're paying me a wage that works for what I need and it never would have occurred to me to be thinking differently. I know that younger generations these days are thinking about more of those kinds of things. What does the company value? How do they think about the environment? What is their corporate social responsibility program? People are thinking about more of these things and I love that because it just wasn't on my radar screen when I was younger.

Rob Lion: 16:14

Yeah, I think to your point there that, and especially I think about my younger experiences we weren't exposed to that. I also think about it in terms of and I laugh when I say this is that you know what our younger generation? We brought them to the dinner table. When you and I were young, we had the children's table from the corner with the other children, and so the dynamics of all these things have shifted.

Rob Lion: 16:36

And one of the things that, to your point, that we've done better is that we've included them in more conversations so that they know what those organizational identities and climate is and all these things or organizational commitments and beliefs that back when I was entering the system, it was more of I'm a cog, I'm a piece that keeps things moving, and we fix it if it's broken, and that's kind of it, and I think that was a disservice to us. I think it would have changed our trajectories if they would have helped us better understand what such things as culture is and how we fit into something greater than ourselves. And maybe for our generation, we always chalk up the younger generations as being self-serving. I think our generations are super self-serving and the boomers are super self-serving because there was a lack of granularity in terms of looking at things such as culture and differences and beliefs and stuff like that we could have benefited from.

Manya Chylinski: 17:43

Right, and I think about that as you're speaking. That is all about our media landscape social media, mainstream media and back in the day, when I was younger, there were just a couple of of news broadcasts, yeah, and everybody. You could show up on thursday and everybody had watched the wednesday night tv show. And so you were right, we were all getting information at the same time and, if not exactly the same way, in similar ways, depending on your choice of outlet channels. It's easier to learn about the world at large when you are younger than it was than I think you and I are thinking about so interesting. Well, thank you for that. And as we're circling back to the concept of organizations, right, what policies or structures are really important for an organization to have to build out that compassion and to have the leadership that treats their employees as real humans who have real human lives?

Rob Lion: 19:31

Yeah, I stay away from policies. I'm not a big policy fan just because it's not my wheelhouse. I like processes. How do we onboard and integrate and socialize people in the process of coming into the organization to understand what it means to be a part of this right? And you know, I grew up playing at the sports and you think about professional teams are doing this really well right now with look, you got drafted onto our teams. This is how it is, this is who you're going to live with. You actually don't even get to choose who you're going to live with, you're going to, you're going to move in with a senior player and and there's all this really structured onboarding that's resulting in really outstanding athletes really focusing, not breaking the law, playing.

Rob Lion: 20:18

You know I'm a hockey fan, playing good hockey and we still are pretty noncommittal in terms of onboarding. That's kind of my soapbox right now is that we really need to fix onboarding. We're putting, in my opinion, the wrong information forward right out the gate. Instead of looking to socialize and integrate people, we're talking about stuff that's of you know. Benefits are important and if I have to get my teeth worked on, I need to know that information. But a lot of the stuff we cover early on is stuff that, even six months down the road, I'm not going to remember, and so instead, let's get people connected within the organization, spending time with people in a way that we believe is appropriate to integrate into our culture.

Rob Lion: 21:08

And so I'm a big fan of culture work and a lot of my stuff over time is focused on culture work. But the genesis or the origin of my stuff over time is focused on culture work but it might. The genesis or the origin of my work was actually performance and and I'm coming back to that again now because the culture and performance work can occur concurrently, in fact we need to do them simultaneously. The problem is is when one's prioritized over the other, we get too culture focused, we become too insular and self-centered and we don't necessarily focus on the performance objectives. When we come to performance objective focus, we forget that people are people and that they have needs outside of the grind, and so we need to find that balance between the two, and in my opinion, we're looking at doing that wherever we can in the organization, whether that's a little bit of purposeful design and staff meetings in one-on-ones, that onboarding element, the pre-hiring element when we're screening candidates right, because we know people have a tendency to approach things with like kind of rose-colored glasses or this belief that, oh, I could fix things, classes, or this belief that, oh, I could fix things. And the reality is that we actually have really marginal or limited ability to make significant changes, that we need to be very honest with those candidates of what we do here and how we do it, and this is who we are, so that they really understand what it means to be a part of this team.

Rob Lion: 22:32

And if I could share a quick story with you, we do different psychometric tests and personality tests with clients, whether that's pre-hire or as part of their culture work. And I had a client that said I want to purchase a volume of these for our new staff. I said, okay, well, when are you going to give it to your new staff? Day one, so that they can complete it day one? And she said, okay, well, when are you going to give it to your new staff Day one so that they can complete it day one? And she said, no, I'm going to wait a couple of months because I don't want to scare them away.

Rob Lion: 23:00

I said whoa, whoa, whoa, like you're saying, culture is important here, but you don't want them, day one, to say, no, I don't want to work here because I don't want to do a personality test about this pre-hire a little bit more in terms of who are we trying to bring to our organization that will have that compassionate lens that subscribes to how we practice and then get that started day one. So that's a part of the system, because I think that's really what's important and you don't not everyone needs to do these things, but we all need to figure out what our kind of cultural identity and approach is and work through that.

Manya Chylinski: 23:38

I appreciate your perspective on the need for balance and especially when you're talking about onboarding, it's often the tasks, and here the list of policies, you need to understand. Here's the way to do your weekly time report, a way to do your weekly time report, and I feel like we kind of go in and just assume that people are going to figure out the people side of things on their own. And certainly many people do. Many people don't. We have been fascinated recently by the concept of how much we expect people to just know when we could simply communicate a little bit more effectively and, without a lot of words, maybe say something to help them understand what's happening.

Rob Lion: 24:31

Absolutely, I think about it. This just occurred to me as I was listening to you. Absolutely, I think about it. This just occurred to me as I was listening to you. What do you do day one on vacation? What's the first thing like? What happens the first day on vacation once you arrive at the resort or, you know not, when you're driving, when you're driving to the destination, I'm still on vacation. What happens right away? You get at it, you explore, you have fun, you get a drink, yeah, yeah, see, look at the pool, you do all these other things.

Rob Lion: 24:59

Why are we not using this as a lens and a model for onboarding? Instead, if we took the approach a lot of organizations take to onboarding and apply to vacations, we'd spend the first day in the vacation orientation session, right and it and it. Just let's capture the element of fun and recognize what the human needs are, and the biggest needs when people are coming into organizations is socialization. Am I going to fit here? It's just like my freshman going to high school. He wants to know if he's going to fit in and what it looks like to be a student here. It's his schedule and his locker location and the rules and policies, and lunch break times are really secondary to these other things that relate to acceptance and integration.

Manya Chylinski: 25:50

Yeah, and as you were talking, I just had this picture of your first morning at the hotel, reading that full thing on the back of the door that tells you all the emergency procedures you know. Sure, glance at it to know where the emergency exit is. And then reading through that whole folder that they give you with all of the facts about the hotel.

Rob Lion: 26:11

Exactly.

Manya Chylinski: 26:12

Now, to be fair, at some point I do look at all of those in case there's something interesting in them, Right?

Rob Lion: 26:18

right, but it's not my first thing, yeah, I'm having a rum runner or Mai Tai, before I even look at that book, I'm just getting at it and becoming free.

Manya Chylinski: 26:28

I like to look for the pool, explore the property, explore the neighborhood, just like what is this place that I've landed in so okay? Well, we are getting very close to the end of our time and I'm curious what is giving you hope right now?

Rob Lion: 26:49

what's giving me a lot of hope is I feel like I'm in the right space, doing the right thing, leading from the right part of my body, which is like the heart and soul, um, and approaching others in that manner and showing up for people, whether it's friends, acquaintances or people I've never met in a way that I think isn't. It is entirely grounded in our humanity and I, I think getting back to political climate, regardless of what you believe, I think we need a little bit more humanity in that and centeredness, and so I believe that people that are kind of coming from similar spaces I am, we're taking care of people, we're helping people, we're supporting people. So a lot of people are worse off than I am, and as long as there's more people that continue to believe in the importance of that love, that support, compassion, open-mindedness, then I think we're in great space.

Manya Chylinski: 27:47

I agree. That's also giving me hope, so I'm glad that you said that. Now, before we log off, I would love for you to share a little bit more about your work and what you do and how our listeners can reach you.

Rob Lion: 28:00

Sure, wonderful, okay, so we, my work, so I have two different works, right, like I'm a professor at a university, idaho State University but outside of that, my wife and I own a consultancy called Black River Performance Management and we focus on organizational performance through a human-centric lens. And if you want to learn more about that, go to Black River the letter P for performance, the letter M for managementcom, so BlackRiverPMcom and you'll see kind of an overview of what we do. But what I like to direct people to is that we have blogs, we have podcasts. So if you go into, um, the blogs page, you'll read all about kind of these little thoughts I have as it relates to.

Rob Lion: 28:46

So, right, you know, right after this I'm going to do probably a blog on why onboarding's not like your vacation and it should be right. So these things that have just a little interesting perspective on it. And then all the podcasts I've been on and Angie's podcast that she's hosted are all found on there and we just we like putting these things out as resources for people to help them with whatever it is they need. And then, outside of that, if you want to connect on LinkedIn, look up Robert R-O-B-E-R-T. Last name, leon, however it's spelt like lion, so L-I-O-N, and connect with me there and love to have conversations and discuss needs and happy to help if there's ever any opportunity to help.

Manya Chylinski: 29:28

Wonderful. Thank you so much. I will put links to those in the show notes so folks can find you a little more easily. And, rob, thank you so much for this conversation. I've really enjoyed our time.