Building Leadership Muscles That Last

What separates great leaders from mediocre ones isn't innate talent—it's intentional training and preparation. Our guest, Christian Muntean draws from his extensive experience in international disaster relief where he witnessed firsthand how leadership quality determined success more than resources or circumstances.  Christian challenges conventional thinking about leadership development by applying training principles to leadership growth. 

Episode Guest:  Christian Muntean
Website: www.christianmuntean.com
YouTube: @christianmuntean8803
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/christianmuntean/

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www.leadershipmomentspodcast.com
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Transcript

Christian Muntean 0:02

You have to walk the talk. You have to be authentic as a leader. If you're not doing it, they see that.

Stacey Caster 0:07

It is entirely universal. There's other people who are going through this. For me, a great leader needs to be able to marry three things Vision, systems and people. Welcome to Leadership Moments if this is your first time and if you are returning. Thank you for your support.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 0:26

This show is about leaders from all walks of life leadership tips and maybe even a little of what you wouldn't expect to help you in leadership.

Stacey Caster 0:35

We would appreciate it if you tell someone else about our podcast, as we strive to support all leaders that want to just be better.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 0:41

Let's get on with the show. Welcome to Leadership Moments, where we explore the turning points that shape great leaders. I'm your host, tracey-ann Palmer, and today I am so honored to sit down with a true thought leader in the field of leadership and organizational transformation, christian Muntin. And Christian is the author of Trained to Lead the Successful New CEO and Conflict and Leadership, so a three-timer here. He's coached CEOs, in fact, we've just been talking about that. He's coached CEOs all over the world, might I add. He's advised boards. He's helped organizations across global navigation, high-stakes leadership challenges and today, on this podcast, we are going to dive in to how our leaders can train to lead but just react, and Leaders how to Move Through Conflict with Clarity, courage and Intention. So get ready for an unforgettable conversation with Christian, and I'm so happy you're here. Welcome.

Christian Muntean 1:55

Thank you, thank you.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 1:56

Christian, I want you to just take us back, okay. What was the defining moment that put you on the path to becoming a leadership coach and author?

Christian Muntean 2:08

Well, there wasn't a single moment but the process or the experience. So my beginning career was in international disaster relief and community development, and so I was working in different places in Africa, in the Balkans, in Indonesia, latin America and so on and I began to see that we could be working in very safe, very secure environments that were sometimes overfunded you know big attractors for money. You had everything you could possibly need for success, but if our teams didn't get along well or we weren't led well, it was a very, very difficult experience and hard to succeed. And that definitely was mirrored in terms of our community partners, like the local leadership as well. If they weren't led well, if they didn't have strong teams, it was very, very hard to be productive at all or oftentimes the work just sort of the value just disappeared.

Christian Muntean 3:02

On the other hand, you could be in an active war zone and in an underfunded project and if our teams were led well, we had good leadership, we could accomplish a lot and particularly if our local partners same thing, if we were working with good leaders, they had good teams, it was really amazing how much more we could accomplish in those contexts and I began to see like context matters, less resources. All those things matter, but they matter less than the capacity of the people involved that are making decisions and working together. And so I became very, very interested in how do I, uh, how do I help in these areas, but personally, how do I grow and learn? How do I help in these areas, but personally, how do I grow and learn? So I began graduate work in that space and just personal sort of inquiry and long story short, I found myself being asked to help with things that I found out later was like consulting, so I kind of wandered into the consulting space, but that's how I got into it.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 4:04

But you know it's interesting what I want to just point out for our audience you know the work that you were doing. When you're talking about leadership having this impact, you really are talking about things that are life and death situations.

Christian Muntean 4:17

Yes, 100%.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 4:18

Yeah, so it's heavy, that's heavy stuff, yeah Right.

Christian Muntean 4:38

Yeah, that's heavy stuff, right. Find yourself in the kinds of situations where, when I found myself making those kinds of decisions because it was just the nature of the work um, all of a sudden you realize I don't know enough, I can't see around all the corners. Um, but here I am, like I'm in this role where the decision's mine and or I'm part of the group that's making the decision, and I would love to say that every decision I made was the right one, but it was not, you know, and all of the ones where I have doubts about are things that I still sometimes think about and reflect on. And you know, you can spend your life wishing you knew then what you know now. But what I did do is make sure that I knew more in the future so that future decisions I would be better prepared and more ready and more able to do well for the people that I had influence on.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 5:34

Yeah, I love that, I really love that. Now your work centers around the idea that leadership isn't a gift, it's a skill that can be trained. Yes, absolutely. What inspired Train to Lead? And why do you believe so many leaders fail to properly train?

Christian Muntean 5:51

Right. So what inspired is? I also have a background in athletics and for about 12 years I was a strength and conditioning instructor, and so one day I was driving away from the gym and I was wondering why is it that I can take an athlete that wants to, you know, get ready for a race or they're going to. I practice Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, so you know, maybe someone that's getting ready for a fight or whatever. Why is it that any good trainer, like literally any decent trainer, can design a training program that will have their athlete peak right before the event? There's a process for doing that that any decent trainer understands. Why can we take athletes and have them peak for an event 90 days out, six months out, six months out, but with leadership.

Defining Leadership Skills vs. Gifts

Christian Muntean 6:45

If you know that somebody is getting ready for a promotion, or they're an entrepreneur and they're growing their company and they're starting to step into less doing and more leading type roles, the response the training or the prep is usually like maybe here's a book, maybe why don't you go to a conference? Now, don't screw up? I mean, that's the typical process. Hey, you were really good at sales. Now you're going to be leading a group of people. You know you're going to lead the company.

Christian Muntean 7:11

Not the same skill sets, some crossover, but not the same thing Principles or templates for how you train athletes to how you train leaders, so that you can predictably produce growth in people that are moving into leadership. And I started playing with the concepts and I realized there was enormous crossover, like just enormous crossover around how that works. And so, as I played that out, I thought I'm going to build some plans around this so that I can take a beginning leader, intermediate leader and walk them through a process so that within a set amount of time and the book's designed around 90 days that was arbitrary because it's a convenient number, but it's in 90 days what's a plan that you can follow where you will be predictably, reliably, a more effective leader within three months than you were at the beginning. You won't necessarily just like an athlete in 90 days. You're not going to go from couch potato to the best athlete in the world, but in 90 days you can make significant progress, whether you're an elite athlete or whether you're a beginner.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 8:21

I love that, absolutely love that. So now, what are some common myths or misconceptions that you see leaders holding about what leadership is and how it works?

Christian Muntean 8:35

Right. I think a lot of leaders think that leadership particularly when you're in a larger corporate setting, they view it as a prize or a privilege, and so it's the next rung up the ladder, it's the next position, it's a sign that I'm worth it, that I'm doing well in my career, it's all of these things and all of that can be true, and none of that is necessarily wrong, but leadership itself, in my opinion, is a skill and an action and a relationship, not necessarily a position, because you can have the titles and the office and everything else and not actually be effective in your leadership role. So that's one. I think the other thing is that many leaders get stuck in kind of power dynamics, like they think leadership's about who's the boss and there's a place for authority and there's a place for being able to be directive and all of those things. I'm not minimizing that, but they don't really understand the skills around. How do you motivate a group of people to act together towards the same goal, in alignment with the same set of values? And when you can do that, the ability for you to affect change is just dramatically different.

Christian Muntean 9:52

And so I think those are two common ones, and then the third I would say is most leaders this may even be most they don't think much about it. They just take the promotion and they're excited about it and then they get swept away into the whitewater rapids of this Holy smokes, what did I just get into? And then they're just in survival mode but they're trying to look like they know what they're doing, and I think that's a very common scenario. I've been in it, most people have been in it, and, um, there's just not a lot of. There's moments of I need to reflect or read a book or get some help, but mostly it's like but I need to survive. Today I got this meeting, I have to deal with this staff issue, client issue, et cetera, and I think that's mostly what happens.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 10:37

Yeah, I think that's why we have things like, you know, the imposter syndrome and things like that, because, to your point, the preparation, you know whether you're an athlete, whether you're a leader, whether you, you know, are someone in the Navy SEALs, you have to have preparation, yes, and so if you're not prepared for the scenarios that you are going to come into, that you have never had to deal with before, that's what causes the, quite frankly, the unsuccessful individual in leadership, because it's the same kind of responsibility. And I loved what you said about getting that impact, because I think the impact is people do it willingly because you've influenced them. You haven't told them. That is so different. The energy that comes from that, from people, is so different.

Navigating Leadership Challenges

Christian Muntean 11:37

Yeah, yeah, I've been heavily influenced by a thinker named Robert Greenleaf, who's now passed away, but he was the person who coined the not the concept, but the term servant leadership, so we all use that term now. Yeah, he coined it back in the 60s and so in the 60s, in the States and elsewhere, there was a lot of social change, a lot of upheaval, a lot of questioning about authority and about government and what makes you the boss of me, type stuff. That was a very big topic, especially in the States, and so he, instead of arguing with the question, he was like that's a good question, what makes somebody the boss of you? Like, why would anybody especially when they have choices willingly lead In today's economy right now, where it's so hard to find employees, when leaders don't look at that scenario of why would somebody follow my management? Why would somebody join this team? It's not like this is the only job available. There's plenty of opportunities available. And what he began to look at is when leaders I mean the short version of what he says, paraphrasing is when leaders are leading with the interests of others in mind, like how do I improve the condition of the people that I'm leading along with hitting our organizational goals. So it's not an either or In the pursuit of our goals. How do we also help serve the people that we're leading? You're going to find that they're naturally going to want to be part of that. Yeah, because they benefit from that and they're being taken care of and they're being respected and those kinds of things.

Christian Muntean 13:05

And this gets to the crux of what I think is challenging about leadership is to switch from maintaining like you need to respect me, my position, just do what I say, don't make my life complicated. Power-based approach to shift towards the servant leadership orientation. To shift towards the servant leadership orientation. The biggest part of it is I have to deal with internal, my internal stuff, my pride, my ego, my impatience, my character, and that's the least fun. Work right, no-transcript. Maybe I could have done that differently. Maybe next time I'll try to do it differently.

Christian Muntean 13:47

And then that gets to part of where I have in the book. Maybe next time I'll try to do it differently and I don't know if I'll succeed. So it's going to be practice. I'm going to practice being more patient, and here's how I'm going to practice running a meeting more effectively, and here's how I'm going to practice making room for someone else's voice, and here's how I'm going to practice making room for someone else's voice, and here's how those kinds of things are learned behaviors, and you can learn them Very. I mean nobody naturally knows all of those things, and so, and character, character, I mean I don't think any of us are naturally oriented towards being wise and generous and selfless. Some people are maybe more that way than others, but everybody has to work on it.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 14:32

Yeah, yeah, exactly, and even if you are that way because these are other discussions that I've had there's a balance that way too, by the way, because you could be completely, you know, skewed one way or the other. Would you look for it?

Christian Muntean 14:46

So two days ago I was talking with the owner of a company who is a very nice guy and he's got a very successful company. It's just been growing like crazy. It's scaling. So I'm working with him on that, but what we're trying to do is, in a way, untangle some unnecessary knots that he tied due to not having healthy boundaries, because he was being nice to people and giving opportunity to the wrong people and they weren't bad people, but they weren't the right fit for the jobs and he was viewing promoting them or giving them opportunities as a way of rewarding them.

Christian Muntean 15:25

And many entrepreneurs make this mistake of hey, you helped me get to where I'm at so now you're going to be in charge of all these things, but the person that they sometimes promote isn't good at that or not qualified for it, or haven't been prepared for it, or it's just not their happy space, it's not where they're going to perform well, and so we're trying to figure out now, how, how do you fix that? Because it actually feels worse to put somebody you know from a promotion down to the space where they can actually perform well and succeed. That's not an easy conversation, and so I was trying to communicate. Sometimes the things that feel nice or feel helpful or feel warm now are actually damaging in the future, and being able to recognize some things that provide the greatest opportunity and benefit for others don't initially have that warm fuzzy connected to them. And so knowing how not to make decisions based off of the feel of the moment, not to disregard it, but to not use that as your, your single kind of compass point, is important, and that's tough, that's tough, that's all.

Christian Muntean 16:33

When I work with executives doing coaching, I thought it was mostly going to eruditially, like decades ago. I thought it was going to be around strategy and tactics and stuff, and then I started finding out almost always we're talking about these internal struggles, dealing with tough conversations, self-doubt, imposter syndrome, questions, fears about this, that or the other, anger, impatience, those kinds of things. Development, growing in that space is really the most important thing for a leader to focus on. When they start growing in those areas, it helps other things work.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 17:14

Yeah, and I love what you said and I hope our audience heard that as well, because what you're really talking about here is, first and foremost, being self-aware yeah, self-aware and being able to then say I know I'm not perfect, these are the things I've got to work on, but I'm going to practice these things because I know to your point that if I practice them, just like any asset, I'm going to get better. I might not always get it right, but what I do know is I'm going to get better.

Christian Muntean 17:42

Yeah, absolutely, and there's some really interesting research around that too. You know, when you do, a lot of coaches and consultants use 360 assessments or ways of evaluating leadership effectiveness, and there's when you look at the research in it there's some really interesting correlation between self-awareness like leaders who have distinctive weaknesses in particular areas. Maybe they have short temperedness or they are not that well organized or whatever the thing is. If they're aware of it and they're undefensively open about, okay this is part of what I struggle with those leaders tend to have a higher rates of effectiveness than leaders who are in denial or are dismissive or deflect these issues. And I and the thought around that is, it's because they can deal honestly with their strengths, they can staff their weaknesses, they can get help in those spaces, they can address it and work with it, whereas the other ones are so busy trying to hide it from people or not even being able to see it themselves that it just always is a problem that presents itself.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 18:47

It's never, ever going to change. Yeah.

Introduction to the Show

Christian Muntean 18:48

Yes, yeah, that self-awareness is. It's hard. It's one of the hardest things, right? Because you're trying to be successful, you're driven, you're motivated and then you realize I'm not yet perfect. Yeah, it's a tough reality.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 19:00

Yeah, it is. I know we've got a lot to get through and I know you've got a bit of a time crunch here, but, man, I hope our audience is just holding on here because there's so much more to come, so I'm going to pivot quickly. We're talking about successful new CEO. This is your second book, right? Yeah, you give leaders a powerful framework to avoid what you call the honeymoon hangover. So what are the first 90 days that new CEOs consistently get wrong?

Christian Muntean 19:32

I think what I tend to see is a couple of different things. One is some come in, so there's different approaches. Some new CEOs come in and they mostly focus on being everybody's friend, being liked by everybody. They want to be everybody's buddy and that's a massive problem. It's the wrong set of principles or precedents, I should say, to set with the team. It's nothing wrong with being friendly and open and warm, but that's not. Your job is to be everybody's friend. Your job is to provide leadership. So that's the first mistake that people make. The second one that's common is kind of a I'm the new sheriff in town, I'm going to come in here and fix everything that the other person screwed up and that just creates damage and it's offense people.

Christian Muntean 20:18

And usually the new person coming in doesn't have the full story, even if they are coming from a promotion.

Christian Muntean 20:27

Within there's often more to the story than what you're aware of, and a lot of this I'm going to kick butt and take names type attitude can you end up kicking the wrong butts or kicking them too hard, or you know it's like you don't understand the consequences or the context and so taking time. So I recommend a process of setting direction, setting tone, but initially, starting out by, there's a process that I described for taking the time to get to know the key stakeholders in your organization, getting an understanding of how they see things. Not spending too much time in that space, but a little bit of time. Not spending too much time in that space, but a little bit of time. And so, within the first 90 days, that would be where I would focus. Most of that time is relationship building, context building and formulating a clearer set of informed vision or direction, and not being reactive to what your perception is coming in or just coming in with your own ideas that don't have sufficient context.

Leading Through Conflict Effectively

Tracy-Ann Palmer 21:31

Yeah, yeah, I really love that. I think that's incredible. So what advice would you give a leader who's you know stepping into a new organization and the history there is? There's instability that's been there. There's instability that's been there. There's been underperformance. How would you sort of give your consulting perspective?

Christian Muntean 21:53

Nice. Well, this is one that they haven't worked in before. They're being brought in from outside.

Christian Muntean 22:00

Yes they're being brought in from the outside. So in that scenario, I would definitely begin with what I really. What I just described is taking time to make sure you understand things. The first steps, I would do the minimum amount of work needed to provide stabilization. Yeah, so I would stabilize things. I would provide short-term vision, like, okay, folks, this is what we're going to focus on the next 90 days, next half month or half year, next year, not necessarily, this is what we're going to do the next five years. I mean, theoretically, that should be coming from the board anyways. It doesn't always, but that's what I would do is provide a short sense of here's what I'm going to be doing in this period of time. And then I would be taking the time to do diagnostic work, make sure I really understand not just what are the issues, but also what are the opportunities, what are the weaknesses, what are the strengths of the organization, who are the key players? To what degree can I understand who the influences are within the organization and make sure I really understand the map of the terrain that I'm trying to navigate before I start executing.

Christian Muntean 23:11

Statistically, the research shows this that leaders who, within their first year, are willing to make big moves often end up having more successful careers and a successful impact in the organization. But if you make those big moves without understanding the and the context, you can easily unintentionally blow things up or find yourself kicked back out or without influence in the organization. So the first 90 days is a very short period of time and if you're coming in new I'm kind of re-wrapping up what I said If you're coming in new, you probably don't have much of an understanding of internal dynamics and so I would say, mostly stabilize what you can. If there's an obvious disaster that needs to be addressed, address it, but then try to get context. The other thing along with that is I encourage, as you're getting context, if you can discover easy wins that have a broad value or broad impact. They don't even have to have huge impact, but they just have to have some positive impact. If you can bring in those easy light lift wins at the beginning, it gives people a sense of momentum and especially if it's not deflecting you or taking you off track of like, okay, what really is required for a turnaround, required for a turnaround?

Christian Muntean 24:39

The other piece of this that's important is to understand this isn't just a chessboard where you're moving people around or developing strategy. You're working with humans and if there's something that's not working in the company or something toxic in the company that you need to turn around, that's the context. These people have been impacted. They've both been part of what's created it and they've been created by it both of those things.

Christian Muntean 25:02

And so when I've done turnaround, sometimes I walk in and it's like, oh, these people, their souls, have been crushed by this company. I need to work with building confidence, like that's what we need to do is show them that they can make decisions. I need to work with building confidence, like that's what we need to do is show them that they can make this complicated. You know other people. We have to deal with some toxic players who've been allowed to be there for too long, and that needs to be addressed because they're hurting people and there's just been delayed decisions that haven't been made because they were hard. So it's, but you want to have context around that, but that's, I guess the point is, you're working with people and people have to kind of psychologically, emotionally, socially, they have to be there with you and that's really the thing is to figure out how do I get them there, how do I raise them up to that point or deal with whatever unhealthy dynamic is bringing them down, whatever unhealthy dynamic is bringing them down.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 25:55

Now you said something that I have to just because you said it in a moment, but I want to bring it up for the audience. They didn't make the decisions because they were hard decisions to make and they didn't want to make that. And I'm bringing that up very specifically because I know you have seen that and I know I have seen that and one of the major responsibilities of leadership is making hard decisions.

Christian Muntean 26:26

Absolutely yeah.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 26:28

Right, and it's not easy, but you have to do it.

Christian Muntean 26:32

Yeah, I think most leaders are familiar with the concept of deferred maintenance. So if you have vehicles or you have buildings and you just never fix them up, eventually the cost to fix them far exceeds the cost of maintenance. Same thing where decisions that were not easy, were not hard or not easy or had a cost connected to them, but people kick the can down the road, they put it off and hope it will resolve itself. And then when you actually are forced to deal with it, it's such a major issue and it's so time consuming or costly in some way and that is very common Leaders often hope things will disappear and they don't. It's like the leak in the ceiling. Oh, it's not leaking now. I hope the building fixed itself. And there's that magical thinking that we fall into. Yeah, but things usually don't fix themselves.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 27:31

No, no. So now talk to me about deep alignment. Okay, you talk about this. Can you unpack what that means and how?

Christian Muntean 27:42

a new CEO for an experienced CEO, for anybody who's in the leadership role, whatever their title, is having a deep alignment around the values of the organization and knowing what they look like when they're played out in every department or role or function in the organization. So if you have like many organizations will have a value around, they'll say something like customer services are value or integrity, like that's in every value state, those two words, many of them at least, and all right. So what does integrity mean in our sales or business development? What does that mean for us there? What does it mean in terms of our admin and finance? What does it mean in terms of our, our operations? Cause it's going to look a little different and if we don't define it, then we're leaving people to define it themselves and they're going to come in with whatever definitions they already have. And if I take a room, just the two of us, if we both came up in our conversations, it felt like there's a lot of alignment and how we think and see things. But my guess is, if you take a few words like that and we on our own independently defined integrity, take a few words like that and we on our own independently defined integrity, we would come up with word definitions that were adjacent to each other but maybe not exactly the same, and that matters.

Christian Muntean 29:03

When you're trying to write policy, write processes or protocols or hope people can make decisions. So that's a big part of it is having clarity, not just a value statement where you've got nice words on your website. That means nothing at all. What does mean something is when you define. How are these values expressed through decision-making and behavior? The second thing is real clarity around your vision, the big picture, the future that you're trying to build and the priorities that you're trying to accomplish in the shorter term, when people understand our values. This is how we make decisions and how we behave, and this is what we're trying to build. That creates alignment within the culture, where people start to make decisions and behave similarly and they're moving in a similar direction. Decisions and behave similarly and they're moving in a similar direction, and it makes leadership and management dramatically easier because you're not herding cats and chickens. People are already moving in the same, or at least close to the same direction.

Christian Muntean 30:07

And then the leader keeps reinterpreting vision, keeps refreshing it keeps clarifying priorities, keeps reinterpreting not new values, but helping people understand how that's applied in different contexts.

Christian Muntean 30:20

And when they're in that role, people largely can start to move themselves in the direction that you want to go in, and that's why so you had mentioned preparation, like for the SEALs versus some other group, one of the things that anybody in those special operations spaces. They spend an enormous amount of time, or any profession, if you're working with nurses or anything they spend an enormous amount of time learning the values of that profession and then learning the basic best practices of that profession so that they're so ingrained that they don't need external forces driving them in a particular direction and then they can operate with high independence. I mean, that's the theory.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 31:03

Really, absolutely, we have to have yeah. Because if you don't have that, then you don't actually scale, you can't scale.

Christian Muntean 31:10

Right, yeah, if you have to try to directly manage everything, you'll stay a little, a little mom and pop shop, for sure.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 31:16

Yeah, yeah, so I want to talk about conflict and leadership. Sure, right, your, your, your other book.

Christian Muntean 31:22

Yeah, that was my first book.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 31:24

It was your first book, but you talk about, you know, you sort of challenge the way most leaders think about conflict. I love this. So why do you believe conflict is not just necessary but healthy?

Christian Muntean 31:38

Yeah, I think conflict can be very healthy because it's an opportunity. When conflict occurs, nobody likes it I don't like it, it's not fun for me but conflict immediately starts to show me things, and it shows me at least one of four things. It could show me something about all four, but it'll show me there's either something in myself the way I'm responding to this conflict, the emotions that come up in me and the actions that come out of that that shows me something about myself that I may need to grow in. So if you and I are in a conflict and I'm not relating to you in a way that is the way I would want, it gives me an opportunity to do something about how I relate. And if I recognize that conflict is always and only about something that's important to both of us, there's something that's important to you and there's something, because we don't people don't get in conflicts about things they don't care about, and so there's something that's important to both of us. There's something that's important to you and there's something, because we don't people don't get in conflicts about things they don't care about, and so there's something that's important to the two of us. And if I can take the time to understand what is it about this issue that matters so much to you? Because you may not know, you may not want to tell me, you may not even be aware, and I think about myself. What is it about this that makes it so much to me? Maybe it's not the thing itself, maybe it's because I feel disrespected, Maybe that's the real thing and maybe I don't care about the specific solution, but I want to be treated a certain way, which that scenario is a very common one. That helps me personally grow.

Christian Muntean 33:10

The second thing is conflicts and opportunity to strengthen relationships, because if you and I got into a conflict and then we both even if we don't do it perfectly, but we both work towards each other and we work to understand each other and we resolve it I have this experience with you now of like, oh, when I'm with Tracy Ann and we get into another conflict in the future, I have a reason to believe that she's going to work towards me again. Yeah, that starts to de-escalate my sense of the intensity of the conflict. It reduces my likelihood of reacting or overreacting and it makes it easier for us. It strengthens our relationship. Yeah, organizationally, I've found that most conflicts within organizations can be addressed upstream. By addressing these last two issues, which has to do with the systems and processes in the organization and the culture of the organization, and by addressing both of those well, most downstream conflicts just disappear. I would say 75% probably will go away, when you like. Systems and processes most organizational conflict is tied to ambiguity around expectations or roles or responsibilities.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 34:25

Yeah.

Christian Muntean 34:25

And when there's just clarity on what is expected and how is it supposed to be done and what's your job and what's my job, a lot of things just kind of naturally resolve themselves, yeah. And then culture you know, I've talked about that a little bit, your job and what's my job a lot of things just kind of naturally resolve themselves. And then culture you know, I've talked about that a little bit. But culture is how we, without going into a big talk around it, it has to do with how we collectively make similar decisions and have similar behaviors.

Christian Muntean 34:52

And when we find that we have a culture of, let's say, conflict avoidance, we don't talk about hard things, well, that's just going to breed conflict. And so if we start addressing that and I look at the conflicts that are occurring and I see, oh, there's certain things that keep happening, maybe we need to shift something in our culture, yeah. And so that's what I see when I see a conflict in an organization, I think, great, now we have energy, we have everyone's attention, we have interest around this. Let's figure out what this is really about and let's make those deeper level changes so everybody can move forward together from a healthier, stronger, more robust position than before the conflict.

Universal Principles Across Cultures

Tracy-Ann Palmer 35:30

Yeah, I just love your whole perspective on this topic. I think it happens. I think more times than not it's avoided, meaning it just gets put under the rug, and then people think that you know it's going to change. Nothing changes if that conflict is not addressed. And, to your point, the things that are actually underlying, or never, the things that are immediately addressed right, it's typically things that you have to dig and really figure out what is really motivating the conflict, right, yeah, and when you get to that point, then you can. You can move forward. So now a quick question You've worked across continents, cultures. What universal leadership principles have you found, regardless of geographies?

Christian Muntean 36:15

I found that well, I think we've been talking around it. I think that, regardless of geography or culture, when you have a leader that intentionally seeks to lead in the best interests of the people that they're leading at, they impact and they pay attention to that and they keep trying to learn how to do that, those kinds of leaders tend to have the most impact and it's easiest for people to follow that leader, and that's a natural what I found. There's an exercise and I've done this in lots of countries where I'll just say, okay, everybody in the room give me one word that defines leader, describes leader to you, and so I'll put up a list of all the words. Always, what happens is the list will skew towards positive definitions Someone who cares about us, someone who provides vision, someone who is responsible, someone who will take risks for us, someone who will you know, or neutral words. But it'll be that way.

Christian Muntean 37:17

And then I'll ask how many of you ever had a leader that didn't describe these words, like you couldn't use those words to describe them? Everybody's got their hand up. Yeah, and so you can see that the position and what actually causes people to what they think about when they want a leader is are different, yeah, and I find it's interesting that I can walk into a room. I don't know any of these people, new culture, new place to me, and I have the same experience with that exercise and I think there's just something deep in the human psyche that says I want a leader who's going to do certain things. They're gonna be effective, they're going to make decisions, they're gonna provide direction, but they're also going to care for us. They're not going to walk over people.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 38:01

They're going to do those kinds of things.

Christian Muntean 38:02

I want to follow that and, and so that's probably the main, the main thing that I've seen. Then, of course, in a, in a kind of a cluster of skills, people who sell are self-managed. They manage their own emotions, they manage their energy, they manage their time, their priorities. Those people can accomplish in any culture, significantly more than people who are scattered, distracted or, you know, pulled off.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 38:27

Yeah, absolutely. So I know we're under the gun. I'm going to ask you one last question.

Christian Muntean 38:33

Sure.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 38:34

If you could leave our audience, our listeners, with one question to reflect on this week, that would really deepen their appreciation for leadership. Okay, what would it be?

Christian Muntean 38:51

Yeah, so, for everyone who's in leadership, and we've been talking about this but if you can identify one thing that will significantly improve or benefit the lives of the people that you lead, or impact or their ability to accomplish the goals that you're pursuing, what would that be? And it's that simple, if I know what's the one thing that I need to focus on? That's a gary keller question, if you're familiar, uh, with him. But what's the one thing I can pursue that will significantly make it easier for everyone else to accomplish what they're trying to pursue, and I clear that obstacle out of the way or make that opportunity available. So much good and so much momentum will come out of pursuing that that I think most people will be surprised that it's that simple.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 39:41

Wow, that's great. So fun question Do you prefer receiving handwritten letters or getting surprise gifts?

Christian Muntean 39:49

Oh, wow, I think handwritten letters. Yeah, I think that's what I like better, because it's so.

Stacey Caster 39:58

Personal.

Christian Muntean 39:59

Rare. It's so rare. Yeah, it's like one or two a year of those, but I think, yeah, it's very personal. You can tell they've put thought into it. Also, my handwriting is atrocious, so I'm always amazed at the people who can write well.

Final Reflections and Takeaways

Tracy-Ann Palmer 40:13

That's funny. So listen, christian. Thank you for this rich, grounded, insightful conversation. Now you've reminded us that leadership is a practice and it requires humility, it requires consistency and it also requires courage, right, Because you want all those hard decisions. So, for our listeners, if today's episode spoke to you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. I'll share all of Christian's links and information and books so you can reach out to him and learn more about the work he's doing. I could have sat with Christian for hours, by the way, just so that you know. It would have been really easy. So until next time, keep showing up, lead boldly and create your own leadership moments.

Stacey Caster 41:08

Lead boldly and create your own Leadership Moments on what you like and don't like or what guest you want us to have on the show. So until next time, this is Stacey Castor, and what does it challenge? You won't change you.

Tracy-Ann Palmer 41:20

And I'm Tracey Ann Palmer. Be the change you wish to see in the world.