Quality Grind Podcast

Meeting Leaders Halfway - Part 2

• MEDVACON Life Sciences • Episode 13

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In this episode of The Quality Grind Podcast, hosted by Joe Toscano and Mike Kent from Medvacon, we continue our exploration of Leadership with special guest Lisa Bourquin. Continuing from the foundations laid in Episode 10 about initiative and ownership, they explore the significance of being open to feedback and a more effective 'feed forward' approach, which focuses on guiding improvement rather than criticizing past mistakes. Lisa shares practical tips and stories illustrating how coachability fosters team success and how influencing and managing up can enhance organizational effectiveness. The episode concludes with insights on developing leadership programs that incorporate these vital skills.

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Ep 13 - Meeting Leaders Halfway, Part 2 with Lisa Bourquin

Jessica Taylor: [00:00:00] This is the Quality Grind Podcast presented by Medvacon. Conversations that go beyond compliance. Sharing insights geared toward helping you navigate the everyday grind of regulated life science industries. Here are your hosts, Joe Toscano and Mike Kent.

Mike Kent: Welcome to The Grind, everyone.

So to this point, we've covered initiative and ownership, two of the five attributes exhibited by people who successfully meet their leaders halfway. In part two of our visit with Lisa, we'll talk about the remaining three attributes, those being coachability, managing up, and engaging others, while sprinkling in some additional thoughts on how to best cultivate and sustain all five of them in your current environment.

Our discussion with Lisa picks up introducing the concept of coachability. Let's jump back in.

[00:01:00] One of the things that comes to mind right off the bat, and Lisa, I know you were really excited about this particular attribute. And I think it flows really nicely from the conversation we just had, and that's coachability. One of the biggest things that individuals and teams can do to meet their leaders halfway is being open to feedback and able and willing to shift their behavior and their mindset based on the responses and the coaching and the feedback and interactions that they have with their leader.

Walk us through what coachability is for you and how individuals, for lack of a better term, can go about or create an opportunity to be maybe more coachable. Is that the right term that I'm looking for here?

Lisa Bourquin: There is more and more research coming out around organizational effectiveness on coachability. [00:02:00] And in fact, some organizations have started hiring for it as one of the key competencies or criteria they look for in their employees. It's that important to team success. 

Coachability is the ability for someone to receive feedback and embrace coaching from a learning perspective. So they're open to learning, they're open to trying and they're open to constructive criticism, and are able to enact positive change or behavior change based on that. So it's willing to shift, willing to shift mindset and willing to shift behavior. And so that's really what coachability is. 

And so from a team perspective, it's using some self awareness. "How coachable am I? How open am I? What can I do [00:03:00] to shift my mindset from resisting and becoming defensive to being open and recognizing this is an opportunity for me to grow and for me to be more successful, and to win." 

From a leadership perspective, creating that culture where teammates are willing to give each other feedback and to call each other out when they're not meeting the expectations of the team, that's a great environment to create from a leadership perspective. 

Another technique that works well from a leadership perspective is the concept around "feed forward" instead of "feed back". And so coachability works really well when people are told how to win, not what they did wrong. [00:04:00] And that's the difference between feedback. Typically, feedback leaders are taught to say, "Okay, you did that wrong, and you did that wrong, and that didn't go that well, and you missed that." Instead of focusing on what people did wrong, leaders and peers and teammates can say, "Hey, the next time let's try this, or maybe when you go to set up this on the manufacturing line, try using this tool. I've seen other operators have better success." It's telling people how to do it right, how to win, how to be successful. It's forward thinking. Not what they did wrong, because they can't fix what they messed up in the past. That's in the past. And so that's another little tip or technique to create that environment. 

And that's something teammates can do. Teammates can give feed forward to each other and then also their leaders, and then the team [00:05:00] embraces that. That's the coachability part. And they're more likely to be willing and open when they're being coached in a feed forward fashion. 

Mike Kent: I absolutely love that! So much of what we do in, and again, I'll come back to my experience in a regulated environment, is there's pressure that's put on or pressure that's felt not to screw up. And so the responses to actions that don't go the way that they should is, "You screwed up and now we're going to fix your behavior rather than encourage you next time this happens with here's what to do." And not I, what I noticed is you didn't say to avoid a negative outcome.

Lisa Bourquin: Yeah.

Mike Kent: There wasn't any discussion of a [00:06:00] negative outcome. And I'm curious, is that intentional or was that just your interpretation and how you use feed forward? It seems like a terrific and dramatic shift in how we speak with people and how we interact with people that when I roll it around in my head, I can see so many advantages and so many examples of where it's working much more so in today's climate than maybe a traditional whack on the wrist with a ruler that, "nope, don't do that!" And we learned to avoid the whack on the wrist rather than performing activity correctly. Have I got any of that correct? Is any of that landing?

Lisa Bourquin: I mean, it's the "carrot and stick" principle. They both work, they both are motivating. People want to avoid pain, but people also want to seek pleasure and they want to win. They want to succeed. 

[00:07:00] I'll share another story of how this concept really hit home for me and for those in teams with younger generations. So, you know, you're, you're Gen Z, even you're Gen Y's. But you know, the younger generation, they really seem to respond to feed forward. I have a teenage daughter and she has the chore of loading the dishwasher. And so my daughter, Katie, loads the dishwasher and one day she loaded the dishwasher with the steak knives pointed side up. Now, I go to unload the dishwasher and I cut my finger on a steak knife because it's pointed up. And so my initial reaction was to yell, feedback, you know, "Katie, you loaded the dishwasher! Put the steak knives pointed side down! I cut my finger! Now I'm bleeding!" Oh, you know, like that's human reaction, though.

I must have been coaching a leader or [00:08:00] somebody earlier that day on this feed forward concept because I remember taking a pause and thinking, all right, this is an opportunity here. And so I said, "Hey, Katie," she was in the other room. "Hey, Katie, next time you load the dishwasher, please load the dishwasher with the knives pointed side down. That way, when I go to unload the dishwasher, I don't cut my finger." Like, not a revolutionary change, it's just a little nuanced shift. Don't tell people what they did wrong, how they messed up. That feels icky and they can't change that. Tell people what to do right going forward. And she never loaded the dishwasher with the knives pointed up again.

Mike Kent: So you're saying it worked.

Joe Toscano: Is that because you made her unload it? Right.

Lisa Bourquin: And now she's at college and hopefully still doing, still loading the dishwasher the right way.

Joe Toscano: There [00:09:00] you go. It's such a great example. Like you said, it's not changing the world. It's a nuance change that has a better and a different impact, right? 

And you also brought something else up that's important. We're talking about generations. I feel like I'm just in the old one now, but people at different timeframes, they react to things differently.

And, you know, we've talked about this in the past, workforces are different. Different groups of people are learning, training, reacting, and incorporating things in different ways. You have to be mindful of who is it that you're working with. How do they absorb information? How do they derive things and implement things. 

A leader has to be flexible. There's not just one way to kind of do it all. You need to be flexible with the different people that you're responsible for. And, if you're able to [00:10:00] do that, you have much greater success because you communicate more effectively. 

But you're right, that little change, wow, instead of yelling, what a difference it made. And it made a permanent impact, right? A little thing that made such a big difference. And that's what usually happens. Little things can make really big differences.

Lisa Bourquin: Back to the team approach, uh, teammate. This is not a leadership skill. This is a life skill. And so as a teammate, you can do this too. 

One more quick story. I was working with a colleague and we were co-facilitating a session. There were international leaders in our class where English was their second language. And I noticed my coworker, my peer, who actually, I think, is at even a higher level than I am. She was speaking and facilitating very fast. She's a fast talker. And so during the break, I gave her feed forward, and I said, "Hey, going in this next module, this next section, [00:11:00] can you slow down a little bit so the participants who don't have English as their first language can keep up with you?"

So it was just, again, a nuanced thing. Feedback would have been, "Hey, you talked really fast and you lost some people." And so that's, as a peer, a peer giving peer feedback, that builds coachability, as well.

If people are hearing from you, how can I get better? How can I do this more efficiently or effectively, how can I win? That peer to peer feed forward can build that coachability environment.

Mike Kent: And it seems to me that there's an awful lot of additional wins that can happen when it's on that peer to peer level. Sometimes we may wait for the leader to provide that feedback or feed forward because that's what we feel like their responsibility [00:12:00] is. Some folks may feel like, well, I'm not the leader, so I'm not in a position to deliver feed forward or feedback across to my team members.

What I'm hearing you say, Lisa, and check me on this, is that there's so many other wins from the team members being able to manage and collaborate and work with and coach each other. So that not only the individuals move forward, but the Team moves forward and that makes things easier on everyone and better on everyone. Things like trust, humility, team first perspective. 

Do you experience that on teams that have those dynamics, they're able to solve problems within the team environment and not rely on the leader to solve all of those problems, and they move themselves individually and [00:13:00] collectively forward more rapidly? Is that consistent with your experience?

Lisa Bourquin: It's consistent with my experience. It's also supported in the research. And so you can look at all the research coming out from key think tanks, Gallup, Korn Ferry, Hay Group. This is all very consistent with team effectiveness.

A really good thing would be for a team to get together and do a book club with Patrick Lencioni's book, 'The Five Dysfunctions of a Team', because that book goes into Patrick Lencioni's research on this exact topic and teammates having that collective ownership, accountability and then being able to call each other out and give each other feedback. That would be a really neat thing to do as a team.

Joe Toscano: One of the things I really like about this approach is if you could get your team members interacting with [00:14:00] each other that way, what great training for when they're leaders someday, as well, right? You don't have to wait until you get the title. You could practice so many things about leadership long before you're there.

And a good leader who can get a team to function this way will also be creating the best future leaders because these are skill sets that go just beyond that current environment. They're skill sets, like you said, life skills that will take them to so many other different places. It's just such a great concept.

So, Lisa, I've got a question for you in terms of, you know, we've talked a lot about leadership and the teams and how different people can do different things for meeting each other halfway. One of the topics Mike and I are passionate about, and was one of our first podcasts, is training.

What are those types of things that if you could influence a leadership program and a training program for leaders, even starting at an earlier stage, what would you love to see [00:15:00] incorporated there?

And then similar type of question, just on the normal training side for people that are on their teams at lower levels. There's always those training opportunities. What are some of the things that you wish you could see more on a consistent basis?

Lisa Bourquin: That is such a great question! So there are two approaches to building leadership training strategy within organizations. They both work, and combined, they can be an incredibly powerful and successful program. 

One is to take a look at what are your top performing leaders doing that other leaders are not. And that truly is what a best practice is. Often I see leaders get together and they brainstorm best practices, but what they're doing is they're sharing what everybody's doing. So, what everybody's doing is not a best practice. It's really taking a look, spending the time [00:16:00] observing. What are those behaviors, skills, things that your top performing leaders are doing that the other leaders are not doing.

 And also look at external research. What does research validate makes the most effective leaders? That's the cool thing is that we can look to see what's already been proven to work. 

And so there are certain things, number one is absolutely building trust. Absolutely 100 percent building trust. If a leader is not able to build trust with their team, it is hard for them to maintain long term success. Trust, when you look at different research, it is a foundation of leadership. So how do you do that?

Some organizations I've worked with do that by building Emotional Intelligence training, EQ training. [00:17:00] Because it starts with understanding yourself, self awareness. What are your strengths, what are your gaps? And then relationship management and empathy and impulse control. There are a bunch of emotional intelligence competencies as a leader. You develop those that will help you build trust, especially being self aware and demonstrating empathy. So we do a lot of work around that.

And then, you know, there's the competence side for business based on your role as a leader. It's being able to make decisions and think critically and set strategies. So there's a business piece to leadership competence. 

And then it's, I like to call it the Management Trinity, the holy trinity to wrap it up would be, situational leadership, not necessarily from Ken Blanchard, but [00:18:00] just flexing your leadership style to meet the need, which is also an EQ competency, flexing your style to meet the need of the person or the team. So that's first in the trinity. 

The second is that feedback or feed forward. Letting people know how are they doing? How can they get better? Making sure you're engaging with them and giving them the resources they need, the feedback or feed forward, the training, the support, the development they need to be successful. 

And then the third is coaching. Spending the time one on one to help people figure out what their goals are and help them develop that plan to get there. Not tell them, tell them, tell them, but coach them and let them take that ownership and accountability. 

There's a lot, a lot more that can go into building a strong leadership development program. But the research says that those are the things that help generate and drive the [00:19:00] most performance. But again, also take a look at what are your best leaders doing that all the rest are not.

Mike Kent: There are organizations that I've been a part of, and known colleagues that have been a part of, that do Team Training, that focus on those exact same skills and those exact same concepts in terms of building teams intentionally. And it's not going out to a ballgame or, you know, all those things that are important, but it's formal leadership training for the individuals on the team. Then there are the organizations that don't cater to those and wonder why teams are dysfunctional or not as productive as they can be. There has to be a happy medium I think between all of this, as well, that I got to believe that organizations are aiming towards. The information is out there for organizations, and we've discussed a lot of pros and [00:20:00] cons and barriers and ways to enable those things to happen. 

And we've also touched on another one of those attributes that Lisa and I talked about early on was really engaging others. How to bring team members on, understanding where we have influence, what the landscape looks like and how to really take ownership and initiative in a way that makes sense for individual and team success. 

One of the last key attributes that we mentioned in teeing things up, Lisa, that you hear an awful lot about. Individuals, if they want success, if they want things to move forward, they have to be able to "Manage Up".

Can you boil it down for folks in terms of some specific strategies that they can start using now to effectively engage and manage upwards into their [00:21:00] leadership? 

Lisa Bourquin: Yes, "manage up" is situational leadership in reverse. So in situational leadership, we teach leaders to flex their leadership style to meet the needs of their employees. In managing up, the employees have to flex and be willing to ask for what they need based on where they're at in their competence and in their development. And so someone who is brand new, even if they've been with the organization for quite some time, they might be new at a specific task. Managing up would be asking for the training, the resources needed to be successful to complete that task. Managing up might also be letting the leader know, "Hey, I got this. I've done this before. I feel confident and competent. Let me run with it." 

So it's being vocal on what you need, asking for what you [00:22:00] need. Sometimes what you need is direction and training and support. Sometimes what you need is autonomy and you need to be given permission to run things and be autonomous. And so it's a delicate balance for sure. 

It's also a team member's responsibility to build trust with their leader. Trust goes both ways. And so the leader's wanting to build trust with the team members and employees. Employees though need to take accountability and initiative to build trust with their leader. That is part of managing up because if my leader trusts me, I'll be able to ask for more, I'll be able to gain more permissions. 

So I want to use some psychology, again, to figure out what's motivating my leader, what are their preferences? What are their pain points? What's their risk [00:23:00] tolerance? And utilize that, because the bottom line: managing up is getting what you need. 

Joe Toscano: Yeah. And it goes back to where we kind of started, right? It's having some insight, observing how things work, having that initial conversation to understand your leader's style and what their risk tolerances are and how they want to be approached and work. If you could have those conversations and make those observations, it puts you in a better position in order to do that more effectively. 

And we don't want to get that confused with kissing up, right? They are two very different things. One is an appropriate strategy as to how to work effectively with individuals, and the other one will only get you so far and lead to failure eventually, right? So, 

Mike Kent: That's a very tactful way of saying (joke) that, Joe. 

Joe Toscano: Well, you know, be in business long enough, you see a lot of different things. But, it's a great [00:24:00] concept and I don't know how often that's promoted, right? Like how often do you hear, "Hey, as an employee you should ___ , and this is a tactful way to do it." It goes back to if we can create that perfect training session where people get things reinforced all along, those are one of the things that should be reinforced. "Hey, let's talk for 10 minutes on how to effectively work with your manager or leadership in the company, or people in different positions that you're working with."

That to me is so vital, because it's a skill set that should be reinforced all the time. If you teach your team to do that effectively, how effectively are they going to be in management roles or leadership roles as they grow through the organization? And, they're going to give that back. They're going to teach their teams that and reinforce that. And wow, all of a sudden it's part of the culture and how much more success is there because there's that collaboration, that initiative, that conversation happening. It's the little things that [00:25:00] make such big differences, and it's not rocket science. If you're having the conversation anyway, just take a different approach, right?

Mike Kent: I hear an awful lot in working with junior folks that, "Well, they're the leader, they should know." Or that's what they get paid to know, is to figure these things out." 

So I wonder if you might respond to or give folks some additional strategies or, or some things to work through or consider when they find themselves saying, "You know, they're the leader, they should know all of this," or "we told them this already," or "I sent an email, and now the ball is in their corner." 

Can you help us if we're having those challenges or saying those things? What else or what should we be thinking differently?

Lisa Bourquin: Well, when we are shifting complete ownership and [00:26:00] accountability to the leader, we are really giving up influence. And so I would say to any employee, team member, associate, even leaders in a leadership position, they're reporting to somebody, usually. Think about your influence and how much influence you want to have. And the more you give up what's within your control and focus on those things that are outside of your control, the more influence you're giving up. 

So when you use the leader as a scapegoat, "Well, they should know it. That's what they're getting paid for. I sent the email, I'm done." Every time we have that in our mindset, we are giving up things that are within our control and relinquishing influence. 

And so if our goal is to not have any influence at all, fine. If our goal is to [00:27:00] be a team member that has some influence, then we want to go back and say, "All right, so this doesn't seem to be working. Yeah, maybe my leader should know this. Oh, they're getting paid the big bucks. What's within my control, though?" And then go back to what do I want and what's my intention? What do I want and what's my intention? And this is a tip for everyone out there. I share this tip in leadership training when we talk about feedback and coaching and having difficult conversations. It is a great life skill to have though, when you are approaching someone and you're not getting what you need. Go back and restate what you want by using these few little words, "My intention is..." 

"My intention is...", and then state your positive intention, state your goal, state what you need or what you want in a positive [00:28:00] manner. That is a great tip to initiate a conversation with your leadership or your team, a peer, to manage up, to engage them, to take ownership, it pretty much wraps up all five of our attributes here of things that meet a leader halfway. Start with what do you want, what's your goal, and then state it. Use the words, "My intention is..." Manage what you can control. And you can absolutely control having conversations with your leader about what you want.

Joe Toscano: So maybe it's something that you're more familiar with on a personal level versus in a business level, but it's just a change of vocabulary. It doesn't mean the skill is different, right? It's just using that skill in a different way.

So, these things apply or people are good in one environment. It doesn't mean they [00:29:00] can't apply that same skill set to another one. They might have to learn how to do it a little differently, but people already do it, and they probably are good at it. 

And you're right, nobody who really needs to should give up that influence. And that's an easy way out. Blaming somebody else is always an easy way to kind of get away from that responsibility. But it goes back to that initiative, taking ownership, making some impact. That little change goes a long way.

Mike Kent: This has been a tremendous conversation around not only, as both of you have said, applying some life skills and some specific tactics to things at work, but really I think some of the key points around people being able to create what it is that they're looking for. 

You have some influence, you have some agency. And what we've talked about here with Lisa [00:30:00] today, and she's put so eloquently and so practically, is by taking some initiative, you have some ownership in that process and you have some agency in that process. 

You also have the ability and the expectation to play your part and to play your part the best you can. That means being coachable, taking accountability for your part in the process, and asking for what you need and driving that process forward.

So Lisa, thank you so much for being a part of this discussion today. If you had to boil this down to a few key messages from what we've talked about, what might those be? And what, last bit of encouragement might you give to team members and individuals who are looking to express that influence and be more effective?

Lisa Bourquin: That is a loaded question. So one of the things [00:31:00] that I see happen is people just get very frustrated because other humans don't behave how they think that they should be behaving. 

And so one key thing is to always assume positive intent. And so when you're dealing with other human beings, whether it's your leader or teammates or friends and family outside of work, assume positive intent. And do some mindset work, right, to look at things differently and choose a perspective that serves your needs. 

Constantly assuming that your leader won't like your ideas or your teammate is not going to collaborate with you, that's a mindset shift that needs to take place to assume their positive intent that they want to help you. They want to support you. They want to win. 

And [00:32:00] then really owning what you can control and not spending time thinking, worrying, ruminating about what's outside of your control that diminishes your influence, but owning what you can control. And so much of what you can control involves the things we talked about, taking initiative, coachability, managing up, influencing others. But focusing on - what do you want? What do you want and what's in your control? What are those options within your control to get you what you want?

Mike Kent: So Joe, having heard all of this and your experience and Medvacon's experience, really going into a lot of different organizations with a lot of different challenges, what resonates most strongly for you in terms of guidance? 

Joe Toscano: Yeah, Mike. So, one of the things that we see often are consistency of issues just across different organizations, right? There's very few times that we see things that are new. [00:33:00] It's usually just the same issue repeated in a different environment within a different company. And from a consulting perspective, the good news there is, we can bring quick solutions and help with that. But at the same time, you would hope that organizations would be able to correct those and then maintain that correctness once they do. 

It goes back to a couple of simple principles. It's good communication within the organization, making sure that leadership is communicating with teams. Teams have the initiative and the courage to communicate with their leaders, and that each side is taken seriously and they're listened to. You know, it doesn't always have to be a yes. That's okay. It could be a no. The important thing is, is that there was a discussion, and if that discussion takes place, that's 90 percent of the battle. Where we sometimes find issues is when that communication isn't happening because people feel they can't.

Training plays a vital part in organizations, and those that take it seriously see great success. [00:34:00] And companies that maybe don't, a little change of approach or mind shift can have tremendous results. And then with that success, you'll see people want to do more and more of it because they could point right back to it and say, "Wow, we did this and this was the outcome." It's measurable, it's instantly visible. You could really see impact from it. 

So I think it's a combination of a lot of small things that make big differences, and that's always the thing that from a consulting perspective, always impresses me is a small shift, a small change, a small direction produces an outcome beyond what people could expect. And if it's sustained, wow, what a great thing, especially if it can become part of a culture or the fabric.

And a lot of what we talked about today, and Lisa, thank you, because I think you brought some great and valuable insight, especially with your experience, are minor shifts that don't cost companies lots of money or should take a lot of time. It's just doing it a little bit differently, right? Saying the [00:35:00] words a little bit differently. Changing that approach a little bit differently.

Very appreciative of you being with us and all the great information and insight. I know how successful you are, and I think our audience is going to really appreciate a lot of what you had to share today. So, thank you!

Lisa Bourquin: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Mike Kent: And Lisa, thank you for all of your time today. We hope the audience has enjoyed it. 

Joe Toscano: If Medvacon can help you and your organization, we're happy to do so. We specialize in the following areas, Quality and Compliance, Validation and Qualification Services, Project Management, Tech Transfers, General and Specialized Training Programs, Engineering Services, and Talent Acquisition.

If you have general questions as well, feel free to give us a call at any time. We can easily be reached at 833 633 8226 or via our website at www. medvacon. com. Thanks so much, and we look forward to speaking with you.

Jessica Taylor: Thank you for listening to the Quality Grind [00:36:00] Podcast presented by Medvacon. To learn more or to hear additional episodes, visit us at www. medvacon. com.