Hidden Project Drivers with Kursten Faller

AI will force us to be “more human or be obsolete”. So what does it mean to be more human as a leader and still drive results, get great performance, keep a team engaged and motivated? Especially in a world that is driven by project after project, how do you lead project teams effectively when team members don’t formally report to you?

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💡 About the show:
There is no growth in comfort and no comfort in growth. Business today typically values and promotes leaders for their subject expertise. Leaders who have command of the details and execute based on knowledge and experience are highly respected. However, to grow as a leader you have to get out of your comfort zone – that means learning to lead without just being the expert. Learn to gain the trust and respect of a team that might know more than you do. Get comfortable with ambiguity and with not having all the information. Develop the skills and confidence to lead in a different way.

For female leaders, subject expertise is usually the source of their confidence. Learning to lead outside your comfort zone is one step for breaking through the glass ceiling. The show’s purpose is to give you tips on how can you develop the capability to lead – to get out of your comfort zone.

#WandaWallace #OutoftheComfortZone #Podcast

Transcript

Wanda Wallace (00:01.384)
Welcome to the conversation. All right, so no doubt you all know already that AI is going to force us to do work differently. Well, and the argument is it's going to force us to be quote more human or be obsolete or so my guest today thinks. I happen to agree with him. In fact, I think that maybe this whole AI revolution is going to teach us to be the leaders that we should have been in the first place. But let's stay tuned on that.

So the question for today is, what does it mean to be more human as a leader and still drive results and get great performance and keep a team engaged and motivated? What's the secret sauce for getting all of that done? And especially in a world that is driven by project after project after project, where you rarely actually formally own the team. You're often trying to motivate and lead and inspire and control people into getting the results when they don't formally report to you.

So the question is, how do you do that in a more human-centered way? My guest today is Kristen Faller He's an organizational advisor with more than 25 years experience helping executives strengthen human systems that drive organizational performance. Founder of Centric Business Consulting, he works with leadership teams to improve decision quality, ownership, and execution in environments where technological capability is accelerating faster than leadership development.

I think that's probably every environment that we're working with. The book we're talking about today is called The Hidden Project Drivers, Building Behavior That Drives Success. And you can learn more at kurstenfallercom. Kursten welcome to the show.

Kursten (01:36.495)
Thanks for having me, Wanda. I've been looking forward to this.

Wanda Wallace (01:39.872)
So have I. I am super looking forward to this. And I like several of the angles you take in this book that I think, you know, we're all talking about how you be a better leader and a more human centric leader. But what I like about what you're doing is you break that down into some very actionable things that we're going to get to. But first, you didn't start out life as a consultant. So what got you on this journey as a leader?

Kursten (02:05.285)
Sure, well, so I have lived my whole life in consulting, but I started in a very technical role, like many people that end up in leadership positions. So thinking back to where I started my career, I was trained originally as professional engineer, highly technically trained, with no line of sight on anything human related. And I'm sure that many of your listeners have started out the same, whatever that technical background might be. So for me,

It was pretty early in my career when I started leading teams of people. And I thought, as most of us in these professional technical roles have been trained to believe that we know everything and we're ready to face anything that comes at us. I hit the wall really early in my career. It was in my early twenties. And I remember the moment when I came to the realization, I was stunned that people didn't look at the world the same way that I did. I felt like, don't they want to...

Go the extra mile. Why don't they want to work overtime? Why don't they want to push to get to the deliverables that we're trying to achieve on time and It was a it was a hard realization because I quickly realized it was me I was the problem and I was the one that was causing the friction I I continued on and I was able to get great results

the work that I was leading, was leading projects, they were profitable and they were typically delivered on time and happy clients. But I did it through heroic efforts and working way too much, causing way too much stress on everyone around me and myself. And it sparked a journey around figuring out there has to be a better way here. Why can't I get the results that I want in a way that's lower stress for everybody?

Wanda Wallace (03:33.803)
Yeah

Kursten (03:51.994)
So I realized there was a ceiling there that I was bumping up against, but as stubborn as I was with coming from my technical background, I kept doubling down on more best practices certification, more rote learning, more, it must be something technical that I'm missing. And a little embarrassed to admit, I kept doing that for almost 10 years until one day, I guess it was inevitable probably, I stumbled into social psychology and I took a...

Wanda Wallace (04:07.692)
Mm-hmm.

Kursten (04:19.789)
a course called Crucial Conversations, which was another pivot moment for me where I realized I was shocked to realize that the narrative in my mind was not fact-based or based on what was going around me. was purely my interpretation of what was going on around me. And that was a moment where I realized I needed to keep doubling down on that.

Wanda Wallace (04:34.423)
you

Kursten (04:45.189)
area of learning. So I moved from psychology into neuroscience and more application-based coaching and coaching in a brain-friendly and human-friendly way. And that's when the rubber really started to meet the road. So I was able to move quickly into a leadership approach that got great results that

were far less stressful for everybody, including myself. I mean, being selfish, I think I wanted a lower stress life for myself with better results. And if I look back at that, what I've learned in my work is that we tend to approach these moments as but moments. It's good for the employee, but bad for the company or vice versa. And what it actually is, these are and moments where what's best for the employee

Wanda Wallace (05:15.5)
Yeah.

Kursten (05:39.482)
tends to be best for the company and tends to be best for our clients as well. So I've got many moments, particularly in my own journey building my company, where that's proven out to be the case. There were moments that were scary along the way. Like I remember one of my employees coming into my office, I had built a boutique firm of 12 people and saying, she was, she's quite upset saying,

I don't want to work 40 hours a week anymore. I want to work 20 hours a week. And then I had an hourly billing model for the most part. That's terrifying as a business owner to realize you're going to have half of your top line cut out if we entertain this. But I leaned into it. And what I found is that it's actually the opposite. That's turned into an amazing success story with that employee who's still with me today, even though I've shrunk my company down to one and a half staff. So that's where I've come from.

Wanda Wallace (06:14.753)
Bye.

I'd go, yeah.

Kursten (06:35.115)
And I suspect many of your listeners would relate to that and perhaps they're in different degrees of being stuck with the friction and the pressure and the stress and don't know how to pivot out of that into a way that unlocks far more potential for everyone.

Wanda Wallace (06:52.257)
I don't think it's an uncommon story. I certainly hear it all the time. It's, and it's the, you know, from my book, You Can't Know It All, it's exactly what you see. You have this expert leader, technical or otherwise, who knows everything there is to know about their specialty, their area of expertise. They're probably leading a large team. And that team often comes to them and says, hey, boss, how do I do X? And the boss has the answers and tells them what to do.

But the moment you have to cross the Rubicon from your specialty to working with people who see the world in a different way is where you run into friction. And I love what you said is that you've turned to realize that the friction on all the teams was you. That therefore you had to do something about it. OK, so and I love the very scientific technical approach.

There must be some facts here that I need. There must be some certifications that I need. There must be some training that I need. There must be something out there that gives me the performance answer. And you stumble into psychology after a long journey. I love that. Okay.

Kursten (07:55.512)
Yeah, absolutely. And I realized this is probably where I should have started my journey from the beginning, but also can't discount the value of the learning that I learned from. I'm trained as a systems engineer and not just a systems engineer, but an industrial systems engineer, which is probably the most industrial view of the world and least human view of the world you could imagine.

Wanda Wallace (07:57.389)
haha

Wanda Wallace (08:01.408)
Yeah, well, every-

Yeah.

Kursten (08:17.027)
But some of those things have served me quite well. mean, a systems view is very powerful in what we're talking about. You can't look at these things in isolation. I realized there was a system. And I'm applying that systems thinking approach to understand the system more holistically. And it's going to sound ridiculous, but realizing that, whoa, humans are part of the system. And there's brains and emotions and things involved in the system.

Wanda Wallace (08:42.935)
Yeah, they're not just computers. There are human beings that come with a whole host of behaviors and personalities and characteristics and emotions as well as thoughts. I love that. I'm a big fan of systems thinking. I don't know how we do the job of leading in organizations if you don't think about it as a system because it is a system, but it's a system with not just gears. It's a system with some complex component parts. All right, so.

Kursten (08:52.463)
Absolutely.

Wanda Wallace (09:08.713)
You go down this route with crucial conversations. You discover social psychology. You realize that people have a different view of the world, that people come with emotions. So what is it you've learned that you now teach to people that is really the critical unlock for leadership?

Kursten (09:30.278)
Sure, yeah, that's a good question. I mean, my approach in life tends to be to broaden my learning and then condense it back down to the essence of what really makes a difference. And so your question, that's what I take away is what's the essence of makes a difference here for leadership. So a couple things. look at the, I look at life now, not just organizational behavior, but I look at life through the lens of threat and reward, whether it's...

you know, at home with my daughter or the clients I'm working with. So you have to, you have to look at it through that lens and couple empathy. Empathy is probably my favorite part of the book because until you develop an empathetic lens of those around you, I'm not talking about kindness. I'm not talking about pity. I think empathy is quite misunderstood. I'm talking about truly being able to see the world through somebody else's lens.

Wanda Wallace (10:14.295)
Okay.

Kursten (10:30.615)
experientially, intellectually, emotionally. Once you can do that, and you start to understand the patterns around threat in the workplace and reward in the workplace, then you can start to co-create ways forward for people that are intrinsically motivating for them, get good results. But that's really the essence. Human behavior is driven by threat and reward. And I'll give you an example.

Wanda Wallace (10:57.281)
Yeah.

Kursten (10:59.553)
If you've ever had one of your team members come into your office, and this happened to me often earlier in my business journey, feigning a bit of emotional distress because they were uncomfortable with something, for example, chairing a meeting, and that's a real example in my company, know, early leader Kursten was so happy to jump in there and make it comfortable for the person and think that by doing it and showing,

I would be helping and helping people grow. So what I was actually doing though was conditioning the behavior that Kursten comes in and makes it comfortable for everybody. So if you understand the threat that's going on in that moment and that person was by my assessment, uncomfortable with the notion of being evaluated or getting something wrong potentially in front of the client or me being critical of them.

Wanda Wallace (11:34.997)
He he he he.

there.

Kursten (11:54.98)
Until you understand that, you can't be empathetic and you lose your influence. So until you're empathetically understanding what's going on, you're not able to influence the outcome. I think leaders tend to pivot between too much accommodating and too much assertiveness. And that was definitely true in my early parts of my journey. So in those moments, we accommodate, we accommodate, we accommodate, and we step in until...

Wanda Wallace (12:07.691)
Ha ha!

Kursten (12:24.569)
the pressure or something's happening in life where you become too stressed and your stories get out of control and you say, what the heck, why am I doing all of this? Then you go to assertiveness and you start commanding and controlling like a dictator. Effective leadership lives in between those two points, Assertiveness and accommodativeness. So really, to answer your question, it would be three things. The threat reward, balancing your leadership dynamic and using empathy as a...

Wanda Wallace (12:46.571)
I love that.

Kursten (12:53.527)
as a tool to understand and influence.

Wanda Wallace (12:56.725)
Okay. Those are three powerful, I think, summary statements. And they're too easy to just say, yeah, and not kind of not really get. So let's take one, threat and reward. And everybody thinks they understand the reward and they all think that has to do with money. And it rarely does in my experience. It has to do with something else people really genuinely care about, usually more intrinsic than extrinsic.

But I have said for decades that until you understand what somebody's afraid of, the threat, in other words, for you, you don't understand how to work with them.

Kursten (13:32.965)
100%.

Wanda Wallace (13:34.388)
Not for the purposes of manipulating. This is not, me find a way to twist it to get what I want out of you, because that creates a different threat. This is understanding what they're really truly afraid of. Whether you would be afraid of it or not isn't the point. What are they afraid of? And I think that's what you're saying. Yep. Okay. So we've got understanding for each employee that you're working, that is working for you or with you in the case of a project team or a peer.

Kursten (13:51.717)
Yeah, you have to meet people where they're at.

Wanda Wallace (14:04.651)
I need to understand how they see the threat and I need to understand how they see the reward. Okay, now let's go to empathy. We always talk about empathy and emotional intelligence and we all know that's putting ourselves in somebody else's shoes and I say no, because you can never put yourself in somebody else's shoes. You have a unique definition of empathy. So walk me through how you see it.

Kursten (14:27.533)
Right, I see empathy as having three dimensions. So the first is an intellectual understanding of what's going on. using an example from earlier in our discussion that the knowledge of psychology, for example, and understanding threaten reward. Another part is the emotional part. Have you experienced the emotions that somebody else might be going through? You know, to your word, the fear.

And I really like David Rock's work around scarf because it gives dimension to the fear, right? And particularly in command control and very hierarchical organization, status is something that's used to motivate behavior. And that comes typically with a lot of threat, unless you're someone quite unique and brave who isn't scared of going against the herd. And then the third part is the experiential part.

Have you experienced what somebody else is experiencing? Have you been in that middle management position or C-suite position before and experienced what it's like to be facing tough decisions or whatever you might be facing? So those three elements together are what we call holistic empathy. And that's truly where you can start to understand where somebody else is coming from and co-create solutions.

And the big mistake that leaders make is first of all, they don't look at their teams through that lens and they tend to go towards making assumptions and a judgmental approach that usually turns into, I call it psychologically coercive because you're using your judgment of what people should and shouldn't do and what your definition of right and wrong is in that situation to.

judge and evaluate people against to get them to move where you want them to move. Well, that's that is like taking a hammer and striking the threat nerve in people. the funny thing is most people don't understand this is happening to them because it's so normalized.

Wanda Wallace (16:39.691)
Yeah. Yeah. I need to understand. have an opinion about what you need to be doing about what's right and wrong in this situation. And I'm going to do everything I can to shove, nudge, coerce, pull you into that strategy, all of which creates a threat. It's my way or there's trouble.

Kursten (16:58.307)
Right. Right. You're touching on something interesting here too, because the way I look at, again, systems approach and putting some definition to things, that's how I look at leadership journey is the beginning part of that journey is what you alluded to at the beginning, that subject matter expertise. You're the one with the knowledge and the right answers and the one who's...

been anointed with the superior superiority that can make all of the optimal decisions and tell people what to do. That certainly was my journey and how I saw the world. And then the next step is what you're talking about now. It moves into more of a, it's influential, but in a more manipulative way, right? And there's many leaders that get to that point, but stop there. And ultimately what we're trying to get to is the next zone that

Wanda Wallace (17:29.879)
Right, right?

Kursten (17:53.326)
I talk about where you're able to work with your team as collaborators, co-create solutions. I like the idea and it's completely embedded in my knowledge now, in my approach now around micro agreements. So I look at work in terms of we're continually negotiating, agreeing to.

and acting out and then revisiting and renegotiating and agreeing whether it's what we're going to do at the next meeting or what's our strategy going to be for the C-suite. So that's where we need to get to is somebody that's that and I think that comes hand in hand with the coaching approach, right? We're no longer there to tell people what to do and make decisions for them.

Wanda Wallace (18:28.343)
Yeah.

Kursten (18:39.919)
we're actually there to unlock their potential and coach them towards the organizational outcomes and particularly build the environment that will allow everybody to be successful. Those unwritten rules, mean, people would call it culture.

Wanda Wallace (18:45.355)
Yeah.

Wanda Wallace (18:52.83)
Yeah, yeah, we could call it lots of different things. I think if you're trying to get somebody to be accountable for something and to take ownership for something, anointing them is a good start, but it doesn't get you very far. Harassing them because they haven't delivered doesn't get you very far. It's another threat. They feel all sorts of other threats, but it starts with your ability to understand the micro steps.

and make small, as you said, micro agreement. And you get there not by saying do ABC, but by getting them to say, what do you think we need to do first, second, third? Okay, great. That first one sounds good. Let's go to there. Then we're going to evaluate and say, does that make two still the right step? Those micro pieces are what allow you to kind of keep steering in the direction of the outcome you're looking for without people feeling like you took over. And it gives you your moments to coach.

I it's all right there in one big thing, but I love your phrase micro agreements. I'm gonna steal that from you, Kursten, from this point forward. Okay, so let's go back to empathy. I will, I will give you credit for it too. So empathy is three components. Intellectually, I need to understand people's threat and reward. Okay, and we've talked about that. And then I'm looking towards not my judgment of what they should and shouldn't feel, what...

Kursten (19:56.826)
Yeah, please do.

Wanda Wallace (20:14.749)
are they actually thinking? What are they afraid of? What are they seeing as their personal reward in this moment? And that creates a context where I can co-create solutions. But number two is emotionally. Understanding how they are feeling. And this is the space you said where influence really happens. If I can't understand the emotion, then I can't get to influence. What I see an awful lot of people doing is they think how they would feel.

and they project their emotions onto the situation. But it isn't necessarily how somebody else is feeling. So how do you stop projecting your own feelings and learn what somebody else is thinking, is feeling?

Kursten (20:54.821)
Sure, well, know, admittedly, I didn't start life in this philosophical view of the world or this approach to leadership. I had to learn it. that insightful moment early in my career where I realized people don't look at the world the way that I do was a key moment, but it didn't stop there. It sparked a...

curiosity to try to figure out the system attached there. So for your listeners...

First of all, that insight is powerful, but then you have to do something with it. So what I would challenge them to go away and do is curiosity is very powerful. And we tend to go towards telling the next time today, after you listen to this podcast, you're about to have a conversation with somebody on your team and you're about to tell them what to do. Pause and ask a curious question.

Ask something like, you know, very common people would come into my office with wondering about what they should do with the problem. Ask a question like, what do you think the problem is we're trying to solve? Or what do you think the root cause of it is? Or what do you think the next steps are? Or what do you think our options are in terms of solving this problem? Those are the moments which you alluded to, those coaching moments that...

That's where the true learning happens because the gap in our organizations is critical thinking. And we do not build critical thinking when we tell people. We build critical thinking when we create the space to slow down and have people think things through and practice critically thinking through a problem. So that's what I would challenge your listeners to do. Certainly you can do some of the things that I did, like you can investigate some of the rote learning.

Wanda Wallace (22:29.206)
Mm-hmm.

Wanda Wallace (22:42.039)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kursten (22:52.151)
opportunities out there in psychology and neuroscience, but I tend to be more towards the practical application based. Jump in there. It's like riding a bike. Hop on the bike. Don't look at the bike. Don't read a book about riding the bike. Don't ask somebody else about riding the bike. Get on the bike and grab the handlebars and feel how it corners and steers and how you pedal. You'll get there. It's going to be clunky and it's going to feel awkward, but I guarantee if you lean into it, you'll be riding a bike before you know it.

Wanda Wallace (23:20.341)
I got there. Okay. All right. All right. So I've got the intellectual understanding how somebody else sees the threat and the reward their terms, not my terms, not my judgment about what I think they should and shouldn't do. I've got understanding the emotion they're experiencing, which I get to by asking questions. And I also use those questions to train the critical thinking, the essential skill we need at this moment in time.

A, to solve problems, B, to be more human-centered, C, to do something the computer can't do. Okay, those are straightforward. Now you come to experience, which is your third piece of empathy. Walk us through how that works. What's that about?

Kursten (24:03.075)
Right, so.

Emotions are about feeling and the intellectual side is about the knowledge, but the experience is have you been in a similar situation in the past to whatever somebody's facing? And although you may not have been in exactly the situation, I find that there's many examples once I start, particularly with executives, if they're stumped on like what would be the similar experience be if I'm coaching them a bit on empathy, they're there.

So you need to just slow down and pause and start thinking about what have I faced in my life that's similar to that situation. Every precise detail of that situation won't be the same in terms of experience, but I guarantee you there's more than enough parallels that you can draw on in your own journey. you know, for example, if you were an executive and you were bringing a

a leader up to a more senior level, you likely went through that same journey. And there will be experiences in there, like perhaps the moment when you leaned into learning how to coach, how did you build those skills? You can draw on those experiences so that you can start to understand, that's where they're stuck because...

I don't think the human brain is very good at realizing where we've come from. We forget about our journey. And I tend to plant coaching questions in my own mind for those exact moments. And a coaching question that would come to me would be, think back to a time in your career where you faced something similar to that. And that helps me a lot in those moments. Yeah.

Wanda Wallace (25:38.277)
You

Wanda Wallace (25:57.166)
Okay, okay. All right. So you said that this, you know, is your, is your amalgamation of a whole bunch of study, trying to think about the systems that we've got the empathy, which is the intellectual, the emotional, and the experience. And I'm using all those together as a way to kind of co-create, to coach, to influence along the way, not to give a judgment, not to say this is the experience I had and therefore you should do exactly what I did.

not to instruct even with the best of intentions, but to help somebody see a solution ahead of them or to co-create a solution with them is the intent we're trying to get to. Okay, I'm still back on one thing. I wanna give you an opportunity to give a pitch. So you have a group of engineers out there, all technical programmers, data analysts who think about the world through.

Kursten (26:45.007)
Okay.

Wanda Wallace (26:54.541)
programming, data analytics, machine, et cetera, et cetera, et who aren't yet sold that empathy is important. Give them the pitch. Why does it matter?

Kursten (27:05.733)
Sure, I'll do it through a story. When I started my career, I came early to the conclusion that there were far smarter people elsewhere in the world that could do my job and do it faster and to a higher degree of quality. And I knew that what was left for me was the relationship work. And I thought that the journey would be...

my technical work would be outsourced overseas, which has certainly happened to a large extent. I did not expect the rapid acceleration of technology at this point in my life being in my forties now. I can guarantee you that I felt exactly the same way and it was scary to imagine stepping out of the safety that I had created in terms of my image of myself and my technical prowess and ability to solve these technical problems.

Once I embraced that and embraced the human side of leadership and a more brain friendly way of approaching it, I've never looked back. mean, my life is fundamentally different. I'm able to create far more value for the clients that I work with. I get the satisfaction of seeing the people that I work with, whether it's some of the team members who have come through my own organization, but now the clients that I get to work with in leadership development.

see the personal satisfaction and the intrinsic reward out of it for them. And, you know, all of the other things too that just come as a result of that, right? The lifestyle, I work from anywhere I want to in the world, you know, the financial part, those are all secondary or tertiary effects of it. But I guarantee you if you lean into this, the opportunities are endless. And in fact, these days,

Wanda Wallace (28:49.494)
Yeah.

Kursten (29:01.093)
I think people are focused on the wrong thing. They're focused on the onslaught of technology and the threat of taking everything over. I've never seen a time in my career that's more opportunistic in terms of being able to pivot. I fortunately stumbled into that conclusion early enough in my career that I was able to be ready for this moment and take advantage of it. But the world is full of opportunity here, whether you're a...

a programmer, an engineer, any medical doctor, you have to learn how to recognize what's your value. And it's the high level cognitive work. I mean, my wife's a medical specialist, medical doctor, and she's realizing that AI is an amazing tool for her to make sure that she can take symptoms and catch potential diagnosis and things she couldn't think of, but.

Wanda Wallace (29:27.789)
Yeah.

Wanda Wallace (29:50.327)
Mm-hmm.

Kursten (29:52.954)
her value is still the nuance of the specifics of the context and the situations she's dealing with to make the right call in the moment to work with her clients. So that's what I would say is the opportunity. And if you don't embrace it, I mean, you're going to be obsolete already. seeing that, especially in entry-level programmers.

Wanda Wallace (30:08.705)
You're not going to add. That's right. Right. I love this that you say you've always felt the threat of the technical work disappearing, going overseas, being outsourced, something else. And so now all of us are facing that that technical side of what we know is likely to be subsumed in an AI world in some capacity. I still think there's some room for it.

but it's in that critical problem solving piece, not necessarily in the what I know and how I know it. So where that leads is how do I add the greatest value? That is how I get more human beings to work with me, for me, on the things in the same direction. And that is back to the empathy that we've been talking about. All right, I wanna go to the next point that you make. This notion of leadership is a style where I'm going to go between accommodating and asserting.

So accommodating, yes, whatever you want. Yes, of course, that's your and moment from the beginning. And asserting is no, it has to be this way and it's non-negotiable and get on and getting it, getting with it, okay? All right, accommodating feels quote nice and asserting feels quote harsh. Give me how do we get the right balance in between those two? How do I know if I'm in the right balance?

Kursten (31:31.589)
Sure, yeah, that's a good question.

Kursten (31:37.498)
First of all, just a point. Some of the most psychologically unsafe environments I've seen are the ones that flip-flop between the two and particularly the ones that are nice at the surface. And that's the highly accommodating zone. And that's because we all instinctually know what's going on underneath the surface. But safety is built out of the environments where we are not...

not fearful of being judged. So that's absolutely critical. And then your question was, how do we go about finding the balance between assertiveness and accommodativeness, right? Yeah. Okay, well, first of all, don't expect yourself to be perfect right off the hop. My journey was moving from a highly polarized,

Wanda Wallace (32:08.77)
Mm-hmm.

Wanda Wallace (32:18.901)
Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Kursten (32:33.227)
Approach where I spent a lot of time in accommodating and I would flip to assertiveness under stress so then I moved into a very accommodating approach and creating too much space and then I moved into a more balanced model Later in my career. So in terms of how you do that don't get down on yourself one

Think that you're failing just lean into it and practice it and treat it as a journey It will take you some time before you can recalibrate your emotions and your nervous system and your narrative to get there to Don't think that it comes from a military style Approach where where you you're going to be, you know always direct and dictating actually the most assertive mode I've seen is

the confidence and comfort in leaning into questions in those moments and making space for people to go through their, you know, the journey of learning critical thinking skills. So make space. I would say stop treating situations that come up at the workplace like we're a cardiac surgeon with a patient dying on the table in front of us. That's the beauty of the business world is that

Wanda Wallace (33:36.557)
Okay.

Kursten (33:54.694)
The operating zone is wide. We are not in life and death situations very often, and I would say hardly ever in our career, yet we treat them that way. I think that's a relic of industrialization and believing that we need to achieve perfection here and we need to do everything we can to correct every mistake that happens. Those moments are the ones where...

Wanda Wallace (34:04.321)
Yeah.

Kursten (34:19.681)
If you lean into them and you create the space for some coaching moments and building critical thinking, those are some of the most influential and balanced assertiveness I could think of because you're not going to judgment, you're not going to coercion. And I'm not talking about yelling at people or calling them names. We can do it with a smile on our face and be very nice about it. I'm talking about

those moments where we show that, this isn't a life ending moment and it's okay to take some time now to think through what's going on, get ourselves pointed forward, figure this out, let go of whatever happened. We really need a change in mindset and thinking. So that would be three things that I can think of.

Wanda Wallace (35:02.125)
I love that. is that allowing the confidence that you will get to where you need to get to, that you do have some frameworks here that are useful, that you can influence people and allow people to ask questions rather than seeing those questions as threats to you. Okay, so that's going to help you kind of get a balance. I love that one.

I also love the recognizing that this is probably not going to take any company down and it's probably not going to kill anybody. If it is, then it's a very different kind of decision and let's think about that one in a different way and that you're allowing that moment for critical thinking. So I want to give you my framework and I want you to tell me what I'm missing in my framework. So one of the things that I think is the assertiveness is that as a leader you assert

Kursten (35:46.885)
Okay.

Wanda Wallace (35:52.514)
where we're trying to get to. We've got a goal. We've got metrics around that. I might have some negotiation around it, but generally, I'm trying to get to a particular place for a particular reason. And I've got some guardrails on what we can't do, like budget and time and who's involved, and a whole bunch of other boundary conditions, I say. To me, those are things that you can assert. I can be confident about them. I can allow people to challenge me on that. I might push a little here or there.

But I can't get pushed all over the map or else we're not achieving anything. But when I come to setting those micro agreements, as you've described at the beginning, then I want to be a bit accommodating, so long as the micro agreements are moving us towards the right boundary conditions and the right goals. So now, how does that sound to you? What did I miss?

Kursten (36:47.557)
Well, that sounds good. And where I see many leaders stumble is they move too quickly to establishing those guardrails or those boundaries.

Kursten (37:03.065)
We have the good fortune in the business world for the most part of enough time. I'm not talking years or months, but I'm talking, you know, days and weeks or hours and minutes, certainly. We have to pause and listen first.

Kursten (37:20.409)
So I look at it like Venn diagrams where the business needs what the business needs and the leader, whatever level you're working at has a responsibility to move towards that future state.

But if we don't take the time to listen first to where people are coming from, we one, don't understand what's in it for them. And we miss the opportunity to co-create something that might create the exact conditions that we're trying to achieve. And that's where the ownership is built, right? I mean, we can't command ownership. We can certainly drive accountability, but it's usually for the most rudimentary tasks like filling in your time sheet or being on time.

Wanda Wallace (37:56.621)
That's right.

Right.

Kursten (38:06.521)
to the workday. But we need to make time for that. And the other reason we need to do that is I've lost count of the number of times that when

I myself or a leader that I'm coaching pauses to listen that they find that the team member or the team they're working with brings forward something better the leader never even thought of.

Wanda Wallace (38:34.029)
Yeah.

Kursten (38:35.693)
And that doesn't happen if we jump in too quickly. We actually shut that down.

Wanda Wallace (38:39.085)
Right. Right. Right. All right. Fair enough. Because one of things that I say is that you've got to be sure that the goal that you're setting is compelling to the person you're asking to be a part of it. To the team and to the individuals. And I can't get to whether that's compelling or not without pausing to listen. Because I have to figure out what it is you want to learn and where it is you want to go and what it is you're trying to achieve and what it is you're afraid of and all of those things that you talked about at the beginning.

Otherwise, I have no clue how to define this in a way that's meaningful to you. Okay, fair enough. All right.

Kursten (39:12.325)
Well, another thought too, I think is really important there is those moments become the coaching moments where often I can see that it, can already see the alignment, especially if I know the person that I'm working with quite well, I can already see the alignment. So my role becomes helping them critically think through to what I think their goal is, but not pushing them towards that or forcing it on them. And often that threat, your words, fear is in the way of that. You know, if somebody's got aspirations of a promotion,

I've seen people that don't go after it because they're fearful of something. I don't have enough credentials yet. I'm not experienced enough yet. And the fear is in the way of where they actually want to go. And we also, as organizations, need future leaders in those positions. So it becomes a coaching moment for me to help them see that, that overweighted fear isn't as big and heavy as it actually feels like. Yeah.

Wanda Wallace (39:56.855)
That's right.

Wanda Wallace (40:05.067)
Right. Right. Right. That's, that is the source, I think, of inspiration, Kursten. When you can help somebody believe in themselves more than they started out believing in themselves, I think that's the source. That's right there. Okay. I can't let you go without talking about motivation because you have talked about the reward side of it and we haven't spent any time talking about intrinsic motivation. Here's a question I get asked all the time. How do you know what motivates somebody you're working with? How do we figure that out?

Kursten (40:35.909)
You ask and you listen. I mean, to your point earlier, right? You said often you see leaders assume. It's very easy once you practice a little bit, just taking time to ask questions and listen. And again, that's what I'm looking for, especially when I thinking back to my own company and bringing new.

Wanda Wallace (40:38.733)
Okay.

Kursten (41:04.879)
people on board. That's where I started. I realized I just thinking about this now, that's what I started doing was taking the time to understand what was in it for them specifically and not making assumptions because, you know, rewinding to the story at the beginning, was rewarding and motivating to me was not the same that was rewarding and motivating to most humans around me. I was highly motivated by the...

Wanda Wallace (41:24.663)
Yeah.

Kursten (41:32.407)
achievement of doing something I didn't quite know was possible. Maybe I thought I could do 50 or 70 % of it. I really enjoyed the stretch of seeing, whoa, you learned there and you grew and you achieved something that you didn't quite know if you could. That's highly motivating for me. Many other humans I've come to learn, that's highly threatening for people because it exposes them.

Wanda Wallace (41:47.347)
Yeah.

Wanda Wallace (41:51.469)
Yeah,

Kursten (41:56.516)
So what you have to do is ask questions and they don't have to be subtle or beating around the bush. You can just ask questions like, you know, what does success look like for you here, you know, in this role? And build an understanding. I realized that I build mental maps of how other people think just by asking questions and I'm constantly calibrating them as I have new information come in, whether it's direct interactions or just observing behavior.

So take the time to ask questions and understand first and then build the alignment. You know where you're being asked to take your organization, whether it's the board asking you as an executive or a senior leader being asked by the C-suite. You know where you need to go. Treat it like Venn diagrams and try to find the alignment there. And sometimes you can't. Sometimes you realize that there isn't and then it's a role mismatch. It's not because there's, unless you're dealing with

Wanda Wallace (42:49.133)
together.

Kursten (42:57.663)
a severe personality disorder, which happens sometimes. know, people have good intentions. They want to do a good job. They're not actively trying to undermine things. Even if you see things that are counterproductive in term behaviorally, like, you know, triangulation is one that I come across a lot. People are just doing the best they can with the tools that they know how to use.

Wanda Wallace (43:23.339)
Yeah, yeah, I I agree with you. think most people, there is a certain small percentage of the population where we can't say that is true, are really genuinely just trying to do a good job and finding understanding. I love your notion of Venn diagram, understanding where people coming from, what they see as a threat, what they see as a reward, what's rewarding to them, motivating to them at this moment, what their experiences have been, what their emotions are about.

Kursten (43:33.198)
Absolutely.

Wanda Wallace (43:49.61)
Understanding all of that is or the tools that allow you to co-create solutions to inspire people and to influence people. So it all comes down to questions. If I think back over this conversation, Carson, though, there are three things that kind of really stand out to me as rather unique. One is this notion of what we're doing is creating micro agreements. I really like that. It's not, you know, yeah, we got a general agreement of where we're trying to take the business, but.

Basically, that isn't the thing that looms. What looms is, what is I'm gonna get done by Friday this week? So those micro agreements, I just think is a great way to be able to think about that. The second thing I love is that you break empathy into those three components. The intellectual side, threat and reward, the emotional side, how people are feeling, and the experience side. And I like that's a nice framework for helping to get a better picture of how people.

are what they're experiencing, thinking, feeling, as opposed to my judgment about them. And the third thing I really like is that what you're looking for is a balance between accommodation and assertiveness. Not all asserting, not all accommodating. It's some mix of the two and how we go about striking that right balance. So Kursten, what a great conversation. Thanks for joining me.

Kursten (45:08.645)
Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.

Wanda Wallace (45:10.101)
I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. The book we're talking about, The Hidden Project Drivers Building Behavior That Drives Success. And if you are a technical leader wondering how you're going to add value, or if you're just a regular leader trying to focus on where it is you add value, I'm telling you this is the answer. This is where you add value, especially in a world where the technical know-how is often going to become a commodity. Kristen, if somebody wanted to find you, where's the best place to go?

Kursten (45:36.271)
Sure, I'm on LinkedIn and KirstenFaller.com would be the places.

Wanda Wallace (45:40.589)
Perfect. All right. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for joining us, Kursten. Everybody is listeners. Thanks for joining us and join us next week for another episode in getting out of your comfort zone. If you like what you heard, please like us on your favorite podcast server. We always love the reviews. If you have a question, send us an email. We love to hear from you. Outofthecomfortzone.com. Until next week.