4 Patterns Every Leadership Team Is Stuck In

Shaun   00:00

3 weeks ago, I’m sitting with an executive team, I won’t say who, and the CEO says something that I have now heard in some version or another with 4 different companies in the last month. Welcome to In the Arena. My name is Shaun Dyke, Managing Partner of DoorTwo.

Chris   00:23

And I’m back in studio here, Chris Stemp, Head of Marketing. Shaun, look, you’ve been gone for a month. I know this ’cause I’ve been trying to get in touch with you. But you’ve been doing work, running the company, right, doing what we do. And you’ve been with 4 different executive teams consecutively. These are different size companies, different industries, different geographic locations. But you were sitting with, you know, the C-suite and you know, maybe just, plus one. And I’m curious, as you were in these, wanted to catch it fresh in your mind, were there similarities? Were there things you noticed that everyone else could learn from?

Shaun   01:02

I mean, it’s not uncommon over the course of months that you get this exposure, but this sort of, like, this back-to-back hit, made it so much more obvious because I would think to myself, like, “I just heard that said, like, 4 days ago.” And then again, like, “And I just heard that said 4 days ago.” So yeah, there are a series of things that consistently materialized as focal areas or problems or perceived issues in and among those groups, independently, but all with a very similar reality.

Chris   01:35

And I assume that was the case. That’s why I wanted to get you now. Because one of the things I think of, and as a coach, you add value in this space, is you get to hear from so many different executives and senior leaders what’s going on, what’s in their world, what problems are they solving. That’s a really valuable asset, right? That’s an information source that can help those listening. And so you started off, the intro of this episode was, you heard a CEO say something, and then you noticed at each company afterward, you heard the same thing. So I figured we’d start with that one.

Shaun   02:11

Love it. Yeah, this was potentially one of the more curious ones for me throughout the whole time. They all have a fair degree of profundity in them, but this one was quite interesting. So, you know, one of the things we try to do on this is either we get to have people on here directly and hear from them, or we try to take from our learned and lived experiences and then share those. And at the same time, we try to provide an appropriate level of anonymity. So I’ll do my best in this space to protect and safeguard who these folks are.

Chris   02:41

Don’t worry, we have editing, so I’ll make sure they get that out.

Shaun   02:43

We can pull it out if I stumble into it. I bumped into a leader at one of these groups last time, and he came up to me and said, “Hey, I was listening to the podcast, and one of those examples hit a little close to home, man.” I said, “Yeah, you were in the room when that happened.” So, you know, if this is you, you know it. So in this particular scenario, we’re a multi-billion dollar business. I fly into this, large East Coast city, show up to the hotel. This is actually a really incredibly beautiful hotel. I get checked in, bump into the head of HR in the lobby. We chat a little bit through kind of the impending realities over the next couple of days and, get settled in. And, the next day, they’d curated this incredibly cool space that was really designed to help us stay away from the noise, settle in, be focused, cool, tall, windows focusing over the skyline. So CEO goes to set it up. Everybody’s got coffee, water. We sit in. He steps in front of the group, and they’re a big business, and they are in the process of acquiring another really big business. And the basic framing that he gives in the beginning is an acknowledgment of, “We are in an unprecedented moment. Never have we gone through this size of an acquisition before in this level of turbulence with this level of uncertainty that’s going on.” And by the way, everything he said was accurate and true, right? It’s valid and real. States it, and in my mind, I listen to it, with full belief and confidence that’s true, because I think it is. And then the next week, I’m now flown to another city in another location and arrived at a hotel the night before, and I show up in the room the next day, and the leader takes the stage and starts talking about the current reality that they’re in. And it gets socialized with, “This is an unprecedented time for us.” It’s not an acquisition but it’s a, either a workforce reduction or a new product introduction or the advent of digital fluency and what we’re doing in those spaces and worlds. And this pattern repeats at every one of them. The initial socialization, and in fact, repeated use of the language, “unprecedented.” Never ever have we experienced this level of fill in the blank, turbulence, noise, change, disruption, uncertainty, volatility, all of those pieces. Every single one of them perceives, it’s probably important to acknowledge that this current moment that they are experiencing is unprecedented.

Chris   05:26

Obviously, that realization hits you in hindsight. Maybe it’s the second, maybe it’s the third, but eventually you realize it. Why did that stick with you? Like, why does that actually matter? Because in some sense, it’s like it is unprecedented or it’s large or to them it feels this way. What do we take away? Because I imagine a lot of those listening are either in those rooms or saying that word.

Shaun   05:51

And, on some level, again, let’s not discount that it’s probable that it is accurate to a degree. So here’s where it got interesting. And you’re right, it was really, in retrospect. I think on a flight home as I was evaluating or considering. And there’s a phrase we use all the time, you know it well, it’s that all behavior is purposive. So everything we do.

Chris   06:17

Yeah, wait. You’re gonna have to say it again ’cause look, if you guys haven’t learned by now. A lot of the time, I think you make stuff up. Purposive? Not a word. Can we just say that?

Shaun   06:27

I think it is.

Chris   06:27

Okay. I mean, I believe you.

Shaun   06:28

Let’s, we’re gonna do a quick search live.

Chris   06:30

But in my mind. Okay, purposive.

Shaun   06:32

Let’s. So, yeah, we’re gonna look it up and see.

Chris   06:34

We’re gonna do it live.

Shaun   06:34

Live. We’re gonna see. I hope it is so much.

Chris   06:37

What if it’s not?

Shaun   06:38

Yes, purposive is a word, Chris. It means having or showing a purpose, intention directed toward an aim.

Chris   06:44

Learn something new every day. This is why you listen. Okay, so state the comment again.

Shaun   06:49

So all behavior is purposive. We do things for a reason, sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious. Sometimes we wiggle because we’re uncomfortable, or we scratch because we have an itch, or we drink because we’re thirsty. And then sometimes we might wiggle because we’re uncomfortable or we’re nervous or we’re insecure or whatever the piece is. So all behavior is purposive. So then I start thinking about something. This repeated behavior of people saying, “We are in unprecedented times.” Why? Why are they saying this with such repeated fervorance? What is the. Okay, excellent. Let’s believe that to be right and true. What’s the reason behind it? So any guesses? What do you think?

Chris   07:32

I will tell you actually something that’s coming to mind. I was, I’ve had a chance to interview a lot of really intelligent people in my life, and I remember interviewing this.

Shaun   07:42

You interviewed me once as well a long time ago.

Chris   07:43

I did. That’s true.

Shaun   07:43

Okay, good.

Chris   07:44

This, neuropsychologist.

Shaun   07:45

That’s not me.

Chris   07:46

And she was explaining, she was explaining what the brain is. And the way. One of the primary ways she talks about it is a pattern recognition machine. The goal of the brain is to say, “Apple, blank, apple.” And as long as that lines up, it’s good. So I’m wondering if by using the phrasing of, you know, unprecedented, it is acknowledging that we don’t have a pattern or, safeguarding against the unknown.

Shaun   08:17

Yes. So, entirely agree. What I landed on was a couple things with it. Some of it was just, this was. I guess I’ll lead with a provocative one. It’s ego protecting. So when I say something is unprecedented, what I am saying is, “I’ve not done this. We’ve not done this. Nobody’s done this. So I’m gonna extend myself and probably others a bit of grace around if we don’t do it right, if we aren’t resourced effectively on it, if we stumble in it makes sense for that to happen.” And on one level, I’m incredibly supportive of that. I don’t have any issue with that pace. The other side of it, I think, could be quite interesting or produce a bit of a conundrum on, are we saying it so that when we stall out, when we give ourself permission not to win, when we give ourself permission to stumble through it, is it, a way we’re extending ourself grace maybe when we shouldn’t extend ourself grace? That sounds extreme to describe it that way.

Chris   09:24

Yeah. Mm.

Shaun   09:24

But you kinda get to say, like, “Well, we’ve never done this before. Like, I-I don’t know how to approach this.” And I think that’s right and true, but in all of these situations, the only real answer for every one of them was, “Yes, and we have to figure it out. We have to lock in. We’ve got to put our resources toward it. We have collective capability in it.” So what I didn’t frequently hear was, “This is unprecedented,” with a smile, with excitement, with energy.

Chris   09:58

You know what struck me about this? It’s interesting. How many descriptors do we use as often as unprecedented? I mean, go back, right? Not many. And you know what we definitely don’t? We don’t use positively framed descriptors that often.

Shaun   10:13

Oh, no. Yes.

Chris   10:14

How often do you hear in every meeting people say, “So the past 6 months have been the best ever,” or, “We can expect the next 6 months to be the best ever,” or. You don’t hear.

Shaun   10:23

Yeah. Yes.

Chris   10:24

So that framing of protecting us against the unknown or maybe protecting our egos, giving some grace to others in the negative is interesting.

Shaun   10:34

Tom Shank, one of our colleagues, says the variant of the phrase, you know, one of the coolest things is when you reach comfort of self where you have suppressed your ego to a point where you get to say, and if you’re only watching the video where you see this, I’m smiling, where you get to say, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” And then he will say, “Oh, boy. Oh, boy.”

Chris   10:56

He does, yeah. Yeah, he does.

Shaun   10:57

He literally says that. Like, “This is gonna be cool.” ‘Cause we have a group of collective individuals with capabilities and interest and intrigue and drive that we’re gonna be able to do something that nobody has done before. High achievement drive. It isn’t. I didn’t hear it positioned that way most of the time. It was positioned with a little pensiveness a little uncertainty, a little, “We’re gonna have to ready ourselves for the storm.” And in truth, all of those are accurate. That is true reality. And what does that do to your mind whenever you lean into it that way?

Chris   11:35

When one of the things we talk about a lot, we talk about it in the PCM episodes we did previously, is that line can land differently based on the person. So I think it’s just.

Shaun   11:46

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chris   11:46

Be aware, right? If you are in a risk-averse group or, a group that has to know, is. We call them thinkers, right? More logically oriented, needs to see the full picture. Saying, “We’re in unprecedented times,” to one person might mean, “Oh, boy. Oh, boy,” and to the other might mean, “Oh, boy.”

Shaun   12:08

Well, and I think interesting. Sorry. Like, seeing your face and that tone shift. You know, when I was in the military, one of the things that you really wanted were your leaders to know what they were doing, ’cause they were gonna guide you into situations and scenarios where you sure as heck hoped somebody had a plan an approach. And, um, you know, I was Navy side and air wing side, so I wasn’t on a front line. But let’s use that as analogy. You know, you’re marching on a front line, and the leader stops and turns around and says, “Hey, team, this is unprecedented.” “We don’t know this land. We don’t know this enemy. We don’t know, we don’t know anything. Let’s go.” You’re gonna be like, “could we have done a little recon?” Or like, “Is there something we could have done in this?” So there’s aversion, too, whenever we sort of position this in a way that is full of a bit of uncertainty and volatility. There’s also a, a desire that you socialize that with a degree of confidence. So it’s okay to position it that way, and we would be encouraged to follow with, “And I have complete confidence and certainty in this team’s capability. The collective competency in this room and the collective tenure in this room exceeds the vast majority of other organizations in this.” “And there’s nothing that we’ve been presented with in the past that was unprecedented then that we did not figure out a solution set for and solve.” And so just trying to ensure that the s. A bit of hyperbole that can come around articulating like that we’ve never done this before, you’re right, and you still solve it the same way. Incrementally, problem at a time, capitalize on your collective resources, and move forward.

Chris   14:05

Okay. So, unprecedented, we got that. Common theme throughout. I know you said, and you didn’t. You weren’t willing to share them with me prior to recording, so that’s good but you said you have a couple more. So what’s another one that you saw as a common theme that others listening probably see or hear as well?

Shaun   14:23

So again, protecting. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. I was with a group that I have been with a number of times over the years. Great group, brilliant people, phenomenal. And, um, we were attempting to solve the same problem we’ve attempted to solve multiple times. However, it’s not being approached that way. So I’m gonna call this one the knowing-doing gap.

Chris   14:51

Okay. Knowing-doing gap.

Shaun   14:52

So in this scenario, there is a asserted belief, and I don’t even know that it’s a true belief, I think it’s what’s asserted, that we have a barrier, a problem, a block, an impediment to success in front of us, and we don’t know what this team needs to do to operate more effectively, more efficiently, more aligned, in the organization. We know that the current approach is creating some organizational drag and that our team needs to work better together.

Chris   15:23

While protecting anonymity, give me an example. Like a very basic one of what many of us might experience when this comes up.

Shaun   15:32

A leadership team that is conscious that they do not address prioritization problems. Let’s say they say, I meet with them a year ago, and they say, “We really struggle, because we’re so resource contained, constrained, and we’re tapped,” and they all acknowledge, “We try to take on too many things.” And then if we say, “Great, let’s not do that,” we go through a process. They do rationalization of some of the priorities. They come up with a core set of priorities. They sign a charter. They cheer, they pop champagne, and they say, “We’re gonna lock in on these things.” And then we come back a year later, and we’re like, “Man. Once again, we’ve got so many things on this list. “. So are we gonna sit in that room, and we’re gonna say that we don’t know what the problem is? ‘Cause we already know what the problem is.

Chris   16:23

Right. ‘Cause we already. We solved for the problem. We didn’t solve for doing.

Shaun   16:28

The doing it. So we know what we’re supposed to do.

Chris   16:31

Hence the knowing-doing gap.

Shaun   16:33

But we don’t do it. So this is that interesting thing, right, I think we’ve talked about before. Knowledge is, you know, rarely the solution. I think the analogy we always give, if it was, there wouldn’t be any divorced marriage counselors, right?

Chris   16:45

That’s.

Shaun   16:46

I mean.

Chris   16:47

That’s true.

Shaun   16:47

I mean, we know.

Chris   16:48

Maybe there aren’t. I don’t even know.

Shaun   16:49

Maybe that’s true. I’ve not done a poll on this. Okay, any overweight doctors as well.

Chris   16:53

Yeah.

Shaun   16:54

Like, we would say we know that’s not the right thing to do, but we do. So I’m in these situations where I’m sitting with an executive team in this particular scenario, and they know they’re not congealing. They know they’re not aligning. They know they’re not working at the level they need to. They know they’re creating organizational drag, and they know that with the strategic imperatives in front of them, it’s not going to work. Like, I will ask them, “Hey, if you keep working at the level of rigor that you’re working as a collective team, will you be able to deliver on the collective imperatives?” Universally, no, we can’t. Okay, great. In this particular scenario, I said very directly, “I think we have to confront the truth. We either need to replace members of the executive team, or we need to replace me.” Because we have had this conversation quite a few times.

Chris   17:39

I mean, you’re talking years, though. I know this group.

Shaun   17:42

It’s been a long time. And by the way, it’s not because. I think it. I know some of the folks, listen to this podcast that will be in the room. It’s not malice. It’s not ill will. It’s none of these things where the individuals are just, you know, intentionally being defiant about what they know needs to happen.

Chris   18:01

Then what is it?

Shaun   18:02

Yeah, it’s, there’s, I think, two big things. One is, we said it a minute ago, a patterned behavior. So I have a, pattern of behavior that has preceded my success that I continue doing. And so I just execute that same thing again and again that I know to do. And disrupting that is hard. Changing behavior is tricky. It is hard to do. So in my harried world and all the activities that I’m doing with my scope of responsibility, I gotta lean into that. That’s one. 2nd one, you know this one as well, reinforced behaviors are repeated behaviors. So the organizationally, we unintentionally reinforce behavior patterns that drive an outcome or a behavior we don’t want.

Chris   18:47

This one has depth to it because if you’ve listened to the show for any length of time or know of us or the work we do, we often talk about scripts and patterns, right? And I love the example you’re giving because it’s a perfect example of how those scripts and patterns show up organizationally or team-wide, group-wide, right? So if we say in this example, you know, we need to be better at prioritization, we can’t do as many things, but the person who does the most things is the one who gets rewarded and seen as the firefighter or potentially is promoted, it doesn’t matter how many offsites you talk about prioritization.

Shaun   19:29

Doesn’t matter.

Chris   19:30

Everyone will burn themselves out for it.

Shaun   19:32

Yep. Probably promoted, not even potentially.

Chris   19:34

There you go, right?

Shaun   19:35

That individual executed with they could get it all done. And again, this goes back to the conversations we’ve had around these constructs of hero culture where on some levels we think we just made a great hire. But what we’re doing is we’re just overly extending the insecure overachiever nature of an individual. So there’s a version where that is the case as well, where as long as we continue to say this is important, but we actually don’t serve it in the way that we wanna serve it, then we’re gonna keep doing the things that are getting the reward and the recognition for us around it. So this was a recurring reality around. I often say this, that I could take probably any of the leaders that I get to work with, and I could put ’em on a panel, and I could say, “Talk me through the 5 to 10 things that are critical for a team to be effective.” They could give a dissertation on it. They know. They’ve been around it forever. Great. How’s that working out in application? So when you are trying to do the things you know, what gets in the way? So the identification of the friction points, the reinforced behavior that we don’t intend or mean to reinforce, the barriers that hibit- inhibit us from doing the things we know we need to do. What is that? Now, I will give credit to this team then spent some time authentically walking at, which is the 3rd thing I wanna talk about, authentically walking at the true and real inhibitors that are showing up. And that takes a lot of vulnerability. It takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of willingness to step into those things. Now, the complex part, which sometimes is amazing, I think both you and I think have this headspace, is we are often surprised at that. 15 people in a room, incredibly competent, capable, educated executives. They, you know, industry giants in many different ways, and yet sitting in a room and me turning to you and saying, “Hey, Chris, sometimes you over-rotate on something that’s serving you, and I think we’d be better if we worked on it together.” And you being willing to say like, “Hey, man, I think. I appreciate that. I think it’s a blind spot that I had, but I know we’re both in it for the same thing, so let’s go get it.”

Chris   21:38

So you’re saying this commonality is the 3rd thing you saw, you see often.

Shaun   21:43

I’m saying the 3rd thing I see is an inability and an unwillingness.

Chris   21:46

To do.

Shaun   21:47

To do it. So we.

Chris   21:47

Even at the highest levels.

Shaun   21:48

Oh, yeah.

Chris   21:49

So this is why I think this conversation is so important because one of the things I was gonna ask, I wanna get more into the 3rd one is, but as you go back to the second one, the knowing-doing gap, right? We know it, but we don’t do it. I always assumed it was, well, it’s out of my control, right? We know we’re overburdened. We know there’s too many priorities, but that’s the people above us fault. You’re dealing with.

Shaun   22:14

The people above us.

Chris   22:14

The people above us. And even they are struggling. Do. Who do they blame if they can’t blame somebody above us?

Shaun   22:21

Yeah. I’ll chase it a bit. The reality that we experienced one time, many times, but very specifically working with a series of executives that were all incredible. They were all full of passion. They all believed in the purpose. And when you would talk to them on-one, they were individually just incredibly astute around the problem orientation, the solution orientation, what would be ideal, what they needed to do, where ownership-li. Individual, on-one. That’s amazing. And then you come back 2 months later and nothing would have changed. And so we started trying to figure out why. What’s. Again, all behavior is purposive. So if somebody knows the answer, but they don’t do the answer, why? There’s a variety of reasons it could show up. We said like, well, is it apathy? Like, they just don’t care. No.

Chris   23:09

No. Yeah.

Shaun   23:10

Rarely in these populations. They care. Is it fear? I’m afraid if I say something, I’m gonna get terminated or executed. Most organizations do not fire fast.

Chris   23:21

Executed? Wait, what organizations are you working with?

Shaun   23:27

I think I meant exited. Not executed. That’s extreme. So they’re going to get terminated as in let go or exited. So again, what stops people from doing the thing they need to do? And then we stumbled across with a lot of consideration, what is this? And, there’s a social construct known as the diffusion of responsibility. It’s most commonly known as bystander effect. So the idea is you come up to a car crash, there is a vehicle on the side of the road, there are other people standing around. You know the things that should probably be done. Somebody should call the police. Somebody should probably call an ambulance. You know this, but you hesitate. So why do you hesitate? Well, ’cause you’re uncertain if you are the one that needs to do it. Hasn’t somebody else done it? I would imagine the people standing around, and they probably already called. It probably doesn’t make sense for me to call. That’s someone else’s lane ’cause you know it’s not squarely your lane. So frequently in these groups, people will recognize a need, but they either don’t think it’s their job, they don’t feel empowered for it to be their job, they don’t believe they’re the ones supposed to do it, so they wait.

Chris   24:47

You know. I’m hearing you say essentially is, often at this level at these groups, instead of looking up, they just look out, right? So if you’re middle manager or whatever, I don’t like the phrasing of that. A lot of the levels I’ve been at and whatnot, you can say, “But up there, they made the decision.” But once you’re up there, you can say, this ties into the 3rd point, “It’s out there. It’s on this team.” But then what you’re saying number 3 is, yeah, Chris, that’s correct, and then they don’t talk about it. They don’t say it to the out there.

Shaun   25:21

So. Our phrase, we don’t name it.

Chris   25:24

Tell me about that. So number 3 is.

Shaun   25:26

Yeah, so we- number 3 is.

Chris   25:27

People don’t name it.

Shaun   25:27

The willingness to name it. So it’s the language we often use in the firm, which is basically just a logic-based, unemotional statement. So the simple example we always use, if somebody was shooting 10 free throws and they made 7, we would say, “You made 70 percent of your free throws.” That’s not coming with judgment. That’s not coming with encouragement. It’s not coming with anything other than just an is. So in situations where an executive team, well, you go back to that example where they say, I would say with them, “You consistently struggle to prioritize.” Not you’re bad people. Not you are ineffective at what you do. Not you should have never been promoted into this role. Not if you continue doing this, you’re gonna be executed. You’re gonna be exited. It’s just a reality that we get to acknowledge as a problem because then we get to shift from a known point. Here’s my known point. So on this team and on many teams, you will see a group saying, “We’re sub-optimized. We’re not working exactly as we need to work.” Say, “Great.” Now, you know we do this. I’ll interview people on-one beforehand. And they’re great at giving me.

Chris   26:34

They know the answers.

Shaun   26:35

The why. All the answers. Then we come together as a team, and we say, “Hey, thematically, here’s what we experienced, this reality.” But as a group in those moments, there’s just a felt level of tension, and there’s uncertainty because it feels like, “Well, I mean, I don’t do that. That’s really Chris that’s the one that’s doing that, and I’m not exactly sure how to do that or those pieces.” And it comes back to reinforced behavior is repeated behavior. I have responsibility over my business unit, over my area of focus and my functional expertise in this spot. Really, I just gotta lock in and do what I’m doing because after all, this is unprecedented times that we’re in right now. And I am resource-constrained, and I have to execute against these pieces. So the 3rd biggest theme was our willingness to truly name what we already know is getting in the way. We already know it. And you’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. I guarantee you everyone listening has been in a room when we’re pretending we don’t know what the real problems are. And we’re trying to scratch around it with loose behavior or loose language and realizing ultimately, here is our core issue. This is a core problem.

Chris   27:44

Okay, so we’ll do this live here, and I think it might help ’cause we internally recently had a similar scenario, and there was a conversation happening, and in truth, I could name it, but what was going on in my head was well, I don’t know everybody’s reality. So maybe my naming is incorrect. You know what I mean? Now, eventually I did, and it was like, “Yep,” and you’re like, “Oh, okay. I’m not crazy.” But I wonder how often that happens when people are thinking they either know the answer, know the problem, have. But they’re going, “I’m in a group of 15. I can’t come out and say, ‘Guys, it’s this.’” You know what I mean?

Shaun   28:28

But do you remember how you did it?

Chris   28:29

No.

Shaun   28:31

So you did it really gracefully, which is how we would encourage you do it. You asked a question. You gave an observation. This was when we were on the call. If we’re talking about what I’m thinking of.

Chris   28:39

Yeah, it is. Yeah.

Shaun   28:39

You said, “Hey.” “I have to admit, I’m not fully read in on what’s happening here.”

Chris   28:45

That’s. Yeah.

Shaun   28:45

“But it feels off.” “Can I ask what’s going on?”

Chris   28:50

Right. Okay.

Shaun   28:51

You didn’t accuse. You didn’t assign.

Chris   28:52

Or say, “This is it.”

Shaun   28:53

No. You created a space. And so let’s say you’re in a reality, that this is going on. You can easily say, “Can I pause the room for a minute? Do we genuinely believe we don’t know the solution here, or is it that we’re a bit fearful of acknowledging the truth?”

Chris   29:11

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Shaun   29:12

And then if people. Would be my approach. If people still tap dance around it, then I think we get to walk out it. We get to say as an individual, “May I offer my vantage point? I’m not saying it has to be yours, but can I offer a vantage point that I think is what’s contributing here?”

Chris   29:27

Well, and what you just. We actually haven’t talked about this on the podcast. We’re not going into it, future episode, but the may I offer. We call it request of channel. Really important communication tool to use. These things, these, nuances matter.

Shaun   29:43

Massively.

Chris   29:44

In human connection, human, you know, communication.

Shaun   29:44

Getting permission to make a statement.

Chris   29:46

Yeah. Yeah.

Shaun   29:47

“May I offer?” Someone will always say yes. “Would you like a piece of feedback?” They will always say. Nobody’s gonna be, “No, thank you. I don’t want anything.”

Chris   29:53

Yeah.

Shaun   29:54

And then you condition them to receive versus if you just state.

Chris   29:58

All right, so those are some really solid ways to handle the name it problem which I think is really challenging in any relationship. You know, we know how.

Shaun   30:07

Personally.

Chris   30:08

Exactly. We know how work and life intermingle. This is an example of something you could use at home as well. Request of channel, et cetera. So just recap. You’ve been with 4 different executive groups in the past 4 weeks all over the country, and what we’re trying to do is bring to those listening and watching, “Hey, here’s what’s going on behind those closed doors.” If it’s happening with your team or your organization, here’s some thoughts. So we have the unprecedented and why we might do that and the impact it can have. We have the knowing-doing gap. So many of us know the problem, but why don’t we do it, and what we can do about that. And then the 3rd one here we had, which was.

Shaun   30:47

Name it.

Chris   30:47

Name it. How many more we got?

Shaun   30:50

Number 4, we’ll call this, misapplied pressure-prompted pride.

Chris   30:58

One more time.

Shaun   30:59

Misapplied pressure-prompted pride. Looks like this. When I’m chatting with teams and we talk to them about some of their core strengths, inevitably, teams will create pride in their ability that when there is a crisis, when a situation is a-brewing, a storm, a recall, some kind of complicated scenario going on, we rally and we can lock in. Now for years, I actually kind of interpreted that as an asset. Well, that’s cool. Like, when things get crazy, when the proverbial it hits the fan -like, this team knows how to lock in. I started recognizing a pattern, though. That statement simply means we don’t know how to prioritize. Because when there is an external prioritization done for us, we know how to show up. We’re quite good at it. When there is pressure that we didn’t have to decide the most important thing on, when for whatever reason the context of the environment created clarity for us, we knew how to lock in and marshal our resources against it. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing all in all, but in an ideal world, how do we figure out how to bring that level of intentional resource allocation to the priority items that we have recognized based on trends, patterns, conditions, realities, imperatives, not some external reality forcing us into it?

Chris   32:32

What does that look like in these rooms? I don’t know if you can do it with the anonymity, but do you have an example, a moment? Is it obvious to the whole room, or is it just something you’re picking up on as you look?

Shaun   32:44

It’s obvious to the whole room that they know they’re able to marshal their resources when they have to. Product recall. Man, we were able to lock in on that. Security breach. Leak of information in some way.

Chris   32:58

And then, like, a pause in the meeting to say, “Great job. Look what we did.”

Shaun   33:01

Oh, people do. And there’s a rally around nice job with it. And again, it’s not discounting.

Chris   33:07

No.

Shaun   33:08

-The ability to show up when it matters. Like, often, crisis hits, and we have to be able to respond to that. I’m down with that. That is excellent. However, if the only time we are really effective at aligning our resources and moving with urgency to accomplish a task is whenever a crisis hits us, we are really incredible firefighters.

Chris   33:33

Reactive.

Shaun   33:34

Massively reactive. So I see this happen a lot, and I think it’s a difficult pattern to get in front of, and you have to be willing to go out far enough to start trying to, predict and respond versus react -to the realities that we’re gonna be experiencing. I think at any given time when you ask teams what they’re dealing with, often it’s a heat map of fires they’re putting out -things they’re reacting and responding to. And so one of the challenges is the intentionality behind, is this a, could we have predicted or planned this and prevented it so that it didn’t turn into the swirl? But again, let’s go back to that fun part. Yeah, you. I know you’re probably gonna go exactly.

Chris   34:25

Chomping at the bit.

Shaun   34:26

It’s fun.

Chris   34:27

Yeah, it’s fun -and it’s rewarded. Those are the 2 things. And we don’t need to get into it. I think most people know this, but it’s fun because the chemical reward you get from saving the day -is far greater than the one you get from just keeping the train on the track.

Shaun   34:40

Yeah, from preventing the fire. That’s not nearly as fun. So I, if these guys are listening to it’ll be good, but so I have, um, a house I’m selling. And. I’ve lived in it for, like, 7 years, and, now and again, you’d walk out into the garage where the washing machine and dryer are, and you’d get this faint hint of natural gas smell. And I. And I have a gas dryer. And so 2 different times I called the gas company to come out and check on it, and they brought their little cool sniffers out, and they’re like, “No, it’s nothing, man. I think it’s just, like, residual.” Okay, that’s fine. Well, everything’s moved out of the house. It’s all cleaned up, and it’s just more prominent because there’s no competing smells in there. So I call the gas company out again. I meet this guy, and he shows up, and I say to him, a little bit of an achievement hook, I say to him, “Man, there’s been 2 other guys out here over the last 7 years, and nobody has found anything.” And you can see him, like, lock in. Like, he got his sniffer ready. And he finds it, but he had called another buddy to show up to come help him. So he finds it. It’s a really straightforward piece where. There was a Y connector, and it was just leaking from the Y connector. Well, as I go to walk in the gara- in the house, I hear the other guy show up, and I hear this guy telling his story. And he’s like, “Yeah, man. So I showed up. 7 years, this guy’s had 2 other people out here. They’ve never been able to find it. So I started looking, right? And I found it. What I did is I pulled the dryer out and behind it.” And I was just chuckling at, like, he felt a lot of pride in solving the problem. It would have been way more boring to just if I’d had him come out, and I said like, “Hey, will you pipe this so that there’s no gas leak into this?” And he’s just gotta do a standard job. So putting out the fire, I think, is a lot more rewarding for a lot of teams than preventing the fire.

Chris   36:22

And so you saw this happening. Do you call it out? Do you try to change it? You know, when you’re in these rooms, what, uh, shift might you coach them toward, and what benefit will they get from it?

Shaun   36:40

Yeah. So they’re linked in a number of the things that kind of what we have just talked about. So I definitely call it out. It usually manifests in, like, early stage conversations with them or in the room. So we’ll always call it out. They always acknowledge it. They know it’s true. They’re. And, of course, we do it in a way where it’s not a condemnation, it’s a strength.

Chris   36:56

Sure, yeah.

Shaun   36:57

It’s an asset and a liability at times. And then the conversation moves into we have to be willing to name it on why this continues to occur. And one of the most frequent problems that we’ve just talked about is reinforcing the wrong behaviors, poor prioritization, a myriad of things that if we’re unwilling to acknowledge those, we’re gonna continue perpetuating this problem.

Chris   37:18

What’s interesting about this is actually as you think about one through 4 that you just went through, I don’t know if you did this intentionally, they’re almost, like, linearly linked, or it’s almost a slight waterfall of it, right? Which is we state a problem or a challenge, we talk about how great it is. So we’re framing it one in the negative and 2 in we gotta go into solve mode -right? And then instead of solve and do, because doing’s hard, we almost satisfy by just talking about the problem. And you’re in there as an agnostic 3rd party going, “Yeah, I get it. We’ve been talking about this. Let’s go.” ‘Cause I’ve done -what you do to some extent. You whiteboard and you sticky note it and you come up with all the thing -and you try to get them towards action. And then there’s a pause, there’s a silence, there’s a discomfort. And guess what that is? People not naming what’s gonna come up when we try to accomplish that. So now there’s like a pause.

Shaun   38:09

Oh, 100 percent.

Chris   38:10

Do you see what I’m saying? So there’s actually a bit of a linear flow -to these things you’re -calling out for us.

Shaun   38:16

True. It wasn’t intentional, but I’ll say it was intentional.

Chris   38:19

Okay. Um.

Shaun   38:20

But no.

Chris   38:20

It’s just what I do.

Shaun   38:21

That’s not inac. It’s just what we do. It’s not inaccurate that is certainly how it shows up. It’s funny, what I was just thinking about is the frequency with which, there’s problems stated. And in the background, you oftentimes know, like, those aren’t the problems yet. But that’s okay. We’re gonna work with those. And then people part putting solutions in place. And that’s okay. And then you get to reach this point, and you’re like 6 hours in sometimes. And then we get to pause and we say, “Okay, so what we’re in collective alignment of is that if we action against these solution sets, it’s gonna solve these problems and serve the greater goal.” And then the room sits and says, “Shit.” “No.” So those are symptoms presenting issues, oftentimes not real issues. And that’s okay. It’s why we tend to say most of us are unwilling to do that thing we say, which is talk until the talking starts. Which is sometimes you do have to sit in there and talk it through and work around it and get in those spaces. And that’s part of what we do with teams -is we create the space to socialize the problem with enough comfort and vulnerability to get to the spot where we can actually solve it. I don’t know how many times I say. I believe it’s a Tom Peters quote, that there’s nothing worse than doing something well that shouldn’t have been done in the 1st place. Putting great energy toward execution of a task that is not gonna move the needle, what are we doing? And we like to solve. We like to solve. One of the groups that I was just with, one of the things that they had said in the pre-offsite interviews was that they tend to go to solution mode really quickly. So I had, like, 9 macro themes to share with them, and I put up the 1st theme. And, I don’t even recall the specific theme offhand, but I put up the 1st theme, right? And they start spinning up, and they start talking, and it’s getting energy, and they’re going back and forth, and they’re working on solving it. And so I just very visibly sat on my stool in the front of the room. Caitlin, our colleague’s in the back of the room. She keeps looking at me like, “What are we doing?” And I just purposefully just sat there 20 minutes. 20 minutes, they just kept going. Finally, there was enough of a breath in the room and I said, “Ha, hey, what the hell are we doing?” And somebody goes, “You’re observing a leadership team meeting right now.” I said, “Right. You guys are immediately dropping into solving it without having any collective understanding of how it fits in with the other 9 issues, the priority of those issues, its linkage and implication on us.” But we just. It was like a swarm attacking the problem because that’s satisfying.

Chris   40:57

Pausing on that. It’s a really powerful point to think about going into that solution mode and then saying, “What are we doing? You’re witnessing a leadership meeting right now.” Right? Yeah. So we know what leadership is. They don’t define it as the best solvers that exist.

Shaun   41:16

That can talk the most with the loudest voice in the room -solving a problem that maybe shouldn’t have been solved in the 1st place.

Chris   41:21

Right. Nice.

Shaun   41:21

It might not even be a real problem, right? So you know this analogy. We give the analogy all the time. I actually wish I knew where this came from. It’s probably just, probably like that adage. Who was it? Somebody that, somebody recently said to us. Oh, it was Kevin Hancock that said that fun question of, do we think fire was invented once or a 1,000 times? Such a great.

Chris   41:41

You gotta bring this up at the end of the episode.

Shaun   41:43

I know, right?

Chris   41:43

I mean, such a great question.

Shaun   41:44

It’s such a good one, right? So in that vein, there was a phrase, and I don’t know where this phrase came from, the idea between flashlight and floodlight. That oftentimes executive teams walk into the darkened room of their reality, and with a concentrated beam, they put singular focus on a problem, but not realizing that we need to turn on a floodlight to light the entire warehouse to understand what is the highest and best use, where’s our greatest points of engagement to solve the problem. So we have an hour executive team meeting. We bring up one single thing. We swarm it like 6-year-olds on a soccer field -and then we actually don’t get any time to tend to the other things. How do we step back and away from that?

Chris   42:25

Love it. Okay, so, Shaun, you just went through 4 points. I’m sure you could come up with many more, but for brevity’s sake, we’re gonna end this one. But for those listening, you know, we’ve given them a lot to think about. You’ve brought them behind the boardroom doors of multiple companies, and, we will continue to do this. By the way, those listening, if you kinda like this style of what’s happening behind the conversations, let us know. Reach out, info at door two dot com. Let me know. We’ll do more of these. But with everything they’ve heard and learned, right now they’re driving into work, and they recognize themselves or their team in these 4 observations. What would you recommend? What would you have them do?

Shaun   43:05

1st thing I would remind us is the solution is rarely as big as the problem. So as you’re thinking about the complexity of realities you’re experiencing, the magnitude of challenge, the myriad of things that I just walked through, do not attempt to make a list and execute every one of those. What stuck out? What resonated? Is there something that you’re conscious of that you are doing or your team is doing from a leadership standpoint that you know that if you adjusted, modified, impacted a thing, you would incrementally improve it? I mean, I told most of the teams that I was with on like, “Hey, guys, let’s just look at. If we just did 2 things, if we learned to name it more effectively, and if we learned to take individual ownership of our noise, how much better would the organization be?” Like, pick a thing. Solution never needs to be as big as the problem. So I’d say anchor in on something that you feel called or feel pulled to, and I think those are meaningful. If something sort of created a little bit of a, “Ooh, yeah, that’s me.” The frequency with which I just shared with you, I just got a text from actually my older brother that sent me a note, and he was like, “Man, I was listening to your podcast,” and, yeah, that one landed. Those are the things. Anchor in with that one, which I know you told me I have to wrap it, but I’m gonna give one last thing.

Chris   44:28

Shocker.

Shaun   44:29

It’s the other thing that I noticed. People are really working their tails off, everywhere. There are so many incredible individuals that are really putting in thoughtful, intentional, concerted effort to help the organization be better, to help the product or service that they’re trying to create and deliver on the customer promise be better, to live into the lives that they have, you know, um, chosen to embrace in order to lead populations of people. And they’re really working hard. So I left everyone feeling the weight of their realities, personally and professionally. And so, I guess I’d say admiration if you’re in that spot where you’re feeling it. Like, pat on the back and then also acknowledge everybody else around you. It’s a busy world right now. It’s been for a long time, but it’s unprecedented right now.

Chris   45:27

I was just about to say, one might say…

Shaun   45:29

It is unprecedented.

Chris   45:30

…unprecedented times. Well, Shaun, thanks for, you know, bringing these back to us. I know it’s been a bit of a whirlwind for you.

Shaun   45:36

Yes, sir.

Chris   45:36

I don’t know if you know what time zone you’re in.

Shaun   45:38

I do not.

Chris   45:38

Helpful. I know I learned a lot. Love sitting down. Hopefully those tuning in learned a lot as well.