TITLE: TENSION_07
DURATION: 00:21:25
NARRATOR: You are listening to leadership on the ground Season 4 – The Tensions of Leadership. A tension is a gentle pull, a stretch that causes a strain or an emotional trigger that can cause a positive or negative reaction. When you are in a leadership role, you’re confronted with tensions constantly. What would you do with these critical moments that matters the most? In this series, we’ll learn how to identify and acknowledge these tensions, how to appropriately respond to them with our next move, and how to skillfully navigate through them when leading ourself, leading teams, and leading at the organizational level. This series is made possible by the international bestselling book— Leadership Rigor — Your guide for achieving breakthrough performance in productivity and now here are your host Todd Schnick and Erika Peitler.
TODD: Good morning and welcome back to our very special edition series Leadership on the Ground Season 4 – Tensions of Leadership. As always, I’m joined by my friend and colleague Erika Peitler. Erika, I cannot believe we’ve already come to the end of our 4th season. Wow!
ERIKA: Unbelievable. This one is so fast.
TODD: It did. It did and it’s going to close very strong because I’m looking for this chat episode 7 – The Tension in Leading Organizations and Being either an Entrepreneurial or Enterprise leader and thereby enabling the organization to both skill and sustain itself and that would be very, very important. So, before we go there Erika, reminder audience, what is meant by the Tensions of Leadership?
ERIKA: Yeah, this is really going to be, I think, an exciting Season 4 because we’ve been engaging in this ongoing dialogue regarding leadership being a skilled profession. So, it requires conscious discipline, it requires practice, and it’s all in this pursuit of performance and productivity. So, when Season 1, we really laid down some skills about “How do you become a consciously competent leader? What do you need to do? How do you do with MYD to do it?”And then we advanced in Seasons 2 and 3 and we started to talk about Practices of Leadership. How do you practice in real time? How do you establish rhythm for working at the speed of business and putting some macro structures in place? In Season 5 Todd, we’re going to change it up again and we’re going to look at these tensions that leaders face as they progress in advancing their leadership practice and these tensions are stresses. They’re pulls, they’re triggers, and they’re things that leaders must raise, wrestle with, and resolve or else they’re going to struggle, they’re going to get stucked, and they’re going to stagnate themselves and their businesses. So, the stakes are really high in Season 4.
TODD: Alright. As we close up the series here of Part 2 of our Leading Organizations, we did wrap up the last episode talking about the changes that needed to be made for the teams and with the talent. But, I think it’s important to also remember that the leader him or herself need to make some changes here, right? So, walk us through with some of those might be. You know, fundamentally, the biggest change in this entrepreneur and enterprise leadership is it’s typically the model at the entrepreneurial level; you’re the “spoken the wheel”. You’ve kind of have all of the decisions, people kind of come to you and you kind of delegate the work out but you’re the mastermind of whatever this enterprise is and people tend to defer to you and you tend to make all the critical decisions be as important, you’re moving really quickly, you’re the early stages. But, as the organization evolves and changes and you do become more of an enterprise, you start to realize that my capacity as an individual can’t be the capacity of the organization. So, my bandwidth is going to ultimately hold us back if I’m spoken the wheel and I’m making all the decision, or is it an enterprise of model and format? It starts to now rely more on the team. You’ll start to get functional experts on board, just start to get people who understand process and structure, and you start to have a team based environment. So, the capacity of your organization and the scalability of it will be exponentially greater because your team’s capacity is always going to be greater than your individual capacity. So, that’s a fundamental shift that a leader needs to get used to it, is they’re moving from one model to the next.
TODD: Well, what you’re talking about here is this classic working inner on the business. I thought that was limited just to small companies but, no, this is applicable to large enterprise, too.
ERIKA: It’s definitely applicable to large enterprise. You know, when you’re working in the business and you’re a part of that day to day, you don’t have the altitude and the landscape to really strategically be able to figure where you need to go next. So, you got to get on the business and not in the business. So, we talked about the organizational excellence model in our last session, that starts to create on the business format world map for leaders and gets them out of the day to day weeds and [INADUIBLE 04:51] starts looking at “What do I need to do to solve the tensions that are in the way of my scalability and sustainability?”
TODD: Aha. Critical stuff. So, another tension that are things worth talking about here is this idea of loyalty versus performance. What is meant by that?
ERIKA: You know, when we’re talking about the people side of things, you start to move from an entrepreneur to an enterprise model and too big changes happen, — process which we’re talked about, do we have the training’s running on time, do we have the structures in place, so we’re educating and using the processes that we need to and then the people side of things which is “Are we having an appropriate focus on talent management?” Do we have a philosophy around talent? And as our jobs evolve and as our needs evolve, the entrepreneurial leader moving to an enterprise format is probably going to have a skewed look at their talent. They’re going to look at the talent that’s brought them this far and they’ll going to go, “I love these people. I’m loyal to these people. These people we’re with me. They’re employee number 16, 17, 18..” I can’t tell you how many companies I’ve worked with. They’re such pride and joy in terms of them being one of the first, and being there 20 years ago and really laying down the foundation and that level of gratefulness and respect, you can never get enough of.
TODD: Right.
ERIKA: And being loyal is really key, but when you start to get into this enterprise model, you really need to be tomorrow’s leader as well. You can’t just be today’s leader and you have to be able to say but, “Do we have the appropriate performance measures in place? Do we have the appropriate skills? Are we holding back the organization?” New skills start to become so much more important, accountability, developing others, being able to collaborate, being to be let go of position power and authority which is kind of have a baby boomers grow up, right?
TODD: Right.
ERIKA: Now, you look at where we are. So, that shift from loyalty to performance based. Will you as an enterprise leader be able to make the right call about the people and yet with grace and respect appropriately thanked and appropriately moved to the right position, most people who may have been with you for all those years.
TODD: Yeah, talking this reminds me that when we talked to few episodes ago about protecting my team and it’s kind of conceptually similar to that and that we’re holding on the talent for too long. I think, part of the role you play here is certainly is your shifting into an enterprise is you have to be a talent magnet, right? We’ve talked about that and I think if this idea of being loyal an having people who aren’t the right fit for the organizational needs, we talked about these transitions in life cycle. I think that becomes more difficult to recruit the right talent when they’re not actually sure that they’re going to be welcomed there.
ERIKA: If diagnosing the life cycle correctly, is the first half of the battle. But then, if you get it right, now building these processes and these philosophies around it is really critical and you’re absolutely right. You need different talent at different stages of the life cycle. That would be wonderful to just think that every one who joined us from the beginning can evolve, and change and grow and have all the skill sets that we need through the entire life cycle of an organization. But you know what? That’s not true. Go back to what we talked about in episode number 1 or 2, are you a team leader or you’re a thought leader? We can ask you to evolve and be in this different roles but is that consistent of who you want to be and what were you talents are? So, we have to be careful. We go out there, we start to want to be a talent magnet, we want to bring in this great talent because “Hey, we want to be this big company. We’re getting bigger now.” But, if we bring in greta talent and we don’t have the processes in place or we don’t have a talent management approach and career management for them, high potential talent may be uncomfortable in that kind of atmosphere and environment. Now, you may bring in the right people and they can be people who build it with you, which is great but sometimes we over promise talents what’s really here and they come in and they go, ” Wait a second. You’re running this on a shoe string. You’re really and entrepreneurial organization, you don’t have these processes in place.” You have to be really careful about how you bring in new talent as your making a shift between the models.
TODD: And thinking further about the talents, it means loyalty over performance, but it’s also performance versus potential, right? It’s another thing you have to think about.
ERIKA: This is huge and I think one of the things that both large companies and small to mid-size companies get caught up in is historically, we’re given promotions over the years to those who were next in line, those who would put in their 10 years, their 15years, their tenure. Today, the game has really changed and I think what talent expects is the people with the right skill set, meritocracy wise to get the job. And meritocracy is really different in today’s world because having the skills that’s necessary for today, we may have quite a number of people that have put in a great deal of time and loyalty in a company that don’t have the skills for what we’re looking for tomorrow. But, what do you going to do when you run an organization? When you are the leader, you have to come to terms with, if you’re going to scale and sustain your business, the organization as a whole is your highest priority. Now, we get distracted by a relationships and our loyalties, but really if we’re not protecting them, like we talked about, not protecting or even our senior people. If we really were being objective and were looking at the organization’s needs, we would promote a lot more on potential, people who don’t necessarily have all the skills sets in place but they will be able to take us through the next five, ten, fifteen years. Whereas, if I promote these other individual, they may be able to give us three but then they’ll going to be a blocker. They’re not going to be leaving the company for another five or ten years until they retire and yet they can’t take that organization to that next transformational level, we get caught in a lot of those challenges and that’s a very difficult position for organizations to be in.
TODD: And that’s a tough tension for a lot of people to think about. It’s hiring a potential, that doesn’t feel — that’s not normal. Frankly, it goes back into this idea, I’m thinking back of a few episodes of giving versus earning trust. It’s the same idea, right? Because if you hire a potential, then you are giving trust and that’s what we’re thinking of.
ERIKA: Right.
TODD: And I think that also feeds into being a better talent magnet, right?
ERIKA: Being a talent magnet, look, is someone who doesn’t necessarily only recruit when they have an open position. You should always be recruiting. You should always be talking to people and always looking for game changes who can come in to your organization. Yeah, that’s the talent magnet that you’re talking about. Now, an entrepreneur or an enterprise leader, you might get more of that from an entrepreneurial leader you think because you’ll just say, “Hey, you just seem like your fit for the company. You should come in.” But really, enterprise leaders are getting a little bit more hip to this as well, recognizing that we may not have an absolute position for you but we’ll make a role for you or give you an opportunity to come in and help create something with us. I think we’re starting to see a lot more change in that.
TODD: Now, we have to be competitive with all those great talent out there.
ERIKA: Absolutely.
TODD: Alright. Erika and I will return after this short break. We’ll be right back.
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TODD: Alright. Todd Schnick back with Erika Peitler. So, gosh, I think about loyalty and performance and performance and potential and become a talent magnet and all these different things. You do really have to make the right call on your executive team in recruiting executive leaders. I think, the leaders who’s now leading an organization versus leading him or herself, certainly leading teams, they are now the leader of leaders, right?
ERIKA: Oh, that’s such a great phrase. I love that phrase. The leader of leaders, yes, it means that you not only have to make the right call on your leadership on your leadership team but you may have to have the courage to make some tough calls on that leadership team. That leadership team needs to be the leadership team with the skills and the capabilities to develop that next generation and strategically work on the business with you and take that organization to the next level. Remember that if we have people who are not able to play at ta highest level on that leadership team, the will slow you down and they will slow and jeopardize that life cycle of change in that model change for you, so it’s critical. Just to link it to what we’re talking about before with talent, a lot of organizations do succession planning. It’s great. It gives visibility to the issue. You get dialogues started about your talent but you have to then link the development of that talent, whether it’s through coaching or performance development plan, stretch assignments, so that if you do have to make a call on a leader at a senior level, that bench is appropriately prepared to bring that next leader up from the lower level. So, you don’t have a big shift.
TODD: Well, there comes that courage thing again, right? I mean, we talked at the last episode about this idea of flanking yourself. If you’re an entrepreneur leader, you have to hire a COO to help you run the organization. But then, when you shift and you evolved into the enterprise, maybe you need to then revert and get an innovation officer. You might have to make that call. And that COO who you hired to get you started may no longer fit and that’s a difficult decision. That’s a big tension, but we have to keep the enterprise in mind, the organization in mind, right? Oftentimes, we don’t.
ERIKA: Absolutely. If the players are going to change and you have to be able to appropriately balance and manage that over time. No question.
TODD: Yup. I think the final discussion here as we’re talking about leading organizations, certainly with how we think about our talent but it’s this idea of short term or longer term thinking and I think a lot of leaders struggle with that.
ERIKA: They do. I think it’s probably one of the most significant tensions that you see, even at the enterprise level. It’s so easy to get in the weeds, it’s so easy to dropdown an altitude, it’s so easy to solve at the problem level, at the basic level and get distracted into the details of the business because we love the business. But, one of the things that I always listen for really, really hard is for the ways that people talk about short and long term and long term in the business that I’m in coaching, I see one or two scenarios. I see either enterprises, — you know, long term are really looking, five and ten years. A lot of my pharmaceutical clients, they’re talking about drugs cycles and patent cycles that are quite long and they’re in research phases where they may not see the fruits of their labors for five and ten years. Some of the entrepreneurial companies, they look at their horizon in one year. It might be long term for them, two or three years might be long term for them. Some of them think in terms of decades in a negative way. Maybe, that over the decade something is going to change, whereas there cycle may need to be shorter. So, we’re all over the map with short and long term. What I like to look for is “Do people have an appropriate balance of what are we doing today? Where is it working? Where is not working and now we appropriately building for resolving the tensions of where it’s not working and creating new solutions, so that we can scale to that next level. A lot of leaders will say to me, “Erika, I don’t have time for that. I got to run the business today or there won’t be a tomorrow.” And you know what my response to that is, Todd? “That’s a wrong leader in that role.” If a leader literally says to me, I’m thinking, that leader might be the wrong leader for that life cycle because the right leader for the right stage of a life cycle should always be able to balance today and tomorrow, because my job is not just to manage this phase of a life cycle but to help us transition to the next phase of a life cycle.
TODD: How common is that scenario! I don’t have time to think long term. That’s prevalent from large enterprises down to mom and pop store openers. We all have said that and that’s a tension that we just can’t grapple with and you have to resolve that or, frankly, none of anything we’ve said so far in this series or in the seasons 1, 2 and 3 matter right.
ERIKA: Yeah, and to me it all comes up and summarizes for me in this episode and in this segment in balance. It’s the balance of that entrepreneur and that enterprise. It’s the balance between the short term and the long term. It’s the balance between performance and loyalty. It’s the balance between performance and potential. You could see all of these tensions that you have to resolve. You have to make the choices around, you have to integrate, you to sequence, but for me, in this series, if we’ve hit home with the fact that tensions are things that you have to name, you have to address some, you got to wrestle with them, and you have to find your way to resolve them, because if you stay silent on them, they will take your organization down the rabbit hole and they will cause pain points that will really discourage you from managing through to that next level of scale and sustainability.
TODD: Well, in closing, I mean, is it a fair question to ask that, as you think about your own leadership career and you move from leading yourself to a team, to an organization and as an organizations of all, from a start up and more entrepreneurial to more established in an enterprise, they’re dealing with tensions all on that path. But, it sounds like from what you just said, especially if you are understanding the value of long term thinking, you’ll be dealing with tensions for the duration of that organization.
ERIKA: Yeah, and I think that’s a great way to phrase it. Don’t look to solve your tensions and have them all go away. Learn to just be with the fact that it is just a series of tensions that you’re going to have to move through and the more you get comfortable moving through them, the easier they are to solve.
TODD: As we said at the very, very top of the season, attention is an opportunity to make an appropriate action and [INAUDIBLE 19:27] Alright. That’s all the time we have for today and that’s a wrap on season 4 of Leadership on the Ground – The Tensions of Leadership. Erika, should anyone have any questions, how can they contact you, learn more and most importantly how can they get their hands on the copy of Leadership Rigor which inspired this whole series.
ERIKA: Oh, yes! – Leadership Rigor. So, Leadership Rigor is available on amazon.com. You could also order it from my website. There’s a link there to amazon.com. My website is erikapeitler.com. You can reach me via email erika@erikapeitler.com. And if you are Tweeting and I hope you are Tweeting, if you want to follow more of the conversation that Todd and I have and talk about these topics a little bit more, the Twitter handle is @erikapietler.
TODD: Alright Erika, thank you for all for that and as per usual, another great season. Thanks for making series possible and it’s always a pleasure and honor to collaborate with you.
ERIKA: Always a pleasure.
TODD: Alright, and stay tuned for coming of the not too distant future – Season 5 of Leadership on the Ground – The Realities of Leadership – going to be a critical capstone to The Leadership on the Ground Series. I cannot wait. So, on behalf of myself and my co-host Erika Peitler, Todd Schnick signing off from Season 4. But, no worries, we’ll see you again real soon. Thanks again for listening.
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