Mindful Leadership

Your Work Friends Podcast: Mindful Leadership with Aurora Myers and Carissa Ricci

Emails flying. Deadlines looming. Your Slack is a war zone. But what if you could lead through it without burning out? Aurora Myers and Carissa Ricci are here to help! We’re talking mindful leadership—the real kind. No fluffy mantras or toxic positivity—just practical ways to stay grounded, focused, and human when everything around you feels like a mess.

This compelling episode dives into the essence of mindful leadership in the workplace. Our guests share their journey and expertise on integrating mindfulness and mental health practices into corporate culture, emphasizing the significance of showing up as your full self at work. By embracing self-awareness, leaders can harness their best selves, fostering healthier and more effective team dynamics.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

And what I wish somebody would have told me is just sit your butt down and just feel and just practice, because you are in your body and you know it's best for you.

Speaker 2: 0:09

Boom. Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 4: 0:11

I'm going to put like five exclamation points after that.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Friends. Mel and I talk to a lot of people every week and really uncover what's happening with them at work. On the same token, what was really interesting is when we look at our analytics around, what people search for when they're searching our pod or when they find our pod, it's all around the same type of themes, right, mel? It's like how do I get through this work? Schmutz.

Speaker 3: 0:53

Yeah, it's. My day is hard. I'm dealing with politics, I'm dealing with changes, I'm dealing with tough team situations, project situations. How do I get through it?

Speaker 2: 1:05

Yeah, it's how do I get through it? How do I get through today, now, this minute, this stress? And so Mel and I called up Chris Arici and Aurora Myers. They are experts in what's called mindful leadership, and if you don't know what mindful leadership is, it's really about understanding ourselves and our own nervous systems and our physiological reactions to stress, because when you have stress, whether or not you recognize it, you're having a reaction physically, mentally, emotionally. We have them, and what mindful leadership is trying to do is allow you to understand your own operating model so you can use that data to inform how you want to show up and then show up in a really beautiful way, because when you understand how you show up and react to stress, you're going to be a better version of yourself.

Speaker 3: 1:54

I couldn't agree more, and I feel like in this episode, carissa and Aurora gave so many tangible and tactical tips that you can take with you every single day Stuff you can implement in the next five minutes.

Speaker 2: 2:09

Listen, chris and Aura do this as their life's work. They have a company called Ignite where they're uncovering and helping people ignite their own mindful leadership style, but with us they really shared. What do I do in the minutes in the small movements today? What do I do as an employee? What do I do in the minutes in the small movements today? What do I do as an employee? What do I do as a leader? And then, how do I really work to establish a better understanding of my own operating model? Well, with that here, it is our conversation with Carissa and Aurora about mindful leadership. Friends, we're so stoked to have you first of all, just like being around both of you, so much a good energy and a good juju. But what I'm going to talk about your backgrounds? Um, obviously both of you have deep mindful leadership practices and you also have really interesting backgrounds in terms of how you got here. So I'm wondering if you could start by telling us what's your journey to where you are today.

Speaker 1: 3:16

I started getting into the mindfulness and yoga space when I was 17 years old and it's been incredibly helpful for my mental health, and I saw a need to infuse all of this good stuff movement in your body, working with all of the messy thoughts in your brain in corporate culture, in a place where I feel like all of that stuff is not either prevalent or taken seriously, and so I wanted to take what I had learned and bring it to a place where people could use it the most to de-stress and feel better and really invest in themselves over time, and that's what inspired me to get into all of this Right environment to do it too. What about you?

Speaker 2: 3:54

Carissa.

Speaker 4: 3:55

Yeah, for me, I bounced around from the academic environments corporate environments. I would say the bulk of my experience has been in corporate and I have seen examples of really amazing and incredible leadership and not so stellar leadership and everything in between and those environments where you feel like you're allowed to bring your humanity to work versus those where you feel like you have to check part of yourself at the door. And I think seeing all of those different examples of what it looks like on a team when you're engaging with different types of leaders really intrigued me. And what does that look like from a health standpoint and mental health awareness is something that has been really important to me and mental health in the workplace and what does it look like to be able to show up to work and feel like you can bring your full self? So for me, getting to this place has been wanting to bring some of those healthier practices to teams across the corporate environment where we can make the workplace feel better for people.

Speaker 3: 4:54

I would love to hear from you both how do you define mindful leadership?

Speaker 1: 4:58

It's such a nuanced but fascinating topic.

Speaker 1: 5:02

The way that I like to think about it is we all have these operating instructions for ourselves that help us figure out what triggers our stress response cycle and how we can show up to be the best version of ourselves in as many situations as possible, both personally and professionally. And the goal of mindful leadership is to figure out what are our personal operating instructions. How does that show up in these professional settings? When we're in community, when we're in conversation and relationship with others, how can we use that data to inform the way we show up? And then, on the flip side, how can we work with other people who have different operating instructions and meet them with empathy and curiosity and kindness, when we're all coming at a situation from different perspectives and whatnot? So it's really like understanding ourselves and our own nervous systems and our physiological reactions to stress. So that way, when we're in those conversations that feel messy or we don't quite know the answers to them, we can feel a little bit more grounded and less pulled or pushed from this place of internal stress.

Speaker 3: 6:06

Why do you think this is so critical in the workplace?

Speaker 4: 6:09

Aurora and I often talk about, like it starts with us as the leader and if I can't hold space for my stuff, how can I hold space for that of other people?

Speaker 4: 6:18

So, as Aurora was talking about those operating instructions and the physiology of it, moving from a place where it's less reactive and more intentional is really, really important, because we are in a high stress environment Most of the time. We are being pulled in a million different directions and how can I tap into what's happening within myself? So there's, there has to be that willingness there to first open yourself up to okay, I'm going to explore this and then, secondly, raising that awareness of oh, this is the physiological response that happens when I'm triggered and this is how I can move forward with that. One of the reasons why it's so important is that, in those moments where you would traditionally be more reactive, it gives you an opportunity to pause and rethink the way that you approach things and can have a really incredible impact on your teams If they start to see you showing up in a different way and you coming from a more grounded place, a more centered place, a place of authenticity. You're role modeling that for your team.

Speaker 3: 7:17

Yeah, I think that's really important and we've seen the shift. I've personally seen a shift over the last 20 years on leaders being more introspective before showing up for their teams and spending a little more time there. Why do you think this is so important right now? Why is this so important for the future of work?

Speaker 1: 7:36

In my experience of working with teams is that so often there's this interest in mindfulness and mindful leadership, but sometimes it can happen in these vacuums within certain groups of leaders and then they don't have the tools and resources to take that and carry that forward to their teams. So that's one of the things that we've also recognized that we would like to change about. The future of work is not just sitting down at the beginning of a team meeting for five minutes and breathing and feeling really good and then going eight hours straight and just like not being able to maintain any information because you're just so tired and exhausted, but really infusing it as much as possible into the spaces where people need it most and giving the leaders the tools that they need to help their team do the same their team do the same.

Speaker 3: 8:26

That makes sense. It's interesting because when you first start to hear something like mindful leadership in certain workplaces that some people feel, oh, this is too woo-woo, is this too touchy-feely, what does that exactly mean? But it's clear from what you're saying this is really for everyone, right? So this?

Speaker 4: 8:40

is for everybody, whether or not you actually lead in the formal sense that, oh, I have direct reports in the system, so I'm a leader. That's not what we're saying here. We're saying that you are showing up as a leader. You're showing up as a leader in your communities, with your friends, with the people in your life. There are all of these different facets in which you show up as a leader and, yes, one of the lenses is if you lead people at work. But really, this mindful leadership practice and idea can be infused throughout your life, no matter what your work life looks like.

Speaker 3: 9:09

Yeah, I think it's such an important call out to say leadership does not equal a title. It shows up in so many different ways, so I just love the work you're doing.

Speaker 2: 9:18

And Mel, to your good point too. I know a lot of folks might feel like, oh, is mindful leadership, woo-woo. But quite honestly, there's a lot of benefit for someone really understanding their operating model, right, their operating system, to understand how they're going to react, how they're going to react in stressful situations, how they're going to react when they're excited, how they're going to react in front of their teams. Like to really be able to check themselves, because I think we've all worked for someone where you're like man, you need some therapy, like we've all right, probably not, probably not.

Speaker 4: 9:50

Oh, 100% Right.

Speaker 2: 9:52

Or you're like in a conference room with someone where they're just they're going in fuego or they're really reacting so poorly and the impact for the team, the impact for the work, is slowing it down, it's making people feel really disengaged, and that all costs time, that all costs money, and so I think this idea of really starting to understand you, your operating system, and then how you can take that and show up as your best self through mindful leadership, is rad. When we talked earlier, one of the things you were talking about is this doesn't have to be these big leaps of things, right. This is something that can start small, small things. And I'm curious how can someone really start small in mindful leadership, start small in understanding their operating system? Let's start with employees. How can employees start to pull into a practice of mindful leadership?

Speaker 1: 10:43

When we do talk about mindfulness, it can feel disconnected from our real life experiences and the stressors that are going on.

Speaker 1: 10:50

Sometimes we assume, in order to feel good, I need to go off to a 10 day meditation retreat, or I need to quit my job or I need to change my life in some way. But the purpose of these practices is truly to learn how to do it in the middle of the messiness, and so I think one of the best things that someone can do in the middle of a work context is figure out what works best for them to regulate their nervous system. And that can look like anything. For some people it could look like breathing. For others it could look like finding some movement. For somebody like myself who doesn't like sitting still, sometimes I need like a hardcore workout before I feel relaxed and then I can do breath work. It's truly figuring out what helps you feel more calm so you can recognize what that operating model is telling you, so you can get out of fight or flight and show up to that situation from a place that's more grounded. That's probably my number one tip Regulate your nervous system.

Speaker 2: 11:43

It's so funny Whenever I get really up in my anxiety I feel it in my gums, like I can feel it in my neck and in my gums, and I have learned to do a box breathing, just to like one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, and that calms me down because it is it's. I need something now that's not a Xanax, because we can't take those during the workday, so like yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:04

And that is so huge is like noticing where it is showing up in your body. A lot of times people are like I'm stressed, but they can't quite tell where they feel that. Do you have a stomach ache? Are your shoulders lifting up? And that's a lot of that mind body connection that we teach in yoga and mindful movement. That is really helpful.

Speaker 4: 12:22

Yeah, I would piggyback onto that and say that I have noticed that when I do notice, even just the noticing in and of itself, like oh, my chest is tight or oh, my throat feels it just the noticing, it can actually help relieve some of that tension. Which is the irony of it is that even in the noticing it can help release some of those places of tension. The other thing that I would add, as far as a small thing, once you get that physiological response and I'm going to quote Ted Lasso, quoting Walt Whitman here, but the be curious and not judgmental, yeah, Be aware I'm a Ted fan.

Speaker 4: 12:55

It might come up again later, I don't know, but there's this line that he quotes by Walt Whitman be curious, not judgmental. And I feel like so often we do that outward right, we share that curiosity with other people, but do we do that with ourselves? So I feel like that. For my own personal mindfulness journey has been one of the biggest hurdles to jump over is when I feel or notice that tension in my body, I go right to judgment Like, oh, Chrissy, you're anxious again, why is your body doing this? And so the other small habits that I've gotten into the practice of is recognizing when that happens and going oh, you're in judgment, You're judging yourself for being X, Y, Z.

Speaker 4: 13:34

How do you move into curiosity and go oh, what is your body trying to tell you right now, as opposed to body, why are you doing this to me right now? That's another little, little mindset shift and tweak that you can make when you find yourself in those moments is being kind and compassionate to yourself, which is really difficult. I don't know anyone else, but like that self-flagellation of like, oh my gosh, I'm having another moment where my body's freaking out and I'm feeling anxious and I'm and shifting from that to well, why is that happening. Let me dig under the surface and ask some compassionate questions about why that might be happening with me right now.

Speaker 2: 14:07

Yeah, I think so much of the time there's this archetype of leadership that is still very, very prevalent that we all have to show up and be Shackleton and have no emotions about things. Right, You're cool, calm and collected all the time. Personally, when I felt like holy shit, I'm flipping out right now, Like I am full on flipping out, I think all of us have had moments where we're angry, we're anxious, we're frightened at work or there's something happening For me. I feel like I should be able to handle this. Why is my body reacting this way? I should be able to just brush it off. So, on top of feeling it, I feel shame, honestly, because I'm not Shackleton, but what I hear you saying, Chris, is don't shame, just notice it. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 4: 14:49

And understanding that initial judgment is normal. It happens. It's that initial knee-jerk reaction to when that, and again going back to the small wins, is reducing the amount of time between when you notice you're judging yourself and then shifting into curiosity instead. So really celebrate those wins, even if it feels like, well, I went right to judgment again and then, guess what, you're still in judgment. So it's like trying to get more quickly from the oh, I'm judging myself to let me get curious about this and implement the things that they do know, like box breathing or other things to regulate what's happening.

Speaker 2: 15:21

Yeah, what about managers? Again, I'm looking for those small wins. I'm leading a team, I am trying to shorten that time between judgment and curiosity and really notice when I'm having those triggers for myself and at the same time I'm leading a team. And are there different moves that I can make or pull into as a manager?

Speaker 4: 15:43

One of the most powerful things you can do is really just be transparent with your team and say, hey, this is something I'm working on.

Speaker 4: 15:50

And again this goes back to there has to be a willingness to be vulnerable and there has to be a willingness to to show up to your team and say this is what I'm working on and ask them for feedback on how things are feeling within their team, really source that information from them Like, how is this feeling? Know that I'm working on these things and then open up the conversation, because even just talking about some of this stuff is going to be new for teams and I think it not only will help your team feel like they're allowed to talk about it, but they'll feel empowered when they see you role modeling. That to say, hey, like I don't have this figured out, this is something I'm working on. Maybe this is something we can work on together as a team. So opening that door can help people feel like they're a part of the process. It can help build that psychological safety to be able to have some of those conversations on how you want to move forward as a mindful team with a mindful leader.

Speaker 1: 16:46

I could not have said that better myself. Literally perfect thing I could add on to that is the accountability piece when you're receiving feedback, being open to that and creating the space, like you said, for your team to feel safe in providing you feedback. One of the things that I do because I know personally I'm always afraid of feedback is I'll try to beat my insecurity to the punch and ask for it first. So if you can create that environment and say this is something that I'm working on in my personal mindfulness practice, it's something that I want to bring to the team, but I'm not quite there yet. Can you let me know if I'm falling short? Can you let me know if I can do better? And just creating that connection, like Carissa said, I think is huge and different and not normal, as I'm thinking about the interactions that you have with your team.

Speaker 4: 17:31

One of the other ways that managers can show up in that space is allowing for silence. And going back to what we were talking about with holding space for other people. Specifically, in this instance, if you're having a one-on-one conversation with a team member and you are in a conversation where maybe your team member brings up something that is uncomfortable or does make you feel or does trigger you, that's an opportunity for you as a leader, as a manager, to tap into some of those practices that you have around. How am I going to show up and self-manage what's happening with me while also being able to hold space for another human who is in this moment? Because, as humans, we're designed to run from discomfort, we don't like sitting in the muck of things, and so how do we, as leaders and managers, sit in that space with another human and do that? Because that is an incredible gift to be able to give someone else. How do we lean into those moments where it's like, ooh, this is sticky, this is uncomfortable, this isn't normal for me, and I think one of the most powerful things I've ever had anyone say to me was when I was going through a really difficult time and I now use this with other people that I care about in my life where they said, I can't fix it for you, I can't take away what you're going through, but I can sit with you in it, and I remember feeling so relieved.

Speaker 4: 18:41

I've had other people who said, oh, don't cry, we'll figure it out, or they're trying to put the bandaid on it for me and I just needed to be in that moment, and so there is such relief when you're on the receiving end of that. I will just sit with you in it. And that ability to be able to hold that space and that discomfort with someone else is so powerful and can create such a deep and meaningful connection. So I would say, as a manager, that's one of the things that is most important to work on. It's difficult to sit in silence sometimes. I'm a highly empathic person. I want to help, I want to fix, so that's a lot of self-management that happens in those moments.

Speaker 2: 19:17

It seems like it's a good opportunity for that curiosity too. Mel and I joke about this. We don't know if it's like a trauma response or not, but we will be the first one with the really ill-timed joke when things get uncomfortable. You know it's not appropriate. You know, yeah, things make us uncomfortable, but it's interesting. There have been many times when I've been leading teams where you're having a conversation. It's uncomfortable. It might be uncomfortable because they're sharing feedback about me that makes me feel uncomfortable, like I failed them or something it might be that they're sharing something really deeply personal and it's outside the bounds of work.

Speaker 2: 19:56

Maybe it's inside the bounds of work but it's getting mucky to your point. And when we have these initial reactions which might feel like failure or feel like discomfort, to pull into that curiosity and be like, okay, you're feeling this, francesca, don't tell the joke or francesca, don't make it right, be here and be okay with the silence of things, because I love that idea of giving someone the gift of your time, your ears and your silence it reminded me of way, way, way back when I first graduated from college and I was going into teaching and so I got my teaching credentials and in one of the classes the professor said after you ask a question, wait six seconds before you say anything else.

Speaker 4: 20:35

And I thought, oh, six seconds, it's not a big deal. And then they said we're going to set the timer for six seconds. We're all going to sit here in silence. So you know what that feels like, and they did that and you could literally feel it was like people's skin is like skin crawlingly, like just, it was so uncomfortable. We got to seconds four, five and six and it was so interesting to me how, in my mind, I was like, oh, six seconds isn't that big of a deal. But especially when you're in a conversation that feels emotionally charged or it has some depth to it, that silence can feel really heavy. So, being able to embrace it instead of run from it and sit in it, I've been amazed at what comes out in the silence.

Speaker 3: 21:14

We do a 10 second rule in facilitation with the same thing and it's a good break Once you get used to it.

Speaker 4: 21:20

Those first few times are a little they're awkward, a little intense they are yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:26

And they are. I will always be like okay, I'm giving the obligatory 10 seconds now because that's the way I manage.

Speaker 4: 21:34

By the way, I love this. I love that you shared that you have this urge to tell inappropriate jokes. It's bad, it's so hard it's.

Speaker 2: 21:41

So I'm like oh God and it's my, it's so hard it's so I'm like oh god, and it's. My husband does this too and I realize it's a way to ease the tension, it's a way to bring levity and sometimes I'm wondering is that for me? I'm trying to do it for the group, but I'm trying to do it for me too, because I get uncomfortable with the silence.

Speaker 4: 22:02

A hundred percent. Yeah, there's this moment of am I doing it to ease my discomfort or am I doing it to ease theirs?

Speaker 1: 22:25

you know point in time where we decide am I going to tell the joke or am I going to try to sit with this discomfort? One of the phrases that I find really helpful in my personal practice comes from Brene Brown, but it's this phrase of the story I'm telling myself is and if we can get curious and lean into like wait, what is going on in my mind? Am I feeling incompetent? Am I feeling awkward or insecure? What's going on internally and how is that going to impact what I say or do is a huge part of the practice, and probably one of the hardest parts is when you're doing it in real time, versus when you're sitting and feeling great and there's no messy conversation in front of you. You're just relaxing.

Speaker 2: 22:59

Yeah, yeah. Is it valuable to do like a post-mortem on that? Let's say, I completely biffed the conversation and I was just Jerry Seinfeld-ing it through the whole thing. Is there value in being like, wow, I really just did that and why did I do that? Or do you feel like the real value is stopping yourself in the muck?

Speaker 1: 23:17

So Carissa mentioned, the more we practice and the more we do this, the quicker we get at recognizing what's going on in the moment. So I like to think of it as this bell curve, where at the very beginning you have the stimulus so say it's silent and that causes anxiety, and then you have a very short amount of time where you get to decide what your response is, and then maybe your reaction is to tell the joke, and then we watch as whatever happens happens. The more we practice mindfulness, the quicker we are going to understand in the moment when the thing is happening. Oh, it's happening. Like how do I want to choose my response this time? But most often what happens is that we realize it afterwards. Like you said, the postmortem check-in is great because then we can think oh okay, I want to do something different next time. Both are good. It's just harder to do in the moment if we're not practicing in the container of quiet or doing that post work of understanding how we showed up in the situation.

Speaker 2: 24:31

We talked about the small stuff. What if people want to really establish a practice of mindful leadership where they're living with this intention, at work and at home, their laser focused on knowing how their operating system works and how they can show up in the most constructive way? How do people get into establishing a deeper, mindful leadership practice.

Speaker 4: 24:51

This kind of harkens back to what we were talking about earlier noticing where the tension is in my body For me and establishing a longer term practice. That's been the most effective way, that the most effective entry point for me is noticing what's happening physiologically with me, because it's easier for me than going straight to like what am I feeling right now? So I noticed, oh, my body's feeling weird. Okay, what is that telling me? There's something happening here, and so then I can get into more of the. Oh. Now I'm going to pull on those techniques that I like box breathing or four, seven, eight breathing, or I'm going to lay on my stomach because that helps, like pressure on your stomach helps downregulate your nervous system.

Speaker 4: 25:27

There are things that I've learned from Aurora Thank you, aurora over the years that have helped me. I'm like, okay, this might look funny, but I'm going to lay on my stomach in my office for five minutes. There are things that I've implemented that have helped me when I noticed that getting into curiosity, using those things that I know work for me and then becoming more consistent with them as I can. Everyone's different, everyone's going to have a different entry point, a different way of doing it that's going to work for them. Really, it's about finding what works for you. Again, back to curiosity. What does work for you as you look at your life and your past, as you try to establish new habits or new ways of being? What's most effective? What works for one person isn't always going to work for the other, but for me that's been the most effective way.

Speaker 1: 26:14

I see two definitions of mindfulness One, which is the classic definition from Jon Kabat-Zinn, where he says it's paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally Lots of hard things to do all at once combined.

Speaker 1: 26:27

And then the other one that I'm familiar with is to do anything artfully and with intention, is to be mindful, and so, like Carissa said, everyone's entry point can be different and I think part of the mindset piece around that is. A lot of times we look at mindfulness or meditation and think well, I can't sit still or like my back hurts or my legs hurt when I cross my legs, so I'm not a good meditator. I don't like to do yoga because I'm not flexible. Maybe you like going on a walk or eating lunch without looking at your phone, or playing with your kid. It could be so many different ways that you could create that sense of grounding and calm in your body. It doesn't have to look like anything specific or make sense to anybody else, and staying committed to that and exploring what feels good and playing around with different practices and not worrying about whether or not you're doing anything right or wrong is probably the best thing you can do in the long run to commit to something long-term.

Speaker 2: 27:22

Yeah, I love this concept of figuring out what's really going to enable you to strengthen your ability to connect with other people. For those folks that have never really entered into yoga or don't even know what we're talking about when we're talking about box breathing, what do you all typically recommend people start with or try?

Speaker 1: 27:39

Any type of movement in your body that feels good, anything that helps you feel more open and relaxed and stretched out or alive or energized, whatever you're going for. That's one bucket. And then what Carissa talked about is the opposite of that is stillness. Movement is one thing, stillness another. That could be sitting, that could be lying down, it could be moving very slowly on a walk, it could be listening to a guided meditation, lots of different things, but those are the two ways in which I would attack complicated spheres.

Speaker 4: 28:12

I love, aurora, what you said about it doesn't have to look a certain way, Because when I very first started years and years ago, I did feel like I had to be sitting on a pillow like that and I had to meditate like 60 minutes a day.

Speaker 4: 28:21

It was just so unattainable. But then I started to realize that any moment where I'm fully present is a mindful moment. It could be I'm eating lunch and instead of scrolling through my phone or being distracted by all sorts of thoughts, like I'm paying attention to how the food tastes, what the texture of the food is, I'm actually enjoying and being present. When I'm in a conversation with someone, I'm fully there, phone is away, I'm not focused on anything other than that person. When I started to do that, I realized how much of my life I wasn't fully present. So mindfulness can happen in a split second and just enjoying the smells, sights, sounds. The conversation of the person that's in front of you doesn't have to be like Aurora says, doesn't have to be sitting on a pillow in a certain position with your mind completely blank.

Speaker 2: 29:04

That's, that's. Yeah, that's kind of impossible. I'm like I've never, ever, never.

Speaker 1: 29:11

If you know how to do that, let me know, but I don't know how to do that.

Speaker 2: 29:14

Exactly. It's funny, especially during COVID Chrissy. You and I met during the pandemic and I'll tell you that's where I really started pay attention to what's my body feeling and how am I reacting to it, and what I've realized over the last few years, to the very good point, around movement and stillness and looking at those two dichotomies. When I have anxiety or when I'm angry, I have to go for a walk, I have to walk my dog and I'm walking down the street and that helps me. But when I'm incredibly nervous or I even feel fear, I have to be still.

Speaker 2: 29:51

That's been a lot of years trying to suss out like what do you need? Based on what your body is telling you, I know when I need stillness. I know when I need walking. It is not good for me, when I'm fearful for me, to do activity that will actually exacerbate it for me. So it's been interesting figuring that out. I don't think I ever put the two and two together until you said stillness and movement, but I'm realizing I do that For folks that want to read up more about this, go into this a little bit more deeply what resources have you felt are really good?

Speaker 1: 30:19

So here's the thing because I've been teaching for so many years and I see so many students and I myself have gone through the experience of starting off thinking I needed to do it a certain way in order to get it right and be perfect.

Speaker 1: 30:32

The one thing I ask people to do is just trust their own bodies and practice in their own way and see what that feels like Like.

Speaker 1: 30:41

You can ask me questions about alignment and all this other stuff, but I really try to emphasize that the all of that is secondary to your own experience, and the priority of the practice is awareness of sensation, awareness of what's going on in the body and the mind and how the mind reacts to what's going on in the body. Learning to sit in stillness and discomfort and the way the shape looks is not that important, and so I don't necessarily point people to like a book or a video, because I used to ask those questions who do I read? What classes do I take? And what I wish somebody would have told me is just sit your butt down and just feel and just practice, because you are in your body and you know it's best for you, and I want people to feel empowered to teach themselves as much as possible, instead of feeling like I need somebody else to tell me how to do it Right.

Speaker 2: 31:38

Boom. Yeah, I love that, I love that.

Speaker 4: 31:41

Yeah, I'm going to put like five exclamation points after that. Whatever you're feeling, five exclamation points after that.

Speaker 2: 31:47

Whatever you're feeling, there's no value on that. You're just feeling it right. But being honest with your honest, I guess, or being able to recognize that and understand how you need to personalize for yourself, is huge.

Speaker 1: 32:00

Yeah, it's all trial and error. There isn't a book or a. If there was one, I would have figured it out by now. But I think it just takes time and just your own practice and experience. That means the most.

Speaker 1: 32:13

I use this phrase of balance between effort and ease and only you can decide and figure out where that is.

Speaker 1: 32:20

So, for instance, if you're pushing yourself into a pose or a movement that feels tight, pushing yourself into a pose or a movement that feels tight or you feel uncomfortable in it, is that discomfort or is that pain? I don't know, because I don't have the experience of sensation in your body. So you get to figure that out and then you get to choose. Am I going to move into it? Is that going to serve me and create space in my body more today by shifting into this discomfort? Or is it actually more productive to back off, which feels like I'm not doing as much and it feels less productive? And then all these stories come up. I should be doing X, y, z, and that's really the whole point of the mindful movement practice is to teach us how our minds are reacting to a specific stimulus, so that way, when we step off of our mats. We notice that pattern more often in the middle of a conversation that's heated of our mats.

Speaker 2: 33:07

We notice that pattern more often in the middle of a conversation that's heated. You know what I'm doing in my head while you're. I'm like stillness, movement, the ease, discomfort I'm like. Is there like a X Y axis here I'm trying to plot?

Speaker 4: 33:16

I'm like I'm like oh, my God, francesca stop.

Speaker 2: 33:25

You know I'm a visual learner too, friend, but I'm like this is fascinating.

Speaker 3: 33:28

I love all of this advice and the personalization behind it, because it feels so much more attainable. That leads me to the typical challenges you both see when you're trying to share this with others, or what you've heard comes up for others, and I know we spoke earlier about one of those challenges for individuals, for example, is the ability to have self-compassion instead of beating themselves up. What other typical challenges do you see people having when trying to practice mindful leadership and how do they overcome it?

Speaker 4: 33:58

One of the questions that I think is often asked is this going to be worth it? Especially when we are in a results driven like my values tied to my productivity that type of culture. It can be difficult for people to understand that when you slow down and you take the time to dig into this stuff, this actually can accelerate a lot of other things that you're trying to accelerate much more easily than the way that you're trying to push this rock up a hill.

Speaker 1: 34:25

It's such a long game and the results are both personal and they're also communal, and some of them are more immediate, like downregulation of the nervous system, and some of them are much more long-term. Like we got through this project without wanting to. Like we got along while we were doing this. Like this project, that was really difficult. The other aspect that we were talking about the awkwardness of not knowing how to bring this forward to teams. Let's say, somebody has been using the Headspace app for a year and they're really into mindfulness and meditation and they want to bring it to their team, but they're not quite sure.

Speaker 1: 34:57

Well, I'm not a teacher. Like I barely know this stuff. I still struggle with it. How are people going to think of me or perceive me if I try to introduce this? Or are they going to think it's weird? There are all these questions and there aren't a lot of resources around supporting leaders and letting them know that the journey of mindful leadership doesn't really have a playbook. There is no guidebook right now, and that's what Carissa and I are trying to figure out how to share with people. You get to create your own path for yourself and your team. It doesn't have to look like anything that you've ever seen before. It can be something totally different than any work environment you've ever had and giving people that permission to come up with it for themselves. So I think there's that fear and insecurity of I love this, but what do I do?

Speaker 3: 35:39

with it. I love that. The concept though similar to individual personalization. When you're doing this with your team, you're creating that playbook together and what works for the team. It's all about personalization throughout Carissa. You had mentioned that statement where's the ROI, when am I going to see results? Et cetera. How do you answer that when that question comes up within organizations?

Speaker 4: 36:01

There is data to back up that a human-centric work design actually does lower the amount of employee fatigue, it increases their likelihood to stay and it increases productivity. There is science behind this. There is data behind this. I think it's that mindset shift of saying woo, woo, or is this actually going to move the needle for my team and so for teams that get hung up on that part, coming in with the science behind and the data behind why this is important can be really helpful in helping them shift course and at least give it a try. What's the harm in trying it for a little bit and then see what happens? Our philosophy give it a go, see what happens, what's the worst that could happen?

Speaker 1: 36:41

And it doesn't have to be an entire overhaul of the complete system. It could be those little changes and just testing things out.

Speaker 3: 36:47

Test and learn.

Speaker 2: 36:48

I'm a fan, you know what's interesting is, when we do a lot of executive development in organizations, their training and development budget. A large chunk of it, let me just say this, is on executive development. It's getting very personalized development opportunities to, I'd say, the top 100 people in your organization. And one of the biggest things that we work on are the things that set people back. It's the things that they haven't checked in their operating system, that they need to in order to be more empathic, more effective, a better team leader, and if people can get into this practice earlier, they're not going to have such a hurdle if they get up into those upper echelons, because this is the stuff that can really hold people back a lot of times if they haven't checked themselves and their reactions to things.

Speaker 4: 37:36

We've all seen the laundry list of leadership skills and competencies and they are important, right? You need to be able to communicate vision and purpose, you need to be able to think strategically and all of that vision and purpose, you need to be able to think strategically, and all of that. And if you don't have those deeply human skills, that ability to lead from a mindful place, then you're limiting yourself so significantly.

Speaker 2: 37:54

I think about the way a lot of organizations run. They have things like pulse surveys or engagement scores, right, we have things like manager development, training and capabilities. These practices are things that can be surveyed for, assessed. They could be written into trainings where we're teaching people how to do this. This is absolutely something that could be operationalized within the way organizations currently operate.

Speaker 4: 38:22

Yeah, when we think about specifically manager development and we think about the conversation guides that we put out for managers in different scenarios and those are great and how do we take those to the next level, like, here's some questions that you can ask and ways that you can be curious, but then also, what does it look like like we talked about earlier to hold space for those more difficult conversations? How do you show up in those moments? Are we preparing our leaders to do that? So I think there are ways to infuse that into development programs and prepare leaders to be able to show up in those moments in the ways that we would hope that they would.

Speaker 3: 38:52

One of the best meetings I ever attended was somebody who held an afternoon meeting. That was going to be two hours after everyone was coming off of half a day of other back-to-back meetings and they started it with a simple breathing exercise for everyone to level set, let go of everything that they've done. And it changed the attitudes in that call, where people were more present, they contributed more and they were willing to participate. It was normal, it didn't feel weird and it was great.

Speaker 4: 39:23

We've all been in those meetings too, where you come in and it's oh, icebreaker, tell us one interesting thing about you. And everyone rolls their eyes and it's like, oh my gosh, there are different ways. So I love that, mel, that you're talking about different ways to open meetings, because are other things you can do as well to create that transparency, whether it's, you know, just sharing, hey, this is the reality that we're in. Let's just be real about where we're at. There's this realness in humanity that I feel like is lost sometimes, and there's a way that I've seen meetings opened that have been tell us one challenge and one win from this last week, and it doesn't have to be work-related and just being able to share openly, as opposed to tell us one interesting thing about yourself, but in a non-threatening way.

Speaker 4: 40:02

People can share as much as they want. They have the ability to set those boundaries. But there's also we're opening the door to humanity a little bit by saying let's check in and see how you're doing. And, by the way, like when we were in the pandemic, I was leading this one meeting and I kicked it off by like hey, by the way, I know the whole world's on fire out there and so let's not pretend that it's not, let's just acknowledge that, and you could see shoulders come down and people like, oh, thank goodness we're acknowledging this as opposed to just coming into this meeting and getting right to it and let's get after the goals. So there are lots of little ways that we can show up and make it easier to bring our full selves to work.

Speaker 3: 40:36

I will say the best icebreaker I ever heard was what's the least interesting thing about you. So it took the pressure off of the most interesting thing, it's like, I like peanut butter and fluff sandwiches. Who the hell cares?

Speaker 2: 41:05

Is everyone ready for rapid round? Yeah, yeah, okay. So, friends, with all of our guests, we like to do the thing called rapid round. It's meant to be fun, ask you a few questions, provide some short answers, but I will tell you, this is where we typically get some of our best conversations as well. So if we want to go a little bit deeper, we can. Are you ready to play rapid round? I'm ready. Ready to go a little bit deeper? We can. Are you ready to play Rapid Round? I'm ready. Ready to go? Okay, who is a leader you really admire?

Speaker 1: 41:33

my yoga teacher I met when I was 17 years old. I walked into his studio, met him for the first time and he is just absolutely incredible because less than a month later, I emailed about 30 different studios asking for a work tree partnership, because I was 17 at the time, I didn't have a job and I couldn't afford $25 yoga classes in San Francisco. And so he said yes, he'd only met me that one time. He gave me the keys to his studio and said come clean whenever you can take whatever classes you want, and literally this one person changed the entire course of my life and trajectory of my life. Because of him, I am where I am today and I am talking to you all and sharing my passion for movement and mindfulness, and it's all his fault.

Speaker 2: 42:13

Yeah, I love it. I love it. We're grateful for him, then that's awesome.

Speaker 4: 42:19

For me. I've had a few in my life, so it was hard to pick one, but I can share the attributes of those leaders with you, because I think they all shared a common thing, and that was that it's exactly what we've been talking about. They made me feel like a human first. They made me feel empowered to bring my whole self to work. They made me feel like I was valued for more than what I could just produce, and inspired me and believed in me beyond what I felt like I could do. I mean, I feel like that's. The other thing is that they were always so, so great at seeing that potential in me when I didn't see it in myself, and allowing me the freedom to try things, and they held space for me. It's like what we were talking about they held space.

Speaker 2: 43:03

Yeah, it's funny. We were just talking to Alan Whitman, who is the CEO, and he was talking about being able to see the X factor in people and put them in different positions and that idea that somebody believing in you is such a big deal for folks. So I love the connectivity to that in mindful leadership we talked about. So much of mindful leadership is happening in the muck and so I want to give some muck scenarios and see how would you handle this from a mindful leadership perspective. Is there a mindful way to handle office drama?

Speaker 4: 43:38

drama. That falls into two different buckets for me. One is there's the run of the mill office drama, right, which is the we all know what that is. And there's that level where it hits like that toxicity though, where it's like, okay, this is a very unhealthy place to be. We'll go with the extreme.

Speaker 4: 43:49

First, if we're in that really highly toxic work environment from a mindful place, some of those coping mechanisms and skills and things that we've talked about there are others in addition that can be used, but those can help you manage through that and so you can get yourself into a healthier place. So I think about all those ways that you can physiologically balance yourself and also get some perspective. Right, okay, this is happening. How do I emotionally detach a bit and keep myself where I need to be? And then, when you have the run of the mill office drama similar thing you might not be trying to get yourself necessarily out of the situation, like you would be in a more toxic environment, but again, leaning on those skills, the breathing techniques, the different things to help keep your body healthier, safer, during that.

Speaker 4: 44:31

And there's also a level of tapping into that curiosity again. Right, that, okay, what is actually happening here? How am I feeling about what's happening here? What's going on? And then I am leading people and I'm in that scenario. How do I navigate those difficult conversations? Because some leaders, when they encounter office drama, will be like, well, okay, they'll figure it out or I'm gonna let that just unfold or happen. But I think if you're leading from a more mindful place, you are going to be leaning into those uncomfortable conversations. You are going to be self-regulating and working through some of that to try and figure out how to get your team to a healthier place.

Speaker 2: 45:05

That's tough too, because sometimes, as a leader, you don't want to deal with it. But being able to notice when you're realizing, oh, you're getting into a cadence, as opposed to leaning in where you really need to lean in and regulate. Yeah, that makes sense. I'll tell you, we're having an uptick in people getting yelled at at work.

Speaker 4: 45:28

And I'm curious is it a different answer for how you would handle getting yelled at From the perspective of, like I'm the person being yelled at. Yeah, like it's a?

Speaker 2: 45:33

really emotionally charged situation and you are getting yelled at. Yes.

Speaker 4: 45:43

Yeah Well, I think for me, if I was to put myself in that scenario, I would absolutely be paying attention to what's going on in my body. I know I would be having a reaction in my body for sure. There's also a place where you can detach a little bit and realize and recognize oh, this is probably not about me. What else is going on here For me? I will get sucked into that. I'm highly empathic. I'm going to be like, oh my God, I am a horrible person. What have I done that has made them want to yell at me?

Speaker 4: 46:07

But to get to a place where you can realize, okay, this is probably not about me, how do I regulate in the moment, like breathing, and then because potentially that could become an unsafe situation, like if we're talking verbally abusive how do I then remove myself from the situation and say what statement am I going to use to say, okay, I hear you, I see that you're upset. I need to remove myself from the situation right now and go regulate myself. You take care of whatever you need to take care of. And then, if it gets to that place of toxic behavior, abusive behavior, get to a place where you're grounded and then do that post-mortem look at what happened, what level is that, and then what action do I need to take?

Speaker 1: 46:47

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 46:48

I love the idea of taking these mindful leadership principles and noticing how are you feeling, and giving yourself and everybody does have the permission to detach and remove yourself from those situations too. A lot of times, that's probably the healthiest outcome for both parties. If someone is yelling at you at work, they're not regulated period, so it's probably best for everybody to go to their corners and chill for a little bit. Okay, well, one of the things that we were curious about is how do you define success? And maybe we can take this from two ways. How do you define success in terms of your practice with mindful leadership? And then does that answer change in terms of how you define success in life?

Speaker 1: 47:25

For me, it's the same and related to what I said earlier about figuring out what works best for you.

Speaker 1: 47:31

A lot of what I've been trying to do over the years is figure out how to undo these external definitions of success and all of these rules that I've internalized about who I am supposed to be or how I am supposed to show up, versus what's actually going on and what I feel, and understanding that the gap between who I am now and who I would like to be in the future is not a character flaw or some kind of thing I need to fix about myself in order to become more worthy or deserving.

Speaker 1: 48:02

I am worthy now in all of the success that I have accumulated and the things that I would like to do with my life. And that is a struggle to remember that and feel that because, like Carissa said, I'm also always moving and wanting to do and serve and create, and when I am not doing or serving or creating, I feel not productive. And so a big part of success to me is figuring out how to undo those thoughts inside and then sink more into stillness and less less doing and more being, and finding gratitude for what I do have right in front of me versus seeking constantly.

Speaker 2: 48:45

Yeah, that's tough. That's just as tough as the blank space in your head, I think. I think that's changes too, like what you really really really want at 25 is very different than what you really really want at 45. Right, like, different than what you really really want at 45, right Like it's it's, it's a that's tough.

Speaker 4: 49:00

I had a similar experience to Aurora, where, when you're younger, you have these ideas about what success looks like and what you want to attain or be or do, and so I feel like these last five years in particular have been about undoing that, and that is a lot of rewriting narratives and expectations and programming of what you feel like you should be, or who you feel like you should be and what you shouldn't you be going for that beach house and the fancy car and all of those ideas of success that have been shown to us from a young age. It's been about unbecoming and then stepping into becoming who I want to be, and for me it is deep connections with other human beings. It gives me so much energy Doing work like this with Aurora. That makes me feel like I'm actually helping to bring healing to the world, bring joy to the world, help people have a space that feels safe to explore what's real for them. That brings me so much joy and energy.

Speaker 4: 49:56

And then I have a big chunk of my identity, too is around exploring and curiosity and wanting to travel. I want to craft a life for myself that I feel like is authentic to me, where I can do those things where I can connect with humans, I can do meaningful work and I can have adventures, explore the world, meet new people, have new experiences. And I think ties in to the way that I practice mindfulness, which is letting go of all of the expectations that I've carried for myself for so long and allowing myself to explore new things and try new things and find what works for me, regardless of if it works for anybody else, and being okay with that.

Speaker 2: 50:35

Last one Do you have a life philosophy, like in one sentence Mine is do the thing that scares you the most.

Speaker 1: 50:42

Keep pushing out of your comfort zone and doing the things that allow you to grow and become the best version of yourself. So you're leaning into that discomfort huh, oh, like literally, if it's uncomfortable, I raise my hand and I'll go do it, no matter how uncomfortable it is. Yeah, that's my thing. I'm like yes, sign me up. If I'm scared of it, I'm in.

Speaker 4: 51:04

You're my hero. Aurora, like that is. That is pretty awesome. Mine actually. Funnily enough, it came from years ago. I was taking a yoga class from Aurora and she asked us to set an intention for the practice and I have carried this forward and this is my life philosophy it's be here now. It's a good one.

Speaker 1: 51:28

I love that. I didn't know that oh, really aww are we all having a moment?

Speaker 2: 51:35

I feel like Mel and I are witnessing.

Speaker 3: 51:36

I'm going to cry.

Speaker 2: 51:37

It's so nice it's so nice, Are we all having a moment? I feel like Mel and I are witnessing so nice. Friends, what's next for you? What's? What's the rest of the year looking like in terms of taking your, your practice forward and to the people?

Speaker 4: 51:51

We are going to be offering some workshops where people can join us and virtual workshops on all sorts of different topics around mindful leadership, so that people can come check it out. Whether you've dabbled in mindfulness practices before or not, whether you're just curious, we're going to offer some sessions for you to come and check out and then later in the year we will be offering a retreat all about mindful leadership and finding your unique mindful leadership style. Ooh, in person. I'm very excited about In person. That was going to be in person, yes.

Speaker 2: 52:26

Ooh, where are we doing this? Paducah, kentucky, do we have it?

Speaker 1: 52:31

Oregon, so it's great for anyone who's local and it's a beautiful property, it's a working regenerative farm and it's just this place where you go and I don't know if you've ever been somewhere where you immediately feel a sense of calm and ease and everything just feels like. But for some reason this place has that vibe and it's so relaxing and we want to create a space where people can practice these things and feel good in their bodies and have time to relax and de-stress, but also learn about these practices in community and not feel like they have to figure it out on their own.

Speaker 2: 53:09

Carissa, thank you so much for joining us today. It was really a pleasure and a delight.

Speaker 1: 53:14

Thank you so much for having us.

Speaker 2: 53:16

Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.

The Ego Equation for Leadership Success

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Ego Equation with Dan Springer

Impact over ego, thats the mantra for true leadership success.

What if the key to great leadership isn't confidence or charisma, but checking your ego? Former DocuSign CEO Dan Springer shares his Ego Equation and how humility, hard work, and self-awareness drive results that actually last.

So, what makes great leaders different—and how do you measure it?

(Skills ÷ Ego) ^ Work = Success.

Dan shares leadership lessons from decades in tech, including how ego almost derailed his career and what changed after a layoff turned into a leadership awakening.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

I try to define ego as

Speaker 2: 0:02

High ego is putting yourself as the primary, putting yourself first, and low ego, which is preferred in this context, is someone that puts the organization or the greater goals or family. It could be. Any type of organization you're involved with puts that first.

Speaker 1: 0:32

We brought Dan Springer on to talk about leadership and ego, and he's probably one of the best people to talk about this with, because this guy has ran mega organizations as a CEO, as a board member. He's genuinely a really nice guy and, more than that, he knows how to get returns in a business and really create these workplaces that people love to work at. If you ask anybody who's worked under Dan Springer, they loved where they were working, and so we wanted to figure out what was it that made him who he is and what did he attribute to his leadership success? And what he talked about was ego.

Speaker 3: 1:12

Yeah, he was such a great example of somebody who can focus on the human in the workplace while also having very successful business results, and how those two things went hand in hand together. Yeah, there is some secret sauce that he shared with us. That's pretty awesome.

Speaker 1: 1:30

Totally agree. Dan Springer is the former CEO of DocuSign. He's also still on the board. He's an incredibly seasoned tech leader with decades of experience scaling some of the biggest names in SaaS like Responsys, teleo, nextcard, and. He began his career at McKinsey was a partner there. He's led billion-dollar exits, built high-growth teams and knows firsthand how ego can make or break great leadership. And you're right, mel. He brought this refreshingly honest take on what it really takes to lead well.

Speaker 3: 1:59

I think this is one of my favorite episodes so far and one of my favorite guests. The insights he brought were really valuable and others will get value out of this too.

Speaker 1: 2:07

It wasn't his Dave Matthews story.

Speaker 3: 2:10

I did love Dave Matthews as a fellow DMV. The fun fact in Connecticut I was at the Meadows with my friend for a DMV when there was an entire flipping of the cars and arson back in the 90s what the hell? At a Dave Matthews concert. It got out of control. I don't know what happened and we parked in a McDonald's parking lot. This is just a side story you can take out, but it got towed and we hitchhiked with some randos to go find our car at the Impel lot.

Speaker 1: 2:41

Listen my favorite Dave Matthews story, can I tell you, yeah. So there is something I celebrate every year, which is the anniversary of the Dave Matthews Band tour bus. Oh, the bridges in Chicago. And if you don't know this story, Mel, can I tell this story? Yes.

Speaker 3: 2:56

They're probably like please not again, just when we're not brought up, so I've never been in Chicago.

Speaker 1: 3:02

There's the river in Chicago and then it dumps out into the lake and over the river are a series of bridges that are grated and they can lift up and down so tall boats can go through to the lake Keyword grated. The other thing I want everyone to know about Chicago is it's a massive architecture town, so they have these wonderful architectural cruises. If you ever go to Chicago you have to go on them. They're fantastic and you can see all of the different buildings and the stories behind them, etc. They are typically open boats, so think about massive kind of pontoon boats looking up and admiring all the skyscrapers.

Speaker 1: 3:37

On this very warm summer day there was an architectural boat cruise cruising down the river looking at all the skyscrapers and at the same time the Dave Matthews Band tour bus was going over one of these graded bridges and the bus driver accidentally decided to dump the toilet out and it dumped all over this architectural horror boat. So it is one of the most disgusting stories, but also one of the funniest stories on the planet. I love to tell it just because it's so man dave matthews, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3: 4:11

If you were on that boat, the universe was just like f you, in particular today. What like?

Speaker 1: 4:18

but you've got some explaining. I love talking with dan, not only about the dave matthews story, but about his experience and how he's really looked at ego in this equation. If you don't know, dan, he's also a mathematician back liberal arts major, which I love, but he has this idea of how do you manage ego with skills and hard work. How do you pull that into balance to really set yourself up for success and to set your team up for success as well?

Speaker 3: 4:42

And you can do this equation yourself tomorrow to gut check your own ego. Yep, good tool, right away, great tool, and with that here's Dan Dan.

Speaker 1: 5:04

how are you today?

Speaker 2: 5:05

I'm doing great Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 5:06

Great, absolutely All right. I want to get you right into this. We're here to talk about ego and leadership and your background. I'm so excited for it.

Speaker 3: 5:14

All right, we want to start in understanding your origin story around the whole concept of so and ego and the role ego has played, and so I'd love to understand how your own relationship with your own ego evolved throughout your professional career.

Speaker 2: 5:29

I've been called by many, particularly as a young man, to have prodigious ego, so I guess this is a good topic. The simplest construct around that I try to define ego is high ego is putting yourself as the primary, putting yourself first in the context. It could be your family, it could be your office, it could be your company, it could be your sports team, whatever it is. And low ego, which is preferred in this context, is someone that puts the organization or the greater goals. Or, again, it could be family, it could be any type of organization you're involved with puts that first.

Speaker 2: 6:01

And my own origin story, I think, is a good, healthy, I mean growing up with the world being presented to me.

Speaker 2: 6:10

In a certain way. It was when I was growing up I was pretty egocentric. I think I was pretty focused on Dan, and although I had wonderful role models like my mom, my hero, who demonstrated to me by putting me first, been really dedicated to whichever life to me, I probably should have seen that sooner, but I was a little slow on the uptake and somewhere, probably in my late 20s, I at least became aware of the fact that I was a little bit of a selfish person or a selfish SOB, maybe it would be more accurate. And then professionally I started to figure that out a little bit in leading people. But it wasn't until I had my first son that I think I really figured out that it wasn't about me. And once you have that ability to love someone more than you love yourself, it opens up your ability to just be much less egocentric in everything you do. So that was probably my. So I was. I'm embarrassed to say that now, but early thirties before I probably got to a reasonably evolved sense of ego.

Speaker 3: 7:13

Yeah, that makes sense, right, our brains aren't even fully formed until we're about 24, I think so to make good decisions and things like that. So it's totally understandable. We're in the non-judgment zone, by the way.

Speaker 2: 7:22

All right.

Speaker 3: 7:22

So having your son obviously major pivotal moment. What other kind of pivotal moments did you have that really transformed your understanding of ego, especially in leadership?

Speaker 2: 7:33

Yeah, so two, actually One before I had my son in my first job managing people. So I worked for the phone company. I was a forecaster, a econometrician, I did modeling and I showed up and they didn't have sophistication at Pacific Valley at that time. So I quickly got promoted less than a year in my first job as a college and I was now managing people. My parents' age that had been professional forecasters but didn't have some of the technical skills I had, and I quickly realized how bad I was at the job.

Speaker 2: 7:59

But I couldn't figure out for the longest time why. And it was because I was a little jerk. I couldn't figure out for the longest time why. And it was because I was a little jerk. And who's this little jerk telling me he's experienced and good people with probably a condescending ear if we want to be honest about it. But I eventually got that feedback so I did get a snippet. Being a jerk is not the best archetype of manager that you probably want to have. Then I think fast forward to probably having a son. But the it was one period that I think was really powerful for me, where I started to respect how wonderful some of the people we work with are and I ran a company you've never heard of called Tellio. It was my first time as the CEO and I ran it into the ground.

Speaker 2: 8:38

we sold it for 50 bucks to our Donnelly maybe a little more, not very much money, and so that's why you've never heard of it and I will bury the details of the company. It's important to me but it won't be to your audience. But something happened is right after I joined. It was like it was a dire situation and we had to do a slight restructuring. It was a small company but we had to do a layoff and I had never done that in a role, in a manager role, in a manager role. I've been a consultant at McKinsey, so I've been around a little bit of cost cutting. And that night after the layoff I was in my office late and four of the guys that had been laid off were standing outside the doors like a glass door looking in and they knocked and they came in and for a minute I had this thought are they telling you to beat the crap out of?

Speaker 2: 9:19

me, I can figure out why they don't want to stay around and these four guys sat down and they just asked to check in on how I was doing and they said they could tell how difficult it had been for me to go through the layoff their layoff, not my layoff, their layoff that they were worried about me and I'll tell you for the next couple of years.

Speaker 2: 9:40

That was this incredible strong feeling.

Speaker 2: 9:42

Every time I thought about it it made me feel worse, obviously, because these are the greatest human beings that could get laid off and they're worried about the guy that just came in to be their boss, that had to carry out the action.

Speaker 2: 9:53

And two, it just made me realize how wonderful people can be and it's just always stuck with me as a message that we have a responsibility when we lead an organization for those people, a responsibility when we lead an organization for those people, and I vowed I would never it hasn't happened yet, but it could never have a layoff of people who were doing their job well and were losing their opportunity because leadership in this case me failed to provide the opportunity. So don't overhire, don't get into that situation and when you have it. It's a painful lesson, but it was hugely eye-opening for me against the quality of people and the really serious responsibility we have as leaders for the people that work for us, and not everyone feels that way. I think it's really important If you're not feeling that way, not caring that much about your people, what are you doing in management?

Speaker 3: 10:40

Yeah, you have to think about the whole person and get down to humanity. At the end of the day, we are bigger than our jobs, so life is bigger than that.

Speaker 1: 10:48

Yeah. So Mel and I didn't go to math school. Dan, we did not go to math school. I know you did. I know you were being a jerk to the Yellow Pages people. Let's talk about how you were a jerk, dan. No, I'm just kidding. I was sitting there thinking like you were 30. I think I was like 35 before I got that that lesson around. Don't be a total asshole to people. But one of the things that I love about what you've come up with is an ego equation or an equation how to think about ego, because we have all these stories around. It's about how smart you are, it is about your strategy and you're playing five degree chess over here. Or maybe it's about the fact that you work your ass off. I'm wondering if you can talk about the mathy equation. You have to think about ego and work and skills as it relates to success.

Speaker 2: 11:39

It's a little bit geeky. Sure, it's only geeky when you put numbers to it. Conceptually, even liberal arts majors like myself even though I was a math and liberal arts college people we can really grasp these concepts. The simple expression which I've used in this so like sewing needle and thread is you have your skills that are usually highly correlated to the fortune you were given with your smarts and your ability to build skills. And then you have your ego.

Speaker 2: 12:04

As I mentioned earlier is your ability to control your focus on yourself versus to the broader organization, and then, as you said, how hard you work. And the equation for the geeks out there like myself is you take those skills that you have, the S, you divide it by your ego, so you want to have less ego, obviously. Then you take that and you raise it to the power of how hard you work. And if you do play around with little numbers I generally use one to five and you assess yourself. I'll give you my own self-assessment, so yeah, and then we're, we're on this spectrum think of this bell curve spectrum, not a one to five.

Speaker 2: 12:38

When it comes to skills that have been built, I think I'm a four. Most of my life asserted I was a five, but we can get to the ego point. I just had a lot of good fortunes. It's not so much that I'm smarter than other people or more skill, I just showed up in some really good situations that made me look good. So I've had a lot of serendipity. And then the ego. And again I don't think I was ever a five.

Speaker 2: 13:02

On the ego, Maybe I was a four. There's a distribution curve and there's other people out there that could be pretty condescending, jerk like two, but I was probably in the four zone. I'm down to about a two in my self-assessment. So I'm pretty good not the best, but I'm pretty good at trying to really put the organization first and get out of my own ego and then on how hard I work. It's four or five. I've been a five at times. Sustaining five is very difficult but I think I'm a good, solid four.

Speaker 2: 13:27

So if you use the four, two, four, you say four divided by two is two. You raise that to the power of four and you get two, four, eight, 16. And that's pretty good. And, of course, when you're a competitive person, like I am, you play this game and you go. Okay, what I really want to do is be a five over a one. Raise it to the it. Just, it really probably doesn't happen very often and, quite frankly, if you have people operating with a high ego, you do the math. If you're around a one, it doesn't matter how hard you work. You're not going to get the number any better. If you're below one, it's effective. A person working really hard has all focused on themselves could actually be a detriment to an organization. So that's how I think about the formula and have to chat about each of the elements more, but I use that in evaluating people and thinking about how effective they can be in our organization.

Speaker 1: 14:17

Let me ask you this so you're 16 and you're so score. Is there a range? Let's say you're building out a C-suite, for example, or you're building out whatever and you're trying to gauge where people are at what's considered like a good score.

Speaker 2: 14:32

16 is good and again, it's my form. I'm not going to create a system that I have a terrible outcome in.

Speaker 2: 14:38

And you're like, wow, I really need work, I have to change the model. But 16 is good, have to change the model there. The 16 is good and the real challenge is it's the most of us, of course, most situation. I'm talking about me as a software exec to 16. Um, by the way, the only place I've ever been better is actually in in in sports, and the reason is and this is that you're really fortunate if you have this makeup my whole life, life I played sports all through college, division III college, but still some of my college soccer and lacrosse teams.

Speaker 2: 15:09

But all through school, all through every team I ever played on, I don't think I was ever the most skilled player on my team and I had just enough self-knowledge to know. I think sometimes I was one of the better players I knew. I was never the most skilled player on any, whether it was football, soccer, basketball, cross, whatever but nobody worked harder.

Speaker 2: 15:31

I don't believe anyone on any team I was ever on. I know it was a pretty aggressive statement to make, but I can't. How are you going to know? How are you going to refute it?

Speaker 3: 15:38

anyway, Ever Sounds a little like. Ego Sounds a little like ego.

Speaker 2: 15:43

Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way. Can you have ego about how hard you work? Maybe, and I do think if you look at the stats score you'll always see not as many points but a lot of assists from Dan's work, and that was the joy I had as being a playmaker and trying to make other people score and succeed. So in sports it's the only time I've ever been ever better than I have as a profession. But I would just clearly say 16 is taking me a career to get to. I was realistically a one-two, probably most of my career because of the ego that suppresses the ratio of the smarts, and so if you had a team of 16s, that would be a killer team.

Speaker 2: 16:22

Everyone could get their egos down. Some people might get it by a five and a three. You're playing the different modes, but yeah, it's all about getting that balance right.

Speaker 1: 16:30

Is there ever a situation where you need to have hot ego?

Speaker 2: 16:34

Yeah, and again, the problem with the definition of the word ego in general. There could be a lot of different nuances and interpretations of that, and I think they can be healthy ego for sure, in the construct that I'm defining. I don't think so. I think it's optimal is to be a team player, because not only does it help the team's output, but then it forces other people, because of that behavior you exhibit, to do the same. People want to be drawn, I think, to something bigger than themselves, and if other people lead that way, it makes it easier. So you have a knockoff effect on other people when you bring down your ego and some cultures can get to the place where that happens. But just to be clear, there's high-performing cultures that have high ego.

Speaker 2: 17:12

I worked at McKinsey. There are investment banks, I would tell you. Most of them is a model where people are fighting, particularly in banks, for their compensation. It's a big thing, it's a let me show you how great I was and the deals I got done. Therefore, I deserve more compensation in that model. By definition, I think you should answer your question. That's supposed to be a high ego place. Now, over time, that can have become destructive, and yeah, but I think that's the balance. Leadership and that kind of organization has to figure out a way to maintain that competitiveness around individual performance and at the same time still figure out how do we have some collegial nature that we can build a firm together.

Speaker 1: 17:53

You've taken your career where it is based on this model. You see it and evaluate your teams based on this model. We doubled down on ego, but I would love to understand what do you think about skills? And when you think about hard work, what would you recommend people consider when they're looking at upping those potentially? Just to balance out the equation.

Speaker 2: 18:14

One thing I tell you about the skills side, the hardest part about skills, it's the one I think we can do the least Now it doesn't mean you can't take classes and get training things, but core thing that drives and in fact you didn't ask if I stole this idea. There's no SEW, quite like the way I do it. But this construct of these sort of three forces in determining how effective people are in their work was stolen from a guy I worked with at McKinsey years ago, an Australian guy, clemenger, and he actually initially his thinking was it wasn't skills, it was smarts. It's also smarts are trainable. It's a very McKinsey way to think about it. Right, and he'd been a career McKinsey Was we just want smart people, because smart people will figure out problems, but they'll also figure out how to learn and grow To some extent your clock speed.

Speaker 2: 18:59

You can work on it. You're born with what you got. Thank or don't thank your parents, but you got what you got. So that one is much harder for people to control. And I would tell you the best thing you can do to either quote unquote improve your smarts or your skills it's the learning you get, it's taking wisdom from your experiences. So what makes you smarter, effectively or more skilled is the fact that you have ability to take feedback and say, oh, I got to move a little bit over this way, so that's probably the most important piece, except that a lot of it is going to be.

Speaker 2: 19:28

You're given processing capability and then the one is applying yourself, and if you just do more and you're active, it goes back to the work. How hard you work. If you take on opportunities. Every time you have a chance to do something new and different, you do it and then you listen and learn about how you did. That's the best thing I think you can do to improve your sort of smart skills and on work, that's probably the least complex, right?

Speaker 2: 19:51

And it's just how will you apply yourself? It's definitely about working smarter, not just harder, although I sometimes think we use the excuse of working smart, not hard, to not fully deploy ourselves and really invest ourselves in the things we're working on. But that could be personal, professional, across the board. We often know when we're just showing up and there's days sometimes where that's all you can muster, just showing up. But if you find yourself only just showing up a lot of the time, you're probably not in the right place, because you just don't have that enthusiasm for your work to allow you to get up to a four or maybe even a five on how hard you work.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Yeah, it's interesting when you have those where you. Is it context you know what I'm saying Like when you're in a situation I know when you were at DocuSign or Responsys, for example, too, it felt like that was like these magical times, right, these magical cultures where you wanted to show up, right, it's the context of it, or is it the individual that's always going to have that lens, or is it a combination of both? I think it could be situational, right.

Speaker 2: 20:52

Yeah, but your point about the magical times what makes people remember times as magical is because they work really hard with a group of people they respect and care for and built a great album, and when you do that, it bonds people. I think we were chatting the other day and I told you that there was this 10-year reunion of people from when we sold Responses to Oracle and I thought the whole idea was a little wacky in the first place, to be completely honest with you, and then, when hundreds of people showed up and said it was a really special way for them to be back with people, it felt more like a college reunion than a company had been part of. You had something special and that culture that you were part of will always be important to you.

Speaker 1: 21:37

It's the power of when you have this in masses, right, when everybody is pulling in their weight or has a high SO score, right. That's the power of that too. Come to think about it, I don't think I've ever had a magical work experience where I phoned it in or where I was very egocentric, or like I was the smartest person in the freaking room, like that never, ever happened. I think that's common.

Speaker 2: 21:58

I think that experience you're describing is probably common and I would say there are times, particularly in technology industry, where you get on a wave and you probably could continue to have great success with phoning it in a little bit, although be careful, because when you're riding that kind of wave it's going to crash at some point. But I would tell you, I bet it's not a magical experience. I think it's very difficult, if you didn't really work hard at something, to truly enjoy the success and the outcome, because it's not as important, it's not as special to you as if you know that you really applied yourself fully.

Speaker 1: 22:32

Yeah, you got to be invested.

Speaker 3: 22:46

Something that really resonates with me with what you said, because, as another former athlete but I will say I was D1. Just rubbing it in a little, just a little, but I was a rower, so it doesn't really count as a former athlete, throughout my life, one of the things that I heard time and time again from my coaches and like you, I was never the best, but what I always got was the heart award. Because when you're the one giving heart and in my mind, when I keep hearing you say hard work, that's what I keep hearing.

Speaker 3: 23:12

Oh, the people who give heart, like you have the heart in it. Is that what you mean when you say hard work absolutely?

Speaker 2: 23:18

and in fact it's funny. I was thinking about your point about crew. It actually is a great example because, if you think about again, I never rode crew in any close to semblance of a real way, but oddly enough, I went to a strange high school in Seattle that happened to have crew, which is unusual, particularly unusual. Then on the West Coast, I'm going to start and for the next six, about six minutes, I'm going to get increasingly uncomfortable to the point that my body's going to hate what I'm doing and I'm going to collapse in exhaustion and you go and that's what we do every time and that's our form, and there's probably some track and field things that are like that a little bit, and it's the only one you do in unison, depending on three other, seven other I guess, four and eight if you count. But what a crazy bond that people must have with the team when you go through that.

Speaker 2: 24:17

You've probably seen it, but you see the boys in the boat. There's a movie from the book the Boys in the Boat. The book was better than the movie. Usually Not always, but usually it's the University of Washington men's crew that won the Olympic gold medal in 1936. No-transcript.

Speaker 3: 24:53

Oh, I loved crew. By the way, I think when I talked to any of my teammates, most of us did it so we could watch the sunrise before class, because it was just a fun experience at 5 am.

Speaker 3: 25:03

I wanted to go back to those high-performance work cultures, because we've all worked in them, right, like I worked in big law. We work cultures because we've all worked in them, right, like I worked in big law. We've worked in the big four, all of those things. Do you think something has to happen in terms of, like performance management? Performance management set up in a way to be egocentric or to build ego, because there's always this kind of back and forth? Do you brag about the work you've done and that impacts your potential bonus and your raise or your opportunities for growth, but none of us get our work done, necessarily as individual contributors. Even when you're an individual contributor, you still need others to complete your work, and so do you think there's an opportunity for organizations to think differently about performance management and how you brag about the things you've done while also bringing along everyone else who helped you get there?

Speaker 2: 25:50

I think so. Yeah, and I'll tell you the first thing. There's certain things in business life that are close to universally. True. There's probably none that are quite, but there's two I want to talk to One related to your question, but first I'll do the other one.

Speaker 2: 26:03

It's amazing how what we learned in kindergarten is so important for what we do in life. Saying please, saying thank you and saying I'm sorry when appropriate is the simplest thing to do, and when we don't do it oftentimes it leads to fairly significant conflict and problems. I'm not saying it always solves everything, but at least creates the opportunity and the space to be successful. And one of the things that I think is really corollary to that is about teams that you described. And if you say we instead of I, first of all people know.

Speaker 2: 26:40

So if you're so worried that you have to be clear that you did something, the detraction that you're going to get from your colleague to everyone else I need you to point out that it was you Way swaps, any extra benefit you might get in bonus time or what you're just got, is my opinion.

Speaker 2: 26:55

But if you do that chest beating and you do it around a wee, it's amazing how everyone gives you license to brag all you want because it's about wee, and if you figure out a way to try to give the credit in a credible way to other people, because we've all seen the bullshit, the fake oh, thank the little people, because it wasn't me and you just look and you're like, okay, that not only gets you the credit for having delivered the great results that your team's done, but, more importantly, that we language makes everyone else feel great and it sets us up for another success, because now everyone wants to do it again. So you're also building followership from teams. So I think that's the answer to the question is just be a we oriented and get away from needing to point out what people probably already know when you've done something great.

Speaker 1: 27:55

Yeah, I'll tell you too, where I've seen people be really successful is with that we language and that authentic we language like you talked about, with their team, and also cross-functionally as well. When you can be we, when you're reaching across the aisle with finance and HR and marketing and you're going at it we as one, that is hugely powerful, especially as you're going up in the ranks.

Speaker 2: 28:17

And I would also tell you I think it's powerful when you're the hardest grader on yourself. A lot of people say they're the hardest grader on themselves, they're toughest on themselves. I don't always find that to be the case and I find if you can do that and get a reputation amongst your colleagues for being tougher on yourself than you are on them, it's a really exponentially improving opportunity. I'll give you one sort of dumb example. But at Responsys I had this thing where I tried to change the way we thought about performance reviews. So we did everything out of 100. It's just just like a hundred. But a hundred was perfect Pretty hard to be perfect and I was CEO for 10 years at Responsys. I had twice a year had a review and I would submit my self-assessment, just like I would have all my managers first submit a self-assessment, and I never had a hundred. I never got above low nineties and we had a couple of quarters that led to a half year performance that you would say those were pretty good and I had a board that would push back and say come on, this has got to be a hundred percent and I'm like a hundred, how can you get a hundred? But what would happen is I'd come in and say, yeah, I think I had an 82. And they'd be this is crazy. You at least have a 90. We have to argue this up to a 90. Think about that.

Speaker 2: 29:28

Normally my experiences before that was the other way around. I think I'm about 115. And then someone else has to say, god, we really think he's about a 90, but now we've got to say he's an 80 to try to compromise. So it just totally changes that. Every single executive my direct reports at responses but one and I'll get to the one in a second Over time grasped that and said this is the way I want it to be.

Speaker 2: 29:54

I want to be in a situation when I come in tougher on myself and my manager was me says no, I think better than that. Those conversations are so rewarding and I did. One executive who was very talented and a great executive and he had grown up in a sense of I'm above 100%, everything I do is above 100%, and the math major in me says there is no above 100%. It's impossible to be above 100% Asymptomically. Approaching 100% on most things is almost impossible, and so that mentality to get out of that I got all Ben Antonio, but I got everyone else there and it was I think it was a big part of our culture that then went down and trickled down wherever what it was saying like. Let me be tougher on myself.

Speaker 1: 30:39

Let me ask you this In those moments, did you want to rate yourself 100? In the back of your mind, were you like I actually was 100, but I'm going to put it in myself at a 91? Or were you like, no, I was genuinely in 91, you wasn't you can't what's truth I think there's times where I thought I was pretty damn good.

Speaker 2: 30:56

Yeah, we had a lot of challenges too, but the early parts of the company was a complete turnaround. There was some, I think. You know I often talk I'll give you a. Let me answer your question, then I'll give you them. Yeah, there were times when I thought I was great, but because I defined it it as 100%. It's just yeah, you can't.

Speaker 2: 31:12

One of my pet peeves when people say I gave 110%, you don't have 110. There is no 110. And I appreciate what the construct they're trying to say pushing yourself. No, it's like the crew thing, like my 100% is to get us there in six minutes. I got us in five minutes and 55 seconds. I did more than a hundred percent. Well, you just reset. What a hundred percent is? That's new love.

Speaker 2: 31:32

But but that concept, yes, there are probably some times when I might've been a little bit I don't know too cute by half about saying no, the IPO was great, it just wasn't really the accomplishment I wanted for the company. I think we could have done better. Or my last time I sold the company at the highest multiple SaaS offer company I'd ever had. That was a pretty good outcome. Ceo should feel good, the whole team should feel good about that. But there were some things that just weren't quite optimized in those periods and I think it's important to always tell yourself that the grade you would give yourself is lower than the grade you'd give the company If you're the CEO or general manager for your business, because telling people I'm better than you are and I'm pulling us up, it's a hugely odd message to send, and you and I have talked about this before.

Speaker 2: 32:21

I think the leadership model I try to think about is the inverted pyramid. Instead of a CEO at the top and then all these people coming down, I say the job of a leader is to make everyone else on the team successful. So you should think about it as an inverted leadership model. And the simple example is that if you think about a company, particularly if it gets to scale, even if you have a lot of self-confidence, managed ego I have a lot of self-confidence. The best I could be at a company of scale let's say there's a thousand employees maybe I could be as good as three or four people. I would have to just be in my A game constantly. Best case, I could be as good as three or four actually, but if I could make each of those thousand people 10% better, that's like hundreds of people you've added of good work, so it just swamps it, and so if you get your mindset to think like that versus to think top, down ones, so it just swamps it.

Speaker 2: 33:09

And so if you get your mindset to think like that, versus to think top down, I think it helps you to achieve.

Speaker 3: 33:15

I like the we, not me, concept over there. Yeah, when you think about how leaders can accurately assess where they fall on this scale, can they accurately self-assess, or does it require some external measurements? I'm the only one that can self-assess.

Speaker 2: 33:32

You're the only one Awesome, sorry, sorry. Of course, everyone can do your own self-assessment. In fact, doing a self-assessment is great. More valuable for most of us probably two is to ask the people you work with, ask your colleagues, ask the team you manage, ask your manager hey, how do you think about me? In this format, and that would be the fun exercise. If you're doing it as a management team, I should do this actually my next gig. You should actually just ask everyone to do that assessment for everyone on the team and then you give people the sense of here's what you said about you and here's what the rest of us said about you.

Speaker 2: 34:04

In each of these dimensions, I think it could be really powerful way, and I'll tell you that the hard part about it is assessing. You try to think about assessing people when you don't have a lot of data. Most people, if you work with colleagues and you ask people oh yeah, francesca, usually people have a pretty similar view. The hard part is like when you're interviewing someone and you meet them and you say, hey, should we hire this person? You're trying to assess how successful they'll be. It's much harder to figure out some of these things. There's some things that are typically around the smarts and skills. People have degrees and things, or people have a track record where they've delivered tremendous performance. So you see some areas where you can get that.

Speaker 2: 34:41

The ego one, of course, is the hardest one, although the work one is interesting because a lot of people tout how hard they work and again they're just about working hard. It's about working smart. Sometimes you can't completely rock that. You get a better sense from other people, but the ego one is the hardest one and the way I'll give you my fun interview question. I love to ask people. If it were you, mel, I would say hey. So, mel, if I had in the room everyone that you've been working with for the last five years, but you weren't there and I said to them what's really great about what Mel does? What would they say? And then you answered that question and then, when I'm finished, I said, hey, if I asked that same group, what are the things Mel should be working on? What are some areas where you know Mel could be a little more effective?

Speaker 2: 35:27

What would they say to that? And of course, everyone loves the first question. First of all, they'd say I'm the smartest person. They give you, as they should. You're giving them a softball to say what's great about you, yeah. But the second question is interesting because there's basically three buckets of answers and some people are in tune with issues that they're working on and they've gotten feedback in the past. Maybe they've made some improvement, they know there's more, and that's a really thoughtful and great answer. Another answer is I don't think they have anything to say. Look, that would be it.

Speaker 3: 36:01

Look at what we're saying. Such a weird response.

Speaker 2: 36:02

Really they just have. No, they actually just they've never dawned on them that people might not think they're perfect and they may be great but just like. That's an indication that we ought to be probing further how effective they are in teams if it's never sort of done. But the worst answer of all is what I call the faux answer. And the faux answer is let me tell you what they'd say Now. First of all, they say I work too hard and carrying the load of the whole team makes everyone feel terrible because I do so much more than everyone else, and that's a real problem for people.

Speaker 2: 36:38

And they give two or three things that you're like the most ridiculous fake critique of all time. Then you actually realize this person's smart. They probably have some awareness of things that they could work on and be better, but they're manipulative and they're full of shit and they're basically going to say let me tell you how I can smooth that. That's actually indicative to me. They could be skilled and there might be certain roles where that sort of ability to communicate and feel if they're going to be an actor or something you might say that's a great skill, to be able to have right To improvise that answer. But to be a colleague, that's a person that's I'm going to be wary, I'm going to be wary. Can they really dedicate themselves to a mission to work with other people? So that's a great question to ask.

Speaker 3: 37:17

I love that question, Someone who worked in talent acquisition. I think it's such a smart question to ask because I've heard also those rehearsed answers and you're like, oh OK, yeah, I don't know about that. What are some ways? I guess, when you think about warning signs Because I would see that as a warning sign, just as you did but when someone's in the job, what are some of the warning signs that indicate ego might be creeping up or interfering with their leadership effectiveness?

Speaker 2: 37:43

Core issue of where an ego is a problem is usually not in someone's self-led efforts around their interactions with the team, and so I think where we see people who are less effective team members and aren't able to the company or the team first, that's where you see it and you see it from their colleagues. And what do I be careful about? I'm a big believer in things like 360 feedback. I'm not actually a huge believer in massive programmatic you have your talent, background, sort of solutions but I think the discipline of getting feedback in a thoughtful, targeted way, as opposed to just lots of forms that people start filling out in a shitty way, is not, honestly, the key to success. It is in a thoughtful way, given the person and the individual. You as a manager do work, but getting that feedback from folks is great. One thing to be careful about is just because other people are unhappy with someone or complain about someone doesn't mean they're the problem. Are unhappy with someone or complain about someone doesn't mean they're the problem. A lot of times we ask someone to carry some pretty heavy water and drive some pretty aggressive performance and some people might not like that and they might say that's a bad person. A lot of times. Let's get this at.

Speaker 2: 38:45

Docusign or CPL would say they're not living the DocuSign values. They were very important. We had this really strong set of values. Docu DocSend's an amazing company and it's got some things that are really strong. By the way, we've had some challenges last couple of years. Some of those values have allowed us, I think, to maintain more success. But it's really easy to pull the values card and say I don't like the way Mel's doing that and so I'm going to say throw the value set. I'd be really careful that the person that's willing to throw that might not just be doing well, they might be actually saying the scrutiny and management I'm getting is making me uncomfortable. And the person is trying to give me aggressive feedback and somehow I missed the memo that said feedback is a gift and since I didn't think feedback was a gift, I think the person's riding me really hard, but actually they're trying to make me better. So get feedback but make sure you're triangulating and then get observations yourself. That's how I'd propose attacking that role.

Speaker 1: 39:41

Okay, here's a question. I feel like we have a lot of representations of ego in the extreme. I've seen very high up leaders, board members, ceos, it could be even a manager. I've seen individual contributors and they're so egocentric they're bordering on narcissistic or maybe they are or just a straight psycho. We've all worked for them. What do you like? Some of those environments incent that, incent that behavior, reward that behavior. If you're in an organization that you feel like that's happening, or you're walking into a culture where that day that's happening, how do you start to advocate for more of this balance? How do you operate as yourself? If you're someone that isn't that way and likes to operate with more of the balance, do you go? What do you do? What's the play there?

Speaker 2: 40:29

So, the first thing is why? Why do you want to do what you're describing you want to do? Do you diagnose that there's a problem in the company? You see a performance challenge happening at some point, or we have a nutrition problem because we have some people's behaviors driving good people out. I'd like to try to understand what the thing I'm trying to fix is before I take my remedy. But in general, I'm a big believer in we motivate people with incentive structures. Some of those are financial incentive structures, some of the praise, all sorts of levels that we have for incentives for people. And so if you're driving behavior and you're seeing it not just one individual, but you're seeing it more creep into your business in a way that you think it's not healthy, I'd look at your incentive structure.

Speaker 2: 41:08

And so one of the phenomenas is you might say we have a lot of individual achievement awards. Let's go to a team award and a company could take a bonus approach and say it's subjectively based on each individual's performance. Or you could say we're going to have a total team outcome. These are our top three goals, and if we achieve them we all win in that award, and if we don't, that's one lever. But I think that kind of concept is thinking about what you've put in place in your organization to drive the behavior you're driving. And the other one and this is one that I don't understand why more people don't do it other than you know. I have some conflict avoidance in my own nature, so I understand it's a human phenomenon. We often avoid conflict, francesca, less you than the rest of us. You're so nice.

Speaker 2: 41:52

You spiked on that in a good way, but the answer is talk about it. I don't know. We have this thing where everyone's in a closed room secretly saying, oh, Billy's doing this and Susie's doing this. Hey, Billy, Susie, people think you're being a jerk and I don't know why. That's not who I think you are. So let's go show them that's wrong and what are the things we're going to do together to have it? And I think, same thing Not everyone accepts feedback as a gift at the beginning, but you have to explain to them.

Speaker 2: 42:18

You want to be successful here. You're going to work with me in addressing this feedback and I think you would find most people 90%-ish people if they know that you care about them and they know that you respect them, they will take that feedback and they will want to be better. And there's some people who just can't take it or see it feels too personal and they have to say it's not me, it's the person that's complaining. Understand that there's a cycle. You go through that process. Past that, I think most people can say you know what? I want to be better, I want to be more effective, so I want to work on it.

Speaker 1: 42:52

Yeah, Mel and I are. We're writing a book and we just came out of research and that's the number one thing around being feeling like you're being respected and valued. You cannot have feedback, trust, development, conversation, anything without that. That is the base, for you have to have that mutual respect and that mutual value, and I think it's something that we overlook or we assume it's just there yeah, right and we've never had a goddamn conversation about it.

Speaker 2: 43:20

Yeah, and I'll, yeah. Um, and you have data. And so what happens when you have data? You sometimes that ad is just nobody cares what you know until they know that you care. And so if you're there, you say I got all this information, make you better. I'm like, are you trying to make better? If you're there and you say I got all this information to make you better, I'm like are you trying to make better? Are you setting me up for failure? Like when I understand that you're. When you show up to tell me something, it's because you care about me and you care about the success of what we're building together. Yeah, then I really do want to know, I want to understand, I care about this feedback that's going to make me better.

Speaker 1: 43:49

Yeah, I think starting with care is such a huge thing. Starting with care might be your answer to my next question, which is I'm dead. It's a little crazy out there these days, but it's a little uncertain. Yeah, hashtag tariffs, speaking of incentive structures as opposed to sticks. I am curious, though if you're a leader, especially if you're a C-level executive, and you have the entire company on your shoulders and you're trying to navigate uncertainty it could be now, it could be in the future, I don't care, but I am curious about how you protect that balance of your ego as you're going through that, because I have to believe that it might be up and down, depending on what situation you're in, what win you have, what punch you just took in the phase. How do you maintain and balance that ego when you are just in a blitzkrieg of bullshit?

Speaker 2: 44:40

Yeah, two things. One, it was harder for me to insightfully answer that question today because I'm at a place where I've had so much good fortune in my career and I've gotten a lot of boost. That makes me feel good about myself professionally, and not that I don't have things I'm constantly working on, for sure, but I've been so fortunate that I don't walk around with a chip on my shoulder that I, you know, because of this crisis or some other, I either need to prove myself. I do feel like I need to prove myself every day, but I don't feel like I'm coming from a defensive way of doing that and proving myself. So that makes it easier. But if I go back a couple IPOs ago, yeah, I think it's a real challenge.

Speaker 2: 45:20

I think what you're describing is absolutely a challenge, and the more that the market gets crazy your market, whatever that is it's easy to feel like it's unfair and lashing out and attacking, and then sometimes even the people that are close to you. You should be pulling together. Some people are critical of them. We're blaming. You know the blame game. If you just sold more, we wouldn't have this problem. So it's your fault.

Speaker 2: 45:42

Sales is fault, which has been a huge issue, by the way, in enterprise software the last couple of years, the number of companies, because I spent a lot of time talking to people about running more software companies that say a company is great, the only problem is our sales team. If we just had a new head of sales, it's going to be great. I'm like really, because every software company is saying the same thing. Is it really just the sales leaders? I don't think so, and so I do think the hard thing when everything is going crazy like that is to just go back and say what can I control and what can I not? I can't control tariffs, I can't control any of these things. I have to make decisions based on the fact that some externalities are there and those external factors are happening. But I have to go back to our team and say I don't know what the outcome is. I just can't tell you what the outcome is going to be, but I can tell you what the inputs are and we're going our very best at doing it in the way we believe and at the quality that we believe we can deliver for our customers, for employees, whatever. And let's just do that, because that's what we can control, and I know it's the same thing like stock price is a phenomenon.

Speaker 2: 46:41

Companies go public and every CEO gives the same speech, or pretty much every CEO. Guys, we can't control the stock price. You shouldn't be spending time looking at the stock price. That response is early on. I made this thing. I said I'm not going to look at the stock price except for Friday afternoon every week. I will not look at the stock If you ask me about it. I don't want to know. I don't care. I don't want to know what the stock price is. What am I going to do on any given day? How are you.

Speaker 1: 47:06

This is a backward.

Speaker 2: 47:07

This isn't that. Leaving is a backward indicator. We got to be focused on our business and getting people out of that mindset. Actually, one thing we did response is we had the IPO and we didn't go ring the bell in New York. We did the IPO. We came back to the office and we were with the office and the people and the day after IPO we said let's play Sales to do. We got product to build. We got customers to take care of. We said what happened to go public yesterday? It's fun and Our customers take care of it. What happened to go public yesterday? It was fun and we should all feel good about it. It was a nice accomplishment. Back to work, because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter in the context of what we have to do every day. I'm sure we care about it and create liquidity for people. Lots of wonderful things that happen. I'm not against celebrating. I'm all about celebrating. Why do we have the opportunity to celebrate?

Speaker 3: 48:03

Because, because we did these other things really well for the last several years, so let's keep doing those things. Looking back at your younger self and what you know now, what do you wish you could tell your younger self?

Speaker 2: 48:10

I think probably a couple things. One is I didn't have a lot of patience, I was in a hurry and I think it's okay to be moving fast, but I think I would tell myself as part of that smell the roses, enjoy the time, enjoy the experiences you're having, and I sometimes skip things to get on to the next, and sometimes I think that's a mistake a lot of us make. And life it's not the end, it's the journey and really making sure you enjoy the journey. And that probably is mostly then around investing in relationships, and not necessarily just like your most important relationship, but the people you know that are just wonderful. It could be colleagues, could be friends, any number of places. Really take advantage of those personal relationships. That is what life is fun to do. So that'd be number one.

Speaker 2: 48:59

Number two, and there's no question, after the practice speech I gave you on this topic earlier, I would tell myself to chill, cool my jets a little bit about then and realize that the joy I was going to get in life, the real joy I have, comes from seeing other people being successful, and I had to accumulate a certain amount of professional success and personal success before I could start to do that. So I missed a lot of years of a lot of joy I could have had. I think I had little snippets of it. I'm not a total jerk. I did care about the people I worked with but it was all in the lens of they could be successful to make me more successful. And if I think I could have just appreciated them more for them and been better for them, starting that sooner I would get a lot more joy. So those would probably be the two things. There's probably a lot of things I would tell myself, but those would be the. Those would be the.

Speaker 3: 49:52

I like it. The second one, especially when you think of giving their best advice to emerging leaders, that's like a big takeaway that they can start today. Okay.

Speaker 1: 49:59

Rapid round questions. You can answer these with one word or a sentence, or however long you want. Sometimes these are our most interesting questions. Are you ready to play? I'm ready to play. Okay, it is 2030. What does work look like? Work will be very similar to what it is today in the post-COVID world Very similar.

Speaker 2: 50:25

All right, interesting. No, I should elaborate. I thought I was supposed to do rapid fire.

Speaker 1: 50:28

Wait, now, I want to know the answer. Wait, why do you think it's going to be similar? Why do you think it's going to be similar?

Speaker 2: 50:35

I think we've had a lot of transformational change going into and coming out of COVID and I think the amount of change in the way we work, assimilate is limited. We're humans and we have our patterns and we have our trends. So I think we've gotten to this place. I don't think it's exactly equilibrium, but in terms of our people going to be in the office, are they going to be remote, I think we're getting to that zone of where we're going to be. I would add, I think artificial intelligence will change the way we work, but I think it's going to be less impact. It'll be massively impactful on business, less impactful on people than I think we realize, because we're adaptable and the things that get automated and then we do things as humans that can't be automated. So I don't think that will change as much as some people are forecasting in the next five years.

Speaker 2: 51:15

Are you an AI optimist? I'm an optimist, for sure. Yeah, I definitely. I have my I call it terminator awareness of what's happening. I just don't see it. I really don't. Maybe it's my. I'm an optimist. I'm also. My faith in humanity is pretty high. Yeah, I'm pretty optimistic.

Speaker 1: 51:31

That's good. There's a lot of really awesome possibility there. I'm stoked for it. I'm stoked for it. Yeah, what music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 2: 51:39

I've been listening to Dave Matthews almost nonstop the last 10 days. Nothing wrong with a little DMV. We had Dave come to an event. Jane Goodall introduced him to me. We did an event at DocuSign. He is the funniest person I've ever been on stage with. If he was an actor, I don't know if you know this before he became a musician he was an actor.

Speaker 2: 51:59

He's been in a number of films since he's become famous, but he is just the funniest. He has the driest, quick-witted sense of humor that I never would have fully understood, even though I've been a fan for years and then joined C&M on stage, so Dave was the bomb Best session ever. At any event, Get out. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 52:18

I always read him as like either really awkward to talk to or making like really uncomfortable jokes period.

Speaker 3: 52:26

Yeah, I got the impression. He seems like a good call.

Speaker 2: 52:29

So he roasted me in front. He had the DocuSign employee base and customers and he was constantly making fun of me in a way that the docuside employee based and customers and he was constantly making fun of me in a way that, of course, that audience love oh sure so you know he knew his audience.

Speaker 2: 52:40

Um, yeah, he's a musical genius. So you're right, sometimes there's oddities with people who are creative geniuses. Uh, there's some of that awkwardness. He's so genuine. I'll just say one little snippet. We should move past dave matthews, but he moved to seattle from charlottesville where they really got going. So he lives in in the seattle area and up until this is about five years ago, he just moved out of a one bathroom house with his three children and his wife and he was just like, yeah, and driving his 1970 something volvo, he's just a guy, that's like.

Speaker 2: 53:13

I don't have any heirs. He's just the same person that I think he wanted to be ever since he was probably 20 or something like that. Yeah, he's a treasure.

Speaker 1: 53:22

See that story restores my faith in humanity. Honestly Like that's it. Okay, what are you reading? What are you reading?

Speaker 2: 53:29

So I just finished reading something I half read. It was embarrassing Principles by Ray Dalio, which is a tome of a big book. But the exciting thing that I just started reading again and I think I read it before. But I'm embarrassed. I can remember his Profiles in Courage. It was a Pulitzer Prize winning, jfk wrote it and it's one of those books that everyone knows about, but then you just maybe never read. And anyway, jillian got it for me and I saw it at a bookstore. He's a bookstore and I'm reading it and he's a gifted writer, in addition to being such a special politician.

Speaker 1: 54:05

It's also interesting to go back, even if you have read something way back, to go back and reread it. All right, here's my last question for you. What piece of advice would you give someone? What's your best piece of advice for them?

Speaker 2: 54:15

Oh, if it's mildly professional advice I suppose there's other realms, but I guess this would fit more broadly is in life the key is to find I used to be a consultant, so I like to do everything in two by two matrices. It is to find the combination of the things that you're good at and the things you like doing and get into that upper right corner. And I think the biggest thing that people sometimes forget is the things you like, and I think we're naturally drawn to. We get positive feedback on the things we're good at, but finding that intersection of the things you really love doing, that's the thing that you need to focus on.

Speaker 1: 54:48

It makes it really enjoyable, right? I look forward to it.

Speaker 3: 54:50

Cool, love it. We appreciate you being with us today. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 2: 54:53

Me as well. I really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 3: 55:00

This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends. Thank you.

Managerial Sabotage

Your Work Friends Podcast: Managerial Sabotage with Davide Rice, People Managing People

Today’s managers are feeling the squeeze from above, below, and all sides. In this episode, David Rice, Executive Editor at People Managing People, joins us to share what it really feels like to be a modern day manager. From the lack of formal training to the growing expectations from executives and teams, we talk about why the role is harder than ever and what can actually help.

Whether you're deep in the middle or just stepping into the manager role, you’ll find practical ways to build connection, navigate pressure, and move forward with more clarity and confidence in a rapidly changing world.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

The thing that disturbs me and keeps me up at night is the fact that, essentially, at this point, ascending into management ranks is an experience akin to being sabotaged. It's almost a betrayal in some ways.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Welcome to your Work Friends. I'm Francesca and I'm Mel. We're breaking down work, so you get ahead, Mel. You and I talk a lot about the state of the workplace. Actually, every single day we're talking about what's happening with work, what's happening with jobs, and one of the things that we just keep coming back to is what the hell is going on with the manager and the manager role.

Speaker 3: 0:51

We've covered it several times in New Week New Headlines First of all. Managers are in the sandwich, the classic corporate sandwich between executive leadership and then their employees, and they're getting dumped on every which way. We covered an article several months back talking about this is the crisis year of the manager, because we see orgs ripping them out, which we both have expressed as a dumb move for many reasons. And the other piece there is the younger people don't want the gig because it's a thinkless job right now being a manager.

Speaker 2: 1:28

It's hard, right, it's hard and to your very good point, that's getting attacked from all sides and we wanted to bring in somebody that hears about what the hell is really going on Real street conversation with the manager. So we brought in David Rice. David is the executive editor of People Managing People, where he's looking at the stories that are happening in the workplace specifically around management, and he's really trying to get at, with people managing people, the heart of the issues that are faced not only by HR professionals but by employees too. So we thought, because he's getting this great overview of what's going on in the ether, he can be a very good person to get the very real street, very raw, very honest perspective on what's going on with managers.

Speaker 3: 2:12

Yeah, a lot of insightful conversation. I also, side note, love all of his videos, so if you're not following David on LinkedIn, you should be and check out his weekly videos.

Speaker 2: 2:23

David is very dry, he is very no bullshit, but he's spot on, so we hope you enjoy this conversation with that. Here's David.

Speaker 3: 2:44

David, it's so good to see you. All right, David.

Speaker 2: 2:47

Again, thanks so much for joining us today. We're super stoked to talk about the state of managers In our part of the world. Mel and I are hearing from managers. We're reading the news about managers. They're getting it from all sides. We're flattening, we're taking managers out. Apparently, ai is now coming for your job all this good jazz. Like it's a. It's a crazy time to be a manager, and especially in your role as the executive editor at People Managing People. What are you hearing? What are you seeing? What is the world of the manager looking like right now? And I'm curious what's keeping you up at night?

Speaker 1: 3:20

as it relates to managers these days, I think the thing that, like disturbs me and keeps me up at night is the fact that, like, essentially at this point, ascending into management ranks is an experience akin to being sabotaged, right, like it's almost a betrayal in some ways, like if you think about the fact that 82% of managers received no formal training. So it's just here, go do this really difficult thing. I'm not going to help you do it. And even the whole way that you were successful, you got into this because you were, in theory, good at something. So is this how we're going to reward success and high performance? Is here's this new challenge that I'm just not going to help you with. And I don't care. I guess I don't care if you're good at it or not.

Speaker 1: 4:09

As somebody who spends a lot of time talking about leadership and how to create success and how to innovate and inspire people to do new things, how can we do that to managers? It's just disturbing, right? It would be like trying to train your pets to go to the bathroom outside but never open the door. What do you want them to do? I don't understand. So what are we doing? There's a lot in this world that I'm like what are we doing? But when I think about business, that's the thing that I just. It blows my mind and makes me want to pull my hair out.

Speaker 2: 4:49

Yeah I mean to your point is we're not setting them up for success at all. If there's a development piece, 82% of people aren't even getting trained. Mel and I absolutely know that to be true. Very few organizations are doing that and even if they are, it's not necessarily that they're developing them the right way, because managing is a very different skill than individual contributor. It's a completely different turn. We know it's one of the hardest roles to step into. If you ask most people in their career ladder, that flip up into manager was way harder than that flip up into executive.

Speaker 1: 5:19

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:19

Because it's just so different and I love your analogy. So we're basically saying, yeah, this is what you need to do, but we're not allowing you to do it or we're not setting you up for success to do it, ie opening the door. Is there anything that gives you hope? Because we absolutely agree on that reality. But is there anything where you're like? But this is interesting.

Speaker 1: 5:37

Yeah, I think the thing that gives me hope is there's a lot of people coming together around common experiences right now, common goals, desires. I think 2025, when we look back on it in a couple of years will be like a pivotal year for community building. That's my hope, that's one of the things that I really wanted to see from this year and for changing the way we think about traditional dynamics. So, whether that's how we use something like LinkedIn or how we approach going to a conference or interacting with each other online which obviously I think could use an overhaul but I'm seeing a lot of people agree on what they see Like we all agree that this is happening to managers, right, and we know what we want to change.

Speaker 1: 6:16

I think there's not as much difference in philosophy or the spectrum of thought around this. There is about a bunch of other issues, right. So I think it's a little different in that we want to build thought around this. There is about a bunch of other issues, right. So I think it's a little different in that we want to build community around this, and that's a skill that we need to learn in and of itself, and so I think it's going to be good for us to come together on that stuff and identify the things that we want. We've all been sold a lot of well, I'll say this bullshit narratives about either management or what it means to be a leader. There's a lot of this like alpha talk and I have no time for it, but it's one of those things that like pervades the leadership space. I just think it's going to be short-lived and we're all going to come together and identify some things. The need for managers maybe we'll get into this as we go, but I don't think that the need for managers is going to disappear.

Speaker 2: 7:10

I want to talk about that community piece real quick. Community Are you seeing community inside organizations or are you seeing people actually going outside organizations to find that community because it's the only place they're getting it?

Speaker 1: 7:24

I think both. I think it's cool to see community within organizations because people are. We talk about, we always talk about like peer-to-peer learning, but I think more and more people are realizing like I can go to this person and get some kind of value, especially around AI, right, I think that people are seeing the things that their coworkers are doing with it and they're going whoa, I didn't know you could do that. Teach me how to do that. So they're learning a lot of things from each other and that, in and of itself, is building internal community.

Speaker 1: 7:51

But I also think, with all these layoffs and the things that you see, trust is low. In some ways there's loyalty, but in other ways people are like whoa, they ain't going to be loyal to me, so why should I be loyal to them? They ain't going to be loyal to me, so why should I be loyal to them? And they want to go out and build their communities outside of it. So they're going to the thing they're trying to build their networks. They're going to people that they have common visions with and engaging more.

Speaker 1: 8:13

We're seeing that activity that even you see in slack communities, right, there's more and more of that popping up and there's a lot more groups out there identifying that and going, hey, I think we can create this community. The facilitation of that is increasing as well, so there's more options and there's more desire to take advantage of it. It just gets infused into sort of the culture and the way that we all think I've got to be part of one of these things so that I can continue to grow, because the organization's not going to help me do it necessarily. I think that is a thing that's coming out now, but I ultimately think that it's a good thing. It's something that we all need to do anyways.

Speaker 2: 8:51

There's this overall sentiment for managers right now that, like I'm on my own and so I gotta figure this out, either through community or internally or externally, because my faith that my company is gonna be doing it for me or my leader is going to be doing it for me is nil. Am I reading that right? Is that what you're hearing and feeling?

Speaker 1: 9:25

who's above you to help you. It's generally like either director, like VPs or executives who have no time or desire to help you figure out your challenges and problems right. They're just not going to step in and help you. And so who are you going to turn? Yeah, you have to go to other people that are having a common experience and build some sort of rapport or understanding. You have to find out what tools are you using to understand these problems better. Where are you getting your advice from that kind of thing? And that's one of the things that we see, partially because we seek to be the thing that you would go to. Naturally, when we are successful, we find that people are gaining value from what we're doing. That is part of what's driving. It is like amongst managers. And then you see, like the flattening of organizations right, they're firing managers left and right, so it's. I don't even think they care if I succeed or not.

Speaker 2: 10:11

If I don't, they'll just use it as a reason to cut my salary from the books and, I guess, get ai to do it yeah, yeah, which is funny the deloitte human capital trends just came out, which a lot of times is thought of as one of the key indicators for where human performance, human capital consulting, is going right in all these organizations. And they just were like psych should be on, you shouldn't be taking this manager layer and I'm like no shit Sherlock.

Speaker 1: 10:40

Let's not, yeah, so it's figure.

Speaker 2: 10:42

Yeah, having 67 direct reports as a VP didn't work. I'm shocked.

Speaker 1: 10:48

I'm sure.

Speaker 3: 10:49

Yeah, it's painful, we just covered a few weeks back that, like Gen Z, has no interest in even moving into the management role, and there's obviously a much better way that people can be preparing people to be in this role. Ideally, from the time you step in the door as a junior level employee, you're gaining this training before you. From the time you step in the door as a junior level employee, you're gaining this training before you even make it to that step. Right, so it isn't this big surprise or big shift. You cover so many different organizations, so you see excellent use cases and really bad use cases. What do you see being done really well?

Speaker 1: 11:17

It's tough to say, because I'd probably say so-and-so is doing it right now, and then two weeks from now they flatten half the thing. So-and-so is doing it right now, and then two weeks from now, they flattened half the.

Speaker 3: 11:26

Thing.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Yeah, it's tough to say who's getting it right and who's getting it wrong. If you're looking at it like okay, no-transcript, and you're actually giving them tools to do that, then you're doing it right. One thing I've always said is, from the pandemic time, nobody ever adjusted. Nobody ever adjusted what they were doing to manage differently. Right, we went to remote. They didn't know how to do that. That's part of the reasons why there's a lot of reasons why they want to force people back into offices that are not great, but one of them is they never learned how to do this any other way, still doing things by the idea of butts in seats. And then you realize, oh, the increase in things like employee monitoring software. We talk about that all the time because it's one of the things we do reviews on our website but you see the increase in that and you're like, is that healthy? Is that any better than just looking at butts in seats? No, it's not a gauge of productivity. They got these like mouse jigglers and all these weird gadgets you can buy to fake productivity, if that's how you're going to measure productivity.

Speaker 1: 12:29

And so the ones that are doing it right, I think, are like look, you got to shift to like measuring output reasonably, measuring outcomes responsibly. Those are like two of the key things. Don't get lost on a goal. You can create this really big inflated expectation and think that's reasonable or responsible. It's not. It's about figuring out. Okay, what does productivity actually look like? Meaningful productivity, not just like completing tasks or creating a huge volume of work, because you can create a huge volume of work. But if it all sucks, what's the difference? It's not going to move the needle. We've got all these traditional quotas and traditional ways of thinking about things like productivity, things like business impact. We've got to get away from it being so role-specific, it being quota specific. I would say in a lot of cases, a lot of it is like volume of what people are doing rather than the velocity or the value of what they're doing. So the ones that are thinking ahead and trying to change that are doing it right.

Speaker 3: 13:35

Yeah, thinking about more meaningful impact than just like checking the box. And we hear it all the time, francesca and I get people reaching out to us. They're feeling the squeeze at the top from the executives that they're reporting up to, or they're a manager, their senior manager, who's getting it from the executive right.

Speaker 3: 13:53

And then they're also dealing with the emotions of their own team and the things that they're experiencing in the day to day. So they're just what's that song Stuck in the Middle with you? They're just really all stuck in this kind of hellish landscape of the middle being pulled in a million directions but also not feeling cared for in either way. If someone's in that space right now, what advice do you have for them if they're in the squeeze?

Speaker 1: 14:19

Yeah, it's tough right, because we're in this period where executive demands are just so out of touch with the experience and the reality of the lives people are living. They could use this moment to gain trust and instead they've used it to put in RTO orders and talk about 60-hour work weeks. A lot of what we're seeing, especially when they start yapping in the media, just erodes people's image of what leadership is right. So if you're in that space, I think the thing that you got to do is basically do whatever you can to increase transparency about what's going on in the org, what's going on with roles and I know transparency is one of those words that gets overused to the point that it means something different to everybody but just try to be real with people about what's happening. Respect them as adults. Okay, what's going on with their roles? What skills do they need? Just be human about it. Be real.

Speaker 1: 15:12

Everybody's terrified that a layoff is coming all the time. Now they're responding to what they see out in the world and what they want to see is you being a human being with them. They can't trust you more than the AI. If you feel like some soulless corporate suit, right, they might as well just listen to the all-knowing robot overlord that's going to own their future. That's why Gen Z wants to go to the AI instead of their manager. So you've got to find a way to establish good faith. You've got an find a way to establish like good faith. You've got an employee population right now that has no faith in leadership, and then you end up, if you don't do this right, you end up looking like a shill for people who are out there saying all these things in the media, or people who are just maybe not understanding the basics of their existence essentially, and it damages your ability to establish a relationship or trust with them.

Speaker 2: 16:08

Why do you think people don't do this? Mel and I, in our research, we talk a lot about the boss-employee-boss relationship, because it is a relationship I'm curious about. Why don't you think managers show up as a human? What's going on there?

Speaker 1: 16:22

I think there's a couple of reasons. One is the manager is expected to deliver certain things from the business, certain outcomes, and so it gets a little bit like it's not like they have any shortage of meetings and work to do themselves, so they're already bogged down and they've got a lot of pressure from the business to deliver results bogged down and they've got a lot of pressure from the business to deliver results. On top of that, you're talking about a couple of generations that have been, I would say, systematically weaponized against each other by media narratives. Right, everything is Gen Z this, but for a long time it was millennials and their damn avocado toast. Right, everything's just.

Speaker 1: 17:07

Oh, this group is awful, awful, and what you end up with is like a group of people. They kind of look at each other weird to begin with, and then you've got really big shifts that happen because of technology. Right, like millennials and gen z, they don't like phone calls, they don't even want to go to meetings. Yeah, we were talking about somebody on the phone. Just text me, or couldn't this meeting have been an email? How many times have you heard that? But it's an old fashioned way to get together. Talk about it, just settle it, and so you're not communicating to people how they want to be communicated to.

Speaker 1: 17:34

In a lot of cases, you're not understanding their culture, essentially because there's age differences or different ways of doing things that you grew up with. Because when you grew up, that didn't exist, like when I entered the workforce, slack wasn't a thing, it just didn't exist. We did everything by email. But you combine all that together and you've got a place where people just don't understand each other.

Speaker 1: 17:57

I feel like and managers, if they are typically a little bit more advanced in their career right now you're probably talking about somebody in their mid-30s to late-40s, let's say, a 24-year-old those experiences are wildly different, right, and their expectations are wildly different. You interpret things at work differently, and now they're being polarized by everything. Oh, I don't understand them and their pronouns and those like that. It's constantly one thing after another to highlight our differences, never our commonalities. We never talk about the things that we experience the same way. We never talk about the things that affect us in the same way. So that's why there is no trust For managers. It's going to have to be a conscious effort on your part to sit down, make a lot of eye contact.

Speaker 1: 18:49

Really, you know what I mean Not an awkward amount, but be present with somebody, be in the room with them, see them as a person, learn about things like energy and body language and personal dynamics, what it is that might be sitting between you and somebody that you're finding it difficult to connect with. Those are the things like as a manager. This job is going to become less and less about technical skills, I'm convinced, because a lot of all the technical stuff you'll just be able to do it with AI. The thing that's going to differentiate you as a manager is your ability to connect to another human being and to see within them what it is you can do to help them achieve that. But it's not easy to do and it's inherently awkward for groups that are different like that, I would say.

Speaker 1: 19:36

Easy, but it's simple it doesn't actually require too much technical thought.

Speaker 2: 19:44

It doesn't, and it's so fun because to point out, like commonalities right, there's way more that we have in common.

Speaker 3: 19:48

humans really don't need a lot, they really don't there seems to be a huge missed opportunity we've reported on, like the silver tsunami that's coming in 2030 and all the the knowledge that we should be learning, but is there a huge missed opportunity happening right now for organizations to have more intergenerational connections and community building to help bridge that gap and have that conversation, especially as we're going through these major transitions? Is that a space where companies should really be focusing?

Speaker 1: 20:21

I would say yes. Here's the challenge, though. We're basically like conditioned to distrust each other, right? So, like older folks, they don't want to trust Gen Z because they're entitled or lazy or whatever the stereotypes they peddle about them. And you've got like the OK boomer side to it where it's just oh, here they go, and we spend all this time thinking about our differences. There's not a lot of motivation to go. Okay, maybe he doesn't get this AI thing, but he was in the workforce when the internet came about and that must've been a huge shift. What lessons did he learn from that? They're not motivated to ask that question because inherently, you'd have to be interested in them or see their value, see their humanity, and everything that we do is meant to polarize and tear us apart, but it's hard to create something totally different within the walls of your organization when the broader culture is constantly peppering people with this narrative of difference. It makes it difficult for us to learn from each other unless there's some other connector.

Speaker 1: 21:24

We did a thing at work. We were just messing around with Sora when it came out, and my team and I we were like, what if we did this with it? I said, well, have it, make me the Pope. And then it did and I was like, oh my God, that's hilarious. That looks ridiculous. Now make it, make all of you my cardinals. So I did that and it was ridiculous. And then we were like, okay, now give all the cardinals blowout hairstyles. And the images were so funny. We were all laughing so hard. I can't remember the last time we all laughed this hard together, but it was lovely. It was like we had a great bonding moment out of it that I ended up making this video.

Speaker 1: 22:06

But I thought to myself you could use that, though In terms of management. You can use that to create all kinds of experiences, to change people's narratives about each other. If you got somebody from Gen Z guiding somebody from Gen X or a baby boomer through that experience and they're joking around and working through it together to make the funniest, goofiest, stupidest thing they can make, well, all of a sudden, in that moment, you are just like two human beings having a good time, and that should be okay. At work, us learn from each other and figure out. Okay, I don't agree with them on everything, but maybe Tom over there, maybe he has an idea about how this could work. That's what we need. We need that institutional knowledge to transfer somehow, and it can't just be through SOPs and internal documentation.

Speaker 3: 22:58

Right, like it's going to have to be that conversation.

Speaker 1: 23:00

Yeah, it has to be. That's the only way. That's really the only way people are going to remember it or actually apply it.

Speaker 3: 23:12

We talked a little bit about, organizations are ripping out the middle, and now we also see there's definitely well, let's not do that and it's just a turmoil across the board. What does all of this mean for someone who maybe has invested years of their life so far just to reach the manager level, and now they've made it, and this is the year they're experiencing? What does this all mean for them? What advice would you give to someone who's in that place?

Speaker 1: 23:41

does this all mean for them? What advice would you give to someone who's in that place? It's difficult, right? Like you spent 10 years trying to climb the ladder and then now the ladder has been abandoned and about to fall over, with you on it, right?

Speaker 3: 23:51

Yeah, it's like the top rungs are gone, the bottom that you were on are gone and now you're just hanging on.

Speaker 1: 23:57

You're like the whole thing rotted out from under me, yeah, but it does mean that you're going to have to be as flexible as you can when it comes to things like upskilling, showing your skills differently, finding ways to play the game in a different way, showcasing your impact essentially on any project or whatever it is that you're working on, ascend in an organization. I'm looking really hard at how I can showcase my outcomes and basically build narratives about how I've been a driving force behind whatever it is we were trying to do and how I integrate tech into my skillset. So you want to be really flexible around that. I work in an editorial space. Right, we are, I would say, in general, we are, I would say, in general, a curmudgeonly bunch. Anyways, editors are not lighthearted and high-spirited people.

Speaker 1: 24:49

most of the time there's always a lot of resistance to anything.

Speaker 2: 24:52

You guys don't have a fun committee there's no fun committee.

Speaker 1: 25:00

The fun committee is occasionally get together, have a few drinks and have a big bitch session. You're constantly trying to understand things in a different way or look at it in a different way, and a lot of this AI stuff does make you go oh, what is this? Oh God. But one of the things that's been tough for everybody is that, essentially, the job as it was five years ago doesn't exist anymore. The term editor is actually starting to mean something different, and you've got to be comfortable with that. You got to be prepared to integrate tech into it. However, you're going to do it, and this is not just our roles. This is across the spectrum of roles within the workforce, whether it's marketing or you're doing coding. The things that you thought were going to be central or core to your work aren't necessarily that anymore, and you're going to have to figure out how you're going to be flexible and adaptable and learn to use this stuff to do it better, quicker, in different ways than you've ever done it before.

Speaker 3: 25:52

Francesca I think I used to say this to you a long time ago where I was, like everyone needs to start to tap into their inner Madonna, who has painted herself like a million times over the last 40 years Got to tap into that right Reinvention.

Speaker 1: 26:09

Yeah, don't be attached to your title. Be attached to things that matter. Your salary matters, it's how you pay your bills. Your title is not how you pay your bills. I've always said you can call me the head schmuck in charge, I don't care. Call me whatever you want. This is what I want to make. This is what I want my benefits package to look like those concrete things that make my life possible. That's what I'm after. You can call me whatever you want, I don't care.

Speaker 3: 26:38

And don't let work define your self-worth.

Speaker 1: 26:40

You shouldn't even really connect it to your worth at all, like at all. One of the things that we did recently was we did a survey about the TV show Severance. We did a survey asking would you get the procedure?

Speaker 2: 26:54

What is Severance about for those that don't?

Speaker 1: 26:56

know. So, essentially, severance is a dystopian workplace drama, in which this company called Lumen Industries, I think it is has created a way so that you can sever your personality between work and your private life, so when you're at work, you don't remember anything about your private life, and when you're in your private life, you don't remember anything about work. It's called your innie and your outie, right, and so you live these two completely separate lives, not knowing, and you just know that you have to go like here at this time kind of thing. So I asked people would you do it? I had been asked by a UK journalist in response to a UK survey that found that 12% of the UK population would do it. So I was like let's see if we can find out a little bit more about the US and Canada. So we did our own version of it, and, for us, 20% said either definitely or they probably would 20%. Wow, 20%.

Speaker 1: 27:52

Here's the really disturbing part, though. We asked people what would be the amount of money that you would need to consider, and almost 70 gave a price only 30. I wouldn't do it for any amount of money. Almost 70 had an amount in which they were like yeah, I'll do it for that I was like oh man, what does that say say about us, when we're at with work, how we're connected to it? People aren't seeing value between what they learn at work and applying it into their life. Every experience I've had informs who I am as a person. That includes what happened at work, not just the stuff that was outside of it. But I think other people aren't maybe seeing the connection or aren't seeing the value of the connection, and that's a little disturbing and sad, quite frankly.

Speaker 2: 28:41

Let's extrapolate that to the US population that 20% of the population wants to hasa dollar amount figure that they would go for to sever their work. Mind it's actually almost a benefit, yeah, To cause yourself a traumatic brain injury.

Speaker 1: 28:57

It's actually almost a benefit, yeah, to cause yourself a traumatic brain injury. That's essentially what it is, if you think about it.

Speaker 2: 29:03

Yeah, it brings a really interesting question around what's the biggest thing that needs to change? If you could change one thing that would make the role of a manager more palatable right now, or at least not want to have to sever some sort of autonomy. Basically, what would need to change?

Speaker 1: 29:26

This isn't just a workplace thing. This is how we all serve, and I'm not to get too political here, but too much of our lives is now dedicated to serving capitalism. Essentially, that's really what it is. This idea that labor unions are bad was the beginning of the end for reasonable behavior about work. And you think about the way Europe constructs work and what their expectations are for people. It's very pretty reasonable.

Speaker 1: 29:59

But in the United States your life is work. Your value to the society is tied to whether or not you have a job and what you do within that job, how much money you make, how much you consume. All of our lives is essentially in some service to capitalism when you really break it down and that would have to change culturally in order for this to get totally better. Because what people are really trying to block out when they answer that question is the way in which they serve it, and they'd almost rather just not remember it than have to deal with all the demands of it and trying to make it match their personal values, Because that's hard. A lot of organizations really don't. How often are you going to find a job that matches your personal values? If you I don't know care about the planet. It's hard Culturally. We just have to shift away from your purpose is to serve the machine, and I don't know if that's going to happen.

Speaker 2: 30:57

I think these Gen B kids are gonna do it.

Speaker 1: 30:59

I have a lot of faith in them. I do? I have a lot they've had a real I'm not gonna put up with this shit kind of attitude and I'm like good for you guys. You know children are our future, yeah we'll see how alpha does when they get there.

Speaker 3: 31:28

We do this thing called wrap it round, where we'll ask you a question. You can respond yes, no or elaborate if you feel so. How do you?

Speaker 1: 31:36

feel All right. Yeah, I'm going to ask anybody I work with. I'm super long-winded all the time, so I'm always going to elaborate.

Speaker 3: 31:43

Let's do that. This is where the juice comes, so we love it. So it's 2030.

Speaker 1: 31:52

What's work going to look like? Well, haven't you heard? We're all going to be wandering around trying to figure out what our purpose is in life. Least you listen to bill gates, right? I do think it'll be very mechanical, like in all respects, like robots will be in the workplace. They've made it to agi the white collar jobs. I don't know if they'll exist or not.

Speaker 1: 32:09

There's this cool thing going around. It's called like ai 2027.com, and somebody ran like a simulation based on all current events and everything, and it was very, I don't know to say, enlightening or disturbing, but it was interesting. Let's just put it that way. I don't know, will white collar jobs exist in five years? Maybe, but this goes all the way up to the ceo, right, because strategy is a skill like it'll do that better, it'll do decision making better, supposedly. Yeah, creative tasks you go right down the list, and they may even do some of the blue collar stuff too, better too. I was saying to somebody recently that old saying plumbers rule the world. They do, I don't, I do, they do. And I don't know if it'll do plumbing as well.

Speaker 3: 32:51

So maybe plumbing is the thing to get into someone who lives in an old house in new england. I don't know if AI is going to be able to navigate it like Joe.

Speaker 1: 33:02

Yeah, because Joe has just been rigging that thing for years.

Speaker 3: 33:06

He's been in every janky house. He knows how to navigate around here. It's so interesting you say that as you respond about Shopify's CEO, who is asking everyone to justify hiring for humans and to showcase what they consider to use AI first before they put in human bodies.

Speaker 2: 33:24

We're always trying to see that. I read that same memo.

Speaker 3: 33:27

Yeah, yeah, okay, let's move on to something a little more fun, a little more personal. What music are you listening to right now? What's hyping you up?

Speaker 1: 33:36

It's spring and I'm going through this like reliving of my college music listening, and I'm listening to a lot of like early to mid 2000s indie hip hop at the moment Indie hip hop. Yeah, what do you?

Speaker 2: 33:47

consider indie hip hop.

Speaker 1: 33:49

Oh God, jedi mind tricks and yeah, like stuff that was like not on the radio at the time, so it was like very, we used to call it underground. Now they just label it indie, same thing as they do with rock music.

Speaker 3: 34:04

What are you reading or listening to right now?

Speaker 1: 34:08

I started this book called the Fourth Turning, by William Strauss and Neil Howe. It's about American history. They present it as seasons it's like 80 to 100 year cycles, and it presents the idea that we are currently in a historical winter, which is a very difficult time, and spring will eventually come. But it breaks down the last hundred years as like examples of these seasons. I can't speak too much about it. I've only just started it.

Speaker 3: 34:34

It's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting to see the patterns and maybe what to look out for.

Speaker 1: 34:39

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 34:40

Now I'm curious did you get to the part where are we in winter, Because it feels like we're like Minnesota January.

Speaker 1: 34:47

I think we're all just to that point where it's like the post-Christmas depression.

Speaker 3: 34:54

Like I got bills and I'm on a holiday hangover.

Speaker 1: 34:58

You're just like I don't know. At least the football playoffs are on. I can just eat chicken wings whenever I want.

Speaker 3: 35:07

Who do you really admire?

Speaker 1: 35:09

Former Liverpool FC manager, jurgen Klopp, is one of my favorite people in the world. I look up to him a great deal, not just because I'm a big supporter of the football club itself, but because he's an incredible example of what a leader could be, and he's just an example of how to transform culture and, honestly, just a lovely human being.

Speaker 3: 35:30

Okay, what's a piece of advice you wish everyone knew?

Speaker 1: 35:35

I was once given a really valuable piece of advice that I think is great for leaders and really anyone working with other human beings to remember, and it's that you can't expect something you've learned through experience to be common sense for somebody else. And it's just one of those things like you think why wouldn't they do that? So you didn't know how to do that. Always, like, eventually, you learn that because you broke the thing or you made the mistake, and so don't expect anybody else to just know that because you think it's a thing that you're supposed to know.

Speaker 2: 36:16

All right, David, so awesome to talk with you today. Thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker 1: 36:19

Yeah, yeah, I hope I didn't ramble, too much. No, it's awesome?

Speaker 3: 36:22

Not at all, not at all. And hey, how can our listeners best connect with you Of?

Speaker 1: 36:26

course, you can get in touch with me on LinkedIn. I'm easy enough to find on there. Be sure to check out to the People Managing People podcast. I'm the host on there. If you come over to peoplemanagingpeoplecom, you can get signed up for the newsletter and I'm always sending on a regular basis, a couple of times a week, different messages from us, and then come to one of our events. That's what I really recommend. Our next one is dedicated to RTO mandates. It's on April 24th, but, yeah, give me a follow and don't hesitate to reach out. Awesome, all right, thanks for being here.

Speaker 2: 36:56

Thank you to reach out Awesome.

Speaker 1: 36:56

All right, thanks for being here, thank you.

Speaker 3: 36:59

This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams. So please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.