 DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives are growing quickly in organizations around the world. Leaders and entire departments dedicated to DEI – or EDIB (equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging) – are being installed in for-profit and nonprofit organizations. These teams are committed to deeply embedding DEI principles into the values and actions of the business so that it can be more accessible, welcoming, and empowering.
Here we’ll discuss the “E” in DEI. Compared to diversity and inclusion, the words equity and equality (with which equity is sometimes substituted) are ambiguous terms that can be defined very differently from organization to organization. According to Robert Harris, Director of EDIB at National Audubon Society, it's "not advisable to use equity and equality interchangeably." "In general," he says, "equality is when folks receive the same resources in amount and proportion and equity is when differences are recognized. Resource allocation varies based on those differences to achieve equality." How you implement your DEI initiatives will depend on how these terms are defined. Your definition of these terms will also influence your culture deck, hiring process, team charter, operating agreements, mission statement, media/investor relations, etc. Making sure that they are clear and meaningful for everyone on the team is very important. Equity may be defined in the following ways:
To review, diversity means that you have various people in the room, equity means that there is awareness that they are not all on equal footing, and inclusion means that you have a process for engaging them. Equality is the outcome of people being equally resourced. If you’d like to have a conversation about team performance, team design, or team development, please schedule a discovery call today.
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WHY YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT SUCCESSION PLANNING Interview featuring Joran Oppelt, Founder of Illustrious Consulting, and Sumaya K. Owens, Founder of Present Moment Media. Sumaya: Let's dive in. I know you work with founders, CEOs, and various other executives. What is coming up for them? What do they have in common? How does this topic relate to them? Joran: The most common theme I hear when I work with leaders and teams at the top of the organization is bottlenecking. I'm always talking in metaphor. So we're either bottlenecked and stuck in the decision-making process, or they start talking about the pie like they have their fingers in everything. They can't get out of the day-to-day. They can't step back and let the team lead and make decisions. There's that kind of pain that you hear from the team. Sometimes from the C-suite or sometimes from direct reports, but for the leader, it almost looks like the opposite. It's like, “I don't know if I have the right team. I don't know if I trust the people I have.” And as a founder, as a leader, that's important. That's an important sense of security and stability to have, that you trust the team you have and that you have the right people in the right seats. The funny contradiction about that is that they sometimes need to be told what they need to do to demonstrate that trustworthiness. So, it is you as a leader who is responsible. You are beholden to communicating what you need to see demonstrated to have that trust in the team and know that the time is right to step back and let them lead. Sumaya: And how do you help them work through these bottlenecks and other issues they're having? Joran: At a high level, we use a lot of the coaching methods around team coaching or one-on-one development plans. There might be some visioning or some chartering that needs to happen around the team or the team's goals. Sometimes that's a short process depending on what internal, intrapersonal and interpersonal work they've done already. It just depends on how ready the team and the people on the team are for that. If they have some of those foundational building blocks in place – they might have a vision and need to orient around it and get everybody leaning in the same direction and filling each other's sails around that one vision – that’s one thing. They also might have five different ideas of what the vision is. So having those foundational building blocks in place first is really important. Once that's in place, then the leadership development piece can come online. Sumaya: And what do they need to believe in order to be ready for this step? Joran: Yeah, that's a big one. It reminds me of the coaching question, “what do you need to believe in order for this to be true?” That founder or CEO really needs to believe in the power of the process. The best leaders really love and appreciate what coaching and having a thought partner can provide. They also budget for it. It sounds self-serving for me to say this, but the best people I've worked with – and the people I've seen the most success with – have a budget for consulting and coaching, just like they would have a budget for marketing or innovation. They plan for coaching and consulting as part of the process. They launch with the intent to scale with this as a line in the business, because they know it's an important piece. They know it's a vital piece – not only for them, but the people they are going to have reporting to them. Another key is that they are queuing up leaders behind them, constantly getting people set up to lead in their place. So there is a belief in the power of the process. There's a belief in the power of human potential. There's a belief in their team to get things done, and a belief in their team to make the right decisions. There's all kinds of beliefs they need to have. And that is a mindset shift for some people. Not everybody starts a company believing in their team. Founders at startups have typically never led people before. But it’s not too long before their focus needs to move from managing people to keeping up with the constant pivoting. That transition can be hard if your team isn’t showing you the things you want to see. They will make decisions differently from you. They will lead differently than you. They will communicate in a style that's different from you. That's sometimes where those bridges need to be formed to build trust. Sumaya: One of the things I've heard from you about working with founders is that at times it's challenging for them to let other people lead or step up to the plate or take more ownership. I think that leads very well into this topic of succession planning. Whenever we've talked about it, my understanding is it's really about the sustainability and the long term goals of the company, with or without the founder being present. Can you talk a little bit more about what succession planning is? What is involved? Joran: I think succession planning should come online earlier than most people think. You should really be thinking about it early on. As the business scales, you get to the point where you should start thinking about it. You're going to have to model the way, show the team how to communicate the vision, and be queuing up leaders behind you. It's usually later on that the team is learning how to play new instruments or the business finds itself flat lining. It could be that you're not bringing in more business because the founder is in delivery mode all the time. You’re unable to scale because the leader is unwilling to develop more leaders. You may find yourself at a crossroads: “Can we bring more business on and scale? If we do that, that means that we need somebody else (or multiple people) in delivery mode.” I think planning before that moment happens would really benefit people so that they can be ready for it. Looking at your business roadmap and knowing you're approaching that crossroads moment is crucial. You can say, “OK, here is that crossroads moment we read about and predicted. We knew it was coming so we’re ready to act.” I think the key components of a really good succession plan are having the right team, knowing you have the right team, believing in your team, and then measuring what your team is doing. The hard part that we don't always talk about is that some tough decisions might need to be made before you get to that crossroads moment. I say tough decision because it's hard sometimes to discern whether it's the founder or CEO saying, “I don't think this is the right person to step up and lead in my absence” or whether that founder or CEO just hasn't asked the right questions yet. Maybe they haven't poured their knowledge, wisdom, and experience into them properly. Maybe they haven't opened the door to give them opportunities to prove themselves and demonstrate their leadership in important ways. Maybe they haven’t allowed them to build that trust. It really is a two-way street to figure out whether you have the right team before you start to step away. Sumaya: Absolutely. And whenever a leader, a CEO or founder decides to begin this process of succession planning, who do they go to? I know that as a consultant, this is something you offer, but, what do they look for in a coach or a consultant if they're looking for someone to help them with succession planning? Joran: You work with who you trust. You work with people who have helped someone you know. People almost never look up a consultant on Google. You might have someone on your team look up the pain points they’re experiencing (change management, team development, culture work, etc.). But most times, you're reaching out to somebody in your Mastermind group or a friend in the industry and saying, “Hey, we're dealing with this. Who do you know that can help us get through this crossroads moment?” It's also not just taste or style. Sometimes there are worldviews you want somebody you work with to align with. It's not just, “I went to college with this person” or “they're into sports, or music, or whatever.” Sometimes it's, “Can I get a sense that this person is developmentally just above or below where I'm at?” It's like the emotional tone scale. You want to communicate just above or below where people are at. That's where we can get the sense of matching culturally with an organization or share the same sense of humor or values. Sumaya: And that's important because how you run your business is based on your own values as a leader. I've definitely been in those situations. I’ve worked with a coach or consultant who was recommended to me and the way that they wanted to implement certain strategies or grow or scale the business in certain ways didn't align with me. If you had to think of a couple of values that are important to you as a coach or consultant, what would they be? The reason I ask is that I'm curious to know if there are other people out there listening who may resonate with them and share similar values. Joran: Illustrious has a set of values in order that we might deliver the best possible, most creative, premium work and value to our clients. But how I’d like to respond to that question is, “What values might I look for in potential clients?” There's something around honesty for me. I've worked with leaders and teams before that weren't necessarily forthcoming, weren't willing to be truthful, weren't willing to be honest with their leaders, and leaders not willing to disclose all the details to their teams. This just builds up resentment. Teams and leaders who are willing to be radically honest with each other, those are the ones who are the most fun to work with. There might be bumps along the road in the process of being honest with each other, but it's like any other relationship. I'd rather have honesty and communication now, and be able to face the things now, rather than have this stuff building up over time. So, radical honesty is important as a value. It doesn't have to be listed on the “About Us” page on their website. But, if I get a sense from the team that they're being honest with each other, then that's a green flag. The other one is the belief in human potential. I mean, they've got to believe that people can change. They've got to believe that people can get better. They've got to believe that if they feed and water something, it will grow. There's just a belief in potential that's gotta be there. It's the growth mindset as opposed to the static mindset. It sometimes takes some digging, because people will say things you want to hear – not just to me, but to each other. They might say, “We believe in this” or “We value this.” But then, when you look at (and talk to) the team, you can clearly see they’re not living it. And that lack of transparency and dishonesty leads to a lack of psychological safety. Then, we’re talking about larger problems – distrust, people shutting down, and turnover. Learn more by scheduling a free discovery call: https://calendly.com/joranslane/30min  "I Was Fired For Doodling" Excerpt from The Best Kept Secret Podcast (Part 8/8) Jay: Joran, I'm gonna go in a slightly different direction. I would like to understand what happened in your life that would most explain why you do what you do today. Joran: Back in ‘94 or ‘95 I needed a job and I needed to start making money. I had worked all kinds of jobs there in Florida. The Florida Spine Institute was a premier medical organization in the area at the time. I thought, “If I can get a job there, I'll be set.” So, I got a job as a transcriptionist. Don't ask me how, but I got it. My first day on the job, I was listening to the doctor’s notes on the headphones and I picked up my yellow legal pad and blue ball point they had given me. And I was just doodling. Probably a dragon or a skull or something, you know, just kind of doodling in the margins of my paper. I felt this hand pat me on my shoulder, like, “Come with me.” I was dragged into the office and fired on the spot. Day one, fired for doodling. And it rocked me. I was like, “Oh, okay. Am I gonna have to put down my creative self? Am I gonna have to change who I am at my core to grow up and have a job in the adult world?” It really affected me for a while until I landed in publishing with a team of creatives and realized, no, there's a tribe of people out here doing creative work and making money at it. But, that, I think, is why I do what I do – so that people don't have to be so rigid and feel like they can’t doodle in the margins of their life. Sometimes doodling in the margins provides the perfect respite or reframe. Sometimes it makes your work better or more effective. If there's something I have to say, it's that life doesn't have to be either/or. Business doesn't have to be a yellow legal pad and a blue ballpoint pen. It can be skulls and dragons and mythic quests and whatever else you want to make of it. Learn more by scheduling a free discovery session with Joran Oppelt: https://calendly.com/joranslane/30min "What Makes Illustrious Great" Excerpt from The Best Kept Secret Podcast (Part 7/8) Jay: One of the things that you were, I think, very articulate about in the first part of our show was the need for a leader to let go. A need for a leader to get beyond command and control and look outside of themselves to a team, be it internal or external. That always reminds me of that old saying, “You are the company you keep.” I think when someone looks to work with another company to help them, they want to know that they're working with the best because that is actually a reflection on them and the standards that they set and how they see themselves. Joran: I have to respond to that because when you said, “You are the company you keep,” what I heard was the double entendre of not only surrounding yourself with amazing people who make it look easy and can do what you need, but also, you are the organization that you're leading, right? It's both of those things. And you know, we'd say that the degree or amount of change that's available within the organization is equal to the degree and the amount of change that an accountable champion or leader can sustain. The organization will bear what the leadership can bear, right? Jay: Indeed. And I wish I was actually the author of that quote, but I fear I was beaten to it by that very wise individual who goes by the name of Anonymous. Having said that, it certainly begs the question, “When people look at Illustrious to understand what it is that makes you great at what you do, what can they latch onto when they're looking for help?” Joran: What makes us great? I would go back to our values. We have a set of values that we live by – as every organization should. We've got three values that I think articulate who we are and what we believe. We are creative and outside-the-box thinkers, so Energizing Creativity is one of our core values. Second, we are Committed to Quality Outcomes, which means that if we have to redo something and iterate again to get it right, catch all the misspellings, get the colors matched by hex code, and proofread the email five times, we do that. I don't want work going out to the clients that looks anything less than stellar. Third, we are Compassionately Curious. We ask questions because we are coaches and facilitators and consultants and that art of inquiry and getting to the next “why” is the game we play, that's how we learn. That's how we get better. And, I will say, because I've mentioned the coaching we do a couple of times, I might add a fourth value in there, and that is a deep seated Belief in Human Potential. When I am with clients, I don't see them as the story they're telling. I see them as the white hot center, that light that is in them and that potential that they have to unfold and become and grow. That's what I see and that's who I'm working with. Learn more by scheduling a free discovery session with Joran Oppelt: https://calendly.com/joranslane/30min "The Pain of Change" Excerpt from The Best Kept Secret Podcast (Part 6/8) Jay: What are the pain points that you resolve for your clients, and why do they need you to get rid of that pain? Joran: That's a good question because sometimes it's a little ambiguous. Some of the things we hear are, “We're constantly pivoting and we're unable to manage and respond to change in a timely fashion.” We call that decision fatigue. Or purpose fatigue. Like, “We've changed our North Star 10 times this quarter, where are we even headed?” Misalignment is another. Lack of clarity around who is setting the North Star. Does the team understand where we're going? Is everybody leaning in the same direction every 90 days? Do we have the right people in the right seats? All of that misalignment and chaos can be felt throughout the organization. Innovation wise, they might be feeling irrelevant. They might feel the pressure in the market to come up with new ideas or launch new programs or products. That creative spark might feel like it's gone out. Again, going back to the idea that people in a misaligned culture can be withholding and stop bringing their best ideas to the table. So, what can we do about it? What happened? Has this gone on for a long time? They don’t usually describe their own culture as toxic. But they'll say it's “uninspired” or “misaligned.” They may say, “We've got a lot of personal conflict or drama.” If you're an organization experiencing this, you are at great risk of churn, losing your top talent, and having to spend six months onboarding new talent. This, in turn, causes you to miss out on goals or KPIs and lose money. So, that's what we have our antenna up and are listening for. Learn more by scheduling a free discovery session with Joran Oppelt:
https://calendly.com/joranslane/30min "Three Steps to Visionary Leadership" Excerpt from The Best Kept Secret Podcast (Part 5/8) Jay: I think you made a fairly compelling case for moving into this style of leadership using visual storytelling, thinking, and tools. Now what do I do? How do I actually make this happen? Joran: There are three things we talk about in the book Visionary Leadership – three steps you can take. The first step is to take ownership of the problem. You have to take a hard look at your planning and your systems and your processes, the style of communication and leadership, all of that. You have to ask the hard questions. Does everybody have access to the things they need to become the collaborative, visual thinkers you're expecting them to be? Have you provided them with the necessary onboarding and training? Are you painting done around what success looks like for their specific role and how you see them fitting into your future vision? All of this is important. You have to do step one, take ownership of the problem, it is on you. And if it's not happening, you've gotta own it and start doing better. The second thing is to break the big thing into smaller things. This can feel overwhelming and it's a lot to do. You know, okay, we've done our customer experience journey, but now we've gotta change these 20 things in the process or in the company. Where do we even start? It's like cleaning out a closet. Take the things out and sort them and organize them and visually stack them and talk about what you're keeping and what you're tossing and is it urgent versus important? And you've gotta lay those things into a plan. You start that by putting things into smaller and smaller buckets. Then you can implement. Then the third one is really important. It should be the first thing because it's the most important, ask for help. You cannot do this alone. You've gotta let your need for control go and not let it keep you from greatness. We talk a lot about the genius zone, which Gay Hendrix talks about in the Big Leap. You've got to operate not from a space of competency or excellence, but your zone of genius, right? Which means you've got to delegate, offload some of these things to other people and, you've got to ask for help. That's hard for people. Like we've said, we are not in a culture, especially as men sometimes, and trained for and modeled to ask other people for help. You've got to stop and ask for help. Those scrum masters, those aren't the only people who can put stickies on a wall. Those hip looking creative directors aren't the only people in your organization who can think creatively. Those innovation teams that you've created aren't the only ones who can test and validate ideas and make the business better. All of this stuff has to be scaled throughout and it starts by asking for help. Jay: One of the things that, as you're talking has come into my mind is this idea of being visionary. And how visionary is a visual tool and how that leads straight towards being able to visualize what it is that you want to achieve. Visual thinking and then needing to have tools and engagement that seems to all tie it together. Learn more by scheduling a free discovery session with Joran Oppelt:
https://calendly.com/joranslane/30min "The Emotional Side of Change" Excerpt from The Best Kept Secret Podcast (Part 4/8) Jay: When we talk about leadership, one of the things that leaders have to do is lead their teams and their organizations from where they are to where they're trying to get to. One of the things we know is that change is hard. I think human beings are wired to resist change. So I want you to comment on the perspective of, “I'm the leader of a business unit or an entire company. I'm hearing what you're telling me that I ought to make things more effective, and that requires me to change.” Can you talk about the emotional side? If I'm that leader who's got to green light everything moving forward in the business, where am I starting from and where am I gonna end up? Joran: Change begins with becoming self-aware. For any leader who all of a sudden has the insight or the reflection, “Oh, this is on me; I need to change; There's something in my habits or my behavior or my routine that needs to shift, that needs to be rethought,” there are a couple of ways they can do that. First, Michael Bungay Stanier talks about it in The Coaching Habit. The steps to changing and creating new habits. Instead of doing a certain thing when another certain thing happens. You say, “When (blank) happens, instead of “X”, I will “Y” And then you work that like a muscle. You're not gonna get it right the first time. It takes time and it takes work. But it is like a muscle and everybody benefits. The benefits for you at the end are that you're leading from the bottom of the pyramid. If you do it right, you are now confident in the entire stakeholder team and you stop to “paint done” for them. You have been explicitly detailed with your vision and your expectations, and you've set them up to get those results. And you shouldn’t care how they get those results. You should focus on the what and the why. Have faith and confidence in your team. That alone can be liberating as a leader. Because as a CEO or as a founder, you stay awake nights thinking, “Are they going to build the thing I want to build?” You just doubt, doubt, doubt. Like we talked about earlier, having the clarity and wisdom to know the difference between what is a short-term project that's going to fire the team up – inspire them, motivate them, incentivize them – versus long-term thinking and major investments. There's wisdom and clarity that comes with that. The strength and speed of your visual vocabulary can make you feel like a superhero all of a sudden. You can communicate faster and more clearly to more people. There's a strength and a confidence that comes with developing and nurturing visual thinking, not only in yourself, but in your team. Jay: It reminds me of when the team really gels and really begins to perform. I like your analogy. You're leading from the bottom of the pyramid. I think what you get is what I'll call the Proud Mama or Proud Papa Syndrome. It just really fills you up with pride and joy in what others are achieving – knowing that you had something to do with giving them the space and creating the environment that allowed them to flourish. Learn more by scheduling a free discovery session with Joran Oppelt:
https://calendly.com/joranslane/30min "The Business Benefits of Visual Thinking" Excerpt from The Best Kept Secret Podcast (Part 3/8) Jay: You talk about the importance of communication which clearly makes a lot of sense. You were very specific about the value of visual communication and visual tools. How about amplifying that? Give us some examples of what you mean and why. Visual communication gives you a lot of return on technique compared to, “let me just get people around the table or on a zoom call and start wagging my finger.” Joran: For me, you can communicate visually if you think visually. Visual thinking is different from design thinking. Design thinking is where you're moving in iterations and you are thinking like an artist by testing, experimenting and validating. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about visual thinking, which means that as opposed to thinking like an artist you are behaving like an artist. When you need to talk about a concept, you draw a picture of it. When you need to host a meeting you have a visual agenda or use a visual pie chart. It's proven that visual communication connects with our brains faster. We're able to process the information quicker and retain that information longer. All of that is proven science. Visual thinking leads to visual communication, and that's how I recommend leading every meeting – every engagement. When you see visual thinking happening in a group, it may look like storytelling. Like people gathered around a fire or drawing pictures on the wall. Whether that's a team retrospective, or a customer journey map, or a cone of plausibility, if you put that image on a wall and you gather your team around it, you will create a conversation that will lead to more clarity. It's similar to the pushback which we experience in facilitation and consulting. You want people to push back on concepts and images. If I'm talking about a tree in a forest and somebody thinks I'm talking about a pine tree, but I’m imagining something else, that's not going to be an effective meeting. I need to be able to say (or illustrate), “No, it's an apple tree and there are green apples on the tree, and it's not standing alone in the orchard. It's got a bunch of trees around it.” We are then super clear as a team what we're talking about. We are “painting done” at that point, and that's why getting these images on a wall, thinking visually, communicating visually is so important. It's effective, it's faster, it empowers your team to be involved in the process and leading becomes really easy at that point. Jay: I think it's very interesting. Visual storytelling and visual thinking is definitely a twist that I haven't really heard before and I think that is well worth exploring, but I'm sitting here saying to myself, “It sounds good, but how does it move the needle for my business?”
So when you have done what you advocate – when you have either worked with clients or seen other companies that have used these techniques – how do you see the business benefiting? What are some objective metrics that you can point to that demonstrate effectiveness? Joran: Most recently we worked with a big sales software company and we built a journey map for them that was focused on their complex sales deals and their discovery process – all the way from discovery to close. We built a Mural for them because they were struggling with their people sticking to the sales process. They're a huge company. They need all their salespeople to do the same thing. It's replicable and scalable for a reason. They needed a map built that every salesperson could adhere to. So that every sales manager, mentor, or coach could go in asynchronously and set up for coaching calls and talk about the discovery process and the stakeholder map, and ask things like, “Who are you talking to? Who else is connected to the deal? Who else is holding the purse strings?” Doing that visually has optimized those coaching calls. It has increased adoption to a very important process for a company as large as they are. We also worked with a global AV company that had 13 strategic initiatives. If we're talking about a balanced scorecard, these are high level initiatives. They were calling them “must win battles.” Well, for an executive team of 12 people, you can't hold 13 “must win battles” in your head all the time. “All 13 of these things are equally important?” That can't be true. So breaking it down visually using the OKRs process and saying, “Okay, what are the top three things we need to be able to recite in the hallway? Can my team reflect back to me what our top three priorities are this quarter?” We were able to do that visually using graphic recording and the OKRs process. Now, those hand-drawn posters are hanging in the common areas and conference rooms throughout their office. It's been transformative for their culture. And it's impacting the bottom line. Learn more by scheduling a free discovery session with Joran Oppelt: https://calendly.com/joranslane/30min "From Ineffective to Inspiring Leader" Excerpt from The Best Kept Secret Podcast (Part 2/8) Jay: We have many listeners shaking their heads like this, saying, I know, I know. My leadership isn't where it needs to be. The people I work for, their leadership isn't where it needs to be. So let's talk about what you should do. How do you go from a middling, if not ineffective, leader? What are some of the things that you would advocate to turn that around and be an inspiring leader? Joran: I recommend two things: inviting and aligning. The first one is inviting people into this process, involving your team through visual communication and collaboration, and putting down the idea that you have to be the one with all the answers. Get rid of the command and control model in your brain. Reprogram, unplug, scrub, reboot, and invite your people into the problem-solving process. I recommend doing that using visual tools. Then aligning happens. Once you have successfully cast a vision and deployed the mission, you align the team with a balanced approach along management methods or innovation horizons. What is the quick win? What short-term thinking do we need to deploy here versus the long-term thinking we need to apply in our innovation portfolio? Aligning your team is then the second step. But I would use visual tools to get there. Learn more by scheduling a free discovery session with Joran Oppelt:
https://calendly.com/joranslane/30min "Why Do Leaders Struggle and The Blame Game" Excerpt from The Best Kept Secret Podcast (Part 1/8) A Conversation with Jay Kingley and Joran Oppelt Jay: Now, Joran, I know that you spend a huge chunk of your time working with executives, working with leadership and their teams, trying to make things more effective. I would love your take on what you see as the big issues as to why leaders often struggle in that role. Joran: Well, you've set it up pretty well. We're not taught how to lead historically. Even when someone goes through the academic process or business school, we're shown or taught, and it's rarely modeled, I'll say it's rarely modeled well for us. In an increasingly complex business environment, as we go forward into the future, we are surrounded by many screens and devices. We've got this continuous partial attention happening. And we've got scaling, ideally scaling organizations that we're leading. There's a tendency to blame, and finger point away from ourselves at the market or other circumstances. And you know, there are things that happen in organizations like, people just not showing up, people not being honest, people not hitting their goals, people holding back, people withholding, where they used to bring a bunch of great ideas to the table. Ineffective meetings, right? Staff churn, staff turnover, all of this stuff. As a leader, you can point at that and say, well, I don't have a good team. Right? You can blame them. You can blame what's happening around you. The reality is that you need to be showing up as a leader. The other thing you can do is finger-point at yourself. The other thing you can do is blame yourself. I deal with a lot of clients who say; I don't want to be that kind of manager. I came from that environment. I'm trying to do this differently. I'm trying to show up as a different kind of manager or director or CEO, and they don't step into that leadership role. You mentioned people leaving jobs. A recent report, "The Future of Work," said that 65% of millennials have left a job because of their manager. It's the platitude that people don't leave bad jobs; they leave bad managers. This is the reality that we live in. So, stepping up, being a leader, and knowing that the best leaders lead from the bottom of the pyramid, they get the best results through other people. That's a key to being a leader in this future complex business world we're all co-creating. Jay: You said something I think is very interesting. I want to explore a little bit with you about blame. People often point the finger of blame outwards, and you're saying, well, often they do, but there are also many cases where people point that finger back at themselves. Then you get what I call the "woe is me." And nobody wants to be around "woe is me." It's that black cloud, so to speak, of doom and gloom. Joran: It could be, "Woe is me," or it could be, "Oh, well, I was never shown; I was never taught." And as a team member, it's like, read a book or something. Go study up, brush up on how to do this, man; you're leading us. You know? Jay: Right. So I wanted you to hit on the difference between blame and briefly, and we'll go even further and say, making excuses versus honest learning and saying, you know, I want to understand what happened here. I want to understand why it happened because it wasn't the outcome I wanted and what I will do differently next time. So that the outcome is certainly different and, hopefully, more along the lines of doing that. And, when you go through that process, do you have any points of view about whether you should be self-reflective? Should that be, I need to get my team members involved and have an honest, constructive conversation. Is it a combination of your experience, Joran? What works best? Joran: I'm a huge believer in this line from T. Harv Eker. It's my favorite quote in the world. "How you do anything is how you do everything." So, look at how you're showing up in all of your relationships, your friendships, your family relationships. How are you leading in other ways? How are you solving those problems? How are you communicating clearly and effectively in those situations? How are you learning from things you could have said differently or framed differently, or how are you getting better all the time? And then just do that with your team. Learn more by scheduling a free discovery session with Joran Oppelt:
https://calendly.com/joranslane/30min |
ABOUT THE AuthorJoran Slane Oppelt is an international speaker, author and consultant with certifications in coaching, storytelling, design thinking and virtual facilitation. Archives
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