[upbeat music] Coming up on the Leadership Growth Podcast.[upbeat music][upbeat music] You know, everybody talks about company culture. Culture is not like words on a page. It's not like a poster. It's not a page on your website. Culture is literally the interactions you have every day, with your direct reports. Like, that is culture. And if that relationship is good, your culture's good. And if that relationship is strained in any way, your culture is bad.[upbeat music] Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Leadership Growth Podcast. I'm your host, Daniel Stewart, along with my brother Peter Stewart, and today we're honored to have a special guest with us. Phil Wilson. So thank you so much for joining us and uh let me read a little bit about your background, Phil, and it's a pleasure and honor to have you with us. Yeah, thanks guys. Absolutely. So Phillip B. Wilson, to be official, of course,[chuckling] CEO of LRI Consulting Services, Inc. and Founder of Approachable Leadership, where he and his team help clients thrive and create extraordinary workplaces. He is regularly featured in the business media, including Fox Business, Fast Company, Bloomberg News, HR Magazine and the New York Times, as well as being the author of seven books, including the forthcoming book The Leader-Shift Playbook. So again, Phil, pleasure to have you on the Leadership Growth Podcast. Yeah, thanks, Daniel. Thanks— thanks Peter. It's great to have you here. And as we were chatting a little bit before the show, we were chatting through the fact that we all have something in common.[laughing] So as many of our listeners know, our dad started the business back in 1980. What is that, 45, 40— yeah, 45 years ago.[laughing] And you have a father that started a business as well 47 years ago or so. And and we often will start a um the podcast with a little segment called Memory Lane.[upbeat music] So, as you think of an experience perhaps, or just kind of comment on working with your dad, I'm going to go over to you, Phil, and— what would you say as a Memory Lane component um as you think about working with your dad over the years? I have a lot of memories of working with my dad. He's a colorful guy, so he— his nickname is Diamond Don he had a lot of, a lot of great sayings. He, he actually has like a book of his sayings. And one of the ones that I'll bring up today is, uh it was not uncommon for us to have a difference of opinion about like what we should be doing in the business or, you know, sort of a business direction. And I would like make my case for a while. And then at some point he would just like stop me and he's like,“hey, why don't we just save each other a lot of time and just assume that I'm right?”[laughing] Another, another classic one is, uh,“you know what, we'll just take a vote on it except for your vote's not going to count.”[laughing] So I don't know if your guy's dad was anything like that but uh, you know, we we would, uh, yeah, I would have to spend a lot of time convincing him to, uh, you know, to change a direction that he was headed Yeah. I'm glad you shared those thoughts and I think there are many, many listeners who can who can relate as they've worked with individuals who have some strong opinions, especially when there's been a legacy and a tradition of doing things a certain way and that that transition to a subsequent generation in an organization, a subsequent kind of leadership team, uh there's there's always some of that compromise or lack thereof[laughing] as it goes.[laughing] Yeah.[laughing] Oh, yeah. And it reminds me, your dad has a book of some of his sayings our dad, one of the things he loved to do was always collect quotes and sayings. And and oftentimes we actually have put them into a book, one of our books that he actually wrote is Leadership Gems. And so he would even put them in gems and use them as learning moments, not only with us at home, but with all of his clients as well and he'd say,“Ah, remember this one” or “remember this one.”“And remember the—” Anyway, he was very prone to do that. And we learned a ton as we listened to these gems. Yeah. My dad had a lot of gems as well but they were not suitable for work.[laughing] His his book is uh—[laughing] not quite leadership gems, although, I mean, there, there are some amazing little nuggets of wisdom uh in there, but but yeah, not— that one you cannot find on Amazon. Oh, that's too good. Okay. Phil, thank you for going down Memory Lane and just kind of commenting and family businesses, uh, tremendous impact and glad we can all be a part of... all be a part of them. So this is an interesting segue to the topic at hand, which is, yes, leadership, and especially the transition, the shift. Mm Hmm. How does one go from an individual contributor, a technical, focused person to now suddenly, oh, I'm a leader. Do I have to change anything? Do I have to change a mindset? Do I have to do all these things? And if they don't this train wreck that might happen. And so let's let's talk for a moment. Phil, give us a sense of what really is involved in this shift. You know, what is it? What does it look like? Open that up for us so we can then dive in a little deeper. Yeah. I talk about at the beginning of of the next book, which is The Leader-Shift Playbook. So that's what the you know, the book is literally about my own personal journey. But it's based on a lot of learning that I've done really the hard way over, you know, decades. And um I I mentioned in the book that like I've been our our, you know, I'm a labor lawyer. I kind of came up in the world dealing with, uh, you know, basically union disputes in companies. Those tend to happen when there's a leadership problem. And as I like to say, I've been like eyewitness to thousands of leadership train wrecks in my career. And so my my point of view around what makes a good leader and uh what causes leaders to fail is really built on a lot of observations of these, you know, train wrecks, so to speak. My personal passion is actually for first-level leaders and Daniel, you know, what you just described is so typical with companies where you will take somebody who's a a high performing individual contributor and you'll plop them into a job and put “Supervisor” on their shirt, and uh not give them any training and then expect them to be able to lead the people that many times, most of the time, these are people that like they just were like peers with yesterday. And um, you... it doesn't work. And and you— and you end up what you you create all kinds of crisis because you put a high performer that is now, you know, judging performance of people that they perform better than. And so they're constantly just sort of looking around, I call it making the villain assumption, but it's like, well, nobody's as good as at this as as I was. And so you only just see performance problems everywhere you look without giving them any sort of help on how to coach somebody or how to, you know, uh encourage others and and you just create kind of like the worst possible storm uh, and and companies do it like over and over and over and don't learn. And that was frustrating to me. That kind of got me started on, you know, well, what can we do to sort of teach that first level group of leaders that are so critical in a company? And that's that's sort of led to, you know, what it is now The Leader-Shift Playbook and The Approachability Playbook was the book before this one, um, but but that's been my experience. I don't know about you guys if you've— I'm sure have experienced some of the same. Oh yeah. Yeah, we we've we've definitely experienced that that observation of the, you know, as you put it, that Supervisor, Manager label is now on their shirt, go to and conquer. And they don't have the skill set. They don't have the resources to be successful so they flounder. They're frustrated. The results on both the business and the people side don't aren't there. And nobody's happy. So I I think it's great for us to dive in a little bit more to some of those things we can do to help, and to do that. But before we go there, I I want to ask you, I'm thinking of the old, you know, Jeff Foxworthy, here's your sign kind of uh comedy sketches. As you mentioned this train wreck that can happen. What are some of the the signs, the top two or three indications that you're headed you're headed for a leadership train wreck here? Oh, that's that's a great question. The I mean, what we talk about are a lot of our training really centers around this idea of power distance. And so power distance is this is this notion that when you have people that are in a high power and low power relationship, the person that is in the low power relationship, if they're experiencing wide distance with their leader, they're going to behave differently. And those are really sort of the tells that, you know, someone is exper— there is a leadership problem here that that then results in all kinds of bad behaviors. So what are those tells? There are verbal tells. So the verbal the verbal tells are, I'm not going to tell you what I think. I am not going to I'm going to try to figure out what you think before I take a position on something because I want to agree with you. Um I will engage in what's called mitigated speech, but those are like verbal signs that I don't feel comfortable and safe around you or safe coming to you. There's physical signs. Like the the most clear physical sign is like I run away when you come toward me. Like I will go find something to do. But like I when you're approaching, I don't want to talk to you. Um, when I do get engaged in a conversation with you uh I will act nervous. I will fidget. I will, uh, you know, I'll I'll try to, you know, protect myself, basically. It's your it's your amygdala going like, uh, this person is not safe to be around. Um, and then the third set of behaviors are are our behavioral signs. So a behavioral sign is like, I will, and as a leader, a lot of times we see these as, well, this person I can't, I can't count on them because I will tell you I can do something just because I don't want to have an uncomfortable conversation with you saying like, I don't know how to do it. Or I don't have time to do it. Um, and I'll just agree to do it and hope you don't check on me later. Like that, those are behavioral signs that I don't feel safe and comfortable with you. And so those would be like truly early warning signs as a leader of like, okay, well, if my team doesn't feel safe and comfortable with me, um I need to be doing things to bridge that gap. Because if you don't, you know, you're going to be the last to know about things, uh, you, you know, lots of safety crises occur because the leader doesn't know information because people don't feel comfortable telling it to them. Um all kinds of negative things happen. Um, and that and that leads to the train wrecks, right? So those would be three things that I would be on the lookout for. And and I you've articulated this really well and get very specific so that you can see and feel it. And I'm sure many of our listeners are right now just remembering themselves—Mm hmm— or others that they've worked with. And the real unfortunate thing is just as somebody's promoted to a managerial or leader role, that's when they both need to have the greatest support to to shine and to learn. And yet it's often accompanied with this impostor feeling of this feeling of, um, I don't know what the heck I'm doing, but I can't let anybody know that. Yeah. I I can't come out and say, “I'm I'm drowning.”“Please help me.” No, I got to pretend like I can conquer it all myself. I'm in the deep end. I can learn how to swim. And yet that's the very time—Mm hmm— that they need the most support. How do we balance this? Because we've all been talking about this pattern that happens. You get the best doer, you make that person a manager and great. They're off to the you know, off to the races, so to speak. How do we do this better? How do we break up this pattern to help the person at the time they they need the most help so they can be successful? Well, I you know, I actually, the person who has imposter syndrome, I actually put like a step above where I start the book talking about myself. So if you have imposter syndrome, at least you're starting from a place of like, I'm not sure I know how to do this. Now, you your your your reaction to that might be to pretend that you know what you're doing. And that that might not be the best approach. But at least somewhere in there, it's like I need to learn something. The flip side of that is the Dunning-Kruger problem, which is where 'I know a little bit about, you know, I read,''you know, one leadership book when I got promoted,''and now I think I'm like a leadership expert' and um you are about ready to just go from the top of Mount Stupid all the way down to the bottom. So uh, both of those are situations, though, where the leader the there's an easy answer to it, but most people won't do it. If you don't know what you're doing, um the the cool thing about leadership is like your customers are standing right there. Like the team that you lead is right there. Ask them if you're doing a good job leading them. Like they will tell you. Is there something that I should do more of? This comes back to the imposter syndrome where you like a lot of times we want to avoid that difficult conversation and we don't want to look like we don't know what we're doing. Um, the crazy thing about it is like if you will just make that one vulnerable step of going like, hey, do you think I'm doing this right? Your team will tell you what to do. Like they will tell you, you know, I wish you would stop doing this or I wish you would do more of this. Like they will give you the instruction manual if you make it safe for them to give you feedback. So that's the ironic thing about like imposter syndrome, but uh but at least you're kind of in the mode where you you're you're probably more willing to learn or or at least you see that there's a a it's time to maybe learn something. So that that's a good place. Like if you if you have that, now it's just like, okay, well, how do I learn it? Go talk to your customers. Yeah. You're making a really clear distinction there between those with a little bit of knowledge and so there's an arrogance that can come of, hey, I I got this. I'm I'm fine versus those who have that openness to learn. They recognize it. And that proximity to your customer's notion, I think is powerful. Mm hmm. Because I it's it's not utilized enough as you really think about it, these are the people you're interacting with, hopefully most often. And there may be some geographic, you know, separation, but with today, you know, Zoom and Teams and everything you can have that frequent interaction with them. It's just that willingness to ask. To ask the question. So how do you set an environment if a leader is willing to get that feedback so that they actually get real feedback when they ask it? Yeah. Well, you know, when I talk about the shifts, and look, these I'm I I am not saying that like I am the like the expert in leadership that I kind of thought I was at one point, but I got, I definitely got knocked off of Mount Stupid with with my own team at the same time that I was going around, you know, giving keynote speeches and trainings and writing books about leadership, my own team was really suffering because I wasn't being a very good leader here. And so like the shifts that that I made and those are the shifts I talk about in the book, and these would then be the shifts that somebody that's in the position you just described Peter, that they would make, you know, the first one is belief in your impact. So like you're having an impact, um whether you think you are you're not a lot of times first-level leaders talk themselves into this place of like what I do isn't really very important. I'm just like this first-level supervisor. What I do doesn't matter. And and that nothing could be further from the truth. I like when I get into a room full of first-level supervisors, I like to start off with, you know, everybody talks about company culture. Culture is not like words on a page. It's not like a poster. It's not a page on your website. Culture is literally the interactions you have every day with your direct reports. Like that is culture. And if that relationship is good, your culture's good. And if that relationship is strained in any way, your culture is bad. You have a massive impact on culture in your company, but that so that that's the one shift people have to make. The second shift is your belief in yourself. Like, do I think I can do this? Um, and then and and so this sort of gets to the imposter syndrome. And and also it's just like you have biases. Like you come to whatever experiences you had that sort of led to this moment of you being a leader, um you've had experiences with other leaders. You've had experiences with other people that, you know, you lead. And like those all together are going to lead to sort of how you're going to interact with people as a leader. So you need to get into the headspace of, I don't necessarily know everything. I I need to um, I need to grow myself, alright? And I also need to be on the lookout for where am I sort of making assumptions about people or assumptions about things that might not be true? So that's the second shift. The third shift then becomes your belief in others. So this is what I call the hero assumption. So the hero assumption is, I got to believe that my everyone on my team wants to be great. You don't have the luxury of any other belief. You that that belief will result in reality. So if you believe people are going to fail, they're going to fail. But if you believe that they're going to rise to the occasion and succeed, your your words, the way you behave around them, the things that you're going to ask them to do, like all of that will result in in their performing at that high level. And a lot of people don't even believe in themselves. So like the first person, when we think about really important influential leaders in our lives, often it's the first person that thought about us is maybe having the ability to be a leader, right? At times that we never even maybe thought about that for ourselves. So that's the third shift. The fourth shift is belief in your relationships. It's so easy to just have kind of phony, let's talk about fantasy football. Let's talk about the, you know, the weather. Um, but really having those conversations like we just talked about, right? How am I doing as, you know, you're my customer, give me some feedback. How am I doing? How can I be better? This is fantastic, especially to create this environment of psychological safety—Mm hmm— or yourself, for your team to have open and direct dialogue, recognizing no one's perfect. Let's all figure this out together and your customers are right there. Let's actually really engage in genuine ways. I want to go back to a phrase you've said a couple of times, Mount Stupid.[chuckling] So I'm sure listeners are like, well, this is an interesting place and it doesn't sound like some place we want to go. You've said you've been on Mount Stupid. Tell us how do you get to Mount Stupid? How do you— what is it? And you've already talked a lot about how to get off of it. But what the heck is it and how do we find ourselves there? Yeah, you if you just like Google Dunning-Kruger, there's a curve you'll see. And the basic idea of Dunning-Kruger is that if you're at the— you're at the beginning of something that's hard. And there's like nothing harder than leadership or relationships, right? So at the very beginning, you're like, I don't know anything about this and you know you don't know anything about it. And like that's a that's a safe place to be because you're because you're not going to you're not going to it's you're not going to do something um crazy because you're like, I don't know what I'm doing. So then the next stop is Mount Stupid. So this is some people when they, it's in fact most people, uh when you start something complicated and you learn something about it, you start comparing yourself to where you were just before, which is I know nothing. Okay, well, now you know something and you have just like a little bit of success. You're like, oh, I got this. You know, like, like I'm a terrible uh snow skier, but like when I, you know, the very first time I ever went skiing, you know, I pretty much got dropped off at the top of the mountain with my buddies and they're like you know, just go down to the bottom, right? Well, if you don't know any better, you're kind of like, well, everyone else here just seems to just be, you know, skiing with no problem. I'll just like point myself down the hill and thank God there was like a building at the bottom I could crash into or I would have ended up in a parking lot. Okay, so that's— I had the same experience![laughing] That was my first skiing lesson with the buddy. We need better friends. Good luck![laughing] Correct. Yeah, how to have better friends who don't want to kill you. Anyway, yes, keep going.[laughing] Yeah. So so that's Mount Stupid. You know, I know I know enough to be dangerous and then you are dangerous. Like you think that you know more than you know. So then, then what happens is, and my own personal story I tell in the book, but like I I, you know, again, I think of myself as like this, this this leader guy, right? And um I— we're making a transition in our company. You know, we've talked about family owned business. We were making an important leadership transition. And I went and talked to uh Debbie, who is she has a role in our company now called Integrator, but when I offered her that role, she was like, well, I think I should tell you something. I told your dad that he's not allowed to retire until I'm ready to retire because I'll never work for Phil. And uh I did not know she felt that way. We're not like a big company, all right? And she was I mean, she worked here years. Um, and so that was kind of my Mount Stupid moment where I'm like, ooh, I am not the leader that I thought I was. And, uh fortunately, we worked through that. We talked a little bit about like what so why do I drive her crazy, um which I do. There's some things that she does that drive me crazy. And so we started talking about that. And I don't know how familiar you guys are with EOS, but there's this this idea of like a visionary and an integrator and she's the integrator I'm the visionary, but like that those conflicts are like super common. But I didn't really realize the chaos I was creating for her and for the rest of the team. And and then she became came to appreciate, you know, what it was that I was bringing to the business. And through those conversations we became a very strong team together. And that sort of began the journey for the rest of the organization. But it required like tough conversations and that that was my Mount Stupid moment. And um and so I like I I say in the book but I just kind of assume I'm on Mount Stupid all the time now just because it gets you in a frame of mind where you're like, okay, I have more to learn. Um I got to grow, you know, what can I do to get better? That's a healthy place to be as a leader. Don't ever feel like you have leadership figured out. Like it's— you don't. Yeah. Arrogance and leadership don't belong in the same sentence. They don't they don't work well together. I'm reminded of one of my my favorite gems that my dad said all the time is“when you're green you grow,”“and when you're ripe you rot.” Mmmmm. You know, it's just how you stay green. And, you know, setting up a summer cabin, condo, permanent location there on Mount Stupid—Mm hmm— so that you're continually in that growth opportunity and that learning. So I love that. That's a great saying. That's a great saying. I want to kinda— Yeah, your dad's jokes are definitely better than mine.[laughing] That's great.[laughing] I want to jump back to to we've talked a lot about beliefs. You know, we've talked about beliefs in ourselves, uh belief in this this kind of growth mindset and a willingness to change. And you you talked about that hero syndrome or hero assumption. Yeah. And heroes often can be kind of frowned upon in the workplace. Like, you know, a leader, I have to be the hero. I have to save everything. But you kind of turned it on its ear and I was really interested in that notion of the strong belief in the ability of others and the power that that has. And I think back even growing up, that was something my dad and my mom shared that they had an unusually, I don't even know where it came from, belief that we could do a lot more things than we believed we could. Mm hmm. In fact, they would come to us with questions seeking our input to solve answers at a relatively young age. I'm like, why are you asking me?“Well, because you come up with good ideas!” You know, and so it and and that that helped build a level of confidence, you know, growing up and even progressing professionally and so forth. How do you display this for others around so it doesn't sound superficial, it doesn't, you know, it's still grounded in reality so we're not just head in the clouds, ignoring the gaps that others have, but conveying that that belief that a confidence in in others? Yeah. Uh— I mean, it's the so you're right. Like the rose colored glasses could be like too much. I don't think that that's not normal that's not normally the problem. Normally the problem is like you're you know, you're blinded to the potential of the people around you. Um, but but you, you know, you can probably over-index the other direction. But but my coaching to leaders and and, you know, my true belief, and I've seen it, you know, a lot of times. I I talk about examples, you know, with our own team here in the book, but you know, you you don't have the luxury of any other assumption because you don't, you know, you need you just all you have to really do is just believe in your team, believe that they have room to grow, look for evidence of the things that they could do, give them a little bit more than than like what maybe they think that they're capable of to stretch them a little bit. You know, it this doesn't mean, you know, sending them off to go do something that they have no business doing and are, you know, like that they, you know, that there's way too many steps, you know, uh, for them to, you know, to stretch, but it's but it is that belief that like they can they can do anything. They can get wherever wherever they want to get, they can, you know, they can get there. And I tell I mean, there like one example I have of this in the book is is uh I talk about becoming Batman, but um there there's a there's a guy who was born um with no sight and his parents refused to treat him as unsighted. Like they they had him go play on playgrounds with his siblings and with his friends. They had they they I mean, they did things that like most parents of a blind child would would be like aghast. Um, you know, your kid is going to go run into traffic. Your kid like your kid can't ride a bike, um, you know, and they just refused to treat their son that way. And over time, because of that, he learned to navigate with sonar, basically. Like he could click his tongue and the sound would reflect back to him and he could essentially see the same way that like dolphins see. And he can ride a bike. He can hike in the, you know, on a hiking trail without having, you know, without having any assistance. Uh you can set him down on a park bench and he can click his tongue and he can like draw everything that is around uh because his brain now transmits that sound to to the visual component of his of his brain. Um so that's like a that's an extreme example, but that's an example of where like his parents believed in him and did not want to sort of limit his ability. And then he kind of figured out a way of, you know, seeing that nobody else had figured out. And now they now like they train other other unsighted kids to see this way. So it's um so that like that's extreme example but like you're you know, you as a leader, your belief in the folks around you are are going to determine the reality, right? And if your belief is that they can't handle this, they they have too much to learn, they're not really their their heart's not really into this, like you are going to behave in ways that will that will lead them downward. And and even even if you don't really mean it. But like your assumptions about them, they're going to change the conversations you have. They're going to change the behavior and that changes reality in the world. And then the magical thing and it's been studied over and over again. But if you flip that and you believe in their ability, and and sometimes you can even, you know, it's kind of placebo and nocebo effect. Like you, you know, you you can you can talk them in to growth that maybe you weren't sure that they could do, and they definitely didn't think that they could do. So you can't you you have to make that hero assumption. I love that you're you're helping dive in to this notion, this deeply held belief that people can rise to the occasion. Mm hmm. And and to truly believe it instead of all... kind of limiting what they can do with your own assumptions about them. Oh, they can't do this or now we're not talking, you know, extreme stuff necessarily, but it's like looking deep within, what are the strengths? What are the what's the potential? And believing it. And helping set people up for future success in ways that they could surprise themselves, they could surprise you. And that that's so much at the heart of this this growth mindset, this ability to believe that we can do more than what we currently do. So, Phil, as we're kind of wrapping up here, let me kind of ask you a Lightning Round question.[upbeat music] What's the one thing that a leader needs to keep in mind so that they can successfully make that leader-shift to a better place? One of my favorites is I mean, obviously the hero assumption is critical. This book was originally going to be called The Hero Assumption, and then my editor talked, you know, some sense into me and anyway, so we ended up with Leader-Shift Playbook. But the hero assumption is is central, but like a sim— like a super practical way to kind of implement that is there are three questions that your teammates want to know the answer to, but will never ask you. So so as a leader, you just need to answer these three questions. The first question is, do you like me? Your team needs to feel like you actually like each one of them. There's things about them that you admire um there's that you know, you personally like being around them. That's number one. The second question is, do you think I have what it takes? So do you think that I'm capable, right? That's the hero assumption. I— I believe, I believe in you. I believe you have what it takes to be successful. I believe you have what it takes to be great. All right? And then the third question that they don't ask but want to know is, do you think I'm worth the effort? So even if I maybe don't know how to do something, but you believe I have what it takes, but like, do you think I'm worth investing in? And if you can answer those three questions, and, you know, you don't go around going like, hey, I really like you, but, you know, but, but you know, talk to people about the things you admire about them. Um, like those answering those three questions, that the hero assumption is embedded in those questions. They're simple questions. You want to know the answers to those questions about people that are important to you in your life. Um, answer those questions. And and you'll be— you will be doing leadership right if you can do that. Yeah. Phil, what a fantastic way to sum this up, of building that belief in the other. Mm hmm. Thank you. And thank you for joining us here today on the Leadership Growth Podcast. It's been an absolute pleasure. Yeah, thanks guys. It was great. Thank you. Awesome. Well, thanks listeners for listening in and/or watching for another episode of the Leadership Growth Podcast where we talk about tools and ideas to help you grow your leadership ability. Please Like and subscribe, send us any suggestions or topics for the next time, and otherwise, best of luck in all you do. Thanks again, Phil. Take care, Peter. Take care all the listeners.[upbeat music] If you like this episode, please share it with a friend or colleague or better yet,[upbeat music] leave a review to help other listeners find our show.[upbeat music][upbeat music] And remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode.[upbeat music][upbeat music] For more great content or to learn more about how[upbeat music] Stewart Leadership can help you grow your ability to lead effectively,[upbeat music] please visit stewartleadership.com.[upbeat music]