I've always been an advocate of as little titular leadership as

possible to keep the idea of being a leader as low key as possible.

I think we, we overdo the whole idea of leadership.

And yet there are times when being a leader is absolutely necessary.

It was funny actually because even the commentator remarked on

it, we were watching the aston Villa - Bologna last night.

Bologna took a corner.

And it resulted in them heading off the post and we were lucky it didn't go in

and everybody breathed a sigh of relief.

But then the camera cut to Unai Emery tearing a strip off Austin

McPhee the set piece coach.

It was interesting because he was just explaining something.

He wasn't ripping into him.

He was explaining something to him.

Austin he started to explain something and you could just

see in the camera Unai Emery go.

No.

And then continued.

And I thought that was really good because the set piece Coach gets a lot

of plaudits for some of the intricate set pieces they set up, but at times you

need to be told where you've gone wrong.

I thought it was really interesting.

He took that opportunity to have that conversation with him.

And it was, Austin McPhee was just yeah, yes, boss.

In that one moment, your set piece coach can do all of the

things that are possible to do.

Still one player gets the ball before the other, either you've made a

mistake or just in the moment, somebody switched off and somebody else didn't.

That's the difference.

They're in the game of trying to predict the future all of the time.

All good managers think that the decisions that they make giving themselves the

best chance to succeed based on what their future view of the world is

based on where they currently are.

Of course it's all nonsense because it is and it isn't.

They're basing their decisions on lots of experience, but

they don't have a crystal ball.

What happens next is still very uncertain.

So anything can happen.

That's what I love about the game.

That's what keeps everybody interested, but people try and

throw this mythology at it.

As if you can solve that riddle by putting a label to leadership or a model.

It doesn't really work like that.

In the moment, people will make decisions that have got consequences.

If anything, the work's done way before that moment happens.

Everything you hear about Unai Emery is that he is personally obsessed

with getting the details right and creating the right atmosphere and so on.

So he puts in probably more mental effort than anybody else.

But I would also wager probably physical effort as well.

He's clearly obsessed with getting it right.

I noticed that was a perfect opportunity because whatever he was saying to

Austin McPhee, when Austin McPhee replied, The only thing he could have

been saying was some sort of excuse.

Coming up with a reason.

Could not have been anything else.

Don't try and justify it now,

He certainly wasn't saying I agree with you, otherwise

Unai wouldn't have said no.

Clearly they've got a good relationship.

You can't have a conversation like that without having a good relationship.

But he took the opportunity to say no.

Look, the point I'm making is whatever it was.

That's important in leadership.

I was privileged to meet the entire staff of a Dutch organization

very recently, the last few days.

I had to ask them when I first met them who the boss was,

because you couldn't tell.

Usually I can tell, I'm fairly able to spot the little

signals that people give off.

But you couldn't tell.

Considering that the team that I spoke to were about 20

people, overwhelmingly women.

And the boss was a guy.

I found it fascinating that because most guys when they're in charge of

women become somewhat solicitous, let's say they tend to be protective

of their team unnecessarily.

This guy, you just couldn't tell.

And the vibe between this group of people was fascinating because the

guy had clearly surrounded himself with the right people and he was

just letting them do their thing.

There must've been opportunities I'm sure for him to lay down certain principles

that they needed to follow and so on, but he just let them do their thing.

That to me is what real leadership is all about.

People constantly talk about situational leadership, but if you're given the job.

of leading a group of people you have to set your stall out about how

you're going to go about doing that.

There are people like Emery, I think, and certainly this Dutch guy who

created an atmosphere where people were allowed to do their thing.

That's to me, what leadership is all about.

Letting people do their thing.

It takes a lot of humility though, as well.

Like when people first drive, they oversteer.

And it takes experience to realize it doesn't take much steering.

In the same way, it takes a lot of humility to not want

to be seen as the leader.

I couldn't agree more, Rob.

That idea of humility is absolutely central to everything that I've

ever worked on in business.

I used to give when I was working more in manufacturing,

a series of training sessions.

There were about 18 of them.

The very first, and it was to management because clearly management are the

aspiring leaders of the future.

The very first training session after explaining how the program would

work discuss the difference between humility and servant leadership.

Because in business servant leadership is a go to set of principles that people

often talk about, but few understand what servant leadership really is.

It's a hard concept for people to get their heads around

sometimes and put in practice.

I'm not a massive fan of servant leadership myself, although I can

understand the idea behind it.

But humility, which is very similar, that's an easier point to get across.

And it's not one that aspiring leaders take to very easily.

Humility can often come across as being meek and mild and somewhat yielding.

Which is not a bad thing.

I often wonder why that could be such a problem for leaders to be yielding.

But, when you talk to people that want to be leaders or consider

themselves leaders and you say, how would you, for instance demonstrate

humility when you're talking to staff?

It's a question that they often struggle with.

The obvious answer is something like saying, what do you think about something.

That is a demonstration of humility and when you're talking to a group

of people and you suggest that you're going to do something, heaven forbid,

you actually tell them we're going to do this because you might be wrong.

But having said what you think might be the best way of going

back, doing something to then say what do you guys think?

Is an enormous sign of humility.

You hit the nail on the head there, Rob, because it's for me,

obviously focus and expertise and all the other things are important.

But if you haven't got humility?

I had this conversation actually very recently.

We talked about the idea of leadership and they were advocating

the idea of situational leadership.

And I understand the reasoning for that.

However, in most situations where Something's going wrong

or something needs to be done.

Most people want somebody to tell them what to do.

That tends to be the way most people would prefer to when the,

what's it's hitting the fan, the world's falling apart around there.

It is.

Most people want to turn to somebody and say, what do we

do when that situation arises?

The person that comes to the fore and says this is what we're going to do,

one would hope is a natural leader, but they could also be a complete nutcase.

Look at Germany in the 1930s.

They were in trouble and this person said, I'm going to get you out of this.

And he happened to be a raging megalomaniac.

That's the problem.

When you get an absolute egotistical nutcase in charge of a group of people who

then all agree with him, we're in trouble.

That's what my work's all about, isn't it?

It's stopping that from happening.

When it comes to situational leadership.

I often used to see in the military, they'd put somebody in charge of a group

of soldiers and say you're in charge now.

All of a sudden they would start shouting orders and because he

feels the need to be the leader.

The obvious thing to do when they say you're the leader is nothing,

just carry on because surely it was working up until that point.

If it wasn't and you recognize what needs to be put right, you could at

least say I think we should do this.

But this idea of putting yourself into leadership mode, the command and

control model is thankfully long gone.

I think situational leadership it's almost I don't even know what the term

is, but every situation is different.

Therefore, situational leadership could be applied to any situation

that you're confronted with.

There's two parts to that.

One is but what's the problem to be solved?

Is the situation that we might be talking about.

The difference would be subject to who are the people that are in situ

to actually solve the problem and leading one group versus leading

another group through the same problem would be completely different.

That's where leaders who look for the way or our style, or this is me,

this is how I do things come unstuck.

Because in lots of situations, that's not going to be the right approach to take.

With a group of experienced people who've been through these types of

things before and can be well left to crack on and solve it themselves, then

the person that wants to take charge of that is gonna, quickly start building

resentment and all sorts of things.

Just that lack of self awareness, really at the outset and to know what do I need

to dial up here in order to connect in the right way to get this thing done.

Versus what do I need to dial down to facilitate the right way forward

with this group of people against this challenge that we're about to face.

Because you're trying to mobilize people, you're trying to get people to optimize

their individual attributes, the things that they've been employed to do.

So how do I do that at every turn?

It requires a hell of a lot of awareness and adjustment, and sometimes

quite a significant personal cost.

Cause if I have to keep stepping outside of who I am to meet people where they're

at, in order to get them to be the best they can be that I've got to be aware

that actually that's draining me a little bit, I need some time to decompress or

recharge or whatever you might call it.

But the alternative is I just stay in, in my natural state and it doesn't

cost me any energy, but actually the team's not performing very well anymore.

But I'm okay.

That's that's fascinating actually, because I've Obviously,

since my accident my work has shifted slightly from organizational work to

individuals working with individuals, and it is predominantly around leaders.

Unfortunately at the moment, it's still predominantly men that I'm working with.

And I would like to work with more women because I think they've got so much more

to offer them than industry, at least is trying to get from them at the moment.

But this idea of having to step out of who you are, I find fascinating

because that's what most leaders do.

They put on their leadership hat when they go to work and

they're not being themselves.

And for me, the most important thing, as you say, it's an enormous expenditure

of energy to try and be something else.

Billy Connolly, I think it was years ago, said that by virtue of the fact

that you want to be a politician or insert leader, if you want, should

disqualify them from being politicians, because, if you wouldn't go down to the

pub and have a drink with them, then they're not fit to be a politician.

And anybody that wants to be a leader is already on my radar

as being a dodgy character.

It's about qualifying them against those characteristics

that they aspire to be.

What is it that they've seen that defines leadership that they

say, I want to be that person.

I want to be those things, because that's the bit that leadership isn't.

It might be in certain scenarios where that is required, but only in those

scenarios, the rest of the time, you might need to be providing support.

You might need to be backing off.

You might need to be lighting a fire under somebody.

You might need to be getting rid of somebody.

There's a ton of different things depending on the situation but you're

right that here's what the leader is and here's how it's defined.

Typically they go to really highly successful people as the benchmark

and go, all right, let's look at all the characteristics of this person

in, and therefore that defines what a successful leader looks like now

apply that to yourself and you're going to be just as good or on, on

the way to being a great leader.

It just doesn't work like that.

I wrote down that there's a dichotomy right when you first mentioned that,

Clark, about there's aspiring leaders and they aspire for a reason and they

mostly aspire because I want to be this person who's powerful, I want to be this

person who's important and all the very things that preclude humility, the last

thing that they want to be is humble.

They want to be seen, they want to be special.

They want to be known for what they can do.

That very trait then that because they're looking for something that

they don't feel that they are.

Into the gap, they're trying to think of what's the quick hack and

oh, it's situational leadership, oh, it's servant leadership.

Like Tony said, there's always context to everything we do.

So it's the very thing we want is because we don't have it, which is often true.

That's really insightful, Robert.

I think there's a sort of human appreciation of that.

Let's say that we don't judge that in the first instance and say, okay,

it's okay to have that ambition.

It's okay to want those needs to be met that may not have been observed.

I just want the status.

I want the position.

I want that.

So it's like a human thing.

It's filling a gap, a void that, that they may not even know

why they want it, let's say.

And it might, it may propel them up the greasy pole, let's say.

And they may be crawling up the ladder to get there with blind

ambition making lots of mistakes as a consequence, especially relationally

but let's say that's okay because it's a fairly human characteristic.

But the job of, say, Clark, for example, in these relationships

to help people uncover what's going on within themselves to go.

We're not going to judge the fact that you're ambitious and that these are

the things that you're striving for.

But for what purpose?

Who is that serving beyond yourself?

Because without, and that's not a nod to servant leadership, although of

course it lends itself to empathy and all of those great characteristics.

Having empathy means giving people bad news and tough love.

Sometimes it doesn't just mean being nice.

It's not compassion.

It's different than that.

But it's saying, okay, ambition is great.

But who do you serve?

And unless you can identify that it's going to be really difficult to lead.

That definitely falls into the humility category.

I use it.

I opened the last two courses I ran.

It's a term that Thomas, I think he called it one word equity.

So I use this one word.

So instead of when they introduce themselves, they have to introduce

themselves around who they are, what they do, just so I can get to know them

so they can get to know each other a little differently than they already do.

Occasionally I'll throw in the one word equity and I've started the last

two with as part of this discourse,

I've said that humility is my one word equity for this course,

and I'll be measured in five days time by you guys on whether or

not I delivered on that promise.

So I'm standing here before you on day one with humility at the

forefront of what I'm trying to be.

I'm here in service.

It's your course, it's mine.

I'm a facilitator, blah, blah, blah.

I'm here to facilitate discussion.

So I'm humbly at your service.

If between now and then I don't live up to that promise, then I've failed the

first lesson basically, which is I am who I say I am, but who am I also, who does

that match with what people think of me?

So if I'm claiming to be this humble servant or humble leader

or humble presenter in five days time, if the experience doesn't

match that, I'll fail big time.

And it's a way to reach very quickly into a little bit of what's going on inside

people's minds that And arts and souls that they haven't previously explored

with each other and you immediately get an incremental growing trust,

because we've shared something that none of us knew about each other before.

The feeling not worthy and the feeling that there's a gap between where

you are and where you want to be and means that people don't have that inner compass.

They don't have, and because they don't have that inner compass, they're looking

for external solutions, but they're also, they're looking to be yes men to please

someone so that they get promotion.

They're looking for quick fixes, which is why.

People take on, like in manufacturing, there was this bout of Kaizen and

all of this stuff, which didn't necessarily apply to the same culture.

And so they're continually trying to put in things that aren't organic

because there's the gap between the aspiration and what they internally feel.

So where you have that inner compass, that humility is key to making everyone talk

and giving everyone the best experience.

But often I think there's that gap between what we project and what we have.

In that Rob, for me, you've captured what leadership is.

The leader's primary role is to understand the gaps between our

collective expectations of this thing that we're doing together and the reality.

Because what success looks like to me, and what success looks like

to Clark, is we're both striving for this same thing, but are we?

Let's try and reveal that.

Those revelations come from, How do we both think about this thing?

How do we both feel about this thing?

What do we both want out of this thing?

And that's where all the gaps live.

And the leader's job is to recognize.

It's complex because The gaps are not simple, if there's multiple

people involved the gaps will differ from person to person.

My working with you versus working with Clark would be slightly different in

order that we together bridge those gaps so that our aspirations are becoming more

clearly defined collective aspirations and that the reality of the challenge

that we're in is a common one Because at that start point that you've spoken about

and where all of these aspirations of far out of line with what the reality is.

That's where leadership is.

It's in helping people bridge those gaps for themselves and for the

betterment of this team's objectives.

Because the business is fixed, right?

The challenge is fixed.

Meet this objective by this date, otherwise we're in trouble.

That's fixed.

Score one more goal than the opposition, you win the game.

That is fixed.

There's no questions.

The rest is then okay how are we going to do that?

And, If my suggestion is that we do it this way and ten other

people think we should do it the other way, I've got a problem.

And if I'm not aware of how big that gap is, I've got a really big problem.

Off we go.

Good luck.

And that's what lots of people do.

That's the that's probably the 64, 000 question or whatever they call it,

Tony, about the out the outcome is fixed.

The goal is fixed.

Very often when you when you talk to leaders and if I'm working with, I

always try to have a little bit of a laugh at first, because I know that

in the ensuing conversation, I'm going to probably be quite Blunt or direct.

And so we have a little bit of a laugh to try and get some rapport going.

One of the first things I ask is, what is the point of view?

Why are you here?

What do you accomplish by being here?

If you disappeared tomorrow, what would they miss more than anything?

Because they're the leader of an organization the point of

them must be to achieve a goal.

To achieve an outcome, regardless of whatever they think about

themselves, I'm humble, I'm whatever, what purpose do you serve?

As you said, what's the purpose behind the leadership that they're

imposing upon their organization?

And that goal, that purpose is not always as fixed as people think it

is, because the shareholders have got one goal, the safety team have got

another goal, the quality team have got another goal, the production team have

got to get numbers out of the door.

So how do you reconcile all of those different purposes and outcomes?

And as a leader the idea that Rob just mentioned there about having this compass.

I think that's absolutely key, and the thing that I'm constantly trying to get

across when I'm talking to people about this sort of stuff, in my work anyway,

is that instead of you personally trying to be this thing or get your team to

do this set of things, why don't we think about the values the, you embody

the characteristics that you display when you're working, because by doing

that, if, for instance the production team says, we've got to get these

machines out of the door by tomorrow and you say, yes, I'm the leader.

Let's accomplish that goal.

And the safety team are going, Whoa, hold on a minute.

We're going to put these guys in serious trouble if we push for that

number or the quality team turns around and says, Oh, hold on a minute.

You're going to compromise quality.

If you adopt certain characteristics, that is you value certain things or prioritize

certain things above other things.

For instance, the relational aspect that you just mentioned,

Tony, is very important.

However, if somebody gets offended because they've been asked to do something

that they wouldn't ordinarily do, you need to have that conversation because

relationally, that, little aspect of the working relationship is not as important

as the rest of the organization going broke and everybody losing their jobs.

So you have to prioritize things and the situational aspect only comes

about because your moral compass, as Rob just talked about, the current

characteristics and the values that you embody lend themselves towards

prioritizing things correctly, because if you're a leader that is only interested

in keeping the shareholders happy, your morale is going to be on the floor.

Or if you're a people pleaser that's constantly trying to be one of

the lads, your business is going to go pear shaped really quickly.

So when I say to a so called leader, whatever it might be, managing director,

general manager, whatever they might be.

What is the point of you?

Why are you here?

The answer should be something along the lines of to make all of the different

goals work towards the overarching goal of the business being successful.

As you said, as a football team score one more goal than the other

team, that may be the immediate goal.

But the overarching goal might be, for instance, to win the league.

or to make this club last for the next 10, 15, 20 years and keep the fans happy.

You have to prioritize the values that you embody so that you are

constantly scanning the horizon to see what is coming around the corner.

And they, as the thing that I'm always talking about is Trying

to be the antidote to groupthink.

And I think that's one of the roles of the leader is when everybody's decided,

this is a great idea, let's go and kill so and and the leader says hold on a minute.

What is that accomplishing for us when we kill that person or when we do that thing?

Because is it going to bite us in the backside in six months or a year's time?

We need to prioritize the values that we embody so that they can be

percolated out amongst the organization.

And that's where the skill is, right?

So there's a great example, Clark of two different aspirations, this person

going, we need to go and do this.

And the leader go, hang on a second, right?

There's the gap, right?

There's the aspiration gap that needs to be bridged.

And in that moment, you're telling this guy, no, we can't,

we're not going to do that.

And even stop thinking about it, that's not going to happen.

So you've got to be prepared.

I think too, for a short period of time, this disequilibrium is kill it.

There's disruption there now.

There's disharmony immediately because this guy is going

I don't like you anymore.

I don't believe in you.

Whatever they're thinking and feeling certain things.

And part of the reality is that this because you've

got this level of authority.

Let's say given by position somebody has the overarching decision to make,

which is going to make this person really unhappy because it's as far away from

the idea that they had as possible.

So for that period of time, there's a potential loss of immediate

I don't know what the word is.

But there's a disruption in the relationship between me and this

person in pursuit of this thing.

And as the leader, I think growth comes from that for everybody.

We find out where people are, we start closing those gaps between.

Eventually over time, we all start to build this idea of,

yeah, we all want the same thing.

This is fantastic.

It feels amazing.

We're all part of it, but along the way, you've got these.

friction points, which are all about bridging those gaps that

you were talking about Rob before.

This guy thinks this is the way we should go.

And he's absolutely firm on it, but hang on a sec.

Whoa.

Wait, there's a bigger picture here.

In the immediate there's a sense that this guy's invalidated in some

way and doesn't feel like he belongs anymore just in a short period of time.

The work of the leader is to be able to destroy that in the moment , without

destroying the whole relationship, I don't know if I explained it well enough, but

there's a loss of doesn't want you to be his manager in that moment anymore,

doesn't want you to lead him anymore.

So that needs to be rebuilt.

And it happens multiple times a day, multiple times a week that this is

happening and without that awareness of it, of course, people are going

through life smashing into each other.

causing all sorts of havoc and ending up, down the track going,

what the hell have I been doing?

I don't know who I am anymore.

None of this has gone

to plan.

It's a bit like in relationships, people think that you have to love

someone all the time, but you don't because there's times when you

hate, like you hate your partner or whatever, but it's for a moment.

People think that love is this constant thing, but it's up and down.

And the key is when I don't like you, when we don't like each other.

That's when trust is built because at that point where we're hating each

other, if you still won't destroy me, that's when you build trust.

Relationship is constantly changing dynamic.

And it's the dominant general overall feel that's important.

But real connection, real depth is built from those up and down and rebuilding it.

Yeah, definitely.

I like that.

It's very powerful.

The opportunities that we have to, I mentioned yielding earlier

when you're in a situation where you have to give, let's say, counsel,

sometimes you may even have to rebuke somebody if they've done something to

endanger somebody else or whatever.

That was the point of the, of when I mentioned Unai Emery talking to Austin

McPhee, that little point where I went no.

And then continue because it's always been known in the team since Unai

Emery turned up, that he has what he likes to call a no excuses culture.

And that's what Austin McPhee was doing.

It was just about to make an excuse.

He said no.

And it reminded me of Colin Powell, former secretary of state.

He always said when we're in the room discussing our options for

a particular situation, you can disagree as much as you like.

We'll have that conversation.

We can argue, it can get ugly even if necessary.

But once we've all agreed on what we're going to do, once you walk

out of that door, I expect total support in accomplishing our goals.

And so that really speaks to what you've just said there about

relationships and, the conversation with Unai Emery, and Austin McPhee.

We've agreed that we're not going to have excuses.

We've agreed as a couple that we're going to support each other no matter what.

We can have this conversation, even if it gets a little bit ugly, maybe.

Or, there's this temporary loss of trust that you mentioned,

Tony, but the overarching goal.

of this alliance is that we accomplish x y and z and the thing that you're

saying now is not doing that.

This is the point of a leader, to point people in the direction of

the goals that we've all agreed.

Look, I know you want to do this now.

I know you all want to have a jolly on a Friday afternoon because, it's

Friday and the weekend's coming, but we still haven't hit target.

We said we were going to hit target.

We should do X, Y or Z.

Whilst you have those momentary losses of rapport there has to

be somebody to remind everybody.

And that again is the role of the 10th man, yes, of course,

we want to do this thing.

But at the same time, we've all said we want to accomplish this and

that's the direction that we should be going and that really is where

a leader has to stand his ground.

I'm always worried when a person doesn't take the opportunity to yield.

If, for instance, a leader has a particular idea and somebody contradicts

that and there's not really much difference, then really that's a perfect

opportunity to yield to the other person.

We often talk about empowering somebody and it's not a concept that I particularly

like because it assumes that you have the power to give to somebody else, but

that opportunity to empower somebody is one that should never be missed.

All things being equal you might as well just go with the other person

because in yielding you are then giving that person some stake, some

agency within the organization.

And that's a perfect opportunity for a leader.

As I mentioned these Dutch guys, you couldn't tell who was the boss there.

That, to me, is a wonderful thing to see that, you've got a group of

people all there on their own merits doing whatever the organization has

decided needs to be done together.

And, that's a wonderful thing.

Yeah,

definitely.

Yeah, it just makes, it makes total sense, doesn't it?

The next level skill is being able to orchestrate that to a degree.

So at what point can you, I see it like when you're training, whether it's for

football or weight training or whatever, you're creating controlled damage.

So you're tearing your muscles to the degree that they don't

break and that they knit stronger.

So your muscle grows and you, or your lung capacity increases because you

stretched it beyond what is normal.

It's almost it's like that, you're stretching you're taking the

relationship outside of what's comfortable to create tension in

order to grow stronger together.

We've recognized these gaps here.

Let's debate this robustly.

And if we agree that there's a difference, then one of us is

going to have to follow the other.

And agree to do that.

And there'll be some pain attached to it.

Our values aligned.

That's important, but we may disagree on how we do this.

And there might be some compromise for one of us in order to get through this little

tricky bit that we're going through.

It's, I see it as like that, that you can create these tensions either by

dialing something up or dialing it down at different times to to train the

environment optimally over time, you're constantly growing together, bridging

the gaps as we go forward slowly.

Just like training you stress the muscles out to the degree where

you saw the next day, it's painful, but two days later, you come back

and you feel a little bit better.

You can run for a bit longer, you can lift a little heavier.

There's a really good point, Tony.

A question arises from that, Tony, that I've got to ask you

when a person, let's say is going to the gym, And wants to train.

The overarching goal, the aim of that is to get fit and strong.

And depending on the purpose behind that, for some people it's just

to get themselves a girlfriend so they want to look good.

For other people it's to ward off potential illness and so on.

I'll be really interested to see how you guys approach this.

If you just wander into the gym, so I say to you, you're going to the

gym yeah, which days are you going?

Oh, I don't know, when I've got a free day.

Okay, and what do you do when I get there?

It depends, if there's a machine free.

That doesn't sound like a particularly good approach to accomplishing whatever

your goals are by going to the gym.

People consider themselves leaders, and then there are coaches who coach leaders,

and there are people that train leaders to be better leaders, and there are

books about being a leader, and so on.

I'm fascinated by this idea because as I said, I think anybody that just

wants to be a leader should be locked in a room and never let out again.

Because that is not the point.

That's just like saying I want to be a husband.

Who of?

Why?

It's a worrying concept for me, this idea of just wanting to be a leader.

There are other things, when you go home at night, are you still a leader?

Are you going to be the leader of your family?

Are you going to lead your dog when you take him for a walk?

What's the point of you being a leader?

So when you talk to people who consider themselves leaders, and

all people can be leaders, obviously under different circumstances.

The question I often ask, and the question I'm constantly asking myself and trying

to refine is, how do you make that happen?

How do you become a good leader?

I've listened to so many people talking about this and a big chunk

of it just makes me roll my eyes because you're describing something,

you're not showing a person how to be this thing, you're just describing.

I suppose you could say I'm telling them what good looks like.

Yeah.

But how'd you get there?

And, somebody like, for instance, Thomas, who clearly is imposing on

himself a fairly harsh regime, to become the leader that he wants to be.

And that to me is why I think he's going to do so well, because he's

forcing himself into a training regime that has some purpose.

It has some structure.

And there are some principles behind it, and it's not just haphazard, I

haven't just been made the manager of this team or this company, and now I've

just got to figure it out as I go along.

There's some reasoning behind it.

And when you say to somebody tell me how you make somebody a good leader.

Usually, they will describe a set of skills.

Or a set of goals that person must have and I personally don't subscribe

to that and it goes back to what Rob was saying about having this compass.

As you said, when you have to keep stepping out of who you are the energy

expenditure involved is quite severe and you can't always keep that up.

So if you're trying to be this thing, if you're trying to embody

these skills and goals that a so called leader is supposed to aspire

to, you're not going to manage it.

The ideal one would hope is that you can be yourself and lead when necessary.

If, and that may be all the time if you're in charge of a company or a

government or whatever, but you don't actually do leading all the time.

So how do you make that happen?

I've, I personally found that there are a set of values that a person should

aspire to, humility being one of them, that regardless of what they're doing

on a day to day, minute to minute basis, makes them a good leader.

And I just mentioned Thomas imposing this regime on himself.

I think that's brilliant because that to me is what it's all about.

How do I make myself embody these particular characteristics or values

and what are those characteristics and values and how do I achieve them?

When you guys are talking to leaders you obviously like most people have

got their idea of what makes a good leader and how you get to that.

And I'm just interested in how you guys would express that

when you're talking to somebody.

How would you explain something?

This is what you need to do to be a good leader.

I would never open with that.

I would never tell anyone how to lead.

So there's a couple of things.

One, I don't hold the same immediate belief that you have Clark around if

somebody's aspiring to be a leader that they should be locked up like, and I know

you're saying it half tongue in cheek.

My start position is to start exploring the reasons why, and I

think sometimes it's defining what do we actually mean by leadership.

I don't think there's clarity often about, because if somebody does

perceive it to be a set of skills.

or they read a book and thought I want to be like that guy.

Okay.

We appreciate that.

That's not it.

That's not the answer.

It's almost who are you being versus what are you doing?

The two completely different things.

Who are you being is everything.

And so my reference to that shift and that energy cost of stepping

outside of your natural style.

So if I want to be a great leader, It's impossible without self awareness.

That's the foundation of everything, right?

In my opinion.

And often people haven't done the work.

If you're a young salesperson that's been a gun salesperson since he was 19, 20

years old and he's now 24 and he's been given the sales director's job at 24,

he's got no grounding other than being a subject matter expert in selling stuff.

Yet the organization's bestowed upon him this title, this position of authority.

Alongside that comes all of these unspoken expectations.

What does it mean?

The boss might say, you're now a sales director, read these

three books on leadership.

You'll be fantastic.

Just keep doing what you're doing.

So off they go blindly into the night.

And realizing that two years later that they're broken.

They're not the person that they thought they were.

They are, they're just not.

all the expectations have failed to have been met about what it

actually was and what it is, because they still haven't done the work.

They still don't know.

They still haven't done the values piece.

They still don't know what their reason for being is.

That question that you asked up front, Clark, about what's the

point of you, they don't know.

They haven't done that work.

It's the question of who are you being?

Cause people will follow who you're being, not.

what you're doing.

Yes, of course, if you've got a position of authority and you're the boss, they

have to do what you tell them to do.

Fine.

Everybody understands that, the mechanics of that, but that's not leadership.

That's power and authority and organizational structure.

That's just doing stuff.

So I think the work is in that, like you say, it's in the

values, it's in the purpose.

So I can have this great set of values that meet, let's say we all agree.

Let's say the three of us could agree on what the ideal value

set for any leader could be.

Let's say we reach an agreement on that.

And we might give a bit here and give a bit there, but we end up with a set of,

let's say, five core values that every leader should have, whatever it might be.

Still so I can be that all of the time in any scenario.

But in different scenarios if my nature is to be warm and open and collaborative

and the situation requires me to be direct, ruthless and stubborn, then

that's the bit where I'm saying, okay, I need to know that when I step into that,

Hey, I might need a bit of training.

I might, but I doubt I can dial it up, can reach into it.

But yeah, it's uncomfortable.

I don't like it.

But I can do it because, hey, these are my value.

These are overarching everything that I do.

This is my purpose.

This is why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Cool.

Okay.

I'm going to go into this situation and do this thing.

So for me, if I think back to football career, that's leaving players out

every week, I didn't like doing it.

It wasn't something that I was comfortable doing, but you've got to learn that

actually you've got 20 odd people.

Only 11 of them can start.

You've got to have 10 conversations with people who ain't gonna

what you've got to say.

So you've got to steel for those moments.

Here we go again, every week, in we go.

They're not easy conversations for me to have, but knowing that and knowing how to

recharge and knowing how to prepare for it is part of the methodology that you use

to adapt in the situation, in the times when you need to, Because for some people,

that's just straight, yeah, no problem.

I just go in and do it because they're not as feelings led as I am.

Let's say if you're way more task oriented than people oriented, those

conversations are walk in the park.

Whether you're one or the other is, irrelevant to whether

you can lead well or not.

It's actually knowing where you are and in what situation does your most

natural state lend itself to being ideal?

And when do you need to make some adjustments in order to deliver what's

required and just being able to step in and out because people are where

they are and leaders have to know where they are and go and meet them there.

It's all of that.

But I think if we agreed on the values and I think we do, and what are the principles

around which I'm I'm going to operate and everybody must operate around those

these core principles, then, okay, within that, anything goes within that, as long

as we're within those parameters, let's be who we are, let's be authentic and be

tolerant of each other's authenticity.

But the job needs to get done.

That's exactly the point I was thinking when you were saying that, of

course, there are times when certain things that we have to do might be

uncomfortable, but if we're subscribing to a particular set of principles

or concepts, ideas, or values, then we will always stand up for them.

If we're being true to ourselves, the way we manifest that,

as you say, is irrelevant.

Somebody that's far more mild mannered than somebody else may

say, no, we're not doing that.

And somebody that's a little bit more strident in their views

might bang the table and say, No, I've said we're not doing that.

It's the same thing.

And yeah, you both had him for the same outcome.

I have, I often have these interesting conversations, because I take some I

don't think controversial standpoints, but I approach them from what you

might call a controversial perspective.

Possibly, but I often say to, to the people that I work with, whatever

that relationship might be, who's the leader in your relationship?

It's such a simple question, but it gets some really unusual answers

because nobody likes the idea of being a leader in a relationship.

There's something about it that, that makes people uncomfortable.

But there is one.

There is a leader in every relationship.

There is a dominant personality, whether we admit to it or not, and it may only

be marginal, but it's always there.

And the thing is, when you then talk to that person, And whoever the leader might

be in that relationship, how then do you govern the team that you're a part of?

How do you guide that team through, through a successful relationship?

And the answer, as you've just been saying, Tony, is that we, I refer to

a certain set of values, and they're the most important thing, regardless of

whatever might happen to us as a couple.

And for instance, that, that might mean that a guy might have

the value of, for instance, I protect my family at all costs.

That might be a value that he subscribes to and that the rest

of the family is okay with.

Having adopted that value, situations then arise that challenge his demonstration

of that particular belief system.

And that's the point when there, there are always times in any leadership

role where your values are challenged.

That's the point at which you then have to decide how you go about expressing that.

But depending on how strongly you, you hold that value or that

idea or belief will depend on how strident or how firm you are when it

comes to resisting that challenge.

But you can't if you haven't examined or challenged your own

beliefs and ideas and principles.

And that to me is the key to being not just a good leader.

But a good person.

And above all else, I think a good leader is a good person.

If you've established a set of values that you subscribe to, and you've

nailed your flag to that mast and you will die on that hill, if necessary,

then it doesn't matter how you say it.

Ideally, you will say in a way that everybody can understand and subscribe to.

But basically, you're trying to achieve an outcome, you're trying to achieve a

goal, but it has to be done this way.

It's not at all costs.

It's not at the expense of the safety or the well being or the

happiness of the people around you.

And so when you talk about people in relationships, I think it's a good

question to ask, who is the leader and how do you manifest that leadership?

Because there's a lot at stake in a relationship, it's a person's happiness.

And when you can transfer your thinking on how you govern or lead your family.

If that's what you do, maybe it's somebody else, but whoever that is,

if you can transfer the ideals behind that to your business, I think you're

on the right track because, these people have got homes to go to as well.

They've got a happiness that is important to them.

And if you can adopt a values driven approach to leadership.

I think you're absolutely on the right track.

And as you say, you don't then have to expend all this energy trying

to pretend to be somebody else.

Go and ask my wife who she thinks the leader is in.

So I come from a different perspective, for me leadership is about

maintaining the relationships because if you have the relationships, that's

what gives you the authority to lead.

That's what people will follow.

And there's a key principle from the Gottman's shared house idea.

It's basically accepting influence.

So it's interesting what you say about in a relationship, there's a leader.

And typically where relationships break down is where typically

the man doesn't accept influence.

So they are, I'm the boss and no one likes to feel that

they're not being listened to.

No one likes to feel that they don't have any input or

autonomy within the relationship.

In leadership, what we're really doing is creating a set of relationships.

Relationships are at the core, a vehicle for connection because

everyone wants to feel connected.

Bad leadership isn't contextual.

Bad leadership is where we have an idea and we want.

when we talk right to the beginning about aspiring leaders, they

want to project an image and what they're looking for is very selfish.

It's I want to be important.

I want to be special.

Like Tony said, there's fixed objectives and we need to be fluid

in how we meet those objectives.

And, but what happens there is they've made the fixed objective,

not the outcome of the group, not everyone benefiting, but them having

a certain status within the group.

So it's very self orientated, which then becomes the breaking

point of that relationship.

In relationships, often people will leave.

You said are you the leader at home?

Often men will leave a relationship 20 years in they've reached midlife their

wife and their kids are used to them.

They're just the person that brings out the trash from it.

And there's someone younger at work that they've got authority.

They have a position.

They treat them like you're, know, all about this.

So it's that wanting to be the leader.

Wanting to be respected, wanted to have a status motivates them

to leave for something that has no real depth other than a temporary

appeal of making them feel important.

I would disagree that I don't think there is necessarily a certain value

set that you can agree on leadership.

But I think we bring our values, we bring our skills.

And then that's why I think certain leaders are better positioned

in certain roles because of the context, because of what's needed.

And I remember Clark, you asking if we were emotional and I

couldn't answer at the time.

I realized I am very emotional.

I react to what I feel is right and what I feel is wrong.

If I feel something is right, I don't matter if it upsets someone because I

think it's better in the longer term.

But when you have a sense of values of that you truly believe, then the

role of leadership is to espouse these are the values that I hold.

Like Tony was saying that I want to be judged on humility.

And when you say this is what we have, what you're really doing is it's like

politicians setting out a mandate.

And if everyone agrees with that, you have the mandate to lead.

And then it's about holding accountable and being a steward of those values.

Finally, Rob revealed his emotional self.

I didn't, two months in waiting with is an emotional mess.

It takes me

a little while to respond to a question , but it took two months.

Yeah because I don't really think of emotionally 'cause I don't

think I think of what's right.

And then I realized.

I really react.

If something's wrong, it will really affect me.

I'll be angry at something that's But what makes something

wrong,

Rob?

I was

going to say, that's an innate sense of justice, right?

That's an innate sense of justice.

It's a value, right?

Yeah.

Strong value.

There's a value there that you hold.

And if somebody challenges or oversteps the mark with regard to that value,

then that evokes an emotional response.

And when you talk there about the husband that leaves, their family for a

partner that now shows them some respect.

That I find fascinating because that's really the key to what I've been

talking about for the last few minutes is this idea that if you subscribe

to a set of values, the problem, the reason the guy's left is because

nobody accepts his role as leader.

If that's what the family initially started out as.

Nobody meets a person and says, listen, I want to marry you and be your leader.

That's not how it works.

And it doesn't mean,

to

have and to hold from this day to lead, from this day forward,

, Clark: Definitely don't agree with the idea that the man should be the leader.

The leader is whoever is the leader.

And the leader can be the person that says the least.

Or directs the least.

There is a person always in all relationships where people defer

to them for an answer with regards to how they should negotiate a

particular set of circumstances.

And it can be either or.

But the fact that guy's left and that's why I think we're in a really interesting

times at the moment because a lot of men have subscribed to this age old

idea that the man should be in charge.

By virtue of what you can't just turn up and be the leader mate and say, even

though I'm an idiot, I'm in charge.

People are rejecting that now.

And when a guy does leave his family, to me, that tells a fascinating story

because he's brought nothing to the table.

And people have basically rejected his leadership.

When you say that you may or not be able to have a set of values

that you would hear I've got a set, they may not be the right set.

They may not be the complete set but it's the set that I've come up with.

Yeah, me too.

Over the years, and the very first one, obviously I always

talk initially about the person.

Who they are, who they think they are, and then how they relate to the tribe

what their particular set of goals and outcomes that they're looking for.

But the first value that I talk about is presence.

It's not really a value, it's a characteristic if you like, it's

a, it's an idea or a concept.

But when you talk about presence, it then speaks to that person's sense of self.

Who are you and how do you relate to other people?

What is your locus of control?

When a guy leaves a relationship like that, he has no sense of self.

His sense of self is wrapped up in all the people and their attitudes towards him.

Nobody can respect or be led by somebody that has no sense

of who they actually are.

Because if you don't know who you are, how can I expect you to tell me who I am or

help me be the person that I want to be?

So this idea Of leaving to get the respect that you're not getting here.

You're not going to get it there either.

It will wear off eventually there as well, won't it?

And this is why you see often you see leaders moving from company to

company after a couple of years.

Because they never got whatever it was they were in the job for.

When you can help a person change this perspective and start to look

at outcomes that are driven by these sets of values, for instance, what

is your vision for the organization?

How do you apply change?

How are you resilient?

How do you present when you're talking to people?

All of these things are values that you adhere to.

If you hold them and they've been examined, rigorously and you hold

them strongly enough, then when they're challenged, you can quite

clearly explain your reasons for doing so, but you will get emotional.

It will elicit an emotional response and you will take a stand for that.

And that's what people look up to when you're in any relationship, whether it's

a business or a family relationship.

If you have a certain set of principles that you are prepared to die for, I'm

speaking figuratively, Of course, people respect that because if it doesn't matter

how you then manifest as a person, how you describe the situation, how you

tell people what to do or how to go about doing something or whatever your

approach is, your style, those values are the things that people respect.

I find this fascinating because I often speak to guys who have

been in failed relationships.

And it's always the other person's fault, and they will love to tell you how it

was the other person's fault, and all I'm thinking is, mate you're literally

in exactly the same situation now as you were when you left, as the old

saying goes, wherever you go, there you are, and you take all of your problems

with you and your values with you.

Or lack of them.

This is why I say people that aspire to be leaders should be locked in a room.

And I have dialed that down because I used to say it should be shut.

There's nothing to disagree with that.

I think those things like blame and denial their nature's painkillers.

They're a way of avoiding the consequences of owning.

Your own basically.

I'm sure that's what gets revealed in those conversations that you have.

But if we go back to the sort of shared set of values, let's assume that the

three of us were, we're here together on this podcast and we're doing this thing.

But if we were moving this thing forward as a collective in a more structured

way, let's say, I think we would quite quickly, the three of us, be able to

come to an agreement on what the core principles against which we were all going

to work together how it would define us.

So if we take that forward into an organization, so the last organization

I worked with, 850 people, they're in a hyper growth phase that they're the

fastest growing company in Saudi Arabia.

They're a helicopter operating company.

The first one backed by the Royal family triple digit growth year on year.

So yeah.

It's insane, right?

The speed in which they're moving is hard to keep up with.

If you're in there as a leader, as a manager, You're in this vortex of chaos,

which is fantastic, amazing place to be, but it's not for the faint hearted

and there's lots of change every day.

So it's a really cool environment.

So you've got the company that's got its core values, and I'm using

this as an example that there's an immediate expectation that everybody

is aligned to those core values, which just doesn't make sense in a way.

So if I'm brought into that organization and given a position of authority,

let's say, as a senior manager or middle manager, whatever it might be, so let's

say I've got 10 direct reports and 50 people in the team and out of 1000 people.

I can only be who I am within the sphere of influence that I've got.

Now that sphere of influence can grow if I want to try and lead up the organization,

if I want to try and lead across the organization internally and outside.

And my start position is I need to lead this thing that I'm in charge of, that

I've been given responsibility for.

Then it's almost obligatory that I do the work to create As a start point with my

direct reports, a shared sense of purpose and the shared set of values against which

we, of course, we're going to align to the key objectives of the organization.

Of course, we're going to look at who we are and how do we meet these?

How do we live within this framework that the organization has given to us?

So we connect it that way, but in the way that we're going to work together,

the principles that we design are ours.

And we, this gives us the strength to go anywhere within and out of the

organization to be who we need to be, to lead in every possible way that we can.

Even using the term we immediately lends itself to, it's far greater

than me from my ivory tower.

It's about us.

You have the most impact with the people that you've got view of and with the

bits that you're involved directly in.

So if we can shape these sort of macro, micro environments with

brilliant culture and brilliant principles and shared values and the

frequency of high quality interactions with people, we can measure it.

How did that conversation go?

Did it go?

Did you progress?

Did you close the gap?

Are you still miles apart?

Did it blow up in your face?

What happened?

We work with each other to keep enhancing these little tension points.

Then we can start to influence.

Ultimately leadership's about influence.

We can start to influence from the position we've got wherever

we are in the organization.

That's quite an amazing thing to get a hold of.

That's what makes it fun for me is to help people view it through

those types of lenses where actually we've been thrown together here.

Unless we do the work we're just thrown together and we're going to

be working as a thrown together group instead of as a cohesive, focused,

principled entity within this hyper growth Business that we're in.

Because ultimately you want and if you're one of those people That we

started out talking about who's who wants status who wants to feel validated

Then there's no better way to do it than to start influencing upwards

through doing a really good job.

Make yourself, The best that you can be that's how i'd that's

how i'd have a crack at it.

I like that.

What I do with teams is You So there's a set of values that I that

I would ascribe to being a leader and to be in within the team.

But other people are going to have different values based on their

different experiences and different.

So I get people to do their personal value model.

And I think there's a distinction between mechanistic values and

aspirational values that we want certain things, but then there's a certain

strategy that we have of getting.

So for example, for me, it's all about living with honor.

It's about having freedom.

So they're aspirational, but the mechanistic ones are looking

for the truth accepting what is.

And evolving.

So I think everyone has the personal and then as a team, you agree on as we

come together, when we work together, how do we work together, how do we And

then what are we aspiring for as a group so that there's clarity and we have to

then all agree that we either believe in this thing that we're doing, how

we're going to do it or then we're not gonna, if we don't believe, then we're

never going to work together as a team.

So we have to hash out what that means.

That's cool.

That reminds me of this workshop I was talking about with the helicopter.

There's 22 people, I think, in the workshop, never been thrown

together before as a collective.

So multiple nationalities, multiple departments all doing the same course.

That was the only common element.

So if I go right back to the beginning of that, where I said, look, my one

word equity for this course is humility.

Let's hear what everyone else has got to say.

So out of 22 people, there are 18 different words that

people came up with that was previously invisible to any of us.

Of course we had honesty, we had loyalty, we had success.

We had communication.

We had all of these that fit those two brackets.

Some were aspirational and some were mechanistic.

But across the group, you suddenly got in the space of 10 minutes, this

snapshot of Imagine if all of those characteristics were pulled together

into one unit to make something happen.

It's wow, we can lean into the honesty that's in the room.

We can lean into trust and trustworthiness and we can lean into

that sense of achievement or whatever it might be that everybody's bringing

something different to the table.

How do we harness that?

This is what we're here to discuss.

So it's great.

I love this stuff.

I love that because what I think is when you take all those qualities

together, depending on the situation, depending on the context, it's going

to depend on who needs to be the leader and the leadership should

go to where the team needs it, not the people who want to be a leader.

It is irrelevant to the situation and it's irrelevant to the relationships.

It's self based rather than the group based.

Yeah, I've often said this in when I worked in manufacturing on the shop

floor that whenever there was a situation, whoever knows the most about this.

You're in charge.

We're all up to you.

You clearly know how to deal with it.

So we'll all look to you.

By virtue of the fact that one person has just transferred power to somebody else.

Should demonstrate to everybody who the actual leader is

because he just transferred the leadership to somebody else.

But this idea of a meritocracy is a very powerful one.

Both of you, when you just talked there about the different values that come

up when you talk about how you want to work within a particular environment.

Things like success and all the other things that you

just mentioned there, Tony.

Very often when you have these conversations with people about all the

different values that they subscribe to, I've personally found that

predominantly people are describing the same things with different words.

There are some, so for instance, the Beatles said, all you need is

love, if you boiled everything down.

To the just, if you could only have one value, then probably

love would be the best one.

You could perhaps just debate whether there are some other things I don't know,

like happiness or freedom or whatever it might be, but there are some key values.

And when people talk about trust and loyalty they come under love, right?

Often what you're describing is basically the same thing.

But as long as you can have that conversation, and then amongst

yourselves, agree that these are the values that we're going to adopt.

But when you look at an organization's value statements,

usually it's utter nonsense.

We believe in the sovereign power of each individual to decide how they look.

Yeah, obviously.

And we all eat and we all breathe and that's because we're human beings.

Some of these things are so abstract that it doesn't mean anything.

And sometimes you have to be very clear about these things.

For instance, integrity, honesty, this is non negotiable in our organization.

You may lie to yourself about who you are and how good you are, but

we're not going to put up with it.

We're all going to be brutally honest with each other.

And if that does involve some tension points and some challenges, then so be it.

But it's necessary for us as an organisation.

To progress to maintain this level of honesty or loyalty, non negotiable,

you are part of this company.

And if you start telling tales to other organizations or selling

ideas or whatever, then you've gone.

When you talk about loyalty, for instance, there are other things that

you could describe it in different ways, but it basically means that same thing.

And, as long as the organization can get concrete on what those values are and then

agree that they're the things that they want to pursue at all costs, then I think

that an organization has a clear mandate.

But also obviously has good leadership because, these are the guys that

came up with that in the first place.

So it's if there are no clear values in sight, it's usually an indication

that things aren't going well.

Agreed.