 My name is Jane Godfrey, I'm Professor and Dean of the University of Albany Business School and it is my absolute privilege to welcome you this evening to our short, sharpened event. And as you'd be aware that this event is actually brought to you by the Business Schools Alumni Relations team and also the Graduate School Management which is in the Business School and you'd already be aware that we work very hard in the Business School to connect with our alumni and when I talk about alumni I'm using the term in the broadest sense because that's how we think of people people who have a special relationship with the Business School because we have engaged with you in one way or another and touched your lives as you have touched ours in what we have to offer. So it's not only those with a formal qualification but for those who have also engaged with us through designate education and the like. And in today's world we know that alumni can choose whether, when and how to engage with us. You can engage with us from anywhere in the world and at any time of the day or night. We see it as our responsibility to provide you with a meaningful reason to actually engage with us in ways that will inspire you and want to do so. So events like tonight's short, sharp session are a collaboration between our alumni relations and executive education teams because we recognise the importance of professional development to business, to our future management, to the capability within management within New Zealand and of course to growing New Zealand's economy. So welcome to that for those reasons. And whichever category of alumni you fit into, I'm absolutely delighted that you're here this evening. I particularly hope that you'll take away something new that will help you in your professional field, something that will help you to deal with issues arise in the near and the more distant future and I really encourage you to stay in touch with the Business School to make the most of our networks and other events like these. And it's my pleasure now to introduce our short, sharp speaker tonight, Dr Peter Blyde. Dr Peter Blyde was the Senior Executive Program Director at the New Zealand Leadership Institute from 2005 to 2010. That's of course a role within the University of Auckland Business School and here he worked intensively with over 100 senior executives on the Hillary Leadership Program, which many of you will have heard of. That was an 18 month long cross sector leadership program. Peter also regularly works with the Business School to develop and deliver executive education programs. He is a Director of Catalyst 4, which is a consulting and development organization specializing in leadership development, specializing in vision and strategy, and executive team development. And most recently Peter has worked with senior executives from Monterra, Midland DHBs, Metro Performance Class, Balance and A&Z. Clearly someone who is very well credentialed to speak this evening. So please join me in welcoming Peter Blyde. Thank you very much, lovely to be here. I'd like to start with a karakia that I heard on Monday which I've never said publicly before, but I'd like to start with that. My clarity be yours, my understanding be yours. Through reflection, through personal endeavour, through respect, the virtues which bind us as one. May we be filled with wellbeing. And so it's my genuine hope tonight. I thank you for taking time out of busy lives to invest in your own development and my genuine hope for tonight for you is that there'll be something that will both stretch and focus your development in the leadership space. In thinking about accelerating your impact, this question around what counts as leadership is both, I think, an intensely personal question and one that's been sort of a professional focus of mine for the last 25 years. Personally, one of the roles I have, I'm a chair of an eldership in a church. I've been doing that for a couple of years. And one of the things, if I stand up in front of a group of 400 and say, this is where I think we should be heading into the future, these are the three priorities that are going to be important for us over the next 12 months. This is what we think success looks like. If I do so with a degree of enthusiasm and I hope a level of articulateness, then there is regularly people who will come up and shake your hand or shake my hand and say, that was fantastic leadership. And the question that I asked myself and the question I know many of you wrestle with was, did what I just do actually count? Am I doing a good job at this thing that people are calling leadership or am I doing a terrible job of it? Or do I know that I'm paying attention to the right things and actually not majoring in minors? So it's one of the concerns that I would have. So this question around what counts as leadership, one is intensely personal. The other is it's been a professional passion for 25 years. So the pleasure of working on New Zealand's first 12 month integrated leadership development program in 1992. I worked with a guy who's passed away and I called Mike Beb. And we ran the 12 month leadership development program out of the belief that you can't develop leaders on a weekend, not even a long weekend. And in 1992 there weren't any options available for kind of long-term integrated leadership development. And so to support both the design and the marketing of that program, I did my PhD on executive perceptions of leadership. So 717, New Zealand and Australian, middle and senior executives. You asked them the question, for you, what is this thing called leadership and what are the best ways to develop it? So for 25 years now I've just been fascinated by how do people make sense of this thing that they call leadership and how does that shape their practice? Now if you ask 770 people what counts as leadership, the number one answer is inspires and motivates others. So that part didn't surprise me. What percentage of the responses did you think that accounted for? This is the audience participation piece if you're looking for a cue. 89%. 5%. So it's somewhere in between there. So the number one thing when you code through 770 accounts for 16.7% of the total responses. The issue when you're trying to develop something like that, so when I say the word leadership I expect if there's 100 at best 16 of you have a picture in your head right now that's similar to the one that I intend. And so with the confusion around what really counts with the diversity of views around what really counts when we think we're having a genuine conversation about leadership very often we're not. And so what I want to do tonight in one sense is I'm going to talk for bits and then get you to work at your tables for bits. The worksheets are in your booklets. How many of you have got low impulse control? If you've got low impulse control I don't want you to flick a head to the end I'd like you to stay with me as we unfold the story. But the first exercise I'd like you to do is I want you to think personally for yourself what do you think counts as leadership? So in the role in which you currently occupy what does that look like? I'm just going to give you a few minutes to think about that and then a chance to do it. And a way to think about this is I'm going to give you something that many organizations aren't prepared to give you which is I'm going to give you an extra resource. And that person is going to only do the parts of your role that you currently count as leadership. And so you're going to have a chance to work with the person next to you and you are going to give them their first briefing about what it is that you currently do that you count as leadership. I'm going to give you about five minutes to have that conversation. So I'm going to give you 30 seconds, 60 seconds, page one, success or exercise. When you think about your own role currently what are the bits you count as the leadership work? So a chance to think... So I'll give you a minute or so to do that. So I want you to pair up at your tables or a few groups of threes and I want you to have the conversation with one another around the briefing them around what leadership is. Now your role as the person who is listening to this is I want you to be one of two things. I want you to be suspicious. So you've been around long enough to know that when somebody's going to delegate some stuff to you they're going to get rid of some stuff that they'd rather not do. So if they have a conversation with you and you're not convinced the thing they're trying to pass on has anything to do with leadership at all I want you to have that conversation. So I want you to be suspicious. Actually I'm not convinced. So help me understand why you think this work you're asking me to do actually counts as leadership. Second I want you to be earnest. So I want you, you really want to do a good job at this. So I said the number one thing is inspire and motivate. So the leadership industry has got a lot of weasel words. So I want you to, what does that look like in everyday clothes? So I want you to nod and smile and say that's fantastic. So I'm inspiring and motivating. So what is it that I actually do in this role that's inspiring and motivating? If I was videoing it, what would it look like? What am I actually doing? So five minutes to tease out together and at the end of it I'm going to pick up some of the answers. What are you confident at the end of the conversation has survived? So what survived the conversation long enough to say we're prepared to count this as leadership? Okay, what am I asking you to do? Okay. I've got the easy job asking the question. So you've got five minutes. Have a crack. I'm not sure if it needs a roving mic or not but just amount of interest. What are some of the things that survived the conversation? So what are the things you left saying, yep, we're pretty comfortable that this counts as leadership? What sort of things we've got? Great. Definitely didn't need a microphone. Thank you. Developing successes. Yep. Been a role model. Saw that in lots of lists. Explaining the why, not just the what and how. Very good. So demonstrating that the cause is bigger than the possible consequences. Yep. So by cause you mean that you're in service of? Yep. Nice. Thank you. Other things that survived? Understanding connections. Like relationships, environment. Relationships, environment. People and processes. Yep. Culture? Culture. Okay. So you've all got your own sort of lists and you've probably sat in leadership exercises all over the country doing similar types of things. So let's do some more with that. So I want you to squint with your eyes. Ever played the game 20 questions? You've got to guess what's in my head. You've got 20 questions to do it. There's two versions of this game. So what's normally the first question that you ask? Is it animal, mineral, vegetable? Okay. You're of the technology generation. Nobody plays these games anymore, right? So you've got to guess what's in my head. Is it animal, mineral, vegetable? Why do we ask that question first? Yeah. So we're wanting to know what's the essential nature of the thing that's in my head. I want you to got 30 seconds with the person next to you when you squint with your eyes behind your answers. What are you assuming is the fundamental nature of this thing we're calling leadership? Now it's not going to be animal, mineral or vegetable. Many of you think you work for vegetables. What's the essential nature of this thing called leadership? What's its essence? 30 seconds. Hardest question I'll ask you tonight. It's a philosophic question. What's the essential nature of this thing you've called leadership? So I want you to... Someone just give me one of their answers. Vision. So what I want you to do with your answer, I want you to put it to this test. So every time there is vision, would you say leadership is present? So for me, for this to survive the test, you need to be able to say, so people have to say or communication or being inspirational. So every time somebody's been influenced, is leadership present? Yes or no? If every time somebody has vision, so take your answer and apply the test. If every time it was there, would you say, leadership counts and if it wasn't there, you'd say it was absent. So 10 seconds, give it the test. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start with a couple... To define something that's sometimes useful to describe what it's not. So I'm going to give you two things I don't think it is. First thing I'm going to say it's not is the characteristics of an individual. So the first thing when you ask the question, is leadership present? Yes or no? The first question most people answer in their head is the who question. So who in this situation has a certain type of characteristics that I'm prepared to call leadership? Now that list might vary a little, but effectively the essential nature question for most people, the answer to that question is it's a certain type of characteristics that certain types of individuals employ. Now is it an interesting conversation? Absolutely. If mum and dad didn't give it to you, or is there a hope for you yet, that these questions have occupied the leadership domain for a number of years and some interesting stuff in the space? For me, I'm just going to rule it out for tonight and say I don't think it's the most important conversation to be having in the leadership space. Second question, who's the leader at home? So why do you snigger? What question did you think I asked? Who's the boss? So the other thing I want to rule out and is a common association in the leadership space is that we think when we're having the conversation around leadership, we think we're having the conversation around what is it that people in charge do? Now we use both often in conversation and most people don't even notice when we've changed fundamentally the frame of reference. So when I'm weighing in on this, I'm not prepared to count leadership as the characteristics of an individual and I'm not suggesting it's just another way of saying what is it that people in charge do? What I'm going to suggest to you is a way of thinking about leadership is to suggest that leadership fundamentally is a contribution and it's a certain type of contribution and it competes with other contributions that people look for in organisations in particular. And so the contributions that I think it competes with and I don't want to get too lost in the language around it but the first contribution it's up against is a professional contribution. In a professional contribution, when you've got a professional head on and you're making your professional contribution, the thing that's top of most in your mind is how do I do my craft to the best of my ability? It's finance, it's computing, it's HR, whatever it would need to be, how do I be the best at the craft? For me it's primarily leadership development so when I've got my professional head on what I want to be is the best at that. The power base for it comes from your expertise and from your experience. I judge my success as a professional by the complexity of the problems people are prepared to pay me to help them solve. So when I worked in a professional services firm in Sydney, you basically knew if your colleagues were involved in your lots of projects you were doing okay and if you weren't getting a lot, so the busier you were, the better you were getting. So how do you add value with your professional hat you keep up to date with and create innovative practice and you handle the too hard basket? Is that an important contribution? Absolutely. I think often when we say leadership often we mean this, excellence in the craft. Leadership, and when people say Richie McCall was a leader I think mostly what they're saying is he was one of the best we've ever seen. So our way of thinking about leadership, again I'm not prepared, if I was being particularly finicky tonight I'm not prepared to count it, we've already got good language for that. You take somebody who's good at their craft and you put them in charge of other people who are doing the craft, what normally happens. Typically you use, lose if it's a salesperson you lose your best salesperson and if you're lucky you get an average person in charge supervisor, team leader, whatever the languages you use. Why is that? It's a different contribution. So it's no longer just about excellence in the craft when you are put in charge of others so this is where the authority thing is relevant when you are put in charge of others what's the contribution that's top of mind? What's most in your heart? Their success, yep so one of the big transitions is about your individual success but other success, yep. So I'm going to suggest the contribution that we often call management two arguments I have on this one. One, it's primarily about getting consistent results. How do you ensure day in, day out, week in, week out, month in, month out the ragtag bunch that currently calls itself your organization delivers on the promises you've been making to your stakeholders. More provocatively I'm going to suggest most of the stuff that's written in the leadership space instead of if you don't like consistent results effectively the argument what is it you want from people in charge is that how do you get high performance? If you Google anything or you get your LinkedIn feed and it says 10 tips for leadership really what it's going to be saying is what do people in charge need to do in order to get high performance out of the system. And again, I already think we've got a good word for that we call it management. I'm not trying to diminish it when I say that I grew up in my early consulting career management development and people started asking for leadership development and it was great all you needed to do was change the title and add a zero. Over that transition nothing fundamentally shifted in what was being developed or what was being paid attention to managers became leaders executive teams became leadership teams supervisors became team leaders the only thing that changed was the language we didn't change a fundamental reference point around what is the contribution that's expected now I'm not diminishing management at all I think I understand why organizations pay a lot of attention to it if you get high performance out of the system there's 40% performance improvement on the table and we know without a scarative doubt actually what it takes to do that so if you provide a clear sense of this is what success looks like and this is the standard of performance people will perform better if you staff them with the right people and you let left hand know what right hand's doing you will get significant performance improvements when people appear to be hitting you said we're going to be hitting north and they appear to be hitting west you sit down with them and you have a conversation that says this isn't working and most of the time what you're doing and this is your experience of most days you have an intent about how you're going to spend your day and it's frustrated by the first phone call, hallway conversation or email and suddenly what you thought you were going to do is no longer what you're actually going to be doing because somebody's called and sick the customer's complained or something else has gone belly up and you're spending the rest of the day making sure you can get things back on track because if we can consistently deliver the results we'll get a high performance coming out of it really important contribution when the people the church would come up and say great leadership what they're telling me is they feel confident that I'm doing this job okay and as having some authority as a chair it's important I exercise that authority wisely so I'm saying this is incredibly valuable and I'm also saying in my mind has nothing to do with leadership so in my mind excellence in your craft carrying responsibility wisely in terms of the authority that you might have and getting high performance out of the system are great contributions but we already have a language for them so if leadership is neither of those things then what the heck is left and I'm going to argue the contribution that I think counts as leadership is any contribution you're making where you are disrupting things today in the hope that the future will be better that is the contribution that can be made at any level irrespective of your personal characteristics irrespective of your title where you are initiating conversations and actions that are saying actually the way we're doing it now if we continue to keep doing it this way is going to mean in the future we're going to have a problem I can see a better way of being able to do this so for me this distinction between leadership and management which is often done is best understood as the difference between delivering business as usual and disrupting things today so that the future will be successful I think the leadership development industry my industry in particular has focused on the inputs and we lost the story about the outcome the reason we pay attention to Martin Luther King is not because he was a great orator and he's great at telling stories around the vision the reason we bother to talk about him at all was he was at the forefront of significant change when it came to civil rights on a national scale that's the main story it's my industry that made it about personal characteristics and so this commitment to shared vision critical a lining stakeholder is critical why do we need to inspire and motivate I get that I do a lot of work in operations environments if people are doing work that's not inherently motivating in its own right sometimes to get consistent results you've got to do other things to do that but I think the inspiring and motivate doesn't necessarily count in that case because really what it's doing is it's inspiring and motivating in the service of consistent delivery and performance it's not a bad thing it just doesn't count as leadership for me so in my church the only thing I'm prepared to count in leadership I think the way we've been doing church isn't fundamentally setting this up for the future anything I'm going to do that disrupts the way we do that and the hope that our future will be better is the only thing I'm going to put in my ledger around I'll take the feedback it's nice to have but it doesn't count for me and if I was being particularly finicky I'd say the only change that counts are the ones that you exercise outside your area of control and the more senior you get in the organization it's almost impossible to make any change in the system without it affecting your peers and most of your experiences will be the first reaction you get from peers and I'll thank you very much for raising that we appreciate it so that's my argument in a box in one sense is that if you like a gentler story so for those of you that feeling a sense of loss around the management space just retitle this a story of the many faces of leadership and maybe it's more helpful because leadership is one of those words that's been associated with everything that's good and right in the world so if you prefer that story then there is professional leadership there's high performance leadership and there's change leadership but I just think get in the habit of recognizing which conversation you're in and what's the contribution that you're bringing so my first point is when you want to accelerate your leadership impact I think it's really helpful to be clear what are we actually talking about and I think the individual question which I want to give you a chance to think about is are you deploying yourself across those contributions in the right proportion so some of you will be spending too much time on the tools doing the work to high standards when really what's expected of you is to be creating the conditions so others can thrive and perform some of you will be spending a lot of time creating the conditions for others that can thrive but are not disrupting things today in the hope that the future will be better and so you are mortgaging the future for the sake of today's performance so the practical application question which I want to give you a chance to look at is I want you to the math goes like this by the way what percentage of time are you currently spending in the professional strand what percentage of time are you currently spending in the managerial strand what percentage of time are you currently spending in the leadership strand now the only way to hold this in my opinion is just by the top line what I mean by that is pay attention to the outcome what percentage of your time is personally doing work to a high standard what percentage of your time is currently getting high performance out of a group and what percentage of your time is currently disrupting things today in the hope that the future will be better what's it been in your opinion what does it need to be so two sets of numbers so this is on page three and have a conversation at your table so when you've done the numbers it's a good way to take it for a test drive so what makes sense about what I'm saying where do you disagree with where are you going so have that conversation and then have the personal conversation are you deploying yourself across those contributions in the way that you think is in the best interest of the long term future of your organisation so have both of those conversations and we'll pick them up from there so in terms of reactions so things are going yeah make sense yeah but taking it for a test drive any clarifications you want things you want to take issue with so the question is how do you disrupt without having a result on the business and I think the challenge affecting the performance of the business I think one of the reasons they sit nicely on a chart side by side they don't sit nicely in practice because the other thing if I do a slight digression in one sense the primary metric used in most large organisations for leadership effectiveness is what engagement scores so performance and engagement so typically the two outcomes we're looking for now I would argue engagement scores are a measure of how do you get high performance out of the system and in every conversation that I have when people say our engagement scores down last year so performance and engagement yep so yep sorry the measure of management would be performance yes it is so I'm arguing engagement still management and my rationale for that when people get poor engagement scores you know the most common reason offered we've just come through a period of significant change it's good okay and so intuitively what I think we understand in one sense is that these two things do not sit nicely one by one in some cases because you have power doesn't mean it's easier to bring about change so one of the fallacies we have is if only I was the CEO then it would be much easier to make things happen around here one of the there's a funny relationship between power and the ability to make change happens the joker general electric was when the chairman asked for a cup of coffee somebody bought a coffee plantation in Brazil okay so what power gives you there's an amplification effect in the system but in ways that are sometimes unhelpful so when people transition into senior roles one of the first things they learn to do is to think out loud much less often so there's some resources that come with power but sometimes just because the person most seniors said it's going to be this way it's already automatically harder for it to happen so I think the challenge is actually one of the core questions and I think every person at every level wrestles with this are we doing the right amount of change or and if you poll you're always going to get a 50-50 response some of you some of the group are going to be saying we're doing way too much change if I could do a Scotty accent from Star Trek you know he'd be saying we can't hold this together it's all going to break apart and then you're going to have another half saying we're changing slower than our external environment we're not even going to be a business in five years time if we slow this up and in the end so from CEO down when you go and poll your group you're going to get a 50-50 response and you're going to have to wrestle with that question am I optimizing the contribution between delivering as much performance as I can today up against disrupting it so that the future can be better if I could give you the percentage that did that in the algorithm that would help I'd make millions I just think that's the core question that we're really having to wrestle with and fundamentally you understand that the reaction to both of those things is different and I think the reason most people defaults and not doing enough of the change piece is that actually the people who authorize you your staff and you actually don't really want it in themselves to one of those three functions right so there's natural craftspeaker who have to make themselves do the other stuff natural managers and natural directors so the point I took was that if I'm one of those three I need to consciously actually practice the other two so that's one point the other point was they all hate each other they can you work in health I do quite a bit of work in health you know so this debate between kind of clinical clinical leadership service management and change you know it's a conversation that's played out of those things well so learning to value the other's contribution if you can't bring it yourself actually recognizing it's a legitimate contribution not one that's designed just to frustrate your own I've spent a lot of time with people in the middle of very large organizations and when it comes to change I think one of the things you have to accept when you're in the middle of a large organization is that every person more senior than you is balancing a broader range of stakeholders than you are every person more senior than you is balancing a broader range of stakeholders than you are and so when they make decisions where you go oh that's so stupid so I was making the comment you think you work for vegetables in one sense typically it's a very uncharitable assessment I've worked with many people where that's been the case it actually often it's a very careful and clever trade-off between competing stakeholder needs many of whom are invisible to you so potentially but sometimes you know you're in position but sometimes you're actually not in a position where you can say yeah I'm also largely in the favor of having interpretation of events that cause you the least amount of upset and if you're going to assume that you're senior people are stupid all that's going to cause you is upset if you live with the possibility that that balancing a broader range of stakeholders than you you'll live longer and your life won't be quite so miserable so absolutely are people more naturally predisposed to some of these than the others I suspect it's true across all sort of capabilities is it possible to get better at these with intention yes I think it is otherwise I wouldn't do what I do but yep it's a good point other questions if performance and engagement are an indicator of management what then are a good indicator for effective leadership it's a great question so if I'm saying performance and engagement are the management characteristics if you hold tightly the definition around positive change what would be the closest metric I'm arguing innovation so the big shift if you look at globally what are things shifting in terms of the leadership space there's a big push around social entrepreneurship entrepreneurship in large organizations so if you go back 10 years there was a talent development and leadership development got merged and so leadership development became executive development essentially because we were asking the question what do you need to be successful at different levels in the organization so that happened like 10 years ago what we seem to see now I think is a merging around sort of innovation and creativity and entrepreneurship and leadership and I think that's possibly more hopeful if we're playing what's the core conversation so if I was weighing in on a metric side I'd be more inclined to innovation metrics what percentage of your current business is off new ideas in the last couple of years what's the rate of improvement and change that's sitting within your organization what experiments are you trying this year that you are setting you up for future success they'll be sort of metrics in that space other good questions thank you other questions clarifications they are going to basically face a natural human condition societies society doesn't go into criticism to a change because they must know what they are doing and they are happy with it how do we get them from that kind of happiness to a better happiness I'll use on vision so for those who couldn't hear him he said it's going great and he was asking the question when you were doing the change piece the first reaction you often get in the change space is reticence rather than we're happy to hear this what can you do to help that and I think that from a development point of view that's at the heart of why things like how do you get commitment to shared vision so by the way shared vision isn't I have shared my vision with you and therefore we have a shared vision so that's the most common translation in organizations so anything you do that exercises involves people in the conversations and decisions around the future is going to increase commitment to it the conversations around the reason inspiring and motivating matters is because exactly of that case when people are offered with change what they see most what they see early, large in their face is loss and the thing that's been most influential in my thinking in this space people don't resist change they resist loss if there's no loss in the change people will embrace it people are changing all the time people are resisting it's not because they're stuck in their ways or most of our assumptions around resistance are uncharitable when you recognize that what people are resisting is loss in one sense part of your role is to help them say you're right we're giving up a certain now for an uncertain future but the risk of doing nothing is greater than not doing something now so I'm not really giving you the answers around the how on that regard I think most of the leadership industry is doing the work to try and do that but it is the right question and this is where I think these two things don't sit nicely getting high performance out of a group requires consistency, a degree of predictability and clarity when you're working in the change space the dynamics are and do feel different the dynamics are different and learning to be comfortable across those becomes really important so I want to give the question back so how many of you have got a shift on the personal contribution that's required the numbers between how you're deploying yourself now to the future are different so how many need to spend more time professionally how many people need to spend less time professionally how many need to spend more time managerially how many need to spend less time managerially how many need to spend more time in the leadership space how many need to spend less time in the leadership space okay when all those are possible I would argue if you've got a number in the leadership column that's greater than 30 you would have to be a massive misalignment between the external environment and your current organization if 10% of your for a 40 hour week is 4 hours you're saying you're spending 12 hours a week disrupting things in the hope that the future would be better you need a pretty good reason in my opinion to be doing that so while I work in the leadership development industry I don't think that number needs to be big I thought the question was going to come there are some people who just want to change thing for the sake of it do you count that as leadership I'm not convinced my feeling was that leadership one needs to be pretty low so you picked your battles because otherwise you'd just be ignored or just worked around if you're always trying to change everything and yeah you need to sort of work with the system in particular things you're going to nail absolutely it's one of many possible contributions so the question in terms of accelerating your development the first question I want to put before you is to say are you deploying yourself in the right mix now the hands are are common proportions and so a couple of things to help you think about so I want you to start thinking tonight what personal changes in how you spend your time and energy will help you make that shift a couple of things I want to say development and delegation will probably be helpful but insufficient and I intend this is good news not bad news so what I'm suggesting in one sense is currently there are things falling off your plate all of you have got things on your list that you've been meaning to get to some of those things have been there for six months at least I think the time has long since passed where it's possible to get to everything that is expected of you again I intend that is good news what I intend in that is that I think there are genuinely some people who think that if only they were better stronger and faster they'd be able to get to all of this I'm wanting to say that game is not that is not an option for you stop playing the game if I was better stronger faster I'd be getting to all of this I think the only game you have to choose you don't choose whether stuff falls off your plate stuff is always going to fall off you only choose what falls off and if you've given different percentage numbers you are telling me that you think the choices you are making about what stays on the plate and what falls off the plate you don't believe are serving you and your organization I'm asking you to make different choices I'm not asking you to get to more things I'm saying you're making different choices about what falls off now again I've got the easy job asking the question is easy what implicitly what you recognise is when you stop doing some stuff you're disappointing other people and a quote I quite like I'm going to try to emphasize is that leadership is the art of disappointing people's expectations at a rate that they can handle and essentially how that was originally intended is that the expectations of people in power is for clarity, degree of predictability and order fundamentally when you get involved in the change thing you have to manage those expectations because actually what you're going to do is disrupt things a little but I also accept that when you're making changes one of the things is people who used to get a whole lot of time and attention from you in a particular way are probably not going to now if you make these changes now at this point some principles I found helpful in one sense if you need to spend less time professionally you will argue that the reason you can't is that you don't have enough time I'm going to argue it's mostly about where you get your kicks so it is prioritized in a sense what I'm trying to do is put that across the contribution level rather than at the task level I know that the thing that would make the biggest difference to my ability to create change in my industry or in the country is not to be doing stuff like this so there's a limit to how many rooms I can get in front of and the number of people I can get in front of and I've known this for years if I was going to do this I'd either scale up my business so it's not just me and my wife and we'd have other associates doing it or I'd be writing and publishing for the wider audience so I've known this for at least two years I've made no progress on it and the reason I'm telling you that it's because I've got a really important group of people here and so I've read a couple of articles before I come but when you've been 25 years in an industry you're going to read an article and maybe I'll get one anecdote I didn't have before if I didn't read another thing in the leadership space for the next 12 months not being rude you wouldn't notice the reason I don't do that is because I get my kicks having that conversation if I was to have a conversation around what catalyst four should look like in five years time I can spend an hour doing that and I feel more confused at the end than when I started so I prefer not to put myself through that I'd rather do stuff I enjoy and think I'm good at so have a strong conversation with yourself learn to have kicks about things that aren't just in your professional area of expertise in the management space my slightly provocative statement is some of the things that don't deserve your high standards I do a lot of work in large organizations typically I can guarantee you some of you are finessing spending two hours finessing a report that frankly people don't read that closely most professionals who move into managerial positions have a perfectionist tendency they lean to learn to kick this is not a stand for low standards it's a stand for requisite standard and people who have a perfectionist tendency don't realize the threshold of added value what you mean by that if you spend that extra two hours getting more detail into the budget it doesn't increase clarity around whether it's going to work or not you've just added detail complexity if you spend too much time finessing a report that frankly people don't read that case the worst example I've had is someone spent one and a half days presenting 70 page board reports to find out by accident they only reach page five and page seventy they now spend half a day producing a five page report and everybody's happier in large organizations that happens a lot so what are some of the things you're doing don't deserve your high standards others of you that a smattering of hands sort of going up around needing to spend more time then there is more time going into the discipline of not just doing the work but what does success look like in 12 months time how do I coordinate things more effectively the leadership space I guess my most common observation people tell me when I get the staff member on board when the system is up to date when we do this then I'll get to the change piece if I see that person in six months time they're still telling me the same story when you go into a dark room you don't chase the darkness out you turn on the light and what is an analogy what I'm suggesting is that in many cases you have to put the change stuff in first and let that force some of the other choices around the professional and the managerial so principles are found helpful don't help me with the practice but some principles I'll give you a couple of minutes hopefully you're doing this as I've been talking specifically what changes would you need to make to deploy yourself across these contributions in a better proportion so give you a minute to do that chance to talk to the person next year if that's helpful so the first part of accelerating your leadership development suggesting one let's be clearer around what it is suggesting it's a contribution primarily we're disrupting things today in the hope that you're making the future better and that it's competing with other contributions to accelerate your development make sure you deploy yourself in the right proportions the other three questions I've found most helpful which to accelerate leadership growth if you buy my central argument that it's primarily around change then I'm saying the three questions if you have a really clear answer to will accelerate your development of these the first one is what is your signature organizational change so if leadership is primarily around change the first question you need to have a good quality answer to is what's the change I'm in service of not like that if I'm making a change on behalf of the whole that I think is going to set up our future if I could only do one thing in the next 12 months and I was put to put my signature next to it and say this is evidence of the leadership difference that I've made what's the one change that would make the biggest difference out of interest how many people could answer that question now okay so I'm arguing for every hand that's not up there's a leadership development impact now for some of you you might be sitting there thinking of all the changes that I'm doing which is the one and for others you're probably sitting there thinking I'm doing a lot of stuff I'm just not sure how much of that is disrupting things for the day and making sure the future will be better either way there's some value in having some time to think about that question second question which is the primary question in the leadership development industry it's an important question it's what intentional change am I making with regards to my own behaviour and again I'd say minimum of one maximum of two so by behaviour I mean changes in the way in which you're doing your work is it the capacity to be able to talk positively about the future is it having a broader range of strategies for being able to influence others is it being able to have some of the difficult conversations that are required in the service of change is it the capacity to be able to listen behind what people are saying and recognise the loss and be able to motivate and inspire towards it what is it about the way in which you do your work that if you deliberately change would make either your life easier or you more effective again how many of you have got one or two behaviours tattooed on your eyelids when you close your eyes you know what it is and you've been intentional about being different in it how many you've got one or two slightly more again I'm going to argue if you can't answer that question you're getting no additional development over and above what you would have got by chance okay how many would say experience is the best teacher yep experience is the best teacher it's only partially true so a couple of things I think most people experience like drinking from a fire hydrant okay so we're having a lot of experience but there's just not a lot of swallowing so one of the ways experience becomes the best teacher is if you build some space into the pace of your life so taking some time out for some reflection to actually process what you're learning from your experiences becomes critical second is getting feedback on the work that you are doing but I think you amplify your development through those experiences you've got top of mind at least one shift in the way in which you do your own practice that you think is going to be making more effective and you're actively trying to do some things around that that's the second question the third question which is in the service of both of those that you can be quite, you can specifically tell me what actions you are planning to take can I use a slightly crude expression where you get clenched cheeks at both ends I did both by the way so what actions are you taking where you are a little bit scared and a little bit excited by it that's the speed of development question you will have accelerated your development at the rate that's necessary when you are doing either in service of the organizational change or in service of the personal change something that feels a little bit outside your comfort zone something that feels not quite like your default something that feels a little bit unnatural in the first instance and in my experience the people who have good quality answers to those three questions accelerate their leadership growth more than people who don't and so what I want to give you a chance to do is to have a chance to think about each of those questions first one I'm not going to add too much to my sense, I don't have a whiteboard but bend diagram your signature organizational change should be part strategic insight part what do I think is in the best service of the organization interest overall and part personal interest, personal passion where are you personally excited got a bugbear want to make a difference in your signature organizational change should sit in a sweet spot between those two things will make a big difference to the organization and you have personally got an interest and passion in it if you're working in that sweet spot it's a lot easier to do the work and so for a couple of minutes with the person next to you I don't need a fully formed answer to this but what might it be if you can only make one change in the organization so if I was to take a photo of the organization now and then come back in 12 months take another photo of it what would you point to to tell me it was different and you would say I was part of making that happen I put my shoulder to the wheel and because of my contribution I think we've really shifted the dial on this what's the one thing in the organization that you think would make the biggest difference so a couple of minutes with the person next to you not an easy question to answer so I don't suggest and I think that's an easy question to answer but I think if you want to accelerate your leadership development it's the primary question in the leadership development industry when people ask you how are you going to demonstrate that you've made a difference what most people look for is time one and time two three sixties what it gives you is a sense of the behavior change but I don't know if you've noticed but most people aren't that interested in it are you more effective at having difficult conversations what they're interested in is how's the world different as a result and I think they have every right to be interested in that the sense is what are you planning to do and tending to do where you're disrupting things today I hope that the future would be better so get as focused on that as you can the second question is one that happens a lot which we do a lot of work on a couple of things which may be familiar to many of you but when you're answering the question what's the one or two behaviors I'm going to pay attention to how many of you are going through your mind of all the things I think I suck at which ones will I pick so one of the common errors in making choices about behavior is that we tend to do that so my industry is largely responsible for this so we're uncomfortable saying weakness so we've called them areas for development as a result now when people say the word development they think we're just using politically correct language for weakness the research case is pretty clear all of us have weaknesses and on the whole they don't matter what drives high performance in particular is not the absence of weakness but the presence of distinctive strength what drives high performance in an organization is not the absence of weakness but the presence of distinctive strengths and so the nuanced argument when it comes to thinking about development is in some cases if you're doing some things that are so distracting they're getting in the way of the other things that you would do it would be good to pay attention to it and in the literature they call this a fatal flaw which is the first time the industry has been more dire than the average population and you know people who have fatal flaws because the fatal flaw walks in the door before they do so I was working with a group in a professional services firm they were the internal finance part of it and we're doing a team development session and we're doing it in house and the phone rang and it was someone and I said I'll use my brother's name Rodney and he said get a Rodney how's it going and everybody in the group says oh gosh he's going to be on the phone for 30 minutes so I would argue if I was Rodney and I was coaching Rodney he's got a fatal flaw I've got a picture of Rodney that people when people walk down the corridor they make sure they don't make eye contact because they don't want to it takes a long time to deliver a short so if you've got something that you do poorly inconsistently that it doesn't matter what else you do that's what you're going to be known for you need to go from sucking at that to being not bad at it and not many people have them so that's the good news so therefore the second place to do your development thinking is things that you are already good at but not distinctive at so that's what they call the good to great shift so not by the title of the book but by good at but not distinctive at distinctive the threshold is better than 80% of the people in your industry so if you make a good to great shift you've already got an aptitude and an interest in it it's just you're probably not doing it consistently enough or some stakeholder groups are seeing it and others aren't you might be graded it with staff but as soon as you go to a peer environment you lose your voice but those kind of shifts are slightly more subtle in terms of getting the impact an interesting thing in the research really in terms of distinctive strengths the number that you need in total about 5 so it's not a large number and it's really about producing distinctiveness so when you are thinking about the area that you're looking to develop you don't have to be sick to get better I coach one of the management team in the All Blacks they don't invest a whole lot of time in coaching their development because they've got sucky players they invest in them because if you're going to keep your edge you don't have to be sick to get better you want to do the constant improvement piece so it's the same sort of personal part there so what I want you to think about have the conversation with the person next to you if you could only do one thing focus on one behaviour over the next 6 months that you are good at but not great at and that if you improve you believe this thing we're calling leadership disrupting things today to make the future better what might that be have a crack, what would that behaviour look like the other thing I want you to do the other part that's critical to this and this sounds crazy, so I've been running a programme for 12 years for the middle and DHBs and every year it goes like this so about this time of year they send out a 360 so they get feedback from managers, staff and peers they go out around September, October or close to November they sit down in January with a trained organisation psychologist who works through the report they have a conversation around it, they agree the one or two behaviours that are going to make the biggest difference two weeks after that they get sent back a one page that summarises the conversation and the one or two behaviours that they have and then I see them a month later in February in a workshop, there's 20 people in the room every time this happens middle of day one I come back to these questions and I pick somebody at random and I say on the basis of all that stuff you're doing what were the one or two things that you agreed in the most common answer can't remember so all that investment of time and energy and you've just had an interesting conversation yourself my experience has been that if I saw you in a weeks time or in two weeks time and I ask you the question what's the one or two thing most of you would have already forgotten as a result I'm going to argue again you're getting no additional growth over and above what you would have got by chance so the interesting discipline it's a very simple discipline in one sense one of the things you're going to have to do is over the short term how are you going to keep this focus top of mind there aren't endless options for this, you know what works for you but if you don't remind yourself repeatedly in the early stages I can guarantee this none of you are sitting here saying thank goodness for this program or this session tonight because I've been wondering what to do with my Fridays you've got other stuff that's going to squeeze out your attention so if you're going to accelerate your development you're going to have to keep it top of mind so 10 seconds with the person next to you what will you do over the next month to make sure that this doesn't fall off your radar okay one of the things you notice on the handout how many people have heard of feed forward conversations so a few of you when it comes to behaviour change in 25 years of doing development if there's only one thing that I could do that takes the shortest amount of time and has the biggest impact it would be having what's called feed forward conversations okay so the international data on this is the same as the data that I've collected in the last five years so the health program that I just talked about people pick one or two behaviours so you might have been more effective at dealing with conflict they'll work on it over the six to twelve over the six months then we send a short survey to everybody who completed the 360 and we just ask them two questions one for each behaviour in the last six months has Peter's ability to deal effectively with conflict minus three it's a hell of a lot worse zero quite frankly we've seen no change plus three hell of a lot better by the way time one and time two leadership surveys I don't believe at all effective descriptors of change and the reason I say that is I don't believe anybody sits across 80 questions going last time I rated you a three this year therefore I'm giving you a four it's not a snapshot of change it's an interesting snapshot of where you are at the moment so if you're using time one and time two for measuring leadership behaviour change I'm arguing that's probably not doing that for you I think a more targeted way to do it is to ask the question directly on the few things we've been expecting to see change in are we or not now the people who do feed-forward coaching or have feed-forward conversations the 90% of the people you survey will say a plus two or a plus three the people who don't 50% will say they've seen no change 10% will say it's got worse and the rest might see some improvements typically a one or a two now I don't know anything that takes less than 15 minutes a month and guarantees that 80% of the people around you will say they see a significant improvement in that behaviour I don't know anything so if there's only one thing you could do this is it. Now a feed-forward conversation goes like this you pick three people and every month you front up and you have the same conversation you start by asking the front would you be prepared to happen with my development sure look I'm going to come and ask you the same question every month so I'm going to work on being more effective about how I deal with conflict and here's why I'm paying attention to that and each month I'm just going to ask you as you know I'm working on how I deal with conflict and what you have around how I might do that better and you nod and smile if you don't quite understand what they're saying can you help me understand what that would look like and you say thank you and you have two other conversations then you pick one of those things and you do it differently for that month then you front up in month two and then you have exactly the same conversation so the conversation you want to have is have you noticed any difference that's a feedback conversation a feed-forward conversation is as you know I'm working on dealing with conflict and what other ideas do you have now the magic number and this appears to be between three and four so if you do it more times than that seems unnecessary if you do less times than that it's probably not that helpful but for conversation typically five minutes is probably taking too long if you pick three people ask them that question every month I can guarantee you in six months time the people around you will say we've seen a significant change in this behaviour so when we do this feedback server thing we involve the people who are involved in the feed-forward conversation plus everybody else who did the original part that's how we know that all people say we've noticed a difference we're not just getting involvement bias which I'd be happy with anyway so one thing to think about for the area that you've picked but would you want to bank that? yes so I think you're in a different mind what you're doing is a mindset change of that person so I think sometimes absolutely I personally don't care so if that bothers you then work harder really there might be some change obviously you might take in but if others it's just in that other person then I can get to marry it's just for them true I think so don't disagree the other side of that expectations that are actually unfounded and I've had some people when people have said I don't think you're very good at this and you've chosen to work on it and you've asked them four times and not once have they given you a substantive point of view after a while they realised actually I don't think there's anything in this and at best what you've got is less noise in the system I like cynical points of view so it's good to challenge you shouldn't take everything I say as gospel so it's the shortest thing I know that makes the biggest difference the key thing is have conversations so pick three people first prize if you're dealing with conflict pick three people you're having conflict with that would be first prize it's a great example where first prize probably might feel a little bit uncomfortable but if another is if you've picked being more effective at coaching staff or being more strategic then actually what you pick is the people in whose eyes that performance matters most so if it was coaching staff who would you pick three staff if it was being more strategic in the organisation who would you pick probably people more senior in the organisation if you're going to be more effective at influencing across the organisation who are you going to be picking your peers so pick the people in whose eyes that performance matters most and get them involved in the conversations around how you might improve it if first prize feels too scary second prize is somebody that you admire the way in which they do and you'd be happy to get their ideas from so who do you think is a rock star in the way in which they do this and just get their perspective so before you leave pick three names that you're going to go and approach and say would you be prepared to help me with my development if you only do that one thing I can guarantee you it will accelerate your development the most closing comment is around the third question around take action outside your comfort zone from a personal development point of view I think it's more often true that anxiety is how it feels to grow and courage is just a nice way of saying that so courage properly defined is feeling anxious and still taking the action and so what we mean by being courageous is choosing to put yourself in situations where you feel a little bit uncomfortable so if I was dealing with difficult conversations in a conversation I'd ask a question one more question than I normally would hoping that I might stay in the conversation longer than I did before and doing so would feel uncomfortable for me but it's part of a deliberate intention to be able to practice doing that so when it comes to your behaviour change I'm arguing it's probably going to come associated with a little bit it'll be a good to great shift there will still be a sense of a little bit of discomfort sitting around it that's how you know you're accelerating it at a rate that's going to be useful to you when it comes to the organisational change component of that one of the things I want to leave you with is this notion that in order to make change in the system it's going to require you to take action outside your formal authority and your informal influence what I mean by both of those things is that there are things that are expected of you because you hold a role there are additional things that you might be able to do because you have a good quality relationship with the individual and if you are genuinely going to make real change in an organisation you're going to have to take action that's just outside both of those things the person who designed this called it walking the razor's edge one of the things that will happen is that when you take action just outside your formal and informal formal authority and informal influence what you're going to get is a smack so if you are making genuine change in the system and you operate just outside that the expected response will be get a smack the system will bite back and if it doesn't you're probably not making a real enough change what I want you to recognise is that the smack isn't necessarily evidence that you're doing a bad job it's just evidence of the system biting back and I think one of the myths in the leadership space has been is that if you tell a positive story if you're empathetic and ask good questions and you have the right people around the table everybody will hold hands and join you running into this glorious future there are some changes that have that dynamic to it but I think on the whole more people's experience is the first responses are typically not quite as glorious and a little bit getting a smack and I think what people want to tell you is it's because your personal style now it's useful to reflect on that but I'm largely going to say it's largely a system response not a personal response so get comfortable getting smacked the thing is if you work way out here so if you operate too far beyond your formal and informal authority it's going to be easier to take you out than it is addressed to change and that's the part that you're all scared about and it's true if you are too disruptive well beyond your formal authority and your informal influence it's going to be easier to take you out than address the problem you're trying to raise so the key in this is that it's a really tricky judgment call is to recognize that the experience of making that organisational change on the inside will always feel like you're doing it wrong what I'm encouraging you to do is to more consistently put yourself in that situation in the service of the change that you're looking to make and what I'm asking you to do from an intentional development point of view or encouraging you to do is to be deliberate around where am I going to choose to show up a little bit differently either what's the risk I'm going to take in terms of the behaviour or what's the risk I'm going to take in the organisation in order to make things different so that's flavour really in terms of accelerating your development get a good balance between your professional management and leadership contributions if leadership is primarily the contribution around change have really good answer to those three questions what's the signature organisational change what's the intentional change in my own behaviour and what actions am I taking outside my comfort zone