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The topics and opinions express in the following show are
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solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
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What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the
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answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose
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at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their
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lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization
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that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their
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highest potential. Business can be such a force for good
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in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide
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guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we
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all want working on Purpose. Now here's your host, doctor
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Elise Cortes.
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Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program, which has
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been brought to you with passion and pride since February
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of twenty fifteen. Thanks for tuning in again this week.
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Great to have you. I'm your host, Doctor Release Cortes.
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If we've not met before and you don't know me,
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I'm an organizational psychologist, management consultant, logo therapist, speaker and author.
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My team and I at Gusta and Now helped companies
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in liven and fortify their operations by building a dynamic
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by performance culture and an inspirational leadership activated by meaning
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and purpose. You do know that inspire employees outperform their
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satisfied counterparts by a factor of two point twenty five
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to one. In other words, inspiration is good for the
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bottom line. You can learn more about us and how
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we can work together at gustodashnow dot com or my
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personal site at Leascoortes dot com. Today's program we have
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with us today Russell Wellocker, an international speaker and the
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host and producer of the Relationships at Work podcast, the
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guide for building workplace connections and avoiding leadership blind spots.
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These held successful leadership and communications roles for alle twenty
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five years, retaining one team for almost twelve years, and
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his work and expertise in building employee and customer trust
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have been recognized on international stages, multiple publications, and as
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a four time named Top Thought Leader by the International
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Customer Management Institute. We'll be diving in this particular episode
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in these areas of expertise on leadership. He joins us
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today from Let's see Victoria, British Columbia and Canada. Russell
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A hearty, welcome to Working on Purpose.
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Thanks for having me, Aleise thrilled to be here.
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All right, isn't it nice to be on the other
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side of the mic?
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Sometimes it is, there's extra pressure, but yeah, it feels
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lovely and.
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Good. Good, Well, we're going to talk about fun things
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that both you and I care about, leadership, trust, all
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kinds of good things like that. And I appreciate getting
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to converse with you and really pull from your background
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and to start, I really loved how you situated the
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idea that we could talk about the actual You said that,
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why is it the definition of leadership? It's so important
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for building employee trust. Let's start there.
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Absolutely, And I love that you want to start with
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definitions because and I had the pleasure of having you
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on my podcast as well, so I know this is
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a bedrock of a conversation piece for us. So definitions
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are so important because what are we talking about if
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we don't have things defined, if we're not singing from
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the same song sheet. We throw out words in corporate
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culture all the time like diversity, leadership, culture, and yet
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nobody wants to define them so that we can reinforce
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support them and go down a particular path. I'll even
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I'll tell you a story where this really this hammered
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home for me. I was out with a friend of
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mine who was working with some executives I knew, and
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she went on to tell me that this particular person
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was an amazing leader, phenomenal leader. And I'm like, okay, interesting.
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I knew for a fact that person was not a
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good leader, so I was curious in that moment and said, okay,
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how do you know they're a great leader? And her
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response was extremely telling. Her response was she gets me
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what I want when I want it.
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Wow.
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So you define leadership as the ends justify the means.
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They got you a thing. And I'm like, do you
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realize that that leader has the highest turnover burnout rate?
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But to you, they're a great leader because they produced,
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not because they had anything positive around the relationships of
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the people they were responsible for. So her definition of
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leadership was probably a lot different than the team member
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of that executive and what they were going through. So
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definitions matter.
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Well, so how do you define leadership?
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I think the organization has to I think the organization
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has to define leadership so that those that are seeking
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leadership know what game we're playing. To be honest, if
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you talk to executives, most of them will say, oh,
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leaderships Simon Sinek and Berne Brown, but they won't reward
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those characteristics. They won't follow up in a performance review
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of well are you making other leaders are you growing
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your staff? Or they don't care. It's more of can
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you fix the problem that we have a problem and
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what's getting in your way of fixing that problem. So,
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even if you don't agree with the definition the organization
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has for leadership, because that might be beyond your control
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within a business area, at least you know what you're
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getting into and what game you're playing. I might completely
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disagree with what they think leadership is because I have
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my own definition of what and I know you do
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as well. Where it's the human piece. But if the
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organization has a definition of leadership. Oh, they're going to
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see a huge turnover, they're going to see burnout, they're
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going to see but that's the game they're playing. So
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we need to understand what the game is. And maybe
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we need to work somewhere else, but at least we
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know what we're talking about.
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Hmm. Such a great point too, Thanks to that, Russell.
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I have to comment on. One is that I'm always
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amazed how many organizations conflate management and leadership, two very
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very very very different things. So let's talk about that
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really quick. So let's let me just throw it to
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you first. How would you distinguish those two different roles?
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Absolutely, and that is such a key piece because we
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make the huge mistake in organizations of calling managers leaders right,
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and I mean that throughout the entire organization. I was
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recently talking to somebody with their like my direct report,
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my boss does not listen to me, does not champion me,
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does not grow me, And I'm frustrated. I'm like, how
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long you've been working with them? For two years? They're
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a manager. And to your point about definitions, managers manage
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resources and deliverables. Leaders are growing and supporting human beings.
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You need to have both. Both are extremely, extremely important.
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But to your point, we confuse the two so that
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a manager who's a great manager and a horrible leader
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is still being called a leader. So they think they're
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doing just fine. They call them they're on a leadership team.
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They're a senior leader. No they're not. They're just a manager,
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and we have we're going to have higher expectations of
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them when they don't have the skill set.
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Yeah, such a great, great distinction. Wrestler completely agree with that,
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and I take tuteledge from my mentor at doctor Lance Sacraton,
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who also hails from Canada, and he really distinguishes tremendously
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between management and leadership, but he also the leadership part
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of this especially, and this comes over to my second
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point for him, and this is where I align with him,
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is I'm interested in developing inspirational leaders. And so those
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people are first and foremost turned on by their own lives,
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themselves and what they're up to in their own world,
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and they have a strong, hearty connection and believe in
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what the organization is doing. That becomes attractive and energizing
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force and they are focused heavily on to your point,
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on their people and loving them into becoming their higher potential,
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really encouraging them a challenge in them, giving them as
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stretch assignments. They know who these people are, and they
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can see and want for them more than they even
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want for themselves, and they take to light and seeing
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them realize those stretch goals and that growth.
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It's interesting you brought that up because that's something I
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struggle with a bit, is around how we qualify leadership,
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because we'll see things like inspirational leader, people leader, servant leader,
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and to me, it's all just whether you're a good
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leader or not. Like we put these words in front
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of it to help those who don't understand leadership and
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understand what their job is, like, oh, I want to
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be a people leader, Like no, actually, you're just being
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a leader or a manager, a good one or a
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bad one. But we have to put those words in
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front of it so that people understand the actions and
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the intent they need to have in order to be
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better leaders. But to me, it's either you're a good leader,
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which would be inspirational, servant growth leadership. But we have
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to almost put that in as a communications exercise to
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get people on board to understand what a good leader
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looks and.
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Acts like I really appreciate your distinction that each each
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organization needs to decide what kind of leaders do we
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want around here. I've certainly worked with organizations like well
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so in my work. This is so interesting just thinking
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about history here, Russell. When I first really got involved
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in the human capital general space a person recruiting and
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then kind of went along the way. Back then, a
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lot of the stuff that I was really doing were
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called soft skills. Now they're called essential skills, right, So
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all these things that we used to think of as
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just you know, nice to have additions. So what's happened
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is because I worked in that realm quite a bit,
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teaching people things around employee engagement and communication, et cetera.
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I worked with a lot of very technical audiences, scientists, engineers,
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it people because they needed that kind of additional leering
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and of skills and what they had on their own,
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and I loved working with them. And some of those
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organizations were, you know, they really proded in having very
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technically astute leaders, people that had a very strong technical vocabulary,
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who were commanding in their technical pross. So to your point,
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you know, each organization defining what kind of a leader.
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Do we really want in prize around here? And we
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will reward around here?
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Absolutely, and technical people are some of my favorite people.
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They're brilliant. But to be really strong in their technical
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sense doesn't mean they're strong in other sense. They need
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people like yourself and myself sort of to clarify that.
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A perfect example was this was I worked with a
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technical group who was trying to communicate what they did,
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and they provided me a PowerPoint presentation that was one
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hundred and twenty slides deep, and I'm like, wow, oh oh, no,
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you've you've there's no mystery here, You've covered everything. But
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nobody's going to listen to this. Nobody's gonna get past
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slide too. So they couldn't connect with or build relationships
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with anybody because they were so stuck in the details.
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And that as a technical person, my god, please be
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that person. But it is another skill set to understand
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what connection and communication look like right exactly.
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Now, you're not exaggerating. There was one hundred and twenty.
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I think one hundred and seventeen. I'm not exaggerating at all.
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I was bored by slide three, but yeah, yeah, on seventeen.
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Wow, Wow, here's just get to know us a little bit.
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All right. Well, okay, well, speaking of that that, maybe
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this is the next This is the time to bring
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up the next topic that I wanted to talk to
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you with that we agreed on in advance, but that
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the seven roadblocks to great leadership we put in our
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own way. That might be one of them.
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I don't know, Uh, it can be. Yeah, no, it was.
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It's been an interesting journey on this. I've noticed as
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I've been talking to leaders and in my own experience
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as a leader, it really became really apparent to me
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that there are these things that leadership will put in
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their own way to get in the way of great
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leadership in an organization. Because we often hear the phrase
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people don't leave good jobs, they leave bad leaders right,
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And I actually disagree with that. I actually think people
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leave leave bad leadership ecosystems. And the reason I bring
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that up is that you will have people go I
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need to leave Sarah or Jim or whomever as my boss.
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I'm like, okay, Now, if that organization identified that bad leader,
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did something about it, coached them, mentored them, provided the
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skills they needed to turn it around, would you still
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stay in that organization, and they're like, well, yeah, I
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would stay because they're doing something to fix it. The
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problem is most organizations don't. They just allow this bad
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leadership to fester and then until it becomes untenable because
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everybody's left, or they need to fire that person, or
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they just let it continue. So I was looking at
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these seven roadblocks to go what gets in the way
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of us being able to identify bad leaders or for
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us to be able to fix these cracks in our culture.