L&D In Action: Winning Strategies from Learning Leaders - Better Bosses: Creating Inspirational Leaders Through Trust-Based Feedback Systems

Episode Date: August 15, 2023

When a business has so many moving parts, overwhelm can easily get in the way of effective leadership. So, it’s important to be proactive and systematic in leadership development efforts. Among the most important ingredients to improving as a boss is the presence of feedback loops that offer truthful insight on the impact you have on your reports. If you have this, according to this week’s guest, global keynote speaker and author Michelle Gibbings, you can take the steps necessary for long-term improvement as a leader.

You're listening to L&D in Action, winning strategies from learning leaders. This podcast, presented by Get Abstract, brings together the brightest minds in learning and development to discuss the best strategies for fostering employee engagement, maximizing potential, and building a culture of learning in your organization. In this episode, I speak with Michelle Gibbings. Michelle is an executive coach, award-winning author, and global keynote speaker. Whether working as a consultant, facilitator, or mentor, Michelle aims to help leaders and their teams embrace and actually

enjoy change. Her list of clients features powerhouses such as Canon and Vanguard, as well as many government and educational institutions. Michelle has written three books on the topics of career development and workplace impact, the latest of which is the award-winning Bad Boss, What to Do If You Work for One, Manage One, or Are One. Today, we discuss some of Michelle's methods for making better bosses in hopes of addressing growing and widespread discontent with leadership in business. Let's dive in. Michelle, it's wonderful to have you on. Thank you for joining me. My pleasure. Great to be here.

We're going to talk about a lot today. We're going to go through leadership. We're going to talk about bosses in particular, but I love to start my show off by making sure that everybody kind of understands the cultural moment that we're in and just addressing the fact that we're not in a vacuum here and that everything we discuss does in fact have to deal with the industry and the economy, the state of the world and what's going on. And there's a lot going on in the world right now. AI, layoffs, general job insecurity, post-pandemic woes, those sorts of things. But an interesting thing happened recently at my own alma mater at Boston University where I went to school. David Zaslav,

Warner Brothers CEO, was giving the commencement speech at Boston University's graduation. And he was interrupted at one point with chants of, pay your writers, clap, clap, clap, clap. And it was pretty serious. People posted about this, a lot of sort of viral moments online. There's plenty of reporting on this. And in fact, before he gave that speech, there was a lot of protests in the weeks before the graduation. This is because as much of the world I hope is aware right now, Hollywood is effectively on strike in this moment. We're in end of July, early August, 2023, and writers and actors have been striking and a lot of shows and a lot of production companies are currently shut down. And it's really changing how film and television are working right now. It's putting a

ton of major things on delay. And this to me is, it's a growing issue in many places. There's also other strikes going on. England and Nigeria are both dealing with their doctors striking. This is a sort of a government oriented thing because those are, you know, parts of the national healthcare system. But I think there's also like a German railroad strike that's pretty massive that either just ended or was going on for a while. You know, there's a lot of discontent in the world when it comes to work. And I'm willing to argue that this is a leadership problem in one way or another. So my question to you ultimately is, you know, is this greed as many suspect, you know, the higher-ups just simply taking too large of a cut and just not being fair? Is it a lack of self-awareness on that part?

Because David Zaslav, in the moment that he was interrupted, was quite literally saying the words to be so successful, to be as high up as he is for lack of exactly remembering what he said. You have to be friends with everyone. He literally said that you have to be friends with everyone as he was being interrupted. So I'm willing to bet maybe there's a little bit of a lack of self-awareness there and we can kind of dive into that. But is that what this is, partially self-awareness? And what parts of these things ultimately can be solved by the practices that you advocate for? There are so many layers to that.

And I often say to leaders, you really need to sit back and challenge yourself and go, what type of organization do I want to run? What type of culture do I want to have? And what role am I playing in all of that? Because that's what it comes down to, is people making decisions about, well, how am I going to treat my employees? How am I going to treat them fairly? But also aware that it all happens within a system. And part of the system is if you think about organizations that are listed on the stock exchange, they will say, well, we've got obligations to shareholders. And they are then influenced in terms of the decisions that they make about how they cut

costs, where they're spending money, because they're continually getting judged by market analysts and also about investors and whether investors are going to continue to invest in those organizations. So I think there's a system issue at play. And I think there's a larger cultural conversation that we all need to have about what's the type of society we want to live in. Because this disruption that you're seeing, when you get huge inequity, that's actually not good for society and for communities, because that's where you get civil disturbance and unrest. When people go, well, that's really unfair. That person is earning a lot and I've got nothing, or I've got very little. So I think there's a broader societal conversation, but then it's up

to each leader in the organization and in the realm of influence that they've got to really challenge themselves as to the role that they're playing in all of this. and I'm a fan. I love his work. And he wrote a book called The Power Paradox. And he talks about how power isn't something that you just take. Power is conferred on you and it's conferred on you because you do good things. And so people go, wow, that person is doing really good, great work. We're going to give them positions of power. But what happens is that it's our very experience of power that actually corrupts us and corrupts the skills that gave us the power in the first place. And often what I see with senior leaders is when they get to those really big roles, they get out of touch with what is really happening at those lower levels within the organization. They forget where they came from.

They forget what it feels like to actually not have a lot. And to me, that's the experience of power. And Dasher Keltner's research shows that people who feel more powerful are more likely to cheat, break road rules, have affairs, and just generally think the rules don't apply for them. And so for leaders, you need to challenge yourself. And when you're talking before about self-awareness, it's self-awareness, but it's also having the people around you who are going to challenge you and say to you, hey, are you seeing the disconnect between what you're saying and what you're doing?

Because I see a lot of leaders who do the talk, they say all the great words, but they don't back it up with action. I see your research that you just cited. And I raise you one more piece of research, which you also cite in your book, Bad Boss, which we're going to talk about a bit. Actually, there's a handful of things that you cite kind of consecutively early on. One is from, I believe it's a Gallup poll from four or five years ago, maybe like 2017. 82% of workers that were surveyed for this particular Gallup poll said that they found their leaders uninspiring, which four out of five, that to me might as well round it up to 100% because there's always going to be those who are just,

you know, sucking up and say, of course I love my leaders. It's just too big of a number. 82% of people are not being inspired by their leaders, especially if you work for, you know, a large company. And when I think about something like Hollywood and the production companies that are there, you would hope that everybody in that organization that's a leader is an inspirational person, because guess what? You're working in media and fiction and storytelling. So even in spaces like that, where clearly there's a big disconnect, I would hope that that's the case. But I guess, you know, we're just not being inspired by our leaders there. And then beyond that, I think there was something like only a third trust their bosses, their immediate bosses was from either the same survey or a different one. And

then there's another one that was, I believe, about half or slightly more than half would prefer a new boss over a raise. So, just all kinds of disconnect there, as you already said. It seems like too much. And I want to enter another question here through these numbers, which is, you talk about doing a sense check a lot of the time in your book in Bad Boss. And this means kind of, you know, taking a feel of what's going on. And you also, of course, talk about gathering data and using the hard numbers to really figure out how things are going. But when you're talking about sense checking, it seems to me like you're doing a little bit of espionage. You're kind of getting the details and trying to figure out who's comfortable with whom and how the relationships are developing. But I have to ask, you know, doesn't this end up being a bit subversive if

you are one of those leaders and you're just trying to sort of get the pulse of the organization and there isn't that trust there and you aren't an inspiration to your people? So how can leaders do this? How can they get the information that they need if they don't have that trust in the first place? It feels like, you know, just like an endless cycle of despair there as far as I can tell. Well, and it is true. If you don't have trust, people aren't going to tell you how they feel. And even when you've got strong trust, people are going to be wary of giving you feedback if they feel that that feedback is then going to be used in a way that is then detrimental to them. So there's a couple of layers to this. It's really important for you as the boss to really

understand how people see you, but you also then need to understand how the leaders that report to you are seen by their team members. So it's multi-layered. And the first part for you as a leader, the best thing is getting 360 degree feedback, getting informal sources in a way that is structured so that you can actually do something with it. And one of the things that I advocate for in Bad Boss, I was an executive myself. And so everything that is in there are things that I've been through. And I often say to people, I put my hand up right at the front. I was a bad boss. And not because I was a bad person. I wasn't mean and nasty or Machiavellian. I just had low self-awareness. I thought I was doing all the right things. I thought I was focusing on the things that needed to be focused on. And I was really fortunate that I had a good

boss who pulled me aside. And she said to me, you know, Michelle, I get you're ambitious. I get you want to do a good job. And I think she was channeling Maya Angelou when she was saying this to me. She said, Michelle, at the end of the day, when you move on to something else, someone's going to come in. They're going to do your role differently. They might even do it better than you. She said, the only thing that people are going to be left with is how you made them feel. She said, your role as a leader is to get those people to places that they can't get to, but for the fact that they're working for you, is to develop them, is to nurture them, is to coach them. It totally shifted my focus as a leader. So for me, I was then able to use that information and then talk to my team and actually be really open about my own

shortcomings as a leader and where I could be really myopic and my blind spots and then say to them, I need you to help me. This is where I want to get to. This is the type of team I want to create. What do you want from this team? So we jointly created the type of team that we wanted to work towards. And also then very explicitly giving them permission. This is where I need you to pull me up. This is the areas that I know that I'm looking for feedback on. So there was that part. But then also there's a real part for you when you're leading other leaders to look at both formal and informal sources. So formal sources are things like turnover.

If you've got people working for you and there's really high turnover rates in their team, doing exit interviews so that you're getting data when people are leaving the organization about why are they leaving? Is it that they're leaving because they've got better opportunities or is it that they're leaving because they didn't like the environment in which that they were working? And then also walking the floor. And yes, you can still walk the floor in a virtual world because you can do casual, you know, drop-ins, conversations with people, check in on how people are going. And to me, that's the sense checking because you do get a sense of what's going on and listen to your gut. Your gut reaction

will often tell you something. And if you're a leader and you walk into a room and it goes completely silent as you've walked into the room, it kind of says, everyone was having a bit of fun and a laugh before you walked in. So maybe you're the one that's shifting the culture and not in a good way. So yeah, 360 feedback. I've touched on this a few times in past episodes of the show, but I've never really gotten too deep with it. So I'd love to continue it off and on it if you don't mind. I know there's a lot of software and tools that are directly dedicated to setting up systems for this. What do you ultimately recommend that leaders set up for their 360 feedback systems? You've just mentioned a few things there, but is it a system of regular meetings that has to happen in some way? Is it,

you know, like how, how do we, you know, walk the floor when we're in the virtual world and we have a disparate and decentralized team? And is this combined with some sort of a software program? And how do we ultimately make sure that the feedback that comes in that's actual words written or spoken from people is as honest as it can be? words written or spoken from people is as honest as it can be. So there's a couple of things with that. To me, a 360 degree feedback process needs to be paired with coaching. And there's lots of different tools on the market. And it's really important to pick a tool that has reliability and validity in how that tool is constructed. I have seen 360 tools weaponized and when they're weaponized, no one answers in a way that is truthful or helpful. I've also seen 360s that have been used as a precursor for trying to exit someone in an organization and that's not what they're designed for. A 360 tool is designed as a coaching and a learning mechanism. And so when it's done well,

you select the tool that is fit for purpose. You then get the person to want to participate. So you need to actually encourage them to get them to understand why this is going to help them from a leadership development perspective. And then what you want to do is not let them just decide who's going to complete it because you do want them not to kind of stack the decks with their mates and their friends. It needs to be a mix of people who have spent time with the person who knows them in different contexts. And some of the really good tools that are on the market, you can segment the data. And to me, that's where the real value lies. When you can look at feedback from your boss, your boss's boss, your direct reports, your peers, suppliers, clients, depending on what context in which you're working, that segmented data can be fantastic

because you can then look at it and go, isn't that interesting? So I turn up in this particular way in this context, but my direct reports see me like this. My peers see me like this. And where the executive coach really helps is digging into why. What is it that people are seeing or not seeing? Is it that you're shifting how you turn up in a particular way because you feel like you need to be something different?

And so the coaching works hand in hand because otherwise what can happen? It can hurt when you get 360 degree feedback. I know the first time I had it done to me, I got the feedback and I kind of looked at it and went, oh, I thought I was really good in all these areas. And then you kind of do that whole, oh, do people not like me? You need someone to kind of pull you up from that to then look at it and go, what are the learnings? What are the insights? And now that I then look at it and go, what are the learnings? What are the insights? And now that I've got those insights and I've done the acceptance piece, so recognizing that feedback is feedback. It doesn't mean that all the feedback is valid.

Different people will have different experiences of you and that's okay. But for then, for you as a leader and the type of leader you want to be, what do you want to do with those insights? What's the actual action that you're going to now take? Where is it that you want to focus your energy as a leader to be a better leader? And that's why it's much better if it's done as a development process, not as a performance management tool. And I would also therefore separate it from your annual performance cycle because if it's done as part of the annual performance cycle, people go, oh, this is performance management. If I get ranked low, does that mean I'm not going to get my bonus or am I going to get demoted? And that

then means people don't enter it with a learning growth mindset and you really do need to lay the foundations. So the other piece that sits underneath all of that is psychological safety. It's very hard for people to one, want to give feedback or participate in a process if they think they're going to get burned by the feedback. And I have seen situations where a leader asked for a 360 process to participate in. They went through the process. They didn't like the feedback that one particular person gave them. They then went around and figured out who that person was and then end up in HR because that person who was the person who gave the feedback said, well, I was told it was anonymous and it clearly wasn't anonymous. So it needs to be done with good intent.

This reminds me of something that you said before we actually started recording when we did our pre-call, which is a slight pivot, but we were talking about just learning and development more broadly. And you mentioned how it's important not to just teach directly toward the concept or be too overt with the concept or the thing that you're trying to achieve. So, for instance, just looking up, you know, do you have courses on psychological safety? Just looking up the thing and teaching toward the thing, you know, let's achieve psychological safety team is not really going to work out. And this feels like it's the same way that you're saying that, you know, 360 feedback, if you're just, hey, let's set up a 360 feedback team. I feel like we're in that sort of phase where we develop almost like an awareness bias or a little bit jaded by these, the buzzwords that become of these things and

processes behind them. And we have to be a bit more subtle. We can't be so jaded by the buzzwords that become of these things and processes behind them. And we have to be a bit more subtle. We can't be so sort of on the nose, as they say in film and writing, with what we're teaching and the goals that we're teaching towards. So you've done a good job of explaining this in the feedback process and where and when it needs to be happened. learning more generally, if a leader or if a learning and development team is teaching and seeking to instill some sort of a skill or change behavior or something along those lines, how do we integrate those behaviors or integrate the learning without making it so obvious that, you know, it's a system of buzzwords and we all know what we're going for. So it's just kind of, it loses its value. How do we teach in that manner? Great question. And to me, it all starts as objectives.

L&D, development dollars, they're always really tight, but there's a lot that you can do in teams that doesn't cost a lot of money. And so to me, it's to get really clear on your objectives. What is it that you're trying to achieve? And in that, you need to know, well, what's the gap? Where's the gap between where we are now and where it is that we want to get to in terms of how the team is connecting and engaging or how the leader is leading, how the organization is working together. So all of those become really clear. And then it's, okay, so if that's the gap, how do we close the gap? What are the things that we're working towards? And I really struggle with buzzwords because, and I see it at the moment, I think psychological safety is fantastic. It's an incredibly good concept, but I get people ringing me all the

time now saying, I just need a course in psychological safety. And can you just run a three-hour program? And I'm like, I think you kind of missed the point of what psychological safety is about. This is not a ticker box exercise. And I think that's the challenge with a lot of L&D efforts is that even with good intention, people go, well, we don't have a lot of money, so let's just do something really small, as opposed to going, actually, what is it that we can do on the ground by just having conversations with people and integrating? Let's look at what we've done before. And I always say this, whenever I'm running any type of leadership development program, I always say to people, do not come into this room and discard everything you already know.

You know things. I know things. We know stuff together. Let's build on each other's knowledge. Because what you want to be able to do is create insight. And you create insight when you take things that you've known in the past, those little aha moments where you go, wow, that's new. I didn't know that.

But actually, that now connects to something that I knew from the past, those little aha moments where you go, wow, that's new. I didn't know that, but actually that now connects to something that I knew from the past and then create that connection because that's where the real learning and growth happens when you slowly over time build on each other. And you can have great sessions around psychological safety and not even talk about the term. And that's what you want people to be able to do is actually understand where is it that we need to get to and what are the building blocks slowly over time that we need to have in place that are going to help us get there. And I often say to people, it's the small things done consistently where you will get far more traction than those big massive events that you have and everyone walks away feeling amazing and they've all been inspired, but they get back to work tomorrow and there's 250 emails and they've

got a day full of meetings and nothing changes. And so it's the integration. It's how are we taking these small bits back into the work environment and what are we doing today that is different from what we did yesterday? So how do we take those small bits back into the work environment? I hear a lot about sort of knowledge preservation and doing exactly what you just described, pulling out the tidbits about best practices and the things that do truly advance the organization in maybe subtle ways

or ways that only one person has figured out because from a marketing perspective, for instance, that's what I've been doing for five years now, finding out a way to utilize the data that you have on your customers or from your advertising ad sets or whatever, you know, really looking at it in a different way and saying, oh, I think I found something here. And then implementing that in a way that brings a greater ROI. How do we as an organization systematically make sure that those things are coming out and then that they're not either sort of being hoarded or just like not being

shared or kept secret? So how do we bring best practices and discoveries and make sure that those things are coming out and then that they're not either sort of being hoarded or just like not being shared or kept secret. So how do we bring best practices and discoveries and make sure that they are, you know, documented, shared and utilized throughout the organization? Does that come down to the leadership directly above, you know, the people that have those discoveries? Does this need to be a systematic thing where we kind of go through and say, what have you learned? What have we discovered regularly? How do we make sure those tidbits make their way into the mainstream? I think it is working at a team level and that's the role that the leader plays. I've seen fantastic knowledge management systems, but knowledge management systems only work if you've got a really rigorous process of someone

keeping them up to date. And the challenge that we have at the moment, and I love the quote by Herbert Simon where he talks about, we don't have a paucity of information. We actually have too much information. We actually have too much data that we actually don't know what to do with it. We're almost overwhelmed with data and with knowledge. And what we know, if you look at the advent of AI, anything you can turn into a process is eventually going to be automated and done by machines. The things that are going to distinguish the type of work that we do into the future is the conversations. It's the human to human connection. So I would focus more on that human to human connection and the conversations that you're having as a team. And so as a leader,

sit down with your team and you should have a regular rhythm of one-on-ones, a regular rhythm of where the team is coming together to talk about tasks and the things we're doing. Now the team's coming together to talk about how we work together because often teams spend way more on the what we do and not enough on the how we're doing it. And it's the how that is generating the connection, the care, the engagement. And so leaders need to have those regular patterns, but they don't own the conversation. The team owns the conversation and it's creating the space in that environment for each member of the team to feel confident and comfortable to share, hey, this is what I learned the other day. And you can play roles and be really clear. What's the role that everyone in the team is playing? So if you've been off on a course or a program, what's your obligation to come back to the team, to share it, to break it down and to go, okay, well, this is the new thing that

I've learned. What did you learn? How do those two elements work together? What could we now do differently? What have we actually learned that actually isn't working for us that we can leave behind? Because often what we do is we just stack stuff on top and we don't stop doing things or leave things behind and then people become overwhelmed. And what I'm seeing at the moment across the board, too much, too much, too much,

too many things, too many ideas, not enough time, people feeling overwhelmed. And in your intro, when you talked about the complexity of the system in which we're working, all of that is feeding this sort of sense of just overall sort of anxiety and noise in the system. And if you want to get stuff done, we've got to get rid of some of that noise. Absolutely. I want to thank you, by the way, for earlier being willing to admit live or on air here that you have been a bad boss in the past. I also have been a bad boss. And I would say for similar reasons, there's a lack of self-awareness there. And in some cases, just overwhelm, that sort of thing. But thank you for bringing that up. And I want to pivot back to the book a little bit. So,

the subtitle of the book is What to Do If You Work for One, Manage One, or Are One, in reference to bad bosses. So, basically, what you've done is you've organized the book into three segments, which is, you know, from the individual contributor lens, sort of higher up leader who oversees bosses. And then of course, maybe like the middle manager management role. So three different sections there. And as long as we're talking about, you know, generally people improvement from all of these perspectives, you do have a four-step process. I'd love for you to go over that. Assess, strategize, act, reflect. I believe this goes for all three of the categories. Would you like to just kind of explain how that works ultimately? Yeah, sure. And I also think it's important at this point, when I wrote the book, it was actually my brother-in-law who came up

with the title. He wanted to go, oh, it should be Bastard Bosses. Everyone's worked for a bastard. My publishers were like, ah, maybe a bit too harsh. And I've had people have said to me, oh, gee, it's a really negative book. And I said, no, it's not. It's actually a book of hope. It's really saying to each person, which is why it's in segments, everyone plays a role. To make work work, everyone has to bring their best. And it's really easy to point the finger and to say, you're a bad boss, or you're a bad employee, or you work for a bad boss, as opposed to going, what's my role? What can I do about it? What do I need to take accountability for? And that's why the frame that sits around this is the same,

irrespective. So yes, what you're doing under each of those categories is different, but the actual frame is the same. So the first point is to really go, well, what is my role? What is it that I'm bringing to the table? Is it me? Is it the environment? Because the environment, the culture in which we work, we are culturalized beings. Now, that is a made up word. It's not a real word, but it's a word that I often use. We get subsumed into a culture and we can shift our behavior based on that culture. And sometimes we don't see it. And so in that first phase, you are getting really real and challenging yourself about the part that you're playing, how you're impacted by others,

but also the part that other people are playing as well and the environment. Once you've done that assess phase, you're then able to go, okay, what can I do about this? What are the options that I've got? Because often we step away from those options. And particularly when I've seen people work for a bad boss, they'll often step away and go, there's nothing I can do about it. I've just got to put up with it. And actually, there are things that you can do. And so get really clear around the circumstances you're in, the role that you're playing, the relationship that you've got with the people around you to then determine what's the best approach to take. Next phase, which is phase three, is to actually put that into action,

to do something about it. So you've identified your options and you're now going to very, in a targeted, systematic way, try and test different approaches because you might try one thing and it won't work and then you try something else and then it does. But all the while that you're doing this, you really need to take care of your mental health and wellbeing. Because as I've been a bad boss, I've worked for a bad boss as well. Towards the end, it got really debilitating. I remember sitting in the car driving to work with my husband and I'd almost be in tears because the thought of walking into the building made me physically sick. And it was at that point that I was like, I've got to find the exit. My act phase, I tried everything I could possibly try. I really

had to exit because it was no longer safe for me to be there in terms of the impact it was having on me. And that really connects to the final phase, which is the reflection. Because once you've gone through options and you've implemented some strategies, you really do need to go, is this working? What's shifting? What's not shifting? Are there different steps that I need to take? Because some of those steps may be for you at an individual level, exit. Now, for me, I was working for a very big organization at the time. So exit wasn't exit the building. Exit was, I need to exit this working relationship because it's not doing me any service. But the reflect phase, depending on the role that you're in, could be quite different because the reflect, if you're a leader of leaders, in that reflection phase, you're going, well,

actually, I've been working with this senior leader, trying to coach them, trying to help them to be a better leader. Am I seeing change? Am I seeing improvement? And if I'm not, maybe there are different things that I need to do. And the same for if you're the leader, what's the progress that you've made? Have you shifted to be the leader that you want to be, or is there more to do? And so it is a circular system because you keep going through that as you're progressing and developing in the relationships and in your career. Let's talk a little bit about each of the phases then. We've already

covered assess pretty well, I think, talking about feedback and just self-awareness in general. But you have a really cool concept in the book. I love matrices. These are very common in books like this, actually, where there's sort of a quadrant that has different axes that represent how well you're doing with something. But in this case, your quadrant is, I believe it's knowing and unknowing and selfish versus selfless. And you have the four different types of leaders and the ultimate goal is to be the liberator. That's sort of like the ideal type of boss, essentially. So would you mind just going over that quadrant and how we can use that from the various perspectives,

whether we're assessing for ourselves, whether we're assessing for our boss or sort of as a higher up leader? So it is that classic kind of four by four, I think, you know, the old BCG sort of matrix. And it's very much going when I'm looking at the leader. So you can do this from the perspective of a person who's working for the boss or that boss is working for you. Or you can actually self-assess it yourself as the boss. Where's my focus? Is it selfish? Is it all about me?

Is it all about my needs? Or is it selfless? Am I actually genuinely interested and concerned about the needs of the people who work for me? And I've had people who have challenged me and, how can that person be a bad boss? I'm like, wait, I will get there. I will explain. And then the next part is the knowing and non-knowing. So this is the self-awareness. To what extent are they aware of their own behavior, of their gaps, of the impact that they're having on others? And so that's the unknowing and the knowing. And if you are purely focused on yourself, purely focused on your needs,

but you may also actually be unaware of the impact because you just actually really don't care. To me, that's the mercenary. And they're the sort of person who it's like, just don't get in the way of my success. They're blinkered. They know exactly where they want to go, but they're not interested in learning about themselves. They're not interested in learning about others. They are purely focused on what they need. But you can also have bosses, and I've worked for someone like this, genuinely nice person, but oh, they were a nightmare to work for. And they genuinely cared about their team, but they had no impact, no idea of the impact. They were disorganized. They were late. They didn't know how to schedule. They didn't know how to allocate work or resources. And to me,

this is the believer because they're the type of boss who actually think they're doing a really good job because they care about their team, but they're not going to step into difficult issues. They're not going to manage conflict. They're disorganized and they just want people to like them. And so they're very often very hard to work for, although there are ways that you can work around them. Then you've got the person who, once again, they're selfish. It's all about them. So they're on a similar level to the mercenary, but they know what they're doing. They are fully conscious of how they are positioning themselves and what they're doing. They are also fully conscious of the impact that they have on others. They just don't care. So to me, they're the illusionist because they're also very, very good at managing

up. They're the sort of person that all the senior leaders and the executives go, wow, that person is amazing. They are awesome. They are on the talent highway. They are on track. Everyone who works for them goes, they are a total nightmare to work for because it's all about them. And if you make a mistake, they will throw you under the bus. They are not going to support you. And then as you said, the last one is the liberator. This is where you've got someone who genuinely cares about the team, but they have high self awareness and they're the ultimate good boss. That doesn't mean they're perfect. That doesn't mean they're going to get it right every day because I think that's impossible. Everyone as a human makes mistakes. Good bosses though go, hey, I messed up. I missed that. And I'm going to take accountability for that. And

I'm going to apologize and I'm going to own my part, but I'm also going to take the time to reflect and work out why, what happened? What was it that happened to me in that moment that created the environment for me to be able to do that? Was it stress over work? Was I feeling pressure for something else or was I just oblivious to what was going on? And did I need to have more self-awareness in that moment? So then when it comes to strategizing, when I think about bad bosses is usually how bad bosses are depicted in the media. And there are just countless versions of this, especially in movies. Office Space is one of my favorite movies of all time. American movie where I think Lumberg is just kind of like the, he's just doting around the office with his coffee. You have those TPS reports yet, Peter. And that's all you know

about that guy is that he's just kind of obnoxious and he's just walking around, not inspirational at all. And then there's the movie Horrible Bosses, which is a much more sort of unrealistic depiction, but you don't know much about those people behind the scenes. And in your strategize section, I believe it's for the sort of higher up leaders, bosses of bosses, you really talk about like a 360 degree assessment of this boss that you're trying to sort of help improve.

And it involves looking at their journey as a boss for number one. It involves looking at sort of the vision around what it is that they hope to achieve and sort of why they're with the company, their mindset, and then developing an action plan. So there's a very serious, robust look at these individuals as human beings more than just as bosses who are, you know, maybe not the greatest leader in that moment or in that role or for that person. So I'd love for you to just address that, how you advocate for this more robust look at bosses and what you hope to achieve through that. I think it's really important to actually do that because when we turn up to work, we

turn up as whole people. And often people try to do that, oh, you know, there's professional me and there's personal me. No, there's just me. And all the research will show this. We are socialized beings. And so, yes, we're born with personality. We now know through research,

DNA shapes our personality and how we see the world and all of that kind of stuff. But we are, as we've developed throughout the years, we are socialized. And that socialization creates belief structures.

It also creates assumptions, blind spots, bias, all of those kinds of things. And so it's really important as a leader to systematically get really clear, who am I? What do I stand for? What type of leader do I want to be? And so when you're strategizing, you're working that through because when you're really clear on what it is you want, where it is you want to go, it's so much easier to then go, okay, well, what's the path I'm now taking and what are the things that I need to do? And to me, I do liken it to that corporate strategy. We think about an organization, the best organizations, they have a really clear strategy. They know who they are,

they know where they want to get to, and they build a plan to get there. And to me, it's the same with leadership because you are, as a leader, never going to have enough time in the day. There are always going to be pressure points. There's always going to be too much to do. And development takes time, it takes effort, it takes concentration and it takes a desire to want to change. And so when you get really targeted and you build your personal strategy around where it is you want to get to and the type of leader you want to be, you can then more systematically go, I now need to work on this piece. Okay, I know that I've nailed it, but I've got the sense that I've built some capability in that area. Now I can move on to something else. And you keep building slowly over time because

often what I see people do is try to do too much at once and then nothing changes. You also acknowledge in the book that we can ultimately only control ourselves, our own thoughts and our own actions, but leaders given their positions can always do more to expand their influence and amplify what they think is right and what they think works. Do you think that modern leaders sort of have a duty to do that, to expand their influence and try to be a positive influence where an otherwise maybe a void or a negative influence could be?

I just think that at this point, if you are leading people, you have to expand yourself a little bit as somebody who influences others outside of your immediate team in the company, or even these days, more publicly. So I recently spoke with Rebecca Horton, who's also based out of Australia. And she was speaking about how more and more sort of middle managers, B-suite folks, as she calls them, are in the public eye. They're acting as organizational representatives with the media sometimes. And I think a lot of this is brought on by social media and the fact that the younger generation really has the ability to utilize these tools that are just, you know, constantly in the public eye, LinkedIn and

Instagram and TikTok. So what I'm seeing a lot of is managers who, especially in the sales realm and sometimes the creative worlds, managers who are, you know, pretty popular online and they have influence in the world beyond their organization. And I feel like in some ways that kind of comes back to their organization and that sort of thing too. But what do you feel like the obligation is of leaders to spread their influence just beyond their team? Do you think that's something that everybody has to consider at this point because of how much power we do have? I think there's two parts to it. There's the internal influence within the organization, and then there's also considering about the influence that you can have at a societal level. So I'll start with the first one, which is internal, because I really do think good leaders need to know how to influence. Good leaders know how to get things done. They know

how to remove roadblocks. They know how to help their team navigate the complexity of the system in which they're working. And so if you're working for someone who doesn't have any influence, they've got no voice at the table, they can't encourage change, they can't help navigate the complexity of the system, it's really hard for that team to make progress, to advocate for change. So to me, influence and leadership go hand in hand. When you think about it externally, there's a couple of considerations. And certainly in Australia, there are leaders who have made deliberate decisions about positions they're taking on societal issues.

In Australia, for example, advocating when we had the referendum on same-sex marriage, we're about to have a referendum on the recognition of a voice to parliament for Indigenous Australians. And there are leaders in the business who have decided to do that and to play that role because they see that that's something that actually represents the organisation, the constituency of the organization. There are other people who would advocate the alternate and say, actually, no, business should stick out. They shouldn't play that role. I come from the perspective that organizations are part of the community in which we live and work. And I think it's important for organizational leaders to have a voice

on things that matter to the community as a whole, because that's how societies change and that's how societies progress. Leaders, when they do that, need to be aware that sometimes there's blowback that comes with that. That's the thing about being a leader. Being a leader isn't easy. Being a leader means that you take positions, sometimes on things that are unpopular, but you know that you're doing it because it's the right thing to do and it's going to help advance us as a society. What about just recommending and advocating for certain business practices? Dave Gerhart, he's an American who I think he has a book called Founder Brand, and he might even have

a podcast dedicated to it now, but he has a big theory. He's kind of a marketing guru. He has a theory that it's important for leaders of organizations, especially smaller ones, but in general to associate their brand and their company with the founders and the leaders and the executives' beliefs. So advocating for the business practices that work for them and that make their people happy and then sharing those in the world. There's tons of examples of people that are doing this, CEOs on LinkedIn right now. And it's remarkable how it seems like how much more about the inner workings of companies

is now made public just through like social media posts. In the past, you'd probably have to go through books and literature to figure out like how a certain company operates or it was just completely secret and there was was just no public information, except for, you know, conversations with workers about how companies operated. But now it really seems like the direction that we've gone is that not only are leaders, CEOs, and founders, like I was saying, talking about their practices and how they believe that an organization should be run,

but you have, like I was saying, even before that is salespeople talking about, you know, how to do SaaS sales on LinkedIn and how to find success in your role in a large organization, you know, just being kind of a spec in a large sales team or something like that. It does seem like we're really talking about the internal workings of the company publicly. So it's not even just like, you know, a general contribution to the community, but it's like a general contribution to work theory and what all of that is. I mean, do you think that's a healthy pattern that's been happening? I think it's healthy when it contributes to the conversation about how organizations can progress and how we can do things better. I'm sometimes a little skeptical. I'm very skeptical for what it's worth.

skeptical. I'm very skeptical for what it's worth. Of how much of that is about, oh, look at me, how great am I? Absolutely. As opposed to genuinely wanting to help. And I think it's really interesting because I've seen it certainly in some organizations where the founder keeps pushing a particular lens on something, but actually the organization has moved long away from what that particular lens is. And the founder is still out there. And then the rest of the organization's going, I think that founder is now out of touch with where the organization is. And also you sometimes see a disconnect between what the founder is saying about the organization's practices and the actual practices and the ethics of those on the ground. And that's, to me, where it's really important

to actually have people externally who are also challenging and holding people and leaders to account. Because if that's what you're saying about how the organization's run, what's the metrics that you've got to actually show that you are behaving in a way that is ethical, according to all these mantras that you've got out there about how you work? I'm glad that's the direction that you took that because I can't say, you know, I'm not a consultant. I don't work with companies on that level, but I know that you have worked with a handful and you've probably seen this. So hopefully you have, you know, more data points than I do. But that was my sort of sense is that there's plenty of leaders out there that are really just kind of trying to be influencers,

you know, and it probably does work for their brand, but could it come back and sort of, you know, bite them in the ass because it's not truthful all the time. Or sometimes it's just a little bit superficial and sometimes it's just, it's not what people agree with or what they believe from within the organization. So, well, and it comes back to your comment before about inspiration. I remember years ago sitting at this speech and hearing this senior exec from an Australian company speak, and he was incredible. And I turned to the guy beside me and I said, wow, he's amazing. He must be just so incredible to work for. And I'm not sure whether

I'm allowed to swear on your podcast, so tell me if I'm not allowed. But the guy beside me just turns to me and looks at me and goes, oh, I work for him. He's a total asshole. I was thinking, oh, a little part of me was shattered. But it is a reminder. It's really easy to do that talk. I'm amazing. Look at me. Look at all this great stuff that I do. But what's the rubber that hits the road? And what are you actually doing? And what are the people who work for you actually saying about how effective you are? That's what matters. Yeah, of course. Let's zoom back to the phases here. So in the reflect phase, what that is. Yeah, of course. Let's zoom back to the phases here. So in the reflect phase,

you have a handful of approaches for sort of thinking back on what took place and, or just kind of following up on whatever the action plan was. And that includes release. So, you know, if you're sort of releasing that person, pursue and review, counsel and coach, focus and sustain. So like, what is the long-term results and sort of the outcome of what you're doing? These things don't come up as often on my show. We kind of talk about the action and we don't talk about the reflection and the longer term pursuit of what's going on. So if you don't mind, I'd love to spend just a little bit of time on these four things. Yeah, absolutely. And it comes from sort of two areas. So as a leader, when you're looking at that leader that you're working with, you really

need to get to a certain point where you go, what's the level of acceptance? You know, are they taking on board the feedback? Is it that you can actually see that they're showing genuine attempts to improve? Are they putting in effort? Because sometimes change takes a while. It can be hard, particularly if they're really ingrained patterns of behavior. And then on the next sort of axis, it's what's the level of effort

that they're putting into this? Is it that you're starting to see improvement? Are you comfortable with the amount of time you're spending with them? Because if they're sucking the life out of you and the rest of the team, then you have to start to go, is this commensurate?

Is the amount of effort I'm putting in commensurate with the return that we're getting? Is the amount of effort I'm putting in in line with my expectations as a leader? And are you okay with the level of focus you're having to devote? So you're looking at it through their level of effort and the level of effort that you're actually putting in. And that's where you get to that sense of potentially release. Because if you're going, they're intractable. I'm seeing no change, and the amount of time and effort that this is taking is really intense, then you may want to get to the point where you go, they're in the wrong role. They need to potentially look at doing something else. But if you're going, actually, I'm seeing that they're still struggling to change, but the level of effort is manageable. You might go,

I'm willing to devote more time. This is the pursue and review. Pursue the effort, continue to review progress. If you're seeing though that they're accepting that they need to change and they're really wanting to change, but you're still putting in a lot of effort, you go, okay, I still need to spend more time counseling and coaching because this is going to pay off in the long run. And then the last bit is, yes, you're seeing that they've got change, they're adaptable, they're willing to actually put in effort. And also the level of effort that you're prepared to put in is acceptable. Then you go, I'm going to sustain this level of focus and attention because it's worthwhile. And it's important to do that because often we can do very sort of

knee-jerk gut reactions to this and it'll be, I'm done. I just need this person to move on. Have you genuinely put in enough effort to actually coach them? Have you also been honest about the feedback that they need to hear? Because sometimes, and I've studied all conversations like this, where the executive has sort of skirted around the edges about the feedback that they need to give the employee as opposed to being really direct. Because you're not direct with the feedback, it's really hard for the person to improve. So we're almost done with our conversation here. I want to go back to one point that you made earlier that you think that we ultimately need more one-on-one coaching just because of the amount of noise that takes place in sort of

traditional learning programs. I'm just curious as to how you see this structurally. So is this sort of like, you know, more external coaching needs to come in and, you know, more of that sort of outside observation that can really be honest with you? Is it a greater culture of mentor-mentee relationships within organizations that are sort of systematically encouraged and just built, you know, with all new employees? there's always sort of relationship there. And then somehow it's more encouraged for people to just pursue those sorts of mentorships within an organization. Is it a combination of both? I suspect it's probably some sort of a combination in there, but what do you say ultimately, how do we encourage coaching? Where do we bring it from? And how do we get the best results from it? It is a blended approach. And to me, there's a difference between coaching and mentoring because a mentor is someone

who's been there. They've done that. They've been to the place that you want to get to. And so mentoring in organizations plays a really important role. It is different to coaching though. A coach doesn't tell you what to do. A coach will ask questions. A coach helps you generate insights.

But often what we think about when we think about coaching is we just think about it one-on-one, but you can do group coaching. So you can do coaching at a team level. You can do coaching with groups of leaders. And what I see is there's fantastic development programs out there, but often the shift that happens the most happens through coaching because it's the sustained progress and program of activity really helping the person dig into themselves, reflect on what's happened. How did I show up? What could I do differently next time? And it can work in concert with leadership development programs. It can work by itself. You can do it in bite size. You can do it as long as sort of sustained periods of time. So there's so many different ways you can slice and dice it for want of a

better expression. But I think coaching and mentoring, you could have both tracks running because different people need different things at different times. Great. All right. Well, before I let you go, can you just let our listeners know where they can learn more about you and your work? The best place is to go to my website, which is michellegibbings.com. All right. Wonderful. Well, again, Michelle, thank you so much for joining me. It was a pleasure to have you on. And for all my listeners at home, thanks for joining us. We'll catch you on the next episode. Cheers. You've been listening to L&D in Action, a show from Get Abstract. Subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast player to make sure you never miss an episode.

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