Speaking and Communicating Podcast

How we engage in healthy boundaries when it comes to relationships, how we inspire our children to be curious about school, those are all opportunities to practice.

For me, when I say leadership starts at home, but it's also an opportunity to really, really model healthy behaviors for our kids.

And that's not easy work.

It's just not.

Just like leadership in general is not easy work.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Angela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review.

Now, let's get communicating.

With Scott Allen, he is a father of two daughters who love improv.

He is a leadership coach who used to be an educator.

Actually, you're still educating, right?

You're a professor of management.

Yeah.

My students now are just executives, business professionals.

Okay.

So leadership coaching is the main thing that he does.

He helps organizations develop leaders ready to build the future.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show.

Hi, Scott.

Thank you, Roberta.

It's good to be with you today.

I'm excited for the conversation.

Thank you so much.

It's my pleasure.

Please introduce yourself to our listeners.

Sure.

So academic for 17 years, have a PhD in leadership and change.

Any aspect of the conversation of leadership, that dialogue, whether it's problem solving or attributes of effective leaders or designing culture, teams, communication, I love the conversation.

I have jet fuel for the topic.

So for 17 years, I was in the classroom, primarily teaching MBAs and undergraduates.

And then in recent times, I've kind of evolved from that and I'm just simply working with executives and organizations who have the real problems now.

They're trying to chart a path forward.

That's really where a lot of my energy is.

And so that work, I'm in.

It's cool stuff.

It's fun.

So you taught MBAs.

So an MBA is learning management, which is different from leadership, is it?

Well, I think of these as kind of two sides of the same coin, okay?

Sometimes you see very simplistic memes on LinkedIn, for instance, that, you know, decry managers and we want leaders, not managers.

Well, the reality is you need both.

And so I think of it as two sides of the same coin.

One very simple definition of management.

These are individuals who plan, organize, and control, right?

These are the people who, if I have a vision, they're going to kind of move it into reality, right?

So we need those individuals.

Now, a leader might be the individual who helps co-create the vision, helps chart the path forward.

But I think the reality is that we probably need both badly.

Now, at times, organizations can be over-managed and under-led.

There's some great quotes that kind of get to the heart of that concept.

But generally speaking, I think if you're a person in a position of authority, can you do both well?

You know what it feels like to work for someone who strongly defaults to kind of that management side of the house, and you know what it feels like to work for someone who strongly focuses on and defaults to that leadership side of the house?

Can you do both well?

Are you an individual who can go from working on the budget and getting into the details to also putting your head up, energizing and mobilizing a group, charting a path forward with that group?

You're skilled.

You're very, very skilled if you can do both well.

When I started my corporate career, I remember, so we used to be in consulting, engineering, and you have the planning phase and you have the implementation phase.

We used to have this philosophy that if you take more time planning and if the plan is well done, the execution, the implementation is going to be smooth flowing basically.

The way you just described management and leadership, it's like the leadership is the planning, the management is the implementation, and you need to have both in good balance or as you said, adapt based on what's needed at the time.

Yes.

What is it, Muhammad Ali?

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

Something of that nature, right?

So yes, I mean, it's a little bit of a both end.

I think it's about being aware of when we need a little more of one or a little more of the other.

So we might have a beautiful plan going in and it's locked down from a plan, organized control standpoint, but it might be the wrong strategy.

So can we adjust?

Can we reorient ourselves to go down a new path to see if that will work?

A lot of organizational life, as you know, it's complex.

There's an infinite number of variables.

There's no one oftentimes we can call in the world to say, how do we increase our market share in X?

What are the five steps?

Well, that person doesn't exist.

Oftentimes, we're running experiments.

We're learning in real time to see if this strategy is the right strategy.

But there are organizations that have been over-managed.

I would think of like a Kodak, for instance, incredible systems in place, but heavily management-oriented and struggled to chart a new course when it came to the new reality.

Now, there's other organizations who I think like a Microsoft, for instance, has done a really, really nice job over the decades of not always, but in a pretty good fashion, ensuring that they're orienting themselves in the right direction, but they're also really, really, they're managed well.

At times, over-managed and locked into old processes, but they seem to do a pretty good job of reorienting themselves and moving in a new direction.

Right.

It reminds me of the concept of VUCA.

Yeah.

Yes.

So when you coach your executive clients, how well do they adapt?

Or do they come to you and say, Scott, I'm really struggling.

There's too many changes, too fast and too furious.

We do hear that a lot right now.

We hear that the rate of change is only increasing.

And so you have all of these shifts.

Shifts could be demographics, millennials, Gen Zs.

We've got Gen Alpha coming after Gen Z.

We have multiple generations in the workforce.

So that's a little bit of a shift.

We have things like work from home.

That's a shift.

obviously COVID-19 was a shift in some circles supply chain challenges.

Shift.

My sense is that there's always gonna be some shift.

It might be a recession.

It might be some bubble.

It might be a pandemic.

It might be digitization.

Who knows what the shift is gonna be?

There's always gonna be some shift.

So how I think about this when I'm communicating with my clients is when you're navigating a VUCA context, right?

Volatile, uncertain.

Again, there's no person we can call in the world to say, what are the four steps that we should kind of engage in to get out of this or to chart a path forward?

Leaders have to think about that work in a couple different ways.

First, are you elevating the right questions for your team?

Leaders go to bed with hundreds of questions.

Are you elevating the most important questions for your team to work?

You've worked with leaders somewhere along the way, Roberta, I'm sure, where the questions they elevated was like number 77 on the list.

You're like, why are we talking about this when this is happening?

Because some of them do get obsessed with checklists and then the question of what's urgent versus what's important.

Yes.

Yes.

And so are we elevating the right questions?

And then have we created what Amy Edmondson would call a psychologically safe space, where leaders, the people at the table, can kind of have the knockdown, drag out conversation.

Again, we're trying to chart a path forward.

No one in the world has the answer.

So we put the problem in the center of the table and we really debate.

Jeff Bezos kind of famously says that he speaks last.

That's a consideration.

He watches the discussion, watches the dialogue.

The problem statement is beautifully framed up and then he might weigh in at the end.

So does the team have the psychological safety that we can have the really, really difficult conversation and we can all at least share our perspective.

We know that it might not be agreed with, it might not be acted upon.

I might not get my way, you might not get your way.

We might collaborate and develop a third option as a path forward.

But generally speaking, we're going to have that dialogue.

So, and you know you've had that dialogue when there isn't a meeting after the meeting.

You've been in the meeting after the meeting where someone says at the water cooler, well, this is going to be a nightmare, right?

Maybe use other words.

Yeah, so this is not good.

And everyone in the meeting was quiet.

No one said what they really, really thought.

That is not a good place to be if you are a leader.

You need a team of people who feel like they can voice.

Now, they also know they might not get their way.

They also know you might make a decision that they disagree with.

Cool.

But I do want to hear your thoughts, and I want to hear your perspectives.

And then you're in the realm of experimentation.

So we think this is our best path forward, or these three things are our best path forward.

Let's try them out.

They're going to interface with reality, and then we potentially will adjust.

But that requires leadership, but then it also requires management to actually put that into motion and chart that direction.

So when we are in this VUCA context, do people around you, are you elevating the right questions, the most important ones?

And do people feel like they can contribute, and they have the psychological safety to do so, that they can disagree with you, that they can disagree with one another respectfully?

And then we're going to try.

And organizations engage in that work every year or every five years when they develop strategy.

And again, there's consultants out there that will say they have the answer or the formula, but when we're in complexity...

Strategic getaway for a week, and let's go and brainstorm.

I know, I've been there.

Yes, yes.

And it's all at times, it's a theatrical production where the leader already has what they want to do, and they have their answer, and it's a performance, so to speak.

It's theater.

But then there's the individuals who do it well, and they really engage the team, and they really challenge the team to look at the problem from multiple perspectives, bring multiple perspectives to the table.

And then we chart our path, and ultimately, in that realm of VUCA, you're experimenting.

And your best, only hope is that you have a team of people who feel that they can share their perspectives.

Because if you don't, you're flying blind.

You're literally flying blind.

You think you have agreement, you think you have consensus, you have not that at all.

In fact, people are complying, but they're not necessarily committed to this new path forward.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, they're not invested.

And especially because if you get the opinions and perspectives of those who are closer to the customer.

Yes.

Because you're not omnipotent, going to be everywhere all the time.

So if you get their perspectives, that's firsthand information.

Yeah.

That will feed into the strategy.

Yeah.

You say that leadership begins at home.

And I just mentioned at the beginning that you have 14 year old daughters.

Do you start now?

How do you drill as a parent the idea of develop the leader in yourself?

Yes.

Okay.

I'll say a few things on this topic, because I'm very, very passionate about it.

So first of all, I have a partner and she is our leader.

She's incredible.

She's an incredible mom and we are partners in this process.

And every morning we go on a walk at about 5:30 AM.

We have orion and the Big Dipper as our partners in this walk.

And we talk, we communicate.

I mean, just this morning, we had a conversation, a pretty deep conversation about something I'm struggling with when it comes to parenting.

I'm not there yet.

So I think parenting, first of all, is a wonderful opportunity to learn, to learn about yourself, to learn about your strengths and some of those areas of weakness that you have.

I believe that in my heart.

It's very easy for us to see what limitations our children have.

Sometimes, and I have this mantra in my head, oftentimes, I'm not good enough yet.

I'm not good enough yet to maintain emotional intelligence, or I'm not good enough yet to navigate some of these situations.

I kind of keep stepping into situations that I want to be better than, and I'm not there yet.

I believe I can be, but I'm not there yet.

So not only is it an opportunity for us to practice, because in many ways, there's this really, really cool theory called social learning theory, Albert Bandura.

And we are products of what's modeled in our environment.

So even some of the research on the origins of leadership highly correlate to family.

What was I taught about difficult conversations and how those happen?

What was modeled for me about optimism or our world view?

Gratitude and giving back to our communities, religion or faith, spirituality.

So much is being modeled.

And so my wife and I are modeling curiosity.

We're modeling gratitude.

We're modeling what it means to have healthy fun.

There's people whose parents had fun and drink every weekend, sometimes four or five times a week.

And that was fun.

That's what was being modeled for the kids.

So it's critical how we engage in healthy boundaries when it comes to relationships, how we inspire our children to be curious about school.

Those are all opportunities to practice.

So for me, when I say leadership starts at home, I think it's really, really true.

Not only for me as an individual, it's an awesome place to practice because I have a lot to learn and I have definitely opportunities for growth and development.

But it's also an opportunity to really, really model healthy behaviors for our kids.

And that's not easy work.

It's just not.

Just like leadership in general is not easy work.

But it's an opportunity.

And I think if you look at it as an opportunity to practice, you're a little bit ahead of the game.

Optimism, right?

Think about your mom or your dad or the person who raised you.

How optimistic were they?

How excited were they for the day?

Well, that was being modeled.

Good, bad, or ugly, right?

Like you said, the leaders that you coach, you want them to prepare for the future.

How optimistic were they about the future?

Whether you're pessimistic or optimistic about the future, it feeds into however you handle situations and when things pop up, yes.

Well, okay, so a great example was during the pandemic, our children were maybe around 8 and 10, okay?

They would say things like, this Halloween is going to be so different, it's not going to be as good.

And we would look at them and say, this is going to be the best Halloween ever.

What do we do?

Or the best Thanksgiving ever, or the best Christmas ever.

How do we create that?

What traditions can we start?

What can we do as a family?

And that could have been an opportunity for us to look at our kids and say, yeah, that sucks, there's nothing we can do.

But my family, we ended up running around Arches national Park dressed as dinosaurs.

It was awesome.

It was a Halloween they will never forget.

It caused us to have to be creative to start some new traditions.

But there's some really cool things that came out of that.

Only because we were intentionally trying to be optimistic model problem solving and try to make the best of a difficult situation.

Now, we were very privileged in the situation we were in.

But I believe we all have a choice.

We all have an opportunity in some of those situations to model where appropriate that optimism or model kind of a interesting and fun problem solving activity.

And they help co-create some of those new traditions with us.

My daughter and I started a cookie baking competition, where we go head to head every year.

We each bake a cookie and then the family judges.

Well, we've done that since and she looks forward to it and she loves it.

And she's won every year.

I think the judges are biased though, but I love that.

You know, or we started a tradition we called it jams giving.

So we had Thanksgiving and we started where we each got the same t-shirt.

It was a memory of something.

And the first t-shirt was we watched a television show called The Good Place.

And it had a concept.

With Ted Danson?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was a family we would get together at night and we would watch that show.

And the kids loved it and we all loved it.

And there was a concept in that show about time called Jeremy Baramee.

So the first year we all got t-shirts that said Jeremy Baramee.

We got some pajama bottoms and that's become a tradition in our family.

Now on Thanksgiving, we wear our pajamas and with a shirt that we got for the year.

I was arrived just this last weekend for this year.

You know, it's a tradition.

We could have said, oh yeah, it's going to be a terrible Christmas.

We can't be with anyone or yeah, we can't do this.

We can't do that.

We tried as best we could.

Again, not perfect and not like staying in this in a braggadocious way.

But we tried to model that optimism, that problem solving.

Well, what do you think?

What could we do?

What could we start this year?

So we started watching four movies on Thanksgiving Day.

And we watched those four movies on Thanksgiving Day ever since.

And we started traditions, right?

Creativity.

Yes.

Which is really big when it comes to innovative ideas and problem solving.

When you're in a team, be creative instead of saying, oh, look at this economy.

Yes.

Because oftentimes in some of those down economies, there's potentially opportunities or it challenges us to be more creative, to find a path forward.

My wife has a statement that she says to our children often.

So they'll kind of run up and they'll have some type of problem or challenge going on.

And she looks at them and she says, every problem has a, and they say in unison, solution.

Okay, what are we going to do?

But that's a mindset that you're then shaping over 7, 10 years.

And for me, yeah, it starts at home.

And what are we modeling?

Social learning theory.

And again, by no means have I arrived and am I perfect?

My wife either, but we're trying.

And every morning we talk about it and we go on a walk and we have a discussion about how we're going to influence the kids and coach them to move in a certain direction.

And that consumes a lot of our time.

It really does, because we view ourselves as leaders of our family and managers.

Because we need managers.

Which you then demonstrate the growth versus fixed mindset that you talk about.

Yes.

You know, Carol Dweck, if listeners want just an incredible book that will, in my opinion, fundamentally transform how you think about parenting, how you think about leading, how you think about life.

It's a book called Mindset.

And she distinguishes two different types of mindsets, a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.

And individuals with a growth mindset, they're kind of intrigued by puzzles.

They're intrigued by learning.

They're intrigued by trying to find the answer.

And they don't view it as a fixed state.

Like there's a very, very important word when it comes to a growth mindset.

And that word is yet.

Ah, I haven't figured this out yet.

It might be public speaking, for instance.

And I would have students I taught for 17 years full time.

And they would walk in and they would say, I can't, I can't present.

I'm not a good presenter.

And that's kind of a fixed mindset statement, because if that's what's coming out of your mouth and that's the identity and the belief system you have, then you probably won't be.

But an individual who would say, you know, I'm not where I want to be yet.

I know I can improve and develop and grow.

I know I can learn this.

I know I can improve this skill.

I'm just not there yet.

They stay in a place of possibilities.

They stay in a place of wonder and curiosity.

The person with the fixed mindset, yeah, I'm just not good at that.

And it's shut off and it's done.

And oftentimes they live into the reality of that fixed mindset statement.

They shy away from presenting.

They don't put themselves in that situation.

They tell themselves that story and they stay fixed.

I was that way with math growing up.

That's what I teach.

I love school because of math.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I struggled in geometry and I gained an identity of someone who was not good at math.

That perception was never challenged.

Were there options that helped me get better at math?

Thousands, thousands of options to help Scott learn geometry.

But you had made the decision that you are not good at geometry and you shut that door, as you just explained.

And that message had been delivered to me as well in statements like, well, maybe you're just not a math kid.

Okay, teachers sometimes, yeah.

Authority figures, yeah.

Yeah.

And I think that's a hard place to be.

So that growth mindset is always looking for the possibilities, is staying in that place of curiosity.

We're not there yet.

So back to the pandemic example, my wife and I, we would go on walks and because sometimes in that case, it was two or three times a day.

We would say, well, how do we make Christmas really special?

How do we make Thanksgiving really special?

And we would struggle with that at times because we had, you know, in our minds, the reality of how it had always been.

But we stayed in a place of curiosity.

Well, we're not there yet.

We don't have it totally figured out yet.

But I think the answer exists for us to really create some new tradition and make this one of the most memorable Thanksgivings because of the good place.

It's funny because of the good place.

There's a character in that series named Doug Forsett, and there's a picture of him that hangs on a wall in the series.

So as a gift for my daughter, I got her a picture of Doug Forsett, and we hung it in our kitchen during the pandemic, and Doug would just look over us.

Well, somehow that picture stayed up for the last four years.

So we had company over on Saturday night.

They were like, who is that?

Why is that picture hanging up in your kitchen?

And so we had to tell the story, but we've just kept him there because it's a reminder.

It's a reminder of us making the best of a challenging time, and staying in that growth mindset.

Great book if listeners are interested.

Great book.

Mindset.

Now, let's talk about your podcast.

Please give us more details so we can encourage our listeners to tune in.

Please.

So you can just Google my name, or go to your podcast platform of choice, and it's Scott J.

Allen.

It's called Phronesis, which is a really weird Greek.

It's Aristotle, but Phronesis means Practical Wisdom.

So the title is Practical Wisdom for Leaders.

And I interview C-level executives, world leaders, non-profit leaders, academics from around the world.

And every week, as you know, it's just an incredible process of podcasting.

I just love it because it's building my network.

It's helping me better understand certain topics because I'm getting my butt kicked every week by talking with people from all over the world who are much more schooled in the topic we're discussing than I am.

So I just sit back, I ask some questions, and I learn.

And so it systematized my learning.

Of course, I don't always agree with what everything a guest says, but I give them the space to share what their perspective is.

Because the topic of leadership, I don't know that any one person has a corner on the market, but anyone who's curious and wants to explore, I'm in.

I think that's just a lot of fun.

So yeah, it's been about 250 episodes.

And I just had my 250th episode.

Roberta, this is interesting.

I had AI analyze the transcript of 10 of the most popular episodes of all time.

And then the AI created two voices who had a conversation about those 10 episodes.

So it sounds like two humans, hosts.

I basically set the episode up and I said, hey, so I have two guest hosts today, you know, and I introduce them, blah, blah, blah.

I'm going to turn over to them mid conversation.

And then it just goes.

It's literally these two manufactured voices having a conversation based on the transcripts of 10 episodes.

It sounds real.

It's fascinating.

So it's also been a place to kind of experiment a little bit and try some new things.

My friend, Gary Lloyd, kind of turned me out.

It's called Google Notes.

And, man, it's been a lot of fun for a number of reasons.

But as you know, it just helps you systematize your learning every week.

Learning, learning, learning, learning.

And systematize my networking.

Every week, I'm building the network, right?

That's how I pointed to myself when I think about learning.

I say, yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking.

There's so much I've learned.

And one last question when it comes to your guests, because they're still level executives, what is the one thing that they say just in general, collectively, was their number one biggest surprise when they were placed in leadership positions, or they didn't expect?

Well, something I hear fairly often is that it can feel lonely.

That at times, especially if that leader is kind of constructing the role as the person who has the answers.

Again, I think when it comes to a VUCA context, it's about elevating the right questions.

No one has the right answers.

No one has the four-step model to success when it comes to some of those puzzles of how to develop a high-functioning team, or how to design culture in your organization, or questions around strategy.

Where should we invest our resources?

At times, it can feel very lonely, especially if they don't want to ever model a level of vulnerability.

They don't want to say things like, I don't know.

That can be a very, very lonely place.

So I always say, who are your thinking partners?

Who's taking care of you as you take care of the organization?

Who are your mentors?

Do you have a psychologist?

Do you have a coach?

Who's helping you be, as my friend Amy Elizabeth Fox would say, who's helping you be performance ready?

Because it's incredibly difficult work what some of these individuals are charged with.

So who are your thinking partners?

Who's helping you be a better version of you?

And are you carving away some time to help you truly be at your best?

Because if you're not, well, then that shows up to the team.

That shows up to the organization.

And again, what's being asked of a lot of these individuals, they're Olympians.

They're in the Olympics.

They're working at the highest levels.

And what do they do to take care of themselves?

I see it over and over.

And you say leaders create the weather.

Is there one last question I should have asked in order to demonstrate that point?

Yeah, I love that.

That's Jonathan Reams.

Good friend of mine, Dr.

Jonathan Reams.

He said that leaders create the weather.

So what I love about that quote is I think you can also, to go back to our parenting, parents create the weather, coaches create the weather, teachers create the weather.

What's the tone you're setting in the organization?

Is it always just kind of 50 and rainy?

You've had that boss, and it wasn't a good, I mean, what's weather over time?

Climate.

What's another word for climate?

Culture.

So when you have someone who's kind of 50 and rainy, no one wants to live there.

That's not San Diego.

But not everything can be San Diego either, right?

So is the leader intentional about highlighting the good authentically, elevating all of the good that's happening in the context?

Is the leader intentional about making the environment and designing it in a way where it's a place where people would want to be?

And right now, according to Gallup, or if you look at some of the other engagement numbers, they're fairly low.

It suggests that about two-thirds of Americans go to work every day and they aren't engaged.

They aren't committed.

They're complying maybe, but they aren't all in.

So as leaders, we have an opportunity.

I think there's an opportunity for learning here.

How do we create weather patterns that make the environment?

Not always.

There's going to be storms.

There's going to be tornadoes.

There's going to be inclement weather.

But by and large, is it a climate where people want to live?

Or is it the Sahara or Siberia?

Hopefully not.

Yes.

What's of wisdom from Scott Allen, educator turned leadership coach for executives.

It has been such a pleasure to have this conversation with you.

Thank you so much, Scott, for being here today.

Well, I appreciate the opportunity, Roberta.

I really do.

And you know what?

I love the conversation and I have so much respect for what you're doing.

As you're engaging in all of these conversations, how do we help better prepare people to be successful when serving in these really, really challenging roles?

And you're a part of that.

And you do that with your podcast, Practical Wisdom for Leaders.

Please say the Greek word again.

Phronesis.

There you go.

And last but not least, Scott, what is your website?

scottjallen.net.

That's how you can find me.

scottjallen.net.

scottjallen.net.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

My absolute pleasure.

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