Speaker 0 | 00:00.956
So, yeah, man, you’re kind of a big deal. Flexible leadership. I’m more a fan of inflexible leadership, but, you know, people tell me I’m wrong. Everyone out there listening, you’re listening to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds Day. We’re talking with, I believe he’s going to be a super nerd, Kevin Eikenberry. He’s written the book Flexible Leadership, which obviously is like, you know, you don’t want to be an inflexible leader, but, you know, talk to me, man. What’s this?
Speaker 1 | 00:24.138
A lot of people are. I don’t, I will have to see if I can. If this will qualify me as a nerd, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just be dissected. I don’t know.
Speaker 0 | 00:33.897
Okay, we’ll start with dissecting. We should. Oh my gosh, of course. Of course, my wife’s calling me at the same time via some kind of weird computer application via video. So I’m going to shut that off. Someone, I don’t know what the problem is. You got to ignore your wife. You know, you got to ignore your wife when you’re doing it.
Speaker 1 | 00:50.153
That is probably not the big message. I’m just saying, like, I mean. Listen, my wife will probably not listen, but just in case, I am not advocating for that. You’re on your own on that one.
Speaker 0 | 01:02.341
We’ll have her listen to the show and see what she says. I should have brought her on live. I wonder what she’s got to ask. I should have brought her on. We should do that. We should allow interruptions on this show from significant others. That would be a good section of the show. We should do that. Wife interruptions. What are the top three interruptions you get? What are the top three interruptions you get from your wife on a daily basis? You know what I mean? She’ll be like, can I borrow the card to do this? Yes, take the card. Or can I pay for the… Yes, of course. Like, what are you talking about? Just do it. Why are you asking?
Speaker 1 | 01:37.685
See,
Speaker 0 | 01:38.007
I’m flexible. I’m flexible.
Speaker 1 | 01:39.788
That’s all about having clear boundaries and expectations. Like, those things, you don’t have to ask. Those are all good.
Speaker 0 | 01:45.072
How can we turn this into a flexible leadership conversation? See, I’m flexible. I’m flexible. Gosh, just ignore your team members. That’s probably a number one rule in your book. I’m sure.
Speaker 1 | 01:54.523
You’re over two. You are over two, Phil. Don’t ignore your team members. Don’t ignore your spouse.
Speaker 0 | 02:03.367
And don’t be inflexible. Okay, let’s go. Come on, man. Talk to me. I mean,
Speaker 1 | 02:08.931
can I just say that, you know, because you just, you said something, you know, you’re just sort of riffing off the word flexible and saying, well, you know, I’m a fan of being inflexible. Who wants to be inflexible? And so that’s actually one of the big points of the book. And that is that a lot of, most everyone will say, well, yeah, I want to be flexible. Yeah, I want to do that. And yet, on the other hand, they will say, well, but aren’t I supposed to be consistent and aren’t people supposed to know where I stand? And so then they start to do this. Well, if I’m this, I can’t be that, right? If I’m flexible, I can’t be stable and I can’t be. consistent. And I would suggest that those aren’t opposites, that they’re symbiotic, and that rather than thinking about the world as an either or, we have to think about it as both and. At some level, that’s kind of filled the underlying idea of the book, that it’s not about I have to pick a spot or I assume I’m in a spot in my approach, but rather how do I flex and I can do that and still get great results for everybody.
Speaker 0 | 03:16.015
So the majority of… The listeners are fairly senior IT level managers, CTOs, CIOs, IT managers, and they have to be probably maybe some of the most flexible because technology is perfect and nothing ever goes wrong in the technology world. And every implementation that you do goes as smooth as possible.
Speaker 1 | 03:38.832
I’m taking notes on that, Phil.
Speaker 0 | 03:41.774
So, and just the nature of… business in general mergers acquisitions technology AI adoption employees coming and going taking computer systems and applications and putting them together and make them work for a very diverse diverse crowd of people is very very is very very difficult so the if you were if you were inflexible or very rigid or you know, tunnel vision type of thing, which can be a problem for some people if they’re very kind of engineering mindset, you know, with like the blinders on and we’re working this direction towards a solution. I can only see one way it would be problematic. So maybe you can speak to that dilemma that I just described to you and, you know, give us some simple pointers or some simple methodologies, so to speak, to deal with some of that.
Speaker 1 | 04:41.124
So here’s the first thing I would say, that you just said something in passing that’s a really important point. And that is that, you know, we come into our role as a leader, in the case of those of you listening today, in the IT world. But you came from different backgrounds. You got here in different sorts of ways. And that’s all good. But many of you, if you got into a senior level, you’ve taken some sort of workshop, you’ve taken some sort of course and you’ve taken some sort of assessment and you have determined or the assessment determined for you what your strengths are, what your style is, or I’m an engineer. Right. Or what or however you want to frame that. And the point is, all of those things are useful until they aren’t. And when they when they become not useful, Phil, is when it does. as you said, put our blinders on. Because see, here’s the thing about flexibility that as we’re talking about it, it’s flexible in approach, right? What should be the same for us as a leader, our principles, our values, our mission, all those things should be steady, solid as a rock. It’s the how or the approaches that have to change. And we can think about that sort of from the approaches of the technology. But really what I’m talking about it from is the perspective of How am I actually leading my team?
Speaker 0 | 06:00.359
Okay.
Speaker 1 | 06:01.480
How is it that I go about leading my team every day, right? And I might be very flexible and agile and able to think about, well, we need to go to this technology. We’re going to think about these vendors. We’re going to try these things. Doesn’t necessarily. But if we’re making all of those decisions ourselves all the time, then I’m saying that way, you’re not flexible at all, right? And in a world that is more uncertain than ever. I would propose that trying to assume that everything has clear context and one person has to, or needs to have all the answers, um, is going to leave us falling short. If we think best practices are going to get us there, they’re likely not.
Speaker 0 | 06:42.133
I’m frantically looking for a pen to write down all of this very, these deep thoughts. And it’s, I think it’s probably good that I don’t have a pen today because I have endless notebooks of just, just scribbles, right. That I never look at again and I just throw away. So we’re just going to, Maybe this is the day that I become flexible and change that. So this is very deep actually. So, because I think if you ask the majority of people, how do you lead? Like literally, how do you consciously lead? Like not just show up and be who you are and you know your systems and you know how you do things or you know what needs to get done and you look at this and you look at that.
Speaker 1 | 07:20.047
Not how we manage, but how we lead.
Speaker 0 | 07:22.308
Yeah. So I don’t think people could actually, could actually. Tell them how they lead. Like you said, I think they’ve gone to a course like I’ve, I’ve taken years ago, you know, I’ve probably gone through, you know, Covey’s seven habits of highly effective people, maybe twice. I’ve, you know, I’ve read atomic habits. I’ve definitely gone through all the first break, all the rules now discover your strengths. And I’ve gone through that whole, that whole deal years ago. Um, I’ve been through numerous leadership positions and courses and I don’t think I could tell you. I don’t think if I’m being completely honest with myself, if you ask me how I lead, I would say I’m a mix of, you know, you know, this, this and this and prioritizing. And I need I know what I need to get out of my own way. And I probably don’t do that enough.
Speaker 1 | 08:07.881
So I think one of the most important things to think about here and and because here’s the thing, just like you said, Phil, we tend to lead whether we can label it or not. Right. If we can label it, then that becomes our identity, which is the problem, right? Because then the blinders come, well, I lead because I lead this way. I lead because I have, I’m a trained engineer. I lead because I have these strengths. This is how I lead. But whether we have that piece or not, what you’re saying, I think is true for many leaders, many leaders, excuse me, because we just do it on autopilot. We do it based on our habits. We do it based on our learned experiences. which we probably quit trying and working on relearning a long time ago. So we’re basically set in our patterns. And I’m suggesting that in a world that is more uncertain, complex, and complicated than ever, that we have to be willing to say, is that approach going to get me the results we need, that the team needs or not?
Speaker 0 | 09:10.196
So what do we need to do? Come on, tell me. Give away your best thing. That’s how, I want your best thing. I want to know, fix. Fix me in the world.
Speaker 1 | 09:18.166
Well, I’m not sure I can fix you, Phil, but I can give you.
Speaker 0 | 09:20.628
I don’t need to get fixed anyways.
Speaker 1 | 09:24.049
So here’s the thing. Let’s just take. So there are three parts to the approach. One is intention, which we’ve been getting at, like even being aware that maybe I need to think about doing something other than what comes automatic. The second is what’s the context of our situation? And we can come back to that if you want. And I’ve hinted at that by saying that the context of our world is more complicated and uncertain than ever. But the third part where I want to go to give you something tangible is this idea of a flexor. So here’s the idea of a flexor. I’ll give you an example of one that everyone who’s listening can connect with. Okay. So the question for all of you listening is this, do you want to lead for commitment or compliance? And most leaders will say, and I, cause I’ve done this with all sorts of groups, including one with several hundred on a webinar last week. And like 95% of people, well, I want to lead for commitment. I want to lead for commitment. I want people to be committed. I want accountability. I want ownership. I want engagement. Like I want to lead for commitment. And yes, all the research says that’s not really where we’re getting. So even if that’s what we want, are we getting? So here’s the flexor, compliance, commitment. And most people, and even honestly, the way I framed the question says, which do you want? And even that is really the wrong or an unfair question because the right question is, which do I need more of right now? Right. So I’m with the group who says, generally speaking, I want to be on the commitment side. I want my team to be committed to the work. committed to the team.
Speaker 0 | 11:00.963
You want them to have ownership and feel creative, be happy, come into work every day like they love it. This is the best job ever. But in reality, what you get a lot of times is, well, we need to get a job done, okay, at the end of the day. So we’re really getting those people that are complying with what needs an end result that needs to happen.
Speaker 1 | 11:18.616
And they’re saying, yes, boss, yes, sir, yes, ma’am. I’m of the opinion that leaning toward commitment is, generally speaking, a better answer. And… Even though that’s the direction I want to lean, there are times that all we really need is compliance. Sometimes all we need is we just need to get this done today. And there’s a high enough level of trust and people will follow. Like everyone knows there’s a pretty simple, straightforward someone needs to decide. And if the boss decides, I can be in with that. But if we lead like that all the time, that’s not the right answer. So the challenge of the flexor is. The ends of the spectrum by themselves are rarely the best answer. The right answer is somewhere in between. And it depends on the situation.
Speaker 0 | 12:03.615
I’m assuming you have to have good foundations because people are going to, it’s kind of like being in the army, right? Like people are going to just take orders, right? But they know why they’re taking orders ultimately. And they have to, like, there’s a certain kind of level of like, once you get to a certain decision, even if there was, you know, once, once the decision and order is made, you just, you just follow orders because, um, so there has to be an. And I’m just thinking of a situation, let’s just say there’s an ERP implementation, which could be very, very complicated and take a very, very long time, right? And that’s one of those things where we just need to get the job done. But we know that if we get the job done efficiently and fast and everything, then the commitment piece is like the light at the end of the tunnel, kind of like when we’re in… we’re done with the job, then we can maybe enjoy the fruits of our labor a little bit more and have a little bit more visionary speak and things like that. So I’m assuming that’s kind of what you’re getting at. At least that’s what I’m imagining.
Speaker 1 | 12:58.841
That’s part of it. And what I would say is in the midst of that multiple, multiple month ERP implementation, right? Like we can say that ultimately the business drivers say, we have to have this new ERP. We have to have it by this point in time for these reasons. And all that stuff, like the business drivers are there and the facts are there. And ultimately, we just need to get it done. And yet there are moments of time during a week or during a month or in a phase of the project when maybe what you need to do is lean more the other direction for a bit. Maybe what you need to do is say, hey, here’s ultimately where we need to get. What do you all think is the best way to do this thing inside of us? Like, what are we engaging our folks in the micro decisions along the way? at the appropriate times. And that’s where context comes in. So this is, again, it’s not just like, well, it’s an ERP, it’s a big project. So that, so it’s about, it’s about compliance. And then, oh, hopefully when we’re done, we get there. But like, how many people do we burn out along the way? And we don’t, we never get there. Or because of the way we led the project, we make it really hard to move, to move us, move the team to the other direction later. How do we manage that along the way would be my.
Speaker 0 | 14:12.522
I don’t know which question to ask you next. We need some, um, well, I’ve got a bunch. When you don’t ask any,
Speaker 1 | 14:18.325
it’s a shorter podcast.
Speaker 0 | 14:19.666
Let’s see if we, um, we need some, we need some like fire branding questions here. Let’s see here. Um, that one. Well, you have a couple of things in here that are fascinating to me, leading in a distance and remarkable results. So how do you lead at a distance and get remarkable results? I want, I want both. I want to lead at a distance. I just want to check out, I have a friend, he runs a very, very good and efficient software development company. And he said to me, he’s like, look, one day, Phil, he’s like, I told the one guy, I said, hey, look, you’re the boss. You’re like the big boss, man. Okay, you’re in charge of all this. You know the results, you know what you’re doing. You know what needs to happen. You’re in charge of the team. Don’t ever call me.
Speaker 1 | 15:06.360
he’s leading at a distance okay now i’m that might be a little bit over exaggerated but he’s leading at a distance and he’s getting remarkable results and um yeah so that’s that’s happening in that case i mean i would i would love to dissect that a little bit more with him i mean not not hypothetically with you and
Speaker 0 | 15:25.637
here but here’s what i’d say it’s like how does elon musk do everything how does elon musk launch rockets run a this company x How does he do it?
Speaker 1 | 15:34.183
Well, number one, you have to have people that you can trust. And number two, you have to be willing. And I’m not enough of a student of Elon to answer it from the Elon perspective, right? And he’s kind of the extreme example anyway, right? But let’s just take it back a notch or two and say that if you want to be able to get remarkable results when folks aren’t all. around you and you’re not seeing them all the time or in your guy your friend’s case maybe you don’t want to talk to him which i’m not sure i quite agree with however no no he’s just he just he likes surfing i know i know i know so here’s the point the point is that we have to have uh people who understand the mission who that who you trust that you have clear expectations with and you have to let them go like you know i I can ask leaders to say, think of the best leader you’ve ever thought of and then tell me why. And no one will ever say, well, they were a great micromanager. Like no one wants to be led by a micromanager. And yet all of us have been led by one, which means that it happens even if people think they don’t want to do it or they’d like to not do it. And the only chance you’ve got, whether people are down the hall or whether they’re across the country or on the other side of the globe, is that you have to have clear expectations. Clear picture of where you’re trying to go. And you have to let them do it and give them a safety net when there’s a challenge.
Speaker 0 | 17:02.231
Do you think it’s possible that they have a hard time firing people and getting the right people in the right seats on the bus?
Speaker 1 | 17:09.996
Well, I think there’s no question that there are people that have a hard time firing people. I have had challenges with that. I’ve safely had very many of those situations, right?
Speaker 0 | 17:19.002
They get in micromanaging. They get into the micromanaging position because they don’t have the right person there that can do the job.
Speaker 1 | 17:24.182
That’s one of the reasons they might have other reasons people micromanage. And it is that they can’t let go. It’s not that they don’t even have the, sometimes they don’t have the right person, no doubt, but more, I would say at least as often, it’s they want it done the way they want to do it in regard, irregardless of how good that other person could do it. They can’t let go.
Speaker 0 | 17:44.295
True. There’s no doubt. I think that would be the, that’s the stereotypical answer. I’m just trying to. dig deeper into what some of the problems could be as to why someone gets stuck into a into a micromanaging position because no one wants to be i can give you a couple of them here’s number one people got promoted because they were really good at doing the work yeah like really good at doing the work but they’re not a good leader in this world in this world uh they were really good coders right
Speaker 1 | 18:09.866
and or really good project managers right they were excellent at it they were rewarded for it they were recognized for it they were promoted for it but what they what the role you The new role requires is not to code, at least not all the time. Even if you’re a working manager role where you’re still going to code 30% of the time, you can’t have all your focus on that part. See, we have our head connected to that’s what we’re good at. That’s what we’re recognized for. That’s what we have to still be good at. We’re supposed to have all the answers. So psychologically, why wouldn’t we then keep doing the work, keep checking the work that we’re comfortable with? rather than doing the stuff now of guiding the team, setting the vision, all those things that are harder and they’ve never done before.
Speaker 0 | 18:56.557
So what would you suggest then they do rather than stand over some shoulder and tell them this is how you do it? Would you guide them through the same learning process that you may have learned when you became a good coder? Like, hey, take, so this is the other thing that the guy that just said, don’t ever call me. I left out the best piece of advice that he actually gave that person. which is you’re the best, you were the best, whatever, coder, project manager on the team. Thus why I’m promoting you, which might be the wrong reason to begin with. But I don’t think it was. I don’t think it was because he also said, when there’s a lot of work to be done, you guys need to work hard. And this goes back to the first part that we had just talked about, right? When there’s a lot of work to be done, it’s just compliance. It’s just compliance, right? There’s a lot to be done. I want you guys to work hard. When there’s not a lot of work to be done. I want you to be leading the team and for them to be doing the work, but I want you to be spending the majority of your time learning and like researching and upskilling yourself and doing that. So, but like for me, for example, I, I, I’m a. I have a creative writing degree, yet I ended up in technology. Okay, so I have a creative writing degree. I’ve been studying copy and writing copy, you know, for years and years and years. So one of the things that I have a hard time letting go of is the titles of episodes and the copy and the bullet points and stuff, right? But I’ve just let it go, right? And then like, I let it go. And then I’ll see like a dip in like some kind of like, you know, clicks or something or like, you know, it’ll show up in the data. So then I’ll be I’ll be back in it again, like micromanaging all of the copy because it’s very, very, it’s just difficult. Writing copy sometimes just comes naturally after years and years of experience. So now rather than what I did is we put like a, like in a, you know, in an agile kind of like a Kanban board type of style, just put like more of a, of a training and coaching copy section. So you do the copy first, then I’ll give the points. Then you go back and change it and then come back. Would you say that that’s a good method? Well,
Speaker 1 | 21:04.409
first of all, if that’s working for your team and for you and isn’t keeping you from doing other stuff, then that combined sort of flexible approach seems perfectly fine.
Speaker 0 | 21:14.996
But what if it is keeping me from other stuff? What if it obviously is taking me from other stuff?
Speaker 1 | 21:19.799
Then it’s like, what are the things that there are things that you have in your head or metrics that you can see clicks, engagement rate, whatever it is that you. like you have dashboard, whether it’s in your head or it’s for, you know, for real, it says, here’s when I found myself sucked back in. So make sure that the team knows what those measures are. Right. So rather than you just jumping in and taking away their ownership, fundamentally, when everyone, if anyone, everyone can see where that dip is, then it’s a five minute, 10 minute conversation. Why do we think that dip is being caused? Right. Maybe it’s the copy. Maybe it’s not. I’m going to guess in this case, it probably is based on what you said, but in some more complex situations, guess what it could be? Because your expertise is copy, every problem looks like, because you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, right? So that’s the thing you want to fix. Might not even be the thing that needs to be fixed, which is why we suck into our expertise, but rather we could say to the team, hey, the goal is we got to keep this set of metrics flat or up and to the right, whatever that is, right? And that, and in your, if that’s in your head, when you found yourself going back in, make sure everyone can see it. And then let’s have a conversation about that. And guess what? There may be sometimes that they would say, man, Phil, you’re so good at writing the damn bullets. Would you just write the bullets?
Speaker 0 | 22:41.299
Yeah. Everything you say is spot on because you see what I’m saying? Yeah. Everything is spot on because I would say that maybe a small part of it, portion of it was the copy. And the other part of the problem was backlinks and who was promoting it and how it was posted.
Speaker 1 | 23:01.056
Because there’s a, because that is a complex.
Speaker 0 | 23:03.157
I just am personally attached to the copy. I’m just personally attached to like, come on, that’s not exciting enough.
Speaker 1 | 23:08.898
Like, can’t we just make the copy better? That’ll solve everything. And it might help, might not be the whole picture, but that’s the thing that we all get sucked into. We get sucked into the piece that we knew the best. And so now if you’re listening and you’re. at this in the c-suite you’re a very high level on it guess what there’s a whole lot of stuff in your organization in the details like phil’s describing that i guarantee you they know better than you do even if you used to do it because look how much of it’s changing okay so how do we uncover that how do we uncover which part of that my my my
Speaker 0 | 23:41.816
like how do we uncover that stuff that you don’t know what you don’t know right so this is like it guys and or a lot of people hate that all right stop giving me that i don’t know what you don’t know that’s just a you know it’s like a way of like It’s something that salespeople like to say,
Speaker 1 | 23:53.936
right? Well, let’s just say it’s very specifically for, you know, those of you who are listening right now, right? I’m not talking to Phil. I’m talking to all of you. Like, if you’ve been in a senior IT role for any length of time, it shouldn’t be hard to realize that there’s a bunch of stuff that your team does that you can’t do anymore or you can’t do like you used to be able to do because so much has changed. Like, you don’t even have to, you don’t even. we don’t have to figure out which piece it is. Just, I think that we can all agree to that fact, right? So then the question is, how do we get better at asking the questions to uncover the stuff rather than just rolling up our sleeves and going in ourselves? So it really does start with an awareness that I have blind spots, even if I don’t know what they all are, right? Like maybe we just kind of uncovered one for you, Phil, around it’s not just the copy. Right.
Speaker 0 | 24:49.966
No, it’s definitely not. It’s like how, you know, what other things are really.
Speaker 1 | 24:53.789
Right. And so that’s the point.
Speaker 0 | 24:55.410
Where else could we spend this time? Like, do we need to spend really all of our time on this or where else could we spend our time that would actually move the bar four or five X, seven X, 10 X, what it is in, you know, a fraction of the time, as opposed to worrying about, um, how much time is being spent on production.
Speaker 1 | 25:13.660
And I would propose to all of you listening that it’s our job to ask that question. It’s not our job or even possible for us to know all the answers to that. We have answers. Our answers are useful, but they’re not the only answers. Our job is to ask that question because all of you now go back to when you were an individual contributor, all of you listening. And remember all those times like, well, if they would just listen to like, we’re the ones doing the work. We see it. See, here’s the thing about leading. We need as a leader, and this is another reason why it’s hard sometimes for us when we get promoted from within, as a leader, we have to have what I would call a bird’s eye view. We have to see at a higher level. So let’s just imagine that I’m a bird and I’m looking at a forest. I see a bunch of trees, okay? But if I’m an individual contributor, I don’t see that. I’m like down on the ground. So I like to call it the bird’s eye view and the worm’s eye view. I’m not saying that our employees are worms. Don’t misunderstand that. But if a worm is looking at the tree in front of them, it looks very different to them than that same tree looks to a bird. Right. And the worm has a perspective that is useful and the bird has a perspective that’s extraordinarily useful. And if as leaders, we’re not lifting our sight to look higher, to look broader and to look further, then no one will because no one can. That’s our job.
Speaker 0 | 26:34.318
It’s a pretty deep metaphor.
Speaker 1 | 26:35.799
Even though I called, even though I implied that people are worms, which they aren’t.
Speaker 0 | 26:41.972
The birdworm metaphor. It’s like the next, how can we work that into a book title? See, I already just went back into copy. I just went back into the copy. There you go. The birdworm.
Speaker 1 | 26:51.859
Birds on ID, birds on ID. But I think that that really, in some ways, encapsulates a lot of what you and I have been talking about for the last 15 minutes or so, right? About the challenge of us as we lead to not get sucked in or to get sucked in at the right times. And because what we, see what you run the risk of doing, and I’m not saying you are. has a lot to do with the context of your actual team and who’s on it and their confidence and their trust in you and all that stuff. But when you swoop in to work on copy, you run the risk, right, of sliding them all back to compliance. But like whatever he says, that’s what we’ll do, as opposed to them having ownership, not of the show notes, but of the result.
Speaker 0 | 27:33.561
Okay. Top three questions that you can ask your team today that will make a massive, um… let’s say thermonuclear difference and completely open up your eyes to what’s going on in your organization. Top three questions that a leader should ask his team that he can take from this he or she can take from this episode today and ask their team.
Speaker 1 | 27:59.419
I’ll ask the, I’ll give you the questions and I have to have, and then I’ve got a caveat or an asterisk. So question number one is what do you see that I don’t see? Question number two. If you were in my spot, what would you change? Love it. Question number three. Oh, I got four. Question number three. What are, what other opportunities do you see? Question number four. What, what worries you?
Speaker 0 | 28:21.000
Freaking love.
Speaker 1 | 28:21.720
So opportunities and threats question, right?
Speaker 0 | 28:23.680
Yeah. Love it. Here’s the caveat.
Speaker 1 | 28:25.320
So I said, I’m going to give you the question. I’m going to give you a caveat. If you have a team, if you’ve not asked questions often or questions like that often asking them now will give you blank stares.
Speaker 0 | 28:38.164
I have a, I have a way of delivering it. I have a way of delivering that then. Right. So you have to send out an anonymous survey or let that, or, or we’ll see here. One of the most valuable things that I did and that came from a first break, all the rules or whatever that was book a long time ago, which is it’s, it only, it kind of works if you have a big team, if you only have two people, then, you know, it might be like, it might be difficult. Right. But if you have a team of like 20 or 30 people, then you can’t tell really who’s who. Right. So you put like. the leader on the team, you have all those questions. It’s a lot more than three or four, right? You let them meet without you there and let them answer all those questions and roundtable you. Basically have a roundtable discussion.
Speaker 1 | 29:18.801
And have someone facilitate it.
Speaker 0 | 29:20.542
Yes. Have someone facilitate it. Take all the questions, put it in a vanilla envelope, type it all up, typed, and deliver the feedback to you as a leader anonymously. And it might be one of the most eye-opening. challenging experiences you’ve gone through.
Speaker 1 | 29:37.113
For sure. So the other half of my caveat is, yes, so you can certainly ask those questions and honestly find out what, and you don’t necessarily ask them in front of the whole group and then ask them to like share their thoughts, you know, live in front of everybody else in front of you. But I will say this, that if you have, if you have a culture and if you have working relationships where trust levels are higher, the need for anonymity will go way down. And. it will actually be richer because now I can get context because now you can give me some feedback and I can say, tell me more about that, which I can’t really do with the typed up results. So 100% use that kind of an approach.
Speaker 0 | 30:20.150
build the culture in your organization of trust you can more likely get those some at least some of those answers from 100 agreed 100 agreed i’ve received some very vicious i don’t want to say vicious but like um difficult feedback because it’s a um way of being i guess or saying or um and people feel safe to share with you and i think Yeah. I had a friend once say that it’s like, it’s better to get like a, it’s better to get like an insult and a slap from like a trusted friend than like, you know, like a piece of feedback from someone that’s like, you know, not really trustworthy or whatever. That’s just telling you kind of like what you want to hear or something like that. Right. You know what I mean? It’s better to get like, you know, it’s better. Yeah. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1 | 31:08.300
because here’s the thing about feedback. It’s not just about, we have to, in terms of us receiving feedback or giving to either way, like it has to be heard. understood. The ultimate goal of feedback is that people use it, right? But it’s not just heard, understood. There’s another step it’s called accept. And what you’re saying is, well, I’m looking at that person. I’m looking at their position. I’m looking at their expertise. I’m looking at my relationship with them before I decide whether I’m going to accept that or if I’m going to take action on that or not. Right. But if I get it from a friend or someone that I trust or someone that, and someone that I know has expertise here, then I’m much more likely to say, like, I. probably ought to pay attention.
Speaker 0 | 31:46.686
Yes. There’s this thing going around a lot lately. I find that these trends happen. I don’t know if it’s AI and social media and people feeding me stuff on a new level. And I think AI and social media and how they’re pixeling me and recording me secretly through my cameras all over the place and on my cell phone and listening to me and spying on me and all that stuff. I’m very much a, I’ve become more of a conspiracy theorist as I got older. I don’t know if this is just something that happens with old age or not. But I say that in fun as well. I should do, I would love to do a show on just crazy stuff. The, where was I going with this? Do that,
Speaker 1 | 32:23.069
right? You have a card, do that.
Speaker 0 | 32:26.691
The, is it okay to be a quitter? And the reason why I’m saying is what’s going around a lot is this like, you know, a lot of people stay in things for too long, but I’m very much one of the ones that’s like built everything on grit, right? Like I’m, I remember, you know, you know, like how the grit, the grit goes around a lot. sometimes too you know that that whole like that like you know you got to have grit and grit’s the main thing that separates people from that from like you know the successful people from the whatever you know and Tony Robbins used to always say you know like hard work and whatever beats out talent any day you know hard work and grit you know and you know just you know pushing through and just you know being able to be take on pain and suffering you know is so good and even the NVIDIA guy or whatever he’s saying that too you know he’s like I love pain and suffering if I if I suck if my employers are talking, going through a lot of pain and suffering, whatever, I tell them, that’s good. That’s good. Because that’s, that’s where we learn and get developed and stuff, you know? And I don’t know if he said pain and suffering, but something along those lines. And yeah. Um, but there is a, sometimes where you’re still kind of like spinning the wheels too long and you’ve got to just give up and quit or, and when, and, or it’s, or it’s like, Hey, this, maybe this guy’s not in the right position or whatever. And it’s like, when do we call it quits? When do we quit? Is it okay to be?
Speaker 1 | 33:43.003
There’s a great book with that title called Quit by Annie Duke. And in all seriousness, it’s a great book. And I would say this, and I’ll just, for the purposes of our time, I would say, think about the bird’s eye, worm’s eye view, right? Like, I think probably most people listening to this buy into, have lived in that grit, work hard. be persistent, be resilient thing. You said you have. I know I have. And yet sometimes we need to lift our eyes and look and say, are we trying to burrow our way through that tree when all we need to do is walk around that tree? And the bird would see that and the worm never would. And so I think that a short answer to part of that question is that perspective matters so much, which takes us back. to part of our formula, which is that word of context. Right. And so to me, context is like, the more we understand the context, the smarter we get about anything. Right. And so when we’re in the middle of that banging our head, pushing forward, we need to step back enough to say, well, if, what if we moved over 12 feet and moved forward again and made another right hand turn, would that be different? Right. Like our Are we trying just to try or are we trying intelligently, right? Like the goal is still the same. Should we be looking differently or maybe has the world changed and we want a slightly different goal?
Speaker 0 | 35:19.410
So. It’s okay to quit because you’re burrowing, because you’re burrowing, burrowing.
Speaker 1 | 35:23.876
I think,
Speaker 0 | 35:25.157
I think that it’s more like a pivot. I guess it’s more like a pivot. It’s more,
Speaker 1 | 35:29.121
I think it, I think, yeah, part of, part of it is how you define quit. Part of it is, you know, how quickly are you quitting? Right. Is it, are, if the, if the, if the question is, are there times when quitting is the right choice? I would say the answer is a hundred percent. Yes. That’s my personal answer. I probably need to hear that as much as anybody.
Speaker 0 | 35:47.873
Yes. Well, we’ve had it happen before. We’ve had people, I was so inspired. I went and quit. It’s like, okay, that’s awesome. Kind of. Um, all right. What, uh, uh, what else do we have? What’s your final, um, if you had, you know, one final message or something to deliver to, to the listeners out there, to the leaders in the world, um, what would that be?
Speaker 1 | 36:13.249
Well, in the, in the context still of what we’ve said. what we’ve talked about and thanks for having me.
Speaker 0 | 36:17.571
And I do have a 0.5. I am going to, I’m going to reserve a second, a follow-up question to that, but go.
Speaker 1 | 36:21.994
That’s fine. So here’s, in the context of our conversation, here’s what I’d say in a world that is more uncertain than ever, the best antidote we have to that is to be flexible because we, uncertainty happens because there are things we don’t know and things that we probably can’t know. So being willing to flex in our approach is our only chance to move. to over time reduce that uncertainty. So the antidote for uncertainty is flexibility.
Speaker 0 | 36:52.797
And guys, you can do that just in anything. It’s actually something that I realized a long time ago, which is you can be flexible in your life in general. You don’t have to stay living in that house, making payments on that mortgage for the rest of your life and be buried in the backyard. You really don’t have to, if you don’t want. I have… lived in multiple different countries for different periods of time. I have completely ignored the person that says like travelers is the fool’s paradise or whatever that is. I’ve completely ignored that. I don’t believe that. And although my wife, my wife did say, can we make this the last move, please? Cause we’ve moved like, you know, like six times and like, I can understand that. I can understand the pain of that, but there’s, there’s. A lot of things that you can experience in this life and in this world without having to just continue doing the same thing over and over and over again forever, hoping that there’s going to be this weird light at the end of the tunnel where I cash out my 401k and sail off on a pirate ship into the Caribbean and retire with this great life. Because by that time, you’re probably going to have a couple of slipped discs, some other aches and pains, some itises. The itises are going to start to come in. And by that time, it’s like this, you know, false perception of like what the future really brings. So with that being said, from the flexibility of leadership and everything, do you have what’s the end game for a lot of people? I think a lot of people are in this thing and they’re kind of, you know, they’re going on day to day, which is not it’s not a problem if you’re passionate about what you do and you just love doing it. And I’m just going to keep doing this. But. What’s the legacy mindset that people should have? Should they have this mindset of leaving a legacy and wanting to, you know, you know, give back more than they take from this world? Because most of us are just really, really, really just adding to the one of those trash, big trash areas that they cover up and then have to put the little the hose on it for the nitrogen gas to landfill. Most of us are just adding to the landfill and eventually we’re going to become part of that landfill anyways. So. What’s the problem with this constant capitalistic mindset and constantly going? Do we fail to have any future legacy thoughts or anything like that?
Speaker 1 | 39:21.323
Well, I don’t like to answer shoulds for other people, right? So I can answer the question for me. And that, to me, the role of leading, not necessarily the position of being a leader, but the role of leading. whatever part of our life that might be, is the best way to leave a legacy, if that’s your goal. If that’s not your goal, that’s fine. But I’m guessing if you’re listening to the show and you’ve been listening to Phil’s podcast for some period of time, you’re leading in a way and you care about doing it, or you wouldn’t choose to spend your time listening to these podcasts, you’d listen to music instead, right? And there’s nothing wrong with listening to music, don’t misunderstand me. But like, I’m guessing you’re somewhat self-selected if you’re hearing these words that at some level legacy is a part of what you want to do. And I would suggest that nothing positive happens in the world without someone leading. Things can devolve alone, but they can’t evolve without.
Speaker 0 | 40:25.476
It’s funny that you brought up the music thing. Cause I gave up, I gave up music a long time ago and I used to be a guy that was like, that that’s like a, that’s like a deep conversation for, for like another level for like another time.
Speaker 1 | 40:36.024
Like you gave it up. Like you don’t listen to it.
Speaker 0 | 40:38.505
I used to play guitar. I used to play piano. I used to be like really like hardcore. Like, and it’s just, it’s interesting. So, um, uh, But I like, like you said, like there’s no should for another person. I actually happen to believe that a lot of good leaders are in a leadership position, not because they chose to or they even wanted to. They kind of fell into it and it happened to them, which is interesting because most of the people that are in an IT leadership position nowadays fell into that position because it wasn’t a real thing back in the day. No one went to school for IT. They’re all engineers or they are someone else that just knew how to fix printers well back in the day. And then one thing led to another. And now they’re the CTO or the CIO because there was no school for it back then. I mean, if you think about it, think about when you were growing up, what was the technology that you had? What do you have? An LP? I mean, I don’t want to, I don’t want to insult you by going down to like, you know, like eight track, but I remember eight tracks. I remember. I just didn’t want to go there without going there. Right.
Speaker 1 | 41:42.418
In the middle of the song. Right.
Speaker 0 | 41:46.000
you know it’s just crazy there was no cell phones there was no none of that so that the fact that we’re in this you know you know if you thought the industrial revolution was a big thing we’re like we’re the history book right now we’re like the history book being written that they’re going to talk about maybe i don’t know decades from now on if we don’t blow ourselves up about that yeah it doesn’t take over you know maybe the robots will be talking oh that’s
Speaker 1 | 42:08.016
a whole other show about leading virtually and about everything that’s happened about how the world society views work That changed over a long weekend in March in the United States.
Speaker 0 | 42:21.032
It did happen. March, exactly. March 17th. March 17th.
Speaker 1 | 42:28.017
It was the Monday. It started happening late that week.
Speaker 0 | 42:30.799
I was supposed to get on a plane on the 16th or 17th and fly off and be in another country for three months. And that did not happen because three days before, everything shut down.
Speaker 1 | 42:44.088
And the. President came on television and said, if you’re a United States citizen and you’re overseas, you need to get home. And my daughter was studying overseas and we had figured out how to get her home. And she came home on the night of the
Speaker 0 | 42:55.835
17th. I had people stuck, stuck in other countries for a long time. Some of them were like, this is great. I’m stuck. There was a whole podcast I remember done on like four kids that got stuck on like a. like some island in Indonesia and surfing. And like, they kind of like lost their minds and kind of went crazy and were shaving their heads and stuff. They’re like, you know, like it’s just different when you’re like surfing and getting barreled every day. And like, now it’s your life and you’re stuck here because of COVID. And they kind of like lost. It was like, you know, you could probably go, there’s like, there’s a whole nother cycle, psychology type podcast thing on all that stuff. Either way, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. How can they get your book? Flexible leadership. What do we need to do? What do they want to click on? What do you, where do you want us to send people?
Speaker 1 | 43:43.008
Three things. First of all, if you go to, if you, anywhere you buy books, if you look up flexible leadership, my name, you’ll find it. And we’d love to have you buy a copy. Of course. You can, you can follow me and connect with me on LinkedIn. You can go to our website, Kevin Eikenberry. I’ll spell that for you in a second. KevinEikenberry.com. K-E-V-I-N-E-I-K-E-N-B-E-R-R-Y.com. And Phil. For everybody, if they’ve made it through this conversation until now and you’re listening to us, I’ve got a gift for you. The piece in the book that we haven’t talked a lot about is confidence and the role of confidence for us as leaders and for our teams. So I created a master class a couple years ago about how to build confidence in ourselves and others. And I want to give that to you as a gift. You go to this page, kevinikebray.com slash gift. You can get that master class for free. And there’s stuff there about the book, too.
Speaker 0 | 44:35.096
Beautiful. And all of those links will be on the website page when we release the episode. So you guys can just click on the little LinkedIn box and it’ll take you right to his LinkedIn page. And we will do a special post inside the leadership community as well so that everyone can get the master class for free. Been a pleasure, Sher. Thank you so much for being on Dissecting Popular IT Nerds.
Speaker 1 | 44:59.199
Thanks so much.
