Joe Miller: 0:05

Hey, welcome back. I'm really glad to pick up on this third session, really focusing on leading through radical change. Now, we talked about, you know, is it real? You know, the messaging we're getting, what we're interpreting through the world and all the different channels to us, being more mindful. Today, the focus is really on leaders and leadership.

Bob Tipton: 0:27

Yeah, yeah, it's about leadership behaviors that are important during times of radical change. And, you know, one of the things to note, well, touch base on this as we get closer to the end, but radical change, as we talked about in the first episode, is necessary. It is something that happens. There's no just simply stopping it from happening. And in some situations, it's really beneficial. So this idea of order, disorder, reorder is nothing to be feared or pushed away. Instead, as leaders, it's really important for us to be able to be good at it as much as possible, recognizing that Often we're affected by it as much or more than those that we're leading. So there's a little bit of compartmentalization that's important. And I'll talk about some of that as we get into the individual behaviors. But it's nothing to be afraid of. It's something to be good at. And that's what I want to try to discuss through in this final episode. How do we get good at doing these kinds of things? And I put things into two different categories. There's five different leadership behaviors we absolutely do not need. And I'd like to talk about them, but unfortunately, they show up a lot. And then there's seven leadership behaviors that I think are really important as we're dealing with transformation or radical change. So for a moment, as leaders, it's very important to think about who we're leading. George Patton, General George Patton, Second World War, he had one of my favorite quotes, although we didn't have YouTube back then, so we can't prove that he said that. But He said, as a leader, every now and then you have to turn around and see if people are still following you. That's good. Yeah, we can get way ahead of the people that we're leading and we can lose them. And at that point, our effectiveness is lost. So a lot of this idea that these behaviors I'm talking about is to keep people engaged and keep them connected and making sure that we actually have some followers as we go forward. So I don't know, Joe, I'm sure you've experienced situations in your career where you were asked to do something and you knew about it weeks or months in advance. And then it's a matter of letting people know. And then some of us are surprised that they're taking it the way that they did, right?

Joe Miller: 2:49

Yeah. You know, early in my career, I remember thinking more about the outcomes that I wanted and

Bob Tipton: 2:55

And

Joe Miller: 2:55

then it was sort of very simplistic about, oh, I know I need to communicate and I need to be clear. One of our previous episodes, you talked about leaders, you know, assuming that everyone has signed on for the change. I don't remember the exact little snippet you had there, but that was an important piece.

Bob Tipton: 3:16

Yeah, not everybody wants to be part of what's going on. It may have been the stages or steps in transformational change. There's an opportunity. Right. Yes, exactly.

Joe Miller: 3:37

Yeah, that really does tie back to this notion of, is there anybody behind me? Right? And if they're not, why aren't they there?

Bob Tipton: 3:47

Yep. How did I lose them? Well... We lose them with these five behaviors that really aren't helpful. So I want to start with at least, I'll start with the first one for sure. And then we'll talk about the other four as we go. But the first one that is just, it's never okay, but it's definitely not okay during times of uncertainty and transformation. And that's gaslighting. And What I find a lot in social media and what I find on news, quote unquote, people are saying, I didn't say that. That's not what I meant. Why are you being so sensitive? It's an attempt to have people question whether they actually heard things correctly and taken to an extreme. It can be a form of bullying. Where... You're trying to hold somebody accountable or trying to get clarifying questions surrounding some circumstance or situation, and they wind up gaslighting you. It's designed to have you question your own sanity. And like I said, it's never okay. To me, it's an example of very low personal accountability, very thin skin. People are really concerned about how they might look. They can't be held accountable to anything. So they just try to make the other person feel like they're nuts because they didn't hear something like that. So I don't know if you remember a time, I remember a time where I was being gaslit by my leaders in an organization and it felt terrible.

Joe Miller: 5:12

Yeah.

Bob Tipton: 5:13

So the first night I went back and I thought, did I really miss this? Did I hear it incorrectly? And then I went back through my notes and emails and all that. And I said, no, that's what they did. So how quickly a leader loses their integrity, loses their trust and This is the people following them if they are gaslighting people.

Joe Miller: 5:35

It's one of those situations in an organization that it starts with one individual or one or two doing the gaslighting and it becomes almost like a virus that the other people are just repeating the same information and not realizing there's no anchor back to truth there.

Bob Tipton: 6:00

Yeah, it's a lot easier to just simply repeat something than it is to be curious to find out about the source. You know, that's another dynamic we talked about in the first session, that is just being in an echo chamber. If you don't know you're being gaslit, it's a mechanism to keep you in your echo chamber. It's like, oh, I just have to keep listening to whatever this leader is telling me because that's the source of all things that are true. And I think we have a real lack of curiosity here. in our society. We have so much going on. We are so overwhelmed with things. We just tend to accept things and move on. So yeah, one more time, no one said the line, Luke, I am your father. And anyone who tries to convince you of that is just, they're gaslighting you. It's not true. So that leads into the second behavior that we really don't need, leadership behavior during times of uncertainty. And I have a story that I want to tell about this one. So it's the idea of a blamestorming, trying to assign blame to someone else. So finger pointing, you know, it's someone else that did this. So the story goes like this. I was working with a public school district. I won't tell you where, obviously, because it's not a really positive story about her district. They had serious, serious academic problems. In fact, 18% of fifth graders were reading at grade level, 1.8%. And in fifth grade, do you want that to be 90 or higher? Because up until third grade, you learn to read. And after third grade, you read to learn. So the prediction for the academic success of kids in the school district was really terrible. And I scheduled, for the first time ever, I've actually never heard of anything like this with a public school district anywhere. I had a three evening scheduled back to back to back with the senior leadership and the school board in the same room. I have never heard of that before or since. It probably has happened somewhere, but it took until the middle of the third night, the middle of the third night. So we're talking seven hours of being with this group for them to finally say yes to the question when I asked them. Do you own the path forward together? back to this idea of accountability, Joe, if I had one thing that I would inject into humanity, it would be personal accountability. I think the world would be substantially different if we all operated from a perspective of personal accountability. So this bling storming is useless. It provides no value. All it does is try to make others look bad and make you not look bad. It's the equivalent of putting in your Teflon clothes. Nothing sticks to you.

Joe Miller: 9:01

So what do you mean by brainstorming? Maybe you can give an example.

Bob Tipton: 9:04

Well, it's a play on words. It's brainstorming versus blamestorming. So it's this idea of I spend a lot of time and energy trying to find somebody else to blame.

Joe Miller: 9:14

Okay.

Bob Tipton: 9:16

That's the idea. I see. I didn't come up with the term. Somebody did years and years ago, but I've sort of glommed on to it because I like the way it feels, this idea of blamestorming. Okay. I don't know if you've ever been in a circumstance where you've asked somebody and they just simply point at somebody else and say it's their fault.

Joe Miller: 9:36

Oh, yeah. And I think even, it's a little bit nuanced, but even watching behaviors at senior leadership levels and understanding they're positioning themselves for deniability. You know, they're wanting to make sure that nothing can come back on them. So it's sort of a proactive non-accountability stance. And that actually drives a lot of behaviors.

Bob Tipton: 10:07

It does. You know, Geico made a whole commercial about that. It was a group of people around the table. They have lunch or dinner or something. There was an alligator. that was at the table and couldn't reach the check, you know, because of tiny little arms. I can't reach the check. It's this learned helplessness that there's no way that they can do what they need to do. So, you know, the term is plausible deniability. It's all about trying to find a way that it doesn't come back on them. But that happens a lot in political discourse. I don't care You know, we've really, I think, done a good job here staying out of any particular ideology or perspective because it doesn't matter. All of them do it. And that's kind of the third leadership behavior that we don't need ever. It's deflection. So I get frustrated trying to get information about policy perspectives or stances when it comes to those that are making policy that are looking to be elected to whatever organization. role, I don't care, city council all the way up to president of the United States, it doesn't matter to me. But trying to get a straight answer to a straight question, isn't it fascinating how the political candidate, I don't care who they are, they all, you know, they might give a blustering sort of two or three second kind of thing and then immediately go back to their talking points and their platform. They don't answer the question. Slippery is the word

Joe Miller: 11:35

that comes to mind.

Bob Tipton: 11:38

Yeah, lip service, it's I'm going to act like I'm going to answer your question and I just don't. And in times of radical change, in times of transformation, that is so frustrating. It's like all I want is an answer to the question that I'm asking. Going back to what we talked about in the second installment, I want to know something that's relevant to me and I want you to communicate it in a way that I find accessible, right? and valuable. I want you to be able to satisfy my question, why? And when you keep going back to your talking points, think about this, massive restructuring, job loss, mergers, acquisitions, and all we get from people is deflection. Again, immature leaders, and I hate to sound judgmental, but I'm going to sound judgmental for just a minute. They depend upon talking points, and that's it. It's not a matter of giving context or Well,

Joe Miller: 12:36

it's a defensive strategy to make sure that they don't expose true accountability or expose a potential chink in their armor, so to

Bob Tipton: 12:46

speak. Yeah, it's this idea. I don't know if you've heard of Brene Brown. Yeah,

Joe Miller: 12:53

sure.

Bob Tipton: 12:53

Okay, so Brene Brown wrote a book called Daring Greatly. It's a book my daughter gave me. I hated it, and I loved it, and I hated it. It was one of the books I couldn't pick up, and I couldn't sell. It just really drove me nuts. But one of the most important messages in that book is around the courage to be vulnerable. And deflection is the opposite of that. There is no desire, no ability actually to be vulnerable if you're constantly deflecting. So we can see right through it. It's one of the fastest ways that we can just simply lose faith in those that we expect to lead us. if we're not getting straight answers as to straight questions. So the fourth behavior that we do not need from leaders during times of radical change or transformation has to do with, it's sort of a cousin that lasts too, but it's whataboutisms. What I mean by whataboutisms, it's this idea that, well, so-and-so is behaving badly.

Joe Miller: 13:47

So why can't I? Why can't I? Yeah.

Bob Tipton: 13:52

Why are you picking on me? Why are you picking on me? That's right. Everybody's behaving badly. Everybody's broken. It's like, stop that. It's not helpful when you're saying that, what about so-and-so? So it's the story of, well, so-and-so's parents let them have ice cream before dinner. It's like, well, do they call me mom or dad? Is that the relationship they have? So it's trying to justify your own poor choices, your own bad behavior, own lack of accountability, et cetera, by pointing at somebody else. And there are so many examples in politics. I can't bring them up because it points to one viewpoint or another, but it's constant in that world to say, well, what about so-and-so?

Joe Miller: 14:41

Well, I mean, there's examples from children, right? I mean, that's where you often see it show up. Why am I getting in trouble when Johnny over here just did that and you didn't call them out, mom or dad? So it starts at an early age.

Bob Tipton: 14:58

Yeah, and the example that you used there, it's just a very immature thing. Again, it's leaders that don't have confidence, leaders that are trying to manipulate, leaders that are not wanting to be vulnerable, and that's just not helpful. I don't think it's helpful ever, but it's especially not helpful when there's significant uncertainty. People just want answers to questions. So we'll dispense with the five, with the fifth one here. And the fifth one has to do with self-aggrandizement. And if you can imagine a picture of someone sitting on a throne with a crown and a scepter, And what they've done is they've drawn all authority to themselves. I'm large and I'm in charge and nobody gets to make decisions without my blessing. You know, it's this idea that they are the hub to all the spokes. And taken to an extreme, it can feel like a dictatorship where there is no ability to disagree or to ask clarifying questions. You're looked at as weak. or looked at as ineffective if you're just trying to ask why. And it's just, you're dismissed, you're dehumanized, you're invalidated because there's one authority figure that is central to everything. That's a lot of pressure for that person to put themselves into that role because nobody is empowered to make any decisions at all. And ultimately, this is where cultures that depend upon a single leader fall apart. They all fall apart at some point. They all have in history, if you go back and follow it, because the organization isn't making decisions. It's depending upon that single self-aggrandizing leader to make all the decisions for them, to establish all the policies and perspectives. So during times of radical change, boy, I hope that person never sleeps. I hope that person has an open-door policy where they can talk to everybody all the time. Because organizational paralysis happens when people aren't empowered to be able to make decisions.

Joe Miller: 17:06

That's a point struck home just then because, you know, a healthy organization fosters personal responsibility. It fosters people taking actions. It disrupts productivity. It disrupts everything, really. You become completely dependent upon people. leader who has enthroned themselves to be the arbiter of all truth and all direction then everybody else becomes you know mindless and they just sit in sort of this zone of inaction and indecision

Bob Tipton: 17:43

yeah and learned helplessness just

Joe Miller: 17:45

learned helplessness that's kind of a that was what i was looking for thanks bob

Bob Tipton: 17:49

oh it's just rampant yeah because of two things. One, I have no authority to make any decisions, so I'm not going to. Or I tried it once and I got my head handed to me, so I'm not going to ever do that again. It becomes the classic bureaucracy that we see at the Department of Motor Vehicle, which is unfair. There are a lot of Department of Motor Vehicles here in the state of Colorado that operate very efficiently. They are excellent organizations when it comes to productivity, but the stereotype is, That's the place to go for things that are slow and people don't care. I think there was another maybe Geico commercial that had sloths at the customer service desk. I remember that. They were laughing very, very

Joe Miller: 18:35

slowly. That's hilarious. Yeah, that's a good example.

Bob Tipton: 18:39

That's why those commercials are funny is because there's a level of truth that's in them that's based typically in something that is historic or is a pure stereotype. So... Taken in aggregate, these five behaviors, we see them way too frequently inside of organizations, especially those that are trying to control everything associated with the transformation or the radical change. Back to what we talked about in relevance theory in the second installment, it's not up to us as the communicator to decide what's relevant. The listener or the reader is the one that gets to decide what's relevant. And if all we're doing is deflecting and blaming and doing whataboutisms and drawing all authority to ourselves, people aren't satisfied at all. So here's another dynamic that happens with these five behaviors that I think most people undervalue or underprioritize. When people don't feel like they're being heard, they're being valued, they're Those that can leave the organization first are the ones that do. The ones that are the most marketable, that have the best skills, the best network, the best opportunity to move on, those are the people that leave first. So you've probably seen them, the different surveys that are out there. Every survey I've seen over the last, I don't know, my entire career, I guess, it's either number one, number two, or number three reason why people leave an organization is because of a poor supervisor. Yep. So can we dispense with the five that we shouldn't do and talk about the five, I'm sorry, the seven that we should?

Joe Miller: 20:14

Maybe we can just dwell on what you shouldn't do a little bit and how to catch yourself when you may fall into these patterns. Because obviously everyone who's on is looking to improve themselves, but sometimes it's good to dwell on, are there some signals that I can pay attention to? You kind of hinted at one, no one's following me, that may point to a number of these, but I'm wondering, when I find myself saying this, or when I find myself behaving in this manner, maybe it's something that falls into one of these five.

Bob Tipton: 20:48

Yeah, I think that there's a real red flag, and that is when people get quiet, when they quit talking, when they quit...

Joe Miller: 20:56

Not getting anything back? Right. That's another way of, they're not following me. They're not signed on. Right.

Bob Tipton: 21:04

They don't care. They've checked out or they don't trust what you're saying. When no one's asking any questions, when nobody is looking for clarification, when no one is challenging you, you know, I go back years and years and years ago. I may have used this in our first session. I don't know. But there are different roles that we play. The group dynamics, you know, studying communications are different groups. And there's this role called a central negative role. And a central negative is someone that has the best interest for the organization at heart, but they think they can do your job as well or better than you can. And so it's not self-serving in their negativity. It's something they're trying to make better for the organization, but they'll question you constantly. And when that person stops questioning you, you've got real problems. They've given up. Yep. Anyway, years ago, I had someone in my organization. I was a very new manager. And she would just simply question everything I said in staff meetings. It was frustrating. And after I went through two or three of those, I said, there's got to be a better way. So what I did was I reached out to her ahead of time and I went over the agenda with her and we talked about all the points that I was wanting to make and discussion items. And the first meeting we had after that, the staff sat open mouth staring at both of us because there was no contention.

Joe Miller: 22:27

Yeah.

Bob Tipton: 22:27

We had reached some level of understanding to agree or not agree, but we had conversation ahead of time. So it wasn't this challenging, conflict-filled sort of a situation. So anyway, if no one is challenging you or everyone starts giving you yes sir, no sir, yes ma'am, no ma'am kind of answers to things, somewhere you're demonstrating one of these five or multiples of these five behaviors that are just not helpful.

Joe Miller: 22:56

The other thing I was thinking about, I'm just curious what your response would be to this. Oftentimes in leadership roles, you're asked to support a certain position that the company is putting forth in regards to a change or a strategy. And you want to be able to be supportive as a new manager, certainly. But I found myself being crosswise sometimes. In my team meetings, I took the risk. I'll put it this way. of just stating where I was at with that and just put it on the table saying, this is what the company's doing. This is the rationale. Now, I'll be honest with you. It's kind of what I said. I'm not 100% sure about this myself, but it's important for us all to go forward. You know, some kind of language like that, but just giving a hint of transparency that it kind of falls into sort of the gaslighting thing a little bit in that I don't want to be just part of that repeating crowd that's not processing. Maybe just saying, yeah, I'm struggling with connecting all the dots here as well. And I know this is hard. And, you know, just showing some empathy. I don't know. What do you think of that?

Bob Tipton: 24:15

Well, that's one of the seven behaviors that I think is really...

Joe Miller: 24:20

Okay.

Bob Tipton: 24:21

Yeah.

Joe Miller: 24:21

I don't know what your seven are yet.

Bob Tipton: 24:23

Yeah. It's a great segue. Go ahead. So, yeah, I'll jump into that one first. Transparency is something that people know that they're in the presence of or know they're not in the presence of. They either trust it or they don't trust it. And some people think, well, I have to be careful about being transparent. No, you need to be specific about being transparent. So transparency, there are things that we can talk about and there are things that we cannot talk about. and being very clear about the distinction for others about which is which. There's certain things I cannot talk about, please don't ask me anymore. I have no answers that I can share with you and I won't for, and that gets into another one of the behaviors, but I can't right now. These are the things I can talk about and I'm gonna speak freely about them. So transparency is the idea that what happens, this is one of these other behaviors, when you know you're not being transparent, people feel that you're you know the answer you're just not sharing it you can't trust me with the answer you're just not sharing it you're hiding something and when you're transparent about what you can and can't say people have that feeling sort of dissipate they say okay thank you for letting me know what i i have questions about these things so that's transparency it has a cousin and the cousin is being forthright or being forthcoming and it's interesting that we can tell the truth without being forthcoming whereas i can tell the truth but not the whole truth the idea about being forthcoming is i will create oh here's a tangible example of being forthcoming you'll create a frequently asked questions database that's comprehensive it's thorough and And this idea of forthcomingness is I'm going to anticipate in advance, which I guess is redundant, I'm going to anticipate the questions that you may ask, and I'll come up with answers to those ahead of time. You know, FAQ databases that are rich and robust, they start with some pre-populated answers to questions that nobody really has asked. The better ones are those where you try to look over the hills and around the corner for others to say what might they want to know. And then as real questions are being asked, you populate the database with those. So I find way too frequently that people look at FAQs as being a waste of time. I don't want to take the time ahead of time to create something that might help people understand what's coming. We just don't have time. We have to move. Well, back to the conversation about all of this. During times of uncertainty, people have an internal timer inside of their head. They will wait, wait, Wait. And then after that, they start making up their own stories. And I think I mentioned this before. The stories are always tragedies. They're never comedies. They always put themselves in a starring role of the tragedy. So it's like when somebody used to driving with my wife and somebody would cut me off, I'd raise my hands and I'd yell at them. And she said, of course, Bob, they did that to you personally. It was something they did especially to make you angry. And it brought me right back to reality to say, no, they either didn't see me, they didn't care, they've got some emergency going on. But no, they didn't do it to me. So this idea of forthcomingness is necessary. This making sense?

Joe Miller: 27:50

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Bob Tipton: 27:53

Yeah. So those two are critical when it comes to communication, being transparent and being forthcoming. To stop the process of people making up their own stories or believing that you're hiding something. The third behavior that is so important has to do with accessibility. And this was something that was a mess during COVID. I always like to use that as an example because we lived through it, all of us, in some form or another. How do people know how to get a hold of you? Do you respond when they reach out to you? Do you have a... I don't know. Some organizations come up with a key word that they use that otherwise wouldn't be in a normal everyday conversation, like pomegranate. Let's use that one. I don't know how often you use the word pomegranate, but probably virtually never during a year. Someone puts in the message subject line for an email, pomegranate, it's like, I need to drop everything and pay attention to this, right? So do you have office hours? Do you have specific channels of communication where you will respond sooner? Do people know how and when to get a hold of you? Or does it come back to, I know we talked about this before, this idea of I'm busy. You put up the shield, you put up the wall to say, don't try to reach me because I'm busy. Well, that's not what our staff need during times of radical change. They need to feel like they can reach us. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Recognizing that we may be going through this change ourselves, maybe our job is at risk. Maybe our department is being eliminated. Maybe we are going through a merger or acquisition as a leader. Guess what? Leadership has a special requirement for us to be able to compartmentalize some of that and help those that we're leading. So accessibility is critical.

Joe Miller: 29:47

Yeah, that's an interesting one because you think, well, That's a little obscure or that's a little, I wouldn't have predicted that, but it actually is extremely important.

Bob Tipton: 29:59

Yeah. I'll give you an example. Last week, I was in a meeting with a client. I was actually sharing my navigating times of radical change presentation, but it was live. It wasn't in a webinar form. So I had 17, 18 leaders and organization that were sitting and listening to me. And about, you know, the whole webinar lasts about 50 minutes. It was about minute 45 and my phone started blowing up. It just, the text messages and phone messages, something was going on with my younger daughter. And in the middle of my presentation with the leadership group, I had to stop. I said, I need to stop. My phone was blowing up. I have, uh, a requirement in my life that I've established that if I'm trying to be reached by one of my children or grandchildren, I'm going to stop what I'm doing and find out what it was. So I told them that. They were gracious. I had them sort of talk while I left the room. Well, my daughter was in the emergency room with stroke-like symptoms. I had a radical change that I needed to navigate right then. And the requirement for me to be accessible to my daughter trumped everything else that I was dealing with. It became number one. Turned out she was okay. She had some form of a migraine headache that can create stroke-like symptoms. But for a half an hour as I was driving to the hospital, it was terrifying. Yeah. Yeah. So there's also the corollary here of not being accessible. I needed to tell my client that I was not accessible because I had something that I was dealing with personally. So those are the first three. Having people know where they can reach you and believe what you're saying because you're being transparent and forthcoming. Number four on the list is the idea of being reassuring. And please don't take this as hollow cheerleading, singing kumbaya around the campfire. You know, that can be a form of gaslighting. Don't worry about it. Everything's fine. Well, if everything's not fine, don't say that. This idea of being reassuring instead is we're working the problem. We're trying to figure it out. We have the best people, the best minds working on this. Top men, top women. You know that whole thing back to Apollo 13? Men. Top men, top women. We have the best people in the organization working on it, but it's this idea of reassurance. We don't know right now, but we're working hard to figure it out. People, just like you did, you'll nod your head. You'll feel a sense of confidence if your leader is exuding confidence A feeling of reassurance.

Joe Miller: 32:40

A lot of these things also, there's kind of stated at a point in time, but those that are listening and watching to us are watching our behavior throughout time, throughout the timeline. So, I mean, like the last one, when you were talking about your daughter's emergency and how that required your accessibility at the moment, your client at first might go, okay, now I get it. But when you show back up and they know that you're putting something else in the back position, then that's a mark of integrity, right? And in the same way, the Apollo 13 example, to just say top people are working on it is a point in time. But cross a timeline and history with an individual, if you build up credibility and trust, that gives them confidence. a much better sense of calm and peace through that turmoil because they know what you're, they can count on what you've said based upon their history with you.

Bob Tipton: 33:43

Yeah, definitely. In fact, if you don't have that integrity, if you don't have that accountability and all of a sudden you show up like you do, they'll look at it as a form of manipulation. Yeah, absolutely. You're just trying to make me feel a certain way and I don't trust or believe you. So yeah, that's very insightful, Joe. It's this idea that There are points in time where things we do or say that are critical, but how we have behaved over time is a way for people to be able to trust and believe what we're doing or saying.

Joe Miller: 34:15

And I think it gets back to transparency and it's a little bit counterintuitive too. I think that it's helpful to tell people the truth when you're not sure what the heck is going on. And as a leader, we want to we want to be able to be in a position to be able to reassure people but if we don't have it and i can think here's one example if we don't have that assurance it's really a mistake to try to pretend you do because that point in time will then build distrust i remember one large organization that i worked at 20 plus years ago where we had a huge system failure and at that point in time All of our systems worldwide were centralized in one location. And the shipping functions were down. And this meant tens of million dollars of an hour being lost, probably more than that. And there was my engineers working on the problem. And there was three or four other vice presidents around me, staring at me, wanting me to intervene and to beat people up. That was my sense. And to, come on, we're not getting the resolution we need to, right? They're panicking. And I just said, we don't know what the problem is yet. Me getting in the middle of it, not knowing the detail that they know, isn't going to be helpful. Now, that wasn't the right message back to my peers or people above me even. So I just bring that up as an example that it is okay to say, you're still not sure what the heck is going on. Because then later on when you say, we have a handle on it, but it's going to take time, then there's more trust that you're being straight.

Bob Tipton: 36:07

Yeah, there's a level of consistency in these types of messages where the behaviors are demonstrated and we see it over time. Trust is one of those things that you can take years to build and you can lose it in an instant. Yeah. I think this is a sign of mature leaders as well is transparency. Going back to what you said originally, this sort of triggered all the segue was I was in the leadership team meeting. We talked about this thing. I had some concerns. I still don't know that I feel I understand all of it yet. That is, I think, a valid and necessary thing to let people know. It's a form of empathy that is so important. And coupling that with reassurance to say, We're going to get there. Count on me. I'm still asking the hard questions. I'm still trying to get the detailed answers. I don't feel like I have them yet. That's another form of reassurance. And people can validate you and your role as a leader when you do those kinds of things. So this also gets to, I guess, number five on the list. And number five on the list is to be factual. And facts are interesting because there's bias and there's perspective built into facts often. So questioning the facts is important, but don't speculate. Don't use conjecture. Don't transmit gossip. You know, it's this idea of here are the facts and here are the parameters that go around it. It's like a, you know... I can't even think of the term now. I've been out of IT so long, I can't even think of data warehouse. There we go. The idea of data is stored, but you also have to have a context associated with it being stored. So you know what the cutoffs were and you know what the assumptions were. Otherwise, it's just garbage, right? It's just stuff. So being able to put the context with whatever the facts are is important. But be clear, be specific. Talk about things that you can measure as opposed to like I said, conjecture or theories or guesses about things. People don't need guesses. They need to be able to depend on something. So that's number five on the list. Number six, this speaks to how you are showing up. And what I mean by how you are showing up, it is in your body language. It's being hyper aware, being aware of the way that you're communicating outside of the words that you use or the things that you type. So imagine somebody with an exasperated roll in their eyes, kind of a view about something. Well, that's okay if you're talking about the perspective that I don't get it either. I'm not sure how I feel about it. That's a fine time to have that sort of a posture and body language. But when someone's asking you a specific question because they're worried and they're concerned and you show exasperation, they'll give up on you.

Joe Miller: 39:03

It's a mismatch. Yeah.

Bob Tipton: 39:05

Yeah, I've just been dehumanized. Yeah. So I'm not suggesting that we become automatrons and just robotic-like responses to people. There is important interaction that we have with the way we look back and forth. And frankly, that's one of the challenges in this type of a medium. You and I would have a better conversation if we're sitting in the same room. It's not bad here. It's actually pretty good, I think.

Joe Miller: 39:29

Yeah.

Bob Tipton: 39:29

This idea that we're social creatures and the way that we communicate is really important. So be hyper aware of the way that you show up in your nonverbal communication.

Joe Miller: 39:40

Actually, nonverbal communication is something we don't give enough attention to. And I was thinking mismatch when you were talking previously. And there's this whole concept of, and knowledge of this can be manipulated like other things. So mirroring and those kinds of things, adopting another person's body language, in order to establish a connection, all that stuff, you know, not suggesting that, but there should be consistency. So if you, you know, you nod your head with approval, you know, shake your head, no, but you don't go, yes, I agree with you. Or I really think I can trust you and roll your eyes. One of my bosses called me out one time. I was in one of his staff meetings. He goes, Joe, rolling your eyes. not helpful in the context of, you know, kind of trying to say I was supportive of something when clearly I wasn't, you know? So yeah, that's how you show up. That's, that's a powerful one. There's a lot, there's a lot to that one.

Bob Tipton: 40:37

There is. And it's back to what you were saying earlier, this idea of consistency, right? So I'm a very expressive person. I've got a lot of emotion that I show on my face on a regular basis. And I, If you don't have integrity inside your head, you're not gonna have integrity outside either. So it's about the way you're talking to yourself and how you feel about things yourself that it gets expressed on the outside. So somebody told me a long time ago that I should be less expressive in the way that I show up. And I thought, that's not gonna go well. What I need to make sure is that there's a connection, there's integrity between what I'm saying and how I feel. That's a far better way of having nonverbal work.

Joe Miller: 41:23

Part of leadership is followership too. We're not all at the top. So I think to your point, being expressive, maybe you don't understand a point someone is making that you're in someone else's staff meeting or even as a peer. It's better to say, help me with this. I don't understand. You can make all kinds of gestures that are consistent with that. So that way, when you get to the point where you go, oh, I got it. You know, and I agree now, you know, that means something. You know, not only does it demonstrate that you're engaged in trying to understand what was trying to be communicated to you, but it also understands that you got over the threshold and you reached agreement. And that means something more than just, you know.

Bob Tipton: 42:08

Yeah. Well, years ago, I used to do interactive workshops around giving and receiving feedback. And One of the activities I'd have people do is they'd sit back-to-back in their chairs. They'd actually move their chairs so they couldn't see the other person. And one person's job was to talk about the thing that they loved doing the most. Just absolutely fantastic. They just loved this. And it's amazing how quickly they ran out of steam when they were talking because they were getting no feedback. The other person... Couldn't answer questions. You know, it was just nothing. It was somebody present, but they're not paying any attention to me. And then I'd have them turn around and I'd have somebody not give any verbal, facial, nothing. They just blank stare. And that was worse. I found people in some cases actually became physical. They wanted to reach across to the other person and say, would you please respond? React. Yeah, I mean, sending out emails, text messages, we don't see the closed loop of communication. And no wonder we get misunderstood all the time because we don't know how people are reacting to things anyway. This idea of being aware. And then the last one is being upbeat. And you may say that sounds like being reassuring. Well, to me, it's a little bit different. Reassurance is we're working the problem. We've got the best people on it. We've got all these things happening. We'll figure it out. Being upbeat. is the way you answer questions. It's the way that you present energy. So energy is resonant. Whatever energy you put out is the energy you get back. It's like a tuning fork. If I'm a leader, I'm a big tuning fork in the room and I hit myself against the wall and pretty soon my resonant energy has shown up with everybody. So if I show up in a meeting, how's it going? Well, it's still early. How's your day going? Well, it's Monday. You know, the responses that people often have that are just simply automatic. How's your day going? Well, pretty good day today. You know, I'm the sun shining. It's a beautiful day here in Denver. That's a question you asked me when we first saw each other. You know, it's this idea that I can choose to show up with energy of any kind. Most of the time, not always. There's some situations like with my daughter where I was very concerned and my energy was clearly in that place. But that's not all the time, Joe. Some people think that that is deceptive. I think it's helpful. It's the idea that, okay, yeah, maybe things are hard right now, but we have a choice about how we respond to hard things. And going back to the third question that I had, the three big questions in the first installment... Who lives, who dies, and why? Well, the writer of the book, Deep Survival, one of the primary correlating factors to whether you're going to make it or not is the belief that you will. I'm thinking of Eeyore right now. Well, okay. Yeah, it's always something. You know, the people in your life that show up like Eeyore, they tend to feel a little bit like energy vampires. They just suck the energy out of the room.

Joe Miller: 45:18

Yeah. And in particular, thinking of a... of leaders. Thinking about the impact of how you show up in this way is huge. And so you have a responsibility. It's important to understand the impact you have on the rest of the people you are caring for.

Bob Tipton: 45:39

Yes. And this is something I don't think is taught enough in leadership school. There's a lot of process and tools and methodologies and so on. I think it's just as or more important in terms of how you show up. The change that can happen inside of an organization is remarkable. You know, the work that I do professionally is all around transformation. It's all around radical change. Organizations that are trying to go someplace big or different or they're trying to solve challenging, hairy things. And the requirement of getting there is frightening for a lot of people because you're giving up The known, you're going from order to disorder to reorder, as we talked about in the beginning. And that's frightening for a lot of people. If you have someone who is leading you through that process that sounds like Eeyore, you're doomed.

Joe Miller: 46:34

It's not the kind of leader you want to follow, right?

Bob Tipton: 46:36

No, it's just not going to work. Nor is the toxic positivity. You know, I think of whatever his name was. He lived in the van down by the river. Do you remember the Chris Farley character? Yeah. I don't remember his name now. You know, there's toxic.

Joe Miller: 46:52

Motivation likes Bert.

Bob Tipton: 46:53

Yeah. Yeah. No, you don't want that either. You want something that is upbeat. It's like, yeah, this is hard. And some of it doesn't make any sense. And it's going to be challenging for a while. And we can do this. Yeah. In fact, you are doing this.

Joe Miller: 47:12

It's not denying the reality that people see. I think that's an important thing to consider. It's not trying to push away or deny the challenge, the emotion. People are picking up the reality. It's basically guiding and leading people through it in the most positive way. And sometimes, back to your example from previous episode about crisis on an airline that might be going down. Certain situations require a more expedient response, right? But in all situations, having the perspective to know what type response is appropriate as a leader is important. But going through these challenging times, boy, I think one of the biggest mistakes I do see is that Leaders tend to want to push away anything that causes friction for them to take people down that hallway of change as quickly and expediently as possible.

Bob Tipton: 48:15

Which is ultimately self-defeating. Yeah. Because the truisms of my line of work are people don't resist change. They resist being changed without their permission.

Joe Miller: 48:26

That was the snippet I was trying to remember earlier from one of our earliest episodes several years ago. Yeah, that's a powerful statement. Say that again, Bob.

Bob Tipton: 48:38

People don't resist change. They resist being changed without their permission, without their participation. And then Margaret Wheatley, another visionary, probably 30 years ago, said people support what they create. And then she went on to state it even more emphatically. Oh, wait, people only support what they create. So... Yeah, getting out of a plane, I don't have a lot of time to get buy-in on behalf of people. Either they do or they don't, but they can participate by helping others get out of a plane. That is a rare circumstance. Most transformational change doesn't feel like a plane crash. Most of it feels like a tree losing its leaves and then growing them back or a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. There is some intermediate stage that you go through And having a leader be able to know what people might be feeling, how to best lead them through that, how to communicate effectively. I guess that's the bottom line for this whole thing as we talk about it. The three hours we've been together talking about the subject is it's important for leaders to be able to lead people someplace where maybe they haven't gone themselves. Others haven't gone. A leader needs to have gone there in order to effectively lead people through their journey. And that's why I worry about 25-year-old vice presidents. Right. You know, they just don't have the life experience to go along with their book knowledge, so they don't have wisdom. What they have instead is theory.

Joe Miller: 50:09

Yeah. Full of what they call, as they say, vin and vigor. Is that right?

Bob Tipton: 50:15

Something like that,

Joe Miller: 50:16

yeah. But, you know, hey, I've had the privilege of spending these three hours talking through these things with you. Kind of one-on-one. We had Mike on the last episode with us, Mike Peterson. But let's pivot now, if it's okay, and talk about the webinar and the format for the webinar. I mean, you'll be touching on these same points, I think, in the webinar. This is intended to have a little interaction beforehand. But what's that experience like for folks who want to join and then how do they join? I think I can easily drop the web link in the bottom for registration.

Bob Tipton: 50:47

That's easy.

Joe Miller: 50:48

Tell us about that.

Bob Tipton: 50:50

Well, the experience is designed to be efficient in use of our time. So it's not three hours long. It's designed to be 45, 50 minutes of content and then live. All of the sessions are live. None of it's prerecorded. So if you have a specific question or an observation or a thought, you can drop it into the Q&A. And then I'll take that up at the end. And there's some really fascinating questions that are coming forward. Most of it have to do with some form of resistance, some form of organizational bias, some leadership immaturity. But we'll talk about specific situations. And I'll also have visuals, so you don't have to imagine what I'm talking about. I'll have some visuals that you can actually use. And then sending along copies of the slides, having you be able to reference it later on, and having a a connection if you want to reach out when it comes to additional perspectives or thoughts. I welcome that. I encourage that. So the experience is designed to be efficient, hard-hitting, factual. I move along quickly. But then also there's opportunity for it to be interactive because all the sessions are live.

Joe Miller: 51:59

Yeah, and this is what you've been doing, Team Tipton's been doing, and what you've been doing for years now. Oh,

Bob Tipton: 52:07

yeah. Back in the day, I remember sitting in my walk-in closet in my master bedroom doing webinars because that was the only quiet place in the whole house. The sound booth. Yeah, and trying to imagine the audience that was there. You know, it's a good thing that's happened with all these virtual meetings. Dogs bark, you know, things happen. You get network glitches. We're a lot more forgiving with the technology than we used to be years ago. But yeah, I've been... providing this type of approach for many, many, many.

Joe Miller: 52:40

And obviously for years, people have been going through changes like this, but it just seems like as we first talked about having these episodes with you on Titans, boy, it just seems like things have ramped up in the past five years, six years, maybe two years. So, I mean, I'm wondering, you know, over the arc of the period of time, has there been any shifts or differences? Have you refined the your teaching and your tools in recent years, or has it been a lot of what was always there? Just as a curiosity.

Bob Tipton: 53:12

No, I think there's a lot of, that's a great question. We have moved to inflection points much more rapidly with the advent of certainly the internet, but social media, the ability for communication to make it around the world in seconds that used to take years in order for things to happen. Also, the lack of curiosity and people's willingness to voluntarily be part of an algorithm or an echo chamber. It's been more and more difficult to get people to move off of their positions. The curiosity is not nearly as strong as it used to be and the sense of questioning things. Along with that, there's been a destruction in our belief when it comes to certain institutions. And it's just all of it. added together has moved us to a point where we are right now.

Joe Miller: 54:01

Yeah, it just seems like the amplitude has turned up much, much higher.

Bob Tipton: 54:07

Yes, and I remember 20 years ago working to support a marketing organization with manipulating behaviors and knowing exactly what people would do and say. 20 years ago, we've become so much better at that. And now trying to break through, we need sensational information to get some sort of a significant response to things. So it's like we're being adrenalized constantly. Everything that we hear has got some significant issue associated with it.

Joe Miller: 54:38

I heard something today. I was consuming some content where the individual said that we have become the product of our reaction has become the product to monetize, right? Which to me was, I mean, I kind of knew it, but to have it called out like that was just like, whoa, that is so true. And so there is the whole control conspiracy thing of messaging, but there's also the ability to get our eyeballs on certain messages can be monetized, right?

Bob Tipton: 55:13

It is all the time. It has been for years. That's where influencers make their money.

Joe Miller: 55:16

Yeah.

Bob Tipton: 55:17

It's a

Joe Miller: 55:18

number

Bob Tipton: 55:18

of people hear or see them do or say something. I don't know what history will say a thousand years from now when we look back on this time period with influencers making millions of dollars just simply by providing content. But you're absolutely right, Joe. Our reactions have become the product. And certain reactions are far more valuable than others. So the idea, going all the way back to the first episode that we had, is, is this actually real? The simple question of questioning the question, questioning the assumption, questioning the platform of what somebody's trying to put forward, that diffuses what you're describing. It's this suffering in advance dynamic. One more time. Somebody said something, and I'm worrying about it. Well, is it even real? Taken to an extreme, suffering in advance becomes premeditated bitterness. I'm already pissed off about something that hasn't even happened yet. And we live in this adrenalized form that people prey on.

Joe Miller: 56:23

And we wonder why our cortisol levels are driven through the roof, and we have health consequences because of that as well.

Bob Tipton: 56:31

All of that.

Joe Miller: 56:32

So

Bob Tipton: 56:33

if there's anything that I've learned that's different now is it's so much more important for self-care, for awareness, for the ability to sort through and decide, discern whether something is real or not real. And does it belong to me or not belong to me? We're asked to pick up loads all the time. So you asked if things are different now? Yeah. We're so overscheduled. We have so many things in our life that we are asked to pay attention to. I think here's one of the radical pieces of advice I give to leaders on a regular basis is take all of the meetings off of your calendar, the ones that you're able to. Take them all off and then add back meetings based upon value. Add attendees based upon benefit. It's amazing how much time just rushes back into your schedule because you're not just holding meetings for some historical purpose that doesn't matter anymore. That's a topic for another conversation.

Joe Miller: 57:27

Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. Just a closing thought for me would be if you're a leader and you really want to stand out and stand out in a very positive way, put into practice some of these positive things that Bob has gone through because you will be differentiated immediately. And Everyone who is looking to you, the people you want to be on your team, people you want to follow you, will come to you quickly and enthusiastically because you're being empathetic and truthful. You're showing up. You're being accessible when needed. All those things are really the things that matter. So people are looking for that right now, and they're unfortunately not finding enough of it. So Bob, I want to thank you for coming on and bringing this, I'll call it teaching to us because that's what it is. And I want to encourage everyone who's listening in who's hung in here this long to please check out the link for the registration, the webinar for Bob. He could be doing a lot of other things, but he's passionate about this whole topic and the importance right now. So any closing thoughts from you, Bob?

Bob Tipton: 58:44

I just want to say thank you to you, Joe. You bet. For your wisdom, your vision, your leadership to bring lots of topics and perspectives around leadership and helping people be as effective as they possibly can. Because the world does need as many great leaders as it can have. There's no limit to the number of great leaders that we can have on Earth, and we need more and more of them all the time. So thank you for the chance to be with you, and I appreciate what you do.

Joe Miller: 59:14

You bet, Bob. Till next time. All right. Take care. Hey, thanks for joining me today on Titans of Transition. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Please check the show notes for additional information.