209 Jason and Steve - Inside Out Leadership

Uncover the unexpected truth about achieving organizational flow and freedom! Dive into a transformative conversation that unveils the surprising keys to leveraging team members' strengths for growth. What's the real deal behind emotional intelligence, avoiding bottlenecks, and achieving the perfect balance? This eye-opening discussion will leave you with actionable insights to enhance your leadership and drive organizational efficiency. 

In this episode, Jason and Steve discuss:

• The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Leadership
• The Concept of "Waitering" or "Waitressing"
• Being a Better Thermometer
• Adaptive Problem Solving vs. Technical Solutions
• Focusing on the Box vs. Focusing on the Person

Key Takeaways:

• Master adaptive problem-solving to lead your team through any challenge
• Acquire effective techniques for coaching mindsets to inspire your team's success
• Enhance your leadership through the power of emotional intelligence
• Uncover inside-out leadership strategies for driving organizational growth
• Harness the benefits of appreciative inquiry to transform your management approach
  
  

 “Our people are our most valuable asset. Team members come first; the project, the problem, the things your people bring to that box day in and day out—if you're a leader and just focus on the box, there are only short-term wins. However, when you instead focus on the person first, that's a separator.”

 - Jason Abell

Connect with Jason and Steve:

• LinkedIn: Jason or Steve
• Website Rewire, Inc.: Transformed Thinking
• Email: grow@rewireinc.com
  
  

Listen to the podcast here:

Jason and Steve- Inside Out Leadership

Hello and welcome everybody, to this LinkedIn live episode of The Insight Interviews. I'm your host, Jason Abell. I get to serve as the president of Rewire, and alongside me is Steve Scanlon, the CEO and founder of Rewire. Steve, welcome to our show.        

Dude, I love that you're the host. We draw straws on that, and when you win, I always feel better. I think you're a great host, man.

That's awfully nice. That reminds me of Dale Carnegie's “How to win friends and influence people.” Like, you're starting off in a friendly way. You complimented me. Well done. Appreciate that, brother.        

It was pretty organic. When you said host, I was just being honest, that's how I felt when you said that.

I appreciate that. I appreciate that. So, you and I have prepared a particular topic, but you know what we rarely do on these LinkedIn lives, and just hit me right now, we didn't even really prepare for this? But our typical opening question for the episodes of the Insight Interviews is, what are you grateful for? So today, Steve Scanlon, what are you grateful for?

What am I grateful for? You know what, I was thinking about it this morning. You didn't tell me you were going to ask me that, so I'm left with the truth because I didn't prepare. You know, I got a lot going on in my life between two grandkids and some other stuff going on in and around my house. And there's so many beautiful things that with that. There's always challenges. And I was reminded this morning to actually be grateful for the challenges. You know, I know we should always be looking for the things that are great in life, but I never stop to think to be grateful for the challenges that I have. They teach, they instruct, they help, they keep our feet on the ground. There’s just a whole bunch of things with that. And so, yeah, there's some, there's some challenges. Kind of reminds me when someone, you ask someone that and they're like, it's all good. When someone tells me it's all good, I think, well, I don't know if you dig very deep, like, it can't be all good.

That’s exactly right.

So, it's always a series of good and bad, and I'm grateful that I'm not always grateful just for the good.       

There you go.

There are challenging things, and I'm grateful for them. So, thanks for asking.

Ah, man, amazing. Grateful for the challenges. I think you and I have had, gosh, over the years, how many discussions have we had, even recorded discussions on the challenges and the good that can potentially come out of them? And even if the good doesn't come out of them, how that's helpful and you learn things and whatever, and so yeah, sweet.        

Well, you know, that dovetails into our topic. Want to dive in?

Well, if you're joining us live right now, there's a reason that you did it, and it may just be, well, heck, it may be because you like Rewire, you like Steve or me or I don't know. I can't imagine that might be the case, but the case really might be that you saw the title. I can bring that back up here. Inside out leadership, looking inward and leading forward.

                                                                                                         
"For leaders who want to take their leadership to the next level, that inside out piece is what we want to talk about today."

There are so many things that are difficult, even in your grateful answer. You know, there's challenges, there's headwinds, there's things that happen. And we, you know, at Rewire, we think very deeply about just the neuroscience of leadership and how important the role of mindset plays. But then we go deeper than that and think about that and also help our clients with that. And so, yeah, so inside out leadership, Steve, that that's what we're going to talk about today. We've got some real tangible takeaways for people. But before we get there, as is often the case when we do this, you've got a story to open us up that illustrates some of what we want to talk about.

That always makes it sound like, I'm going to read this book and this story. I think the stories that come out of us, Jason, we bring these to the table, and they are stories, but we bring them to the table because these are events and things that happen to us in our coaching calls with the leadership that we coach. And so, yeah, I mean, we don't sit around a lot of times and, hey, what do you want to talk about? We actually, you know, we talk about what are you hearing? And for anyone listening, you should also know even here at Rewire, there's a huge sense of confidentiality. So, Jason, even when you and I talk, as owners of this business, we often, we don't even use names and stuff, and there's such a big confidentiality. So just know that we do that. So, my story is, I really was working, in fact, recently with a leader, a great leader, and it was interesting how the coaching call started because it was something to the effect of, you know, I'm just not feeling it. That's how this person started. I want to be pretty gender neutral, but I'm just not feeling it. You know, then they, when I asked some questions, like, yeah, okay, what is it? I dug in a little bit. And, you know, there was, I don't think especially with service, some of the industries that you and I serve, Jason, it wasn't that new. I'm not feeling it because of the economics aren't working. I'm not feeling it because other people aren't feeling it. I'm not feeling it because of some of the challenges that we're having. And, and they just kind of gave me a litany of reasons why they're not feeling it. And, you know, obviously, I'm rigored a little bit by that language when someone says something like that because it makes my mind, I remember why a huge element of what we do in mindset coaching revolves around emotional intelligence. If someone says they're not feeling it, you know?

Yeah, your coach trigger went off, right?

Yeah. And then, I could have stopped right there and said, okay, well, here's what we're going to do. I want you to feel it by Friday, right? Just feel it, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.     
   

And instead, I was like, okay, well, let me ask you a question, like, as a result of not feeling where you should be and just sort of being off and having all these reasons, like, how's that having an impact on you personally? How's it having an impact on people around you? You know, what do you think about that? And I was just asking some questions, and it was interesting. And this is something that you brought to the table, because, again, we know leaders are- they're not barometers. They're thermometers.

Oh. Oh, right. We're writing that one down.   
   

We are the often the gauge for the temperature.

Yep.

And so, we just talked about this a little bit, and we did a thing that you and I can spend a little time with, I guess, which is there's a really interesting effect in mindset coaching that we do, in adaptive based coaching that we just call waitering or waitressing. And that comes from the idea, and so you, as leaders, you can practice this. In fact, it's a pretty cool practice to do just with people in general. But when someone tells you anything, you act like a waiter or a waitress. When you go to a really fancy restaurant, you order something, the waiter or waitress will just kind of go, okay, let me make sure I heard you. You had the steak like this and salad like that, and, you know, whatever it is, and they repeat back your words. So, in this case, with this leader, Jason, I was like, so let me make sure I heard what you said. You're not feeling it and here's some of the reasons why you're not feeling it. If I heard you correctly, I wasn't trying to embellish or whatever. I just gave this person their words back to them. And I will tell you this. I'm not going to tell you that doing that always solves everybody's problems, but it's such an interesting practice to waiter a waitress because hearing it almost, you know, maybe not verbatim, but just hearing what they said from someone else, it was interesting to even watch their facial expression, right? We were on a Zoom call, and they were kind of like, you could see it. They were like, is that kind of- whoa. And immediately, this, you know, you could almost feel like they were beginning to go, well, if that's the case, and they began a different journey just by me waitering to them and offering their words back to them without going, here's what I think you should do. Here's suggestions you make. Just offer their words back to them.

 

So, right there is the first takeaway. So, if you're listening this, I know we have a lot of HR leaders and executive leaders that listen to this. That right there, that could be the only key that you take away. We got some really good stuff coming. But that piece about when somebody comes to you with an issue, in this one, your client was, hey, I'm not feeling it. But substitute, hey, I'm not feeling it for any challenge that a direct report of yours has, right? And then for you to say something like, tell me more about that, and then literally repeat waiter verbatim back to them, what you heard them say, that just opens up. You're not, you're not reacting good, you're not reacting bad. Like Steve said, telling them what to do. You're just repeating what you heard that they said. And it opens up a very, what do we call it, Steve? A toward state. A very open-ended way for the person to say, yes, that's it, or, gosh, not exactly, but, and now you've got a dialogue, and now you've got a path to a solution, right?

Well, waitering, or waitressing, as it were, you know, you just got me thinking of this. This is hot off the press because I just thought of it, man. Can you imagine going to a restaurant and the waiter or waitress does their thing and says, let me make sure I heard you right. And then immediately went, you don't want that, dude. You want a steak. You want chicken instead. Let me tell you what I think you should get.

Like, no, no. No.        

But, like, right? They wouldn't think to do that. Their job is to affirm what they heard so that they get your order right. Not to tell you what you want. Or tell you what to do. And so, I just find that in, I was going to say a lot of leaders, but if I'm, you know, if you and I are being honest, maybe I'll just be honest, I find it with a lot of leaders and a lot of times the guy I see in the mirror. We move to solution mode. Someone brings you something, and rather than waiter or waitress initially, let me just solve that for you. Right? And so, when we're walking around a world like that, just everybody's solving everybody else's stuff and offering advice, and it can create a fairly toxic environment. And so, I don't know that there's a leader on the call that their environment probably couldn't be helped if people just listened like that. Reflected first, really practiced waiter or waitressing. Now, again, we eventually got to get to bringing out the dinner and talking about things, but it was an initial take on things, and it was just super helpful to this person.

And I think that's partly why we called this session inside out leadership, right? Because that's something that I know as, as a leader, and I've had different leadership roles. So have you and so have many people that are listening. Part of the reason you're in that leadership role is because you're really good at whatever the thing is. And so, when somebody comes to you, your natural internal reaction is, I know the answer and I can just give it to them or tell them what to do. But if instead inside you quell that down and go into this, some people call it appreciative inquiry, we're calling it waiter or waitressing, like this, repeating back that is the inside out. Like, your natural reaction on the inside is to do this one thing, but if instead you can just experiment with and try this other thing, and that's what comes out of, that's the inside out leadership. Oh, man. It just has a whole different effect and dialogue. So, I'd actually like to hear from people who try this, like whether it in LinkedIn live, you comment, you know, even if it's later, you're listening to this recording. If you comment, like, hey, I tried it, and here's what happens. So anyways, waiter or waitress.

And I love it. I will call out right away, Jason. And again, now we're going to go away. We're going to do a little away state, and then we'll come back to toward. I want to call out the problem really quick.

Yeah, yeah, right.

At least one of them. I mean, it sounds so good. Give their words back, whatever you want to hear. What I notice is one of the largest problems in this really is just time.

Sure. Of course.      

Right? Rather than going, wow, let me make sure I heard what you said, I think where so many people are so stinking time starved, that if I get into a dialogue with that and reflect back and wait for you to hear whatever, that all sounds good, like on, you know, a podcast like this or whatever, but in real life, like, I don't have time for that. So, I'm just gonna go do this, do that, hammer people do this so I can move on.

Yeah, there's an issue with that, and I think maybe there's people that can already make this leap, but what I would contend is you don't have time not to because you're actually costing yourself and the person that you're leading right in that moment more time by giving them the answer. It's a quick hit of like, I gave them the answer, we're done. I can move on. I've got dopamine. I feel really good. But you didn't give them permission or an environment to come up with their own solution to where they can then go do it and not have to come back to you again to fix the next problem. You've given them agency over themselves, as you're just repeating back, listening what they say. Inquire some more to come up with their own solution, and it gives them a little vote of confidence to come up with their own solution the next time. Then you're saving everybody time because you don't need to do this thing.

I like how you threw the dopamine. Like, dude, we're going to have to do neurochemistry and leadership as a whole session. It just feels a lot better for me to think I have the answer to something and go, sure, do this, or whatever. I think it does give us a shot of dopamine to do that. And when you're a waiter or waitressing, you don't really get that same sense because you're just offering something back to somebody.

One thing I will contend there, and I know we've got some of the other keys to get to from an inside out leadership standpoint, is it's actually, as a leader, it's more freeing. You can experience more freedom if you do it the way that we're suggesting right now. And that actually also produces dopamine for you. So, you'll still get a sense of accomplishment with you helping them come up with their own solution by waiter and waitressing and a sense of freedom, because now they are- and we talked, I think was it last month or the month before? We talked about freedom and leadership and how important leverage, freedom and leverage, where you're allowing them to go do their thing that they're great at, and now you've got freedom to do other strategic things or whatever it is that you're gifted at for the organization as well. So tying it all together. Okay, waiter and waitressing. But dude, we've got this. I'm looking at my bullet points here. We talked about blowing in the wind. We talked about adaptive coaching. Where do you want to go next?

Well, I think we go where the story goes. I, you know, eventually. I didn't just waiter, a waitress. Eventually we did get to, okay, what are some of the things that we can go do there? Because people listening are like, yeah, I could just wait her and waitress all day long. No, eventually, you know, people want to go from a to b, y to z. You know, whatever.

Right. Yep.

What is it that we can do with that? In other words, you know, once this person understood that they were the thermometer, well, there, here's a question. How do I be a better thermometer?        

Yeah.

And the reason I think that that's super relevant, again, this goes back to us as leaders inside out. Yeah, but, Jason, here's the big challenge. And again, I hope you do your thing and go, here's the next takeaway. Being a better thermometer is what you and I would call an adaptive based problem. It is not a technical one. It is an adaptive one. And that language, if anybody really wants to understand that and so that you and I don't come off like you and I made this up. We didn't make this up. This really comes from the work of Keegan and Leahy, Robert Keegan and Lisa Leahy from Harvard that wrote a book called “Immunity to change”, and in that book they point out that there are basically two kinds of problems or issues or even opportunities, and they put it in these buckets. One of them is technical and the other is adaptive. These are research scientists. They weren't making stuff up. They were doing research. And they chose as their research topic something as simple to learn about all this as losing weight, which is an interesting thing to choose. And the reason they did it is because it's probably the number one thing people want to change, at least in the United States, maybe around the world, who knows? Losing weight. So, they pointed out, I think for simplicity's sake, think about losing weight, the technical part of losing weight, if you want to lose weight, for most people, here's all the technical stuff that I can think of off the top of my head. Feel free to add. Drink more water, eat less carbohydrates, eat less sugar, drink less alcohol, get more exercise. Technical, technical, technical, technical, technical. And they're probably right. If you looked at the problem adaptively, it might look like, hey, when you think about lunch or dinner or going out, how do you feel in that moment? You know, when they bring out butter and bread, can you possibly think about how that makes you feel? That would be approaching the problem adaptively.

Yes.

So then they asked a really big question about this simple conundrum. Is weight loss a technical problem or an adaptive problem? And that was the big question. And so, and by the way, because they’re research scientists, it wasn’t 100% one. With the time that we have, ill spare everybody the suspense.

Yeah, give us the answer.

I think people know listening to the call know. For the most part, weight loss is an adaptive problem, not a technical.

As is almost all challenges and problems.

So back to my story for this client of mine, learning what it might mean to observe the thermometer that they are, for the function of some realization that being a better thermometer, by the way, irrespective of the environment. What they were saying is, I get the thermometer thing, and Steve, if this would happen to the economy or this would happen to interest rates or this would happen to the stock market, then I would be a pretty good thermometer. And when I reflected that back to them, then the question, they were like, whoa.

Yep, exactly. Now were starting to hit on something.        

Then it was like, what do I do about it? And that's when it became, wow, let's have this conversation about what part of that's adaptive. In other words, they call it adaptive. How, as a leader, do I have to adapt?

Exactly.        

How do I have to adapt? Because if we don't do that and we move to just technical solutions, then it sounds like, I guess I could coach. And if I was just a pure technical coach, it would be, I want you to put a smile on your face by Friday. I want you to wake up and feel good. I want you to, when you, I don't know, get a rubber band and when you're feeling sour down, snap your wrist or something like that, those would be technical solutions. But, and I'm, I'm using hyperbole, right? I'm exaggerating to make the point. To try to help this leader solve that adaptive problem with adaptive mindset modality was so much more effective than going to technical modality.


Yeah.

To try to solve it. And so, we wanted to do this call because there are technical solutions in life.

Sure.

They point that out in the book. Hey, wanna be a heart surgeon? You better technically know what you're doing. I think the example, hey, you wanna learn to land a plane without the front landing gear down? Or something like that. We don't care how adaptive you want to be. You better technically be fit to know how to do that.        

No, I'm glad, I'm glad you made that distinction, because sometimes you could hear the adaptive versus technical argument that you just made very convincingly and go, well, it's all adaptive. Not always. At the end of the day, there are some actions that need to be taken, and oftentimes those actions are technical. Like this is making me think about our last discussion, Steve, about, you know, the shipbuilding example, right? I'll let you give the quote, but it is blueprints versus yearning.
                                                                                                         

                                                                                                           
"If you want to build a ship, you don't get a bunch of people together and bark out a bunch of orders. Instead, you teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."
     

Right. So that's an example of adaptive and technical coming together, right? The yearning of the sea may be perceived as adaptive is like we're talking about now. You got to figure out how to cut the wood and do the thing and, you know, do the buoyancy and whatever. That's technical. So, yeah, there is a meshing. I think our main message here before we get on to our next point is there may be a tendency to go right to a technical answer to whatever your challenges or whatever your direct reports challenges. But oftentimes, starting with adaptive, opening up a conversation, taking into account that person's personality profile, what their background is, what they're going through right this minute, trying to adapt in that fashion, will lead to a technical answer that may be more well-rounded and more suited in that particular circumstance. You’re adapting to that circumstance as opposed to going well, here’s the answer.   
     

Yeah. Well, they did point out that when people tried, most people, and I think on average, and again, I might get the exact data wrong here, but if they give it a one-year period, anybody that lost in the United States more than ten pounds, no, it was 15 pounds, gained 110% of it back within a one-year period. But their whole point was that when you use technical modality. So, from a leadership perspective, let's say you've got a manager that needs to do something or salespeople that need to do something, one way to really know, and I know we got a run here, to think about if something's technical versus adaptive, let's say somebody knows they need to sell more. They need to make more calls. They need to do something, and they're repeatedly not doing it. And when they don't, we keep going, here's another call report. You need another piece of software. You need this. You need a script. You need to say this and this and this. That's not that those things are wrong, but they're highly technical. So, when something repeats itself over, maybe as leaders, we need to look inside and ask the question, is there an adaptive problem that we need to help these people see? And by the way, Jason, it's not usually one or the other. It's both.

Yeah.

Once you figure stuff out adaptively, we have to go into technical stuff.

That's right. You mentioned something in your story about, like, as soon as the economy changes or as soon as this funding goes through or something like that. And I wanted to bring up this picture that we have this little deal. Explain what we're looking at here.

This is just a cool model we use in coaching. We don't bring it up in coaching. We just do it. So, if you'll think on the left-hand side, the people that are looking at this, the left-hand side is the coach. The right-hand side is our coachee. Someone, a leader that we're working with. Most people come and bring us some sort of opportunity that they're trying to solve, right? Look, coaching exists because you either have something that you don't wish you had or don't have something that you wish you did.

That's right.        

Right? So sometimes, like, this person, like, I'm not feeling whatever whatever they bring to you, hey, my deal is in closing. Hey, I got to sell more. Hey, I can't recruit. They're bringing you, and that thing is in the box. And so, on the right-hand side, you know, that person's focusing on the box. So, we, as mindset coaches, we are trained, and I think by default we can give this to leaders. I wonder what all leaders would be like. Rather than just focusing on what's on the box, we focus on the person. We're looking at how they're talking about it, what they're saying, and not necessarily getting into the deal and the minutia and solving it. And this is really just another way that we can visually explain adaptive. We're trying to say, how do we look at us differently? And there's a dotted line to the box because we don't want to completely ignore what the issue is.

That's right.        

But how often can we look at what the individual is and not just the issue? And that's where we're going.


Well, thank you for that. That reminds me of so many organizations that we hear, you know, people are our people are our most valuable assets or team members come first. This little illustration is how you could play that out on a day-to-day basis. The project, the problem, the thing your people are going to bring you that box day in and day out if you're a leader, and if you only focus on the box, there may be some short term wins there some things that pseudo seems like they're saving time, but when you instead focus on the person first, yeah, the box to dot it line to the box, but the person first. Oh man, that a separator.

And you'll get to adaptive based programs, and you'll be able to waitress better which, interestingly, changes us as leaders.   I know we got to wrap it up. So, you're the host.

Well, a little bit of a wrap. We put this QR code up here because that you may want to have a further discussion with us, and if you do, you can go to this QR code which will take you actually to my calendar. You want to talk about anything inside out leadership based? Maybe something about adaptive coaching struck a chord with you? Any of that get on my calendar. Love to chat with you more about that and we have all kinds of free tools on our website that we can talk about, or we can talk about coaching, or we can bring this material into your organization, which it would be our honor to do. Steve, we're going to wrap another LinkedIn live in the books, another episode of The Insight Interviews. And it has been a pleasure and a joy to be with you, my friend, and it's been a pleasure and a joy to be with you LinkedIn Live World and The Insight Interviews world.

                                                                                                               ---

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