IDL114 Season 3: Remote Not Distant with Gustavo Razzetti
Can an old leader learn new tricks? Are you a leader that is guiding your team in a hybrid working situation? How can you make the most of the professional shift in the working world to retain and maintain your team and their passion?
It’s great to share this awesome conversation I had with Gustavo Razzetti. Gustavo is the author of Remote Not Distant as well as the CEO of Fearless Culture, an organization which helps businesses develop accountable, innovative, corporate cultures. Today, we dig into the evolution of leadership. Specifically we look at how Covid has changed the nature of leadership, and how we define and understand leadership in a fast-changing world.
Meet Gustavo Razzetti
Gustavo is passionate about helping teams do the best work of their lives. He is a sought-after speaker, culture consultant, and author of three books.
After 25 years of helping organizations build purpose-driven brands and teams, Gustavo realized that most companies don’t lack ideas, resources, or talent but a conducive culture.
He created Fearless Culture to help organizations become purpose-driven, agile, and innovative. Razzetti is also the creator of the Culture Design Canvas, a culture mapping tool used by consultants, coaches, and organizations worldwide.
Gustavo’s work has been featured in Psychology Today, The New York Times, Forbes, BBC, and many other publications. Throughout his career, he has advised companies in multiple business sectors, including GM, Continental, Coca-Cola, Mars, and Comcast.
He is the author of four books, including Remote, Not Distant – a roadmap to build a strong culture for remote and hybrid teams – and three other books.
Visit Fearless Culture and connect on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
Leaders need to loosen control - 05:46
Lead with empathy - 11:14
Navigating change - 18:26
Build and support flexibility above all - 31:05
Leaders need to loosen control
The pandemic showed people how quickly things can change. Overnight, entire systems and structures can shift, and what seems like something that’s easy to control can shift drastically.
Leaders need to pull back on trying to control everything. They will waste their efforts and even alienate their teams by forcing the hand of the business when the tide is turning.
Therefore, leaders need to learn to loosen up on the control but tighten in on the structure. How can you provide support and balance while the team rides out the storm?
“Leaders don’t do things on their own. Leaders are not heroes, [and] good leaders are not miracle performers. They’re great at building the right cultures, so they facilitate what needs to happen.”
Rather than trying to stop the uncertainty – which is impossible – can you buffer your organization and let them ride it through with you? Can you create a resilient culture wherein your team can operate?
Lead with empathy
“It’s not that all of a sudden people have now changed. I think the change has been happening [where] people are looking for meaningful work, to collaborate, to be understood, to be more human, to care about the environment … but the leaders in charge were not letting those people do that [until now]. ”
There has been a change happening over the last few decades. Slowly, but surely. Now, people are expressing their desires to be part of meaningful work rather than just the regular nine-to-five.
From even before the pandemic in 2020, there has been a shift from just making sales and crunching numbers to looking for a more genuine human connection in the workplace.
Currently, leaders and companies need to shift if they want to keep their employees and clients.
“I think that leaders that are coming from this new generation have a huge opportunity to change things a lot … so my advice is don’t stop being realistic, don’t stop fighting but realize that the only way that you can make change is from within.”
Therefore, lead with empathy.
Create a company culture that values connection, authenticity, and honesty, and doesn’t punish mistakes but creates a space for active learning, and taking responsibility.
“The leader that embraces mistakes and learns from those mistakes and allows those mistakes to [create] innovation is a leader who actually builds trust within an organization. ”
Navigating change
You need to do what’s right for the people that are working for you. Things change and shift, and you can navigate the change as best as you can, but your focus should be kept on those that are currently in your team, and who are about to enter into it.
If you keep working with your focus placed backward, it will be difficult to move forward with the change, which means that you put yourself at risk of losing your current clients and employees.
“If you don’t do what’s right for the people then the people are … not going to give you the best work that they can. So, when we say “focus on people”, it’s not about being protective … people [are] what drive your business, and if you really want your business to grow [then] you need to trust your people. ”
Build and support flexibility above all
One of the best ways that you can create a healthy and successful work environment is to value and support flexibility. Allow your staff flexibility in both their temperament, and treat them as people.
“I think it’s important to identify how we can create a flexible model in which people can define how they work. Of course, there need to be certain agreements and we need to find some common ground but also [allow] flexibility for people to work around that system. ”
Allow your business flexibility and let it shift depending on what is needed. Allow yourself the flexibility to take time to work hard and then time to rest.
The hard-line should be cautiously used because if you overdo it, you will alienate yourself from your team.
Create psychological safety for your team by not using a one-size-fits-all approach. Welcome each person individually, because those individuals will make up and support the culture and the business as a whole.
“Great coaches realize, “No, every player is treated differently based upon what brings out the best in that player”, and I think that moves into our corporate teams as well. ”
Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:
BOOK | Gustavo Razzetti – Remote Not Distant: Design a Company Culture That Will Help You Thrive in a Hybrid Workplace
Visit Fearless Culture and connect on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Awaken the Leader Workshop April 3rd and 4th 2023: theimpactdrivenleader.com
Sign up for the roundtable at: hello@theimpactdrivenleader.com
Check out the Practice Of the Practice
About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast
The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.
Rate, review and subscribe here on Apple Podcasts or subscribe on Stitcher and Spotify.
Good leaders are not miracle performers. They’re great at building the right cultures, so they facilitate what needs to happen.
Gustavo Razzetti
Podcast Transcription
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. Man, I'm excited to be here, excited that you're listening, so energized by this conversation I just had, I'm doing the intro. I'm wrapping up from that conversation with Gustavo Razzetti. Gustavo is the author of Remote, Not Distant. You're going to see that later on in the video if you're watching the video as well. He is the leader, CEO of Fearless Culture, a consultant organization, helps organizations with culture. Man, we dig in and have a great conversation. A little bit about this Remote, Not Distant, but more about the evolution that we're seeing today in leadership. It's something if you are a regular listener of the Impact Driven Leader podcast, if you watch some of my videos, some of my content that I talk a lot about it. We're going through this.
As with many guests as Gustavo did, he said, hey, who's listening? It's like, well, the person that I aim this podcast to be for, is someone who much like myself, we found ourselves at a point where, what does leadership look like? What does it look like to lead in our current environment? I can't do, what I used to do, and expect new results? Covid has caused that. Gustavo and I talk a lot about that subject, and it's a fun conversation that, again, we talk about remote work, but we talk about so much more in the evolution of workers. And here's a thought I'm going to leave you with. I bring this up in our conversation. I want to tease it now. You're going to hear it later. Can we make old dogs learn new trips? Or maybe here's another way, can we make new dogs do what old dogs do? Think about that. Let that sit in the back of your mind as you listen to the conversation. I'll tie it up at the end. Again, thanks for being here. If you're not a subscriber, hit subscribe, whether on YouTube or wherever you listen to this so that way you're updated whenever there's a new episode. As well, lastly, if you get value at all, at any point during today, let Gustavo know. Share it with someone else. Increase your learning by sharing it and have a conversation with people. That's something I love to do, and I encourage you to do as well. I'll catch you and wrap all this up. Again, Gustavo Razzetti.
Gustavo, good morning. I am so excited to have this conversation, one in preparation, but two, just meeting another person who has many of the same ideals and ideologies in regard to leadership, in people and serving. It's a kindred spirit that I believe we have and I'm excited to have this conversation.
[GUSTAVO RAZZETTI]
Awesome. Good morning, Tyler, and thank you for having me on. So, good morning to everyone for joining this, watching the recording. Great to be here. I'm very excited and see how, even though we share things, we can share different perspectives and complement our views.
[TYLER]
So you, as we can see in the background, for those watching the video last year wrote the book Remote, Not Distant talking about workplaces. To me, it was probably a little bit in the moment, but very ahead of the moment for everything that we've seen, the last 12 to 24, now 36 months of this whole idea of remote work, hybrid work, get back in the office because you have to be in the office. So I'd love for you to just help the audience, help myself understand how did you get to that place and realize, oh, we have problems?
[GUSTAVO]
Well, for me, I mean, I think that it was zoom out. I think that we have problems long before the pandemic. I always like to say that the pandemic didn't hurt organization, but actually amplified both the good and the bad. There were really, most organizations thrive in the pandemic. There was a lot of adjustment, but many were ready to adapt. Many others weren't so when now we hear that they working either remotely or in a hybrid spectrum, whatever the spectrum is, it's harming culture. Actually, I say, well, your culture wasn't in good shape before that. If you see a lot of indicators like Gallup in engagement salaries, they were really, really, really bad before the pandemic. So I think that what the pandemic helped us is realize that culture really matters, and most importantly, that we cannot continue in business as usual, and people are looking for different things and we're going to expand on that. Which things are people looking when it comes to their workplace?
[TYLER]
I think you bring a point there, and if you look at economically pre pandemic the economy was on such a rise on such a high, and that success to me masked all the bad culture that organization's had. You saw as we entered into the pandemic, and that really changed so many workplaces, either people rose to the moment or they absolutely went down. We've seen that from organizations. There's a place that I want to jump here to, that I think really helps divide those two different, to me it's a dichotomy, the companies that succeeded through the last couple years and almost got better and the companies that have struggled and just, there's all this tension. It's on page 42, your book, and it talks about let go of control, be a facilitator. To me, that's the difference. That's the difference. If we talk about the leader who embraces remote work compared to the leader who really struggles with it, is are they willing to let go of control and realize it's going to be different going forward? Talk a little bit more about how you see that.
[GUSTAVO]
Absolutely. I think that we need to think about the leadership narrative and not in the workplace, but in history throughout centuries. We basically always use this Mel Gibson Braveheart movie in which he's the one that goes first and kills 20% of the army and then people follow. I think that narrative, not only it's broken, but actually was never real. So leaders don't do things on their own. Leaders are not heroes. Good leaders are not miracle performers. They're great at building the right culture, so they facilitate what needs to happen because in the end that where you, like Steve Jobs famously say, so you are hiring the best talent so let them do their work and I think that's the point about being a facilitator.
So a few months ago, one of the CEO actually from Google asked a question where are the, to your employees, where are the speed bumps that are getting in your way to do better work, move faster, innovate? I think that when it comes to facilitator, it's not about making things easier for your team, but basically remove unnecessary pain. I mean, work is not easy, the world is not easy, but leaders need to create the right context and the right content for people to do their job. That's for me, the biggest shift. Rather than trying to have all the answers, leaders, good leaders need to lead with great questions, let people think, provoke, think, challenge your team, but then let them come up with the best solutions.
[TYLER]
So where do you think this the, that ideology of the image of the Mel Gibson? I love that, the overbearing the extreme masculine personality that's believed, oh, that's what a leader looks like. In reality, we know in great societies that hasn't been the leader who actually gets the most of people. I think as I'm saying that, I remember I saw Jane Goodall article and she talked about her study of gorillas and chimpanzees and she said the overbearing dominant leaders, they led, but not as long as the empathetic, the caring, the really supportive leaders within that community. And we see that same thing in humans and it's like, where did we get that idea of that's what good leadership looks like, or why do we fall into that pattern?
[GUSTAVO]
I think there are two patterns. One is historic. So I think that anything when it comes to leadership narrative from books, from movies, from the news, et cetera, that's what happens. So I think that when, for example, you read any leadership book about the success of a company, it's always written by the CEO, actually not written by them, it's signed by them but someone like a ghost writer did it. They make it all about that person. You are running a 100 or 100,000 employee company. You cannot tell me that one person is actually making all decisions, inventing all the products, and so on and so forth. One example I like to use in my, I put in my book actually, I think, it's about when Steve Jobs was presented for the first time with the idea of Apple creating its own phone, now the iPhone, which is the most profitable product in the company's history.
He actually rejected it. He said, no way. A phone company suck. Apple would never become that. So he resisted over and over. That's the things that they have all the answers. Luckily Apple's culture, culture of innovation was stronger and they were able to push back and they were always able to show him, hey, we're not here to mimic what other companies do. We're here to create Apple's version of what a phone should be, and the rest is history. So I think that to your point, a lot of research about leadership, so sees that we admire people who are good at selling themselves, who are very persuasive, they know how to talk, they are very dominant in their personality. But in the end, research shows that the most effective leaders tend to be more introverted, they tend to be more team players. They're not about themselves. Maybe they're very right about selling themselves, but they're actually much better at making decisions on building strong teams.
[TYLER]
So as you and I talked about before we got started, and the audience that I aim to serve and bring guests to talk to is that Gen X, millennial leader that's now the bridge between the older generation and now the younger generations, the millennials, the Gen Zs, who want something totally different than what organizations have presented it in the past. I've read in books and as I believe that you point to a generation now of workers that want to be understood and not just show up to work and be glad you have a job that seemed like for generations, that's what it was. So how do we move people to that point to where they feel empowered to lead in that way?
[GUSTAVO]
Absolutely. I would say, I don't think that when we talk about generations, things are in evolution. So it's not that all of a sudden people now change. I think the change has been happening, people looking for meaningful work to collaborate, to be understood, to be more human, to care about the environment, not just the work. But the leaders in charge were not letting those people do that. So if you say, hey, this is not good for the environment, you could get either ignored, laughed at or maybe fired. Now companies, some out of pressure, some out of conviction, or maybe reflecting on their behavior, they're realizing that, hey, we need to care about more. So I think that leaders that are coming from these new generations have a huge opportunity to change things a lot.
It's not going to be easy and I think my advice would be that sometimes when you are too realistic, then you get frustrated very quickly. So my advice is don't stop being realistic, don't stop fighting, but realize that the only way that you can make change is from within. So quitting all the time and going somewhere else, or having a one person company, I mean, do it if that's the way to go, but the amount of change they're going to be doing, it's really small in terms of scale. When you're able to influence larger systems, then the impact of your work as a leader is going to be larger.
[TYLER]
Well, I mean, I think about probably in your experience, how you saw different, the organizations you've worked with or the different leaders that you've worked with, how you saw maybe that evolution play out. We're seeing that again and to me it's a very entrepreneurial mindset, meaning we have this entrepreneurial mindset as a culture and people want to embrace it and how do we allow that mindset to work within corporations instead of saying, you can't act like that here.
[GUSTAVO]
Definitely. I think that you mentioned mindset. I think that many companies use that term mindset, like a thing, like a metaphorical mindset is the lens used to filter reality. But it's not as easy as putting up different pair of lenses and now, hey, everything's going to change. I think that changing the mindset also requires changing the system. So I have a lot of leaders, CEOs from mid-sized and large companies that say, “Hey, Gustavo, your team, can you help me build a culture of innovation?" I say, "Well, let's talk about mistakes. How do you deal with mistakes?" The realization is that most companies are mistake intolerant. The same way our, some body rejects lactose and lactose intolerance some companies reject mistakes.
I'm not talking about errors on your day-to-day jobs that you should be doing like without thinking. I'm talking about if you're expecting people to learn how to incorporate AI into their work, if you're expecting people to come up with new formulas, new software, whatever, they're going to screw up. No one gets it right the first time, not even the second. So if leaders don't create a culture in which mistakes are welcome, mistakes are addressed in the open, and we learn from those, then how you could invite people to do that. I think that many people are frustrated because they hear this inconsistency. One thing what leaders promote, but then what they reward or punish with their behaviors is completely the opposite.
[TYLER]
That to me is, you hit on such a point. It's the leader that embraces mistakes and learns from those mistakes and allows those mistakes to lead innovation is a leader who actually builds trust within an organization, without trust, without the ability to say, hey, all right, I screwed up. Great, let's own it. What can we learn from it? In instead of thinking, uh-oh, you made a mistake. Now I'm so fearful of a mistake cause I'm going to get fired, or I'm so fearful of a mistake because now I'm going to lose the autonomy or the appreciation of my superior. So much of it, I think in those is around trust, but it's around the personal security of the leader. If they're comfortable in their position, they're going to be more comfortable with people making mistakes. If they're not comfortable in their position, they're going to be tense and the mistakes they're ultimately going to look at as uh-oh, is this going to affect me? If it affects me, uh-oh, I can't allow mistakes.
[GUSTAVO]
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that we are transitioning the leadership style, going back to the origin of our, the beginning of our conversation. One thing that's happening is that many leaders are realizing that the model that took them where they are, it's not going to help the organization go into the future. However, they're having a hard time. Like their brain realizes it needs to be different, but then their managers or their manager's managers are not there and they don't want to push back. My point is, if you're a leader and you're not willing to fight for what you think you are right, then quit. So being a leader is not, I think that going back to the narrative, many people feel that being a leader is, okay, I made it to the top, now I have all the privileges, it's going to be easier and now let the other people take the risk.
It's not that like that, it's the contrary. Basically, the more you climb into the ladder, the more risks you go, the more vulnerable you need to be. So you need to model that behavior if you want to. I remember working with a company recently where we're mapping your culture and they say, no, we really promote innovation. Then at some point talking to different groups in the organization, we realize that hey, no, you reward innovation that works. So the innovation that goes, that fails, those experiments, you hide them. So it's easy to reward what goes but what about the rest?
[TYLER]
Well, and I think the great scientists, the great innovators of time say the innovations that work are not the ones to study. It's the ones that don't work, the ones to figure out why didn't it work because we thought it was going to, so let's understand why it didn't work. That leads us to the next great innovation and not, oh, it worked today. We know all the answers. Doesn't really happen. I want to go back because it's probably going to take a few minutes here for us to unpack it, but you make this mention of this massive cultural and business evolution that I think we're experiencing. It's the style of leadership is changing the workplace dynamics, how people are working, where they're working is changing. Yet leaders, so many leaders listening in are in the midst of that, in the midst of layoffs, in the midst of all this transition and they're sitting here saying, how do I lead the people I lead and yet I'm forced to answer to those that want to hold onto the style of business that was done pre-pandemic because they're sitting here saying, we have to get back to what brought us to success. Like you said, but I would agree with you that will never happen. There will never be the normal of the past. So how does that leader, how do you, what do you say to that leader to empower them to say, keep doing what's right for the people?
[GUSTAVO]
I think that if you don't do what's right for the people, then people are going to get, not going to give you the best work that they can. So if they, when we say focus on people, it's not about being overly protective or about, oh, it's not about the people. It's like, hey, people is what drives your business and if you really want your business to grow, you need to trust your people. For me, the most important thing is that many employees, when they had no chance, but to, for example, start working remotely in the beginning of the pandemic, without training, without technology, without the expertise, with the additional stress of a global pandemic and no one know what was happening, they adapted. It took some time, it was stressful, but in the end, most organizations stood afloat. I mean, most businesses were able to make it and many actually grew during the pandemic, they became even more profitable, et cetera.
Research shows that people, when they work remotely, they feel more psychologically safe, they're more productive and so on and so forth. Actually, they're working more hours because the time that people safe commuting some part goes to personal life, which is good taking care of themselves, but also there's some extra time that goes to actually doing work. So net there's a lot of benefits in which companies are improving. So why didn't want to do that? It's a first because many people are doing it, so it becomes an excuse. But most importantly, many leaders, especially senior white men are basically going back to what's comfortable for them, the way they used to be trained, the way they operate.
So the question for me is not where do we work from? How do we work, but how can we create an environment that allows people to do their best work? Flexibility is critical. There's a lot of examples. For example, Spotify, Allstate, Airbnb, all companies that have accelerated dramatically the amount of women in executive positions. So now Spotify across the world has more than 45% of their executive positions that are women, all state dramatically increased. Diversity seems with Airbnb and all those companies are over-delivering in results. So flexibility, it's great to change your culture and get a lot of people diverse thinking to do better work.
[TYLER]
One thought that always hits me when I get in this conversation in much like yourself, you writing this Remote, not Distant. There's some inherent things that need to be replaced there. The coffee, the coffee pot talk, the water cooler talk, the I'm walking by you to the restroom. And there's that interaction that you have to almost create now if you're in a remote situation, but yet relying on that as the way to do business is not effective. Again, it goes back to an old style where everyone was in the office and that's the only way you had to interact. But I want to overlay a subject with that. If we look at most college graduates today and college graduates over the last probably eight to 10 years, most of them did not step into a classroom that are last two or three years of school. Most of their work was online remote. It was doing classwork online.
So when I think about that, I look at the leader that's saying, "Hey, I just hired you, Gustavo. You just graduated from university. Great, now you're going to come show up at my office and you're going to do work." I think about that person and they're like, well, this is not normal to me. I did not work like this the last couple years to graduate from university. Instead, I did everything remote because that's what worked for the university. So now you want me to work in a system that's not natural to me. What I find when I have those conversations discussed with people, that's almost like a, oh, we never thought about it that like that. We never even realized that we've conditioned workers, we've educated people from my own kids who are teenagers now who do so much work online, so much work remote by themselves and we're creating a worker who then when we hire them, we're saying, well, that doesn't work for us. How much do you see of that or organizations recognizing that or is that a very slow recognition?
[GUSTAVO]
I would say the latter. It's a very small recognition, but one, I think we need to go back to challenging our mental frameworks. To the point I have teenagers, I'm 55, different experience, but their experiences, all their first relationship with their basically girlfriends started online. They didn't start dating in a, oh, we met casually. So for them and for us would be, well, but how do you know, whatever? That's how they used to be. I think that the most important thing is we need to stop seeing things like in black or white terms. So when we talk about hybrid, people feel, ah, either people work remotely or they need to back to the office. That's not the point. It's how can we integrate the best of both worlds?
You talk about the water cooler conversations, and I don't want to be the party booker here, but there's no research. I did a lot of work, I took a lot of experts writing my book, there's no piece of research that shows that those impromptu conversations actually create any creativity or innovation. It might be in isolated pocket. Where there's a lot of research is those conversations were exclusive. There were people after the meeting talking about things, talking about their colleagues behind their back or saying the things that everyone should hear in a meeting, but they weren't because they were afraid. So what we need to do now is how can we earn people commute? How can we make it worth it for good to go back to the office? But most importantly, why and when should go people back to the office?
For example, the three and two or four and one kind of the arrangements, they are useless because they are once again, trying to recreate a rigid schedule rather than think of what type of work is my team doing in the next week, two weeks, one month. Based on that, sometimes maybe, well maybe they need to get two weeks in a road together in the room to crack some big challenge together but maybe for a month they don't need to see each. Other on their hand, even companies that work fully remote, they still see each other. But when they see it's about going, having dinner, they spend a lot of time building relationships. So if you're going to bring people to your office, a lot of that time should be to create relationships. If I'm going to go to a desk and try to write a presentation, when I have people like two feet away from me, they're all screaming, taking phone calls, that's not effective. I'm not going to build relationships. I'm going to fail to do my deep work. So it's the work that should define the working skill and not a skill, whatever that is, define how people work.
[TYLER]
As you share that, I think about instances where I've worked with different tech providers and they do three-week sprints. I think about that is like, oh, if we look at that what's the work that we need to accomplish the next month? Where are days that would be imperative, hey, you know what, if we sat down, we brainstormed together, let's do that in person. Let's take that time to have a meal. Let's interact. But then we go two and a half weeks, we go do our deep work, and then we come back at the end of that sprint or whatever it may be, that work cycle projects that we're working on, hey, let's have that time together. I think that's such an excellent example, but yet it means you have to look at that work and leadership in an innovative, innovative way instead of, well, here's the blueprint that's always worked so we have to find a way for that blueprint to fit everything going forward.
[GUSTAVO]
Definitely. I think also I was, the office itself, the blueprint needs to change, but also the blueprint of the physical space. I think that the model of the open office, it was created for companies to save money so to have more people in fewer space, it was sold to us, and I bought to into roads, it's going to drive collaboration, blah, blah, blah. But in the end, it didn't work. So if we're going to have a people in the office, we also need to think, rethink how the office is designed so we need to have spaces that are clearly for building relationships, socializing. We need to have spaces where are important for people to do deep work. Having a phone booth where people can take a call standing up for an hour, it's not necessarily a solution, but also people need to write something or do some research. Standing on a phone booth, it's not going to help. And lastly, we need to be more mindful about collaboration spaces. Having conference rooms with a long table and people sitting in front of each other it's not better than being, and like we are now on a Zoom call, in this case, Riverside looking at each other. So we need to be more creative of how we design that space.
[TYLER]
The piece that I am again, coming back to here is as we recreate that, it needs to be done new. I almost think about that as I think about my friends and peers that are dealing with much of what we're discussing here, this evolution in leadership, but it's evolution in the workplace and understanding if I had somebody that was hired pre-pandemic, because I'm going to use that as a very defining mark. It is an absolute, but it is in our society. If I had someone that was hired pre-pandemic, they were coming to an office five days a week, they were doing good work, and then all of a sudden here now two years later, I'm starting to look at it and say, oh, oh, this isn't working. What I need to understand is, it's not that we have a problem in their ability to work. They're not the right person.
I need to find someone who thrives in working in an office that does not like to work remote, does not, that there are people that say, I do not work well at home. I do not work well in that instance. I work much better going to an office, being able to get there at 8:00 AM leave at 5:00, have my lunch break. That works for me. We need to hire that person rather than trying to force the person that has grown and evolved to go back to what they used to be. I'm a person of faith and I think about this and it's an example and you can't put new wine in old wine skins. I believe that's exactly what's happening. We're trying to put new wine into old wine skins and we're trying to make it work and it's just not working.
[GUSTAVO]
Yeah, definitely. I think one, you brought a very interesting point, which is first of all, we need to stop thinking in one size fits all approaches from a company standpoint, because each team requires different arrangements. I know it's more complicated, but many companies have been able to crack that code. Once you let go, going back to what we're talking before letting go. But also when it comes to people, to individuals, there's some people regardless of age that might need to go to the office. Maybe they don't have the right physical space at home to work from. Maybe they love the experience of being in a nice building with nice people, hopefully. Also maybe they don't have good relationships at home, so they don't want to be there. Also going to the office, it's escape if you will. Also young, some younger people in different roles, they want to be close to people so they can learn from observation. But I think it's important to identify how can we create a flexible model in which people can define how they work. Of course, they need to be certain team agreements. We need to find some common ground, but also flexibility for people to work around that system.
[TYLER]
I think about great sport coaches and there's this ideology that, oh, every player needs to be treated the same. In reality great coaches realize no, every player is treated differently based upon what brings out the best in that player. I think that moves into our corporate teams as well and it's embracing that, embracing to say, okay, instead of Gustavo, you have 50 people to lead and therefore the easiest way to do that, instead of trying to lead 50 people differently, you just put a blanket, this is going to be the protocol instead of saying, hey, we can't do that because that doesn't yield the best results. But that's a difficult charge for you to be able to lead everyone how they need to be led. We need to actually different team leaders to say, hey, what's important here? I think there's a point where maybe that's needed in order that people can be cared for better instead of just saying, hey, the blanket approach and the very thin organization is going to yield results. Instead, we need a better relationship of understanding who works well in different positions, who doesn't and allow for that rather than thinking, hey, let's just full steam ahead, Elon Musk, everyone has to be in the office, everyone has to work this way. You're either going to have people in the organization that's what they want, or you're going to have everyone leave.
[GUSTAVO]
Exactly. You mentioned the character, but once again, when we're talking about Elon Musk being the bravado, the hero, the guy says, I said this is my way because I'm the leader, I lead the way. But then he has, I mean there was a picture and that's a real case of a couple who had a newborn and they were both the employee with his wife and the newborn sleeping at Twitter's office. So is that the culture you want? That's the message that, is that the workplace that you want as an employee? I don't think so. I don't think so. We are people that care about people. But then as I mentioned earlier, there are companies because they offer flexibility that they were able to dramatically increase the amount of the diversity, having more women raising to a senior position. So I think that's what companies have been promoting and talking about. But well, now there's real evidence that shows that flexibility in the workplace is going to help achieve that and I think that the people that have the opportunity to do that because of flexibility, they're going to do not only their best, they're going to go the extra mile to help you because you're offering that opportunity.
[TYLER]
There's that piece of getting people to go the extra mile means that they have a reason to go that extra mile. To me, that comes down from understanding and having the belief and having that alignment, which is something that you talk a lot about is finding that alignment. To me, there's work that needs to be done, and the more that leaders push that work down on other people doesn't mean it's going to get done. It's going to cross more frustration. The leader needs to do the work and say, hey, how do we need to change the way that we lead ourselves? Why or do I need to grow as a leader in order that I can serve people in a better way? It's going to look different and I need to grow and change. I need to become more vulnerable and comfortable where I'm not uncomfortable where I'm, comfortable in order that I can serve people better. That's the work that needs to be done instead of saying, well, I'm not going to do the work, I'm going to force it on other people to align and what ends up happening is this major frustration that we see every day in organizations really magnified because it's all coming to a head, it's all at the forefront.
[GUSTAVO]
Absolutely. We basically move back into culture. So hybrid remote is a piece of it, but there are elements culture that needs to be taken care of. It's the what do you really care about. When I talk to many companies before with, we're going to work together, o, we say, well, what matters the most to you? Most people immediately say, people, of course, people first. I say, what about your customers? What about your stakeholders? What about innovation? I say, well, we are also innovation first and we are customer first and we are stakeholder first. I say, well, you cannot be first everything in life. So that shows that what people say, what leaders say versus what they actually prioritize when they make decisions, actually it's not consistent.
We run a three-year studio like asking people, thousands of people across the world, what makes the best or the world or what describes the best and the worst culture you'll ever work out. That inconsistency between what leaders say and what they actually do is one of the most important points. Now in tech, we're seeing lots of layoffs that are in many cases unfounded. Can you save money? Of course. But if you want people to innovate, you can, don't just keep the people that are running the day-to-day show. We need people to have free time to do that. So that's for me the most important thing. Like, leaders are really inconsistent and I think going back to if you want to be a leader, it's not about the title. You have to earn that respect. You have to earn that trust, and you need to earn the ability for people to align. So people are not going to align because you force them to align. You need to bring something that's worth aligning around.
[TYLER]
Absolutely. As we're getting to a point here to wrap up and put a bow on this, I think that last piece that you talk about, and I love the idea of as we go through layoffs and we expect people to do more with less. You talk about it in the, you call it the psychological safety ladder and the innovation is the top meaning in my mind as I read that, innovation comes by the desperation at times. But that's only when you're safe to know that I can make a mistake and I'm still going to be able to recover, move forward. I'm not going to innovate if I think that's going to lead me to demise. I'm going to, if I try to innovate and it's wrong, going back to your conversation about the topic about mistakes, I'm not going to be able to move forward. This idea of psychological safety, that's what needs to happen in organizations. And what we've talked about this entire segment has been moving towards that, moving towards that safety, bringing about that innovation and not trying to do it one size fits all, but what works best for us as an organization to get where we want to go.
[GUSTAVO]
Absolutely. I think you nailed it. I don't have much to add. I think it's, we don't build that as a leader. We don't, going back to facilitator, we need to facilitate a culture in which people feel that they belong, they're welcome as a person. You need to create a culture in which you facilitate courageous conversations and what you said before, you need to model that and lastly culture in which it's okay to fail while you're trying to do things for the first time. I'm not talking about failing doing that. We don't want our CPA failing, like with the balance sheet.
[TYLER]
I mean it's failing in the right way, failing forward as it's said, it's not failing because of lack, it's failing because we're trying and embracing that. Gustavo, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Love the book. Love what you're about. Love this interaction, and again, like I mentioned in the beginning, a very much of a kindred spirit of seeing this evolution right in front of us and trying to make an impact, make a difference. I thank you for what you're doing.
[GUSTAVO]
Absolutely. Thank you, Tyler, and thank you for joining us. It was a great conversation and hopefully we can continue its hotline.
[TYLER]
Awesome. Thanks Gustavo.
[TYLER]
In the introduction, I made the comment about an old dog doing new tricks or a new dog doing old tricks. That was really a illusion to the idea of putting new wine in old wine skins. Again, it's a biblical reference. It's made a comment, meaning that you can't take and put new and old because it's not going to be flexible and move. If you think about the I don't know much about wine skins, but I know this, that when it's new and you put in a new wine, it flexes it, ferments it, oes those things. Then once it gets old, it gets dried out and you try to put in something new and when that new wine ferment and expands, it blows up the wine skin. That's what's going on. I'm thankful that that image hit me in this conversation with Gustavo.
As we talked about that's what's happening so much for leaders today. We're seeing this right now in front of us, this change of the guard, Gustavo talked about it, these old leaders that want to force back in the way it used to be. Why, because it's easy, it's easy to go grab that old wine skin and put in the new wine. It's difficult to go find and fashion and buy a new wine skin. It's difficult to find a new way that serves people. That's the journey we're on. That's the journey that I believe that I'm helping to grow with people and to become an impact driven leader is to find the ways new that we can make an impact, to serve people in a different way. Why? Because people deserve to be served differently. We have different technology. As I mentioned during that podcast conversation, during this conversation is that so many workers today have been educated differently.
We figured out different ways and we can't expect people that have not worked and been conditions to work in a certain way to embrace and want to learn differently and work differently, especially when they have the opportunity to work remote. There's so many different businesses, whether it's entrepreneurial or other facets that allow people to work from home, to work in their schedule, to work that gig type job. If we're saying that doesn't work for us, then we have to accept, we're only going to find people that want to work like that. That means as leaders, we're going to have to grow. This is an offer that I want to make to you.
I just wrapped up the Awaken the Leader within workshop. Don't worry, there's going to be another one. Go to theimpactdrivenleader.com to be able to sign up and make sure that you can get notified for the next one. As well, share this. A little bit of a tease I have coming up, in the next month, I'm going to do a special workshop just for team leaders, for those executives, for those HR directors that Gustavo and I talked about that are stuck here and say, hey, how do I do this? We're going to talk actually a lot about the Remote, Not Distant, the material that Gustavo showed. Why? Because it aligns perfectly with this idea that in order for leaders and organizations to get the most out of people, they need to be trust makers instead of trust breakers. Look for the link to that workshop, the impact workshop in the notes, in the show notes. We can have a link to that. Would love to be able to serve you in that way, again, have that conversation to what it looks like for organizations to work through this process of being impact driven, having trust as a driver, being a trust maker instead of a trust breaker.
Thanks again for being here. Till next time, have a good one.
