IDL118 Season 3: Future Makers with Ryan Estis
Why should you be careful about the balance between technology and people in your company? Do you work in mid-level management? How can you create trust in your professional community?
I’m excited to share this conversation with my friend and guest Ryan Estis. We got to know each other several years ago on a previous podcast, and today, we’re talking about the state of where we’re at now. In our conversation, we’re speaking to the leaders and workers who are navigating coming back to the office or working remotely. We consider the problem of devaluing employees, and how to foster a culture that incentivizes growth.
Meet Ryan Estis
Ryan Estis is a globally recognized sales and leadership expert and author. He previously spent 15 years as a Fortune 500 Chief Revenue Officer leading the go-to-market strategy and building a client roster of category leading brands. Over the course of the last decade Ryan has been advising clients on navigating change, improving performance, influencing culture and accelerating growth. He is a Founding Partner with ImpactEleven, where he is helping define and shape a Community that is influencing culture and shaping the future of both personal and professional growth.
His work and writing has been featured in Forbes, FastCompany, Inc and Entrepreneur magazines. Meetings & Conventions Magazine identified him as “one of the best keynote speakers seen or heard” and Ryan has shared content across his social platforms that have garnered tens of millions of views and engagement. His new book, ‘Prepare for Impact: Driving Growth and Serving Others through the Principles of Human-Centered Leadership offers a playbook for individuals to capture opportunity, accelerate growth and lead into the future.
Visit Ryan’s website and connect on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
Mid-level management - 08:10
Don’t fall into the trap of devaluing your employees - 14:11
Trust has eroded and it needs to be rebuilt - 17:58
Look inward first before working outward - 21:52
Be intentional with community - 35:12
Mid-level management
“[Mid-level management] is really responsible for executing and aligning the teams toward a shared vision of the future. ”
Many management systems have completely shifted since the pandemic, which caused many managers to fully change the way that they do business, relate to employees, and focus on goals.
Even though this change was and has been necessary, it left many people in management positions feeling burned out or drained.
“Our leaders and managers are overwhelmed and exhausted and navigating a very uncertain future, so there’s a lot of pressure in that role today. ”
Don’t fall into the trap of devaluing your employees
Many businesses chase profits and share values over them valuing their employees. This short-term goal is not sustainable for long-term success.
If you want to build a successful business that can thrive through changing and trying times, you need to value and invest in your people because they are the ones that can bring in the profits. If you primarily aim for profits, you will lose your people.
This is the same when it comes to using technology over people whenever possible; it will harm your business.
“Technology in and of itself … it’s an enabler of our capacity and competence, but it doesn’t replace things like empathy and gratitude and compassion and vulnerability and belonging. ”
People are still wired for connection, belonging, and love, so using technology at every step alienates your people which damages the success and longevity of your business.
Trust has eroded and it needs to be rebuilt
“If we’re going to organize people into teams and invite them to contribute their time, talent, and their emotional commitment to a worthwhile cause or mission, we have to carefully consider what they expect in return and that is the contract that should be changed. ”
How do you rebuild trust? By using the cornerstones of empathy and vulnerability.
Additionally, by opening up the pathways of communication to fully explain what the expectations are of the employee by the manager, and furthermore, what the employee can expect to also receive from the manager and the business itself.
Look inward first before building outward
“My invitation [to leaders] today is, “Don’t start with why. Start with self.” Look inside you, what stories are you telling yourself that inform your belief system that needs to begin to evolve? [That] feedback is a gift. ”
Leaders severely miss the mark when they plow forward without any regard for what is happening emotionally in and around them.
Yes, you need to be headstrong, but a healthy leader knows that you need to be emotionally in tune as well as willful to be successful.
“You have to confront yourself, you know, and your limiting beliefs [and] your stories that inform the way you experience the people around you. So, looking inside and doing the work in committing to some personal growth [because] I think to lead others responsibly, you have to lead yourself first! ”
Be intentional with community
You do not need to force people into the office to make a team culture. On the contrary, doing that will drive people away more than it would bring them together.
If you want to create a community in your workplace then you need to meet your team halfway.
“We need to find ways to enhance our community building. Now, that may be in the office, that may be off-site, but that’s what’s essential, and if you’re intentional about that and mandate that [then] returning to the office may be a solution but it’s not an absolute.”
Today, you need to be flexible. You cannot force an older model onto the current workforce.
What are you trying to create? How can you facilitate change that is flexible enough to move with how things can shift in life?
Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:
BOOK | Liz Wiseman – Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact
Visit Ryan’s website and connect on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
Learn more about Impact 11’s Keynote Speaker Training
Impact Driven Workshop over the 8th and 9th of May 2023: www.impactdrivenworkshop.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.
Our leaders and managers are overwhelmed and exhausted and navigating a very uncertain future, so there’s a lot of pressure in that role today.
Ryan Estis
Podcast Transcription
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader podcast, this is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. Great to see you. You're watching on YouTube, if you're listening in, hopefully this sound is magical to your ears. All right, well, glad you're here. Excited as always to share another guest, another friend, Ryan Estis. Ryan and I got to know each other several years ago, previous hosted podcast called Impact Makers. He was a guest there with me. It's in the show notes, so you can find the archives on that. Great conversation. We revisit, come back together again, and we talk about the state of where we're at now. Really, we're speaking to the audience that I'm curating this podcast for. I described this a couple weeks ago. I'm going to share it again because I think it's so fitting. It's the leader who's the peanut butter and jelly, you know that mass smashed in the middle between two pieces of bread.
Right now those two pieces of bread are the executives we talk about in this episode that are demanding people come back to the office, "Oh, you have to come back to the office, the great resignation. The pandemic's over, come back to the office." Or there's those workers that are like, "Hmm, sorry. No, no, thank you very much. I don't have to, I don't want to, and if you don't like it, I'll just go somewhere else." See, the employee today is empowered to, listen to my podcast a couple weeks ago with Davin Salvano. We talked much about that, and we're talking about it again, because it's that imperative inner world. One of the things that Ryan really impresses upon me, and it's this, we are incentivized to devalue people and organizations. Yeah, it's a sad reality. You see, that's what happens when we're directive towards a return over people.
I was talking to a friend yesterday, I'm going to share it here in this open before I get into the podcast, the truth couldn't be any farther from that. It's when you actually invest in people. My friend and I, Tyler Johnson, we're talking about this in regards to high school athletes. We are talking about when you invest in the athletes, when you encourage them, when you support them, when you create safety, man, they perform tremendously. Yet, when you break them down, when you attack them, when you chastises, you create tense situations, they struggle. So often, whether it's returning for a shareholder or we're trying to win a match, the two are the same. They're not different. They're much the same. We actually lose. It's when actually we focus on the process. Ryan talks so much about the process, the process he uses when he speaks to organizations or the work that he's doing himself within his own organization Impact11.
[TYLER]
Excited for you to hear this. As always, would love for you to rate review this show. Let me know what you think. Let me know what value you get from us so that I can pass along to Ryan. But also, thanks for being here. Excited to share more. We'll catch you back at the end. Ryan, thanks so much for joining me, man. Excited to see you again. It's been a little bit since we've caught up. I find these, this portal, this platform great to catch up with people because not only does it drive a normal conversation, but it also touches on some of those points that we've connected most about. So, dude, I'm excited to be here with you.
[RYAN ESTIS]
Yeah, no, it's great to be back and thanks for the invitation. Look, man, I always love connecting with you, so this is a great format to do it in. You're doing a bunch of great work here, so it's a privilege to come back and visit.
[TYLER]
I appreciate that. Let's start off here. I mentioned this before, both of us are very much impact aligned and I want to leave this broad umbrella. I'll touch on it now. We're going to talk about it much later in a couple months, your book Prepare for Impact, the book coming out, but what does impact in our current world and our current workforce look like to you?
[RYAN]
I think it's in the most simplest form it's contribution to others. I think meaning and fulfillment is derived not for doing for ourselves but far more when we're in an active service of contributing something to others. I suspect that's the genesis of this entire podcast and platform it's certainly the genesis of mine and I think at its best, truly, and I know we're going to talk about leadership, but my thesis is that leadership isn't a job. It's a responsibility. It's not about us. It truly is about the impact we have on others. So that's what I think it's all about.
[TYLER]
We are obviously through this perfectly aligned there. I think one of the thing that hurts me, and I know you write about, you speak about doing all the work that you do as a keynote speaker, you get to interact with a lot of organizations, fortunately enough for the organizations you're going into. Usually, they are driven towards an impact. You're not usually going in, invited into the organizations that are, like the article I read this morning, I'm just going to, I'm not going to put this see you on blast, but this is one snippet that I read that pained me, that makes me feel like, one, there's a lot of work for you and I to do. The CEO applauded the work ethic of an employee who sold their family dog in order to rise to expectations at work. This was a Yahoo Finance today.
[RYAN]
I saw the article and I think the article came on the heels of another sort of viral video about a CEO who was talking about not wallowing in the pity party and it's not about your bonus, it's about what you give to the company. Those leaders are misaligned and they are failed, failing to recognize the reality of the new world that we're living on. The world's forever changed. This is no longer a 2019, January, 2020 world. We've all lived through an existential crisis. Our relationship to time, meaning, place, fulfillment, purpose, mission, the meaning of our lives has fundamentally shifted. So work is no longer a place for just achievement and security. It's a place where we desire, meaning, connection, contribution, impact, and we'll question that relationship if those things are misaligned. So congruence is very important.
When you're a leader that's making $4 million a year, but you're deriving employees, "Give to the company, and it's not about your bonus and quit asking about that," you aren't connected the right way to this forever changed world. So we just have to realize that the world has changed. And I think it's an invitation for leaders and managers to do a little introspection and recognize, am I changing with it? That's why by the way, that's why we have a crisis of leadership today and I think a crisis of disconnection and meeting in the workplace. I think part of my mission and yours is to write those things.
[TYLER]
As you're speaking to audience, you knows you fly in, you speak, you fly out, you speak, you fly out, I mean, that's your gig, when you interact, whether it's through your pre-call or whatever else, what are you hearing from not the CEO executives, like, oh okay, if you have speak time with him, but it's more of someone else, whether a CEO different leader that's talking to you and they're sharing's like, Ryan, we need help here, or ---
[RYAN]
Sure, let's talk about the mid-level managers, I think often who get missed. So let's step down from the C-suite a bit and get into the leader or manager that's mid-career, mid-level, and really responsible for executing and aligning teams toward a shared vision of the future. I think the challenge is really first that leaders and managers feel, the way we're describing it, just, it's not just frontline employees. 72% of leaders today identify with being burned out. So our leaders and managers are overwhelmed, exhausted and navigating a very uncertain future. So there's a lot of pressure in that role today, and I think there's a tension that exists between what's required to grow a business sustainably into the future. You think about competition from everywhere, disruption, we're coming out of this crisis where people have reoriented their relationship to work. It's the great resignation. It's hybrid is the future.
So there's a lot of pressure on the traditional models and systems and playbook is sort of collapsing. So if you're a leader or manager that feels waiting. By the way, we're still incentivized to grow the business. What is any CEO's charter? Grow the business? What is any publicly CEO's charter? What was your earnings report this quarter? What's the stock price? Those are very short-term incentives, and there's a lot of pressure to drive growth in a complex, constantly changing world. That bumps up where with the evolving set of needs and expectations of our people. So there's this tension point that we're in the midst of navigating that the organization, the business has needs.
It's an interesting time because we've never needed more from people. We've never needed more thinking, innovation ideas, collaboration, execution, effort, commitment. We've never needed more. And in many respects the reality is we can't extract more. So that's a broken model, and it just doesn't work and so we have to come up with a new paradigm, a new, more effective, thoughtful way to lead teams and ultimately drive the performance of the organization into the future. That's sort of my thesis. Thesis is what's next? What's new? That's what I talk about in writing.
[TYLER]
How much do you, you talk about the squeeze to get more. The more from people may be more time, it may be more commitment. Ultimately, I think the more comes through more connectedness, even though that may not be physically more of me, but it's how am I making more of what I'm doing? We look now at the advent of technology, AI, everything else that really the solution is almost a two-pronged word, the more of me is making whatever I produce more valuable so that way we can use technology to actually gain that efficiency.
[RYAN]
Sure. Let's call it more impact. We can use that word again. Like, I want you to contribute the max, to your maximum potential. And ultimately, I think that's what leaders are getting at. There's a group of sort of these elite high top performing or high potential employees. We call them future makers. These are the group of, the employees, they're all in, they're focused, they're hyper talented, they're curious, they're constantly learning. They're self-enabled, self-started, they're impact-driven. Their work matters and regardless of the external circumstances, they're the ones that are charged and deliver the charter to make the future happen.
So yeah, just like on a professional sports team not every athlete is equal. Not every employee is equal. Some contribute an outsized amount of value and impact. Somebody who ran large sales organizations, that was always the case. You call it the 80/20 rule or whatever. But these people, these future makers, they have, they're delivering outsized value to the business. The idea as leaders is we want to potentialize people. We want to put people in a position to contribute the maximum of their potential. We want to stretch people, grow people. I think part of a leader's charter is to grow and enable other leaders. That's ultimately what we need to be doing. You talked about technology. I am, I think what we need to do today is we need to build these agile, human-centered, digitally enabled teams and organizations. It's the balance, the fundamental balance of those two things. You used the word connection and I do think human connection or being human centered is very, very central to a leader's ability to deliver on that mission.
[TYLER]
There's, when we talk about this AI and this connection, I was driving with my son, who's just about to turn 15, by the time this releases, he'll be 15 and we were talking about AI. Obviously, he's in, he's aware. He knows what's going on. He's thinking about it, and he's talking about, it's like, why do we, we just have technology to do things? I shared with him, as someone has shared with me, an understanding that all AI is programmed by a person. Even if AI can learn, there's still a person and as we were talking about it, I said, the necessity for research to understand the evolution of that, it still takes humans to be involved in it. Now they can go beyond it, can create efficiencies, all those other things, but still takes the human connection, that human impact, that human centered that you discussed. And if we as organizations or leaders or think that we can just replace all people, man, I think we're very misguided. What happens by that is I think many organizations, especially the disconnected ones, devalue people.
[RYAN]
Well, sure. I mean, I think, they're, we're incentivized to devalue people. So let's start there. I mean, the way we've sort of set up our incentive structures, I mean, I work for a Fortune 500 company. The value of the business wasn't based on how people felt or what people experienced. It was based on the price per share. It was a shareholder first mentality. And honestly, when I think back about that the only real sort of reinforced message from the C-suite was our responsibility is to return to shareholders. Like that sort of was the mentality. And it's short-term thinking that ultimately it isn't well suited to sustain the longevity of a business or the fulfillment of its people today. To me, that's a misnomer. That should be the outcome of a strategy where you put people first, then performance, then profitability follows.
And look, I'm a big proponent of technology. I mean, technology is fostering this connection today. It's responsible for certainly a dramatic shift in the quality of my life. But technology in and of itself, and artificial intelligence, certain, most certainly, it's an accelerant. It's an enabler of our capacity and competency, but it doesn't replace things like empathy and gratitude and compassion and vulnerability and belonging, and a sense of mission and love. It should be a catalyst to accelerate our contribution to those things. But humans are, we're innately wired for connection and belonging and love. So to minimize how essential those things are is to miss the opportunity. And also, they've become even more important. We're more aware of that right now than we've ever been. The world changed, we changed, our relationship to work changed, and it's about time the way we lead teams changes too
[TYLER]
As you were talking earlier about future makers, and I was pondering this question, this thought and almost give you the answer instead of asking the question and try to get there, is to me, the big driver for future makers, or as I, as you're describing that, I think about Liz Weisman's Impact Players I've described it as impact makers. It's to drive, blend it all together. The one thing, which I think all the words that you described between connection and empathy and love and care, it's trust. And one thing that I believed, it just go, one, is that's the difference that humans can absolutely, I would say, I don't want to say manipulate, but influence, trust that technology maybe can't.
[RYAN]
Well, I do think trust is the foundation of a relationship. I would say that's right that technology doesn't facilitate ---
[TYLER]
There you go. That's the word
[RYAN]
trust between two people. When do you trust somebody? How do you know that you trust somebody? What did it feel like when you trusted somebody, but then realized you shouldn't have. Like, you start, those are, that's the human condition and the human experience. Trust can, you've seen the erosion of trust in places where we traditionally would put it in large institutions, in government, in media. And so there's more of a responsibility inside the context of a, of an organization or a corporate setting to facilitate or foster those kinds of what I call I trust, I value relationships. Look, I mean, you've seen this, and I don't want to belabor all these media buzzwords, great resignation and quiet quitting, but you would say in some respect, the employment contractor loyalty certainly has been broken.
And I think in some respects, that's a good thing. the idea we're going to work one place, climb the corporate ladder for 30 years and get a gold watch at the end and they were going to send us off into the pasture, that's an old model. Certainly, you and I are an example of people that had broke sort of free from that paradigm, said, no, that's not the way. And now that's just accelerated. Technology, again, it's an enabler and an accelerant of people to create freedom and opportunity for themselves. So if we're going to organize people into teams and invite them to contribute their time, talent, and invest their emotional commitment to a worthwhile cause or mission, we have to carefully consider what do they expect in return. That is the contract that's changed. So the very essence of sort of trust and the exchange of time and talent, I think is in a state of evolution or a state of flux. Leaders just need to be aware of that. That's all.
[TYLER]
So how are you, when you're again, going back to your role as a keynote speaker, you're coming into conferences, you're coming into corporate events. Again, we talk about this multi-level from C-suite to mid-manager to frontline performer. That communication, what you just communicated, that organizations are forced to reckon with today, that trust has been eroded because of the layoffs, because of 2008 that you and I went through professionally and saw the ills of it, and like, we're just another number, sorry, and move on to where we're at now, that people are like, I have other options. I don't trust you and I don't have to trust you. And just thinking, that's my way forward. Yet we find this as I come the beginning, that there's a lot of senior executives that have been around for 30 years that are like, no, this is the way it should be, and we're going to force it back to that. How are you helping those organizations unilaterally understand that, becomes self-aware?
[RYAN]
Well, yeah, I mean, I think part of my mission is education. It's education, inspiration, and then it's to introduce a new and better way of doing things. You used a word that I love. The word is self-aware. That's where this paradigm shift needs to start. It's funny, then I'll back to self-aware, I'm going to put a pin gap for a second because it's a really important thing to talk about right now. But yeah, to your point, we just had a, just a Fortune 500 CEO, we could use his name, but in the advertising category, you can look it up. It was all over the media this week. He made an announcement on an online call. He said, the great resignation's over and effective next week, all 70,000 of our employees will be back in the office Monday, five days a week, we're done.
He just missed it. He's hearkening back to a time that no longer exists. So my part of my mission is, it's a moment in time where leaders need to look inside themselves. So you use the word self-awareness. My invitation is today, don't start with why. Start with self, look inside you, what stories are you telling yourself that inform your belief system that needs to begin to evolve? And feedback is a gift. I would say, we've talked about three stories already in the short time, we've been in the media this week where leaders just didn't get it, and they missed the mark. So self-awareness is a journey you have to confront yourself and you're limiting beliefs, your stories sort of inform the way you experience people in the world around you. So looking inside, doing that work and committing to some personal growth. I think in order to lead others responsibly, you have to lead yourself first. And this is a moment where that's never been more true because things have fundamentally changed. So start with you.
[TYLER]
I think that's the challenge that I see and hear from people, and it's my evolution, my personal growth, which I've shared on this platform and through the work that I do. It's not easy, and you have to do it on your own, but this is the other piece. We'll run with this, is you can't do it alone. I'll put an insert here to one of your current projects ImpactEleven, because I think it facilitates, here's the parallel. So often so many leaders feel alone. Your role as a keynote speaker is really aligned with a lot of leaders in a lot of way. They come in, they give a presentation, they inspire, they maybe do a little pre-work, post-work, and then they're off to the next place.
[TYLER]
That can be a lot of leaders or salespeople today, which are in their own leadership role, and yet, when you think about that is where do I find the opportunity to become self-aware? There's been this piece that, you know look in the mirror, look in the mirror. I get challenged with that because when I stop and think about it, and I did this, I shared a podcast on it a couple weeks ago, is when we look in the mirror, all we do, we see a reflection. We see a reflection of our intentions. We don't see our actions. The only way to see our actions is what I call looking through the window.
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
Quick little interlude here, May 8th and 9th, I am hosting the Impact Driven Workshop. We're actually going to talk a lot about the topics Ryan and I are talking about today. We're going to talk about sharpening the knife as a leader. We're going to talk about being an impact maker versus an impact breaker. I'm excited to host that workshop for those stuck in the middle, that peanut butter and jelly, the VPs, those HR directors, those mid-level managers, you, those people that are listening to this podcast right now. Even if you're not there, I know you're going to get value from it. How can we move forward in this workplace? Ryan talks so much about the future, the future maker, be a future maker. Join that workshop, May 8th and 9th. Go to impactdrivenworkshop.com in order to learn more. Back to the show.
[TYLER]
Going back to the previous question is like, as you're sitting down with organizations and you're leading them through this, and how are you helping them, but also overlay that with you as a speaker and in the involvement with ImpactEleven, the ability to get better through that.
[RYAN]
Well, yeah, that's a multifaceted question, so a lot to unpack there. Part of what I would say is that, yes, I'm a speaker or a thought leader. I write, I do research, I think about things and I'm fortunate to be in a position where companies will invite me in to share those ideas with their teams. I also run a business and I have three partners in that business. We built a team and we have a culture, and we're making decisions and building so I get to practice what I preach on both sides of that equation. You, so the self-awareness piece, you mentioned another point, sort of, the genesis of this piece of the conversation was don't go at it alone. And that's right. I mean, you need sort of systems of accountability and I think support to become more of who you're capable of being in the world. It's an invitation or a call forward to leaders and future makers to say, "Hey, I'm going to go on the journey you went on, the journey to maximizing my potential, becoming my best self.
Quick story. And this is sort of the genesis for me of what ImpactEleven has become. During the pandemic, things collapsed and as somebody who obviously goes around and does conferences and events for a living, that got taken away. So I was having my own little bit of an existential crisis, dark night of the soul, but also it was a moment of pause where I could ask bigger questions and reflect or look inside a little bit. Things stopped. That time and space was a gift. I had a mentor of mine ask me, he said, "On a scale of one to 10, if one was sort of, you're just beginning and you're Bambi in the woods and figuring it out, but 10 in your business, or your craft, let's say was max potential. You rung it all out. You were a 10. You can get, no matter what you did, you couldn't get an ounce more out of yourself. So the full scale from one to 10, where do you think you are on your personal and professional growth and evolution?"
Well, that's a big question. So I sat with it for a second, closed my eyes, and I had to answer truthfully. I said, what's coming up for me is I'm probably about a six, and I have a lot more potential in me. I know it that my best days could be ahead of me. That doesn't mean they will be, they could be. He said, that's great. Second question, also important. When you're done, he said, if you're looking back toward the end in your swan song, you're in your eighties and you've lived a great life or your life, what would you like that number to be? He said, if it's a ,60 it's fine. You might want to relax, or it might be a time of rest for you, or you may have other interests. I said, no, no, no, no. You talking to, who are you talking to, man, I'm the prepare for impact guy. The only acceptable answer is I can. I have something inside me, these gifts, I was given the opportunity here like, I have to maximize that. I want to ring out my potential. He was like, awesome. He's like, I thought that's what you'd say.
Then the third and most important question, what's your plan to go from a six to a 10 and who's going to help you get there? Now, I didn't have an answer to that question at the time. It had hurt me. It was a very isolating time in the world. I think a lot of people felt alone during that period of time? ImpactEleven is my journey from a six to a 10. We're better together. We can't do it alone. I spent last weekend with two of my business partners and we flew to Colorado, we did a little content camp. We sort of hold up in one of the partners houses for three days. We broke down our IP, our thought leadership, our position, and the things we want to bring forward into the world.
I mean, like, what a gift to sit with people who I trust, who I know have my best interests in mind, and are helping me call and call forward all of the best work that's inside me. That you can't do it alone. So growth is a team sport and it's also a process, not an event. You've got to do the work, but you've got to get help. By the way, from a leadership perspective, again if you're going to lead others, if you're going to coach others who's coaching you? And I get nervous anytime a senior executive tells me they're not getting outside support or coaching. It's like, how are you getting better? How are you learning? How are you growing? How are you expanding? Or are you a 10? Is that it? So that's sort of some of my thesis.
[TYLER]
I would even, that last piece is they're not a 10. They can't, you can't be. I mean, to go to a, to pull something from Jim Collins, it's just you can't be great if you're stuck at good and you're happy with good. There's an evolution of humility that descends there and realize that the farther you get up the ladder, the realization is like, dude, I am, I'm even more lost.
[RYAN]
The idea for a leader today is they be simultaneously growing their humility and their self-confidence at the same time. Now, the only way to do that is to work on yourself and it's hard to do that in isolation, man. I couldn't imagine. I couldn't imagine, even at my stage, I'm writing about this and researching it and leading a team and talking to Fortune 500 companies, I couldn't imagine doing that without a coach. I've never not had one for the last 15 years.
[TYLER]
I think, to come back and as we continue to push forward and come back and we're thinking about those organizations where, again, those leaders find themselves, where either by their own admissions, by their own volition, by whatever circumstance alone on an island and they're sitting around saying, well, I can't, I don't have a team around me, or I don't have those around me to be able to give me that insight. I think the reality that I understand is having humility and say, there are people around you, even if it's people that you work with, that will give you insight, but you have to be humble enough and vulnerable enough. And I think that's the challenge in our workplace today, is we're asking leaders instead of, hey, you need to go away and figure your stuff out, figure your stuff out in front of us, because we'll all get better.
[RYAN]
So look, I think you, there's truth to that and I think figuring those things out in the construct of a group setting is a gift. Now, if you're trying to, by the way, that's what community is so important. We talked a little bit, I think I mentioned the erosion of trust. We've seen an erosion of community and you look at where people go to foster sort of these safe connections. We've seen an erosion and commitment to the church, and I think the way we do community where we live has completely evolved. The pandemic didn't help that. So it's important for people in general, and I think precisely leaders and managers to foster some sense of community where you have that sort of support and you can grow.
They use the word vulnerability. Vulnerability is an act of courage. You have to go first. So if leaders or managers don't feel comfortable doing that in the context of their team or their organization, if it's not a safe place, and we can talk about psychological safety, cultivating that around you. That's part of what ImpactEleven is. It's a community of experts and thought leaders who connect and are on this, committed to helping each other evolve on this journey. So I'm not doing this in isolation. I'm part of a community, and I think like the old Peter Drucker quote saying, it was culture eats strategy for breakfast, and all the experts went around and quoted that for a hundred years. By the way, it's, he's right. Like you could have the best strategy in the world, but in the absence of a committed, aligned team and a culture, a purposeful, nurturing company culture to execute on it, you are going to miss the mark. My thing today is that if culture eats strategy for breakfast, community eats culture for lunch. We have to have a support system and a network around us to help us navigate the complexity of the world we're in today. I think without it we'll certainly feel a sense of isolation or disconnection and maybe even more importantly, we'll fall short of that 10 for sure. I would've without it.
[TYLER]
Well, what's, I think the big challenge that leaders, and when I say leaders, I'm talking about that chief executive officer, that person that is dictating, hey, this is what we're, we're going to return to office. I think what's happened there is there's been a lack of awareness. We talked about self-awareness, a lack of awareness to understand how the world has changed, but the drivers, what you just talked about of why people have changed, either through their own lack of community understanding how they've been educated, which has had a major impact, but now we're forced into this lack of community, and now all of a sudden we languish in this lack of community because we're remote working and instead of thinking, you need to come back in the office, the directive is, no, we need to find ways to enhance our community building. Now, that may be in the office, that may be offsite, but that's what's essential and if you're intentional about that and mandate that returning to the office may be a solution, but it's not an absolute.
[RYAN]
I completely agree. The idea today is to be flexible and don't reach behind you for a system that worked or a model or a paradigm that worked in 2018. We're in a forever changed world. So the invitation I would have to the C-Suite is ask yourself to, what are you trying to create and what are additional ways that you might be able to facilitate what you want in a forever changed world? Can you drive what the business needs and also meet the needs of the people? Remember that tension point. So the default is we've stalled as a business, we missed our earnings two quarters in a row, screw it. This is over. You don't want, if you want a job, get your back to the office. Like that's the default nature. I would say that's not a very self-aware way of, now you have a problem, this.
And by the way, I run a business. That business has to grow, and it is a challenging time right now, but the invitation is, okay what's the right path to growth in the future? To your point, the things we need to facilitate, there are other ways to think about doing it. I actually think that's why the meeting or the offsite or the retreat takes on so, and I tend a lot of it because I'm a speaker, it takes on so much more significance now that what you need to get out of that experience is more because we're not together every day. And that's okay. Technology was an, is an enabler for us to do our work in a new way. So the paradigm is shifting, and we need to be thoughtful and shift with it. I think that was a real misfire by the CEO who came out. I get where that's coming from but to me, that's not a future that's going to exist for ---
[TYLER]
I think that without aligning this, the CEO to it is a, this is what the expectation now of as executives are, and they're being driven by shareholders and that's just the, oh, if you're going to fix your problems, you just have to demand everyone to come back to the office instead of realizing, no, that's not the problem. The problem is something much different in either purpose, alignment, connected, all the things we've discussed. So the thing that I realized, and I thought about my younger sister, my younger sister is, she'll be 27, 28 this year, and like so many in her age and a little bit older, they finished their degree or their work. If I think about the last couple years, and I think about when they were in college was remote. So many graduates leave college and their last two years was online classes. They were doing things where they were remote, so if they were able to do the work there, get it done there, why then can't they do it in a workplace? To me, that's a failure on systems and leadership, not a failure on work situation or work the dynamic of how it's done. So I think that's where the crux comes here. It's not return to the office because for so many workers that's actually abnormal, consider, compared to being normal.
[RYAN]
We managed resistance to change. I think we're in the middle of a period of time where we have to recognize it's why do 70% of organizational change efforts fail? It's not because there's not smart people. It's not because it's the strategy, it's human nature. It's our psychology, our resistance, our fear and so in some respects, this is a moment where we actually have to transcend our own human nature. You talked about your growth journey. That's a journey of transcendence. You're evolving out of sort of what you've been into a new iteration of you and that's the invitation. It's actually the price of entry to lead effectively today. By the way, you could be in a leadership role leadership, which should be a sign of authentic leadership, is who's following you and who's following your vision of the future. If you have this disconnected, disengaged, frustrated workforce where 75% of the people wish they worked somewhere else, 46% of the people were looking for another job, I would argue that you're a leader by title, not proxy and you're certainly not having the impact that you desire. So that's again, look in the mirror, it starts with you.
[TYLER]
Ryan, thank you so much. I appreciate the time. Been fun to catch up, fun to discuss this, can't wait to do more. Ryan, thank you so much. I appreciate the time. Been fun to catch up, fun to discuss this. Can't wait to do more.
[RYAN]
Appreciate you and all the great work you're doing, and cheers to the future, brother. Let's go make it happen.
[TYLER]
Same to you.
[RYAN]
Thank you.
[TYLER]
As I reflect and as I step away as we're finishing this podcast, I'm thankful for the conversation Ryan has and again, even more excited about the mission that he's on, that I am on, that I am here to serve you and the other audiences that listen to these messages. There's a better way. We talked a little bit about the transformation process, the process that I transformed. I shared the Window in the Miracle back in the archives. You can listen to that episode again. But I also know this, that so often it is hard for leaders to help others around them see it, to see the need for self-awareness. There's looking in the mirror, but then there's also how can we set up windows. That's something that I do that we're going to do within the Impact Driven Workshop that help organizations set up those environments.
It's also a process through the Impact Driven Round table that I host. Don't worry, we're going to open that up again later this year in July for a new group to join. But I know this, it's through platforms like that where you force yourself to sit around a table so that way everyone can look through the window. That's how you build self-awareness. And the organizations that are actively doing that today, the leaders that are saying, nope, there's a better solution. It's not forcing people to do something. Ryan mentioned it. I've heard other guests share it too. We are in a pivotal time of change. We see organizations that are being forced to change. Some of them are doing so willingly, they're evolving, they're growing, they're improving healthy human centered organizations. Others are fighting it and know there's going to be a winner, and there's going to be a loser and ultimately, I want you to win.
I want the leader who cares about people, that wants to put people first, that wants to be impact driven. Sometimes it's realizing what insecurities, what fears, as Ryan discussed, hold us back. That's something that I'm so excited to help people work through, through either the Impact Driven Workshop or the Awaken the Leader within Workshop. Thanks for being here. If you want to learn more about either one of those, you can, excited to host the next Impact Driven Workshop in just a few days. Thanks for being here. We'll catch you next time.
