SuperLeaders Wrap-up

In This Episode

Cultivating SuperLeaders is integral to an organization’s success, but how does it happen? Listen to this special episode of The LeaderLab where we invite our SuperLeader guests back into the lab for a deeper dive into this very important topic.

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Transcript

Vanessa Tanicien, narrating: Hello, and welcome to The LeaderLab, the podcast powered by LifeLabs Learning. I'm your host and LifeLabs leadership trainer, Vanessa Tanicien. In each episode, my Labmates and I distill our findings into powerful tipping point skills. The smallest change is that tip over to make the biggest impact in the shortest time. Welcome back LeaderLab listeners, you're in for a treat today. It's our wrap up episode where we bring our guests back in for an in-depth conversation. This time to do a deep dive into the skills and tools that make SuperLeaders well, super, and to bring this conversation to a beautiful point today, we have Robleh Kirce, Abby Reider, and Massella Dukuly back on the show. Welcome back you all.

Abby Reider: Hey, so happy to be here.

Massella Dukuly: So happy to be here.

Robleh Kirce: Yeah.

Vanessa Tanicien: Yes. And I'm happy that all of you are back specifically because you covered some topics that were pretty pithy. So Robleh, you were talking about responsiveness, Abby, you were talking about celebration and I got to speak about role modeling with Massella. These topics are really front of mind for me, but I really want to pause and ground this conversation for a moment and start here. Why does being a SuperLeader matter now more than it did before? I also wanted to make sure that you're listening to my cool rhyming skills.

Robleh Kirce: Caught it. Thanks, Vanessa. I had a drum set. I think I just set it aside. For me, the world and the workplace, just continue to get more and more complex. The problems we're solving, the software that we use, how teams function to together, and SuperLeaders are those that are able to simplify that complexity and solve those problems with the teams and tools that they have.

Vanessa Tanicien: I love that. Abby, what's your take on this?

Abby Reider: Yeah, I would add to that. I just agree that the one constant here moving forward and that will continue to be consistent is change. And what we're seeing in the research is that the most successful leaders and the most successful organizations are the ones that are able to adapt in the face of consistent change. And so being a SuperLeader within that environment is just more essential today than it's ever been.

Vanessa Tanicien: Yeah, absolutely. It reminds me of something that my friends in the armed forces talk about all the time and that's a VUCA situation – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. These folks don't know what they're walking into, but they have to formulate hypotheses and get prepared for what's on the other side. And that's exactly what SuperLeaders need to also be doing. So I totally hear you on that one, Abby. And then Massella, what's your take on why SuperLeadership matters now more than ever?

Massella Dukuly: Yeah, just a plus one to everything that Robleh and Abby have already shared. One, we want to acknowledge that things are going to continue to change. We have to normalize that and normalizing that gives us the ability to really focus in on the skills that are going to matter most for successful leadership. Our leaders are going to be our influencers, if you will, they're making sure that people are supported. They have what they need. And they're also really modeling behaviors that will allow people to be doing the same thing. We want leaders in every single domain. And so when you have one SuperLeader, we have the potential to create more.

Vanessa Tanicien: I love that. So this is really about leaning into the unknown and being prepared for it, right? That's what SuperLeaders do differently. And that's why people want to be working for them and be around them. So I'm curious, thinking about the topics that you all selected, what motivated you to select what you did? Abby, I'm going to toss that on over to you.

Abby Reider: It's a great question. And it might be a little bit surprising that focusing on the good things and not just moving forward is actually what I was focusing on, but the drive to always be striving and reaching our next goal, leaves us feeling depleted and exhausted, especially when there is such consistent change. And so in order to weather that change effectively, we've got to press the pause button. We've got to stop on all levels individually for ourselves, with others, one-on-one, as well as for our teams and organizations in order to reflect on what's going well, what are the successes in the wins? So that, that can sustain us through the challenge and we can build on that for the future.

Vanessa Tanicien: Love that. So basically it's all about putting fuel in the tank, right? Like the car can't keep going, if we don't gas it up.

Robleh Kirce: Oh, don't tell Elon Musk that.

Vanessa Tanicien: Tesla, we're coming for you. One dopamine drip at a time. Robleh, you were talking about really leaning into openness. Not being defensive. What made that important for you?

Robleh Kirce: For me when I look at qualities and behaviors of leaders that stand apart, in my direct experience, this is one thing that they all have in common. They're able to hear just about anything and not take it personally, not get defensive and respond to the situation in a way that invites others to continue sharing and to build something together. I'm not forcing anyone around me to do this. It's an invitation to collectively build something. And when I think of SuperLeadership and skills that make an impact day-to-day, being responsive rather than defensive is one that I think I'll hold onto to for my whole life.

Vanessa Tanicien: I love that. And it ties perfectly to this idea of role modeling, which is what Massella was talking about. We can demonstrate that we're not defensive by role modeling that. And Massella, what makes role modeling sort of that super strength of a SuperLeader? I think yours is probably the most important of all of this.

Massella Dukuly: Yeah. So I really love the topic of role modeling. And I think it's so important because this is when we lean into, I think more heightened awareness of the type of impact and influence that we actually have on our people. And the example that I shared in our episode was just the fact that like, for example, PTO, it's all great and well, if you have a policy that's like, it's unlimited PTO. Do what you want with it. But if you don't take PTO, there's an implicit message that’s being sent to your teams, to the people that work at your company, that to be successful here, you have to be working it all the time. And I think that what's really helpful is considering how do I contribute to the cycle or the system that impacts those around me. If you don't have any insight into that, it'll make it really hard for things to stick, especially the good things.

Robleh Kirce: That reminds me of a CEO that I chatted with during my time in grad school. And he said something that just really stuck with me. He said, "If you're a leader and you're looking around and you don't like the things that you see, there are one of two possibilities. One is that you don't like yourself very much." And that's correctly to Massella's point. That we're constantly modeling this stuff. The second he said is that, "You're not really leading, somebody else is role modeling and that's the real leader in the room."

Massella Dukuly: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robleh Kirce: So I really love that point.

Massella Dukuly: It's a zinger of it. It's true.

Vanessa Tanicien: Yeah. I think what's really interesting is that people tend to not be aware of how they're impacting others in even a vicarious nature. This idea that you are creating the water that people are swimming in with you is so, so important to think about, which leads me to my next question around what can organizations do to support the creation of SuperLeaders on their team? Like everybody doubles down on high performers in those folks, but what can we do to create these folks, engineer the environments where they're more likely to grow?

Massella Dukuly: I think the first thing is pausing to ask ourselves, if our leaders actually have the resources to truly be able to support their teams? I think one of the things that prevents people from being a SuperLeader is that, there are tons of great intentions and people want to do well by those that they're managing. It's very rare that I meet managers who are just like complete garbage, who are like screw these people. I don't care. Often they want to help, but maybe they're on bandwidth. Maybe they're like, I don't even know how to have this conversation. Maybe they feel like if they do have a conversation, their leadership team isn't actually going to back them or support them. And that's just not fun. So I think a real question is, do these people have the skills to actually do their job? Well, do they have the time?

Massella Dukuly: And I know sometimes we cannot give people time. I understand we're busy there's meetings, but even just like a, Hey at the end of the day, we want you to prioritize your people. We want you to feel like you can make space for them. We want you to say, Hey, I'm not going to go to this meeting because I need to make sure that this person is okay. That is something that I think is really powerful. The really explicit conversation around giving your leaders the support that they need, whether that be a training, you can come to us at LifeLabs. Or if it's, just -

Robleh Kirce: Subtle.

Massella Dukuly: I'm not so subtle come to us, you know what you should do? No, but it's whatever it is, maybe it is resources. Maybe it's providing them with, a budget to go and learn these skills elsewhere, outside of on the job. But if people don't have that, they're not going to do it. I'd also say beyond things like learning dollars and learning funds, actually making it really clear that people can spend their time this way. I've heard from so many companies in the past year and really for a long time, they're like, yeah. I know I have a thousand dollars to spend a year, but I don't have the time to prioritize it. That's a really dangerous thing. So it comes back to this modeling.

Vanessa Tanicien: Yeah. And I think an interesting subject about what you're mentioning, Massella, is there's this element of psychological safety in there. And Abby, this is your expertise. Understanding this and being able to talk others through it. How can we, aside from creating time and space, create psychological safety deep in the workplace, what are some of the things that we can do?

Abby Reider: Yeah. Something I'm super passionate about as you know, one of the things that I think is most important for leaders to be able to do is to see and make space for people to be their full selves. So appreciating, asking, getting to know people on a human level, to whatever extent others feel comfortable, there's something we talk about in our Behaviors of Inclusion workshop called equal phatics.

Abby Reider: And phatic communication is just a fancy way to talk about small talk. And often we're so busy that we think, oh, small talk is a waste of time. But small talk is not small. It's what signal sets to other people that we see them and that we care about them. So in our one-on-ones spending time to actually get to know people, it's funny when Massella was just talking, I was just thinking about our workshop people development, because I literally was just teaching this and thinking about what do people like working on, what do they want to grow and get better at? Helping people understand that, and having those conversations shows care as a manager and as a leader, demonstrating that care is just so important and it's really connected with engagement.

Vanessa Tanicien: So if I'm hearing this correctly, it's not only just making sure people get things done, but we're checking in before we're checking on. This idea that I want to get to know you as a human and then use that information to make your job better. And makes such a difference that we are actually paying attention to the folks around us. So we can, again, engineer that environment of safety and learning, of creating a learning orientation, which we keep coming back to again and again and again. Robleh, you've been a little quiet on this particular question. I'm curious, what's bubbling around in your brain?

Robleh Kirce: Now I'm thinking about Busta Rhymes Bubbling, which I don't think is exactly what you wanted me to do, but thinking about what can organizations do to create space for SuperLeaders to emerge. And that's how I would think about it. You're kind of hearing too, I think big topics here from Abby and Massella, one is creating the conditions inside of the organization for the right things to arise. And those are things like psychological safety, motivation, maybe accountability to pick up some of these behaviors that are important. And the second is make sure they're picking up the right skills.

Vanessa Tanicien: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robleh Kirce: Now, I've worked with enough organizations to know that there's a certain pride that comes from recreating one's own wheel, but there's been so much research spent looking at leadership and things largely fall into two big buckets. Timothy Judge did a meta-analysis looking at several dozens of studies looking at leadership behaviors. It's a bucket one is consideration. It's basically taking into consideration the individuals that are on the team. And then the second is structure. Creating the right processes that work for teams and the organization. Those are the general big buckets. But beyond that, and I think maybe the magic of LifeLabs is breaking it down to the actual skills that people do day-to-day. So we talked about not being defensive, and the ability to check in on other people.

Vanessa Tanicien: Thank you all for chiming in on that one. And I'm sure people are furiously scribbling notes down. I know that every time I'm chatting with you all, if I really want to nail this, it's about creating psychological safety, this space, and then also providing the support to learn these things. SuperLeaders just don't come out of thin air. It's something that we have to be deliberate, intentional, and strategic about.

Abby Reider: I would just add one more thing too given what Massella's topic was, role modeling. If we're really intent on creating SuperLeaders in our organizations, we've got to be really intentional about what we're role modeling, and what being a SuperLeader looks like.

Vanessa Tanicien: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Abby Reider: It all starts at the top in terms of the culture and the messages that we're sending through our behavior.

Vanessa Tanicien: Yeah. There's this idea. And its leaders honestly have a disproportionate amount of impact on folks' experience in the workplace. So keeping a keen eye on that leads me to my next question here. What impact are organizations seeing when they employ SuperLeaders? What actually changes when you have SuperLeaders on your team?

Massella Dukuly: I think people's day. So retention, people are generally happier and it doesn't mean that, it's a stroll in the park, humans are humans. And I think one thing that's important to consider, especially when it comes to engagement is the fact that you can't expect somebody to be engaged all of the time. But what's really powerful about a SuperLeader is that this is someone who's going to have the wherewithal, the skillset, the ability to check in and see, what does this person need right now?

Massella Dukuly: We talk about this in our effective one-on-ones workshop, where it's like, as much as they care about strategy or say that they care about strategy, people will want you to focus on the task at hand, what's on the table. And SuperLeader is really great at thinking about other people's thinking, where are they? How can I support them? How do we make this sustainable? And it's really powerful because again, to the point we've been making, throughout this entire conversation, create SuperLeaders, create additional SuperLeaders within your organization even if their titles are not leaders, so to speak, we're all leaders of our own domain. And this is about ensuring that people understand their own locus of power, their locus of control.

Abby Reider: I will say that Massella is actually my Role Sponsor at LifeLabs, which essentially means she's my manager. And I have legitimately seen her employ these skills with our 1-1s. Two of the top predictors of engagement for folks are, do they feel that their manager cares about them as a human? And do they feel they're learning and growing?

Massella Dukuly: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Abby Reider: And this is what a SuperLeader is able to do in their conversations with their folks. And Massella does this with me. I feel like she really cares about me. And I feel like she is very much invested in helping me grow and develop.

Vanessa Tanicien: I love that. And I wonder what bonus points Massella is going to give you for dropping that on the podcast?

Massella Dukuly: I did not. I did not pay her.

Vanessa Tanicien: No, but honestly, Massella, you have been a leader in a lot of folks' life. We won't make this Massella show, even though it's easy to do, I say all the time because of you, I'm here in big and small ways, but Robleh, what impacts are you seeing in organizations that employ SuperLeaders?

Robleh Kirce: The impact Massella has had on my life is a...

Massella Dukuly: Come on, come on.

Robleh Kirce: Yeah. You get better retention, you get better engagement and you get better productivity. Bruce of Ohio did a study looking at the impact of losing a CEO on publicly traded companies. So you can literally see the dollars that strong leadership brings. It's something that's very much measurable. That's also measurable at the team level. You can see it even in small teams like surgery teams. This is stuff that matters both in terms of our own quality of life, but also for the performance of the organization.

Vanessa Tanicien: Yeah. Shout out to Tania Luna. She's our Co-CEO at LifeLabs. And she's definitely the type of leader that I would follow into battle. So Tania, if you're listening, you are also a SuperLeader too.

Robleh Kirce: Yeah. And Tania, the impact you've had on my life…

Massella Dukuly: Plus mine, this can be The Tania Luna Show.

Vanessa Tanicien: Absolutely. So I guess one of my final questions beginning to wrap up this conversation is thinking from the shoes of a SuperLeader. I'm a person who is looking to create this psychological safety, decrease anxiety on my team. What are the things that I need to be thinking about in the future? We know a couple of behavioral units that we've covered on the show, but like, what are the things that you see coming up in this new hybrid environment that SuperLeaders need to take into account?

Abby Reider: One thing I'll note is just the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And we're seeing that more now than ever. But there's a long way to go. It's a lot more than just talking. And so I think that's going to be something that differentiates SuperLeaders moving forward, is that actually educating themselves and making a real priority from the top down in an organization.

Massella Dukuly: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Vanessa Tanicien: So making sure that we have diverse teams, so that way we can strategize in a different way, innovate in a different way, especially since we're going to be working from a distance, whether we're going to be co-located in office or some people are going to be in different spaces, I think people often think diversity, equity, inclusion is about a person's appearance. But what I love to say is that diversity is not a person. It describes a group. And SuperLeaders taking the time to really lean into that, create the conditions where those diverse perspectives actually can show up to your point Abby, I think is absolutely paramount for the future. Robleh...

Robleh Kirce: For me, a lot of my career is just about developing leaders. And that is maybe a meta answer to this question, but I just want to acknowledge that 70, maybe even 80% of development happens on the job via experience. So SuperLeaders are those that are willing to acknowledge that and step into new experiences, feeling like they could be more prepared. Of course, that's most situations most of the time in our life, but don't let that hold you back from picking up those experiences that will make you and your teams better in the future.

Vanessa Tanicien: Yeah. It reminds me of Molly Graham's essay, "Give Away Your Legos." As businesses scale, we need to make sure that the people that we're leading can also grow with us. That we can eventually parse out some of the strategy, the projects that we're working on and trust that there's going to be a new legion of SuperLeaders underneath us. And that's also a subtext of what I'm hearing you say, Roble.

Robleh Kirce: Yeah. And leading from the rear, Kofi Annan, as a UN leader who really advocated from letting the most nimble amongst you go out up front and steer from the back. And I think that works just as well. So develop experiences, develop your own skills, learn things from those around you. It can go a long way.

Massella Dukuly: I think one thing I'd add to all of this, so I'll start with the diversity, equity and inclusion, and really tie that to what Robleh just shared around, leading from the rear. We have to acknowledge the fact that for the past year and a half, people have been self-managing, people have been figuring out whatever it is that they need to figure out in order to work well and take care of themselves and their family and their friends, and try not to get ill, whatever it is. And so there is going to be a real need to step back, listen, and allow people to also SuperLead for themselves to pause and say, well, what do I need in order to be successful and productive here? And for us to not be prescribing what we think it needs to be, getting their voices into the conversation.

Massella Dukuly: And when we think about real inclusion, real belonging, it's not assuming that what works for one person works for all. So really stepping away from this. We've got representation, but what does it actually mean for so and so to be, a mom who happens to be a mom of color on this team, who also happens to maybe deal with some level of anxiety or stress, or someone who's going through some sort of life change who happens to be in a situation where they're living with, X, Y, Z people.

Massella Dukuly: And I understand, of course there are boundaries that we have at work. This is about pausing, co-creating, and considering that you didn't need to be watching these people for them to do whatever work they've done in the past year. So let them be part of the process as we depict what the future looks like.

Vanessa Tanicien: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robleh Kirce: Oh, so well said.

Vanessa Tanicien: What a word?

Robleh Kirce: I wish that, instead of hearing my own voice in my head, I heard Massella's voice. Just telling me what to say out loud. I think it'd be a lot better.

Massella Dukuly: I hear Massella's voice and the impact that she has on me.

Vanessa Tanicien: Are there any final thoughts on SuperLeadership that you would like to leave listeners with?

Abby Reider: Be constantly curious, and be willing to reinvent the wheel, while also knowing that there's a lot of good that's been done. So when I've been talking about, building on our wins and celebrating our wins, what's worked well? I was recently listening to a podcast about cultural renovation versus transformation and renovation. I love that idea that this is all about taking the good and iterating to keep that going.

Vanessa Tanicien: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Like how stellar of an idea is that? We're all always talking about cultural transformation. We want to just overhaul the whole thing. And that really just kicks away the fact that there's lots of good, that a lot of cultures have embedded within them. So just like when you find an old house that has really good bones, but you just want to gussy it up, thinking about that with your culture at your organization and figuring out how can I keep the good brush away a little bit of the bad and then optimize it, make it perfect for the folks who are living in that home.

Abby Reider: Yeah. And that just resonates so much with building on the wins. Really building on what's going well.

Massella Dukuly: If there's something that I can leave people with, it's really just a reminder that we are not going back to anything. I keep seeing all over LinkedIn and wherever else, I'm assuming everybody else as well. Going back to work. We've been working. I don't know about all of you, but I feel I've been working in fact more than maybe I've ever worked before. And it's just important that we stop hyper focusing on like the going back to, and instead to this point of cultural renovation, really think about what we're trying to build ahead. Imagine to the analogy of having a home, you like the bone's instructor, but sitting there and agonizing over how much you hate the current kitchen, make a new kitchen. We have space for that.

Vanessa Tanicien: Robleh, final thoughts.

Robleh Kirce: When I was a kid, my parents ingrained in me to leave things a little bit better than I found them. And I think that's one of those lessons that leaders have to take to heart and expand that sense of responsibility moment by moment, and group by group. So asking yourself, what's the impact that you're having on those folks? And are you leaving things just a little bit better than you found them?

Vanessa Tanicien: All right. So unfortunately we have to wrap up the wrap up and we have learned so much around what it takes to take SuperLeaders into the future and to grow them within our organization. This idea that we want to be able to invest in time, resources, skills, and then also recognizing that almost everybody is a SuperLeader because we've been self-managing for a really long time at this point over a year. And with that, I want to thank each and every one of you for being on the show today. Thank you all.

Robleh Kirce: Hey, thanks Vanessa.

Abby Reider: Thanks Vanessa.

Massella Dukuly: Thanks V. So good to be here.

Vanessa Tanicien: And that's a wrap of another episode of the LeaderLab. Make sure to subscribe and share this with at least one other person so we can all be SuperLeaders. It's pretty awesome. The LeaderLab is executive produced and hosted by me, Vanessa Tanicien. Mead James is our senior producer and Alana Burman is our director and editor. If you'd like to hang out with us on social, go ahead and find us on LinkedIn at LifeLabs Learning, and on Twitter at LifeLabs Learn. To bring training to your team, head on over to lifelabslearning.com. See you in the lab soon.