Latest / Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight / What Got You Here, Won't Get You There

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What Got You Here, Won't Get You There · Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight

• 0:17
  Find yourself in.
• 0:23
  I am Nola Simon, and this is the Hope and Possibilities podcast.
• 0:27
  One concept that I'd like to talk about is the whole theory of what
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  got you here won't get you there.
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  It actually comes from Marshall Goldsmith and he may have been inspired by somebody
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  else, but that's where I know it from.
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  And so basically the concept is whatever got you to whatever level of success you
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  have currently isn't the thing that's going to get you where you want to be.
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  So often this comes up when people get to a certain level in their career
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  and then they move into leadership or management, whatever got them to the
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  peak level of success that got them.
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  That promotion to leadership or management is not the thing that's actually going to
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  be make them successful in that new role.
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  A lot of times individual contributors have to actually let go of.
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  The things that made them very successful in that individual contributor role
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  and step away from those skills and abilities and prioritize other things.
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  The attention to detail, the, maximization of effort all of that isn't as
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  needed in a leadership role because.
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  You are paying attention to different types of details.
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  You're looking at things from a different perspective.
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  A lot of times you have to let people figure things out themselves and
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  you are not the person in control.
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  But you have to.
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  Strategically support.
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  A lot of times parenting is the best metaphor for leadership
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  and management, right?
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  Particularly management, you are responsible for the overall.
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  Success of the project, but you are not the person doing the work.
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  You're just accountable for what's going on, right?
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  So as a parent, you wanna make sure that your kids are, healthy, they're fed,
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  they're doing their homework, they're safe, they're developing themselves.
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  They're fed, they're clean, and.
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  They're developing all kinds of skills at different levels.
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  They're making friends.
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  They're supporting their emotional health, their mental health, as well as their
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  physical health at the end of the day.
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  I remember saying this to my husband, once your kids are alive, that's
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  about all we can ask for today.
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  They're fed, they're healthy, nobody's dead.
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  Yay me.
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  My kids just turned 18 and 20, and I perceive that to be my success.
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  Everybody made it to adulthood.
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  That's something my mother used to say to me is the goal of
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  a parent is to raise adults.
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  So if you've raised adults as a parent, you've achieved your goal.
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  It's a long term project.
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  So that's the sort of metaphor that I applied to leadership and management
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  is you are not the person in control.
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  You're not living their lives, but you are.
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  Supporting them in their journey to become independent adults.
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  And a lot of times that's the same as work, right?
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  You are working on a project, but you are not the person doing the work.
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  You're just enabling, you're facilitating the work to be done.
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  You are moving.
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  Obstacles out of the way.
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  You're negotiating better circumstances and resources for the team that will
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  enable them to have success, right?
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  So if you think about it it's a really good metaphor for what's going on in
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  the world of work right now, right?
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  Nobody exactly knows how AI is going to actually.
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  Come in and change things, whether it's going to be bad,
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  whether it's gonna be good.
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  We all have opinions on what that's going to look like, but at the end
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  of the day, if you are thinking about it simply from a perspective of what
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  got me here won't necessarily got, get me there, that kind of narrows it
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  down because AI didn't exist before.
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  So it wasn't what got you to this level of success.
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  Success, so you have to consider.
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  What's going to get me to where I want to be in the future?
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  It's not that your past success isn't valuable, but legitimately it's not
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  going to be the only thing that's going to carry your career through to the next
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  stage that you want to move towards.
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  And I, I saw this actually even when I was doing the deep research
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  into Liam Payne in one direction.
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  So Liam was always a strong singer.
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  That was his main skill and ability.
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  He was naturally gifted.
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  He, even when they started, when they were young teenagers, he
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  was an incredible singer, but he also brought this ability to.
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  Melt and to fit in and cover when other people weren't
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  necessarily having the best vocals.
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  So it made him actually ideal within a group because he
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  could sing almost anything.
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  He had an extremely wide range.
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  He could sing falsetto, he could sing high notes.
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  He could, but he could also do really deep notes.
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  And he had that mellow ability to harmonize with anyone.
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  And it really, in lots of ways, he was the glue in the harmonies.
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  The thing about Liam, he was also very vocal and he was in lots
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  of ways, especially early on, the spokesperson for the group.
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  If you watched lots and lots of interviews, especially early on, Liam
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  was often the person who spoke first, who's often the person who's sang first.
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  He took that level of responsibility and initiative.
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  And that carried him through an awful lot of the group dynamic, but it actually
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  became problematic later on because the others grew in their skills and abilities
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  and, the dynamics of the group changed.
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  So they didn't necessarily need Liam to be the leader in all aspects
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  of how the group was performing.
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  Both, in interviews and professionally on the stage.
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  So that ability of, adjusting what got you here won't get you there.
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  That's something I think that Liam struggled with.
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  If I was analyzing his career, which I did, he very much,
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  although he was very creative and inventive and changed a lot of things
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  because he could sing almost anything.
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  He was very much into changing sound and genre and experimenting in different ways.
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  His playbook of how he conducted himself stayed pretty similar all along the way.
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  He, showed up.
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  He was responsible.
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  He, again, was very vocal.
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  He voiced his opinions an awful lot.
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  He did lots of interviews.
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  He was very active on social media.
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  I'm going to counter that, that actually, especially when he carried that through
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  into his solo career, that did not work well for him because it made him
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  a target in lots of ways, and there was nobody else to actually balance.
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  And I think that he might say so he was incredibly available and I think that in
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  retrospect, looking at how his life and his career worked out, he would've been.
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  Better May speaking less and letting the music stand for itself
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  because it did stand for itself.
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  His solo work was actually incredible.
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  Where he actually got into some problems I think is.
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  Because he said so much.
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  There was so much to analyze.
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  And the more you say, the more you make yourself a target to certain people
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  who have nothing better to do, but except analyze everything that you say.
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  So strategically, I think if he had been able to adjust his playbook
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  and how he interacted and how he presented himself he would've had.
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  A better experience now would've, could've shoulda up.
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  There's no way to know for sure.
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  But that metaphor of, what got you there won't necessarily get you there, I think
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  really played out through it Liam's life.
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  And there were other factors as well, like tall Poppy syndrome.
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  One Direction was incredibly successful and Liam was a big part of that.
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  But the way the world works in terms of tall poppy syndrome is when people
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  have that level of incredible success, there's certain personalities in the
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  world that want to take you down a peg.
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  And the way that they do that is to undermine your
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  credibility and your success.
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  And so Liam's often engaged in defending what he had managed
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  to do with One Direction and.
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  That again is totally understandable, but it was detrimental to him, right?
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  So what I'd ask you to do is really consider how this plays out in your life.
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  You're not a pop star, you're not, selling at the top 1% of the music industry,
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  but it plays out in everybody's lives.
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  How do you adjust and adapt from what made you
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  comfortable?
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  What made you happy?
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  What made you successful?
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  However you define success, how do you adapt and change that?
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  So for example, I'm looking at that with my work right now.
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  I founded my consulting business because I saw an opportunity.
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  To talk about the way that I had developed hybrid remote within my own
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  career and adapted it so that I could be a more present parent for my girls.
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  My girls were what?
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  Six and three when I first started advocating for work from home because I
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  really didn't have a whole lot of family support or daycare reliable daycare.
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  And so that's why I started advocating for that flexibility because I
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  had a four hour commute and I was seeing my kids one hour a day.
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  Now my kids are now 18 and 20.
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  I don't need daycare.
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  I haven't needed daycare for a good 10 years.
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  But they're also not living at home, right?
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  So I have to consider that, although I may believe.
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  And everything that I read and research indicates to me that
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  flexibility will be the future.
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  It's better for caregivers.
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  It's better for anybody who's disabled.
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  It's better for integration of work and life.
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  It benefits.
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  Everybody, even people who don't need any type of accommodation in their
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  lives because you just have more freedom and autonomy to do the things
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  that are more important in your life.
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  And the businesses do matter as well too, right?
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  You don't have that fixed capital cost associated with real
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  estate if you can get that away.
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  So automatically you have the ability to redirect resources.
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  To different areas of your business that can help leverage your success.
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  In terms of how I work, I've always been the type of leader.
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  Who teaches by role modeling?
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  I have this thing about actual teaching.
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  I never wanted to be a teacher.
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  I took training courses and I realized that I didn't actually want to teach or
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  be involved in learning and development.
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  It's not that those things aren't good to do.
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  I'm very glad that there are people who can do them, but
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  that's not the way that I.
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  Communicate best.
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  It's not the way that I inspire best.
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  I am not very good at repetitive teaching.
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  I'm not good at reinforcing messages.
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  What I am good at is role modeling, right?
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  So I see something that I think that is valuable to do and I. Take my own
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  advice, leverage it, and then share what worked, what didn't work, what
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  has a possibility of being tweaked.
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  And then I go from there, right?
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  And so that is really the way that I. Developed my whole work from
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  home when I was working corporate.
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  But it's also how I developed my business as well too.
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  And so that's really how I got media attention.
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  That's really how I've developed my podcast.
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  It's that role modeling.
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  So now that I don't actually need to be present for my children,
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  how does that change my work and what do I want to role model?
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  And how do I best share my skills and abilities so that I am useful
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  and sharing something that's going to be inspiring both to myself and
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  to the people that I work with.
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  And I don't know that hybrid remote is really where I need
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  to be right at the moment.
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  So I am thinking that I'm going to be customizing how I do my consulting work.
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  It's not that I'm going to abandon that.
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  Right at the moment I've always found that hybrid, like flexibility,
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  hybrid, remote work from anywhere, work from home, whatever you wanna
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  call it goes in peaks and valleys.
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  And when you've got a valley where the economy is not doing well,
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  where employers feel that they're in control at its employer's
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  market and they can operate from.
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  A perspective of it's my way or the highway, and they're using that
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  fear to inspire and control their workforces and flexibility is that.
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  A minimum where they're trying to go that route where they're actually
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  impeding people from having that flexibility and they're requesting
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  and demanding and mandating that people come back to the office.
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  It's happening throughout Canada, the big banks, insurance companies federal
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  government, provincial governments.
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  All of that is really based on the fact that.
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  A lot of these companies have too many, too much staff.
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  A lot of this, these companies, especially government, have a lot
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  of people with a lot of tenure.
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  So that means severance would be really expensive.
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  And I'm not saying it's going for everybody, but there's an instinct to
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  try to mandate to bring people back to the office to force a decision.
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  Even if that's really early retirement.
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  Maybe that's, I'm going to start my own business so that I have the flexibility
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  that I need because I create it.
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  Or maybe that's I'm going to accommodate this mandate because I
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  have no choice, and see how that goes.
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  So personally, I've been there.
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  I a mandate in 2013 meant that I had to go back to the office.
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  I actually had to go back to the office with a day's notice because
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  they canceled the program and.
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  I was on medical I had broken my foot and so I really had to go back to
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  the office because my medical leave got canceled, and they basically
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  said either I show up or I get fired.
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  So with a day's notice, I had to go back.
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  Which was awesome.
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  So I've been there.
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  You have no choice except to comply with a mandate unless you
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  actually want to lose your job.
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  And without that mandate, I wouldn't have actually started this work.
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  So mandates, I don't respect them, I don't believe in them.
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  But if you are forced to comply with one, what you have to look at is
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  what are you gonna learn from the experience and where can it lead you.
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  So that's again, what got you there to where you are right now won't
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  necessarily be what gets you to where you wanna be, but that path may not be
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  what you expect it to be with everything that's changing in the world of work.
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  So the world is scary right now.
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  There's lots of things going on that nobody ever really planned for, expected.
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  Even from a demographics perspective, people are living
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  longer, people are having fewer babies, lots of things are changing.
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  How do you plan for it?
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  How do you adapt to it?
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  What do you want your life to be and what do you want your
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  work to be to support that life?
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  And that's really where you have to get that clarity and that clarity may
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  come as you work through this process.
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  And that's what I'm doing at the moment as well too.
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  So I'd love to hear your perceptions about what playbooks hold you back and what
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  you think that you might have to drop in order to be more successful in the future.
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  And for me, I'm thinking I have to move on from hybrid remote.
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  So that opportunity may still be something that I come back to
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  because once the cycle changes and it becomes more flexible again, which,
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  honestly it did after my mandate.
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  It was about a year where we started to go back to it.
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  But you have to repair broken trust.
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  You have to assess, how policy works, how those interactions work what the
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  engagement level is, how you demonstrate respect for people who made different
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  choices throughout the whole mandate.
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  There's a lot of repair work that might have to do, and that can be interesting.
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  So it may be that what I do is, I still have it on the books, but it's more.
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  Assess where you are, assess what's working, what's not working, assess the
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  impact on trust, leadership, management and how that all combines with the changes
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  that are being brought also by AI and the different interactions of different
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  generations within the workforce.
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  Because we've got five different generations who are working and often
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  people are working longer and later.
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  Than they ever have before.
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  So all of that, it's like a tsunami of change that's not gonna go away.
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  That's maybe where, that's something that I explore when people are in
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  the mindset to walk away from that control and really look at how you
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  move forward with flexibility and.
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  The same things that would've made you a really good leader and manager
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  during the pandemic, that knowledge management, that trust all of that
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  is gonna help you adapt to AI in the future of work as well too, right?
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  So it's seizing the opportunity that you see to actually make an impact.
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  And that's really what I'm asking you to look at anyways.
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  I'd love to hear from you.
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  Thanks for joining.
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  Bye.
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  Find yourself in.