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Design Thinking for Leadership Development · Humanity Working

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: Almost everyone in any large organization is going to have a new manager that doesn't have a clue, and you kind of throw them to the wolves and hope they do well.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: But you can do better than that by equipping them with design thinking and showing them how to tap into that experience that you surround them with.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hi everyone.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: In today's episode, Paul chats with Karen Ziggler, who's the founder of Design for Innovation, a consulting organization that teaches executives the principles of design thinking as a leadership practice.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Karen focuses on designing innovative solutions to pain points in ways that develop the leadership bench of an organization.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's a really interesting discussion, and you don't have to know anything about design thinking to enjoy it.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Karen and Paul discuss how leadership is evolving from a role to a set of skills, and how those skills can be developed through rigorous approaches like design thinking.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: We've included some important links from Karen in the show notes.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: This podcast is brought to you by Billion Minds.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Billion Minds helps companies be ready for the future of work by developing adaptable, resilient employees.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: You can learn more about them on LinkedIn or by visiting billionminds.com.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if you like this episode, like us and review us on your favorite podcast app.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: All right, let's get going.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I am here today with Karen Ziegler.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Karen teaches executives the principles of design thinking as a leadership practice, uh, really focused on designing innovative solutions to pain points in ways that develops the leadership bench of an organization, creates an engaging employee experience, positively impacts the customer experience, and has a sustainable impact on financial performance.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Karen, I've known for some time now.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: She's a frequent speaker online in workshops, conferences.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: You've been on other great podcasts, including your own.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've been a guest on yours, Karen.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and so it's really centered around a lot of the topics that she talks about are around the intersection of something called design thinking and leadership.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, don't worry if you don't know what design thinking is, we're gonna get into the specifics of that, uh, of that today, and I think it's gonna be very interesting.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: In 2022, Karen was named in the Thousand LinkedIn Women Who Inspired to the work on innovative leadership.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome to the podcast, Karen.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, thanks so much for having me, Paul.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's always great to hang out with you.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: All right, well, let's dive right in.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mentioned that we're gonna be talking today about design thinking as a leadership practice.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's start with the first part of that, design thinking.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that um, you know, I I kind of hang out in this community a bit, and uh, and I basically you you see two categories of people.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: One where you say design thinking and they go, oh yeah.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then you see another group of people where you say design thinking and they go Making furniture?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: So uh could you talk a little bit about design thinking, kind of talk about the fields that you know, who are the groups of people who really know what this stuff is, and uh and then uh and anything you want to do to help people understand really a little bit more what the practice is about.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, design thinking uh to me in its simplest form is a creative problem solving process.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: And design thinking has been around for decades, I think in the 50s, maybe sooner.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: Basically, as soon as we started coming off the farm and into the factories and we started producing widgets, design thinking was starting to evolve because of the problems associated with it.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so design thinking has evolved over time back in those days when we were primarily product driven.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: Design thinking was all about creating a better widget, making a better product.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: How can we design it to sell, to meet the customers' needs?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: And as we evolved and we became more service oriented, design thinking evolved as well.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: And it became a process for divide just designing better services.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: And even as that's beginning to transform and we've come into this age of experience where our customers are first and foremost, the employees are going, hey, wait a minute, there's a lot that could be improved in our experience, and we're the ones serving the customers.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_02: So it's evolved into a way to innovate not only the products and services the companies offer, but the processes and uh teams and organizational structures and kind of anything you can name inside the organization that might need improving.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's that's where I've always utilized it in a as a leadership practice in in engaging the team and making everything most not only efficient but effective for the people involved.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: And then obviously that equates to um improved performance and more sustainable of performance.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's like some of these things that are that we think of in some cases as new or different, so many of them have like much longer histories than you would uh you would think of otherwise.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think of something like Kanban, for example.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: So Kanban started with uh sorting uh sorting boxes and sorting trays in in the 1940s, I think, something along those lines.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and it's that classic thing of innovation, which is innovation is not just about the idea itself or the concept itself, but it's about applying that idea or applying that concept to a different area.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so to your point, we've seen this this uh evolution as we say, okay, here's where it would be helpful here, here's that would be helpful here.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um let's make it real though using some kind of an actionable example.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: So give me an give me an example of something that people, I don't know, just just do, and then and where they where you might uh put uh put a design thinking lens on an action that somebody might perform.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'll I'll share from one of my earliest experiences using it more intuitively than trained.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't trained until many years later in the process, but I I it was kind of the I called I called it at the time the track that my brain ran on, but um, so I was doing it more intuitively than in the full scope of what design training will provide you.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um I was a brand new manager, fresh out of college, never managed a person in my life.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I got put in charge of a retail bank with a new team.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um not only was it me, me being new to management, they being new to being on a team, we were also a brand new location, so we didn't have dollar one in deposits in our bank.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: And um by using the process, we ended up winning the sales award that year, recognized as the best team in the district and all sorts of things.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I was clueless.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I really was, but it was through tapping into engaging with the employees with empathy, uh, but because they did surround me with some great experience and people that had been in banking and been in different locations a long time, I was able to tap into their experience, I was able to tap into their creative potential.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: And we just we just did what, you know, design thinking loves to preach, and that's experimentation, ideation.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: We just tried one thing after another and it moved us along.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: And it was very fun to do as well.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I think, you know, for leaders listening to this, almost everyone in any large organization is going to have a new manager that doesn't have a clue, and you kind of throw them to the wolves and hope they do well.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: But you can do better than that by equipping them with design thinking um and showing them how to tap into that experience that you surround them with.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, sometimes when I explain this um anecdote anecdotally to people, um one of the things I talk about is is is almost like the concept of thinking about thinking, um, which is something that that many of us don't do.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, many of the things that we can sort of get by with doing naturally, um we don't put any thought into whatsoever.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um and if you take a look, for example, and an example that I that I often use with people is um runners.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So we can all like if we've got two legs and and you know our heart can stand it, we can all kind of like break out in a jog.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um and to each of us that is sort of running.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you look at the different if if you were to actually look at say me running and compare me running with, let's say, an Olympic 800-meter runner, those two things would look quite different.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the reality is that the 800-meter running, as well as being much more physically fit than me, there's actually a lot of um thinking about form and how you do it and how you go about the activity of running.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's it's kind of a human condition in many cases to uh take uh to take these things that we can sort of do naturally and think that that's the that's the end of the equation, the end of the equation.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas in reality, with just a little bit more, a little bit more structure about it, a little bit more process about it, a willingness in some cases to just slow everything down and start thinking about um the elements that we have to consider.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like the time, like displaying empathy, for example, takes time, right?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So um like allowing that time and allowing that space to happen, that's when very significant results can be can be achieved.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm my hope is that you know, through our discussion today, we'll persuade people to just if they do nothing else, even if they don't like pick up a book on design thinking or spend some uh or spend some time in one of your classes, at the very least, they're like going, okay, well, actually just taking a step back and thinking about whether I've got the basis covered in terms of how I'm thinking about things.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And am I, to use your example of empathy, am I am I thinking about how my colleagues uh or my employees are thinking about this?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Am I thinking about how my customers are thinking about this?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And am I communicating with them in such a way so that I can figure those things out?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Those are simple things that many of us leave because we just we're we're so instinctive in how we do things.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: We don't even think we could be doing this better than the way in which we're doing it already.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um well, you know, I agree with you.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: And just like design thinking has had its own evolution from products to services now to internal innovation, I think anyone that picks up design thinking as a process is gonna find that they're gonna have their own evolution too.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: Because I was a, you know, a know-it-all brat at the time that I started managing people at 23.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I can tell you I was not that empathetic, even though I knew how to listen and knew how to tap into their experience and their potential.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: But having practiced it all these years, I'm much more empathetic than I ever have been.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: It really to say it's a process is just one level of it.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: It actually is a skill.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: And just like any skill, it gets better over time with practice.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I can say, not going for the degree until much later in life when I discovered that was kind of how my brain was naturally wired, that even in taking the degree, I was like, oh wow, that's what went wrong here and here, because I didn't know this piece and this piece.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_02: So um it's it's really it's very transformational, in my opinion.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: Every step of it has its own transformation, but the thing as a whole, and the more you practice it, can really be transforming, both personally and on a team and organizational level.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's fascinating.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So ostensibly, um what you're suggesting is that just just the practice, the repeated practice, is ostensibly changing the way in which you you are thinking on a day-to-day basis.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we've yeah, we've certainly seen that as well.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh it it it fits into this overall concept of practice is a huge piece of skill development.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just um reading a book and being done, right?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's yeah, it's your day-to-day practice that actually changes the behavior.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: It starts to change really kind of the way your brain is wired so that you're doing things naturally differently every time.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and it's like the runner, they're not they're not a marathon runner the first time they lace up their sneakers, right?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: They get out there and practice every day and learn to breathe better, posture better.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's all these things.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm no runner, so I can't keep telling you.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: But I know that there are things that they are adjusting all the time to get better at it.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: And just, you know, you mentioned to think differently over time.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: Think of any organization that is struggling, it's because they're stuck in the way that they think.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: There's probably not an organization out there that doesn't need a catalyst for starting to think differently.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I can't think I'm a little biased, but of a better catalyst for thinking differently than design thinking.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and that actually brings us neatly on to my next question, I think, which is we've talked about the concept.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um you obviously believe this has particular relevance for leaders.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: So talk to me about why that why that is.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'd also be curious as to why it is not, in your opinion, much more common parlance among leaders at this point.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, the first question, why why it's conducive to leaders.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um one, especially since the pandemic, and even before, I think the the pandemic just opened our awareness to it more clearly that we are surrounded by issues that need to be dealt with.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: Where you know, people pivoted so much during the pandemic that they were running around in circles getting nowhere.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it's that level of intensity with issues to be solved that leaders have to begin to think differently.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh otherwise, just as it happened, uh it wears people out, and you have the great resignation and everything else that's followed it.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um people are not machines and um they can't pivot at that speed and not break down.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so that's one of the reasons why leaders need it.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: And your second question again, refer refreshment.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you why do you feel it's not been more common parlance traditionally among leaders?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: So you hear you kind of hear subsets, right?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: You that you you hear terms about you know terms like seventh leadership or authentic leadership, sometimes even empathetic leadership and so on.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: But you're but but this concept of design thinking for leaders um is not you know, if we if we were to if we were at a conference of CEOs right now, it wouldn't be it wouldn't be the first thing when there wouldn't even be like large scale awareness.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you why do you think that's not it's not broken through yet in terms of the leadership community and and the way that it should?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, um we talked a little bit about this earlier this week, and the biggest obstacle to innovation or empathy or really anything that you're looking to change is ego.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: So there's that.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um but secondly, I believe because the evolution is just getting to that spot, you know, right uh people still see it as, oh, yeah, that's that thing they use to make products better or services better.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I have a department for that.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um so because it's been isolated in that way in the past and it's just beginning to be talked about as something useful.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: I believe the first article I read was out of Harvard Business Review in 2015 or 18, I don't remember.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: So it hasn't been that long ago that conversation has even started sprinkling in the metaverse or whatever you want to call it about design thinking and and applying it to to the problems that leaders are facing.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think ego definitely a big piece of this.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um and actually, even the way in which you'll see certain leaders talk about even those other things, like um, like for example, servant leadership is a, I think, in many cases a strong indicator of that.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um whereby um they'll talk about servant leadership in a certain way and then frequently behave in quite in quite different ways.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um I and that's a beautiful point too, that you that point you just made, that you can discover when you use design thinking as leadership practice.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: You may be thinking you're communicating one thing, but when you start practicing empathy, you may understand that they're receiving that communication in a whole different way.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then you can tweak how you communicate to make it more influential with them because of how they're understanding what you're saying.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: And just the very fact that you've shown that you've cared through empathy makes them more malatable to the message that you're giving them.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: I am also quite interested about how you discuss leaders and leadership in general.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um in some of the stuff that I've read from you and some of the conversations we've had, you often use the term leadership practice.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I'm fascinated by that because um we've been talking a lot, some of it on this podcast, about what a leader even is.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'll tell you my bias up front.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay to uh to understand what you think about it.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I think it's it's not a title, it's not even a job description.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think it's it is to your point a practice, and it's a practice that can be performed by anybody inside an organization from the CEO to the intern.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um and sure, there are some roles that involve leadership being practiced more often, but there are uh but almost every role has an opportunity to practice leadership.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's my opinion.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just curious as to as to how you think of uh how you think of of leadership and how you think that relates to the concept of a of a leader as a position.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I I do agree with you.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: Leadership is not necessarily a title, uh, it does not necessarily come with, you know, 2.3 associates underneath you.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: There's there's none of that.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um leadership really is um, you know, we think it starts externally in how many people we supervise, but it really starts internally.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um and until we're able to effectively lead ourselves, uh um, which may be the you know, the root cause of why we have poor leadership, um we sh we should tread lightly in leading other people.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um because when once you are in that position of manager, you know, you're inspiring your people for the good or the bad, you're inspiring them.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: And um so yeah, it's a practice because no one we're human, no one shows up doing it at 100% perfect every day.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, if you get a few moments in a day as a perfect leader, that that may be all you can hope for, but you get another chance to practice it tomorrow.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're talking about practicing it internally.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um I like that concept.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Can you can you give me a an example of what that might look like?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, um let's use your runner example, right?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: Before I ever hope to win a race, right?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um I have to win getting out of bed each day.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: I have to win getting my tennis shoes on and hitting the pavement or the treadmill or whatever it is.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I have to lead myself before I'll ever lead a pack of runners.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's discipline, that's truthfulness, that's that's even empathy.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if I'm not feeling well, I need to empathize with myself.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: This is probably not the best day to get out and rain run if it's pouring rain and cold.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I should probably stay home and maybe I'll run extra miles in a few days when I feel better.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: But for today I need to take a break.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, it's all those things we want to do for or we hope others would do for us and we would love to do for others, we must first do them with ourselves.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that's, you know, the the harder things of discipline, but also the kinder things of empathy.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you today uh spend a lot of time guiding other people through that journey, in a sense, leading them through that journey.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um as leaders are going through this process, and in many cases, you know, starting from from nothing, reevaluating things about themselves along their journey, probably even reflecting on ways in which they've uh done things in the past and how they could have and how they could have done things, but obviously um starting the process of changing the behaviors in terms of how they think, how they act, etc.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um what changes do you see in leaders that go on this journey?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm actually really curious here in in two things, Karen.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing I'm interested in is is what they tell you, but I'm at least as interested in what you observe, the things they don't tell you, but the things that you see.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: So pick that in which whichever order you want.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, um things I love to hear, and and this is my own, I think speaks to my own heart, uh, is when they say, you know, I never thought about it like that, or you made me think about it differently.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: So because I think that's that's the first step to successful change is to be able to think differently.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: So I see a lot of that.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um another thing is obviously improved relationships with their employees.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: But even a because the white leadership has been exercised in the past, it's it's really quite a burdensome process.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: You're in it all alone and and you're carrying the weight of the load of you know, meeting all these goals and achieving this vision.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I see a shift in that feeling of being burdened and being doing it alone.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they are energized because they begin to see that they're not in it alone, that the people on their team or in their organization want to be a part of making it successful as much as they do.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, when they see, when leaders see their employees energized because they tapped into their potential that perhaps they didn't even see, but the leader saw, and that's a that's a good quality in a leader, is to be able to see that potential in another person, to be able to see it, call it out, encourage them to step out of their comfort zone to pursue that potential, and then to watch it blossom is just it's a gift.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: And um it's really as simple as like turning a key because they're really doing all the work.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's their passion, their gifts and talents.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: You just kind of gave them the pathway to do it.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you've touched on a little bit of this already, but um I'm also interested in there's a bunch of people that you're working with that are going through their own personal journey.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, as they're going through their own personal journey, they don't exist in a vacuum.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: They sit in in teams, they sit in organizations.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: In general, what are the downstream effects that you see in organizations as you're working with leaders on this stuff?
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think the easiest to see are the engagement goes up, uh job satisfaction goes up, um, KPIs go up, which is always nice from the leadership's perspective.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh interdepartmental workings can improve because you then begin to realize, you know, you're not doing your job in a vacuum.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: You're doing it with other humans in other places and how they think, feel, and act affects your outcomes.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: So there's that, you know, it's just a well, I have an uh infograph of all the upskills that take place when leaders um use design thinking as a leadership practice because every step in the process has a good dozen skills that leaders are developing and not even realizing they're developing them.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh that to me will include a link to that in the uh in the show notes for people to take a look at.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um okay, a couple last questions to bring us home here, Karen.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: My first one is is really I'm curious about a dilemma that a lot of leaders talk to us about, um, which is that as a leader to your point, you have uh at least a couple of roles when it relates to your work, right?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: You've you have to have the ability to to meet the needs of the people inside inside your organization.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then somehow you have to balance that with the need to, as you put it, to kind of lead yourself, right?
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that includes leading yourself from a position from a place of empathy.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um I know even prior to the pandemic, um, we would speak to a lot of leaders that wrestled with that a great deal.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and whether their employees felt this or not, um, they themselves as leaders were struggling to to balance those two things.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And typically, if it was a choice, then they were frequently putting themselves last in the equation.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now I think it's very important when we discuss this that that you know there are there are responsibilities that you have as leaders, you know, if you choose to to uh to put yourself in a position of leadership, then sometimes that means that you are making difficult choices about uh about those two things.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, if you continue to do that, if you do that on a repeated and consistent basis, then you can wind up in situations of severe burnout, which we see quite a lot in the case of some leaders.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious as to uh for actually anybody, because it could this could be somebody in a formal position of leadership, but it could also be somebody who's trying to balance their own needs with those of their teammates, right?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the other people that they work with and they collaborate.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um we call it at Billion Minds the me versus we dilemma.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I'm curious as to how you recommend when you're working with leaders that they do that they kind of create that balance between looking after and taking care of themselves and looking after and taking care of the people that they lead.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um while, you know, personally it's been a lifelong journey.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know that I always get it right, but I have discovered just as um we talked about earlier, it's our ego that keeps us from taking care of ourselves.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the more that you can understand your ego, why it operates, how it operates, and to recognize it when it's going off in your little head, which only you can do, um, the easier it will be for you to say, okay, no, I'm gonna take today off from running, or um, no, I'm gonna, you know, take my kid to lunch today because that's important.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um ego really makes this, I mean, it runs on fear.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: And and leaders obviously have much to fear, you know, they have stakeholders to answer to, they have uh employees to answer to, customers to answer to, they feel like at times they're answering to the whole world, and no one's listening to them, speaking of um what we mentioned earlier with the neurodivergency.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: But that that is ego that says it all stems from me because it doesn't, because we've probably seen this in our own lives.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_02: Someone dies, someone comes deathly ill, they don't have a choice but to check out, and guess what?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: Things continue on.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um so don't push it that far.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: It would be my uh recommendation, but to learn to balance that so that you don't get to that point.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's very powerful stuff there, Karen.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you see it inside every part of an organization, say not just the people with the title, right?
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think of the oh, I can't go on vacation because if I go on vacation, everything will fall will fall apart.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and one of the things that we've seen um managers, even colleagues do in many cases, is forget a very simple kind of human thing, which is that if you give people space to thrive, they're more likely to thrive.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um and many of the controlling behaviors that we have inside organizations are centered around the idea that the only people that can do X or Y or Z well are yourselves, right?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: And controlling in and of itself is an indication of ego.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, our ego says we must control this because, you know, I gotta keep us safe, protected, whatever the word language is, but it's our ego that tells us that in the first place.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, precisely.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: And there's so much latent potential inside organizations that remains untapped, purely because we're not giving people the space to express that potential.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's a journey, I think, for all of us, anybody that runs a company, yeah.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um like pulling back um and allowing other people to do uh to do things that we would normally do remains a constant struggle.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's something that I struggle with every day.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if so I think my last question I've been I've been debating what we've been talking here as to what was the what's what's the last question that I would uh that I would like.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and a lot of people do a qu a question that's centered around, you know, what if you had to tell your younger self something, what would it be?
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I've I've always thought that as kind of like a it's an interesting theoretical question, but it's a useless practical one because of course your younger self's not gonna listen, right?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: So of course not, because their ego's bigger than anyone's.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so so so I like I like to flip that um a little bit.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you've been going through a journey.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what do you want your older self not to forget?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: Play and experiment.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: Don't be can don't don't be afraid of mistakes.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: Mistakes are what uh make end up making it magnificent, in my opinion.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: All right, we'll leave it there, Karen.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for your time today.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um we'll put all details in the um in the show notes about all of the various things that that uh Karen is playing and experimenting with at the moment.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually uh I uh uh full disclosure, I'm in one of those experiments right now.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're doing a uh a design uh thinking for uh for Lita's workshop, which uh which has been great and uh and is useful even if you're familiar with the concepts.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: It really causes you to to start thinking more deeply and and forces you almost to take an hour out of your uh out of your week or every couple of weeks to say, okay, we're gonna stop and we're gonna focus on X or uh X or Y or Z.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: So uh we'll put details of of anything and everything that Karen's been uh been talking about, including she's got some uh um uh an interesting uh project around an app as well that will pop in there.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: So do be sure to read those show notes.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but for now, thank you so much again, Karen.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's been a delight.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: Have a great day, Paul.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Neal.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: Our interviewer is Paul Slater.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: Music is by Dolo Records.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you like this podcast, please subscribe, like, and recommend us to others.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: It helps us reach more people.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to learn more about how Billion Minds gets companies ready for the future of work by building adaptable, resilient employees, look for them on LinkedIn or visit their website at billionminds.com.