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Welcome to this week's episode of People First, and my guest this week is Margaret Andrews. Margaret is a seasoned executive academic leader, speaker and instructor. She's created and teaches a variety of leadership courses and professional and executive programs at Harvard University.

And is the founder of the Milo Center, a private leadership development firm. Her clients are broad. You may recognize a few of these logos. Amazon City, continental, Walmart, Wayfair, and the United Nations. She lives in Massachusetts and she is here today to talk with me. Look at all of the little flag about her new book.

Manage Yourself to Lead Others. Margaret, welcome to People First. Thank you. It's great to be here. I'm so looking forward to our conversation. But before we dive in, relationships in an HR appropriate way, relationships at work, what role have relationships played in your success?

Oh, so much. Relationships, I think are, are the foundation of business, right?

They're the foundation of our life, our, our relationship. So, you know, when you have a great relationship, I've, I've had a couple of really great relationships with bosses and that was so much fun, uh, and we could do so much together that we couldn't do it. I've also had some, not so good one with bosses, uh, as well as with, you know, employees.

So, um, so yeah, they're the foundation of everything. And trust is the foundation of relationships, of the all. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Amid you went to my Lord of the Rings sort of thing. One, one value to rule them all or underpin them all and it's trust. So this is a question I get asked by leaders all the time, or it's a conversation I have with leaders all the time, especially inexperienced leaders, emerging leaders around how one builds trust.

Mm-hmm. And often I will hear, well, you know, I've hired you onto my team, prove it. Two years, you know, show me that you are worthy of my trust. Mm. So Margaret, what's your guidance for emerging leaders around how we accelerate that timeframe? How does one go about giving and building trust with our colleagues and teammates?

Yeah, and I don't think it takes two years. I think it takes a whole lot less than that. It takes a little over a nanosecond, I think. Uh, you know, it's just the way we behave. It's about how we present ourselves, how we listen or don't listen. How we follow through on what we say or don't what we say about that person behind their back or don't.

Uh, it's all of those little things and, and I, I think, you know, as we all know, it can take a while to build trust and it takes about. 30 seconds to erode it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and I think, and, and if you do that, you may never get it back. And, and I think that's a, a hard lesson for a lot of people. But in general, I would say do what you say.

Say what you do. Uh, don't think of it as a transaction. I think that's sometimes where, uh, a lot of people get in trouble where they think of a relationship as a transaction. I'll do this for you, you'll do that for me. And relationships don't work that way. I oftentimes think about. A good marriage or a good boss subordinate relationship, or a good team relationship is that it's never exactly equal.

That there are times when you are pulling harder and there's times when they're pulling harder, but over time it balances out. So, uh, so yeah, I, I would say trust to how do you build it, doing what you say, saying what you do, and also being. Being okay with saying what you think and what you need.

Yeah. I love the fact that you've emphasized it doesn't take two years, certainly at the pace of business and transformation right now, if you're waiting two years, you are already behind the curve, but you also nailed it with, it takes time to build.

A nanosecond to lose, which comes back to the conversation, which is being clear on what? What would you need to do if you were working with us here at SkyTeam? For me to feel that we were in that strong foundational relationship, but irrespective of that, if I can articulate that, then that helps you to reach that point sooner.

But also I can still choose to give trust with those guardrails from the get go. That's what stops it being a two year slog and something that can start to transform a team and a working relationship overnight. Alright, well let's pivot to your work and research. So your book Manage Yourself to Lead Others.

What was the inspiration about why now for this great book?

Yeah, so the, the story behind the book is the story behind the class, and that was that. Long story short, uh, one day my boss, uh, told me in a meeting, uh, you're not self-aware. And it was not said in a pleasant way. It was not said in a developmental way.

It was said in a, you are broken and cannot be fixed kind of way. And it kind of summed up our relationship, um, that. Uh, you know, there really was, there was some goodwill, but not a lot of trust between us. And so, uh, you know, I, I kind of sat there and stunned silence as he went on to say that I was overly ambitious and demanding.

And, you know, he used a few other choice words and I was shocked, uh, because no one had ever said anything like that to me throughout my entire career, or having been at this organization for a long time and having rapid promotions, et cetera. So, but once the initial shock of those words wore off and all the defensiveness that was around it, I started to think about it a little bit more and realized, Hmm, I may not like this, but I think he's right.

And so I realized that, uh, you know, there were some people on my team that I could be demanding and I was very fast paced and, uh. And had very high standards and things like that. All of the things we think of as good, but taken to an extreme are not good. And that's where I was. So I, uh, I realized that some people on my team were anxious, um, feeling maybe undervalued, and certainly my relationship with my boss was underperforming.

So, uh, once I settled in and said, okay, this is, this is where I am, I thought, okay, I, I don't wanna be here. I wanna figure out how to not be here. This is a, a situation, very much of my own making, so what am I gonna do to get outta it? And that's where I started looking for insights. Everywhere I looked at, you know, uh, famous leaders and people I knew, I looked at academic studies and management books.

History, philosophy, uh, theology, everything, anything that I thought, mm-hmm. A clue is what I looked at. And that's where I came upon the whole idea of, first you have to manage yourself to beat others and backing that up, you have to understand yourself first. In order to manage yourself. 'cause you can't manage something you don't understand.

And then if, and also if you can't understand yourself, you really can't understand other people. Uh, and if you can't manage yourself, you have no credibility asking anybody else to manage themselves. So that's how it started. And it became a class, and then it became an executive program. I'd had people ask me for years and years.

Oh, so when's the book coming out? I used to say, well, never. And so then it just seemed like it was time. So there it's,

yeah, that's a bit about how Kel Cultivate came to life. People kept asking, when can we read more? When's the book coming out? And it was like, oh, right, the God book. So you were your own Guinea pig and I love it actually early in the book, you have some examples of leaders and it's a three step, um, sort of process that you outline here, which is.

The leader I am now for good, bad, or indifferent, the leader I want to become, and then what will help me get there or who will help me get there. And it seems so obvious, simple, but to your point, quite deep and profound because being able to articulate who I am now and who others think I am now. There's two different lenses there.

How does one close the gap then between, you think you've got high standards, you think you're holding others accountable, but you've heard that the impact is the, let's face it, people weren't having as much fun as you might like working for you. How does one close the gap?

Yeah, so, well, several different ways.

One is by being curious if there is one. Uh, you know, lots of people might think, Hey, I'm a great leader, you know, for whatever reason. And the answer is okay, but that doesn't mean you can't be a better leader, and also are you a great one. So some of that comes from just self-awareness, you know, is paying attention to how other people react around you.

Uh, you know, are they pushing back on your ideas or do they just say yes to it? And, uh, I, when, when I. Have some questions that I use with folks to get to understand themselves better. One of the things that I ask them is, you know, what feedback have you received over your life, uh, in your personal life, uh, professional life, and, and this is, uh, feedback you agree with, feedback you don't agree with, and feedback that surprised you because they all may have something.

And, uh, a lot of times what's interesting is, is feedback that surprised you or you don't agree with, because sometimes that is pointing right at a blind spot. And even if you disagree with it, it is still a, um, the gift of a perspective you didn't have before. Uh, so sometimes it's, it's worth looking. So positive and not so positive.

And then, uh, you know, if you're a total geek like me and you have, uh, all your performance reviews as far back as you can remember, what's super interesting is to just lay them out with highlighter and see what words either used exactly the same over the years or variations of it are there because, uh, and, and the other part of it is that.

Most of us, if we get a written performance evaluation, we, we look at the here's what you do well, kind of thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we just, we skim it at best. Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. That's so easy. And I would say don't do that because that is that easy for everyone. That is what you bring to the party.

Uh, so, you know, lean into that, uh, and watch out for the other things that

are. That's interesting. I've done that activity, attention to detail and talks a lot, especially if I go all the way back to my high school, um, report cards, which I thought were gonna be better, but when I actually read them, were not necessarily where I remember my contribution, but that's part of it.

It's a journey and it's, we have a choice with feedback. You don't have to add act on it. But if, to your point, you're seeing the same themes emerge both for things that are the special secret sauce that you bring to the table, or the things that might hold you back, then you've got a choice. And the choice is either to adjust or continue down that path, but then we don't get to complain if it bites us in the ass later on.

That's right. That's so right. The other thing I was gonna say is I, I oftentimes have people say, well, I only accept feedback from people I respect, and I think, well, then you're missing out. Potentially on some valuable information. Uh, if you, if you do that, you get to decide what you act on. Um, yeah. But it's helpful sometimes.

It is. And you, you have a section of, towards the end of the book where you talk about coming back from career missteps. Mm-hmm. And maybe those, um, where your reputation is going forward in the, in an unhelpful way. What's, what's one tip here that listeners who might be thinking, okay, I've got to do a recovery plan at this point.

What's one thing that they can do to help come back from a career misstep or mistake?

Yeah, so. I'll, I'll back it up by saying, you know, um, years ago my family and I used to go on, um, for a week away in Maine where we'd just kayak and swim and breed and those kinds of things. And the highlight of the week was that we would go.

River rafting on the Kennebec River. And what I will never forget is the safety briefing that we all got before we would get in the boats. And they talked about, they said, listen, you're going down Class four rapids and occasionally it would get bounced out of the boat. What you wanna, they said Nobody cares.

About your safety as much as you do, and you should act accordingly. And they called it aggressive self-rescue. And I just thought that was the greatest term, aggressive self-rescue. And I thought, you know, that goes along with what I've always thought. But I also think sometimes you need to pause when you've had really disastrous news or, uh.

Even grief, right? People get fired or, or whatever. There's some grief there. So, you know, you don't have to, you know, do anything in the moment. Sometimes you just gotta unplug, um, take a nap, go call a friend, or something like that. Kind of, that's a little bit of aggressive self rescue in the very beginning.

Um, but then start to think about, okay, what is within my control and what is not within my control? And you can draw a list, right? Or you can draw circles. This is in my control. This is within my influence. This is out of my control. It's outta your control. Don't worry about it, and I know easier said than done.

But, you know, what can you control? And, and you know, as, as somebody I know who had a really, really difficult time, they said, you know what, I can control. I can take a shower in the morning. And I said, there you go. Right? That just, it's a start. It's a start. It's a start. And that's what you are looking for.

You're trying to get some momentum. But I also think too, that you have to. Give yourself a time to, as you know, grieve it a little bit or to really take it in that sometimes if we try the aggressive self rescues of getting out of a difficult situation, I'm gonna say too soon, without feeling those feelings.

We're just covering them up and we're oftentimes not really learning the lesson, we're just trying to get outta it. So I, I do think that there's some processing there.

So there's processing, which for some extent is logical, but it's also emotional because there was another chapter, it's a topic I adore, which is the importance of emotions.

And you've already talked about aggressive, um, self rescues. So that has its own emotions with it. If you're falling out of a, a boat, it's uh, fear maybe. But you also talked about grief if you've just been fired or shock an awe, if you've just had feedback that doesn't quite match your own self image. So emotional intelligence, how does that fit into this?

Oh, it's all about that. You know, emotional intelligence is, uh, a big part of relationships. You know, I oftentimes think of it as. Um, what I'm gonna say, interpersonal skills, right? Uh, I so many words to describe this. Emotional intelligence, relationship skills, interpersonal skills, and my favorite, not favorite is soft skills because, mm-hmm.

Uh, soft skills are, it's such a misnomer, right? If anybody has ever tried to develop one of these skills, you know, there is absolutely nothing soft about it. It's what makes. It's the grease, right? That that helps us, uh, work together. So I, I do think that that is important in any relationship is, is to, uh, understand who, who you are, how you know, am I feeling anxious today?

Am I feeling sad today? Am I feeling lazy? What am I feeling today? And how does that come across? The big one, I, I think that most of us don't know or don't want to know is when we're kind of angry, you know, we have a. Uh, a disagreement with our spouse or child before we leave the house. And so we're stewing as we're driving or taking the train to work.

Then we come in and we are behaving in a certain way that we think we're masking it. We're not masking it at all. Everybody else knows that something is off. And so, uh, you know, our behaviors at that time can, uh, not help us. So if we don't know that we're feeling a certain way, I always say other people can, so the question is who knows first,

which comes back to your point earlier on about seeking out feedback from people Yes.

That you respect, but also those where you might be experiencing friction because they're giving you the answer to a problem that you may still be in denial that even exists.

Yeah. Yeah. But

again, it's an answer that you can choose to act on or not.

And I think part of that is being aware, is being aware of what's going on with the other person is watching their facial expressions or their body language, you know, do they shrink or do they put their arms, you know, across their chest?

Do they lean in, do they look frozen? Uh, all of these are tells on how we're impacting other people. And sometimes you can just say, Hey, you know, when I said that. Seemed defensive or it seemed like that kind of made you frustrated. Uh, yeah. And you know, then we're talking and if I said that to you, oh, rag, you know, when I said that you looked frustrated, you might say, no, I wasn't frustrated, I was angry, and I, mm-hmm.

Fine. Now we're talking, right? And now, now we're having a conversation and maybe that's what we need to do.

So I'm curious with regards to. This, the camera working at a distance. Certainly since the pandemic, it is now prevalent everywhere and we've all done it for many years. But how has that impacted the, the nature that your programs at Harvard and how you teach leadership?

So when we're in a room with humans, but also when we are just, you know, business on top. PS on the bottom.

Exactly. Uh, so, oh gosh, a few things in general, I do have a preference for face-to-face whenever possible. Because you just, you know, there's, I remember actually in the very beginning of the pandemic, I was, uh, everything got moved online and I remember there was a guy in executive program and he said, oh, he said, uh, he said, you know, working online is, is so much better.

We don't have, we don't have all that stupid water cooler talk. I remember saying to him, I said, oh, be careful what you wish for because I said the water cooler talk is the, is the stuff that keeps us together. Yes. It's the small things. You and I are standing at the elevator, uh, waiting for it to go down together.

We walk out to the parking lot or whatever it is, right. It's those small little moments of chitchat or somebody has. Candy on their desk, can you stop by and get one and have a little moment of discussion. Those are all part of the relationship, part of the culture, et cetera. And so there are some great benefits of being, uh, online.

We can get talent from all over the world and work at different hours and things like that. But I do think that, uh, especially in larger groups, the uh, so if you and I are on together. You're probably not gonna open four tabs and start doing your emails, but if we have three or four people, it increases the likelihood that each one of us will do that.

And that detracts completely from, uh, because if I'm, let's say I'm running the meeting, I can feel it, uh, and it's probably making me a little angry. Like, whatcha guys doing? Mm-hmm. Disrespectful. It's disrespectful. I think it's very disrespectful and I, I know people say, well, I'm getting more work done.

And I say, no, you're not, you. Uh, you know, I read all kinds of exercises in the class to show people that what you think is multitasking is not multitasking at all. You're just making more mistakes faster. Uh, yeah.

Right. And in, in several domains and hands up. I've done it and thought I was really good.

But you know, you people will notice your, um, shoulders moving. They'll notice that your eyes are going somewhere else. You can't fake it. I agree. Agree. So stop doing it. Be present.

It's so hard. It is so hard, uh, to do that. And I think it's increasingly difficult. Uh, and people make all kinds of excuses for it.

And I say, just stop doing it. Just stop doing it. And you know, if you are the team leader, make sure no one is doing it. So, you know, if I, of course, you and I both wear glasses, so we really can't cheat because the reflection, right? It goes from white to blue, or you can tell Yeah. Switching screens. But you're right, you can tell by body language and the face and the way the eyes are, it's, it's not an attentive look.

So yes, it's not,

it's, it's a really, really bad habit and I think it's really not good for any of us.

So I'm gonna come full circle. Back to the, the leader. I am the leader I wanna be and the actions I'm taking. But I'm gonna ask you about you and your leadership. 'cause you touched on the genesis of this, was the feedback that you received that said you might have been a bit of a task master mistress in terms of your approach to others.

So help me understand what was the lead, how would you describe the leader you were then the leader you are today? And what are you, 'cause for those listening, we're all going, well, you teacher at Harvard, you've written a book about leadership, kind of you, you must have reached the end journey of good leadership.

So what were you, what are you today and what are you aspiring to and working on in your own leadership?

Yeah, so, so where am I? Maybe I'll take it back when I had that wonderful discussion with my boss. Uh, at that time I was very hard charging. Uh, not, I'm not mean, I'm not like that, but I just had, was demanding and expected a lot.

I expected a lot from myself and I expected a lot of others. And, uh, I think a lot of times I wasn't always aware of how I was impacting people. In fact, I could say I definitely was not always aware how I was impacting people. And, uh, so. What I did was I really did dig in and try to understand myself and, you know, what am I doing that is causing this?

And, and why is this showing up? And what I really wanted to learn was, um, a to listen better to, uh, to really listen with all of my senses. So if I'm talking to you, what are you saying? What's the tone of your voice? Because we know we can say the same. Would you like some coffee? Yes. Would you like some coffee?

Yes. Right. And same words, very different meaning, um, uh, facial expression, body language, uh, you know, kind of how much pep in your step you have, those kinds of things. So listening and watching and hearing were one of the ones that I, and, and understanding actually probably the hardest part for me was really trying to understand someone else's perspective to.

Go around and, and sit in their chair kind of thing. So those were things that I really worked on, and I think it, it helped. And honestly, one of the reasons why I like to teach this is because it's a reminder to myself mm-hmm. All the time. So whenever I talk to, uh, a class about it, I'm talking to myself, uh, as a, as a reminder.

I run an exercise in a lot of classes where I ask people to think about their best boss and, uh, you know, and why they were the best boss and, and, um, and it usually surprises people. What, uh, it's not just what they thought, but the collective room. All have very similar ideas and I, I oftentimes say that is your definition in many respects of a good leader.

Yeah. And so what were the qualities that you, uh, admired in them? And therefore, and do you have those? And most people say not enough of them. And I say, there you go. You probably already know what those things are, and you can channel that person as you're thinking about it, uh, as you're thinking about, I need to listen more, you know, what would so and so do in this situation?

Love it. Well, Margaret, I've enjoyed our conversation and for everybody listening, I encourage you to get a hold of your own copy, whether it's digital audio or in. Print of Manage Yourself to lead others. It is, as you can see, a great little resource. Margaret, where can people learn more about your work and you.

Great. Well, thank you. Uh, I guess two things. One is LinkedIn is, is where I kind of hang out a bit. Uh, and I'm Margaret C. Andrews on LinkedIn. It turns out there's lots of Margaret Andrews and, uh, and things. In fact, two Margaret Andrews at Harvard, so I know when I get her details. Okay. Um, and the other is my website, which is margaret andrews.com.

Uh, so there's a list of resources there, books that I would, um, recommend and things like that as well.

So final thoughts, what's one message that you would hope that the people listening and watching this conversation would take as it relates to leadership in the 21st century?

I would say that it's helpful to understand that we judge ourselves by our intentions.

I mean, I intend to be a good boss. I intend to be a good leader, whatever it is. But other people judge us by every hate. So if our behaviors and our intentions don't match, they will look at our behaviors and then we will feel misunderstood. So that would be my, my big one is are do what are your intentions and do other people see that through your behavior?

Margaret Andrews, thank you so much for sharing a few of the gems from your book. Manage Yourself to Lead Others. Thank you for joining me on People First. Thank you so much.

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