People First! with Morag Barrett

OK. Welcome to this week's episode of People First. And it's a two-for-week. Two for the price of one. My guests this week are Jeffrey Hull and Margaret Moore, who are the co-authors of a fabulous new book that I got to see the advanced copy of called The Science of Leadership, in which they reveal nine ways that we can all expand our leadership impact. Just a little bit of the deets in the background. Jeff has been on People First before. You might recognize him if you've watched those episodes. And he and I know each other through the hundred coaches. And we're introduced by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, the number one executive coach in the world. Now, Jeffrey, give us the fifty thousand foot summary of who you are and what makes you so awesome. And then, Margaret, I'm going to get you to do the same. This is where you get to toot your own horn. Oh, well, I just appreciate the opportunity to be with you again. And let's see, I am an executive coach in terms of my profession, which is how I got to know Marshall Goldsmith and joined the One Hundred Coaches a few years ago and got to meet you. Originally a psychologist by training, so I was a psychotherapist for a few years, transitioned into coaching. and then get involved with the Institute of Coaching affiliated with Harvard and the Mass General Brigham Hospital System in Boston. So I've been affiliated with them. And that's where I met Margaret quite a few years ago. We don't like to talk about how long ago it was. um so I'm currently the executive director at the institute of coaching and I currently have a coaching practice and I am thrilled to have written this book with my dear friend and co-author margaret and with that I think that's a good start. So, Margaret, I love that. And what I love about both of your bios, which you're going to bring alive in the conversation, is it's the real world leadership experience in corporate, but also the depth of the research that you've done and more on that in a moment. So, Margaret. help our listeners and viewers learn a little bit about you and your special source. Well, my origins, I'm a Canadian, I'm a biologist with an MBA, and I spent seventeen wonderful years in the biotechnology industry, including in the CC suite roles several times. So I came from high tech, high stakes leadership and decided that I would focus into coaching and I started out on with coaching and health care. And I've been on a twenty five year journey to get the coach on the medical team, which is getting close and starting three coaching organizations to get there. And along the way, I've been a leadership coach all the way through. So I've built a school that's trained sixteen thousand coaches. I co-founded the institute and I co-founded what has now is now the credentialing organization for health and well-being coaches in the United States. And all the policy stuff I've been in front of all the main healthcare policy groups. And, and so I'm a leader, um, and I'm a coach and that's a combination. I really am both. And I learned from both and I appreciate my coaching opportunities to give me a break from leading to be honest, and then help other people. So, um, and then I'm, uh, I, you know, as a biologist and working with scientists, all these, all these years, I am not afraid of the literature and I read a lot and I love it and I love translating it and I use it every day. So it's a combination, it's a kind of a unique combination of coaching, leading and science that helped us, helped Jeff and I become close friends and collaborators and now do something significant, we think, which is to organize the science, fifty years of research into something that people can actually digest and use. See, what I loved about the book was its accessibility, but also the signposting to the literature and the research as to why these elements have made the cut. But personally, I was just excited to see the synergies with my own work and research and the fact that connection, whether it's connection to self, connection to others, or connection to the work, in your case, you described that as the system orientated capacities there were just so many synergies and I was going oh yes yes it all gave you a foundation yeah yeah all right so the book the science of leadership nine ways to expand your impact so I'm going to start with the basics why nine not seven not twenty seven how did you end up on the nine Well, I'll give the quick version and then Margaret can dive into the broader history if she wants to. But I think it's safe to say that there are hundreds of different leadership capacities that you can write about. And we are always getting asked, why did you leave out this one? Or why didn't you touch on this one? Or why did you combine these three into shared, for example, because there's distributed and there's LMX exchange, there's all sorts of different things. But the simple answer I think is that we wanted to bring together the core best researched leadership capacities or capabilities, and then string them into a format that would lead leaders on a journey of development. And so we didn't really follow the format that many researchers would have, because they have their specialties that they dig deep, servant leadership or transformational leadership. And what we did is we pulled back the veil and really as coaches, we looked at how can we construct this framing so that one capacity of leadership builds on another. And it can really literally turn into a lifelong journey of growing and leading so that at the end of the day, you do want to develop your capacity in all nine. But we wanted it to actually be accessible and to give people, give readers a place to start. And that's how we ultimately framed it. And Margaret may want to talk a little bit more about how we came up with nine, because there's a whole history there. Well, then, Margaret. So one of my secret hobbies is to... after being trained in internal family systems therapy to the top level, um, I, I discovered in my own inner world, nine parts, and I have since mapped, mapped, I have a book on that, a Harvard health book on it, that's wellbeing based. And I've gone on to map it to everything, young, big five, ten factor. So there's, I really do think there's a universal map. And, um, And I think leadership is the highest expression. That's not mainstream. I mean, Dan Siegel just published a book on the science of Enneagram after twenty years of research. So it came out last November. So this is maybe the moment when there might be credibility for it. But it works because it held everything. It created the nine. There's nothing surprising, you know, autonomy, relationships. at Agile is adventure, novelty, creativity, deep thinking, the achiever. It's all stuff we've heard about before. It's just that it does provide this robust set of buckets so we could put inspirational leadership and visionary leadership with transformational leadership. And we could put humility in with servant and we could put on and on. And so it created a way to take all those hundred topics, and probably we used about fifty of them. We stayed with research that was at the meta-analysis side, which means it wasn't a single one or two studies. There was two hundred and twelve studies of humility and leadership. There was a hundred and eighty studies in psychological safety. Emotional intelligence has a lot, so half of it went in conscious and half of it went into relational. So we really did a reorg. But we stayed with them. For the most part, we stayed with the most studied things that have survived the recent process over decades. So yeah, so there is there's a method there and and and it and it functioned in that way. Everybody will feel when you finish you feel a sense of wholeness. Yeah, I think I would add that the framing that we had intentionally, knowing that we had abundance to work with, like an overabundance, if anything, of research, was to create a map for leaders. And I think that's really an important point for anyone listening to this podcast is not to feel overwhelmed. Our goal was not to overwhelm the reader with thousands of studies or lots of academics, but to be able to pull out a core journey, a map to the best research that's available that would be accessible to everyday leaders. And that's what I think I remember reading that you went through fifteen thousand different papers, research studies, et cetera, to distill out these nine. And earlier you'd mentioned that they build on each other. So leaders who are thinking about diving in, Is it important to start at the beginning and work your way through all nine in order, or is it a case of dive in and out of whichever chapter catches your attention? That's a good question. And by the way, we didn't read fifteen thousand studies. We picked four hundred or so, but they they led to fifteen thousand. Like they would review hundreds of studies and then they would have forty or fifty references that reviewed. I mean, it's just a it's kind of like a you know, pyramid. There's a lot. The best scientists do the hard work of assimilating. I mean, it's writing, putting together a meta-analysis is not very different than writing a book. It's a huge amount of effort. So there was a, you know, we did, you know, we did contribute a kind of logical flow so that it kind of does work. So the first three, the self-oriented ones, kind of work as your roots, And what are your roots? You know, one is that you have some amount of self leadership, you're conscious, you're awake. you know, all your mental and emotional activity, you know, all of the ego noise gets set aside so you can see clearly. And being so we didn't mean the conscious capitalism means something different, but we meant like real being conscious, like seeing. And that is the starting point is seeing things clearly, right? Seeing to the extent that humans can. And leaders have a lot to see themselves, other systems, you know, you have to be in touch with touching reality every day. So that's core and then authenticity is about your values and your virtues and then caring about others and that that's your heart that's that's your blood you know that's your that's your life force and then third is agility which is the how you know how you use your brain your emotions cognitive agility psychological agility creativity is agile learning is agile you know resilience is agile dealing with polarities is agile agility is just everywhere you know for leaders who have to go from big picture to to find details to this culture, to that culture, from this meeting on this project to the, you know, you know how, you know how it goes. I mean, it just like, in fact, coaching is kind of like that too, because people's situations are so different. So those were like the foundational ones, kind of the cognitive agility, intelligence, you know, resilience, heart, and then being awake and Jeff can continue the journey. Yeah, I do want to answer your question, though, which was whether or not someone should start at the beginning or jump in. And I think because it's a really good question, and we addressed that, in fact, at the outset of the book, because the answer is yes and yes. which is, yes, you should start at the beginning and work through all nine. If you're pulled to do that, that would be incredibly valuable. And also, yes, you could pick one of the capacities through the nine that draws you and start there as a strength. And I think a lot of readers will find something that they feel drawn to. And so they don't necessarily need to read the book A, B, C, D, E, F, G. They can start with something that they're drawn to, but I think that will open them up to think, oh, well, I'm starting at, let's say, relational, which would be the next one that Margaret was pointing to, the next three, relational, positive, and compassionate, which are the beginning to move outward as a leader. What Margaret was talking about was those foundational, internal, self-oriented, as a leader, which you have to start with, really, at some level. And as you move outward toward relational leadership, positive leadership and compassionate leadership, you're actually thinking about how you begin to influence others. Everything starts to focus more on your interpersonal dynamic with others. Obviously, relational leadership is about helping, coaching, mentoring. how you support people as a leader. And then positive leadership is a topic that has been studied a great deal in terms of multiple ways that being optimistic, creating meaning, efficacy, motivation, being positive creates an environment of psychological safety. All of those things are very well studied, and we put them all under the rubric of positive leadership. but not positive leadership to the point of being overly rose-colored glasses. There's positive and positive. Just to be clear that there's a distinction between being fundamentally optimistic and bringing meaning, but not being positive to the point where you are ignoring reality. Then finally, in the other oriented domains, we looked at the studies on compassionate leadership. which is a relatively new area for academic research. And it's sort of taking empathy and upping the ante. Empathy comes out in relational, comes out in positive when you're starting to be aware and sensitized to what is going on with other people. But compassionate leadership takes it up a notch. And it puts you into a place of awareness of the suffering, awareness of what's going on in the world. And it's really a heartfelt connection to especially if you're a leader and you're seeing that people are in pain or struggling, you know, to actually be demonstrating a real higher level of care than just. understanding um coming at it from a real heart-based place and in the book we talk about sort of the type of compassionate leader who embraces the whole of how the world is not always easy. There is a lot of pain, there is a lot of suffering and to be awake to that and to be resonant with it. We use the phrase resonant as a potent, heartfelt way of being with your team. So those are the three positive, relational and compassionate for the next level outward. And I'll let Margaret continue to finalize the last three. Thank you, Jeff. And so I mean, I'm just gonna start with compassionate and add an element. Because what strikes me about compassion is that it's about all the stakeholders, who actually are tuning and you're creating resonance, you know, vision, purpose, strategy, it's, that's Richard Boyatzis' work on resonance, leadership, relational climate, where you where you're almost like everybody's minds and hearts are working together in that resonant field. Like professional sports have it, where there's this attunement that is beyond the one-on-one relationship and the helping and supporting. It's the beginning of strategy. And then we go to the next one, which is from doing workshops and having people rank them. This one's the hardest. And I'd say it's the hardest for me too, is sharing leadership. which means that you are not just like, you know, the C-suite produces the vision and the purpose and the blah, blah, blah. And then they, you know, put it out there and say, please comment. What do you think? And, Instead, it's actually deeply engaging people. And it's hard work because they don't speak the same language. There's a beautiful piece of research in the strategy. So there's a whole field around strategy management. It's not in leadership. We pulled it in here. So we kind of went outside the bounds in this one. And strategy management, there's a concept called open strategy. And you can guess what open strategy is about. But there's this wonderful story of... insurance company in Europe with fifty thousand employees whose stock price is plunging. They bring in a new CEO, has four months to turn things around, and they go on a major campaign to bring in forty frontline employees who've never even met anybody in the C-suite. I mean, these are people in offices, like customer facing roles. And it took them four months to get these folks and the CEO to be able to talk the same language. And, and it was hard work, you know, it was real hard work. They were stumbling, they were teaching each other. and eventually a third of the strategic plan came from them, went into the company's plan and the value went up, um, eighteen billion dollars. So that's just a fabulous story because the effort it took to get on the same page was worth it in spades. And that that's what leaders, you know, they're not really doing that with people with AI strategy. You know, it's not just it's not happening. And but but, you know, this is the high engagement issue because if people are engaged in building the strategy vision you know purpose they're going they're engaged I mean that's simple as that that's what engaged is so so that's really a big one and then the the next one is servant leadership which is you know um this beautiful place where you put others first more of the time not all of the time um you know, good more of the time than most of us do. And in order to do that, you have to be pretty mature, because you can't be worried about yourself. You can't have a big ego, you can't be thinking about how it affects you, you have to be beyond that. And so service service works better in a lot of different ways. And so it's something to get better at its humility is the right amount of humility, not too much. You know, in crisis, people want directive strength. And, and so humility is place for all of us to get to, you know, that quiet ego where you, you really are there to help everybody else thrive. And then the last one, which is the coaching one, and which is our favorite, and we were going to call the book self transforming leader is transformation, because transformation is the game we're in, right? I mean, we're not here to just get the job done, we've got big challenges to solve in the world. And transformation is about, you know, expanding and shifting mindsets dramatically from, you know, here changing identity, changing workflow, like transforming things in significant ways. And that's the toughest one. And what we hoped by placing it at the last is people would appreciate that if you actually were good at all the others, you'd be much better at this. You wouldn't just be, you know, one of the celebrity leaders who's a transformation leader, but then breaks things all around them. you'd be someone who got to another level of transformation. And self transformation is part of that. So in ordering them in this way, and we debated about which one to land on. to be honest, because there's different ways you can look at it. But this seemed to be the way that helped people see that while transformation is hard, and if I'm better and better at these other things, that's going to be a byproduct of my efforts to really expand myself, not find myself. That's a big message of the book. It's not like finding the one that is you. It's actually not the opposite of that. It's saying start from there and expand your repertoire. So I'm curious then that in writing the book, you had a message that you wanted to bring to the world. But what did that process do for you and your own leadership? So what did you uncover about your own, and Margaret, you may have touched on it when you said sharing leadership was one of the things, but I'm curious, when you think about the nine ways you've identified here, what are you carrying forward into your own personal ongoing transformation? I mean, I would say for me, it was stepping back and asking myself all the way along, know do these apply to me as I'm leading for example in my role as the executive director of the institute of coaching where we have upwards of around twenty people so I am um until recently I was kind of co-leading it with margaret but I've been doing that now pretty much on my own and I was asking myself all the way along so what is the level of consciousness what is the level of agility what is the level of positiveness you know and um For me personally, the desire to be a servant leader really started to come to the fore. I think Margaret and I are complimentary, but a little bit different, as you would expect. And transformational leadership was sort of a natural. I feel I didn't have any real challenges with being visionary or coming up with great big ideas or strategies, but I definitely felt challenged at asking myself, when am I really being a servant leader? When am I really distributing? And that, like she was saying also about shared, shared and servant are very challenging. And so for me personally, and then the final thing I'll say about my own personal journey was recognizing that to be a servant leader and to be someone that can share leadership, you have to be a conscious leader. So it almost jumped back to, leadership in order to jump forwards to servant leadership, because it's about being grounded in yourself and having that quiet ego, which is really in conscious leadership. So even though there's an order to these that we set up as a map, I know for myself personally, and I think some of my clients will tend to jump around. Okay, thank you. Life is more complex than just a one, two, three, four, five. Yeah. So Margaret, what about for you then, in addition to the sharing leadership? It's a great question, Marag. And I want to just make a point that one of the great things, the gifts of this book is that when we've given it to people who we respect as leaders, they get validated by the things that they were doing well, that they didn't necessarily get applauded for. that the research shows that worked. And so there's a gift here, there. And so I'm going to speak to that for me, because, um, so I am an INTJ, which means I'm an introverted intuitive. And that's the compassion, that's the harmony of all the parts. And I'm also really good in strategy, I would say, as a just fundamental, I'm a strategist. And I didn't, I wasn't naming that in my being, that the strategy was coming from the compassion for all the parts. And so that was really nourishing to realize that I had something that I wasn't seeing, because I was more like the executive achiever, MBA, more the thinker than the harmony. And so I came to really appreciate that compassion is, and I made that point, that it is the basis for good strategy. And that's not, that people don't think of it that way. And that's what came to me. So I think what, for us, we got this deep engagement with the research that allowed us, I mean, I think we both have a foundation a mile high now, mile wide and a mile deep. I mean, you can't, where can you get that? It's just, it's really something to travel through the world with. I'm curious, where did you come out, Morag, when you glanced through the book? That me to we scale, again, it's a concept that we have in both Cultivate and the Ally Mindset, you, me, we. And so for me, the authentic care for self, that's an area that I know I need to invest in more. And the transformation, it's the being bold, taking bigger steps sooner versus informed steps. But it did. Every time I went through, there was little, well, I was reading the digital version, so there weren't the sticky flags. But there were the moments where I was going, oh, yes, this. Oh, yes, I remember that. Oh, yes, I need to remember that. So that is what makes it powerful. But actually, that triggers a thought for me. Obviously, we've gone through this whole conversation talking about the science of leadership. This is for leaders. Margaret, you just said it's a mile wide and a mile deep. So for people listening to this thinking, holy whatever, I've got to jump a mile wide or swim a mile deep. Who was the avatar you were picturing as you were writing? Is it an emerging leader, mid-career leader, senior leader who thinks they've got it all made? Who's the book for? Yes, yes and yes. I mean, what we always come back to is what we call the everyday leader. I mean, my personal view, and I had this in my earlier book, Flex, that we talked about on your podcast, was that what we need as a culture in our society is for everyone to recognize the potential leader within themselves and to step into that and then to discover what that leader emerges, how that leader emerges. So I don't think that we necessarily believe that it has to be the C-suite alone. But at the same time, the coaching studies, and we didn't talk about this much, but each of these nine incorporates a coaching study from a real life case. And in reflecting upon the number of coaching studies or case studies that are in the book, I mean, they are all at various levels. There's an operating officer, there's a director, there's a head of a medical residency. They can be really at any level, but I would say someone who aspires, where they start is less important than the aspiration to be really impactful and end up in the C-suite. or if you already are in the C-suite, to really demonstrate your leadership chops. Those are the kinds of things that I would put in. It made me think of another guest I've had on People First, another Margaret Moore. But this one was Margaret Andrews. And she was talking about her book, Manage Self to Lead Others. It was a week or so ago. But she had a three-step process that you've just reminded me of, which is like, who am I today as a leader and who do I want to be? And then what are the steps to help me get there? And that's where I think your book is so powerful in that there are nine ways to expand that impact, to grow into the leader you want to be, that your team, the others need you to be, and the system in which you are operating also requires you to be so that you can be successful on all those planes. Right. And it's powerful stuff. So as we come to the end of our time together, what's one message you would like our listeners and your audience today to leave with and where can they learn more about you and your work? Well, I'm going to start by saying I'm getting a sense from my interactions that Gen Z is responding really well to this book because they're needing a compass and a map. Starting out, and they look around at role models I mean you know role models today of good leaders I mean there's lots of them they're just not visible the visible ones are um unfortunately hard to follow for many so I I think it's um if you're feeling as though you need a compass and a map This is going to give it to you. And everything else you read about leadership sits on top of it. It's like these are the elements that are the basis for everything else. They get mixed and matched and turned into every other book. So it's sort of like chemistry one-on-one for leaders. I don't know, but there is no course quite like this because everybody picks it. It's a bit disorganized leadership. development and training and everybody has their own little thing. So I think it's that. And then the more senior leaders, it's validation and expansion. So it's directional for young people, which is what they need. And it's validating and expansive for older leaders. Thank you. And Jeff, what would you add? I think that the leaders that I'm beginning to use this book with, because now that it's out, I can start to work with my clients and it's actually happening in real time. What I'm finding is that even the senior level folks that I'm coaching, are discovering that they tend to be a bit of a one trick pony. They tend to have the one, the servant, or the transformational, or the positive, or whatever. And all of a sudden, they're realizing there's a whole symphony that's available to them. So recognizing that they can learn so many more instruments than they were aware of. And it could result in feeling a bit of overwhelm, but on the other hand, it's more like having a variety, a varied tool set. And in today's world that is disruption personified, I think for most leaders, having more tools is better than having less tools. And so that's what I'm seeing with some of the more senior people. I agree with Margaret about Gen Z and feeling like they can get into it early in their career and have an incredible foundation. But the senior folks can also start to expand their capacities in recognizing that maybe they've been doing a little bit too much of one thing And there's more to the tool set available to them than they realized. So I think it's really fun to work with them as a coach. Well, thank you. You've been listening to People First with me, Morag Barrett, and my fabulous guests this week, Jeffrey Hull and Margaret Moore, who are the co-authors of The Science of Leadership, Nine Ways to Expand Your Impact. I'll make sure all their contact information and book details, et cetera, are included in the show notes. But if you liked this one and what was not to like, make sure that you subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Thank you all. Thank you.