Shayne Daughenbaugh  00:04

What do you think of when you think of the future of Lean leadership?

Catherine McDonald  00:08

The best way to predict the future is to create it. What we’re moving to is actually more leadership in its proper form, which is the actual ability to develop everybody in the organization to be leaders and to be innovators and to be problem solvers. Definitely, we’re moving more towards, I think the need for that approach.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  00:27

My advice for those that are looking to, you know, project themselves into the future is start, start being who you want to be. Then you music. Hello and welcome to another episode of the lean solutions podcast. I am Shane with my fantastic host, Catherine. Catherine, how are you today? I’m good,

Speaker 1  00:59

shade. I’m just trying to match your energy here. I’m good. Where are you? Shane, I don’t feel that energetic.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  01:05

You know, I have been accused at times of being, I have to put these words correctly, of being aggressively positive. There are times when my energy is just a little bit too much, and I’m still learning. I’m still young in life and still learning how to I love your I love you. Bring that down. I am excited about today’s topic. And to start us off, and to kind of give a little bit of a hint of what we’re going to be talking about, Catherine, I want you to imagine it is 2035 so 10 years from now, not terribly far 10 years from now, 2035, what are lean leaders going to be doing? Like, are they going to be having some kind of holographic Kanban board? Are they going to be doing virtual gimbal ox like, on the moon or, like, across, you know, continents? It could be, I don’t know what, what? What? What do you think of when you think of the future of Lean leadership,

Catherine McDonald  02:02

big question, okay, I would scale it back a little, you know, maybe no moon and, you know, outer space. Hopefully I’m not you ever ready for that. But look, I do think we’ve had the conversation before about AI and technology, and we are going to have to get up to speed with doing things differently, that there is no doubt about that we cannot keep working and and implementing and being trying to be lean in the same way we always have. That’s for sure. However, I do think we can’t forget our foundations, our you know, what’s really, really important in terms of respect for people and continuous improvement and a focus on the foundations and we that’s, I think, what’s happening in the world today. We’re getting so focused on this shiny stuff, like you just said that. I think, I think we were, there’s a danger of us forgetting the Foundations of Leadership and the I really do. So I think it’s a very good question to actually bring us back to reality.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  03:05

Sometimes, yeah, ask my wife, sometimes I do need to be kind of brought back down into like the here and now. So let me ask a question, then to go along with this, to kind of follow up with what you were saying, and I totally appreciate where you were going with that. What do you see as possibly some key skills, mindsets, those kind of things that you think will define effective leadership, you know, moving forward. And how can organizations start cultivating those kind of mindsets, or key traits, or whatever, however you want to define it, how can they start cultivating that

Catherine McDonald  03:40

now, yeah, so Well, definitely, I mean, you’re probably picking up on what I just said. There adaptability, flexibility is massive. That is the mindset we need to have in that we can’t keep going and and and expecting to roll out lean and treat people the same way, and, and, and, I suppose, expect changes in the way we’ve always done them. So definitely being adaptable, looking to see what resources are out there, what can help us speed up the way we’re doing things right now. And, you know, learning about those things and implementing those things, and being ahead when it comes to the knowledge about all of these things. So I think that whole adaptability mindset, and that probably links to growth mindset, which a lot of people are probably familiar with, the the work of Carol Dweck and growth mindset, but this idea that, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re, it’s possible to do more, it’s possible to be more, it’s possible to be better, and that’s going to be really important, because I think a lot of organizations could choose to stay stuck in, oh, we’re okay. We’ve been doing fine. You know that’s not going to work over the next 10 years. And in terms of how we, I guess, try to bring in that, those mindsets now, I think these whole cycles that we use in Lean need to be done more effectively. So when we think about plan, do, check, act, I think we’re very. Good sometimes about creating this plan, we’re not so good at the doing. We’re even worse at the checking, and we’re even the change in the acting part, right, right. Get better at our action using the actual cycles that we’re supposed to be using, and not just, you know, leaving it to chance or taking some sort of ad hoc approach this. It’s not a time for ad hocness. It’s a time for structure. It’s a time for bringing in the this. I think that’s what I think. So, yeah, thank you. Kind of my top two mindsets, along with maybe this idea of intellectual humility, where we have to understand and put up our hands about what we don’t know, because there’s so much we don’t know. And I think we have to say every leader out there, every Lean leader out there needs to be able to say that to the teams they’re working with, because it’s going to be a joint effort to change and improve over the next few years. That’s just my talk. I mean, where do you what, what do you make of all that? Would you? Would you?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  05:53

It’s, it’s, it’s so alongside of what you just mentioned. Because where, where I’m thinking is, and I’m just going to phrase it just a little bit different way, just a scientific mindset of experimentation and exploration like that that has to be in, you know, that’s really what the PDCA, the Plan Do Check Act cycle is all about. It’s experimenting, it’s exploring, it’s it’s using scientific thinking, not just like you mentioned, you know, ad hocness Is that a real word, like, I love this now, trying to start using this.

06:25

People know what I meant, though, right,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  06:26

right, right, yes, yes, exactly, um. And I want to also add, like, there’s components that that leadership has been doing really good so far, but will even more so continue with AI, with technology, with the the things that that make the world smaller and smaller. And what I’m what I’m speaking to, is global citizenship, this, this embracing of different cultures. And I’m going to say diversity, but when I say diversity, I want it to be a more broad term than diversity and just the color of the skin and the nationality diversity in culture, and that could be in the same country, you have so many different cultures, you know, with with the different generations and everything, they have different cultures. So that global mindset of starting to think, hey, how do we, how do I best lead these kind of, this kind of culture, but the other diversity would be diversity of thought, so that, in I see this as the best way to move forward is to get the best minds together. And they can’t all be the same, because I only have that limitation you just mentioned. How did you say intellectual humility, or something like that. You know, knowing that, hey, I have a limitation, and if I surround myself with people that think just like I do, then we all have that same limitation. So those global thinking globally, you know, I’m taking more diversity in. And I want to say the last thing that I was thinking about ethical and social responsibility. I mean, I you know, what kind of impacts will the decisions that we have, that we make today, impact grandchildren and people further on? I think it’s really short sighted for business to not start thinking that way, just not start projecting that way as as again, the world becomes smaller and smaller with all the technology that we have and and all this going on, we have to be aware of and be stewards of the decisions that we make in the impacts that we make. You know, wherever it is. So those are, that’s, that’s my quick soapbox there for the things that that I think about in regards to, you know, the traits and the mindsets and and, you know, I asked, I also followed up that question with, Hey, how can leaders start cultivating these now? I mean, I don’t have a great answer for that, because I don’t have a stargate in my bedroom, so I can’t jump to the future and see this. I don’t have that holographic or that, that virtual GEMBA on on the moon. But what I what I do think, because the future is so man, what’s I want to I want to say sensitive in that it’s not set. It can be changed by how you act, how I act, how we all act. My My advice for those that are looking to you know, project themselves into the future is start, start being who you want to be. Then, yes,

Catherine McDonald  09:39

what? What’s that saying? The best way to predict the future is to create it. That’s kind of what you’re saying. Yes, yeah, definitely, definitely agree with that. And so much of what you’re saying is making me think we focus on leadership a lot in our conversations, right? I. The whole world does, you know, focus on leadership, but yet, when it comes to practice, we focus on leaders, and the role of leaders, you know, leading the team and all the behaviors and tasks and roles that come with that. But what we’re moving to is actually more leadership in in its proper form, which is the actual ability to develop everybody in the organization to be leaders and to be innovators and to be problem solvers. And everything that you’ve said, and I’ve said, really, I think, emphasizes the need for us to move to that way of working right now, and for not for leaders. And it links with intellectual humility to think that they need to be the ones to change everything, and, you know, shape the path to the moon. They don’t. It’s, it’s a partnership approach, really, with the leader absolutely having, you know, certain responsibilities around the guidance there, and the and the people development piece. But definitely, we’re moving more towards, I think, the need for that approach, it’s become clear to me, yeah,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  10:59

developing a vehicle, and

Catherine McDonald  11:02

then what about chain? So we talk about lean on the Lean solutions podcast, because that’s what we all do, and and, and that’s what we we all know. So how can lean principles, I guess, evolve in your mind to stay relevant with everything that’s happening out there in terms of technological advancements and and change in the workplaces. What do you think? Or do they need? Do they need to evolve? The actual, I guess, way that we teach lean, the way that where we I guess, the focus of lean, when, if, as you think about it, now, do you think that needs to change? I

Shayne Daughenbaugh  11:40

think I don’t know that the principles need to evolve, but our application of those principles, you know, because if we were to just label off the principles, you know, the principle of value from the customer’s perspective, I don’t know that that needs to evolve. The principle of understanding the value stream and visualizing how you’re getting whatever you whatever the customer wants, how you’re going to get it there, the idea of push and pull, perfection and respect for people, which you mentioned before, those are principles that that I don’t see. I don’t know that those can really evolve. I I mean, our application of those principles are what I believe are going to evolve, you know, I I see and our understanding shifting in what the customer really values, and the more things change, especially with technology. I mean, remember back when we were kids, when before there was really much of the internet, we just had stores you actually had to walk into, you know, and now we have a society where what the customer values is, I just want to click a button, like, I want to click a button and have it delivered to me. I want to be able to check on my phone, Where’s where’s the little UPS guy, where’s the delivery guy? Oh, he’s 10 stops away. Like, those are the things that we value now that that weren’t valued before. So just understanding how, how that shift happens in regards to, you know, the principle of, you know, value from the customer’s perspective, I another one that I can think of is the idea of of real time data collection is, as we’re talking about, you know, value stream and visualizing how the customers need comes through our system back to them. The more technology enhances and advances, the more we have access to this real time data to be able to see where the bottlenecks are, you know. And I think that principle is a value stream, and visualization is is definitely going to need to evolve and be enhanced with more technology.

Catherine McDonald  13:51

I do, and I do think there might be something in what you’re saying about the evolution of the even the principles, because the basic principle will will stay the same. But even when you think about the customer, like value from the customer’s perspective, we’re living in a world where customers don’t know what they want,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  14:08

right? Come on, now,

Catherine McDonald  14:12

you said it at the beginning, like we’re getting hit with things we never thought would ever, ever be invented or seen, and then they’re, they’re, presented to customers, and customers love them, but they didn’t come up with them, most of them. Do you know what I mean? So we’re living in a world where innovation is has to be so, so strong for companies, I think, to be competitive and and to do well. And we need, obviously, the people on the teams to be innovative. But I don’t know if traditional lean values innovation as much as it does problem solving. So that would be my one kind of way of looking at the principles and kind of going into how do we do we need to tweak those or think differently in terms of that. Now I could be wrong in. Do you know? I know it does value innovation. I know that values adaptability same way as agile, but I guess that’s just been my experience with it and how it’s been taught. I don’t know. I could be wrong, yeah, and

Shayne Daughenbaugh  15:12

I will you, maybe you kind of stirred up some other thoughts in my head, and we spoke about this just a little bit, you know, just a couple minutes ago, but this idea, I think, what, what can happen, what I’m what I fear is, as technology advances, that what will end up going as technology goes up, what’s going to end up going down is the the desire for perfection, the desire to continue to strive. You know, we’ve made it digital. We’ve made it automated. We don’t need to worry about, you know, all of the experimentation and trying to figure it out. We’ll just let the computer do it, or the algorithm do it, or, you know, whatever, the machine, you know, do it all. But I think it’s, it’s Jimmy flinchba, who has the podcast or the book or whatever it is that people solve problems. So, so So having that, making sure that that doesn’t get left in the dust, you know, as as we’re moving forward, and as leaders move forward, and think about, you know, what they’re going to do in the future. So, yeah, I

Catherine McDonald  16:13

agreed. Agreed. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, it’s going to be an interesting 510, years. Who knows? Maybe nothing will change. Maybe it’s just,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  16:22

yeah, I used to watch the Jetsons as a kid, and I never got a I mean, now we have Roomba, but still it wasn’t, it wasn’t that housekeeper that rolled around and made all my meals and everything, and I don’t have a flying car. Come on, now,

Catherine McDonald  16:36

people, no change is a lot slower often than we think. But I guess that’s the uncertainty these days. We just, we’re not sure that anymore either. So yeah, I mean, when it comes to leadership, I guess there’s, there’s, there’s lots that we need to take into account. There’s, I guess we have to look at, first and foremost, in my mind, our own self leader, leadership of self first. Because I believe, if we don’t, I guess, work on that and work on, I guess, being a good person, you know, working on our own skills, working on our own attitude, it’s going to be very difficult to lead teams through the change and uncertainty that we’re seeing out there, you know, so we do need to, I think, focus on that. And then we also need to focus on, well, how do we work best with our teams to, I guess, see change and innovation happen and manage lead. But i What do you think in terms of people who are leaders or who want to be leaders, and the strategy that that they should adopt to be able to lead in the most effective way in the current climate. What do you think leaders should be saying to themselves now in terms of their own approach?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  17:51

That’s a really good question, because I’m seeing some of that shift now in in I’m kind of moving away from and that’s one of the things I love about Lean, is it’s taking us the next step past the Industrial Revolution mindset of how we did things with the command and control which worked back then. And it was an incredible leap forward in innovation that you know, that the traditional or classical, I guess, business model, but now we’re shifting into things where I am happy to say that my perception is it’s so much more human centric, like you mentioned. You know, Leadership isn’t just about manning the ship. It’s about investing in your people, you know. So so I see things, you know. I see things like transparency, being, I mean, there’s, there’s whether we go American football or, you know, English football, you know, soccer, however we want to call it, because we’re, we’re both from different places. But you can be a really Junior League and player or a team and have one really great player, right? And that, that one really great player can take you so far. But when you get up to the pro level, it’s no longer about that one really great player. Just get the ball to that, you know, to the star player. It has to be communicated as there has to be some transparency that, hey, this is where we’re going. This is how we’re doing things. And I would love to be able to see this fostered more in leadership and in their strategy, you know, in in disseminating that information and giving people ownership in where this is going. So transparency, I also think of empathy, yeah, and having that, again, human centric, like the people that that we’re working with, the people that are on your teams, are not just machines and robots, like they have lives. They they have they have values and joys, and they have dreams and and they have something to offer that most likely has not been tapped into yet. Like, that’s the beauty of human potential, is it just continues to grow so. That having that empathy and that desire to imagine with other people what they could be. And for the last the last thing that I want to mention, because we’ve talked about several times, is is value you know, looking at the value you know, from from the customer, but also understanding that really, your MVPs of your organization are your employees. You know, yes, customers are our customer is king. It’s what’s driving it. But your MVPs, the people that you should be spending more, almost even more market research on, is, how do we tap into the human potential that’s right here that our employees are really what’s going to get us to what the customer wants. I

Catherine McDonald  20:47

agree. And I think that’s, again, sort of a change in the principles of Lean as well, in that focus and who we focus on. Totally agree. And I think you were talking there about transparency and openness and empathy, and they’re all, I guess, skills, competencies that leaders need. I would say that even just this coaching approach, this ability to spend time with people, the ability to understand them, understand their strengths, their areas for development, help them to understand what they need to do to develop themselves, that’s the real role of the leader. Now it’s not to make all the decisions. You know, decision making is becoming more centralized. It’s becoming part of what the team does, and the leaders part of the team. So it’s a very different way of looking at the role of the leader. Now, you know, and obviously there’s other approaches you still need leaders to, you know, be the ones to bring people together, sometimes to make the decision at the end, after listening to everybody, that’s all absolutely fine, but the way in which all of that is done is definitely changing, and for that reason, I think leaders just need to keep learning. They need to keep developing themselves, and organizations need to understand that, you know, leader development does not mean these one day courses or these Mickey Mouse you know, online courses that they sometimes sign people up to and tick the box to say, oh, leader development, we’ve done that. No, it’s much deeper. It’s, it’s looking at the competencies that are important for the role of a leader. And it’s, it’s working with the person on those competencies internally, manager to manager mentor to manager, coach to manager, and working on these over time, all the time. And that’s that’s my interpretation of leader development. And I think we fall down there hugely when it comes to leader development and organizations. People are not getting this. They’re still looking for that tick box, because they just don’t know what else. And also you’ve got the issue of, well, who’s going to do the work? You know, really, there should be an understanding if you’re if you report into somebody, they’re your manager, and your manager is the one person for responsible for your development, you know, and they make that happen with you. So I think there’s a long way to go still for that to happen, but it’s not difficult. It’s not difficult by any man or means. So definitely the skills, and then I think, how we treat people, how we and we often hear now about, you know, work life balance. I don’t really believe in work life balance as such. I don’t think there is a perfect balance you can achieve. I do believe in well being. I do think it’s important for leaders to understand, you know, within their one to ones with people, talk to them about their well being. You know, how are you feeling and work, what can we do to help you with your mental, physical, spiritual, social health, whatever it is, and we need to prioritize that well being, to get people to a level where they are performing really well and able to innovate and with energy and, you know, bring their their their full selves to their team. So I do think in terms of practical steps, that’s the role of the leader. These days, it really comes back down to spending time with people and developing people. And I do think that’s where we need to go back to if we want, in 10 years time, to have an organization full of innovators and and bright, energetic, healthy people, because the ideas are going to come from people, or at least the implementation is AI can give us some ideas, but it can’t do the work. So I think it’s looking after our people. I do. I really do. Shane,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  24:11

that’s awesome. That’s awesome. I again, I agree. We’re on the same page. There. You mentioned balance, and I want to take a little bit a little shift in balance. How can leaders balance, you know, in the future, moving forward in the future is anytime you know, past today, you know, on into infinity. But balancing the short term goals with the long term vision. How do you how do you see, do you see any of that changing or adapting? You mentioned, kind of adaptivity and agileness to be able to do it, yeah, yeah,

Catherine McDonald  24:45

yeah. I think this is where actually, you know, lean is done, right, and we can do this, and we can continue to do this. So for example, I think where Lean has the advantage. Is in the way it’s done through Kaizen, right? So when we have a Kaizen, and we involve the people doing the work in coming up with improvement ideas, and we bring them together and we say, Go, great, great idea. Go, do that. And we take that whole Toyota production system where it first started, approach to empowering people every single day, and their work to come up with ideas and then to implement those ideas, right? So you’ve got that side of lean, which I think is totally workable for the next 10 years, and it’s the way it should be, and it does work, and we know it. So we’ve got Paul acres talking about two second lean, you know, and it’s sort of sort of, you know, that that is the future on one in one sense, I think we’re also going to have to have the other side, which is the more strategic side, which is the more longer term thinking about the organization. It’s where leaders need to have this strategic ability, systems thinking, to look ahead, join the dots. Understand that not everything is a quick fix. Not everything can just be done through a Kaiser and say, great, go off and do it. We need to bring people together. We need to understand processes from end to end. We need to be able to, you know, like we’ve always done, I guess. But it just may become more important to put the structure on this, as I said in the beginning, if we really, really want to stay ahead, and if we want to bring in the right technologies, and if we want to standardize our processes properly before we bring in this new shiny technology, which is happening in a lot of places. I do think we’re going to have to balance those the short term with the long term and get that balance better working better in our organizations. I think it’s off at the moment.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  26:36

Yeah, yeah, that’s where my head went as well. It’s funny. You should say you mentioned Paul acres because I was thinking, you know, in regards to to short term, lean goals, small and many are so is so much better than few and long like, you know, having, just having really small things that we can do lots of those really small things are, you’re going To get better progress than if you’re just taking, you know, a really long approach. But I also, I love what you said there about systems thinking in that we have to also understand, how do these, these improvements, these small improvements that we’re making, how do they impact the bigger system? Because without doing so, you may make this improvement here on, you know, in point C, in in regards to A through F, but down the stream, you know, it, it messes things up. So understanding, having, having that foresight, to be able to say, Okay, if we fix this, what are the impacts, both upstream and downstream? What are those going to be? Because that’s, that’s more that long term vision of what you’re you know what you’re talking about and and one of the things that that I, I try to bring up when, when I’m working with clients and whatnot, is the idea of, hey, let’s just fix what matters. You know, not every problem needs a solution, because we have limited resources, we can’t fix everything, but let’s try to fix the things that we can. And let’s fix the things that matter. And I would even give, I don’t know if this is if this is right or not, but I’m going to give it a kind of a priority, priority assessment. Here. You know what matters most to the to the customer, then what matters most to the employee, and then what matters most to the business. Now, I am not a big business person. I don’t have lots of people under me, you know. So I could be way off, and if so, please comment. Please send us your feedback. If we’re a little bit off and you’re finding it, you know, different experience. Love to hear that as well, but I really appreciate hey, let’s look at the small. Have a small play into the big, and let’s just try to focus on that which really strategically moves us further ahead. Let’s just fix what matters customer, to the employee, and then to the business. That’s true.

Catherine McDonald  29:01

It’s true. And, yeah, I think, I think sometimes we only focus on, okay, what matters most, that we know about, that the data is telling us about. So often we’re reactive to right, our approach to changing or improving something, and our kind of long term, short term goals as such, they’re they’re reacting. And I think this is where it’s really important to have both, I suppose, leading and lagging measures. And I think oftentimes we’ll have the lagging measures so we look back and we’ll say, Well, how were our profits last month? How what were our What was our losses, what complaints came in, what defects were there, what was turnover like? So we look back and we kind of take a sort of a reactive approach to the problem. We go and in Lean, I think we’re sort of taught to do that, even if you look at Lean Six Sigma, to make define the problem first, right? So we’re told to look at the problem, but then. Then I think this is where we need the LA, the leading measures, which are the forward looking measures to help us on, to help us just plan to do more innovative things that will prevent the React, the reactions, right? So things like, you know, even I spoke about leader development there. What are we doing? What What are measures? Have we got to tell us that, you know, where our investments in leader development, we’re making investments, and those investments are maybe changing the perception of leaders competencies in, you know, perception of their own competencies, right, in their role. Okay, great. So we’ve got this measure. A lot of people would go, Oh, sure, what good is that? You know, that’s not telling us anything. But actually there’s leader development can be linked to, you know, changes in profits and bottom line metrics over time, but I think we don’t take them seriously enough. We don’t look to see things like daily hoodie participation, customer engagement. We don’t look at the positives. We focus on the negatives. So I think there’s a lot we can interesting, learn from the pot, taking the positives and doing more with that, and maybe not looking for results out of it, just focusing on it as a sort of a platform to jump from into, you know, innovation. So, yeah, I think, I think those, both those measures are important for me as well when it comes to short term and long term thinking too. Oh, look, we could talk about it all day, but I think both say, use the word balance, and it’s all we’re always looking for balance. But let’s be honest, we’re never balanced. There’s no such thing. We’re just doing our best to look to see what will what could we try differently to help us a little bit better? That’s kind of the way we are, isn’t it? Yeah. So we talked a lot there, actually about about skills and about leadership. And one, one thing that didn’t come up, I noticed I didn’t say the word, but actually, we’ve, we’ve covered a lot of terms linked to it is emotional intelligence. And emotional intelligence, kind of like what we talked about there before, the ability to know yourself, lead yourself. So the pillars of emotion intelligence are self awareness, self management. So the management of your own emotions, social awareness, understanding what’s happening around you and in the people around you. And then relationship management, right? And then you’ve got empathy, which the word you did use, and motivation, right? So these are the pillars that emotional intelligence are is built on. And I do you hear very different perspectives on emotional intelligence. You’ll get some people poo, pooing it honestly, you know, doesn’t matter. Business can go on. We don’t need to look at that soft stuff. I hear a lot, and then you’ve got the other side, where people think it’s the most critical skill to develop in people, it’s going to become the most critical skill out there. And what are your thoughts on emotional intelligence? Shane, and what about the two sides? Oh, goodness, yeah. What do we do with emotional intelligence? And should we be harnessing it? Should we be investing in it, or can we just get by without it? And what’s, you know, what’s the what’s the point?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  33:07

I mean, I mean, my, my heart, goes with the human centric side of things. I’ve mentioned it before, and I will continue. You know, we, we, we’re human beings, not human doings. We’re human beings, and we need to be aware of that. We need to respect that, to honor that. And there are a lot of ways that can, that can play out, but I definitely, I don’t know which side is more important. I don’t I don’t know if, well, okay, I will say that those that poopoo emotional intelligence. I want to make an accusatory statement and say they probably don’t have any, I don’t know, sorry. I’m just, I’m just making a judgment call, um, I’ll apologize for it. Or, or they

33:55

think they, they could think they do, or they That’s

Shayne Daughenbaugh  33:57

true, that’s they could think they do. But just trying to understand, like you were mentioning, hey, understanding who I am and, and what is it about me, you know, the kind of that self awareness, self reflection, those kind of things that’s huge, but also trying to put myself in the feet of other people and, and I think there it could grow beyond just wanting to understand, you, Catherine, if I was your, your manager, supervisor, whatever, you know, just wanting to understand. Okay, so Catherine, you know, as kids, she’s got a husband, she’s got ailing parents, you know, whatever it is, trying to capture those kind of things to give, you know, understanding in regards to maybe why you missed this deadline or that deadline. But I think emotional intelligence also can speak to Okay. So what are Catherine’s goals? So Catherine said that she would like to advance in this company. Okay, to advance in this company, she needs to have more opportunities to solve problems. So emotional intelligence would say that if there is. An issue, and this is just an example, and I’m spitballing here, but if there’s an issue that Catherine’s having, and you bring it to me, Catherine, I turn it back to you and say, Hey, what do you think? You know? You You take this and the best you can. I will support you. I will give you the resources you will need. I will move things out of your way. But what is it that you think so that my emotional intelligence is saying, Hey, I understand what Catherine wants. I understand how she’s gonna get that is by experience. Let me give her that experience instead of always fixing, always firefighting, always being there as the hero, I step back as the lead support and allow you to learn, to allow you to fail. And I have heard some pretty crazy when one really crazy experience in it, and then I’ll just shut down, or I’ll just shut up here. But yeah, there was a an executive who had an assistant who drafted, you know, drafted something, drafted something up for them, a letter or whatnot, and brought it in, and the executive read it, looked at it, and then handed it back and said, you know, you can do better. And did that like, three or four times. And when I first heard this, as as I was hearing the story, I was like, Man, what a what a jerk. Like, didn’t give any ideas as to what was wrong, you know, maybe he mentioned, Hey, I see there’s a couple errors in here. You can do better. But what the the principle behind it, and whether right or wrong, how he did it. And I’m just giving, you know, the Cliff Notes version of, really, you know, cut really, really quick. Idea of it, but the idea behind it was, I’m not going to fix this for my, my my administrative assistant. I’m going to allow them to figure out the way, because that’s more important in the long run for our relationship than it is this piece of paper that has to be perfect.

Catherine McDonald  37:01

Yes, that’s a great example. Because so when I I studied the EQ i 2.0 it’s a psychometric EQ assessment. And when we did that, that piece of work that you had to do to be able to come up become a practitioner, I learned something. I learned that having a high IQ doesn’t mean you’re high in everything. Doesn’t mean you’re high in empathy plus you’re high in Independence plus you’re high in stress management. It doesn’t mean you go through the 15 or 16 competencies and you’re high in them all. What it means is you’ve learned to balance your competencies out. So it might mean that you might actually, let’s say, be low on empathy and high on assertiveness, but EQ is being able to get, maybe bring the empathy up and bring the assertiveness back a little. So it is about like they, they described it as this mixing board, which, you know, like a DJ mixing board, which I thought was amazing. You’ve got all your like, um, EQ, you know, competencies listed out, and then you’re constantly moving the buttons up and down based on the situation, to understand what to do in that situation. So it’s, it’s fascinating to learn about it, and to learn about how you can actually adjust your IQ and develop your IQ. Because a lot of people think you can. Shane, you actually can once you become thank you so much. You can. So it’s fascinating that you know when you get, I guess, leaders who’ve never thought about this before, who’ve never thought about the importance of emotional intelligence, and then when they start looking at their own behaviors and how they handle a situation, and are able to put a language and an understanding around that, using words like empathy and assertiveness, I think they start to see, oh gosh, I understand now where I’m Maybe strong, where I need to develop. It’s just it opens up so much, I think, in terms of self development for people. And I always say that, you know, developing yourself as a leader is self developed, personal development first, not professional development. It’s about working on yourself. So it is, it’s amazing. It’s amazing. And even if you think about, you know, the the idea of problem solving and lean, which we’ve to do a lot of, obviously, there is a lot of that. But if you imagine a person with, let’s say, low emotional intelligence, trying to run a problem solving session, I mean, they’re probably going to look at the data, the facts, you know, they’re probably not going to take into account, you know, the human factors in all of this, in terms of the problems. I mean, that’s going to be so bad for relationships, and how’s that going to lead to any change? Because the conflict is going to get in the way. So there’s so much when it comes to lean and respect for people, so much that we depend on, I think, our emotional intelligence for and I think it’s a really important thing for every leader to understand,

Shayne Daughenbaugh  39:37

agreed, agreed. Okay, all right, so we have, we have crushed a whole bunch of terrain. We have. We never really got into the holographic Kanban boards. We didn’t do the virtual GEMBA dad gum it. You know, maybe next time I do love this discussion and and just do. The the excitement and and the exercise of trying to project, man, what could it be? I wonder what is still going to be there, what’s going to get us there? That’s been a lot of fun. I’ve really appreciated the time that you’ve you’ve given us as listeners and Catherine, that the you know what, what I have been able to absorb from you and kind of interact with that’s been super fun in talking about this

Catherine McDonald  40:24

same Shane, same shape. I think we compliment each other, because I do think you’re, you’re probably a lot more creative than me. That was obvious from your first statement. I’m like, I’m usually the one where I’m go, right? Let’s come back down to earth. So your first statement kind of upset me a little bit. Shane, I’m never in the sky.

Shayne Daughenbaugh  40:42

Yeah, okay, fair enough. Fair enough.

40:47

Can’t handle it, right?

Shayne Daughenbaugh  40:48

Fair enough, well, we’ve come to the end. Thank you so much for for watching us, for being with us, hanging with us. We hope that this has been enjoyable. It’s been fun for us, and most importantly, we hope that you were able to at least get some things to think about as you’re looking into and projecting. What is it that I’m going to be in the future? How can I future proof? Or how can I make sure that I’m remaining useful and relevant as things change?