Patrick Adams  00:00

Welcome to the Lean solutions podcast. This is the podcast that adds value to leaders by helping you improve performance using process improvement solutions with

 

00:09

bottom line results.

 

Patrick Adams  00:10

My name is Patrick Adams, and this season, I’ll be joined by three other amazing hosts, including Catherine McDonald from Ireland, Andy Ulrich from Australia, and Shane gottlenbalch from the United States. Join us as we bring you guests and experiences of Lean practitioners from all over the world. Hello and welcome to this episode of the lean solutions podcast led by your hosts, myself, Patrick Adams, as well as Andy Ulrich from Australia. Andy, how’s it going?

 

Andy Olrich  00:42

Good night. How are you? Hey, it’s

 

Patrick Adams  00:44

I’m doing. Well, not exactly sure when this episode will drop, but we’re right in the midst of planning for the Lean Solution Summit. So it’s been crazy a couple of weeks, and possibly by the time our audience is hearing this episode, it’ll be after the summit, maybe, or maybe even the week of, I’m not really sure, but it’ll be like a huge breath of relief to have everything done. So it’s, yeah,

 

Andy Olrich  01:11

I’ve started packing my bags because obviously I’m coming over and yeah, I just see some of the work that’s going in behind that. It is going to be amazing. So yeah, I’m really excited now, mate, I can’t wait to get over there and be part of it and meet you all well. We’re

 

Patrick Adams  01:26

excited to see you. I’m also looking forward to our interview today. We have a couple of really great guests that’ll be on, and we’re going to be talking about their new book that just came out recently. But just to kind of give a little bit of background and context, you know, obviously we are living in a world where, you know, change is the only constant right. Leadership has become more complex than ever before, and you know that traditional one size fits all approach to leading organizations, it’s it’s no longer sufficient in an environment where agility, empathy, adaptability are just paramount, they’re the most important things. So today I’m excited to have our guests on. I’m actually going to bring them to the stage here so we can welcome them in. But we have today, we’re joined by Brad Jevons and Chris Butterworth, who recently authored a book along with Stephen Dargan titled leading excellence, the five hats of the adaptive leader. So we’re excited to have them on. Welcome to the stage. Excited to have you guys joining us.

 

02:37

Thank you absolutely.

 

Patrick Adams  02:41

Andy, you want to give us a little bit of background on Chris and

 

Andy Olrich  02:44

Brad. Absolutely my pleasure. So we’ll start with Chris. So for those who don’t know Chris, Chris is a multi award winning author, international speaker, Shingo Faculty Fellow that goes on. He’s co authored three Shingo award winning books on continuous improvement culture, and that’s pretty brief, but yeah, I’ve been a fan of Chris’s work work for a while now, and I’m super excited to have him on on the show. And yeah, and then we’ve got a fellow Australian on the show which is which is super exciting. So we’ve got Brad. So Brad’s a senior leadership coach focused on creating a better future, economically, socially and environmentally. He hosts the enterprise excellence podcast and has also authored a book, agile sales, delivering customer journeys of value and delight. Now they’re pretty brief summaries of what you guys do and have been doing for a while, but it’s such a thrill to have you on the show. Welcome.

 

03:38

Thank you. Great to be here.

 

Andy Olrich  03:40

We’re zeroing in on the recently launched book. It’s been out for about a couple of weeks now, leading excellence, and in particular, as Patrick said, The Five hats, and we’ll get into that around the adaptive leader, really, for those listening now, and I’d be really keen to explore as our first question to kick off, tell us why you wrote this book. What was behind it?

 

Chris Butterworth  04:04

Yeah, really, really, great question to start with. So we Brad and I have known each other for 10 years and worked together for quite a while on improvement, and I’ve also worked with Stephen for 10 years, and Brad and Stephen hadn’t met till we decided to write this book together. But myself and Brad were up in Brisbane having a chat about there’s a gap. There’s lots and lots of books around continuous improvement. There’s lots of books around leadership, but there are few that combine the and explain the two in terms of what is the key role of a leader to create a culture of continuous improvement, and that was the purpose behind this book. We said, Actually, we need to help leaders. Many people become leaders without any training on how to be a leader. And we believe that creating a culture of continuous improvement is. Essential role for any leader to do. So when Brad and I were talking about this, and I said, Well, I know someone else who would be really good to collaborate with. You, mentioned some of my other books, but all of them have been collaborations with people because they’re so much richer when when you can get that range of experience together and and this, this latest book, for example, has over 30 case studies in it from whole kinds of different organizations.

 

Patrick Adams  05:27

Wow, that’s, that’s amazing. I love case studies. It makes such a big difference when you can actually tie the learnings back to real stories you know that people have experienced or are experiencing. And specifically, this book focuses, or it’s, it’s very much written to leaders in how to, you know, lead in an environment where change is happening regularly. And obviously, you know, all of us have experienced many changes over the years. And I don’t think change is going away. I think we’re going to continue to see some significant changes in technology and how we how we do business, no matter what industry that we’re in. But at the end of the day, it’s important that we have a focus on leading excellence, right, that we’re that we have, you know, at least that driving effort towards just providing our teams with, you know, vision and direction towards, you know, whatever perfection may be for the industry that we’re in or the work that we do so, you know, just kind of tying into the books theme and what and what it’s about, how, What can leaders focus on to improve in leading excellence or leading their teams towards perfection.

 

06:44

So I’ll just, I’ll just give an initial answer to that, excuse me, and then I’ll hand back over to Brad to expand on it. But one of the conclusions we came to is that you cannot be a good leader unless you first understand yourself. Who Am I? What is my purpose? What in what do I value? And as a result of those conversations, we’ve got some help from some other some other people. We came up with this concept of the core belief system, and that’s actually the first two chapters of the book. Is helping people to understand what their own core belief system is, because that helps to ground us. We are all first and foremost feeling beings who have the ability to think. But actually, we need things that trigger us to think. And what I mean by that, you know, just think back on Is there any conversations what you’ve had where you’ve kind of said, Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have said that. You know, maybe there’s a better way of saying it. That’s where we created this, this concept of the five hats to help people to do that, to pause, to think about the context and say, Well, how should I respond in this situation? And I’d like to hand over to Brad to talk a little bit about what we mean by leaders who serve.

 

Brad Jeavons  08:03

Yeah, so guys like, Thanks, Chris. When you look at organizations that are really pumping, you’ve got high engagement. I think we all know that. You know, right down to the front line there pumping improvement, but only 23% of the world workforce is engaged at the moment. So it’s a really low number. When you look at the recent Gallup and Chris dives, and I’ve, like, worked with hundreds, if not 1000s of companies when it comes to reviewing their excellence journeys. And the one thing we find is that high engagement. And then you go in a nutshell, what creates that high engagement is really leaders who serve the growth of others. So when you got leaders who are truly serving the growth of their people, the growth of themselves, the growth of their peers, even the growth of their leaders. You get great outcomes, but then when you look at it, and like Chris said, You’ve got to know yourself first, because otherwise you’re just not going to be conscious enough to do it. Because is every person the same? No, we’re not. We’re all different, and the context surrounding someone like when you’re engaging someone as a leader, that context, it’s never the same. So the one fit behavior as a leader won’t get you the ultimate results every time. So the piece we landed on is critical for a leader is like Chris said, to know yourself so you can actually stay conscious. The reason you need to stay conscious is that you can adapt, and that’s where the adaptive leader comes in, which is really being that leader who serves the growth of the other person by choosing the ideal leadership behavior, considering the person and the context to truly help them grow. And I know it seems very simple, but I guess we nailed on one thing that you got to become good at as a leader, is to stay conscious, like Chris said. But the next thing is to pause. Look at, you know, pause, look at the person, consider the context surrounding them, and then adapt your behavior to the ideal behavior to help them. Grow and become that better version of themselves. Now we all know that type of leadership behavior will also drive engagement, because ultimately you’re going to be choosing behaviors that truly motivate that person also. And I think guys that then is what led us on to go, Well, how do we simplify this? Because we just tell audiences that choose 1000 different behaviors. And so we went, right. We got to pull this back, which I’ll hand over to Chris on that, guys, because, and it was pretty easy to pull it back, wasn’t it, Chris, to go, Well, what are those ideal behaviors?

 

Chris Butterworth  10:32

Yeah, absolutely. But so we all have the privilege to work with many great leaders and to visit leaders, and all of us do, actually quite a number of assessments of organizations. Key part of that is to we get to learn what good leadership is, because we see it in the results of the organizations and the engagement of the people. So one of the key skills is the Inspire and leaders. Leaders need to think about inspiring the people, inspiring them in terms of the purpose of the organization, and inspiring people in terms of helping them to see how their own purpose connects to the organization’s purpose. That’s one of the exercises we have in the book. The book is full of each chapter’s got exercises to do that, to bring it to life and to make it rich for people to practice what we talk about and case studies that illustrate it. So the Inspire hat is really important in terms of, what role do I play? How do I What does this mean for me and inspiring people to think about improvement? How can we make tomorrow better than today, every day? And why is that important? So that that’s one of the one of the key elements, one and one of the five hats, the the other hat. I’ll just mention one of the other hats, and I’ll let Brad talk about talk about some others. The other one is to coach. There’s a coaching hat. And this is not new rocket. You know, everyone, lots of people say leaders have got a coach. But what we found is there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what that really means and what, what? So we’re very clear in the book, because it’s important to make a differentiation between coaching and mentoring. Because what we found is lots of leaders say, oh, yeah, I’m coaching a lot, but not they’re really mentoring. And for us, the difference is, if I’m mentoring, I’m effectively giving advice and teaching. If I’m coaching, I’m asking questions that help people to think for themselves. But it’s not that one’s good and one’s bad, it’s actually we just need to know what’s the appropriate one to do and when to use it. And most leaders think they’re being very helpful when they are giving advice teaching. But if when we’re giving advice, what we’re really doing, if we’re not careful, is building dependency and also limiting people’s ability to think for themselves. So it can also be demotivating. People come up to us with with great ideas. And we can say, well, that’s a really good idea, but I’ve got an even better one. How about if we did it this way? You don’t have to do that very often before they stop coming to you with ideas. That’s right. So, so the coach, the real coach skill here is, and a nice way to think about is, how can I have a conversation where I only ask questions? It’s really difficult. So lot of practice, you know, to make sure you’ve got the right hat on to do that. But the impact of that is that people will grow and develop.

 

Patrick Adams  13:50

Just want to jump in with a quick follow up on something Brad mentioned earlier, obviously, love, love the first two hats. I’m excited to hear the others inspiring and coaching. But before that, Brad, you mentioned respect for people and or, I’m sorry, serving so, which obviously ties to respect for people, but being the type of leader that is serving others in their growth and helping to develop you know others that are working around you, peers, your employees, your team, whoever it may be. So do each of the different hats? Do each of the five hats? Do they have some tie back to serving? And are they when leaders say, I’m a servant leader? I mean saying it is one thing, but actually doing it is a whole nother thing. So the first question was, do they tie back to is it kind of woven throughout all the five hats? And then I’m already hearing, as Chris is talking about inspiring and coaching, that there’s some very specific behaviors and actions that are necessary in order to show that so is that? How each of the hats is kind of separated then, and I guess, can you just talk about that, and then we’ll go on to the others.

 

Brad Jeavons  15:06

Yeah, because what we did, guys, to come up with it like we’re at this position where we we, we knew the concept of the ideal leadership approach to create insane engagement and performance and Gallup. Found it too, guys. They found the number one thing was leadership behavior, right? But okay, so this is not just us, but then what we had to do, we had to go, how do we simplify this now to help us actually educate leaders and help people grow? And we, we looked at all our data. So Chris has coached both dogs. So Stephen, we often call dogs, so Chris has coached both dogs and myself over the years on how to help leaders analyze ideal behaviors. So we got all this wealth of data of taking leaders through this analysis process of ideal leadership behaviors, and so we’re able to draw on that to go, Well, what are the ideal behaviors of leaders who serve? And we were able to pull it down to five, you know. And the reason we went to five when we went the hats is because in one conversation, guys, you might have to wear the Inspire hat and be able to connect someone. But then a topic comes up and, right, I should coach on that, you know? So I’ve gotta lean it so. And then the hats thing’s been written about on many other topics, right? But we went, it’s the right thing to say, because it to be adaptive, you might have to put on different hats in the one conversation. So we had all this data, we pulled it together into five, which we thought was really representative of ideal behaviors, and then we led down the hat path, because we’re like, it’s, it’s the best approach to explain the adaptive element that has to play out.

 

Chris Butterworth  16:44

People say, quite right. I was servant leading. But in the book, we really clear, well, what does that mean? I am serving my people so that they can serve the customer. It’s a connection. It’s not just a nice thing to do. It is a good thing to do, but it’s actually got a purpose behind it, because who has the biggest impact on the customer experience is the front line. It’s because they have much more even if they don’t meet the customer directly, there’s a lot more people who have the interaction with the impact on the customer experience. So behind that thinking is your customers will experience the culture that you have internally. So if you have a great internal culture, your customers likely to have a great experience. If you’re a very poor internal culture, your customer won’t have a great experience. So their leader is serving people. Have they got the right systems in place? Have I given them the right training? Am I providing inspiration so that they know how to delight the customer. So is that serving for a purpose?

 

Andy Olrich  17:49

Okay, thanks, Chris, yeah. I was just going to say that I connect well with the hats. You know, it’s a very common saying, isn’t this person wears many hats, you know, meaning they’re quite diverse and capable. The other piece that, yeah, really strikes a chord with me is something that Brad said earlier. Was around that, you know, that self awareness, being conscious, I think, was the term you used. And, yeah, emotional intelligence is for leaders to be, you know, self aware around in the moment. Okay, how am I? How is my behavior and affecting me? But what’s it projecting out like to others and and that’s, that’s a that’s a skill, right? And I, and I really appreciate that that’s been tied in. Because, yeah, unless you can have that moment to pause, how do you know which hat you’re wearing now or what to put on next? So I just wanted to drop in there, because, yeah, I connect well with that. And that’s, that’s definitely something that I appreciate about this book and the approach. So and

 

18:42

Andy, I’d like to add two guys just quickly on that. Two guys for you to get on the podcast is Dr Mark Williams, who helped us develop because we’re going into psychology, guys like when we Chris mentioned the core belief system. So Chris darks and I are not psychologists, but we partner with the neuroscientist Dr Mark Williams, and Australian get him on the podcast. He’s great. And Laurie scander, organizational psychologist, and they both helped us develop that, that simple system.

 

Andy Olrich  19:10

Love it. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And it gives more Curt, you know, more credit to the whole book. And the approach is because, again, you’ve said it in earlier, it’s not just us, right? And you’ve actually sought out some expertise there in that, that space. So that’s, that’s fantastic. Thanks for sharing that.

 

Patrick Adams  19:25

Yeah, it makes me, makes me think about again, just going back to the different hats, and the situation you know that that you’re faced with is going to, you’re going to put on a different hat. So I think about, I’m probably going to get this quote wrong, but I believe it was Mike Tyson who said, you know, I can put the best plan together. But the, you know, once the first punch is thrown, like the the plan goes out the window, right? So, again, very similar, right? We can, we can sit in a boardroom, or in a in a corner, you know, in an office, or whatever it might be, and we can put the best plans together for our team. So. But once we go out there and we’re faced with all of these different things that we had no idea were going to happen, we have to be willing and able to make adjustments according to the situation, and possibly to your point, take off one hat and put on a different hat. Is that pretty accurate?

 

20:17

Exactly?

 

Andy Olrich  20:18

What was it? Everyone has a plan until I punch him in the face.

 

20:25

Well, that’s, that’s one hat we encourage people not to.

 

Andy Olrich  20:31

I remember that one will. I was like, Okay,

 

20:35

you mentioned you asked earlier about what underpin connects all the hats. And one of the things, as well as the core belief system is actually our values. So we talk a lot in the book about the values of the core belief system and humility, respect and trust are three of the key things that we think are essential for good leadership. So

 

Patrick Adams  20:57

important, so important. And obviously, again, those are woven throughout the five hats, and so inspiring. And then coaching, which, again, I love your your description of the difference between mentoring and coaching. And I love that you used you know questions, because there’s so many leaders that you know for one, they think they need to have all the answers. And so they feel like, for some reason, they need to come to the table with an answer, versus, you know, coming to the table with questions. You have people working for you that are experts in what they do. They know their job inside and out. You don’t have to have all the answers. All you have to do is ask the right questions and guide your team towards that solution. So I love that you used. You know that that analogy around just asking the right questions, so I’m interested to kind of shift and move into the other hats. If you, if you guys don’t mind, I don’t know, Brad or Chris, if you want to walk us through a couple more,

 

21:57

yeah, I’m going to go to the extreme guys on on this now and then, I’ll pass back to Chris, because we, I think you we would all say, there’s a lot of books been written on coaching. I think Inspire is quite unique. What we’ve written in there, you know, with the help of Dr Mark Williams and Laura Skander. And, yeah, Chris’s approach to it, what he wrote about is unique with coaching. But when you talk about being directive. Now, this is a topic that doesn’t get talked about too much nowadays, which is when you have to put on that direct hat and actually be direct. We feel it’s part of great leadership, because the first thing you got to be able to do to wear the direct hat is you’ve got to be very clear on your ideal behaviors as a team. So as a team, you’ve got to have developed, we call it like your own core belief system, right, which is your team’s purpose and your team’s values and behaviors. But then, if those behaviors are being trodden on or not being lived, oh, you have to be direct. The standard you walk past is the standard you set. And so we believe that there is a place for a direct hat. Now you have to wear all the other hats, right? We’re going to talk about other ones. I just want to bring this as an extreme, because we see a lot of organizations where a lot of bad behavior and poor culture just gets ignored and that just festers and goes the wrong way. We even see cultures where a safety situation gets fluffed over and it’s like, no, the safety situation, you got to deal with it, get the person out of harm’s way, have a conversation. Understand the root cause, you know. So we actually believe that great leaders, you know, this has got to be used at the right frequency, the old 8020 rule, you know. So you gotta build that emotional bank account through inspiring and coaching and the other hats. But then the 20% or hopefully only the 1% you have to be directive. And so I thought I’d just go to that extreme to say we believe this hat’s needed. And I think, Chris, you’ve got a great analogy about the garden with that, which might be a nice segue to hand back to you Sure.

 

24:03

So one of the analogies that we use in the book is that being a leader is a bit like being a gardener, in that you have to nurture your garden. You have to fertilize it, water it, make sure everything’s as it should be. That’s what we need to do with our people. We didn’t nurture them, develop them, train them, but in a garden, well, no matter what you do, you get weeds, and you have to deal with those weeds, because if you don’t deal with them and deal with them quickly, they overtake the garden and They’ll ruin all your good work really quickly. It’s exactly the same with culture. You can spend years building a wonderful culture, but can be destroyed overnight by some poor behaviors, and that’s where the direct hat really comes in. Is about caught calling out immediately and dealing with behaviors that are not what we’ve agreed and hopefully we don’t need to do it very often, but we must do it when it’s near. Lead. I touch on another hat, which I briefly mentioned, which is the Teach hat. And we think this is really important for leaders to do. Increasingly, leaders have become disconnected from teaching our people, and it’s outsourced and other people do it. But actually one of the key reasons to teach is you learn every time you teach. And if you’ve got to teach something, you’ve got to really understand it, and people will ask you questions, which will help to develop your thinking as well. So it’s actually a really powerful thing to do to teach. I’m not saying spend all our time teaching, but for example, one organization I visited several years ago which really impressed me, the senior, one of the senior executives, was teaching the continuous improvement course to new starters. I think, wow. What kind of message does that send? So the being prepared to teach as appropriate, and that’s, you know, class mentoring as part of teaching as well, is a really important skill that leaders need to develop.

 

26:05

Hello, everyone. I am sorry to interrupt this episode of the lean solutions podcast, but I wanted to take a moment to invite you to pick up a copy of my shingle, award winning book, avoiding the continuous appearance track in the book, I contrast the cultures of two companies I work for, and though each started with similar lean models, one was mechanistic and only gave the appearance of lean, while the other developed a true culture of continuous improvement. The contrast provides a vivid example of the difference between fake lean and true lean. You can find the book on Amazon simply search by name or the title of the book. You aren’t a reader. No worries, the audiobook is also available

 

26:44

on Audible. Now, back to the show. Such

 

Patrick Adams  26:49

an important skill I love, love that you said that because it’s so true that the more that I find myself teaching, you know, obviously, even in preparation, like I don’t want to go into a teaching moment and not be able to not understand that the information that I’m trying to teach well enough. So I have to prepare myself and know that I have the experience. And also I have to know what are the what are the things that I can teach versus the things that I’m just not I’m not able to teach because I don’t have the experience. I’m a big proponent of, when you’re teaching something, you should have the experience, right? I mean, I spent many years as a production supervisor, so I feel like I’m, you know, I have the skills and the abilities and the background that that I can teach it. You know, on the flip side of that, if I read a lot of books about how to be a production supervisor, I mean, maybe I can spit out some information, but the real experience, the real learning, happens when you actually have the experience, which is why you guys have so many case studies involved in the book as well.

 

27:59

Yeah, we learn by stories. That’s that, that’s that’s how we work. So we, you can’t just teach theory what it’s superficial. I

 

28:41

absolutely, and

 

Patrick Adams  28:49

you, you mentioned, uh, trust, building trust too. Uh, leaders. The one way that we build trust as leaders is by being transparent, honest, humble. I mean, if, if I don’t know something, I need to be willing to say this. This isn’t an area that I have strengthened, that I have experience in and but Andy, you know, Andy has a ton of experience in this. Let’s, let’s let him, you know, teach us. How does this, Brad, how does this differ from so coaching we talked about, you mentioned that training and mentoring maybe fall in the same bucket, Chris, but, but the difference we talked about earlier with coaching is you don’t have to know everything. You might be just asking the question. So can you give us a little bit of a distinction between mentoring and training versus coaching? Talk maybe a little bit more about that.

 

29:38

Yeah,

 

29:40

with within training, I guess, to in training, Patrick, and there’s training and there’s training. So if you think about history of learning, we get taught how to train through a classroom, and then we go to uni, and we’re taught to train like a sage on a stage, often that you know, the teachers the expert, they’re up there just. Telling, and that’s how you teach, but that’s not adult learning. So we did a lot of research on training, and I’ve been fortunate to work and a lot of train. The trainer builds and looking at adult learning. So I’ve had a very fortunate career there. And training, we have a training loop in there that is effective for adults, which is, first of all, think of it as a story loop, like training. Is this loop that you loop through a topic, you loop through another topic, you loop through another topic. But that loop, there’s some important techniques you can use, which is, first of all, ask someone, why? Why is this? Why is this topic important? And hang on that. Why? For a while, first to just really get clear on the purpose of it and the importance of it or not, with those people. And you know that might choose you to be adaptive. But the next bit is, what existing knowledge do they have? So just open up. Okay, guys, what do we already know and get that dialog going? So there is, in a way, there is a coaching element to the way that we’ve positioned teaching that you’re using humble inquiry, those open questions quite often, particularly at the start. And then I think this goes back to child this, actually, this next bit came from child learning. Which is, I do, we, do you do? Which? I think we all know. It goes right back to TW training within industry. You know that I do, we do, you do type of approach. And then finally, you know, you teach, which is what Chris mentioned that and what Andy mentioned that. You know, potentially there’s a teach back, but potentially that person, as we all know, they could become so skilled that they are then the teacher to use that to do that loop with the next group of people, which we all know, the elements you need for that it’s where you can start to bring in visualization of skills and capability and who can do what in a team. And there’s so much, so much beauty and so much opportunity there in how we teach and how we implement that system within our organization and our team. So we’ve really tried to unpack that on every hat. Really bring in best practice, that can help leaders really learn how to, you know, case studies, but also learn right? What is best practice? How can I do this better? Because I think one thing I think, Chris You mentioned, is that, as a leader, we might actually be good at coaching that hat we’re quite fine with, but teaching, wow, okay, I got some opportunity there. I’m going to focus my energy on growth, on the T chat, or another one might be like, wow, this stuff these guys have written about on Inspire. I’ve never done that. I’ve never tried to understand my team members purpose and their goals at work and at home, and I’ve never really helped connect them to the company. Oh, wow. I’m gonna, I’m gonna lean into that hat. So that’s the other reason we thought that we’ve got some assessment elements, or some review elements in the book that allows a leader to review where they’re at with different hats and actually choose the one that they want to practice. Because we all know learning new skills is not just a you don’t just, like you mentioned Patrick, you don’t just read a book and know that skill,

 

Patrick Adams  32:55

right, right? Well, and, yeah, well. And even training, you know, you mentioned adult learning. I mean, everybody learns differently. And as leaders, we need to understand our people well enough to know how to train, and that might take some, some personal development, you know, and some, some of our own research to figure out what’s the best way for me to teach, you know, and understanding the different ways that people learn. So I think that’s a really good call out for sure. So we have, we have inspiring, we have we have coaching, we have directing, and we have training. So let’s, let’s dive into the the fifth one. What do we have for the fifth hat? And you

 

33:39

and you and you really started to talk about it then, Patrick, because the fifth that is support. So, and to to be able to support, we need to know our people. So, so what we what are we supporting? And and, you know, used to be few, perhaps some time ago, but used to be saying that, well, home stays at home. Don’t bring home into work, you know? Well, actually, no one can really do that. We all complete human beings, and everything comes with us when we move around. So we need to recognize that when someone’s at work, then the part of respect is we respect the whole person. And we have to think of people as people, not just a payroll number. So they bring the whole self into work. And we need to understand their whole self and understand what support at any one time that person might need. So that’s a key element of support. But the other really important element of support is recognition. So recognition has a huge impact on engagement levels. And what we mean? We talk a lot about this in the book, we don’t mean big monetary programs. Once a year someone gets a big check, not that at all. Recognition is also about peer. Peer recognition, just saying, Thank you, well done, but being really clear on what the thank you and recognition is for. Had a fascinating conversation with someone just a few weeks ago. He says, My boss keeps telling saying to me, well done, and I have no idea what he’s saying, well done for that’s ineffective recognition, we are well done for the way you did x, and ideally it linked to a behavior, because the what recognition should be doing is encouraging people to do more of the things that we want them to do. So we have to be really explicit about what the recognition is for, and it’s dangerous just to recognize the task, because people could achieve a task or result in a very bad way. So what we really need to recognize is the behavior that we’ve seen that has got a result in the right in a good way. So that recognition builds engagement, and it’s a big driver for the right behaviors.

 

Patrick Adams  36:08

And Andy, I’ll pass it over you here in just a minute. I just had one more follow up on that. In the US, I realized I was that we’re we’re global here, so there’s other countries listening here, but in the US, there’s a lot of leaders that just think they can just do maybe a monthly pizza party and call it good, like check the box we did our recognition for the month. So that’s clearly not the right approach. Would you agree?

 

36:35

No, the problem is, many of these recognition programs become a tick in the box exercise, and they lose all credibility with people, right? They have to be authentic for something specific that is of real value, and when it’s done that way, you see a huge uplift in engagement, because people feel value

 

Andy Olrich  37:00

so true. I just have in my mind for you, for you or anyone listening. There’s a, there’s a meme that floats around with Steve Carell in it from the office. And he’s, he’s getting his boss is shaking his hand, and he’s, he’s just there. He’s got no idea what that’s for. And that’s, that’s where my mind went to with that thing around, yeah, yeah. It’s like, yeah, great, great. It can be quite unnerving. Yeah, hilarious. And that is used a lot to say, you know, when you turn up for work or you get the employee the month award, and, yeah, it’s just like, you’ve got absolutely no idea where that’s come from. So, but you kind of take it in the moment, right? So, yeah, it’s, it’s, I’d love the the one around the supporting as well. And, and within the book, there’s no actual sequence, right for these hats, okay, there’s, there’s no like again, there’s a, there’s a piece there around, you know, that self awareness, where are you? And there’s also, you know, follow your podcast, Brad enterprise excellence, and the episode where dials into this a little bit as well. There’s a, there’s actually a link to a maturity index that you can, you can access around leading excellence. And I found that, you know, it’s a really great piece to, you know, that baseline piece, where am I now actually as a leader, and how you can sort of measure out before you start to step in and and engage. You want to talk a little bit about that, if you don’t mind, please?

 

38:24

Yeah, I might pass over to Chris on that one, because you’re the mastermind behind the five hats maturity index and that review piece for leaders. Yeah.

 

38:32

I mean, it’s really simple. What we’ve tried to do with everything in the book is make it practical. So we have a simple chart with hats on it, and then some five stages of maturity. And stage stage one is, I need to go and buy that hat, not yet. And stage five is, I’m at a level where I can coach other people in this hat. And then there’s steps in between. And we’ve run this exercise several times the last few weeks, probably over 100 people had a good it, and it takes a few minutes to do to self assess now you then really want to go and check your what you think with your colleagues and your peers, because you you might not be right. No, you might have underestimated yourself on one hat, but, but it’s a good kind of picture. And none of the 100 people said they were stage five out of all five hats, thankfully. And lots of people said, You know what, I think I’m pretty good at those three, those two. I’ve only just scratched the service off. What that allows you to do then is to we’ve got some templates in the book to come up with a bit of a personal action plan. Said, Okay, well, if that’s where you if that’s an area of development, what can you do about it? Because one of the challenges often is if we not particularly, if we don’t feel we’re particularly skilled at. Something, we don’t do it, and because we don’t do it, we’re not skilled at it. And so it’s actually a vicious spiral cycle, yeah, yeah. What? So what we’ve got to do is is kind of be brave and have a go at stuff. And that takes a bit, a bit of humility and vulnerability. But if we do that in the in the context of letting people know that we’re trying it and learning it, and we might make a couple of mistakes, then that’s fine. That’s part of learning to be a good leader.

 

Patrick Adams  40:29

So true, also even even being intentional about reflection. After you’ve you know, you’ve put on one of the hats, and you’ve completed whatever that was that you were doing, to look back and go, Okay, how did that go? What you know, and even talking to your peers or the people that you’re leading, and saying, Hey, how’s my coaching going? Is there anything I can do differently or and really, again, genuinely asking, because you want to become a better leader.

 

40:58

Yeah. And I an example of one of the single prize winning organizations that are not quite well. The leaders get together once a month, and in groups, triad, triad, groups of $3 they’ll do a we call them in the book, look, listen and learn walks and often called GEMBA. But I think that, yeah, people miss the true purpose when we just label it GEMBA, and it’s become another tick in the box. So we need to go and look what’s happening, listen to what people are saying and telling us between active listening, and then reflect on what have we learned. And a lot of learning is not just about what we’ve seen, but about learning about myself. Am I? Am I really inspiring these people? Am I really giving the support that they need? So a key element of look, listen, learn is that reflection time, and what we see working with oil is leaders coming together and reflecting and asking two questions, what did I learn on that look? Listen, I learned in terms of what I saw and what people were telling me. Question one, question two is, what have we learned in terms of how we can do it even better next time,

 

Patrick Adams  42:16

yeah, Chris, would you say if you’re on a look, listen, learn, walk. Would you have a specific hat on? Would you say, or does it depend?

 

42:26

I think you’d have the career curiosity hat on. It doesn’t not in though it’s not a hat. But you’d actually, you’re you would go with humility, but always, one of the key things is to go with purpose. Sure, talk about this in the book, because you don’t just go for a walk, right? Go with this explicit purpose, which says, I want to go and find out about x. And that can be anything at all. But what we see many sometimes we see people going, so I’m going to go and do a two hour tour. Well, you know you’re going to see so much. Are you going to really remember it all? What impact you’re gonna have? Far better to go and do four or 515 minute visits with a specific thing that you want to understand, then you will which hat you were will depend on the conversation that you’re going to have, the context and the person you’re talking to, they might need a bit of inspiration. They might need a bit of support. You can choose the appropriate hat when you’re having the discussion, not, not in advance. I think, yeah, I

 

Patrick Adams  43:36

think that’s an important distinction, that you aren’t going on a look, listen, learn, walk with your directive hat on, or with your your training hat. You’re, you’re, you’re really going there to, to be very, you know, big ears, big eyes, small mouth, right? That’s, that’s what we’re doing. Absolutely.

 

Andy Olrich  43:57

I love the, the framing of that, the look, listen, learn, walks. A particular organization I’ve worked in with, the leader was obsessed with waste walks, and it was, you know, that was the term, and we’re going on a waste walk, and we’d go out there, and it was really geared up around, okay, let’s go and find all the things that are wrong, you know. And actually, we ended up having some of the staff say, well, they call it a wastewater, but you’re coming out to look at us, like, are we a waste or Wow? And there was a real cultural bend on that. So we actually, yeah, we dialed it back, and we had a very structured list around who was, you know, one was the the rudder, one was the timekeeper and the scribe and all that. So we actually had, like, a formal list, and that was visible to the workers out there. And that was, yeah, it was really about asking the questions, and we would have to meet back at the in the War Room to Yeah, unpack. So I Yeah. I really love the framing of that, because it is more of a people centered feel to it, plus it’s very clear to everybody that it’s about reflection and the leaders helping to to. Crew themselves as well. So another fantastic place to come out of this. So appreciate that.

 

Patrick Adams  45:07

So Brad and Chris, I know we time is flying here. We’re coming to the the end of our time. It might be a good idea for us to get Steven on and maybe even do another session at some point where we can do a deep dive into maybe, maybe even just pick one of the hats and do a deep dive into that. And so maybe something for the future. But if someone’s interested, they heard something that they liked, and they I know the book is recently out and available. Where would they go to find leading excellence, the five hats of the executive leader.

 

45:42

It’s available on book pod and in Australia, and it’s also available on Amazon, both as an ebook and paperback. And we also have a website for the book which is leading excellence book.com, and so if you want volume, you can you can order it direct from ourselves as well. Perfect.

 

Patrick Adams  46:03

And we’ll drop the links into the show notes. So if anyone’s interested to grab that book, you can go right to the show notes and find the website. Also, if someone has a question for either of you, should they reach out to you on LinkedIn. Is there another direction that they should go? If they have a question about something we talked about today,

 

46:22

I think LinkedIn is probably the easiest way to do that. We both, we’re both active on LinkedIn, and we very happy to take questions.

 

46:30

Yeah, perfect. Sure,

 

Patrick Adams  46:32

perfect. So, Chris Brad, any, any last comments before we close out for the day?

 

46:39

I think I’d just like to mention one thing, and that the book is also designed for aspiring leaders, not just existing leaders. So one of the key things we wanted to do was provide something that would help people to learn how to be a leader. And so we didn’t mention that. And I think it’s just an important point, yeah, very

 

46:57

important. And I think the only thing I’d end on team is that what we’ve written about in this book is at the heart of sustaining an excellence journey. You know, so many of them, you roll out something and it falls over. You roll out something that falls over like this. Is what we found, is at the heart of the companies that truly sustain and keep going. And you know, there’s other topics in there on other key aspects, but yeah, we just hope it delivers a lot of value to help a lot of companies create a better future. Yeah,

 

Patrick Adams  47:26

I love it. I’m excited to get my hands on it. And I’m wondering is, is there a workbook coming? Because I’m thinking just like, this would be a perfect opportunity for someone to just almost just talking through the different levels that you can be at, and then, you know, just developing myself and putting a plan together for how do I learn and develop those those hats even more than you know, like you said, some people are maybe not at the highest level, and so that would be an area that they need to work on, right?

 

47:58

There are some like self assessments, some tips. In the book is an element of workbooks, not necessarily a full workbook, but maybe that’s a great thought.

 

Patrick Adams  48:06

Maybe that’s the next maybe a couple years from now, we’ll get this one out. First. You said it actually, even in the first week, you had some considerable sales right on it. Yep,

 

48:17

we’ve sold almost 500 copies in the first two weeks. Oh,

 

Patrick Adams  48:20

that’s amazing. Congratulations on that. What’s definitely the book that we want to get into the hands of every leader. So if you’re listening to this podcast, go to the show notes, click on the link and order yourself a copy of leading excellence of five hats, the adaptive leader guys, it’s been great to have you on. Appreciate you coming on as guests, and we’ll definitely follow up with a deep dive into into these hats, for sure.

 

48:44

Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure.

 

48:45

Yeah, thanks, Patrick, thanks Andy,

 

Andy Olrich  48:48

good on you. See you next time.

 

48:49

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the lean solutions podcast. If you haven’t done so already, please be sure to subscribe this way. You’ll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please give us a review.

 

Patrick Adams  49:01

Thank you so much. You