The Six Keys to Being a Cultivating Leader

Cynthia:

Welcome everyone to the Cultivate podcast, the podcast for leaders who want to cultivate healthier, happier, and more human workplaces and lives. And why? Because all of the neuroscience research says that when we’re healthier and happier, we are able to have sustained performance. So it’s not a flash in the pan of high performance that is unable to be sustained in the long term, that this is about enabling people to have longevity of experience in the workplace and make better decisions and be more productive, which is a win-win for employees and their employers. I’d like to acknowledge that I’m recording on the Lands of the Wurundjeri people of the kulin nation, and I pay my respect to their elders past, present, and emerging. And I extend my respect to any First Nation’s people we might have listening today. Now, in this episode, I am flipping the format just like we did in the first episode, the birthing episode, where I handed over to the fabulous Maree McPherson to do a little interview with me, and the same thing’s going to happen today. So our guest from last time, Dr. Page Williams, the fabulous, the wonderful, the amazing Dr. Page Williams, who is my special friend and also just a highly respected academic as well as the practical implementation of a lot of the work that we’ll be talking about today. So she’s going to interview me on the six keys of Cultivating Leadership. So Paige, I’m going to hand over to you to introduce yourself and get us rolling for today.

Dr Paige Williams:

Oh, fabulous. Thanks so much Cynth. It’s such a joy to be here and to be on the other side of our interviewing relationship. What fun is this? So yeah, hi everyone. I’m Dr. Paige. I’m an organizational psychologist, but with a very grounded experience in leading teams and organizations internationally in Europe, in the UK and in Australia. And as Cynth mentioned, I love taking the ideas, the cutting edge thinking that’s coming out of research and making it relevant, real and relatable to the work that leaders do every day. So I am so looking forward to diving into Cynths amazing book Cultivate and us really unpacking these six keys to cultivating leadership and understanding what might it mean for leaders here and now and how might it help us bring out the best in ourselves and the people we lead and in service of the communities and organizations that we live and work in. So let’s kick off with something that kind of sets a bit of context about you and what’s influenced you. And I’m wondering is there a person that really comes to mind who’s had a significant impact on you as a leader? And as you think about that, I’d love to understand why that person, what impact it had and how you can still feel the ripples of that in your life today.

Cynthia:

Thanks Paige. I would like to nominate not a person but a community.

Dr Paige Williams:

Oh, okay.

Cynthia :

Yeah. I grew up in Benalla in Northeast Victoria and Benalla is in the federal electorate of Indi. Okay, now, very exciting. So inspiring. Such an amazing story. And it ties into Margaret Reeds quote where she said, never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. And a small group of the people of Indi back about probably 12 years ago now, used a method of community consultation called Kitchen Table Conversations. And I’m an agricultural scientist, I’ve worked a lot with rural communities, done a lot of consultation, and this methodology of kitchen table conversations was developed by the Victorian Women’s Trust. And in the nineties in particular, it was a really great way of having consultations and finding out from communities what are the really important issues by having conversations around a kitchen table.

Cynthia:

So this group of people in Indi thought, Oh, do you know what we are going to run that process in our electorate and find out what the issues that people really think are important? So they ran a series of conversations with their networks and friends, and then they went to the local member at the time who was in the liberal party and it was a safe liberal seat. Now unfortunately, the member at the time was very involved at a national level in a lot of committees and she actually declined the invitation to meet and hear the feedback from the community. So that signal to them that potentially they weren’t first on her agenda, that it was some of those more federal issues rather than being a local representative. So what they decided to do was to find someone, an independent candidate to represent them and their aim was going to be, and it was a big, bold, audacious aim to make Indi marginal.

Cynthia:

And one of the people that had been involved in that little group was Kathy McGowan, who is a rural consultant. Used to work a lot with rural women in rural communities. And they eventually ended up talking Kathy, persuading Kathy, who was reluctant at first to represent them as their independent candidate. And absolutely amazingly through all their community engagement, Kathy actually won the seat. It was a safe liberal seat. Absolutely. And it came down to the why they had to do a recount. It was a couple of hundred bikes, absolutely incredible. So it gives me goosebumps to talk about it, to think that again, this group of people didn’t take the status quo, that they decided they really wanted to make a difference, and they involved others and brought others along with them, and they actually empowered their community to become engaged in politics.

Cynthia:

As a result of that, Kathy got elected a second time and then she retired, but the community then held interviews for who was going to replace Kathy. They would choose a candidate. And the wonderful Dr. Helen Haynes, who’s an incredible woman, she was elected and she’s just been elected again. So it was the first time an independent had handed over to an independent, just a whole lot of firsts. So Paige, I know this is a long story, but I’m still, I love talking about it because then Kathy McGowan and a couple of her friends, also rural consultants, Jill Briggs and Alana Johnson, they started up an organization called the Community Independence Project and they wanted to change Australian politics. So a lot of communities were interested in how they’d done it in Indi and a lot of other people as well, but led by them ran workshops, they brought people together, they were generous, they shared their methodology, they inspired people, they had a bold vision, they were really courageous, they grew other leaders, they really encouraged other people to step up.

Cynthia:

And in this last election, we saw a whole lot of independence become elected. And so I said to my friend Jill, who’s one of the three of the women that formed this organization, I said, I’m so proud of you because there aren’t many people who can say in their lives that they’ve truly made a difference and impacted the impact that they have had on empowering people, enabling people to have a voice, to want to do things differently, to put integrity first, to be really authentic, like they’re authentic people, there is nothing manufactured about them. And to be super connected in with their community. I love that story. So that group, that community, and then later on, that group of three women leaders, I just take inspiration from them all the time.

Dr Paige Williams:

And Cynthia is so clear, firstly how connected you are to that story and how much it really does inspire you. But also I see the threads of that throughout Cultivate and throughout cultivating leadership, cultivating teams, cultivating cultures. So that clearly has stayed with you and informed as you hold this question, what does good leadership look like? That’s something that’s been a powerful influence for you as you’ve considered it through this lens of cultivate. So maybe let’s move on to that and talk about what some of those threads are. But why is it that this theme of cultivating and cultivate is really important to you?

Cynthia:

Well, it’s so important to me because I believe that a philosophy of cultivate is actually an antidote and antidote to overwhelm burnout. And what I see the relentless inhuman drive to be continually high performing.

Dr Paige Williams:

Oh, that’s interesting because we have been set up to, we want high performing teams, we want to be high performing, we want to a life that looks great on Instagram that we can share posts about. It’s what high performing looks like. So firstly, why do we need an antidote to that and how is it that cultivate is the antidote to that?

Cynthia :

So we’re all of the workplace statistics that you look at from a range of sources around the western world all say that burnout is on the rise and that we have a mental health epidemic. So what we’ve done in the past isn’t working or it’s not fit for purpose anymore. It was okay was what we knew then. But the world has changed and the way people relate to work and want to show up at work has changed. And so we need a different way, we need a new way. And that way is by recognizing that we’re not machines, that we’re actually human and humans are not a machine that just goes along same level all the time. We never flow, we dig. And so that whole metaphor of cultivate is that just like our seasons, we have spring, summer, autumn and winter. And as humans, we some we need time to rest, we need time where we can be out there and be awesome, but we can’t be awesome all the time. I worked for the public service for 17 years and I still see it now relentless efficiency gains. We have to do more with less and eventually just you can’t do it anymore. You’ve taken all the fat off the carcass and I’m seeing now friends of mine are quitting really good jobs because the sheer workload is relentless and they don’t know who they are anymore. They’re not connecting with their families and they’re not well. Yeah. And they’re making the decision to step off.

Dr Paige Williams:

Certainly research I’ve been involved in Australian workplaces in the last six weeks suggests that 66.5% of Australian workers are experiencing burnout of at work and for those people. So you think that’s two out of three people, the thing that they are saying is contributing to their burnout the most is unreasonable job demands. That’s over 93% of them state that and over 90% of them say poor workplace relationships. So that’s a pretty full powerful combination in terms of too much being asked of me and not enough support being provided for me, not enough connection. And I know that as we unpack the keys for cultivating leadership, we can see how the keys to cultivate leadership address both of those kind of things and perhaps help us really pull back on this epidemic of mental health issues and the burnout that’s so real for many of us right now.

Cynthia :

And I find it just as physical health and safety is not tolerated anymore. I just find it outrageous that it seems to have been tolerated, that the mental health side of our workplaces has been okay. I mean I’ve worked with some corporate clients who they have a zero tolerance for workplace accidents, zero. They do not want anything yet for physical accidents. But yet I’ve never heard that expectation being talked about for mental hurt in the workplace.

Dr Paige Williams :

Yeah.

Cynthia :

Never heard anyone say we need to have zero tolerance because it’s not acceptable. And I know Paige, you’ve got a lot of really good insights around the changes that are happening

Dr Paige Williams :

There. And as we chatted in last week’s episode recommending you go back and have a listen to that if you’ve got time at some point where there’s new legislation coming in around psychosocial hazards and it falls under the Work Health and Safety Act. So it becomes part of the work safe requirements. It’s a compliance issue. And the invitation with this is that we don’t just need to tick boxes, we need to go beyond that. And there’s an opportunity, and cultivate leadership speaks to this for leaders to fundamentally shift where they place the health and safety and wellbeing and the psychological safety of their wellbeing of their teams in the strategic mix of their business and organizations

Cynthia :

And page. I just have one foundational question that I encourage everyone to ask to get a bit of a read on what their workplace is like. And that question is, would I want someone I love working here?

Dr Paige Williams:

Yeah, that’s such a great question.

Cynthia:

If you say no way <laugh> something wrong and why are you in that workplace? If you wouldn’t want someone you love working there and I certainly am lucky enough, and I know you are two page, to work with some organizations where people say, Oh hell yeah, I’d love, I’m encouraging my network to come and work here cause it’s so great. And then there’s other workplaces that we both know of where you would just be going, I wouldn’t wish this upon anyone, let alone someone I love.

Dr Paige Williams:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know what, it’s a challenging time, right? Because we’ve got over 66% of Australian workers saying that they’re burnt out and we’ve got nearly 60% of leaders saying that they’re burnt out. And yet the mantle for this wellbeing piece in organizations seems to sit at the leadership level that leaders are expected to support and sustain and enable wellbeing with and for their team. And yet actually they’re running pretty low and lean themselves. So you’re talking in the book about how people can be a cultivating leader and I know that you start first with it starts with you. So let’s unpack that a bit since what does it mean to be a cultivating leader?

Cynthia:

Well, just to go back a step, I’ve got a cultivating model and it’s a really simple one, but it absolutely addresses what you’ve just brought up, Paige, that the first step for anyone is cultivating yourself. In my book, I’ve got a wheel with eight things on it that help you learn about how you might cultivate yourself and look after yourself. Things like boundaries. Because we are really not great <laugh>, many of us have boundaries now. It’s even more important that leaders do this work on themselves. So that’s the first part. And then the second part is how, as a leader, how do you be a cultivating leader, which we’ll get into and that’s a leader that grows and develops other people. And then the third part of my little model around cultivate is then how do we create cultivated cultures rather than cultures of burnout, which the leader has an influence on as well.

Dr Paige Williams:

So if you haven’t got since book page 91, that’s the model of cultivating leaders.

Cynthia:

And just a little plug, I will be running in the new year, a cultivating group coaching program where we will go through that wheel over three months and look at the different aspects of how you look after yourself and cultivate you. And I think it’ll be a really terrific program.

Dr Paige Williams :

Oh, that’s so fabulous when you do that alongside other leaders and other people who are going through that. And that idea of the oxygen mass principle, you’ve got to put your own oxygen supply on first before you can be in service and support others. And given that we’ve got nearly 60% of leaders saying that they’re experiencing burnout work, it feels like that is absolutely the first step.

Cynthia :

And not only leaders, but I feel everyone has got responsibility for looking after themselves. In my mind it is not a luxury, it’s essential. So for me, that thing of cultivating is about looking at people like their elastic bands so that they can stretch and be a bit uncomfortable and perhaps push themselves. But then they, they’ve got time and they’ve got permission to just go back and relax and not relax in being slack, but just relaxes in not overextending themselves all the time. And for me, it seems like there’s a pervasive culture of that. The rubber band has to be stretched all the time. And what happens to a rubber band when it’s stretched all the time, it breaks or it gets bent stretched out of shape and it doesn’t go back to being just a nice little rubber band, happy, happy without being stretched

Dr Paige Williams :

<laugh>. I love your rubber band metaphor there since, and it speaks to again, what you’ve said in that we’re not machines, we can’t just switch ourselves on at the beginning of the day and run on full throttle for the whole of the day. There are ebbs and flows to this and in the same way that we can stretch, but we need to have some time to rest and recover and recuperate and rejuvenate. And then we’re able perhaps even to stretch a bit further. And if any of us are involved in whether it’s physical training or weightlifting, we know that the physicality of it makes sense to us. And yet it’s actually a whole of life whole performance piece.

Cynthia :

Isn’t it? <affirmative>, absolutely. And that whole thing of organizations, people, they have high performance as this is our aim to be high performing, but high performing isn’t an aim, it’s an outcome. So if you are healthy, happy human, then the result of that, one of the outcomes of that is that you will perform better. If you are saying we want high performing organization, then it comes back to, well, what do we have to do for us to get that outcome? It’s a shift in mindset. It’s like the tail wagging the dog.

Dr Paige Williams :

Yeah, absolutely. And as I teach my work around anti-fragile and this idea of thriving through disruption, challenge and change, I talk about this whole of life performance. It’s not just about performance at work, it’s not just about your KPIs or this quarter’s goals or this projects milestones. It’s about how connected do you feel to yourself, how connected you feel to the people that you love? How much joy are you experiencing your life? Where, what’s your physical energy? What’s your mental energy? What’s the kind of ticker tape thoughts that you’re having? Are they healthy, are they helpful? So it’s this whole of life performance. I think that we need to expand our understanding of performance into not just the key metrics in our role. And you’re right, it’s a fundamental shift in terms of what good looks

Cynthia :

Like and not being afraid. I think a lot of organizations, not that organizations have feelings, but organizations and leaders are afraid that if they allow that performance will drop. But actually the opposite will happen. And it’s always going to be a few people who in any system don’t do the right thing, but in the main people do the right thing. And I was chatting to someone yesterday, a leader who said, and the funny thing is, or the funny thing that when you do trust your people like that, they will give you even more.

Dr Paige Williams :

Yeah, I love that. So a couple of things come up for me as you say that since the first thing is this idea of assuming positive intent, which it means that I assume that you are going to meet me with integrity and with trust and with commitment. And so I’m going to engage on that basis and I’m going to trust and commit and be engaged with you until you show me not to be. And I have that as an orientation to life and what it saves so much time and effort and energy because I’m not trying to second guess and I’m not telling stories that haven’t been shown to be true yet. I just go, No, I assume that you are showing up to this as much as I am. And we both want to retrieve great things together. I love that you’ve spoken to that. And to your point around trusting people, we’ve got this phrase at the moment, quiet, quitting.

Dr Paige Williams :

And you mentioned that a couple of your friends are leaving their jobs. And the research that I mentioned earlier, also what it showed is that we’ve got a crisis of meaning in our workplaces at the moment. So whereas pre covid, it feels like people are quite willing to almost do volunteer overtime and go beyond their contracted hours. They’ve had this fundamental shift in what’s important to them. They’ve experienced a different way of working through C and now they’re coming back into workplace or hybrid work structures and going, do you know what, not so much with the unpaid overtime anymore because I don’t actually see why I was doing it in the first place. So there’s this kind of crisis of meaning going on. There’s a shift of values that’s happened over the covid years and there’s reluctant to step back into the unpaid overtime. And the challenge is our business models and these high performance models have been based on that

Cynthia :

Absolutely. I don’t see people talk about quiet quitting as a negative thing, but I actually see it as being like, fair enough, fair enough. Quite all it means is you are doing the work that you are paid for and exactly, that is fine. There is nothing wrong with that.

Dr Paige Williams :

So rebalancing

Cynthia :

Expectation that we should all be working extra hours and if we’re not late back at the office, then we’re going to get judged for being not up to scratch.

Dr Paige Williams :

It’s so important, isn’t it? It’s a rebalancing of a system that has been skewed. And so what good look like and what the basis of high performance has been built on is a fundamentally flawed understanding of what’s okay in workplaces.

Cynthia :

Yeah, absolutely. The other thing that that’s interesting is I was chatting with an employer just on Friday, they’re very short staffed in a regional area as so many employers are finding at the moment, it’s really hard to get labor. They recruited a parent to go and work in an admin capacity and he said she last seven weeks because there was a really toxic person in the team. And this woman just said, You know what, I’m out of here. I’m not going to put up with this. So people just are not, they’re voting with their feet that I’m not willing to put up with this anymore. So again, workplaces have to find a way and that’s why again, I’m loving this new legislation because you’re actually not allowed to just sit by and go, Oh, well that person left and that person actually gets results even though they’re pretty poisonous. So yeah, we’ll let them stay. Actually you can’t do that.

Dr Paige Williams :

It’s almost like the quality of the workplace experience is now just as important as the quantity and not just the physical quality, not just that safety compliance piece like the emotional, the mental, the relational quality of work as well. So since I reckon we’ve set up a pretty compelling reason why cultivating and cultivate leaders are essential right now. So I reckon it’s time for us to unpack those six key.

Cynthia :

Okay, six key. So I can, I’ve done some research into this. I thought about when I was writing my book, I thought about all the amazing leaders that I work with and the kinds of things that they had in common. And so I reckon when you’ve got a cultivating leader, hopefully you’ve got a cultivating leader and you’re appreciating them and you’re giving them some love. And you definitely know when you don’t have a cultivating leader. And so I had a story of a client who, they’d had a really good leader, that person left and they got a new leader. And this new leader did not create a psychologically safe work environment <affirmative>. So one of the things that he wanted to do, this was in a technical scientific area. He wanted staff to sit an exam to prove that they had the technical knowledge to be in their role. And this was even admin staff, he wanted to make them sit an exam.

Cynthia :

So of course everybody freaked out in the team. What’s that saying? He would apparently go to meetings with other departments and bag out his staff. He absolutely destroyed relationships with stakeholders. He told staff that how much he didn’t respect them and didn’t think they were good at their jobs. And my client told me that as a result of that, I’m not sure, they might have had a team of 50, but 20 people left because they were so destroyed by this guy this, and he had a really good reputation as a scientific leader, but his people management was just not acceptable. Anyway, he went on, got another job and moved somewhere else. And then they got another guy come in who was actually from their team and he was just the opposite. So he was like, How are you? How’s your family? How are you going?

Cynthia :

You need to take some time off. Let’s look after your development. So just total contrast and people felt safe again. So this whole thing of psychological safety where people feel they can show up to work as they are and they’re not going to be judged negatively or punished for being themselves. And so that’s that whole thing of the rubber band. If you are in a workplace where you feel unsafe, you feel like you’ve got to be stretched all the time because otherwise if you’re not stretching, you are going to be punished or judged. Whereas the sort of workplaces I’m talking about and the leaders I’m talking about that create psychological safety, allow their people to stretch and relax, stretch and relax, stretch and relax and that it’s okay. And you are not going to be punished or looked upon as a slacker if you are showing up as a human being yourself in the workplace.

Cynthia :

So all of my stuff like yours, page is evidence based. So the science tells us that when we feel safe, we become more open-minded, resilient, motivated solution, finding creative and persistent, we perform better and we connect with others a lot more effectively. So as I’m talking about these six keys, my invitation to the leaders listening is just have a think. So cultivating leader creates psychological safety. How do you go out of 10 with that? And what might be something that you could do to just raise one score up on that scale? So for each of these keys, that’s what I’d be encouraging you to think about. How do I go with this one? Do I do some of this stuff?

Dr Paige Williams :

I love that. The first key sense really is it’s like unlocking a series of blocks, isn’t it? And that idea of psychological safety being the first key to unlock, because once that is unlocked so much fabric stuff follows it. And so we all have this deep psychological need to be seen, known and valued <affirmative>. And creating psychological safety with people meets those three deep psychological needs. And once you’ve met those, what comes the other side, as you’ve said, in terms of creativity, innovation, sensible or strategic, risk taking, growth, learning, development, trust, all of these magical stuff comes after we’ve built the psychological safety. And I think that the other thing that I’ve certainly found, because this is part of what I talk about in the work with accountability, which I know we’re there’s a key on accountability later, is where you believe your psychological safety is at may not be what the other person experiences. So there’s always kind of two sides to what we’re talking about when it comes to psych safety because you may think that you are creating a context, but for whatever reason that might not be landing with the team member or with the other person that you are speaking with. So I reckon it’s the other thing to think about with this, isn’t it?

Cynthia :

Absolutely. And so that to bring us back into cultivating yourself, one of those little wedges in my wheel is because, and aware self-awareness of being how aware am I of myself, but also how aware am I of how I’m experienced by others? Our motivation, like you said, assume positive intent. Our motivation is positive, but people don’t see our motivation, they see our behaviour and then they interpret things on that. And I think that’s again what this new legislation will do. It will actually mean that we will need to have conversations, really open conversations about what does psychological safety look like for you and me? And actually then how do we operationalize it?

Dr Paige Williams :

And I love that because that kind of conversation. And I think in the past we’ve called those courageous conversations, which I want that struck from our language please. Because if we’re having these conversations in the right way, they don’t need to feel courageous. But what they do is, I think these cut types of conversations speak to the next key, which is create small leaders, <affirmative>. So perhaps tell us more about that.

Cynthia :

When I thought about leaders, and I’ve already mentioned Kathy McGowan and that voices for Indi movement, I see that that’s exactly what they’ve done. It’s not about them, it’s actually about that they’re empowering and enabling other people to get involved. And just recently this week, there was a photo posted on LinkedIn about a meeting that took place with the federal government and it was an industry consultation. Now this photo was full of white men and there were two women in the background. Now that created, amongst my network, a huge commentary, which I was, it was so positive because it was like, Hang on, why are there just folks around the table who all look the same? Our industry is so much more diverse. Where is everyone else? And apparently they’d done consultation with the women and other groups outside of that meeting. There are a few people who couldn’t make it and was, it was justified supposedly. But the optics of that, who would even think that that’s a good photo to post in this day and age? So I see all the time a lack of diversity in our leaders. And in this day and age, again, a cultivating leader is someone who looks around the table and says, Who isn’t here?

Dr Paige Williams :

Yeah,

Cynthia :

Who’s not here? And I’ve done a lot of work in increasing women’s participation in agriculture and rural communities. And back when we did a lot of that work in the nineties and two thousands, it was like, well, the normal ways of recruiting people don’t work. So we’ve actually got to think of different ways and engage differently, provide a number of pathways, and that means we actually have to think about it and perhaps work a little bit harder or do things a bit differently in order to encourage participation. So many times I hear people, organizations say, Well, we put a call out and these were the people who applied for this award. Yeah. I had one national women’s leadership program say to me when I gave them some feedback about my concern with their lack of diversity in their winners in the Northern Territory last year was that, oh, well we ran to online workshops for indigenous women.

So what do you expect? And I was like, That was it. Yeah, that’s your commitment to diversity. So I really encourage leaders to think about opening up the opportunities to a more representative range of people because we need all voices. We’re better with a range of voices and a range of perspectives. And it makes us better, it gives us better outcomes. Yes. It can be a bit more tricky because yeah, it’s much easier when you are talking with people who think the same as you, but you don’t get a better outcome.

Cynthia :

You’ve got some of that philosophy in your work page with partnering.

Dr Paige Williams :

Yeah, absolutely. And in antifragile, one of the principles in the robust principles, the yes is seek collective wisdom. What it speaks to is my experience with systems and systems thinking and systems inform positive psychology, which is that actually when we expand the perspectives and include perspectives from the whole of the system, there’s a method called appreciative inquiry that speaks to this where we get the whole of the system in the room. And so in a rural community, it might be that yes, there are people of different ages and stages of development. There are people from different aspects of industry, there are people, different community roles. And that’s the whole of that community system is represented in the room and in the conversation. And because otherwise the system replicates itself. It’s as simple as that, which is why there were so many middle aged white men in that photo was because as much as they may have done consultation, the system is replicating itself.

Cynthia :

Well, and also there were older white men and then there were younger white men who looked like clones of the older white men, but with darker hair

Dr Paige Williams :

<laugh>. There we go, rep the system replicating itself unless we do something to have a circuit breaker on that process. Absolutely. And it’s for leaders as you invite them to here with the second key to go, No, where are the other leaders outside that look different to what we’ve already got? Where are the other voices? Where are the other potential leaders of next year, next generation? That can not mean that we’re just replicating what we’ve already got.

Cynthia :

And I think too that it’s that thing of leadership isn’t about you, it is about your legacy. For me, again, this theme of cultivate, I see it. You’re a gardener. Yes. So you, you’re actually looking around at your garden, you’re seeing a variety of plants growing in a variety of places in a variety of different ways. Some are thriving, some aren’t. And you are all the time, hopefully as a curious leader, looking around your workplace garden thinking, well, that person’s striving, let’s keep them that way. That person seems to be struggling. What do I need to do? And also, how do I propagate more plants so that I’ve got an even better garden going forward? And that’s that creating more leaders and plant’s, getting a bit old, and how do I bring a new plant into the mix as well?

Dr Paige Williams :

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Love that. Our next key is around asking questions and listening. Again, I love the way there’s a thread and narrative thread through these because if we are gonna create more leaders, if we’re gonna invite voice, this is exactly what helps us to do that.

Cynthia :

Absolutely. And if we’re going to have these conversations about what does psychological safety mean to you and how are we going to mitigate it in our workplace, How are we going to do this together, as you said, page co-create this future together? And I always draw on the wonderful work of Judith Glasser who wrote a wonderful book called Conversational Intelligence, which is a resource I would encourage our listeners to investigate. But she had a phrase called Words create worlds. And she’s again, brought a lot of the neuroscience into why asking questions and listening is so important for having really important conversations. And she actually has, she calls it, there’s three levels of conversation. And she said, Our first level of conversation in which there’s low trust, if this way of conversing, does not build trust in your team or if you’re a leader and that is tell you will do this, I think this.

Cynthia :

So that’s the first level. The second level is you ask, but you are asking a question because you actually then wanna tell the person what you really think. It’s not a general question. And then the third conversational type that she says is this co-creating conversation. And she invites us to ask questions for which we don’t know the answer. And in order to have that conversation, you need to have a high level of trust, but also asking those questions around, Could you tell me more about, could you help me understand? Yeah. They actually put our brains into a state of trust. So it’s a twofold thing. If someone’s threatened and we ask them a curious question and we don’t have an agenda, we’re not trying to undermine them, we’re not trying to be clever, but you know, might have done something and someone’s fired up at you, happens with one of my brothers, I have really great intentions and I do something and little Joshy reacts in a way that throws me. I’m like, Oh my God, what just happened? Yeah. So I don’t understand because I had good intentions, but it’s gone wrong. So the invitation for me is to look, I didn’t mean for that to happen. Can you help me understand what happened there?

Dr Paige Williams :

Yeah, it’s exactly that, isn’t it? It’s asking questions for understanding. Yeah. Rather than asking questions for positioning or for knowing. And it’s that I don’t know what’s going on here and I’d like to understand more. So it’s kind of a question with a energy behind it. Help me understand. Help

Cynthia :

Me understand. And I love that because that then takes the pressure off leaders to have to know everything as well. Who wants to have to know everything? I don’t,

Dr Paige Williams :

Gosh, 21st century leaders, the amount of change, the rapidity of change, the complexity of change, God, we’ve heard it so often, but there’s no way we can have the answers. And so what a relief it is to put that mantle down or feeling that we even need to. But again, this leads beautifully into our next key around practicing emotional courage. Because what we’ve been sold and told good leadership looks like has such an integral part of it being that we have the answers that we can solve all the problems, that we are the font of knowledge. So to be able to ask questions from a space of, I don’t know, can you help me understand? Or, I’m not sure what’s going on here, I’d like to understand where you are at with this really does mean that we need to practice this emotional courage, doesn’t it?

Cynthia :

Yeah, absolutely. And one of my other heroes, Brene Brown, who hopefully everyone is well aware of, and if you’re not going to check her out, she had a quote saying about practicing emotional courage. The key word is practice very deli a theologian rights. Courage is like, it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue. You get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by courage.

Dr Paige Williams :

Yeah, love that.

Cynthia: 

And a lot of the work that Brene has done around being more and around the courage it takes to not wear a mask at work, to not wear armour, but she says often that we don’t have, we’ve called them the difficult conversations. We don’t enforce our boundaries. We don’t do a lot of things because we trick ourselves that really we are doing it to protect the other person. But she actually says, what’s really going on is we don’t want to feel discomfort ourselves, <affirmative>. So we avoid so many conversations and we don’t show that emotional courage by talking about what we need to talk about and being clear and therefore being kind.

Cynthia : 

But we delude ourselves that it’s about kindness to others. But we find it really hard as humans to sit with discomfort, <affirmative>. And I remember I had a dark night of the soul a few months ago, and I was beside myself with internal conflict. It was around a guy that I know had experienced bullying in his workplace. And it was just a shocking story. And again, because leaders lacked emotional courage and then did underhand things, and then this person was got rid of and not due process not. And anyway, it brought up a lot of, I’ve experienced some workplace bullying issues in my past. So it brought a lot of stuff up for me. And it was like I could not be in my skin. And yes, I know that the theory is you should just sit there and try to feel those feelings and be with those feelings.

Cynthia : 

Cause when you try to push them down and escape them, they just keep coming up in different forms. So I was doing my best to sit there with the feelings, but it was so overwhelming. It was like I wanted to burst out of my skin or something like that. It was so uncomfortable. And a lot of us aren’t even aware that this discomfort is going on within us because we lack self-awareness about our own emotions. And we don’t sit with them and we don’t take time to connect in with ourselves. And so there’s a lot of work for us to do as leaders to practice emotional courage by tuning into our ourselves and recognizing what, avoiding discomfort actually, how it manifests itself in our everyday lives. It can be really destructive.

Dr Paige Williams :

Absolutely. And I love the idea that emotions are data, emotions are information. And so if we can hold them as, Okay, so I’m feeling, and some of it is that we don’t even have a language. I’m feeling icky. All right, what flavor of icky is it? Are you angry, icky? Are you frustrated? Are you anxious? Are you creating a sense of guilt? Because if we can build a language and then understand that we’ve actually got, this is information, how can we use this information to build that self-awareness and understanding of ourselves? And that way we can step into the emotional courage with kind of eyes wide open. It’s not that we’re kind of stepping blindly into it. We’re kind of, okay, I’ve got a sense of what this is. I’ve got a language of what this is. I’m a bit detached from it in that I’m using this as information to help me.

Dr Paige Williams : 

I call it chewing. Chewing through life. And the thing is, what you’re speaking to with your experience, and I really felt as you spoke into that story, is that we can’t chew too much. There’s only so much we can actually chew at a time. And so sometimes we do need to take a bite at a time and chew through that. And then once we’ve done that, then we can bite off a bit more and a bit more. And so it’s understanding that emotions of data chewing through knife is normal. And how is it that we can support ourselves to get through those moments?

Cynthia : 

And I think there’s that, just that metaphor of which we use a lot in all of our development programs of the muscle that exercising that courage muscle, it makes it stronger. So you might start off and it’s hard. And that’s the thing with courage, isn’t it? It’s hard, but you do it anyway. So it doesn’t mean that you don’t not feel fear because that’s just no idiocy <laugh>, Yeah. That you’re, you feel the fear, but you’ve got the courage to actually still take action anyway. And that is a really great capacity for leaders to have. And leaders have had to practice a lot of emotional courage over the last couple of years in particular.

Dr Paige Williams : 

Yeah, absolutely. There’s

Cynthia :

There’s been so much to deal with having conversations, trying new ways of working. And so no wonder they’re feeling a lot under the pump at the moment.

Dr Paige Williams : 

Absolutely. So I think this is a two way thing. So what helps us feel able to step into emotional courage, but also what showing emotional courage kind of develops is our next key. Yes. Which is connection, isn’t it? Yes. So what does this mean in terms of the cultivate leader? Yeah, we’ve got the connect key.

Cynthia :

Yeah. So connect is in two components. The first, as we’ve just talked about, is that ability to in with yourself. So that is super, super important that you take that time to do the work, do the work to connect in with yourself. And again, it’s not an indulgence, it’s not a nice to have, it’s it is work. It is work. And then the second part of that is your ability to connect with those around you as well. And we are social animals, as you’ve said. When we are disconnected, when we’re cut off from the pack, we feel that the pain of that is having a limb cut off. And so there’s nothing worse for us than to be ostracized. So a leader who is able to make really strong connections, that builds trust, that builds belonging, that builds a sense of team, that makes people feel safe. There’s so many benefits from being able to connect. And yet I hear a lot of leaders and see a lot of leaders who fill up their diaries with busy work.

Dr Paige Williams : 

Yeah,

Cynthia : 

Busy, busy, busy work. And it’s sometimes it’s the technical work that they can’t let go of that they’ve been promoted cuz they’re really good, technically it’s something and it’s part of their identity and they still wanna do that work. They can’t quite let go of that. And other times that they haven’t been able to think about what their role is. And I always say put the rocks in place. So make that time in your diary. Just leave it spare an hour, a couple of hours a week and that’s your work. It’s real work to connect with your team and to have those conversations. I was chatting with Christian Parsons who’s the manager of berries at Costa and Costa group that was in an earlier podcast episode and he was talking about that that’s one of his strategies to leave some time in his diary free so that he can go and have conversations because that is a crucial part of his work. And I see a lot of leaders, again, they make it a, oh, I’ll get to that if I’ve got time. And Paige, I’d love to draw on your research here cuz you found that that kind of mentality’s led to a disconnect.

Dr Paige Williams : 

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean this speaks to so many things that we’ve already mentioned as well, doesn’t it before I pop into the research, is there’s deep psychological need to be seen, known and valued. Connection speaks to that. The understanding of feeling safe and psychological safety, it speaks to that. So this idea that it’s not just the mechanics of the work, it’s the dynamics of our work as well. And that actually once we get to a certain level, we’re not technical leaders anymore. We are absolutely people leaders because the work that we have accountability for is done through and with others <affirmative>. And so our work becomes enabling them to do what we need to have done in order to meet our accountabilities. And it interestingly spent you speak to what came out of that research that I’ve referenced a few times and that is there is an employee experience gap.

Dr Paige Williams : 

So what leaders think that they are doing in terms of creating a culture and a context that’s safe, so psychologically safe and socially safe leaders are reporting, they’re putting a lot of effort into doing this. And then when you go to the team members and you say, Hey, how are you experiencing these hazards in your workplace? Things like supervisor support, things like poor change management, things like unrelenting job demands or low job control. They’re saying we’re experiencing high levels of these hazards, yet leaders are saying we’re doing a lot <laugh> so make sure they’re not experiencing these hazards. So we’ve got this big disconnect between what leaders think they’re doing and what’s actually being felt and experienced by team members. Now the only way we can close that gap is by having conversations and connecting with each other. And that speaks to my work around partnering where we do leadership with people, we lead with others not to or for them.

Cynthia : 

And it’s just this belief, I don’t know, that’s not real work. And it’s the work as a leader, that’s the work. Yes. I think if doing all that other stuff, you’re actually not doing the work of a leader to no enable your team to be their best. And I remember again hearing the Geelong Football Club winning the premiership this year in the Australian Football League. And they said that every single staff member at the Geelong Football Club, their job is to help the players be their best in whatever way that looks like. And I just thought, wow, imagine if we brought that, that’s my role. My role is to make sure that everyone in my team can be their best. And actually that is your role <laugh>. Yeah,

Dr Paige Williams : 

Absolutely. I did the antifragile leadership work with the Jerome Football Club earlier this year. And it’s amazing to see what happens when all the energy is pulling in the same direction. And that’s what clarity of expectations brings. And so as we come to our final key, which is encourages accountability, that idea of everyone pulling in the same direction and understanding what their part <affirmative> is in the overarching goal is certainly something that I’ve seen in my work with accountability. But in terms of cultivate leader, what does this key mean for us?

Cynthia : 

So I feel that cultivating leadership, some people might view that as potentially being a little bit soft. Yeah, cultivate, let’s grow garden, let’s grow, let’s grow, let’s grow people, let’s grow people and develop people. And it absolutely is about that. And in order to grow and develop people, one as a leader must hold them accountable. And really importantly though, again, like everything, it starts with you. So you need to be accountable and you also need to help your people be accountable. And this is hard. This is hard for many people. And it’s confusing too because I’ve been in a number of workplaces where there’s some rules for some and different rules for others and people are accountable in different ways and it’s very confusing. So there’s a real need for leaders to help their people develop by giving them feedback where they need it and for there being consequences as well.

Cynthia : 

So I’ve got three critical things that I think we need to do in order to encourage this accountability. And I also know you’ve got work, you’ve got work in your partnering work as well to talk about. But I just read author and social scientists, Joseph Graney found that teams breakdown in performance roughly as follows, in the weakest teams, there is no accountability in mediocre teams. Bosses are the source of accountability and in great teams peers manage most performance problems with one another. So as a leader, you play a really big part in how your people navigate collective accountability and peer accountability as well. And so I often work with teams and leaders to make behaviors about what’s okay and what’s not okay in the team. Really explicit, as Brene says, clear is kind, unclear is unkind. So if you were a fly on the wall, what would it look like in this team when we’re at our best and what are the behaviors?

Cynthia : 

What would people be doing? What would they be saying and how would they be feeling? And when we’re not at our best, what goes on there? And so I feel in what I’ve developed, once you’ve identified those behaviors, you though need to go further with that. So you need a system. So some way of making those behaviors visible, having conversations about them, whether it’s, it’s in your performance conversations and it’s part of your performance criteria. Whether it’s that at the start of each meeting you go, how did we go with our behaviors this month or this week? So having those continual conversations and making it alive. So you need a system some way that you do that. The second thing is that you need commitment. So you need commitment from the leaders. It can’t just be a, oh yes, we’ve done this thing and then the minute someone does something, we let it go, we walk past it. And the third thing that we need is consequences. So like I said, too often people will not hold the standards or the behaviors, but there’s no consequences for them. Again, that’s mixed messaging. So we need to have that ability as a leader to encourage accountability and to be able to talk about what was going on for you there and what are the consequences going to be.

Dr Paige Williams : 

Yeah, absolutely. As I’ve done a body of work around this and in my book own it, when we come to the conversations around consequences, it’s really interesting and I like to emphasize that it’s the natural consequences of them not fulfilling their responsibilities and accountabilities. So there’s no sense of punishment in this, but there’s also not a coming in and saving situation where it’s possible. And I recognize and as I’m sure you do as well, since it’s not always okay for the natural consequences to unfold. But in the same way I often think how much leading is parenting? And in the same way that with my children, there were times where I just had to let them feel through the consequences of what they were doing. Now if it wasn’t safe for them to, I wasn’t about to let my toddler go and put their hand on a stove or anything, but if they were doing something that was okay for them to feel the consequences, then I just let that play through.

Dr Paige Williams : 

And it’s the same in our workplaces. It’s not that we’re punishing people, we’re not creating consequences, but we are letting the natural flow of consequences happen. And I love in the coaching ladders that I’ve developed around own it actually making explicit and having a conversation around. So if we don’t deliver on or if we don’t follow through on what we’ve agreed here, what are the consequences going to be for us, for others, for our stakeholders, our clients? So that before we’ve even stepped into that accountability, we are already got very clear and agreed understanding of what the consequences will be if it doesn’t go as we’ve discussed. So I love that idea of consequences and making them explicit and making them having clean and clear conversations around them.

Cynthia : 

And then that brings us back to the psychological safety kind of in the full circle because we want to have organizations where people can learn through mistakes. And again that they’re not going to be punished for it. They’re learning opportunities. So the leader’s role is how do we learn from this as an individual but also as a collective? And in order to have those conversations, again people need to feel safe. It’s all complex because one person’s idea of pretty mild bit of feedback might be perceived as devastating for someone else. So that’s why leadership is such an harsh as well as a science. Science that it’s a bit of both, isn’t it?

Dr Paige Williams : 

And this understanding about connection and needing to know your people and that actually people are the work. Yeah. They’re not just the mechanism through which the work is done, People are the work.

Cynthia: 

I love that Paige. Yeah, I love that. That is beautiful. <laugh>, say that again because it was so good.

Dr Paige Williams : 

People are the work. Not mechanism through which work is done. They are the work, they are the work of leaders. So since there’s been a joy, I love unlocking these keys and understanding that actually it’s not linear. They’re all interconnected. This is a cultivating system of leadership.

Cynthia: 

Absolutely. Kate, it’s just been so lovely to talk with you again and thank you so much for leading this interview today, which I think feel like it’s more a conversation and definitely enjoyable to have a chat with you even more and get your experiences, the depth of your research and also the practical way also that you help people implement this in their workplaces. Cause it’s a special skill I think to have the mix of theory and also then being able to be practical and implement. So,

Dr Paige Williams : 

And you’ve done that beautifully in the book since. I love Thank you. The way that you’ve taken the research, applied it, given some reflective space. And clearly the program that you’re launching next year actually will bring it out of the book and into relationship with others. So can’t wait to hear more about that

Cynthia :

Too. Thank you so much, Paige. Yeah, it was just really terrific to share stories as well. I, I’ve loved sharing stories from my clients in the book to help really see the sorts of challenges people are facing and how they’ve responded and bringing to life that theory. But I also love, love a bit of theory cuz I’m a scientist, but I also love making it then accessible so that people can do something with it in a really realistic, practical way. So we’ve definitely got that in common page as well as lots of other things.

Dr Paige Williams : 

Absolutely, we have. So thanks so much for letting me come in and play today since I’ve loved

Cynthia : 

Pleasure, pleasure And thank you everyone for listening. And that’s it for today’s episode. If you’d like to keep the conversation going and connect with other like-minded people, please hop on over to the Cultivate podcast Facebook group. Just search for the Cultivate podcast where you can ask questions, share information, and keep those conversations going. And also be brought up to date with all the latest episodes and news from the Cultivate podcast. You can also go to my brand new website www.cynthia.com.au to listen to other episodes of the Cultivate podcast. You can subscribe to my blog, check out my leadership team and coaching programs, and you can even buy my book, Cultivate How Neuroscience and Wellbeing Support Rural Leaders to Thrive. It is written for rural leaders, but if you are not a rural leader, it will still have a whole lot of applicability to you two.

Cynthia : 

So next time on the Cultivate podcast, I am so thrilled to announce that I will be chatting with Neha Samar, and Neha is an Indian migrant who now lives in Shepperton in Northern Victoria. I had a chat with her today in preparation, and we are going to have such a fabulous conversation. She’s created a project called The Flamingo Project, and it’s a mentorship project and its mission is to connect women from all walks of life and create a space to help each other’s personal and professional development. The Flamingo Project wants to break down barriers and create opportunities for success by linking people with specific skills and knowledge with people who are looking to learn similar skills and knowledge. And Neha going to also chat about some of the challenges that particularly women of color face in rural and regional communities as well as just in Australian life in general.

Cynthia : 

And she mentioned a fascinating concept called, She said Women have the glass ceiling where you can see through the glass ceiling, so you can see where you need to go, but there’s a bit of a ceiling sometimes to get there. But she said with a lot of migrant women and women of color, when you think about language barriers, when you think about just some of those cultural barriers, that it’s a bamboo ceiling. She talked about the bamboo ceiling where she said that you can’t see through it and you can’t hear through it either. She said her greatest aim has been to try to fit into Australian culture and just the work that takes. So we’re going to have an interesting conversation about some of those issues next week, which I’m really looking forward to. And again, this will be a must listen to for leaders who really are genuine about wanting to grow more leaders and encourage diversity in our organizations, in our communities, so that we are seeing the people who we claim to represent and we claim to actually seat seated at the table with us. That’ll be an important conversation. So thanks so much for tuning in. Remember to stay happy, healthy, and human, and I’ll look forward to our next conversation on the Cultivate Podcast.