The Accountability Blueprint Every Leader Needs

Leadership training is critical to scaling sustainably. As you grow, leaders must move from firefighting to strategy, delegation, and coaching. Strong leaders build high-performing teams, make better decisions, and create clarity around goals and accountability—reducing burnout, improving retention, and accelerating execution.

In this episode, I sit down with Steve Riddle, a leadership coach and author who turns “accidental” leaders into intentional, confident ones. Drawing on deep coaching and real-world experience, he shares practical tools and stories you can use immediately. Through his book, *Falling Into Leadership*, and his work with CoachStation, Steve shows how to build healthier cultures, stronger relationships, and better results—by pairing accountability with genuine care for people.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveriddlecoachstation1/

00:00 Intro to Steve
03:03 Introduction to Leadership Challenges
05:13 The Impact of Fear on Leadership
07:46 Accountability in Leadership
10:01 The Cost of Delayed Decisions
13:44 The Importance of Clarity and Context
17:47 Prioritization and Productivity
21:23 Aligning Team Goals with Company Vision
25:48 Navigating Change in Leadership
30:00 The Importance of Time Management in Leadership
31:33 Financial Incentives and Performance Measurement
33:36 The Role of Status Reports in Performance Evaluation
35:26 Using Tools for Objective Performance Assessment
37:15 The Challenge of Measuring Performance Effectively
39:55 The Need for Action Beyond Knowledge
42:18 Navigating Information Overload in Leadership
45:21 The Journey of Writing 'Falling into Leadership'
48:14 Helping Leaders Overcome Challenges
53:44 Encouragement for Hesitant Leaders

Transcript

Intro to Steve

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Change is a constant. You see it every day, I see it every day. But there'd be very few people watching and listening to this podcast today that wouldn't be nodding and thinking, yeah, my job's full of change. Has been for years. It's we don't go through, oh Steve or Gamete, over the next two weeks we're going to go through a period of change, but before that and after that, it's not changed. I mean, there's various ramp ups and ramp downs, but excuse me, but the reality is that we are always going through the change. So if that's true, and it absolutely is, imagine trying to manage that change and facilitate culture and do everything we've already talked about in the first 20 minutes in the absence of that clarity and those systems and the granularity of those conversations. The key message would be we have more influence and control than we think we do. That doesn't mean we get to influence and control most things. But if we're focusing on the things that we have that influence over and we build the skill and capability and knowledge and awareness of how to influence that, it creates a lot of power. And I don't mean power in some dictatorial way. I mean power in terms of our feeling good about who we are and us feeling aligned to the work that we do. There's obviously a lot of different challenges. I think in the modern world, uh certainly in Australia, our legislation has changed in the last 10 or 15 years. So the employee has a lot of uh power and authority now, and that doesn't mean that the employer doesn't, but uh I've seen a lot of fear created um from many leaders and managers, particularly um in certain sectors and industries. And that fear often leads to avoidance and it leads to a judgment and assumption. And um, you know, sometimes it can actually lead to um, well often actually it leads to situations getting worse, not better. I want to be really clear. This isn't about resources and tools for resources tool stake. This isn't about, as I said earlier, uh having policies and procedures so that we can lean on them and go, we've got good policies and procedures. They are all important, but the only thing that matters in my experience and and my belief is.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Hi there. Welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. In this episode, I had a discussion with Steve Riddle. Steve is a leadership coach and author who helps accidental leaders become intentional, confident, and effective in their roles. Drawing on a year of coaching and a real-world leadership experience, he translates the messy reality of a work into practical tools and stories leaders can actually use. His book, Falling into Leadership and his work with the Coach Station, focus on a building healthier culture, stronger relationships, and a better result for combining accountability with the genuine care for people. Coach Station is helping create effective leaders. Listeners will walk away with the usable ideas to lead themselves and their teams with more clarity, confidence, and impact. If you find the value out of this discussion, we need your help to grow this channel. Please share, subscribe, and send us your feedback. Your feedback is very important to us. Allow us to focus on the right discussions to help you grow and scale your business. So thank you again for your time. Please welcome Steve Riddle. Hi guys,

Introduction to Leadership Challenges

SPEAKER_00 3:03

welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. Uh, today we have a uh guest far away from Australia. So, Steve, Steve Riddle. Uh Steve, I just gone through your book, very interesting book. And there's so many different perspectives you share in the book, so many stories in the book. So looking forward to our discussion, looking forward to learning from you. Thank you so much for time today.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Uh pleasure. Lovely to uh see you again, Kamit. And uh, I'm genuinely excited about our conversation.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Thank you. So let's talk about, you know, you've been working with a lot of business leaders, Steve. You know, you've been helping them, you've been coaching them, mentoring them, many different areas. What do you see some of the, if you can pinpoint some of the challenges, the common challenges that you see across the board, what people are up against?

SPEAKER_02 3:43

Look, there's obviously a lot of different challenges. I think um in the modern world, certainly in Australia, our legislation has changed in the last 10 or 15 years. So the employee has a lot of uh power and authority now, and that doesn't mean that the employer doesn't, but I've seen a lot of fear created from many leaders and managers, particularly in certain sectors and industries. And that fear often leads to avoidance and it leads to a judgment and assumption. And you know, sometimes it can actually lead to well, often actually it leads to situations getting worse, not better. So a lot of the work that I do in my coaching and mentoring is supporting people and helping them in terms of how they do what they do. But honestly, in recent years, it's been as much about overcoming fear and uh helping people to improve their self-esteem and confidence. And it's remarkable to me, Gamete, how often people will uh say something we'll be talking about a particular topic or subject. And and often the coach here will say to me something like, Oh, am I allowed to say that? Or can I do that? And I'm like, No, not only are you allowed, you're actually compelled to. That is leadership. So it's creating a lot of doubt, a lot of fear. And yeah, a lot of my work is very much focused on and uh giving people the capability, but also permission. And uh 15 years ago when I started this, and for the previous 20 years before that, when I was leading, I don't think that was as prominent. So that's probably the the handful of things that I would suggest different now than they were maybe 15 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Yeah, I think uh that's a great point, Steve. Thanks for sharing that. You know, we have a similar challenge in Canada as well. You know, a lot of leaders because

The Impact of Fear on Leadership

SPEAKER_00 5:13

uh, you know, they don't know what how you know which way politically the the statement's gonna go, or or uh, you know, so a lot of uh leaders are seeing that at that to your point. I think that you want to they they ticked you know tip token around this you know issues, uh, you know, trying to not to be got into trouble. But it's as you know, from a leadership standpoint, there's some of the bold decisions you have to make, you have to confirm that the beast right and ahead on and simply deal with it, right? So if you don't deal with it, there's a cost of everybody else around you gonna pay for that. So you know, this this notion of uh you know tick-toeing around the solution, not dealing directly and simply just trying to be safe and and not get into trouble. I don't know how that's gonna work out in terms of other positions. It may work on a manager side or or or operational side, but on a leadership position that where you have to address the situation right, uh, you know, confirm sometime and sometimes make some bold decisions. I don't know if the tick toes uh you know around the situation is gonna help us or is it gonna go work against us?

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Look, I think in tiptoe is a good way of putting it. I often talk about avoidant behavior, and that's something that's become much more prominent. So the avoidance of dealing with the situations that need to be dealt with. And uh one of the outcomes, I can't give this to people, uh, but one of the outcomes of my coaching mentor, and let it often talk about very early, and then as people go through the program, they start to realise how to do that, is that it's important that we are holding people accountable. And uh most importantly, or I'd say more importantly, it's more, it's actually more about creating cultures of accountability. And I don't mean that as some cliche, it's allowing people to be accountable and own their role. And uh in that environment that we've already described there, Camit, it's becoming harder and and people are less inclined through their own fear. It's not just the leaders holding them accountable, but people in their own roles are struggling to be accountable as well. So I'm finding that uh there's a lot of outcomes uh in the modern world in leadership that that are probably less than ideal. And uh it's making it's I I would say without a doubt, it's making leadership harder. And then you add COVID and the remote work environment, and you know, I've talked about legislation before. There's a lot of reasons why things have changed, not all bad. There's there's plenty of good things that are happening in terms of technology and and opportunity as well. But it is certainly different than when I was you know started leading teams 30 or 35 years ago. So yeah, it's it's a thing. But just just to talk to that brilliantly briefly, Gamete, accountability incredibly important. But what I find is that if you're trying to focus on accountability for accountability's sake, that almost becomes at its worst, it's almost coercion. It becomes a dictatorship and directness and people do struggle to understand

Accountability in Leadership

SPEAKER_02 7:46

the different difference often. And so a lot of the work I do is the step before accountability, which is to ensure that there is real clarity and context around expectations. And if people are truly understanding and own and buy into the expectations and they know where that fits into the bigger picture and why we're focusing on those things, then they're much more likely to own it and do something with that information for their sake and everyone else's. But that's where accountability becomes owned and it becomes part of who they are and how they operate, rather than it being I'm wait, I'm waiting to be held accountable, or I hope my culture or my team are accountable. So, well, that's just the sum of the parts. You know, if we're all accountable individually, then the team obviously is going to be operating like a team, not just a group of people who happen to work together. So uh yeah, I've got a model called Rheome, R-E-O-W-M, that I created, and that is focused solely on accountability and expectations. So that is the bedrock of all the work that I do because I find that the the the guise of how that's why I created that first place has become more prominent and it's much more important now than it ever has been. Um because accountability I think is lessening, sadly.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

You you mentioned a couple of very interesting points, uh Steve. So I want to tie those two together. So, you know, we we before we get to the model that you just mentioned, you mentioned accountability. Is that accountability on a people or are you also accountability on leadership as well? And if you tie that, what you just talked about, delayed in a leadership, you know, uh hesitation to make a decision or you know, avoidance of making decisions. One of the items I see that when when when there's a hesitation of making decisions, we add time to the decision. And there's a cost of not making decisions. A lot of people don't realize that you know, not making a decision or delaying the decision, it's also a decision you just made. You want to add delay to it, and there's a cost of that. You know, sometimes it's a financial cost, sometimes people have to pay the price around you. So, how does that tie that to that delaying in a decision and the cost of it? And then we're talking about accountability. What's accountability in a leadership on that? You know, is it only accountability on our people?

SPEAKER_02 9:46

No, great point, and that really flows back into uh my point about we're trying to create accountable cultures. So it's accountability for everyone. So a leader, and this is one of the anomalies that the people know, but they don't always know

The Cost of Delayed Decisions

SPEAKER_02 10:01

how to do it. And so much of the work that I do with with my clients is about teaching them how to or helping them understand how to, because most people have been people trying to do good work and they want to be accountable, but that doesn't necessarily mean they know how to. And that's not me being judgmental or insulting. Yeah, many of my clients and co-cheers would recognize that, but it takes a little bit of time to understand not only that accountability takes effort and that it's about everything we do every every moment of every day. And when I'm developing or helping people, it's interesting to me how they're waiting for shortcuts and tricks and tips and some silver bullet. And I said it just doesn't exist. This is like learning to play tennis. And if we're playing tennis well versus playing tennis at some lower grade, there's a difference. We're all playing tennis, we're all leading, but there's various levels that we can be playing at or leading at. So that accountability to your question is both allowing people to be accountable, and that only happens in my experience if people are very clear about what's required, and also are capable of doing their job. And there's something, and maybe we'll talk about this later. I I wrote a blog a few weeks ago about a topic called the PETA principle, and it's uh a really lovely, really lovely uh topic, not because it's um fun, but it talks about people being promoted to their level of incompetence. And uh really what we're talking about there is people's capability to do the role at the level that's required. So because you're a good SME subject matter expert, it doesn't make you a good leader of SMEs, because you're a good team leader in in architecture or sales or whatever, it doesn't mean you're a good middle manager. So it doesn't mean that because you've nailed your current role that you're automatically capable and able to do the job well at the next level and so on, all the way through to C-suite and and executive level. So that that accountability starts early. And if we're really earning the right to do our jobs well, then as we get promoted, we've we've set ourselves up for the greatest opportunity to do that next level well. But I'll just go back a step. I rarely talk to my to my clients and coaches uh about promotability in terms of the end result. I'll often talk to them about promotability in terms of their current role. And in my experience, I know there's politics and bias, and it's a it's an imperfect world, but in my experience, the best way to get promoted and be successful in your role and promotability is just one outcome. But the best way to be successful is to learn how to do your current role to the best of your ability. You cannot do that, is literally impossible if you are not sure about what's required or not capable of delivering on those expectations. So as a leader, we need to be focusing our time and effort to become effective as leaders, not just managing, and managing and leadership, management and leadership are both required. So it's not a management versus leadership, it's management and leadership. And the simplest way that I put that, that is over oversimplified, but it does make sense, is that we manage things and processes and we lead people. So the management is side of it is what we do, and the leadership side is how we do it. And I see a lot of people in roles of authority in management that are focusing on the process and the systems. And at worst, they will rely on you know policies and direction that comes from documentation. Now that's all important, that's a bedrock. But if we are leaning into policy 5.4.1 and yeah, using that with our clients or with our teams to say, but you've signed off on it and you must do it, well, that's you know, that's pretty poor. It's not even close to leadership. So I think from that point of view, it's a capability thing, it's an understanding of what's required, it's understanding about what the business is requiring. So from an organizational standards and outputs and vision point of view, and what our focus is this month, this year. And these things seem quite simple. And most people that have been listening to this will be saying, Oh no, I get that, but because we get it, it doesn't always mean we know how to do it. And that's the point that I'd make about accountability. Yeah. So and then

The Importance of Clarity and Context

SPEAKER_02 13:44

the other point you mentioned there was around cost. The cost of not being an effective leader or effectively uh allowing people to do their job to the best of their ability is significant, and it's financial for sure. But gee, a lot of the time I see time as being a cost. And most of my uh people that I've worked with at various levels over the last 30 odd years have really struggled to manage their time. And I often don't talk about time management, but I do focus a lot on prioritization, and that's yeah, similar to accountability, it flows out of that and into it as well. If we don't prioritize the work that we've got, the many things, the 30 things I could be doing now, if I don't prioritize those into an agreed way with my leader every week, so on a Monday morning, it should be a three-minute conversation with my immediate leader, whatever your level. And that conversation should simply be here's the 15 things that I could focus on, but here's the three that are my real focus with my team this week. And here's the order of priority that I put them in. Are you in agreement with those, or is there something I need to know that we haven't talked about since we last spoke in my one-on-one or last Monday that's changed? And I see a lot of people that are held accountable, accountable retrospectively. So I'll call it better retrospective accountability. And that is when we haven't agreed on the task, the function, the format for the week. And then later on we get criticized or blamed for the fact we didn't do what my leader expected me to do. It's like, well, I wouldn't have because we never spoke about that.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

So there's a lot of things. But if you set up the priority list, but the to your point, the priority list, if you set up the priority list, once you have the list, it's very easy to align them with the company uh success, right? So given this is what we're trying to do as a company. You have your priority list. Well, let's take a look. Well, let's make sure that you can align that with the success of the company and the goals of the company. So once you have that list, you can easily do that. But if you don't have the list, how do you align those two?

SPEAKER_02 15:31

That's very look, it is difficult. But what I would say is it's the conversations are rarely had, can I? This is the challenge. And again, I'm not trying to sound hypercritical and saying this is this the actions or inactions I see every day. And so I've got a simple uh tool that I created years ago, but when I was working at GE, and it's a version of that, but it's the simplest tool. It's called a status report or sometimes a rag report, red, amber, green. And it's literally half a dozen columns that are here's my core priorities, might be recruitment because I've got a vacancy in my team, might be relationship with my boss, might be project X, and so on. So they're broad, brush straight actions. But then we move across the columns, and all we're doing there is saying, when is this accountable buyer? Who needs to help me with this? And then the last column is the identifying of the actions that I'm taking within within each day or week or month. And so that sort of prioritization is that document should be being brought to the table with my leader every single Monday and always re-prioritizing. So because we we do talk about it on a Monday, it doesn't mean that it's set and forget. By Wednesday, stuff might have changed. But at least we've got a baseline of agreement between myself and my boss about where that focus is. And then when flexibility is required and a bit more reactivity rather than proactivity, then at least we're in a position where we've got some level of control. And the point around that, where your question comes from, I think, is we're often out of control and we're almost entirely reacting to situations. Very few of the people that I get to work with feel like that they have much proactivity at all. And it frustrates them. And it it's not only for their employment, Gamete, it's then they're doing long hours. Then their spouse or partner at home and the kids and friends are dropping off as well. And it's very important that we see this in a holistic sense. It's not just me as a leader or an employee, it's me as a person, as a human. And the impacts that flow in and out of work are huge. So when we talk about cost, I see it as much more than just uh the financial cost, the sunk cost of inefficiency or ineffectiveness or lack of productivity. I see it very much as a cost to society. And I went up as parents and friends and not going to the gym, having been in the gym for six months. So I used to go regularly, and that the impacts of those sort of things, mental health and physical, physical health as well. So it's significant and it's huge and and it does matter.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Yeah, you mentioned the tool that you mentioned that you know, aligning all those you know items to the so when you're using the tool, Steve, do you keep it on a just a higher level management or

Prioritization and Productivity

SPEAKER_00 17:47

do you bring the tool down to all the way to uh you know our team leads and managers as well? You know, and on a top level, you just aligning that with the business goals. What are we trying to do? And with the with the the president could be the person who owns a business. How about the layers down? Do you bring the same tool or there's a different tool to managing those priorities?

SPEAKER_02 18:05

It's a great question, Gamete. So let's think about what we're talking about here, and that's the prioritization of the tasks and roles, the things I need to do. And generally speaking, let's just say you're my boss and then I've got a team of five. So I would bring that document to every discussion, whether it's a project meeting or our one-on-one or informal catch-up or whatever it might be. That is my back in the day before I had tablets, I used to have a printed-out copy that would be a month. I would handwrite on it, and it would just be in a plastic sheet and it went to every single meeting. Now, to answer your question, I would expect that you you, as my boss, would have a similar tool. Maybe it's not the same one, but your task, you let's say you have 15 things on your list, and it's not a task list, it's a status report, as we call it. So it's actually the formal, formative, functional things that you're required to do. Yeah, 80% of the work you're going to do this week or this month. And so some of those things on your list are going to fall onto my list and and you know, your other three direct reports. So let's say you have 15, 5, or 6, 7 might actually, or maybe 10, actually flow down into my list. But the tasks within that, my actions might be different. So you're responsible for customer service across this organization. My responsibility might within that might be an audit function or something along those lines. So my task might be a part of your story. But if you've got four direct reports, Committee and you're you're our boss, then our functional work that we do should in many ways very literally flow in and out of what you do. And then if you think logically about that, and let's just say we've all got, you know, your direct reports, the four of us, have five report direct reports each. There's 20 people below us, or 16 people below us, that have the opportunity to have the same clarity and opportunity to see where your requirements come into my requirements, and some of my list becomes part of the list for my team as well. So to answer your question, absolutely, we should be using a similar or the same tool. And every week, my team should be coming to me on a Monday, three to five minutes, and saying, Here's my priorities. Does that sound about right to you? Say, oh, maybe number three needs to skip up a level. I didn't get a chance to tell you, but I met with Gamete on Thursday and that prioritization shifted because we've got, you know, uh we had three weeks to do it now, we've only got two. That's okay, so I need to move that from number three to number two. So it's very literal. And it's like, well, I was going to do that on Thursday or Friday, but I need to get that, get, you know, start that on Tuesday, Wednesday to get it done in time. Is that okay though, that I drop number three down the list or don't get it done this week? So that's the conversation. Instead of it being, you know, a week or two later, I'm saying to my team member, why the hell didn't you get number three done? It's like, well, because you told me that Gameet said that there was a new priority. It's like, yeah, but we didn't talk about it. I didn't know that. Yeah. Well, now I'm going to hold you accountable retrospectively. And I'm disappointed you didn't get done the thing we never talked about. So it sounds really simple and it sounds a little bit anal, a little bit too granular, but I just cannot find it or see a way. And I've not got examples where if we're not doing it to that level, it doesn't sorry, if we are doing it to that level, it allows people to be accountable to their roles. In the absence of that, the the disparity of understanding and the confusion that reigns and the reactiveness is is constant. It it just has to be. That's it, it's an outcome of not having those conversations. So and I'll just say commit quickly, one-on-ones, which are an imperative. So every fortnight, at least we would perhaps, but every um fortnight we catch up. And all we're doing is summarizing all the conversations we've

Aligning Team Goals with Company Vision

SPEAKER_02 21:23

had in between. So we're just saying, you know, what we had a lot of.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Yeah, but you're lining, you like you're lining their action items, are you lining the focus where the focus needs to go, right? So I think there's such you made such a great point, uh, Steve. You know, if you can do that on a on a layers down all the way, you simply just focus everybody in the same direction. You have a tool to focus, at least you have a tool, an opportunity to focus everybody in the same directions just by looking at the priority list.

SPEAKER_02 21:47

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

Very interesting. I think that that is something that a lot of uh business owners listening to us or or team leaders or or or business, you know, C level, you you'd be take a listen to you know to this, you know, and and try to understand. Know what you just mentioned, Steve, that you know, if you want to get a company moving in the same direction, everybody aligned with the you know, everybody's goals and tasks, this is probably the best way to do that. You could simply take a look at everybody's property list, and you can simply just if you go all the way to the shop for each shop level or somebody who's doing a programming for you, you can simply take a look at the list of a priority and assess in a two-second that those properties align with the company goals. And what two seconds doesn't matter how many layers you have.

SPEAKER_02 22:25

Correct. Now you could spot on. I'll just add to that, Kamate, because this is critical. This is the underpinning of success, in my opinion. Because we talk about vision, we talk about values, and we talk about standards and so on. You imagine this kind of this is a brilliant conversation, Kimete. You imagine if we have that rhythm and we've got the that relationship because what we're doing is also building trust between ourselves, we're building clarity and context between ourselves. Tomorrow we're better for how we're managing today. It's not like because we're so reactive and we don't have to meet or my door's always open. I hear that all the time. I'm like, that's just a that's a fallacy. You know, very few people walk through that door. But if you think about vision and values and so on, it's very easy then to understand what I'm focusing on because we speak about it all the time. But in our one-on-ones, we get to talk about it in depth. So, Steve, over the last few weeks, uh, when we've been talking about uh your priorities and so on, you were quite nervous about meeting with John in that meeting, client, client John. And you know, we talked a bit about how to prepare differently or set yourself up for success in that meeting. So, how did you go with that meeting with John? That was last Wednesday. Oh, actually, yeah, the preparation made a big difference. And I thanks for your advice about doing X. And I didn't know that about John, so that really allowed me to connect with him at a different level. And I felt the trust built more quickly. And so the one-on-one becomes the functional wrap-up and the the overview of all the detail that we've we've we've got into all the granularity during the week. But now we get to roll that up and down to talk about who I am, how I've gone with my relationships, and and what how I've gone with the stuff I'm doing. And they're the three things in one-on-one that we should always focus on. So, how am I going? How are we going in our relationship and all my other relationships, stakeholders or peers of my team? And then how am I going as a result with the stuff that I've been asked to do? And because we've been talking about the stuff, you know, the tasks a lot, then it's very easy. And but that's in most one-on-ones, that 90% of the time that's what we talk about. We just talk about the projects and the work we're doing. But if we don't talk about our relational aspects and also how am I going, then we we're talking about the outcomes and the focus on the the results and not the contributions that make that real. So, and then to you know, my point being, how much easier is it to have a conversation, say, well, we value respect as an organization. I now know you and what you see respect as I I know how you define it as my team member, and I can help you to connect the dots so that you can see how you contribute to that value, as opposed to it being up on a poster on a wall, and we just hope that people connect. So it's it's much more than just the stuff, it's it's connecting the values to your great point, Gamete, to the vision and the direction of what we were trying to achieve. We've got a big goal this year as an organization. This is your part to play, and this is why it matters. And so it it's the flowing up and down. You can think that's a vision is a we've got a project X to complete this year, you know, major piece of work. As you go down the channel, the granularity of that work that's required and the clarity and context that's required is imperative. It's not a nice to have. And I see too many organizations and managers that are kind of having these conversations, if at all, and then wondering why people aren't achieving what we think they should be achieving. Well, I don't know. It's it's often quite obvious.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

A plus B does equal C mate. There's always disconnect to your points. You know, I think all that is, you know, that those are benefit. But what I'm I'm also looking at on what you just mentioned is uh such a great point that company changes based on economic challenges, financial challenges, all that stuff, companies sometimes change directions. So if you're using that kind of mechanism where we have those tasks like a property list and and you know, all those items we just talked about it, if a

Navigating Change in Leadership

SPEAKER_00 25:48

company changes direction and I have to change direction with the company just to make sure that that that you know I'm aligned with the company, as a leader, if I'm changing direction, it's gonna trickle down all the way very, very quickly because they also build upon those my property lists, whatever my property list is, right? So economically the challenge comes in. I gotta pivot something to something new to make sure that company is viable, that we we we strive for success. I may have to change the way I look at some of the some of the items. But if everybody's working on the same priority list, theirs gonna automatically change because I just changed the direction because the you know company required us to change direction because something changed economically.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

100%. So, Gamita, I'll ask you a question here. You you speak to a lot of people in your work day to day, this is a side muscle, and you do it beautifully, but you speak to a lot of people in the work that you do day to day and in in podcasts. How often do you feel that people are talking about non-changing environments or environments or work where there's not much change? Like it's a constant, isn't it? Change?

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Like it's constantly business changes, technology changes, economic changes, financial stuff, you know, these are these are items change, especially what we're going through right now. Look at how many technology challenges in, you know, world affairs changes, you know, wars happen, deaths happen, a lot of stuff changes so fast. And if you don't pivot with those changes, you know, the speed of changes is is a way too fast. You know, you're left behind with the competition. Look what's going on with the AI. So you gotta change. But if you don't have the good system working with you, then how do you bring everybody on the same page when you're going through those changes and making those changes on a fly?

SPEAKER_02 27:19

That's bit you literally answered the question where I was about to go. I would say to you, it it changes a constant. You see it every day, I see it every day. But there'd be very few people watching and listening to this podcast today that wouldn't be nodding and thinking, yeah, my job's full of change, has been for years. It's we don't go through, oh Steve or Gamete, over the next two weeks, we're going to go through a period of change, but before that and after that, it's not changed. I mean, there's various ramp ups and ramp downs, but excuse me, but the reality is that we are always going through the change. So if that's true, and it absolutely is, imagine trying to manage that change and facilitate culture and do everything we've already talked about in the first 20 minutes in the absence of that clarity and those systems and the the granularity of those conversations.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

It is literally Well, you've been erective that way, not a proactive. You've been erective that way, you're just responding to the change instead of just fixing it before that, right? So I think that's where we talk about most leaders I talk to, as you mentioned that on a podcast, change management management is one of the biggest challenges they have. You know, whether it's uh technology changes, a culture changes or team changes, change management is where they spend a lot of time on. But what are you and I talking about, uh Steve, to uh, you know, to your point, we're talking about managing that proactively, not erectively, uh, after you're making a change.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

That's spot on. And I say this all the time. We're not trying to make you know an imperfect world perfect. We don't have influence on everything. In fact, we often don't have influence on most things, but you do have more influence than you think. And I will say to my clients and coaches, at the end of the day, if you can have 15 or 20% more influence because you are more proactive over the next six to 12 months, that 15 or 20% has an it's an outlier in terms of its value. So even 5% more proactive versus that, you know, 98% reactive, that 5% more proactive has a level of ownership and clarity, the people, your team will feel less pressure. So if we can increase that, you can't really measure it, but if you can increase that 10 or 15%, not big numbers, but the outcome of that is significant and it's game-changing in terms of how people feel about their leadership and how people feel about their level of control. And you what you're describing there is the tail wagging the dog. At the end of the day, if we are constantly responding and reacting to things that are happening to us, then that's other people owning our time. And again, much of the work that I do is focusing on saving people time to give them the opportunity to focus on the development and then dedicate the time to their people that is absolutely required. Because that's the other thing we haven't spoken about. We do not spend anywhere near enough, generally speaking, anywhere near enough time with our people. And I listened to a podcast the other day, and it was a quite a senior CEO here as a CEO of Australia Postal Service and one of our big financial firms, Ahmed

The Importance of Time Management in Leadership

SPEAKER_02 30:00

Fahor, and yeah, quite a successful CEO and entrepreneur in in Australia. And his point was that if we're not spending 50% of our time with our team, assisting them, guiding them, facilitating, connecting with them, helping them to understand the priorities and where they're struggling to guide, not do, but guide them and so on, then we've missed the trick in terms of leadership. And yeah, you know, it may sound revolutionary to people. And I can't tell you anyone at C suite level that's spending 50% of their time. So it's not like it's easy, but it's necessary. And in the absence of that, then we become reactive. In the absence of that, we don't have clarity of expectations and then accountability falls away. In the absence of that we don't have relationships, I'm assuming what you value. I don't know what you care about, I don't know what you're that good at. So I'm gonna give you the job to be an analyst in my team when your job is better, BD. You're a people person. And now I'm gonna get your head in a computer to analyze data. Uh these are the things that we do day to day. We're guessing and we're assuming, and that's a huge failure point.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Well, great point. I want to take this on another level, uh Steve. You what you just mentioned, we're talking about, I want to build upon it when we just talked about it. Have you considered you know, we talk about setting up priority, we talk about you know about building a relationship with the people? Have we considered tying that to a financial model, something financial? So, you know, we all give uh performance bonuses, we all give you know composition to people who perform well because it's a coward and sticky, you know. So you want to award people as well. Have you ever considered that people who are performing well on those tasks or the or they achieve those three tasks or four

Financial Incentives and Performance Measurement

SPEAKER_00 31:33

tasks you have, you you know, some sort of financial and of incentive to them. So they have a not only they want to do good, but there's some sort of financial reward for them to encourage them to even do better than what what they're doing. Have you considered any of that models as aligned that with that as well? And would that work? Because the way I'm looking at that is when you have a three, four terms, now I can measure it. I I can measure that. Okay, you had a three task, you completed, I can measure it, and I can measure, I can award that that work because I was able to measure it. So if you can do that, I mean you just moved not only people in the right direction, but you financially provide incentive to even do better than what they're doing.

SPEAKER_02 32:13

Yeah, absolutely. Gee, this that is a can of worms. I'll try and keep this brief. I would say to you, think about what we've talked about. Right now, if someone is being accountable, and it's not just some theory, they're being accountable to their role, and they're building their book for the year based on their status report. So it's the status report is an Excel spreadsheet, right? And every month you just save it into a new spreadsheet, remove and delete the things that are now done, update and so on. And so now you've got January, February, March, April, and so on, or financial year. And so at the end of the year, how easy is it for you at any level to be able to summarize all the information's in there? You're just grabbing the key half dozen or eight or ten elements from your great successor through the year. You've got all of it listed. I cannot tell you how common it is for people to get to the end of year if there's an annual review type process. Most people hate it. Like both the deliverer and the and the recipient, you know, the so that the leader and the team member, most people hate that process. And it's not the process. Like most things, email is a pain in the bum for a lot of people. Email is not a problem, it's how we've learned to use it. Annual reviews are not a problem in terms of the process. One-on-ones are not a problem. We're just not that good at doing it. And again, I'm not trying to be hypercritical and saying these are these are facts. I hear this every day. And so we need to develop the skills to do these things well and have the right conversations, but we also need the processes behind it to do that. So, how we do that is to use these tools to advantage. And the status report just summarizes in an annual perspective and all the

The Role of Status Reports in Performance Evaluation

SPEAKER_02 33:36

one-on-ones we've had along the way. So, when we're talking about you know performance, we should be thinking about me not telling you how you've gone. It's your job as my employee and my team member, and we've got a great relationship that where you're going to be honest, otherwise, there's a big failure point anyway. But it's your job to help me understand what you're challenged by. It's your job to help me understand what you've succeeded by. Yeah, what have you been challenged by in the last week or two since we formally met? That's what a one-on-one is. And I said you do it under the guise of how you're going with the relationships, stakeholders and customers, as well as internal, how are you going and how you're going with the stuff you're doing? And I want to really reiterate that because that's the bit we miss that. We always just talk about the stuff we're doing, the tasks. So if we're actually having these conversations and the, I guess the rhythm, not process, but the rhythm is there, then we have an opportunity to truly understand who's performing at a high level. Right? And without that, how do you truly know? You're assuming a lot, or it becomes about likability. Exactly. Or I relate to you because you're like me. You know, we're similar to two Ps and a pod. So now I get you. So now I'm going to rank you higher at the end of the year, or whatever it might be. And so that that that value that we can put on those conversations isn't just uh the moment and the clarity in the moment or the week. It's the clarity for the year. And we build on this, it's always an iterative process. But where I'll go really quickly with that, Gamiche's great question. I have a, again, I don't want to make it about resources and tools, but on my website, I've got a lot of free available tools and resources. One of them is called a nine-blocker. And when I worked at GE for a decade, it was a version of that. Uh I've got a more advanced version of a version, but it's an interactive version that I've created there that you can literally go through and plot people on a nine-block set of cells. Top right-hand corner is your people excelling, bottom left is your people that are probably not going to make it or need a lot of work to do, and then yeah, areas in between. But within that, and it's just a process, but within that, we're measuring performance and we're measuring behaviors,

Using Tools for Objective Performance Assessment

SPEAKER_02 35:26

and we're measuring values and values alignment. And if we can focus on those things and all that, those three things and all those conversations, it's less subjective. We're creating an objective conversation and assessment of my team based on not just what I perceive them to be doing as a series of outputs and performance, but also how they're achieving what they're achieving. And that's where the behaviors and values underpinning that becomes then less about just the output, and it's much more about what we're doing to achieve those and not just measuring the result. Because I've seen many people that have got promoted or get the monthly sales, often happens in sales, but the monthly reward based on things that they've done that look good as an output, but how they've achieved them have been, you know, not so great as an example. So we should need to be measuring all those things. So we need to have informative systems and processes and models in place to really, really get beyond our own biases and and favoritism and all those things, the click, the clicks that occur and make it much, much more objective rather than subjective. So yeah, something you can measure.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

Yeah. Go on. Yeah, something you can measure, and especially what you know, a lot of business leaders I've been talking to. What they're we're going through recently is measures.

SPEAKER_02 36:36

Go for it. No, go for it. I see a lot of things measured, but it but gee, there's a lot of things that still have high subjectivity and what I call personality-based assessments rather than you know, formative understanding of performance and all the things that contribute to that performance.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

And and that is a challenge. A lot of business owners I'm talking to, simply what we've gone through with the remote work, you know, but not all the teams are centralized and it could be decentralized. They're working overseas. So, you know, what we just talking about, the reason we spent, you know, I wanted to spend a little bit more time on was simply if you start using those lists, whether you're working a remotely, whether you work in a same office or you work from home, you can still align everybody in the same, same, same path

The Challenge of Measuring Performance Effectively

SPEAKER_00 37:15

simply because you build that property list and you just align everybody in the same. So it's much easier to measure that way than we're trying to measure performance many different ways because we work in a decentralized environment, not everybody's in the same office anymore, right? So those tools become very handy. But I'm gonna include a link to that tool you mentioned on your website. People can access that and they can get a get a sense of it. But yeah, especially in a decentralized environment, we work in those little tools, will will help people when they're trying to figure out how they measure performance and all this. We know what we just talk about.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

I agreed. I will say though, we've spent how long are we talking? Half an hour. I want to be really clear. J guys quickly, 35 minutes can make. I want to be really clear. This isn't about resources and tools for resources tools' sake. This isn't about, as I said earlier, having policies and procedures so that we can lean on them and go, we've got good policies and procedures. They are all important, but the only thing that matters in my experience and and my belief is how well we use those resources to advantage. So when I'm talking about, and I've got many assessments, they're all freely available. When we're talking about a leadership assessment, I've I've created an opportunity for people to answer a series of questions, 15 questions around their leadership, and then a prompt that I've created. And I've got an AI tool that I created as well, it's called CS Coach Bot. And to grab the information and put in there, hit the copy prompt and put it into CS Coach Bot, and it will spit out a report that will give them here's the what I'm seeing, here's three opportunities for you in terms of the gaps, here's three things you're already doing well, here's five questions you might want to reflect on based on what you've told us. So it's you know, and other information. All that information there is only useful if people actually use it.

unknown 38:51

Right?

SPEAKER_02 38:51

It's yeah, no, it's phenomenal to me. It's not about the tool, it's about because I'm all about relationships. I love technology, and like I said, I've got a lot of information, but it's phenomenal to me. And again, I'm gonna sound a little bit critical here, Camille. But I was talking to a client yesterday, a good friend of mine I've worked with for many years, and I said to her, It's straight, I struggle with the aspect of how much coach station content is just co-station content. I've got blogs and material and that, but there's millions of other sources. Your podcast is a great resource, right? But it's interesting to me how passive people are around this information, and they will take it in as if knowledge is the end game. But knowledge is just the the precursor to doing something different. We need to know more to do different or do more, but it's not the end game. It's crazy to me how often people are just gaining that knowledge and not applying. So the whole premise for this is about relationships and action. Reflect and act is a term I use all the time. It's through the book, um, a book I wrote. It's about what does that mean for you? How to translate that information into your world, not just what does it mean to someone else's, how does it translate into yours, that assessment or that tool or reome the accountability model?

The Need for Action Beyond Knowledge

SPEAKER_02 39:55

Which parts do you do well already? Relationships is the first aspect. Great. Are you good at building that? In what way? What could you do more of? Yeah, it's not about just looking at it and go, well, that's the information, it's translating into the world and then doing something with that information. And that's the whole point. If people listen to this to nothing else can meet, it's just to challenge themselves to do something more and differently with the actions that they know they should, but often don't.

SPEAKER_00 40:19

Yeah, you know, if you look at it 10, 15 years ago or 20 years ago, uh Steve, you know, the challenge was you don't have the right information. You know, we the challenge was to finding the right information, you know, what's going to help you there. And having a night right knowledge, whether it's from our webinars and all this stuff, these days, that's not a challenge. The challenge is we have too much information. You know, if we I was talking to my son that in, you know, the challenge for his generation is going to be too much information, too much knowledge out there in you know, deciding, and and too much information also brings a lot of distractions around that. You know, there's if there's a 20-path to go and and you can't pick the right path, what do we do? We freeze as a human. We we don't take any any any step forward, right? We just freeze. It's like a traffic lights, you know, they all blink in red. What do we do? We just freeze. We don't we don't move forward, right? So it's the same kind of approach. So the challenge with them, you know, even in the current generation, is that it's too much information, too, but too much knowledge out there making the right step. And and and to your point, executing whatever the right path there is. You know, when you decide the right path, uh taking action on that and executing the path and getting a result and doing a lot more than that. Otherwise, it it just information, it's not gonna get you anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

Uh spot on. And Gamet, this is gonna sound like I'm trying to sell to uh I'm not passionate about what I do. I got to senior levels in organizations with Toyota and GE and others, and I decided 15, 16 years ago to go down this path for a reason, not to be a hero or to go, how good am I? But genuinely care about care about helping people. And I had 20 plus years of leadership experience. I was enjoying the coaching mentoring side, for got some formal qualifications around that to validate that for myself because I didn't really know what it was. And now for 15 to 16 years, I've I've coached 600 plus people, several thousand people in workshops and different things. Now, again, that's not me big noting. The reality is I've then created a website with content to give people the opportunity to have no excuse. So, as I said, I'm not trying to sell this, I'm trying to give, I want people to use these tools. I've got half a dozen assessments at different levels as a leadership and organizational audit, which is a similar process

Navigating Information Overload in Leadership

SPEAKER_02 42:18

to half a dozen questions and then a prompt that you put into my AI tool, and it will give you information to tell you what you need to focus on based on your reviews. It's not you can't put rubbish people in good output. I've got information around change management. We've spoken about that, the Rheome model, interactive models around Rheome, that nine blocker I've talked about. But again, I don't want to make it all about tools and resources. I'm just saying that's an opportunity. The book I wrote, Falling into Leadership, it's it's a uh a book that covers eight chapters, and that's each chapter with the protagonist, the key character Sally, it's about following her journey. So and her journey is a representation of everyone I've ever coached. So people reading that now are reading it and going, Oh my god, I really relate to that. It's because, well, of course, because it's written in the guise of what you guys have been telling me. So again, I'm not being silly about it or again, being heroic. I'm saying I've got a book, I've got AI tools, I've got other resources, ain't interactive or otherwise. You've got coaching and mentoring, always happy to have a chat with anyone about you know their desires and needs or gaps or whatever it might be. So there's no reason not to. And here's the point that I'd say to you, Gamet, in the absence of using those, and and thousands of other coaches and and content is out there. I'm not saying I'm the only one that'll do it the best, but what I am saying is the reason I do that is to help people. And I don't want people to make it have an excuse that I don't have access to the information or I don't know what path to take. It's like, well, I'm telling you, my website is just one of many, but and my content is one of many, but it's pretty good content and pretty good insight. So if you're lost, use the resources to your advantage. And I guarantee you you will be better for the experience if you apply one or two things, right? That's all we're saying.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

No, there's and your website is very interactive. There's a lot of information there. You know, I was on it, you know, just do some research. Great. A lot of tools. Talk about book falling into leadership. I think that is a story of a lot of entrepreneurs. We were good at some sort of a technical skills or some sort of trade. That's why we started a business, right? So and all of a sudden we have to learn leadership or sales and leadership, two things, right? So all of a sudden we have to build that. So talk about book. You know, the is that what the problem you saw? That a lot of people got into leadership, you know, without any training. We simply have to and what inspired you to write this book?

SPEAKER_02 44:27

Yeah, great series of questions. The brief version, I actually started writing the book in March 2016. And I know that because I actually, in the last couple of years, I uh I was sitting a bit of a wall, pretty busy. And so I engaged my mum and my mother to help me to finish that last couple of years. And mum did it, mum's name's Kath. Mum did a great job of uh bringing a lot of the content together and creating a story. And she created Sally, who's the key character and so on. So it made a bit of a story out of it. But old originally 10, 11 years ago, when I started writing it, it was simply to give a gift and a resource to my coaches at the beginning of their program. And the idea behind it was to give them insight into the sort of things we talk about, some of the core concepts and models, but to make it an interesting read, too, not just a dry series of blogs that have been brought together in a book. And so we've managed to bring that together in a way that tells a story and it's Sally's story, but it's actually everyone's story, as I said. And it covers all of the things, or it covers many of

The Journey of Writing 'Falling into Leadership'

SPEAKER_02 45:21

the things that we all have to deal with day-to-day working in organizations. And so it's interesting. We've sold several hundred of the books at this point and give them to clients. And the feedback is consistently, I relate to Sally's story. It's almost like people are really, really thinking about her within their world, it's almost like I know Sally. And that's beautiful. Because and mum deserves a lot of credit for that because that was a lot of her ideas. But the practical reality of that is how do you translate? So the end of each chapter, there's five questions, reflect and act, as I said. So, you know, what you've absorbed here, what resonated in your world? What's one thing you could do differently as a result? And yeah, how could you make your world slightly better? How can you save time? How can you be more effective, productive, efficient? And they're the sort of things that we need to be thinking about and doing and not just reading and knowing, as I said before. So falling in leadership was written to give to my clients. It's got legs. I was in strangely in uh in Amazon in uh the US a couple of weeks ago, I made the top 40 list for around two of the business genres. Congress. It's sort of got legs, and you know, it wasn't really why I wrote it, but now that I now that I do have it out there, I I probably see it more than just for my client list. It's a it's a way to touch and help people well beyond Australia and my network. And genuinely, again, I'm not trying to promote it for the sake of promoting it. You don't make a lot of money from books, but I do want that to be a tool that people use to become better at leadership. That's why I wrote it. And fooling the leadership, the premise for it is that we often are given opportunities and we are not necessarily ready for them. And there's a lot of people that are in leadership roles that are battling and struggling. And I know that because I'm often engaged to help them 15 or 18 months after they were promoted. And I often say to the leaders or HR or the organization, how powerful would this have been if you had to contact me 15 months before you promoted them and we got them ready for the role rather than now we're remedial coaching, doing remedial coaching work because it's not quite going as well as you would have liked. They're worth the investment, but the timing's not always great. So this is a book that's designed to not solve all the ills of the world, but to help in that space.

SPEAKER_00 47:21

Yeah, you know, there's uh you helping a lot of people, you know, definitely uh much needed help in this area, Steve. You know, so business leaders, we built we get into business, you know, there's so many moving parts, whether we have to watch revenue, whether we have to watch economy, we have to manage team. There's so when we're working on a too many things, there's so many blind spots. And I think that's where the help like this comes handy. So that we, you know, as a when we deep down in a trying to move a company forward, we can't see all the blind spots. And this is where the tools like yours and a book like yours, and and a you know, people like you come in, simply say, listen, uh, you know, there's a business as an inflection point. If you're stuck on something, let me see what blind spot you're up against. Now, not only showing us blind spot and then then helping them to get over the blind spot so we can get to the next inflection point where we solve a different problem, right? So I think this is where that the lot of help comes in. Simply say, listen, you're stuck in a blind inflection point, you're not gonna see it because you're in it, you're living through it on a daily basis. Let me see

Helping Leaders Overcome Challenges

SPEAKER_00 48:14

the blind spot, let me help you get over that stuff, and then you get to the idea goals and objectives. I think it's uh such a great help, great service that you provide uh to people, especially that you know, if somebody wants to be self-helped, the book is there, website is there, there's so much information. What is the best way to connect with you, Steve? I'm gonna include a link to your book and your website and and and all the contact information below the video as well. What is the best way for people to reach out to you?

SPEAKER_02 48:37

Great. Thank you for the opportunity. My website is, as we've talked about, coachstation.com.au. So coachstation.com.au. There are many avenues to or resources within that. There's a full in the leadership menu on the menu, there's a full in the leadership link. I should say too, there's also a resource. I created a companion hub to the book. So it's its own page under that same menu that allows people to explore some of the content within the chapters further than just the questions in the book as well. And then, as we've talked about, the resources and tools section, there's many assessments in there. I genuinely encourage people, not because I feel good about seeing my website hits go up, but I genuinely encourage people to use those tools and resources. If you're struggling with change, there's two models in there and a descriptive. There's a whole page. Yeah, we're talking seven or eight minute read. It's not not you know war and peace, but change management, emotional intelligence. I've got a couple other tools around balancing emotions and logic. We often react emotionally when we need to apply logic to the emotion to you know, so what I call it at you know, a perspective scale. And that perspective scale allows people to, you know, apply logic when there's highly emotive situations. And so there's a lot of resources and tools, as we've talked about, and I don't want to keep pumping that, but you know, explore it, explain. Because I the here's the thing I'd say, and maybe it's a good way to sort of start to wrap up. If you go to my website, coachstation.com.au, you've got a lot of resource. And that resource is gold. What you do with it is platinum, right? It's good to have that knowledge, it's good to have the information and the and the insight and the reflective piece that maybe you didn't have yesterday. What you do with it is really the whole point. And so that platinum, that absolute elevation is about you using that and then share it with your leader if you've got that relationship or a peer or a mentor or a coach or whoever, and talk about what this means for you and then do something with that to really embed that as part of who you are. That's what development is, that's what growth is, that's what progression is. It's the point. Because if we don't focus on that, the world's, as we've talked about, Gamit, the world's changing around us rapidly. If we're not at least taking a pace with that, then we quickly get overtaken and we get stressed and we feel lesser, imposter syndrome kicks in, and there's a lot of things that uh happen that are less, less good. And what we're trying to do here is to help people to become more comfortable, confident, competent, skilled, and so on. Um, so it's a series of resources. But you know, from my point of view, always happy to have a chat if anyone wants to reach out. I am in Brisbane here in Queensland, Australia. So the time difference is there, but genuinely always happy to help. So any anything I can do to help, you just have to ask.

SPEAKER_00 51:03

Yeah, I know it's uh interesting discussion. Steve, I want to thank you for your time. You know, I again, you know, tell definitely got a different perspective on our task list we were talking about. Just one of the topics we talk about, there's tons of stuff we can talk. We can talk all day. You know, uh maybe we gotta do part two and pick a different topic and talk about it. But there's so much to learn from you, so many different perspectives to gain in you know, business owner uh owner or you know, business leader listening or watching us uh on a podcast. I will strongly recommend that listen, the link below this video, click a link, reach out to Steve. Well, get all the resources from the website and get a copy of the book, and then uh if you still need help, reach out to Steve for discussion. Who knows where the discussion is gonna go, right? You know, you know, I we just talk for half an hour, you know, 45 minutes and I learn a different perspective. I'm sure whoever uh reaches out to you, they're gonna uh get a totally different perspective and they're gonna learn so much from you and hopefully get over those inflection points we were talking about on a business, you know, help them to see some of those blind spots and deal with the inflection point. So before we go, Steve, any message you wanna leave, people who either you know, business leaders who are always hesitant to take a next step to you know start working on themselves or working on the teams, and any word of you want to share with them, people a little bit on the edge, hesitant, you know, always there's always blame that you know, economies when the economy gets better, then I'll do it. When this gets better, then I'll do it, you know, one day kind of stuff, you know, one day I'll do it. So people who are in a little bit on edge, any message you want to share with them to simply say, listen, so start somewhere. Uh, what are we trying to do? So you know, stop using all those uh, you know, there's always going to be some challenges out there in a market, right? So uh when do you start? How do you start? So if you want to leave any message for them.

SPEAKER_02 52:36

I love that. Thank you for that. But there's two things I say. One's about you, actually, but I'll get to that in a moment. The key message would be we have more influence and control than we think we do. That doesn't mean we get to influence and control most things. But if we're focusing on the things that we have that influence over and we build the skill and capability and knowledge and awareness of how to influence that, it creates a lot of power. And I don't mean power in some dictatorial way. I mean power in terms of our feeling good about who we are and us feeling aligned to the work that we do. And so it's about trying to truly understand the few things that are going well and do more of it and then understand some of those gaps that are relevant. Because just because they're gaps, it doesn't mean they might be relevant. If your job doesn't require public speaking, we'll probably don't focus on becoming a better public speaker. But for the things that are relevant, then you need to focus on those things. And all you're trying to do each week, and I don't mean every month or year, each week we should have at least one thing we're doing slightly better than we were last week. It's just progression, it's iterative, it's not designed to be boiling the ocean and trying to do it all at once. And that's the mistake that I see a lot of people make. They get overwhelmed by what it could be, and the world is busy and changing, and so they try and do it all, and it doesn't work, so they quickly revert back

Encouragement for Hesitant Leaders

SPEAKER_02 53:44

to who they are and what they've always done. The opportunities are definitely there, and just do it comfortably and calmly and do it in a way that's nice and methodical and iterative. And that is where best growth comes from, in my experience. And the second piece, Gamit, I just want to genuinely I mean this uh not just to float your boat. I said to you before we uh started to uh record it today, you have a very nice style, and I felt very comfortable meeting with you the other week. And uh I really appreciate how you have these conversations. And I've listened to several of your other podcasts, and I'm quite certain that the other guests feel the same way. So I genuinely want to thank you for the opportunity to um not just have a conversation and get me to sprue my stuff. It's not the point, it's about helping other people, and you do that day to day, and I just want to acknowledge that and say thank you for your time because I know you've got a real job outside of this, and this is an opportunity for you to contribute in the way that I contribute my way and you doing your way. And I just want to acknowledge that and say thank you for that opportunity too.

SPEAKER_00 54:36

No, thank you for kind of working with. But but people like you, you know, when they come on a podcast, that makes everybody's life easier, right? It's simply because you added so much value for people listening to uh, you know, you know, watching us, it it that's just it, you know, for me, that's the encouragement to you know, keep doing that over and over because every time I talk to somebody, I learn so much. And uh definitely the people who are watching, I'm gonna, you know, we're gonna add value to their experience as well. I think that the combination of that encourages me to keep uh you know having this conversation. So, but thank you again. So about your you know, for your time. Great discussion. Enjoyed it, and I think we gotta do part two, pick a different topic from your book, and maybe we've got to do part two. We didn't get to the book yet. So, but uh pleasure talking to you. Great discussion. Thank you so much, Steve.

SPEAKER_02 55:17

I'm doing it. Have a great time. Thanks again.

SPEAKER_00 55:19

You too, thank you. If you enjoyed this discussion, I'm I recommend to check one of these discussions on the top. Um, also don't forget to go back to that channel homepage. There's a playlist created just for you, whether you're looking for business discussion, technology discussion, or process discussion for business growth, all those categories are there, and I'm sure you will find something that you enjoy from those categories as well. So don't forget to send us your feedback, subscribe to this channel for any upcoming videos. Your feedback is very important to us, allow us to focus on the right discussion to deliver value for you on a weekly basis. So enjoy until next time. Thank you for your time.