HR People Pod - Ep 52: Courageous leadership, clarity and organisational falafel - with Diana Osagie

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to another special episode of the HR People Pod, the CIPD's fortnightly podcast, where we bring you topical stories and expert insights impacting the profession and the world of work. My name is David De Souza. I am director profession at, ah, the cipd. And, um, I'm absolutely delighted to welcome a very special guest. Today we're recording live from our remote base at the CIPD Festival of Work at, uh, Excel. So you can. You may hear the occasional plane go by in the background, but, uh, we've got someone who's, uh, headlined the show earlier, is going to give us half an hour of time, so. Diana Osaghi, hello and welcome. Hello.

Speaker B: Good to be here. Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: Fantastic. So you are. I've got the full bio here.

Speaker B: Go ahead.

Speaker A: Author, leadership coach, and founder of the courageous leadership consultancy, the Academy of Women's Leadership.

Speaker B: That's me. Absolutely. You got the right person.

Speaker A: That's good. It'll be super two or three times. We've just got entirely the wrong person, and it's a bad start. So in this episode, we'll be talking about the foundations of courageous leadership, why values, leadership matters, and the benefits of finding your tribe potentially. But I'm very much in your hands.

Speaker B: Oh, okay.

Speaker A: It seems the best. So you've, you've written, uh, a couple of books. You. Could you give us a flavor of the speech that you gave earlier?

Speaker B: Okay. So I've written. I've written five books.

Speaker A: That's more than a couple of books. I've undersold it by three.

Speaker B: I've written five books all around leadership. And this morning's speech was on, um, transformational leadership. And I was centering on the gap between fact and truth, where you've got things that are undeniable. These are the facts. So I was a former head teacher. I had staffing. Always tight money, always tight. Has to watch off for the behavior of the young people. These things are facts. And facts want to dictate to your organization where and how fast and where you should go and how much success you're going to have. Then you've got the truth. And the truth was that my young people were limitless in their potential. The truth was that we were an amazing organization, despite what parents may say and what the press may say. And then you've got the people like myself and my senior team that were the vanguards of the truth. But we have to deal with the facts. And there's a gap between these two parts of your organization. And in that gap, you have who resourcing, lack of or abundance. People in the right jobs or in the wrong jobs. Um, attitudes and approaches and procedures. And how do you as leader navigate the gap between the facts and the truth? So then we talked about habits. Do you as a senior leader understand the habits of your colleagues? Understand how habits form powerful undercurrents in your organization, more powerful than training, more powerful than the send all email you sent out on Monday? These habits are, uh, what people default to, especially when they're under pressure. So yes, you've trained Brenda in the office what to do when there's a safeguarding concern. But when Brenda's under pressure, she'll do what Brenda does, which is, oh, come here, love. You know, she'll start hugging the child when you're not supposed to do that, things like this. But oh, yes, I remember the training. But the child looks so enough weaker. We've got another situation in our hands. So I've got to help Brenda develop different habits. And habits kick in when you're not thinking, when automatic routines unfold. And this is the work of senior leaders. I don't expect my newly qualified teacher in French to start doing this kind of, this is what I pay senior leaders a lot of money for this quality of thinking. Then you m move on to thinking. We were talking this morning about, do you understand how to lead the thinking in your organization? You can't have transformation of doing transformation of output without a transformation the way your teams think. Do you permit incompetent leadership thinking around your leadership table? What a courageous conversation. Will you lead the conversation with around what are we doing? That's a waste of time. We lead the conversation around what systems do we perfect? And, um, those systems shouldn't even exist. And this is where we get courageous leadership from leading a conversation where people are saying it's a waste of time, but they're saying it under their breath. They're saying it around the photocopier or in the water cooler place when you walk in. Hi, Mr. Sagi. Oh, I really enjoyed that training day. And you're like, thank you. And they're like, she's a rabbit, she's a muppet, she can't do anything. When you influence how your staff think, then you can truly transform what they do. Otherwise you spend your time transforming at the surface. And when you do that, when pressure comes, that transformation disappears.

Speaker A: So there's a lot to unpick there. But how have you got to the kind of evolution of your thinking around how that operates in organizations and how leaders need to be.

Speaker B: Oh. Mainly from examining where I made mistakes. And I mean, my first book was Courageous Leadership. It's on Amazon. And honestly, I just documented in there where I went wrong. Where I went wrong. When I trace it back was often with the thinking I was doing was shallow. I was a very good teacher, very good. I was a good leader. I was a great deputy head. Then I became the head. Um, I mean, it just changed the level of thinking I needed. There was no course that could train me or told me, diane, you've got to think deeper, wider, better, ah, stronger. Hold onto it, don't forget it. No one trains you for that. That's not on the training course manual. So when I went back and looked at my mistakes, traced them back to. It was a quality of my thinking and my rationale, wrote about it, thought about it some more, and continued to write about what would have been different if I thought differently. My main thing was this. I did too much assuming. So my mantra is now, assumption is your nemesis as a leader. Clarity is your best friend. I assumed that when I sent an email and I pressed send all, I assumed everybody would open the email wrong. I assumed they'd all read the email, understand what was in my head when I wrote the email, they would never forget what was in the email and they would implement it forevermore. Amen. I mean, when you say it out loud, it sounds ridiculous.

Speaker A: I don't know, I'm kind of like, is that not how it works?

Speaker B: That's not how it works.

Speaker A: This is a lesson for me. I'm gonna have to pick a lot I've done in the last week.

Speaker B: Ridiculous. But what do you do? You write an email on Thursday night. Can we be doing this from Monday? You press send door, you go home thinking you've done leadership. You've done none of the sort. When I look back at, uh, the shallow thinking, the assumptions I made, the opaque messaging, saying one thing, but you mean something else. People will sell me falafel. They mean it. It's cardboard. It is just flavored cardboard. But I've bought opaque, ah, messaging because it says it's good for me. I can't even digest this. This is for cows.

Speaker A: Is this a general rant against falafel or is this so it's not like a particular type.

Speaker B: It's falafel in general. It's not for eating, it's not for people. I don't know why we've got this whole industry.

Speaker A: I feel the same about hummus, but it's Quite. That feels controversial. People get really upset.

Speaker B: At least you can digest hummus because it's soft. But falafel is for cows for sure. But we wrap it up and we sell it at five pound a lump. Opaque messaging. It's healthy. What do you mean? Unclear assumptions. It's got vitamin C. Really? Really. It's got fiber. Yeah, I know it's got fiber because I can't digest the thing. So when you have unclear messaging, false claims of, oh, you're really good at your job when the person's a muppet. But they've been there since 1904, and no one challenges them because they're in charge of secret Santa. So you dance around Brenda or Sammy in the corner, and you make up, uh, rules that dance around them because you're so scared of upsetting the kingdom they've built. And then you think, why? Why are we not having transformation? Why are we not having deep, sustained success? Because you are dancing around egos. You're dancing around kingdoms that have been built in your teams, and you're permitting it because you refuse to say, you know what? Enough of that. Brenda, I know you've been here since the, ah, arc, but I need you to start thinking in this way. How can I help you move from that to this? Is it a courageous thing I'm asking of you? Yeah. Is it easy? No. Is it necessary? Absolutely. It's that level of thinking that you need. If you want your organization to succeed in this volatile, uncertain world. You've got to have that clarity of thinking.

Speaker A: So you've got to identify the organizational falafel, the kind of like you go where. When I wake up, if I think really richly about my organization, can I see falafel in the organization?

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: And then you have to go and remove that falafel or turn it into something. Turn it into something else.

Speaker B: I mean, it's going to be strange. I genuinely don't know if you. Can you cook with falafel? Can you make it into something else?

Speaker A: I don't know. Sorry. We've got a couple of other people in the studio. Does anyone know cook with falafel to

Speaker B: turn it into wraps? Into brownies?

Speaker A: Into wraps. Isn't that just putting it into a, uh, like. I mean, you can. You can put anything into anything.

Speaker B: But it just. It's. It's there and it's expensive, and I'm sure it takes some ingredients to make it. It's not easy. So you've invested into it. There's a sunk Cost in there, but it tastes horrible. No one likes it, but people eat it because they think it's healthy. But it gives you constipation. Why are we doing this? Because we've always done it.

Speaker A: If, uh, if there are any people who really do like falafel, genuinely, we don't need the complaint letters like, like it. Just, if you enjoy it, we're delighted you enjoy it. I think there's a big, bigger, uh, point around richness, thinking, and, um, working through some of that organizational red tape. Falafel. So, I mean, did you genuinely go back and think about your entire leadership experience? It seems transformative.

Speaker B: Yes, I did. I sat. I mean, I'm one of those women that journal. So I did journal all the way through. Anyway, so I had a record of things good and bad and ugly. But then my first book, I sat, and I just thought through year one of leadership, of headship, year two of the headship. Right way through. What were the pivotal moments where things were fantastic? What was the thinking behind that? And where things were just catastrophic again? What was the thinking that led you there? What thinking did you allow that led to this? And it was a very honest reflection. It was painful. There was no getting away from it. When you dissect your mistakes and then you write them in the books for everyone to see. But I think people appreciate the honesty. So I talked this morning about being a hostage to someone's skill set, where I had a leader who was phenomenal at a particular skill and data. As an organization, we were not very good at this at all, and he was phenomenal at it. So I quickly brought him into the organization, brought him onto my senior team, because I needed that skill set desperately. But he brought with him such baggage and toxic behavior. Um, my office was full of complaints within the first month. But the skill set I needed desperately. So I was in that hard place of, I need this. I need him to help me transform my school. However, uh, he's bringing issue, issue upon issue upon issue. In the end, we had to part company. But I said to myself, I will never allow myself to become a hostage again to how good someone can do something. So it's that kind of mistake. Because my thinking was, I need this particular skill set to transform. But my thinking didn't go deep enough to. But this guy, that skill set comes with these issues. Diana, how are you going to mitigate this? I should have kept him as a consultant, for example, and not put him as a senior leader. I gave him the platform, the power and the influence. But I didn't do the thinking behind that appointment. I regretted it. It's in the book.

Speaker A: He talked, uh, briefly. Well, we talked extensively about falafel, but we touched on as well, um, habits.

Speaker B: Oh, yes.

Speaker A: How do you go about helping other people shape. Shape and rethink their habits? And how do you build the habit of that yourself?

Speaker B: So there's a book called the Power of Habits. I know Atomic Habits by James Clear is the seminal work, but there's a book before that called the Power of Habits by Charles Duhig. Transformational. Just amazing. It's really good.

Speaker A: I've also read it.

Speaker B: Have you read it? Yeah. Read that book. And he talks about cue. C, U, E, routine, outcome. When the cue arrives. And, um, you can't influence the cue. The cue might be when you see an advert for McDonald's, you can't influence it. There's the advert. What is the routine that automatically unfolds? Then you get your outcome? I see an advert for McDonald's automatically unfolds. I think I'm hungry. I'm, um, not. I've just eaten, but I can't. I'm. I think I'm hungry. Outcome. I put on weight. You have to recognize you're helping your staff to recognize the cue. So they don't say, I don't know. It just happened? No, there was a cue. The cue came that triggered a routine that unfolds automatically without you thinking. You walk into the kitchen, there's apples, there's eclairs. Two cues. What do you do? What do you do?

Speaker A: Well, uh, it's really easy. I don't like eclairs.

Speaker B: Oh, here we go.

Speaker A: But also, I'll probably head out to McDonald's to the third option. You weren't expecting that.

Speaker B: There's always a third way. When you recognize M. These are the things that are the cues for the organization. In the wintertime, people spend less money. Let's just say that's true for your organization. Okay. You can't help. That's the cue. It's winter. You're not going to change that. But what is your response? Now, you can be intentional. What is your intentional response to the cue that you know is going to come in the wintertime? People spend less money. Okay? So in the wintertime, we change our line, we change our product, we change the way we advertise, and so on. So we get the outcome that we want rather than the default outcome. So it's about planning for your response to the cues that are going to come in the morning. I've got to go to the gym. The morning's going to come. It's the cue. What is my response to the morning? Coffee, whatever else, Or I lay out my gym clothes. I look at them. Yeah, I'm looking at them. I don't want to go to the gym. I have to have an intentional response. And that takes time. Often organizations will not allow the time it takes to embed a habit because they want transformation, they want it now. Hence Arsenal. So as they're saying, yes, 21 or 22 years it took 22 years, it took to win the League again. Mikel Artet has been in. In power there. He's been the head teacher there for six years. I can't tell you how many head teachers Tottenham have had in the last six years. My team.

Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, you. You're a Spurs fan.

Speaker B: I'm a Spurs fan.

Speaker A: Oh, I'm really glad because, uh, I was like, if you're just rubbing it in my face.

Speaker B: No, I'm a Spurs fan. 40 years. In the time that Arsenal have stuck with Arteta to embed their habits of Championship mindset for them to win, we've changed M. I think we're on. I don't know. We're into double figures. We've had three this year. How can you embed the habits that are going to lead you to a Championship mindset if you're changing every term? In our case, it was almost every year. You can't. You have to be patient, but there's a cost to patience. So will you pay the cost to embed the habits now and reap for years later? Up to you.

Speaker A: And is the first. Is there like a meta habit of observing the habits in others, learning those things and having the discipline to keep looking for them?

Speaker B: I don't know about a, uh, meta habit, because habits are personal. So what you've got is all your personal habits come together in this one thing called the organization. But what there is is a consistency of approach to the way you develop your people. And if you are honest, especially if your business is about making money, you make a product that you sell. If your bottom line is financial, our bottom line is money, then you are always, uh, teetering on that line, aren't you, of developing our people, making money. Developing, uh, our people to make money. Your motivation is different than an organization that doesn't have that as their bottom line. So what your motivation is for your organization to exist will drive your habits deeply. You've got. You've got to Be honest with yourselves.

Speaker A: I guess my point is if someone was, which I may be making badly, often do, uh, if someone is trying to make the shift from where you described yourself early in your career to the kind of clarity of thinking that you've got now, they need to build, whether you call it habits or discipline.

Speaker B: Yes, yes.

Speaker A: They need to build that discipline of thinking in that way around the people around them and also their own actions.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Because if, if you just do it once. No, you're never going to get there, are you?

Speaker B: Yeah, you do need to build the habit and underpinning, um, the habits like that now are, ah, things like reading. You should be as a leader, reading widely, reading deeply, reading frequently. It's a tenant of our lead, of our, of our profession. You should be reading always, all the time. You know, if you're not, then you are, you're not opening yourself to new ideas and to new ways of thinking and you're not challenging what you. And if you don't challenge what you think, your thinking is already stale. But you don't know, you're the last to know if you don't challenge that. So reading again and again and again, then it's not even about training. It's about finding the tribe of people who are operating above where you are. No matter how high you are in the organization. I still need to learn more deeply, widely. You've never finished, you've never finished expanding what you know and then getting rid of what you thought. That was solid, solid learning, solid way of doing things. You now know. Actually I was wrong. That's changed. That's different now, you know. So when you've arrived, you've been promoted. When you arrive, you've. You've reached the great revenue that you're looking for. Count it as that is wrong. Number one or on the new ladder, not number 10 on the ladder you've always been on. That will always keep you moving forward.

Speaker A: It takes, it strikes me when you're talking about the level of courage needed, you also need a lot of humility.

Speaker B: Oh, yes.

Speaker A: You need the ability to reflect constantly and also to accept that there's. To your point, there's always further to go.

Speaker B: Always further to go. Yeah. So one of my courageous statements is this. The absence of strength is weakness. When your strength is under control, that's humility. My strength is always under control. So I don't have to have the right answer come out of my mouth. As long as the right answer comes in the team meeting, I don't have to display My strength to know that I am strong. But when my strength's under control, I can listen to you. I can hear your criticism in your voice or what I've done or what I'm doing. I can accept it or reject it, but I don't take it so personal that I think if I take it, I'm being weak. Humility is not taught. When was the last course you did on humility? M ever. It's not on any management course, the module on humility, because everybody would skip that and be go truant. But it is a pillar of good leadership. And we see the results of leaders who operate without humility. And those results can be catastrophic for other people's careers, other people's lives, for your organization as a whole. So pursue your strength being under control. Absolutely lovely.

Speaker A: Really enjoyed that. Your book has got a really interesting. Longer title than Some Way, I expect. Uh, could you bring that to life for people listening? Because it's interesting.

Speaker B: The first one is called Courageous Leadership. An hour to quash the tummy flies in your butter.

Speaker A: How did the editors feel when you first kind of went like this? This is the thing.

Speaker B: This is why I self publish. Okay. So I can do what I want. But it came from, um, I'm head teacher. There was exams going on and outside there was a Somali girl. She was getting ready to go into her exam and she was literally shaking. So I went up and held her hand and said, are you okay? And she said, cause English is not her first language. She said, miss, I've got tummy flies in my butter. And I said, so have I. Come on, let's go in. And we went in together. So she's got the butterflies in my tummy. She's got it the wrong way around. But I knew what she meant. She knows I know we can. Let's go in and do this exam together. So that's where it came from that when you're leading and you're doing what you have to do, you're having a difficult conversation, you're managing a difficult teams, your stomach is going, your heart is beating, so you've got butterflies in your tummy. But Mariam, her name was, she had tummy flies in her butter. And that's where it came from.

Speaker A: That's beautiful. And for lots of people earlier in their career, particularly, you know, our students will be listening to this as well. It's worth knowing that like when you, when you see most people and you think they're confident, that's still going on underneath.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Going on Underneath. And let me teach you quickly the trilogy of confidence, because confidence is not a feeling and we think it is, but it's not. You know, you. You spray deodorant and you think, oh, you know, the advert will say, spray the links on, you're going to be really attractive to women and put l' Oreal in your hair and do this because you're worth it. You know, Confidence has got nothing to do with how you feel. It's a stance and you need to build it with a trilogy. The trilogy is this. Have you taken the correct action, the correct number of times to the right quality and depth? If you have, then you can stand in confidence. If you haven't, how you feel having to do with this, you're not going to feel anything that's going to be of any worth. So I'm trying to lose weight. It's been a 30 year journey. I can eat 1500 calories for a week. No, every day for a week. That's a lot of falafel, the cardboard on toast. Right. I can do that for a week. I can go for a walk every day and a walk every evening. So I've limited my calories. The right action, done it for a week, the right amount of times, the right depth. I've had vegetables, I've had falafel. At the end of the week, you go to Weight Watchers and you weigh yourself in your pants with everybody watching, right? I know I've lost weight. I'm confident of this outcome. How much I don't know how I feel has nothing to do with this. I could have had an argument that morning. I feel terrible. I'm wearing my best shoes, I feel fantastic. My feelings don't matter. Have I done the right action the right amount of times to the right quality or depth? If I have, I can be confident. If I haven't, I've got to wing it or get my excuses ready. So confidence is not about how you feel. That's where you miss it. The feelings come, but the feelings also go. I've got jackets that make me feel confident, I've got clover. I feel I can't even leave the house looking like this. But I know I'm confident to deliver that keynote, to deliver that training, because I've built the trilogy. Only then can I walk out on stage and say, this morning I did the keynote and I said to the whole people, I've left my kitten heels in my bag, I'm doing this keynote in my flat shoes. I'm upset and the man made me take off my earrings. It was clashing with the mic. I'm really annoyed. Right. I'm sure Beyonce doesn't have to take off her earrings when she's on stage. Yeah. For other people, that would have made their confidence go, I've got the wrong shoes and I've not got my earrings on. But my confidence is not in how I feel. It's in me building that trilogy. Once you've done that, you can do things. Building the trilogy might take time, so give yourself the time to build it and become confident, not feel confident.

Speaker A: That's fantastic. And I know some people will really benefit from that. Uh, and I know they're regular listeners as well, so I kind of feel

Speaker B: like that's just for you.

Speaker A: Final thought from you, if possible. We work in a profession that, uh, is, um, always challenging and very much dealing with quite high stakes in terms of the impact that we have on people and the criticality to organizations. What would you say is, like, the golden lesson or the one thing that you kind of like to impart to the people listening?

Speaker B: No matter how challenging and difficult things are, no matter how in flux things might seem to be, people don't mind change. They're not resistant to change. I know it feels that way, but they're not. They don't mind change. They do mind uncertainty. People don't like that. People resist uncertainty. So when you are leading, if you're leading change or whatever you're doing, what you want to do is minimize uncertainty, Certainty, the need to know thing, is irritating because if you've told Sandra, but not told Billy, Billy will tell, you know, they'll talk anyway, behind your back. The uncertainty causes toxic behavior because they're not sure what's going to happen. So they start to fill those spaces of uncertainty, um, with myth and with rumor. So when you are leading and things are challenging for you, be clear. Clarity is kindness. Opaque messaging, I'll tell you at the end of the month, all of that kind of thing just causes anxiety and it causes uncertainty to rise. And you are the emotional anchor for your organization, for your team. Your nervous system sets the tone. And if you're setting a tone of uncertainty, don't be surprised when people think that you're a Muppet. They don't say it to your face, though. They sell it behind your back, but they smile to you like this. They say, thank you, Ms. Osaga. That was great training, Muppet.

Speaker A: That feels like the best possible place to finish. Thank you so much for your time today. Both speaking earlier and now, uh, uh, five books, which is more than a couple. Just to be super clear to people. For anyone who doesn't know, this is what an apology looks like. Someone going, sorry, I got that wrong, shouldn't have. Um, ah, you said available on Amazon.

Speaker B: Put my name into Amazon, Diana Osagi, they'll all come up. Go for it.

Speaker A: So really hope you've enjoyed this. Thank you so much for your time.

Speaker B: You're welcome.

Speaker A: Uh, you found this podcast at least once, so manage to hit the subscribe button. Tell your friends, tell your family, whatever you need to do. Or if you're studying, let the kind of rest of your cohort know. But until next time, because we do these on an incredibly regular basis, it feels today because this is our fourth from Excel in two days. I hope everyone takes care. Thank you.