E03a: Becky Andree and High-Quality Connections

Speaker A: Thank you. Okay, so today, um, I'm here with Becky Andre, who, uh, is operating out of the Midwest in America. Um, and Becky's been a really, uh, important influence in my thinking, especially around, um, vertical development, adult development, complexity of thinking. Um, and because she's been such an important influence, uh, of my thinking, I'm going to stop talking here and get Becky to introduce herself and tell me, tell us all a little bit about her work in a very general perspective before we go into a deep, deeper dive. So welcome Becky. Uh, please introduce yourself.

Speaker B: Yeah. Thanks Richard, for the invitation to be here. And definitely you have furthered my thinking as well. So it has been a mutual collaboration and, uh, finding new ways of thinking about things. Um, I currently am a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. So professor of management, specifically HR and Org behavior. Um, just made the transition. Before that I was in global Fortune 100 companies, um, for about 20 years. But over my career I've had about 30 years in industry, whether it's working for an organization, um, but more recently owning my own consulting company, which I still do and work with corporations. But I've shifted from activating potential in executives and leaders to now activating potential on 17, 18, 19 and 20 year olds. So, um, I'm excited about that shift and change. And that was a geographical change for me as well. So big changes this year. Right.

Speaker A: Thank you. I'm really glad that you're enjoying it as well, because it sounds like you are, um, from the stuff that I've been reading and hearing about you. So the main reason I wanted to talk to you is, uh, uh, when I'm writing about Maya and in Leadership Rewritten, um, she goes through sort of a development, a couple of developmental stages. The first developmental stage she goes through is I'm stretched. I feel like I'm breaking that. I'm. There's too much going on. I'm living in contradiction. Um, there's too much work. Uh, I'm drifting. There's no purpose and no meaning. And I feel like I'm breaking. Um, and she turns to classic leadership literature and kind of calls it out as bullshit. Eventually she says, this doesn't help. Um, and then the first part of literature that she helped, that she finds helpful is the developmental psychology, um, of which you're part of. Um, but she finds it really interesting, but not necessarily that useful in terms of being able to develop anybody else. So she reads it, but kind of goes, yeah, I don't know how to use it. Uh, and I'd quite like to kind of have your critique and a sort of nuanced understanding of why someone like Maya, uh, and this is based on real case studies why someone like Maya, uh, might be finding that tension in, in vertical development or adult development or developmental psychology. So could you uh, go, go for your life and explore why that might be the case?

Speaker B: Yes. So, um, you know it, it can be quite attractive to have these nice little stages with descriptions and labels to uh, we can find some comfort in it of uh, feeling like oh, I'm here. Um, but one of the difficulties is we actually aren't really good judges of where we're at. And so we oftentimes think we're further along on our journey than what we are and what becomes more important. And when you talked about being stretched and kind of at that breaking point, that actually is kind of that developmental movement of uh, there's um, you're being challenged. And if the environment provides the right scaffolding and support, meaning the right amount of tension or the right amount of challenge, um, then you can move very quickly. Unfortunately, we have structures and systems that don't know how to provide the right uh, support when we're in those development things. Instead we're kind of criticized or we're sent to a class or um, maybe just uh, our self esteem gets attacked, um, because we're not performing. For me it is much more about, and I think the reason that these. I understand from a research perspective it can be really important to categorize and define kind of what's happening at ah, each of these levels. Um, for me what I orient more towards is the skills. Um, how are you elaborating a particular skill within a particular domain and how is that shifting or changing? And so for those of you that are listening, that have been parents, you can think about your parental journey. Um, as I watched my child grow and develop, I remember these moments would always happen where I would feel like, oh my gosh, I finally got this parenting thing down. And then my son would go and have a developmental movement and all of a sudden the skills and the ways that I had engaged with him were no longer getting the right results. I had to shift and change because he had shifted and changed. And so um, what I find with the uh, vertical development and even the stages or the labels is that it almost feels like we're arriving. Um, but you actually don't ever really arrive. You're always facing these growth edges. And it's much more about knowing how to step into those growth edges and know how to Navigate them. And my work kind of focuses on. It doesn't have to be done alone. We can leverage some of those tensions and relationships to help us navigate that.

Speaker A: So what do you think is structurally lacking in these organizations? And what kind of pressures are, uh, overblown to stop this scaffolding from happening? What do you see in the work that you do, both research and your practical experience?

Speaker B: Well, I think right now I'm kind of holding a curiosity. I don't know whether I have answers, but I'm holding a curiosity. Um, I've done a lot of reading of, uh, uh, indigenous cultures. I've been invited into some, uh, indigenous ceremonies and to observe. And the thing that has really struck me and the book memory coding was kind of, um, uh, a really inspiration for me to be having this curiosity is when you, when you look at some of these indigenous cultures, the memory is coded into the way that words are structured, um, how the culture, the tribe operates, even within stories and rituals. And when I look within the business environment, my curiosity I'm holding is, uh, are we putting too much focus on individuals having to develop the cognitive complexity of thinking and, um, not looking at what the system or the structure should be holding? What complexity should it be holding? I'm going to give you an example. Um, in memory coding, it talks about how there are things that are coded into a song or ritual. And then if you are meant to carry that in the tribe, you're initiated into it. But there are things that don't make sense except for every two to 300 years. But it's coded in there so that when you are faced with that complexity, the coding is there for you to reference. All right, now you're initiated in so that you can use that coding. Um, but I would ask you, do you think we're doing a good job in our business structures of coding, um, that complexity?

Speaker A: Uh, I think I might be very cynical and say not only are we not doing a good job, we're doing a terrible job. Uh, and this is my own practical experience. When I run leadership cohorts, uh, etc. Etc. A huge amount of what I have to help people develop is a basic understanding of organization systems or organizational dynamics. There is no understanding of organizational dynamics. So they don't know how organizational systems work. And so they're being asked to lead how organizational systems work. And the only language that I really come across around structure is the language of culture and a little bit around teamwork. And I don't think the language of culture is anywhere near good enough now to talk about the structure of the organization. It doesn't hold these memories of what works and how it works and why it works. It's just this kind of aspirational value set rather than a deep description of the system to help people, um, embed themselves and encode themselves within the system. So that's what I'm seeing. Would that resonate with what you're seeing as well?

Speaker B: It does. I mean it's almost very transactional, um, and depending on kind of who's in power and who's demanding what from that power structure. Um, you know, I have a global company that I've engaged with and I've watched the global CEO, um, you know, make decisions that I would say don't really kind of handle the complexity of what's going on and instead is creating what I would call a low quality connection of where it's just sucking the energy out. And now, you know, they're facing some really strong headwinds and everybody's too fatigued. There's no energy left, there's no um, ability to be innovative. Um, and there were no structures holding anything. It was just, it was just, you know, setting these hard targets and just driving towards what?

Speaker A: Um, yeah, yeah. And I, I see similar things. I mean I'm not, not with all CEOs obviously and also there are many who do kind of wrestle with the complexity and understand it. But I would say the general theme and I think that the wider data backs is you're talking 80% of people who really don't have that, that deeper understanding of complex organizational systems. And I think the, the way I frame Maya's initial experience is that's, that's what she's wrestling with. She's, she's wrestling with being asked to constantly achieve, uh, in a system that is, is just stripping energy from people. And so people are, are just beginning to, to slowly uh, drift and break and potentially collapse into meaningless and purposelessness and breakdown, etc. Etc. And the wide data I think supports that. We're on a threshold of this being existential crisis for lots of organizations that an awful lot of people are being pushed into a level of complexity that they can't handle. And this is partly what I've learned from you. You talk about the complexity gap. Yes, and that's something I refer to. So could you explain what the complexity gap actually is?

Speaker B: Yeah. So, um, it really came out of Dr. Theo Dawson's work where they looked at, they were asked by an intelligence agency of the government to help them look at decision making. Uh, because um, and this all happened after 9, 11. They wanted to find out where the breakdown was. And so um, really focused on kind of that, that cognitive complexity, that cognitive development of how complexly did someone need to be able to think in order to handle these different situations that they were facing? And so the research has been pretty clear, um, that what we need at different levels of what cognitive or what I call complexity of thinking, uh, the ability to handle and act with that ah, uh, ambiguity, volatility, whatever complexity it is uncertainty, um, is often greater than what the skills or the capacity of the individual leaders. What happens is around supervisor and then you move up to that next management level around manager. Um, you are either right where you need to be or you're in what, um, the zone of proximal, uh, is a zone of proximal learning. Is that what it is? I always call it the Goldilocks zone.

Speaker A: Uh, we can just, we can just call it you're being stretched. Because you are being stretched. You're being stretched a little bit. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: But when you're being stretched just a little bit, when the heat is just that right amount and that right temperature, you actually thrive in it. Um, but what ends up happening is we tend to over promote people and then um, all of a sudden they're in over their heads and they don't have an environment that can help support them. And then if we look at Dr. Uh, David Day's work, he does a really great job of clearly articulating that these episodic leadership development things that we do where we take people out of work and send them to a class, uh, without any application or connection to the work, um, we aren't developing that capacity. We might be developing competency, um, you know, I now know kind of the framework for delegating. But capacity to delegate within different contexts and complexity is a very different thing. So the gap uh, continues to get wider somewhat because we haven't coded complexity into our systems. That's my assertion. And then also because we aren't doing development in a way that actually honors the struggle and provides the right amount of struggle.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I've lost count of the times I've been asked to do just a one off workshop with no coaching support afterwards. And you're kind of going, well I can, but maybe, maybe you have 30 people in the workshop and maybe two of them will take off this stuff and run with it and the rest of them will just, it will just be a bit of a jolly for them and they, they'll go back and they'll have a bit of a networking experience and then they'll go back and get dragged back into the way they used to do things. So you do need, you need that, that, that scaffolding. Um, and I think one, one of the, the thing that, um, I know your PhD is on is part of the scaffolding, which is high quality connections. And Maya runs with that because it's something. She goes, oh, I can see that working. So, you know, so it's a very, very simple rule to start with. What's a high quality connection? How does it function not just in terms of emotion, but in terms of cognitive development, systemic understanding, etc. Etc. What can you go through that? And, uh, I know you talk about relational energy as well, so, you know, really, if you could explore all of those dimensions, it would be wonderful.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'll do my best. And then you can prompt me if you want to know a little bit, something more. Right. Um, so there is, uh, a difference between a high quality connection and a low quality connection. So a high quality connection is one that actually feels energizing, whereas a low quality connection is something that feels like it's draining your energy or it's very difficult to be in that engagement. So the high quality connection in the technical terms is that it feels energizing. It feels like you're respected or cared for and it feels like there's some engagement, like we're committed to each other. Now. It can happen in like less than a minute. You can have a high quality connection with the coffee barista where you just have this moment where you just connect with that person. I mean, I've had high quality connections with people with like a Uber, um, or a food delivery person who was delivering food, um, to my son when he was sick. And uh, we kind of experienced a high quality connection together. A low quality connection is the exact opposite. Where you don't feel like someone cares about you. Uh, it just drains your energy. Um, and when you don't feel like someone cares about you, there's not that engagement, there's not that, um, connection. So that's how it feels when you're in a connection. And we probably can all think about that. Um, what the interesting part is is it's also, in my assertion, a signal. It's a signal to a growth edge for us as leaders as well. When I'm having a low quality connection, it's not about blaming the other person or blaming myself, but that's a moment to say what Is this moment inviting me into. And it might not be anything. It might be systemic or structural, um, or there might be some power dynamics, but it is just kind of a signal to pay attention to. And um, I think the way when you look at kind of the structure of, of what's behind a high quality connection, you kind of see three things and these are very activating for the business ah, environment as well. The first one is uh, what they call connectivity. But it's really about being open. I'm open to hearing your perspective, Richard. I'm open to integrating it. And potentially being influenced by um, allows the capacity to express a multitude of emotions. I don't have to just be Pollyanna. I can really be honest about my emotions almost that uh, it's psychologically safe to kind of say how I'm feeling about things. And then there's this uh, they call it tensility, but it's really resilience in the relationship of uh, being able to bounce back from different things. And it's almost more like I usually call it, it's about humanity. We recognize that we're all flawed and then we all make mistakes and there's this sense of humanity and we're willing to give someone, you know, a second chance.

Speaker A: And, and do you have, what percentage of high quality connections do you think are ah, happening in today's workplace? Uh, I, I ask this because I've just been, I was actually talking about this to somebody not that long ago. Um, and they, they argued that uh, people are. The reason it doesn't happen is leadership believes that actually what drives performance is this directive kind of, I say you do competitiveness. Um, and so it's almost counter to this belief system which again watch Maya calls kind of leadership. It. The belief system embedded in the organizations is different. Are you seeing any organizations at all that has a high quality connection kind of network or is it just in pockets?

Speaker B: I would say it's probably in pockets, yeah. Um, I don't want to be too cynical, uh, but I want to say less than 25% are really understand the importance of maybe even lower of that. When you are facing really hard problems, you need people to be excited and have energy. And that is a relational component. If you don't have those uh, connections, that energy isn't going to be there. Um, I don't know. What do you think?

Speaker A: Well, yeah, no, I think you're pretty realistic. Those kind of figures, the ones that constantly turn up in the wider desk research on leadership effectiveness, it's kind of 20% 10%. It's, you know, we are in that kind of, uh, that kind of ballpark. And that's partly, you know, what's prompted me to start trying to talk about this in a much more, uh, concrete manner. Because if those figures are right, this is an existential challenge. Because none of these organizations are A, going to be able to address complex challenges that emerging, but B, they're not going to develop anybody who can step up and, and do it. And what the. The third part of the data is, um, is that the stress levels and the overwhelm. So when people are stepping up and they're going, I, I don't want to do this. So you have a stress and an overwhelm. You've got a loss of trust both within the system and of the system. And then you've got loss of capability. And it's become, if you're really following the data, it's potentially becoming existential that these organizations cannot exist in, in that current form. So that, that's what the data is saying to me.

Speaker B: But they focused on wellness by putting up a yoga poster. You know, like, uh, it really is about. I mean, when you think about energy kind of comes from four sources. Physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Um, you know, and those are all about connecting. Connecting to people, connecting to my body, connecting to something that's higher than myself, um, and, and broader. And I do worry today, um, you know, we've become so disconnected and I see people just hungry for connection.

Speaker A: And do you think, do you think there are organizational practices that can help with this connection building, um, that you could actually sell into organizations and say, look, just do more of this simple stuff. And if you do think there are, what are they?

Speaker B: It's an interesting question. I don't know if I have an answer for it, Richard. Um, other than, um. I think the thing that really strikes me when I go into organizations now is there isn't a shift. Shared space for breaking bread. And I'm not even saying breaking bread. I mean, having, uh, you know, I have one organization I work with, uh, that it's. It's just in the middle of the office and it's just a coffee machine. And so it's very, again, transactional. You're. It's not cozy, it's not inviting to stay in that space. You are to go and get your cup of coffee or your water and then go back to work in your cubicle, uh, which, uh, you know, so I think those things we've gotten away from, um, and then I think we Think we can put in like a foosball table or a ping pong table and that that's going to create those connections. But that isn't what creates connections. It really is kind of those passing each other in the hallway but having feeling comfortable kind of staying in that space. Um, I would say that that would be one thing. Now, um, I'm not sure how you replicate that virtually or if you even can.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I think there are, there are, there are practices I've seen. I mean certainly as I move deeper into, into my story, there are going to be some rituals that are based around connection. And one, one of them is very similar to what you just mentioned. It's, it's hang around in the pantry, have a coffee with someone, and if there's no pantry, just take somebody out for a coffee and have a 45 minute chat with them over a coffee or something like that. Um, and that's kind of built in as a ritualistic behavior. Um, and of course if the person has enough positional power, they can do that. If they don't, then there's a challenge. So I'm very fortunate that most of the people I'm working with have that positional power. So they can go and say, look, even with a junior, he said let's go, just have a coffee for half an hour and tell me what you're saying. And that, that works really well. Uh, the other, the other aspect of connection I think is missing, um, but also works really well is what I, what I actually call cooperation rituals. And a cooperation ritual is when you're going to another function and saying look, we're going to do this. And again, it's just a one to one or a two to two over a coffee. Um, you know, maybe even you leave the office and go and sit in a different place and you say look, this is what my team is trying to do. Um, we need your kind of buy in and support. How is this going to impact your work? What do we need to change to make sure that we can get your agreement, that this is, this is going to be helpful to you, etc. Etc. Um, and you see that with the number of stakeholders, but you constantly go back and tell them, if you've had to see with stakeholder one and then stakeholder two wants you to change things, you have to go back to stakeholder one and say is it okay if we, if we do this new thing as well? And that, and again, it really is a high quality connection ritual because it, I don't Call it a connection ritual because the connection rituals are more these just coffee meetings. But ultimately it's a high quality. It's relational influence at a cross functional level where you're, you're building, you're building the trust, you're building the safety, the lack of risk, um, through a coffee meeting, through a series of coffee meetings. Um, and then people have your back and then they're not surprised by you. The best leaders I work with do this all the time. And I've had people say, look, this is about 80% of my work to go and. But that's only a very few number of leaders. I also have seen leaders who just sit in their office the whole time and throw out directives by email and don't ever do any of this kind of work. So that's two of the rituals that I would, that I would. Very, very simple things.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, I like that. I know that. I know they work because I've, I've been working with people who do that on a regular basis.

Speaker B: It's interesting because as you were talking about that, it reminded me, I mean, I've been setting up my office and I brought in my own comfy chair with a comfy pillow and set up a coffee and tea station so that, uh, you know, I have to start meeting people, I have to start connecting. And I wanted my office to feel warm and cozy so I have plants all over. Um, I want people to be drawn, to come sit there and to be comfortable to sit there for as long as they want to. Um, but that also means that I have to structure my work in a way that allows time for that to happen. Um, you know, it means that I'm, I'm probably gonna have to work more nights or weekends. Uh, but it's gonna have dividends because I will have been building real connections

Speaker A: with people and I, Yeah, I think that that's an important point because one of the things I work with, my sort of collection of Myers is calendar control.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Have control of your calendar. Okay. And make sure that you, that the, the, the rituals or the meeting practices that you, you really find valuable. Make sure they're always in your calendar. Make sure they're in early. Um, and, and that, that way you, you're, you're constantly replicating and replicating and replicating the things that, that people find value out of and you make sure it's not an ad hoc or we'll do this now. It's very, very regular. Um, so I think calendar control. And again, it's something that people don't think is important. It's a very simple thing that you can try and try and do.

Speaker B: Um, yeah, well, I, most leaders don't have control over their calendar. When I meet with them, it's shocking. Uh, they just are very reactive all day long instead of really planning how long does something actually take, how much am I really doing? Um, that overwhelm can sometimes be, uh, simply because they're not leveraging or structuring their calendar in a way that is either creating connections or delegating or following work. Um, so I think that's a critical component.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I would agree very, very few have control. They are reactive and it's such a simple thing to start taking control over and it makes such a massive difference for people. So, I mean, I think we've been, we've been. Sorry, I was just going to say

Speaker B: sometimes they just need permission to take control.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Just kind of surprising. But it's just saying, yes, you, you have the ability to do this. It's okay.

Speaker A: Which is weird when it's something that is so simple that they don't feel they have permission to do. Uh, so I think we, we can move away from some of this cynicism because we are being a little bit cynical about, uh, and I think cynical based on the data out there. I mean, I don't think we're making this up. The data is not good at the moment and that's what's prompted me to do this kind of writing in the first place. Um, but what we're actually looking at is an organization full of low quality connections. And I think you've already said, well, everyone's energy is drained, nobody's trusting each other. Ah, everyone's overwhelmed. Um, they don't have the capability to step up and deal with complex problems as they emerge because they're so tired and exhausted. Um, if you do the opposite way around, and I think I had one more thing on to that. Is it sucking their cognitive capability? Is it sucking? It is so they can't even think properly.

Speaker B: It's creating an environment where there's no option to develop. They don't have the energy or the capacity because they're in survival mode. When you're in survival mode, you can't develop.

Speaker A: Yes, very much so. Um, as I'm going to ask you to, let's move out of the cynicism and say, well, okay, if you could design an organization where the high quality connections are kind of a, uh, pattern tracking. Relational energy is systems intelligence. So if we're saying that the current thing is reducing intelligence or cognitive capacity. If you could actually go the other way, what kind of things do you think organizations would be capable of?

Speaker B: Oh my goodness, it would be. I really think it would be remarkable. Um, you know what I observe, um, with organizations that I work with. Once you start engaging them in more, focus on these energy, um, creations of connections. Right. Of being meaningful, whether. And I do it all through structure, dynamic skills, things like decision making, collaborative capacity, perspective, coordination, even having clarity and how they speak and gathering clarity from others. Um, what I watch happen is this um, uh, I mean it really just sparks movement. All right? It sparks possibility, it sparks emergence, which are all things that you need when you're facing complexity is you need to have ah, that happening. But it, it also just is a, I'm going to call it like a vicious cycle of creating energy. Uh, it just feeds on itself. So once you have that going, it just continues to go.

Speaker A: And have you seen any organization operate like this at the moment? I've seen one, um, I work with, I've seen teams working like this within organizations and I've seen one entire organization working like this. But then they were bought out by somebody else and, and it disappeared within weeks after the buyout. But um, that, yeah. So that. Have you seen much of it?

Speaker B: I see pockets of it, I see leaders creating it um, within their sphere of influence. Um, have I seen it in an organization? I just.

Speaker A: Can it be scaled across an organization?

Speaker B: I think that's a curiosity that I have. Uh, you know, when you look at what is being deemed as performance within an organization, I mean we attempt to move beyond profit and yet we can continue to get dragged back to that. And so I think there's this knee jerk reaction to try to control, to drive. Um, and then it just can, it's just going to create the exact opposite of what you want. Um, I mean we've seen so many things come through of ah, wanting to kind of shift that perspective. And yet I, I don't see much movement with that.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I, I wonder if, if that's embedded in some of the, the core assumptions in developmental psychology in the first place. I mean this idea that you are developed or you're. You're not and this is something that, that Maya, uh, struggles with is. I use the uh, the super chickens analogy that actually the people who are the most evolved peck the least evolves to death constantly. Um, and I see that in the high potential, the hypo or the high potential discourse, like you're a high potential, you're the one creating all the value. Nobody else creates value. So everybody who, who's in that valueless bucket is getting pecked to death by these evolved hypos. Um, so I, I actually think this is baked into a lot of not, not the vertical development work but a lot of the, the, the adult development stuff as it becomes systemic. So when you're talking about you know, consciousness level jumps etc, and I, I, I actually find it quite scary that organizations can develop systems based on this kind of thinking. I don't know what your interpretation of that is.

Speaker B: Yeah, there is this danger of uh, feeling that uh, growth is good. Um, and growth isn't necessarily good or bad, it's just growth. Um, and uh, I might push back and say I don't think those people have actually reached a level that they, maybe they think they've reached. Um, uh, because you don't. Again, I am more of the dynamic skills. So it depends on the domain and I look at your capacity within that domain. How are you able to handle abstraction and complexity? Um, so I look at it a little bit different lens. Um, but I do think that there is this moment where they maybe get stuck. Um, and it's just uh, uh, it's kind of formulatic uh, for them rather than really kind of uh, looking for emergence and, and having curiosity about what can be created with all of these different perspectives. Um, because you don't necessarily, the answers aren't always with the most complex people. If you asked my son um, who was most influential on my dissertation, he would say he was because he asked the question that helped me see how to resolve an epistemological problem. Now did he have the cognitive complexity to really know what that meant or what to do with it? No. But because he wasn't embedded in it, his question sparked something that those of us that were thinking deeply about this couldn't figure out. Um, so that to me is really the key with organizations. And that's where I think the high quality connections has so much potential is because it's not about achieving a level. It's not about, you know, how cognitively, complexly I can think. It's really about I'm forming a human to human connection with you and a way to understand how you're framing things, how I'm framing things. And then we create some movement and energy together because I care about you, I care about um, that movement. And that to me is the really powerful is if we can move beyond these hierarchies. Because at the Top, you sometimes are too far removed. You don't have the answers. Uh, it might be someone that just joined your organization that actually has the question that might help you get to the answer.

Speaker A: Yeah, I heartily agree with that. So my. One of the challenges I've had in reading some of this developmental work, and I'm going to actually say, this is not Keegan, this is not Torbert. This is more things like reinventing organizations, tribal leadership, etc. Etc. Where they're saying, look, here's a system, here's a better system, and put this system in place and you're going to have all of these evolved people in an evolved system. And I've not read a single one of those books without actually saying, you arrogant prick in my own head, because they're basically saying, I've solved all the problems. Problems. I'm better than you. If you read this and if you behave like this, you're going to be, uh. And I, I just can't get my head past how that. What they think is evolved.

Speaker B: Aren't all leadership books that way? I've figured out the thing and you should do it my way.

Speaker A: Um, lots of them have figured out that they think they've got a model that will help, but they don't. It's when it, it's. For me, it's when it's. It's put in, I've got this higher level of consciousness. I'm. I'm. I'm more ev. The new. And so one of the books, I won't mention it, but, um, at the end of one of the chapters, they sort of said, look, what's the best thing you can do for someone who's only at this level of personal, uh, evolution? Leave a book. Leave this book on their desk. And I'm like, oh, really? That's where you're going? You're going, just leave them my book. And then I'm gonna. I'm so. I, I really, I find it quite, really interesting because I really think you do need to work on the environment. But all of these books that connect the environment to personal development and consciousness, I struggle with. Because I. That ego stuff always gets in the way. Um, so I'd like to shift into that, that environment because I think this is where, this is where Maya is ending up. If she stops working so much in herself and starts working on the environment that she has a level of power over, a level of influence over, uh, to try and create the conditions in which everybody else. And it's actually kickstarted by the high quality connection. Oh, I can do this because I've got control over an environment to make sure the connections are high quality in it. But it's, there's that paradox in it that the ego gets in the way because you think you're better because your environment is better rather than just create the environment and leave ego out of it. How are you seeing that paradox in the vertical development stuff and the complexity of thinking stuff that you work with? Because I think it's an important thing people need to wrestle with.

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, some of it is, uh, there are some developmental transitions or skill development transitions where the ego needs to be allowed to be there for a little bit in order for the growth and the development to happen. So there's this overarching structure that happens from when we're a little baby all the way through our lifetime. And as we get into adults we sometimes can kind of get stuck in certain places. But development uh, happens where I'm focused on myself as the individual and then I'm focused on the outward system, then I'm focused on the self, then the outward system. And so there's always this loop going back and forth. Um, where I think sometimes we have difficulty is when uh, we don't have power structures that are oriented within the organization. Kind of a checks and balance. And then an individual gets power and is allowed to exert that over everyone else. Um, but there is an element of that individual system. Individual system. Individual system. I mean I was working with one leader and I had to let them be in their ego. I had to let them focus on individual framing, but then was working with their manager to make sure there were some structural guardrails, um, to keep that in check. Um, but there is an element of that Richard.

Speaker A: And not so the, the, the, the addition that I think my work adds to this is it's not just self consistent. I have role in the middle of it.

Speaker B: I think that's a really key ad. Yes.

Speaker A: So is that, is that what's missing is, is you need to um. For me, it's. For m. Me, it's what's missing. You need to understand the leadership role. And we can't do that because most of the stuff out there is. So you're, you're the stuff. If you're doing the self help stuff or if you've been through a classic leadership development program, the role itself has actually been taught to you really badly. Uh, and you're internalizing the wrong aspects of wrong. And I think hq your high quality connections, your Complexity thinking is the right aspects of wrong, but it's not formal, it's not concrete. Um, and I think maybe that's. Maybe that's what's missing in, in that self and system is that's. These are the, this is the expectations of you playing the role, not the expectations of you. The expectations of the role. And it's not formalized enough. Would you agree with that?

Speaker B: As a wholeheartedly? I would agree. Is that we don't acknowledge that there are. There. There are expectations that others have of us by nature of a role that we've stepped into. We, um, don't understand. Uh, and those that. I think that role can be also a buffer as a way to keep the ego in check, um, as well. So yes, I would wholeheartedly agree with that.

Speaker A: And I, and again, part of my own conceit with this is the leadership role. We've been talking about it for 8,000 years. I mean we've been writing about it for 8,000 years. So we've got a fairly good understanding of it. We've just moved off in the wrong direction in the last, I would say 40 years where it's just become about self and ego. Uh, sadly, somewhat North American, east coast

Speaker B: inspired, all based on surveys and uh, the ideal. Not really studying what's actually happening.

Speaker A: Yes. And so I think that role is as a, as a grounding. So the way I look at it is, and again, you can completely disagree, but I see the role as a kind of a stable thing that you can make quite concrete. You can say, look, here are the expectations of the leadership role that they, you know, there are going to be some variables with your organization, but mostly the leadership role. There's a certain set of expectations, whereas the self and the system are so complex and so variable. Um, so if you're just on the self and the system, you've got nowhere back to ground yourself. For me, I think if you have the social role, I've got to play the social role of leader. And whenever I feel lost, I can go back and ground myself and say, right, am I showing up this way? Um, I find that a really useful grounding to actually then be able to become much more complex in your thinking about the self and the system. It.

Speaker B: So a curiosity I have for you is, uh, how much complexity can a role hold?

Speaker A: Um, so what I'm looking at in it can hold quite a lot of complexity because you've still got the system expectations. You've still got the fact that your role and the language. I would Tend to use then would be threshold language. So the role, it's stretching you beyond where you're actually comfortable. It's tangling you up in contradictions that perhaps you'll know your non leadership role hasn't actually had to grapple with. Um, you need to be able to understand the meaning and the purpose of the organization or you start to drift. Um, you might be looking to leap into a new way of doing things, but you can't articulate it. So you've got a bunch of complexities in the role itself. Um, but uh, so I'm not suggesting the role is not a complex thing. I'm suggesting it's the thing we can make most concrete.

Speaker B: Well, I think that's most intrigued by it because of course I'm holding this curiosity of we embed complexity. How can we code it into these different things? And the ability of a role to have that coding in it. Um, you know. And uh, Is it Elliot Jacques or Jacques Elliot? I always forget which one is for first. But I mean he would say the same thing. Right. That coding of that role, that strata is really, really important.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I, I mean his, his work is a little bit out, out of date in terms of, you know, talking about supervisors and etc. I would. So I, I use a, a very similar strata but I say individual country on individual contributor, team lead, team of teams lead, network of teams lead, and then ecosystem lead. So you've got these kind of five, five layers and you can embed them. You can encode or embed the role at each of those levels. Um, and you'll be expecting different levels of stretch and different types of tangle and different types of drift depending on where the person is. But you can code the role quite clearly I think. Um, and it does become more complex as you go, as you go up. But it's what, what I think can be done is you can calibrate yourself to where you currently are, but you can try and anticipate where you're going.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And uh, an awful lot of roles now are kind of multiple. You're playing a leadership role, but you're also playing a project lead or a project support role. And so you're able to, to kind of shift and move in and out of roles. I personally think this is what's lacking in leadership literature and has been for the last 40 years or so. We don't talk about the role dimensions, we just talk about the self and system dimensions.

Speaker B: I would agree with that. And I think the other really, uh, brilliant aspect of it is even when I'm working with people from a developmental perspective, um, when they, when I can concretely tell them, here's how uh, you're thinking about things now and here's how you're uh, what you're leaning into and what you're growing into, how you're thinking. Just that concrete aspect really helps accelerate the development. And so if we can do that within a role, it accelerates the individual capacity to be able to handle that.

Speaker A: And I think this, this comes down to something that's deeply untrendy. Um, is as soon as you start talking about role, people hear work design, nobody wants to do work. Ah, design. Um, and actually the role descriptions, I see the job descriptions, they're just ridiculous. They're over complicated to the nth degree. I've received a role description with 74 bullet points on it before. And you go well if you're making the role description that complicated, we have a real challenge to actually ground people in the first place. We've got to get that bit right. But then people hear work redesign and they want to do much more trendy stuff and work redesign. That's that again, that's my, my impression of the market at the moment.

Speaker B: I would agree with that. Yeah.

Speaker A: So I'm going to ask you um, really to finish off this idea that assuming we, we can actually do the work in an organization to, to um, to create high quality connections, to create this kind of uh, conditions for scaffolding development to ground people and code people, are we actually going to result in a system of some kind of distributed intelligence so that the whole organization becomes more intelligent in its solving of challenges? Is that really where we're trying to go?

Speaker B: Yes, exactly. Um, when we are looking at connection it is uh, that mutuality, uh, and that openness to uh, influence actually creates that collective intelligence because we're making space and time to ask, to listen, to engage. Um, and so it enables it and activates kind uh, of building of that in just a very natural way. Uh, um. And you even think about some of the ways Richard, in which we've engaged. Those are born out of having a high quality connection, um, where our intelligence gets expanded because we're willing to engage with each other, share challenge, support, um, and so it helps create that expansion, um, which is what we need in today's organizations.

Speaker A: So I'm going to kind of close off with two questions, um, related to two let's, let's see that as a future vision of distributed intelligence. So we've got two Things that one in the leadership data and one that everybody's talking about because it's super trendy. And I want to see how you would, um, how you would kind of deal with it. So first of all, so you've got a leader. Ah, um, and they're a classic leader in the early Maya stage. They're stretched to breaking point, they're overwhelmed, they don't have, they're struggling with the complexity gap. Um, what do you say to them in terms of how to begin the development? And then the second question is, now AI is so trendy, can AI help build uh, a network of uh, that allows us to be able to deal with this complexity gap, uh, and actually build these high quality connections? And if so, how?

Speaker B: Okay, so I'll start with the overwhelm. Um, I kind of think about it as triaging, Richard. So I look to find where can we triage and stable things, get things on a more stable platform. Um, how can I help them navigate through this overwhelm and reduce that stress and tension so that then they can be in a space of development. Because when you're in that, when you're truly in overwhelm, you can't do development. Um, so I triage and then I stay really curious, Richard, on where their motivation is, what is the challenge that they are most wanting to tackle, what is the skill that they want to be able to do? I look at that future and then build in the development and the cognitive complexity into that domain for them because it really doesn't matter what domain they pick. Um, you can develop that skill within that domain. And then when they have the motivation, they're putting in the work and the time. Now AI presents an interesting challenge. So, um, AI has great capacity to support developmental work. The difficulty is that people that have dedicated their whole lives to developing these developmental frameworks, I don't see them being willing to put them into a generative AI that's just democratically available to everybody. Um, doesn't mean that you can't use AI to help challenge um, your thinking. But what I see, um, I think some of the danger is having AI do the work for you rather than having AI help you think, being more of a thought partner. So when I use AI, I'm using it more as a thought partner of uh, here's how I'm thinking about things. Um, I'm curious about this and help help me. I ask it to help me see the flaws in my argument so that I can have time to think about it. And I'm Fixing the flaws. I'm not asking AI to fix the flaws, um, but I might ask AI to help me brainstorm classroom activities around a particular topic and it comes back with some fabulous thought starters for me. It's usually not something I can just plug and play, um, but I think AI can be really, really helpful. What I get worried about is, uh, that you know, certain people are using it to profit, um, rather than it really being used in a way that's going to help us develop.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think. No, I would agree. I mean my, I E. That it's a sanity check because my, yeah, ah, I've, the way I interpret, um, Sorry.

Speaker B: It does make up stuff though.

Speaker A: Oh, it does, But I, I, I, I'm, I'm aware enough of my subject matter to go that, that's not that. I, I've just done some stuff looking at the development of, um, complexity, capable leadership. And I, I always go back to Venice's call from in HBR, uh, from 1961 as the start of it. Uh, and I was, I was working, working on AI to try and map it out and it kept on, um, referencing a different book. It was, kept saying, no, he first talked about it. No, he didn't. He talked about it. And so you need to know, you need to know what, what you did, not your subject matter. And that's one of the challenges with AI if you don't know your own subject matter, you can't pick it. So, mistakes. But what I do find is the sanity check for me is if I'm interpreting it this way, um, am I completely miles away in my interpretation or is it, I keep on asking it, is this a reasonable interpretation versus the mainstream interpretation? And that's a way of then allowing me to, and if I fed it my own writing or have I fed it, if I'm allowing it to access a PDF or something, I can pull out the bits and I go, ah, okay, so this is, this is where we differ. I found that's accelerated my thinking just many, many fold being able to do that. But it's still my thinking, it's not its thinking. And I think that's key.

Speaker B: The only danger is AI does tend to tell us we're brilliant all the time.

Speaker A: Uh, uh, yeah, it does, it does have that opening bit. Oh, that's brilliant. Or that's excellent. Well, okay, let's just avoid that first paragraph.

Speaker B: Often you can wade through it and find it.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Uh, but yeah, it can be. I, I, I, I think AI has a lot of capabilities. I see um, upsides to it, it does have some dangers to it, but with any new technology, this is what happens.

Speaker A: And yeah, and um, my, my, my biggest advice to anyone using it is train it, give it some canonical memories of the stuff you need it to know and then you've, then it's brilliant. I mean I, I've given economical memories around a huge amount of the stuff I'm working with in terms of the Myer essays, etc, and so I can now use that to pass anything and say, right. I know that you've got the structures in you that I need you to have so I can pass it before I read it and, and get a summary and then go, right, okay, this is what I'm expecting to see and that's been hugely valuable for me. But it's taken me months and months and months to get the canonical memories right. So it's not quick, but once you've done it, it's very quick.

Speaker B: Um, I would agree with that. Yeah.

Speaker A: So, um, to close off, Becky, is there anything else that you would like to say about your work and um, vertical development and the future of leadership that we haven't covered?

Speaker B: I think the key thing that I would invite everyone in to consider is how can I create more human to human connection and really stop and reflect? How do people experience me? Um, you know, we tend to be self delusional, um, and really kind of think about am I experienced in a way that is energizing or am I experienced in a way as depleting, um, and maybe even testing the environment to see if you can get some data points from that. Uh, but I think, uh, I don't think I know if we focused more on each kind of interaction that we have with each other as really wanting it to be energizing. I mean, every time I go to the grocery store, every time I order a pizza, every time I engage with a student, I'm always thinking about how can I create energy for both of us? Um, and it just pays so much dividends and so many amazing things happen in the world because of it.

Speaker A: I think that's a wonderful point to leave on. Thank you very much for coming, Becky. I've really enjoyed the conversation.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for the invitation, Richard.

Speaker A: Pleasure.