The Best Boss You Never Had

I mean it's real wonderful to to see someone have a few wins, but when you get on a roll and you start to believe, oh, this can happen more of the time. That's you know, that's that's pretty powerful. I always think to myself, Alf, I'm a leader and I'm listening to Greg and I'm trying to pick up some clarity of yeah, what this could mean for me and how can I step into my job more effectively tomorrow. I mean I've heard some we've already heard some amazing clarity, like but if you were to try and sum it up, um imagine hypothetically I'm not that young leader, I'm in my fifties.

But what what would you tell me in my 30s? Like here's the key things you need to remember about leading people, Michael. And this kind of ties back to values and and um and we didn't really go that deep into those spaces, but I'd come back to that statement, it's not about you except how you conduct yourself with others. It is about you in how you catalyse and unleash good outcomes and the growth in others.

Because that's a leverage point. That's more than what you can do on your own. This is a multiplier of resource in an organization when you unleash it. And one's role I think, and why I like so much mission-based organizations, is they they have a way of re-grounding you in the stewardship.

And it's not about you, it's about the mission. It's about how do we make that happen? How do we how do we get better outcomes? And in in an organization like Life Without Barriers, that is a thing that we do so very well that we reground ourselves by saying, What if we put the child or the client at the centre of our thinking in every decision we make?

How does that change our thinking? None of it's then about us. It's about what's the best outcome. And how are we going to do that sustainably and how are we going to devote the resources to it?

And by the way, can we run it and still survive? You know, are we economic? Are we are we all of the elements that go with that? But it's not about you.

It's about how can you multiply to get get more. Once you let go of it's about you, it's amazing how much more probing your questions can be or or how it opens things up for others because you're not trying to protect things like asking a question that you know the answer to. Welcome to the Secret Life of Great Leaders, a podcast by Triple Goal. We share deep transformational conversations around leadership and personal development to help you uncover the unseen facets of human growth and leadership impact.

I'm your host, Michael Bunting. Welcome to the Secret Life of Great Leaders. I'm Michael Bunting, and today we have Greg Ridder with us, who I'm really excited to interview about values and being deliberately growth-minded as a leader. Greg, welcome.

Could you please give us a little background on yourself? Thanks, Michael. My background is that, like many I had a career in, in my case, the packaging industry. I was a 30-year veteran of that.

A role that allowed me to grow from being a graduate intake student and find my way through that organization to the top. So at one stage I ran the Asia Pacific business of the largest glass packaging organization in the world. And that great privilege meant that I got to lead lots of people in different nations and kind of try to make things happen, but make things happen through them. In the last 10 or more years, though, I've had career change.

I was purposeful in not wanting to be what I might call institutionalized a second time. There's there's not enough length in one's life to go 30 years twice. And I've found my way very much into now into the for-purpose sector, but by various ways through interim roles in societal organizations and onto boards. And now I'm currently the chair of Life Without Barriers.

And for those who don't know that organization, Life Without Barriers is, we often talk dimensionally, it's almost a billion-dollar organization. Does most of it's perhaps the largest disability service provider in the country. It's a major provider of out-of-home care, which typically relates to children removed from their homes, sadly, and how they are looked after in in life in and around that circumstance. We also deal with asylum seekers in integration into community, and we have a part of our business in aged care.

I also sit on the board of a small homeless charity that I I chair here in Melbourne, and the Papua New Guinea Sustainable Development Program, which acts as pretty much like an NGO, but has the privilege of having its own funds. Separate to all of the four purposes, I'm still chairing Kogan.com, which I is a listed online retailer on the Australia Stock Exchange. And I'm now in my tenth year there.

Wonderful. Been a wonderful journey along the way. So an interesting contrast between for-profit and non-profit at both in career span and even today, you're sharing a, I think, one of the arguably one of the most famous online retailers in Australia. I think they're right up there with Amazon, even in in general experience for Aussies.

And and then the nonprofit sector. Yes, it's a it's an interesting mix. And often you talk to people who have been in the for-profit sector and gone through their careers often all the way to CEO, they're often desirous of making transitions into board roles, and sometimes that lands in the not-for-profit sector or the for-purpose sector, as we prefer to say. But I made that choice quite a long time ago, and I've just had the the good fortune for things to kind of fall into place.

Lovely. Thank you for the intro. Now, two topics we want to talk about today, two primary topics. One is values and being a values-based leadership leader, and so what.

And the other topic is being growth-minded or having this ability to what we call vertical growth, having this ability to see your behavior and to examine it objectively, whether it's working for you or not, and adjust it. These are two topics that I've heard you speak about beautifully, and I thought it'd be a wonderful podcast for people to listen to. I'll kick us off on the values side of it, and I'll give you just I'll just give our listeners a touch of theory on values, and then we'll move into your journey around values.

So, firstly, we know that probably the primary thing that people want from their leaders is they want their leaders to walk the talk. And yet, interestingly enough, when we ask people's leaders, so what's the talk you're trying to walk? Usually people stare at us back blankly. What do you mean the talk I'm trying to walk?

And so, well, how are you going to walk the talk if you don't have a conscious defined talk? About one in a thousand leaders we typically uh meet have a talk and are able to articulate it's very rare. Uh it's surprisingly rare for such an obvious statement. So hence why when you said, hey, let's chat about values, I said, wow, okay, good.

This is a rare leader who's actually been conscious about their values. So I wonder if you could take us through the formulation or the process of how you got to your values as a leader and why they're such a big deal, how they help you navigate things like complexity or senior executive roles. Yeah, it's kind of a big question, isn't it? Um I think I get better at it as I get older, no doubt about that.

Um, although values are often intrinsic. You know, our parents have influence, where we went to school has influence, our friends have influence. Certainly one's spouse has a large influence. Um in my early years, I think I would say I was uh um I was pretty quick paced, pretty quick minded, and often my mouth would follow with the same sort of speed, and that's a little bit, you know, you're just a smart ass.

You can do cynicism, you can do all of those things, but none of those are kind of additive to anything. They're they're low forms of engagement. And it somewhere along that early journey, a few years in, I r I really was sharpened up a little bit about the impact with others and and recognizing that every engagement that one has is an opportunity to either take a high road and build relationships and build rapport and build curiosity even, or to take a a low road approach, which might be just transactional or you know, what are we doing here?

And it's a bit blase, it's a bit nya. So since then I I think I've been clearer in in how I go about those things. Energy's always been there. And I take a little bit from sport, not a lot, but a little bit from high performance and consistency, but about that clarity of when someone sees you or hears you, what do they see or hear?

And do you and I often, when I talk to people, I say, do you wear it like this, like a badge? What do they see? And when they see that, is it consistent? And not just consistent, but authentic.

And along the journey, I've really learnt that recognizing fallibility, and we're all fallible, it's just a human condition. Means we don't we will never be perfect. So striving for perfection is kind of ridiculous. So how do we just bring people together in a way that's that's trying to drive their collective value?

And in my case, I I just love strong suits, degrees of strength. And I'll always be looking for in anyone I'm with, what's their super skill, what's their degrees of strength. And I'll be looking at how can I draw from that or learn from that, but also how can I make that happen more of the time. And I'm not really very interested in weaknesses because you can find other people or other parts of an organization to cover for those.

Wow. So can you just talk a little bit about I love that idea of of of how it's I use a similar language like how am I showing up now? Yeah. And it's it for you, it's it sounds like you're saying, How am I being experienced now, right?

Yeah. And and and and if if I had to say, how would you what's your what's your standard? Like if if I at the end of this podcast, I said I experienced you like X, let's say, if you're in a leadership role particularly, which is not the podcast I know, but how would you want that to be? Like, how would you want me to experience you?

Hmm. I'm uh hesitating a little because I'm not sure it really matters to me. It doesn't affect who I am as to how you experience me, but but what I like about that or any engagement is that I've given you the respect that you deserve. I've given show an interest in you what you're trying to achieve.

You will have hopefully felt that I've listened to you and that I'm giving you something greater to take away and run with than before we started. And hopefully those engagements are a little bit of drawing from whatever I've done in my life and times, and putting a little bit of reflection on that into the circumstances of any conversation that we're having. But but trying, while I draw from me, it shouldn't be about me. It should be about how is that perceived on the other end and interpreted and and developed.

Right. You've said some fascinating things there from my depth psychology training, right? First thing I've noticed, you say, and I hope the listeners picked this up, you said, I don't really know it's almost like you didn't say these exact words, but it's like you don't really doesn't really matter how I experience you. That's a really big deal.

And just um just to explain to listeners, I'm just watching that happen, Greg, is was pretty cool because you what we're saying in adult development theory is you're saying I'm gonna show up the way I want to intentionally show up, and I'm not going to be concerned with how you are experiencing me, Michael, which means you're coming out of the approval-centered style of showing up into the intentional, hold on a second, this is how I want to show up, regardless of how you experience me, Michael.

That's a really significant statement you made, just in a simple way. I just wanted to highlight that for the listeners, is, and this is a key moment in adult development theory, actually, it's when I become internally referenced, not externally referenced, but in a good way, internally referenced. Because the paradox of your share is that it sounds like if I articulate what I'm hearing you say, and I'd love to hear your response to it, is I'm wanting, if I'm to paraphrase, if I was I was to be you for a second, I'm wanting to show up in a way that's respectful, service-oriented, caring-oriented, and leave you, whoever I'm that you is in front of me, better off or uplifted or better off because of that interaction, which for me is a quality of love, actually.

It's it's a it's a quality of of deep care. So it's like I'm going to be respectful and care and add richness and value to your life. That's it seems like that's a core operating principle for you in your life and your leadership. I think it is.

Um, you know, obviously different words. It's kind of cool to hear the that theory and and a psychological perspective of what I might just do innately. But there's an element in there that I really do get a kick. I get a joy out of seeing development and success in others.

That's if there's one primary motivation for me, that is it. And especially with young people, especially with and when I say young, it's always relative, right? But but if you're 25 or 30 or just starting out as a in business or in life or or going through whatever you're going through, it doesn't really matter. But how does how is there resonance in that conversation that somebody gets something they can take forward?

And whether that's empowerment, whether it's validation, whether it's a runway to go further before the next check-in, it's all of those things. But I could not be happier than staying in the background and seeing others thrive. Yeah. And I and you know, this is year 25 for me around interviewing leaders and working with great leaders and average leaders and poor leaders.

And I've had to say there's two quintessential qualities that all great leaders, the really good leaders, have. You've just mentioned one of them, right? There's that it's a genuine care for seeing, or a genuine joy, actually. Others, other success, there's a beautiful expression of mindfulness practice.

It's the opposite of of Schadenfreuder. It's um it's the sense of Freud, I believe. Sorry, say that again. I think it's Freud and Freud.

No, well Schadenfreud is the celebrating others' demise, right? I agree, but the opposite. Oh, Freud and Freud. Okay, I didn't know that.

Okay, thank you. Which is what I take delight in. Because the other is just taking the leaks out from people. And I was sorry to cut across you, but you did just hit one of my one of my kind of explanatory topics when I try to share kind of how my mind works or how I interact, which is another thing I've found useful from time to time, is to let people in about a style so that they go, Oh, this isn't tricky, it's not as weird as we thought.

Yeah. He he's just given us an access point. Yeah. So yeah.

And it's beautiful because he I mean, just literally just yesterday, I I debriefed the CEO with their team, and it was a feedback session, it was a two-hour feedback session. And the fundamental message the CEO was given was that we are weakened by our interactions with you. We leave our interactions less confident, more rattled, more second-guessing ourselves. And that that is this particular CEO's core work for the next 12 to 18 months.

We're going to help them shift that because what you're describing is exactly the opposite of leaders should leave people strengthened. Even if it's a tough conversation, and it's an accountable conversation, it can still leave that person strengthened and and clarified on what needs to happen, right? Yeah. Accountability is still kind of a non-negotiable.

Yeah. All of those things. Nothing in in what I push for is about diminishing performance. It's about trying to unleash performance.

It's it's about trying to find the individuals and saying, how do we get the best out of you? What's the style that works for you? What do you need from me that can help you? And and you know, how do we work on that?

Yeah. Ironically, just because of the contrast to yesterday, this particular CEO thought that they were adding value, right? By nitpicking and telling them what they didn't do wrong and going at speed and rushing, all those things you talked about that you did in your early career, well, probably not as, and that shift in you is exactly the shift. I mean, I'm hoping I could put this podcast in front of that particular CEO because I think this would be really valuable for them.

And that's slowing down to speed up and that doing things through others, not you having to do everything multiple, you know, at a high speed. So that's a beautiful share. This is in the area where we call empower others to shine. It's one of our seven practices and it's quintessentially leadership, but also takes tremendous confidence, Greg.

Because that's the other thing. And just you should talk a little bit about that, because a lot of leaders we work with who are struggling with insecurity, they struggle to empower people because other people's shining might diminish their light or it might help them, they may feel um they're gonna lose their job or insecure. Has that arisen for you ever? Or how did you work with talk to that?

Yeah, I I've seen examples of it, and this this will be a very unfair generalization, but I spent a lot of years working with an American company and I worked with the most wonderful people. However, in the presence of a boss or talking about their career, it was really uncommon for anyone to be self-deprecating or to appear not to know an answer. Whereas kind of the Australian condition is almost, yeah, we don't take ourselves too seriously. And I've been taken to task for using phrases like, she'll be right.

It'll be okay. Whereas in kind of my vernacular, that is, yeah, I've got it under control. We know it'll it'll work and we've got it under control and it'll move. Whereas others have seen that as, yeah, that's a bit blasé.

That's just, you know, you just crossed your fingers and hoped for the best. And so I've learned that in different circumstances people respond differently. I think, though, that it's it's a collective that we run. And as I've gotten older, hopefully I've got a tiny bit wiser, but as we go through these experiences, I think we realize that we as individuals matter less and outcomes matter more.

And when we talk about values and and even more so in the not-for-profit wor world, the sense is a little bit more around stewardship. And it it's one of I'm here to shepherd this along. I'm not here to do harm. I'm here to get the best collective outcome.

I'm here to actually protect a few things. But we we have a mission, and the endurance and the sustainability of that mission is what matters. And I'm I've even become much better at extending the mission beyond the organization. And we could talk about that at some stage.

Yeah, beautiful. I just to just to highlight when we when you think of leadership and structure, because you as you note out picking up, Greg, you are the I jokingly said earlier, I'm the the theory person and you're the actual practitioner here. And sometimes it's useful to hear both, right? And how they interact.

And we we we call it alignment. Like we've got we have seven leadership practices we measure. You were measured on those. I'll show your graph to people in a second.

Uh, and and part of that is what is the leader supposed to do? They're supposed to create alignment for direction. That's true, vision and values. Yeah, it sounds like you've got those two very, very clear.

I mean, your value score was insane. It was like a hundred hundredth percentile uh uh on your on your assessment. But also then the other key practice you're talking to as well is generating growth or creating empowerment and curiosity and creating space for growth and that interesting juxtaposition of alignment. And then you've also talked about the accountability pieces.

So it's not devoid of it's a paradox where I'm both empowering you, but I'm also holding you accountable. Yeah. Sometimes when we try to express that in our work, we've try to say it's almost like um the Viking with a mother's heart, one of our clients once said it. It's like I'm I'm really, really here to to help you be your best.

But make no mistake, there's an accountability. All right. I'm not but budging on that. Whereas often it can get both of those things can get lost.

You know, it's like, why can't you be betterwork? And so now I'm not helping you, I'm just abusing you. But not only that, I'm not even holding you accountable actually to you know, like it's it's the opposite that you're talking about. But these I'm actually really fond of holding things in tension where you have kind of binary outcomes, but either end of the pole.

But and I don't kind of do black and white very well. I love the shades of grey. I love the nuance, because that's where sort of all the meat is. That's where the real growth happens.

Because if if we're just binary, it's it's kind of yes, do that, no, don't do that. Um it it's or or you're telling someone what to do to make sure that it stays in that binary field. And that doesn't give room for exploration, it doesn't leave room for degrees of growth, it doesn't sort of throws a one size fits all blanket over things. Yeah.

Yeah. And often it's these those imperfections on on the that blanket that it where opportunity is. Like though you're still having to you know, one of the things we talk about in accountability is a a prerequisite to account uh healthy accountability is clarity. And sometimes, you know, that's that's a an interesting tension between what you talked about, the grays, but then how so would I be is if I had to guess, and you can tell me if this is uh inaccurate, it's like the outcome that we're talking about is a kind of black and white clarity.

The method means thoughts around that can be pretty grey. Is that would that be a way of describing it? Not quite. I'm not a hundred percent in agreement.

I think if the vision isn't clear within reason, I'll probably be keeping things in a starting gate by asking more questions and seeking, you know, trying to assess risk and likelihood and things like that. And what I've learned in sharing, and I mentioned this a bit before, is I share my style of engagement really well. And I speak far too much for many people, by the way. But my style of engagement is I will hypothesize about a circumstance or a scenario.

I'll have that going on in my head, and I will be asking questions, and people think, oh, he's just asking a lot of questions. What I'm really doing is I'm validating a hypothesis of where I think that outcome is. And I've learned rather than people going, why is he asking these questions, to say, you know, I just think out loud. I actually need you to engage with these things and not take it as as you're the boss.

It's not an instruction, it's a thought. And I need you to calibrate with your more expert knowledge on what that is, because if I'm looking at a target that looks like I'm pointing straight at whatever that target is, if my if I'm not recalibrated and I miss by only one or two or five degrees, I fly straight past the target, miss it completely. But it also provides inclusion for others. It also validates their roles in things because they have an expertise to contribute to that conversation.

Right. And that helps paint a vision of what I'm thinking, and therefore others can start colouring a bit themselves. God, it's uh again, I'm just trying to I'm just for my own sake, always trying to get, am I understanding that correctly? Are we saying that the process of clarification, the process of the direction setting is not uh I tell you where to go and then I give you space how to do it?

It's much more well sometimes what we call it a conscious agreement. It's like it's an agreement process more than a dictation process to get to that clarity. It's a conversation and then it's an agreement. Yeah.

And and typically we'll I will do all of that and I'll go, uh-huh. I think I've got it, and thank you for the contributions. And I'll I'll then try to reframe that conversation, something like, and in board meetings tend to do it a bit more, perhaps, but it goes something like, Well, I believe I've heard this, this, and this. And on the basis of that, I think the best course of action is this.

And I might also elaborate and say, I don't think we really need to be concerned about A, B, C, D, or E. Keep an eye on F and G because they might fall into place, but and then seek validation and agreement. Beautiful. Then then, so how do we think we want to run with this?

And then it's back over to them. Yeah. So well, the way we when we work with that particular element in leaders, we we we always try and think make things really short, sound bites, and then we can double-click those. And in our world, we would say make clear agreements, don't set clear expectations.

Agreements imply conversation, exploration, but they arrive at clarity, but it's a mutual uh clarity. Then commitment is far easier for the person than if they're just getting told what to do. Because and then we have another statement we measure that says involves people in important decisions that affect their work. Yeah, so you're nailing that one too, but you're still creating clarity, right?

But you're creating a co-created clarity, not a beautiful, yeah. That's a line. No, I agree. So I want to just share if you're listening to this apologies.

I'll try my best to describe this. Uh, just to give you a sense of Greg's leadership, saw me speak at an event in Melbourne and he and he put his hand up to do our very challenging assessment. Clients keep telling us, wow, this assessment is very graphic and very clear. And um, I remember when I I saw Greg's results, and I'll share them now.

When I saw Greg's results, I was shocked, as probably you will be if you've ever done this assessment. Um what this graph shows is that we measure we measure leaders on 13 red zone behaviors, which are behaviors that are damaging to leadership outcomes, actually. They don't serve the leader. An example would be defensiveness, or another example might be self-promoting, another one might be reactive.

Greg, you mentioned maybe earlier in your career speed and reactivity actually is fast, but it actually slows things down in a weird way, as opposed to spending time and energy on clarity and connecting and adding value. That's a green zone behavior as opposed to a red zone behavior. And then on the green zone, uh we measure leaders on six key leadership practices, which is uh have its alignment, so vision and values. How well are you doing on that?

Then it's driving the outcomes, getting great outcomes, which is all about driving accountability. Drive, we we debated the word drive, but it's creating shared accountability and clarity, creating clarity. And then it's also about appreciation and encouragement, which we call engage the heart. And then the other two practices are cultivate curiosity, which is all about navigating complexity and experimenting and learning, and then empowering people, which you've talked about beautifully already, Greg.

And uh, and in the center of the circle is self-regulation, which is the next topic we're going to talk about with Greg, is it all about self-awareness and deliberate growth. But as you'll see from Greg's result, I think this is the best result I've seen ever in this assessment. Really, really high green and really, really low red. And and when I tested my first instinct, Greg, when I see results like this is this is BS.

I don't believe this. No one's this good. And then one I'll tend to test for, interestingly enough, when we have something like this, there's two things, values and and and conscious, most important, more important even than values, is this ability to consciously grow. Does this leader demonstrate a deliberateness?

Great leadership does not happen by accident. I don't know what fairy tale we thought people were just natural leaders. That's not true. You have to work at it, just like being a good parent or a good husband or wife, or it takes effort and consciousness to work.

And I tested you for that, and much to my delight, you were able to speak to those two things so eloquently, in which at that point I was like, okay, fair enough. I'm I'm a believer. So let's talk about that last topic is deliberate growth, right? So, which which really I'll try and give the quick theory framework for people so so you can get a sense of what you're listening to.

Edward Freeman, my favorite author on leadership, uh, he wrote a book called Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. He had a psychotherapist's view of family systems and how they played out in organizations, a pretty crazily interesting book, and how most organizations are completely dysfunctional, chronically anxious families, and how that all plays out. But he made this statement, that's probably my all-time favorite statement around leadership, is that uh leaders who are consciously committed to growth, it's not exact words, will make any leadership theory look amazing.

And he was talking to this idea that the process of deliberate growth is far, far more important than anything else in leadership. And when we say that in our language, it's the ability to see a behavior that's actually not generating the right outcomes, even though we might think it is, to look at behavior objectively and go, I wonder if, maybe this is not, self-awareness process, and then the ability to cultivate something different, the actual ability to that that that's like the engine of great leadership.

And I'd love if you could just share, because you did share when we chatted last time, a process, how that works for you and how that process happened for you. Well, one example I sometimes give, and I might have given to you, Michael, is and we did mention my sort of speed to vocalize things. And basically I've learned that being the first one to speak is not a not a really good thing unless the conversation needs a catalyst to actually kick it along. And even then I've learned to reserve conclusions a lot more and and more stimulate the scenario.

Yeah. Okay, I'd like to interrupt you there. Can you share? You said I've learned.

Yeah. How did you learn? Like what happened that you realized, what what was the process for you to realize, oh damn, this is not working? Sometimes it's just a response in others.

It might be, you know, Greg said too much, and it's like cross the arms and roll the eyes and sort of there's nothing left to say type of thing. Or, you know, I had the same thought, maybe. And occasionally someone's tapped you on the shoulder and said, leave a bit of space for others. And I and I actively do this as a chair in some of my boards is I've had some wonderful, wonderful directors, but one or two of them always want to be the first into the conversation.

And I've I've tapped them on the shoulder after a while and basically said, um, just leave a bit of oxygen for the others. Um I'd really appreciate you coming in because you're powerful all the time. But come in late because then you can use uh the other things that have not been as obvious and you can roll them up in it and and actually bring it back together. But um one thing I might have shared with you is to try to stop me engaging my mouth.

Sometimes you might see me in in a meeting doing this. Right. So have you if you listen to I'm pensive, I'm thinking. Right.

What's he thinking about? No, I'm stopping myself talking. I'm actually pressing against my lips to stop myself. So there are body-to-mind triggers that we can do to try to hold ourselves in a point and not be reactive, but give ourselves the opportunity to be more reflective or to or just that bit more thoughtful and thoughtful's on a journey to being kind and gracious, which are you know, I love words like that and I love behaviors like that, which allow the space for people to shine.

So again, sorry, I don't I'm nerding out on on the thing you're saying. Yeah, um, the first thing I wanted to highlight is, and again, because I'm trying to, we're always trying to help leaders really, really even listening to this, like clarify for yourself. What Greg is saying in my my view is the environment gave him multiple signals, people, outcomes. There were multiple signals saying or screaming almost at Greg, saying, this behavior is probably not the best, right?

So the the invitation to leaders, if you're listening to this, is look, what's the environment telling me about my behavior, right? Because unfortunately, defensiveness, for example, is not your friend or convite yourself. Really look, even if it's confronting, really listen. So that even the leader yesterday, if you really were watching, you'd see that your people are not leaving interactions empowered or confident.

You would you would see that. And then you would do a reflection like Greg has done, where you go, like, hold on a second. What's my behavior here that I'm doing? And how can I do this better?

That's the first thing. Is that a line, Greg? It is, it is. And I I'd go further.

I mean, sometimes it's it's a simple thing, but it's not about you. It's it's not about me. Yeah. It's about the issues, it's about the outcome, it's about what are we trying to achieve here?

It's not about me. I don't need to, you know, own it or whatever else. We just need to help it happen. Yeah.

The second thing you've said, when we teach self-regulation, which you're talking about beautifully right there, you're regulating yourself by, and I'm just gonna say it in case people are listening to this, not watching, Greg put his hand over his mouth and like a pensive look. But that action is him regulating at a physical level. It's noticing that when I start speaking too much, it starts probably with a particular physical element, posture, it is something. And by trying to take a physical, physically regulate almost yourself, it's super supportive.

And that's in the center of the circle again. No surprises, you're getting such high scores there. Because it's all and good to know you speak too much and then to keep speaking too much. That's not self-awareness, that's any useful.

It still happens, it still happens, but it's that you actually regulate, you regulate the the action. So I think that's um why I wanted to talk to you about it. And then you move towards what sounds like to me a very deliberate, defined intention of how you're trying to show up for the purposes of leading the best outcomes. Yeah.

And and I think it's interesting you use the phrase show up. I know sometimes when I'm really well prepared and things like that. If I'm leading a meeting, which you kind of have to as chair, that's not telling people what's going on. That's facilitating the strength of the group and trying to bring out what makes most sense and brings us to consensus.

But I kind of feel this might sound good. When I'm good, I'm really good. Yeah. But boy, I am fallible.

I fall into it and I I think of it, you know, when we become reactive. I had this phrase, you know, it goes into my head, I go, I took the bait, didn't I? Right? Right, right, right.

I was triggered a little bit, but I took the bait and it goes, nah, better next time. But um, look, it happens and I try, I I try, I was gonna say I pride myself on only at an internal level when things have been smooth and others have gone well, and you go, geez, we've got a bit done in that. Or that was a good meeting. I go, yes, that's that's just enough for me.

But otherwise I'll be beating myself up a bit saying, I could have done that a bit better, I could have done that a bit better. Yeah. But not long after I'll get over it because I will have then told myself, no, it doesn't really matter. Probably no one noticed that, but I still think it's a pretty good job.

Yeah. That reminds me of uh uh in adult development, and they talk about it takes 12 to 18 months to master a new behavior, right? One behavior. And then they don't suggest you ever do more than one.

And that's how we work with clients. We go, what's the right one? What's the really important one? If we move the dial on that behavior, it's gonna have really good because we have such a limited bandwidth.

But sometimes in the adult development field, those of us who are in it, we all chuckle and go, 12 to 18 months, you're dreaming. But it's a lifetime. It's it is to fair to say, and you did talk about a distinctive shift, right? That there is that first 12 to 18 months of working can make massive changes and strides, but it's not like one and done.

It's it's it's like you're beautifully describing it's an endless Achilles heel that just stays in the background, that we endlessly work with, we're in endless work in progress. I can be a great leader on a Monday morning and a terrible leader at Monday afternoon, right? It's we all have moments, but it's you know, hopefully they're just moments. Yeah.

And you'd like to think that none of those are being terribly damaging. Yeah. We might have let ourselves down, but sometimes and especially if one holds authority or power or instruction over others, it can be terribly damaging if if the wrong things are said at the wrong time. You know, I I I said earlier I love seeing the development, especially in young people.

And I'm also fond of saying that the best thing a person can have when they start out in their work life is a good boss. And I don't mean a boss who just lets you do whatever you want to do. Yeah. I mean somebody who kind of has that balance about what good work looks like, what good behaviour looks like, how you turn up, um, how you conduct yourself, how how you set a work ethic, how how you conduct yourself with others.

And that modelling behaviour is not always present. And sometimes people have lost that that early induction, and so you're already years behind in how to how to keep working on it. Yeah. And you might have already been ingrained into some behaviors which and I'm not saying competition's bad, but if they're if you've got competition that's a net zero outcome, then that's just a waste of energy.

Yeah. Crazy. So how do we get more of that? And so I also see that as building sort of confidence in people.

I mean, it's real wonderful to see someone have a few wins, but when you get on a roll and you start to believe, oh, this can happen more of the time, that's you know, that's pretty powerful. I always think to myself, Alf, I'm a leader and I'm listening to Greg and I'm trying to pick up some clarity of yeah, what this could mean for me and how can I step into my job more effectively tomorrow. I mean, I've heard some we've already heard some amazing clarity, like, but if you were to try and sum it up, um imagine hypothetically I'm not that young leader, I'm in my fifties, but what what would you tell me in my 30s?

Like, here's the key things you need to remember about leading people, Michael. And this kind of ties back to values and and um and we didn't really go that deep into those spaces, but I'd come back to that statement, it's not about you, except how you conduct yourself with others. It is about you in how you catalyse and unleash good outcomes and the growth in others. Because that's a leverage point.

That's more than what you can do on your own. This is a multiplier of resource in an organization when you unleash it. And one's role, I think, and why I like so much mission-based organizations, is they they have a way of regrounding you in the stewardship. And it's not about you, it's about the mission.

It's about how do we make that happen? How do we how do we get better outcomes? And in in an organization like Life Without Barriers, that is a thing that we do so very well. We reground ourselves by saying, what if we put the child or the client at the center of our thinking in every decision we make?

How does that change our thinking? None of it's then about us. It's about what's the best outcome. And how are we going to do that sustainably and how we're going to devote the resources to it?

And by the way, can we run it and still survive? You know, are we economic? Are we are we all of the elements that go with that? Yeah.

But it's not about you. It's about how can you multiply to get get more. Once you let go of it's about you, it's amazing how much more probing your questions can be or or how it opens things up for others, because you're not trying to protect things like asking a question that you know the answer to, that sort of theory. Brilliant, Greg.

Thank you so much for your thank you so much for your time today. I have felt like I've learned a lot today. I really appreciate the calm, kind wisdom that you speak from too. You're very kind, Michael.

Very kind indeed. But I wish you well. I hope there's something in it for some of your watchers and listeners. And for me, yeah, I've kind of survived it too.

Thank you. Thanks, Greg. Secret Life of Great Leaders is brought to you by Triple Goal, where good coaches become great and leaders grow their impact where it matters most. Discover more at triple goal.

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