Episode 88: You're the Boss with Sabina Nawaz

Speaker A: Business matters, making money matters. But people matter most. That's what we heard from Rishad Tabakkawalla in the last episode of Timeless Leadership, and it's a recurring theme that we're going to hear from Sabina Nawaz today.

Speaker B: Caring counts, and I think if we take that literally, counts counts as in numbers and productivity. There is lots of research that shows caring translates into hard dollars. So if you care about the business, care about your people first.

Speaker A: People first. It's a timeless concept, yet so many seem to forget it. And when they do, there are consequences.

Speaker B: There's also research that shows that when we don't care for our people, when they don't feel psychologically safe or seen or acknowledged, they deliberately sabotage results. I mean, think about that. They deliberately sabotage their own results, their own performance assessment, just to get back at the boss who doesn't care about them. So caring m definitely counts.

Speaker A: But in order to care about others around you first, you need to care about yourself. When you're in a leadership role, it's natural to put your own needs last. But as Sabina Nawaz tells us today, taking good care of yourself first makes you a better boss to others.

Speaker B: There are certain values and practices that withstand the test of time. As Goethe wrote, he who cannot draw on 3,000 years is living hand to mouth. Timeless Leadership connects the stories and experiences of modern leaders with lessons of the past that we know to be beautiful, useful, or true. In the swirling maelstrom of change and uncertainty that perpetually threaten progress, our north stars are character, culture, communication, and other timeless principles. This is where leaders learn. This is Timeless Leadership.

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Timeless Leadership. I'm your host, Scott Monti, and I'm glad you're here with me today. As always, I welcome you to subscribe on the podcast player of your choice and to check out the timeless and timely newsletter. Links are in the show Notes I'm a former executive with Ford Motor Company and now I coach executives and teams that are in flux on leading in uncertain times, trying to overcome stagnant growth, and battling old communication norms. If I can help you or your team think about character strengths and values that drive your organization, I'd be glad to do a workshop, speech or coaching session based on the Working Together Leadership and Management System developed by my old boss, Alan Mullally. Why don't you send me a Note@, uh, coachingcotmonte.com and let's explore how we can help you and your team find more sure footing by working together. Now let's Meet Sabina. Sabina Nawaz is an elite executive coach who advises C level executives and teams at Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, nonprofits and academic institutions around the world. Sabina routinely gives speeches each year and teaches on the faculty at UH, Northeastern and Drexel universities. During her 14 year tenure at Microsoft, she went from managing software development teams to leading the company's executive development and succession planning efforts for over 11,000 managers and nearly 1,000 executives, advising Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer directly. She's written for and been featured in Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes Inc. Fast Company, NBC, NASDAQ and MarketWatch. And her book is you're the boss, Become the manager you want to be and others need, published by Simon and Schuster. Sabina Nawaz, welcome to timeless Leadership.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker A: SCOTT well, I want to start, um, just talking about your background a little bit. It's not often that we see an engineer move into HR in particular, and to do so in such a way that, uh, is really, uh, introspective and appreciates kind of the softer skills that we see, uh, you working on here.

Speaker B: I was led to believe it's a very traditional career. Pat Scott of course not. I think I surprised myself more than anybody else when making that jump and taking that decision. I m also disappointed my boss on the engineering side very much because he didn't want to let me go and gave me blank check to come back. So I had really a low risk proposition in moving. The decision happened when I was sitting on the couch doing nothing. What I mean by that is I was on a sabbatical from Microsoft after working hard in various engineering capacities. And I think you're probably familiar with this, Scott what happens when we give ourselves some space? We start to get answers from inside ourselves that we thought we didn't have. And sometimes those answers are not what we want to hear or not what we expect to hear. For me, this thought popped up with crystal clarity that it was no longer a matter of if, but when I would become a corporate vice president at Microsoft. It had very much been my career goal to do so. But once I realized I could get there, it lost its charm and appeal and challenge. And I thought, that's boring. If I know how to do it, if I know the formula, why should I spend the next five years of my life chasing it? And that's when I went, shoot. What do I do with my life? I'm in my early 30s. I'm obviously going to work for a while I like working. What do I do? And that led to this inquiry that got me into HR and heading up the company's management and executive development and succession planning and so on.

Speaker A: It's really an amazing story. And the book opens, um, almost dramatically where here your boss, uh, is quitting and tells you that you are taking over their job the very next day. And you were. I think you were coming off of her, or you were involved in somehow in parental leave, and you didn't think. You were quite prepared for it. How. How do you. You kind of swallow the elephant at that point and just jump into something that, you know, yes, you had on your path for a while, but this was just kind of dropped on your plate.

Speaker B: Well, I actually looked like an elephant at that point because I was eight months pregnant with my first child, and My husband is 6 foot 3, 6 foot 5. So my babies were big babies. So my boss calls me, she says, you know, um, need you to take over my job. And I said, well, let me think about it once I'm back from parental leave. And she said, no, no, no, this is tomorrow. And, um, so I take on her job as well. And it was really, actually exhilarating and exciting and honoring that she would trust me with such a big responsibility to hold even a broader remit across the company, which was all fine. But then that first day back from parental leave, my assistant calls me on the way. I haven't actually left the house yet. And she goes, where are you? Steve is meeting with you in half an hour, Steve being the CEO of the company. And I'm thinking, uh, what? And so she, uh, reads out the memo, uh, on my way to work. And that basically sets the pace and the tone at which my life is going to go. Not to mention, screaming baby at home in the middle of the night.

Speaker A: That's an awful lot to take on. And what's interesting to me is you recognize this. Well, you were helped to recognize a shift in yourself. Uh, I think Joe. I want to hear more about Joe, because Joe is, uh, an extremely pivotal character in all of this. He helped you realize that you weren't quite yourself and you were coming off in a way that perhaps you didn't realize. And this, in turn, has helped kind of set the stage for two major sections of the book, which are power gaps and pressure pitfalls. We're going to talk about those in a little bit, but talk about that setup and tell me a little bit about Joe.

Speaker B: Well, Joe was a, uh, colleague, and we worked very closely together. And when I came back. So here's the thing. When I was in engineering and even initially when I moved into hr, the feedback I got was, you're the best boss ever. And I said, why? They said, because you really care. And I did. I deeply, deeply cared. I helped people progress in their careers, even if they moved outside of my group. I invested a ton of time, I poured my heart and soul into my teams coming back. There was no time, there was no space, and there was really high stakes and really high visibility all the way to the top of a 90,000 person organization. So I thought, uh, okay, these are adults, they'll figure it out. I don't have time to spoon feed them and empathy will follow later. Of course, there was no later. And you cannot time slice empathy. Not only that, with the pressures that I was under, and we'll talk about how pressure really corrupts you and your actions. I started micromanaging people because again, I didn't want mistakes to appear at a senior level of the organization. I managed every single detail. And I neglected to check on whether people were having a good time, whether they were motivated and so on, until Joe walks into my office one day and says, do you know that such and such is crying in their office after a conversation with you? It was a complete gut punch. I had absolutely no idea. Which goes into that other part of the book, which is that power really blinds you to your actions because no one's going to tell you, especially if you're being a jerk like I was. So here I am thinking, how did I go from being best boss ever to worst boss ever? Same person, different circumstances.

Speaker A: And that notion that you were willing to listen to Joe, I mean, a lot of people would hear, uh, hey, so and so is crying in their office because of what you said. And their response might be, well, they need to toughen up. Or these are the, this is what comes with, uh, you know, being in business. It's not personal, it's business. Right. I think you've made a pretty good case that, well, business is personal. I mean, these are people's lives and livelihoods that they bring to the office every day. And they put a lot of hard work into, uh, the projects you're working on. And to them it very much is personal. And the difference, I think, is that people don't raise their hand at work and say, I need to be cared about. No one kind of expresses that. But fundamentally I think that's something that we all need. So how, how, as a, as a boss, do you can you can you keep centered on that? Especially while you've got all of these other swirling and, uh, competing, uh, pieces, uh, coming for you in terms of your responsibilities and the things that you need to show up for and the numbers you need to hit? How do you. How do you make that clear to people that caring counts?

Speaker B: Well, I love how you're saying, Scott, caring counts. And I think if we take that literally, counts counts, as in numbers and productivity. There is lots of research that shows caring translates into hard dollars. So if you care about the business, care about your people first. That's one way to think about it. In fact, there's also research that shows that when we don't care for our people, when they don't feel psychologically safe or seen or acknowledged, they deliberately sabotage results. I mean, think about that. They deliberately sabotage their own results, their own performance assessment, just to get back at the boss who doesn't care about them. So caring definitely counts. There are various ways in which you can work on this. Uh, now you could go on to long retreats. You could spend decades building up, uh, empathy and many other capacities, and I encourage you to do that. But you can also use some simple tools that I talk about that can give you immediate results. One of those would be to simply talk less. What I mean by that is, as a boss, we carry an enormous load. I have lots of compassion for the pressures bosses are under. I work with them every day. And so we think we're going to rush in and shortcut things and provide over. Provide answers, information, and so on. Instead, if you deploy what I call your shut up muscle, you are more likely to have other people step up and do the work that they already know how to do or learn, signal that they need to step up and do that. I just got off a call with somebody who manages a $2 billion business. It's a small firm that has been very successful and said people are still coming to them about whether they should roll over their vacation at the end of the year. Why are you so involved in that minutia? So shut up. Muscle is a tool and an exercise that can really help with showing caring because it shows I care about your opinion. It shows I care enough to give you space and grow you instead of just taking up all the airspace myself.

Speaker A: Yeah, and, uh, this actually resonates from one of your pressure pitfalls about needing to be the sole provider. You know, the one with all the answers, the one who swoops in to save the day. And this is. I've seen this over and over again, uh, with leaders. Because typically when someone is selected to go into a management role, they're selected because they, they are an excellent, um, uh, individual contributor. They're very good at that particular area. When you put them into management, they're not managing processes anymore, they're managing people. And that takes a different set of skills. And I think so many of us, the instinct within us is to keep sharing this great knowledge we have and thinking that we're helping other people do better. And I mean, it's like being a parent. You don't want to keep tying your kids shoes for them. Eventually they need to learn how to tie their shoes themselves. And then they can create all kinds of special bows and knots and you know, do everything to their heart's content. But until you got out of their way and let them provide for themselves, you're actually hampering them in the process.

Speaker B: Yes. And it's not so obvious to us in the short term because we think we hide behind these noble stories of I'm just trying to be helpful or this is a particularly busy time of year and so on. And we jump in and guess what? It's not single handed. These are not just individual issues. These are structural and systemic issues. Because the other people let us do it as well. And they let us do it because it's convenient, isn't it? Great Scott, if you just provided me with all the answers to the questions you're asking me right now, I can just sit back and enjoy watching you perform and dance. But this is a two way tango. So. And, and we're all complicit in this dance. It serves us for the manager to be the sole provider.

Speaker A: So let's talk a little bit about, uh, the power gaps, uh, before we get into the pressure pitfalls. Because, um, you, you made a statement in the book that you disagreed with Abraham Lincoln, which I thought was a fantastic and bold statement. Um, because there's this notion that power corrupts. But you're very clear that it's not power that's corrupting, it's the pressure that corrupts. So talk a little bit about the role of power versus pressure.

Speaker B: Mm. Do you have, do you feel some pressure in your life right now, Scott?

Speaker A: Oh, sure.

Speaker B: Right. From whatever's going on in the world.

Speaker A: Yeah. Work, family, you know, global. I mean, stuff that is completely out of my control. It's just being.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And rained down on me.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And some self generated pressure as well. Probably.

Speaker A: Sure. Pressure to perform, um, pressure to show up, et cetera.

Speaker B: Exactly. Pressure to be great. And who here doesn't have pressure? Everybody, welcome to the human condition. Now as you get, the more promoted you get, the higher up you go, the more pressure. Because now you're responsible suddenly not just for yourself, but for the livelihoods of more and more people, for the sustainability of your business, for the impact that has on your customers and so on. The more pressure you have, the harder it is to also recognize and take time to understand your behaviors under pressure. So there are rarely purely good bosses or bad bosses. They're bad behaviors that are forged under pressure. Just like I knew how to be a good boss, that wasn't the issue. It was the pressures that I was under that made me veer towards bad boss behavior. So pressure corrupts our actions in a way that has a negative impact on the health and well being and engagement of our employees. And then that then tanks productivity power, then blinds us to the action of these pressure induced behaviors. The more we know, the higher we go, the less we know, the less we know about how we're coming across to people and potentially about problems in the business. Because, uh, especially if our behaviors have been corrupted with pressure, who in their right mind is going to risk docking their paycheck by saying, boss, uh, you just screwed up over there or you suck at that? That's not going to happen. The reason Joe was able to speak to me is he was a colleague, not somebody who worked reported to me because those were people who were crying in their offices. So it's a cocktail of power and pressure that can turn you into somebody you don't recognize.

Speaker A: So, and it is a, it's something I think we've all seen examples of, uh, in, in the workplace. I mean, it's very common. Um, we don't always have a Joe by our side though. So how can we break this cycle ourselves? Whether it's, uh, we notice it through some kind of quiet reflection or uh, maybe we, we pick up on somebody's demeanor in a meeting or a face they make and that tells us something without them actually telling us. What are some ways we can break the cycle?

Speaker B: Well, one way to not break the cycle and continue to delude yourself that you're doing just great is to ask for feedback. Is to ask for feedback for people who report up through you in a very generic fashion. Hey, would you give me some feedback if you notice? And they all will go, yes boss, we will. And then all they will give you is treatly praise at your feet. Okay, so that's one way to not do it. There are a couple of things you could do. One, ask for, ah, very, very specific and pointed feedback. What's one thing that's working well in how I'm managing you? What's one thing if I could do even more of or less of would help. Notice I say more of or less of because again, you need to soften the U.S. but ah, keep it very specific to one thing so that there's less wiggle room. You could also externalize the ask. In other words, you could say, hey, I see you, Scott, as somebody who has his ear to the ground. What do you think people who appreciate me, who might be supporters of mine, how do they describe me? And how are people who might be detractors describe me then? I'm not putting you on the spot. I'm asking you to speak on behalf of other people. And of course you're going to share your own opinion as well, but in the third person. Lastly, I think you could ask yourself a few questions. There are 42 questions at the end of the book that will give you a, uh, comprehensive assessment of which power gaps or pressure pitfalls you are most susceptible to. If you don't have time for that, here are four questions out of that one. Nobody disagrees with you or comes up with an idea that's contrary to yours ever. You seem to be the only one who comes up with agenda items. Ideas work harder than everybody else. Let's just stop at those two. If you just did those two, you are likely in some pressure pitfalls and power gaps.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, people, uh, need to be on the journey with you, you know. And, uh, I think there was a phrase you used at one point where you said, mandates without buy in don't work. Nobody simply wants to be told what to do. So, uh, if, if you find yourself in this kind of a pitfall where, where people aren't giving you suggestions, aren't adding to the agenda, you don't feel like you have buy in. What's a way to begin to turn that around and help them feel like they matter?

Speaker B: I think, uh, through two words. Changing two words, going from ya but to yes and yeah but makes it a binary. You've got to come back to work five days a week. Yeah, but I have a, uh, situation at home or I have a situation at home. Yeah, but we need you back at work now. It's an untenable situation. Instead, if you use the practice in improvisational theater of yes, and using the word and starts the conversation towards collaboration. So now we can Say yes, we need some face time because it's important for collaboration, it's important for whatever your reasons might be. And I want to make sure you have a healthy life at home and you are able to take care of your responsibilities there. How might we come up with some solutions that meet both those needs? Now suddenly they're sitting side by side with you instead of ya butting across the, across the video call with each other. That's what creates buy in is I care about your opinion. That doesn't mean I'm caving on my non negotiables. There's a big distinction there. Those are important non negotiables. But I'm also bringing your goals into the conversation with an and instead of a but.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I think that's again, human nature. It's the need to be heard. Right. And that's another way of using your listening skills, your shut up muscle where you state what that non negotiable is, but then you invite them to contribute to the solution in a collaborative kind of method.

Speaker B: Exactly, exactly.

Speaker A: Um, that's wonderful how all of this, uh, all this comes together. Um, one of the things that I really enjoyed, uh, about your uh, book was a section on microhabits. And we don't spend a lot of time when we get to a certain level, we don't spend a lot of time on ourselves and the stuff that actually makes uh, us who we are and how we show up every day because we think we've got it all figured out at that point. And yet you kind of unwind that through these microhabit exercises to help us get to new practices and to build them over time. Want to talk about what that looks like and maybe some examples of what microhabits might be? M mhm. Absolutely.

Speaker B: Mhm. There's a lot of goodness to doing exactly what you're doing most of the time. Look, this book, Scott, is for people who are wildly successful. This is not about how to become a manager. This is not about how to get successful. This is how to remain successful. Because there are things that you don't know. That's what I'm interested in surfacing. So autopilot. Great. Efficient. There's a lot of goodness what got you here. But there are some things you need to switch from autopilot to pilot. In other words, become a little bit more conscious about. And those are the things that no one's telling you when you're in those positions of power and where your actions may have gotten corrupted because of the pressure you're under one example that I share in the book of this woman who, her manager tells her that three of her employees are threatening to leave and have gone to the manager's manager and said, we're leaving because of this person. Another gut punch. So we work together, and she creates microhabits that help her, long story short down the road in retaining all three of those employees. They each stayed for at least a year more, and when they left, they said it wasn't because of her and they were telling the truth. So she color coded her microhabits. And microhabits, let me explain, uh, have two characteristics, very simple. One, they are ridiculously small. Very, very small. And two, you do them every single day. So in her case, she had microhabits that she needed to stop doing. For example, she was instant messaging people all the time. And so people thought they had to drop everything to kowtow to her messages. And her thing was, okay, unless it's an emergency, I'm not going to instant message. So that was one category of microhabits, and the other was things that she would do. So, for example, once a day, her job was to ask a coaching question before providing an answer. She was also that sole provider, um, who wanted to hand everything to her employees because she thought she was being efficient. So simply by adopting that at that level, one question a day, one, uh, instant message less in a day at that level, she was able to turn it around. You know, we, the people who read this book, if they're successful, want to overachieve. And we overachieve. You know, we even have terms like bhags, right? Big, hairy, audacious goals. Well, the only way to overachieve is to start by underachieving, as in doing really tiny changes, which is incredibly difficult for successful people to do. The executive who tells me, this is it, I really need to work on my health. My cholesterol is up, my blood sugar is up. I'm, uh, going to hit the gym 30 minutes a day, and they've not seen the gym for a year. And I say, don't bother telling me that you're wasting my time and yours. That's just not going to happen. So instead, how about one push up a day? Oh, that's ridiculous. Of course I can do one push up a day. All right, well, can you try that between now and the next time we meet? Sure. And next time we meet, they're like, well, I didn't quite do it every single day. Well, then maybe we should stick there first. Right? So it's that doing it in small, small chunks. Yeah.

Speaker A: Ah, and documenting it too. Right. I mean, that's part of it. Because that's a level of accountability.

Speaker B: Absolutely. So the biggest way to succeed is to document that progress. I mean, think about these days. We all wear watches and other tracking devices and what do we do at the end of the day? You know, just the other day, my husband's walking around the bed, I'm thinking, what are you doing? And he's like, I've got 200 steps left to get to 10,000. I'm not going to go to bed without that. So tracking really helps shift. And when I say documenting, we have this yes. List. It's. It takes less than 60 seconds a day to document. So this is not something that's a burdensome, onerous, big thing that you add to your list.

Speaker A: Mhm. Yeah. One of my favorite quotes is from Charles Noble who said, first we make our habits and then our habits make us.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: And that's really what it's about. You know, if you're committed to making the change, then, you know, you have to start small because like I said, it's hard to eat that elephant all at once. So, uh, well, Sabina, this is, uh, fantastic information. And you know, obviously there's so much more in the book. We can't cover all of it. Uh, but if people would like to buy the book or if they'd like to find out more about you and your coaching, where should they go?

Speaker B: They can go to my website, www.sabinanoaz.com.s A B I N A N A W A Z.

Speaker A: Excellent. Well, we will have a link to that and uh, every way to purchase the book in the show notes. And I thank you for sharing so much of your timeless wisdom here with us on Timeless leadership.

Speaker B: Thank you, Scott. Thank you for making this conversation timeless. I would love to hear from you as you perhaps work with your clients in using some of these tools and the listeners. These tools are road tested, pressure tested, because real life people have been using. So you use them, you tweak them, um, let me know.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Please take a moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts and share it around. In doing so, you can help the next generation of leaders on their journey. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. Our theme music, Timeless Harmony, used with permission, was written by Matthias Lyon and performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. I'm Scott Monti. There's so much to learn.