Developing leaders could make or break your business. Bringing on interns is a great way to build your talent pipeline, but make the wrong choice, and the walls come crashing down.
The same things goes with a new hire or a new promotion.
How do you prepare the leaders in your organization before you need to promote them? This is at the core of the New Generation Leader framework, and we’re diving in today on the show.
Interested in learning more about our 2021 Intern Bootcamp? Leave us your name and email, and we will reach out to learn more about your interns!
The Emotional Intelligence of Google CEO Sundar Pichai – Inc Magazine
This is so key, because to get the most out of your team, you need all the voices–including the quiet, introverted ones–especially those that offer an alternative perspective or contrarian view. Feedback like that should push teams to at least consider going in another direction. And even when the decision is to remain on the current path, those voices can help the team refine its work and clarify its messaging.
How Much Should You Spend on Talent Development? The Best Firms Spend More Than You Think – Inc Magazine
If you invest in tools and resources, shouldn’t you invest in talent development?
The very best companies understand this. To be in the top quartile of talent developing companies, you actually need to spend 2 percent of your revenue on talent development.
3 Stages to Developing Leaders
The three key stages, whether investing in next-level leaders or interns, builds a solid foundation of health in order to multiply core leadership behaviors. Out of a place of deep self-awareness, rising leaders become adept at making strong decisions at a moment’s notice, replicating key leadership behaviors.
Full Episode 5 Transcript
Developing leaders could make or break your business. Bringing on interns is a great way to build your talent pipeline, but make the wrong choice. And the walls come crashing down. The same thing goes with a new hire or a new promotion. How do you prepare the leaders in your organization before you need to promote them? This is at the core of the new generation leader framework. And today we’re diving into this and more on the show.
Welcome to the new generation leader. We’re giving you the tools you need to lead in the digital world, ready to reach your true potential. Let’s get started. Welcome to the new generation leader podcast.
Thanks for tuning into today’s show. This morning, I was having a conversation with a friend who said, you know, I’ve got a whole line of interns ready to come work for our business this summer. They want to learn the ins and outs of what we do in our line of work. And you know what? I have hired a lot of these interns to join our business team, but I’ve also had a few go very wrong. And I said, do you know what we need to talk about this? We need to find a way while you are building those, I cue skills related to the task at hand in your business. I want to come alongside your interns and build the pie and the EEI, the personal intelligence, the emotional intelligence, learning more about themselves and how to lead themselves as they interact with each other.
There’s so much that collides for me all at once on this subject. And I just ran across an article in Inc magazine. It’s actually a commentary piece from Justin barista, the columnist at Inc magazine. He just interviewed Sundar Pichai about Google’s new certification program and Sundar after their long conversation, Justin started ask him about leadership, what it’s like to lead Google. How really, how in the world do you lead at Google? And Justin’s been a follower of Google’s work on psychological safety. If you know their work on project Aristotle, we’ll link to this in the show notes. This is some really great research that helps us understand a little bit more about what it means to be a good leader, to be a good manager. And if you haven’t seen this research, you should take a look. It’s really insightful, helps us to understand more about those key building blocks of what it means to be an effective manager.
The psychological safety is the number one building black team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other. And we’ll come to this in a minute, but dependability team members get things done on time and meet Google’s high bar for excellence. Number three, structure and clarity team members have clear roles, plans and goals. Number four, meaning work is personally important to team members. You know, we want team members to do more than just the bare minimum. We want them to move from half to, to want to, and meaning helps do that as does. Number five impact team members think their work matters and creates change. So Justin burrito has followed this work from Google and project Aristotle and all of their great research on management. So naturally you’ve got the CEO of Google. You’ve sat down for a conversation and you start to explore, how does this actually look in real life?
And how has the pandemic shifted some of this? But here’s what was really interesting. There were two things, one mostly unrelated, but Sundar said, you know what? One of my business mentors said, your role in leadership is to break ties when there is a conflict, when there’s a lack of understanding when we’re not quite sure what decision to make, but we’re sitting there as a team instead of letting things go on and on and on. Sometimes it’s time for the leader to break the tie, to stop wasting time, to stop letting the meeting go on and on and on. Let’s just make a decision act decisively and move forward. You know, I’ve, I’ve heard before. Let’s just make a decision. We make a decision now based on the best information we have. And if we need to make a different decision later, we can make a different decision later, but let’s make a decision and start moving.
So here’s the second piece that I think was really insightful. Sundar says meetings, virtual meetings at Google have become a little more difficult because in a room when you’re physically with everyone, you can see the people who are engaged and unengaged, and it’s a little bit easier in a virtual meeting. I found myself in the same, same place when I physically, this is me, Aaron, when I physically lean back away from the table, I’m less engaged in the meeting. So I have to physically lean forward, lean towards the screen, get closer to the camera and the screen to feel like an active participant. And Sundar said, it’s really important to highlight this and to re-engage the people who are disconnected, but he said, here’s, what’s really going on here. This is so key. This is a quote, because to get the most out of your team, you need all the voices, including the quiet, introverted ones, especially those that offer an alternative perspective or contrarian view feedback like that should push teams to at least consider going in another direction.
And even when the decision is to remain on the current path, those voices can help the team refine its work and clarify its messaging. How do we build that within team members? How do we help them develop and cultivate the skill, the passion and the confidence to speak up, to even know that it’s worth listening to other team members. We talk about this as a hallmark. Sundar said, you need all the voices. I say, I preach. You want to make sure every voice is truly heard, valued, and appreciated around your team. There are so many different voices with so many different perspectives on a situation. And if we can elevate every voice, we will make more confident, more informed decisions. I had a conversation with a leader recently, who said one of her young team members is simply unaware, is simply unaware of the dynamics of what’s going on around him. And he’s jumping to conclusions and making rash decisions. And in its raw pure sense, he’s doing exactly what he should be doing.
He’s just reaching a fork in the road and he’s choosing the wrong fork of how to let that perspective come to life. So in its raw purest sense, how do you elevate the true potential of everyone on your team? How do you make sure that everyone on your team has an opportunity to be heard, feels valued and is able to contribute that idea of psychological safety? How do you set the stage so everyone can bring their best? Well, one of the ways is to invest in talent development, another Inc magazine article. And I find it interesting that two Inc magazines articles came across my screen in the last 24 hours. This other one is talking about talent development and how Patrick Lencioni and the advantage says the only real competitive advantage that any organization has is its ability to learn. And again, back to the idea of skills self-awareness and emotional intelligence, we tend to invest on the skill side. We invest on the structure side and as this Inc story points out and we’ll drop the link to this one on talent development in the show notes as well,
You would
Not bat an eye to invest a significant amount of money in a tool, in
A machine
In software that would help your business get to the next level. You wouldn’t hesitate,
But
How much money are you spending on your people and how much are you investing in them? How much are you spending on benefits and everything in a compensation package and how much of that is truly an investment in helping them get better? Yes, you are giving them great resources, great pay, great benefits. You are making this a desirable place to work, but on the skills and self-awareness and emotional intelligence side, how much are you investing in them? And I think of a plant. And if you got a plant, you would not hide it under the deck. You go to the local nursery, we’ve got one just up the street here, you’d go. You pick out something that you want to plant in your yard or have around your house. You’re not going to bring it home and hide it away. You’re going to do everything you can to see that flourish, to see it grow, to see it, come to life.
Hold that
Thought about the plant. We’re going to come back to that in a second,
How
Much you invest in talent development is going to reap benefits for your business down the road. So this article says the highest performing organizations, the best companies in the top quarter of talent development are spending 2% of their revenue on talent development writer, a CEO himself, Jim Schleckser, he’s been a CEO. He said he could only ever spend up to about one and a quarter percent. And you don’t have to spend up to 2%. I don’t believe anymore because there are ways to leverage technology and virtual platforms to make this come to life and trim your expenses to do it more efficiently without limiting the benefit.
But what are you at investing in talent development today? And if we think about how we make, how we build a successful internship program or how we build the next level of successful leaders in our organizations, this is part of developing talent. If we develop the talent in-house, if we help them to grow into top-notch leaders right here under our own roof and keep investing, we might reap some of the benefits ourselves. We might keep these leaders close to home when they’re ready to step up to the next level, we might lose some of them. We might, and maybe we want to lose some others. But for right now, let’s think about the process of what it takes to run our interns and next level leaders through a process that builds them into what we need them to be. And there’s three steps to this process. Number one is a healthy foundation. You go back to that example of the plan. When you get a new plant, what do you do? Fertile soil, the right pot. Maybe you transplant it into the ground. You’re going to make sure all of the environmental factors are just right for your leaders in developing your interns and next level leaders into who they will become. You have an opportunity to build them up
Based on a solid foundation. You need to make sure that what you are building on what you are replicating is a strong foundation. Are they at peace with their work with you? Are they at peace and ready to build simple, sticky, repeatable skills to implement in their lives? We’ve got to start from a solid foundation. We got to get our base camp in order, before we start to climb the mountain of leadership. So we spend some time in building that healthy foundation. We established the skills, give them the tools that they need. We’re not giving them nails and wallpaper and shingles and siding. We’re giving them hammers and drills that they can use over and over and over again, to keep building their leadership capacity in life, in every circle of their influence in their internship and in their leadership, in your business, in their work, within their families and the community, the organizations they connect with, all of these are places where they will use these skills.
So you are investing in them. That’s our first step. Then our second step is to know yourself. You have to understand these three dynamics, nature, how you are hardwired, how you see the world and what is uniquely. You there’s potential in this. There’s also challenged in this, but the better we understand ourselves, the better we realize what unique perspective each of us are bringing to the table so that we can continue to elevate those. Remember, as Sundar said, we want to elevate every voice around the table. How do we elevate? Well, we have to recognize the unique contribution that each of us bring from our perspective. So you add on to nature that hard wiring with nurture everything that you’ve been taught or trained to do. You ought to do this. You should do this. Whether from your family ethnic or racial communities and cultures that have helped form and shape you, geographic communities, the type of education you had even down to your own unique family unit and the influence that that nurture had on who you became, what habits and rhythms did you put in place to become the grown mature version of you.
And then last but not least is our choices. What unique choices are we making each and every day as we respond to the situations around us, we’re going to make many of those choices based on our hard wiring and the odds and sheds. Those are going to heavily influence us, but the better able we are to hold up a mirror and see a clear picture of who we are, the better able we are to make healthier, more responsible choices, to build towards a stronger team
Tomorrow.
So when you know yourself, then you know your tendencies, you know what you are likely to do. You can catch yourself before you do something wrong and go off the deep end, but you can also pick up and push more fully into the true potential of those strengths that you bring to the team. So on a healthy foundation, we know who we are. Now we can lead ourselves. We put these tools that simple in the heat of the moment, a stressful situation, we can immediately bring a simple tool to mind, run through a quick diagnosis in our heads and make healthier wiser choices to build for a stronger business, a stronger team, and a stronger tomorrow. If we give you tools for every decision, we’re not giving you an answer, but we’re giving you a repeatable framework so you can make good decisions. And isn’t that one, what you want as a leader, you want your team to make similar decisions. You want them to make decisions like you would make in the heat of the moment.
And when they have to make a decision on a dime, how simple have you made this process so that they can make a decision. And that’s our three steps, a healthy foundation know yourself, lead yourself. And as we work through those three phases, we build stronger, more confident interns, ready to take on their job, their role, and the challenges that are coming their way. We’re able better able to raise the next generation, a new generation of leaders to step into positions of leadership, to bring their best and to help your organization when you need it. Most know, most teams function at less than 60% of their true potential. How much does this cost your business every year for every team within your business, it’s at least $200,000 in lost revenue. How do you solve this challenge with invincible teams? You can measuring the five key building blocks of high performing teams. We immediately know where to start to take your team to its true potential. Start your free assessment today@newgenerationleader.com.
So this is our process. And today I am really excited for us to officially announce the 2021 intern bootcamp. This 96 hour experience is going to put your summer interns into the harshest physical realities, known to humankind hosted by one of Virginia’s finest Millis, military installations. Your interns will be pushed to their breaking point. We want to break the interns before they break your business. Eating MRAs, hiking deep into the wilderness foraging for meals and surviving against the wild animals on the brink of starvation. We’re going to host the live leadership development workshops around every turn to make sure we train them up before we release them. And at the end of 96 hours, they will be yours for the summer. And they’ll be prepared to take on anything you throw at them four straight days to change your summer. Sign up your interns today@newgenerationleader.com slash intern bootcamp.
Well, we’re really excited about this new intern bootcamp, and I hope you will sign up your interns. I hope you also will take a look at the publishing date of today’s episode, but here’s what I want you to know. The 2021 intern bootcamp is for real, none of the details of what I just described are for real, but we are going to take the three steps, the three pivotal steps of developing leaders. And over the course of your interns, being with you this summer, we want to build them up and develop them. So while you are giving them the skills, they need to be successful in your line of work, we’re going to come alongside you and bring your interns into a community with other interns. So they not only learn from our experience and the tools that we’re bringing to the table, but they’re learning in a collaborative environment with each other.
It’s a really great opportunity to learn. And if you think like, I think back to earlier in my career, there are specific skills and tools that I wish I had learned. Self-Awareness I wish I had learned five, 10, 20 years earlier than I actually did. It’s an incredible opportunity to grow while they work in your business. Because as my friend highlighted this morning, many times the interns that you bring in turn out to be great potential employees. So if you can build them up, if you can give them the tools that they need this summer to take their own personal leadership to the next level, to take their capacity and productivity to the next level, to achieve incredible results this summer in just a short term internship, how much more can they contribute to your business going forward? So this summer long experience we are going to build in a few key components, one, an intensive kickoff that establishes that healthy foundation so that we can jumpstart our growth process in giving them the tools that they need.
But establishing from the outset, a strong, healthy foundation. Then after this intensive foundation at the beginning of the summer, or we spend an extended time together, then we’re going to spend time together each week in a core group, not alone, but together in community, learning from each other’s experiences to quick start this process to get to results much more efficiently and together. We’re also going to provide them with weekly leadership content that they can do on their own time at their own pace, but in very small bite-sized pieces, maybe 15, 20 minutes tops each week, but something for them to learn, to put into action and to bring to life in their day to day interactions with your team and their fellow interns in your workplace. And last but not least, our coaches are going to be available to them for live processing. They come across a challenge. We can connect by chat by text, by a quick phone or zoom call. We can hop in and help them problem solve as they go throughout each day. And each week of their intern. Our hope is that a stronger, healthier intern gives you a better opportunity to help them see who they can become and help you see the potential that’s untapped and how they could potentially become part of your team in the long haul.
That’s what we’re kicking off today. We’re excited about the 2021 intern bootcamp and all that. It will entail, but know this, no matter what level a leader is at, we want to help you invest in them to help you take your leaders to the next level. There’s nothing worse than promoting a leader. You’ve identified them. You promote them. They jump in with both feet, dive into the deep end of the pool, and they have no preparation for what they’re doing. We want to help you equip your leaders before you need them to jump into the deep end. That’s the whole new generation leader framework. That’s why we do what we do here at the new generation leader, because we want to raise up a new generation of leaders. We know we all need them in a variety of organizations at a variety of levels. So how can we prepare our leaders, our new leaders before we need them to be leaders. Let’s give them the tools that they need to step up to the plate so they can step up confidently and boldly and build a brighter future. Thanks for tuning into today’s episode. I’m so glad you joined us. Really do visit newgenerationleader.com/internbootcamp.
Sign up your interns, let them be part of this growth journey throughout this summer. And newgenerationleader.com/5 for all the show notes from today’s episode. Thanks for tuning in to the intern bootcamp.