Episode 42 – Learning to Lead and Win in the Digital World

If ChatGPT has reminded us of anything, it’s this: the world will never be the same.

And if the world’s changing, shouldn’t our leadership look different too?

Today we dive into Learning to Lead and Win in the Digital World, taking a look at what is the same and what needs to change in order for you to lead + win in this new, digital world. Welcome to Episode 42.

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Show Outline

• 00:41 – Technological Breakthroughs
• 05:19 – Staying Healthy in a 24/7 World
• 08:30 – The Manual Transmission Tool
• 11:02 – Rest and Recharge
• 12:55 – Leading through Influence
• 18:18 – Support and Challenge
• 24:20 – Identifying and Equipping Upcoming Leaders
• 25:25 – Building an Organizational Culture to Attract and Retain Top Talent
• 28:52 – The Intersection of Operating System and People System

Download Notes from Today’s Episode

Quotes from the Show

We need to let that wall come down. Nothing to lose, nothing to hide, nothing to prove that we are secure in who we are.”

“You need fifth gear for a reason.”

“You are losing so much potential by not capitalizing the best by not leveraging the power of your culture.”

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Episode 42 – Full Transcript

0:00
New Generation leader if Chad GPT has reminded us of anything, it’s this, the world will never be the same. And if the world’s changing, shouldn’t our leadership look different to today we dive into learning to lead and win in the digital world, taking a look at what’s the same, and what needs to change in order for you to lead and win in this new digital world. Welcome to Episode 42.

0:26
Welcome to the new generation leader podcast, we’re giving you the tools you need to lead in the digital world ready to reach your true potential. This is the new generation leader podcast.

0:41
There is nothing new under the sun. There’s something heartfelt and comfortable about this phrase that reminds us that there really is nothing new. Yet at the same time, technological breakthroughs have changed everything. They’ve changed our lives, they’ve changed our patterns, they’ve changed our rhythms, they’ve changed the world of work. So if everything is the same, yet, everything’s different. How do we respond to this reality? Well, we can respond to our current reality, what we’re currently facing with the advances in the digital world. By going back, we can go back in time and look at what we can take away. What can we glean from each of these technological breakthroughs in our past? Well, first, the printing press, all of a sudden information was at the fingertips of the people, they could hold it. Previous to this, it was only in the hands of the elite. And what’s interesting here is the people who could hold it in their hands. Some adopted that they thrived, they celebrated. They were ready to have the information at their fingertips. Yet at the same time, there were people who rebelled, who burns these very same words, everything new that was created, they rebelled against it.

2:08
Fast forward to the rotary steam engine. And James Watt introduced the dawn of the Industrial Age, all of a sudden, machinery was taking on the work of people and taking on the work of animals. And all of a sudden, society began to change, cities began to get bigger, towns got smaller people moved from a town or a cluster of homes in a single community, and gathered in larger and larger places because they could now work in a factory. And in the same way, many celebrated and made that move, and many dug in their heels and rebelled. They rebelled against the very innovations that were coming their way. And then Tim Berners Lee, he types w w w into a computer and change the course of the internet. Now he wasn’t the only one. There were many people along the way in that evolution of the Internet that advanced the technology to the point that made it publicly accessible and available for all of us. But in that moment, the digital age changed things. Still, today, 43 years after Tim typed those letters into a keyboard for the first time, people are still resisting the technology, they’re still trying to unwind these advances and go back to the glory days, the comfortable past and the memories. So in every one of these technological breakthroughs in every one of these advances, and really, in every change that you face, you have a choice. Am I going to take on the entrepreneurial opportunity? jump at the chance to learn something new explore new world and take on new opportunities? Or am I going to react with fear? Am I going to persecute those who are advancing? Am I going to deny that what is happening is changing, that the world around us is shifting?

4:19
Well, here’s the reality of this situation. You cannot an innovate an innovation. You can’t rewind and take this back. No matter how hard you dig in your heels. You can’t rewind time, these new advances are going to exist. And they are going to push a world to react and respond differently. And so you have a choice. You have a choice of where you fall on this spectrum. You don’t have to be a leading innovator or an early adopter. But you also don’t have to react to respond with fear, persecution and denial.

5:00
So as we look at these changes, as we look at these shifts that have occurred, we have to ask ourselves, which organizations are going to thrive, not just survive, but thrive in the new world? And my question for you is this, do you want to thrive, not just survive in this new world, if you’re going to thrive if you’re going to lead and win in the new digital world as something we’ve talked about here on the new generation leader, since the very beginning, it’s the subtitle of the book, the digital world is here. And you need to react and respond differently. So today, we’re gonna dive into three big challenges facing leaders in this new digital world. Number one, is how do you stay emotionally, physically, and intellectually healthy in a 24/7 365 world that never stops, where work is always at your fingertips, and you could always be doing more. Gone are the days where you clock in and clock out and go home. Some jobs, some careers have that, but so many of us are carrying work around. Our work is interwoven together with our time with our tools, and even with our minds. So how do we stay healthy in this world?

6:24
Well, let’s first talk about unhealth. 74% of employees say they have experienced burnout on the job. Some people just believe this is a given reality, you will experience burnout.

6:38
62% of adults worldwide say they don’t sleep well, when they go to bed. I don’t know about you. But on my daily tracking form, I’m always keeping track of how my sleep was the night before. I haven’t checked my score yet this morning, but I’m pretty sure last night was sub optimal. It was just one of those nights where I didn’t sleep well. And that is not helpful. On the long run. We’ve got to be healthy, and recharge in those overnight hours. Globally, people spend on average seven hours per day on screens. And while happiness has increased globally, had increased globally, up to 2011. Happiness has been falling ever since Gallup studies happiness every year, they do a global study of every class, every country, all around the world. And they’re exploring five key factors. Now if you’re interested in those five key factors, Jeremy Kubitschek actually came on the show and talked about this to check out Jeremy. Jeremy talks about those five key factors of happiness peace, back on episode 22 of the podcast. Here’s where we want to focus on this. Yes, we can know what the reality is we know what the situation is. But what can we do about it? How do we get better? When we teach this principle, we use the analogy of a manual transmission a stick shift car, this is the kind of car that I learned to drive on, my brother thought he was going to die that day. Because the car jerked and stalled out with such severe force, because I didn’t know what I was doing.

8:30
The key component of a manual transmission is that you have to manually shift yours. And the same is true about our time each and every day. If you have a manual transmission, or you’ve ever driven one, you know, you could drive in first gear as much as you want to. But once you hit the interstate, if you’re still driving in first gear, you might need earplugs, you’re gonna burn out the engine. And it’s all in all going to be a very uncomfortable unfulfilling ride. You need fifth gear for a reason. So here’s how this tool works. Fifth gear is focused mode, you are in the zone, your head down. Distractions aside, nobody can interrupt you. And when you get to the end of this project, you feel rejuvenated, you feel an extra burst of energy because you are cranking out that work. This is pure focus. Fourth gear is where many of us find ourselves in a given workday, task mode, a checklist, checking things off one by one and moving through multitasking, our email inbox our text messages, people popping in, either in Slack or in person in our office, knocking on the door, checking on the status of a project. It’s multitask back and forth between many different things on our list.

9:57
Now third gear is the great pivot

10:00
It’s the social mode of how we check in at the beginning of a meeting at the beginning of a conversation, or passing on a sidewalk. Hey, how are you? And we give a cursory response? How’s the weather? How are the kids? What, what do you watch on TV last night. Second gear, though, goes one level deeper in that relationship, one level deeper in social mode to truly connecting. It’s one on one or in a really small group with a few people. And when you ask somebody, how are you,

10:33
that’s a place where they can be honest, they can truly tell you how they’re doing and what’s going on in their world, they can get feedback from you on something that they’re dealing with reacting to. Second gear is more connection, it’s going deeper and fostering that bond with someone. First gear is recharge.

10:54
Here’s the key. First gear is foundational to all of the other gears. And

11:02
you have to rest and you have to recharge. There’s no ifs ands or buts about it, we have to do that.

11:12
There’s some of these gears are going to come easier to you than others, some of them are going to be natural, some of them based on the external realities around you are going to shift adapt, adjust. Based on what’s happening in any given day,

11:30
we have to recognize that we have to recognize that we need to recharge, and we have to recognize which gears don’t come naturally to us. If you’re going to pull out of the driveway, in a manual transmission, you’re going to work your way up through the neighborhood, out to the local roads onto the interstate highway, you work your way up to fifth gear. And when you come back home, you work your way back down to first gear. The same happens in our workday, our work rhythms. If we want to stay emotionally healthy, physically healthy, intellectually healthy, we have to work through each of these five years. In a given day, we need to be productive in fifth gear, we need to check off the task lists of what’s in front of us. But we also need to connect with the people in front of us, the people who mean the most to us, the people who are most important to us. And last but not least, we also need to shift into reverse. We need to backup when we need to backup, clean up our mess, ask for an apology, ask for forgiveness, and help clean up that situation. It’s a tremendous opportunity for us to strengthen our relationships and our bonds, and to also become much more productive.

12:55
Here’s our second challenge. Our second challenge is that we have to learn to lead through influence more than positional power, or title. In the industrial age, when you were promoted to a role people believed in you, they trusted you, they responded to you simply based on the role and title that you held. Not so anymore. The world is moving too fast. There’s too much going on. And that’s simply not the way the world works anymore.

13:28
Here are some realities that we’re facing. And how this is playing out. The world now is too complicated for anyone to have all the answers. So you as the boss, the leader, the supervisor can no longer be the one stop shop. With all of the answers, we have to figure out how to be agile, and collaborative.

13:48
high performing teams are also far more valuable than the sum of the talented individuals, we have to figure out how to leverage the unique gifts, talents, abilities and perspectives of every person on our team.

14:04
But 82% of the average team doesn’t feel truly heard, valued or appreciated. They don’t feel like they can speak up. They don’t feel like they can share their ideas. And because of this, around the boardroom table, you don’t hear from people. There are countless examples in healthcare of nurses not feeling comfortable speaking up and speaking out. When facing a doctor. When they noticed something going on. We have to hear from them in order for patients to be healthy. There’s an infamous NASA story after the Challenger disaster, where they had to look in their control room at how they could truly hear value and appreciate every person to allow anyone to speak up and speak out so they could prevent the next shuttle disaster.

15:00
And last, relational intelligence is way more important here in the digital world than IQ is, it’s not about how much you know, because anybody could know that much the information is at our fingertips, it’s right in front of us. And so we have to do more than know things. We have to be more skilled at the relational connectivity. And in this digital world, it doesn’t work anymore for us to operate out of fear, afraid of losing something, or to try to hide that we don’t know things. In this digital world, we can ask for answers. Even as leaders, we don’t have to know everything. We don’t have to prove anything. We have to let this wall come down. There’s an instinct in all of us, that there is a wall that’s protecting us.

15:59
But we don’t need to protect ourselves from the team. And the people that we are supposed to work with and collaborate with. We need to let that wall come down, nothing to lose nothing to hide nothing to prove that we are secure. in who we are. We are humble, knowing that the answers are out there. We are a catalyst for movement, change and progress. And we don’t have anything to prove. If we can create that culture, build that culture, we will find a way to leverage through influence the power of the people around us. Now, our example, our analogy of this philosophy of leadership, it comes from Mount Everest, we tell the story all the time of the Sherpa, you will not climb Mount Everest without a Sherpa. You won’t make it from base camp to camp 1234 Or to the summit. There are so many stops along the way to get there. And you need somebody who knows the way they’re a Wayfinder. They’re a guide along that path along that journey. You can’t reach this point. Without them, you can’t reach the summit, higher than any one or anything on earth in the world. You can’t reach that point. Without somebody by your side, who is uniquely accustomed to the high altitudes they’ve grown up here. They know the ins and outs, the weather patterns, the climate, the adjustments that they need to make day in and day out. But here’s what makes the Sherpas a really powerful example of the leaders that we want to become.

17:49
The leaders that we need in the digital age, aren’t trying to accomplish things for themselves. If you ask a Sherpa, how many times have you climbed Mount Everest? That’s not a metric that they keep track of.

18:04
But if you ask them, How many people have you led up Mount Everest, they are doing this.

18:12
For the sake of the people around them, they are doing this for others. They want others to succeed. They want to celebrate the accomplishments and the achievements of others. They are bringing their expertise, their knowledge, everything that they have learned throughout their lives to each step along that journey. As a hiker climbs Mount Everest, the Sherpa is there to lay out ropes and ladders to know which way to go left or right. In any given step in any given day. As the dynamics and the reality shift around them. The Sherpa is ready to take that step.

18:54
We describe this for leaders in the practical every day with support and challenge. And many times for many leaders, it looks like an either or equation.

19:08
But it’s not either, or, we can tend to look at is either support. We’re nice, we’re encouraging, we’re positive rah rah. Or we are challenged. There are goals budgets, deadlines, things we need to accomplish, a vision that needs to become reality.

19:28
But it’s not either or, if we only have challenge, we’re dominating the people around us. That culture of fear is not a place where anyone wants to work.

19:41
And ultimately, in the long run, a culture only of support is really nice for a moment. It feels comfortable and warm, but not much progress is made.

19:54
This isn’t an either or discussion. This is a both and

20:00
How do we find liberation? How do we find support and challenge the right amount at the right time to unlock the true potential of our people? So as we use this analogy for leaders of the Sherpa climbing Everest, we have a few questions to help us reflect on what does it mean for me to fight for this person? What does it mean for me to bring the best out of this person each and every day? Number one, what specific support and challenge do they need for me in this moment, read the room, we have to adapt, react and respond to each situation differently. I’m a big fan of SWAT on CBS. The show has just come up for renewal for seventh and final season. It’s

20:51
an interesting show, an entertaining show. But there are a lot of moments throughout, where different characters are focused on their life situations. And one in particular, there was a conversation with Deacon deacons, a family guy, and he tells one of his colleagues, hey, I have four kids. But every one of my four kids has a different father. And his coworker looks at him really funny. Like,

21:22
you’re a family guy, I thought you were the dad to all four of these kids. You and your wife have been happily married for years. He says no, no, no, not a different father.

21:35
But I have to be a different dad to each one of them. They are each uniquely wired, they are each very different. And I have to react and respond to them differently. That’s what these questions are leading us to do. What do they need for me in this moment?

21:53
Number two, what tendency or pattern is undermining their influence. If we ask this, we can help them, refine those rough edges grow as a leader themselves, so that they are ready to take on the challenges of the world that they’re facing, which then prepares them for number three, how do I help them get to the next level? Now, as we look at leaders, so often, we see the highest performing leaders celebrated for the work that they’ve accomplished. My classic go to example of this is a sales team. The highest performing sales leader is many times promoted to be the leader of the team. But in this world where we want to build influence, rather than just a position.

22:44
Performance doesn’t translate to leading performers, you can be the best salesperson. But the skills required to sell are not the same as to lead people to sell. Now, if you can translate that to teaching to mentor into coaching, that can work. But not everybody makes that leap. So in this digital world, performance does not translate to leading performers, an eight on a performance scale, and only a two on leading performers is not going to create the kind of leadership environment and culture that you want. It’s not going to endear you to people, it’s not going to build your influence, you’re going to leave capacity and influence on the table every day.

23:34
We have to help leaders develop those leadership skills to understand how do I lead performers on my team, not just perform myself. Now in that example, when this goes sideways, and you’ve promoted the top performer, not only do you have an ineffective leader leading other performers now, but you’ve also lost the capacity and the incredible work of that performer.

24:03
We have to consider this. Look at it very closely before we make these decisions.

24:11
Many times we also see leaders identified and promoted before they are equipped. This is one of the key foundational frameworks within the new generation leader book that we want to reverse that we want to identify these up and coming leaders we want to equip them with the skills they need to lead performers before we set them loose to start leading. We want to identify a quip and then promote

24:44
you have to become a leader people want to follow not a leader people have to follow. You want people to want to follow you in this digital world. And you don’t just want that you need that. You have to have that it is a require

25:00
Men in the digital world that you become a leader people want to follow. Not a leader people have to follow the grudgingly

25:09
grumbling every day they come in the office because they have to sit through another day with you as a leader. So how do you work on those skills to lead performers, not just become a top performer yourself.

25:25
Our third and final challenge is that we have to build an organizational culture that can attract and retain top talent. Competition for top talent is global. Now, in this digital remote workforce, you can hire somebody from halfway across the globe. And we have to create a place where people want to work. My friend Scott Waldron has spent his career focused on marketing, marketing, to external audiences. But in the last few years, Scott has shifted his talking points, and he now says, It’s vitally important for you to invest in the culture of your organization, because the way people talk about their employer is marketing your company.

26:14
If they’re talking about your company negatively, that’s going to shape the public perception of your business. We want to increase employee morale, we want people to recommend their family members to come work for us. If there’s a job opening, we want people bringing candidates to us. If that’s not happening, competition is going to be stiff. And you will be edged out of the market slowly. But surely,

26:43
this is also a costly

26:46
challenge. Philly new places new spots on your team replacing a full time employee, it can cost anywhere from one half to two times the annual salary of that position. Depending on the role, the function your industry, it can be anywhere along that scale. But even on the low end, that’s a very expensive proposition.

27:10
Third, toxic company culture is the main reason why people leave their jobs. It’s not because the work itself isn’t interesting. It’s because of the culture, the environment, people want to feel like they are being fulfilled, that they are living out their purpose. And the intersection of these two challenges,

27:33
having leaders who are influential who people want to follow and multiply that throughout your organization in culture is vitally important. The last but not least, the huge cost of low employee engagement cost lots of money,

27:54
you are losing so much potential

27:58
by not capitalizing the Best

28:01
Buy by not leveraging the power of your culture.

28:06
This is why we use visual tools, we want to introduce language with a visual tool, so that the language and the communication at the foundation of your culture will build a high performing organization where a team is accomplishing great work, people want to work. And they are doing more together than they ever imagined than they ever thought possible. This is the culture of liberation. There’s empowerment and opportunity, we’re telling the truth. But we’re telling the truth with enough grace that people know we’re fighting for them, we want the best for them. We can do this, to equip them and build them up and prepare them for what’s next. In an organization, it looks like this. There are two kinds of systems. And for too long, in an industrial world, we focus on the operating system of your business, the nuts and bolts of how you do work. Your culture is the intersection of that operating system with the people system.

29:12
If you have a strong people system, you have it codified with language and vocabulary. You’re modeling it through all levels of your organization. And it’s reinforced with visual models, images, tools, and language.

29:28
That at the intersection of your operating system, a simple, scalable, sustainable operating system of how you do your work.

29:37
That liberating culture will mean that the organization is at full alignment.

29:43
To create a healthy culture, you got to be intentional with your operating model and your people system. If you put the two of these together, you’re gonna have a strong organization, a strong system. You won’t have a credibility gap.

30:00
You won’t have an integrity gap, you won’t have an absence of culture, you will be fully aligned ready to take on the challenges of this digital world.

30:11
So my question to you is, which one of these challenges is facing you today? Which one of these do you feel is most relevant most important for you to work on, and choose a next step to consider how you might expand your leadership to unlock your true potential,

30:35
and learn to lead and win in the digital world. You can download these tools and a variety of other resources. We’ll link to all of this in the show notes, along with an invitation, an invitation for you to schedule a one on one time with a coach from our team. And see what is it that you can do to unlock the true potential of yourself, your team, and your entire organization. We’ll link to all that in the show notes at NewGenerationLeader.com/42.