Leadership BITES

The return of Bob De Koch And Phillip Clampitt "Leading With Care In A Tough World"

• Guy Bloom • Season 1 • Episode 130

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In this episode of Leadership Bites, Guy Bloom engages with Bob De koch and Phil Clampitt, co-authors of 'Leading with Care in a Tough World.' They discuss the critical issues in leadership today, including the alarming statistics on employee engagement, the integration of skills and beliefs in leadership practices, and the importance of recognizing different audiences in leadership development. 

The conversation also touches on the challenges of giving feedback, building confidence in teams, and the necessity of effective communication in a fast-paced environment, especially in times of uncertainty. In this conversation, the speakers delve into the complexities of leadership in today's fast-paced environment, emphasizing the need for real-time learning, transparency, and effective communication. 

They discuss the dynamics of meetings, particularly the 'meeting after the meeting,' and how pushback can be transformed into constructive dialogue. The importance of creating a safe space for honest conversations is highlighted, along with strategies for leaders to engage with differing opinions and foster a collaborative culture.

Takeaways

  • Only 15% of team members are truly engaged in their organizations.
  • Leaders need to integrate skills and fundamental beliefs.
  • There is a significant gap in leadership development investment.
  • Different audiences require tailored leadership approaches.
  • Feedback is often difficult at senior levels due to established views.
  • Building confidence is essential for motivating teams.
  • Leaders should find joy in their team's success, not just their own.
  • The fast-paced environment demands quick and transparent communication.
  • Embracing uncertainty is crucial for effective leadership.
  • Highlighting the learning environment is key during crises. Real-time learning is crucial in high-pressure environments.
  • Leaders must balance transparency with the need for information.
  • The 'meeting after the meeting' can reveal unspoken concerns.
  • Pushback is a necessary part of healthy organizational dialogue.
  • Creating a safe space encourages honest communication.

Sound Bites

  • "Only 15% of team members are truly engaged."
  • "We have a problem in how leaders lead."
  • "The joy comes from watching you do the task."
  • "We live in a rapid-fire environment."
  • "Leaders need to embrace uncertainty."
  • "The fluidity of the situation is critical."
  • "We didn't highlight the learning environment."
  • "Maximum disclosure for what you know."
  • "You have to be savvy to that."

References made in podcast


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Guy Bloom (00:01.947)
So welcome to this episode of Leadership Bites. I am very pleased to have both Bob and Phil on the episode with us. They are the authors of Leading with Care in a Tough World. for those of you that do follow the podcast, you know that we've had both Bob and Phil on previously. But for those of you that are just new, I'm just going to get the two of you to introduce yourselves.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (00:30.69)
Good morning, Guy. Great to be with you again. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm Bob D. Cook, one of the co-authors of Leading with Care. Phil and I have been in a partnership for 30 years, working together, written three books together, this being the third one, several articles, and exploring this whole dynamic of leadership and better leadership because we think it's an important topic, a critical topic.

for the world today. In my other life, I've been a corporate leader and executive my whole career, come up through several companies and in many leadership roles. So I'm the businessman in this partnership and Phil, I'll let you introduce yourself. Yes, I'm Phil Clampett and I'm a professor at the University of Wisconsin here in Green Bay.

I've been researching communication practices and leadership and social media for several decades, let's just put it that way. And even more recently looking at health communication and the way we dealt with COVID. And so I'm kind of the research component of this.

having read all the literature and try to bring that perspective to our relationship and to our discussions. Guy, I'll tell you, it's been a terrific partnership for me, for both of us, but for me, this tension between how a business person would look at a leadership challenge and how an academic would look at a leadership challenge has led to many

constructive and interesting conversations and we've tried to summarize that in the various books and articles that we've written. It's been a great journey. I kind of look at it like a vision that you both are looking at the same thing but we know that depth perception comes in vision when you have both eyes connected to depth and so Bob has one eye on it and I have another eye on it and so you get this depth perception into the issue.

Guy Bloom (02:27.067)
think that's it.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (02:48.41)
And sometimes I don't even understand exactly where he's going and then other times he doesn't understand what I'm doing and so that act of clarification, working with a partner that's looking at roughly the same thing but in very different ways can be enormously powerful and you would hope that's what happens in groups and happens in meetings and you know happens in organizations that you get people looking at the same issue with slightly different perspectives.

Guy Bloom (03:17.627)
you know what, I'm jealous because the conversation that you have between the two of you, unfortunately, I have to have inside my own head. So that's a beautiful thing that you've got somebody else to do it with. listen, jumping into leading with care, I think it's a phenomenal piece of work. And I think it's worth just noticing that it's in its second edition. So I would just like you to spend a few moments just

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (03:26.414)
Guy Bloom (03:47.311)
Just talking about the book in the sense of if somebody says why would I read it, why would I pick it up and pay attention to it? I think that's just worth understanding before I get into some other questions.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (03:58.702)
Let me start with that. We quote these statistics in the book and there's many other statistics that you can dig up and look at, it basically is a set of Gallup statistics. I call them 1570 and 70. Gallup and lot of their, they're arguably the best social media market leader in social media polling in the world.

The work they've done suggests that 15%, only 15 % of team members are truly engaged in their organizations. 15%. 70 % say they would work harder if they felt more appreciated. And 70 % say that they would, they wish their leaders had better communication skills. They don't have the

communication skills to lead. Those are pre-pandemic statistics. They've been getting worse. They're worse after the pandemic for obvious reasons. And they just wrote a book, the two leaders in Gallup just wrote a book that elucidates many other points of research that they've done on this same issue. So to say we've got a problem with leadership.

Some people say that and it's a fairly shallow statement. We've got a problem in how leaders lead and how leaders are taught or not taught to lead. And that is the issue that we're trying to tackle and think about a new way of doing it. So that was the inspiration for all of our work and the best inspiration for this book, Leading with Care. So what we've done here is put together a formula.

tapestry of beliefs and practices that we think are critical to helping people be better leaders. It's a very practical look at what you do every day, how you think about leadership, and then what you do every day to be a better leader. And Guy, I would just pick up on that because I've been watching all your posts and what you've been doing and I think that

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (06:21.198)
Sometimes there's a frustration and I certainly get it where you get people that want to get a skill set to solve a problem but then at the same time they don't have a fundamental belief about the world or life that's going to allow them to do it. So they might get the skill set on the surface but they don't really get the fundamental belief that backs it up. Or you get the flip side and I suspect you're in this camp because I'm in this camp.

as well is that you have somebody who sort of knows in general what needs to be done. It's like I've got the belief, but I don't know how to necessarily apply it in a practical way. And so you get people that on both, you know, they've got both those problems. so what happens in my view of a lot of these literature or leadership and communication, et cetera, is you got people that either talk kind of, I hate to use the word theoretical, but it's certainly...

perspective taking at the top, or you have people that take more of a skill-based approach to the issues of leadership and communication, and yet few people integrate them. And so what we try to do, and in fact last time we talked, I thought Bob and I were talking, I said, I want to talk to Guy again because he gets it, he gets it, he knows what we're talking about. And so, I don't know, I'm sure where you are, I mean, I know.

I know that that integration of the skill and then the fundamental set of beliefs that people don't have. mean, we talked about this last time, but I still find it absolutely fascinating that people can have kind of what, know, a collaboration. That's skill to a certain extent. But you've got to, there's a lot of people that do a lot of faux collaboration. It looks and appears like they're collaborating, but they really don't because they think they have all the answers.

the underlying belief is that you have to have embrace uncertainty that maybe as a leader I don't have all the answers. So that dynamic, it's very hard to write about, I will tell you, we struggled with this, but it's at the core of what we tried to do. And so if we're successful and we get both those perspectives out there, that's wonderful from my viewpoint.

Guy Bloom (08:45.307)
Yeah, I think there's a lot going on there. think, in my experience, when I work with potentially other people that want to deliver for me, some of them come from quite an unideological position, which doesn't really marry to the real world. And, yeah, I think there is something very powerful about knowing what good looks like and then having the algorithm or the methodology that actually is transferable.

which to me means it's sticky, that people can remember it. And yes, it's always good to have deep learning and to really understand something. But actually, in truth, most people are not thinking about leadership like somebody that writes about leadership development. And actually, they get, if they're lucky, they get a course for half a day or a day or if they're blessed, they do a program. But there's usually so much content that...

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (09:20.088)
Yeah.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (09:31.438)
So.

Guy Bloom (09:43.327)
If it's not transferable, if it can't walk the walk in real life, I think that's one of the things that denigrates actually leadership development because it's more of an academic aspiration than it is the reality of everyday life. And that's what I think resonates with where you come from.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (09:59.566)
Thank

Yeah, and I think the other thing you mentioned there, which I think is hugely important, is that they might get a half a day seminar, or they might get a two hour podcast, and then they believe they are one, you know, a good leader. We do a poor job in general at investing in leadership development in many cases. Not all, but many. And we don't allow people to think about...

how to think about leadership and then to develop the skills and practice. It takes practice to do some of these things. And you gotta make some mistakes and get some coaching along the way. And there has to be an investment in time by a coach or a supervisor or a manager and the individual in developing themselves and developing a pool of leaders beyond just the technical skills for running.

the accounting department, or running the marketing department, or running the engineering department. And a choice of people needs to change too as to which individuals are better suited for handling these people related skills. The other part of it, Guy, that I think you'll find interesting is that I just had an hour long conversation with Dalhousie University, they're MBA people, and they're gonna use the book.

for part of the program and they have, it's fascinating because they said we have two kind of groups of MBAs. One are like, just, they just graduated from college and they're sort of, for want of a better term, niave about the world. They don't have a lot of world experience. And then we have this whole other group of people that are in executive positions and they're well up in government, they're advanced in their career. And she asked a question of me that we talked about for probably 45 minutes and it's like,

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (12:00.598)
Given those two sets of MBAs or two different types of people, how do you structure the educational process for both of them? I mean, you probably have some great thoughts on it as well. We should have had you in the conversation. But you know what? What Bob is talking about is that one group who's kind of just new to the leadership world, we kind of came up with you need an expansive view of abroad or...

a breadth of understanding of what it really means to be a leader. And so that would be one approach for them. But then the people that are already in leadership roles and have well advanced in their career, what we've discovered, and at least the way I've approached it, maybe there's a better way to approach it, Bob and I both approach it this way. What we've discovered is they may be missing one little thing and they need this light bulb moment.

to come on and it just shifts their whole perspective. I certainly can relate to that in my own leadership journey that I needed. And frankly, Bob was the one who helped me with this because I just kind of observed him and I said, as I move into a leadership role, that's one thing I want to do. And I probably normally wouldn't have done it. And, you know, in that case, it was a simple thing like meeting with people regularly.

and talking about their career and talking about their approach and where they were going with other professors. I do think, and maybe you've got a different perspective, but those are kind of two audiences of people that have probably listened to the podcast and probably you interact with all the time.

Guy Bloom (13:41.381)
No, I agree 100 % and I think at the more senior level, little things make big differences. that's, you know, it's still universally true, but very much more so at the senior level. And the way I probably reflect on that is, if I'm introducing feedback to emerging talent or even to a junior middle management group, the methodology of giving feedback is a craft. What's the model? How do I hold myself? All the things that go with that.

But at the more senior level, what starts to happen is I'm on a board, I know how to give feedback, Guy. I go, great. So who around this table is difficult to give feedback to? And of course, that's when people smile. The reality is at the more senior level, it's not that I don't know how to do it, though every now and then they don't. But actually, let's talk about the very specific characteristics of who you try, who you find it difficult to. So I do think at the more senior level, it is

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (14:10.712)
Thank

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (14:38.702)
of it.

Guy Bloom (14:41.017)
Call it the epiphany if you want, but it's the insight into, that piece of vocabulary or that way of looking at it, that actually helps me with that specific gap. Because actually I'm 90 % effective, but that's where I'm not so effective. So I think I resonate with where you're coming from very strongly.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (15:00.878)
I think at that level, because I have that experience as well, what I find is that those individuals sitting around that boardroom or sitting around that executive table all got there because of their leadership and their technical abilities and their business abilities. So they have very definite views on

what it takes to get it right. And when faced with alternates to that view, that's where the pushback starts to come because it doesn't line up necessarily with their worldview or their experience, which is fine as long as there's some sensitivity in that individual to consider that maybe there's another point of view. And sometimes there isn't.

And that's where the difficulty of giving feedback starts to emanate because they're unwilling to embrace the uncertainty that their view may not be the only view. I think we find that in every walk of life for politicians or corporate leaders or organizational leaders. The more experience you have, the more definitive your opinions are about how it ought to be going.

It's not necessarily the only way to go.

Guy Bloom (16:27.771)
I definitely see that. if I pick up on something we spoke about just a little bit before, which is the gallop and 15 % of US employees, only 15 % are truly engaged and that may have got worse during COVID. What are, maybe it's leaders or maybe it's institutions, maybe it's the organization at a systemic level, but what is not right?

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (16:54.604)
Well, I'm going to tell you a story that just happened two days ago that I think speaks as an example, not the only example. I just was telling this to Phil. As the three of us all do, I'm sure we do coaching with individuals who might need a little career advice. I do it a lot. I'm sure you do it a lot. Phil does it a lot. So I'll use the word befriended this.

young woman just one year out of college, so you know, one of the younger generation who we often think are disconnected and think differently than they do. And she's searching for what she wants to do as a next step in her career. And so I had coffee with her two days ago and she's a pretty energetic person, kind of shy, kind of...

Very knowledgeable. mean, she's got a degree in psychology. She wants to do big things. She had an experience with a part-time job while she was in college. And the experience was that she's a hard worker. She likes to organize things. And, you know, that's a refreshing idea coming from a younger person. And her supervisor said, you know, well, and she was looking for more to do because she didn't have enough to do.

because she was getting things done so quickly. And her supervisor said to her, well, we don't work that hard around here. We've got to slow down a little bit. Of course, that was pretty devastating. She didn't understand why somebody would say that in a supervisory role. And of course, the implications are obvious. I gave her, she actually bought a copy of the book before we had coffee. And she came to the coffee.

having read half the book and she said, this is one of the best books I've ever read. I'm telling all of my friends about it because it's a book that helps talk about what leadership should look like for us as younger people because it lifts us up to something that we aspire to be. so I think what they're looking for, think frankly, whatever

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (19:21.038)
one is looking for is recognition of a job well done, appreciation for hard work, and an opportunity to show someone what they're capable of doing. And when they don't get that to a large enough degree, they go and hide, or they do quiet quitting, or they have the great resignation, which are all the popular terms for describing the problem with...

people running away from the job. And I think it has implications with people getting back into the work environment post-COVID. think it has implications for the 15 % or only 15 % engaged, all of those things.

Guy Bloom (20:08.987)
Do you have a sense that...

Guy Bloom (20:16.451)
Maybe for some people there's a lack of, how do I say aspiration? people often don't want to be pushed. But actually every time I see success it's because it's either coming from an internal motivation, be it for whatever reason about where somebody's trying to get to and the environment they're in is irrelevant, they're never going to stop. All the way through to those people that...

may not be so internally motivated, with the right manager, with the right leader. They are, call it cajoled, call it coach, call it mentored, cancelled, whatever it might be, but actually they require the external push. And I wonder if leaders or managers, probably more recently than before, are they scared of pushing? Are they scared of holding people to account? Is that something that...

we sense in this, and I'm going to air quotes, a slightly more woke environment, and I don't say that as a negative, but more as a descriptive context. Is that a reality?

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (21:19.084)
Yeah. Yeah.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (21:25.486)
I think that can be a reality. There's one other word that I would add to your list, and that is confidence. I think that all of us, I remember when I was younger, you try to develop, you have push, you have drive, but you develop a certain confidence in your ability to get through difficult things. And I think confidence comes at different rates for different people.

And reinforcement of confidence can be done by the right kind of leader who can just say, lift people up to help build their confidence so that they can build on their confidence and let this push and aspiration come through. And I think that a lot of leaders don't see part of their role as helping.

people build confidence in their abilities. If I could just pick up on that because I think you make a great point. I think sometimes we think of you got this internal motivation and then it drives outward to a skill set or aspirational acts of one sort or the other. And it's kind of like your attitude leads to these incredible behaviours. One of the things I remember when I started studying persuasion in great detail is that's

For some people, that's the way it works. It's like I got this emotion, I got this drive, and I end up doing these behaviours. But there are other people that go the other way. They start doing something and they realize, oh, that's what makes me happy. Oh, that's what my drive is. I didn't know until I could do it. And so Bob's comment about confidence is critical because what it really says is you're giving people experiences that they may feel uncomfortable with.

but they develop confidence around that and then it becomes part of their internal motivation. And interestingly enough, going back to our previous discussion, it might be that missing piece. It might be that missing piece that they're just not ready to rock and roll on quite yet in their career. So I'm working with the executive right now. That's one thing that we're talking about with this another person, know, motivating them. Like, what is, how do you get them to see that there's a missing piece there and

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (23:49.998)
You know, one argument would be it doesn't exist in here and pushes out. The other one is to say, well, let's give that person an experience and then maybe they'll discover it. So the discovery process is really important. And actually Bob is a leader. When he watched him with his team, I would see that as a very common strategy. He calls it building strategy, but from an academic standpoint, it's like he's going outward in rather than inward out.

So it becomes a really interesting challenge because when I first started studying persuasion and started studying how you work with people and motivation, a lot of it was inward out rather than outward in. So I found that kind of an interesting dynamic and the word confidence is part of the way in which we discover it.

Guy Bloom (24:41.067)
I am fascinated by people that self-generate and those that need to have that, I guess, that energy and that generation created for them. And maybe that's one of the key things as a leader or manager, whatever that title is, is to recognise that in different times in a person's career or whatever that might be, that actually the level of involvement

is in releasing that energy, getting out of their way, giving them the skills, because actually they've almost got two Duracell batteries inside and they're very driven. All the way through to when somebody maybe goes flat, be it confidence or a recognition of lack of skill, and then you need to input. So you're almost recharging that battery. And I think that's probably that balance, that it's not always going to be the same. And maybe that's one of the big mistakes. If you think somebody's set in a way,

the chances are they're not, is different requirements at different times. And I have a sense that's what I'm hearing you talk about.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (25:42.84)
Yeah, that's a really good way to put it. I've said to people in a coaching environment, I remember one in particular, you know, as a leader, your job isn't to do the work. Your job is to encourage and help others do the work. The leadership role is to get the same work done through others. We all know that you could probably do it. That's not your job anymore.

Your job is to let the other people get the limelight for accomplishing the same thing that you got the limelight for in your last role. that's a hard thing for many people to give up because the prize or the recognition for having done it, whatever it is, is, you know, accomplishing the goal. You have to get...

more joy out of seeing others accomplish the goal than you did accomplishing it yourself. And when you can get over that hurdle, then I think you see the world as a leader in a different way.

Guy Bloom (26:55.643)
That's very interesting isn't it? The joy of the task being completed is very different to the joy of that task being completed because of the team that you're working with and have contributed to and have developed. And of course the things that both have weight. But if it's purely task completion and not really the people, then you're probably out of kilter.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (27:04.642)
Yeah.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (27:16.75)
Right, and you know it's never black or white 100 % one way or the other because certainly the leader has a role in all of that and the idea generation and all of that but the praise and recognition and the opportunity to get it needs to go to the people doing the work not the people leading it because their joy comes out of seeing the team succeed.

The other piece, Guy, that I think is really interesting, what you just said, is that you could say the joy comes from having other people do the task. But sometimes people just get joy when they do the task like I told you to do it. I think leaders, what they do is they say, my joy comes from watching you do the task.

maybe in a different way than I would have done, but you still ended up doing the task or accomplishing the objectives. I almost think of it like music, you know, it's like my job sometimes is to cast the basic line, a Bach fugue or whatever, but then your job is to improvise on that. And I should take joy in the fact that you're improvising on top of the general approach that we've outlined.

I think that's hard sometimes because think some leaders are so tight-fisted and controlling, they don't allow the improvisation on the theme and that's what you really got to allow. I think that's what's really cool and it brings a lot of joy. As a professor, the greatest joy I have is when I see somebody taking an idea that maybe I've sparked and then see them like, they've looked at this in a slightly different way and that's even better than what I looked at it. So I think that is just the coolest thing.

Guy Bloom (29:09.179)
I am fascinated by the difference maybe to I'm 55 and so I even in my lifetime I recognized that I would have conversations with people where I felt I had longer pre mobile phones pre internet where if things went wrong I had a few days to put them right before

the rest of the world caught up with what had gone wrong. Which also meant there was a little bit of time to coach, was a little bit of time to counsel, there was a little bit of time to... And then by the time somebody realised what had gone on, you'd kind of halfway put it right. But now people know within 15 minutes and then everybody wants an update. And I wonder if that... Just the sheer rate of speed of the system...

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (29:35.092)
Thanks.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (29:55.598)
you

Guy Bloom (30:00.699)
puts a pressure on leaders to act in the now rather than to take time with people. Or maybe the question is, where is the time for people in a space that has accelerated? And I wonder how that resonates with you.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (30:17.038)
Well, that, I think, that's certainly very real. mean, if you just watch the tremendous tragedy that happened yesterday night in Washington, D.C. with the airline crash and the news that followed all night long and all this morning and the questions that asked and what are the answers to questions that we don't know yet. It happens with everything and want instant information. But that's the world we live in. And there's a...

principle in the communications chapter in the book that we talk about in terms of transparency that goes something like I don't care if it's pre-internet or post-internet maximum disclosure minimum delay that's one of the things and the other thing is tell people what you know and tell people what you don't know and tell people

what your plan is to figure out how to communicate what you don't know when you begin to know it. Because they want answers. They expect that leaders will have the exact answers to questions that don't have answers at the moment. But that's the world we live in, in this rapid fire environment that you describe. So if you don't do maximum disclosure with minimum delay,

you generate suspicion immediately. So you gotta tell people something happened, it wasn't good. If it's good, there's no problem. The problem always is generated when something goes wrong. So you tell them something went wrong. This is what I know, this is what I don't know. This is when you can expect to hear and then be following up with information. The robust communication is a...

chapter in the book and it talks about how important that is in carrying leadership. It's absolutely critical in whatever environment, pre-internet, post-internet, social media, whatever.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (32:27.874)
That's my view. Well, yeah, I kind of related back to the COVID study that we did where we interviewed 90 frontline communicators here in Wisconsin and around a little bit around the United States. And the number one complaint, besides being politicized, that was the number one complaint. The number two complaint was really about the fact that most people that the leaders were not

embracing the uncertainty and the fluidity of the situation. And they weren't acknowledging what they didn't know. And by the study, mean, the CDC just comes under brutal attack from these are frontline physicians, epidemiologists, healthcare workers here in the area, our whole state. And they just said they were changing things.

so much and so quickly. So it undermines your credibility. I had one nursing director who I interviewed and she was running a nursing school as well as dealing with the COVID thing. She said, I would issue a guidance in the morning and by the afternoon the guidance would change. So I had to resend them the email. And so that fluidity and that the fact that they didn't highlight the learning that

needed to go on in a very uncertain and like you say, fast-paced and almost, and people with emotions all over the place. The fact that they didn't highlight that, I think was one of the bigger challenges that occur, that emerged from at least the study. we're trying to work with those kinds of folks that get in those roles with helping them learn how to communicate the uncertainty in a way.

that doesn't cause panic but encourages them to realize here's what we know, here's what we don't know, and here's what we're gonna learn, and here's how we're gonna learn it. In fact, the White House Task Force, Deborah Birx talked about in her book, she said the number one thing we didn't do that we should have done is talk about the learning environment. Now, the language we used is that there was a fluidity to the situation where things were changing so rapidly, you had to...

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (34:52.59)
communicate about the fluidity. We didn't do it as well as we could have. I don't know what it was like over there, but here that was one of the issues that kept emerging on the front lines of the people we interviewed.

Guy Bloom (35:05.657)
I think the capacity, I think it definitely has played out very, very similar over here as well. I think my thought is that if I look at things like the military or emergency services as a practice, they are very good at sharing and learning in the moment, normally due to the fact that they have an understanding that the issue might arise again 20 minutes from now. So it can't wait till next week. It can't wait.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (35:35.875)
Yeah.

Guy Bloom (35:36.047)
till the end of the month because actually this scenario may play out again on our next call or our next action. So there is something about what may be happening at a global level. But I think when I just think about commercial enterprises, what is it that leaders can do in an environment that demands, yeah, maximum disclosure, people want to know maybe more so than they did a couple of decades ago, whether or not that's how real that is. But it feels like that.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (36:01.806)
Thanks.

Guy Bloom (36:05.467)
But how can they maybe find it within themselves to coach, to mentor, to counsel, to train, to just have a conversation when they themselves feel the timeline is ever more pressured? Whereas maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago when they started, the reason they, or 30 years ago, the reason they got good was that their line manager spent the time.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (36:08.398)
you

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (36:30.894)
Thank

Guy Bloom (36:34.319)
because actually they were probably in a different time. And that's the bit I think I'm very intrigued by.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (36:42.03)
And I think there's one other dynamic that lays alongside that. And I think when something happens and there's disclosure needed, I think within a leader's mind they can start to go down a path that says, well, I don't know all that I need to know yet to communicate what happened. So I'm going to let the situation develop so I can give better answers or give the answer rather than give.

part of the answer because they're driven by an internal desire or perceived external pressure to have all the answers immediately. And that is not, it's certainly not true now. I don't think it was true 20 years ago because if you have this mental model that says I'm going to wait a day or two days to know more,

That's when the fomenting occurs with the conspiracy theories and the lack of transparency. And you've got to get rid of that right away. Maximum disclosure for what you know, figure out what you don't know, tell them, and then minimum delay with all of that. I would say that there's one other word that needs to be in that conversation. It's frequency. The way in which you deal with...

the fact that the events are emergent is that you're going to have to say, look, I don't know all the answers now, and Bob kind of alluded to this, but make sure that you do it on a frequent basis enough that we're going to continue to update you as the situation emerges. And then they will trust that channel instead of some crazy person on social media. And so what happens is that if you don't address those things and talk about

the gaps in your learning, they will take those gaps in your learning to the meeting after the meeting, so to speak, and start talking about them and speculating on it and then building up fear. So it's better for you to say, look, I don't know, we will find out over a period of time. We'll just have to see how this emerges. And I always encourage people to think like a meteorologist, you know. This is our best prediction right now. The forecast may change in two or three days.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (39:07.25)
or depending on where you live, it may change in general, change more quickly, but it's gonna change in that I don't stop watching the meteorologists just because they made a bad call one day. I think that they're gonna update me when things change and I have trust that they'll keep me updated and that's where the trust occurs. And so you don't relegate that responsibility off to the meeting after the meeting or.

know, social media or something like that.

Guy Bloom (39:39.621)
So picking up on the meeting after the meeting, which I think is part of the update in the second edition of the book, I'd really love to get a little bit of a conversation going about that. I suppose the impact of it, where it can add value, but potentially where it can also be toxic. It'd good to get your thoughts on that.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (40:02.062)
So about the meeting after the meeting.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (40:11.148)
Yeah, mean, meeting after meeting happens when you have a spontaneous group of people that get together and they talk about what happened during the dynamics of the meeting and try to fill in gaps. And a lot of it is called, you know, what we call in the academic world is sense making. But it's basically, it's hard to describe, if like, let's say an executive, for example, or somebody at a high level told a joke and

kind of fell flat and or it was maybe inappropriate. So in a meeting after the meeting you might say well let's clarify what was the purpose of that joke? Was there something else going on? I mean it's more complicated than that but that's the easiest way to think about sense-making that I make sense of it that of the joke by saying is he just bad at telling jokes or is he really highly insensitive he or she highly insensitive to the needs of people in the room.

So you end up with that kind of dynamic where that occurs. And I do think the meeting after the meeting can be a positive thing. Sometimes it's asking for clarification or something like that, but it could also be enormously destructive and create pods of resistance to initiatives or proposals or issues like that.

The topic could be anything, bring a of people together as a leader. You're going to talk about a new program or a strategic initiative or something like that. And there's a discussion and maybe a presentation of an approach. Or maybe the leader uses it an opportunity to sell their point of view on how it's going to be done. And then you get, you hopefully get...

reactions from the other attendees in the meeting. But sometimes you don't. Sometimes you get two or three loud voices that support the idea and a lot of silence by other people in the room. And that's a red flag when you get half of the room that doesn't have comment or maybe fearful of making comments or especially fearful of making a comment that might

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (42:32.832)
fly in the face of the proposal that's on the table. The leader's job is to create an environment where those opposing points of view, alternate points of view, call them what you want, are legitimized and can be surfaced so they can be had in discussion and debated in the room with the group. The meeting after the meeting

is when that silence occurs and then those opposing points of view are taken in the hallway amongst a subgroup that says, well, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard and torpedoes what was said in the room and there's a whole polarization dynamic that starts to occur. And it happens all the time. You're smiling a little bit so you know.

A breeze of toxic working environment is what it ends up doing. If the real meeting occurs after the meeting, then that becomes a toxic working environment because people aren't really voicing their concerns during the real meeting, which is why it's so fundamentally important to master some of the skills like how to create a collaborative environment and how to deal with pushback.

Guy Bloom (43:56.227)
I think this is a very real thing. I'm also quite intrigued by the meeting before the meeting, which is where people actually calibrate their opinion based on the previous meetings after the meetings, where they then enter with a lens that actually, even for a leader that's trying to recalibrate or shift, is quite difficult because people have preset their focus. And again, I see some thumbs up there.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (44:07.651)
Yeah.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (44:16.792)
Yeah. Right.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (44:22.349)
No.

Yeah.

Guy Bloom (44:25.165)
again, just your reflection on that.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (44:29.954)
Yeah, absolutely. It's the dynamic of what happens in the change process, right? It almost always happens around some thing that's going to change or could change. And people start to take positions about it. And that's fine. Everybody's got opinions about things and you need to legitimize those. But if your opinion becomes the only way you allow yourself to think about it, whether you're the leader or one of the participants,

That's where it becomes problematic because you're not open-minded enough to think about other potential solutions. Yeah, it's interesting because there was a Wall Street Journal article about somebody recommending avoid the meeting after the meeting and try to suppress it. that's what prompted us to write this one, which actually did very well and made it one of the top 10 articles of Slow Management Review last year.

because I think it resonated with a of people that you can't suppress it, but you have to be able to deal with it in a positive way. What Bob is talking about is something that I suspect you are picking up on as well, and I've tried to get a label on it. I don't know if this is the right one, so if you come up with a better one, let me know. But I've been calling it the single-lens fallacy, that you end up looking at an issue or a concern

by only looking through one lens. And any problem that really, at most levels of an organization or certainly a government, is always going to be there's multiple points of view. Now you may end up, at the end of the group discussion, with a single approach that might be considered single lens, but certainly in the developmental phase, you want to look at things through multiple lenses.

even if you end up rejecting one of those lenses, which I think is perfectly okay, the fact that it's in the back of your mind and part of the history of the decision making is extraordinarily powerful in trying to share that vision of what you're trying to do, perhaps with other people not involved in the decision making. So, it may be a better word for it, but I think you know what I'm talking about. But it's literally, if you get, all you get in your meeting is people agreeing with you, that should be a red flag.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (46:54.05)
that maybe we're not looking at this in the right way. I remember a famous story, I believe it was about one of the big automakers and he would have a meeting with a senior people and somebody said, he went around the tables, disagree with this, anybody disagree with this? And no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And his response was, you probably know this story, and his response was, well, then we must not have thought about it long enough.

Because you've got to have somebody who disagrees with it. That means you haven't, you've fallen into, your group has fallen into a single lens fallacy.

Guy Bloom (47:32.836)
The version of that I understand is if everybody's agreeing with me then we quite clearly don't understand the seriousness of the situation.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (47:39.342)
Thank

Yes, and then the other dynamic that's important there for the leader who is going around the room asking for that input is if you're lucky enough and fortunate enough to get the opposing points of view, your response to that, the words that come out of your mouth and the body language that you use to facilitate the rest of the discussion is critical because immediately if somebody

has an opposing point of view or a difference and you you shrug up or you say well that won't work or whatever you say if it's not inviting to hearing more and understanding what the other point of view is it'll completely shut down not only that input but any other inputs you're going to get so there's a leadership skill there to coax out of people

what they're thinking about. So the leader should have the idea that if they put a proposal on the table, how can the input make this idea better? Some of it with opposing points of view, some of it with reinforcement, some of it with discussion. How can it make the idea better than the one I came into the meeting trying to sell? So. Yeah, it is the responsibility, I think, of a leader to bring those

Guy Bloom (49:04.667)
I'm okay.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (49:09.834)
opposing points of view and I've been studying recently these side meetings that are going on while you're having a Zoom meeting or a Teams meeting or whatever and there are side conversations going on on the side and looking at the dynamics of it. In fact, one Microsoft study had it called them parallel chats and I'm like, know, Microsoft does great work and I use Microsoft but...

they're not parallel chats because there's a main meeting and they're not on parallel track. And sometimes the chat on the other side that's going on on the side or even on the backside on your phone where you're direct messaging people during the meeting are actually undermining what's going on in the meeting. So the leader has to find a way, particularly the...

the person who's managing it has to find a way to bring those side conversations that are occurring on the side into the main meeting. And that's a really important collaboration skill given the technology that we're working with today with these Zoom meetings and the Teams meetings and all these different types of things. when, Guy, gonna assume you grew up at a time like we did.

when side chats during a meeting were really looked down upon, you were rude. But what's happened with really post-COVID, as we've legitimized these side chats, and certainly for younger generations, they're used to having three or four conversations going on at one time. Well, that probably tells you you're not maybe listening as much as you should be to the main conversation.

Guy Bloom (51:07.395)
Yeah, definitely. think if the side meeting is more vibrant than the meeting you're having, then that's definitely a flag. So in terms of those meetings that happen after meetings, I do have an approach that I offer, but I'm very keen to understand what's the approach to understanding as a leader the meeting after the meeting and how it might be an in...

or it might be an indicator of what's not being really voiced and verbalized in a transparent and honest way in a meeting. How does a leader, as you would talk about it, engage with, in essence, what they're blind to and what they're not privy to and what they may not have access to?

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (51:54.555)
Yeah, so I think I'd say a couple things to that. The leader has to be out there listening to what's going on in the hallways through one-on-one conversations or small group conversations. And you have to be able to pick up on the fact that there are other opinions being generated that may not have been generated during the meeting itself.

So you just have to be savvy to that. You have to, not in a suspicious way, but you've got to presume it's happening and figure out what the issues are. And then the other one that I would say is that in the subsequent large group meeting, I think the leader should bring up those topics, not in a way that says, I heard this guy say this in the hallway.

But I understand that there's some views floating around after our last discussion of ABCD. Let's talk about that. Let's have that discussion here. So you're legitimizing those topics and they can be talked about in a way that everybody can participate. And I often use the word with groups that this is a truth room.

When we're in this room together, we're going to be truthful with one another about what's on our minds. And we're not going to be judgmental. We're going to be listening. you know, tell the truth about how we feel and then let's see how we work through that together.

Guy Bloom (53:41.485)
something very powerful isn't there about the leader being able to, and maybe that's one of the health checks that is very important as an observer of a team or of a leader, the capacity to bring conversations into the room in a manner where people feel safe to do so. That's probably one of the more powerful observations or...

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (53:58.85)
Yeah.

Guy Bloom (54:07.097)
diagnostics around whether or not there's trust, whether or not there's accountability, whether or not there's bravery and other words that sort of align to that and almost like a health check I guess for that. Easier sometimes to spot as an external person than a person inside but I find that quite fascinating.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (54:19.875)
Yeah.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (54:24.161)
Yeah.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (54:28.566)
Yeah, in the book we talk about, I think we call them the power dynamics in those kinds of conversations. And we talk about what would keep people from bringing up issues that might not be popular or might be running against the grain. It could be just lack of courage. It could be that you don't want to say anything that the boss isn't going to agree with. It could be...

fearful of its impact on your career, you could be fearful of the group's perception of you if you bring up a controversial idea. All of those dynamics are real in a person's mind that would keep them and the leader has to provide a safe environment. It's kind of a no retribution environment. If you want to hear what's really being thought about and talked about, it's got to be safe for people to do it.

I think you make a great point, Guy, because this observer mentality, I think great leaders are both participants in the meeting, but they're also observers of what's going on in the meeting. And that's a really hard thing for your brain to get around. And so sometimes bringing in an outside person.

you trust to observe the meeting can make you sensitive to that. In fact, all leaders, in my view, that they should get somebody who's a coach or whatever and just watch them with their team and how they perform because things emerge in that meeting dynamic that don't emerge face to face sometimes.

So we're good here, okay? Okay, our screen just went a little wacky. I was gonna tell you.

Guy Bloom (56:23.854)
okay.

Guy Bloom (56:28.973)
I can hear and see you perfectly.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (56:31.626)
Okay, we can't see you, but we can hear you. So let's just keep going. Yeah, well, I just was going to tell you an interesting story. The article that we ended up publishing about pushback, that happened because I observed a group of people making a decision, many of whom I knew very well, and I was just jaw dropped by the dynamics in the room.

Guy Bloom (56:34.927)
Well, that's okay. You spared the full horror. That's okay.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (57:01.046)
went home that night after observing, I couldn't sleep. And I wrote the entire night about some of the dynamics that were going on in the meeting and the power of pushback. that became, that was principally because of my role as observer. And I think it's very hard as a leader to have that observer role of what's going on here, as well as being perhaps an advocate or being part of the meeting and advocating for it.

That's something that you can deal with in a variety of ways. One, for example, on the Zoom meetings with the side conversations, you can appoint somebody in the group to say, want you to be the wrangler who brings in those side conversations of issues that are emerging there at some point in time, and I'm gonna call on you to see what types of issues might be emerging in these side or something they call parallel chats.

Guy Bloom (57:57.989)
So you spoke about pushback and that might be the final bit of the conversation today. Bring that to life in terms of how you reference it and what it means to you for a leader and an organisation in terms of whether it's good or it's bad and how a leader can positively engage with pushback.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (58:07.918)
Thank

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (58:21.676)
Well, it's kind of the dynamic around the meeting after the meeting. The pushback is the opposing point of view. The pushback is an idea is presented, someone has an opinion, and another person doesn't agree or has a different point of view. So we call that pushback. And pushback is inevitable.

The problem with pushback is that many times pushback turns into an argument. It doesn't turn into a discussion. Debate is great. Debate is necessary. Phil is a master debater. This is background. And we debate all the time. But it doesn't turn into an argument. It turns into a problem-solving discussion. And it focuses on the issue.

not on the people. so pushback is absolutely necessary in a healthy organization. It's how you manage it and work through it so that you become... The chapter in the book is caring leaders transform pushback into progress, not into an argument. And so that's the context.

Well, I'm sort of a pro-argument than Bob Hamilton because I mean, know what he's saying and I agree with it. But, you know, as a debater, you just sort of like you want to get the opposing point of views. not necessarily what I think Bob's talking about where we ended up on this issue was that it's the opposing point of views, but it's literally I've seen Bob do it.

Guy Bloom (59:50.949)
Ha ha ha.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (01:00:13.742)
It's the integration of those poisoning point of views or different points of views sometimes where the magic occurs. And the magic occurs when you, you know, you take a viewpoint that maybe was on your own and you say, gee, if we add this different perspective, it'll make that basic idea better. I can remember as a department chair in our university, I would propose something and then somebody say, well, I don't know about this. I don't know about that. And they come a lot.

I'd encourage you to push back everything. And then there's this magic moment where like, wow, these aren't necessarily opposing, they may start off that way because that's the way we perceive it, but they actually can be merged in a positive way. And I think Bob does that wonderfully. so, I mean, that's the ideal. Now at some point, sometimes you have to say they are opposing points of view, we're have to make a call here.

So that said, we do end up with those kinds of situations as well.

Guy Bloom (01:01:18.243)
Yeah, intellectual conflict isn't personal conflict. And I think there's something, again, very mature about an individual or a group where they can hold, as you said, F Scott Fitzgerald said, the sign of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold to opposing truths and still function. You know, I love that quote. Right. It's one of my favorite quotes, so that fits in perfectly. Now, listen, gentlemen, I am super.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (01:01:27.448)
Thank

Guy Bloom (01:01:45.945)
alert to time and if I lived nearby I'd now take you out to dinner and listen to you talk for the rest of the evening until you said, Guy, we both need to go home now. So unfortunately I can't do that. So I am going to bring this to a close and maybe that leaves us wanting more and we can always regroup in due course. So leading with care in a tough world. The newest edition is now available or is that coming out in...

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (01:01:55.864)
Bye.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (01:02:13.602)
Yes, yes, yes.

Guy Bloom (01:02:15.407)
Fantastic. And if people wanted to connect with you, where would they, where would they go?

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (01:02:21.784)
Well, you can go to our website, leadingwithcare.net and follow us there or on LinkedIn. We're both on LinkedIn, Bob De Koch or Phil Clampit. And you can connect with us and touch base there and we'll be happy to respond.

Guy Bloom (01:02:39.397)
Fantastic. Well, listen, I forward to these conversations because I do feel as if I'm in the presence of two people with huge insight and credibility and just the ability to transfer a message. so intellect doesn't always mean that I understand what you're trying to say. So it's lovely to be able to do that. So for me and everybody listening, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your insights with us.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (01:02:47.416)
to me.

Bob Dekoch & Phil Clampitt (01:03:06.466)
Well, you're so welcome, Guy. We appreciate it as well. We really enjoy being with you. It's fun and we appreciate your help in spreading this word about leadership. So thank you so much. Yeah, Guy, I just wanted to say, you know, when we were promoting the book a year ago and we went through a lot of podcasts and then Bob and I started talking about, you know, who do we resonate with in terms of experience, perspective and brings out the best in us.

you're at the top of our list, at least my list. It's like, thought, yeah, this guy, you get it. You know what we're driving at. And it's sometimes hard to articulate, which is obviously why we have podcasts and we continue to write and do the various things that we do to try to get people to this level. And so we enjoy it a great deal. I appreciate you taking time to chat with us.

Guy Bloom (01:04:02.927)
absolutely perfect and you will return. So I'm going to bring us to a close. Stay with me so we can make sure everything's doing what it's supposed to do. But once again, thank you so much.