The Craft of Leadership

In this conversation, Guy Bloom discusses the importance of viewing leadership as a craft and the necessity of proactive learning for personal and professional development. He emphasizes the significance of being aware of one's learning journey, the flow state of competence, and the need for tools and techniques to navigate challenges effectively. Bloom encourages leaders to take ownership of their development and to seek resources beyond their organizations to enhance their skills.

Takeaways

• Leadership should be seen as a craft.
• Proactive learning is essential for effective leadership.
• Self-funding learning opportunities can be beneficial.
• The world offers many free resources for learning.
• Being in a flow state is crucial for competence.
• Recognizing when your usual approach isn't working is key.
• Consciously competent leadership is necessary in challenging situations.
• Having tools and techniques is vital for effective leadership.
• Reflecting on experiences helps improve future performance.
• Reliance on oneself is a strong indicator of future success.
  
  

Sound Bites

• "Leadership as a craft is crucial for development."
• "You can learn just about anything for free."
• "You need a tool, a process, a mechanism."

To find out more about Guy Bloom and his award winning work in Team Coaching, Leadership Development and Executive Coaching click below.

The link to everything CLICK HERE
UK: 07827 953814
Email: guybloom@livingbrave.com
Web: www.livingbrave.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Leadership Craft
• 0:00 Tools for Effective Leadership
• 1:31 The Importance of Proactive Learning
• 5:18 The Importance of Proactive Learning
• 10:03 Navigating Challenges: Consciously Competent Leadership
• 20:05 Crafting Your Leadership Journey

Transcript

Guy Bloom (00:01)
Hi, so I wanted to take the opportunity to have a conversation about actually various things. I've been running the podcast now for some time, 130 odd episodes in, and in the introduction I say maybe sometimes just me talking by myself and of course realise I haven't done that one single time. I've always had guests on. So actually what I'm going to start to do is every now and then pepper in some

episodes where it's just me talking. So you're either going to look forward to those or skip through and wait till the guests come on. Because that's by definition pretty dynamic, I know. But I think I've got some things that might be of value. Number one, I would like to share some ideas and thinking that I share with clients. But also there'll be an opportunity for me to give some commentary on things that I see in the world in terms of leadership and leadership behavior. There's so much going on right now.

at the particular characters that we've got out there, regardless of let's just say politics and political persuasion, actually what are they doing that is effective or not effective in terms of their leadership. Forget what your preferences are, is it actually effective or not. So I think there's an opportunity to have some conversation even though it's me to you but I think that would hopefully add value or of course you'll let me know that it doesn't.

In this first one, I would just like to maybe talk about the relationship with learning that a lot of executives or people at a senior level have or don't have with their craft of being a leader. So I just want to get into this as a little bit of a topic. I think it's the probably one of the most important factors that comes into development.

which is whether or not you see leadership as a craft, whether or not you see management development as a craft, whether or not you actually think or perceive that in terms of you moving forward in terms of your skills and your competence, it's a thing that gets done to you or something that you're proactively doing.

Now that seems pretty obvious if you think about it in an interview if somebody says, what do you do to keep yourself sharp? What do you do to learn your skills as a manager or a leader? Consider how weak it might sound as a response. If your response was, I don't do anything really, I just wait to get put on a course and or I apply for the ones that look good. But if the company isn't running anything that I can get on, I just wait passively and, know, just hope I'll

you know, pick things up as I go. That would be pretty poor show, I think, and it wouldn't bode well for maybe getting in through the front door. What you'd probably want to be able to say is, you know, of course, I'll jump on any course that adds value that an organization runs, but I also take ownership for my own learning. I take ownership for the craft that I want to demonstrate as a manager, as a leader in the organization.

So what might you say that you do? You might say that you self-fund or you seek funding to go on workshops or learn things in that sort of way, but that could be pretty expensive. But the world offers a lot of things for free. From YouTube to podcasts, you can pretty well learn just about anything. You can listen to the best people in the world in terms of their knowledge and their skills. And of course you can read books and...

take on board that information at a relatively cheap and effective way. But I mean, go back to, I'm 55 years old right now, so go back to when I started out, I couldn't listen to the quality of leaders and managers or just human beings that exist in the world in such a way. There is so much out there that it's, well, you could argue it's overwhelming.

But actually, if it's your craft, your ability to curate a way of learning, I think, is pretty key to the ability to demonstrate, A, to yourself, and to others who might be interested, be that people that are looking down at you and wondering whether or not you're the kind of person that they should promote, but also setting a standard for peers and being a role model for others that might look up to you. Just imagine if a member of staff said to you,

Hey boss, what is it that you do in terms of your own development? Imagine if you say, if you're being honest, and if the answer is, well, in the last 12 months, not listened to any podcasts, not read any books, not been on any learning or training sessions, interesting. But it's an easy place and space to get into. And if you're trying to go up the food chain from the most junior levels through to the most seniors, one of the most...

effective ways that you can demonstrate that you see leadership and management as a craft is to have something that you can define and talk about and point a finger at. So I want to just talk about how this comes into play. So I'm going to, in this case, I'm going to share my screen here, which I can draw on. And for those of you, of course, that may not be

watching I will tell you what I'm drawing. So the first thing I'm doing is I'm just putting a 95 % on a whiteboard so you can see 95 % and I think that most people most of the time that are competent in their role competent in their job spend 95 % of their time in what you might call a flow state and that would mean a place in a space

where rather like driving a car, you know what you're doing. It doesn't take a huge amount of effort. It does take effort, but it's something that you know how to do. So the more experienced you are, the more you've seen, the more you know, and by definition, when others around you may be panicking or suffering from anxiety, when you are good at what you do, you can say, do you know what? It's that, I've ridden this horse before. I know what I'm doing.

And even though you may not be unconscious in your activity, you have so much experience that you can, for the want of a better word, if you're not in a flow state of just unconscious competence, doing the things you need to do, at the very least, you're very able to be conscious and to navigate what it is that you're dealing with because you've ridden that road before, you've been down that particular river before, you're...

you've ridden that horse before, whatever the phrase is that you want to use. Now, I think a lot of people like the idea. It's quite appealing to say, you know, really, want to be, that phrase would be here, I want to be unconsciously competent. It is this ideal place where you're able to say that I operate in this

flow state and in truth if you said you were doing that a hundred percent of the time I'd be a little bit worried I'd be like going so at no point are you consciously competent at no point are you actually coming out of just that unconscious set of activities and doing things on purpose because in reality think about a sport or a hobby or anything that you might do you you do want to be able to do it with a certain level of just

let's just use the word flow. You do want to be able to do it with a certain ease because you've mastered it or you're on your path to getting very, very good at it. But there are moments, there are times when you being you, and reality for me is when you think about that 95%, really what that is, is a steady, it's a steady state.

of you.

being you.

And that's hugely effective. You being you, 95 % of the time gets you into a flow state where you're able to navigate most things with relative ease. And that is the place that I think a lot of us are aiming for. There then are times when one may say that you being you isn't working. When you come up against an individual or a situation, a context, whatever it is, where you cannot apply

unconsciously a skill set to this situation and make it work. So let's just say you have a particular skill with people, you're very good at getting people to calm down, to listen, to engage, even if they've got different agendas and they're a little bit aggressive and they come with a particular frame of reference to a meeting, you're really good at engaging them and getting them to connect with you, mainly because you have a genuine intention and you people buy into that and they connect with it.

there will be a percentage and let's just say it's 5 % everybody's going to be different but let's have it as a working metaphor for this where actually there will be a times when you being you

isn't working.

Now, when you being you isn't working, that means you have to do something very particular. You have to come out of a unconsciously competent flow state and you have to become consciously

incompetent and that would mean you realise that you don't know what you need to know or you would become consciously competent you do know how to do the thing but now you need to do it consciously now what might that mean let's just take feedback as an example you know how to give somebody feedback you're very good at giving somebody feedback it's quite easy for you to do so

you being you 95 % of the time works. Now you then come across a particular individual that isn't buying into you as a particular character maybe they just don't have the respect for the role that you're in maybe they have a level of seniority or power that means in terms of speaking truth to power you don't have a relationship with them previously which you can pull upon the emotional bank account with them isn't there yet or they have

reputation or they have a way about them that tells you actually they could be very difficult to negotiate with or have a conversation with because of their demeanor or their particular motivation. Maybe they're internal, maybe they're external and they're a client or whatever it might be. But you realise that you being you in your normal state isn't working. You're trying to have conversations with them, you're trying to give them maybe feedback and it's being resisted.

it's being rebuffed, it's being rejected, whatever that might be. So what have you got to do? Well, you being more of you in that way won't work because you've been doing that, you've been trying to navigate that path. So again, now what we have to do is go, right, I need to snap out of just the competence actually, the skill set that I've clearly got.

but I've got to snap out of that and I've now got to proactively come out of that and engage. Now if I'm consciously incompetent, blimey, I realise that I don't know how to talk to somebody like that. I don't have the vocabulary for that particular type of individual. What do I need to do? I need to go and learn, I need to seek counsel, I need to get some coaching, I need to get some training on it.

And that can happen more than you might think. I think of the most senior people that I sometimes work with. They are, by definition of their experience or the position that they hold within a business, either used to people listening to them or they have the seniority and the power to expect and also to receive because they're good people, somebody to respond to them. So when they come into contact with somebody, maybe at peer level or external to the organisation, maybe you're in a large organisation,

but it's somebody at group or just somebody new in who's operating with you at board level or whatever that might be they may not have the same need to Listen to you in such a way that you might be used to or the character is jarring against yours now when that is not working At that level sometimes people have not consciously given feedback for a long long time. They've just given feedback as required

but they don't sometimes have a tool. don't know how to do it on purpose. And you could take the word feedback or the topic that we're talking about and insert almost any other topic here, which is to say, even at the most senior levels, sometimes senior people just don't know how to do it on purpose, which is strange because they do know how to do it in the terms of an internal process. I sit down, let's just take feedback. I sit down, I have a conversation.

And it has, they may have learned how to do it a long time ago, but the mechanics of it, to be able to run the algorithm, to be able to do it on purpose, actually they can't do it in a very specific way. sometimes, more often than you might think, one of the things that's required is, it's not that I don't know how to give feedback, I don't know how to give feedback to this kind of person. I don't know how to give feedback to that kind of character. So what does this mean?

it means that you will need a tool, a process, a mechanism, an algorithm to run. Because if you can't do something on purpose, then there's no skill to it. There's no competence to it. It's a requirement that when you being you isn't working and you need to go into a space where you need to become consciously competent, then actually you're going to have to learn a tool, method.

process. It could be a behaviour, could be a technique, it could be the language, it could be an approach, whatever that might be. So what am I interested in here? A couple of things. Number one, if you do not have those tools in your toolbox, it's a little bit like discovering that your windscreen wiper doesn't work when it starts raining. And that can be a surprise for people. It can catch people out.

because they can go for a decade, even two decades, they can be in their third decade, and if the scenario crops up in a manner that them being them isn't working, without that tool, without that technique, without having practiced in a conscious way to become skilled at a thing, to be able to call upon it, to be able to apply it consciously,

That's when somebody might need, for example, to work with somebody like myself as an executive coach or, bloomin' heck, just Google it and say, how do I do this as a technique or an approach? Because to not be able to do it on purpose is not to be able to become crafted and skilled and competent and elegant at it. So that for me is one of the starting points. What's craft? Well, craft is an element of

unconscious competence, flow state, being able to navigate things with relative ease. But craft is also the capacity to recognise that if you're going to get better at something, you have to practice it and you have to be able to pull on it to bring it into conscious competence. So think about a hobby or a sport or something along those lines. You'll see that at the highest levels,

they move in a flow state, they're unconsciously competent. But if they meet an opponent that is better than them at a thing that they normally might dominate in, if they cannot come out of that 95 % flow state and go to a position of that 5 % conscious competence, if they can't apply technique on purpose, for example,

I normally can return, if you're playing tennis, can normally return the strongest of serves. doesn't matter how, I've never met anybody that can give me a serve that I can't return. And then all of a sudden, boom, you're up against somebody that's up their game or they're coming through the ranks or whatever it is. And they're serving at a blistering speed. And you think, this is nothing I've ever met before.

Well, in the moment of the match, if you do not have the technique and the skill that you can pull on at a conscious level to apply it directly, to think about your footwork, to think about how your body's aligning, to think about how you want to react, then you have very little hope of adjusting in the moment to beat something new if you cannot pull something out of that unconscious competence into the conscious.

space. How can you apply something if you do not understand the mechanic of it? Now, let's just say you do that and you win the match and you go, well done me, but you might lose the match. That's a little bit like being in a meeting and going, well, that didn't go in my favour, did it? I went onto the back foot. I lost kind of my way there a little bit, or I didn't have the impact that I wanted with that individual. Not all things are one in the moment. So what would I have to do? What would you have to do?

it would be to then go away and it would be to reflect, it would be to think, it would go, do you know what? I do actually know how to do this. So what can I do? I pull the model out of the bag, I've got it in a drawer, I Google it, I write it down or whatever it is, or I seek counsel and I remember what it is or find out a new way of doing it and now I have to plan. And now I have a strategy and now I can apply my thinking with a...

expectation that when I revisit that individual or that situation again I will be consciously competent this time. I can apply things on purpose and that to me is the application of craft. So what have I shared with you? What am I thinking about before anything else? Never mind what it is that you might need to learn or might need to think about I would probably argue that one of the defining

factors in the success of an individual who is trying to move in terms of their talent further up within an organization is in a position that they value and they just want to absolutely knock it out the park and whether or not you're trying to bring talent through and what you're looking for what you're actually going to say is yes one of the things that will define you will be your actions and your output and your characteristics and your behavior

But actually one of the ways that that can be identified rather than just looking at figures, if you're in sales or whatever, is actually how do we know that this person can operate at this level? There might be evidence for the level that they're at and there might be an indication that they've been able to operate there. But what we don't want to do is make the mistake of promoting somebody to their own level of incompetence, that Peter principle. So what's the indicator?

What is it that we could look at that would tell us that that individual would succeed if we put them into a place or space that might bring them challenge that they've not met before? That not tame problems, but more wicked problems. Tame problem being something that you've been through that process before, you've got the tame template for it, you know how those jigsaw pieces fit together. That 95 % of unconsciously competent because you've ridden that

course before. But actually when you get a wicked problem, a problem that you've not come across before, a problem that you don't know how to solve, be it a situation, a project, a person, then actually how do you operate in that wicked space? And I'm going to argue that's your relationship with craft. It's your relationship to recognise that this is something new. It's the ability to recognise that you need to pull things into that conscious space, or you need to get

You need to get counsel, need to seek the wisdom of the crowd, need to whatever it might be to then get the knowledge to be able to then do it consciously, to then work on it, apply it, turn it into a habit and then of course it then goes into then that unconscious competent space. So there we go. The relationship with craft, seeing things in that light, I think is hugely powerful.

Now, be it through a podcast, be it through a book, be it through going on a training course, or be it buddying up with people actually saying, hey, look, let's be our own learning council. Let's have regular conversations. Let's meet once a month online, grab a cup of tea and talk about our experiences, what we're learning, not relying on the organisation to supply you and potentially spoon feeds you with what it is that you need. Now, if you're in a particularly forward thinking organisation,

that has a phenomenal learning and development capability, you may be, you struck gold and actually you've got all the learning at your fingertips and that's being given to you. So that craft might be actually in the system itself. And that's a beautiful thing if that's what happens. But still in that space, I would argue it's great to be able to say, I've been on everything that I'm supposed to go on, but there's something very valuable.

about you being able to indicate your relationship with the craft that doesn't rely on the organisation giving that to you. Because actually when you step from those wicked, into those wicked spaces I should say, the organisation sometimes may not be able to supply you with the answer, but your capacity to not be then vulnerable at that space because it's not being spoon-fed to you, but you have a reliance on yourself.

not just the system that you're in is a very strong indicator for future success. Okay, so listen, I hope that's been of some value. This is gonna be on YouTube, so you can see the image that I've drawn if that's of some value. But if nothing else, I think that's my kind of first kind of move into talking to you all directly. I'm sure I'll get better at it.

As I go, the difference between speaking to an audience and speaking to myself is something I'll just have to get acclimatised to. But I hope it makes sense. I hope it's been of value and I will no doubt get some feedback from some of you in due course. Take care.