Unpacked with Ron Harvey
People Always Matter. Join Ron as he unpacks leadership with his guests.
Unpacked with Ron Harvey
The Transformative Role of Candor in Leadership and Team Effectiveness
Discover the transformative power of candor in leadership with Todd Holzman, CEO and founder of Holzman Leadership, as he joins us on this insightful episode of Unpacked Podcast. Learn how mastering the skill of honest communication can revolutionize your professional and personal life, turning challenging conversations into opportunities for growth. Todd shares his extensive experience, shedding light on the common pitfalls leaders face, such as the fear that people "can't handle the truth," and how overcoming these barriers can significantly enhance your leadership effectiveness.
Have you ever wondered why some leaders excel while others struggle to maintain trust and productivity within their teams? Todd Holzman reveals the secret: it's all about developing candor as a competence. Through engaging anecdotes and practical examples, including a successful coaching program at British Telecom, Todd illustrates how honest and open communication not only boosts productivity but also prevents long-term career setbacks. By balancing honesty with tact and providing constructive feedback, leaders have the ethical responsibility to address blind spots and help their team members succeed.
Join us as we unpack practical methods for mastering candor in conversations, from understanding differing points of view to presenting data effectively and considering what's at stake. Todd also shares a straightforward three-step routine for facilitating more productive dialogues. Embrace the power of vulnerability and learn how taking calculated risks in your interactions can lead to better decision-making and collaboration. This episode is packed with valuable lessons and strategies to elevate your leadership game. Don't miss this chance to enhance your communication skills with the wisdom and insights from Todd Holzman.
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The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the information, products, services, or related graphics contained in this ...
Welcome to Unpacked Podcast with your host leadership consultant, Ron Harvey of Global Core Strategies and Consulting. Ron's delighted to have you join us as he unpacks and shares his leadership experience, designed to help you in your leadership journey. Ron believes that leadership is the fundamental driver towards making a difference. So now to find out more of what it means to unpack leadership, here's your host, Ron Harvey.
Speaker 2:Good morning. This is Ron Harvey, the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, global Core Strategies and Consulting. We're a leadership development firm out of Columbia, south Carolina. My wife and I have been in business for over 10 years. After we decided to serve 21 years in the armed forces both Army and we wanted to find something else to do, to add value and to make a difference in our community. So we established a firm, and what we spent all of our time doing is helping leaders stay better connected to the people that they're responsible for and responsible to. With both of us serving in the military, we knew that leadership made a difference.
Speaker 2:It's hard to get someone to go to combat if they didn't trust you, didn't believe in you and were willing to entrust their life with whatever decisions that we made, and so we've taken a lot of those skill sets and brought it to corporate America, and so we love what we do. We do a lot of executive coaching, a lot of training, and what we also do is this podcast. We pause briefly because of experiences throughout life, giving people access to people from around the globe that are really good at what they do, and so we've had some phenomenal guests, have another phenomenal guest lined up today that you're going to be impressed with. That's going to share a lot. We call this Unpacked, and the reason is none of us know what we're going to talk about, except for one thing leadership. So we unpack, we ask real questions. There's no pre-scripted. This is a real conversation. So we hope you enjoy the journey with us. We hope you stay with us the entire time and you can tell them to follow us on Unpacked with Ron Harvey, where we release a new episode every Monday with leaders from around the globe, which is super exciting.
Speaker 2:So I'm excited to have Todd Holzman with us this morning. A lot to share, to tell you about. We're going to talk about his book. We're going to talk about the work that he's doing. He's also going to talk about AI. He's going to also give you a website to get some free content, and he's giving this away as a gift for listening to this podcast. So we'll get to all that towards the end. But what I want to do is give him space and grace to tell us a little bit about who he is and welcome him to the show. Todd, thank you for saying yes, and welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me. Ron, ron, not Ronald, right, that's your mother calling you Ronald, I'm in trouble when they use that name.
Speaker 3:I'm in trouble. Okay, I don't think you'll give me cause for that today. So the boring bits is I'm the CEO and founder of Holzman Leadership. We are a global leadership development consultancy. We've got 13 global faculty, most of whom are in the UK and Europe and some of whom here are in the US. I'm not sure why I need to look out the window to know where I am, but that's the nature of somebody who travels way too much. I'm in my little home office here in Midtown Manhattan, new York City, usa.
Speaker 3:The boring bits about what we do probably similar to some of the stuff that you do, ron executive coaching, team coaching, leadership development programs and also seem to have a specialism in Salesforce development, particularly when it comes to working with pharmas. We work with some of the top 50 companies in the world, but also some very innovative you know smaller companies as well. So those are the boring bits. The thing that I actually care about and is the red thread that cuts across all that is I've dedicated the last 30 years of my life and my career toward improving people's conversations with each other and specifically trying to inspire and equip people to get to candor, to be able to have honest and open conversations about the real issues and the opportunities to make things better. And I've done that.
Speaker 3:And then I'll pause for a breath, for three reasons. One our direct experience and research shows that it's critical to people's thriving at work. Two, it's also critical to their thriving outside of work. Three it seems to be, I believe, kind of the cure, or one of the cures, to what ails us in a leadership development field that spends $60 billion every year with very little to show for it. And then. So I was going to talk about three things. But the fourth thing is it turns out that seemingly none of us are naturally good at getting to candor with each other when it matters the most. So that's what I've dedicated my life to and that's what my whole firm's mission is is to turn candor into competence and to make people just darn good at it, primarily at work, but also outside of work.
Speaker 2:Wow, I mean, todd, phenomenal. I'm glad that you're on that journey. I mean you spend a lot of time in that space and so we dive in, for everyone that's listening and watching. We're going to talk about leadership. I love that you're spending time around candor and communication. It can be very difficult. What are you finding the challenges? As you look at it, it can be very difficult. What do you find in the challenges as you look at it? What are some of the biggest challenges people have with actually being effective at bringing candor to the communication? What are some of the biggest challenges?
Speaker 3:That's a good question. First of all, I don't think people understand why it's so important. Okay, two, people don't realize how big their candor gap is. And three, even once they appreciate one and realize. Two, their ability to produce competent candor when it matters most is quite limited, even if you can show them what good looks like. And so it's kind of, I think, important to talk about all three of those things. Does that feel appropriate?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, I think it is, so what's the value of it? So that's where you started at Like, what's the value of leveraging and becoming really good at having candor in conversations? Because most times we're not taught that. You don't learn it out of school. You learn math and science and social studies, but I don't think there's ever any course I've taken in high school that said how to be kinder in conversations and be competent at it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so let's get into that. I mean, what's the value of it? Why does it matter? So I know you studied at the Kennedy School. Yes, and if you remember, you know the way we define leadership at. What was the name of the course? The Art and Practice of Leadership Development. Exactly, okay, and that was with Ron Heifetz.
Speaker 3:So, I studied under Ron and taught with him there, and Ron has a kind of unusual and, I think, quite modern and practical definition of leadership, as does one of his colleagues and friends and my friend, dean Williams, who wrote another book that you read as part of that course Leadership in a Fractured World. And, of course, ron's famous for Leadership Without Easy Answers. And both of these, I guess impressive gentlemen, both define leadership not as we typically traditionally think of it. Right, here's this grand vision. Now I've got to motivate people to follow it.
Speaker 3:Their view is my job as a leader is to mobilize people, and if you think about an organizational context, both within my team and beyond my team, both within my authority and beyond my authority, to confront and deal with problems that we're blind to confront and deal with problems that we're blind to, would prefer to avoid and are struggling to deal with, ron would call these adaptive challenges yes, and one of the things I did at the Kennedy School was I taught a practicum about how to make the stuff we were learning from Ron more actionable.
Speaker 3:And if you buy the notion that your career is going to rise and fall based upon your ability to lead people both within and beyond your authority, within and beyond your team, then I think what you also have to buy is that it comes down to your ability to produce honest conversations about the real issues and opportunities to make things better. Ie get to candor, and that skill set is what the students after Ron's class were really looking for, because when I want to mobilize someone to face the real issue, how do I actually say it so I don't become the issue? Or how do I actually say it so somebody doesn't become so defensive that we can't actually talk about the important thing that we need to talk about? So that's a little bit of where it started. I mean, it started within my childhood. We could go back to that later. There's some funny stories there.
Speaker 2:I love what you said, todd, as you're talking about candor. You said how do I confront an issue without becoming the issue? Because people are so defensive? And if you're listening, that's a moment of take a note, tweet it out, document it, because we often become the issue because of the way we deliver information.
Speaker 3:That's exactly right, and I'll stay theoretical and I'll get practical for a second, but also just kind of think about it. I mean, like you consult organizations, I consult organizations. We spend a lot of time inside of these companies and we can't solve any problem that we can't talk to each other about honestly and openly. And yet this is something that we struggle with, incredibly, and I'm working on a project right now with a large pharma company and they're trying to update their organizational design and there have been issues with the current organizational design that have been going on for, say, about a year. But when you really start to look at why those issues have persisted, it's because people aren't having honest and effective conversations with each other about those issues. You know, you remember that famous was that cool hand Luke with Paul Newman.
Speaker 3:Yes, what we have here is a failure to communicate, and I'm seeing that left, right and center, ron, as the underlying cause for a lot of organizational misery, the underlying cause for why decision-making is way too slow, for why execution we have gaps in that for results that kind of missed the mark, and my team and I have studied nearly 50,000 documented conversations that haven't produced the results that people wanted, and in every single instance there is something the person is doing or not doing. Who shared the conversation with us that they're blind to, which is compromising the truth in their critical conversations, when the truth is needed most? So the reason I think it's so valuable just to summarize, because that was your really good question is because we're not very good at it. Right time in the right way. It's like there's this core pathology that seems to explain a lot of other problems, and so that's where we focus.
Speaker 3:But one of your alma maters I know you've gone to like 14 different schools with like 20 different master's degrees and certificates, but you went to Georgetown, right, and I was asked to give a talk on candor to the Institute for Transformational Leaders yes, if this capability gap had implications beyond just leadership and organizational effectiveness, which is what I've been seeing for the last 30 years. And I looked at the psychological literature and at least when it comes to the ability to express oneself authentically and candor isn't just about that, candor is also about helping other people do the same but at least on the ability to express oneself authentically, what the psychological literature demonstrates, that capability is either causal of, or significantly correlated with, every measure of psychological well-being. The clinicians care about it. So if you can actually help to produce conversations that are deeply truthful on behalf of making things better, then your life is going to be much better, and so will the lives of people around you from a psychological well-being standpoint. And if you don't, I think the converse is also true.
Speaker 2:Wow, a lot to unpack there, todd. And when you think about the conversation on candor, how often do we tell ourselves as leaders that they're all saying out of full metal jacket, they can't handle the truth.
Speaker 3:So quite often and was that from full metal jacket? I know it was also from as good as it gets with Jack. You can't handle the truth. I'll back up a little bit. So, in these conversations, when we look at all these documented conversations that we've analyzed, where the person didn't get the results that they wanted okay, kind of a leadership failure they failed and be able to mobilize one or more people to confront and deal with some important business problem or opportunity, yes, Okay, and the argument was at least what we're seeing in the data is there's something that they're doing that they're unaware of. That is compromising candor in those conversations where candor is most required, Because you can't solve any problem unless you're having a truthful conversation. So I won't lose the thread.
Speaker 3:What you see less of the time is somebody say being too aggressive. Yes, what you mostly see is people avoiding the conversation Absolutely For the reason that you're intuiting right and obviously you know what you're doing and you've been around the block and you've worked with lots of people and, yes, there is a story in their heads that the person can't handle the truth. They basically have a very strong view of all the bad things that will happen if they get to candor. But what they don't realize is all the bad things that are already happening and will likely happen if they don't get to candor. So I said at the beginning, people don't value it enough because they don't see all the benefits that can accrue from it. But they also don't see the downsides of their candor gap. And, of course, they don't realize their candor gap. Now what's interesting about this? They can't handle the truth point. It's both not true and true. What I mean about the not true and I think this was implied in your question, but regardless of whether it is, I think it's still true is that a lot of times, if people were simply to say what they're thinking, it ain't going to be nearly as bad as they think it's going to be. We're overprotective, so we think we've got this much room. We've actually got this much room to push the envelope in terms of our own honesty.
Speaker 3:But what happens is partly this ability to get to candor is about mindset, it's about courage, it's about how we feel on the inside right. But one of the big talking points I think I want to leave your listeners and viewers with is I think we're making too much of courage. It's actually this is what I've dedicated my life to is turning it into a skillset so we don't have to have so much bloody courage. Yes, Okay, Because what I've also seen is when people have tried, they've gotten burned, and so then that justifies future avoidance.
Speaker 3:And what I've tried to figure out is what does actually good look like? Not what I hope good looks like, not what's in the dozens of books about. There aren't dozens, but there's a handful of good books and there's some good stuff out there. To be fair, you know difficult conversations, radical candor, yeah, but no one has studied this phenomenon like my team and I have for 30 bloody years trying to figure out what actually works in the real world, and we're turning it into a competence, and so what we find is that a lot of the things that people are taught about how to say be honest actually backfire.
Speaker 3:So, for example, as Chris Argers coined it in one of his famous Harvard Business Review articles the shit sandwich, right. The only thing I'm really trying to communicate is the shit in the middle, but the stuff I say at the front and the back, you know it's all fluff, right. Let me kind of ease you into it to make you more open to it and let me kind of rebuild your self-esteem at the end. First of all, these days it's not even a shit sandwich, it's a shit focaccia, because we don't have any freaking time. Okay, so we got one thing of bread, but everybody, I mean we're so far past how to win friends and influence people stuff. You know, like Ron, if I say your name, maybe a few more times, maybe I'll be able to coax you into believing what I want you to believe. I times, Maybe I'll be able to coax you into believing what I want you to believe. I mean, we're more skeptical and so these games they don't work anymore. Or I'm sorry I may be offending people here, but things like the grow model, you know where I'm going to question you to death until you answer the way I think you ought to answer, because I've been told I can't tell you what I think anymore. I mean, I've been the aftermarket for these methodologies so many times. It's not even funny.
Speaker 3:So, but when we find people can learn the competence that we've isolated, it is very rare that their fears come true and then things they didn't believe were possible at all actually become possible. Like wow, the person was quite open to the conversation. How did that happen? Oh, my goodness, their behavior is changing, their performance is improving, we're getting better collaboration, decision-making, we're not swirling endlessly. We're actually making lots of progress, we're actually enjoying it and we're getting a result. How could it be? If we could turn the truth into a competence, you know, then we don't need to have so much courage, I think, because if you're skilled at something, you're naturally less afraid, because you feel you have an ability to control the outcomes to a much greater degree. I actually learned that from race car driving.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, wow, I mean phenomenal is how you turn candor to competence and become better at it so you can be having the conversation that you need to have. And I think every leader will have to have those conversations that sometimes you're intimidated or you're telling yourself a story or they're not going to receive it. Well, and why do I have to be the one to deliver it? And I think, leaders, it's an important competence to have is can you have candor when it matters? And oftentimes a thought that to mind when the space shuttle blew up.
Speaker 3:Good, I'm glad you're talking about that.
Speaker 2:Because there was not candor in conversations, Because when you go back and pull data on that, there was a lot of information that they knew in advance but no one could talk about it.
Speaker 3:That's right. There were real concerns about launching because of how cold it was on the day and I think Argyris actually testified in front of a Senate subcommittee and basically there was a positive kind of can-do attitude. So people minimize their concerns about the launch. Again, they were unable to get to candor and, as a consequence, the thing blew up. I saw it on TV when I was in high school. Sally Ride died right the teacher, along with all the astronauts. And NASA has never been the same.
Speaker 2:Never.
Speaker 3:Since that, what was that? 86 or 87?
Speaker 2:So you're thinking about your brand and your character, your reputation, and all the stuff is costing you not to have candor. It's definitely worth it to figure out how to turn this into competency so you can do it. Because it's costing a lot? There are plenty of scenarios you can go down where it's costing people not to be able to have these conversations that we need to have, but I think it's also something that you have to learn. It's not something that you flip a light switch on and off and you wake up tomorrow morning and you have it. So what are some of the skill sets that we need to develop? To be more candid, Cool.
Speaker 3:I'd love to tell a story about, like somebody I'm working with right now and people I've worked with, so that your folks on the call here can kind of relate to the subject, because it's a little hard to kind of sometimes relate to because people often think yeah, I definitely see that you know there's a lot of lack of candor and honesty in my organizations. I just wish those other people can improve on this dimension. It's not so much, but maybe we come back to that.
Speaker 2:That's probably a good time to actually insert it. I mean because it'll cover, I mean because people do, it's real, it's called unpack, so this may be a good time to insert the story.
Speaker 3:I want to help people to the degree that we can on a podcast. Yes, help people recognize to the degree that they struggle with candor, degree that they struggle with candor. We take our clients, the people we coach and all that through exercise that help them do that. First of all, let's define it. So a guy named Ed Jenkins actually defined it for me. He was a client at a big pharma. He's moved on since then. He said I could tell this story publicly. He said, todd, at the end of the day, what you're teaching us? He said he always saw these conversations as kind of situation where he was going to win or not lose, or be right and not wrong. And he said the big mind shift for him and this has been my North Star ever since this is now two years ago was to treat every important conversation not your recreational whinging and complaining let's please still enjoy those but to treat every important conversation with anyone as a collaborative search for the truth in order to do more good in the world. And you know, I heard that I was like 30 years and I finally had to have somebody else give me a definition and teach me what the heck I've been doing. And so that means we have a responsibility to express the truth of what we think, but we're equally responsible for helping the people we're talking to to do the same, because it's not about us being right, it's about us figuring out what's true in order to make things better. So you got a piece of the truth. I've got a piece of the truth. This other person has a piece of the truth. Make things better. So you got a piece of the truth. I've got a piece of the truth. This other person has a piece of the truth. You may disagree with me and you may be right, and the faster I can learn I'm wrong and you're right, the better, because what's above any us is the truth and trying to do good. Okay, there's that. And I have to say, probably the reason I got into all this is because I struggled with it personally and I'll tell a personal story and I'll tell a story about another guy. I mean, you know I'm a little kid and none were stories I could tell you.
Speaker 3:But I remember coming home for my grandmother and grandfather's 35th wedding anniversary and I was seven years old and my grandmother asks me how'd you like the party? I said I didn't like it. She said why I said I didn't like it. She said why I said because you kept calling Papa, grandpa, an idiot all night. I don't think you love him. So my grandmother was cool with it, but my mom not so cool with it. And she drags me to the other side of the room and she says to me what are you doing? You can't talk that way to Nana. I said but you and dad always told him to be honest. And she says not that honest.
Speaker 3:So, dude, I'm seven years old, right, but my dad had programmed into me tell the truth, be honest, tell the truth and be honest. The first time I try, I go down in flames. And I had always had this feeling of when I attempted to at least express the truth of what I thought, it didn't go well. But when I didn't, I didn't feel well. And so I felt in this horrible dilemma for a good 17 years. And then I went to Columbia University, discovered some things that really helped me.
Speaker 3:And then you start to realize, when you start coaching to people, insulting in organizations like this, honesty dilemma is something that we all suffer with. So I'm working with somebody right now. You know he's got a person on his team who, in conversations with clients, tends to say things which come out of left field, because she's quite a creative out-of-the-box thinker right. 10% of the time they're helpful. The rest of the time they're either harmless or harmful to actually helping their clients and or progressing deals. Okay. So he asked me for help with this, and so here's what's very interesting for me and why I keep signing up, continue to sign up to do this work is because it turns out that he and her two colleagues have been observing this for years and haven't said anything wrong.
Speaker 3:Now, partially, it's because it's only become more of a problem recently. It was kind of like a personality quirk. That's the person you got to go along with it. Who cares? But as the organization is evolving and growing and people need to take different roles, this behavior is now starting to become disruptive. And why that bothers me? Well, maybe it's a moral issue for me. So am I, my brother and my sister's keeper.
Speaker 3:I say yes, especially if you're a leader of somebody and she's or he's your employee, I think we owe them a duty of care. And if we don't tell them the truth, because it's a blind spot for this person, this person doesn't want to have a negative effect on other people. They're not behaving this way because they think I know this is quite disruptive of the conversations we're having. It's probably damaging to the deals we're trying to be doing. But who gives a heck, I'm going to do it anyway. So by definition she has, or he has, a blind spot around the issue, right. So we have to help people become unblind to what they're blind to, because they don't want to have that effect on other people. But more importantly, I'm sure this person is carrying this particular strange behavior into other aspects of their lives and if this company evolves and there's no longer a role for this person, she's gonna bring this into future roles and that's gonna compromise her there. So this thing could negatively affect the rest of her life.
Speaker 3:I was at BT where we trained within the British telecom. I lived in the UK for a few years. We trained 3,000 people in the space of like three months, all right, and then we left behind about a hundred master coaches whom we trained peers. So there was a peer to peer coaching thing and it was very successful. Bt talked about it to other companies in the FTSE 100, unbeknownst to us. That's why I've got a faculty in the UK because it generated all kinds of business, by the way, improved productivity by nearly 9%, earning the company $120 million in cost savings in the year two of the program According to their CFO not according to us.
Speaker 3:We were not involved in the measurement and what was sad about it that's an analog to the situation is you had so many people managers avoiding these conversations with their people, not telling the truth about how they're behaving and they're performing, and then some of these engineers who had been working for this company for 20, 30 years are now working in Tesco's or the equivalent of Walmart.
Speaker 3:Now, there's nothing wrong with working at Walmart, but if you've had a proud career of 30 years we are deeply technically expert something and you've worked hard at that and now you could have been given feedback and you were deprived of it and it could have made a huge difference in your career, and now you're making a third of your salary. Doing a job isn't fulfilling. That affects your entire family and affects the community that you live in. All because people are one avoiding telling the truth. And they're avoiding in part, again, not just because of courage, because they don't know what good looks like and they don't have the skill to produce it. So all they see is the downsides of actually having the conversation and, without being appreciated enough, of the downsides of not having it. Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Phenomenal information. Thank you for the stories of sharing, because those are the things that people get to see. It's never easy, but it's not impossible is what I tell people, and oftentimes we complicate it where it's not easy and we automatically put that in the impossible category. I say no, it's not easy, but it's not impossible. And so what is it that you can build up? The skill sets to work through being able to put candor in place, because it costs everybody a lot when we can't be truthful.
Speaker 3:Everyone. And I want to minimize the cost and risk of being truthful?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, and you said it well too. I mean, you talk about it, todd, like when I did it it didn't go well, and when I don't do it I don't feel well. Yeah, that's the reality For most of us. We walk away from those conversations. We feel like crap. The other person may have felt good, but you didn't help them grow, you didn't help them move forward, you didn't help them really achieve what they want to achieve, but their feelings were intact, and I think there's a way to be pretty candid and also still leave people intact.
Speaker 3:And that's where I should get back to your other conversation, or how we do it skillfully the three things I think that people should always think about when talking to each other and a really straightforward recipe that people can use to express themselves more authentically, more honestly. Yes, so again, if the idea of candor is it's a collaborative search for the truth in order to make things better, to do more good in the world the truth in order to make things better to do more good in the world then again you've got to express the truth of what you think and you have to explore the truth of what other people think. Three things you should think about when you're expressing your truth of what you're thinking and exploring the truth of what other people think. It's number one what is your and their point of view? So I think X. Number two, what is your data and reasoning? Okay, so what is the evidence you have that this actual problem or opportunity exists? That's data. What's your reasoning, what's the logic that leads you to see this bit of data and come to this point of view? And number three, talking about what's at stake what are the downsides if we don't address this issue? What are the upsides if we do so, it falls into three categories. Again, you want to be clear and help somebody else be clear about their point of view, no-transcript consequences for failure to address it and if there's some real upside, to address it. So what I'm saying to people is, when you're talking, make sure you express those three things, but also explore those three things.
Speaker 3:So let's say, ron, if you came back to me and says I don't think any of that's true, or you say I think that's a bunch of nonsense, I don't have to panic, everything is fine. I just code that as Ron's point of view. So what hasn't Ron told me? Well, he hasn't given me data and reasoning. He hasn't told me anything about what's at stake. So I can just chill out and just be calm, like a Brazilian jiu-jitsu player on the mat when they're on their back and they have somebody in the guard, everybody's flailing. You could just be calm and say okay, ron, why do you say that? Just insert that, and then Ron will explain it to you. And then you got to think and, ron, if what I'm saying is nonsense, what does that concern you? And you'll tell me what's at stake. And then it gives me time to breathe, to think, to calm down, and then I might actually there might be merit in what you're saying.
Speaker 3:You know I say well, ron, you know, actually on this piece of it I think you're right because of this, this and this, but there's other pieces. Let me tell you why. I think that there's still something to what I'm saying and so we could have a meeting of the minds. So, just keeping in mind those three things point of view, data and reasoning and stakes you got to give it and you got to get it in the conversation. Yeah, so those are those three things and I can also share a good, like cool three-step routine around this. You want me to go there now? Yeah, so like, let's say it's the stupidest, most simple thing in the world, but it's actually really hard to do.
Speaker 3:And I have people coming back to me from 20 years ago and I say well, what did you take away from this whole candor program? They so often come back to this one thing. I'm like that's it, this one thing, you know, but that's what they come back to. You know, I'm like that's it, this one thing, you know, but that's what they come back to. You know, it's like okay, but I kind of get it. So it's a three-step routine Articulate your point of view, share your data and reasoning and what's at stake.
Speaker 3:So you're and then ask the other person wait for it what they think about what you just said, not what they think about what we ought to do about the thing they're not actually agreeing with yet. So it's like I'm going to put my point of view on the table, I'm going to make my reasoning and data vulnerable and my view about what's at stake like why you should even care about this. Then I'm going to ask you what do you think about this? So, if I go back to the example of one of the people I'm coaching right now, he could say to this person sometimes you got to frame it up first before you do the routine. It's like hey, you know, there's something I should have told you for a long time that I think is having the kind of impact on our clients that I know you don't want to have. And first of all, I've got to apologize to you because I should have brought this thing up to you much sooner. The person's going to go okay, what is it?
Speaker 3:Well, one of the things I've noticed is kind of quite frequently you make these out of left field comments on one of these calls with clients and I got some examples I could share with you and sometimes, at 10% of the time or so, they're actually helpful because you're quite a creative thinker, but there are other times when it takes the conversation. Unless I pull it back, it's a totally different direction in ways that I think are rubbing our clients the wrong way, making it harder for us to make progress on stuff and also endangering some of the deals. Yes, okay, now notice, I gave point of view, I gave state, I didn't quite give data, I gave reasoning, I didn't give any examples yet, so the data is absent and I explained why she should care or he should care in this case. Then the next move to say, yeah, but what do you think about that, ron? So that's the three-step routine and it's not aggressive.
Speaker 2:And it's meant to be a dialogue versus a verdict. Yes, which is important yeah, which is important, Todd, as you're talking, is in those conversations, what I'm picking up on and noticing is is this a dialogue? Is it conversation versus accusation and nailing people down?
Speaker 3:That's great Conversation, not accusation. That's great, ron, and.
Speaker 2:I think that's important is what I'm hearing from you. I love the process because oftentimes, when you want to have candid conversations, you come across very accusatory. But what you said is I noticed this versus you're doing this, which is a total different thing. This is what I'm seeing. Tell me what's happening. Let them explain the gap for us. It's a total different thing. This is what I'm seeing. Tell me what's happening. Let them explain the gap for us. So, if you're listening and you're watching, be very careful of having accusations, because people will defend it even if they're wrong. Some people will defend their bad behavior or what's wrong because it's a part of their character. But when you say, hey, I noticed this, what's happening? What's happening in have a dialogue or conversation versus accusation, you said something I want to unpack before we wrap up Please, please.
Speaker 2:All this requires vulnerability. You used the word be vulnerable. That's a scary place to be for everybody. How do we get past this place of I'm going to be vulnerable, keeping in the back of mind that I've tried this before. It didn't go go well, but now I need to lean in a little bit more, to have more candor in conversation, to build a competency. It's going to require some vulnerability. How do you get past that? How do you manage that?
Speaker 3:I don't know, but let me think it out loud with you. You said something earlier that I thought was very insightful. It's not like turning on a switch. My initial reaction is I don't think any amount of self-talk is going to help you bootstrap yourself into it. I mean, vulnerability is kind of an element of wisdom, and we don't attain wisdom by flipping the switch or by reading some kind of slogan Although I do like my slogans, I really do. You see how excited I got. I was like conversation, not accusation. That's awesome. We should post something on that one.
Speaker 3:I guess what I care about, ron, is helping people make choices about whether they want to be and, I think, making your point of view and how you've come to that point of view, vulnerable. I do get what. That's scary. I've been in context where, even though I've overcome a lot of that, you know, like working with like a ceo and their team in a place where it feels like you've always got to be right, you feel a lot of pressure not to screw it up. So I feel scared about that right, even after working on this now for 30 years.
Speaker 3:But the thing that helps me do it and even though there could potentially be negative consequences. I'm not saying it's consequence-free, I'm not saying it's risk-free. I am not a Pyanna about this stuff. It comes with risks. It's just that it's so much worse if you don't. Yes, that's the thing. And we take people through this, like these exercises that we do. They have all these understandable reasons for not being vulnerable, candid, honest, authentic, whatever word, because we're all kind of talking about the same thing with these words. But then they really don't know what the downsides are of the avoidance behavior. And then, when we have them, take the directions, when they start realizing all the downsides for other people, the organization, the business and themselves, like they're aware of this much of the downsides, and the downsides are this much. They have a holy moment, you know, and then they're like, okay, I better learn how to do this.
Speaker 1:So I think my answer to you is.
Speaker 3:It's an appreciation of the downsides of the lack of it. Ron, go ahead please. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what I'm hearing from you, todd, is this going to cost you something if you do it or don't do it. What are you willing to pay? Because it's going to cost? It's going to cost you if you do it, and it may be uncomfortable, it may have some anxiety, but if you don't do it, what's the cost of not doing that, like the space shuttle? I'm sure there are people that went back and looked at it and said I wish I would have spoken up. I so I will tell you that it's going to cost us one way or the other, and if it costs me to get better, then I got to take some risk, and you never really get better without taking some risk. That's just a part, of course.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so limits are until you break them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. So I think that's it, A couple of things I want to do before we wrap up. For us here today I mean phenomenal conversation, but I know there's some things that you got to pay the piper hyper, no matter what.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's the question. But what I've seen now, 30 years that the cost of avoidance so far exceeds the cost of engagement. It's not even funny. Yes, and you also miss the opportunity to have a life where you can thrive a lot more. Yes, because when you throw yourself in the truth of things, it opens up something in the world for you and it brings untapped potential inside of people out, and you never know who you could be unless you lean into the truth. Yes, I love it. Sorry, I got a little excited about what you said no great conversation.
Speaker 2:So a couple of things. We got about two minutes to wrap up here. All right, we have a book coming out. Can you tell us what you're working on?
Speaker 3:Sure, okay, the book. I can tell you a little about the AI thing and thanks for reminding me, and then also some of the free resources I want to give to your folks. So the title is going to be yet, so it might be candor, but I haven't written the book yet because I didn't want to just do something that was for marketing and selling more services. I want to do something that was actually going to be really useful. So I want it to be inspiring, yes, but also be a handbook that people can come to and get very actionable advice about how to have the conversations that matter most to them in their lives, in and outside of work. As part of that that book, I'm also developing an artificial intelligence application, okay, and I'm going to include it in the book.
Speaker 3:So the book will be out next year and I'm not going to charge people with AI app.
Speaker 3:I will charge them later, but the whole point of the app is bring any conversation you need help with that, you need preparation for to her I'm not sure why I call her and and she will help you strategize for how to have the conversation, but she will actually practice it with you, so she will recreate the conversation you're going to have and the moment you fall into some kind of trap and there's some gaps in your communication, she's going to give you, in the moment, coaching and help you correct for it and restart the role play.
Speaker 3:So not only are you prepared for this conversation, but you're building competence over time every time you use her, and I'm going to be able to program her with the discoveries we had around the algorithms that underpin good conversations. So that's it for the book and the AI thing. Because less than the top 1% of people get access to good leadership development in the world. Not everybody gets to go to Harvard like you, ron, or Georgetown you know what I mean and there are lots of people out there. We need hundreds of millions of people exercising leadership in their lives, in and outside of work every day. Candor is critical to it. So this is my way of democratizing leadership I want to make it super affordable and they can get world-class development and advice to have these critical conversations.
Speaker 2:That's my mission around this development and advice, to have these critical conversations. That's my mission around this, thank you, thank you. So the website at ToddHosmanKander at gmailcom. If you send that respond to you, you've agreed that you'll send them some content for them to be able to continue to grow.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just free content. No marketing guys. I just want to give and share with you guys stuff that could potentially be valuable for you. I'm gonna start also posting stuff on LinkedIn that will start sharing excerpts of the book and videos of me in my writing room while I'm doing this stuff, so that people don't have to wait and hopefully people get the benefit of these ideas before the book ever comes out. And if they just put your name in the subject line, Ron Harvey, and then it's Todd Holzman, so H-O-L-Z-M-A-N. Candor at gmailcom, my team will make sure you guys get some stuff.
Speaker 2:Todd, it's been great man, Appreciate you for being here and for all you that stayed with us and listened to our conversation, unpacked with Ron Harvey and Todd Holzman phenomenal conversation. I'm sure we will connect again and bring you back on the show. Continue to follow us. We release every single Monday a different podcast, Again Ron Harvey, with Global Core Strategies Consulting, a leadership firm based out of Columbia, South Carolina. Thank you all for joining us and until next time, the next show that we will bring out new guests coming on every single week to talk about leadership, unpacking and talking real stories and real stuff. So thank you all for joining us. We look forward to having you. Until next time, Todd and I are signing off for this particular segment.
Speaker 1:Well, we hope you enjoyed this edition of Unpacked Podcast with leadership consultant Ron Harvey. Remember to join us every Monday as Ron unpacks sound advice, providing real answers for real leadership challenges. Until next time, remember to add value and make a difference where you are, for the people you serve, because people always matter.
