Unpacked with Ron Harvey
People Always Matter. Join Ron as he unpacks leadership with his guests.
Unpacked with Ron Harvey
Building Bridges Across Generational Lines
Explore the transformative role of questioning in effective leadership as Ron Harvey engages Sean Grace in a thought-provoking conversation about leadership development, self-care, and rebuilding trust. The episode weaves together essential insights for leaders aiming to adapt to the complexities of a multi-generational workforce and redefine leadership in the modern era.
• Emphasizes the need for leadership development from a young age
• Discusses the evolution of leadership styles over generations
• Highlights the importance of creativity and innovation in leadership
• Recognizes the challenges of managing a diverse workforce
• Stresses the necessity of self-care for leaders
• Explains the transition to new roles and confronting self-doubt
• Offers strategies for rebuilding trust with teams
• Introduces Sean's book, "The Art of the Question," focusing on leadership through inquiry
Remember to check out Sean's book and reach out for more enriching discussions on leadership!
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Just Make A Difference: Leading Under Pressure by Ron Harvey
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Disclaimer:
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:Well, good morning. This is Ron Harvey, vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Global Core Strategies and Consulting. I'm coming to you again with another episode of Unpack with Ron Harvey. Our company is all about leadership helping leaders be better connected to the people that help them be successful Quite honestly, just having healthy relationships between leaders in their organization and the people that are getting things done. But we pause every single week and we release another episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, where we invite guests from around the world to really talk about leadership and growth and experiences and things that no questions in advance for them. We have real conversations.
Speaker 2:So we don't know where we're going to go and what we're going to talk about, except for one thing we're going to talk leadership somewhere in this podcast and we're going to share some best practices with you and we're going to be really transparent. So we let you behind the curtain. So I'm excited to have a new guest on with us, sean, who runs his own organization, grace Media Works. I will pause, as I always do, and let our guests introduce themselves, because I find it robbery introduce themselves, because I find that robbery who knows them better than them. So I'm going to pause. Let Sean share who he is and what he does, and then we'll dive into the question. So, sean, thank you, and the microphone is yours.
Speaker 3:All right. Well, thank you, ron, for having me on your program. I really appreciate it, Excited to be here.
Speaker 3:As you so eloquently already stated, I'm Sean Grace and I'm the founder of actually a couple of consultancies. One is Grace Media Works and the other one, more recently, is called Peak Luma. Peak Luma is specifically about leadership development and it's about training. So, whereas Grace Media Works includes also multimedia production work and other things on the production side. So between the two of them, our mission is to try to elevate leadership across all organizations, whoever wants to tap into the things that we have to say and the learnings that we produce, especially through our workshops. And I'm here also to talk about a brand new book that I have out called the Art of the Question a guide for seekers, dreamers, problem solvers and leaders. So it's recently out and it focuses on how questions play such a central role in leadership, in problem solving, in creative thinking, in interpersonal communication, in conflict resolution and pretty much all other aspects of communication and leading others. So I'm anxious to talk about the book and any other leadership topics that you think would make sense for your listenership and viewership.
Speaker 2:Yes, sean, thank you so much. As I looked at you, you put the book up and went to look at that, sean, thank you so much. As I looked at you, you put the book up and went to look at that. You have a new book out. How important now with AI, this prompt engineering, which is a career now, of how valuable and important it is to be really really good at your questions. I mean because AI is driven by questions.
Speaker 2:So thank you and we'll dive into the book. Thank you for sharing and for those of you that are watching our guests, come on and share things with you. They show you books. So I tell you to support you know, and we'll talk about how to find the book and where you get it at and support you know we're entrepreneurs, we are business owners, but we're also community advocates and we care about the work that we do. So we always want to offer our services to you, not to sell out to us. Have a conversation with either one of us at any time so you can be successful in what you're trying to do and we can be successful in what we're trying to do.
Speaker 2:So, sean, as we dive into the work you've been in the space. I mean, like I said, you're doing two different organizations. You know, one multimedia but the other around leadership. When you think of where we are today as a society across the board, how important is it for us now to really develop great leaders from ground level up, whether you're talking in middle school or you're talking in high school or you're talking in collegiate level. How important is it for us to pay closer attention? How do we develop effective leaders, regardless of what industry they go in?
Speaker 3:Good question. Well, I address some of this in the book regarding the change in demands on the leadership level over generations, where the more sort of industrial style of leadership was command and control, where your management style was based on your knowledge level and your direct experience and your ability to solve problems. And that all is still true. However, what's changed over the recent years is as we've moved away from the more industrial style of economy and manufacturing that really built much of this country. We've moved into a more creative style of leadership, management and overall production. So your average company is not necessarily looking for leaders who have stacks of knowledge to hand out, like maybe 20 or 30 years ago may have been the value proposition of a good manager and a good leader, whereas now organizations need leaders as well as teams who are able to think more creatively about how to solve problems and how to innovate.
Speaker 3:So innovation is a primary driver now for leadership, whereas in the past, innovation was secondary to controlling and commanding large teams of people who were doing a lot of repetitive work.
Speaker 3:So, as the service economy kicked in 20 or 25 years ago and certainly the tech industry has driven much of that you have a new generation of leaders who are desperate for the skills to be able to tease out creative problem solving from their team.
Speaker 3:And in all my experience as a leadership development trainer as well as a leader myself, I've learned that those leaders who succeed best these days are the ones who are able to ask better questions of the people who report to them and the teams that they manage. So, whereas in the past, your team may approach you as a manager and present a problem and you may dole out some possible solutions to that problem or maybe a definitive solution to that problem for their teams to be more self-reflective and to be better critical thinkers and to be able to think creatively and collaboratively in order to think more innovatively and outside the box. So that's where I think the big distinction is, in the leadership shift over the past certainly the past 10 years, but if not the past 15 or 20, where there's been an evolution in change in the type of skill set that your typical manager and leader needs in order to be successful, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yes, John, when you think about leaders today in your experience, it can be pretty. I mean, you've got five generations in the workforce. You want to work from home or high work, or you're in the office one day or two days out of the week. Trust is at an all-time low for people trusting organizations or leaders. How do you get away from the command and control when your career is on the line and you're the person that I'm going to come talk to about your job? If it doesn't get done, how do leaders make that transition?
Speaker 3:Because you're still held accountable but leadership is changing right in front of us. It almost feels as though the employees run the organization. I think it's a little more of a bottom-up kind of ecosystem versus a top-down. So, although the leader and the manager is still ultimately responsible for the results, it's the coordination and effectiveness of the team who will essentially drive those results, and the leader doesn't need to necessarily be in the position where they are solving those problems directly, but they are directing teams to be more creative in how they do that. Now, if, in the end, they're not getting the results they want, well, it's still on the leader to be able to adjust and change their methodologies in order to produce a more effective team. So there is more, I think, of an organic feedback loop that happens now between the frontline teams and senior management. So you have, I think, much more of a fluid communication loop that's needed now, where there isn't necessarily that strong hierarchy where the leader stands alone, has to present results and says well, it's all me and it's on me, and to a certain degree it is because the buck stops with the leader of the team.
Speaker 3:However, there is less of a mystery, I believe, between at least ideally, between what's happening with the frontline teams and senior management.
Speaker 3:So I think that there's more of a cooperative communication cycle happening At least that's what I see in the more effective organizations and the hierarchy is less linear than it used to be less vertical and less linear, so you have more of these horizontal structures being created. There's more shared responsibility. There's more of an open communication line. Again, ideally, there are organizations that continue to struggle with that change, but those who have been able to figure that out have a more cohesive communication organization between leadership, frontline teams and that feedback loop. So, although, at the end of the day, it's still the leader's responsibility to drive results, there is, I think, more data, more information and more communication between the systems and the people in order to make better decisions going forward. So you may still be holding the bag in the end if your results aren't what they're supposed to be, but you have many more options. I believe in being able to tease out how to correct that, how to fix that and how to improve the process in order to improve results.
Speaker 2:What advice would you give our listeners today that find themselves as a younger leader with a more mature workforce and not have an imposter syndrome as they're leading that organization?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's another good question there, with the multi-generational divide between workforces right? So you do have young managers and you more conscious and conscientious of communication styles as an example, cultural and subcultural differences within generational breaks right? So you have baby boomers who have skill sets that have strengths and have weaknesses, all the way up to Gen Z, where you also have strengths and have weaknesses. All the way up to Gen Z, where you also have strengths and weaknesses. So you have priority changes.
Speaker 3:So if you're leading a team with several baby boomers as well as several young Gen Zers, your communication style needs to be sensitive to the language they use, the tropes they may use, as well as the cultural memes and norms that they might be more used to.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I think it's necessary for today's leaders to be much more flexible and much more aware and sensitive to how best to bring out the best in all of these skill sets, because there are strengths that the boomer generation will bring to a team that a Gen Z just doesn't have and, vice versa, that Gen Z will bring a perspective that the Gen Z doesn't have.
Speaker 3:So, the leader, it's incumbent upon good leaders to be able to pull out the best from each figure out where the common grounds are when it comes to communicating with all of them at the same time, and constantly figuring out ways to figure out where the common ground is between the generations and figuring out where the strengths are in order to really leverage those strengths, whether it's loyalty in one generation versus privacy in another generation, whether it's open communication or whether it's more closed communication. So I think the more aware you are of the differences generationally, you're going to be in a much better position to manage, lead, empower and inspire your teams, and I think you'd be lucky if you had a wide variety of generational differences across your team, because it brings a huge variety of skill sets, perspectives and wisdom that you may not have with a less diverse generational team.
Speaker 2:I'm glad that you hit on all the points. As for effective leader and so I know you have the book and you think about the question I want to unpack it for a second self-care as a leader. You find that leaders tend to all in run the count on both ends and sometimes in the middle. It's just we work really extremely hard because we are left holding the bag and there are some expectations, and usually you'll take very good care of everyone else except you. What advice would you share with our listening audience? How important it is for you as a leader, to intentionally practice self-care?
Speaker 3:Chapter three in my book is called Know Thyself, and it's focused on ways in which to elevate your self-awareness and all of what we call metacognitive skills, and these are the skills regarding knowing how best we learn, knowing how best we gain knowledge, knowing how best we react emotionally to scenarios. So this metacognitive skill set, which is essentially a type of self-awareness, the more you're in touch with your own self. We all operate differently and uniquely, thank goodness, in the world, and we all have our strengths and our weaknesses and those things that we want to boost and those things that we want to maybe try to keep in more control. So the more you are aware of that as a leader, the more sensitive you're going to be to your own needs, as well as your own shortcomings and those things that might trigger you and maybe put you in a less productive state emotionally or even thought wise. So I spend the chapter talking about methods.
Speaker 3:A lot of it is through self-questioning on how to elevate your sense of yourself in order to not just know yourself, but to also take care of yourself more intentionally, so you're in a better position to inspire and lead others. There's no better example of leadership than to walk the talk and to be the person that you are hoping to instill with the team that you lead. So if they look to you and they see a discombobulated and emotionally unraveling person who has difficult time managing their own thought processes and their own emotional states, the less they're going to be likely to trust and turn to you and look to you as an example of leadership. However, the better leaders who are much more self-aware, take care of themselves, know their limits and are humble enough to recognize the areas where they may need improvement, and in that process, they're constantly thinking about how to be better, how to be more stable, how to be more consistent, and I think that's all part of that taking care of oneself and being in a position to properly inspire and lead others.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, there are a couple of questions that I want to unpack. I mean really, really great information. What's coming up as I listen to you speak? You use the word how to be better. Let's say you and I. You know we're in leadership and we're the best of the best. Everybody knows our name. We're very dependable, we're very competent and consciously competent. We know we're good and then we get promoted to this role. We know about 30% of it, but we'll fake it till we make it or break it. How do leaders that go from this high level of being consciously competent to all of a sudden get promoted to something that they're not the best at it to embrace? Now they're consciously incompetent in what's expected of them and they want to revert back to doing what they used to. How do you help that leader make that transition from coming to this really, really good to mediocre, average and almost not really good at it, and I need to learn it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, the way I look at that, I see personal growth very much dependent on trying to stay out of your comfort zones. And you know, one can certainly get very familiar with a set of processes, an ecosystem, a set of data, whatever it is that you're grow are the ones that then push themselves out of that and challenge themselves in a new opportunity. That puts them kind of far down the ladder from sort of the four levels of how we attain knowledge. Right, so you start with being unconsciously incompetent. You don't know what it is you don't know. You then move into the consciously incompetent, where you start to realize the things you don't know. Then you become more competent and now you're consciously competent so you're able to do things, but you're constantly thinking about doing them, so they're not a second nature quite yet, until you elevate yourself to the unconsciously competent level where the competence is such a part of you that it's no longer something that you need to think a lot about. But that ascension in knowledge, understanding and competence takes time, depending on where you are.
Speaker 3:I'm a musician. I spend a lot of times learning new instruments, and every time I pick up a new instrument that's unfamiliar to me, it is a humbling experience, because I'm an expert with some instruments and I force myself to try something that will make me look foolish. But that process forces me to reset and to take a step back and gain new perspective on how to learn this new competent thing. And as I move through that, I gain all kinds of additional wisdom, additional competence, outside of even the specific task I'm given. However, if I just stayed with the one instrument that I'm quite good at and just continue to refine that and that's perfectly fine, right, but that's not me. I always want to step out and say, hey, let me challenge myself, because while I challenge myself, I'm going to hopefully increase my ability to understand the world better. Maybe understanding and learning this one thing will give me a unique perspective back on the other thing that I think I'm pretty good at.
Speaker 3:And in every one of those cases, I've learned much more in the process than just kind of sitting back and saying, no, I'm just going to stick with what I know and stay at the position that I am because I'm quite competent. I get compensated for it. X, y, z. But if you are ambitious and if you want to continually grow and if you feel you have a growth mindset. Well, that kind of requires stepping out and getting uncomfortable and getting to a position where you may look quite incompetent, but if you have the inner strength and the inner self-awareness and the mindfulness, you're able to rise above that and see that. Well, this is great, because this is a process for me to now sort of tackle this new thing, learn how to get it done and gain all kinds of additional skills along the way. So it takes courage and some bravery.
Speaker 2:Yes, if you're listening, I mean, sean walked through all of it. You know, really, really great and phenomenal. So, as you're going through those phases, seeking it out, I love that you said seek it out, go forward, continue to learn. Sean, we're at an all-time low with trust for a variety of reasons across our society. How do I, as a leader, rebuild trust if I broke it with my team? You broke it.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, trust is a very hard thing to gain and it's a very easy thing to lose, and it's very difficult to regain it once you've lost it. However, it certainly doesn't mean you can't regain it. You can. It requires a certain level. Going back to the concept of self-awareness and humility, there's this idea that then listen, if your ego is so big that you're not going to be able to handle that, that's something you need to look at to say, okay, where is the fear here? In learning this new thing or doing this new thing, you have to prove that you are in a position that you can rebuild. You have to be, you know, humble enough to be able to say, first of all, admit that, hey, I screwed up here. Hey, I made a decision that broke some trust. I see how that happened. I acknowledge that, and this is something I'm going to learn from, and I'm hoping that you're able to continue giving me feedback as I move forward, because, you know, leadership is a two-way street.
Speaker 3:You need followers to agree to follow a leader right. A leader isn't just a leader because they've got a title and they've made the decision that they're leading. A leader is defined by the team that they're leading. So if you have followers who have lost trust in your leadership, you're no longer than their leader, at least not effectively, right? So the two-way street concept is that the relationship that you have with your team, it needs to be constantly reinforced from a standpoint of trust, because it's they who will define and determine your leadership and it comes from you, obviously, because it's a reflection that's constantly happening. So that's why it's important, as a leader, not to think singularly as a leader, of being a director, a leader as purely a manager. There has to be an organic back and forth going on. There has to be an agreement between the teams who are essentially following. They have to agree that, yes, this leadership followership dynamic works well.
Speaker 3:So if you can establish that, which requires a tremendous amount of trust also on your teams, right, so you need to give them trust. You need to give them the ability to speak their mind, speak their piece, have a certain level of safety around that. So someone speaking out about a decision that you made isn't condemned or they aren't somehow punished indirectly or directly. So I think that relationship, if you lost that, then the first thing is to reestablish that. But, as I say, building trust is really hard, losing it is really easy, but building it back, I think, requires those realizations that it is a two-way street, that there has to be agreement on both sides and there has to be a level of giving right.
Speaker 3:So you have to be able to give to your people to a large degree in order for them to feel that they can once again establish that trust. So it takes time and you want to ask your team how can I help rebuild this trust with you? What can I do to prove that we're all together in this and I'm not in one direction and you guys are in another direction? So the questioning process is very self-reflective and very important in that process of rebuilding trust.
Speaker 2:Phenomenal. I mean because I think people think that you know when it happens they make excuses really quick, versus I love to say, hey, you just got to own it, you got to come clean, you got to swallow your pride or your ego or whatever that thing is that's getting in the way of you, and people will be forgiven if you behave in a different way and allow them to know that you own it. And they see it and they're human too. So, thank you, you walked through it really, really well for the audience to listen to it. If you find yourself in that situation, it's difficult, but it's not impossible to rebuild trust and you got to put the work in. So, sean, you have a book out. Do you want to share anything about the book? And then, where do we find it, the book?
Speaker 3:is the Art of the Question, a guide for seekers, dreamers, problem solvers and leaders, and the slug at the top is Better Decisions, deeper Connections and Breakthrough Ideas. It's 300 pages and it's 13 chapters actually 14 chapters and it's broken up into three sections. The first is about really ourselves and how we understand knowledge, how we acquire knowledge, how we know about ourselves. So it's more of sort of a construct of what is real, what isn't real, how do we go about using questions just to understand basic things? The second part is about interpersonal relationships. Starts with the most vital skill, which is listening. So we go through listening, we go through conflict resolution, we go through techniques in what we call reflective inquiry, which is whether you're a leader managing a team, or whether you're a partner and you're in a discussion with a loved one, and there's ways in which to be a more effective listener and a better question asker when it comes to interpersonal communication.
Speaker 3:The third and final section of the book is about innovation and creative thinking.
Speaker 3:So I take case studies and break apart different ideas on how to use questions to create more collaboration between teams, how to use questions to think more innovatively, how to use questions in brainstorming and ideation, design thinking and things like that. So the book overall uses questions as the primary catalyst for all of these types of ideas and concepts. But it all starts with knowing thyself, then bringing that over to how we communicate with other humans. As well as a little bit of part one is also critical thinking and how we solve problems not necessarily communicate and then the third would be a little bit of the problem solving, but on the creative ideation front. So overall it covers all those bases with lots and lots of methods and ideas and systems and techniques on how to use questions as a leader, as a creative problem solver and as a caring, productive human being in a relationship. So it covers a lot of ground. It's available on Amazon currently, maybe available in more sources soon, but right now it's available on amazoncom under my name, sean Grace. The art of the question.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, thank you for sharing where you can find the book and walking through the different parts and components of the book, which I think is huge. As we started off with the podcast, questions are becoming more relevant for us to get things done. What's the best way if someone's interested and want to bring you on a podcast or wants to talk more about the services that you offer? What's the best way for people to get in touch with you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, the best way for people to get in touch with you yeah, the best way to reach me is through my website, peak Luma P-E-A-K-L-U-M-A. Peak Luma is rather a new brand for us here and it focuses specifically on leadership development and consulting, executive leadership, et cetera, and the idea is it's about elevation and it's about light and enlightenment. So there's your peak and there's your luma. So it's essentially sort of how we do what we do in order to bring out the best in you, to elevate your leadership skills to your highest peaks while at the same time having you shine brighter and also enlighten you and the people you work with on how to be more productive and effective in all the things that you do. So that's peaklumacom, and you could reach me through the contact page there on the site.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you. Thank you for everyone that's listening. Reach out, the book is available for you. Go to the site and you'll be able to reach out to Sean if you have more questions about something he may have said or what we discussed, or an opportunity for you to invite him in if your team is looking for an opportunity to grow or get better at whatever that is that you need to get better at. Thank you for being a guest and for all of our guests, thank you for hanging with us as we walk through some practical things.
Speaker 2:No-transcript. What I will tell you is keep growing, keep being curious, never, ever, stop learning. The world is changing fast, right around you, so don't get stuck and frustrated. Just retool, reskill, ask a lot of questions and get better. The world is expecting us to get better as leaders. The question I always ask people is are you good enough to be the leader of the people that you're leading? If not, get better so that way they're well taken care of. So until next time, sean and I will sign off and tell you thank you for joining us and hopefully you tell a friend or you share the link and you continue to follow us on. Unpacked with Ron Harvey.
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.
