330 Leadership Shock: Using Authenticity to Navigate the Hidden Dangers of Career Success with Pete Steinberg | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

[00:00:00] MahanTavakoli: Pete Steinberg, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me. 

[00:00:05] Pete Steinberg: I'm very excited to be here. 

[00:00:07] MahanTavakoli: Thank you. Looking forward to it, Pete. Most especially can't wait to hear some of your thoughts on leadership shock.

[00:00:15] Love that title. Using authenticity to navigate the hidden dangers of career success. Before we get to that, though, we'd love to know a little bit more about you, Pete. Whereabouts did you grow up and how did your upbringing impact the kind of person you've become?

[00:00:30] You can probably tell, Mahan, that I didn't grow up in America. I came over in 1994. So I grew up in England, just outside Cambridge, a small little village called Duxford that some people might know because it has an air museum that's there.

[00:00:44] Pete Steinberg: My dad was a history professor. Which is, I think, where I got a lot of my fascination for learning. And my mum actually was a professional actress and a bit of a what they would say now is a community activist, but started not for profits and those sorts of things. That's where I get my caring.

[00:01:02] So that caring about things and then caring about learning are the two things that I think are really important. 

[00:01:09] MahanTavakoli: That is awesome. I imagine growing up , you must have been more familiar with a sport that is bigger in some parts of the world than here in the U S and that's rugby.

[00:01:21] You spent. Almost 20 years coaching rugby at Penn State. How did your love for the sport come about and how did you end up coaching?

[00:01:31] Pete Steinberg: Oh, really interesting. I did not come from a rugby family I Learned to play rugby in spite of my parents. My parents wanted me to do music and drama and those sorts of things. I think I was 29 when my mum saw me play my first rugby game. Oh, wow. Yeah, but I also wasn't really very good, and I came to the States to both go to grad school, but also to play rugby.

[00:01:53] My dad was from New York city and I thought I'm a pretty mediocre rugby player, but the U S isn't a very good national team. Maybe I can go to America, get my PhD and play for the U S and I went to Penn state and found out that graduate students can't play because if graduate students could play.

[00:02:12] The college game would be filled with foreigners and the college game is where most Americans really developed their rugby skills. So I found myself at the age of 23 in state college, which is you probably know my hands in the middle of nowhere. There's no other rugby, there's nothing else around me.

[00:02:26] And so ended up curtailing my playing career and became a coach at the age of 23. And Best thing that ever happened to me. Much better coach than I was a player, became a good coach, was never a good rugby player and it's funny because I became the national team coach, and I talked to friends that I went to high school with back in England, and they were like, did you play rugby?

[00:02:46] And that's because between the ages of 16 and 18, Rugby was moved. When you turn 16, rugby doesn't play on Sundays anymore. You play on Saturday. Saturdays is when my parents ran a music and drama workshop. And then you're not playing rugby. So all of my high school friends didn't even know I played rugby.

[00:03:02] And then all of a sudden I become the national team coach. Yeah, so I'm passionate about the sport, but I'm mostly passionate about women's rugby and the impact that women's rugby can have on women as they become leaders and they become their best selves. 

[00:03:15] MahanTavakoli:  I can't wait to hear some more about that as well.

[00:03:18] Pete. Now, I love the fact that you said you didn't play that much competitive, rugby, but you became a great coach. My girls play volleyball and Couple of the best coaches they've had never played volleyball, and I find that challenging organizations as well. A lot of times they look for a person who has done a job well and trying to get them to be a manager and a coach.

[00:03:45] So for you, Becoming a coach. You said it was an enriching experience and obviously you were a very successful coach. What were the capabilities you had to have as a coach that were drastically different than a player of the game of rugby? 

[00:04:02] As a mediocre rugby player, I wasn't big and I wasn't particularly strong and I wasn't particularly fast, so I had to be smart.

[00:04:10] Pete Steinberg: So I actually had to understand the game. So I think that's something that prepared me was I always had to think about the game. I had to be the smartest player to make the teams that I made. I actually think this is one of the unusual things of rugby. I don't often like sports analogies, my home with business, but when I coached at the women's world cup in 2017 In Ireland, I sat in the stands like when you coach rugby, you have to empower your players to do everything.

[00:04:36] They have to make strategic decisions. They have to make tactical decisions. They have to manage the culture of the team. They have to lead people. They have to recover from mistakes. 

[00:04:43] MahanTavakoli: You said something that just shocked me when you say leadership shock

[00:04:47]  I don't know much about rugby. You were not on the sidelines. 

[00:04:53] Pete Steinberg: It's a law. Yeah. You can't be on the sidelines. You have to be up in the stands and so we are micd up with sort of our physios.

[00:05:01] And so they'll run out and someone will get injured and we'll be like, on your way out, can you please tell the fly half to kick more or to look at this? Rugby is designed to be a player centered sport. So as a coach,  it cannot be about you.

[00:05:13] And I think one of my biggest attributes was, I never thought I was important. It was always the players journey. And I was just helping them along the journey. I actually recently took a bunch of KPMG senior partners to the Olympic training site to train with the women's sevens team, the Olympic team.

[00:05:32] I coached in the Rio Olympics and the coach there now is someone that I coached. I still know some of the players. So I took them there to say, look, let's really go and spend some time with the Olympic team. And it's all about teamwork and how you be about a team member. I've worked with KPMG for about eight years.

[00:05:46] And there are people that I've known for eight years and they turn up and they're like, hold on, you coached at the Olympics? I had no idea about that. And that's because I don't really talk about it. It's not about me. So I think the biggest attribute I had was that it wasn't about me. And so that allowed me to prepare the players in a way that was about them.

[00:06:07] And then I think that's also what really made me successful. I created teams that really understood how to lead for their goals and for their outcomes and to really work together. You said something, which I think is absolutely impactful for leadership shock, and in leadership shock when people transition, often they get selected for roles because of what they did in their previous role. Not what they need to do in their future role. And so I think thinking about attributes. And actually, what are the attributes that are required in the future role and how we select for those is a way that organizations need to adjust in how they select leaders.

[00:06:47] And I think that leads to don't select a coach because they're a great player. Select a coach because they have the attributes to be a great coach. 

[00:06:54] MahanTavakoli: I couldn't agree with you more, Pete. Now I can visualize the audience, whether they are walking their dogs or driving their car, nodding and agreeing exactly with the point you made, because.

[00:07:09] Every time I talk to a CEO or an executive, they totally agree that you don't take the best performer and promote them to manager. It never works that way. You look at the attributes that are required, but truth be told, if I look at vast majority of organizations I've dealt with. They still practice that, 

[00:07:27] Pete Steinberg: this is really interesting.

[00:07:28] So this is a measurement issue. It's a metric issue, and it actually exists in sport. So one of the reasons why I don't sport as an analogy is we'd look at winners and say, Oh, that's cool. They're winners. They must be a great team. Actually there's lots of reasons why teams win. One is they can be a great team.

[00:07:45] They could have a transformational player. The other team could have had a bad day. But the metric we have is winning and losing. What we don't have is we don't have very good process metrics. And so what's really hard for leaders, in particular, human resources that often manage that succession planning is what are the metrics that aren't growth or aren't profitability or aren't sales?

[00:08:09] What are the metrics that we have that we can make the selection on? And the reality is that we don't really have any. So I think it's a measurement issue. Then also, if you said it's a risk issue, people want to mitigate their risk. That was the best sales guy, make him the head of sales.

[00:08:26] That was the best. Functional or business unit president. Make her the CEO. Then it allows the leaders to be like hold on that wasn't my fault. They were the best salesperson. That was the best business unit leader. Wasn't my fault versus I make a judgment based on what we do.

[00:08:43] And actually, we do this with clients. People select on experience skills and outcomes and we say none of those select on attributes for the future of the role. 

[00:08:52] So I think there's a metric issue that we have that makes it hard for people to select for the future role. 

[00:08:59] MahanTavakoli: I love the points that you made. First of all, any Duke also talks about resulting where. A lot of times we look at the result and then determine whether it was a right decision based on the result, as opposed to the likelihood of it working out or not.

[00:09:18] And she uses examples for Superbowl and other instances where you can make the right play, but that right play can result in the team losing and then people therefore question the play because of the result. 

[00:09:30] Pete Steinberg: In sevens rugby, which is in the Olympics, which is the same rules of the game, but only seven people, the bounce of the ball has a huge impact.

[00:09:40] So you can do everything right. But because there's so much space, you drop the ball, the other team picks it up, they score. It can be the change the game. We undervalue in sport, but also in business. The impact of luck we like to feel like we have control, but actually we don't have control. I have a client right now.

[00:09:59] New CEO, one of his business units is tank. He could be amazing, but he's not going to move. There isn't going to be growth. , but he gets judged. He gets judged on the stock price.

[00:10:11] That stock price is judged on the results versus it being like, hold on for the long term success of this company. Does this leader build the right cultures? Do they select the right leaders? Do they lead in a way that really maximizes their potential? All of those things is what you want to invest in.

[00:10:26] But because the market's down, they're down like they might get fired. Luck is so much in our lives. We completely undervalue it. 

[00:10:35] MahanTavakoli:  Because we want to feel like we have a sense of control and therefore we want to hold others accountable with a greater sense of control.

[00:10:42] That we place on the, 

[00:10:45] Pete Steinberg: , that's right. I think accountability is key. And I also think it takes a strong owner like set of shareholders to say, we believe we are making a choice. We believe in something that we can't see. We believe in the intangibles. We believe in things that aren't concrete.

[00:11:02] That's a very strong choice. It's a lot easier to believe with the numbers, and I think that's hard. 

[00:11:08] MahanTavakoli: You also Pete mentioned attributes. Rich Deviney has an outstanding book titled attributes and makes the same point. He was a Navy SEAL commander for 20, Plus years and had studied high functioning Navy SEALs teams.

[00:11:23] And part of what he also mentions is the need to focus more on attributes. Are there specific attributes that you hone in on when it comes to leadership? How do you determine what are the right attributes for the right roles? 

[00:11:40] Pete Steinberg: So I think it's very contextual. The work that we do with clients is we say, what's the role?

[00:11:46] What do you want them to do? Therefore, what are the attributes that are required? So recently we helped an organization internally select a C suite. So it's like, all right, so what do you want this role to do? They wanted it to drive change, right? They wanted it to, do some things differently.

[00:12:01] Okay. So an innovative thinker, someone who is a good communicator and storyteller, like those are all things that are actually really hard to change. You could, Find someone that has done that work before but that benefit goes away very quickly two months into the job three months into the job.

[00:12:18] They have the experience that you were selecting for. You can select for skills. But skills can be developed, so you can invest in someone to do that. But , if you have someone who has the experience and if you have someone who has the skills, but they're not an innovative thinker, and the role requires that as an attribute to get to the outcomes that the CEO or the board wants, they're not going to be successful.

[00:12:39] It doesn't matter how much experience they have to have the right mindset and the right attributes. 

[00:12:43] MahanTavakoli: What would be the difference between attributes and a skill set or experience that the person has shown through their behavior in the past that they've done similar things, which is part of what behavioral interviewing is all about?

[00:12:56] Pete Steinberg: So I'm with you. The way that you will uncover attributes is through things like behavioral interviews or you can do situational case studies so there's ways of being able to identify them through their past the differences. It's Oh, we need a CFO.

[00:13:12] This person's been a CFO before for a large organization, we're looking for a CFO. The only people that we're going to look for people that have been CFOs before and I'm like, okay, you're going to restrict, especially if you're looking internally to your business units that have been CFOs.

[00:13:26] It feels like a very different job to being a CFO of a business unit to be a CFO of the corporation. So to me, it's the role experience, not necessarily the situation. So the situation of someone who has led transformation before. Let's investigate why they were successful.

[00:13:44] And use that to uncover the attributes, but just because someone's been in the role before isn't useful. And by the way, most of the time when we come and work with clients, we have to completely rewrite whatever they had for their job description. 'cause their job description is filled with experience and skills , and it's often back quick looking, not future looking.

[00:14:03] It's not actually what you want the job to be. It's what the job is now, so I think there's a lot of work that leaders have to do and be really intentional about making those choices. We've helped just recently an organization select a chief people officer. And the person they end up selecting had never been a chief people officer before wasn't even an HR, which I think you're going to see more of, by the way, I think you're going to see more of those enterprise wide leaders in those roles, and by the way, the board wanted a CHR, they wanted someone that had done it before. So it took the CEO going to the board and saying, that's not what we need. People can run the HR process. We need a business leader to head up our people. not an HR person to head up our people.

[00:14:49] So that's a great example of not using experience as the key indicator for a selection. 

[00:14:54] MahanTavakoli: That is such an important point, Pete. The fact that we end up with mediocre people in roles when we look primarily at that experience. And a lot of organizations, as you said, limit the pool of people they're looking at and end up with someone mediocre, as opposed to someone who has the attributes, both for the present role and the future of the world.

[00:15:21] Completely. Absolutely. 

[00:15:24] Pete Steinberg: Very different thinking again, talking to a client yesterday about this. They're bringing someone to head up their operations and very progressive CEO. This person needs to be someone that can replace me in the next 5 years. That has to be a requirement, 

[00:15:38] so I think that is a very. Wide aperture view of the role, thinking about it as an enterprise wide leader, not thinking about it as a functional leader. And I think that's also one of the challenges that we have is that we over index and functional expertise. When actually the functional expertise lives in the function, we need leadership, enterprise wide leadership, particularly in the CD suite. 

[00:16:02] MahanTavakoli: Your definition and clarity with respect to attributes actually makes that practical. Because as I said early on, Most CEOs, most executives listen to this and agree. But when I see the practices are different. They gravitate back toward what's comfortable, which is that experience 

[00:16:21] Pete Steinberg: so when we've done this and we've had a client that has really bought into the process, we create scorecards. Around the different attributes around the mindsets because we have multiple different assessments that we use and that creates comfort for the leaders because they have something that they see as tangible.

[00:16:39] Now, the input is what people thought in the interview, so it's intangible inputs, soft inputs, but actually giving them a score gives them confidence that they're making the right choice. So that's why I go all the way back to it's a metric and what I will say is and it's something that I've brought from coaching from sport into business.

[00:16:58] Is the in sport, we measure everything for the players, measure how far they run, how fast they run, how many hits they have in a rugby game, we literally code everything a player does we have data on everything. And I don't use that data as truth.

[00:17:11] I use that data to test what I call my coaches. I so I have a belief. From what I've seen in the game, and then I go back and I test my beliefs against the numbers. And that's what we do with our scorecards is it's not like the decision making. It's that these scores match up with what your leadership intuition says.

[00:17:31] And if the answer is yes, great. And if the answer is no, it's a red flag to say, let's pause. The person that you want didn't score very highly. Let's go and investigate it, it gives them a little bit of assurance that they're making the right choice. 

[00:17:46] MahanTavakoli: So one of the people that I've been following for six plus years, is AJ Agrawal wrote prediction machines and then power and prediction, I had him on the podcast last year, Pete, and AJ talks about the fact that AI.

[00:18:02] Drastically reduces the cost of prediction and great decision making is prediction plus judgment what you are saying is you are gathering and using that Data, and that's what AI, by the way, can be helpful with, and marrying that with the human judgment, it's not going just with the data, letting that decide, and it's not just relying on the judgment by itself.

[00:18:32] Pete Steinberg: That's absolutely right. And it's interesting because I actually think we're going to get to the point where we're going to have data that tests the AI judgment. AI is no different than us. We're thinking about stuff. We have experiences. We come up with some solutions. AI is going to be the same thing.

[00:18:45] And so we're going to need Some judgments, it's interesting. We're doing some work now with a couple of really progressive companies around prediction. And so we're doing something employee collective intelligence, which is how do you leverage the knowledge of your organization to predict the future?

[00:19:02] Because they actually know more. There's lots of research that says the crowd knows more than the experts, but in your organization. I think 80 percent of the knowledge that sits within someone is tacit. Only 20 percent gets accessed by the organization. So how do you leverage that?

[00:19:17] And then the other thing that we're doing is a way of being able to see into the future is agent based modeling. And so we're actually doing it around trust where we're building models of an organization and saying, okay, if you do this intervention, how does that impact trust within your organization?

[00:19:34] Now, it's not right because it's a model. And all models are wrong. But again, gives you like you said, more data That allows you to then, therefore, have a better judgment about what you're going to do. 

[00:19:48] MahanTavakoli: What powerful examples, what you just mentioned, I'll also reference Lewis Rosenberg.

[00:19:53] He is CEO of Unanimous AI, has a couple of great TED Talks on swarm intelligence. The intelligence of the group and how AI can help tap into the intelligence of the group. So what you're doing is helping tap into the intelligence of the collective of the employees for those organizations.

[00:20:15] Pete Steinberg:  So the AI for us is so much about, we can now turn qualitative data into quantitative data. We can theme things much larger data sets. There's a lot of really interesting stuff that we can now do. That's going to open up the data sets that we can leverage to help leaders make better decisions.

[00:20:33] And I think that's going to be really interesting. Our experience with employee collective intelligence has been the data's good. But the leaders don't know how to use it, so employee collective intelligence can tell you what your attrition is going to be next quarter an interesting thing about crowdsource forecasting is it's not Mahana.

[00:20:52] You're going to leave. It's no, it's rather people gonna leave because you're having conversations with your friends who are like this recruiters calling me, and there's this really great offer over here, right? Oh, I'm gonna go update my forecast, so I can tell you that attrition is going to go up next year.

[00:21:08] Not 200 percent but it's pretty likely. Are you progressive enough and a thoughtful enough leader to do something about something that has not yet happened? Are you going to give bonuses? Are you going to restruct? What are you going to do? That's a really hard thing. And so our experience has been that most leaders aren't running to do something.

[00:21:29] They're going to wait for it to happen. Then people have left and now they're going to do something. And so we have to train the leaders to use this new data. It's going to come out of AI. It's going to come out of crowdsource forecasting. We're going to use modeling.

[00:21:40] But the trick is to actually do something with that data before That prediction happens. 

[00:21:45] MahanTavakoli: So I was reflecting on that as I was reading your book Leadership Shock, Pete, in that sometimes leadership shock is when we are in new leadership roles for a lot of leaders, we are going through leadership shock Because of the transformation that's happening around us.

[00:22:04] So even for leaders who are in the same role, it's leadership shock. 

[00:22:09] Pete Steinberg: That's right. You're absolutely right, man. To me, it's about the context changing. Something has changed in your world. And now all of a sudden your calendar's crazy. You never feel like you do a good job.

[00:22:21] Your team's confused. Your stakeholders are asking you, what the hell are you doing? Like you're just in this space because something has changed. You might be thinking about I might never be like her leadership shock in the age, right?

[00:22:33] Because over the next five years, there's going to be so much transformation that if leaders are not intentional. And that's what, the authentic leadership model in leadership shock does. It helps you be intentional. If you're not intentional about how you lead, you're going to find yourself leading the way you did two years ago when your business was completely different and wondering why you can't have an impact.

[00:22:57] MahanTavakoli: So one of the things that you mentioned, Pete, In trying to address that leadership shock is the need for deeper self awareness, which is critical, but how can leaders develop that greater self awareness? 

[00:23:11] When I work with a client, the first question I ask is, Do you have the time?

[00:23:17] Pete Steinberg: The answer is no, because they're in leadership shop. Are you willing to make the time? Are you willing to make the time? Even just to meet with me, let alone do your own thinking. I think a lot of it's time, but I also don't feel like leaders value the time the way they should.

[00:23:34] Our time is our non renewable resource and we need to treat it. Like it's very precious. Whenever I work with leaders, they can't meet with me. So we go through their calendar and I'll look out two months from now and I'll be like, Oh, this vendor, they're meeting with you two months from now.

[00:23:50] How did that get on the calendar? And the leader will say, Oh, last week they called me, but I don't have time this week to meet with them. So I put them on the calendar two months from now. I'm like a week before that meeting that you just put on the calendar. Are you going to be busy that week? Our attitude is time is precious now.

[00:24:07] Time tomorrow is less precious time two months from now. I can give it away. And so getting real discipline about time, I think is important. The other thing, and this is a real challenge that we have in the post COVID world, is that time used to be our commute. It used to be the time where we could really think, and now we don't have a commute.

[00:24:24] So I encourage my clients create a virtual commute, go for a walk, so number one is time. And then two is really to understand the skill of metacognition, 

[00:24:35] which is not just reflection, But thinking about why your reflection is what it is to go deeper into not just, I want to be a servant leader, or I am a servant leader, or I really struggle with giving feedback. Okay, that's a reflection. But why do you struggle?

[00:24:54] And what is it in your past experience that has made feedback difficult for you? It's going those extra steps. And so in the book, there are some questions that gets you there. I'm not sure that you can get that without some support. It could be your spouse.

[00:25:08] It could be a mentor. There's someone that needs to challenge you a little bit. I actually think, we talked about AI. I don't know if I'm gonna be coaching 10 years from now, because there's going to be a Pete Steinberg AI bots. That's going to take all of my coaching and ask all the right questions to the client.

[00:25:26] And hopefully I'm getting a percentage of whatever that company is that's doing that. So , having the right questions and the responses. Is part of the process. So it's hard to do on your own. You don't need a coach, but you need someone that's really going to be helpful in pulling together your thoughts and challenging the way you think.

[00:25:44] So time and being metacognitive, and really the two critical pieces. 

[00:25:48] MahanTavakoli: Those add a lot of value. The piece that still adds value. And I don't know if. AI will catch up in the foreseeable future with. It's a little bit like when I go to the gym, I see a lot of people who know exactly the routine they're supposed to go through and go through the same routine every single time with a trainer, not because they need a trainer to teach them or work with them on a routine, but because.

[00:26:14] The meetup with the trainer becomes a discipline for them to actually do the exercises and go through the routine.

[00:26:22] , so I talked to colleagues and partners that I partnered with, and we have this conversation about AI. We come down to the personal connection is an important piece where you actually feel responsible to someone to do the things that you're supposed to do.

[00:26:35] Pete Steinberg: I think some people in AI would be like, Oh, we're going to do that. Like your bots can have a relationship with your client. It's going to feel real. That's what they say. But I do think AI can democratize coaching. So I do think that there's an opportunity though, exactly like this, the authentic leadership model.

[00:26:55] I'm expensive. Capacity limited. I have a partner that does it, too. She's expensive. She's capacity limited, but someone in their first managerial role, they could use the authentic leadership model to be successful, they could use that framework. So how do we democratize? The executive coaching that can be just in time to help people.

[00:27:15] And I think that's where generative AI can really go well. 

[00:27:21] MahanTavakoli: What a great way of putting it. To a great extent, knowledge and information has been democratized. 

[00:27:27] Now, one of the other things that you also go into Pete is the ability for leaders to effectively delegate in order to be able to manage their workload. What in your experience typically gets in the way of that effective delegation? 

[00:27:45] Pete Steinberg: The first one is obvious you come across it all the time and we actually talk about it, Mahan, which is their expertise in their previous role.

[00:27:53] So one of the things that is really challenging and I think gets people's leadership shock let's take our CFO example. I was the CFO and now I'm, the business unit and now I'm the CFO of the enterprise, not just the business unit, but my self identity is wrapped up in my expertise as a financial professional.

[00:28:13] Therefore, when I take a C suite role, that's enterprise wide. I still want all of the information I had as a business unit CFO, but now I get it from eight business units. So now I'm working on Sundays to try and review all of these financials. Like you have to fundamentally change your mindset.

[00:28:34] I am no longer a financial expert. I am now a leader of the financial organization. Therefore you really have to understand not what's my value. What am I good at? But what am I good at in the role that I currently have?

[00:28:48] What's the strength that I'm bringing to this? It is not being a financial professional. That is not the strength. Therefore, I should not be spending time reviewing the finances of different business units. That's no longer your job. So one is letting go of your identity. The second thing is having clear priorities.

[00:29:05] That get you where you want to go. And this is where we get into the intentionality, so I think, there's a chunk of your calendar. Maybe it's a third. I'll just use it as an example. You don't have control over your boss puts time on it. There's other things like the monthly meetings and it's the forecasting.

[00:29:22] It's the team meetings you don't have control over that. There's a third, which is probably things that you need to do as a leader in your role. Now there's some work you can do that. And then there's a third that you have a lot of discretion over understanding which of the roles that you have like, where the meetings fit.

[00:29:40] Will allow you to manage your calendar and it will allow you to delegate. So this goes a little bit back to the rugby experience. Actually delegate the CFO, letting the new CFO, the business unit that they used to run do their job is maybe the hardest thing you do when you transition, so being really intentional, if you can reframe the role that you have, then you can get things off your calendar.

[00:30:07] When things go off your calendar, the people that are in that meeting have to step up. You give them space to lead. I talk a lot about leadership space. You can fill as much of the leadership space or not fill it, have it be intentional. So let your team lead by giving them space to lead.

[00:30:27] Then find ways to monitor and support. So being intentional about your priorities, looking at your time, getting out of those meetings, and then being really explicit to your team that you want them to lead, you're giving them that space. That's the way to probably do it.

[00:30:40] MahanTavakoli:  A couple of the things that you mentioned, I wanted to highlight. . I see that a lot of times in organizations, when the CEO has a specific background or particular interest, they're a lot more involved in it than they should be for a CEO.

[00:30:57] And then second, really we all tend to have way more priorities than we can handle and then wonder why we don't do as good a job with any of them. Those can be very impactful. 

[00:31:10] Pete Steinberg: Yeah, that's right. The interest one is really interesting and that's why really creating a clear vision of what you want and your priorities. And people that are overwhelmed I don't think have clarity in their role. Now, you can be overwhelmed for short periods of time. So there can be a crisis, there can be a fire, but when you are always overwhelmed, you're in leadership shock.

[00:31:30] Like when it's been six months then that's not sustainable and you're not doing a good job. So it's almost like my hand they say a good strategy tells you what you should do. A great strategy tells you what you shouldn't do a good leadership model.

[00:31:43] Tells you what you do. A great leadership model tells you what you shouldn't do. And so as soon as you've chosen what you shouldn't do, and by the way, you should never choose something because you're the best person to do it. If you're in the C suite. Horrible reason to do it. You're not there as an expert.

[00:31:59] You're there as a leader. So I just think that having clarity around your leadership model. That tells you what you shouldn't do is going to clean up your calendar. I worked with a CEO, calendar was crazy, leadership shock.

[00:32:13] Eventually, she got to the point that she had two hours a day where she could think every day. She's yeah, sometimes it gets crazy stuff happens, but two hours a day where her EA said, this is protected. This is thinking time, reading time, reflection time and , it was a two year journey to get there.

[00:32:32] But that's someone who had real clarity about what she wanted to do and also real clarity about what she expected from a team and a team understood it. She's not there to run the business as the CEO. She's there to lead the business. And that's different. 

[00:32:47] MahanTavakoli: What an outstanding experience. And I love the point that you made Pete, if at any point in time, you're in leadership shock, that's fine.

[00:32:57] We all go through that. If six months ago, you were also in leadership shock and a year ago, you were in leadership shock, then maybe it's something about the system and your approach to it.

[00:33:10] Pete Steinberg: Exactly 

[00:33:11] MahanTavakoli: right. 

[00:33:11] So from an organizational perspective would love to hear your thoughts Pete, on how organizations can support leaders in transition. 

[00:33:19] Pete Steinberg: The first thing I would say is don't let them wear two hats.

[00:33:23] Like in many cases you get the job, but you have to do the old job. If you want to be really good, give them a month off, give them a month off, have them go and explore. Have them go and spend time with competitors, with clients, get them to really think about what they want to do. And I'm not joking.

[00:33:43] I think that especially for the senior levels, giving people a mini sabbatical. Having them recharge will be super impactful. And it's not like a month off. It's no, there are things that you're doing, but the things you are doing are prepping you for the next role.  I struggle to understand this. It's you knew this was going to happen a year ago. This person was going to retire. You knew it. But it was never a priority until the day before that person retired.

[00:34:10] Now all of a sudden, the person that you're gonna put into that role has to do two jobs while you spend three months trying to replace them. And it's a terrible way to start the role. You just can't do the job very well. So I think seeing things as an investment in performance is probably the big thing, but at the very least, giving people some transition time.

[00:34:29] And then, in the book, the chief learning officer at United Maria Taylor talks about how leadership shock often happens when you transition internally. Do a bigger role. And it's less likely to happen when you bring someone in from the outside or you go to a new organization, and part of it is if I go to the new organization, I expect things to be different.

[00:34:48] And so I'm more open to change. But what often happens is that people do build in breaks, like I left my old job, I've got a two week break, so that's another reason why it's good to go to an external client, so if I leave the office for two weeks, and then come back, it'll minimize my chance of leadership shock, because I will be expecting things to be different, and I will expect myself to be different.

[00:35:09] Transitioning the same day, keeping my old role that's pretty much going to lead you to leadership shock. I think 

[00:35:16] MahanTavakoli:  It's setting the individual up for failure. Completely  

[00:35:22] Pete Steinberg: I think all of this is iterative. These are complex systems. So really having an experimental mindset to try things and see if they work, but I really start with purpose. So I say, what is it that fills your emotional tank? What is it that makes you feel good about yourself? Where are you your best self?

[00:35:41] What is it in your career that has made you feel so good that you really felt like you had an impact? And the reason why I start there is I think if you can connect your vision, the role that you think you should have, your leadership beliefs, the strengths and values you bring to the role.

[00:35:58] And. Your priorities and the way that you want to lead if they are all connected to your purpose, and that's some of the iteration. It's more sustainable. It means that you're doing things that make you feel good about yourself. They can be very hard.

[00:36:11] It can take lots of time. But if you're doing things in a way that is fulfilling your purpose. I think that's sustainable. And so I always start there because I think it's the foundation of great leadership is to be authentic and to be true to yourself. And I think you find that in your purpose.

[00:36:27] MahanTavakoli: That is powerful and  requires the discipline of that time to reflect on it. . 

[00:36:34] Pete Steinberg: I've had clients use vacations, because it's really hard.

[00:36:38] So first of all, you're in leadership shop. You actually don't know it. You just think that this is how it's supposed to be. And so you're not even intentional about how you change it. But when you realize, oh, it can be different.

[00:36:48] And I want to change my life, I want to have more time with my family. I want to be more impactful as a role. How do I start that journey? So often it'll be, vacations Yeah. Yeah. Thought questions on the weekend. I think people just need to find that time and say, am I being my best self?

[00:37:09] Am I making the impact I want to make as a leader? And then if the answer is no, all right, what is it I want to do? What's the impact I want to have on the world? What's my purpose? And how can I do more of that? How can I just do more of that? And how can I do less of the things that don't fit that?

[00:37:27] And I think that's the starting point. But finding some time to do that when you're in shock is very difficult. 

[00:37:33] MahanTavakoli: You gave everyone outstanding starting points.  For the audience to Both find out more about your book and follow you and your work, Pete, where we descend them to.

[00:37:45] Pete Steinberg: Connect with me on LinkedIn. You'll see that there's a lot of things that I share on LinkedIn. And then if you go to Pete Steinberg. com there's a newsletter that comes out that talks about these leadership challenges and leadership shock. So those are probably the two best places to connect with me.

[00:37:59] MahanTavakoli: I really appreciate both the conversation and your thoughts, Pete, because as I referenced earlier,  we're all going through leadership shock, whether in new roles or in existing roles, which is why it becomes even more important for us to use that authenticity to be able to stay close to our purpose and be able to navigate well. 

[00:38:22] Pete Steinberg: Absolutely. You've summarized Mahan. 

[00:38:25] MahanTavakoli: I really appreciate the conversation.

[00:38:27] Thank you so much, Pete Steinberg. 

[00:38:29] Pete Steinberg: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.