342 Resilience and Brilliance: Unleashing Leadership Potential and Lessons from Disney with Simon T. Bailey | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Simon T. Bailey, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me. 

[00:00:06] Simon Bailey: Thank you for having me. Good to be with you. 

[00:00:08] Mahan Tavakoli: Can't wait to talk about resilience and brilliance. But before we do that, Simon, would love to know whereabouts you grew up and how your upbringing impacted the kind of person you've become.

[00:00:20] Simon Bailey: Oh my goodness. Grew up in Buffalo, New York. Go Bills. This is our year.

Let me just get that out first. 

[00:00:30] Mahan Tavakoli: Simon, you lost half the listeners to the show right there. 

[00:00:33] Simon Bailey: For those listeners around the world listening to us, Buffalo Bills NFL team. So my father was an immigrant from Jamaica, married my mother who's from Florida. So I'm Jamaican. And my upbringing was the best hand that will feed you is the one at the end of your wrist.

I've been working since I was 12 years of age. All I do is work. My father would wake us up at 4. 30am on a Saturday morning. Get up. Do something, be productive. So that never left me. From Buffalo, Mom and dad dropped me off at Morehouse College at the end of my freshman year. They called and said, we don't have the money to send you back to Morehouse, but we do love you.

Dropped out of Morehouse, moved into a drug infested community, though I was not on drugs. That's all I could afford at that time. I eventually did go back, got my undergrad degree. I was just on the 10 year plan and my parents said it took you 10 years to finish your degree. I said, cause you didn't pay, but I love 

[00:01:31] Mahan Tavakoli: you.

[00:01:35] Simon Bailey: Fast forwarding from Atlanta, moved to Orlando, Florida, where I've been living for the last 32 years. Interesting journey. 

[00:01:43] Mahan Tavakoli:  You had to solve your problems and your challenges by yourself. Your parents loved you, but you had to solve it yourself. You also had, experience at Disney Institute, 

I wonder how the Disney Institute impacted you. 

[00:01:59] Simon Bailey: The incredible opportunity to serve at Disney Institute left an imprint that I am forever grateful for because not only did I see leadership within Disney corporate, But also seeing it from the client perspective. So we work with clients all over the world who wanted to learn Disney's approach.

One of the clients I was fortunate enough to work with is Barclays Bank out of London. They brought a thousand of their leaders to Disneyland Paris, and we began to share with them some of Disney's best practices that they could perhaps adapt in an envelope into Barclays Bank. But what I really learned, three quick takeaways from Disney Institute.

Number one, the job of a leader. is not to motivate people to work harder. The job of a leader is to invite people on a journey to discover the leader within themselves while they're following you. So in other words, a leader can never take a person to a place that they have not been themselves. That was the first big epiphany and aha.

The second thing is at Disney Institute, all leaders are in the trash business. So what does that mean? If you are out at Magic Kingdom, Epcot, any of the theme parks and there's trash on the ground, it is your responsibility, forget your title, to pick up the trash and discard it because everything speaks.

If people have saved three to five years of their discretionary income to come to Disney for maybe once in their lifetime and they may never come back, what's that first impression? So I learned that it was my responsibility. forget my suit, forget my title, pick up the trash, right? Model for the other cast members at Disney Employees are called cast members.

Model the behavior for them. And I think the third thing that I take away from Disney Institute is that a leader is forever a student. A leader is always learning and advancing thinking. And how do you become an anticipatory leader who begins to see what's not yet. You begin to look around the corner.

You have the ability to ask questions because that's really how Walt built Walt Disney World and certainly Disneyland California that opened up in 1955 is to see what's not yet. And as a leader being anticipatory enough to lead your team in that same mindset. 

[00:04:18] Mahan Tavakoli: What outstanding principles to guide ourselves, our teams and organizations by, I would like to know a little bit more about each one of them, Simon.

 You mentioned you can't take people where they haven't been what, therefore, does that require for the leader to do 

[00:04:43] Simon Bailey: so I'll give you an example and then give you some key takeaways. When I first got promoted into a leadership role at Disney, I was a boss with an agenda instead of a leader with a vision. I was in over my skis, but I didn't want you to know that I didn't know what the heck I was doing, so I made it up.

And Disney was about to fire me, and organizational development did an intervention. They walked me through start, stop, and continue, and they said, The feedback from your direct reports is that you manage up really well, but you do not listen to the staff to find out how to do things. Because I came in with all the answers and basically I ran an adult daycare center.

So after I went to Disney University to understand I'm going to talk a little bit about what it meant to be a leader at Disney. So Disney University, different from Disney Institute, Disney University is the internal training arm of the company. And what I walked away with, number one, is people don't care how much until they know how much you care. So I had to begin to engage them and say, how do we do certain things? So the key takeaway is intellectual humility. It doesn't mean that you need to be the smartest person in the room. You have to engage the entire room to move towards that you want to get.

That's number one. Number two, partnering with other leaders across the organization who understand how to get things done. It's not written down. It's not in the employee handbook. So humbling myself to ask my peers to say, Hey, how does this work? How do I navigate? What questions should I be asking? What don't I know?

And it's really putting yourself out there, which makes you vulnerable because everybody wants to have the game face on. Hey, we are perfect. We've got it all together. No. Ask. And then the third thing is sharing the why and the what. What I realized early in my leadership tenure, I would just make decisions and say, we're going to do this.

But what people were waiting to hear why are we doing this? Because if I didn't give them the why, they fill in the blanks, and they were confused. So what I quickly realized, here's the what, and here's the why behind the decision. Is there anything that I've missed, or should we be doing something else?

Which then gives them an opportunity to give feedback and say, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? What if, and what I began to realize is moving from ego, which is edging greatness out to eco encouraging, caring often and encouraging, caring often is listening more than you talk, dialing in by asking instead of telling, connecting instead of just communicating. 

[00:07:27] Mahan Tavakoli: What outstanding thoughts, Simon, and what it took initially to get you on that journey was the feedback and then the openness to that feedback, because part of what I've seen is there are lots of different reasons why we come up with Why the feedback is not correct, even when we get it or we avoid getting the feedback.

You were open to that change as a result of the feedback. 

[00:07:58] Simon Bailey: I was open because I needed my job.

If I didn't adjust my behavior, Dizzy was going to invite me to find my happiness elsewhere. And guess what? There was a role of people in lives. Standing waiting for my role. This is when you insert bless his heart. 

[00:08:20] Mahan Tavakoli: It worked, now the other thought you mentioned Simon is all leaders are in the trash business. , I love that. So for most leaders in organizations. They are not walking the Disney theme parks to bend over and pick up the trash, although there are sometimes those opportunities as well.

How does that translate to executive CEOs, managers in organizations? How do they get into that trash business? 

[00:08:51] Simon Bailey: First of all, what are you modeling for your team members by how you communicate? Leadership is caught and taught. So in emails, in meetings, in person, virtually, how are you showing up?

Because people are picking up what you're putting down. That's the first thing. The second thing is when you're working on a project or solving a customer issue, How do you model that behavior by saying, what do you think our approach should be? So you're engaging individuals, not just telling them the answer, and that's inviting them to be a part of the solution.

So you're modeling. It's not just about me. It's about we. But I think the other thing that leaders can do in the spirit of picking up the trash is what would it be like to allow someone else to get behind the steering wheel and lead the meeting, have them put together the agenda, have them begin to guide the conversation.

You're right there. But what you're doing is letting them test drive. What it's like to lead and then do a debrief afterwards. So what did you hear? What did you think? What did you see? What could you have done differently? That allows that person to learn real time. Oh my goodness. This is what it's like.

And then they'll engage you to say, how should I have approached that differently? So it's this whole give and take in modeling and being an example. 

[00:10:08] Mahan Tavakoli: Being an example is really important. And another piece that you talked about is giving people the opportunity to , experience.

And you mentioned coaching. Why is it that coaching is. Not done as often as it should, and done so ineffectively by managers in your experience, and how can they do it better? 

[00:10:32] Simon Bailey: I think a lot of managers, they have so much on their plate, number one, when they were hired or promoted into the role, There wasn't time for HR or learning and development to step back and say, here are the tools to be an effective coach.

So they've made it up along the way. And the reason coaching is so important right now is when people are on indeed. com and other search engines looking for another gig, it's because they don't feel they've been mentored. Coached or develop and they're going to learn anything beyond what they've been hired to do.

, I could talk hours about this but here's the key thing I want all managers and leaders and CEOs to think about retention is a myth. . I know we want to retain staff. The real purpose of leadership right now is to catch and release. Hear me out. When you release a person into their destiny, they will begin to figure out how to move the organization forward because they've been coached by a leader who's moved their ego out of the way and says, I don't have a need to hold on to you.

[00:11:43] Simon Bailey: I'm going to train you and coach you so well that you leave because if they leave, listen, that's a feather in your cap. But if you treat them really well by coaching them, They will stay. So this whole coaching thing comes down to number one. What is the person's learning style? Number two, what's their appreciation language?

Number three, what's their vision for their future? So real coaching is about deployment, not employment, because when we employ people, Oh my goodness, we got to hold on to them. No, release them by coaching them to leave. And they might just stay. 

[00:12:23] Mahan Tavakoli: That's an outstanding way of putting it. Simon, I love the catch and release in that it becomes an opportunity for growth for the individual.

As long as you're able to coach them and give them that opportunity within the organization, that's even better. They grow sometimes for them to grow. They have to seek opportunities. But I still find it a big challenge when I'm working with clients. And I'm sure you experienced the same thing, Simon, because of the many pressures, even some of the managers who have been through management development, understand the importance of coaching.

They don't get around to it. So how do you recommend this coaching be approached? 

[00:13:12] Simon Bailey: Regular cadence starts with at a minimum once a week.

Once a week, a one on one meeting, either face to face, now virtually, where there's a check in. And even if it's for 15 to 20 minutes, you want to just make sure we're all on the same page, singing from the same sheet of music. A minimum of that. Once a week, if not once a week, every other week, twice a month, where there's time, there's an agenda that there are some things they want to talk about.

There are some things you want to talk about, but it is a standing meeting. And the thing I encourage managers to do. Do not move it if you don't have to allow them to say, Hey, I need to move it. Something else is going on, but keep that regular cadence because if you wait to meet your review, it's too late, it's too late.

And I think mid year reviews are dead. That dog will not hunt anymore. We have to check in with people twice a month just to see where their head is, to make sure they're still in the game and their heart is still there. 

[00:14:13] Mahan Tavakoli: Simon, I've done episodes on it. I have written about it. I tell clients repeatedly what you just mentioned, which is one of the most critical things.

And there are lots of excuses for not doing it. Regular cadence once a week, one on ones are a must once every two weeks, the very, very least, and. Nothing replaces it. Sometimes I have clients or managers say, oh, I see them all the time when we are walking in the office we have a casual chit chat by all means have those conversations, but that does not replace the more structured one on one where you get to have that conversation with your direct reports.

[00:14:59] Simon Bailey: I totally agree. And what it also does for them, it lets them know that they are seen, valued, and appreciated. And that's what you want to continue to reinforce, that you are a presence in their life, there to serve them and help them be the best they can be.

[00:15:13] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, the third item you mentioned, Simon, is that a leader is a forever student. So many of the executives and some of the CEOs I'm coaching, they say, I've got a long list of things to read. Never get to it. Long list of podcasts to listen to. In my queue and I can't get to it because I am overwhelmed. I'm barely able to keep up. So as people are listening to this, obviously the audience for the are people who are into learning.

That's why they're listening to the podcast. How can they embrace more of this learning mindset that you said is important in leadership now? 

[00:16:00] Simon Bailey: I would encourage them to plan their learning and development like they plan their vacation. Everyone listening to us right now, they are already thinking about where they want to vacate, what the dates are, they make it a priority, they block the time.

And have you ever noticed the day before vacation, people become really productive and they get a lot because it's a priority. And I'm not trying to make anybody feel guilty. Maybe I am. You scared the shit out of me. Schedule your vacation. Schedule your learning and development. Eric Hoffer, a noted philosopher, says, in times of change, the learners will inherit the earth, while the unlearned will find themselves beautifully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

Your learning should be a priority, like you brush your teeth, like you take a shower, like you put deodorant on every single day. Make an appointment with yourself. Literally to go to podcast University, 20 minutes a day. You remember if you have kids, they said 20 minutes a day in reading. You have to do that now because things are moving so fast and what you will discover.

If you develop the habit and the commitment over time, everybody has the same 24 hours. You're like, wait a minute. I can carve out 15 to 20 minutes and a little becomes a lot over a long period of time. 

[00:17:21] Mahan Tavakoli: That discipline becomes really important, both in habit formation and making sure we get to the things that are important in our lives based on our priorities.

Now, in addition to all of these thoughts, Simon, you write a lot about resilience and brilliance. Would love to first get your definitions of each 

and then why you focus so much of your effort on resilience and brilliance. 

[00:17:48] Simon Bailey: So here's the visual. Business is like surfing in the ocean. You're knocked off your surfboard because of change, uncertainty, AI. Your resilience allows you to pop back up and get on the surfboard. And it's your brilliance that allows you to catch the next wave.

 We asked working Americans to define what is resilience, and here's what they told us. It's problem solving, perseverance, and grit. We turned around and asked working Americans how do they define brilliance, and they defined it as creativity and resilience. Confidence and intelligence. So what that says in any organization, you need individuals that are going to solve problems.

They're going to figure it out. They're going to persevere and push through, but then the creativity spark is going to kick in to say, what if. What else can we do? And that's where the innovation really happens. So the reason I've married the two, because resilience and brilliance are the twins of unlocking potential.

We can always tell people to bounce back and be better. Okay, that's great. But are we going to practice AI? actual intelligence as we bounce back. So what I realized in the feedback that we got from state of work in America is that 55 percent of working Americans would take a lower paying job to work for a manager or leader that inspired their brilliance.

So what that says in order to unlock my creativity, my confidence, my intelligence, that leader, they've got to model it for me. And care about me as a human being, not just as a human doing.

[00:19:33] Mahan Tavakoli: You also mentioned in your report that around 82 percent of working Americans believe that leaders should inspire this resilience, which is outstanding.

How would they do that in addition to serving as an example, which you have mentioned repeatedly and I wholeheartedly agree is a critical piece. 

[00:19:55] Simon Bailey: Oh, I love this question. So everybody's dealing with change, but where the rubber meets the road is how we talk about resilience is in the transition. We've got to have people understand 

the changes happen. It's the event. Here's how you go through the transition. So in your communication with them, here's what happened. Here's what I understand. Here's the need to know. Here's the nice to know. And here's how I'm dealing with the transition and how it's going to impact us. The more you begin to be vulnerable and open with people, you build trust in the midst of transition that allows them to translate.

Here's what it means to me so that they can transcribe. Form what tomorrow looks like. So help people through the transition as we're modeling resilience 

[00:20:47] Mahan Tavakoli: What you just went through is an outstanding framework for leaders to think about how they're communicating messages through this uncertainty to their teams.

Another thing I found interesting in your report is you found gender differences between men and women. What were the differences you found? 

[00:21:09] Simon Bailey: So what we discovered is that males in an organization are all about it's perseverance, it's go.

Whereas women specifically are looking at growth vulnerability. So what I invite organizations to do whenever you are working on anything, is there a diversity of talent And mindsets around the table genders around the table because you get the best thinking when everybody comes from a different perspective.

Sometimes males, we have a very linear approach where women have a 360 degree view and we need their input. Here's the other interesting thing. You post a job internally. In an organization, men will only have 60 percent of the skills, but they'll say, I can do 100 percent of the job. Whereas women, if they don't have 100 percent of the skill set, they're not going to raise their hand.

So you got to encourage them. Guess what? You should apply because you can do the role. And so it's just that purview to say, how am I engaging thinking? for who we become long term in an organization. 

[00:22:23] Mahan Tavakoli: That ensures that you tap into the best of the people that you have, rather than them not seeing opportunities within your team and organization and deciding to swim elsewhere, as you were mentioning.

Now, one of the struggles that a lot of. executives have, Simon, is the fact that they are measured on results, whether it is the CEO of the organization, senior executives, or managers. And then on the other side, they sometimes send me emails or talk to me and say, sure, Mohan, you talk about resilience and experimentation and making mistakes and celebrate it.

That's not what's, Measured what's measured is the results. So Simon, how do you recommend for executives and managers to balance that need for resilience with the demand for results? 

[00:23:22] Simon Bailey: I think number one, start with here's true North. Here's where we're going here. The results that we are responsible for. I have some ideas on how to get there, but I want your input because We have to get there together and you put it on the team, invite them into achieving the results together.

That creates purpose, that creates energy, that creates focus. I think the second thing along the road to reaching results is what gets recognized gets repeated. I'm not just talking about, an atta boy. I'm talking about that. Personal thank you to that person and highlighting them in front of perhaps senior leaders to say, this is what they've done along the way to achieving the results.

And I think the final thing is to recognize when we have bumps in the road and going after the results. pausing, what do we learn? How do we recover so that we can continue to move forward? Because the quarters are different. And if you're a publicly traded company, you're at the mercy of wall street.

So it's those conversations early and often where people are like, it's about the result, but I also am learning and developing how we go about achieving the results. 

[00:24:41] Mahan Tavakoli: Results mean different things to different people in different organizations. It depends on how we define results.

And if results are singularly defined based on financial metrics, then we can achieve results. without bringing people along. So it part depends on how we also define those results. 

[00:25:04] Simon Bailey: Yes. And let me add to that. It's finding out what that person wants to achieve as well, because we can't do anything in business without relationships, without people.

So we build a bridge from where we are to where we can go together. 

[00:25:18] Mahan Tavakoli: So  over the past few years, there has been a tension with hybrid. It's settled down to about two and a half days on average for knowledge workers in the office.

 How has that in your view impacted the state of working in America and how do managers need to approach leading their teams differently as a result of this new work environment? 

[00:25:47] Simon Bailey: So our research shared with us that 46 percent of working Americans who work remote think that their manager does not care about them.

So it's the whole out of sight, out of mind. Even if I have a hybrid situation, do I still matter? Is my career going to progress? So I'll give you probably one of the best I'm going to give you the best examples of how to manage this. I was talking with a former leader that gave me my first leadership role at Disney.

I was talking to him just a few weeks ago. And he said, what he has done, he has shared with his team that, Hey, you want to work home? You can work home. That's great. No problem at all. However, there is a standing 9 30 a. m. on zoom every morning, cameras on. And he said, if your camera is not on, there's a different conversation.

He said, do whatever you need to do throughout your day. And he said, they do a once a week check in. How's everybody doing? What's going on? And it's mandatory. But then at least once or twice a month, they invite people to come together. And he said, Simon, the productivity has gone through the roof because everybody has fallen in line that, Hey, if I just show up nine 30 in the morning, here's what's going on.

Here's what's happening. And he said, the media is not going to be more than 15 to 20 minutes, but they know I'm watching. But I'm not, overbearing. I'm not micromanaging and that allows them to adjust their day for whatever they need to do. Now that's one extreme. I talk with a 15 billion.

Corporation talked to a CEO and he was like, I need people in the office because if they don't show up, how does that impact us? And so they have found a cadence of at least two to three times a month where people come in and work two to three days, they share offices, they schedule time. So you have those serendipitous moments as people bump into each other to come up with breakthrough ideas.

So it all depends on culture. Connection communication. 

[00:27:56] Mahan Tavakoli:  In addition to that, when people were in person all the time, there were more opportunities. To bump into someone and say, great job or give them feedback with less in person time. There are less opportunities to do that. Therefore Therefore making it even more essential to have some of those structures, systems, one on one meetings that you were talking about.

[00:28:26] Simon Bailey: Absolutely. Move it right to virtual and make it happen that way. It's intention and priority. 

[00:28:32] Mahan Tavakoli: Simon, you also mentioned your take on AI, how do you believe knowledge work is changing in part as a result of exponential technologies such as AI. 

[00:28:45] Simon Bailey: I think it's inviting every employee and employer. to look at the distribution of work to say, how does this drive customer outcomes ultimately? So first of all, do we have individuals that have the skill set to take us into the future?

And if not, how do we get them there? So people are having to re imagine the job. The job that they had a year ago has already changed. The market has moved. So how do we have that ongoing conversation? As we know, upskilling, reskilling. That's the first thing. The second thing is the onus is now on the employee, not to wait for their employer to say, I'm going to get on Coursera.

org. I'm going to get on edX. org. I'm going to level up and not wait for the tap on the shoulder. I think the third thing is CEOs recognize that the future is all about how fast are we learning. So AI isn't going anywhere. How do we lean into it and become a learning organization? Where everybody is learning.

How do we move people around to see different aspects of the organization? So they have a bigger view, not just the job they've been hired to do, but they understand the customer and the customer's needs that are changing and evolving. 

[00:30:06] Mahan Tavakoli: Outstanding perspectives and the need for us to learn at a faster rate than ever before individually within our teams and within the organizations as well.

As the podcast listeners are listening to this, A big part of the conversation has been on their leading of their teams and organizations. Would love to get your thoughts for us as individuals. What is something we can do to increase our resilience and our brilliance? 

[00:30:41] Simon Bailey: Take your meds. Meditate, exercise, diet, sleep, take your meds, take care of yourself before you try to take care of anybody else.

And so two quick data points. Gallup says 10 people in the world in the workplace are dealing with stress and anxiety. Borderline depression, so you got to take care of yourself Second thing david brooks did an op ed piece called the rising tide of global sadness in the new york times And he says the emotional health of the world is shattering So that means you're working with somebody virtually Or in person who is dealing with something and the ability to step back and take a moment and just say How are you?

That just builds resilience in and of itself, where you ask another human being how they are doing, but make sure that you're in a good place yourself. 

[00:31:34] Mahan Tavakoli: Beautiful thoughts, Simon, both the focus on taking care of the self in addition to the empathy that it takes as a human being to genuinely. Care for another human being.

When we do that, we can have thriving teams and thriving organizations, which is why I so appreciate the thoughts you've shared. Now, for the audience to find out more about you and follow your work, Simon, where we descend them to, 

[00:32:07] Simon Bailey: they can go to simon t bailey.com t for terrific, and that's my website and you can follow me on social.

[00:32:14] Mahan Tavakoli: You are terrific, Simon. I really appreciate this conversation. Thank you so much for joining me on the Partnering Leadership Conversation. 

[00:32:23] Simon Bailey: Thank you.