46 How to lead, care and win with authenticity with Dan Pontefract | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

Mahan Tavakoli: 

Welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm really excited this week to be welcoming Dan Pontefract to the conversation. He is CEO and founder of Pontefract group. He's a best-selling author of Open to Think, The Purpose Effect, Flat Army, and now his latest Lead. Care. Win. We spend most of our time talking about that, and I love Dan's style and insights on leadership as I am sure you will too.

Before this, Dan also served as chief envisioner of Telus, where he led a lot of different initiatives, including working on employee engagement, where he helped those sore from about  53% to nearly 90%. So Dan is not just an author, but also a practitioner. 

I also love hearing from you. Keep your comments coming,mahan@mahantavakoli.com. There is also a microphone icon on partneringleadership.com. You can leave voice messages for me there. Finally, don't forget to subscribe or follow the podcast depending on your platform of choice. 

Now, here is my conversation with Dan Pontefract.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

Dan Pontefract, welcome to the Partnering Leadership Podcast.

Dan Pontefract: 

Mahan, hey, it's my pleasure. What a treat to be able to riff with you on all things about leadership care, human beings. Let's go at it.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

Oh, I am really excited. I have read your books. I've listened to your podcast interviews. And most specifically, Dan, it is the heart that you have and the empathy that you show, even in your writing, that resonated a lot with me. And I can't wait to share that with the Partnering Leadership community.

First, I would like to know where abouts you grew up and how your upbringing impacted the kind of leader and person you've become?

Dan Pontefract: 

Well first and foremost, I'm of English descent. My parents immigrated when I was really weak to Canada, outside of Hamilton, which is outside of Toronto, Ontario. So I grew up in the Southern Ontario hemisphere. I have a sister and a younger brother, both younger to me. And, Hamilton is a blue collar town. It's basically the Pittsburgh of Canada, lots of steel mills, tough gritty individuals. And I was the antithesis of that. I am a metro-sexual creative weirdo. And as I grew up, I had some difficulties , quote, fitting in. I was captain of this and captain of that and president of this and president of that. So I think I had  some God gifted, innate leadership skills but, close friends, fitting in, , being the macho man of Hamilton was not me. I was not sort of the macho type. I was quite different. 

And so, that coupled with a somewhat difficult upbringing where I had a very sane and orderly father who was futuristic, very entrepreneurial, ran his own business, lots of money he made like  in a good way from an engineering perspective. But, , and a difficult mom who was an alcoholic and wasn't always pleasant to be around. And so, kind of mesh the entrepreneurial-ism and the love and the affection with my dad, with the tough gritty factor of Hamilton. And then, my sister and I, and my brother, surviving with some of  the house antics that would ensue with a mom that had some difficulty trying to overcome her own battles probably shaped me to the degree that created that empathy and just wish for kindness and care.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

And it's your extreme empathy, which sounds like some of it comes from that upbringing, which comes through in your writing that I can't wait to get to. 

Now, you also talk about the fact that this experience we're all going through right now. We are not going to be going for a new normal, this is a great reset.

Why do you say that Dan?

 Dan Pontefract: 

First of all, the whole notion of the great reset seems to have been taken out of context by some of the extreme left and right as if it is a notion by which, we are trying, whether it is on the left or the right to completely do without how we used to operate. And all I'm getting at with sort of my vernacular is this is a chance for us to look back and say, do we really want to go back to the way it was or can we potentially take some of the good bits and reset how we might lead, operate, love, live, in a  mid pandemic and post pandemic society. 

And so for me, I don't believe in the new normal. And that term seems to have taken on a completely mainstream media essence. The new normal presupposes that the old normal was normal. And I don't think it was. I think society needed a heart attack, but one that in which we could survive from. And although the tragedy of the pandemic, obviously we've lost lives right around the world. It is still to me the heart attack that was necessary. And so by metaphorically applying an EKG and maybe some CPR, maybe we're able to look back and say, well, that was kind of unhealthy the way we were living. Wasn't it? 

Whether that's organizational berating of employees, whether it's the fixation on profit at all costs, whether  it's not caring about your neighbor, whether it's not, it's kind of looking the other way in the community, all of that. But we were doing some really good things too.

There were lots of individuals, organizations, community-based faith groups, et cetera, that actually took the time to empathize, to care, to give. And so what I'm really getting out of the great reset is let's take the good bits now that we've had a heart attack and let's move forward in the post pandemic way that really resets how we operate as  a human being quite frankly there,Mahan.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

And based on what you're seeing Dan, interacting with leaders and organizations, if we look back a couple of years from now, what will you hope will have been some of the changes in leadership practices that we keep as a result of having gone through this crisis or a heart attack as you put it?

Dan Pontefract: 

The biggest juxtaposition I think we need to think about, I'll talk about three, is the selfishness versus selflessness quagmire. Far too often, our ways of leading, we're very selfish and at times unconsciously selfish. So what I'm looking for and hoping for and yearning for is that conscious, selfless way of leading.

And so that may mean getting out of the light to shine it on someone else because they deserve it or they need that development. Or there's something that you should be doing as a selfless leader to help that individual rise or that team take credit. So the selfish versus selfless leader, the dichotomy is something that we really have to kind of pay attention to.

Number two, as we're kind of coming out of this again, there's some just simple civility questions that I have. Are you looking in on your neighbor? How are they? Are you taking the time to stop and pause and say not the perfunctory, hey, how are you doing? But how are you really doing? Taking the time, whether it's three minutes or 10 to actually dig into that question, how are you doing?

 So that civility, that humility to know that it's not just about you, are you a point of selfish versus selfless, but to follow that up with some care, some kindness, some in-depth extrapolation on that other individual or team or neighbor, whoever the other entity is. That's what I think is missing. Just the time to actually care and dig a little deeper. So that'd be number two. 

And then number three, this is going to sound almost antithetical, but self care. I think where we've landed is in a world of consumerism and let's be as busy as we can. And back to back to back to back to back meetings and growth at all costs. I'm asking us to self reflectively, look in the mirror and say, huh, what about me? What can I do to improve my sense of self care? So whether that is by virtue of pausing, reading a little more, filling up your bucket with time, with space, with meditation, with walks. I just think we're at the precipice of collapse.

The heart attack of the pandemic has allowed us to contemplatively look at ourselves cause we're holed up in our homes many of us and the gift of time has been given to us. Let's not go back to how it was and that frenetic stressful, busy at all costs type of work and lifestyle to then maybe reclaim our sense of self-worth and thus also our sense of time.

Mahan Tavakoli:  

It is a great learning that I hope sticks with us as we go through this. 

Now Dan, with the same sense of empathy, you were able to do great things that tell us and I wanted to touch on that before getting into your great book, Lead. Care. Win. You were able to increase employee engagement. And you actually were able to create a flexible work culture and telework. It's one of those things that a lot of leaders are struggling with now, both remote work and eventually transitioning into having more of their people work remote while some working online, some working in their organizations. So we'd love to get some of your thoughts and perspectives on how were you able to increase employee engagement so much? At the same time that you were increasing also people being able to be flexible and work from home, not necessarily in central offices.

Dan Pontefract: 

Great question. I'm going to correct you on one thing and it's never a how did you do it? Complete team effort. And that's one of the bonus privileges of being part of a great team is that everyone can work towards that goal. And that's what we did. So certainly not a damn thing. 

That all being said, when I joined, I joined the organization in late 2008 as its chief learning officer. And although certainly there was more to do than learning whether that's culture, change, leadership, development recognition, et cetera. It was right at another crisis. Here we are in the middle of a pandemic in a big crisis, but the financial fallout in the cliff that we were in the midst of late 2008, 2009, the financial crisis was nothing I had ever been prepped for before. I had worked in the dotcom bubble, but nothing to this degree.

And so what we sort of look back now and said, maybe we need to  do a better job of how we're leading and operating as an organization, because this is a doozy. I E the financial cliff crisis back then. And what we'd said about doing was not to react because per se of the financial crisis was to kind of look at, well, how are we operate? Could we do better for either the next crisis or just generally how we operate on a day-to-day basis? 

So we basically did three things. The first thing we did was we went across the organization and said, what's your definition of culture? How do you want to be led? How do you want to lead? What does the culture feel, the engagement feel for you  in a highly productive, efficient, awesome way? And so we did that for about a year. 

And asking employees and focus groups and discussion boards and online forums and so forth about how they want their organization to be was cathartic for someone like me. But it forms something we eventually called the TLP, the Telus leadership philosophy. And that philosophy, not a model, not a framework, not a program. Just like the Greek, so it was a philosophy of how we ought to be. Like Kierkegaard said, a famous Danish philosopher, " To be that self which one truly is." It's kind of the way in which we want it to operate as a TLP, as a 50,000 plus organization.

So we started to roll out the TLP and help folks see a better way of leading self and others. And simultaneously we then said, well, maybe we don't need to all work in an office all the time. Maybe there are more flexible ways. Now this is 2008, 2009. And so officially we launched something just towards the middle of 2010 called flexible work styles.

And these work styles were in three ways. You were an at-home worker, 95% of the time. You were a mobile worker where you spent two to three days, either home, somewhere else, maybe in an office, doesn't really matter. Or you were a resident worker where 90% of the time you'd be working from an office.

And we set about over a five-year period to get to where 70% of the organization was either mobile or at home. But you couldn't do that in isolation, hence the point of the leadership philosophy. So in order to change the way in which an entire organization of 50,000 plus were operating, you had to both change the way in which we lead ourselves and one another, how we collaborated, how we were trustworthy, et cetera, and where it was done from. 

So rather than just seeing people hammer keys on a keyboard, or,  having to physically see them do something on site, you had to build in the leadership trust and empowerment and authenticity and so on.

So those, the kind of one, two punch was what we did over several years. And then we added in a new learning model, because again, to be a curious, lifelong learner, you can't just say, Oh, I get 40 hours of training this year. I got my five day course. That's not what you need. And again, still to this day in 2021, I enter organizations as a consultant or a Sherpa. And I see some of the employee sentiment of I didn't get my training this year. I didn't get my class. That is the wrong philosophy. Learning is equal parts formal, informal social, and it's continuous. And so you had to reset again or re-engineer people's psyche on how they learn and how important was to the flexible work style and the leadership. I E the other two points. 

So leadership model or philosophy as we called it and still do, the flexible work style kind of way of operating and then the learning model, add them all up together and that's how ultimately the engagement went from 50% to 87, about over a five-year period.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

And that's kudos to a lot of hard work and engaging the entire organization in determining the culture and giving the capabilities to the leaders to be able to lead in that kind of culture. One of the challenges though, is maintaining culture when some people or all people are working remotely, as you bring on new team members to the organization. How were you able to nurture culture with people that operated some in the office and some remotely?

Dan Pontefract: 

First of all, you want to recruit people who get the model to begin with. Back then when we were re-engineering how work works, nobody was actually doing the kind of flexible work. And those that were doing it like Yahoo and Best Buy, yanked all their people back into the office in early 2010s.

So we were literally the only organization on the planet that was advocating for a flexible work model. So you had to recruit the right type of people who understood the psyche, whether that was a leader, mid manager, frontline team member, this is how we operate. Then you got to think about things like onboarding and induction, both organizational and at the unit level. Are you building in those behaviors, the flexible work style model, the learning model into your induction program? Because if you're not. Then it just becomes something on a website, not something that's inculcated as systemic to the culture. 

There's a whole other array of opportunities  and issues that you want to make sure you're embedding in. But that's the key word. Hiring and then embedding those people into the practice and embedding those practices themselves into programs, into culture, into executive communications, whatever the case may be, wherever you can make sure you infiltrate and make sure you embed.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

And to be able to do that, it takes great leadership skills and that's where your book comes into play here, Lead. Care. Win. One of the reasons I absolutely love the book is that it's more of a field guide where leaders can ask questions of themselves, fill out assessments. So it's much more of a process of reflecting how they can improve their own skills.

What got you to write more of a field guide as opposed to the way typical authors write leadership books?

Dan Pontefract: 

Well you’re one of the first and few to actually articulate what the book is. So, first of all, thank you, kudos. And although, quote, it's a book, you're right. It actually was written as a field guide. And if the astute observer will know when they get to the book is that I don't even call them chapters. They're lessons. So it's not chapter one through nine it's actually lesson one through nine. And these lessons are kind of like the field guide approach of how you analyze what's working in your life, in your work life and your leadership, your leadership of self. You articulate. And after that analysis and assessment, then you can go on to what you might remedy.

So there are then the techniques, the tips, the things to fix ,the examples that come in the back half of each of the lessons. And this comes to me probably from the fact that I'm an educator. I started out thinking I was going to be a high school teacher and I did so for three years. And after getting my feet wet and learning a little bit about classroom management and kids and so forth. I then moved on to higher ed and I spent six years in higher education, running career changing programs for adults. And then of course, I move on to SAP as its chief learning officer. And again, to Telus for being a chief learning officer. So I've always been in the education, academic learning space.

Now I'm not saying my book's the best. What I'm saying is what you're getting is twenty-five years of on the ground, in the trenches experience of how culture engagement, learning leadership care ought to happen. But then I put my learning hat on and I say, well, I'd rather write a book that is more like a guide and put the learner hat on and say, how would you want to go through lessons in some fun punchy self-reflective ways with also, I hope, an arsenal of techniques in which to help you fix or augment or improve. That's exactly how and why I wrote the book in that manner. 

Thank you for, as I say, picking up on that.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

It really serves that purpose because I think as leaders, the best authors help us reflect on our own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities for improvement. And that's exactly what you do here. The other thing I really love about it, Dan is the stories you tell, but especially the authenticity and the humility you show as a leader, as an author.

And I specifically loved Kaylin's story that you shared in the book.

Dan Pontefract: 

We're human beings. As Pope wrote, "To err is human. To forgive is divine." And so I have no problems whatsoever highlighting where I screwed up royally whether it's in a book or a talk and in consulting, because when I see other authors, speakers, consultants, and for some reason,  they don't share those experiences. It makes me distrust them. It's sort of lacking credibility. So I could write books and books and books Mahan on the things I screwed up with. So I try to limit some of those stories that would make myself look like a complete arse. But with Kaylin, the story is as follows.

So I have left high school teaching for higher ed. I'm about a year in. I'm subsequently about 27, 28 years old and Kaylin is about five to six years my senior. And he's in one of those one year, make sure you already have a degree, we're going to help you become an IT professional in a year, career changing programs. So it mixed kind of IT administration with business management, with consulting, with leadership, et cetera. Kaylin was a Cracker Jack. Really, really, really good student. 

Now we're about two or three months into the program. And every Friday I, as sort of the program director would facilitate Friday afternoons kind of like the Greek Agora, where we would sort of, you get in for 90 minutes, 120 minutes on a topic or two, and we'd just chat and work around problems because we're trying to get people to think differently, right? To be that humanistic type of individual. Now this is 1999. So I think it's a bit ahead of its time, but that's another story for another day. 

Now in the halfway through this particular session and somewhat ironically, we're talking about collaboration Mahan. I like roaming around a room just like they did in the Agora. And so I'm not at the front of the room cause I believe that's hierarchical. So I just kind of parade around  and Kaylin is situated at the back of the room in a little pod of three. Now a query, a question, something I can't recall specifically comes up from the other side of the room. And Kaylin is quick and I'm close to Kaylin, like right in the proximity of his desk. And he's quick to chime in on something. And horribly foolish of me and looking for a laugh from the class. Because of what Katelyn said, and I might not have agreed wholeheartedly, even though I was the facilitator of the discourse, I sort of put my hand up to Kaylin's face. And I said, Caitlin, talk to the hand, looking for a laugh from the class. I think I got the laugh, but what I did equally so is humiliate Caitlin in front of his 25 other peers. And I didn't really get it until I saw his body language later on during the class slumped down, certainly frowning and not completely abject checked out and not part of this anymore.

And then it kind of, it was bugging me a little bit, but I didn't address it. And I just sort of said, Hey, everyone have a great weekend. And I went back to my office, about a hundred meters down the hall. Sure enough, within seconds of me entering my office, knock at the door, it's Kaylin. Kaylin enters, and he's teared up and he shuts the door and he says, "Dan I just want you to know what you just did affected me greatly and I'm embarrassed, but I'm also hurt." And I knew it, I knew it was going to come. And so, I'm now on the other side of the desk sitting in the other chair with him and I'm crying because I know how deep I've hurt this man because I didn't allow for his way in which that he learned to prosper.

He's an overtly open communicator and he needed to get out what he had to get out in that particular time. And I just looked for the laugh and caught him off. And we got through that. We hugged it out. On Monday, I came back to the class right in the morning at half past eight and without bringing Kaylin up to the room or anything I apologized to the class and to Kaylyn specifically for my actions and my antics.

And I think to bring out that story and just to sort of highlight the fact that we all have leadership lessons, we all make mistakes. And I'm the first to admit that I do as well. But if I don't learn from it, whether it's you or me Mahan, and from the lesson we learn, if we don't learn from it, I should say, and we continue that practice, we're going to hurt other Kaylin's. And that's what I just wanted to share in that particular story. It was that we all make mistakes. How do we find a way in which to console, absolve, regret and issue the apology to learn from it? So you don't make the mistake again, you make amends for the mistake you did make, and others, others Mahan may learn from it as well.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

I really appreciate you sharing that story, Dan. Most specifically, because the humility you show is what I want leaders to reflect on as they look at the different elements you mentioned in your book, because you have great questions for people to answer after every one of the lessons. And as I was looking at them, thinking about some of the leaders I know, I can easily see them saying, "No problem here. No problem there. Yes, yes, yes yes, I'm moving right along." And even though Caitlin's story comes toward the end of your book, I appreciate you sharing it because it's that kind of humility with which if leaders are willing to read your book, ask the questions. It will help serve as a field guide for them to become more effective leaders.

So I really appreciate both styles you approach it. And I encourage others to think about it with the same exact humility and perspective that you've shared it. 

So one of the elements, you have a beautiful circular graphic which is also really, important, you don't start in a place and end in a place, but you do mention critical factors. One of them being relatable is one of the lessons. You referenced Krugman's article on an epidemic of infallibility. And I wonder why is it that as leaders, we feel like we have to be infallible. What has caused that to be the case and how can we overcome that?

Dan Pontefract: 

There's a myriad different reasons. One of which is I think just history. We tend to look from a masculine perspective as that's how leadership ought to be from a militaristic command and control approach. The scientific principles of management as suggested by a stopwatch that we try to get more blood from the stone. That type of thinking has been with us for almost centuries I would argue, like multiple centuries. 

So there's a history here that we need to think about. But more recently I would suggest to you is in part this notion that I'm the boss. So I must put on the Teflon suit when I go to work and not be the human being I was on the weekend with my family or my neighbors or my faith or my community.

And it's simply ironical, but it's also antithetical. What I don't get, which is why I implore leaders of many genders to look in the mirror is that, are you being true to yourself by being someone you're not at work? And if you are a bully, a rampaging berating buffoon at your home with your spouse, with your neighbors, with your faith then you might want some psychological counseling first and foremost, and maybe get out of a leadership role in the place of where you work.

But I'm suggesting to you that that's not the case most of the time. And there might be a small percentage that actually are. So I wonder why are you pretending to be the Teflon mechanistic autocratic type of leader in your workplace? What does it serve? So that's question number one. 

Then question number two is, well, okay, if you can bring your  true self and let's again, presume it's open and fun and collaborative and a human being. What might you do to inculcate the team camaraderie? The team collaboration, the team notion. It's not you being just Joe or Jill or Jenny happy. It's about what operational practices can you and the team come up with.

I E your team norms that allow you to be relatable, humanistic, open, caring, compassionate. Again, mistakes are going to be made. How do you forgive them and overlook them and learn from them? Like new deadlines are going to occur. A partner, a supplier are going to screw something up. There's a crisis every minute you could turn it into that. So what are we doing to handle it in a humanistic, empathic, kind generous way?  I ask you that, of your leadership with your team? So that again, A) you're a human being, but B) you're bringing up some of those qualities and characteristics of the team can operate in such a way.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

And you do a beautiful job. You also break down empathy into head, heart and hands.

Dan Pontefract: 

Pretty proud of that one, to be honest. And again, I'm not making it up. I'm just taking language from psychologists of which I'm not. I'm more of a corporate sociologist.  I kind of observe how things are going. I got a bunch of degrees, but certainly not, psychology is one. And so my corporate sociology takes what the great academics and researchers and psychologists have come up with. And I try to almost converted into lexicon that is for us , almost like regular people. 

And so when you think about head, heart and hands and the empathy quotient there, I'm asking you to consider what psychologists call an analysis of your emotional, your cognitive and head is about how you are cognitively intellectualizing how someone is thinking. So, maybe you come from either a different religion, different culture, a different country. And so you're going to be thinking differently when you come to DC or San Fran or Toronto, because there's just different things that you had to think about back then back there. That's just one example. So that's you as a leader getting into their heads, basically saying, how are they thinking of on this one? 

The heart is the emotional empathy. And emotional empathy is again, now trying to feel how someone is feeling about a situation. So, maybe, they just lost a grandmother. Because maybe it's COVID and what have you, although your grandmothers are safe, theirs isn't, how are you feeling, how they're feeling? They've just lost a grandmother. So that's a feeling part. 

And  the third part is called sympathetic empathy. And when we sympathize enough as a leader, we're able to do something about it. And when we do something about it, that's where I bring up the hands. So you now kind of thought about it. How are they thinking? You felt about it. How are they feeling? Now, sympathetic empathy or hands is you doing something about it. Whether that's a card, whether that's setting up a meeting to chat, whether that's helping them with some extra service, bereavement, what have you. It doesn't matter. You're taking action to support. Head, heart, hands.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

And that's beautifully put and specifically right now, where more people are operating in a virtual environment, that empathy, there needs to be an intentional focus by leaders on that empathy. 

You also share a great story of a conversation that you had with Eric Yuan, Founder of Zoom. A lot of people tell me Zoom is successful partly because of the crisis. And I want to point them to Google meet and so many other platforms, WebEx. So it's not just being in the right place at the right time. They have done a lot of things really well. So you had a conversation with him.

Dan Pontefract: I glommed onto Eric's story well before the pandemic. And Eric and I had met, I think, five or six years ago, previous to this year at a conference. And I heard him speak, about the transition from WebEx to Cisco, to Zoom. And effectively, Eric and team had come up with WebEx. Cisco bought WebEx. Eric's at Cisco in for several years, tried in earnest to help to fix the culture of Cisco, but also kind of rise up and say, "We need to do something better than what we've got with WebEx right now. We got to retool." And Cisco was not listening to Eric and they were more fixated on something they called Facebook for the enterprise. 

So Eric got ridiculously frustrated and put his money where his heart is and said enough. So he quits, rounds up a few engineers and starts Zoom. This is like 10 years ago. And so Zoom, some people might remember as the kind of the 40 minutes web conferencing free a way in which that you could use kind of like a new type of Skype. And it was like this fringe thing. 

But what I loved about Eric is the story  of him deciding that that culture was not enough for him and he needed to do something better, hence zoom. But then when he ultimately started Zoom, he thought back to his upbringing and his parents and immigrating to America. And he wanted to have that same sense of duty of love. And he, when he created zoom, he's like, "I'm not doing a whole bunch of values. Those values mean nothing most times. They're just sitting on a wall in the lobby when people walk in and as a customer." And he said, "The only value we're going to have is one word. And that one word is care." 

And just, I noodled that. I noodled that for a long time and followed up with a couple of interviews with him on Zoom, of course, for the book. I pay homage to Eric and his story, not in the book, but in the title. And somewhat unbeknownst to Eric, actually the title of the book Lead. Care. Win is me saying, look, if an immigrant can set up shop, get bought by Cisco, say that's not enough, the culture is wrong, that we're not being listening to. Set up an entirely new company and then look himself in the mirror and say, "The only reason that this place exists for customers and for our employees is if we care and if we care, that's going to be the one value, one word, and we go from there." And then the pandemic hit. And, he became a bazillionaire, but he has promised to give it all away to give back to community. Cause he cares. I mean, it's just, it's a rags to riches story, but it's more a care to care story that I appreciate mostly.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

And that care, Dan also showed when they tripped at the beginning of the pandemic with the Zoom bombing and everything else with the transparency they had in handling it and showing their customers that they really cared. So, again, it wasn't some, a word that they had put on a chart up at corporate offices. It was something that they truly embraced and when they had to show it, they showed it through their actions.

Dan Pontefract: And, I agreed with the Zoom bombing and again Eric being authentically transparent and writing about it in the blogs. Mia Culpa saying sorry, taking action, refunding where we're needed. But also if you think about American Thanksgiving, Ramadan, Hanukkah and Christmas, he said the 40 minute limit is done. We're going to, for these dates and holidays, we're going to open it up and you can stay there as long as you want. It's a pandemic. And we want people to be connected no matter what. So, just caring about humanity and not worrying about the profit is another example there.

Mahan Tavakoli: Yes. And I love that story. Addition to that, you also talk about one of the lessons is on commanding clarity. And one of the challenges that the leaders that I interact with have right now, they say we have no clarity. So how would you guide leaders to try to have a certain level of clarity as they try to guide their organizations?

Maybe not three to five year strategies, but still there is a need for clarity.

Dan Pontefract: Yeah. And, again, as much as I love the word care, lead care win. To win, you have to care and if you care, then you can lead and win over the hearts and minds of your people. If you're not caring about your clarity quotient, hence this lesson is called commit to clarity, then people won't care about you.

So you actually care about your people. You have to command clarity. I don't love the word command, but it gets your attention. What is he up to? What's this command clarity bit? And that goes back to really simple, personal hygiene pieces. Like, are you focused? I E are you paying attention in the moment of that one-on-one meeting, that team meeting or are you distracted?

Are you concerned about the balance of your team? I E their load. How many projects they have? Are they stressed? Because they're working 15 hour days and not eight. So if you're not clear about how people are spending their time, then you're not commanding clarity. If you're only focused on the short-term versus the long-term or the long-term versus the short-term right? Vice versa. You're not commanding clarity because you're either thinking way too far in the future and not enough right now, or you're too in the moment and too distracted by every little thing that happens today and not giving any guidance or asking for direction opinion, ideas on the future and the bigger picture of strategy. 

There's all these little hygiene pieces of your clarity quotient that I urge leaders to get a handle on, because if you're wishy-washy, if you're not clear, ultimately you're unclear. Then again, your team will look at you like boss, what's up? Like, what's the deal here? And if you're getting that, then they're not going to care about you. And thus it works vice versa. So things like being focused, things like being involved in the strategy, both short and long term, thinking about things like load balancing.

And  I think the last one I might add is decisions. No one wants the paralysis by analysis boss, which means, just sitting on the data, sitting on the information, sitting on the report that was submitted and the boss sits around for two or three weeks and doesn't make a decision. That's not clear. Your team is going to be so frustrated with the fact that you haven't actually done anything with the stuff that you asked them to do in the first place. So they're going to go bonkers. It's very disengaging. The flip side is making too sporadic off the cuff without enough information decisions. And it's like a sawed-off shotgun. And again, the team's like, "Oh Jesus, he changed that now? She did what?" And so again, the freneticism starts to envelope and again, you get this disenfranchised type of character of team. So be clear, command your clarity, and thus you will demonstrate care to your team.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

And it is required even more when the organizations are facing crisis, especially in a remote environment, but in a crisis that clarity is absolutely critical. Now being relatable and commanding clarity are only two of the nine lessons. After the lessons, you talk about  Dakota, Stand by Me. It's probably the only chapter Dan of any business book that has actually made me emotional. I had tears in my eyes because of the beautiful stories that you told and the beautiful message of that entire chapter whether Dylan Benson story, but I would love for you to share with our audience the experience you had in New Orleans and what that can teach us as leaders.

Dan Pontefract: 

Well, I am thinking now I should probably also issue a small box of Kleenex when I, when people get the book

Mahan Tavakoli: 

You should.

Dan Pontefract: 

Thanks for that. And again, I think, if you're a credible author, you will write from a sense of emotion and heart. And I sought out to do, and I'm thankful, honestly, Mahan for that feedback. I'm not trying to make people cry, but I am trying to make them think about their humanity and it hit me. And that's why I wanted to share the story in Dakota. 

So in essence, happily married, we're raising three goats, which we call children, they're teenagers and I travel a lot, but I had never been to New Orleans. Weird. And so I was thinking about writing another book and I was contemplating how that book might look and I just, I needed to be inspired. And I asked Denise, my beloved, for a hall pass. I said, “Look, I don't have a talk. There's no consulting gig. I want to go to New Orleans. Could you give me like a four day, three night hall pass? And I'm just going to head to New Orleans." Denise is like, "Yeah. If you're out of my hair for three nights, I'm good. Yeah, you go. That's great." 

So  I land in the land of the great Satchmo and Ellen Degeneres and so on. And the second night there, I don't know anyone and I didn't even look to meet anyone. I just wanted to absorb the city. So the second night I'm walking around and in the French quarter and I pass what may not be known to many of your American viewers as a Canadian institution and that's the House of Blues. And why it's a Canadian institution is because Dan Akroyd, one of the two blues brothers is Canadian and is very profoundly proud of being Canadian from Kingston, Ontario. I have a chance to meet him a couple of times, just a great Canadian. First name is pretty cool too, being Dan. So I feel compelled to go into the house of blues in New Orleans. And again, I stumbled upon it. It wasn't as if this was premeditated. 

So serendipitously, I walked in, I ordered an old fashion and yeah, it's late-ish, it's like almost nine. So this two person band is just finishing up a song. I sit down and old fashioned is ordered and then the gentlemen on the left and right. So one one's playing keyboards and one is playing kind of drums essentially. And so the older gentleman says this one's for my wife and they go into Stand By Me. And it's just glorious. I'm just like, this is amazing.  And then they left, like they packed up and they leave. 10 minutes later or so, the gentleman who had introduced the song as this one's for my wife sort of comes around behind me from the other door and I didn't really see him at first. He almost surprised me and he said, “Hey”, I said, “Whoa, hi.” “So you were watching us. Thank you.” And I thought this is great. “You were great.” He said, "Wasn't my son fantastic?" Now to picture this, the older gentleman, I would say probably mid fifties, mid sixties, somewhere around there, he was an ectomorph meaning he's kind of like six foot two, maybe 160 pounds, right? Like thin. His son was more of an endomorph, kind of like five foot eight and about 300 pounds. So I could not tell they were father and son. So of course I said,  "You two were fantastic." And then he dropped this on me, Mahan. He says, " Well, tonight was the first night after about six months or so that we've played live. Because my wife died and I had to take care of her for awhile, but I thought we were pretty good." 

And so,  it still frighteningly tears me up every time I think about this. For this man to pack up and come around and say hello to me. And it was just me, like there was some sort of cosmic, kismet connection. And for him to divulge that he had to take care of his wife and then, for me to sit down and listen to Stand By Me as he introduced it for my wife and to see these two pick themselves back up and honor their mom and their wife. Honor each other. I just thought how ridiculously caring is that? And so I just needed to pay homage in my own way to those two for helping me articulate why I went to New Orleans to find inspiration and hope in what we all can become a better version of ourselves.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

And that's a beautiful story. And you mentioned Dan, the fact that we also have to have that humanity in mind, that the people we are leading have spouses that are sick, kids that are having issues, parents that might be having issues. So leadership has to have that humanity. That's why that caring is critical to being able to lead and then winning from there.

 Dan Pontefract: 

I couldn't have said it better. So you can write the sequel the Lead. Care. Win. Part Two , Mahan. That's effectively it, right? We all have bumps and bruises, highs, and lows. We have brickbats and bouquets that are gonna enter our lives. And whether that's through the miracle of birth or the sadness of death, whether that's a new job, a new acquisition, new team member, new customer, new supply chain, new product, everything is new. Each day is new. And each of us have things that we gotta deal with. And so if we're not humble and demonstrating humility that we're all in this together. And as a friend of mine used to say, "We're all on the journey to the waterfall", which is a first nations metaphor for our meandering path to the afterlife. And again, you have one shot at life. I hope it's long, but even if it's not, I hope that you give it your all. And being kind and caring to others.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

What a beautiful message, Dan. And now I know you have, in addition to Lead. Care. Win, which is an outstanding book, outstanding field guide, full of lessons for leaders, you have lots of resources that you have made available for free to your community. You have online courses and programs. So where can our listeners find out more about you and engage more with you, Dan?

 Dan Pontefract: 

Well, first I just asked that people do offer up some sort of donation to their community, five bucks, 10 bucks, any cause that's near and dear to your heart. If you'd listen in on this, do that first. And then if you're interested, the site where the microsite of the book, where everything is, the free stuff, the courses is leadcarewin.com. And I hope to meet you online as well.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

Well, Dan Pontefract, I really appreciate the insights that you've shared through the book. The kind of values that you advocate for and more than advocating and more than talking about it, exhibiting it through your own leadership. So thank you for your insights and thank you for sharing them with the Partnering Leadership community.

Dan Pontefract: 

Mahan, it is my sincere pleasure. Please keep doing what you're doing because you are helping hundreds, thousands of people with their own self-reflection on how to become a better version of themselves. So my hat tips to you.

Mahan Tavakoli: 

Thank you, Dan.