The Art of Leadership Toronto 2019: Conference Summary

CONFERENCE SUMMARY

Toronto | September 24, 2019

CONTENTS

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About The Art of Leadership

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Ron Tite – Organizational Alignment and Positive Momentum

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Robert Richman – Corporate Culture and Accountability

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Dr. Liane Davey – Team Effectiveness and Productive Conflict

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Neil Pasricha – Employee Engagement and Happiness

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Marcus Buckingham – Talent Development and Peak Performance

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Executive Panel

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Bill Williams – Closing Remarks

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Sponsors

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Many companies like to use quantifiable data to measure the impact of its efforts on productivity.

But while the beans are still being counted, creativity is finally finding its rightful place alongside the bean counters. These days, scoring leadership has fallen by the wayside, and words like measuring employee engagement, satisfaction and accountability have become a critical part of the lens through which leadership is evaluated. What makes a leader great?

Upholding corporate values and steering a course that is clear to everyone involved? Defining and creating a great culture? Making tough decisions and owning them? Being able to admit to failure, while creating an opportunity for growth and learning from it? Leadership is all of the above and more.

Working beyond the status quo, creating change without fear and fostering inclusivity amongst teams are just a few of the goals that define what great leadership is all about.

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RON TITE Named one of the “Top 10 Creative Canadians”, Innovation Expert and Bestselling Author

ORGANIZATIONAL ALIGNMENT AND POSITIVE MOMENTUM

Doing is the decisions you make and actions you take to live your values.

Ron shared the observation that far too many clients have no idea where to look and who to trust. Why? Because everyone is trying to be everything to everyone.

Your grocery store and your local retailer are also trying to be your bank.

they are having is honest, and that they can expect that same experience again.

Notably, this goes beyond what a company makes or sells; it has to also be what a company stands for, how they act and how they reinforce their beliefs.

Ron asked, “If everyone is trying to be everything to everyone, what is happening to their brand?” Do customers know what they stand for and what product or service they can trust? Do employees know what the brand promise is?

Ron shared that when Think-Do-Say are out of alignment everyone will experience an integrity gap. When there is an integrity gap, employees, suppliers and shareholders all have different expectations about what they are doing, why they are doing it and who they are doing it for. In addition, when there is an integrity gap, customers begin to experience something different than what they expect and perhaps, what they were promised. When this happens, clients have

In an ever expanding and complicated market Ron believes great leaders bring clarity to a company’s brand promise by aligning three actions in a compelling, relevant and authentic way:

no idea where to look and who to trust.

Ron closed by asking the question, “How can you use Think-Do-Say to customize your connection and to create alignment with how you connect with what you do, why you do it and who you do it for?”

Are you thinking, doing and saying what you believe? What do your employees believe?

Think-Do-Say allows everyone involved to look out for each other.

Think-Do-Say provides a framework where organizational alignment and positive momentum can be supported, ultimately making good things happen for you and your organization.

• What they THINK • What they DO • What they SAY

The corporate culture will either support Think-Do-Say across the company, or it will not. When these actions are aligned, employees, suppliers, shareholders and customers experience synergy. Most importantly, they can trust the experience

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ROBERT RICHMAN Co-Founder of Zappos Insights, Leading Authority on Culture Transformation and Bestselling Author

Greatest innovations come from our greatest frustrations.

CORPORATE CULTURE AND ACCOUNTABILITY One of Roberts first messages was that a great corporate culture is one that attracts and repels at the same time. If you are trying to appeal to everyone, it means your people and corporate culture are compromising, or being compromised.

These accountabilities are:

3. Do leaders in the company live it?

ONE LAST HACK: TIME MANAGEMENT

Robert shared the story that when Zappos started, they didn’t have a budget for marketing and advertising. They thought, “What if we invested in creating a customer experience so incredible that people would talk about it?”

Robert also shared three key principals behind a strong corporate culture that leaders have to implement and nourish.

Robert shared how important it is for everyone to change their relationship with time. Time is the one thing that everyone has in common—we all have the same amount of it.

The Zappos customer service business model became a brand promise and cultural experience customers could depend on. But that’s not all. That customer service idea also became a cornerstone of a corporate culture that has resulted in Zappos being listed as one of the best places to work. As Robert says, “Service is what we do – we are more than just shoes.”

Robert shared three accountabilities a company and its leaders must stand by to build and maintain a corporate culture people can count on.

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1. Is the company hiring based on it?

3. Culture is grown through rituals: a. ‘X’ is what we do/practice, all day and every day.

b. Rituals create predictablility, and helps 2. Is the company firing based on it?

1. Culture is driven by feelings: Feelings drive performance. Energy, excitement, and passion are examples of important feelings.

2. Culture is governed by games, which have: a. GOALS – Do we all have the same goals and deadlines? b. RULES – What are the core values and rules everyone must follow? What are fireable offences? c. FEEDBACK – Everyone gets honest, timely constructive feedback so they know how they are doing.

manage everyone’s expectations.

Zappos believes that respect for time is fundamental to an organizations corporate culture. If someone shows up late for a meeting it suggests they have a greater respect for their own time over that of others.

Robert also pointed out, we don’t need other people to change our own behaviour, especially in relation to time. He encourages us to be early, and to model this behaviour into the corporate culture we want.

d. OPT-IN – Everyone has the autonomy to opt-in and make decisions they will be accountable for.

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DR. LIANE DAVEY Organizational Psychologist, Team Effectiveness Expert and New York Times Bestselling Author

TEAM EFFECTIVENESS AND PRODUCTIVE CONFLICT Isn’t teamwork always awesome? Liane says “No.” Teamwork is a challenge for anyone trying to survive the corporate world, and a lack of conflict is hurting our teams. It’s stopping us from making tough but important choices.

Liane believes that we all need more conflict at work. Why? Because if we don’t face conflict, it lingers and gets bigger. This avoidance is what Liane calls conflict debt. Often, someone else has to pay for the conflict avoidance.

SOLUTION #2 Hypothetical Strategy Instead of pushing your idea, use a ‘What if’ statement to get people to generate possible solutions. In the case where a department head believes the sales unit will not agree, ask, “What if sales did agree?” a. What would it look like? b. Is there anyone in sales who might be an early adopter?

Liane gives us three solutions to help us engage in healthy conflict, and begin to transform it into problemsolving. She warns that we are clumsy with conflict, because we are out of practice.

Not only is this a good solution, it feels good to be part of this problem-solving approach.

SOLUTION #1 Speak Their Truth… Then Speak Yours

Team members don’t all pull in the same direction, even when they all have the same objective. For example, teams that include finance, marketing, customer service, and risk all have different needs and priorities which can create conflict. Instead of being frustrated, we can choose to begin resolving this conflict by asking three questions for each team:

Make sure their truth comes out of your mouth, before you speak your own truth.

‘Speak Their Truth’ doesn’t mean you have to agree with them, but doing this shows you are listening, which may take down some of their defences.

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Having the courage to disagree with your team is essential to building a high-performance team.

SOLUTION #3 Teams Are Not Easy

a. What is the unique value that this department brings to the team? What expertise do they have?

b. What stakeholder group does this department represent? What perspective do they advocate for?

c. What is the challenge that this department is obliged to put into the discussion?

This exercise shows us that conflict is not the opposite of teamwork; it is the purpose of teamwork. These three questions will help make conflict normal, and easier to manage.

How can you make conflict a productive part of your job?

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NEIL PASRICHA Fear is an excuse that holds us back.

Positive Psychology Researcher, Harvard MBA and Former Director of Leadership at Walmart

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT AND HAPPINESS Our parents told us that if we study hard, get a great job, get promoted, then we will be happy. Neil argues instead, that this model is broken and that the path to real happiness should be reversed.

We need to train our brain to be happy first and then the great work and success follows.

According to Stanford University, happy people are:

NEIL’S BIG 3

ONE LAST BROKEN MODEL

1. Forest Therapy: A brisk nature walk in the

Neil closed by sharing another broken model—that ability leads to motivation, and motivation leads to action.

woods for 20 minutes with no cell phone.

2. Replay Journaling: At the end of the day, take 20 minutes to replay all the great things that happened that day and write them down with a pen and paper.

3. Book Reading: Read 20 pages of fiction from a real book—not an electronic device.

• 31% more productive • 37% better at sales • 300% more creative

And that’s not all. Happy people:

Neil also encouraged us to tell someone when we choose the option we want to commit to.

Why? It helps us be more accountable. Neil shared, “When you tell someone, it is 50% more likely that you will do it.”

Instead, Neil suggests that action leads to motivation, and that motivation is what leads to new ability. He argues that it is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking, than to think yourself into a new way of acting. What this means is that through action we begin to learn and gain confidence in our ability, which reinforces our motivation to continue.

Can you commit to doing one of these for 20 minutes per day, for 20 days?

• Are 40% more likely to get a promotion in the next 12 months • Live an average of 10 extra years

In his study of happiness, Neil has discovered three amazing ways to help people be happy and increase selfengagement. He calls them his ‘Big Ones’.

They are highly effective, simple to do, easily shareable, and take an average of 20 minutes each.

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MARCUS BUCKINGHAM World’s Leading Expert on Talent and Strengths Based Leadership

TALENT DEVELOPMENT AND PEAK PERFORMANCE Marcus set out to answer the question, ‘How do experts become experts?’

Study excellence as it actually happens in the world. Focus on what you want to be, not what you don’t want to be.

branch—not new branches.

2. Tasks they are good at

As leaders, the best way to develop excellence and success is to focus energy aligning people’s strengths with the company’s mission, vision, and goals. Marcus encourages us to do more than focus on strengths. He recommends we ‘interrogate success’ and get to know all elements of it by asking questions like:

3. Tasks that give them strength, and

• What am I doing when I experience success?

The simple answer is that people become excellent when they are motivated by three things: 1. Tasks they enjoy spending time doing

empower their spirit • What am I thinking when I experience success?

Marcus encourages us to spend less time focusing on what doesn’t work, and more time on what works exceptionally well. While it’s good to understand what doesn’t work (so it isn’t repeated), spending time studying failure isn’t going to help us become experts.

Marcus shared research showing that when we play to our existing strengths, and are motivated by personal interests, our brains actually build new synaptic connections to support this learning in very exciting ways. Marcus likens learning to how a tree grows. Learning is like growing new buds on an existing

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• How can I do more of that, and do it better?

• How can I celebrate success?

The example Marcus shared was about Lionel Messi—a star soccer player who has a passion for the game and great skill with his left foot. When Messi was young his coaches failed him by trying to get him to improve his less dominant right foot. In other words, Messi’s coaches focused on his weakness. Messi became so disheartened, that he was close to quitting the sport. At that moment—faced with losing a great talent—his coaches backed

off and began encouraging Messi to improve his skill with his left foot. They also challenged Messi saying, “Wherever you are, be dangerous.” And the rest is history.

PULL ON RED THREADS Marcus shared a final observation that people experience job satisfaction when 20% of their job consists of work that they enjoy, are good at, and focuses on their strengths.

Marcus calls this work ‘Red Threads’. If the percentage of a person’s work goes higher than 20%, job satisfaction for the most part doesn’t change. However, as that number drops below 20%, there is a marked decrease in employee engagement and job satisfaction with every percentage point drop.

Marcus encourages us to get to know and protect our own ‘Red Threads’. Marcus’ final message is, “Find your red thread and weave it into your contribution. Don’t wait too long. As a leader, give your people time to love what they do, and do what they love.”

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EXECUTIVE PANEL

KAREN COLLINS

DENNIS HOFMANN

ROBERT HOSKING

SANDY MCINTOSH

Chief Talent Officer

Vice President, Sales

Senior Vice President, Managing Director – Search Practice

Executive Vice President, People & Culture and Chief Human Resources Officer

“I attribute our success to being a highly adaptable culture. One of the things we’ve done to build on this is BMO’s Institute for Learning—our Corporate University. BMO has also recently launched two online-agile tools to ensure all 46,000 employees have access to training that they may be curious about in their current role or for a future role.”

“Getting culture right is really important. The first step is to know what your important cultural values are. Then, communicate and over communicate those cultural values through the leaders and down to the team.

And then as Robert Richman said, hire, fire and model those behaviours.

“Culture is critical to the overall success of an organization. One of the things LHH Knightsbridge did was to implement an employee engagement survey that is done bimonthly. The results were in real-time which put some perspective on areas of opportunity and immediately dives into challenges and look into trends in the organization.

“We are faced with a number of challenges, and it’s getting increasing complex for leaders.

It’s really hard to have anything stay still long enough to feel completion, or to have time to look in the rear-view mirror and think about the next move.”

“As a leader, help each of your employees bring their authentic self to work. To create an environment of psychological safety where people can really contribute their best.”

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From a leadership standpoint, Dell also developed leadership principles based on those cultural values that we train and evaluate our leaders against, and how we get feedback from our employees.”

This real-time reporting lets us act on issues and implement programs that have helped make a difference in people’s lives, while also aligning the company mission and values.”

“Integrity is a foundational layer you need in any circumstance / situation; knowing who you are, coming as you are, bringing your values and whole self to work—staying grounded. Your leadership brand is the one thing you have, and it is ‘born’ on how you show up… your consistency.”

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CLOSING REMARKS Think, Do, Say. When behaviours don’t align, you have an integrity gap.

When you behave in ways that reinforce your beliefs—CELEBRATE IT! Purpose before product.

Leaders should be working to create an experience so wonderful people talk about it!

A great culture attracts and repels at the same time!

Great leaders give credit for success and take responsibility for failures.

Hacking is the opposite of a ‘best practice’.

It’s amazing how people who don’t want to be there, suck the energy out of the room!

“Taking it off-line” is THE meeting to go to! It’s also a ‘conflict debt’.

Embrace conflict. You need it to grow and make change.

Stop listening to your “Itty, bitty, shitty committee”!

If you know you need to innovate, it’s too late.

Be Happy – Great Work – Big Success!

Sadly our cell phones are a ‘constant fondle’.

Instead, peel an entire orange in ONE move.

Take the 20 for 20 challenge: •

Brisk nature walks – AKA Hiking,

•

The 20 minute replay – AKA Journaling,

•

20 pages of fiction – reading an ACTUAL book.

Prime your brain for positivity.

Open a door for total strangers for 5 min!

Do! Can Do! Want To Do! Excellence must be studied as it exists in the world. Not by inverting the bad.

Cascading mini goals trickle down on you like toxic rain.

Be curious about excellence.

19 left and 2 right make you an expert soccer player and super left footed!

You have a left foot too!

Find your Red Thread.

The power of human nature is that each human’s nature is unique.

To know and not to do, is really not to know.

To learn and not to do something with the learning is not to have learned.

Go and LEAVE YOUR LEGACY!

To know and not to do is really not to know.

To learn and not to do something with the learning is really not to have learned.

BILL WILLIAMS Host

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OUR SPONSORS

OUR CONTRIBUTORS WRITTEN SUMMARIES

VISUAL SUMMARIES

PHOTOGRAPHY

BRUCE MAYHEW

CAROLYN ELLIS

MIRA BUDD

Mayhew Consulting

Brilliance Mastery

Lifeology 101