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How ancient wisdoms can influence a modern leadership mindset
Do you use your intuition in leadership? Would you like to develop your inner knowing to a greater level? How about a 30-second hack to change your brain waves into a meditative state? Speaker, author, and advisor Scott Stein shares his insights and practical tips on these, delegation, strategic planning, and the core of what we leaders need to do in current times of tension.
Why you should listen: how ancient wisdoms can influence a modern leadership mindset
Native American ancient wisdom: using the Fox Walk to change brain waves for movement meditation
Compression planning and how it saves tons of time and avoids ‘talk fest’ in strategic planning
The four levels of delegating and mistakes to avoid
Access your leadership strengths with meditation
#boundlessleadership
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Shownotes:
About Scott:
Author Scott Stein on how to access your leadership strengths through meditation
Speaker
Scott has worked with thousands of leaders around the world helping them to become better leaders by fast-tracking their thinking and their approach with people. Scott is a highly sought after international speaker and mentor who has worked with a range of global and Australian businesses.
He has a Master’s Degree in Communications and taught Communication and Public Speaking at Central Michigan University. In addition, Scott received the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation from Professional Speakers Association, which recognises him as one of the top speakers across the globe.
Author
Scott is the author of four books, his most recent titled: ‘Leadership Hacks’ that aims to equip leaders with effective and fast track strategies to boost impact and results as a leader. In ‘Leadership Hacks’ Scott identifies possible distractions that could be slowing leaders down and provides an expansive toolkit to help in streamlining delegation skills, fast-tracking productivity and re-routing meetings so that leaders come away with more productive outcomes. So, if you are a CEO, aspiring CEO or just somebody who would like to improve their leadership skills and effectiveness, you should be adding Scott’s new book Leadership Hacks to your bookshelf.
Advisor
Scott also advises individuals and organisations pulling from his Native American heritage and wilderness survival training. Scott’s desire to help others is inherent. As one of the founding board members for the charity Hands Across the Water, assisting children who lost their families in the 2004 tsunami, it is within his nature to support and encourage those who need guidance in finding their path. Scott also guides a number of Senior Leaders and Business owners whom he mentors on a regular basis. Despite championing the business world, Scott’s ego is well and truly on the ground next to him. Humility and approachability are perhaps two of his most defining characteristics, enabling him to be so successful in what he does. Congruently, his experience as a practical expert on leadership and influence has helped many of the world’s best-known brands and government agencies to clear the way to improve communication, connection and results.
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Transcript:
Zoë Routh: Here we go. Well, it's Zoë Routh. I'm here with the fabulous Scott Stein. So excited for this interview. We've been having a few months to line it all up and as Scott said, he's easing into the year, which is fabulous. He's an author of many books, and I've got his latest one ... I think it's your latest one ... Leadership Hacks here. It's a wonderful handbook. I recommend it to all my clients. He is a partner in Thought Leaders Global, and a stalwart in thought leaders community for forever, like 20-odd years or so. And it's such a delight to have you here, Scott.
Scott Stein: Yeah, thanks, Zoë. It's great to be here.
Zoë Routh: Indeed. Well, the first question is you've got a really funky accent. Like, I know I have a Canadian accent. What's your story? What's your accent? Where are you from?
Scott Stein: Yeah, it's kind of a interesting one. I grew up in America, grew up in Michigan up on the border of America and Canada, but my parents lived about three hours from the Canadian border, so it's a little bit Canadian, right? Drinking age in Canada, 18, America was 21 at the time. And I came out to Australia almost 25 years ago. I came out a holiday, fell in love with the country and the people and there was a woman involved ... Funny that ... and ended up staying. It wasn't the plan, but, yeah, it just kind of all came into place the way it was supposed to.
Zoë Routh: Did you marry an Aussie then?
Scott Stein: Yeah. I did. It was a funny story. I was hitchhiking from Canberra to the Snowy Mountains. I was about to go bush, so I used to be an adventure guide and I was going to do a Bear Grylls. I was going to go to the Snowy Mountains with just a special knife. I was taught in the Apache tradition, and on the way down, I was picked up by somebody when I was hitchhiking who was going to an adventure- guides-only whitewater kayaking weekend. We hit it off in the car and he said, "We've got an extra kayak. Why don't you kind of spend the weekend with us?" And I was going, "How good is that?" And ended up meeting the owners of the company and that's how I met my wife. She was a guide for the same adventure guiding company. So who would have thought? Yeah.
Zoë Routh: Oh, that's so cool. We have so much in common. You grew up not far from where I grew up. I grew up in Winnipeg, it's just over the border, not too far away. Also an outdoor leader. I married an Aussie, but he was nowhere near an outdoor guy. He's a lawyer.
Scott Stein: There you go.
Zoë Routh: Now, something you mentioned in your bio there, you were trained in the Apache way. Do you have Apache background in your heritage?
Scott Stein: No, but my great, great grandmother was a Cherokee medicine woman. So, the unfortunate thing is in that time, the Cherokees were hiding in the hills of Tennessee. So they hid from the US cavalry that moved them to Oklahoma. So my kin, which is what I like to call them, are all kind of Appalachian mountain people. So she married a white man, broke the bloodline, and was banished from the Cherokee tribe.
Scott Stein: So really interesting history. It wasn't passed on very much. I've always been drawn to the native American approach and philosophy and that leads into a lot of the things that I do. But I was fortunate enough to come across somebody named Tom Brown, Jr. He was trained by an Apache elder about native American survival and wilderness and philosophy, and I studied with him over about a 10 to 15-year period.
Zoë Routh: Yeah. Wow. That is so cool. Do you still maintain your relationship and contact with them?
Scott Stein: A little bit, yeah. But I also reach out to other tribes. I was just an America, and met with some Apache, Yaqui Apache, and then Navajo. I was in the Grand Canyon and we spent some time on the Navajo reservation. Yeah, 'cause my eldest daughter is doing a bit of a HSC project on it. So yeah, so still very much in tune with that and always exploring and opening up new doors as well.
Zoë Routh: Wow, that's amazing. And have you, since you've been 25 years in Australia, have you had much involvement with any of the aboriginal cultures here?
Scott Stein: Yeah, a little bit. Not a lot. I did a couple of little things up in the north end and things like that. Not as much. I reckon that'll happen a little bit later. So yeah, so always open to it, of course.
Zoë Routh: Yeah. It's all about relationships with Australian Indigenous people, that's for sure. You talk about ancient wisdom. I know that's one of your keynotes. Can you explain a little bit about that? You weave this background, all the experiences you had and all the intelligence that you got from these experiences. What is it about ancient wisdom that you can bring into contemporary leadership practice?
Scott Stein: Yeah, I think one of the interesting things is today we get so busy with things that technology rules our life, and a lot of times we forget what's really important. And I think the native people had a very good balance of what was real and what wasn't real. They were in tune with themselves in the environment around them.
Scott Stein: I think one of the things that I find is, especially today in the corporate world, is we are so insulated from the real world. We drive in our cars with our air conditioning. We go to an office that's a box inside a box in air conditioning. You know, we don't get outside. We go to the gym inside, in a gym, you know, and I'm going, yeah. And then you look at all of the ailments that people have, and things like that. And I think there's something in it as far as we're not really listening to that wisdom that was passed on through generation over generation.
Scott Stein: And that's really about what is my intuition telling me I should be doing. And I think that's what we need to start looking at. I think quite often people get so caught up in business that they forget to listen to their intuition. The native American people, their wisdom was about listening to that inner vision and using that almost as your guiding compass.
Scott Stein: So regardless, if I'm doing something with a big corporate Fortune 500 CEO or a small-business owner or a middle-level manager, quite often we're looking at what are the things and strategies and hacks you can use, but we're also looking beneath the surface to go, what's really driving you. Are you in alignment and are you on your path or are you not? 'Cause what I'm finding is if you're not doing what you should be doing, no matter what else you're doing, you're kind of lost anyways.
Scott Stein: So first of all, people need to know am I actually doing what I should be doing and then let's look at how can I do that faster and more convenient.
Zoë Routh: So developing that intuition, is it a daily practice or activities or habits that you implement to hone that?
Scott Stein: Yeah, I think it's different for different people. For me, I'm a big one on movement. So, I know some people are really good on meditation and they can sit down and they use eastern philosophy like yoga and things like that, which can be brilliant, and doesn't really work for me. I'm an active meditation person, so if I go for a walk or go for a run, I was taught a technique called fox walking, which shifts your brain waves up from alpha to beta.
Zoë Routh: What's it called? Fox walking?
Scott Stein: Fox walking. So it's a particular technique I was taught. So it was used by a lot of native American people, and essentially I was taught as a technique for hunting. So when you're out, again, I grew up in Michigan hunting, in fact, where I grew up, if you didn't hunt, you really didn't have enough food in the winter to eat.
Scott Stein: And I was always concerned about the hunt, because you need to make sure that not so much the deer didn't see you, but it was the birds, right? Because the birds would see you or hear you, give an alarm call off, and then the deer would be scared because they knew something was in the woods. Similar to Australia with kangaroo as well. So, what fox walking does, it's a particular strategy where you slow your breathing down and essentially you move much more silently when you're either walking or moving through the bush, where you're almost invisible because nobody can hear you.
Scott Stein: So yeah, it was a technique I was taught. You shift your brainwaves, and quite often I'll do that when I go for a run, but what I notice is once you get that or any form of little mini minute meditation, it just relaxes you, gets rid of some of that stress and it allows you to clear that, clearly think and really start listening to that intuition.
Zoë Routh: So you slow your breathing down. So do you breathe through your nose. Do you count breaths or is it just a conscious slowing down of the process?
Scott Stein: Yeah, it's a conscious slowing down, and there's a little physical technique. So one thing that I was taught is you just put your hand out in front of you and then move 'em up to the side so your hands are on your peripheral vision, and rather than looking forward, which is tunnel vision, which is called White Man Vision, you actually shift your eyes so you're looking out of peripheral vision. And if you keep it there for about 30 or 45 seconds, your brainwaves automatically shift and you actually go into a meditation.
Zoë Routh: Holy crap cakes. That's amazing.
Scott Stein: Yeah, it's a great technique. In fact, it's something I teach quite a few CEOs and managers and leaders when they're under stress at work, you know, some big pressure, big decisions quite off just a little ... I don't even put it in a book ... but it's a little hack that I teach on how to get realigned so you can actually not be so overwhelmed with pressure in mental thoughts. Because the more that you're mentally getting clogged, the less it is to listen to that inner vision.
Zoë Routh: Wow, that's amazing. So there's something about the intuition though that I read recently, like it's related to the research that was done around the 10,000 hours and that was the basis of which you could trust your gut for making decisions. You seem too to purport that's a little bit different in this. Like your natural inner intelligence isn't necessarily based on 10,000 hours.
Scott Stein: Correct.
Zoë Routh: It's based on ... What's it based ... that inner voice, that inner knowing?
Scott Stein: Yeah, and I think the difference is the 10,000 hours are usually about learning a new skill. 10,000 hours you learn a new skill. It's a new habit. What I'm talking about is more about intuition, which is knowing so it's not so much a skill which is doing. It's about the wisdom of the intuition of going, "Well, I've got to make this decision which is the best pathway to go and then I can use my skill to execute once I make that decision."
Zoë Routh: I'm struggling with this one though, because I'm about to do a workshop this week with the rice growers and we're talking about decision-making and using rational processes to work through options and so on. Is there a point where you just say, "Okay, we've got all the options on the table. A looks the same as B looks the same as C." You then have to then go to the final call on that. Or can you have specific processes that eliminate the need for it?
Scott Stein: I think you can do both. So again, like I always talk about, I live in the duality, right? So I live in the western modern world, so we need to use logic, we need to use data, we need to use processes. However, what I'm finding is we only use that, which means we're not listening to the intuition, the inner vision and the other things that are really, really important to us. I think the best strategy is using both.
Scott Stein: So it could be looking at all the facts and looking at all the data and then let's take some time, not talk about it, not go in circles about it, not look at the logical side of it, but just take some time to start thinking about does that feel like the right decision. It's an interesting process. What I find with groups, and I use a process called compression planning with visual cards and things like that. You can see in the background. I use it for myself, and what I find quite often when you combine those two, a group can move through information faster, and make decisions quicker because they've done the work on the logical side. We gather the data and the facts, but we also know that it's actually the right thing to do.
Scott Stein: Sometimes we look at all the facts and figures and go, well, based on the facts and figures, well, that's what we should do, but sometimes it just doesn't feel right. There is an intuition. It's the voice in the back of the head that says, "Yeah, that's all the data, but yeah, we can cut 15 or 20% across the board, but what is it going to do to morale with our staff?" So logically it makes sense. but, you know what? There's something else that we need to listen to that's more than just what the facts and figures show.
Zoë Routh: Yeah, I wish I wish leaders would do that way more often. You see these decisions happening all over the place ... You know, slashing 6,000 jobs. Sure. It makes sense. And what is the long-term impact of that? You know, it's traumatic.
Scott Stein: Yeah, and I think sometimes they have to do that. like, if they've inherited something, there's no way through. And I think some of them do it really well because they don't just announce it and suddenly it's a shock to everybody. Some leaders, that they knew it, they went around, they actually talked to people before it was officially announced, and everybody knew that that was one of the options and they kind of go, "Well, there's not much more of another path that we have to take." Why does it go in the closed-door meetings, and everybody's surprised? You know, and to me, that's the difference of true leadership.
Scott Stein: True leadership are out there already before they make the announcement. They're already bouncing the ideas with people and they're already being honest and saying, "Hey, one of the options that we're looking at could be, we're going to have to get rid of a number of people or jobs or processes or something just to survive the next year or two or couple of years.
Zoë Routh: Yeah. So you mentioned ... It's behind you. I can see it in the video. I'm dying to ask. So this is, you talked about this visual, a visual process for planning that you use. Can you just talk me through a little bit about what you've got on your board there and how you use it with leaders?
Scott Stein: Okay that's one thing I was doing for some of my PR with my last book, and I just kept it up there because I go back to it now and again. What I find is I do a lot of strategic planning sessions, and a lot of groups get frustrated because it's a talkfest. The same people talk in the same patterns in the normal meeting. They talk in circles and you know they go, "Well, we could have actually covered that off by not even wasting a day or two to do that." Or, they've gone through a session and somebody tries to facilitate it all on butcher's paper, as if we're kindergardeners, and we go, "Well, we could have done that ourself."
Scott Stein: So I was fortunate enough to be trained by somebody named Jerry McNellis. He's passed away a number of years. But what he did is he created a methodology called Compression Planning, and it's actually based off of how Walt Disney worked.
Scott Stein: So what, what Walt Disney would do is he would storyboard all ... Like his park, how he was going to develop it, the projects. Then he would do it with movies as well, but by using visual cards that you put up, it shifts it from a verbal interaction, to a verbal and a visual interaction. Every idea is captured and put on a card and they all go up and then there's a process where it's timed so you can't do, can't do a soap-box session. And then what happens with those cards, there's a voting or prioritization process where the entire group gets to vote based on what they see and then the ones that get the highest vote get re-prioritized and move to the next stage in the process.
Scott Stein: So it's kind of a creative way to take something that normally would take a senior executive group maybe two months to do, I can do in three days.
Zoë Routh: Wow.
Scott Stein: And that was a pretty amazing process.
Zoë Routh: So what you end up with is as a strategy plan, like the end result, the steps to get there, that kind of thing, right?
Scott Stein: Correct. So it's what I call the framework. Let's develop a framework. Now you might need to go back and talk to this division about how do we do this in the framework. We think it'll work and you want me to fill in some other data here because we didn't have all the facts, but usually even at even a two-day Compression Planning, I've got my admin manager Kat, who captures all the ideas, within 24 hours, they'll have about a 35-page document that has the entire framework for them. And again, this is just another method of what I call a leadership hacks.
Zoë Routh: That's in your book, right? That particular methodology in your beautiful book.
Scott Stein: Yeah, it is. It is. It's in the last section, which is about Team S and one section is about how do you hack your team meetings and I talk about the different types and that's that kind of planning strategy, meeting formulas and methodologies I talked about.
Zoë Routh: By the way, I love this book, Leadership Hacks. I think it was one of the most useful things that's come out in the leadership space in a long time. I've recommended to a lot of my clients. The delegation framework we have in here is fantastic. It's so simple and straightforward and it just eliminates all the delegation issues that people have. You know, the typical one is people struggle with delegation because they don't trust their staff to do it to the right level. It's like, "Well, how did you delegate?" "Well, I told them to do it." That was it.
Zoë Routh: What do you see are the major mistakes that leaders make when it comes to, let's say, delegation?
Scott Stein: Yeah, I think it comes back to how most leaders were taught. You know, I think about when my first job was on our farm, where I grew up, it was called a muck farm in the summer and had capsicum and onion and things like that. And you know, my first boss was a farmer. You know, so he was my first leader in a work setting. So the way that he treated me, of course, as I moved up, I just mimicked what he did.
Scott Stein: I think that's what happens with a lot of leaders. If they're lucky enough to have a great leader when they first come in, then they actually learn some really great things, but if they get the opposite, quite often they don't learn some of those quick strategies. And delegation is a big one. What I find, I would say most leaders or managers don't know how to delegate.
Scott Stein: So what they do, and it usually happens as a process or a pattern. So, let's say you get promoted and you become a leader, right? So you're now a manager of a team of people and most people have the best intention at heart and they go, all right, I want to empower my people. So you decide you're going to delegate something to one of them, right?
Scott Stein: And the challenge is they may not do it in the timeframe you want it or they may not do it the way you want it, right? So you might give 'em another go and they still don't do it and usually the excuse is, "I'm so busy with everything else on my plate, I just didn't get around to it." So that's what I call Level Four delegation. It's the highest level and that's where most leaders stuff it up.
Scott Stein: So what commonly happens is you go, "Well, I don't want to risk my reputation as a new leader of not getting the job done." You go from Level Four all the way down to what I call Level One. And Level One is you stop delegating, and you do it yourself and this is a knee-jerk reaction and I think most leaders fall into, right? And they go, "Well, if I didn't waste the time trying to delegate, I could've done it myself and it would've saved me the time and the headache anyways."
Scott Stein: Right? So Level Two is one step above that. And Level Two is actually sitting down with them and having a conversation with them around, "All right, here's a task," and it starts with what I call an ask. It's not a tell, it's not a, "I don't want you to do this, this, this, and this." It's, "Here's a task that I think we need to do. I want to see if we can do it, but before you take action, let's have a discussion about what the steps are you think you need to take to accomplish this task."
Scott Stein: Right? And the thing that I talk about in the book on Level Two delegation is map it on a sheet of paper or an iPad, so all of the ideas are captured, and this is a really important thing for a lot of managers. We have a lot of discussions. We don't have 'em capture any of it. They leave and then they forget what three or four of the steps were, which means it takes 'em longer to remember it. So step two is actually about mapping it, discussing it, and then letting them go off and having a check-in along the way.
Zoë Routh: So that's a real coaching approach, because it'd be so much easier, supposedly, if you just said, "Okay, these are the steps, this is the order, and go and do it."
Scott Stein: And what I find is when managers that we use go to Level Two, what they're doing is they're actually teaching problem-solving and project-management skill.
Zoë Routh: Yeah.
Scott Stein: Right? And what you can do is you could do that for awhile and what I find for a manager, once they do that with their staff for ... And it depends on the staff member. Some staff members, you only have to do that a couple of times and they've got it, and you can move them to the next level. Other staff members, you might need to do that for six months, and then suddenly they get it. And that's what the beauty is. Level Three. So you've got Level Two. Level Three is, "All right, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go and map it on one sheet of paper, show that to me with what your steps are, and what your time-frame is, how you're going to execute it ... Because there might be an email I forgot to tell you about or whatever else and then I'll have you action it."
Scott Stein: And the minute you get people from Level Two to Level Three, that's when things get much easier. But what I also find is the relationship is much stronger when you go to Level Two or Level three. Because rather than me dictating to you, I'm working with you.
Zoë Routh: So the question I have, like you mentioned that it may take some people six months before they get that process, have you seen or I have anyway, certainly leaders who get frustrated by that and go, "Maybe they just don't have the skill to get it. Maybe they're just never going to get it."
Scott Stein: Correct. I think that's the case as well. I think sometimes some people just don't have the capability, you know, and so my big thing, I've got a lot of leaders, I'm going, why wouldn't you do this process in your interview?
Scott Stein: "Great. Oh, I see you and I see that you've got all this experience, right and you've done this project." I would take them to Level Three, "Actually just map out ... You tell me. I'm going to map this out about how you actually executed it, what your plan was, what your check-in strategies, what were the variables were." Now, if they really know and have the cognitive ability to capture and communicate that, you know, you have a great potential staff member-
Zoë Routh: That's such an-
Scott Stein: ... Or they'll just be fumbled and all, "What do you mean?" "Well, if you've done what you sent you'd done, you should have the conscious awareness to know what steps you took to achieve it." Now some people need that little help, and once you give them that, they'll go, "Okay, well the first thing we did was this, and then we kind of did this. And then we ... " So then you know that you've got somebody that kind of has that framework but they've never really been taught how to capture it very well.
Zoë Routh: And I think I've never seen anybody use that technique in an interview, and I think that would be so useful and so terrifying if you're the person being asked.
Scott Stein: Right. But I do it all the time. In fact I recommend ... I've sat in on some candidate profiles and things like that, and I'll ask that. You know, now I'll work with them. So it's not just, you know, four by two between the eyes, but it will be, "Here, let me map this. I want to just understand the steps that you guys took." So, it's about how you do it, right? So the approach, let's them know that you're there to understand and not criticise. And I think that's the important thing on delegation. It’s about, "I'm here to support you. I'm here to support you, challenge and stretch you, but I'm not here to make you look stupid or intimidate you or actually just kind of let you struggle."
Zoë Routh: Yeah. Okay. Well, that's good. Yeah. You're not a mean guy.
Scott Stein: I don't know if it's about mean. I'm very big on being very direct and having people be uncomfortable. So I've used this before, where staff have delegated, we've mapped it, they haven't done it. And then the conversation, if they hadn't done it a couple of times, the conversation is, I'm going to bring the map up and go, "I want to find out why you chose to not honour what you agreed to do." And I'm very specific on my language. And that creates some discomfort. Well, I've got to be honest. I want 'em to be uncomfortable, right? We had an agreement. They've let me down now. Now, if they'd been checking in, they would let me know. "Yeah. Sorry this came up. I'm not going to do it." Well, if you let me know then we're all fine. That's about honest two-way communication, but if they haven't, "Oh, yeah, I'm on top of it. I'm on top of it. I'm on top of it," which is a really common pattern for people in the workforce, and they really haven't started it, that's when we have the issue.
Scott Stein: And I think that's an important thing for leaders. I think, quite often leaders go to extreme, so they're either really dictatorial, they tear strips off people, have unconscionable expectations, but they get people to stretch or they're the opposite. They go so soft that they actually don't lead their people. And I think today we need to have leaders that have somewhere in the middle. They are challenging, they are supporting and they are stretching their people.
Zoë Routh: I liked that and I like ... I think leadership is about being uncomfortable, so if you're creating the opportunity for people to be uncomfortable so they can grow from it, that's a growth opportunity for sure.
Zoë Routh: So, I want to finish with this big-picture question, which is leadership out there in the Zeitgeist, which we're seeing it incredible challenges in the leadership space politically around the world. We've got really a divided US, as you know, you've probably been with family there, you've probably been watching all the politics there. We've got Brexit hanging in the balance. We've got issues at home. We've just got the Banking Royal Commission about to come out today. They're going into lockdown this afternoon to announce it, and all the challenges with ethics there.
Zoë Routh: What do you see as the thread through to that, and what do we need to do as individual leaders in order to survive/thrive through this kind of chaos?
Scott Stein: Yeah, good question. A big question as well.
Zoë Routh: I know it's pretty big.
Scott Stein: I think a couple of things. I think one of them is the leader needs to stand strong, right? And this is what I mean ... Quite often, a lot of leaders are making decisions that are knee-jerk reactions based on the surface fact. They're not looking deeper and they're not looking at, you know, what's the real impact gonna be on my department, my organisation. And what I mean by that, you know, some of the CEOs, their plan is to be there for two to three years anyways. So, "I can do whatever I want to make it look good, and of course it's a house of cards. I'll leave and the next person coming in, they're going to have to pick up my mess," versus going, "No, how do I create a sustainable culture that's going to grow and thrive, even be better when I'm gone?"
Scott Stein: I think that's what we need a lot of leaders to start doing. So, it's about their own approach with themselves, and listening to that inner vision that I talked about earlier. I think the other critical thing is the ability to connect with the people. What I'm finding is because so many people are so busy nowadays, they're not taking the time to connect, and because they're not connecting, I think this is when people get a little bit lost. I was just in the States, I just got back a week ago from spending about three and a half weeks in America, and what I'm noticing up there, is the only thing that people agree on is you can't trust any politician. It doesn't matter what party they're from. And they're so disillusioned, and I think the reason why is people don't feel like they're being connected to.
Scott Stein: I see it in the workplace. Managers coming in, they could have a real conversation with somebody that's on the same floor as them, but what did they do instead? They sent an email. And I think that's what we need more of. I think we need more of leaders actually being more transparent about what's working and what isn't working.
Scott Stein: And I think they also need to be able to adapt with the workforce of today, but what I'm finding is the younger generation are mentally so much more overstimulated then my generation, for example, which means if they are not mentally active, they get bored.
Scott Stein: So what I've found is a lot of baby boomer, even some generation X leaders, because they actually mentally don't have the same cycle, they go, "Well, you know, stop looking at your Facebook. Stop looking at this. Stop doing that." That person's going, "Well, I'm just bored because I've done everything you've asked me to do.: Of course the senior leader's going, "Well. You didn't do it the way I wanted you to do it." [inaudible 00:28:25] a navigation process. But I think we've got to really connect with the people, and I think we need to kind of develop and grow them. Right? Well, I talk about this in the book as well.
Scott Stein: There's so many different distractions. We've got technology distractions, we've got email distractions. We just need to hack their approach. They need to be fast in going through their inbox, respond to things that are important, delete the things that aren't, right?
Scott Stein: And there are a number of things that you can do to save them some time, so they do have time to do the important things. 'Cause I'm finding a lot of leaders, the number one excuse is, "I just don't have time. That's a good idea. I know I should do it." And I even had one at the end of last year, I said, "All right, so if I were to follow you around this morning, you're telling me that you wouldn't have actually done some things that wasted time where you could have taken that time to check in with those people?" And she just looked at me. I said, "You're thinking about it. That's what I need you to do." Right? We need to get leaders off mental auto-pilots, so they're consciously aware of what they're doing and the impact they have.
Zoë Routh: I like that. Yeah. It's like, "I followed you around this morning. What are you really doing? What are your priorities? Are you connecting with people? Have you put your top three on your list and you'll be executed on that." It is a big, big concern, for sure.
Zoë Routh: Thank you so much for your time. You are fascinating. I love your energy. I love your story. It's a true privilege to have you on the podcast. I'm so grateful. Thank you so much.
Scott Stein: No worries. Great meeting you.
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Related episodes on leadership under pressure:
E101 - The curious, non-intuitive way to change culture
E98 - Manager to leader - a shortcut with these great questions
E97 - Habits and Meetings, plus book review of The 25 Minute Meeting with Donna McGeorge
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About your host, Canberra leadership expert Zoë Routh:
Zoë Routh is one of Australia’s leading experts on people stuff - the stuff that gets in our way of producing results, and the stuff that lights us up. She works with the growers, makers, builders to make people stuff fun and practical.
Zoë is the author of four books: Composure - How centered leaders make the biggest impact, Moments - Leadership when it matters most, Loyalty - Stop unwanted staff turnover, boost engagement, and build lifelong advocates, and People Stuff - Beyond Personalities: An advanced handbook for leadership. People Stuff was awarded Book of the Year 2020 by the Smart WFM Australian Business Book Awards.
Zoë is also the producer of The Zoë Routh Leadership Podcast.