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Hey, fella managers and leaders.

I'm Eden and I'm the CEO of fellow dot app.

Today's guest is Paul Sloan.

He's a leading Innovation consultant and he has written over 20 books.

That's right, 20 20 books including the book, The Innovative leader today, we talked about a bunch of different things, but one of the topics we really focus on is this concept of an open mind.

The leader and how open-mindedness can break thinking patterns it can help you become more Innovative open to more ideas and really just Propel your organization to be able to adapt to change.

The other thing that we talked about is this concept of thinking laterally, a lot of people when they think they think vertically, and Paul really explores this concept of lateral thinking and how that can actually help us in a very, very The changing world.

We also talked about brainstorming sessions and how to really make the most of them within your teams.

We also talked about the difference between managers and leaders and how transformative thinking can really help you with problem solving.

If you found this episode helpful, to your leadership Journey, send me a note on Twitter.

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And without further Ado, here's Paul Sloan on episode 84 of the super managers podcast.

Paul.

Welcome to the show.

Hi, it's really nice to have.

You where are you dialing in from today?

Cumberly in England to near London?

Cool.

That's awesome.

Well, it's it's very, very good to have you on the show.

There's a lot of stuff that we want to talk to you about today.

I know that you've had a pretty extensive leadership career.

You've been the CEO of mine active, you've been a leader at math soft and you're an innovation consultant.

And Obviously, you've written over 20 books.

And today, we're going to talk a lot about the Innovative leader, amongst other other things that you've written.

But before we get into all of that I just wanted to kick things off and ask you.

Do you remember when you first started managing and leading teams and what some of the early mistakes would have been that you you made back in those early days.

So I went through sales training with IBM and then I got promoted to marketing manager with IBM and I went to IBM Management training which was very good.

And then I got head hunted to join a database company called ashton-tate.

This is way back in the PC days and we were selling database software, debase to and framework of things.

And I became in a UK marketing director to a pretty chaotic setup.

And I brought a lot of IBM disciplines there or so, I thought, and I was organizing, the marketing department, running all the programs and one day the managing director carry Hobbs was wonderful managing Ha, wonderful Mentor for me.

He put me on one side.

He said poorly said he said you're too tough on your people.

I said, what you mean?

He said, well, you tell them what to do all the time.

I said, isn't that my job?

And he said no, you got to let them make some of their own decisions and make some mistakes and it was an epiphany for me was that it sort of road to Damascus moment?

That I was far too tough on them and authoritative because I was experienced relatively and I thought I knew better than them and I was 10.

Still all the time.

And that's not a great way to lead team and I hope that over a period after that I mellowed and I stood back a little and I gave people more freedom to succeed and when you give people freedom to succeed, you have to give them freedom to fail as well.

So if somebody comes to you with a challenge rather than saying do it this way, my way, the lesson I learned was the think, says, well, what options have you considered?

What are we trying to achieve?

Here, you ask some questions.

And you get them to think of various possibilities, you might gently suggest one or two possibilities, but if they give them think, it's their idea and they go away with it and much more likely to implement it.

Well then if you give them your idea and tell her to get on with it, that's amazing.

I think this is, this is one of those lessons that hopefully, many people end up learning.

It's one of those almost necessary lessons for people to learn.

I'm curious was this, like an overnight thing, you just, you know, realize that.

And then the next day you were super manager or what.

Happened.

Well, I don't know.

I don't know about that, but it certainly made me stop and think.

And and I'll tell you another thing I learned and it's this when someone gives you some feedback or criticism, the tendency is to be defensive and - and and say, no, that's not true.

I'm not like that.

That's not but the here's a piece of advice.

When anybody says anything critical to you, at any time, say this to yourself, there might be something in what they say.

And just open your mind to the possibility that even though they're not as clever as you and they're coming from us at the wrong standpoint, they don't see all the things.

You think they've still got an input, which is useful to you and the something valuable in their feedback.

So whenever somebody criticizes take something from it.

Yeah.

No.

This is this is very true.

I think it's always tough to process feedback and do all the considerations in one shot.

So even if it's like a Almost like repeating.

So what I'm hearing that you're saying is blah and just like letting that sit and then I almost need almost, you know sometimes I need a full week to really process what it was that was actually said.

And then I may need to come back and ask some more questions and maybe do some more digging.

It's typically not a an easy thing for me to on the spot.

Let me let me give you a terrific piece of advice that I was given, which all leaders and managers should take on board.

This is so good.

It's I should charge.

Double for that.

What you do is you take your people one at a time into your office or a quiet place.

And you say, I want to ask you two questions, and whatever you say, I'm going to listen and and just take, take it on board.

And here's the first question, what do you think I'm good at?

And they'll say, well, you're very good at communicating and you're good at giving directions and your great, communication efficient, and you're always enthusiastic and that's always nice to hear.

And then the follow-up question is the key.

And where do you think I could improve and then you shut up and listen and because they've given you the positive feedback because you're entrusting their much wise to give you something candid and that you get something really very well to be honest boss.

Sometimes you know, you tell us to your to directive and sometimes you're not completely clear and sometimes you're too critical and they'll give you something which is really useful and you do with each other and if several of them say the same thing then.

You should really take that on board.

So what, but the key thing is you the only thing you could say is you can't disagree with them, but if they say sometimes you're too critical you could say, can you give me a for instance?

Unless a, you know, that time on Joan was late and you you made fun of her and you say, oh yeah.

But I thought that was it and they said, well, actually that that cut a little with Joan and you didn't realize it.

And so if you can say, can you give me a for instance, give me an example.

But otherwise you I cannot disagree with them at all.

Otherwise they'll climb up.

I like what you said, which is hear what everybody says.

And then, if there are some patterns, then you definitely need to pay much more attention.

Yeah.

Well, everything they say is, is gold dust.

It's really valuable.

Because our leadership.

Journey is the Journey of continuous Improvement.

Every leader can be a better leader.

Yeah, it's never-ending.

It's one of those things that you never you never quite Finish.

Well, the funny thing is, you know, they did a study as to what is the optimum length of tenure of a CEO The optimum time for see and what they found was that if you set up a new CEO that he comes in and he or she is Keen and enthusiastic open-minded, they listen, they're not experience so they don't, they're not making all the right decisions, they don't know what the strengths and weaknesses of all their people.

So in the not that effective to start with, then the gradually become more and more effective, they learn more, they learn more.

And then after a period, they Peak and they start, they think they know it all, they become complacent.

They stop asking questions because they've been there before.

Or the solve that problem do it my way.

And they found the optimum length of tenure for a CEO was four point, eight years.

That's formed between four and five years is about idea because all the initial enthusiasm and open-mindedness gradually is replaced by complacency and an arrogance.

It to to exaggerate a little.

No, you use the word open minded.

And so I wanted to dig in a bit more on that.

You have an awesome tedx.

Talk about embracing open mindedness, Why don't we start with saying like how do you know if you're open-minded because I feel like if you ask a lot of people they'll say that they're open-minded do you would they be right or or people get at classifying themselves that way?

You know, everyone thinks they're a good driver and everyone thinks that good at sex and everyone thinks they're open-minded.

You never met anyone who could say no, I'm quite close minded.

But in fact there's a lot of evidence that we have unconscious biases.

Confirmation bias.

Availability bias also supplies.

And one question if I says, are you open mind?

They say, yes, I am.

The one question I would ask is tell me a major issue that you've changed your mind on in the last couple of years.

Tell me anything where you have received ideas and change your position, On any major issue at all and very often the struggle to think of anything and if you look at the discourse, the public discourse in America between Republicans and Democrats.

It is very divisive, very bitter.

Very entrenched like this your it's what two-burner calls I am.

Right?

You are wrong thinking?

All right sir.

I'm right and you're wrong.

And there's very little compromise, very little middle.

Around and we need middle ground in politics, I need life and in management and in our social discourse, we need to find Common Ground.

Instead of shouting at each other social media was should encourage more open-mindedness.

It could you encourage you to listen to more views as actually had the opposite effect.

And people go into that their little bubble where they listen to similar views or more extreme views that feed them, you know, the conspiracy theorists and all the rest of it that they just go to the same sites and they hear more of the same stuff.

And then Not prepared to listen to opposing viewpoints and we should be open-minded and listen to opposing viewpoints.

And and a good way to do this, is to read the newspaper.

That's on the opposite side of the spectrum from you.

If you normally read a very, very conservative newspaper or go to this, try something very liberal.

You know, if you're normally watch, Fox News, Tracy, and and, or vice versa to just deliberately go to different places and meet different people.

You know, they say whether some of the six people, Spend most time with them.

And we tend to spend time with people who are like us.

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.

So, one of the end time this back to the, the CEO comment of, you know, somewhere between four and five years is the ideal time.

This is probably like something that leaders everywhere should probably keep in mind, right?

If someone has been doing the same role for a very long time and they're wondering why maybe there isn't as as much innovation in the workplace.

Yeah.

So Diversity.

And bringing new blood is really helpful for Innovation, so you should value experience.

But you should move people around, give them new challenges.

So as a leader, your job is to challenge your people.

And you can typically, you can find a new challenge for most people.

We even get a really good experience.

People will be doing the same thing over again.

And again, I say, I want you to Mentor this, so this young guy, I want you to bring him on.

I want you to find a new way for the Department to do such and such a task, and I'm sure you can.

Up with some really creative ways to do that.

But I want you to look at how we're doing it.

How do they do it in Japan?

How do they do it in Malaysia?

I want you to look outside and bring back some really different ideas for how we can tackle this week.

You know, we can't get the lead times down, we need to be smarter and I want you to try and find ideas out.

So so throw a challenge to people and keeping them fresh challenges.

Sisters to stop them getting stale.

And you know, one other point that I wanted to make related back to the open-mindedness concept is there's this, there's This great phrase, which is be stubborn on the vision.

But flexible on the details, there are like I get the sense that from an open mindedness perspective.

People are probably have different levels of open-mindedness about different things.

There probably isn't like a truly open minded person across the board.

I would think, well, if you were to totally open mind, and you never do anything, because you'd still be waiting for other be, I guess, but and nonetheless, you have to fight the tendency to be.

So sure of yourself, so sir.

Certain that you're right that you ignore criticism and you ignore feedback and your charger head and sometimes to be a great leader, you have to be humble and you have to listen.

Hey there.

Just a quick note before we move on to the next part, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably already doing one-on-one meetings.

But here's the thing, we all know that one-on-one meetings are the most powerful but at the same time the most misunderstood concept and practice and management.

That's why we've spent over a year, compiling the best information.

The best expert advice into this beautifully designed 90 plus page ebook.

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Spaced font, you know, a lots of tax.

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We spent so much time building it and the great news is that it's completely free.

So head on over to fellow dot app, slash blog, to download the definitive guide on one-on-ones, it's there for you, we hope you enjoy it and let us know what you think.

And with that said, let's go back to the interview.

So you also have this really great analogy which is leaders need to be both arsonists and firefighters.

I mean, I love the the phrasing around that would love for you to elaborate on, what you mean by that.

Well, what I mean by that, I'm talking about leaders of innovation.

So if you want, if you want your company to be creative and dynamic and agile, then what you do is you go around lighting, fires on the people.

And you say, look, you're doing a great job here, but always, to find different ways to do it.

We need to find a new way to reach.

Customers the challenge for you is to try some experiments and do new things mean, what's that?

This is working fine but if we're going to grow the way we want you, we need to find new ways.

So I'm challenging you to find new ways.

And and you said someone else, I want you to experiment with some prototypes try these different things.

See if the customers like them, bring me some feedback and people develop their own ideas and off they go.

And then you say how's that going?

And they say well this one is so I really think technology is really cool but you know the customers don't like it.

You say we'll stop right there.

Strangle that move on some just I'm it's really cool.

I'm really enjoying.

I really put all this effort in know and yet sometimes you have to start a fire and then you have to put it out.

So there isn't time to develop everything there isn't time.

You know this that you you start a hundred fires and you put 90 of them out and then there's only the good ones that survived and and it's what Eric research talks about in his book.

The Lean Startup.

We talked about a minimum viable product and the minimum you go out with a minimum viable.

Which is the smallest crappiest version that you can show to customers to princess proof of concept.

And when you show it to customers, you get all sorts of really valuable feedback.

They say well we like this and we like this doesn't work and this is completely wrong and then you go back and you do something else.

So you don't develop the whole product in secret.

Yeah.

With Innovation, you don't do the whole thing and then launch it which is what they did with something like the segue, for instance, and then it didn't meet expectations.

Lots of other products.

Similarly, the Amazon fire that all Seasick.

So what you should do, is take something to customers choose the right customers, the intelligent ones, the ones who are ahead of the game and say, look, this is one of our ideas, what you think.

And if they say no, if typically has three some reasons why you should kill a prototype a the customer doesn't like it or be, we can't crack the technology or see.

There's no way we're going to make money with this.

In fact, if any of those, then that's a strong reason to kill it.

You are you being a firefighter, too?

Your own like the fires that you're starting or just being a firefighter in general for well you should be a firefighter for your own as well.

Yeah, there's some initiative I mean you should look at the things that are on your project list and say which of these are of high value and likely to succeed and we should I kill maybe I'm spending time on things which aren't very productive and and valuable and what all guilty of that I'm time as I'm really of guilty of that as anyone, if I look at my Activity and say how much of it was really valuable and that was a really return investment.

Its, you know, it maybe 30% of my efforts of 40% but I'm certainly spending time on things that I should have ditched but I just like doing them or I've invested so much time in them or it's a vanity project.

You know we've all got to be critical and prune and focus and focus on what works and that doesn't mean you don't keep trying new things but yeah.

To try new things, you discard the ones that aren't really successful.

Yeah, this is a super important one.

I think like the challenge is and maybe some of this is related to, you know, being there too long.

Doing the same things for for a long time.

It's you start these processes.

These habits that may be, made sense, at some point, but you've never really spent the time to say, do they still make sense?

Are they so optimal?

Are they still the best way that we should use our time?

Let's write another concept that you also talk.

A lot about is the concept of lateral thinking and if we were to just maybe start by defining what you mean by lateral, thinking and why it's useful.

I think that would be a good place to start.

Well, logical thinking is a phrase, coined by Edward, de Bono, in contrast to conventional thinking.

And in conventional thinking, we go ahead in a straightforward way, very logically, we build block on block, on Block, in a standard fashion and lateral thinking is coming.

Problem from the side coming from an entirely different direction.

So, rather than doing the same thing, you would you try something completely different and maybe a little bit wacky, a little bit crazy, what people sometimes call out of the box.

So instead of being constrained by the current assumptions, you challenged those, and you look for entirely new ways to do things, and it's really a form of creativity, and I've developed a set of tools and methods, based on some de bono work and other work, which helped Has ations to employ lateral thinking to be more agile, more creative, and more Innovative.

And so maybe is there an example of, you know, maybe a situation where we could talk about what normal thinking seems or feels like and then what a lateral thinking approach might look like.

So in the mid-1970s is what our young film, direct a movie director called Steven Spielberg, and he was given a commission by Studio to produce a film called with a tentative title of Jaws.

And it featured a huge mechanical shock and they built this shock.

And there, the thing didn't work and and they had all sorts of problems with it, making it work and all of the mechanics with it.

So they didn't have computer Graphics in those days and that was the problem and he was running behind schedule and way over budget and the studio was coming down in very hard.

Now, the conventional approach would be less fixed the shark.

Let's bring in more technicians.

Let's really spend a lot of money to get this.

This shark working, but he took a lateral approach.

He said, let's eliminate the shark.

Let's imply the shock with music and you use John Williams, theme that doo doo doo to imply a shot.

And when they tested the rushes with, with audiences, they found it.

That imagining what was beneath, the water was much more frightening than actually seeing it.

And, and so with a person swimming along the top, you hear the music, you think?

Oh no, there's something underneath.

What's going to And the lateral approaches, don't fix the shock imply it with with, with music.

And that's just an example.

I like of lateral thinking in action.

That's awesome.

And so I guess like the end, you know, just thinking about a framework that you could use.

So there's a problem that you can't solve, and then maybe stating what the conventional approach might be, yes.

And then afterwards thinking about like, arriving at the In, in an unconventional way, there's all sorts of ways to do it.

Yes.

So, I mean it's if you were working for encyclopædia Britannica in the 1990s and you said, you know, what's the future encyclopedias people would say well and they might be a little bit smaller and maybe a little bit cheaper, but we still need a lot of experts and editors and we still need printed, exactly PD has.

And if somebody has stood up and said, just a minute, maybe it's a completely different approach.

Maybe we could have a free encyclopedia done by volunteers.

With no paid experts at all.

That would have ended your career.

That's that idea.

Probably it would be laughed out of the meeting and ridiculed and so on.

But that's what Wikipedia was, it was a completely lateral solution to the same problem.

And so the four years, we've had printed encyclopedias very, very expert, very high quality and then come along come something whose quality is at times, not proven.

But generally, it's worked out pretty well and it's just swept the market.

Yeah.

So this makes a lot of sense and certainly there's a lot of examples in history in terms of how you can, maybe encourage that type of thinking across the organization, would love to know your thoughts and ideas around getting that idea generation getting like great brainstorming meetings, like what are some best practices ones are all sorts of ways of doing and I used a variety of tools and methods, most of which I explained in my books and then I also have online courses on these advanced.

Techniques.

And the one way, is that thing called?

What if where everyone has to write down a crazy?

What if statement?

What, if everyone had two brains, what if there were 48 hours in the day?

What if we only had one customer?

What if we had a million customers and you, you write down crazy thing and then you just see where it leads and sometimes, you know what, if we didn't have experts, paid experts on our encyclopedias, you know what would have to use?

Volunteers, Howard.

That work don't and they then eat it over the web and so, starting with a, what if where you just challenged all of the assumptions says?

So every situation we bring assumptions to bear and and there's a current model and then most brainstorms were trying to Tinker with the current model and expand it.

But you know, if you were running a taxi company, you couldn't develop that into it but you have to start again.

Andre change all your thinking to come up with a number and if you're running a conventional Hotel chain, You couldn't conceive of Airbnb by just extending the current method you have to start with a.

What, if, what, if instead of building hotels, we harnessed all of the rooms that people are prepared to sell around the country, what a crazy idea.

And then off you go, and that's why most really creative ideas come from startups, rather than established companies because they're so wedded to their assumptions and their framework and the vertical thinking that they can't do the lateral thinking to conceive of an entirely different approach.

Roach in your experience.

Your people generally able to succeed at those sorts of brainstorming sessions or is it very often?

You get disrupted from the outside.

Like, have you seen organizations actually do a really good job of this of this type of idea?

Generation?

Yes.

So I do a lot of them.

They bring me in as an external expert and I external facilitate, it's very hard for a manager to do it with his own t because the manager has his or her own mind.

Persona and style and it's very difficult for them to step out of that and become a brainstorm facilitator because of brainstorm facilitator.

Their job is to encourage ideas, no matter how crazy to avoid criticism.

And initially, at least two to use Divergent, thinking to create a lot of ideas and then to use convergent thinking, to find the best ideas, and there's a structure and there's a good way to run a brainstorm, but most brainstorms are ruined by early criticism.

Well, that idea would Don't work.

We can't afford that.

The customers would never go for it.

All of these things kill off earlier ideas very very quickly and it's the crazy ideas that lead to the good ideas and therefore, you've got to let them run for a little bit to see how where they development and let people develop them and kick them around and eventually you might get something useful.

So having an external facilitator, makes a lot of sense.

And you're right that sometimes you have to start with a crazy idea.

Most Is a lot of great ideas start by being very bad ideas, but you actually need people to build on top of them.

And so there's and I've definitely heard, you know, people talk about this during brainstorming sessions which is the yes and so that people can end up building on top of everything else.

But what do you think about, you know, post idea generation kind of meeting or session?

You probably don't want to like Converge on an idea.

Via like all in the same session, it probably benefits from having some time in between you could do.

But when I run them typically we use the same group to do both the Divergent thinking, and then the convergent thinking, and we select the best ideas using some broad criteria.

So, we will set some criteria, we're looking for ideas, which are novel, attractive and feasible, and then you go through a novel in order to retain the, the, the new ideas, and the more creative ideas.

Yes.

Yeah.

They're making Sense into one of the.

So, once you have these these, these Concepts put into place, then obviously the idea is that you're going to, you're going to put some of these into place and then iterate on them and over the course of time they get better.

Do you have maybe an example of how you would think about implementing?

Some of these new processes or like how you can encourage organizations in general to implement new processes?

Well this is Method called Transformers that.

I use where you, you take a choice of verbs and you draw block diagram of the current process and then you apply verbs to it and the bird might be subtract.

It might be eliminated, might be divided.

It might be compressed.

There's a whole lot of 50 different verb and then you apply it to different parts of the the process.

And you can open the whole bunch of ideas.

This is for service or process improvements and Innovations and it works really well.

And, and basically, once you Chosen that the best ideas.

Then you skip assign actions to people.

Jonah, want you to develop a model for this and bring it back to us in a week.

Jim, I want you to prepare a spreadsheet showing the costs and had their turn.

The plan Mary, I want you to check with legal.

What would be the be involved in this?

And what disclaimers we would need to?

In order to try this, Fred, I want you to go and check with some customers.

These three or four could to test this idea.

So and most of our dishes are good at things that go on to do list once it's on your to-do list.

The list and then it kind of tends to get followed up.

And that's how Innovation happens.

You take great ideas, a lot of ideas, just select the best ones.

You turn them into actions immediately and this is it.

You're not saying we're definitely going to do this.

We're going to change the whole company.

What you're saying is we're going to try it.

We're going to see where it goes.

We're going to develop it to the next stage and you give those actions to different people and then you follow up in a week or a month and you see where they are and then people believe in the brainstorm.

If you have a whole bunch of Brainstorm ideas, you get 100 ideas and the but manager says, I look at those later and then he or she is totally involved in other things, just look at them.

Nothing happened.

People become cynical.

What's the point of the brainstorm meeting off every changes around here.

Nobody listens to our ideas anyway, and so it's very important.

If you have a brainstorm that you do it properly and that you implement some ideas.

Because even if a little tiny things, people say, all right, at least he, or she is listening to us.

And check prepared to change things and do you think that people should wait until there's like a problem that needs a creative approach to start implementing some of these practices know.

The problem is that the world is changing so fast.

And if you can't wait for the truck to arrive before you get on it, you can start running right now because everything's checked.

You've got it, innovate or die.

They're basically if you don't innovate someone else will you know with Your eyes the diner or your the dinner.

Somebody's going to eat your lunch.

This guy is sitting in Malaysia right now.

Or Philippines or Vietnam or Ukraine.

Who wants to run your podcast better than you, Aiden?

And he's got much better ideas for how to do it and he wanted he wants to eat your lunch so you've got to improve.

You got to change, you gotta find new, guess you got to find new formats.

You got to try different things, you will try it on YouTube.

Maybe we'll try it on Instagram or try on Tick-Tock willing to keep trying new things and and One has to do this because otherwise you're going to be left behind.

Yeah I like that approach and bring it on.

I say to that person trying to compete but but yeah separately from that what I wanted to say is that it's almost like you have to constantly be asking like how can we disrupt ourselves and if we don't and if we disrupt ourselves a good question.

Yeah.

And it almost seems like I mean this is this is great material for I would say any sort of offset A and just have to just be with leaders, but this is the sort of thing that should probably be programmed into the culture.

And there's various forms of this.

You know, for example we at fellow, we have this thing where we run hackathons like multiple times a year and just something that is you can actually program this into the culture.

So it doesn't have to be a thing that happens.

Some of the time you can actually program, these sorts of events so that it can't happen.

But on a recurring basis, there's a myth about use called who killed our business.

And what you do is everyone divides into your divided into small teams of four or five people and then the challenges you've been fired by the company but you've been hired by a venture capital company and they have given you a large amount of money to create a competitor which going to kill a bit your business, the existing business and you get, it's going to kill it by doing things.

Not just not by spending more money on Advertising.

People by finding a smarter better way to reach customers and meet their needs.

What's the fundamental thing we do for customers?

You're going to find an entirely different way to do it.

So it's like, Wikipedia and encyclopædia Britannica.

It's like, uber and attacks are companies like Airbnb and Marriott Hotels.

So, what are you going to do?

So, you send them away and they could come back and they pitch.

And they say, well, we do it this way.

We could change the distribution model, entirely would go direct to customers, would bypass, shall we do?

All right, who we've A completely different approach where we would get rid of this and focus on this.

So everyone has to reimagine a completely new company which would kill the existing company through lateral thinking through new approaches.

That sounds like fun.

That is a yeah I think that that's a super fun, fun activity and probably something that everybody here should try.

One thing that I wanted to also ask you about is a lot of people have fun, kind of telling the difference between these two but in Review.

What is the difference between a manager and a leader?

So I yes quite clear.

I think a manager works in the business and a leader works on the business.

So a leader always takes an organization from where it is today to somewhere different.

If what your current doing is currently is making the current operation work well looking after customers trying to make systems work.

Well, if you have two people solving all their problems, you're a manager that's fine and we need managers but the lead Her is always looking at strategic things.

A leader is always trying to take the business from where it is today to somewhere different.

They have a vision and they communicate that vision.

And whether this is for a department or a team or for the whole company, they have a vision for Change and they say, look, we've done really well.

We've got here today, but in a year's time, wants to be somewhere different.

We're going to be meeting in new markets, doing new things with maybe fewer resources were going to find smarter way and I need your help to get there.

So they challenged To throw down a challenge, but a leader takes that his or her team on a journey to a different place in some way.

And that is what leadership is all about, you know, I think this is a very interesting point because tying this back into what we started talking about and maybe one of the early mistakes that you made when you first started leading teams, which is telling people what they should do and how to do it, it seems like a leaders job is almost to have a Have a have a bold enough Vision on some areas or things that can be improved, but then not coming in and actually solving and figuring out exactly how it is that you're going to achieve those things and then really working with the team and making sure that they can come up with the novel approaches.

Well, I precise, I approach I think it's a better approach but having said that, there are some leaders who are very directive of very authoritarian and have been highly effective.

And I'm not just thinking of, you know, styling or erdogan or someone like that.

Yeah, Steve Jobs was very directive, very, very tough guy.

To work my very strong views of his own very critical at times.

So, so, although I would say that, my preferred model is the servant leader, The Humble leader, the leader who steps back and and encourages people to fulfill their potential.

There are some other people who just direct and tell you what to do.

You watch succession I do actually it's quite good Logan, Roy his ally time He's got a whole company but he's he's an absolute psychopath.

So there are different styles of leadership and it would be arrogant for dust to say, this is the only one that works.

There are all sorts of different styles that work in different situations.

But I think they if you want you to get the most out of your people, you've got good people then giving them freedom and space to to succeed is the best approach I think.

Yeah, you know, it's very interesting when looking at it In that light, we recently had a common buyer, whose former VP of at Amazon on the show and apparently Jeff Bezos have told him that if you want to be a good leader you should look to see who is similar to you and try and basically mimic some of their like some of their attributes, don't try and be someone that you're not so everybody out there that is going to be directive because they're going to try and be Steve Jobs.

Your if you know probably I'm not the right person to copy for for the vast majority of people.

Paul this has been super, super valuable so many different lessons that we've talked through, one of the questions that we like to ask all of our guests.

That come on, the show is for all the managers and leaders constantly looking to get better at their crop.

Are there any final trips tips?

Tricks or words of wisdom that you'd like to leave them with?

Well, yes I would say read read leadership books on my My books.

I would obviously recommend the leaders guide to lateral thinking skills, the Innovative leader think like an innovator, or my book, read other books, read, and biographies of great people and, and constantly look to improve every day.

Try something new and everyday challenge, your thinking and ask yourself this question.

If I was starting again, if I was coming into this business fresh, well, you know what questions would I ask and ask those basic?

Questions.

Again the day you became leader, you asked a lot of basic.

Why do we do this?

What's the purpose of this?

Go back to that immigrant Viewpoint in your Insider now but sometimes you have to act like an outsider and say what can we change it?

And how can we make things better?

And how can I improve?

And how can the organization improve?

That's great advice and a great place to end it.

Paul, thanks so much for doing this.

It's been my pleasure agent and that's it for today.

Thank you so much for for tuning in to this episode of the super managers podcast.

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