Fierce Leadership

Susan Scott: Oh I love the word, it wakes me up. I know that the publisher of Fierce Conversations wanted to change the title of the book to Powerful Conversations which probably would have assured that no one would even have looked at it, much less bought it, but to me the word fierce means robust, it means passionate, unbridled, untamed, uncurbed and the simplest definition of a fierce conversation is one in which we come out from behind ourselves into the conversation and make it real.

Rachel Salaman: So we shouldn't be thinking about lions and bears and things like that?

Susan Scott: And tigers, oh my, no, no! Really, honestly, a fierce conversation can be one of the sweetest, most compassionate, compelling conversations we could ever have and they include meetings where we are tackling some of our most complex issues and meetings in which we want to interrogate reality around a topic and we want to provoke learning and resolve our issues and in the process enrich relationships and yes, a fierce conversation can also be one in which I confront or am confronted about behavior or attitude and yet even that conversation, when it is skillful and completely candid, can enrich the relationship rather than set it back on its heels.

Rachel Salaman: Your first book, Fierce Conversations, has been widely read and much admired. Why did you write this second book, Fierce Leadership?

Susan Scott: Well I certainly had no intention of writing the second book but as we began to work with our clients around the world, particularly the very, very large global organizations who are committed to taking fierce enterprise-wide so to speak, they really want… they recognize that what gets talked about in an organization and how it gets talked about, determines what's going to happen or what is not going to happen and they really want fierce conversations to become a part of the way they get things done, and in working with them on the sustainability piece of that, it was very clear that some of their so-called best practices were squarely in the way and as I began to think about that, I realized it's so easy not to see what is right in front of us.

And a friend of mine who lives in Hawaii had told me about a concept called "Squid Eye" which he learned when he was a teenager in Hawaii and trying to dive for squid and he couldn't even see any, much less catch them and the native Hawaiians told him you have got to be able to develop Squid Eye, you have to be able to spot the tells that indicate a squid is present and once you know what you're looking for, you'll see them. And he learned those tells and he began to spot the squid and catch them and so I think my fishing brief for the last twenty years really has been corporations, organizations all over the world and their meeting rooms and their board rooms and their hallways and I've learned to spot the tells that indicate the future much more accurately than how the stock price is trending. And so some of these tells kept popping up for me as these are the results we are getting due to our so-called best practices and these results are actually disastrous and some of them are costing companies billions of dollars.

Rachel Salaman: The idea of Squid Eye does run all the way through Fierce Leadership. Before we go into some of the other ideas that are in that book, perhaps you could explain other ways in which Fierce Leadership is different from Fierce Conversations, for the people who may have already read that book.

Susan Scott: Sure, well Fierce Conversations focuses on seven principles and, you know, when I was writing that book I really tried hard not to make it seven because it seems like so many books are always seven this and seven that but, no matter how much I wrestled with it, it turned out to be seven keys to having conversations that are both courageous and skillful and so there are seven chapters in Fierce Conversations and the subtitle of the book is "Achieving Success at Work and In Life, One Conversation at a Time" and so Fierce Conversations truly focuses on the notion that our careers and our organizations and our relationships and our lives succeed or fail one conversation at a time and that the conversation is the relationship and so how do I have these conversations and in particular the seven principles that are key to success?

Fierce Leadership is a sequel in that it addresses six worst best practices and helps people understand, using Squid Eye, what are the tells, what would you see if you were really paying attention that would alert you to the difficulty, the results that these practices are producing that would suggest that we would need to do something differently and then going into what are the bold alternatives, what could you do instead of these worst best practices that would net you far, far better results?

Rachel Salaman: Perhaps we could talk about one of those now. It's the first one in the book actually, you challenge the idea of 360 degree anonymous feedback, tell us what's wrong with that.

Susan Scott: Well this is really an easy one to practice Squid Eye on because most people, if asked, if you say does your company value honesty and openness and transparency and trust and respect, most people would say yeah. And do you personally as a human being value honesty, openness, transparency etc? And most people would say of course I do. Then what is the tell in the name of this practice that would indicate that something is off, 360 degree anonymous feedback? And everybody gets it – anonymous.

In what world would a company or an individual that does value openness and honesty and transparency, would anonymous anything be appropriate except in very, very rare situations? In fact, if we want to be trusted and we want to trust others, we have to understand that trust requires persistent identity. We must come out from behind ourselves and to all of our conversations and make them real because unreal conversations are incredibly expensive for organizations and individuals and so the alternative to anonymous feedback is 365 – as in days a year – face-to-face feedback if at all possible, and if not possible face to face, then on the phone, never via email which is the coward's way out and almost always backfires and so people are afraid to give candid input face-to-face with someone because they think that people can't handle it or there will be repercussions and yet when you do it skillfully and with courage, you will be extraordinarily successful and you will enrich the relationship, so there is skill involved.

It's not about just blurting out exactly what you're thinking at any given time about how somebody is doing because you don't want to leave such a negative emotional wake that there would be no impetus for someone to change their behavior or attitude, so what you really want is that there will be a shift in behavior, a shift in attitude and to do that you've got to know how to extend the invitation to someone to even have the conversation with you and then how to have it. And so the first chapter explains that and Fierce Conversations, the prequel, goes into great detail about that, how to have that conversation.

Rachel Salaman: You're not a fan of the so-called "Oreo Cookie" approach to feedback, is that right?

Susan Scott: I'm not, I'm not a fan of saying to someone "I was really impressed with how you handled that phone call the other day but I need to talk with you about ..." and we just absolutely flam them and then we end it with "And I'm just so glad you're a member of the team." I mean, that is very confusing. There are a lot of wrong ways to begin a confrontation. Another one would be to say simply, "So, how are things going?" because we immediately alert the person that something is about to come over the transfer. I mean everybody sees through that.

I want to point out a bigger concern. If we are anonymous in our feedback, then where else are we hiding within an organization, where else are people withholding what they really think and feel and what is that getting us? I honestly imagine, if there was a way to prove it, we would see that at this very moment in time there are millions of people all over the world who are at this moment withholding what they really think and feel from someone who is important to their success and their happiness at work or at home and I think it's a pandemic. It is so costly, it is so sad and relationships just deteriorate, we don't make the best possible decisions, change is just something we talk about, it isn't something that we actually experience and we are in no danger of getting into really fresh innovative territory.

Rachel Salaman: This circles back to the fundamental ideas behind fierce that you mentioned earlier, being bold and really coming out from behind yourself.

Susan Scott: Yes, in an economic crisis such as the one that we have been experiencing for two years now, an economic crisis is a horrible thing to waste. We need not to waste it! I want us to, all of us, myself included, to really wake up and understand that when we look at our practices based on results, they did not get us what we said we wanted and in fact a number of our clients have said, do you know what, we're abandoning all of our old leadership training because based on results it wasn't effective and we're focusing on Fierce Conversations because we know that business is fundamentally an extended conversation with its employees, with its customers and with the unknown future that's emerging around us. So we've got to stop operating out of the back bedroom of our lives and at least move into the living room, if not step out into the front yard and notice that there is a beautiful valley filled with people and ideas and there is an ocean beyond that. We need to just start paddling and move forward and not live such small, small lives and not think such small, small thoughts because really we're all much bigger than we realize, I think, most of the time.

Rachel Salaman: Well another best practice you challenge in your book, Fierce Leadership, is hire smart people. Now this is discussed in what I thought was a particularly useful chapter that suggests better ways to recruit people. What's the fierce approach here?

Susan Scott: Well, before I outline the fierce approach, I will say that even Einstein said we must take care not to make the intellect our god. It has strong muscles but no personality, it cannot lead, it can only serve. Now there are many, many crises that smarts can't solve and certainly I am not suggesting that we hire stupid, we need intelligence and we need more. In fact, my thought is, if I'm so smart, I'm halfway there because the next frontier for exponential growth, whether it is for an individual or for an organization, and the only competitive edge, lies in the area of human connectivity and leadership really needs to be measured in terms of the capacity to connect with colleagues, employees, customers, at a deep level or we should lower our aim. So we need to hire for smart plus heart, the ability to really connect with people, the ability to gather people around us because we can't mandate that marvelous thing called discretionary effort. We can't order someone to increase our level of passion for what the company does. Everybody decides every day how much of that discretionary effort and how much of their brain cells and their heart they are going to bring to the task at hand, so we've got to learn how to hire leaders who are both highly intelligent but also know how to connect with the people important to the company's success.

Rachel Salaman: Another of the six best practices you challenge is holding people accountable. Now surely you are not suggesting that employees shouldn't be accountable for their actions?

Susan Scott: You're right, I am not suggesting that. In fact to have a group of people in a team, in an organization that operates from an accountable point of view is about as good as it gets because that's the attitude basically if it's to be, it's up to me rather than pointing fingers everywhere else. We're really always looking at what can I do to move things forward, what can I do to help get around, past, over, under, beyond this very real obstacle in my way or in our way, so that accountability is devoutly to be desired and it absolutely does not happen when we tell someone we are going to hold them accountable. In fact we really derail people because everybody connects that with blame, now I know it's my head that's going to roll if things don't go well and what people do, quite understandably, is prepare their list of very good reasons and excuses in case things don't go well.

I can remember, I was leading a session for about 45 high-potential individuals in a very large global manufacturing company and the CEO surprised everybody by walking in to the room, the founder, a big tall man with a booming voice and we had just begun to talk about accountability and he said, "What I want to know is if we move someone who is a very successful manager in a very successful store and we put him or her into another territory that isn't successful and that territory still doesn't turn around, I want to know who's accountable" and I watched 45 high potentials try to disappear because he meant who is going to be thrown on the funeral pyre, whose head is going to roll, whose fault will it be and that's what we connect with it.

That's not the way to raise the level of accountability in a company. The way to do it is to model accountability and hold people able. And you know, so often leaders hold other people accountable and then don't behave that way themselves, they are always pointing the finger, always putting the blame on someone or something else – he, she, it, they did it to me – when things don't go well and yet they accept all the praise when things do go well. So the accountable leader says "Here's what I brought to the party, here's where I see my own DNA on this disaster and this is what I'm going to do about it, this is what I'm needing to change and do differently" and that is very powerful. We are attracted to someone who admits "I blew it" if they did, rather than "mistakes were made." I mean wouldn't it be great if those pesky mistakes would just stop making themselves! Somebody who just says "I blew it, I made a mistake and here's what I'm doing to overcome that or correct that" and then to hold people able, and that's a phrase I use all the time.

I use it with our employees, I use it with my clients that I'm working with, I use it with my own children and these days with my grandchildren – I hold you able, I hold you able to do this, so there is a conversation in that chapter which is when someone comes to a manager and says, you know, I've run into a problem, this is not going well, this is a conversation that leads them to the choice to be accountable and to look for what it is that they are doing or not doing that is contributing to the problem and to make changes. They arrive at that conclusion themselves because accountability is an attitude, it's a private, non-negotiable choice that a person makes about how to live their lives and it's a fabulous choice but it's not one that anyone can mandate. So a leader must create an environment in which accountability is highly, highly regarded and is modeled and there is a real win in it for people to choose to behave accountably rather than being fearful that their heads will roll.

Rachel Salaman: Employee engagement programs get critiqued in another chapter. What's wrong with employee engagement programs?

Susan Scott: They don't work, in a nutshell. Over and over and over again companies do surveys, they want to know how engaged their employees are and they want to know how included people feel, so employee engagement and inclusion tend to go hand in hand and when they find out they're not where they want to be, what they tend to do is hold another awareness training and talk about it some more. And just like accountability, we need to stop talking about employee engagement and start actually engaging and including people.

We need to not always just invite – and this is an example, one of many examples that I give in how you actually engage people – don't just invite the usual suspects to your meetings but think about who else might give a valuable perspective and err on the side of inviting more people than fewer people and tell them, we really want to get this right for the organization and so I'm going to tell you what I would do if I had to make a decision today without your input and then your value in this meeting is to tell me what I'm missing or what you have seen that is entirely different from what I am seeing and I really invite you to contradict me because I hope to be different when this conversation is over, I hope that you'll influence me and that together we will pool our brain cells and come up with the best possible decision.

So that doesn't happen by holding a meeting and talking about engaging employees, it's just a practice. It's a practice of engaging people all the time and in Fierce we do this constantly. We have meetings, we call them "Beach Ball Meetings" because we think of the company as a beach ball and everybody is standing on a different colored stripe on the corporate beach ball and maybe I've got a decision to make and I'm wrestling with an idea or a strategy and I think, okay, whose input would be really valuable and I ask them, look, can you spare me five minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes or an hour, I really would like to know what you think about this and people are honored to be invited and there is a whole – again we don't have time to go into all the details – but there is a whole technique for how to hold these meetings so that people do put their honest perspective on the table and are heard, don't just come and sit there and end up not getting heard, but really are heard.

It wakes people up because not only are people engaged and included, literally engaged, literally included, but the company does end up making the best decisions and actually implementing them. I think engagement plus inclusion equals execution muscle and if I don't have engaged and included employees, I won't have execution muscle. I can have the most brilliant ideas but when it comes time to make them happen, things will really drag because people are not putting their, not only their heads and their backs but their hearts into what we have to do, particularly when things get rough, as they will from time to time.

Rachel Salaman: You are quite critical of terms like customer-centric and customer-facing. Why is that?

Susan Scott: Well for one thing, just to be a little flip here, I have never yet have a customer say "Come on, I want you to be centric with me." I've never yet had a customer say "Will you please put on that special face you keep in the drawer and pull up that script that you have for the typical customer and not answer my real questions and not treat me as an individual but just give me the canned script." I mean the term customer-centric, anything-centric, sounds very clinical and cold, it has no warmth, it has no life in it, it has nothing that would appeal to any customer that I know so I think we need to focus on customer connectivity.

This goes back to the point that I made when we were talking about hiring for smart plus heart. Our valuable currency is relationship, it is emotional capital. I am either requiring that emotional capital with my customers or flat-lining so what's the point, or losing it every single time I engage with them. And too many CRM programs, customer relationship management, well for starters what customer wants to be managed? Nobody I know. It depends too much on software and where there is a place for software and we certainly value software, when it's time to talk with the customer, the customer wants to talk with you, it just doesn't work in most instances to pull out a script and slap on this customer-facing face and try to deal with the typical customer because, you know what, there isn't one, there isn't a typical customer.

Everybody who has ever tried to call a bank or some company with a question, they just get 12 options which are of no interest to them at all and can never get to what they really want. Who knows what I'm talking about? At some point on these automated calls we almost lose the will to live because... and we forget why we were even trying to call in the first place or we find ourselves just cursing and hanging up because we don't have that kind of time to waste. So these systems that companies put in place to improve their efficiency irritate the customer, turn the customer off so obviously we can't have like in the olden days a whole building full of telephone operators taking every single call, large companies can't do that for a variety of reasons but we've got to make it easier for them to get to a real person quickly and to the right person and then when they get to a person we need to drop our requirements that you need to deal with this customer's question in 30 seconds and move on or else you're going to be fired. What are we really after? We can be efficient all the way to bankruptcy and I would rather we were effective, I would rather we really truly connected with our customers so that we have something going for us that's more than a relationship based on the price of our products and our services or something like that, that our customers can probably find a deal some place else. If we don't have something else going for us, eventually those who do will take the field and hold it.

Rachel Salaman: The final chapter is titled "From legislated optimism to radical transparency'. Can you explain this?

Susan Scott: Well yes, and I actually think this is the most important one in the entire book. I think it's because of legislated optimism that so many companies and entire industries tanked in the last couple of years. Legislated optimism is the purview of the one way leader, where communication is from the leader to everybody else and the reverse is not valued, it's not welcomed and the message is always upbeat, everything's fine, we're fine, in fact if I were you I'd buy more stock, we've got it covered, we've got a plan – often insisted on the day before the company files bankruptcy.

So we've really got to go off message via the publicist, we've got to put it out there like it really is. We've got not only to talk about what's working but also where we're struggling and invite input. The bold alternative is radical transparency and when a company or a leader or any division of a company says, look, we're really struggling with something and we want to know your thoughts about this, here's what we're planning to do but we want to make sure we get it right, we want to make sure we come up with the most powerful solutions that are possible and go out to the customers too and really, really solicit input and stay engaged in the conversation.

People are always afraid that, oh my gosh, this will backfire and people will say oh, they're in trouble, I should leave but that is not normally the response. History has told us time and time and time again that when an organization or an individual says we're struggling with something and we would really like your input and discloses completely what's going on, people will circle the wagons and want to help and the other thing is, if a problem exists, it exists whether we admit it or not, whether we cop to it or not. Karl Jung said "If a problem is not made conscious, it emerges later as fate" and so we have got to stop pretending that all's well when it isn't and put it out there and get input and act on that input.

Rachel Salaman: Finally, in your view, why is it important, do you think, to challenge accepted ideas of best practices in business?

Susan Scott: Because, as I have said earlier, an economic crisis is a terrible thing to waste and it would be very, very easy as things begin to improve, if things begin to ease up a bit, it would be very easy to knee-jerk back into old practices which means that we will simply start the whole miserable cycle all over again. A martial arts sensei once said "We're always practicing something, the question is what are we practicing?" and I think we can practice what we please but we are responsible for what we choose to practice and our practices include our beliefs.

If I believe that I should withhold the truth, then I'll get to be right about that, I will withhold the truth and I'll get all of the really dreadful results that ultimately go along with that and so there is a direct link between our beliefs, our practices and our results and I don't want us to keep repeating the same boring saga over and over again, I'd love us to step in to blue water, deep water and go some place worth going together and individually and this is a great time of year to be thinking about that – where do I want to go in the next phase of my life and where do I want my company to go and what is it going to take? I think we need to be bold, we need to take stock and recognize that it is going to start with each one of us as individuals. The solution is not out there some place, it is not with the leaders and the customers and the marketplace, it's within. This Fierce Leadership is an inside job, it's both a skill set and a mind set, it's a way of life.

Rachel Salaman: Susan Scott, thanks very much for joining us.

Susan Scott: You are so welcome Rachel.

Rachel Salaman: You can find out more about Susan and her work at www.fierceinc.com. Her books are called "Fierce Conversations" and "Fierce Leadership."

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview, until then, goodbye.