Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader's Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You

So, once you get this orientation, we want you to do it unapologetically because a lot of people are going to look at you curiously in the beginning. Now, they'll stop looking at you curiously when you outperform everyone else – and we have seen that this is the recipe to outperform other people.

Rachel Salaman: You say, in the introduction to the book, "You can improve yourself or the people around you, but it's difficult to do both at the same time." And I thought that was a great insight. Could you expand on what you meant by that?

Frances Frei: Yes, that's super. So, if I use the oxygen mask metaphor: I sometimes have to put the oxygen mask on myself – I think, in these current times, more than I have in years, and probably that's true for all of us – but when we're putting the oxygen mask on ourself, we're not leading, we're preparing to lead.

When I'm putting the oxygen mask on other people, that's going to be closer to leadership. It's really hard to be "self-distracted" and "other-distracted." So, when you're self-distracted, which you might have to do, please do it away from those you're leading and don't count it as leadership time. When you are distracted by setting others up to thrive, that's what counts as leadership time.

Rachel Salaman: Now, your book is based around a framework, which is represented by five concentric rings. Could you briefly describe this for us?

Frances Frei: Sure, I'd be happy to. So, the foundation of what's needed for leadership is that we do have to create a foundation of trust. So, if the people I'm leading don't trust me, the rest of it, I would actually argue, don't spend much time on it because without trust you don't get the benefit of the doubt, things constantly get re-litigated... So the foundation is trust and we have to figure out how to set the conditions to build and rebuild trust and we now know how to do that well. So, that's the first part.

Once you have that foundation, building on top of that is (what we call the next string), how you set one other person up for success. And, if I was going to do it one at a time, what are the tools and techniques to set one person up for success? We call that love – because in our view, it's the greatest act of love to set someone up to achieve their greatest potential, to really unleash someone in the world. So, we give very specific tools for how to do that.

So, you have a foundation of trust – setting one person up for success – and then setting more and more varied people up for success. You can think about that as teams, but, "What do I do now, when I'm leading people, not just one at a time, but in groups – and not just people that are similar to me, but people that are also different than me?" So, we give the very specific tools for how to do that.

Those are the first rings, and we call those the "presence rings" because our view of leadership is that leadership's about making other people better as a result of our presence, and then having it last into our absence.

So, those first rings – "Trust," "Love," "Belonging" is what we call the third one – that's what we can do in our presence. And then the next two rings, the "Absence" rings, are when we're not around. When employees are making the hundreds of decisions that they're making a day, when they don't have our direct guidance, how good are those decisions? And what could I have done in advance to increase the likelihood that there are great decisions? And we call that the employees' discretionary behavior, like, when it's just all on them.

We have two levers that we should have used up until then, that will reveal whether or not we're going to be effective in our absence. And that is, how well people understand the strategy. And strategy can guide discretionary behavior, the clearer it is. And then, everywhere where strategy is silent, culture fills in the gaps. So "Strategy" and "Culture" are the last two rings of empowerment leadership. And they're meant to influence people, even when we're not in the room.

Rachel Salaman: That's a brilliant overview and it would be great to drill down into a little of that now, starting with the innermost ring of empowerment, which, as you said, is trust. And here, in the book, you describe a "Trust Triangle" with three points, and the three points are "Authenticity," "Empathy" and "Logic." Could you briefly sketch out what those three qualities look like in practice in the leader who is trying to build trust?

Frances Frei: Sure. So, you are more likely to trust me if you believe it's the real me speaking to you. And, of course, the opposite of that is true: if you doubt that I believe what I'm saying, you're going to question my authenticity and the first thing to go is trust.

You're more likely to trust me if you get a sense, a real sense, of the rigor of my logic. And you're more likely to trust me if you get a sense that I am really in it for you and for the broader group. So, "Authenticity," "Logic" and "Empathy" – it's the real me, with rigorous logic, and I'm in it for you.

What we have found – and we've done this, now, with over a hundred thousand people – is that, any time we see that trust is broken, whether it's between individuals or organizations, we can trace it back to authenticity, logic or empathy getting in the way.

The good news about that is that we now know well the prescriptions of how to overcome an authenticity, logic or empathy obstacle. So, before, if trust was broken, we didn't really know what to do, because it was multidimensional. But now that we know the component parts – and, beautifully, the component parts are actionable – we have prescriptions for what to do. We just have to keep in mind that the prescription to overcome a logic obstacle is very different than the prescription that will overcome an empathy wobble, which is why a clear diagnosis is needed.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, and I think that's the real "light bulb" moment here, isn't it? The fact that you can, literally, split these up and, thereby, diagnose problems – and fix them.

Frances Frei: Yes. And we have found that you can fix them in as little as one day.

Rachel Salaman: Amazing! Do you have any example you can share with us about that?

Frances Frei: At the institutional level… So, when I got to Uber it had a lot of trust problems. One of the trust problems was that – just under the foundation, it's logic. And here's what the problem is with many tech companies that get a lot of funding: its costs were much higher than its revenue.

It's just, like, super-hard to believe in the logic of the company when you're both upside-down in that way and then you're also creating an amazing value proposition for the riders, but a pretty terrible value proposition for the drivers. So, in that context, we had empathy for the riders, an empathy wobble for the drivers. The logic with, "Why are we subsidizing rides at a greater and greater scale, competing against someone else that is subsidizing rides?" That didn't make sense. So, when we diagnose what the wobbles are, we can then go in and say, "Okay. How do we get physics to apply to the business model? What are the indignities that the drivers have been facing that make it... it not only appear, but it's true, we haven't given them enough thought." And then, "How can we turn their indignities list into a dignities list?"

Rachel Salaman: That's such a great example. Authenticity is a really interesting characteristic in leaders and it's something that's getting a lot more focus in recent years. And it can clearly help to build trust, as you've outlined. But what happens when a leader's authentic self isn't actually very nice? Maybe they have a short fuse or they're self-regarding. Wouldn't it be better not to be authentic in those cases?

Frances Frei: It's so good! So, the first thing is that, if they have a short fuse, they're going to have an empathy wobble. So, we should work on the short fuse, and there are ways to overcome that. So that's not an authenticity problem: that's an empathy problem. Because, if I'm short-fused, for sure I'm taking it out on other people and I'm permitting myself to have a short fuse – I'm being self-distracted as opposed to other-distracted.

But your broader point, which is, what if my authentic self isn't great? So, first of all, if it really isn't great, I'm just not sure you should leading. Having said that, "What if there are aspects of my authentic self that aren't great?" Because that's probably more likely. And I think it's totally fine – in fact, it's probably good – to trim the amount of authenticity that you bring to the table.

And this is for people who are already authentic, this isn't for people that are just trying to become authentic – I don't want them to start trimming, I want them to experience being all in. But if you're like… Your whole authenticity isn't a problem for your showing up but, "Wow! We just don't need to see that final 20 percent." I think it's a totally reasonable thing to do, to keep that 20 percent at home. It won't be inauthentic. I don't want you to pretend you're not the middle 80 percent, but you don't have to give us all of it, if that makes sense.

Rachel Salaman: That's a great point. And I suppose that would apply if the leader was, say, a vulnerable person. They don't have to show their authentic vulnerability.

Frances Frei: Yes, and our vulnerability is so deeply interesting to me. I don't care if a leader is vulnerable. I do care that a leader sets the conditions for other people to be vulnerable, because that will be part of setting the conditions for them to thrive, because you can learn what's within the vulnerability to help overcome it.

Some people use displaying their own vulnerability as a role model for other people's vulnerability. So, I don't begrudge that, I don't care what technique you use. But I do care that it's OK for others to be vulnerable in front of you because I think there is great potential and learning to unlock there.

Rachel Salaman: If we could talk a little bit now about the second ring of empowerment, which, as you said, is "Love" – and it has its own chapter in the book. You say that you were going to call the chapter, "Tough Love." I just wondered, why did you change your mind? And what place does love have in the workplace?

Frances Frei: Yes. So, I think the greatest act of love is to set the conditions for another person to thrive. If somebody could give me the gift of getting to a better place than I could otherwise get to, I think it's a great act of love.

We do that by doing two things simultaneously that we often instinctually think trade off against each other. So, the first one won't surprise us: people thrive in the presence of high standards. They have to get the level right, it can't be too high, but if we get the right level of standards and expectations we set for people… Very few people thrive in the presence of low standards.

So, the first part, I think, is easy. But people also require that we are deeply devoted to their success. The problem is that when we're setting high standards, we sometimes shield people from understanding our deep devotion to their success, and then we become awakened to that, and then, when we're expressing our deep devotion to their success, we insidiously lower the standards. And we spend a lot of our lives going back and forth and back and forth.

And I think high standards, low devotion is tough love – we want you to have both at the same time. We want people to experience your high standards and to experience your deep devotion. And it's not just, like, "Oh, that's the world we want to live in." That drives the greatest improvement slope.

So, people will get better more quickly and reach higher levels if they simultaneously experience deep devotion and high standards. And so we have to overcome the instinctual trade-off that is present in most of our minds.

Rachel Salaman: And, at this point in the book, you talk about feedback, which is clearly related.

Frances Frei: Yes.

Rachel Salaman: And you say that the right ratio of positive to constructive feedback is at least five to one. But, isn't there a risk that the more optimistic or the less self-aware team members will only hear that positive feedback as there's more of it?

Frances Frei: Yes. So, here's what's great. If I get to hear feedback in the ratio I want and I go against the rest of the world's common instincts for feedback, my team will thump your team. Because I figured out the optimal way to give people feedback. So, I'll explain it, but again, the reason that we advocate this is because it leads to better performance.

So, positive reinforcement, it's not false optimism. It's not like, "Oh, good job! Oh, you're so great!" That doesn't help anyone. But here's a thing: I do a hundred things in a day. I don't know which ten of those were most effective, but, whichever ten of them were most effective, I want to do more of those tomorrow than I did today. So positive reinforcement is letting people know which of the things you're currently doing should you do more of.

Now, there is the other side, which we call "constructive advice," and that is: I want to get you to behave a little bit differently to have a better outcome. That's fine too, but you and I have to have a relationship before I can hear that, otherwise you're probably going to put me into a defensive crouch.

So, if you want to give me constructive advice – and I think that's great – you've got to build up a reservoir of convincing me that you really see me, and you're convincing me you really see me when you have seen the specific things I've done and you've already invested in my improvement through positive reinforcement.

So, if you want to give constructive advice once a week, have at it! But make sure you're giving positive reinforcement once a day. Constructive advice once a month; positive reinforcement once a week. And what I hear from people is, "Oh, my gosh! That will take so long!" Once you get good at it, it takes about eight to ten seconds.

What I say to people is, "Look, don't take it as faith based, go try it." Every single person who has tried it comes back and is like, "Oh, my gosh! Not only do other people get better, they're happier and I'm happier." Because getting to focus on what people are doing right, they do it more often, they get better and it sparks joy for both of us.

You're listening to Mind Tools Expert Interviews from Emerald Works.

Rachel Salaman: That brings us to the next circle, which is "Belonging," and this section of the book is packed with great advice on how to create a more inclusive and welcoming workplace. What are your favorite tips in this area?

Frances Frei: Yes. So, a lot of people, today especially, are talking about the diversity of a workforce. And diversity is a fine word. I often think about it, "Are people similar to each other or different from each other?"

So, we think about diversity in a workforce, and then we also think about the inclusion of diverse people in the workforce. So, a lot of organizations have "Diversity and Inclusion," or they'll summarize it to D&I. And they think about diversity and inclusion in that order – let me get diverse folks and then let me be inclusive. I actually think that's the wrong priority sequence. We should first learn how to be inclusive and then diversity will come to us quite naturally.

And inclusion gets done in four progressive steps. So, the first thing we have to do is ensure that, whatever difference comes to the table, that those folks feel absolutely physically and emotionally safe. That's the first level of inclusion.

Once you get to safety, the second level is, "Despite any difference that I represent, it's the organization's job to make sure I feel welcome." And you know what it's like to feel welcome versus unwelcome, you can feel it in a second – somebody invites you to sit next to them, they're curious what you have to say. But here's the important thing: no amount of welcome can replace the need for safety.

So, those are the first two levels of inclusion, and those are despite any difference I bring to the table. But then it gets thrilling and exciting, which is, now, because of the difference you bring to the table, we all are going to thrive.

So, when the organization celebrates my unique way of thinking, my unique lived experience, the challenges that I have seen, the failures I have learned from – when I am celebrated and encouraged to bring up my difference, then we really start to gain distance between us and other organizations.

And the last rung is that the organization cherishes everyone who feels different – and, by the way, the organization is already cherishing people that are similar – so the organization also cherishes people who feel different and communicates [that] the most interesting thing about you is what's different than us. And that's how we're going to get more rigorous decisions, that's how we're going to be able to do things faster, that's how we're going to be able to do things at higher quality.

So that's the inclusion dial, and the really important trick is that, as you move one group up the inclusion dial, it's crucial that you not move another group down the inclusion dial. So, it's a varsity sport – but we have to make sure that, when we make the world better for one group, we are also making it better for every group.

Rachel Salaman: And, in this section of the book, there are sidebars about how to create spaces where women feel they belong and spaces where queer people feel they belong. I wonder, what's been your own, personal, experience of this and what did you learn from it?

Frances Frei: I went through this. There were some places where I felt cherished, and then there were some places where I felt not welcomed. I, very fortunately, have had very few examples of feeling unsafe because I kept myself out of those situations, or I learned to keep myself out of those situations.

But my experience was that my difference was not always welcomed. So, I have pretty strong opinions, like, somebody said, "Oh, my gosh! You speak truth to power!" And it would never occur to me not to speak the truth. Like, I'm a lot, just because I want to change the world and I call things how I see them. I have gotten advice, I think at every stage of my life, to really smooth the edges, really trim who I am. Not even trim my authenticity but just change to be more like other people.

Now, in the beginning, I tried to change to be more like other people because I knew these people loved me. They were coaching me on how to fit in. And I was like, "Oh, my god! They love me, I'll try to fit in." It was a disaster! I was terrible at fitting in and I wasn't nearly as effective as the people who were born that way.

And so then, the big unleash came when I was like, "Oh, when somebody is encouraging me to fit in – which is just generically terrible advice, but so many people use it – don't try to fit in." I just reinterpret what gets into my ear as, "They're saying, 'I love you.'"

And so, I don't take their prescriptive advice, but I do take the underlying message that, "Wow, they're deeply invested in my success, so much so they want to give me prescriptions." Their prescriptions are terrible because often our prescriptions are only good for people that are just like us. So, I stopped listening to the actual prescriptions and just started feeling their deep devotion to my success, and then it totally changed my relationship with people, and how I felt on the inclusion dial.

Rachel Salaman: That's advice that you give to others, is it? Just to kind of reinterpret what people are telling you, within yourself?

Frances Frei: If people are different than you, don't give over-confidence to their prescriptions. They might have good prescriptions, but they may not. And, for example, ones like, "Here's how to fit in here," is the classic one at the top of the list that is terrible advice, but ushered from people who are really devoted to other people.

Can I add one more that's also terrible advice? This is just, like, fun for me.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, of course!

Frances Frei: When people say, "Practice the golden rule." And the golden rule is, "Treat others as you like to be treated." That's good only for people that are like you. It's terrible advice when people are different than you.

You don't know if they want to be treated like you. You should treat them how they want to be treated, not how you want to be treated. So, it's just those things.

Rachel Salaman: Absolutely. The fourth ring of empowerment is where we shift from presence to absence, as you mentioned earlier. And in the book you say this is where the leadership path takes its most interesting turn. Why the most interesting?

Frances Frei: Yes, because now you can go to an organization of 100,000 people, of a nation of many millions of people – now you can influence people for whom you are rarely around, and you can still set the conditions for them for success.

So, this is where you get your broadest reach and that, to me, is thrilling because I have great ambitions for great leaders. I want them to make the world a better place and it can't only be the people that they can physically be in front of.

Rachel Salaman: And the "absence" part of your framework, these last two rings, are "Strategy" and "Culture." What's the relationship between those two?

Frances Frei: Yes, that's a great question. So, strategy and culture are really the only two things that drive discretionary behavior.

So, they're the two things that, when no one's watching, "What are the decisions I'm going to make?" I'm going to have been influenced by two things: my understanding of the strategy – and that could be different than the strategy but it's my understanding of the strategy – and my experience of the culture. And those two things are going to drive my discretionary behavior and influence my decisions. And I'm making a hundred decisions on my own every day. And multiply that by all of the people in the organization or all of the people in the community.

So, the two things I needed in advance are having the strategy just permeate my mind, and having the cultural experience be super-consistent so that I totally understand it.

And so, what I love about these two is that, when you get them right, holy cow! I look at Microsoft today, which is one of the highest-performing companies, and they have a culture of inclusion, and it has driven one of the greatest turnarounds that we've ever seen.

The CEO and his leadership team have not met everyone in the 150,000-person organization, and yet they're influencing each and every one of them every day, through their communication of their strategy and their curating of the design of the culture that people experience.

Rachel Salaman: And how much do regular team members get involved in strategy and culture – in the sense of being unleashed to play their part in those two things?

Frances Frei: Yes. So, in the setting of the strategy, very little; in the communicating of it, a lot. So, if you go into a Walmart store, anywhere in the world, I think you can talk to the frontline employees and they will understand the strategy. That is, they will understand that, "Our job is to set consumers up for success. Our definition of that is to let them spend the least amount of money as possible so that they can live a better life."

Everyone will get that, which means, every time there is a new hire, lots of people in the organization are communicating the strategy to those people – not just the strategy deck that was communicated at the top, but, like, "We're all onboarding one another about strategy and about our understanding of strategy." Because, it's not only a subject-consistent strategy, it's well understood up and down the organization.

So, I think that we all have a chance to communicate the strategy to one another if it has been communicated effectively to us. More likely, go to a store – or go to a company – and ask 10 people to describe the strategy to you. If 10 people describe the same thing, it has been well articulated. If you get many different descriptions, I don't care how good the strategy is, the limits of its effectiveness are in its ability to communicate.

Rachel Salaman: And then culture comes from that? Culture evolves from that, I guess.

Frances Frei: Yes. So, what I would think is that every… Like, strategy should be thought of first and everything… Like, all the decisions we make to be low-cost at Walmart, or all the decisions we make to be, you know, "Safety is the most important thing." That's the first thing. And then everything else, anywhere where strategy is silent, culture has to fill in those gaps.

So, I'm not going to say which one is more important, but I am going to say that every board of directors I've ever seen is involved in a company's strategy, and very few boards of directors are involved in a company's culture – and I think it's a mistake, because both of them are equally needed.

Rachel Salaman: And what are some signs that a culture needs to change?

Frances Frei: Oh, my favorite thing! So, I'd say two things: the first one is, if there are demographic tendencies associated with who's thriving, your culture needs to change – if men are being promoted at higher rates, if white employees are more satisfied than black employees. So, if there's demographic tendencies associated with thriving, with achievement, with sentiment, your culture has to change because your culture is really effective for some and not for others.

That's number one. Number two is – and this is particularly for strong cultures, if it's an organization that really lives by its cultural values – if any of the cultural values have become weaponized, that's a sign that the culture has to change.

And, what I mean by that is that… A very common cultural value is, "Default to trust." It's like, "Who's going to argue against that?" Like, "Give people the benefit of the doubt. If we all give each other the benefit of the doubt, everyone is going to do better. It's beautiful!"

But, in some organizations that default to trust value, if you go in there, when you hear the phrase, "Default to trust," it won't be as a way to give everyone the benefit of the doubt – it will be a senior person saying to a junior person, "I'd like you to stop asking questions now. So default to trust."

It's like they misused it; they misappropriated it for their own personal gain. So, if there are weaponized cultural values, that's another sign that the culture has to change.

Rachel Salaman: Fantastic advice. Well, just finally, Frances, what's one step that a leader could take today to begin unleashing more potential in their team?

Frances Frei: I think my strongest advice is take steps today. Don't wait for some fictitious better period.

So, start building more trust today; teach your team how to build more trust; start setting higher standards with deep devotion; understand if you're unintentionally favoring some at the expense of others and start to take action on it. We have never met someone who, in retrospect, said, "Gosh! I wish I had taken longer!" Or, "Gosh! I wish I had done less!"

And so, really put that into your heart and do it now, and have broader ambition than you might have otherwise.

Rachel Salaman: Frances Frei, thanks very much for joining us today.

Frances Frei: It was an absolute pleasure.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Frances's book again is, "Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader's Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You," and it's co-written with Anne Morriss.

You can hear a Book Insight podcast review of their previous book, "Uncommon Service," on the Mind Tools site.

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Mind Tools Expert Interview from Emerald Works. Until then, goodbye.