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Five Common Leadership Development Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
48 Plays5 months ago
In this episode I chat with Walt Morgan. As a certified coach, former Navy Commander, and university lecturer, Walt specialises in helping people develop their leadership skills on both personal and professional fronts. Walt’s seen it all and has some sharp insights on the common slip-ups leaders make.
What we cover:
- Common Leadership Blunders: Walt lays out the five big missteps he sees leaders making. He’s big on understanding what leadership really means personally and professionally, and he challenges us to redefine it for ourselves.
- Leadership as a Journey: Leadership isn’t a fixed quality but an evolving journey that reflects our actions and intentions. Walt shares his thoughts on how our understanding of leadership can and should change over time.
- The Right Time for Development: We talk about the importance of starting leadership development early. The more set in our ways we are, the harder it is to adapt and grow.
- Getting Help: We discuss the power of coaching to unearth and change deeply ingrained habits and mindsets that hold us back.
- Learning vs. Development: We explore the difference between just learning new things and actually developing as leaders. How to turn knowledge into action to make real changes in how we lead.
Interested in more from Walt? Reach out to him on email at [email protected] or check out his website at www.tliftcoaching.com.
Once you’ve had a listen think about your own leadership style. Are you sticking to old habits? Maybe it’s time for a chat with your team to check out what leadership means to you all.
Got a question for me? I’m just a message away on LinkedIn.
Thanks for listening to The Visible Leader podcast.
Don’t forget to hit subscribe and drop me a review on Apple Podcasts.
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Transcript
Shared Traits of Leaders and Followers
00:00:03
Speaker
One of the things that I'll have my students do fairly early in the semester is list out qualities of a good leader. And then I'll have them list out qualities of a good follower. You know, critical thinking, initiative, willingness to understand, build relationships. It's the same list, right? The follower list and the leader list is the same thing. Great leaders are also great followers.
Introduction to the Visible Leader Podcast
00:00:31
Speaker
Welcome to the show. I'm Corinne Hines, and on the Visible Leader podcast, I talk to guests who are rethinking the status quo of leadership. Together, we will be debunking the myths around leadership, challenging assumptions, and looking at alternative ways to get results. Of course, I'll be helping you turn their wisdom into practical advice, because it's not the knowing that's difficult, it's the doing.
Walt Morgan on Leadership Mistakes
00:01:03
Speaker
This week, I spent some time with Walt Morgan, who was a helicopter pilot in the US Navy for 23 years. And since retiring, he became an associate professor, taught leadership management programs, and he is also a coach. I quizzed him on the top five mistakes he thinks leaders are making when it comes to their own development.
00:01:28
Speaker
And if you think you are a little bit past all that now, stick around because it might just be the case that you have a significant impact on the development of a leader in the making. Welcome Walt to today's episode. Good morning. So excited to be here and so, so grateful to be here and grateful for this.
00:01:55
Speaker
important work that you do through the physical leader, just really expanding our understanding of what leadership is and what leadership can be. Thank you. Lovely. Thank you. I'm looking forward to this conversation because we're going to dig in a little bit to do with that. Actually, when we talked and prepared for this conversation, we decided it would actually be really interesting to think of
00:02:22
Speaker
Five things that you feel leaders make as mistakes in their leadership development. So you've gone away, you've come up with the top five and we're going to talk through those and hear what your thoughts are.
00:02:38
Speaker
really focus on what leaders can do differently because that's a big thing about this podcast. It's about what people can do, not just what they can know. So what is your first one, Walt?
Defining Leadership Personally
00:02:52
Speaker
I think that that surrounds just the idea of leadership itself. Leadership feels like one of those things that we say we'll know it when we see it, but I think leadership requires a little bit more thought. So I'd say the first thing
00:03:07
Speaker
that we're doing wrong is that I always want to frame this in the positive green. So the first thing that we can do better is know for ourselves what leadership means. And that doesn't mean it has to mean the same thing for everyone. But just know when I say leadership, this is what I mean. And I'll often ask people, like, what is your definition of leadership? And there's usually some stumbling and stuttering
00:03:35
Speaker
And then the next sentence that comes out typically is, a leader is someone who, and like, okay, but I asked what leadership is, right? Obviously a leader is somebody who is a practitioner of leadership and we might have our preferred ways or preferred visions around how a leader shows up and how a leader behaves. But what is the leadership itself?
00:04:02
Speaker
So my personal definition of leadership actually tends to evolve. I've noticed every three years or so, like every three years, I'll be like, Oh, okay. So as I evolve, so does my definition of leadership. So my current definition is leadership is the process of turning our best intentions into impact. So when I examine.
00:04:30
Speaker
how a leader is performing, when I examine whether or not leadership has even taken place, that's the definition that I'm bringing to it. Now that might not be a good definition for other people, right? It might feel a little woo woo, it might not feel practical enough. I find it very practical to be honest, but others may not. So that's okay. But when we talk, when I talk, when I am talking about leadership with you, that's what I mean.
00:04:58
Speaker
the process of turning our best intentions into impact.
Foundations of Leadership Understanding
00:05:02
Speaker
Now you know what I mean when I say leadership and we have this common ground. But I think so often the idea of leadership feels nebulous in conversations so that we don't share the common ground. And if we don't know foundationally what leadership means to us, then we really don't know what a leader is.
00:05:23
Speaker
And we don't know what leader development is or leadership development is either because that foundational understanding is missing. So I'd invite anybody to develop their own definition of leadership, maybe something that doesn't begin with a leader as someone who, but rather leadership is noun.
00:05:44
Speaker
and then be willing to share that and ask others what their definition of leadership is to establish that framework and build out from there.
00:05:54
Speaker
I love the fact that it evolves every three years because I feel similar to many of my strong beliefs that over the course of a number of years I start developing, I read something else and it grows and it changes and looks quite different. So I think that's great that you also have that same process.
Evolving Definitions of Leadership
00:06:12
Speaker
I think one of the shifts I noticed in the last few years was I had a bit of a sense that leadership was about creating followship.
00:06:20
Speaker
I didn't love it, but I thought that sounds okay. And I kind of thought that was, you know, one definition. And then I read David Marquet's book, Turn The Ship Around The Leader Leader. And I was like, oh, that's really changed my whole follow ship thing. You know, it's kind of, it's really pushed me away from that now. I was like, oh, it's about creating leader-leader scenarios. So I welcomed that invitation to change definitions.
00:06:49
Speaker
And that's a beautiful growth of your understanding of leadership is how it does connect with followership and leader-leader. One of the things that I'll have my students do fairly early in the semester is list out qualities of a good leader. And then I'll have them list out qualities of a good follower. Critical thinking, initiative, willingness to understand, build relationships,
00:07:16
Speaker
It's the same list, right? The follower list and the leader list is the same thing. Great leaders are also great followers. In fact, I often say that every leader looks different. You know, especially if you look to my earlier definition, that leadership is the process of turning our best intentions into impact, right? Our leadership begins from within.
00:07:40
Speaker
and then works its way out. It begins with our values, our intentions, who we are, the impact that we want to make. And then it's a very intentional doing to create that impact through relationships, through modeling, to our own effort, whatever. But every leader looks different because we are different. There's no right way to do this. There's only our way. But I will say that
00:08:08
Speaker
There are three tendencies I notice in great leaders. One is that great leaders are willing to sacrifice for others and for the mission, right? I don't think that's a real stretch. I think all great leaders are very intentional around creating and empowering more leaders. And then to the point that we were just discussing, I think all great leaders are also willing to be followers, right? They just step into that role when the time is right.
00:08:37
Speaker
Nice. Okay. So the practical step is reflecting, thinking about it, coming up with maybe your definition of it and then having conversations with people in your team or that report to you about what their definitions are and just having that conversation.
00:08:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a really great practical step, particularly writing down your definition of leadership. Surprising how many people whose roles are about leadership are unable to say, oh, my definition of leadership is. How empowering it would be if we knew what our definition is and we could articulate it to others and to your point, hold that conversation and invite there. So I think that's very, very useful and very practical.
00:09:26
Speaker
Great.
Early Investment in Leadership Development
00:09:27
Speaker
So I'm going to go on to number two, which is leaders waiting too long to invest in their own development. Yeah. This is something that's showing up on my radar in the last year or two.
00:09:41
Speaker
Professionally, I am a leadership coach. Typically, I'm working with executives in the, you know, maybe 38 to 55 range. I mentioned that I work at the university, not only as a adjunct professor, but I'm also on the University of Colorado Center for Leadership. And in that role, I created a coaching program, brought together 20 professional coaches, and we
00:10:11
Speaker
coach about 65 students a year who are interested in professional leadership coaching. And they're so malleable. Their neurological pathways are so open. They live in this world of possibilities. And the term I use is they're less rutted.
00:10:32
Speaker
My executives are wonderful, but they also have 30 years of work experience and life experience and family experience and expectations of others just piled on top of them and the weight drives them into these deeper ruts that are a lot more work to climb out of to establish a new azimuth or trajectory.
00:10:57
Speaker
But the students, they just hop right out of their shallow little rats and then start off in a new direction. So nimbly, so agilely, so readily. And it's a real joy to work with them and it occurs to me
00:11:11
Speaker
that really critical time of youth in which we are so malleable when we can make these foundational changes in how we show up in life is so often lost because we typically don't invest in leader development, whether it's our companies or we're investing in the coaching of young people, or even I only imagine what would have been possible in my life.
00:11:40
Speaker
I think we pay a lot of lip service to this idea that leadership isn't a position, right? Leadership is how we show up. Leadership is the choice we make in this world, but it's not a designation. It's not a position. Yet organizationally, do we typically only invest in coaching and the deeper leadership work in senior leaders, right? VPs and above.
00:12:08
Speaker
If we really, really believed that leadership is the influence that exists all through our organization, then we would invest more deeply, more credibly also throughout the organization, open it up to everybody and invest in those people regardless of where they are in the organization, you know, as long as the resources
00:12:35
Speaker
are available. I think that's a smart way to approach it. I've still got this image in my head of some of the people I'm working with who are in the similar age bracket to the people you mentioned stuck in this rut that they can barely reach the top of trying to drag themselves out of it.
The Role of Coaching in Leadership Growth
00:12:52
Speaker
It's such a good, not a good image. But if we could just grab people before they've started with these patterns that they're going to develop over those years, I can really see it.
00:13:06
Speaker
Next one is believing we can grow and develop without professional assistance. You know, I'm a coach, so in the same spirit, when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, right? To me, everything looks like it needs coaching.
00:13:25
Speaker
A lot of times these organizations will bring in like this, like, oh, we're having problems with communication in our organization. So we're going to have a two day workshop on communication. We're going to bring in these consultants to give this workshop. It might help. Some things might change, but nobody is going to change. That's the distinction, right? Nobody's going to leave that two day workshop fundamentally transformed or different.
00:13:54
Speaker
They just might have a couple of tactics that they approach differently. It may or may not solve the problem. But what I'm talking about is very much the deeper work that creates the transformation that allows us to meet our shifting context and be effective. It's the deeper work, not the tactical stuff, but the really deep work. And to me, I believe that that's how leaders evolve.
00:14:23
Speaker
But we can't do that alone because the thing that's creating our pattern is too deep. It's too resistant. It's too embodied. And until we have somebody help us with that, we can't even really see it. We can't even illuminate it. We can't name it. We can't build a relationship. We can't understand what it wants. And then even after all of those things happen, now,
00:14:51
Speaker
there's a journey to transcend it, to not leave it behind. It was never the bad guy. It was never the problem. It was just limiting. So how do we transcend that so it's not limiting? That actually really takes help.
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, interestingly, the last two, waiting too long to invest in our development and believing we can grow without professional assistance, in some ways, what I always try to drive to is what can we do? What can leaders do to take a step in the right direction? And I'm wondering if there are, if that's counter to what you're saying, is that stuff that leaders can do
00:15:34
Speaker
after they've listened to this that they can do themselves? I think it's a matter of time. I would say a coach can help with these things in like six months. So it's a difference of scale. When do I need to be better? Okay. Well, you know, I'm a coach, so I'm not against that idea, Walt. Sometimes I suppose
00:16:01
Speaker
the clients I work with, the leaders I work with end up doing that work because of the work we've done. And then I leave them with that and it's sustained. So I suppose I'd like them to be self-sufficient and be able to do this work without me, but I can't deny that I've probably triggered the work in the first place. Yeah, it is their work, but I don't think they would be doing that work growing in that way.
00:16:29
Speaker
without the assistance of somebody like you or me or another coach, right? I think that's what stimulates the work in a really intentional way. I hear so often like these really tactical things. Like if somebody asks me for something practical that we can all be doing, it's like, yeah, put down your phone and all in your Apple watch and all these other things that
00:16:53
Speaker
pull you into that digital world of everything that lives there, our schedules, our meetings, our conversations, our texts, our emails, all of it. Put all that aside and be outside without those things for a little while each day. That would be the practical advice, but guess what?
00:17:15
Speaker
if you can't do that. Even if you know, if you're that senior leader, if you're that senior vice president that knows you need to do that, but you can't make yourself do that, get yourself a coach. That's what I'm saying, because you can get all this tactical advice that you know would make a difference. You know it would make a difference for you. It's the New Year's resolution. There's a reason they don't work,
00:17:38
Speaker
It's because the thing that pattern is too deeply embedded for us to address by ourselves. So those are the sorts of things I'm talking about. The thing that's getting in your way right now that you know you need to be better at, but you just can't seem to escape. That's where a coach would be really useful.
00:17:58
Speaker
I'm just pulling you away from this episode because I want to share with you how you can get a copy of the free guide that I've created in which I share with you several of the techniques that I use with my coaching clients today and that you can use too, which will help you create more of an impact as a leader, have more influence and the holy grail, have more time away from the doing.
00:18:27
Speaker
You can use this time for key things like focusing on strategic thinking or go for a bike ride. If you want to grab the free guide, check out the show notes and click on the link.
00:18:44
Speaker
Next, we have one that I think resonates with me because as a Marshall Goldsmith stakeholder centered coach, his book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There, very much resonates with this next one.
Adapting to Changing Contexts
00:18:59
Speaker
So believing that our current way will continue to serve us. So that's how I read it. Have I interpreted that right? You and I are completely aligned on that. That's exactly how it's intended. It's such an important idea. And this is how
00:19:14
Speaker
I describe it. I, I call it the ICDC and, and, and, and do not, do not Google that. That is just a term that I made up myself. ICDC stands for the iterative context development cycle. And the idea here sounds so official, right? And the idea here is that our context changes. And when our context changes, we,
00:19:43
Speaker
need to do something different. Now, sometimes that's just a tactical or technical fix. We just need to do something different. That's a small adjustment or a learning that's very cognitive. But sometimes we need to show up differently as that context changes. And so then we develop to meet that new context. And then our development actually creates a new change. That's the iterative part. And then we have to respond to that.
00:20:13
Speaker
But what I would offer is we're in a really fast paced ICDC right now. The loop is rolling really, really quickly. So just as we're trying to adapt to one change, we're getting slapped with another change from an entirely different dimension and it's overwhelming and we feel frustrated and we feel out of control. What happens when our context changes, the human response to that
00:20:40
Speaker
is to retreat to what's always worked for us. And I don't mean that like in the technical way, again, or tactical way, like, oh, this is my system. I mean how we show up. We tend to double down on how we show up. So if we're highly directive on the context changes, we double down on being directive. If we're achievement oriented on the context changes, we really get hyper focused on achievement.
00:21:03
Speaker
if we are really attuned to harmony when the context changes, we become acquiescent and really, really mindful of the harmony, whatever it is, like we all show up differently. But that way that we show up is what we tend to reinforce when the context changes because that's the comfortable place for us. But here's the issue. When our context changes and we need to learn to show up differently,
00:21:32
Speaker
That's when we tend to seek the comfort, as I just described. That's when we tend to do the same things that we've always done. But it's really when we should be leaning into discomfort. And that's really when we should be learning new things and becoming new things, but we tend not to. I think the big idea behind that, like we double down on the thing that got us here to use
00:21:58
Speaker
to use Marshall's language, right? We double down on the thing that got us here and we actually become resistant to creating the thing that's going to get us there. So practically, we're now aware of that. So somebody's listening to this and thinking, wow, that's a great insight. What can they do? They can, one, really connect with what has changed.
00:22:25
Speaker
Like to really even just write it down. This is what feels like what's changing around me. It might be scale. It might just be a new job responsible for a lot more. It might be the inclusion of AI. It might be discomfort around climate change. It might be a big personal change in our life. It can be so many. It might be market disruption, supply chain, whatever. It can be any of these things that are shifting that we feel we don't have control around. And then
00:22:55
Speaker
Allow ourselves to just feel whatever shows up. For me, it's usually some sort of combination of sadness or fear or discomfort in my body. Just allow ourselves to feel that. It's okay. Feel that. Change is frightening. But once we allow ourselves to feel it, it becomes a lot easier to move on from it. And then ask ourselves,
00:23:25
Speaker
If I could show up differently, if I could be a different kind of leader to address that change in a way that allows me to continue to make the impact that I want to do, to do the job I want to do, to create what I want to create, whatever it is, how would I look different? What would that be?
00:23:49
Speaker
begin to feel that trajectory and that area of growth so that we know that something's there and catch ourselves when we find this retreating to our pattern. Now, I just need to be more directive. That's the thing that got me here, but really honestly, is that the thing that's going to get me there? Anytime you hear the word just, you know that you need to question. Yeah, that's so good. I like that.
From Learning to Embodying Knowledge
00:24:20
Speaker
Our final one is confusing what learning is with what development is. What's the difference, Walt? I think I already touched on that. Learning is a cognitive thing and it's very, very comfortable.
00:24:42
Speaker
is going to try to make it through a podcast without resorting to Eastern and Western societies and tendencies and traditions. But in our Western traditions, the cognitive is a very comfortable place. You know, if I can just learn that, if I can just know that. And it is a very important thing, but it's not what really allows us to change. I like to make the distinction between
00:25:07
Speaker
knowledge and wisdom. And I'll even tell you where that came from. I worked in a healthcare corporation for over three years. It was very, very intentional around its culture. And the team that I was on was called the wisdom team. And the wisdom team would normally be called learning and development in most organizations, and it would be tucked under HR somewhere. In this case, it was called the wisdom team. And it went all the way up to the C-suite. It wasn't under HR.
00:25:37
Speaker
And so I thought about that and I had some conversations with the creators of the wisdom team and then I got it, right? Learning and development is a cognitive thing. Wisdom is the embodiment of our knowledge. And so that's the distinction between learning and development also. Learning is just the cognitive piece and then
00:26:05
Speaker
process and development process, there will be a cognitive piece. There will be a learning piece. There is a place to think that it's also critical to bring that down into the body. I don't know if you're familiar with Amanda Blake's work. She wrote, I think she wrote your body as your brain.
00:26:21
Speaker
And then she went back and completed her PhD and her research was essentially to challenge the book that she wrote, which is actually a real act of courage. I put this book out in the world and now I'm going to go do the research behind it. But this is what Amanda Blake learned in her research, that what she calls embodied self-awareness, which is our connection with our body, our awareness of our somatic sensations, our
00:26:51
Speaker
awareness of emotions as they rise and fall in our body is actually connected to our capacity for intrapersonal growth and interpersonal growth. So by actually just connecting intentionally with our bodies in that kind of development piece, as I say, being distinct from learning and cognition, but bringing our body into it
00:27:18
Speaker
greatly increases our capacity for growth, for personal growth and how we grow in relationships. So the neuroscience and the research behind it is really solid.
Physical Awareness in Leadership Development
00:27:29
Speaker
It's really there. The more neuroscience research we do, we never come back with the conclusion that we're somehow less connected or that our bodies are less important or less intelligent. It's always the other way, right? So I hope that clarified in my mind the distinction
00:27:47
Speaker
Learning takes place just cognitively and development is really about a way of being, how we fundamentally change. So if somebody is listening to this podcast and they learn something cognitively, how can they take that into the journey towards wisdom?
00:28:10
Speaker
Again, if we circle back to the part where it's really useful to have a coach in these things, one, you have a podcast that makes growth and transformation practical and brings it into reality. And I really appreciate that. What I would do with a client is say, okay, so what did you,
00:28:39
Speaker
What did you learn? What have you learned? What have you noticed? That's the cognitive part. What have you seen? What have you observed? Like, okay. And so what do you think that means? What is that? Like, oh, I think it means that I get really impatient towards the end of a meeting.
00:29:03
Speaker
And I don't think that that's really productive because I think I shut other people down right that's in the cognitive space like okay so what is the one bite size manageable thing that you can practice that might help with that.
00:29:19
Speaker
And, and the client wants to go in really, really am ambitiously on that. Right. They're going to say, okay, so what I'm going to do is, is I'm going to be really, really patient at the end of the meeting. Well, guess what? If you could, you would have already, you can't. So what's the bite size manageable thing? And that might end up being before going into every meeting, I'm going to take a deep breath.
00:29:46
Speaker
and I'm gonna remind myself how I want everybody to feel by the end of that meeting. All right, that's a bite-sized practice. That is bringing this cognitive awareness down into our body. Or it might be towards the end of the meeting, if I feel the body sensations that I associate with impatience, if I feel my heart racing, if I feel a tightness in my chest or a tightness in my shoulders, I'm gonna take a deep breath
00:30:16
Speaker
And the next things that come out of my mouth will be a question. So those are the kinds of manageable practices that we can use to bring our observations into the being of ourselves. It just fits so nicely with
00:30:36
Speaker
experimenting, trying things and noticing that they're so key to this area that we're talking about. And something you can do with or without a coach, obviously massively accelerated with a coach, but they're important skills to start developing and honing. And you can do them straight away after listening to this.
00:31:04
Speaker
Thank you very much, Walt. It was a pleasure to speak to you and dig into these five areas. Absolutely love that conversation. Well, I enjoyed it so much, Corinne. I enjoyed the wonderful and intentional framework that you brought to our conversation. I appreciate you keeping me on point and for the benefit of your listeners. I appreciate you forcing me to make this a practical thing that better serves them. So thank you so much.
00:31:33
Speaker
Great, and where can people find out more about you? You've got this really interesting history and I'm sure people want to reach out and find out more about you. Okay, so they can just email me directly for your audience. I would love to hear from them. My email is walt, w-a-l-t, at
00:31:58
Speaker
tliftcoaching.com. That's the letter T, L-I-F-T, coaching.com. Or you can go to my website, which is also tliftcoaching.com. And there's a contact form, but you can also poke around and explore and learn a little bit about how I serve others in their leadership and personal development journeys.
00:32:19
Speaker
Brilliant. And if you didn't catch that, I will put it all in the show notes so you will get everything there. Thank you very much, Walt. Thank you,
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:32:29
Speaker
Corinne. What a delightful conversation. What are you going to be taking from that episode? Are you going to be making sure your rising stars get access to some leadership development before they have the L word in their job title? Maybe. I'm going to be thinking about wisdom.
00:32:49
Speaker
and how easy it is to get stuck in a cycle of learning things and then rarely putting anything into practice. And if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and I'd really appreciate you leaving me a review on Apple Podcasts if you can. Until next time.
00:33:18
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Visible Leader podcast. To stay up to date with the latest episode, hit the subscribe button. And I'd love to hear what you think, so please leave me a review. If you have any questions or comments, reach out to me. Cornhines on LinkedIn.