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Creating Safe Places for Performance Management – a conversation with Tobey Wyatt
17 Plays7 days ago
Tobey Wyatt is the founder of Motherlode, a CEO advisory company, based in Chicago, USA.
Tobey had a career as a HR generalist becoming a CEO adviser.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds, host Michael Millward how the role of CEO adviser involves focusing on one aspect of the role of HR professionals within organisations.
Tobey and Michael discuss the challenges of being a business founder or a CEO and the problems that employees face when their CEO fairs to successfully address these challenges.
Focusing on just one aspect of management, performance management they explore what a CEO needs to do to create an organisational culture and individual relationships that will enable managers and their team members to have constructive performance related conversations.
More information about Tobey Wyatt and Michael Millward is available at abeceder.
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Transcript
Introduction to Independent Minds
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysseedah and people who think outside of the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for every everyone.
Guest Introduction: Toby Wyatt
00:00:23
Speaker
I'm your host, Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abysseedah. Today i will be learning about the importance of creating safe places before you can have a safe conversation with employees from Toby Wyatt from Motherload, a CEO advisory firm based in Chicago, Illinois, US of A.
Podcasting Tools and Offers
00:00:47
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr. Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform on which you can make your podcast in one place and then distribute it to the major platforms like Spotify, Apple, Amazon and Google YouTube Music.
00:01:07
Speaker
Zencastr really does make making content so easy. If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr, visit zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my offer code, Abbasida.
00:01:22
Speaker
All the details are in the description. Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one.
Podcast Purpose and Travel Club Promotion
00:01:30
Speaker
One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to.
00:01:36
Speaker
As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we won't be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think. to- Today, my guest Independent Mind is Toby Wyatt from Motherload, a CEO advisory firm based in Chicago, Illinois.
00:01:55
Speaker
I have been to Chicago. I would go again and when I do go i will be making my travel arrangements at the Ultimate Travel Club which gives me access to trade prices on flights, hotels, trains and package holidays as well as lots of other travel related purchases.
00:02:13
Speaker
You can as well if you join the Ultimate Travel Club because there is a discount code and a link in the description. Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds and say, hello, Toby.
00:02:28
Speaker
Hello, Michael. How are you? I'm doing well. Great, great.
Wyatt's Career Journey
00:02:32
Speaker
Please, could we start, please, with you telling us a little bit about who Toby Wyatt is and your career to date?
00:02:41
Speaker
Similar to many generalists out there, I have come from a fairly zigzag background. I have built up expertise across many different industries, different kinds of companies, worked with lots of different people, and that has given me a very broad depth in many spaces to be able to look at this world from. And so that gives me a unique perspective that I like to share with CEOs.
00:03:04
Speaker
of organizations. I started my company after being pretty shaken by the pandemic times.
Evolving CEO Challenges
00:03:11
Speaker
I was laid off twice in two years, something I never thought would happen.
00:03:16
Speaker
When I realized that employment wasn't quite what it used to be, I realized that my skills in broad operations, as well as the chief of staff work that I have done, um really made for a great combo to work with small business.
00:03:33
Speaker
Right. So you're an HR person who's worked in lots of different industries and built up lots of general management experience as well. And I've combined all of that into a new service where you're a CEO advisor and mainly smaller businesses.
00:03:52
Speaker
Yeah, I really love working at the foundational level of, they're not always startups. A lot of the companies that I've worked with have actually been in business for quite a period of time, but either the CEO is finding ah level of exhaustion at the way they've approached operations of their company to date, or they know that they want to scale a little bit, or there is some sort of major upcoming change that they know just means they cannot be the central person the way they have been. And so it's creating operations ah when there hasn't been those before. I really love that ah development of the operation.
00:04:31
Speaker
Now, I've worked in lots of smaller businesses as well from a top of HR type of position. Worked with lots of founders of businesses. And that realization period where they can't do everything, right where they've got to trust other people is a very painful experience for many of them.
00:04:53
Speaker
Yeah, and it shows a little bit about our view of leadership nowadays. It is so important for leaders to feel like they always have the right answers. And yet, one of the things that most companies have in common is the CEO built the company or started the company because they were really passionate about something quite particular. It's either the product that they have made for their clients, it's the service that they are offering for their clients,
00:05:19
Speaker
it is It is the doing of the company, whatever the company's purpose is Then when they start to experience a level of success with it, they realize that they have this CEO job all of a sudden that they didn't really sign up for.
Isolation and HR Challenges in Small Companies
00:05:35
Speaker
And it takes them away from those things that were actually big passion drivers for them. And so it really is an interesting experience wanting to feel like they are the best in their game and yet more and more they find themselves in a zone that they don't have prior experience in. That's a very isolating, exposed place to be.
00:05:59
Speaker
Yes, it really is I know from my own HR experiences that they they need someone to talk to, to talk through the issues with. And very often that falls to the person with the HR experience.
00:06:13
Speaker
It's the HR person who takes on that role of being the confident of the ceo It's a very special relationship to get to the place where someone who has built a business, financed the business, taken out all sorts of risks.
00:06:29
Speaker
It's a very, very sensitive situation and one that takes a lot of work in order to build the trust to enable that sort of situation too to prosper.
00:06:40
Speaker
How do you do it? It's interesting because at a lot of small organizations, there aren't HR people, right? Some of these organizations are only two, three, you know, 10 people large. And so if there is any semblance of HR, you either have two situations. One, the CEO is, again, trying to implement any of those HR things that they think should be implemented, or they have hired some sort of outsourced firm prior to bringing someone in.
00:07:09
Speaker
And also, it's the experience that I had ah quite a while ago in my career, which is i was the executive assistant at an organization, and there was a whole bunch of needs of the company and I figured them out, right? and And I think that happens for a lot of people is they just get given things like HR and it's a figure it out kind of role. And what's interesting about that is HR really does have some expertise you need to have. It has some understanding
00:07:40
Speaker
that that is really important to have. So it's important that those people who are being given those tasks cultivate the learning necessary for that. But what's good about it is I do believe that a lot of h r and a lot of the good parts of h r really have to do with common sense and really have to do with understanding people.
00:08:00
Speaker
So if you're giving the role to someone who is inherently good at those things, then um i do think it ends up better than trying to to offer a novice IT, for example, um you know that comes with a whole host of things. So if if people can figure other people out, then they will tend to do an okay job with HR. What you mean is that the HR role is one that requires high levels of soft skills.
Creating Safe Spaces for CEOs
00:08:30
Speaker
Yes. Whereas somebody like it or finance is that, you two plus two is going to equal four, regardless of which way you look at it. But every time somebody walks into your office, every time there's telephone rings, you're dealing with something that is completely different and you've got to learn how that person needs to hear things, needs to be allowed to create that conversation so that, yes um, they can have a positive experience of positive engagement. That's right.
00:09:00
Speaker
And I think you just nailed the question that that you had sort of really asked me, which is how to create that safe conversation and these extremely vulnerable conversations where i often talk about when I go into companies that I have to touch all the babies. These are you know incredibly hardworking people who have, as you said, put in so much risk tolerance. They have sacrificed so much to get where they are.
00:09:31
Speaker
And they have done the best they can. And they feel very vulnerable about the fact that their best may not be all that good, especially in these zones that they are not familiar with.
00:09:42
Speaker
So I think the first part is not throwing the book at them about what it is, really trying to understand why they implemented some of the solutions they do.
00:09:55
Speaker
And so a sense of curiosity goes a long way Because once somebody believes you understand the context behind decisions that were made, they are more likely to listen to what you have to say after that.
00:10:12
Speaker
Because everybody feels they're special. Everybody feels their situation is special. And so if you discount that, if you don't understand the context that they are living in, then they're just going to discount anything you have to say afterwards.
00:10:26
Speaker
So being non-judgmental is important rather than appearing as the the expert and who knows exactly what you should have done, right? Right. And what you've done wrong and how, if only I'd been here six months earlier, you'd be saved type of
Managing Defensiveness and Communication Techniques
00:10:45
Speaker
thing. It's yeah it's understanding what the pressures were that led to a decision being made and then recognizing the successes from it and understanding the knock-on effects of that decision, the problems, the challenges that it is itself has created.
00:11:03
Speaker
Right. Another element of it that works really well is if we position ourselves as leaders and experts who have only achieved success or are really unicorns in our space, and that's how we position ourselves, that we don't have any weaknesses and we don't we don't have bad experiences. We've always made the best decisions.
00:11:24
Speaker
that's very intimidating to try to talk to. So I certainly bring in elements of where I have made mistakes and where i have tried things that didn't work. And so they get to see a companion in the vulnerability instead of somebody that they just have to open up all their sensitive spaces to. So when you can do that in partnership with someone, it it goes a long way.
00:11:48
Speaker
I like what you're saying. And I'm thinking back over my own career where there have been CEOs that I've been working with who wanted someone to hold their hand through the situation that they were in.
00:12:01
Speaker
And yet, even though they said that was what they wanted in business speak, here as soon as you try to be the person, they go they then regress, go on the defensive.
00:12:13
Speaker
It's a big risk. how do we How do we get over those sorts of um experiences? Yes, that absolutely happens. Yeah. So when i sense defensiveness, I think one of my natural superpowers is to be able to talk to people in such a way that doesn't raise defenses necessarily.
00:12:32
Speaker
as quickly as other people. And I think it's just, again, that collaborative spirit, that that calm, peaceful demeanor, the ability to say back what I think they're hearing without the judgment that they assume is going to come with my understanding.
00:12:49
Speaker
But at the same time, ah defensiveness, again, usually comes from a place of you don't understand me. you that you would have come to my decision if you were in my shoes.
00:13:00
Speaker
That's usually the basis of of defensiveness for a lot of these CEOs. And so again, it's important to understand the context of what am I missing?
00:13:12
Speaker
What am I missing that you feel so threatened by that if I understood it, we wouldn't be in this situation because I would come closer to you.
00:13:22
Speaker
And so a lot of times I try to talk through what I hear them saying from the perspective of, I can understand why this worked. I can understand why you thought it would work.
00:13:35
Speaker
All of the positives around that so they can understand that I see the positive part of that decision or the part positive part of what they tried to accomplish.
00:13:46
Speaker
And in doing so, you diffuse the situation because I'm agreeing with them to a degree before then i can open the door to the conflictory statements, the tension statements that have to be said.
00:14:00
Speaker
It's a very good way of describing finding out about someone's situation without making any judgments about them. When we were planning this this conversation, you talked about judgmental and non-judgmental language that you use and we all use and how it's easier to make a judgmental statement about someone or what they've done or what they've suggested than it is to make a non-judgmental statement.
00:14:28
Speaker
o Our human nature is almost to start some sort of conflict, I suppose. Yeah. And I think we're all trying to... feel impressive much of the time. And I think that starts as children, right?
00:14:44
Speaker
If I look at the the way my children talk to me, they want to sound smart. They want to to assume they know something about the world. And so they'll you know be very antagonistic towards me sometimes of, oh, I researched that, or no, I learned that for sure. Very defensive about understanding that maybe they heard it wrong, or maybe they understood something wrong.
00:15:08
Speaker
And so we're all trying, i think, you know, it it starts so young and so innocently, this very strong judgmentalism. And what's really interesting is i am not free of judgment.
00:15:24
Speaker
I have lots of judgment um and judgment of situations, certainly judgments of decisions.
Accountability and Clarity
00:15:30
Speaker
um What's in important is to try to understand that nobody is any given decision.
00:15:37
Speaker
So when you start to make statements that start to bring in the whole person or the character that is the person who made the decision the decision, instead of keeping it at the decision level or keeping it at the situation, then It is very hard to not be defensive when you believe you are being attacked.
00:16:05
Speaker
And so you do have to be very careful of your language, ah especially when it has to do with how they are approaching something. Because if its if it's your approach, that feels very close to who I am as a person.
00:16:20
Speaker
So for example, if you if I am dealing with a CEO who often gets angry at their leadership team or their employees and expresses that through perhaps yelling or inappropriate arguments um over the conversation, they need to understand that that's not okay. I have very strong judgments about how a manager might speak to their staff appropriately or inappropriately.
00:16:47
Speaker
And I can hold judgment that maybe they haven't had great examples and maybe that is how they have had management modeled to them.
00:16:59
Speaker
Or maybe they have tried other approaches and that's the only one that felt effective. So I don't need to judge their character, even if I'm holding extreme judgment about whatever concept we're talking about.
00:17:14
Speaker
yeah It's detaching the situation from the person enables you to be nonjudgmental in your in your description and conversation of the situation.
00:17:25
Speaker
Right. It's like the the first reaction of of some managers is to think, who do who's to blame for this situation? Right. Right. who did it wrong, who made the wrong decision, who's at error.
00:17:38
Speaker
Whereas what you're saying is that that damages your potential, I suppose, to create a solution. yes makes it harder to find a solution, harder to resolve the situation.
00:17:52
Speaker
it will cost more because you've alienated the people that you need in order to be successful. Yes. And the converse side of that that gets very interesting that I have many conversations with CEOs about is it feels like that statement that you just made, okay, we can't we can't call out people. We can't look for the blame.
00:18:15
Speaker
It feels like what the a lot of CEOs jump to the conclusion that means there's no accountability. oh, so what you're saying is I can't ever hold people accountable because I can't pin anything on anybody.
00:18:27
Speaker
That it couldn't be farther from the truth. But I do think we have a lot of misunderstandings about accountability, what it really is, what the value is, and how we get two accomplish it where we are dealing with humans and not computers.
00:18:46
Speaker
If a computer makes an error, we can go look at that piece of code and know exactly what happened there. If a human makes an error, they are a whole human who has a personal life and health challenges and maybe indigestion that day, right? Like all sorts of factors that we don't know which created the right mix of factors that led to the situation in front of us.
00:19:16
Speaker
And so accountability is really about making sure we understand what quality job is, making sure we have role clarity. I would say a huge component of accountability ends up being clarity.
00:19:32
Speaker
You can't hold somebody accountable for something going wrong if you didn't tell them what right looked like before they started. Right. And I think for a lot of managers, they assume that happens way more often than it does because they forget the unbalance of information.
00:19:49
Speaker
They forget that the context they have for making decisions may be extremely different than their staff.
Perspective and Listening as a CEO Advisor
00:19:58
Speaker
When you talk about clarity and a safe place and and all of these conversations that need to be had, i think it's very important for managers to really understand the context.
00:20:11
Speaker
And again, just like me going into these CEO advisory firms and being very curious and asking a lot of questions, So many managers and leaders, CEOs, they forget the different position they are in from everybody else.
00:20:31
Speaker
A lot of these CEOs don't feel like they're intimidating people. They don't want to be intimidating people. They actually pride themselves in feeling like I have an open door policy and I'm i'm very friendly and I'm easy to talk to.
00:20:44
Speaker
And so they forget the context. But they are still the CEOs. Exactly. not about them as an individual, is it? It's about the job title. Exactly.
00:20:54
Speaker
And so they forget that it's an unsafe conversation from the perspective of someone else. Yeah. We all see the world through our own eyes, whereas it's a great advantage to be able to see ourselves and the world through the eyes of other people.
00:21:10
Speaker
Right. Walk a mile in somebody else's shoes. And I got challenged by that a while ago of somebody saying, you never actually can be in somebody else's shoes. There's there's just too much context.
00:21:21
Speaker
And I think that's very true. But we can do the best we can. And that is to gather as much information so that we understand as as much as we possibly can.
00:21:34
Speaker
Yeah, we are sort of talking about your role as a CEO advisor and the sorts of things that are involved in building the relationship between yourself and the CEO so that they're prepared to listen to your advice. Right. But before they will listen to your advice, and for every one minute that they listen to your advice, it sounds like you're listening to half an hour of their information before you can actually produce any advice for them.
00:22:02
Speaker
Absolutely. Most of my job is listening. Solutioning is what I can do very quickly in response to something.
00:22:14
Speaker
But if I jump to solutioning too early, i guarantee i will put in a bad solution. Because you need all of the clarity, you need the context, you need to ask the non-judgmental questions and to actually to draw all the information out from someone before you can make your contribution.
Cultural Influence of CEO Vulnerability
00:22:34
Speaker
So it's about being vulnerable as well about your own successes and things which could have been done better. And it sounds a little bit like perhaps once a CEO has experienced this, then the people that report to the CEO should experience it from the CEO and then it should permeate down the rest of the organization.
00:22:57
Speaker
I'm making that sort of question in the form, and um as I'm saying it, I'm thinking this is a question, not a statement. Is it possible that once a CEO has experienced this much more non-judgmental approach to what is problem solving and strategizing, is it possible that it then permeates down through the organization and you end up with a much more constructive working environment?
00:23:24
Speaker
It can. the The two things I've noticed about that is a lot of the CEOs, I think, end up being very surprised by what I have to say, especially when I work with a CEO for a long period of time.
00:23:36
Speaker
I will end up hearing statements like, oh, I know what you're going to say or, oh, you know, but before you tell me the thing I know you're going to tell me, you know, let me tell you something. You know, let me, let me give my excuses. Let me say something.
00:23:49
Speaker
But isn't that sort of where you've got to the point where you understand how they think, how they look at things, and they've come to understand the counter argument or the, your perspective on things and what you're likely to view a particular situation. Isn't that a very strong, constructive argument?
00:24:09
Speaker
situation to be in. It is And I constantly surprise them. And so I think once once they experience that, I really do look at situations from a multitude of angles. I don't come at life from a perspective. And I think that is actually somewhat unique. I think it can actually be challenging for some people to not look at situations from that lens. And so once I know your lens...
00:24:38
Speaker
then I know what you're going to say. What's really great is because they don't know what I'm going to say, and usually it's to ask another question and get more information and ask a question that gets them to think in about the situation in a way that I don't think they've thought about it
Empowering Employees and Collaboration
00:24:55
Speaker
before. Because that's usually the problem is you think you've come up with a solution. You're very frustrated that everybody else doesn't understand or that the solution's not working.
00:25:05
Speaker
And it's because you can't get to a different perspective to see the challenge. And so if I can ask you a question that gets you to think about that, sometimes I don't even have to come up with solutioning at all.
00:25:18
Speaker
You're going to realize. And so I think the value in that is once they've had those conversations where they go, wow, by being able to insert a different perspective,
00:25:29
Speaker
my ideas just got magnified or or my ideas just became so much more improved, they want to offer that to their employees. They want to empower their employees the same way they feel empowered from the conversations they have with me.
00:25:44
Speaker
That's a great outcome. And I love when that happens. The other side of that, though, that I think is really important to just address is some CEOs are just not going to handle some of that well.
00:25:59
Speaker
And it's really important to just simply get to a place where you can acknowledge that and you can install somebody else at your organization that can be that person.
00:26:09
Speaker
that can have those. And you know what conversation that means that person needs to lead, whether that's a chief of staff, whether that's the head of h r whether that is just simply your right-hand person, whatever title you give that person.
00:26:24
Speaker
But you know when they need to lead in conversation. You know when you need to take a break and a step back because my natural is to jump to anger and that's not going to be productive.
00:26:35
Speaker
So I'm going to make sure that there's somebody else in this conversation that can stay level-headed and keep this productive. But if you never acknowledge that, you know what, I may not be able to create these calm, safe places for people, then you'll never get that the right resource available to your team.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:26:55
Speaker
It's very interesting. ah Toby, thank you very much. You've really made me think about and not just the role of HR, but the role of CEOs as well within organizations. I'm very grateful. Thank you very much.
00:27:09
Speaker
Appreciate the conversation, Michael. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abucida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Toby Wyatt, from Motherload in Chicago, USA.
00:27:24
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us at abucida.co.uk. There's a link in the description alongside links to Toby's website as well. Toby, what is your website address?
00:27:35
Speaker
You can go to www.motherload, M-O-T-H-E-R-L-O-D-E.biz or find me
Podcast Engagement and Technical Advice
00:27:42
Speaker
on LinkedIn. I have a nice unique name, T-O-B-E-Y-W-Y-A-T-T that makes me quite easy to find.
00:27:48
Speaker
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00:28:12
Speaker
There is a link in the description that will take you to more information and about business and personal telecom solutions from 3 and the special offers available when you use my referral code. The description is well worth reading.
00:28:25
Speaker
I'm sure you've liked this episode of The Independent Minds, so please give it a like and download it so that you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe.
00:28:37
Speaker
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Apocida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.