How Leaders Think with Kenny Lange

Todd Holzman [00:00:00]:
Candor is a collaborative search for the truth in order to make things better. Because I'm not omniscient, nor are you. But you've got access to some valid piece of reality, and I do too. And if we cobble it together, maybe we understand things a bit better than either of us could alone.

Kenny Lange [00:00:23]:
Welcome to the How Leaders Think podcast, a show that transformed you by renewing your mind and giving you new ways to think. I am your host, Kenny Lang, and with me today is the Todd Holzman. He is the CEO and founder of Holzman Leadership. He's a former leadership coach to IBM's top executives, head of organization development at Honeywell, fellow at McKinsey's Change center, and he has taught world leaders at Harvard, developed doctoral students at Columbia, and trained tens of thousands of leaders globally to get to Candor, which stay tuned for that because that that's probably going to come up. As the founder of Holzman Leadership, which is a global consultancy, his real work process has been used by numerous Fortune 500, FTSC 100 and Global 2000 companies to transform their leaders, their cultures, and their business results. He has a BS in Industrial labor relations, which I may have questions about what all goes into that for from Cornell, a master's in Organizational psychology from Columbia, and a master's of Education and leadership and Adult Development from Harvard. Welcome to the show, Todd.

Todd Holzman [00:01:32]:
Thank you, Kenny. Thank you. Thank you very much. You almost read it like I wrote.

Kenny Lange [00:01:36]:
It, so I tried to add the enthusiasm. I didn't ad lib as as much as I normally do. Usually I. My brain works or I would like to say my mouth works faster than my brain.

Todd Holzman [00:01:48]:
There are people who could deliver scripted content like is theirs and it's a rare talent and apparently you have it. So thank you.

Kenny Lange [00:01:54]:
Thank you. That means a lot coming from you. But tell me today, Todd, what is on your mind?

Todd Holzman [00:02:00]:
I guess what's on my mind when you first ask is why do you ask that question?

Kenny Lange [00:02:05]:
Because someone told me it was a smart thing to ask. Actually, it's because I have a deep appreciation for Michael Bungay Stanier's work with the coaching habit and also taming the advice monster. And it was the first question in the coaching habit and I loved how open it is. And it's also not. It's not something I hear all the time either.

Todd Holzman [00:02:29]:
Yeah, it's a very. I asked because it's such an interesting question and I guess it's again, it's a question for you and I know you're supposed to be the one asking the questions. But as we were preparing for the call, you reminded me that one of the topics that was interesting to you was candor, because you're finding, I think it's what you said is having some kind of resonance with your clients. And it's certainly a topic that is core to everything that my faculty and I do, and it's very much something we feel a tremendous sense of mission about. So I guess it's. Why do you think your clients are resonating to this topic and why is it interesting? And I asked that because it might be something that we could build off on. And I could say more about candor.

Kenny Lange [00:03:20]:
Yeah. 1. I think it's a word not often said, so I think that there is some novelty about it. We talk about honesty, transparency, and integrity. Sort of like the world's most boring core values. So sorry to anybody who has those listed on your wall, but let's be honest. No one ever said, I value lying and duplicity, so no duh. Right? So my personal connection to it is when Kim Scott was releasing the book, and I heard her interviewed, I think it was the Entree leadership podcast or something like that, and she was discussing the difference, I was like, candor.

Kenny Lange [00:03:59]:
I was like, all right. I was like, that's like a $7 word. Like, we don't need this. You're just, like, tweaking things to sound original. But the more I heard her speak, I really heard there was a distinction to be made. And in part, my. My personality. I'm very direct, and I would pride myself on being brutally honest.

Kenny Lange [00:04:19]:
I was like, no sugar coating, no fluff. And what she said was, she goes, brutally honest actually lacks complete empathy. And it has nothing.

Todd Holzman [00:04:28]:
You.

Kenny Lange [00:04:28]:
Has nothing to do with the other person and everything to do with you. And when you're communicating, especially if you're in leadership, your job is to be for that person. Like, their success is your success, their failures, your failure. So if you pride yourself on being brutally honest, I'm sorry to tell you, but it's selfish and borderline narcissistic. Candor has to do with the intersection of caring deeply and challenging directly, which sort of gets back to, it's cliched. Now. It is very truthful. But I hate cliches of people don't care how much they.

Kenny Lange [00:05:00]:
Until they know how much you care. And that has been, to be honest. My. Me expressing my care for people had been a real challenge because I was so direct. And so when I found that, I was like, that's Interesting. And then when I started becoming a coach and one of my coaches and mentors said, I've been using radical candor a lot, and I'm finding that clients are resonating. He goes, you should give it a shot. So I was like, all right.

Kenny Lange [00:05:28]:
I did it once. I had. And my clients were in tears. I had one client who. And he's actually. It's a church. He's a lead pastor. And he fell into one of the quadrants that wasn't radical candor.

Kenny Lange [00:05:41]:
And he said this. This actually was. He got real quiet, and he normally isn't. He's a talker. And he said this was a punch in the gut for me. And I was like, okay, there's something going on here. And then I presented it to another client. They loved it so much, they rewrote their core values during one of our exercises.

Kenny Lange [00:05:59]:
And being radically candid is now. One of their core values is on a poster in their. In their main gathering place. And so I've just been struck by that. And honestly, apart from Kim, I had not heard anybody really discussing it unless they were citing her work. So when I came across you and you were talking about getting to candor, I was really intrigued. Just because there. It's not a novelty, makes it sound childish, but it felt rare.

Kenny Lange [00:06:29]:
Or maybe it's not well understood enough for people to really wield it.

Todd Holzman [00:06:34]:
No. Thank you for that. I. So the question then is why is this something that people are responding to so well? And I don't think I've ever thought about it, maybe in this way, but I think the reason people are responding, whether to my and my firm's work or Kim Scott's work in the way that you have, is that I. I think people long for a deeper sense of meaning in life. And I think we understand in ways that maybe sometimes we can't even articulate that the way we're going to find the most meaning in life, the way we're going to extract the most fulfillment is by really caring about something. And when you care or. Or love something, what you really are oriented around is like the.

Todd Holzman [00:07:27]:
The real betterment of these other people. And maybe we all understand instinctively that the way you're going to really take care of people as a leader, meaning that you're really going to serve their betterment through the truth.

Kenny Lange [00:07:44]:
What a novel idea.

Todd Holzman [00:07:46]:
It sounds obvious when you say it.

Kenny Lange [00:07:48]:
Out loud, but it also sounds risky.

Todd Holzman [00:07:51]:
Right.

Kenny Lange [00:07:51]:
And do you think that risk, that interpersonal risk is why it's. It isn't the prevailing wisdom, I think it is the.

Todd Holzman [00:08:02]:
The prevailing espoused wisdom or the deeper wisdom I think we all carry around in us, because like you were saying as we were preparing for this conversation, or maybe no, you or you're saying it just during the conversation, it's like, who's. Who, what. What parent's going to tell their child, look like, do your best to make the world worse and lie your way through it. So the fact that nobody, the fact that it's absurd, means that people will already have this implicit rule in their head, is that if you're going to actually do some good in the world, if you want to, if you want to actually make your life worth living, you got to take on some responsibility for making things better around you. And if you're going to make things better around you, one big part of that is you got to be really committed to the truth of things. I'll. I will come back to your question in a more direct way. So, because what you said was.

Todd Holzman [00:09:06]:
Is the reason it's not the prevailing wisdom because people see it as risky, I would say yes and no. But what people don't think about enough is all the risks of not telling the truth. And in our experience, so what, my colleagues and I have probably developed 50,000 people in candor across the world when you start to look at all these conversations that people have brought to us. So imagine 50,000 people bring to you conversations that by their own definition, did not produce the results that they wanted. And then we have a very kind of cool way that wasn't invented by us of being able to capture in a highly accurate way what people are, how they're actually behaving during these important conversations. They can't fool it. You know, if they try to lie, even if they forget, we get access to how they really behave in real life, it's fine. And in every one of those conversations, there's something that somebody is doing that's compromising candor.

Todd Holzman [00:10:13]:
Okay. Now, it could be they're not expressing the truth of what they think, which is implied in what you're saying, Kenny, about people seeing it as risky. Equally, they're doing a horrible job of exploring the truth of what other people think. But in either case, truth is, you know, these conversations are where the truth goes to die or where the truth is severely compromised. Unintentionally, I would say, largely. And if you ask people what you know, why aren't you expressing this really important thing that you're thinking and feeling that would actually potentially be very Valuable to conversation. They talk about all the risks, right. But if you look at all the problems that not talking about it is creating, they're much bigger than the risk of avoidance and they don't, they don't realize it.

Todd Holzman [00:11:06]:
So I'll give, I'll give an example. So we work a lot of pharma companies and, and some pretty big ones. And we were recently working with a group of people who have to help their customers navigate through the fickle bureaucratic roadblocks of the American health care system to ensure their patients can get access to the medicines the doctors have prescribed for them. And Kenny, a lot of these patients, like they're suffering from severe serious diseases. Some of them, they could be so dire that if there is a two week delay in them getting this therapy, they die.

Kenny Lange [00:11:50]:
Wow.

Todd Holzman [00:11:51]:
Some of them, they're just losing an opportunity to make for their lives to be better than they would otherwise be. Okay? So it runs the gamut of making things better to horrible human suffering. So just because your doctor and you know, for a lot of us who have, have loved ones who have been sick or whose parents are suffering from various ailments, maybe you've had the experience of like the, the insurance rejects the claim, so they're not going to pay for the medicine, so therefore you're not getting it or there's going to be a delay. Okay. Now the reason that happens is not only because of the healthcare bureaucracy, but also is because you were dependent upon these people in hospitals and doctor's offices enter the right code to fill out a start form that allows the medicine to be ordered. So there's a whole back office problem. And so the people at these pharmas then who interact with the customers have to talk to them about the things that say, like the mistakes they're making and putting the right code in because they're not putting the right code in, the patient's not getting the medicine, or they have to bring opportunities to their attention that if they were able to do things differently offices, the patients would get access to these medications much more quickly without a lot less frustration. And the last thing you want to do with somebody who's really suffering is, is create more frustration in their lives with getting the medicines that they really require.

Todd Holzman [00:13:33]:
So then you look at these conversations that they're having. So this is making sense so far. Okay, so they're looking, look at the conversations and they're thinking, listen, I see a pattern where you and your colleagues are not entering the right insurance reimbursement codes. So as A consequence. Here's all the bad stuff that's happening. They think it, they don't say it, and then they blame the other person for not getting it. And then you ask them, well, why aren't you saying it? Well, I'm concerned about damage. Understandably, I'm concerned this could damage the relationship.

Todd Holzman [00:14:10]:
So therefore, they're not going to want to talk to me. So my ability to serve them and through them, their patience will be really compromised. The consequence right now is you're not able to serve them. They're not interested in talking to you. They don't feel like they're getting any of the value out of the conversations you're having with them. They feel like the conversation with a waste of time. Oh, and by the way, patients are dying. So what? People, they're.

Todd Holzman [00:14:37]:
They're, they're rightly scared of having the conversation, but they're not scared enough of not having it. And they have paid too much attention to the negative consequences of having it and not nearly enough attention to the negative consequences of avoiding it. And, and if they did so. So somebody asked Jordan Peterson, why are you so honest? He's a guy I really respect. You have a lot of courage. He goes, no, I have a lot of fear. I'm misquoting him. But I'll get the sentiment right because.

Todd Holzman [00:15:12]:
Because I know what can happen if I don't tell the truth, and I'm more scared of that than what could happen if I do.

Kenny Lange [00:15:19]:
Yeah, it's. It's almost a lesser of two evils right there.

Todd Holzman [00:15:24]:
There could be poison, man.

Kenny Lange [00:15:26]:
Yeah, 100%. Or you could go with the. You miss 100 of the shots you. You never take. But if you don't take. If you don't take it, you don't know.

Todd Holzman [00:15:35]:
But it's also a lack of faith.

Kenny Lange [00:15:37]:
Faith in what?

Todd Holzman [00:15:38]:
That the best thing that could possibly happen will come through a genuine expression and explanation of the truth. Because sometimes it's not going to feel that way in the moment.

Kenny Lange [00:15:51]:
Right.

Todd Holzman [00:15:53]:
But if you have committed yourself to this, I think people will find more often than not, it turns out much better than they imagined. And things they could never predict end up happening. They would never predict end up happening, provided they do it like Kim Scott is talking about, with the care for the other, with the genuine intention to serve the good, not, you know, to narcissistically bathe in their own reflections of excellence.

Kenny Lange [00:16:25]:
Do you think that there's a different time horizon in experiencing or realizing consequences, good or bad, and speaking with candor versus this withholding, like you've been saying, do you think that time that the distance between stimulus and response is different and that is contributing to people default? Because I would say you might be out of a job if people were defaulting to candor, right? Like you and I both. Do you think that that plays a part or.

Todd Holzman [00:17:01]:
No, then the world will find something else for me to do. Of course it does. So I think that's very astute. Right, because you're more concerned about the immediate consequences than the long term effects. And so it's a time horizon problem. It is. But again, it is and it isn't because the bad stuff, there's already bad stuff happening now because of the avoidance that we're not tuned into enough.

Kenny Lange [00:17:27]:
There's, there's a shorter horizon, but we're mentally disconnected from the fact that my.

Todd Holzman [00:17:34]:
It's on horizon. It's happening.

Kenny Lange [00:17:36]:
It's, it's, it's happening.

Todd Holzman [00:17:37]:
It's been happening, it's happening now and it will continue happening. But, but the way we're wired is to be tremendously overprotective, right? So. Because if you don't listen, it's better to be overprotective than underprotective of oneself and, and others because we're always the biggest threat to each other because the people who weren't overprotective, their genes didn't make it to this generation. So we could talk about how overprotective we are. So, so it is, it is, it, it is a. But the problem with this conversation, Kenny, or the thing that's missing from it is that we're not factoring for competence because. And this is what has, has been my obsession now for 30 years. Like what does good actually look like in these situations? It's great.

Todd Holzman [00:18:28]:
We talk about candor and, and what are the things that people need to not do. And this is, this is vital because it all then becomes so much about courage and believing that the best that could possibly happen. This is so like, like a guy like Jordan Peterson, but I very much respect. But this is the limitations of what he's talking about because tell the truth, but at least don't lie. And I love that and I love how he's trying to make people afraid of not telling the truth and helping people face the reality of that and talking about how telling the truth, by the way, which is only one aspect of candor, because you have to equally be committed to helping the other person do the same. That's candor. Candor is a collaborative search for the truth in order to make things better. That's our definition of it.

Kenny Lange [00:19:26]:
I like that.

Todd Holzman [00:19:28]:
Okay, because I'm not omniscient, nor are you. But you've got access to some valid piece of reality and I do too, hopefully. And if we cobble it together, maybe we understand things a bit better than either of us could alone, if we're doing it in the service of something greater. But fine. But the problem is that I don't want people blowing themselves up because now they're more courageous and they've got faith and they're going to take it on. It's all a little too macho for me, Kenny. And this is why we do need to encourage and inspire people to be able to express the truth of what they think and be equally interested in the truth of what other people think. And doing all of that on behalf of making things better.

Todd Holzman [00:20:16]:
But we also have to convert it into a confidence because the more capable you are, the less risky it is and therefore the less afraid you're going to be. I used to be. I remember working another pharma with the. The head of like, I don't know, all, like leadership development, training, learning all, organization development, all rolls up into this person. And they said to me last summer, before working with you, I always thought it was just about courage and leaning in. I never realized it was an actual skill. And. And I remember when I got into race car driving, mostly because I'm naturally a horrible driver and had lots of accidents and.

Todd Holzman [00:21:01]:
And literally my nickname became Crash. I found. And I ended up living in Vegas for a while and was part of a club there. We got to kind of race and do time trials and get properly scared to death, man. But then two or three months later, greater speed, not so scary. Why was I medicated? To get rid of my fear. Did I suddenly find courage? Not really. I found competence.

Todd Holzman [00:21:30]:
I found ability. And when you're more capable of handling something, those. Some things are less scary because you've actually reduced the risk because you know how to handle it. And so that's. That's a huge part of it. We have to combine courage with. With training people in this as a real competence. And that's a little space that we've carved out.

Kenny Lange [00:21:55]:
I really like some of that. Reminds me of some things I hear from Alex Hormozi. I don't know if you've heard of him or follow him. Talks a lot about scaling and, and business growth and he's done a lot with marketing and, and sales, but he talks about Competence similar to you is, is a skill. And he talks about like you just need to acquire the skills and if you go and you do it like instead of you, you don't need. And to tag on another thing, it was actually, it was on Instagram this morning from James Clear, who wrote Atomic Habits. He said you don't, you don't need more willpower. You is like you need more attempts.

Todd Holzman [00:22:34]:
Fine.

Kenny Lange [00:22:35]:
You don't, you don't need to, you don't need to conjure like the, like the courage. I don't need to conjure more courage. I just need to go and, and do the reps sets.

Todd Holzman [00:22:45]:
But the thing is, is those, those are great maxims and, and, and, and, and they're helpful, but they're not concrete enough. Okay. Because like I could go blah, blah, blah, this is a skill. Right. But the question is, so what is it actually? Like what do you actually do under pressure? What are the strategies that you use? You know, and so I know you want to maybe save that to the, when we get a little more practical toward, toward the end. But there are things that we have, we've been studying this now for 30 years that first of all absolutely don't work, but are either explicitly taught to people. So like I would go good communication that blocks candor, like things that are kind of accepted as common wisdom that you shouldn't do and, and things that people would perhaps expect actually work. So I don't know if you want to take the conversation.

Todd Holzman [00:23:48]:
We could talk about some of those.

Kenny Lange [00:23:49]:
What are a few of those? Yeah.

Todd Holzman [00:23:51]:
Okay. So the, the field is, is mixed with good and bad thinking and just some gaps in terms of what we actually know. So let's take proponents of things like you like coaching, so you probably know about this. Let's take the grow model. Okay. Or question based coaching. So a lot of people who will go through something like the international set coaching ICF will get ICF certified, right? Which actually I think it's from people I know have gone through it. It sounds like a really great thing to go through because what people get is as a coach, you don't have to be the person with the answers, right? Okay.

Todd Holzman [00:24:33]:
That's a huge thing. So therefore you should ask questions. But there, but what happens to people who, who go through a lot of this conventional training and coaching, whether it's coaches or even more problematically managers who are trained to coach their people is they learn that they can only ask questions and, and then what happens is they end up, let's say as A manager as a leader of people. Because now you are allowed, only allowed to ask questions. I saw this with British cast. All the managers went through it. Like they told us, we can't tell our people what we think anymore. We can only ask them questions so they can self discover.

Todd Holzman [00:25:15]:
There were a lot of Chelsea fans there too.

Kenny Lange [00:25:17]:
And don't, don't lump that in. All right?

Todd Holzman [00:25:21]:
No. A lot of Arsenal fat. Depending upon the region where it's throughout the whole country.

Kenny Lange [00:25:24]:
That sounds like an Arsenal thing.

Todd Holzman [00:25:26]:
Yeah, yeah. Very good, very good. And you can understand the logic behind it. Yeah. It's going to be more powerful if people can see it for themselves versus if I have to tell them. But then there were two, like huge problems with it. One, the managers then were depriving their people of their experience, of their insights. And two, because all these questions weren't having the impact they wanted.

Todd Holzman [00:25:55]:
Like their people weren't generating improvements in their performance at the pace that they wanted to see.

Kenny Lange [00:26:01]:
Okay.

Todd Holzman [00:26:02]:
Then they inevitably, because they weren't supposed to tell their people what they thought, started to slip into asking leading questions. Because how do you, how do you reconcile the tension of. I've got something to tell you with. I'm only supposed to ask questions. Let me hint at it through the question. Do you really think Chelsea is the team that you should be the fan of giving that it's been losing so frequently lately. He's laughing because he. Because one, I'm hitting the Chelsea button and it's annoying.

Todd Holzman [00:26:30]:
But there's something in the, in this construct of a leading question. Yeah, right. Which starts to activate the amygdala, the fear and paranoia center of the human brain. But yet it is often taught as good practice. It is. People say I've always been taught it's better for people self discover. So there's almost this conventional wisdom, let's not blame ICF or grow about if you're going to have a conversation, you think people are going to defensive. We'll ask a bleeding question instead.

Todd Holzman [00:27:03]:
Which of course guarantees they're going to get defensive. So that's, that's an example of a strategy which is when we look at the 50,000 data points that we have is like a huge trap that almost everybody falls into.

Kenny Lange [00:27:18]:
Sure. It, it's, it's. They were all one way, they were told something else and now they're all the other way. And it's, it's. It sounds.

Todd Holzman [00:27:25]:
That's right.

Kenny Lange [00:27:26]:
Like falling into the other.

Todd Holzman [00:27:27]:
That's right.

Kenny Lange [00:27:27]:
Or ditch on the other side of the road.

Todd Holzman [00:27:29]:
That's right. They overcorrected. So they went from command and control and telling people what to do, but now asking people what they think about the issues and opportunities to make things better and what they should do. But there is also an intellectual error that people are making there. They're conflating being direct with being directive. It's not the same thing. Telling people what to do and telling people what you think is true are two different things. And people are confusing these things.

Todd Holzman [00:28:01]:
We're too black and white in our thinking. We're huge advocates for leaders telling people what they think is true. Provided you do it in the spirit of trying to figure out with them what is true.

Kenny Lange [00:28:15]:
Not just dictate reality, but share.

Todd Holzman [00:28:19]:
Here's what I think is true. Don't you agree that would be the wrong technique? Now, the better technique would be, first of all, let me tell you what I think is true and why and get your reactions because maybe I'm off base here. So here's what I think. Here's what I think is true. I think the reason that you're struggling to convert more lucrative digital deals is because you are afraid to ask the CIO to introduce you to the business stakeholders for fear of damaging that relationship. And as a consequence, you're stuck with the CIO and you're not able to learn anything about the business stakeholders real business needs. So then you're not able to formulate a digital solution which will solve their problems. Now, the reason I say that is because when I've talked to you and I've actually asked you who you've been able to meet with at this client, you've only ever referred to the CIO and different people in it, none of the business stakeholders.

Todd Holzman [00:29:16]:
But I may be jumping to the wrong conclusion. Kenny, you tell me what's really happening.

Kenny Lange [00:29:21]:
Right?

Todd Holzman [00:29:22]:
So that would be a, a, a confident way. I'm doing a speed round on this, but a more confident way to get to Candor because you're, you're sharing what you, your conclusion is. You're sharing your reasoning for having that conclusion along with the data that is informing it. And then you're asking some, the other person what they think about all the stuff you said. And it has to be a real invitation to differ with you.

Kenny Lange [00:29:51]:
It's got to be safe for dissent.

Todd Holzman [00:29:53]:
It has to be safe and all. It has to be, yes, you have to give permission for dissent, but it almost has to be an expectation for dissent. I think that's what I expect of.

Kenny Lange [00:30:02]:
You, which gets into some of the psychological safety. The. The four stages from, from Dr. Timothy Clark. I think I mentioned on our. Our last call that I felt was interesting because what you're describing is Challenger safety. I can chat. It is safe for me to challenge the status quo.

Kenny Lange [00:30:18]:
Right. Or, or to challenge a superior, somebody who is my direct manager on something. Because I have a different interpretation or experience and it's not me. I'm going to speak truth to power. It's right. I, I need to be able to be truthful about what I've experienced, how I'm reading the situation in order that we might like you said, collaboratively arrive at the most realistic depiction. Like we got to. We as leaders we're charged with establishing reality and we are not the sole owner of it.

Kenny Lange [00:30:57]:
We have to get that from our people around us.

Todd Holzman [00:31:00]:
Really well said. It's. It's. It's co crafted. Right. And, and what you said something that was really good. And the question is then what makes people feel. When people feel unsafe is when they think their, their behavior will disappoint or contradict the expectations of people who have power over them.

Kenny Lange [00:31:26]:
Sure.

Todd Holzman [00:31:27]:
So in order to make it more safe you have to be clear on what your expectations are of your people. And you set the expectation that like disagreement is expected. Which then strangely makes it unsafe to not speak your mind because there's tells.

Kenny Lange [00:31:48]:
When you're, when you're lying. Like how are you doing? I'm fine. Like I can tell you're lying. Like my, my good friends will do that with me. They're like hey, how have you been doing? And if I give them a like ah just off the cup thing they're like yeah, no really like expectation is that you, you will be honest with me because there's trust in this relationship and I can take how you're really doing.

Todd Holzman [00:32:11]:
So I'm glad you're talking about. This is great because. So just as remember, go back to the thing that you said earlier. You had such a great question about do people not the partner candor expressing the truth of what you think because they're, because they're. They're afraid of the risks. And then what I said to you. Yes, in part. But they're also not afraid enough about the risks of not doing it.

Todd Holzman [00:32:33]:
If you take a hard look at, you'll start to realize that those risks outweigh the risks that you're of avoidance or expecting or outweighed the probable risks of leaning into the conversation. As leaders you gotta be thinking about that because you gotta make it equally Risky not to express the truth. You're not trying to eliminate all fear. You're trying to have people's fear oriented properly.

Kenny Lange [00:33:00]:
I like that, that because it makes me think of. It's over, it's overused. But. But I think it's accurate. Like we should teach our kids to be afraid to go play in the street, right? Not to go play outside, right? There is a reasonable and right fear. Like fear has kept us alive for. Like you said, like we've so valuable. Like we should be afraid not to cook, but to lay our hand on the stove is like, oh, I can't get near the stove.

Kenny Lange [00:33:28]:
I can't cook anything because it might burn me. No, if you don't cook, you're probably gonna die.

Todd Holzman [00:33:34]:
There's two powerful levers for human improvement always. There's fear and there's aspiration. Right? There's the wanting to avoid bad stuff and wanting to pursue good stuff. We need both levers. So the idea of trying to remove all fear from the workplace I just think is stupid. It's. We want people to be afraid of the right things. We want them to be afraid of doing something which could like actually harm patients, for example.

Todd Holzman [00:34:04]:
We want them to be afraid of not erecting a building or a bridge properly because of all the bad stuff that may happen. And, and so it's very much about what. How the leader behaves as, as we're discussing. Go ahead.

Kenny Lange [00:34:19]:
So how do we like we design whether it's comp. Plans, KPIs, whatever it is to incentivize the. We try to. At least we're supposed to be incentivizing the right behavior. We're, we're generally. I don't think most companies are doing a great job of that. But to what you're saying where we. We've got to shift where the fear sits.

Kenny Lange [00:34:40]:
Be afraid of the right things. I would say, and I'm curious of your take on this. I think some of that comes in the form of how do you create a culture of accountability? Because I think fear of doing, of not doing the right thing, the best thing, the, the whatever. You had some great language around that. But how do we go about shifting the fear from that? Self protective. I just. Let me make sure I don't do something that would get me fired. It's not bad enough to get fired, but I don't have to exert myself like the, the, the.

Kenny Lange [00:35:16]:
The pleasure seeking, pain avoidant levers are being misapplied. How do we start to shift that? Because I Think that is a woefully misunderstood, poorly taught, if taught at all. Skill given to leaders and managers in the workplace.

Todd Holzman [00:35:37]:
Okay, first of all, I'm not sure, but I could tell you how, what's occurring to me at least because this podcast called How Leaders Think. And yes, I'm supposed to be a leader, so I'll share how I think. I do love the name of the podcast, by the way. Such a great, great title. Yeah, it's very evocative. Let me see if I can kind of back in, back into. If we could discover an answer together through this example that's now occurring to me. So working with a bunch of customer facing teams who now for the first time, I guess in their job history in this particular company now have certain, have like quotas about number of physical office visits they need to make to their top accounts every single month.

Todd Holzman [00:36:21]:
Okay. And what I've heard from some of them is the reason I'm jumping to action too quickly in these conversations, which means they're trying to like offer all the ways they can help before they ever understand the customer's problem. Right. So there's no just, there's no understanding or discussion or agreement on the problem the customer has. And, but they're yet offering a solution. And so, and they say the reason for that is I don't have so much time anymore because I with each customer because I have to see so many customers. So they use this as a justification for doing something was tremendously ineffective. So you could say in this instance, if you, if you were to take their perspective on it, it's not something I'm unsympathetic to it.

Todd Holzman [00:37:08]:
I can understand that's how it feels and that's that they are responding to this new expectation that are being measured against in that way. But they're blaming the way they're being measured for their behavior, which I think is incorrect. Now I understand why they jumped to that conclusion. Because before that when I had less, more time, I was more thoughtful, I didn't jump to action. Now I have less time, I'm less thoughtful and I jump to action. And the only variable they see that's changed is I'm still the same person. It's the, the way I'm being measured that's changed. So therefore let's blame that for the way I'm behaving.

Todd Holzman [00:37:48]:
The problem with that is it gives them zero agency. It's like, oh, I had no choices about how I behaved in that situation. The measurement made me do it. So I juiced into something which was profoundly ineffective, which the customer doesn't value. Now they feel my time is being wasted and now they're less likely to see me again. But yeah, it's the fault of the measurement, measurement system. Whereas if they would have said, you know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make as much tracks in this conversation as they possibly can. If we don't get to any solutions, fine.

Todd Holzman [00:38:21]:
But if this person feels like I understand them, if they feel like I really understand their problem now and, and they get that about me, and they feel like I'm more interested in serving them than slewing whatever solution that I have, then guess what? I can get the next phone call. I can get the next conversation. A phone call. No problemo. So now back to your question then. What do we do with the measurement system? Sometimes it isn't the measurement system, it's how people are susing to respond to the way that they're being measured. Basically, what a leader needs to have is the conversation that I'm having is to say you had a lot of choices within that. And ultimately the choice you're making is a suboptimal choice because we're also going to measure you on the impact you're having, not just how many visits you're having.

Todd Holzman [00:39:11]:
And by the way you're choosing to respond to that, it's totally going to compromise your impact. Do you see that? And then they got to work with them on a different way of responding and coach them around that and help them respond more effectively within the context of that time pressure. But you first have to dispute the story that they're telling about their own less effective behavior and blaming the system for it.

Kenny Lange [00:39:35]:
Right. Because it comes down to like, now they're. What you were saying earlier about it being competence and a skill. Right?

Todd Holzman [00:39:44]:
That's right.

Kenny Lange [00:39:45]:
Because the, the previous measurement, if there was one at all, allowed them to function reasonably, at least not to get fired. And now that a new constraint has been put on their skill in navigating those conversations more quickly, more efficiently, but maintaining effectiveness, now you got to go up and then you get to see, like you said, is this person open to, are they coachable? Are they willing to learn? Or have we have we bumped them up against maybe a core values barrier and they're no longer the right person for our bus, so to speak. If to quote Jim Collins.

Todd Holzman [00:40:20]:
Yeah, yeah, maybe it's the first. But again, now it comes down to the manager, in this case, having a getting to candor with them in a. A capable, compassionate way about how well they're doing the same with their customers.

Kenny Lange [00:40:41]:
I. Hopefully this doesn't feel like a wild jump because of.

Todd Holzman [00:40:45]:
Or maybe it will.

Kenny Lange [00:40:46]:
Maybe it will.

Todd Holzman [00:40:47]:
What Chris Voss says is this is probably going to feel like a wild jump for you, so just claim it.

Kenny Lange [00:40:52]:
Yeah. I'm glad you brought him up because some of your. Your stuff makes me think of. Of him. And the.

Todd Holzman [00:40:57]:
He gets me. I follow him too. Black swan. He gets me thinking for sure.

Kenny Lange [00:41:00]:
Yeah. Because when you're talking about we got stuff that neither one of us has discussed is like, we got to get those black swans out so we can have that shared reality. But shared reality as, as you've been describing things and yours, your approach on candor is get to candor.

Todd Holzman [00:41:18]:
Right.

Kenny Lange [00:41:18]:
And I hadn't put this thought in until we were having this, this conversation, but I heard you say, like, we have candor, and people think, okay, we just. We got to have more candor. What, what, what leads us up to it is that, is that the part that has struck you in, in the work that you've been doing, like you said, 30 plus years, 50,000 data points, all these things that. It's great that we can call these things out and we intuitively know they're good, but we've got to give people the tools to take them from where they are today to that place. And in this case, that place being candor, which I really love your definition about that. Shared exchange. I'm probably gonna have to go back and clip that.

Todd Holzman [00:42:04]:
Yeah. Collaborative search for the truth on behalf of making things better.

Kenny Lange [00:42:07]:
Yes. And amen. So is. Is that why are you so passionate about getting to it? Because so many other people who have IP around these different leadership development topics, they're just. They're talking about, you've got to have this. This is what needs to be present. Here's the language to call this out, raise this banner, and pray to God. Either people rise to the occasion, or they show up from the marketplace.

Kenny Lange [00:42:37]:
That doesn't sound like your approach, and I'm curious as to why.

Todd Holzman [00:42:41]:
I. I think it's a very important question. And I think the less important question is like, why am I interested in it? And I, I will answer that too. Why does it even matter? So the time I was 24, I. Strange in this way, maybe 23, 24, I had gone through lots of interpersonal skills training, mediation training, conflict resolution training. I had listened to when we had tapes and CDs, even books on tape, I'd Read lots of things. And I remember I was also a huge fan of Covey 7 Habits of Highly. I was a huge fan of it.

Todd Holzman [00:43:19]:
And one of the things that I really love from the book, one of the habits, I don't remember what the number is seek first, understand before being understood. This really made sense to me. Like this is a beautiful maxim that one should definitely act according to. No matter how many times I read the book or the other ways I consumed, I tried it on, on audio as well. I struggled to behave in those ways. And I get. I was hard on myself about it because I really wanted to behave in those ways and I thought I was right. Yet I'd violate my own principles constantly or my own beliefs constantly.

Todd Holzman [00:43:59]:
And so and then combined with that, I had several experiences where I had failed to influence people to do something that was going to be good. So I went to Columbia with this feeling. So I did my, my first master's degree at Columbia University and I went through a course and they invited some consultants who had been trained by Chris Argy, this famous Harvard professor. And we went through this little simulation where we had to criticize this, this leader for how he had provided feedback and coaching to somebody on this team. And we criticized him. And then the consultant asked us, how do you think one should behave in this situation? And we said things like seek first, understand before being understood, tell the person the truth, be humble, provide data, all these great rules and beliefs about how one ought to behave. And so then they said, okay, it's time to talk to this leader about it. Let's bring him in the room.

Todd Holzman [00:45:03]:
And now you can give him feedback and coaching on his feedback and coaching. Yeah, it was really cool. This is what, this is what we do now. I do this all the time in a different fashion, like almost all the time when we're developing people. And, and I decided to watch my this is all like courses were in. The evening was mostly working professionals who were doing not all, but mostly. And I'm watching some people who are like low level executives inside these companies having the conversation with this character and I'm like, I'm like, these people are so incompetent, it's ridiculous. Nobody's getting through to him.

Todd Holzman [00:45:35]:
He's not getting anything that anybody has to say. And I can see what they're doing that's just failing. So I'm like, let me show you how it's done. So, so I decided to talk to this character and I really get into it with him and it feels real. This Is the thing. It feels real. So your actual limbic responses are getting activated like it's a real conversation in real life. I was so bad, Kenny.

Todd Holzman [00:45:56]:
We had these like metal chairs on not a carpeted floor. Like people pulled their chairs away from the table here, screech on the floor, because he and I were going at it. And then we debriefed the exercise on what happened and we all blamed him for it. Some of my colleagues blamed me because I was so bad. But largely we blamed him. And they slowly started to debrief the exercise. What was very interesting is we shared very little of our thinking with him. We blamed him for not getting the things we were not saying.

Todd Holzman [00:46:27]:
And we were violating most of our good principles about how one ought to behave that he. They had just written on the flip chart. So I'm the one who said, listen, it's important to listen. When I went to the conversation, did I listen to him? No. So. So that was a huge wake up call for me because what I learned, this is part of Chris Ardrus's research. So Ardrus was a professor at the Harvard Business School, Law School, Graduate School of Education, where I studied, the Kennedy School of Government, where I taught. It's rare that a person four schools there.

Todd Holzman [00:46:59]:
He wrote 30 books, hundreds of articles, and received 14 honorary doctorates for his massive contributions to multiple fields. Management, behavioral sciences, social sciences, anthropology, education, research, et cetera. And what he discovered was, is we have two theories. We have our espoused theories and we have our theories and use. Our espoused theories are the things we believe. Our theories and use are the things that actually determine how we behave in real life. And our brains, our spouse theories, are stored in a different part of our brains than our theories and use. So all this stuff that I was reading from the books that I was watching and now people are consuming on YouTube and the maxims in these side of companies, all they did was expand my espoused theories.

Todd Holzman [00:47:44]:
But my theory and use was remaining completely unaffected by this wisdom because my theory and use was, as I say, I was more about winning and not losing, being in control, trying to keep things comfortable, and by the way, pretending I'm like doing none of it when it's actually happening. So that's the theory in use. And Chris called this theory in use Model one. And. And because it's such a sexy marketing term, is the reason you never heard of it. Okay.

Kenny Lange [00:48:17]:
Right.

Todd Holzman [00:48:17]:
So what he discovered was is that again, competition, control, comfort, that this is the predominant universal fury, use globally he studied 15,000. We're up to working with and studied 50,000, 65,000 to 65,000 people. When you look at these important interactions, the main blocker is this universal overprotective program. I call it the overprotective program, regardless of company culture and country. So I realized I could write like as consultants do a book about some great ideas. I could talk a good game about it. But unless I could figure out help how to help people recognize how they're overprotect. What that, that they have an overprotective program installed in, in them that then blocks this them from behaving according to their beliefs and principles and then help them overcome it.

Todd Holzman [00:49:19]:
All the good ideas in the world I could have about having more effective conversations will be worth zero because people won't be able to do anything with it. Which is why I have developed something we call the real work methodology. A very special way of developing people so we can short circuit their default programming these situations, and they could pull through at least the good ideas that they're learning from all these other consultants and all these books and all these TED talks and YouTubers alike. Because we gotta find a way to convert philosophy to practice and there needs to be a bridge. And so that's what I've been working on for 30 years, is how do we help people actually pull this through so they could become truly more competent in a way that's aligned with their higher values. So with my own revelation around it that led me to be obsessed with being more of an engineer around this.

Kenny Lange [00:50:13]:
Stuff that resonates so much with me. I, I had some similar situations where I noticed the, the I, I wasn't able to persuade somebody in, in a way that I knew was for their benefit. I was like, I can't communicate my ideas. I could blame them and, and just pass the buck or I could take responsibility for what, what about the way I, I went about this contributed to the result I got.

Todd Holzman [00:50:39]:
And then the question is also, but why did you behave in those ways? And, and, and so not only did that exercise illuminate for me that I was behaving in ways which were problematic. So I was responsible for my lack of impact.

Kenny Lange [00:50:52]:
Right?

Todd Holzman [00:50:53]:
But also I was behaving in the. Not not only that, but my behavior, I was behaving in ways which were inconsistent with my own principles. And so that was very disturbing. And then once you start to understand why that is, which is this overprotective program, then you end up finding yourself like, okay, I have to get my life to helping people realize it, overcome it, and replace it with something fundamentally better.

Kenny Lange [00:51:18]:
It. It also sounds like the. The. In the true meaning of this word, not. Not the marketable meaning of integrity, of I act in a way that aligns with what I believe. Integrity is just like there's a oneness about it, as I hear a lot of that in. And what you're sharing, which I really admire and I think is deeply missing from most of humanity. But certainly I think it's trickier in the workplace, going back to the beginning of this conversation about how people are avoiding things.

Kenny Lange [00:51:51]:
They're acting in ways that are against their own beliefs. And this seems like the real work process or methodology, like you said, is bridging it and allowing people to be more aligned, which I think is incredibly tricky, but I think produces, I would say, in my experience, has produced the best outcomes. When I've seen those things start to come together, I feel like we could probably talk. Yeah, I know.

Todd Holzman [00:52:18]:
Like, gosh, I really forgot what we started. I forgot where we're supposed to stop. So I think you had a clock there, at least.

Kenny Lange [00:52:25]:
So I have one running around here that. It's actually my first interview of the year. So you're.

Todd Holzman [00:52:30]:
You're.

Kenny Lange [00:52:30]:
You're breaking me in here. I took a little. Little time off. It was good. I had a lot already ready to go. But let's say somebody listens to this and they're like, dang, like, okay, Todd really said. He. He.

Kenny Lange [00:52:41]:
He spoke some words that I hadn't been able to find language for. That's the way I would love to lead this way. I do. I listen to all the books I'm reading. I'm listening to this podcast. But I want to build that bridge between what I say and think I believe and how I'm actually showing up day to day at work or even just in life. What's the first step someone could take in the next 24 hours with little to no money to start making progress towards living a life that is a bit more integrated that way?

Todd Holzman [00:53:14]:
Such a simple yet hard question. Listen to yourself. I think that's. At least. That's what the voice is telling me right now. Organizational life is hard. People are. We all are.

Todd Holzman [00:53:28]:
We're so busy starting to do so much meeting after meeting. The people that we're developing, our clients, they're under so much pressure, and it's just. It's a lot. It's hard on people. It's also. Can be incredibly rewarding. It's all of it together. I think what happens sometimes is that we lose touch or we lose connection with that kind of small voice inside of us.

Todd Holzman [00:53:53]:
And. But it's telling you things, man. And so, and, and the problem is it often is telling you things. It's combining it with emotion. So now you're frustrated with something, you're disappointed with something, you're worried about something, something's bothering you. It's often combined with negative emotions. Don't swipe left or right where the saying is on that thing. Like, lean into it and try to figure out, what is it actually telling you.

Todd Holzman [00:54:19]:
Then ask yourself, what is my concern? What am I really concerned about here?

Kenny Lange [00:54:26]:
Yeah.

Todd Holzman [00:54:27]:
And then, and then maybe see if you can articulate it clearly to yourself and maybe to somebody outside of work, like the way I'm articulating it to you, like, do you get what I'm saying? And then maybe ask yourself two more questions, like, if this is true, why does it even matter? Like, does it even matter? Or is it something that's bugging you? Because whatever, you're spoiled. Who knows, right? We. All the things that bother us are lessons for us. Often there are lessons that we need to get. Sometimes they're lessons we just need to get over it. And we're bothering ourselves about it unnecessarily because just our ego pride cometh before the fall, or it's a sign for us that we need to speak up and say something. So ask yourself that question. So the first question, what's really bothering me here? What is the crux of my concern? And see if you can articulate that to somebody.

Todd Holzman [00:55:25]:
Ask yourself, does it really matter? And when I say, does it really matter? Like, if this isn't addressed, there's a bunch of bad stuff happen, and if it is addressed, does potentially some good stuff happen? And then also, how do you know it's even true? Get from the subject to objective. So ask yourself, what's my data? What is it? What is it that people are saying or doing or not saying are doing concretely that leads me to have this concern? And then if you go, if you could pass the test, I'm clear on my concern. I've now convinced myself that it matters and there's enough credibility to it, like it's believable that this concern exists, then bring it up with somebody who matters in this case at work. But don't do it until you've passed that test. And then when you bring it up, all you're going to say is, here's my concern, here's the Data leads me have this concern. Here's why I think it matters. Then ask them, what do you think about what I just said? That's, that's it. And that will de.

Todd Holzman [00:56:31]:
Risk it because you're making it a collaborative thing, not something you're trying to convince somebody of because you're talking about why it matters. And if you're, if you know the person you're talking to, then maybe say why it, why you think it should matter to them given the things they're concerned about. And then you have some data to back up. You're saying. So it's not just something you finger in the air. And that's how you're going to make it safer for yourself to speak up. But it starts with listening to how this what's agitating you.

Kenny Lange [00:57:07]:
Yeah.

Todd Holzman [00:57:08]:
And the thing, listen to the thing that you maybe want to avoid because that will transform you.

Kenny Lange [00:57:14]:
And I feel like we could, we could take a road down to through stoicism of the. The obstacle is the way. If you're a fan of that book.

Todd Holzman [00:57:21]:
Absolutely, man. I love him too.

Kenny Lange [00:57:24]:
Todd, thank you so much for, for sharing your time, your wisdom and thoughts with us. If people want to know more about you, more about what you're. You're putting out content, any of those things, where would you send them?

Todd Holzman [00:57:35]:
Oh, always put together some like free stuff for people so they could email my pa lace la c e@holzman.com. h o l Z as in zebra M as in Michael A n as in nancy.com they can go to holzman.com there's I post all kinds of stuff there or connect with us on LinkedIn because my team and I are posting constantly. We're trying to provide stuff that can potentially be practical and actionable for people. So love it.

Kenny Lange [00:58:06]:
And we'll make sure that all of that is linked up in the show notes. So if you're driving, don't try to navigate there. Just wait, please don't turn left. I'm just kidding. I always want to do that and just hope that it, it works itself out. One of these days that someone's like, oh yeah, I guess I need to go here. But I, I hope that this won't be our, our last interview because I think that there's so much more here. Thank you so much.

Kenny Lange [00:58:28]:
For those of you you listen, this is a longer episode, but I think there was so much here. So I hope that you, you drank it all in and, and clipped a few pieces that you can really take with you. I would appreciate a like a share a subscribe or whatever way your platform allows you to interact. Get this sort of conversation in front of more people. That's why I do it. I don't need to hear myself talk. I just want to help more leaders like you find new ways to think again, just like I said at the top of the show. So I would deeply appreciate that.

Kenny Lange [00:58:59]:
If you have feedback things you want to hear, you can email me kennynylang.com I'd be happy to listen to any suggestions or feedback or a request for a guest, and maybe I'll get a petition signed and get them to show up. But until next time, change the way you think you'll change the way you lead. We'll see you.