How can you successfully “lead well in all directions” when there are so few proven and practical resources to guide you?
And how might you recalibrate how to manage those you lead?
In this episode of #ThoughtLeaderConversations, V2's Roger Courville, CSP sits down with Jon Lokhorst, CSP, CPA, PCC, professor, speaker, coach, and author of Mission-Critical Leadership: How Smart Managers Lead Well in All Directions to talk about leading through uncertainty.
As you listen in to this conversation, you will:
Discover why effective leadership means leading well in all directions: down, up, across, and within oneself
Learn how aligning personal leadership with an organization’s mission strengthens team engagement and purpose
Find out how helping each team member see their role as "mission critical" drives motivation and impact
Understand the concept of "enterprise thinking" and its role in reducing silos for a collaborative workplace
Hear about practical strategies for bridging the communication gap in remote and hybrid work environments
Explore why self-leadership among team members reduces the need for excessive oversight
Discover the importance of balancing relational trust and measurable outcomes in building strong teams
Learn how to empower emerging leaders by encouraging self-development and continuous learning
See why recognizing the blend of creative and data-driven strengths across teams fosters innovation
Understand why clarifying "flexibility" at multiple levels within an organization prevents misalignment
Learn more about Jon and his work at https://yourbestleadership.com/.
Series: #ThoughtLeaderConversations
Sponsor: V2, LLC, expert virtual and hybrid event production, www.VirtualVenues.com
Host: Roger Courville, CSP, https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerc/
Keywords: #MissionCriticalLeadership #LeadInAllDirections #EnterpriseThinking #SelfLeadership #WorkplaceAlignment
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Roger Courville, CSP: How can you successfully lead well in all directions when there are so few proven and practical resources to guide you? And, and how might you even recalibrate the managers that you lead to think a little differently? Hello and welcome to lead well in all directions. My name is Roger Courville and welcome to another episode of Thought Leader Conversations.
Sponsored by the crew here at Virtual Venues, where you can instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team with a crew that helps you focus on something other than tech and logistics. But we're not here to talk about us, and I'm excited to welcome to the virtual stage, John Lockhorst, CSP, CPA, PCC.
We'll come back to each of one of those. John's a keynote speaker, corporate trainer, leadership coach, and author of the book that we're going to use as a jumping off point today. John Lockhorst. Mission Critical Leadership, How Smart Managers Lead Well in All Directions. John's got an MA in Organizational Leadership, serves as adjunct faculty for the School of Business and Nonprofit Management at North Park University in Chicago, has a 30 plus year career as a CPA and organizational leader, and I think even like partner or owner, that we'll come back to that.
PCC stands for Professional Certified Coach. Credentialed Coach. From the International Coaching Federation, and importantly, CSP, Certified Speaking Professional, which is the highest earned award from National Speakers Association. That is no small thing to earn. Welcome, John. Glad you're here. Tell us a little more about who you are and what you do.
[00:01:32] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: Yeah, thanks, Roger. It's great to share in this time with you and certainly appreciate the work that you're doing as somebody that does a lot of virtual presentations. When you have that production, expertise on the, on the other side of that. It, uh, makes that process so much easier. And as you alluded to with the alphabet soup that follows my name, I've had this winding jagged career path that is, uh, almost hard to fathom now in retrospect, I started out in my career as a CPA in private practice.
All 18 years with the same firm after I graduated from college, became a partner and then a managing partner owner in that firm. And after 18 years there made a transition into 15 years in the nonprofit sector, variety of different leadership roles. The one common thread through all of that is I've always had this strong interest about leadership.
What makes leaders really tick? What makes some really effective and others not so much? Same thing when you get to the team or organizational level. Long backstory, I can trace it back to middle school and high school. But in 2016, I decided to leave the comforts of the W 2 and health insurance and devote my full attention to what I now call your best leadership, the name of my organization.
So that's a hard to fathom how I got here, but it does actually all make sense in the work that I'm doing today.
[00:03:03] Roger Courville, CSP: I've been looking forward to this chat in part because I have this crazy long history of teaching virtual presentation skills. CPAs, I actually worked for ai, CPA once, I've done California Society of CPAs and Montana Society of CPAs, and it's amazing what, uh, what a wonderful group it was to, to connect with.
And you know, of course, one of the things that a lot of outsiders think is that CPAs don't have a sense of humor, and I found entirely the opposite. What a great, great bunch of, uh, a great bunch to work with. Hey, so I know you speak and consult and train for more than just marketers when it comes to this leadership topic.
Um, but you know, that's our audience today. So we'll keep that in the back of our mind, but I'm excited to hear about leadership from your unique perspective. What do you mean by leading well in all directions?
[00:03:54] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: Where that comes from is the fact that most leadership development is focused in a singular direction on the org chart.
Typically it's about. downstream on the org chart, being a good boss to the people on your team. And while that's certainly important, I'm not going to argue that is a crucial part of leadership. You can't be a good leader. Without being a good boss, if that's all you view as leadership, you run the risk of potentially failing or even underperforming as a leader because there's so much more to it than that.
And so, you know, just stretching that perspective of leadership and realizing that the best leaders is the subtitle of the book would indicate. Also know what it means to lead up to their superiors and lead across among their team, uh, uh, their peers and colleagues. And of course, all leadership has to start with self leadership.
If you can't lead yourself well, how do you expect that you're going to be able to lead others well? So a little unique tie, a little unique perspective on leadership, hopefully broadening it out, broadening it out beyond just being a good boss within an organization.
[00:05:01] Roger Courville, CSP: Mm, I like that. Let's start with challenges.
What are some common leadership challenges that, that you observe and that you seek to solve with regard to your book and the way that you help people?
[00:05:19] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: I think starting with the concept that comes out of the book, leading in all directions, it's helping people to understand, especially when you're talking about an organizational context, how does your leadership connect to the bigger mission of your organization?
of the organization. And that's really where the title of the book comes from mission critical leadership, because it's all about, what do you care about as an organization? What is it that you're trying to accomplish? What's the good that you're trying to do in the world or trying to do in society and that leadership, whether you're talking about leadership in general within the organization, or even just getting down into an individual level yourself, needs to be aimed toward moving that mission forward.
Now, you can broaden that out. I use the term mission to encompass some of the other core elements that you need in any good organization. Mission, vision, purpose, values, even the strategic plan. And so, thinking about how you're moving that organization forward. And then, another part of it that is often overlooked is How do you connect the dots between those bigger concepts, mission, vision, strategy, et cetera, and the work that's being done by the people that you lead.
And especially as you get down into some of those lower levels, if you want to think about the typical org chart, in those frontline employees can be very easily disconnected from the mission vision, from the strategic plan. And I think there's an opportunity there where if you can connect the dots, you start to provide better significance and meaning to the work that those individuals are doing and how do you help them make a unique contribution to that bigger mission that you're trying to accomplish?
So I think that's one of the big challenges that I see right out of the gate and kind of at that macro level within any organization.
[00:07:19] Roger Courville, CSP: Interestingly, just, uh, just a couple of days ago, I interviewed a, uh, a young gal relative to the, the white hairs growing on my chin, whose, whose specialty was, was Gen Z, right?
And she herself was Gen Z and you're just talking about connecting the dots between, you know, the, the top level vision, mission, purpose, et cetera, down to the people that are frontline workers. Well, I'm going to guess Gen Z's. Probably more likely to be that kind of frontline worker. And yet that's one of the core things that she said was important to Gen Z was that ability to see that I'm making a difference and I'm, you know, I'm on the right team and we're, we've, we've got a purpose and a direction in a way that they could, that they could buy into.
[00:08:04] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think it's true of everyone to say. Even as a tail end of the baby boomers, as you talk about gray on the chin, I use the term snow on the roof. There's this desire to be a part of something that's bigger than yourself and to contribute something that's a greater good of society or meet certain needs within the community.
And I think where we see the difference is that Gen Z and the early career workers are just much more vocal about that. so much. and wanting to know that they're making a difference, wanting to know that they're making a contribution. And, uh, honestly, that is a huge part of employee engagement. And if you think about employee engagement as being that key driver of so many important business outcomes, they say that having that meaning and purpose and being connected to mission and vision and values is one of those driving factors of employee engagement, then turns into, you know, retaining your best employees and keeping your top talent without, uh, seeing them leave for other places.
[00:09:13] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. Good point. Obviously buried right within the title of your book is the, are the words mission critical. Talk to me about how you define mission critical roles and, and any other nuance you'd want to add there.
[00:09:28] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: Great question. I think the key going back to a comment that I made earlier is for leaders to help everybody in the organization.
See. their role as mission critical and that they're making that contribution to that bigger mission and vision. And I go back to a story that comes out of the 1960s, and I allude in the book, part of that mission critical and even the cover design, is a, is an indication that there's a lot of space related stories in the book.
And one of the greatest vision statements of all time came back in 1961. And it's now known as the moonshot speech where president Kennedy declared that we should make it a goal by the end of the decade to Put a man on the moon and return him safely to the earth again. And it was one of those statements that not only galvanized NASA, not only galvanized the scientific community, but really the entire nation.
And of course, back in that time, 1961, the U S was losing in the space race. And well, Yeah, we can't let that happen. You know, we can't let somebody else get there before us. And so in some ways, you know, Kennedy laid down the gauntlet and said, All right, who's on board? Let's make this happen. And there's this story that at one point when Kennedy was, when he was visiting NASA, or some plant, he ran into someone that was in more of a maintenance or custodial role.
And when Kennedy asked the question of what's your job here? And, you know, The guy's response was, well, I'm helping to put a man on the moon. And I think that's such a powerful illustration of not only the opportunity, but the responsibility that every leader has to make every one of their team members feel like their job, their role is mission critical.
[00:11:16] Roger Courville, CSP: I love that. And I'm going to have to go look that up and I'll tell you why. Um, I, I heard that story eons ago and you just reminded me of it and I haven't even thought of it for, for a good long time, but 20 years ago or so there was a book called, it's not the big that eat the small, it's the fast that eat the slow by Jason Jennings.
And I forget who is, um, who his coauthor was, but he told a similar story of, of, um, a Toyota plant in like Tennessee or something like that, where as they were doing research, the story was, you know, go talk to anybody and ask them, you know, how they connect to the mission of, of the plant or the organization.
And, and, uh, You know, they walk up to some guy holding a broom and say, Hey, well, how does, how do you contribute value here? And how does, how does what you do make a difference? And he said, well, look over there and, you know, see all those, you know, all those cars on the assembly line. Well, there's a whole bunch of robots involved and all those robots are all run by computers and dust is the enemy of computers.
My broom is the enemy of the dust or something, something like that. And I'm just like, beautiful. Is what helps you go, Hey, I'm pushing a broom, but I'm contributing to the mission. So I love that.
[00:12:33] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: Yeah, and certainly you, you hope for that type of response you'd hate to have for, I don't know. I'm just pushing a broom here.
And unfortunately, I think that's what happens in a lot of organizations. People do get disconnected and they see their job as very tactical or very functional, but not necessarily in a way that it contributes to something much bigger than what they're doing, you know, as far as the task at hand.
[00:12:58] Roger Courville, CSP: Does your book talk at all about like alignment?
For instance, like leadership alignment with the organizational mission or that kind of thing.
[00:13:08] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: Yeah. And one of the concepts that I share in the, in the book, and it's in the chapter on leading across leading peer to peer, just because it seems to fit really well there when it comes to collaboration across departments and across teams.
And it's a concept that I refer to as enterprise thinking. And enterprise thinking is when you put yourself in the shoes of the organization itself, as if the organization was a human being, and that human being is you. Because if that was the case, you would act in such a way, and you would engage in conversations, you would make decisions with the greater good of the organization in mind.
Not just your own silo, not just your own team, or even your own position. Uh, that you fill yourself. It's thinking about, all right, back to that mission. What are we doing and how does all of this roll up together? And so many organizations, you see these silos that develop and silos are just part of human nature because our brains are wired to protect our own turf and to look out for our own interests.
And so it's not a surprise that silos pop up in organizations. Part of the leadership function is to identify them and try to break them down and to ensure that there is that collaboration across team lines. And when you have somebody that gets, gets it, you know, they get that enterprise thinking or as one of my healthcare clients refers to it as an organization wide mindset.
Now I can set aside at times some of my own interests and some of my own department's needs because I realized that in the moment. That might actually get in the way of what we're trying to do for the organization as a whole. And maybe right now, what I need to do is I need to focus on one of my colleagues.
You know, the CPA behind my name indicates that I've got this finance background. Maybe as the finance guy or the finance leader, I need to set aside some of my interest and I need to go over and collaborate with the VP of marketing because right now the VP of marketing and their team, they've got something really crucial that they need to get off the ground.
And I've got some expertise. I've got some resources. I might even have some staff that I can throw toward that effort. That's going to help move the entire organization forward because Ultimately, if the entire organization moves forward, that's going to help everybody to move forward in the entire company.
I
[00:15:41] Roger Courville, CSP: mean, as you were saying that I just had some, I just, my brain was just triggering examples, you know, I've worked for, you know, obviously multiple companies over the years prior to, you know, moving out on my own and becoming a professional speaker and consultant myself, but. I was just, I was just thinking of an example we had, you know, just shy of 400 employees and one of the challenges in the marketing department, which is where I was at the time, was, was financial, a financial team that didn't understand some of the like the, the operational things that undergirded our KPIs, our key performance.
Right. And therefore we were sadly siloed and struggling to be understood going, what? Well, no, no, no. You're squeezing me for, uh, for productivity. That's okay. But you also should understand kind of how things get done here so that so that we can come to some reasonable understanding of, uh, Of, of, of how this is going to impact our budget and our go to market timing and strategy, et cetera.
So,
[00:16:45] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: yeah, and I think that's just a classic example of where, especially at those higher levels within the organization, the senior leaders and some of those top levels, depending on how large the company or the organization is really need to, to have that enterprise thinking and that, uh, that intentionality about working across team lines.
Cause going back to the word that you threw out earlier, alignment. There's no way that you can get alignment within an organization if you don't have alignment at that top level. If the executive team, if the C suite is not aligned, what hope do you have as it cascades out from there that people at other levels within the organization, that they're even going to be, you know, close to aligned?
Because it just, you know, as you work through, those silos continue to get thicker and thicker walls, and it makes it harder to break through. Sadly, you know, oftentimes when I'm brought in to work with the team, that's one of the dynamics that's, uh, getting in the way right now of their effectiveness is that ability to work across team lines to get aligned around that common purpose, that common vision and, and really dig in together and work I hear different mantras for it, but oftentimes I'll hear the phrase one team and that idea that we are maybe multiple teams.
And when we think of the functional teams and the different departments or the different divisions, uh, you know, revenue lines, if you want to call them that, but ultimately this all rolls up into one team that needs to all pull together.
[00:18:19] Roger Courville, CSP: John, when, when someone comes to you and, and has something on their heart, let's, let's take you out of this keynote speaker role and put you in like the consultant role or somebody, somebody calls you, whether it's coaching or consulting, I realized those two are technically different, but they call you and say, Hey, we're experiencing struggle.
We need some help. What are the questions that they're asking? Or what are the questions that they should, should they be asking?
[00:18:48] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: Yeah, I think there's a couple of, uh, sides to that. One is what are the, the consequences? What are the pain points? What are some of the, uh, the costs, if you will, of whatever that dysfunction is, the struggle that they have, because as you start to see those costs, you start to see those consequences and you can work backwards to start identifying root causes.
And really what happens, and this is fairly common in coaching and consulting, is that the presenting problem is just indicative of a much deeper problem. And I think of an example where somebody reached out to me, even on LinkedIn, where You're putting your finger up.
[00:19:32] Roger Courville, CSP: Oh, just I just wanted to put an exclamation point on that right the I'm just gonna Yes, yes, yes, you just said the presenting you know, the presenting problem What is vocalized is usually just an indicator of a much bigger thing now I don't want to derail you here, but I wanted to put an exclamation point behind that because oh my goodness, brother You just put your finger on something there.
Keep going
[00:19:55] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: Yeah, and it's, and it's absolutely true because, uh, and sometimes it's because the, there's not the same level of awareness of a deeper problem. They haven't dug deep enough to find out where the, the deeper problem really is. Other times it's just easier to lead with a question that's perhaps a little more benign seeming.
And, you know, the example that I was going to share, somebody that reached out to me And they wanted to know if I did any strategic planning or facilitated strategic conversations. That's a great question, and I could easily answer that and say, yeah, here's what it would look like and blah, blah, blah. But I'm more curious to know, all right, why are you asking the question?
And in some cases, a comment will come back and it starts me getting me to think, all right, I don't know that the strategic point is, plan or even the strategic conversation is the real issue here. I think there's something else going on. Go back to your word alignment. And it's like the owners of the company or the executive team is not really aligned, but somehow they see that a strategic plan is going to solve that problem.
And. I suppose it could, but generally speaking, no, that's not, that's got something that's got to come later. There's going to need to be some other work that gets done to bring that team into alignment first. So that's just an example of where the presenting problem, Hey, we need a strategic plan, might be a lead into something that goes much deeper into the team.
And oftentimes what it is, is that it's at those higher levels of leadership that need to be addressed. Thank you.
[00:21:37] Roger Courville, CSP: Just thinking about, uh, marketers and particularly in like the, the B2B corporate marketing space that, that we play in, they're often working with teams, maybe in roles or leading people in roles that are at the intersection of both creativity and data driven decision making.
How does mission critical leadership work? address kind of that tension.
[00:22:05] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: Great question, Roger, and it is a, it is a big tension. And that's a classic example of, uh, you know, it's like that intersection of art and science and people who are wired in those ways. And I think, uh, one of the crucial aspects of that from a leadership perspective, and again, this can be throughout the entire organization is just recognizing the differences in how people are wired, just their natural, their If you wanna call it personality.
And, uh, I've got a profile tool that I've used that measures different workplace tendencies and you can see the individual differences from one person to the next. And while you might have some generalization that you can do based on the type of positions that, that person, that is much more on the artistic side versus the scientific side, the data side, uh, you know, the accounting and finance world that I work in.
There's certainly exceptions to that, but as you get that understanding now, how you see. opportunities to work together, see the strengths as complimentary strengths, as opposed to competing strengths where people on the data side need that creative side and people on the creative side need that data side.
And how do we all play better together in the sandbox? by knowing our respective strengths, knowing the strengths of our teammates, recognizing where there might be some gaps, helping each other with our blind spots, and when you can be open and honest in those conversations, I think whether you're talking about a functional team, or perhaps you're talking at the executive level with a leadership team, all of a sudden now, You start to see the wheels turning and progress starts to pick up speed.
And unfortunately, in most organizations, a lot of the energy goes to, uh, the infighting, the backbiting, the internal competition, and the world that we live in with all the chaos, with all the change and how rapidly things are moving. that every organization needs to preserve as much energy as possible to fight those external battles.
And I'm not just talking about their, with their competitors. I'm just talking about being able to navigate all the change and chaos.
[00:24:19] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. Uh, I'm seeing or talking when I talk to people, just the level of uncertainty. I mean, particularly in the last few months, we can always, you know, talk about COVID, but the, uh, the level of uncertainty, whether it's political or social or financial, or, you know, you think about the various categories and every one of them is pegged with regard to that level of uncertainty.
In fact, maybe go a little farther. Is there a particular concept in your book, mission critical leadership that addresses uncertainty or is that what you just got done sharing there?
[00:24:53] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: Yeah. Good question on that, Roger. And I don't know that I addressed that, you know, that in terms of a narrow point of focus on that.
I think the, you know, the concept that I share oftentimes in, I, I say it with reservation because I'm not always comfortable with it myself. And the quote has been attributed to several different people, so I'm not even really sure who to, uh, to credit for it. But it's this idea that the pace of change will never be slower than what it is today.
And I remember the first time I heard that, I saw that, I think it was probably on a PowerPoint slide from another speaker, another presentation that I was watching. And I was like, ugh. I was hoping that I was going to get a break in the action here because it certainly ends up being a big part of the conversation and any of the work that I'm doing around leadership development, whether it's in my coaching work, it's in the training that I do.
And again, it just shows how much. how much need there is for leaders to develop, to fine tune their skills. Certainly change management is an area in and of itself, but pretty much everything just in terms of building engagement and how do you really help your team see that you've got their best interests at mind, even when you're, you know, having to work together to deliver the business results your organization needs.
So, you know, that's this combination of building relationships, delivering results and navigating all the tensions that come in, uh, those seemingly competing priorities at times.
[00:26:25] Roger Courville, CSP: I, uh, I used to often quote Alvin Toffler, uh, who wrote a book, uh, like 1969, 70 ish, you know, uh, called future shock, right? When I'm editor of editor at Forbes, I think at the time, but he, you know, he described, uh, uh, a context in which the same kind of shock that we would have if we went to a different country.
Of course, this is pre internet, right? So we're not all, not all is connected, but you go to a different country, different customs, different food, different, different ways of making eye contact or whatever that level of shock is. And he said in the future, it would be that rate of change that would be so disconcerting.
And, um, And we're living in it now, so I would argue that he's right. Just out of curiosity, when you work with a client, and this might be a fairly broad question, so take it any direction you want, but when you work with a client, uh, And you're talking to them about the expected transformation or outcome or result of getting to the other side of strategic planning or whatever they're asking you to do.
What's typically that thing that, that desired future state that they're looking for?
[00:27:43] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: I think that at times that can change most recently say over the last four years with the pandemic and the great resignation was one of those terms that came out of that where all of a sudden there was this plethora of turnover in in the All kinds of different industries.
And while we've seen a softening of labor markets, at least in some areas, I don't think that that's going to change anytime soon because of the sheer demographics and even just some of the changes and perspectives on work that came out of the pandemic. So in my work in leadership development, that's quite often one of the big drivers is reducing turnover.
Also trying to build a flourishing. leadership pipeline where companies were organizations have the ability to promote their leaders from within as opposed to going outside and especially those organizations that have a pretty healthy culture and they've got a great sense of mission and they don't want to lose that.
And so it's a lot easier if you can promote your leaders from within because they've, in some ways, they've already. Had the drink of the Kool Aid and they get it. They understand the culture and they, uh, you know, abide by the values and the norms and everything. So those are a couple of big outcomes in, you could say a subset of that, or maybe a driver of that, as I mentioned earlier, is employee engagement.
Uh, that's often one of the, you know, earlier measurements, organizations that do some type of survey using tools from Gallup and other organizations. Uh, but the bigger outcomes tend to be more about retention also, not just retention in general, but how do you keep your best leaders? That's a big, been a big part of my focus lately, because if you keep your best leaders, you'll keep your other top talent as well.
And of course, your best leaders, That's part of your succession plan as an organization. If you're a business owner, if you're an entrepreneur, it's also crucial because that's also likely to be your exit strategy. If you're looking at an exit down the road where you want somebody to take over the business.
[00:29:50] Roger Courville, CSP: What have you seen change in the last few years? I mean, we've all seen change in the last few years with COVID and whatever, but have you seen any changes with regard to how organizations are approaching leadership when it comes to dealing with hybrid and remote work?
[00:30:05] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: Yeah, that is a huge challenge. And I would say, Roger, that almost every day, whether it's in training or coaching or I'm speaking from a stage, end up having conversations with people at the breaks, the challenges of remote and hybrid workplaces will come up and while there are some unique aspects of leading in those environments, just even in general, some of the fundamentals of leadership, I describe it as leadership on steroids, where you have to be so much more intentional and so much more explicit in what you're doing because What we learned, especially in the early stages of the lockdown back in 2020, I think part of what we learned was how lazy you can be in communication in the workplace.
And let's just say, for example, that you and I are together in a meeting and we're talking around a certain issue or decision or project. And we might have this conversation in the meeting. And then as I'm leaving the meeting, all of a sudden some questions start to form in my mind and I'm like, Oh, you know, I think I understood what Roger was talking about, but maybe not.
And then you and I pass by in the hallway or perhaps, uh, you know, we're together at the coffee bar. Hey Roger, when you talked about, uh, you know, A, B and C in the meeting, I thought I understood where you were coming from and where you were going on that. But now I'm not so sure. Can you give me a little more to run with on that?
And so there were all these conversations in the margins and the pass by in the hallway, the pop into the office, looking over the cubicle wall, lots of opportunities to clean up on little breadcrumbs of communication that would get left behind. So much harder to do that in a remote and hybrid environment where you don't have people all together under the same roof.
And then beyond that, as much as even the format that we're in today, where we are communicating virtually, yes, it's true. It is the next best thing to be in, in person. But still not quite the same when we're talking to each other through a couple of flat screens and webcams than if we were sitting down at a conference table or in some comfortable chairs having a cup of coffee.
So I think there's just a lot of intentionality and it's surprising. You know, we're four years. past plus when the pandemic first hit the fan almost getting to four and a half years now in the next few weeks. And a lot of organizations still struggling with remote and hybrid work, trying to figure out what to do with it.
And if I could just add one more comment in there, Roger, I think, uh, one of the concepts of course, that came out of that was this interest in flexibility. And while that is a huge value, it's a huge desire and for some more so than others. One of the challenges with that term flexibility, it's in and of itself, it's very non specific in terms of its meaning.
You know, it's a concept that where the beauty is in the eye of the beholder and a lot of leaders, lot of organizations have gotten burned in the name of flexibility because what mean, what, what flexibility means to you. might mean something different than what flexibility means to me. And so, even with the word flexibility, I think it's crucial for organizations to have some different levels in terms of what they mean by that, and what is set by organizational policy?
Where does the manager have discretion? And then, at the, at the end, the employee. What autonomy does the employee have to, uh, to make those decisions. And unfortunately, if they're, if you're lacking clarity in that, guess what the employee starts to interpret? Oh, must be up to me. I guess I have the autonomy.
I have the authority to make the decision. And so they're going to act in their own interest. And while sometimes that might turn out just fine, especially if you've got somebody that with some maturity, Maybe they get the whole enterprise thinking thing that I mentioned earlier, but there's an awful lot of times where that self interest can creep in.
And all of a sudden it's like, what gave you the idea that that was okay? Well, there was a lack of clarity. So I just kind of stepped into that void and went the direction that I wanted to go.
[00:34:35] Roger Courville, CSP: No, that is a killer point. Uh, I got my brain spinning. Next month is 25 years for me in this industry, you know, web and video conferencing and, and.
When I got a couple million bucks of angel funding with a few guys and we started a company left Microsoft and started a company that we ultimately sold to a telecom and the, um, half the company did like webinar production, virtual event production, like virtual venues does here and the other half did like these large scale adoption projects like company would, you know, Sign a new contract for video conference.
I don't think they need to deploy it out to everybody and get everybody rolling So we did a lot of consulting in that space Interestingly the two words that you've used today We're what I would combine to say there was going to be success or not be success with regard to when we would go through these deployments and either see it work or not work.
One was one word that you just used about intentionality, right? Dealing with these tools and now it's hybrid or virtual or whatever, there's a level of intentionality and I'll combine that with a word you used earlier in our time together today, which is self leadership, right? And ultimately, one of the key determining factors was whether or not senior leaders would adjust the nature of how they would lead and manage.
And some of them just wanted to keep doing it the way they wanted to do it. Particularly now, it was a whole lot harder then, but particularly now you mentioned like the, the, the, um, You know, the coffee, you know, the, the hallway conversation that are those, what I would think of as those informal communication moments where one's in the meeting and, you know, now in slack or Microsoft teams or that kind of stuff, you can, you can have a lot of that kind of, kind of, um, asynchronous connection in a way that fills a huge chunk of that gap.
But the leader would have to be willing to lead and manage their, um, or it would fail, right? Because the leader keeps doing what the leader's doing. Then, then, uh, um, people didn't, didn't succeed in really moving or, you know, into that, uh, kind of more digital space with regard to their environment. I worked with Microsoft eons ago.
We had just gotten acquired and I was in Portland, Oregon, uh, and my boss was in San Jose, California. And at one point I'm like, Hey, do you mind if I like go into the office at like 10 a. m. to miss traffic and then home at 2 p. m. to do traffic since I'm online from 6 a. m. to 6 p. m. Anyway, he's like, Nope, I don't care.
You know what your goals are. And he was totally cool with it. Meaning that autonomy was kind of kicked back to me, but it comes back, came down to was there clarity in the expectation of the role. What my, what my KPIs or MBOs or LMNOPs were and, uh, and he was cool with, with it being, uh, something that I just took ownership of.
And I think that's one of the places that people touch down to your point. I'm putting an X long, long winded exclamation point behind what you just said. Um, you may. need to evolve your self leadership to go, ah, you know what, my Gen Z folks are very much more comfortable in slack than I am, but you know what, they live there.
That's okay. How do we still reach our goals? Um, and how do I manage differently if I'm not having those hallway conversations because I'm not having them come into the office all the time?
[00:38:12] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: Absolutely. And I think that's where the trust kicks in. And even your example of going to your boss, clearly there was a level of trust that had been built there.
And that's one of the key elements of leading up. So when you start breaking down leading in all directions, I think it's fascinating to think about. upward leadership because when you boil it down, very few people ever get to be the top dog in their organization. And even when you get to the top, you get to that CEO level.
Unless you own the business, you're, you're likely reporting to a board of directors. And so you still have a boss. So If everyone's going to spend their entire career leading up, why don't we do more work in teaching that and it really does start with building that unwavering trust with your boss where you can have that kind of credibility that you had with your boss and then at all levels, I love that point of emphasis on self leadership, because ultimately, if everyone in the organization masters self leadership, well, then you need a lot less of that oversight and supervision and direction.
Yeah, you still have to have boundaries, and you still have to have the communication and the coordination and all that, but there's a lot less of the, push, push, push, push that you need. And with, with people who are being self, uh, that turn into self leaders with being self led, I think that's more of a pull going, okay, what kind of value can I get from my colleagues?
What kind of value can I get from my superiors that's going to help me to be a high performer and even to develop my own skills?
[00:39:52] Roger Courville, CSP: All right, a couple final questions and we'll, we'll bring this train into the station. First, what's the best way for someone to connect with you? When they want to engage you for consulting or speaking or learn more about your book, etc.
What's the best way to connect?
[00:40:09] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: Really two ways, Roger. My website, you've got the address. www. yourbestleadership. com and that's, uh, there's a contact form there, certainly more information about the programs that I have. And then LinkedIn's another great place for us to connect. I try to maintain a fairly active presence there, sometimes sharing some of my own content, sometimes curating content for others, but try to stay pretty active there and that's another great place to connect.
[00:40:37] Roger Courville, CSP: And if you just happen to be listening and you're not watching, uh, in terms of the audio track here today, we not only thank you for, for hanging out with us for, for this past little bit of time, but I will put those links into the blog post when we embed this video into, uh, to the blog post and it goes live and it'll be on YouTube, et cetera.
And we'll make sure links to, um, to your best leadership.com and, and John's LinkedIn profile Are there. John, last question is. Are there any questions I should have asked you that I haven't?
[00:41:09] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: Ooh, love that question as a, uh, as a great recap. I would say that the, the question that really is a natural follow on to our conversation about self leadership If, uh, you're thinking about what does that mean if you're trying to lead people to become self leaders, one great starting point is to take that responsibility to develop yourself, and this is often one of the conversations that comes up when I.
Get involved with an emerging leaders program, or I have somebody that wants to become a leader. They're that aspiring leader and they'll ask that question about leadership and what are some of the keys around that. First off, I always talk about, you know, show initiative. That's part of it, but show initiative and how you're developing yourself and your own skills.
Oftentimes people wait around for someone else. My boss doesn't develop me or my company's not really providing resources. And, uh, you know, even the work that you're doing is indicating that there are so many different venues, so many different vehicles for self development now. than we've ever had before from podcast interviews to articles to ebooks to online programs, traditional books and magazines.
There's no shortage of great resources out there. And so it doesn't matter if you're one of those early career workers. or if you're getting close to retirement. I love it when I find people that are from the baby boomer generation, the countdown clock might already be running, but they're not done developing themselves.
And as one guy just recently at a client site said to me, John, I can always learn more. I might be 90 days from retirement, but I can still get better. And I think if everybody has that kind of mentality, I can still get better, even by one degree at a time. Just think about what's going to happen when you really bring your best leadership.
[00:43:05] Roger Courville, CSP: Yeah. So true. Well, I mean, I'm agreeing because I'm 58 and I'm just ended the thesis phase of my working on my doctorate. So like still figuring out what I'm going to be when I grow up,
[00:43:19] Jon Lokhorst, CSP: aren't we all.
[00:43:20] Roger Courville, CSP: Thank you again to our wonderful guest, John Lockhorst, and you can again connect with him at your best leadership.
com. I will post the links to that as LinkedIn profile when we, when we go live with this and, uh, thank you again to our sponsor today. virtual venues where you can instantly scale your virtual and hybrid event production team. We will catch you on the next episode of Thought Leader Conversations. where you can instantly scale your hybrid or virtual event production team. We'll see you on the next episode of Thought Leader Conversations.
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