Even leaders have leaders. And sometimes it’s challenging for leaders to express concerns and offer feedback to those at a higher level of leadership. The solution lies in learning to lean into the inevitable discomfort of sharing your perspective with whomever needs to hear it, regardless of their position, and in creating conditions throughout the organization that allow others to feel safe in doing the same. Listen as Ralph and Bill discuss and make suggestions to help you “lead up” effectively.

Prefer to read the transcript?

*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors

Bill Berthel: Welcome to the Get Emergent podcast. This is the space where we discuss leadership and team organizational topics and better practices. We like to provide concepts and ideas that you can turn into pragmatic experiments to help you develop your higher potential in your work and in your leadership. I’m Bill Berthel.

Ralph Simone: And I’m Ralph Simone.

Bill Berthel: Ralph today’s topic of leading up means a lot to me. You know, I’ve, in my past, and maybe still do to some extent, I hold back a little bit. You know, I’ve kind of bitten my tongue on a good idea or I won’t speak up. And it’s usually out of concern or even as strong as a fear. I’m afraid of the other person’s reaction, whether it’s my boss, whether that’s my partner, whether it’s my colleague. Right. I’m holding back.

Ralph Simone: I think it’s normal. I think we all do it to a certain extent, and I think part of it could be fear based. Part of it’s the power dynamic.

Bill Berthel: Yes.

Ralph Simone: In the context of the work we do with organizations, I think leading up can be a scary proposition because we don’t know how it’s going to land with our boss or we don’t know if it will be well received. But it’s a vital practice because what we know with our work with emotional intelligence, the higher up in an organization you go, the least amount of meaningful feedback you get. So how are you going to make good business decisions and choices if you don’t have all the information? So I think this is a vital practice to make people less uncomfortable. I’m not going to say make them comfortable. And I think part of leading up is leaning in the discomfort of sharing your perspective with whomever needs to hear it.

Bill Berthel: Yeah, I like reframing it, maybe away from comfort, more towards more practiced. I might not get comfortable with it in the end, but more practice will provide more familiarity with this.

And can you unpack just for a second for me, this idea that the higher up in an organization you go, you may be getting less meaningful feedback? Is that what you said?

Ralph Simone: Yeah, I think people hedge their bets. I think they’re reluctant, and this could be because of baggage they bring from other organizations, but I think they’re reluctant to let the emperor know that he or she has no clothes on. And it could be that the organization doesn’t have enough psychological safety.

Bill Berthel: Sure.

Ralph Simone: Yeah. My kids challenged me on this because they said, dad, you seem to remember all these stories when you spoke up a lot. How about the times you didn’t. Obviously, those aren’t the stories I’m telling. I know there were plenty of times that I have bitten my tongue and that sa

You’ve probably heard the saying “I wouldn’t ask anyone to do anything I wouldn’t do myself.” Perhaps you’ve said it yourself. But is it actually a sustainable leadership philosophy? After all, as leaders, we can’t possibly do everything ourselves. In fact, that’s precisely why we have teams. And it’s not practical to think leaders on their own can keep pace with the exponential changes shaping every industry today. If this hits home for you, this episode is a must-listen.

Prefer to read the transcript?

*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors

Bill Berthel: Welcome to the Get Emergent podcast. This is the space where we discuss leadership team and organizational topics and better practices. We like to provide concepts and ideas that you can turn into pragmatic experiments to help you develop your higher potential in all of your work and your leadership. I’m Bill Berthel

Ralph Simone: And I’m Ralph Simone

Bill Berthel: Ralph, I’m excited to talk about this idea of old school credibility. You know, we hear the declaration, I wouldn’t ask anyone to do something I wouldn’t do from leaders.

Ralph Simone: Really I would. I built a whole career on doing that.

Bill Berthel: Well, you’re maybe more a progressive guy than some people we work with, but I agree with this topic when it comes to ethics and morals. Right. I would not ask anyone to do something I wouldn’t be willing to do from an ethical and a moral perspective. But I don’t think that’s what folks are saying. They’re really talking about this idea that, you know, if I’m not a subject matter expert in this space, I’m not going to have credibility to lead others. And I’m really excited to introduce Geoff Storm.

Geoff is with us today. Geoff is with us every recording.

Ralph Simone: Yes.

Bill Berthel: But today we asked him to join us in this conversation because as we were preparing, he had some beautiful examples of this in his career. Geoff welcome.

Geoff Storm: Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here. on the mic this time, I guess.

Bill Berthel: Yeah, yeah.

Ralph Simone: So we already has the better voice.

Bill Berthel: Well, Geoff does have a voice for radio, but he’s got a handsome face too. So he’s not one of those guys with just a face for radio. But Geoff is our support from MPW and he is our recording technician. And Geoff it’s awesome to have you here every time, but to hear your voice today and your examples of where this has shown up in your career.

Could you share with us a little bit what you were sharing with Ralph and I earlier about how you felt in your leadership role?

Geoff Storm: I said, as soon as you started to sort of lay out what your plan was for today and where you were going to go with this podcast, I just kind of chimed in and said, this one really hits home for me because as you alluded to, my background is actually in this sort of thing, recording video, audio, that kind of thing. And then I went, twelve years ago now, I came to work for MPW, which is a full service advertising agency. So I mean, there are many people in that organization who do things that I cannot do, that I still, after twelve years, cannot do. They have skill sets and knowledge bases that are beyond the scope of mine. And suddenly I was in a leadership role with these people on

There really are patterns in life. Effective leaders can recognize those patterns and use them to optimize the performance of their teams. Listen as Bill and Ralph give examples of patterns you can exploit to enhance your leadership – and how to do it.

Prefer to read the transcript?

*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors

Bill Berthel: Welcome to the Get Emergent podcast. This is the space where we discuss leadership team and organizational topics and better practices. We like to provide concepts and ideas that you can turn into pragmatic experiments to help you develop your higher potential in your work and your leadership. I’m Bill Berthel.

Ralph Simone: And I’m Ralph Simone. And Bill, I’m fascinated with this topic today because I have no idea what it means.

Bill Berthel: Ah, you do. You do.

Bill Berthel: Once we get into the conversation, you’re gonna.

So the title of you’re not paranoid, there are patterns, right? It’s really about looking for and looking at the patterns. The reference to paranoia, right? Paranoia is defined as an ability or a sensing of patterns and sequences. Typically, the paranoid think those patterns are out to get them, right. It’s a negative thing, but we’re going to flip that. There really are patterns in our life, in the world. The way things are structured and really effective. Leaders can read those patterns and utilize them in their leadership to optimize the results of their teams and their organizations. That’s what we’re talking about today.

Bill Berthel: I love it.

Ralph Simone: I’d actually like rather look at that paranoia as an intuition, so much.

Bill Berthel: Is that right? It’s this beautiful ability to tap into that, right? We can take cues from the patterns and the models that are around us when we start to see that, whatever you believe in, intelligent design, divine creation, nature’s blueprint, right? These are all possible sources. Wherever these patterns come from, they’re abundantly around us. They’re very real. They’re very real.

Ralph Simone: Preston, I’m curious, what kind of patterns would leaders be looking for or should they be looking for or uncovering in their organizations?

Bill Berthel: I can think of three specific to leadership and really talk about those kind of meta, patterns or models, if you will. But we’ll give some specific examples. But just think about the simplicity of most people on this planet live somewhere where there’s a change of seasons, right? We experience that pattern, right? Especially here in the northeast of the United States. We have four pretty distinct seasons. I guess our winters are getting more mild and our summers might be getting hotter and drier, but still pretty distinct seasons. Summer always follows spring, winter always follows autumn. While not completely forecastable, we can understand whether patterns each season will bring. So a really simple model of patterns most of us could relate to. We can look at just about any leadership model that’s been published for patterns. So the Harvard business School is notorious for their two by two models, right? Almost every theory Harvard provides follows, that specific pattern right. Plotted on a quadrant and x y axes gives us four different dynamics to think a