How to Lead with Wisdom and Perspective | #87

So welcome back once again to the Connected Leadership podcast by Zentano. Now, throughout this series, we've explored emotional intelligence from various different angles. We've talked about understanding ourselves, understanding other people, understanding our impact, understanding the organisations we work within. But there's a deeper question underneath all of this. How do we understand the world itself? Now then.

Every leader sees reality through a particular lens shaped by their personal experiences, their own core values, their beliefs, the assumptions they make and so much more actually. And yet leadership often requires us to work with people who see things very differently. So in this final episode, we're exploring perspective, wisdom and what emotionally intelligent leadership might look like in this very complex and often uncertain world. Now to join me today as per usual is Zentano's font of wisdom, Rich Horton.

Yeah,

I'm not sure about that but thank you Dave.

And certainly a man who probably, it's fair to say, does see the world through different lens to me. We do have different perspectives on things. Not that

Yes, yeah we do, absolutely.

we don't have a, we come together where we, with a sense of purpose that's aligned and core values are aligned, but in many other things we do see the world differently and

Yeah, we do. Yes.

it makes for some interesting conversations.

Yeah, and hopefully we'll see as part of the conversation to today, therein lies the value.

Yes, absolutely. I think

that's a really good point to make up front here. That is the value of our partnership. Yeah, I wouldn't really want to be working with somebody who just sees everything the way that I see it because there's no value in that to me and I'm sure you feel the same. Yeah.

Exactly, exactly.

So Rich, in this first section of this podcast today, which we've called, We Don't See the Road as It Is, you've often said that we don't simply see reality, we see reality through a perspective. Do you just want to unpack

Mm-hmm.

what you mean by that?

Yes, so I think a lot of people make the mistake that they think they have a mediated access to reality, so to speak. But

Mm-hmm.

actually, we don't. We interpret reality. So we filter reality through a set of filters that includes things like our thinking preferences, our personality, sort of preferences, our values, the culture that shapes our perception.

Our family upbringing shapes our perception. And even as we go through life, when we make different friends, we engage in different teams, we engage in different organizations, all of those subtly shape our perception and affect how we interpret reality. And no two person is the same. And

No.

this shows itself when...

when you see two people experiencing the same event, but they arrive at very different conclusions. I remember I went to a concert with a mate of mine to one of my favorite bands and he likes the band as well. And we literally stood side by side in the same concert venue, heard the same band

Yeah. Yeah.

and I walked out and thought, wasn't that amazing? And he said, I'm not sure sure.

and then he started to pick holes in the performance of I can't remember what the details of it were now but it's interesting that for him the sorts of things that made the concert disappointing

Hmm.

were not something that affected my enjoyment of the same event so two

Hmm.

very different perspectives two different value sets in terms of our relationship to this band to music

Mm-hmm.

for example so

you know, our experience was very different. And you see this play out inside organizations. So imagine a change initiative, perhaps, that you're trying to introduce inside your business.

Mm.

Now, if you're a leader of that and leading the change, often leaders, if they're leading a change initiative, they'll see the opportunity, they'll see the vision, and they'll commit that change initiative probably

with a high degree of excitement. Seeing the vision and the potential for what could be. Whereas actually the people on the receiving end of the change inside the organization might not see necessarily the opportunity. They might hear the words and

Yeah.

see the logic behind that, but probably they'll see the risk.

to them, to their job, to their security. The FD might see the change from a very different perspective. This is a cost to the business.

Yeah.

And again, the customer sees maybe some disruption in the service.

Mmm.

And we've been on the receiving end of that as an organization where an organization is introduced an initiative and that's caused.

us disruption say for being paid. know, you know, so,

Yes, absolutely.

so it's really interesting how actually the same change event inside the organization is seen from a very different perspective. so the world isn't only shaped by by what happens. Okay, the world isn't just shaped by what happens. It's shaped by how we interpret what happens. So there's this disconnect between like reality, if you like, and

a set of filters and our interpretation of that. So I think it's really important. think the first point I would make in this podcast is when you're engaged in, say, a change opportunity or you're in a meeting where you're talking about something and it's an important decision to make, is to ask the question, what assumption am I bringing into this situation?

Yeah, that's a good question to ask actually. It's

Hmm, yeah.

a good question to ask. I mean, we'll get onto the wisdom side of this podcast a bit later, but let's just explore perspective a bit more. So you've made it clear there with your explanation. If we all see the world through a lens and it's a very personal lens that we see it through, one of the things

Yeah, yeah, yes.

is we have to become aware of that lens. So

We do, yes, absolutely.

as you said, many things drive our behavior and they seem

Mm-hmm.

to operate below the surface. So how does that

Yeah, yeah.

affect how we lead in our businesses?

Yeah, so I guess I'd like to talk a little bit about the hidden drivers of behavior because

Hmm.

most people assume that their perspective is reality. What I've just spoken about is actually reality is over here. Here

You

are filters and our perception, our perspective is over here. So

Hmm.

it's not reality per se. It's our own personal reality, if you like, but

Yeah, of course.

it's not the...

the full reality of everything.

Nah.

And so there'll be hidden assumptions and things like our values and our beliefs and our upbringing that shape the way we interpret that. And we mistake that, we mistake our interpretation of that for truth. So

Yes. Yeah.

leaders grow and this is one of the things that we encourage in our leadership development courses.

leaders grow when they start to become aware of their filters.

Yeah.

So for those of you that are watching this on YouTube, I mean, you won't see this if you're listening on the podcast, but behind me, I've got a book called Immunity to Change by an author called Robert Keegan. And he's done some really interesting research around development. And he talks about this concept, what he calls a socialized mind.

So if you imagine, you know, you and I, Dave, you know, we've both had experiences in our childhood. And

Mm-hmm.

if you like our values and our beliefs about the world and how the world should be in inverted commas

Yeah.

have been shaped by our parental upbringing and our schooling and other factors as well. You know,

Yeah. Yeah.

so when I was very young, I went to church, that experience of going to church, that shaped my

my thinking and upbringing. So, and we bring all of that stuff into adulthood. So it's what Robert Keegan calls the socialized mind, those sets of filters, those beliefs, those assumptions, those values, largely when we bring those into adulthood are largely unconscious. Okay.

Yes, they are. You're right.

So Robert Keegan says, ask human beings to grow and learn as a human being. We need to uncover

those filters and to become aware of them and then we can start to consciously choose how to respond and understanding what's driving our behaviours.

And that's why this is so important because if you think of a leader potentially who hasn't grown very much as a human being and still very much unconsciously has this socialized mind, so they're unaware of these filters and assumptions that are driving, that means that they will walk into situations in their organization and be largely unconscious of how their behaviors are impacting those around them because they're uncritically.

engaging, if you like, with what's going on around them. So even things like our need for approval, our fear of conflict, our desire for control, our need to be right, all of those things which are shaped through our childhood upbringing, those sorts of things unconsciously drive our reactions to our interactions with people. So growth begins...

when something that used to run us, okay, so in other words, used to drive us, becomes something we can see.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's why I think it's really important in terms of leadership development. When we talk about emotional intelligence, what we're essentially talking about here is pulling away the onion layers to uncover the filters so you can understand what's running you. That's why our leadership development course,

for example, starts with a workshop around thinking preferences so people can start to develop some self-awareness around how thinking preferences drive their decision making, how they build trust, etc. So it's very

Yeah.

important that leadership development needs to do that and it's so important because I think the best leaders are those people who genuinely

can appreciate that people genuinely see things differently to them and they're able to honor that and take those different perspectives into account and understand their perspective and the impact of their perspective on the world.

Yeah, and you may remember a of months back I interviewed a really experienced coach, Nick Marlow, and that episode

yeah, yeah.

I recorded with him was all about this, that people as leaders need to do the work on themselves and not enough do work on themselves. And

Yes, yeah, yeah.

I don't necessarily mean I've done an MBA or I've done a professional qualification of some degree, because those things, I'm not decrying those things and I'm sure we

No, no.

get great, I've done a diploma, I got huge learning from it. But I think what we're talking about, some of those...

those programs don't always go deep enough on the things that you're talking about here. So those development opportunities are great and we should do those, but we're talking

Mm-hmm.

here about really diving deep in terms of what makes me tick as a human being, aren't we?

Yeah, yeah.

And I would agree with Nick's perspective, actually. I don't see enough people who have done that hard work on themselves.

Yeah,

because human growth, leadership growth is not knowledge accumulation.

No.

It's becoming aware of our filters, peeling away the lens and exposing those so we can consciously respond to what's going on around us as opposed to be driven by our socialized mind.

Yeah. So you've made the point really clearly, and I think it's really important that awareness is vitally important.

Mm. Mm-hmm.

But as we said at the beginning of this podcast, leadership also involves working with people who genuinely might see things differently. know, so

Yes, yeah.

when you grew up, you went to church. I didn't. I didn't have

Mm-hmm.

that experience. So there's a difference there.

Yes,

yeah.

Yeah, so this power of perspective taking is really important. So how do emotionally intelligent leaders work with different perspectives and yet still retain their authenticity? I think that's quite an important thing to consider.

Yeah. So a couple of things I would say here is, understanding another person's perspective doesn't require you to agree with that perspective. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, so when we talk

No, as we've proved to ourselves, feel, never vacations. Yeah.

about the power of perspective taking from a leadership perspective, perspective taking is not just abandoning your own convictions. Okay.

No, no, agreed.

But it's being aware of those convictions. And also to understand that curiosity around other people's perspectives can create better decisions. Because if you're open to other perspectives, you're more likely to make more rounded decisions as a leader. And I

Yeah, agreed.

think personally that if you're able to engage with multiple perspectives, that helps you reveal your blind spots.

And again, I think that's proven for me, that's proved by working with you, because we're both naturally quite curious. We will ask curiosity led questions. That's what coaches do or should do.

Mm-hmm.

I can see there's things that where I've explored your view of something, which maybe isn't my view,

Yeah.

where I've actually, maybe even at times changed my opinion on things because I've been

Yes, yes, yeah.

given a perspective that I didn't have that perspective before. And that's actually quite useful. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you don't do that and you don't learn and grow and then seek to shift your perspective without first honoring the perspective of the other person.

No.

So I'd like to use an analogy here just to help frame this idea of perspective taking and the relationship of our perspective with reality and truth if you like. So

Yeah.

imagine reality or truth however you want to

philosophically frame this. Imagine that's like a trunk of a tree. Imagine this huge

Okay, yeah.

great tree which represents reality and truth.

Okay.

I think people are like the leaves on a tree. Thousands of leaves, well millions of leaves, billions of leaves in terms of the, in terms, think of the whole human race. So you've got one leaf over here on the outer edge.

of the tree looking through all these

Yeah.

leaves and it has a very dim view of the trunk and it sees just this little bit of the trunk and you've got another leaf the other side of the tree much closer to the trunk and it has a very different perspective and the trunk might be a slightly different colour the bark might be shaped slightly differently and if this

Mm-hmm.

leaf over here asks this leaf over here so what do you see in this situation?

they would describe

Yeah.

something very, very different. And I think that's

Yeah.

a really powerful analogy to think actually, know, we as human beings, we often like to think that we are right about everything, but we're simply a single leaf that has a perspective, and it might be a very valid perspective, but it would just be a perspective. It will have blind spots. It will not know about the other side of the tree.

unless you ask the other leaf to tell you about the other side of the tree. And therein lies

Mmm.

the learning and therein lies the more rounded response to the challenges and making good decisions. So every leaf is connected to the same trunk, so

Yeah.

that's not denying that there's no truth or reality out there.

but each leaf experiences the trunk very differently and no leaf sees the entire tree.

Mmm.

So I hope that sort of frames the need actually and the challenge for leaders to honor different perspectives and to look with humility at the fact we're just a leaf. We're not the trunk, we're

Yeah. No.

the leaf.

So that's not the same as presenting all perspectives are equally helpful

No, okay.

because they're not necessarily. There are some perspectives that I profoundly disagree with. Okay. And I think they're

Yes. Yeah.

distorted. know, leaves can become a little bit crinkly as we've seen in this hot weather.

Mm-hmm.

And that crinkliness, if you like, can distort.

how they see reality. That doesn't mean my leaf, my perspective is not without distortions.

Hmm.

if you open and honor other people's perspectives, it allows you to iron out the crinkles in your perspective. So I still think it's possible to challenge another perspective, but still honor it and really try to understand where that person's coming from.

It's really interesting because there's been number of things that I've wanted to explore in the last two or three years on a variety of topics. Some are work related, some are more family related. But

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

one of the questions or a couple of the questions I find myself asking myself more more and more in the last two or three years is, what is it I think I know where I'm wrong? Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And what is it I don't know that would be useful to know? It's questions like that, which, know,

Yes, yes.

yeah. Now, again, sometimes you might find out things that you don't want to hear because

Mm-hmm.

I've got a view of what I think is the truth, what I think is reality. And as

Yeah, yeah.

you said, most of us are not gonna wanna let go of that, we? Because it's kind of, it feels that's right for us.

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

But there's a real value in asking yourself those questions because I've uncovered some things in the last two or three years that have been really helpful to shift my perspective, but actually make some positive changes as well off the back of that.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

So I think this is really important, Rich. You've hit on something really important here and it's not easy to do at times.

No, no, no.

but I would say it's vital to do.

Yeah, yeah, because we're very protective of our little leaf. Yeah, so exactly,

Well yeah, we would be, wouldn't we? Yeah, no, we would be.

I think, you know, just as you said, it's important to ask the question, what am I seeing? What am I not seeing?

Yeah.

What might they be seeing? And actually, if we bring the two perspectives or even more perspectives together, what becomes visible when you take into account all of those different things?

Yeah and to be fair on occasions you might come back to exactly the same answer you had at the beginning but in

Yes, absolutely.

my experience often you don't.

Yeah,

I think, yeah, it's an interesting point. I actually think if you're prepared to engage curiously and honestly with humility with another person's perspective, you're always going to shift as a human being.

That, you know, yeah.

Yeah, you probably are, it's probably right.

Yeah. So, okay, so you've made the point here, great leaders can take perspectives seriously. So

Mm-hmm.

that begs the question, what does wisdom look like in practice? So I'm gonna move here from this need for certainty to being wise and the need for wisdom, which we do need a lot of that in the world. We need a lot of wisdom in the world at the moment,

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So when you think about leadership maturity,

Mm-hmm.

What

changes for you? What do you think that looks like?

So going back to my analogy of the tree and us being very protective of our leaf.

Yes.

So if you think about the analogy of the leaf, you know, we get blown around quite a lot, yeah, because we're part of a tree, so to speak.

Mm-hmm, certainly do. Yeah, yeah.

I know I'm stretching the analogy a little bit here.

So as a result of actually us being blown around, as human beings, we like certainty, we like simplicity, we like quick answers, we like black and white answers, we like heroes and villains. All of those things,

Ha ha.

I think, are a sign of less mature leadership. And I think leadership maturity starts to change when we become comfortable with complexity.

with ambiguity, with paradox, with competing priorities and perspectives. So we're okay with the fact that actually our leaf is a little bit, you know, it gets blown around a little bit. And we're sort of okay with the fact that another leaf challenges our perspective. And when we think about all the leaves around us, you know, that's really quite challenging. So I think...

leaders that become comfortable with complexity and paradox. I think if you come out engaging with a person with that perspective and that mindset, it means then that you can discover that multiple things can be true.

Yes.

You can discover that good people do disagree. You can

Yeah.

also discover that trade-offs are not necessarily unavoidable and every decision creates

consequences.

Yeah.

So I like to think of wisdom as a bit like this. So wisdom, it's not about having all the answers because that's the certainty thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wisdom is the ability to see more of the question. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah, yeah.

So that doesn't mean you don't come to conclusions about stuff and you don't come to a position about stuff because as a leader you often need to bring clarity

of purpose and direction to a situation. But that's different than bringing certainty and simplicity and black and white thinking to a situation. It's subtly different, but the subtlety around this is important. I think it's important to ask questions like, what are the competing truths in this situation? What

Yeah.

are the tensions I'm trying to balance in this situation?

And what's driving that from the people in the room? What are the values and the behaviors and the motivations that are driving that that's creating the tension? What am I oversimplifying potentially and just looking at through the leaf of my perspective?

Yeah, and I think we've made this point on the podcast before, so I don't want to labour it again. But

Mm-hmm.

for us to be able to do this, we need

Mm-hmm.

to put some time aside to do it. If we're just going hell for leather every single day, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, and

Yes.

we don't take any, come up for breath, as it were, take a little bit of time

Yes, yeah.

to get some, we're not gonna ask ourselves these questions, therefore we're not gonna get the wisdom that we need, are we? So we

Agreed.

really need to make sure. And it comes back to your point.

It starts with self-awareness. We need to become as self-aware as we possibly can. And

Yes.

that's a lifelong thing. You'll never become fully self-aware because there'll always be stuff you don't know. But the more

Yeah, yeah.

that we put our effort into that, it doesn't make this easier. Because I think you made the point just now. We need to be comfortable with complexity, ambiguity, paradox, and competing parties and all those things. Well, that doesn't come easily. You have to put the work into it to do that as well, don't you? Yeah.

Yeah, so

I would add to that because I think that that is a really good point. the self-awareness is absolutely critical. That aligned with humility because a person with true humility is able to accept the fact that they only have a partial view of the truth and they're open to other people's perspectives. So

Yeah.

that's why a humble person doesn't crave

certainty

Hmm.

they're able to live with that ambiguity.

So again, it begs the question if wisdom isn't certainty, and I totally agree with you, it's not certainty, yeah,

Mm-hmm.

what kind of leader should we actually be striving to become? Because we're talking in this series that we're doing, and this is the last one of the series, about being an emotionally intelligent leader, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So Rich, as we finish this series,

Mm-hmm.

if we of start to tie things together, what picture of leadership has emerged for you? Now, what are we talking about here in terms of leaders being really emotionally intelligent?

Yeah. So in part, we've built this series around the Daniel Goleman model. And I think we've added some more onion layers to that model. But

Mm.

essentially, I fundamentally agree with the Daniel Goleman perspective. The great leaders know themselves, that's the self-awareness point that you made, aligned

Yep. Yep.

with that is the ability to regulate themselves.

Yep.

and understand when they're becoming dysregulated and have the ability to manage that. So that's on the self side, if you like. That's the intrapersonal.

Yep.

On the other side, the interpersonal, it's having social awareness. So the ability to understand others, to tune into others with empathy and to recognize your impact and their impact.

on what's going on and then to be able to skillfully manage those relationships. So that's the other side of the four quadrant Daniel Goldman model. And I think beyond

Yeah.

that, and it's probably fair to say that Daniel Goldman would have had this in mind as well, but we're

Yeah.

building out from there, is the ability to read context and systems. And really importantly to fold in the Robert Keegan stuff is to stay open to learning.

and to understand actually that we have a socialised mind that we bring into childhood and good leadership and adult growth involves us peeling away those onion layers to reveal the filters that then enable us to self-regulate, become more self-aware and to understand the impact we have on those around us and to understand them better as well.

Yeah, I mean, your analogy of the tree, which I really like, you talk about reading context and systems and a tree in itself is a quite complex ecosystem, actually, just one tree, one tree,

Mm-hmm. It is, yeah. Just one tree.

one tree. Yeah, you know, actually in the world, there are millions and billions of trees. So,

Mm-hmm. Yes, yeah.

know, when you start to think that it's beyond yourself and even beyond your organization, which is what I said at the beginning in the intro, we've got to start thinking beyond our organization into all the stuff that's out there.

And some of that we interact with as well. So depending on what you do for a living, but you'll have supply chains, you'll have other stakeholders, customers

Mm-hmm.

being one of them, but there'll be other people as well. All of that is this massive, massive ecosystem that we need to understand and read and try and make sense of. And it's not easy. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I would summarize what I've just said into probably a couple of things, a couple of human attributes to think about. So all

Yeah, okay.

of those things, they combine confidence and humility, know,

Yeah.

that those two things go hand in hand. I think it's it's it combines conviction and curiosity. Those two things go hand in hand. They feel like

Yeah.

they tension against each other. But

Yeah.

It's okay

to have your perspective, but to be open to others and to have clarity, but also have openness as well. So I think it's important to hold strongly our values, our purpose, why we're on this planet, our responsibilities, but to hold lightly our assumptions, definitely hold lightly our ego and

to hold lightly, I would even say beware of first interpretations, that instinctive response to what's going on around you. And understand the assumptions that are driving those first interpretations.

Yeah, and yeah, guess this not be a popular point to make for some people, ultimately, and the world will chuck all sorts of challenges and curveballs at us and some

Mm-hmm.

of that we can't do anything about, but ultimately, how you operate in this world is your personal responsibility. You have to take personal responsibility for all of this. You have to.

Yes, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and I say, some people might not like me saying that, but

it's true,

Yeah, yeah.

So to summarise this I guess I would say the emotionally intelligent leader isn't somebody with no perspective. Okay, it's somebody

No. No.

who knows they have one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

and what it is

and what drives that and

Yeah. Yeah.

then how that plays out when they interact with others. So very simply, if I was to summarize all that we've said in the podcast today, very simple model, understand what's my view, what do I believe, what do I bring to this conversation, this interaction.

Yeah. Yeah.

So that's my view. Then what's your view?

So what can I learn from you?

Yep.

And I think actually even just in this conversation today, we've been bouncing off each other and open to each other's perspective. So we're learning from each other just in this conversation. And

Mm-hmm. Yep.

then actually the great leaders take the wider view. So it's not about just my view and your view. It's about all of these different multiple perspectives and take in

an integrative view based on the ability to discern all of that and to synthesize and crystallize that into, okay, so having taken account of all of that, I think this is what we should do.

Okay, so just for anybody listening to this podcast today who's thinking, okay, there's an awful lot in this and there is an awful lot in this

Mm-hmm.

relatively short conversation we've had for half an hour today. But what would be your key takeaways from today's discussion? Things that you want maybe people to sort of hold as if you can hold these key things and maybe

Mm-hmm.

it applies to the whole eight podcast series that we've done here. What

Yeah, yeah.

would be the sort of four or five things you'd say these are the key takeaways?

Okay,

so every leader sees the world through a perspective.

Yeah.

So own that, but it is just a perspective.

Yeah.

The second thing I would say probably is human growth, leadership growth begins when we become aware of the assumptions that are driving us. So that's the analogy of the onion layer and understanding the

Mm-hmm.

filters that shape our reality.

third thing I would say is understanding another person's perspective and honouring that doesn't require

Mm-hmm.

you abandoning your own. So this is not completely relativistic sort postmodern sort of thinking where there's no sense of groundedness and perspective in your perspective.

Hmm.

The fourth point I would make is wisdom.

comes from holding conviction and curiosity together. Those two things go hand in hand. So that goes back to it's okay to own your perspective, but still be open and curious about others.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, finally the emotionally intelligent leader continually, continually seeks a bigger picture, a different perspective.

Great, that's some really good perspectives there, Five great tips.

As we've explored throughout this series, emotional intelligence is about far more than just emotions. People talk about emotional intelligence as being the soft and fluffy nonsense. It really, really isn't. And there's an awful lot more to this topic. Hopefully we've demonstrated that through these eight podcast episodes that we've done. So it's about understanding ourselves. It's about understanding others. It's about understanding our impact. It's about understanding the systems we operate in. And as you said, it's about continually expanding our perspective.

So perhaps the most important lesson is that leadership isn't a destination, but a journey of ongoing growth and ongoing awareness.

Yeah.

Yeah. So thank you for joining us for this Emotionally Intelligent series on the Connected Leadership podcast by Zentano.

Yes, yeah indeed.

I've really enjoyed doing it actually, Rich. And we

Mm-hmm.

hope that these conversations have challenged your thinking, encouraged your development, and help you become a more connected and effective leader. We will.

be launching another series at some point in the near future. Not sure what that is yet. We're still in discussions about what we're going to do. Obviously

No. Yeah.

there'll be guests coming along as well onto the podcast. But until next time, Rich, thanks for your time and thanks

Yeah, thank you.

to everybody for listening today.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.