Too often employees don’t aspire to be leaders, to find themselves in the role of inflated responsibilities, expectations, energy and time commitments. But imagine if your entire team could embrace their inner leader and think and act in a way that drove innovation, shared knowledge effectively and produced consistently high performance, all while allowing them to maintain their regular roles, hours and expectations? In practice, how well would a team of 9 to 5 leaders actually work, and could it even become a reality in the first place?

Contributor

• • Kathleen Ryan, Author, Consultant, The Orion Partnership

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Transcript

Sanjog Aul [00:00:26]:

Hello. Everybody welcome to CIO Talk Radio. To learn more about this show, please visit www.ciotalkradio.com, and as always, we invite you to join the discussion on Twitter, #ctr live, and look for this show as #leadership. Today’s topic is 9 To 5 Leaders, and our guest for today’s show is Kathleen Ryan, who’s the author of the book Extraordinary Groups, How Ordinary Teams Achieve Amazing Results, and a consultant with the Orion Partnership. Hello, Cathy. How are you?

Kathleen Ryan [00:00:58]:

I’m fine. Thank you.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:00]:

How are you doing this morning?

Kathleen Ryan [00:01:02]:

Well, I’m doing great. We’ve had cold weather hit the Pacific Northwest, so it’s probably not as cold as Chicago, but nonetheless, I’m bundled up here. So but I’m happy to be on the phone with you.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:14]:

Oh, the honors are all ours. So now we encourage our employees to be leaders and to aspire, to think the way a leader might and deliver more innovation and dedication to the team, but then there’s a fear that many share that doing so comes with added responsibilities and expectations that they just don’t have time for or don’t want to let their family life suffer. They want to essentially have a balance. So we came up with the term 9 to 5 leaders and wondered, could someone be a high performer, be thinking like a leader, and collaborating with the team on innovation, giving the best they can, and still be able to maintain their regular schedule, and that doesn’t mean that if a person stays for 9 to 5, means they want to work less, and could we do this for the whole team? Imagine the level of productivity and innovation and the output we can get out of it. So, Kathy, your book speaks to this possibility, and perhaps we will dig more into what is the possibility of building these regular folks who want to keep a balanced life leaders, and bring the best out of of the whole organization, not just a select few. So that said, Cathy, what we have traditionally seen as an organizational design is we would have a few people who have very who are very highly visible. They are highly available. They’re charismatic, and they are top, very busy working whenever you want them to, and they’re seen as very productive, and that design is what is telling us that those are the people who are truly leaders, they’re the ones who we should invest in and rest of the people who are regular worker bees or or I would say the people who are regular employees, they are not the ones who are truly they are a necessary evil almost. I’m saying that’s a derogatory term that we use in the world out there, which is 9 to 5. So why is that? What’s so bad about having somebody, getting a life and for the 8 hours they spend at the workplace, they just do their best job?

Kathleen Ryan [00:03:28]:

Well, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I think, as I was reflecting on this topic, one of the things that occurs to me is there’s a lot of stereotypes about the term leader, the term employee, the term 9 to 5, as you and I were, prior to going on air, were just talking about. I think I’ve been consulting in organizations for well over 30 years, and I don’t know that there is one, your question is based on this notion of a traditional way of thinking about leadership. I don’t know in the world today with things changing so rapidly that there is one design about leadership, and frankly, my sense of where things are going is that the traditional top down, a few charismatic, highly visible, high, people who work 20 hours a day, there’s only so much longer that people are gonna be able to maintain that kind of focus without either their families unraveling or they themselves unraveling. So the challenge we’ve got is how to engage as many people as possible. My particular frame is teaming. How to engage as many people as possible in doing leader work and sharing in that work of leading a team. So, whether or not that fits nicely into 9 to 5 is another story. We have a lot of stories related to exceptional teaming where people get so energized and are so passionate and excited about what they’re doing that sometimes they stay late, sometimes they come in early, but that’s not a regular occurrence and I think that’s the point you’re making if I’m understanding it.

Sanjog Aul [00:05:24]:

So let’s create a scenario or almost try to paint a picture. Everyone has a smartphone. You’re supposed to respond almost within seconds of receiving an email no matter what time of the day or night it is. Sometimes people have started shutting it down after 9 PM versus at 5 PM, and then when a project comes, there is a deadline, and there is a directive it has to be completed, and that is then taken on by people who show that they have the flexibility and most of the people see their kids growing, while they’re sleeping because they start early and they will come back late, and it’s not about burnout. It’s not about some people are just having all the cushy life, other people don’t, but here, in a mid to large size organization, for example, most of those people, if you see, the parking lot fills in at 8 or 8:30, and it gets emptied at 5, and then there are a few cars that you will always see, and those are the people who get the raises, the promotion, and they grow higher. The rest of them are kept where they are, and, of course, as per what the HR rules are, we are giving them raises, promotions, but if you go back and look and basically poll those people who are in the 9 to 5, they continue to go in a spiraling down curve in terms of their morale and perhaps what they have been able to learn and grow and produce, and it could very well be not their fault that they want to stay 9 to 5. It is an organization’s responsibility to help them do the most in the time that they have been able to allot to their work life because they don’t want to live to work, they want to work to live. So what do you have to say to that?

Kathleen Ryan [00:07:17]:

That’s a lot that you’ve put in there. What do I have to say to that? I personally take, you know, I have a lot of experience working in high-tech companies, high energy, but healthcare frankly, we have images around high-tech companies being the cultures where people are driven the most. I don’t think that’s necessarily true at all, and we know from the downturn of the economy and the drive for increased productivity that especially in the U.S. there has been a push to get more productivity out of fewer employees, and so more pressure has been put on people to deliver and that delivering of course people can feel forced into a work day or a work shift that goes beyond traditional 9 to 5. My own view is that that’s only sustainable for a certain amount of time. I absolutely agree with you that people want to be developed, want to develop themselves, and they very much appreciate opportunities to grow and learn and increase their competency and their capability. So, yes, so go ask me some more questions and help me to stay focused here.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:52]:

No. So what you’re saying definitely is the case where there are people who are, the organizations have that intent. So we’re not saying that organizations are there to exploit anyone. So when we look at productivity, number one, productivity is a term in my view or I’m sure some people would agree from the industrial age where we were supposed to create widgets. On one hand, we want these two people to become knowledge workers, and then what are we expecting them to produce? What’s their measure of success? And second, productivity is a product of skills, competency, and engagement. When you don’t grow somebody’s skills, when you don’t help them improve their competencies in specific areas, and then because you put undue pressure, the engagement level goes down. So you are whatever you’re doing in order to increase productivity, actually, it is spiraling down.

Kathleen Ryan [00:09:48]:

Well, that’s partly why I say that I think many of these situations are sustainable for only so long. So I’m not disagreeing with you at all. I don’t think it’s a particularly wise model or a wise set of assumptions if you’re looking at the long term, and certainly if you claim to have people being your most important resource, to not put time and effort into helping people live healthy lives and grow and increase their capacity, then I think you’re sort of shooting yourself in the foot. I also think that there’s a reality around working in organizations today where lots of people in effect have to suck it up to be seen as appropriate to a culture that is asking more and more of employees. So there’s sort of this thing about one’s personal philosophy and what any of us would like to see in an idealized world, balance that with the reality of what many businesses are faced with these days and a presiding model, and I think what you’re talking about is wanting a different model for the way in which an organization’s culture is structured.

Sanjog Aul [00:11:21]:

So if you were to look at the different organizations and I’m sure you consult with a number of them, have they shown the propensity to say, yes, we will anyway be sending these leaders or upcoming stars for more training, more coaching, mentoring, etcetera etcetera to get them to the next level. What is being done as a percentage to take those 9 to 5 performers, not yet rock stars, but have the potential and the intent to become that as a percentage of their investment towards their workforce to get much better returns? I mean, that’s what we are saying perhaps. What’s their viewpoint? Do they not invest in it yet? What is the percentage of investment as a comparison to the top performers?

Kathleen Ryan [00:12:10]:

You know, that’s data that I do not have. So I really can’t answer the question in terms of percentage.

Sanjog Aul [00:12:19]:

Maybe subjective. Maybe subjectively. What is their intention? Are they investing towards the regular Joe, or are they going to are they, you know, are they showing the signs that they would want to invest in someone who is the top 20% in terms of their measures of performance?

Kathleen Ryan [00:12:36]:

Well, I think a lot of that, again, goes back to it depends upon the organization, and it depends upon the industry. Does the industry require certification and consistent training and keeping up the skills. For example, in health care where I’ve done lots of work, it really is people need to maintain their credentials and, you know, you have a staff of nurses or physical therapists or technicians doing high test, high-tech testing to help people get a diagnosis. Those folks, of course, the organizations provide opportunities for them to maintain their skills and competence, otherwise the entire system would crumble. So, I think that there are lots of, I know I’m sure this must be frustrating for you, but my answer of it depends because there’s such variability in organization size and purpose and the kind of employees that they attract. So let me just say for the clients I work with, there is a varying investment in employee development, and I think first, employers would seek to maintain the technical competence of the employees based upon the work they do, so that that stays high, and then second, there’s less, but in some cases, still what I would consider significant investment in more of the people side of how folks go about working with one another and that of course includes teaming work.

Sanjog Aul [00:14:36]:

Let’s take a quick break listeners, we’ll be right back and just fundamentally try to answer a question about meeting somebody’s full potential. So if you have a regular individual who wants to have their 9 to 5 work life and that is again done because they have constraints. What is the possibility of helping them maximize their potential? What is needed from the organization’s side and what commitment or voluntary support or effort that has to be put in by that individual in order for them to be able to get there? And what are the issues which typically prevent someone from meeting their full potential within that 9 to 5 frame? We will talk about leaders, but that has to come from someone agreeing to say, I want to meet my full potential. So please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Speaker 0 [00:15:36]:

HP is proud to sponsor this program. Find out how the HP as a service solution for SAP HANA can help you gain instant impactful business results without capital investment by logging on to hp.com. Transform information into intelligence and a competitive advantage with a full spectrum of SAP HANA products and services from HP, a global SAP hosting partner.

Speaker 0 [00:16:06]:

Bosch Software Innovations is proud to sponsor this program. Visit www.bosch-si.com/connectedmanufacturing to find out how Bosch can help you improve your operational performance and become a manufacturing industry leader in a connected world. Change the way you predict, manage, and produce outcomes. Bosch connected manufacturing.

Speaker 0 [00:16:38]:

HP is proud to sponsor this program. Tap into our expertise, innovation, and services to bring your most important workloads to the cloud. You are listening to CIO Talk Radio with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about the show, please visit www.ciotalkradio.com. If you have a question or comment, call toll free at +1 (866) 472-5790. That number again is +1 (866) 472-5790. Now back to the show. Here’s Sanjog Aul.

Sanjog Aul [00:17:23]:

Welcome back. So we are talking about meeting the full potential or at least the intent of an individual to meet the full potential and then having the organization support and invest in that individual being able to meet their full potential. So given the direction we are going as a society and as the workforce is evolving and as organizational design is evolving, where are we today in your view, and what is desired for us to be able to create that perfect storm where everyone who comes in, no matter what their constraints are, for the time they are working, they are in that zone of the highest potential or meeting their full potential, and what is organization doing to harness that?

Kathleen Ryan [00:18:09]:

So, if I ran the world, which doesn’t seem to be the case, but nonetheless, if I ran the world, I would create organizations where each person would have an opportunity in her job or his job to not only perform tasks that they do well, but also be required to stretch them in terms of their knowledge or skill base, and that each of those individuals would be supported with an employee development program where they’d have an opportunity on a somewhat regular basis to gain knowledge and skills to help them push into the skill areas where they need to sharpen up because they’re being challenged, and that they’d also have an opportunity to periodically learn things about the human side of work in terms of how to communicate more effectively, how to be a better problem solver, how to have more vision in terms of long term goals, how to think systemically, how to understand the moving parts of an organization, and certainly how to collaborate effectively in a team, especially when it comes to creativity or innovation. Those would be high priorities for me.

Sanjog Aul [00:19:44]:

In your view, the way organizations one is to kinda hire people and train and provide them training. Another is the time boxing that we do in the way we assess what it would take to get something done and somebody sitting in an ivory tower coming up with the deadline if you will, which creates that pressure, what is required to be changing in that phase of how work gets created and how it gets allocated in order for us to start having some breathing room, if you will, so that people get a chance to invest in themselves and organization gets a chance to put some dedicated effort to growing people. It’s almost like you spend time cutting the wood, but you don’t spend any time sharpening the ax.

Kathleen Ryan [00:20:37]:

Right. I appreciate that metaphor. It seems to me that data systems are really important in any type of organization, and when I say data systems, I mean performance data, real time being fed back to not only leaders but to team members. I was in a conversation last night about healthcare and we were talking about when performance data is transparent to not only those doing the work, but also the customers or patients of those doing the work, it’s amazing how rapidly the system can improve, and so I think there’s a need to build a business case for investing more heavily in employee development and that business case comes from performance data, and so absent the information to say, oops, it looks like we’ve got a problem here because people are not able to perform their jobs as well as we need them to just in terms of technical competence or people are starting to get bummed out and discouraged and are spending more time on breaks, not coming back as quickly as possible, missing Fridays, missing Mondays, all manner of sitting in meetings very quietly, not raising their hands, not volunteering to engage. What are those both tangible and intangible signs that certain things need to be paid attention to? And that if leaders don’t make the investment in paying attention, they’re going to lose a great deal when it comes to the performance of the company?

Sanjog Aul [00:22:37]:

So I remember, it is almost, around 1998, I used to consult at a company and there was an individual who would put an alarm, literally an alarm at 4:55 PM, and that would ring and everybody will know, I’ll not use the real name, John is about to leave, and he would take those 5 minutes to pack his bags and at 5 he was out of the door. Now that’s an extreme case but most people who are seen as 9 to 5 leaders are put in that light and that’s why someone does not want to voluntarily pay attention. So what you said right is that we have to take care of that environment, but how does someone do it? Someone who is building policies are maybe too far removed from that floor where somebody is putting an alarm and the rest of them are not going and telling not specifically about John that he’s putting an alarm, but they kinda feel the same. I wish I had the courage to do that. So they don’t go and report back. So this becomes an issue organization wide and it never gets resolved. Nobody goes and sits down with John that why do you do that?

Kathleen Ryan [00:24:00]:

So your question to me is

Sanjog Aul [00:24:03]:

How do we get these things happening in organizations today.

Sanjog Aul [00:24:09]:

And if they had to be worked on, how do we get in touch with those people on a regular basis? Because if these things are persisting and nobody is blowing the whistle, perhaps they agree with it. They may not react in that way. So who is supposed to are they supposed to be watched over, or is this has this has to be solved by someone thinking, no. I should not be thinking that way. If I have to leave at 5, I will leave at 5, but I’m not stuck here. So let me spend the time constructively while I’m going to be here for 8 hours.

Kathleen Ryan [00:24:42]:

Well, it seems to me that in a case like that, like what you’re describing, two things come to mind. One is helping people who are in the first level of supervision in organizations be sensitive to how they need to be present and involved and engaged in the organization and in being very present and there is a resource to the people that they supervise. Years ago I did quite a bit of organizational design work and I have this fantasy that if the entire cultural change effort was directed around helping first level supervisors be highly effective in their work, what would happen with that? And I still really like that approach because I think that, you know, if I were a first level supervisor and I heard that alarm going off every day at five minutes to five, and I saw not only John but other people starting to pack up their bags, I ought to be thinking, what’s wrong with this situation? And what can we be coming together to talk about to help shift the energy that causes people to be bored out of their minds or not very committed to the organization, so all they want to do is get out of here at five minutes to five. Now that’s one thing is to really invest in helping first level supervisors be very good leaders themselves and help them to understand how to engage people. One of the things we know from our work on extraordinary teams is that team members are inspired by the purpose by the purpose of what the team does. So, if you were asking me questions about extraordinary or exceptional teaming, I’d be talking about working in creating a sense of energy in smaller groups of people such that they feel equally invested in the work that they’re doing and have opportunities to talk about the impact of their work and why it’s inspiring or compelling to them and to help them feel that their differences and their unique contributions are welcomed and that that’s a means of collaboration and creativity and shared leadership and full engagement. All of those things can be worked in a scale of 2 to 20 people. So those are things, but that can’t work in a traditional setting unless the first level of supervision has the support and the training and the skill set to invite that kind of teaming.

Sanjog Aul [00:27:46]:

You used the term supervisor, and we understand that supervisor has a role to, of course, be there if somebody needs help. Right, but one interpretation of the word supervisor is that we got to make people work because we feel those guys or whosoever is there on the floor is not willing to work or they have an intention to get distracted if someone is not watching. So would you say that mindset persists because you have people manage? Because if you’re trying to have these 9 to 5 employees become leaders and you want that supervisor to be a leader, then their approach has to change from someone managing to someone leading and leading by example and bringing the best out of them, but do you think the roles, the way they are described, their own measures of success, the way they are described and laid out as part of organizational design are aligned to that end goal of producing and building these regular 9 to 5 employees into leaders?

Kathleen Ryan [00:28:57]:

Well, I see you so alignment is a critical issue, and absolutely, if an organization has a philosophy that they want a fully engaged staff at whatever level of work, at whatever level of responsibility in the organization, that jobs, the structure of jobs, the expectations of jobs, the reward system, the training and development systems, all of these things need to be aligned around that core principle, and of course, today in many organizations, there may be a philosophy of wanting to do this, but in large organizations, it takes a while for the bureaucracy, the structure of the organization to catch up with the philosophy of a new kind of leadership. I think we’ve got real trouble with the language that we’re using these days so that some organizations will no longer use the term supervisor. They’ll use words like team leaders, for example, or other terms that try to escape the traditional hierarchical image, and so, when I was using that term, it was just the first level of the management structure and people who have the responsibility to lead teams of people to do great work and to, frankly, become the employer of choice. I mean that to me is sort of the holy grail is high quality work more than high productivity. I’ve been involved in the quality movement for years and I appreciate productivity and the whole economics of productivity, but if products or services aren’t meeting a quality standard that customers need and want, then the company is not going to be successful in the long run. So, I yeah. So I’m wondering here. So help me.

Sanjog Aul [00:31:05]:

No. That is okay. So let’s do this. I think you definitely gave a response here. Let’s take a quick break. Let’s just when we come back, let’s look at where should we start, and what doesn’t get measured cannot get managed. So where should we start putting the measures in place at the level where we have 9 to 5 employees to see what needs to be changed, and then we define how we’re gonna go about changing it. So what measures should we put in place as they go about doing their job in order for us to identify them as individuals and as teams where their potential is, and then we can steer them that way. Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back and explore the different measures that are possible. Please stay tuned.

Speaker 0 [00:32:03]:

HP is proud to sponsor this program. Tap into our expertise, innovation, and services to bring your most important workloads to the cloud.

Speaker 0 [00:32:15]:

Bosch Software Innovations is proud to sponsor this program. Visit www.bosch-si.com/connectedmanufacturing to find out how Bosch can help you improve your operational performance and become a manufacturing industry leader in a connected world. Change the way you predict, manage, and produce outcomes. Bosch connected manufacturing.

Speaker 0 [00:32:46]:

HP is proud to sponsor this program. Find out how the HP as a service solution for SAP HANA can help you gain instant impactful business results without capital investment by logging on to hp.com. Transform information into intelligence and a competitive advantage with a full spectrum of SAP HANA products and services from HP, a global SAP hosting partner. You are listening to CIO Talk Radio with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about the show, please visit www.ciotalkradio.com. If you have a question or comment, call toll free at +1 (866) 472-5790. That number again is +1 (866) 472-5790. Now back to the show. Here’s Sanjog Aul.

Sanjog Aul [00:33:49]:

Welcome back. So, Kathy, if you were to create a playbook for anyone who was trying to get the most out of these 9 to 5 workers who want to do a good job and we want to transform them into leaders, perhaps first thing would be to collect data or to talk to them. What kind of questions do you think we would ask as part of data collection to get to know them?

Kathleen Ryan [00:34:14]:

Well, you know, there are two levels of assessment that can be done. Most of the organizations that I’ve worked with over time, and I’m thinking of a couple in particular, take very seriously an annual employee satisfaction survey, and those can be pretty wide ranging in terms of the questions that are asked, not only in terms of things about, do you have enough resources to do your job correctly? Do you have the adequate knowledge and skills to do your job as it needs to be performed? How are things going in terms of your ability to speak up about questions and concerns that you have? Do you feel like you’re listened to by your manager or coworkers? Do you feel respected in the workplace? There’s a whole set of very traditional and very useful things to inquire about when it comes to the experience employees are having. So an annual employee satisfaction survey, and then what’s critical is not just doing the survey, but then it’s people paying attention to the survey. Some of my clients are very intentional about bringing back the results. They get the results on the units that they lead, and then they bring both the management structure together to talk about the implications, and then they share all of that information with all of the employees in the group and engage employees in talking about what do we need to do here to close some of the gaps, to make this a more satisfying place. So that’s one type of data collection, and it’s not, again, it’s not just enough to do the survey, but it’s really working with the data once it comes back and using it as a catalyst for problem solving. The other type of assessment of course is periodically, especially you can do this in two ways. When you’ve got a group that’s underperforming, you can certainly bring in ideally a neutral observer. This is going to sound self serving because I do this kind of assessment work for my clients all the time, but somebody from an internal consulting group in the organization if it’s large enough or somebody like me who’s on the outside of the company to come in to do some assessment around how are things going, and in those kinds of efforts, sometimes there is an online survey that can be included, but it’s also maybe doing focus groups or individual interviews to try to collect information about what’s going on. Usually in both of these ways, there does need to be a means of collecting data on the people who are in the leadership roles to give them feedback about how they’re playing with folks and if they need to make some changes in how they go about leading the organization. So those are pretty typical ways that are smart and especially if the data are used once the data come in, then you’ve got something very solid, and to do this on a somewhat regular basis. Another way to do that also is to study the groups that are very high performing and to pay attention to what’s going on there and then, essentially developing best practices and sharing those best practices with other parts of the organization. That’s a very smart way to do things. We don’t always have to be studying and paying attention to what’s going wrong. We can certainly, by paying attention to what’s right and doing more of what’s right and what’s working, it totally changes the energy in an organization.

Sanjog Aul [00:38:24]:

So in your view, the data that you mentioned we should collect and then we take that as a basis of discussing it across the organization or at least among those teams, and then, blending the high performers or taking high performing teams and individuals as an ideal or as someone who can be emulated and bring those learnings back to the people who we want to grow. Are these some of the things which have delivered quantifiable and measurable and significant results in terms of converting those average Joes into someone who wants to maximize their potential just by this very act of doing it?

Kathleen Ryan [00:39:08]:

I think it can certainly help. What I wouldn’t want to do is to set up a situation where, say, group A that was high performing got lots of attention and groups B and C who weren’t so high performing felt put down or diminished because the first group was identified as being such a high performing group. My own bias, so this whole thing of emulating, I think it’s not so much emulating people, but it’s learning about what are the methods that really seem to work well so that work gets done at a high level of quality and productivity and employees are engaged and excited and feel fulfilled at work, so we can learn from where it’s working right, and even more important way to do that is to let’s say you’ve got a group that’s underperforming, is to bring those people together and talk about what it is that they really want to create together, and then begin to work in a consistent and ongoing way paying attention to those people and providing additional support, time for deeper conversations, encourage them in problem solving, working with them on around the vision of the team and what it’s about and why it’s exciting to do that work. So it’s a process of employee engagement with those teams where more is desired of them. Because you’re absolutely right. They want to have a desire to do more as well. So, inviting them into the conversation is critical.

Sanjog Aul [00:41:10]:

Now would you agree that they have the desire to do it, but somehow people accept the fact that they are a cog in the wheel, and as long as they do what is assigned to them, to the organization’s standards, and maybe in some cases even exceed those standards, they’re still doing their job, but now that again is someone at an execution level, and now what you’re trying to do is to elevate them to start to think like a leader and work like leaders and create innovation like leaders. What’s that incremental next step that we would need in order for us to make that have them take that leap or get over that hump?

Kathleen Ryan [00:41:50]:

So I think what I do is initiate a conversation about shared leadership. I bring people together in a group. I’m working next week in Southern California with a group of about 15 people, maybe a bit more than that, and there are three levels in this group, three organizational levels. So let’s say you want and actually my clients are more interested in having people demonstrate more initiative in this group. If I were working with that group, I’d bring people together and engage them in a conversation about what they love about their work and what inspires them about their work. What they’d like to accomplish in the next year to 18 months that represents a stretch not only to themselves, but great benefit to those who use the products or services that they produce, and then I talk about leadership. What does leadership look like? What does leadership mean? Help people get beyond the stereotypic top down sense of management and leadership, and then talk about shared leadership, and what would it look like if each of us on this team shared in leading this team so that we’re focused on making sure the team gets led rather than preserving the notion that there’s one specific leader on the team. I would also work with the person who’s the designated leader of that team to help him or her actually lead in a way that promotes shared leadership and full engagement in the team.

Sanjog Aul [00:43:46]:

One is to, of course, what you just mentioned and kind of take them through that, mentoring or led session. What type of fears, uncertainties, doubts, reservations that are expected by people who have not yet taken the leap, they’re not there, and you’re showing them that this is what’s possible. So that’s great motivation, pep up, talk. What prevents them and what are the questions that have been typically asked? Would be great to learn.

Kathleen Ryan [00:44:17]:

I’m sorry. I’m not following.

Sanjog Aul [00:44:19]:

The people who are supposed to take that leap, you took them in those sessions, and you showed them what other leaders do. What reservations do they typically show, or what are the fears, uncertainties, and doubts that they express?

Kathleen Ryan [00:44:35]:

Well, one would be, what you intimated by saying, you go through a bunch of sessions, and then you’re sort of back to the same old, same old. So one fear or worry is will this stick? Will all of this excitement that we created in this day or this afternoon or this week, will it last? It’s a bit like falling in love, you get all excited about somebody, but then the question is, will this stick around, will this be real? So I think that’s a worry. I think that worry is will I have the time and energy to do my regular work and to be engaged in the more creative, innovative new stuff. Another worry is exactly the premise of your frame around 9 to 5, which is what are my obligations and responsibilities in the rest of my life and will all of this new and exciting stuff create more demands on me so that I’m squeezed even more than I am right now? I mean, everybody’s busy. People have demands on their lives, and so, it’s a worry. There’s sort of a trade off thing about excitement and engagement and feeling connected to a group of people at work, and then, but what about the rest of my life and how do I manage that? Another worry is, do I have what it takes to step into this new way of thinking or behaving? Will I be supported in terms of the things I need to learn and grow? And frankly, another fear or worry is, does this mean I’m going to have to change the way I do things? You know, many people are quite content with doing things in the same way. I just got a new computer system yesterday, for a matter of fact. So I have all this new equipment sitting in my office, and I’m wondering, okay, what am I going to have to learn to become efficient with this new equipment? And if I like the way I’ve been doing things, sometimes the notion of new is frustrating or intimidating to people.

Sanjog Aul [00:47:01]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back, and let’s look at how do we prime an organization for such a transformation, which means that, yes, we might do isolated trainings or those huddles where we will show them the path forward and you may answer a few questions, but then after when the real life hits or the real work comes, is that picture that was painted of what it’s gonna be like? How close are we able to make it to what we had promised because otherwise those dreams, those hopes are shattered and we are worse than we started. So please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back and see how an organization can then be primed before we take on this task of taking these 9 to 5 individuals and help them turn into 9 to 5 leaders as individuals and as teams. Please stay tuned.

Speaker 0 [00:47:58]:

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Speaker 0 [00:48:30]:

HP is proud to sponsor this program. Tap into our expertise, innovation, and services to bring your most important workloads to the cloud. HP is proud to sponsor this program. Find out how the HP as a service solution for SAP HANA can help you gain instant impactful business results without capital investment by logging on to hp.com. Transform information into intelligence and a competitive advantage with a full spectrum of SAP HANA products and services from HP, a global SAP hosting partner. You are listening to CIO Talk Radio with Sanjog Aul. To learn more about the show, please visit www.ciotalkradio.com. If you have a question or comment, call toll free at +1 (866) 472-5790. That number again is +1 (866) 472-5790. Now back to the show. Here’s Sanjog Aul.

Sanjog Aul [00:49:45]:

Welcome back. So we just spoke about what we can do with the people and how do we answer some of the questions and what some of the fears, uncertainties, and doubts they have. So perhaps we do a good job. However, when the real work they go back to the real world and they start working, they don’t see that support or perhaps they don’t see it going the way they thought it’s going to, and it further strengthens their doubts about whether they can get it done or some other issues. So it could have that detrimental effect. So what type of preparation, what type of priming should an organization do before that even starts these x number of people on that leadership journey?

Kathleen Ryan [00:50:25]:

One of the things is going to go back to a point that I made earlier in the program about helping anyone who has a designated leadership role, whether and whether they’re called team leaders or group leaders or supervisors or managers, whatever the title is that they’ve got, is helping those folks understand that if you want to change a culture. A colloquial definition for organizational culture is the way we do things around here. So if you want a more engaged, innovative, shared leadership type of culture in a work group or a team, it’s not just an annual retreat, or it’s not only a three day off-site. So a critical understanding is that those folks who are leading those teams, once the big event is over, have got to maintain regular attention on the ideas and the concepts and the decisions that were addressed in that off-site meeting. So again, I’m doing this thing next week with a group in Southern California. The leaders of that group, if they want to talk about return on investment, if they want a return on the investment of the time that they’re going to spend with me in a facilitated session, when I’m gone and this two day thing is over, they’ve got to be attending to how it is going in the real world so that if people go back to quote unquote normal life, there’s a checking in with people on how things are going. There’s follow-up in terms of implementing decisions. There’s bringing people together to talk about solving problems together. It’s taking the spirit of what goes on in those special sessions and putting that into the real everyday how we do things around here. That’s what changes the culture, and that’s what’s going to let your 9 to 5 workers see that, hey, things are different around here.

Sanjog Aul [00:52:46]:

We always talk about leaders playing that role where they lead by example and they set the tone, the culture of the organization. So if an organization because we talk to a lot of senior technology executives as well as their business counterparts. So both have to work together because both sides have these 9 to 5 folks. If you were to recommend or appeal to these leaders in terms of what they should be doing at the top so that it creates the right type of tone and also creates the right type of inspiration for people who want to get there, and if the right support given to them and training given to them, they can get to that next level, then that investment would be well worth it. What’s your message to those leaders?

Kathleen Ryan [00:53:39]:

To the top leaders. I would say that you start with organizational outcomes, and of course, it varies whether you’re in the private sector or the not for profit sector, but get clear on what the goals of the organization are and then develop a clear and aligned philosophy around the engagement of people and the degree to which the work is either routine work or innovation. What’s the blending of that? And once the senior team is clear on that, then to take a look, get some work going on with aligning the systems in the organization, resource allocation, having equipment in the right place at the right time, what’s the performance appraisal or review process? What about compensation and benefits? What about training and development? To make sure that the infrastructure of the organization is aligned to help meet that vision. The other thing I would do is make sure that there is really great communication between the top of the organization and those embedded within the organization, and that senior people are out and about and visiting teams and watching the work get done and taking shifts at night and participating in a real way that lets the 9 to 5 folks know that those folks at the top are not off in some ivory tower, but really are paying attention. Regular communication, leaders showing up, asking questions, helping to solve problems. I think all of that’s really critical, and keeping it going back to then this sense of what are we trying to do here.

Sanjog Aul [00:55:50]:

On behalf of the show and our listeners, I’d really like to thank you, Kathy, for sharing your thoughts on 9 to 5 leaders.

Kathleen Ryan [00:55:57]:

It’s been my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Sanjog Aul [00:56:00]:

Thank you so much again, and listeners, please like us on Facebook, search for CIO Talk Radio, and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Thank you again for listening to CIO Talk Radio. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host till next week. Take care and God bless.