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TEAM WORK EXCELLENCE
TEAM WORK EXCELLENCE
Episode Summary: Imagine a world where leaders don’t just direct but inspire—where every conversation sparks growth and trust. In this episode, Tim and Sehaam explore how modern leaders can use coaching skills to foster collaboration, innovation, and stronger team connections. Sehaam discusses the rise of younger leaders eager to embrace a different model of leadership—one that prioritizes understanding individual team members, building mutual trust, and supporting personal growth over command and control.
Episode Notes
Imagine a world where leaders don’t just direct but inspire—where every conversation sparks growth and trust. In this episode, Tim and Sehaam explore how modern leaders can use coaching skills to foster collaboration, innovation, and stronger team connections. Sehaam discusses the rise of younger leaders eager to embrace a different model of leadership—one that prioritizes understanding individual team members, building mutual trust, and supporting personal growth over command and control. She illustrates through examples and practical advice how a coach-leader mindset can reshape organizations by encouraging leaders to embrace listening, curiosity, and patience. This dynamic approach, she argues, not only inspires teams but also provides leaders with greater fulfillment and strategic focus. Sehaam also shares insights from her book, The Better Conversations Rulebook, which provides leaders with actionable questions and phrases for fostering more profound, more effective communication. Tim and Sehaam delve into the nuances of building coaching skills, the art of asking the right questions, and the powerful impact of trust-building on team morale and productivity. About Sehaam Cyrene Sehaam Cyrene is an Executive Leadership & Strategy Coach to CEOs and Executive/Senior Leadership Teams. She is the Founder of Coach/Lead Ltd. and creator of the CPD Certified online course Leaders Who Coach(tm). The Better Conversations Rulebook is based on some of the skills and competencies taught to leaders in organizations across many functions and industries. Sehaam's deep knowledge of what keeps leaders awake at night and passion for leaders to find joy in their work make this Rulebook an immensely easy-to-read and instantly applicable conversation resource that every leader should have at their fingertips. A seasoned business leader, entrepreneur and live speaker, Sehaam is on a mission to make coach-leadership a global standard. Resources discussed in this episode: Contact Tim Sweet | Team Work Excellence: Contact Sehaam Cyrene | The Coach/Lead Coach: Transcript: Sehaam 00:01 What I love about this younger generation of leaders coming through is that they're really hungry for a collaborative style of leading. They're not accepting of what they've seen before. They know it can be better. They might not know what that better is, but they're really searching for it, and they're challenging organizations, and that is fertile ground for leaders having these coaching skills and modelling coach leadership because you are, you're modelling your team and your peers. Watch what other people are doing, and so it's just, how do you show up? That's what's exciting. Tim 00:34 I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you consider yourself the kind of person that gets things done? Are you able to take a vision and transform that into action? Are you able to align others towards that vision and get them moving to create something truly remarkable? If any of these describe you, then you, my friend, are a leader, and this show is all about and all for you. I'm Tim Sweet, and I'd like to welcome you to Episode 43 of the Sweet on Leadership podcast. Tim 01:08 Well, Hey everybody, welcome back to Sweet on Leadership. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us today. Thank you very much for taking the time to invest in yourself and broaden your horizons. And the person that's in front of me today and the person that you're listening to join me is a very dear friend, a colleague that we've been in each other's orbits since around 2016-2015. Sehaam is a leadership coach. She's an advisor. She's the founder of Coach Lead, which is a fantastic organization that's helping leaders and people that I'm very fond of on this side of the pond. But of course, Sehaam is in London, England. So, thank you very much for joining us today, Sehaam. It's so wonderful to spend a little more time with you. Sehaam 01:49 I'm really excited to chat with you. Tim, it's been a while. Tim 01:53 Well, you and I are cut from the same cloth. We care about many of the same things. Some of my fondest professional activities have been co-writing articles with you. We've done series in the past. Some of the most meaningful pieces of writing that I've done have been in conjunction with you. And so, you know, I'm really excited to see what comes out of today as we record this conversation and and play with a few ideas. Sehaam 02:21 Definitely, I'm not sure we've got enough time, but we'll see what we can do in the next half hour or so, Tim. Tim 02:27 There's always another time. There's never has to be just one, but before we keep going, though, what would you like people to know about you when they're envisioning who you are and what you do? Sehaam 02:40 Well, I'm super passionate about leaders using our coaching skills as coaches because we know how amazing that is for people, how it unlocks people and gets people unstuck. So my passion, all my work, is devoted to teaching leaders how to use coaching skills, and that might be learning to use a question. land a question, land a phrase, how to show up in a conversation all the way through to actually, really digging in and learning at depth the skills and techniques of coach leadership and the nuance within that. Because you're not a pure coach, you're a leader who uses coaching skills, so happy to share more about that a little later. So, I do that through my one-to-ones. I work with senior leadership teams. I have a program that I built during lockdown called Leaders Who Coach and I run cohorts and connected programs for organizations. Really about building that coaching culture, that coaching capability within teams and organizations. I love it. Tim 03:47 And there's nothing more rewarding. I think of some of my longest-term clients, and it's funny how I have these, I like to say clients for life, the ones that it just never stops. I mean, I have coaches myself in various areas of work and life that I use and that continue to always offer me new perspective and ways to see myself and to get over some of the barriers that I think are insurmountable, but when they break it down, it's step by step, but It's wonderful to see your clients graduate into that, demonstrating the very skills that that we're helping them with, and really becoming that coach to others. Always found that such a gratifying experience. It doesn't stop. I mean, it's funny, in many cases, it makes them hungrier and hungrier to try new things, but that leader as coach, it's a term that you introduced me to, and it's something that's always stuck in my mind. And so, yeah, I'm happy that you're here and that people are going to get a chance to see this. On that note, we talk about the skills that a leader must develop in order to be an effective coach, and I know that is one thing we're going to be introducing a little bit later here. But before we do, our previous guests, Tim Bessinger and Renee Miller, were here, and when asked about our little tradition, about what question would you lob at the guest that is going to follow you? And here was the one they left for you. As we know, everyone finds themselves engaging in activities that are not always clearly helpful to who we want to be and where we want to go. And our conversation with Tim and Renee was really about amazing adventures and big choices that they had made. And Aaron, the previous guest, had said, you know, how do you take that one big thing off the shelf and dust it off and actually get it done? Tim Beissinger Clip 5:47 If you have to do that, if you need to clear up room in your schedule, what is one thing that you're doing that you would or want to get out that you want to stop doing. We all have too many things to do and not enough time. So what would you cut? Tim 06:06 And it doesn't have to be something like stop tying your shoes, as he said, it doesn't have to necessarily be that specific, but would be the one thing that you, as a coach to others, so that people know we're human, would choose to cut to create more capacity for yourself. Sehaam 06:23 Cleaning the house. Tim and Renee. Cleaning the house, right? Household chores are important, and there can be some sort of meditative element counter to doing those chores. But I think if it's to stop one thing in my life, it would be to hand that over to somebody else. If I could afford it, I would have someone cook me meals. Because as much as I love. I do love cooking. I absolutely don't mind house cleaning, but to me, that would be a luxury to have that side of things taken care of. As a mum of 20 plus years, that would be quite liberating to just not have that responsibility. And then hopefully come back to, maybe not the house cleaning, but come back to, you know, enjoying cooking food, because I have the time to really kind of indulge. But, yeah, that's probably two things, right? But we'll stick with house cleaning. Tim 07:18 I love how you phrase that because it's not just what are you going to cut, but what's the thing that it makes space for? And why is that, you know, a net positive on your day or or in your year, right? And I think that's such an important thing that we do the math and we say, you know, what is this really worth? And it's funny, in that afford conversation, yes, it's a luxury for somebody to clean your house. You know, often it's funny. I like building things, but sometimes I do things myself. I build a fence when I should be hiring somebody to do it. Or sometimes they're faster than I am, they're better than I am, they're cheaper than I am. Like, just go and build a fence. Like, economically. It makes no sense for me to stress– Sehaam 8:04 False economy, right? Tim 8:05 Yeah, false economy, 100%. Great answer. I'm gonna let you think about it. Towards the end of the show, I'm gonna ask you to lob one at our next guest. Okay, let's get into what we were talking about before we hit record here. You were sharing with me this idea that the new generation of leaders that are that are moving in, right? We have Gen Z and millennials coming in, and you and I have seen the rise of Gen Y, and we've seen now the tailing off of the boomers. Now, Gen X is slowly leaving the workforce, and we've done generational work, right? So we see this new generation of leaders with new pressures and new ideas and different experiences come into the workplace. You've got some fascinating insight into what this group is looking for. Can you share a little bit about that and kick us off? Sehaam 8:54 Yeah, sure. So my observation is that it's nothing new, but leaders are getting younger, and I think there's a certain amount of a whole culture of startups and scale-ups that's really driven this and encouraged people at a younger age to start something or get involved early in a young organization, and inevitably, those leaders find themselves leading teams of people, having to make strategic decisions they've never encountered before. They're having to be aware of board meetings and governance and a whole bunch of things. How do you build a team? How do you scale? Very often, their own experience is either quite short or doesn't exist. They're absolutely doing it from the beginning for the first time. And also, I notice the number of direct reports that these people have is getting bigger, right? You know, it can very quickly mushroom from one or two people as your direct report to 10 or more, right? In a short space of time, because of the nature of the types of work that we're doing. Because most work is technology work, and so they come with a different expectation. They're very well educated about what good leadership is. This plethora of books, around all of that, I've added one myself to the piles of books. So they are educated, but they're not practiced. And I think this is where this sort of big gap is, and that's the bit that I'm excited by because I think they're challenging the norms and expectations of leadership. They're actually naming some stuff that I think in my generation certainly didn't question. You just joined the workforce; you didn't really ask questions. You did as you were told. Very much command and control. And I think these younger leaders, from young millennials through to Gen Z coming through, we have different desires, different ideas of what good looks like, a greater self-advocacy. It might not feel like that to them, but by comparison to our generation, definitely much better self-advocacy of this is, you know, this is what I expect. Why can't we have a culture like this? I'm expecting a leader or, you know, a manager who can grow me, so all of those make for a very exciting space. What comes next, right? Tim 11:34 For sure, it's funny that when I think back to early work with generation, we were working with Gen Y, and they were the first of the digital generations where we were, you know, just waiting for them to grow up enough where they would get it and they would stop caring about what they cared about. And that didn't happen. Instead, Gen X started to think like Gen Y, and now Gen and so I see this thing that even though I'm 50, I don't feel 50. I feel 26 in my head. And so myself and my clients, I see them struggling with many of the same things that for you, dear listener, just because we're talking about the younger generation if you're my age, my vintage, don't stop listening. We still care about these things, but we're approaching them from a position of change, changing over from what we knew, the command and control structures that we knew, they're being gestated in this, you know, they're bringing that language, often from their parents and often from media. They're entering the workforce or entering their leadership journey with these things being the reality, whereas we're catching up. And for us, it's often a change experience, but for them, it's a foundational thing. And so when you look at that, what are some of the keywords, what are some of the key topics that we have to be really aware of are at the forefront right now for all of us, and in particular, these new leaders. Sehaam 12: 57 I think there's a reality, isn't there, that work life, working in a team, looks a certain way, and there are expectations or an ideal of how a team should function, how your manager should manage you, how you as a manager should show up. Gosh, I so very often hear from managers that they really don't know what they're supposed to do in these growth meetings, so they end up reverting to them being very tactical. You know, how's your week going? What have you achieved? What are you working on next type meetings, rather than, what's your big aspiration? Where do you want to go and knowing how to get into it? Stay with it. Allow time for it to build from one conversation to the next. I often say to people, we ask too much of a single conversation, you can't cover everything, and you're not going to build trust in one conversation. You're not going to uncover someone's desires and aspirations, and passions in one conversation. So I think for all of us, it's just the realization that so much of our happiness at work hangs on the quality of our relationships, but the quality of our relationships depends on us being able to understand people, to be able to be in conversation with people, and actually know what's going on for that person, the stuff that they say, as well as the stuff they don't say and that maybe they conceal, and having the patience to and the skill to earn that permission to get to a deeper level with that individual in that conversation. Tim 14:37 And even to handle that you know, Gallup put out some, and I quote these numbers quite often, but Gallup put out a study that said, you know, they figure that when we look at people's general makeup, about 10% of the population have the capacity to be what we would deem as modern leaders. And I think it's much lower than that. I think it's like 6% because I think a lot of that 10% never got the chance. Socio-economically, gender, race, just situation they were never afforded. The window never opened for them to be in that position professionally, but for the rest, the ability to get into that space, to have the capacity to care deeply about who a person is, and carry that with you as a leader, because you're now taking on their success on top of your own, which I think is the definition for me. You get yourself in the middle of them being as successful as they can. That requires a capacity to do that, and for some people, is exhausting. They cannot hold that with them. It's too burdensome. Doesn't make them bad people. You need to create those spaces. And I love when you say that, stick with it, have that conversation, and oh, boy, do we like to introduce tools and personality profiles that are some sort of substitution for getting to know people, versus doing the work and actually understanding who they are. And as you say, when you've got a team of one and two, it's important to do it, but maybe not overdo it. And when you have a team of 30, it's really hard to do it to any great extent. And so finding what your number is is really important too. Is it seven seems to be an off-quoted number? Is like seven is like a good quality number for direct reports. But can you build that capacity up, that vision of yourself, putting that on yourself, as your responsibility, as part of your not just about getting the tactical stuff done or focusing on that, because it's easy, but really being that glue that is a defining idea for leaders, isn’t it? Sehaam 16:48 I very often say to leaders, you have two responsibilities. One is to be strategic, so that thinking time, the networking, the getting to know your peers, the being out there, and whatever your function requires. And the second one is growing the capability of your people. And if you're doing the coding, if you're doing the admin, if you're doing all of these things, you are not fulfilling your responsibility in that role. You're missing out on the opportunity to grow. You're missing out on the opportunity to feel rewarded. Because, as you say, seeing other people's success is hugely rewarding, seeing someone grow and do that, and you're missing out on being at the strategic decision-making table. If you're sitting in meetings and haven't got anything to contribute, then you've got to think about why. So, to Tim and Rene's question, what would you clear out the way it's the doing, and really look at what is your calendar filled with, and should you be in those meetings? And how do you extricate yourself? Who do you need to build up? Who do you need to grow so that they can own that part of it, which indeed is part of their job description, right? So that frees you up to be strategic. So, if your weekly calendar isn't focused on those two things, you need a really good, hard look at it to see what you could be doing better. Tim 18:16 It’s funny, because, as you see, especially when you see technical specialists, and we see this a lot in education, where we have people that are coming up, they're professors. I mean, they're academics, or they're scientists and engineers, or they are doctors and whatnot. They're coming up through being the key contributor, right? They're the expert. And then they move into leadership spheres, and their idea of what value they provide can still be so deeply rooted in being on the tools that it's very tough to give up that. And not only are you robbing yourself from being at those strategic meetings, but you could be robbing your reports of truly developing their own capabilities. And, you know, we talk about micromanagement. It's so funny, in many of my leadership meetings, micromanagement will come up as that thing that I need. I don't want to do, I don't want to be, and we treat it like it's this thing. Micromanagement, to me, is an indicator. It's a lack of trust. It's like, I don't trust it's going to be done as well as I could do it. Maybe you're not, and there's lots of reasons why it happens you haven't taken the time to learn, or you haven't let go. But there's a trust challenge, like let it go, let them manage it. Be less operational, less tactical. Get into the strategic. Give them room to make mistakes and figure out what you're going to do when it happens. But that micromanagement, to me, is always an indicator that there's a lack of trust, that there's a lack of relaxation and release, that this person can do the job, maybe not as well as me, but differently than me, you know. Sehaam 19:54 And that's also a reflection of the leader's skills themselves. So one of the hardest things when I take leaders through leaders who coach, or a Leading Through Change program, and I'm teaching them coaching skills, and we do live practice on each other, and it's only when they're actually in that that they start to see, gosh, this is quite difficult. It's that tendency to want to give someone the answer to get to the solution as quickly as possible, right? And often, you know, yes, you're under pressure. And I would say in a crisis situation, absolutely, you need to be more directive, but you need to loop back with that person and then reconnect in some way. But generally speaking, because I'm the expert, because I have got all this knowledge and expertise and so on, I do know what the answer is, great. And there's a place for that towards the end of the conversation, that if you bring that in too soon, you are squashing that person's perhaps their interest. Maybe they actually walked into the room and had some ideas, but you never asked them. They didn't get a chance to share. You didn't get to have a chance where you could really challenge them to think bigger or to take an idea even further. You missed the opportunity to really understand how do they think? You know, what's their motivator? Where do they tend to get stuck? And how can you support them? So this desire, tell people you've got to sit on your hands and just, you know, use some other ways. And those ways can be as simple as a phrase like, Tell me more. What have you already thought about doing? What's causing you to feel stuck here? It's back to that. Allow time and stay with it for a little while to really, like, you know, find the evidence, go on an effort to kind of really explore and understand. How does this person think? What ideas do they have? Because that will mean that you can go on holiday, on vacation, and know that your team members have got everything covered, because you know how they think, then you know how they're going to resolve problems that come up. No one needs to ring you or message you or WhatsApp you or whatever you don't need that you can really have that time out so that desire to tell people what to do or to come up with a solution, give it to them, is actually to your words, denying them. It's robbing them of a chance to really express or explore or develop a stronger emotional attachment to the process, right or the outcome, because you know what, that's what's going to drive them us telling them what to do. It went, Yeah, okay, but you know that's not my context, and you didn't really understand it, and you didn't really ask me about it, so I'm just going to ignore you and go and do my own thing, and then we get those surprises, right? Well, things weren't done the way we wanted them. So. Tim 23:00 If we put ourselves into the mind of that young leader who's maybe two, five years into this, and they're starting to extend trust, and then all of a sudden, it turns out that, oh, something wasn't going on. I mean, often, if you are that domineering type leader, if you come with all the answers, and you are the expert, you're intimidating, or they feel they have to surprise you. They feel they have to impress you because otherwise, they can't compete. And that's a real way to ostracize people, is to make them feel somehow less or that they can't be intellectual peers, or can't rise to the level of performance, it's unattainable, those surprises. And we talked a little bit about this off-air, so I think that's a great segue for us to take into this. Talk to me a little bit about the types of surprises that people suddenly have and how that plays on the mind of the leader, and how it could actually cause them to maybe regress and to become more than command and control or micromanaging leader if it's not properly addressed if people don't have the skill to deal with it. So tell me about those surprises. Sehaam 24:12 Yeah, you hear it, don't you? You delegated something to somebody, and the work didn't come back to the quality, or it just didn't happen at all, or there was a key piece of information that you know you as a leader because as we go up through the layers, less and less information gets passed up, and because everyone is making a judgment and filtering that information based on what they think is most relevant. But if you don't have the trust, you are going to find that the surprises are where information is held back in a team that's trying to innovate, that's crucial that your team members are generous, and they can only be generous if there's a high level of trust, and there's a way of collaborating that really is very inviting. So people are going to hold that information back for lots and lots of reasons, right? So a good word is concealment, and concealment because it's not information that was omitted or forgotten, it's information that I'm not going to share with you because you might judge me. It might be politically, a really bad move for me to share something, and that might be about an event, an incident, a mistake, something that happened that actually, you don't want your boss to know about. Your team might mess up, someone might make a decision, someone in your team, if you've got a hierarchy, someone in your team might make a mistake, and you don't share that upwards because you're protecting a team member. You're protecting a decision that you made or the fact that you actually didn't have a conversation with your director report. And now this problem has surfaced again, and judgment might be in the form of I've had this incident a lot where someone they were trying to get their team member to produce a very simple document in PowerPoint, and they went through a couple of rounds of resetting a new deadline, and when they got to the bottom of it, that person didn't feel confident using PowerPoint, and it is so tiny, and for us, we can forget that maybe some people just don't have the confidence to use certain tools, and we assume that they've had the training, or they've used it somewhere else and they haven't, and that can create massive frustration, because if you're relying on it as a presentation to a regional team meeting, for example, and it doesn't show that looks poor on the team. So what are you going to do? You have a direct report who concealed the fact they don't know how to use PowerPoint, and you can't share that information at a regional team meeting because you're protecting that team member. But it's essential to some decision-making. It's essential to the intelligence that's being shared in the organization, right? And then there is active concealment. I don't want you to know this because it's not to my advantage that you know it. I'm going to keep it for myself. I want to be the person that is seen as holding that knowledge or having that influence. So we do it for lots of different reasons, and those are the kinds of surprises that we don't like. Those are the things that create friction in our day, right? Tim 27:33 For sure, when we have people that aren't sharing, what impedes that willingness to expose oneself or to be open? That gotcha moment. Sehaam 27:45 I think that we do a lot of self-judgment first of all, so if you are my manager and I come into the meeting, I may judge a certain piece of information as silly, not relevant, tiny, minor. But actually, it ends up being a massive blocker to us getting something done or starting a task, right? And you maybe gave me a task to do, but there's a sequence in there. I really have no idea, so I didn't know what to do about it. I sat on it and so on. I might have a personal challenge that means I am just not comfortable. My style might not be to share certain things that you're asking me to share. And so that's why having that ability to observe people, to read the situation, to ask questions rather than assume something about someone. Those skills are so important. Have always been important, but we've not been very good at them, but I think super important for younger generations of leaders because they want to have a very different way of being with people. And I think we've gotten a little bit waylaid by things like talking about being vulnerable at work or imposter syndrome. I feel they are distracting from what really we should be talking about, which is our ability to have conversations with people. Tim 29:19 You know, when we take the employee perspective, or at least the person that's reporting into the leader they're carrying with them, their identity of who they think they need to be. And I mean, one of the chronic things I see is that when people get their first salary job, or when they're showing up at a boardroom table, they have this idea that they got hired to be the person that was fire and forget it. Should know everything about everything and should not come with questions or fears or a need to learn and grow. And so if they're asked something they don't know, I hate that fake it till you make it. Just despise the term. But often, people will say nothing, or they will fear that vulnerability. And at the same time, we've got leaders that, as you say, they need to be fluent in their own style and the style of their people so that they can tell that. You know what, this person just doesn't open up in this way, we require a different approach and then make it safe, like imposter syndrome means that a person has to fake it. You know what? I mean? Like, I feel like I'm faking it. Well, when are you enough? When are you enough to just go in and say, this is where I'm at? And if the leader is leading in a way that they are growth-minded, as we say, and not scarce-minded, or transactionally minded, that this person is supposed to show up with all the answers, then we got room for that. Does the employee understand that that's the case? Is their experience consistent, that it's constantly reinforced, and then we can get to this period of openness? And I think that's what you answered, was, why are people worried? Why would they ever hold back? Well, because they're humans. Sehaam 31:02 Absolutely, and I think we go into conversations assuming we have a right to have this conversation. So another thing that I teach is what I call trust, permission, dynamic. You might have worked with someone for a long time and think that you know them and you have a certain level of trust, but actually, for each conversation that you're in, you can't assume that you have the trust enough for the topics that you need to discuss, and so it's being mindful of what's the mood that you're both entering this conversation with. Has one of you come out of a tough conversation or a meeting and is feeling a bit flustered or is distracted and really just syncing with each other and establishing, you know, contracting how you're going to use this time together. What are you going to talk about? What are you going to resolve? But we too often assume and step into spaces, and because we're not inviting enough, we're not inviting of the other person, there just isn't that exploration, there isn't that sharing, there isn't that emotional connection between us to get into it. And so it's important that we do make time for these, and I know people are stretched, but honestly, there's a lot of meetings that we're in that we shouldn't be in, don't need to be in. And like I said earlier, we should be making time for that. And there is that expectation, right? Tim 32:27 Yeah, you used the word false economy earlier, and I think that that's really, you know, that thought that we're saving time by skipping over the connection time, it's going to bite you. You're going to pay for it one way or another. That knowledge of, do we have the right to do things? I mean, even when you and I talked most recently here, I know that I have time blindness. I don't view the passage of time and something I've had to learn about myself. And when you and I talk, it could be years between conversations, and for me, it's like yesterday. I have to be very careful that I'm not assuming trust for somebody that has felt the passage of time, you know. So I have to sort of start where we're at. And as you were speaking, it brought up something really interesting for me, a leader, because they're out there doing the strategic stuff, because they're out there talking to the CEO, or they're out there, you know, in the public, and then maybe they gave a press conference, or they're talking in front of the whole team there, there's going to be a lot of questions. They're very visible, and there's a lot of questions from the report saying, What does this mean for me? And you may need to have time to have them answer those questions, whereas the challenge for the leader is that person may have been working tactically, operationally, and we don't know exactly what they're doing and what they're dealing with. And so where our work is highly visible and we need to explain it, yet their work is somewhat invisible or hard to see, and we need to have them explain it. We're coming from two very, very different positions, where they're making a lot of assumptions based on what we're doing, and we're making a lot of assumptions based on what we did when we did the work, or what we think the job should be, and holy moly, what a powder keg that can create if we don't deal with it. Sehaam 34:11 Right? And there's definitely a power imbalance, right? Just by virtue of us being their boss, can skew, so if we are setting the agenda and we tell them how to do stuff, or we say, this is what we're going to talk about. Okay, you're the boss. I'm going to go with that, rather than actually bring something up that might actually be an idea about how the team functions, what we could do better, right? All of these things. So, yeah, you know. And a certain amount of ego and showing that we know stuff and so on, but we really have to let go of that and create that space for growth. I think you mentioned that earlier, for someone else to grow, because if you're not doing it, you're not fulfilling your role, right? And those nasty surprises and all that concealment will continue. We conceal things to protect ourselves, to make ourselves look better to others, to manage our reputation, and so on. And you've got to be aware that those things are happening, you know, within your team and through the whole range of malicious to innocent and just, you know, I'm not experienced at work. I didn't want to talk about it, because I think it has a lot of air time, but this idea of imposter syndrome, it's the feeling that you have that you don't know enough, right? And so what we don't teach people to do is to hatch a plan, come up with a strategy, think stuff through, reach out to people, right? Have a way that you respond to situations where you don't have all the information. And you know, on the flip side, it's that the thing that drives leaders to jump in with an answer or tell people what to do, is this value that we hold in society, that we should have the answers that leaders do need to know. And to your point earlier, right? I'm hired because I know how to do this stuff, 100%, 110%, so actually, yeah, that bit's great, and that's important, and that's why you're in the role, and you've certainly earned your stripes to be in that leadership role. But now things have changed, and now you have other people that you're growing and, you know, I mentioned earlier, the opportunity to share your knowledge comes towards the end, and you and I know that as course correcting, what have you, and stress testing somebody's ideas, so getting into those sorts of questions of, you know, how do you think it'll happen in this situation? What have we not thought of? And I can share my perspective or my experience of doing this. And it went, what do you think? Do you think that has merit for here in this situation that you're dealing with? Is there something that would be valuable there? That's where we can come in with our knowledge, that's where we can do that course correcting and teach that person to think more deeply, to think several steps ahead, because that's what we want. We want our team members to be able to respond to things, to adapt, to foresee and anticipate, and even just know how to conduct themselves when the unexpected happens. Tim 37:16 And to have a good relationship with that. Not knowing, you know, it's an oldie, but a goodie. You don't know. Add the word yet. You don't know yet, and be able to have those yet discussions with your staff and say, No, you don't have the answer yet. How are you going to get there? Tell me what you think you need to do. And then, as you say, come in at the end. And you've given us this great model, or at least this visualization of, you know, for the leader, understand that they have pressures of their own, and we need to understand what those are, and the concealment is a natural thing, and it's going to happen. And as leaders, we can work with this positively by making sure that we're giving them the opportunity to recognize that in themselves and coaching them through it, and then being supportive and moving a lot of our initiative to the end, saying, all right now we can review how they did, and maybe they've taught us a thing or two so that we don't have to be caving to our own pressure to be the expert, or to get it done quickly, or to be the rightest person in the room, right? Sehaam 38:26 What I do hear a great deal from leaders who graduated from Leaders Who Coaches, and even through the program, they talk a lot because I make them go and practice these skills, right? So sit on your hands, ask these questions, listen, and so on. And they come back, and they go, Wow, they came up with something I never would have thought of. I really didn't know that that was going on, or I didn't know they had that position or those thoughts. They actually came up with something better. And once leaders start to build up their own evidence for those skills working. It's really easy to keep doing them. You know, you get a much richer conversation and an outcome when you do sit on your hands and stop telling people what to do. Tim 39:12 I think we’ve covered a lot of ground today. As you've said, I think that's a great segue knowing what graduates of your program look like to let's take a moment here, and we're going to get you to the question you're going to ask the next person. But before we do, let's talk about, what are you excited about. You’ve got this course that’s available. Tell us a little bit more. What else are you excited about? Sehaam 39:31 I'm excited about us moving into truly what I believe to be the next wave, if you like, or the next era of leadership. And you and I talked earlier, there's command and control that everyone knows and hates, and then we've got servant leadership, which doesn't always get a good rap. We also have had a decade or two of coaches being around and people, more and more people, know what it's like to be coached, and certainly know that coaches exist, right? So, for me, the next obvious sort of move is that leaders have these coaching skills, and that's what excites me because what I love about this younger generation of leaders coming through is that they're really hungry for that. They're hungry for a collaborative style of leading. They're not accepting of what they've seen before. They know it can be better. They might not know what that better is, but they're really searching for it, and they're challenging organizations, you know, with talking about culture and so on, and that is prime fertile ground for, you know, more and more leaders having these coaching skills and being coach leaders or modelling coach leadership through the organization or with their team, because you are you're modelling your team and your peers. Watch what other people are doing because they're looking for answers, too. Nobody has all the answers. Nobody knows everything that they're doing. Everyone has doubts. And so it's just, how do you show up? That's what's exciting. Tim 41:12 If people are going to engage with these thoughts of yours, where can they find you? What can they pick up? Sehaam 41:18 Folks can go to my website, which is coachlead.co, you can find me on LinkedIn. So my handle is Sehaam, S, E, H, double, A, M, and you'll find me on YouTube as well. Sehaam Cyrene. Tim 41:33 And you mentioned you injected a book into the mix, into the universe. Tell us about that. Sehaam 41:38 It's called The Better Conversations Rulebook: Questions and Phrases Practiced Daily by Leaders Who Coach. It's a sequence of essays, if you like, with a total of 88 questions and phrases and explainers for why you might use them in different situations and what's their purpose. So it's a very practical guide to different scenarios that we're facing, and many of them are the sort of the most popular ones that Leaders Who Coach use. So yeah. Tim 42:09 Okay, let's get to the question. So you were kind enough to feel the question the pop fly that Tim had sent for you. What would be your question to the next person in line? Sehaam 42:21 Okay, so my question is, Who or what anchors you when you're having a tough time, and if they feel comfortable sharing how, that will be wonderful. Tim 42:34 So the who or the what would be that would be a memory or a pivotal moment or a pivotal person. Sehaam 42:41 It could be a person, it could be a writer, it could be an actor, depending on what your profession is, right? Might be someone in your industry, might be a family member, someone living, or they might be a historical someone who's just influenced you so much that you kind of go back to again and again. Tim 43:00 Okay, great. So I will lob that question at the next person there, and for all of you, it's a great question for our listeners to ponder. Right. Sehaam, as always. It's been a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate your smiling face and your wonderful ways. It's just such a joy to spend time with you. Sehaam 43:18 Thank you, likewise, Tim, I do. I do. Enjoy our chats. Tim 43:23 Okay, let's not take it too long before the next one. Tim 43:28 Thank you so much for listening to Sweet on Leadership. If you found today's podcast valuable, consider visiting our website and signing up for the companion newsletter. You can find the link in the show notes. If like us. You think it's important to bring new ideas and skills into the practice of leadership. Please give us a positive rating and review on Apple podcasts. This helps us spread the word to other committed leaders, and you can spread the word too by sharing this with your friends, teams and colleagues. Thanks again for listening, and be sure to tune in in two weeks' time for another episode of Sweet on Leadership. In the meantime, I'm your host, Tim Sweet encouraging you to keep on leading you. Comments are closed.
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