The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:04 - 00:00:36:12
Kevin Eikenberry
Blind spots. They're easy to see and others. But how do we see our own? And that's what we're talking about today. You'll get some clues, some insights and some steps that you can take now if you're willing to look. Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership podcast, where we are helping leaders grow personally and professionally to lead more effectively and make a bigger positive difference for their teams, organizations and the world.

00:00:36:17 - 00:00:55:02
Kevin Eikenberry
If you're listening to this podcast, I'm glad you're here. You could have been with us live. Well, for future episodes, you could be with us live. Hope that you will do that. The way to do that, though, is to join one of our online groups so you know, when they're coming in where they'll be. So you can join us on Facebook or LinkedIn.

00:00:55:04 - 00:01:24:16
Kevin Eikenberry
Go to remarkable podcast dot com slash Facebook or remarkable podcast dot com slash LinkedIn to join the groups there where we announce when the livestreams will be happening so you can join us in the future and get this information valuable information sooner. Today's episode is brought to you by a remarkable masterclasses pick from 13 important life and leadership skills to help you become more effective, productive and confident while overcoming some of a leader's toughest challenges.

00:01:24:22 - 00:01:52:19
Kevin Eikenberry
Learn more and sign up at Remarkable Masterclass dot com. And with that, I'm going to bring in my guest. Marisa Murray has joined us. And if you're with us live, you can now see her. Let me tell you a little bit about Marisa and we'll get started. Marisa Murray is a leadership development expert and the CEO of literally International Organization dedicated to helping executives become better leaders in today's rapidly changing, highly complex world.

00:01:53:01 - 00:02:19:01
Kevin Eikenberry
She leaves, leveraging her over two decades of executive experience as a former partner with Accenture and as a VP at Bell Canada in providing executive coaching leadership development services for organizations including Molson Coors, Pratt and Whitney and Queen's University. She's the coauthor of the USA Today bestseller The Younger Self Letters How Successful Leaders and Entrepreneurs Turned Trials into Triumph and How to Use Them To Your Advantage.

00:02:19:05 - 00:02:34:00
Kevin Eikenberry
She's also the author of three other books herself, including her latest Blind Spots How Great Leaders Uncover Problems and Unleash Performance. And that's what we're going to largely talk about today. Marisa, welcome. Glad you're here.

00:02:34:01 - 00:02:36:09
Marisa Murray
Thank you so much, Kevin. It's such a pleasure to be here.

00:02:36:14 - 00:02:56:14
Kevin Eikenberry
It is my pleasure. And so we got the chance to chat for the last 10 minutes or so. I got to know you a little bit from reading your book, but others don't really know much about you except what they see right this minute. So I think even though I've given a bit of your bio, I'm curious, I like to ask people this.

00:02:56:16 - 00:03:10:04
Kevin Eikenberry
Tell us about your journey. Like when you were ten or eight, you didn't think you'd be doing what you're doing now. Just kind of give us a little bit about that, the way you end up where you are now.

00:03:10:05 - 00:03:17:05
Marisa Murray
Yeah, absolutely. I just had to think of what I wanted to be when I was ten, and I'm pretty sure it was a veterinarian because I.

00:03:17:05 - 00:03:20:18
Kevin Eikenberry
Love every doctor. Astronaut. Fireman.

00:03:21:00 - 00:03:42:00
Marisa Murray
Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, maybe there was insight in that in terms of my desire to help others. My desire to help at that time would have been my cat and my dog and any other bird I tried to rescue. And and, you know, actually, I have really a train wreck of experiences of tried to rescue animals.

00:03:42:00 - 00:04:16:02
Marisa Murray
So. So perhaps that was foreshadowing of that of that journey. But yeah, no. So I mean I, I fell in love with the sciences during high school. I was very analytical. I loved math, I loved chemistry and physics. I think I really loved these things because they always were there were right answers and wrong answers. Mastery was straightforward and and that led me to do my engineering degree and to take on roles as an engineer before I did my MBA.

00:04:16:02 - 00:04:39:17
Marisa Murray
And then as I joined Accenture, Andersen Consulting, when I joined it, but I joined Accenture, I worked with a large number of manufacturers, utilities, industrial kind of organizations, and I ended up spending a lot of time supporting clients in aerospace and defense. So very technical. And I like to sort of just live in that world of black and white.

00:04:39:17 - 00:05:20:01
Marisa Murray
And then over time, as you as you grow in these careers, you realize that like as much as the right answer or wrong answer theoretically matters. It's all about people, right? Your your journey in terms of being able to drive outcomes is all about people. Followership, leadership, engagement, influence. And so I kind of found myself pivoting around what, what, what I spend my time thinking about and it was kind of interesting because when I look back, it's it's like I really didn't want to become I didn't really want to specialize in this.

00:05:20:01 - 00:05:41:21
Marisa Murray
I want to specialize in things that there's more clarity around. There's the part of me that doesn't like the art associated with the leadership, but the more I advanced, I wanted to figure it out because I knew how important it was, and I also knew how much I struggled with it myself. And I think a lot of leaders struggle with it.

00:05:41:21 - 00:06:07:01
Marisa Murray
I mean, I just think that it's it's not straightforward. So long story short, I had had some executive coaches during my tenure, and I was up for partner when I made partner, different of thing. And I always thought they had really cool jobs, but I didn't really understand the mechanisms that they were bringing to me. And I sometimes misunderstood them in terms of what I or questioned them.

00:06:07:03 - 00:06:23:18
Marisa Murray
So that that made me curious enough to want to do my executive coaching certification. And when I did that, this world opened up to me. I just like, this is what they were trying to bring to me. And I was like, But I was in my own way. I was so in my own way at so many different points.

00:06:23:18 - 00:06:49:23
Marisa Murray
And so then I just sort of started to want to just bring this to my time, to my people, to my kind of people, my, my technical, skeptical audiences. And so that's where I started. So nine years ago, I found it literally and ever since then I've just been trying to learn and master and articulate and teach and accompany people on their journey to their best leader.

00:06:50:01 - 00:07:09:08
Kevin Eikenberry
Perfect. And so part of that journey led you to recognize in working with other leaders that all of us not just as leaders, but as human beings, have blind spots. We've got blind spots. And so all of us sort of know that phrase. But since you wrote the book with that title, tell us what you mean by that.

00:07:09:08 - 00:07:11:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Define blind spots for us.

00:07:11:13 - 00:07:22:12
Marisa Murray
Yeah, absolutely. So I define blind spots very specifically as the gap between our intention and our impact. The gap And what does that mean?

00:07:22:14 - 00:07:26:03
Kevin Eikenberry
If you look at me, I've already got it up there.

00:07:26:05 - 00:07:50:13
Marisa Murray
Yes, that's what that means, is typically we are all very focused on our intention. So we have an intention to drive an outcome. We have an intention to develop our people. We have an intention and we are blinded by that intention. That is, all our brain is focused on is our intention. And then we take action in the world and we take these actions in the world, some perfect, some imperfectly.

00:07:50:15 - 00:08:01:12
Marisa Murray
And that has an impact in the world. And oftentimes there's a gap between the impact that we had and our original intention. And that's what.

00:08:01:12 - 00:08:03:15
Kevin Eikenberry
I meant.

00:08:03:17 - 00:08:04:06
Marisa Murray
Was.

00:08:04:08 - 00:08:05:16
Kevin Eikenberry
Here's what I meant.

00:08:05:18 - 00:08:22:09
Marisa Murray
Exactly that you hear people all the time say, I did not say that. And like literally you play back the video. I mean, the good news is a lot of the meetings were recorded during the pandemic. So you could literally go back and you're like, okay, I said that, but I didn't mean it, you know, like, it's fine.

00:08:22:11 - 00:08:31:02
Kevin Eikenberry
There's a good I mean, you're in Canada, so there's a commercial. There's some curses in the U.S. right now where they're doing that, like you want to play the replay and then they go back. I didn't say that. Well, yeah, exactly.

00:08:31:02 - 00:08:51:13
Marisa Murray
Exactly. And it's not that people are lying. It's because their brain just understands that they had an intention and then they hear what gets played back to them and they they hear the impact and they say, Well, that can't be what I said, because that was not my intention. Right. And so this so all and it's like, well, it is what you said and it had this impact on me, which is.

00:08:51:15 - 00:09:09:08
Marisa Murray
Right. Which is causing me to not be able to collaborate with you in the way that is optimal for our collective performance. Right. So there's just there's a myriad of these different things. And so when I say, is that the intention that the blind spots live in that gap between intention and impact and all?

00:09:09:09 - 00:09:35:02
Kevin Eikenberry
Yes. Everybody she's trying to do with her hands, she has she's an engineer. She has a graph with her hands only with graph with her genes. Three lines. She's only got two hands. But the gap is is this this, this between what we intend and how people and how it shows up in the world is the blind spot and we can't see it is what your is your point.

00:09:35:08 - 00:09:43:16
Marisa Murray
Absolutely. It's really interesting if you think about we are blind to our impact and others are blind to our intention.

00:09:43:18 - 00:09:52:06
Kevin Eikenberry
So it's wrong, by the way, we judge ourselves based on our intentions. we're judges based on what they actually saw due to two different things. And.

00:09:52:06 - 00:10:21:19
Marisa Murray
Exactly. Exactly. And so that's why this idea of demystifying like this idea of being like, I have blind spots radio on blind, like, that's impossible. We all have blind spots. And not only that, it helps the other way around, too. When we start to understand that the other person that we are blind to their intention, then we can see that we are interpreting the impact that they're having on us in a pretty crude way, rather than considering potentially, you know, what was intended.

00:10:21:21 - 00:10:48:04
Kevin Eikenberry
We are literally everybody, the blind leading, leading the blind, that that is true. So but you know, the other way to look at this idea of, you know, the fact that we all have blind spots as humans is that all of the research on self-awareness is says that most people think they're very highly self-aware and they're we're not good at I mean, it's another way of saying exactly what you're saying, Like there's all this stuff that's going on around us that we're not aware of, we're blind to.

00:10:48:04 - 00:11:23:12
Kevin Eikenberry
So in the book, you basically outlined seven types of blind spots and we don't have time to talk about them all in depth, obviously. But for everyone we are. If you just joined us, we are talking with Marisa Murray, the author of this book, Blind Spots How Great Leaders Uncover Problems and Unleashed Performance. And so, Marisa, what I thought we'd do is just have you sort of walk through the seven and then I think we'll talk about just a couple, but just give us each of and for those watching, I'll put them on the screen, but just tell us about each of the seven in just like one or two sentences.

00:11:23:14 - 00:11:27:00
Kevin Eikenberry
What what what do you mean by this type of blind spot?

00:11:27:02 - 00:11:53:17
Marisa Murray
Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So the first one is false assumptions and false assumptions. We typically we all know that we run assumptions in our mind, and false assumptions are the category of blind spots where we're acting as if something is true and we have not validated that assumption and that category that probably could encompass, you know, all the other seven, all the other six.

00:11:53:19 - 00:11:55:05
Kevin Eikenberry
It's sort of the overarching.

00:11:55:07 - 00:12:21:21
Marisa Murray
It's the overarching one. But I think that the idea of really thinking about what assumptions am I running with on a regular basis and asking people and validating like that's why it's nice to it's a nice one to sort of start with. You just think about what assumptions might be running in an exhibit. An example might be. And it's usually I mean, the one thing that I want to say about all of them is they're typically the shadow side of our strength.

00:12:21:23 - 00:12:46:03
Marisa Murray
So one of the examples for false assumptions is David, the difference maker. So David is a difference maker. He's that he's an amazing, amazing salesperson that closes deals and makes the difference and all that kind of thing. But his assumption is that he always has to do it like no one else can do it. And it's, you know, in part it's been said by this unbelievable standout strength.

00:12:46:05 - 00:13:01:07
Marisa Murray
The challenge is that it makes it impossible for him to scale it possible for him to do the work he needs to do, impossible for him to develop this team. So he's running a false assumption. The false assumption is I got to do this because I'm the only one. I'm the difference maker. I'm the only one that can make a difference as opposed to building difference maker.

00:13:01:07 - 00:13:03:13
Marisa Murray
So there's an example of false assumptions.

00:13:03:15 - 00:13:04:19
Kevin Eikenberry
Number two.

00:13:04:21 - 00:13:34:09
Marisa Murray
Number two is unhealthy detachment. And you could also kind of think about healthy, you know, unhealthy attachment and unhealthy detachment. This is just this idea of sometimes we're really attached to something or we're really detached from something that's not important. That's that's not so unhealthy detachment just to stick to that. This example, because I saw that it was the most common is say something's very important to your team.

00:13:34:12 - 00:14:01:05
Marisa Murray
There's just something sacred. There's something sacred in the culture, there's something there's something very, very motivating to your team. And you don't think it really makes sense, Like you don't really care about it, you don't listen to it, you don't spend time. So you have an unhealthy detachment to something that's very, very important and so unhealthy detachment when we just decide to sort of stay detached from something that's actually quite critical to our environment.

00:14:01:07 - 00:14:10:12
Kevin Eikenberry
Or what are the things I think I want to think about this one is I think about how especially as a front line leader, we feel like we can't be friends with people anymore. So like we detach too. And I.

00:14:10:12 - 00:14:11:11
Marisa Murray
Think another great.

00:14:11:11 - 00:14:13:16
Kevin Eikenberry
Example, another example I think of that particular.

00:14:13:16 - 00:14:14:13
Marisa Murray
One other example.

00:14:14:13 - 00:14:16:06
Kevin Eikenberry
That's the third one.

00:14:16:08 - 00:14:35:01
Marisa Murray
Different views of success. So this happens because we all kind of have our our view of what success looks like in a role or a success looks like in a in a project. And sometimes we don't sit down and sort of figure out what other people think successes. And we just we start running these parallel tracks of where we're headed.

00:14:35:01 - 00:14:53:09
Marisa Murray
So it's really important that we sync up right? We all have our reticular activating system, our part of our brain that's telling every day, figuring out where we're headed. And if it's all different now, it ends up creating a lot of blind spots.

00:14:53:11 - 00:14:55:06
Kevin Eikenberry
Number four.

00:14:55:08 - 00:15:23:16
Marisa Murray
Outdated core beliefs. Yeah. So this is, you know, I think we have to think about our brain as software. It's software that's been programed with experiences and beliefs and thoughts over our lives. And some of those things get outdated. Some of the software needs sort of upgrading and debugging. So an outdated core belief, you know, it could be, well, I'll talk about Xavier, the extra miler.

00:15:23:16 - 00:15:47:22
Marisa Murray
So Xavier, the extra miler had incredible work ethic, incredible work ethic, but literally an end sort of from his his youth. You just sort of this whole his whole life was about like delivering the extra mile, even if it kills him. And that's a core that was a core belief. Like, I can work hard, I can work on religiously, I don't need to sleep, I don't need to eat, I don't need to any of these things.

00:15:47:22 - 00:16:10:10
Marisa Murray
And it was starting to it was starting to seriously sneak up on him to the point where his organization was very, very worried about his health. Stanley was worried about his health. So he needed he needed a new belief. He needed a new belief, which was I can be extremely effective, I can deliver outstanding results. But I have to do it in new ways.

00:16:10:12 - 00:16:26:23
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, yeah. The next one and I think this next one I think is probably the one that people probably will immediately say, okay, I get this one. Yeah, almost without you saying anything. But I do want you to say a little bit more about unconscious habits.

00:16:27:00 - 00:16:53:09
Marisa Murray
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, these are the more classical types of blind spots where we just do something that we're not conscious of. It's just in our behaviors, in our know. Sometimes it can be something like using the word AI, using the word AI all the time. It's an unconscious habit. People will it will annoy people because they do feel like they're being excluded and you're taking all the credit and all this kind of stuff.

00:16:53:14 - 00:17:16:03
Marisa Murray
But I've met a lot of people who that's not their intention. They're just have a they just have a vocabulary habit. They can be very team oriented and very proud of their team, but they have a vocabulary habit that really creates a negative impact on other people. So that's an example where there's an unconscious habit that they need to form a new habit around because it's causing problems for them.

00:17:16:05 - 00:17:44:08
Marisa Murray
Number six triggers from past pain. So this is just, you know, we have a we have an alarm system in our mind that doesn't want bad things to happen again. So it's always and we have a very, very strong pattern recognition engine. So what happens is we're in a situation, we're in a meeting, we're in a project, we're in a sales pursuit, and something feel to the brain goes, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

00:17:44:10 - 00:18:05:13
Marisa Murray
Yeah, this is happening again. History is repeating itself. And it's and so it believes that the past pain is recreating itself. And that creates a whole bunch of behaviors. And so it takes in leadership. I think it takes a lot of discipline to realize, to understand your past pain and understand that you're going to remember your past pain like you can't forget it.

00:18:05:13 - 00:18:32:09
Marisa Murray
Your brain is wired to remember it, but you have to realize when that is what's driving your thinking habit, that that's that's what's happening. And because what that does is it just it just clouds your thinking. You just can't see what's actually going on in the present moment. You're you're clouded by that. So triggers from past pain is, is just your behavior is is being it's kind of you're on autopilot because of some past experience.

00:18:32:11 - 00:18:51:03
Kevin Eikenberry
And if we become aware of that, like it's like it's the idea of if you know that someone pushes your button or if that button is you can tell when that button is being pushed, then you can get a sight beside it and manage it. But if you never noticed it, then you're you're absolutely being triggered by it.

00:18:51:05 - 00:18:54:05
Kevin Eikenberry
Absolutely. And then you're going down and we all know what that looks like.

00:18:54:07 - 00:19:00:16
Marisa Murray
Absolutely. And very confusing to your teens because you sound like you have all this information that doesn't even exist.

00:19:00:17 - 00:19:05:00
Kevin Eikenberry
Who is this crazy person? Yeah.

00:19:05:02 - 00:19:05:12
Marisa Murray
Yeah.

00:19:05:14 - 00:19:07:17
Kevin Eikenberry
And the and the last of the seven.

00:19:07:19 - 00:19:31:10
Marisa Murray
Yeah. Mismatch mindset. So this is a little bit of like understanding that your mind it's in leadership really evolve over time. And sometimes what happens is you know I always I define leadership in some ways that break it down between leading self leading others in leading change. And there's different mindsets associated with that. And sometimes what happens is we get sort of stuck in one of them.

00:19:31:10 - 00:19:49:10
Marisa Murray
So we're so we all have to master leading self. And it's not that it becomes unimportant, it's always important, but when we're in a leading self energy, we're not always as attentive to the leading others aspects. What does the team need from us rather than What do I need to do my best work? What does the team need to do my best work?

00:19:49:16 - 00:20:13:01
Marisa Murray
And then even like leading change, you know, maybe it's actually quite maybe we have to we are out of our comfort zone. We're not kind of like maybe it's actually also like the ways we have to show up is going to be different and so mismatched match. That is when a leader is kind of stuck in a leadership mindset and it's it's incongruent with the role that they need to play in that moment or the circumstances that they're trying to deal with.

00:20:13:01 - 00:20:30:21
Marisa Murray
So trying to be very cognizant. And one of the things that I think is very important that makes it a bit more tangible is to think about the underlying values for each of these mindsets. What we all have these beautiful values in terms of leadership, but which ones are most important in different mindsets is a way to kind of attune a little bit to that.

00:20:30:23 - 00:20:56:03
Kevin Eikenberry
So the unfair question and maybe, maybe even not perfectly helpful, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Is there seven of them? And in all of the leaders that you work with, is there one that you think, generally speaking, ends up being the biggest problem in biggest source or perhaps the most damaging source?

00:20:56:05 - 00:21:23:15
Marisa Murray
Yeah. Well, there's only one example in the book that isn't sort of a hero's journey, which is where a leader actually ended up being let go or replaced. And that was in unhealthy detachments. And in that case, it was again, like some I think unhealthy detachments can be kind of a scary one because you're discounting your repeatedly discounting something that's important to other people.

00:21:23:15 - 00:21:46:21
Marisa Murray
So you're not even factoring it in. You know, you're not you're not allowing it's almost like you can almost describe it as you're not allowing very important co-creators to influence you like people that are just critical to your capability to succeed. And and you think you're letting them out like you think you've heard what they said. That's the detachment piece.

00:21:46:21 - 00:22:12:02
Marisa Murray
Like you think you've heard it, but you don't think it matters. And so so if you don't think it matters, you're almost like this rationally, rationally, rationally irrational version of yourself because you're like, I've heard it all or whatever. And so I think that one's a little bit more dangerous, I would say. And, and it's it's again, you're trying to get to kind of get to that healthy.

00:22:12:02 - 00:22:23:23
Marisa Murray
Like there's a reason why unhealthy and healthy doesn't mean you have to like totally 100% buy in but you have to have a healthy enough interest to understand how to factor that in.

00:22:24:01 - 00:22:33:03
Kevin Eikenberry
And I think understand be aware of the interests of others, recognizing that they're not necessarily the same as your own. Yeah, I think there's a critical piece of this as well.

00:22:33:04 - 00:23:09:22
Marisa Murray
Yeah, You talk about self-aware, you've mentioned self-awareness. And I also late a little bit in the book between talking about self-awareness and others awareness. I feel like self-awareness is an insufficient term for leadership. I think I think we mean when we say self-awareness. I think we mean awareness of everything. But I almost have to overemphasize others awareness because I find like when I say, if you turn on your others awareness, what was going on in the room, all of a sudden they will start getting data points from, you know, the mothership of information that they didn't have access to.

00:23:09:22 - 00:23:15:20
Marisa Murray
When they I would say, What what did you feel you're self-aware about? You see, there's there's something powerful about those.

00:23:15:21 - 00:23:37:19
Kevin Eikenberry
Because there's the difference of what's going on here versus what's going on out there for sure. That's for sure. So I promised at the open that we wouldn't just talk about what they are like. This is an ironic conversation. Everybody we're talking about seeing the things that we can't see. And so we have to figure out how we get there and what we're just talking about.

00:23:37:21 - 00:24:03:20
Kevin Eikenberry
You know, is it creating a bit of others awareness? Having an other focus may help us see some things from a different perspective. Putting ourselves into perspective may help us, and yet we still have these blindspots what's it's a one word answer, but like, what's how do we how do we become unblinded? How do we become aware? How do we get that first step so we can start to move past these things?

00:24:04:01 - 00:24:31:21
Marisa Murray
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the first thing to know is that the information absolutely exists. The challenge is that it is in other people's heads. So you, you know, you can you can sort of re reflect on a meeting and get some theories on what might have been going on with other people. And those theories are worthy hypotheses, but they're not they're not the end game.

00:24:31:23 - 00:24:50:13
Marisa Murray
The data is in other people's heads and that's why feedback is so important. So many leaders say that they don't you know, they don't it's not easy to get feedback. It's not easy to get to it. That's I mean, that's true. But I also think that it's not easy to hear feedback. It's not easy to take in feedback.

00:24:50:15 - 00:25:06:16
Marisa Murray
So, you know, we have we have that same problem of the blind leading the blind. You know, we have you know, we need feedback, but we don't really like it and we don't really want it and we want to reject it. So, I mean, a lot of this is, is is in that notion. I typically try to refer to things as impact statements.

00:25:06:16 - 00:25:11:20
Marisa Murray
I try to get impact statements more than I try to get feedback, the feedback from everybody.

00:25:11:20 - 00:25:13:21
Kevin Eikenberry
What you mean by an impact statement.

00:25:13:21 - 00:25:48:12
Marisa Murray
Yeah. So feedback implies that it's like the right answer like that. Somehow I'm going to tell you. I'm going to tell you back what you maybe should have done. Impact statements is this is just simply like when you said this, I felt this It's it's just very first person. It's your classic like first person. So impact statements the questions can be very similar but you could you know it's it's I find that the hearing of it is easier when you're thinking about an impact statement because it's more it's more depersonalized.

00:25:48:14 - 00:26:11:22
Marisa Murray
It's about you, but it's about them. Right. Because our behavior goes through someone else's brain, which has which of all these are blind spots, too, Right. So so there I mean, what I might say might trigger past pain for them, which will create a different response. But is it important for me to understand, like when when you said that, it reminded me of that deal we lost together five years ago.

00:26:11:22 - 00:26:35:15
Marisa Murray
And I feel like you're still judging me. I feel still judged. Now would be a better way to say it right by that experience. And then I get the opportunity to say, that's so insightful. And yet that wasn't what was on my mind at all, you know? And we get to kind of come closer together. We can sort of say, my intention was not and I wasn't even there, but I totally understand that impact on you.

00:26:35:20 - 00:26:51:09
Marisa Murray
And really when when I narrow the gap. So this is intention and this is impact words and the blind spots create this wedge. We're narrowing the gap through those conversations. We're trying to get the intention and the impact aligned.

00:26:51:11 - 00:27:30:06
Kevin Eikenberry
So what you just described, Marisa, is hard, right? And then we for people in many cases to talk about or to share or even to just put words around, make it more challenging when we're the leader, asking our team member to give feedback to us as the boss. So like, we don't have time to go into this deeply, But do you have any specific thoughts about how to how to encourage people to share their feedback, impact statements, whatever language you want to use, they're like, because there's a barrier, because we're the boss?

00:27:30:11 - 00:27:48:15
Marisa Murray
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it's just habit and practice. It's really so there's you know, it's it's it gets familiar and it gets possible, but it doesn't the very first time you try and if you try, you try and then you're like, I got nothing, you know, And then you're like, I have to.

00:27:48:15 - 00:28:09:00
Kevin Eikenberry
Keep asking that part of what I want you to hear is like, This is important for us as leaders to get this information, get this perspective and say, Well, I actually didn't get it. You have to you have to keep going after it. You have to ask in different ways. You have to ask in different situations. You have to ask when maybe they won't perceive the pressure as being as high, like you have to keep going after it.

00:28:09:00 - 00:28:11:08
Kevin Eikenberry
If you don't, you probably won't get it.

00:28:11:10 - 00:28:29:01
Marisa Murray
Yeah, and I think you have to be like honestly curious and you have to be really transparent in the fact that you are an imperfect human, always trying to get better. Like I just I love it when we can I can sit with the leadership team and we can all just be like, I am an imperfect human. Like, let's all try and get each make each other better.

00:28:29:01 - 00:28:56:11
Marisa Murray
Like it's, you know, it's a little kindergarten, but it's really, really important, right? Because I think there's so much energy in a room sometimes with people that want to make a difference but are getting entangled in kinds of all kinds of suboptimal behaviors. And so we can just sort of say, okay, like, like so I think part of it is just that humility around being like, you know, we're all imperfect that that drive live to get better at just even it's 1% better or half a point better.

00:28:56:11 - 00:29:13:12
Marisa Murray
Like even if it's just half a point better at being able to receive the feedback without defending yourself, which is trying to understand it and having to see it from that person's perspective and trying to find it really fascinating. Like I try to tell people, like people will be like, Wow, that's really upsetting. I'm like, No, it's fascinating, isn't it?

00:29:13:12 - 00:29:46:14
Marisa Murray
Isn't it fascinating? It's fascinating how that how many ways other people can interpret your behavior and not in a paralyzing way, but in a in a fascinating kind of puzzle kind of way. And I also have to remind people that every in the book, there's 21 client stories of a sort of transformation in every single instant. The thing they had to change was minuscule, tiny, tiny, tiny, the tiniest little tweaks like people at some point I think they'll receive a 360 and they'll be like, you know, I'll just speak for me.

00:29:46:14 - 00:30:03:02
Marisa Murray
I remember one time I received a 360 and I thought I needed a lobotomy to rejig this thing because there was all kinds of stuff that I was like, I don't even know how to be right. So but it's not that it's it's very, very small, intentional moments that make the biggest difference.

00:30:03:04 - 00:30:17:19
Kevin Eikenberry
Little hinges. Everybody swing big doors. So, Marisa, I am going to shift the gears. We're going to start to wrap this up and I've got a couple of other questions for you. Three more to be specific. The first one is what do you do for fun?

00:30:17:21 - 00:30:28:23
Marisa Murray
so much. But mostly I try to spend as much time with my boys who are getting big and don't want to play with me as much as before. So they're 19 and 16.

00:30:29:00 - 00:30:32:23
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah. Yeah. You're not cool anymore.

00:30:33:01 - 00:30:53:03
Marisa Murray
So I try to do everything I can to play, whether it's that shooting hoops or skiing or chatting or if they wake me up in the middle of the night like, I do not care. I will, I will do I have a little puppy dog for a time with my boys. I, I made these two babies. I've loved every minute of them.

00:30:53:03 - 00:30:59:00
Marisa Murray
And I didn't get the memo that they they don't have their own life.

00:30:59:02 - 00:31:05:18
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah. You didn't get that memo. There's your blindspot mirrors. So we have identified in this conversation.

00:31:05:20 - 00:31:08:11
Marisa Murray
So, yeah, I have everything that they have something.

00:31:08:12 - 00:31:22:17
Kevin Eikenberry
That we talking about. Okay, So trust me, it'll change again. It's changed. It'll change again, I promise you. So I just read your book clearly. What? Tell us what you're reading these days.

00:31:22:19 - 00:31:44:13
Marisa Murray
Yeah, So I was. I'm reading right now. I'm. I'm digging through senior leadership teams. What it takes to make them great. I like this book a lot because it, it, it's building blocks of teams and frameworks. And I'm reading it again and I'm also reading your book. I told you the long distance team and I reread it. I just reread the five dysfunctions for the team.

00:31:44:13 - 00:32:14:20
Marisa Murray
So you'll notice the theme. I'm reading a lot about teams right now because I do feel that we're rebuilding teams. I believe that 2024 is is going to get a lot of our work is going to be rebuilding teams as if, you know, as if the pandemic hasn't really been okay for a while. We're still figuring out, I think, the composition of that and the new culture and the dynamics of change that continue and perpetually challenge these teams.

00:32:15:02 - 00:32:24:16
Marisa Murray
So I'm going back to some of these fundamental principles. And I love I love the things that you bring in your book to this as well. Kevin So I'm really enjoying that.

00:32:24:18 - 00:32:38:12
Kevin Eikenberry
All right. So we'll have all those in the show notes for you as we do every week as well as, of course, Bruce's book Blind Spots. But where can people reach out to you? Where do you where can they get learn more information? Where do you want to point people? Before we wrap up?

00:32:38:18 - 00:33:00:03
Marisa Murray
Yeah, absolutely. So Leader Lidcombe is my website and so you can reach out to me directly there. And in terms of social media, I am on all platforms, but I hang out the most on LinkedIn. So please connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know what you're thinking about and all things leadership. I I'm fascinated and love to talk about.

00:33:00:05 - 00:33:23:14
Kevin Eikenberry
That's literally Elliot, Elliot l e y dot com everybody eataly dot com. And so now everybody before we go is a question I ask you every single episode. It's the question of application. Now what what are you going to do with what you just got. Maybe what you've gotten is an insight into maybe where you think your blind spots might be.

00:33:23:18 - 00:33:52:12
Kevin Eikenberry
Maybe one of the examples that Marisa shared with you gives you insight into something that you need to go like she helps you see one of yours already, in which case now you can go take action. What action would that be? Or maybe the action you need to take is to work on getting some feedback from your teams, being patient and persistent and curious and humble and asking for feedback from your team on a specific situation or in general to help you become more effective, whatever that might be.

00:33:52:17 - 00:34:11:22
Kevin Eikenberry
Those are just a couple of things that I wrote. Now, maybe you need to remind yourself every day I am an imperfect human. I don't know what the thing is for you, but what I know is if you don't take any action from this time, it will have had limited impact for you. And so it has been our intention that this would become impactful for you.

00:34:11:22 - 00:34:18:07
Kevin Eikenberry
And it will mostly do that if you take action. Marisa, thank you for being here. It's such a pleasure to have you.

00:34:18:08 - 00:34:19:09
Marisa Murray
Thank you very much.

00:34:19:14 - 00:34:37:15
Kevin Eikenberry
And if you enjoyed this, invite someone to come watch or listen to this, but come back next week because next week on the podcast, I'll be here again. I've been here for 400 and some weeks. I stopping now. I will see you next week on the next episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.