The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00;00;00;04 - 00;00;40;12
Kevin Eikenberry
Hi, I'm your host, Kevin Eikenberry, and usually these episodes are about me sharing a short piece of information with you or bringing on a guest. But for the next six weeks, as a part of this very special series called The Evolving Workplace, I'll be handing the mic over to Wayne Trammell. Wayne's been my coauthor of the long distance leader, twice the long distance teammate in the long distance team, and he's been the host of an ongoing podcast called Long Distance Work Life Podcast, which has just come to a close, although all those episodes are worth your time, go to Long Distance worklife.com to learn more.

00;00;40;14 - 00;01;14;19
Kevin Eikenberry
In this series, Wayne will give new context and new ideas for us as leaders to understand the evolving workplace and how we can lead our organizations and teams through it. I hope you will enjoy all of these episodes in the series, and I hope you'll continue to enjoy everything else we bring you on the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, and now here's Wayne.

00;01;14;21 - 00;01;17;19
Unknown
For you, buddy. Now, from the get go.

00;01;17;25 - 00;01;56;19
Wayne Turmel
Kari Group and the Long Distance Work Life podcast and the Kevin Eikenberry blog, and I'm all over the place and it's been my honor for the last six episodes of this special series to talk about what's going on in the evolving workplace and most importantly, what it means to you if you're hanging out here in the Kevin Eikenberry orbit, you know that for 30 years, Kevin and our team have been working to help prepare and develop leaders for what's going on in their jobs right now.

00;01;56;22 - 00;02;30;26
Wayne Turmel
And. That's important. Leadership is really where everything happens in an organization. You know, two episodes ago, we talked about what organizations need to be worried about in the next few years. Well, leaders obviously need to know that last episode, we talked about what individuals, whether they are leaders themselves or individual contributors, need to consider and work on in order to be successful.

00;02;30;26 - 00;03;08;27
Wayne Turmel
Well, in our final episode, we're going to talk about those of us who are in the middle, meaning the responsibilities to the organization, and while helping develop, encourage, manage the performance of individual contributors. So welcome to the Thunderdome. We we are here, whatever you call yourself, you're in the middle of the maelstrom, and there are five things that you need to consider and be prepared to deal with the first.

00;03;08;27 - 00;03;36;10
Wayne Turmel
And I know you're sick of this, and I don't blame you because I am too. Talking about I is not terribly thrilling. It it seems like this constant battle between just get used to it and watch out. But the fact of the matter is, it's going to become more and more an important part of our job. And there are two different things that you need to consider.

00;03;36;10 - 00;04;03;26
Wayne Turmel
The first is helping your people deal with this. This is going to mean coaching them, helping skill them up in how to write a query, and more importantly, in how to use the answers that they get. Some people are going to be resistant just on general purposes, whether they believe this is the beginning of Skynet, it's a Terminator reference.

00;04;03;26 - 00;04;27;23
Wayne Turmel
For those of you who didn't get the geekdom coming out of my mouth, or they're just, you know, not interested, well, that's one problem. The other problem is people are going to become overly dependent on it. When I was in the radio news business, there was something that we used to call rip and read, which is news would come over the teletype.

00;04;27;23 - 00;04;50;22
Wayne Turmel
Yes, I am that old. But it would come in and you would grab the piece of paper and rip it off the machine and just go to the microphone and start reading it. Most of the time that worked fine. Occasionally it resulted in bad information at best and total disaster at worse than darn near cost me my job.

00;04;50;22 - 00;05;26;12
Wayne Turmel
Once. So as leaders, we need to help others navigate this new landscape. The problem, of course, is that we can't navigate this landscape unless we ourselves have a map. And as leaders, we're not always the first ones over the wall when it comes to using and embracing new technology, one of our biggest tasks is going to be learning and unlearning new technical knowledge skills ourselves.

00;05;26;14 - 00;05;41;12
Wayne Turmel
Not just AI, but how to leverage collaboration tools. What are the skills that our teammates need to use in order to create great.

00;05;41;14 - 00;06;14;26
Wayne Turmel
Work? Another challenge that we're going to be dealing with is navigating multi-generational workforce dynamics, which is a really fancy word for we've got old people and kids in the workplace at the same time. And not only is there a generation gap, duh. There's always been a generation gap. The old people think that young people don't know anything, and the young people think the old people are fossilized and don't understand what's really going on in the world.

00;06;15;01 - 00;06;22;20
Wayne Turmel
And the fact is, everybody's right and nobody's right.

00;06;22;22 - 00;06;51;00
Wayne Turmel
Are you familiar with the term generation alpha? Yeah, that's another one. So we got used to millennials and Gen X and Gen Z and boomers and all of that stuff. Well, Gen Alpha are the people that were born after 2000. They are now coming into the workplace.

00;06;51;03 - 00;07;23;06
Wayne Turmel
And their lives, their relationship with technology, their knowledge of what it means to work collaboratively. All of those things are going to need to be coached as a leader. You need to not so much tell people what they're supposed to do as help them figure it out and help the team work with each other to build on each other's strengths.

00;07;23;09 - 00;07;57;26
Wayne Turmel
There is something to be said for being a blank slate in the workplace. There is something to be said for having developed great organizational knowledge and literally, unconsciously competent skills. As leaders, we're going to have to not only communicate communicate across generations in ways that make sense and are productive, but facilitate the conversations and the learning that is going to be involved.

00;07;57;26 - 00;08;51;24
Wayne Turmel
Because even people who are highly technical, literate and may not understand the next level of AI or automation or whatever that is one of the things that the generation gap is exposing is nobody can quite agree, what it means to be a professional. When we were all working in the office, there were dress codes and there were norms, and people kind of learned by osmosis or getting their nose figuratively bloodied and figuring out, oh, I can't do that here now, because we are in this time where everybody's work experience is different.

00;08;51;27 - 00;09;30;12
Wayne Turmel
If you came into the workplace during Covid, working mostly remotely, there are things about working in the office that we didn't realize we needed to learn. Office dynamics, basic etiquette, things like dress codes. Somebody's interpretation of business casual may be very different from somebody else's. And, you know, if I, during Covid, got my work done wearing my CDC t shirt at work, why does it matter that I wear a shirt with buttons when I'm in the office?

00;09;30;15 - 00;09;52;27
Wayne Turmel
Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. And every organization is figuring this out on their own. And guess who's in the middle? That's right. You. But it's not just that. It's the tone of written communication. You know, I'm like a dog with a sock on this subject. And I will admit that I care about this more than most humans I know.

00;09;52;29 - 00;10;11;20
Wayne Turmel
But currently, in our workplaces, as they stand almost 70% or more of our daily communication with our peers, with our customers, with our, employees comes in right?

00;10;11;22 - 00;10;52;15
Wayne Turmel
But most of last time we got any training or coaching on writing, on communicating effectively, we're just supposed to naturally know how to do it. But things like tone and level of information and adjusting to work styles is going to be a core competency for leaders going forward. It always has been. But as we develop more ways to communicate and fewer opportunities to do it in the ways that we're most comfortable, we're going to have to be very intentional and very mindful of how we communicate inside the workplace.

00;10;52;15 - 00;11;26;01
Wayne Turmel
And that's just an example of being professional. Especially if you're a middle manager. Our roles as coaches, for example, are going to be very different than when everybody was in the office all the time. The ability to coach at a distance, the ability to deliver feedback in a way that is useful, that is understood and that is heard, is going to be part of our biggest challenge going forward.

00;11;26;07 - 00;11;40;09
Wayne Turmel
Coaching always has been, but now we need to tweak it and do it in ways that perhaps our bosses didn't have to.

00;11;40;12 - 00;12;07;11
Wayne Turmel
We need to enhance our skills in the virtual and the hybrid workplace. And I know right now there's a lot going on. Remote work is so over here. The government is deciding that he needs to be in the office, and that's a reality that we're dealing with. I suspect that that is not going to last very long for a number of reasons.

00;12;07;14 - 00;12;44;16
Wayne Turmel
Most primarily, the genie's out of the bottle. And whether there are formal agreements about how real virtual and hybrid work takes place, which is ideal. You need these formal agreements so that everybody's working with the same rulebook. There is going to also be a return to what we used to call stealth remote, where, yeah, everybody's supposed to be in the office, but it's Tuesday and Jerry has childcare problems, so he's working at home today and Alice wasn't feeling great, just the sniffles.

00;12;44;16 - 00;13;12;05
Wayne Turmel
But you know, she doesn't want to infect everybody in the office. So so-and-so's traveling. The fact is, if you have one. Remote employee that your team is remote, how do you make sure that everybody's working with the same rulebook? How do you make sure everybody has the information they need and access to the information they need to do their jobs?

00;13;12;05 - 00;13;52;18
Wayne Turmel
Well? You're Kevin, right? Mary Group, we are really, really prepared for this. The long distance work life really consists of three books long distance leader, long distance teammate, and long distance team. If you haven't read them, we encourage you to do that. You can visit long distance work life.com and learn more about that. We have, our leadership series, which is a series of courses that are designed to help leaders make that change to a remote and virtual environment and tons of content.

00;13;52;21 - 00;14;31;18
Wayne Turmel
We urge you to check it out at Kevin eikenberry.com. And that's just one example of what leaders really need to focus on in the next few years. And that's developing agility and flexibility. Change is a constant. This is not another banging of the gong for changed leadership or change management training. Although Lord knows if you're not coping with it as well as you might, or you're not helping your team through it might be a good idea to get some help there.

00;14;31;18 - 00;14;40;06
Wayne Turmel
But the world has never been more complex, and with.

00;14;40;09 - 00;15;10;27
Wayne Turmel
Relying on your innate abilities is helpful. We certainly feel more confident when we're working in our, preferred manner. Right? If you're a by the rules person, you try to apply the rules. The rules don't always apply. If you are a kind of loosey goosey, take life as it comes person. There are times you need to put the hammer down and behave in ways that maybe aren't your preferred style.

00;15;11;00 - 00;15;37;29
Wayne Turmel
This is only going to become more and more the case. Well, I'm going to introduce you to a new resource, which is Kevin I can Mary's I'm not part of the festivities here. Kevin I think Barry's new book, Flexible Leadership, and I highly recommend that you check it out. And it's a resource and we have training and resources attached to it with the Kevin I can Barry group.

00;15;37;29 - 00;16;05;22
Wayne Turmel
Would love to talk to you about how to bring that book into your organization and the concepts in terms of training, webinars, other resources. We are at your service. But what it does is it introduces the concept of flexes, this notion that your response to a situation, your leadership response to a situation.

00;16;05;24 - 00;16;37;24
Wayne Turmel
May rely on adjusting how you normally respond. And there are a series of scales. Kevin calls them flexors that are well worth investigating. And whether you take advantage of our tools and leadership. You know, development opportunities, the ways that we address these problems, you're going to have to look at these five trends as a leader and ask yourself, where am I currently successful?

00;16;37;24 - 00;17;07;28
Wayne Turmel
What's working for me? Where do I need a little bit of help, and where do I really need to make a major change in my mindset? We hope that you will consider the Kevin Hyphen Barry Group as a way to get that assistance and and develop your skills. You know, it has been eye opening for me to do this podcast series we started with, how the heck did we get here?

00;17;07;28 - 00;17;36;19
Wayne Turmel
It seems like the change has come so fast. We haven't really come to grips with the fact that it hasn't been all that long. Since the introduction of the personal computer, for example, or the introduction of the internet or cell phones or any of the things that have changed the way that we work forever. And then we talked about what are some of the technology trends that we're going to have to adjust?

00;17;36;26 - 00;18;12;04
Wayne Turmel
Our work is going to continue to be highly personal. We need to communicate with people as people, but we are going to be using technology to do that, and that can be an uneasy kind of thing, especially as we look at the trends that organizations are dealing with and where the people that pay us are going as an end of vidual, we have needs for our own career, for our own job satisfaction, for our own work life balance.

00;18;12;06 - 00;18;42;18
Wayne Turmel
And finally, as leaders, which is maybe where we're most comfortable having the conversation. We're sitting somewhere in the middle of all of this. I hope that you have found this podcast series helpful. The, kind of the blog version. The written version is available on Kevin Eikenberry Icon's blog. I will continue to be writing and recording and doing things on the evolving workplace, but that's the end of this series.

00;18;42;18 - 00;19;05;24
Wayne Turmel
For now, I urge you to check out the Long Distance Work Life series of books and most particularly flexible leadership, Kevin Barry's new book, and go to Kevin eikenberry.com/flexible Leadership. My name is Wayne Trammell. Best of luck to you and navigating the evolving workplace. We'll see you soon.