Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You want to get into a lot of organizations before a new leader comes in and take the temperature, assess the organizational climate or organizational culture. And oh, by the way, you'd like a comparative sample where people haven't changed and you need a large number of organizations and it's like, oh, my God, how do we do this?
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Hi, I'm Stuart Papp, founder of DN8, and welcome to Stand up to Stand Out. The podcast communication has changed my life and it will absolutely change yours, because breakthrough innovating deserves breakthrough communicating.
Every episode we bring you industry insiders, subject matter experts, and you can learn from my decades of experience to get the most practical and tactical advice that you can put to work. Now, let's dive in to today's show.
Well, I am so delighted to have Kathryn Klein on the show. You have some new work that is out and I cannot wait to dive in. I'm going to read the full title of the article and maybe we can start there. But this is in the Journal of Applied Psychology and that is called For Good and For Bad, the Distinctive Effects of Successors Leadership Behavior on Collective Engagement and Organizational Performance. So, first of all, Katherine, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the show.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: So let's dive in. First of all, maybe you could help us understand this latest research and what drew you to this whole project in the first place.
[00:01:30] Speaker A: So, as you mentioned, I'm an organizational psychologist, so I'm really interested in psychological processes in the workplace, interpersonal dynamics, leadership and so on, and how that affects organizational outcomes.
And as a field, we have a whole lot of research on leadership and we think about leadership as how leaders influence employees attitudes, employee behavior, employee performance. And at some point, kind of late for me, I would say the light bulb went off for me that like, wait a minute, we study leadership all the time and we have incredibly little research on leadership succession. So leadership succession is a fact of life. 10 to 20% of leaders are going to turn over in any given year. And wow, we really don't study this as a field. You know, I don't have the exact numbers, but I would guess that over the last 50 years, less than 1% of leadership articles speak to succession. And this seemed to be a really fundamental dynamic in organizations. And if we believe leaders make such a difference, wow, it must make a really big difference when new leaders come in. And we know remarkably little about how that affects employees as a group.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: When you were thinking about this as a topic, and it's very relevant now because many of the people who listen to the show, they're getting a new leader, someone's coming in from a new organization, people are being promoted, people are changing. And I just feel like, I don't know if it's the time and age, but it feels like there's so much transition and change and so there's just always a new leadership. But when you were thinking about succession originally, what did you expect to find and then what did the research show you?
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Well, I will say first of all, we weren't entirely sure what to expect. I, you know, I wanted to know what makes succession successful, when are successors successful and how do they change organizations? And we thought that something about their leadership behavior would make a difference. I will say that within the broad field of management there is research on succession and most of that research focuses specifically on CEO succession in large publicly traded companies where we look at company performance before and after a CEO change. And as a result, you're using large data sets and people know very little about the leader in question. You know, kind of is the leader an insider or an outsider? But that kind of research tells us very little, if anything about how leaders lead. And I thought it would make a difference how leaders lead, that better leaders would lead to more, to better outcomes. And I have some specific ideas about this. I think what I didn't anticipate early on was that the same leadership behaviors land differently if you are a successor versus an ongoing established leader or what we call an incumbent. So I wasn't as keyed into like what's in the title of this research, the distinctive effects of being a successor and that, you know, people respond to you differently when you're the new person on top than when you're the person who's been on top for a long time.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: So what are some of the advantages of being a new leader and then what are some of the embedded disadvantages?
[00:04:48] Speaker A: I think a real double edged sword is that you people pay a lot of attention to successors. You are the new person and people are a little wary, they're a little uncertain.
And as we respond to things that we're uncertain about, people are paying a lot of attention, like who's this new guy? Is this going to be good for me? I had this good relationship with the boss. Is this going to continue? I had this bad relationship with the boss. Are things going to be better?
Just what is this new person going to be doing? You know, people are paying a lot of attention and I think that's part of the reason why your actions have bigger impact when you are a successor. And when you are the successor, the organization's a little destabilized. You have a lot of, you know, you're not in a. In a rut, you're not in a good rut, you're not in a bad rut, you're not in a rut. You have more impact as well. So those are all exciting opportunities. They're also risky opportunities for successors because you can get it wrong.
And especially when you're an outsider coming into a role, there's just so much you don't know about how the organization works. At the same time, all eyes are on you, and you often, as a successor, feel a real need to show who you are and get some early wins and establish yourself. So all of that is quite challenging. And the other piece I would add is, again, which was sort of a very basic aha for me, when I started to think more about succession is like, well, wait a minute. The vast majority of leaders are going to start their careers and start their positions as successors. I mean, unless you're the founder, you're a successor. So people are going through this.
This challenge often, right?
[00:06:28] Speaker B: Well, I'm thinking of two specific scenarios. I have a very close friend who just got appointed a very big new role on a new team, their new company. So everything is new, new, new. And yesterday had to address everyone and share who. Who he is, what he's about, what his commitments are, but also signal some humility to say, I'm here to learn. I also have another client who I'm meeting with tomorrow. And a beloved leader left the organization last week, and now they have someone who's liked and sort of known, but is an unproven commodity. And so I'm looking at it from both sides. I'm wondering from the new leader's perspective what they can do to signal that sort of humble confidence, or if that's a concept and maybe that's, you know, part of it. But then I'm also wondering from the people who are being led, I guess the followers or the people who are on the team, what they can do to sort of mitigate or I guess assuage some of their concerns. And so looking at, from both sides, what have you seen or what have you come across for. For both sides of that equation?
[00:07:34] Speaker A: Yeah, such a good question. I think, for the leader who's coming into the role as, you know, the new. The new leader on top, the successor. You know, I love the idea that this person, you Described is introducing himself and saying, this is who I am. This is what I'm about.
To employees, I guess I would say to them, to that leader is, you know, be authentic, be proud, put your best self forward.
Recognize that people are paying a whole lot of attention and they don't know you and they may respond to you in ways that you don't expect and anticipate. And I'm not sure there's anything you can do about that.
I'm just thinking about times when I've been a successor and I've said things and I've later heard that some people had different responses. It's like you responded to, boy, that wasn't what I intended. And I think some of that is just inevitable. So I think doing what you described is a good beginning. I think also really taking the time to learn what's on people's minds.
And I love the ideas of servant leadership and how you can serve the organization, how you can serve them, how you can lead them.
What does success to them mean? What would make, I love the question, you know, what would make them say five years from now, 10 years from now, let's make it five, maybe a little bit shorter. Wow, we are so happy we appointed so and so as our leader under their leadership. This is it. We've achieved this.
So knowing that and learning that, I think could be really, really helpful. I think also setting expectations about, I'm going to take some time to learn this organization better and hear you all out and then and plan and I think all that is really important 100%.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: It just, it reminds me of an anecdote I remember in university studying about the Japanese car, car industry and this concept that, you know, if you're the new CEO at Toyota, you're expected to work on the assembly line for nine months. And the idea was that you don't get the honor of leading without understanding deeply what is what goes into making this product or service. And I loved that concept. And of course the net benefit was higher quality at a lower cost. I mean, we've seen that in spades. And so I. It, it's this contradiction or this paradox, if you will, Catherine, that yes, you have to have capabilities and competence and confidence at the same time, you don't know what you don't know. And so balancing those two is probably more art than science.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: I think that's all right. I think that's all right.
I will also say, when you talked about how I got interested in this work, I also had the experiences of making a Move as a senior leader, as a senior professor coming to Wharton, moving.
So I had sort of grown up in the University of Maryland and climbed the ladder of academia. Then I transferred to Wharton and later I took on a leadership role where I was a successor. And I was struck by how little people guide you and tell you when you are the leader or when you are a senior person. They assume you know what you're doing.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:10:39] Speaker A: And they assume you understand the organization and how it works, even if you're a newbie. Whereas when you're, you know, when you're young and young in your career, it's like, no, no, no, we don't do that. And they're just, by the way, this is what works. It's much harder to get that information when you're coming in as a senior leader. So that goes back to your question of what's challenging about that.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: I've. I've heard that over and over and I won't go there now. But I've heard people say that, you know, there's no playbook here. And then of course people assemble quick, you know, fixes a weekend course or a weekend at some prestigious university. But ultimately it's very personal and it's very hands on and you have to put your own stamp on it. But let's explore the other side, because I know I'm thinking of my meeting tomorrow at 9am and I can already feel there's some anxiety or tension from the people who are going to be led by this new person. And of course, you're probably contrasting that to the person who's left. Again, as you said, all eyes are on this person. What can someone do who's in a role of being a follower or so you're now on that person's team to be more proactive in making sure that the team dynamic is as optimal as it could be.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: I think it's a really good question and one I've thought less about. So I'm really interested in your thoughts as well.
[00:11:55] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:11:56] Speaker A: I think one of the issues is when successors come into a role, their direct reports, followers, people in the organization are often thinking, finally, it's my chance to get X that I have wanted.
And so they may come forward with their own hobby horse or their own pet peeve. And I think that can be quite off putting and difficult for successors to navigate.
So I think it raises an interesting question about what do successors do and what do followers do? I think if successors are saying, let's talk about the organization as a whole, let's talk about this entire whatever the team is, the unit as a whole, what it needs. That's what I really want to be hearing from you as well as any individual concerns you have. Yes, I'll listen to your individual concerns. Can't necessarily respond to them. But I think that is really helpful.
I think for followers to understand that it is a confusing time for successors, that they're being bombarded with a lot and I think maybe taking the time, taking some time to ask the successor what's on your plate? What are you struggling with? What's going on for you? How can I be most helpful to you?
And thus the organization is really productive and a really positive thing to say and it's a win win for everybody.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I completely agree and if I had anything to add to it, it would just be echoing that, that, you know, the people who have been on the inside are in a unique position where they can at least up to that moment share this is how our team operates. This is what is useful. This is how I can be of service to you. And just putting yourself in that service mindset, I think is invaluable, especially to a new leader, because they're looking for allies. They're also a bit disoriented. They're I think of them as a pilot and they're in a new plane. Yes, they may have their pilot's license and have logged the hours, but maybe they've never been in this plane or in this terrain. The other thing I think is incredibly useful, and I've done this with a few teams, is really marking the moment of new leadership by getting everyone together and talking about the values, beliefs, goals, roles, the purpose and and as simple as that sounds, having a chance to say new day. Today is day one.
Even though we're all established and subject matter experts and highly credentialed, let's just treat this as the first day for everybody and let's re establish some things so that we can all own it. And I think that also makes people feel a little bit of levity around it because one other thing I've seen, Katherine, is that you're joining a team, but not everybody on the team is at the same rank and time. Some people are 20 years and some people are two months into that team. So even though it feels brand new to the leader, there's wildly unique dynamics happening under the surface and so you have to quickly get up to speed there.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: That sounds great. Yeah, really helpful and an opportunity to say this is how we worked and hey, we don't you know, this doesn't actually work that well, or this is how we worked and we love this strength and we want it to continue.
[00:15:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: And, you know, again, the successor may not agree with everything, but it's really helpful to at least understand it and not be surprised.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: I love that. So let's talk about something that I believe was in your work, which is about appetite for change, you know, looking at internal motivators or intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic or, or however we want to do that. And the reason I'm interested in this is because, you know, this is a bit crude, but I've heard the expression that you can teach anyone anything, but you can't teach people to, to care or there's more, more crass ways of saying it. It just resonates as true, though. The more I get into working with clients, it's, you know, really harnessing people's motivation, their intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic. And I'm wondering how your research has highlighted what a leader can do or what a team can do to harness the conversations already happening inside the mind of the team to move in a direction that benefits everybody.
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[00:16:12] Speaker A: It may make sense to back up a little bit and say a little bit about what we did in this research, hopefully without being too, too technical. When I thought about how do I study the impact of successors on organizations and on, you know, on the collective of employees as a whole, it's like, oh, my God. I realized part of the reason is we haven't studied this much in my field is it's very difficult to do that. Geez, you want to get into a lot of organizations before a new leader comes in and take the temperature, assess the organizational climate or organizational culture, look at leadership, and then look at it over time. After a new successor comes in, you want to look at organizational performance and oh, by the way, you'd like a comparative sample where people haven't changed you and you need a large number of organizations. And it's like, oh my God, how do we do this? And, you know, for a while I thought, like, maybe this is hospitals and a hospital chain, maybe this is hotels and a hotel chain. And then for me, the light bulb went off and it was like, you know, we can study this in school settings because.
And we studied principal succession. And so schools are distinctive. But again, you know, the more I Study organizations, the more I find, like, you know, to a very large extent, organizations, organizations. You know, we study banks, we study private equity funds, we fund retail stores, we fund credit unions. There's a lot of the internal organizational dynamics are the same. So, yes, there are schools. They're distinctive, and I think they generalize to a large extent. And we are interested in schools because part of the reason methodologically is principal succession occurs in the summer, and it's at a predictable time. So we could work with school districts and say, let us get into these schools before a new principal comes in at the end of the school year. Let us, you know, they'll get a new principal. Half of the schools we study will get a new principal in the summer, and then we'll track them over time. So we're comparing schools that are getting new principals that are matched with schools that are not.
And a key thing that I think you're getting at, and we can talk about more of this, is we measured before the successors come in at the end of the school year. So before the summer, we measured what we call need for change.
We're asking teachers, how much does this school need to change?
And I should say that it was really, how much does this school's performance need to improve? How satisfied are you teachers? How much do you regard your school as a center of organizational excellence, academic excellence? How much do you think, no, things really need to change in order for us to be a center of excellence? We're measuring that before the successors come in. And what we find is that the appetite for change is really important for how employees, teachers in this case, respond to the new leader. It makes a very big difference if teachers are saying collectively, like, yeah, performance isn't really good around you. We really need to improve as a school versus no, no, we're good. We're good. We're excellent. We are not looking for change. We are not looking for someone to help us perform better. So let me pause there. I can say more about this, but I'll pause there. That. But this was. This turned out to be a really big driver of how people respond to successors, and specifically to successors.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Yeah. And this may not be related, but as you were speaking, it made me think about, you know, political campaigns right throughout history where, you know, oftentimes the incumbent is trying to disturb the status quo and saying, you know, you don't. And I just remember this rhetorical question that Ronald Reagan asked in 1980, saying, you know, are you better off now than you were four years ago? Of course, Leveraging all these, you know, national crises and international crises and, and all that to sort of create this sense of I need to change. And so that, that was what I was thinking about. But what I find, what I find compelling is sort of gauging someone's internal, you know, motive to, to want to change predicated on what the leader is doing is representing says about who they are, the organization. So yeah, I'd love to learn more about that because ultimately I'd like to know what, what can someone do if they're in a role.
[00:20:18] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: And they may need to refresh the need to change. And this is exactly what's happening with my client tomorrow. This person who's leading this group, there's a new sort of team leader. But the person who has the org has been there for 10 years and is well respected, but also wants to shake it up.
And one of the things that he's talking about is that the world has changed. And thus, even though we may feel comfortable and, and complacent, we actually, we cannot afford to stay, you know, as we are. So anyway, those are some of the things I'm thinking of.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: So let me tell you a little bit about what we found in our research and then try to bring it back to your client because it's a little different way you're describing it. Interesting.
So what we find in our research, and it's complicated, so see if I can give you a concise version. A key finding is that when a successor comes in, we measure both how visionary they are. We ask teachers to rate how visionary, what is the principal, how good are they at vision communication? We also ask them to rate how much they coach.
How much individual feedback are you getting for the principals? How much are these leaders coming in and setting goals, setting expectations, doing what a sports coach would do or others would do, Like, I'm really going to coach you on how you do your job better. That what we find is coaching makes a really big difference. When teachers are saying, we need to change our school performance, our school performance is not great. They respond really positively to successors and come in and do a lot of coaching. It's like, yes, this person's going to help us perform better. We invest more in our work, we're more energized, we measure that and we see test scores rise. So school performance goes up. When you have that right mix of active coaching and hunger for change, hunger for improvement.
When successor comes in and does that kind of coaching. But the employees are saying like, no, no, no, we're good here. Our performance is strong as an organization. They respond really negatively to coaching. Like, who the hell are you to coach us? I mean, again, it's analogous to a sports team, right? Like we're winning and you're trying to change what we do. Like, hello, no. And what you see is, you know, engagement declines and performance declines.
Successors were not creating the need for change. They were responding to where the schools already were. They were responding to the collective appetite for change. And they really had to do that. It wasn't that they were coming in and building up people's sense of change. We measured change before this need for change, before the successors came in. So it sort of, it's interesting. We talk so much about leaders having to explain to people why we need to change and that we need to change. That's not what we found here. You know, again, sports teams have pretty strong records of wins and losses. Schools have pretty clear indicators of performance. I think many organizations have strong indicators of performance that employees know. So we talk about the importance of successors, reading the room and understanding the appetite for change that they are stepping into and leading correspondingly. Because people, you know, yeah, if I need help, if I, if, if I'm feeling like, man, I really need steward's help and we, God, I hope this new leader can really help us perform better. That's one thing. If I think like, we're really good and you know, again, who the hell is he to advise me? He's a new guy on top. Thank you. No, that's really problematic.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: So to build on that, the reading in the room, I'm thinking of a client that's a very large biopharma company, global, and they have a new CEO. And for the last, I think a year and a half, this CEO has been on a listening tour. And I think that's clever use because listening implies that you have no agenda. How are things going? Great. Sort of okay, terrible, right? Like listening serves all that. So I wonder if that's a good practice for a leader to have to come in and say, before I make any conclusions, you tell me how things are going and what's working and what's not and see what I can learn from you. Is that the implied approach or am I missing something?
[00:24:28] Speaker A: I think that is the implied approach.
Again, I think there's nuance to that because sometimes when we say listening towards tell me everything that's wrong. It's tricky because I think employees can be nervous. Like, what do I really tell the boss? How do I make myself look really Good. Is the boss coming in to figure out who to cut? The new boss coming in to figure out who to cut. How, you know, do I need to be position myself to make me and our unit look as good as possible? All that is going to impede getting viable answers. So I think, you know, our research would suggest you really need to be saying, let's talk about how the organization is doing. Let's talk about how well we're performing. Let's talk about are we meeting our perform, you know, our standards for what as an organization is where we want to be. You know, how do you all evaluate this? Here's how I'm evaluating this. I'm looking at our sales over this period. I'm looking at our stock performance over this period. I'm looking at whatever the indicators are. Let's talk about those. That I think is probably a good way to go. So I think this is really speaking to, yes, listening, but also being very thoughtful about what is the information you're trying to learn and asking the questions that get you that information that allows you as a new leader to really succeed. I also want to go back. If it's the client you mentioned, there was an implication, I thought I was hearing that your client believes employees don't know, the staff doesn't know, the workforce doesn't see the need for change.
I thought that's what I was hearing, that the client's feeling like, no, I got to convince these people that there's a need for change.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: So, yeah, the truth is, I don't know that to be true. That's a very recent conversation. Tomorrow I'll have an opportunity to learn more about it. About that. And I think you're right about, you know, the circumstances matter. Are people feeling comfortable to share what's actually true. But to go back to the issue, what this person was telling me was that they were noticing when they were observing their trusted and beloved team members. There's a high degree of respect and very high level of engagement. So I'm making assumptions here, but there's a general reluctance for people to want to change because it's uncomfortable. And also to give you some more context, this particular client has had a wildly successful track record in a very unique business area. And that has sort of not come to a conclusion. But let's just say it's run its course. And so now you're getting the organization has to redefine itself.
And so I think that confluence of factors is affecting people's maybe appetite for change. But it doesn't mean that they're not receptive to it. It's just what we're hearing.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: So when we studied this, we labeled it need for change. But really this was need for change and improvement in the organization's performance.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Right.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: Which we might separate from, like, what specific levers do we need to change in order to achieve improvements? But an essential starting point is, like, how happy are we with how well we're performing? You know, is this work to say, how are we doing? Are we strong and good? Or are we like, no, we're not strong and good. We're really underperforming compared to where we think we should be. And knowing what people's sense of that. Do they have a sense? Do they understand? What do they understand, I think is that our research would suggest is really important and will make a big difference for how they respond to the actions the successors take.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Right. Well, you're giving a different lens of sort of zooming up and saying, let's worry less about what we think individually and focus on what this organization needs to be successful. I love that reframing, saying, you know, are we doing our best work? Are we delivering at the level we know we can? And it reminds me of this concept of psychological safety that Amy Edmondson's written a lot about. But one of the things I love when I saw the sort of concept of psychological safety coined was most well articulated by Greg Popovich for the head coach of the San Antonio spurs, which is essentially two things. We love you, and we hold ourselves to high standards. And so I love that compliment because, you know, love and being supported is what we all, we tend to crave. We want security, we want acceptance, and all of that. And that's critical. But once you're there, it's now, what are the standards we set for ourselves and how do we achieve them? And I think without those two coexisting, you can't have true sustained high performance. You might get streaks, but maybe not sustained.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: I think that's exactly right. And I think it creates. There's a certain creation of shared accountability. When you say, how are we performing? Let's evaluate that. Are we. Where we are, you know, is our reputation in the marketplace. Our. Is our performance in the marketplace where we think it should be and where we, you know, want it to be, where we aspire to be. And when we have a shared conversation about that, like, no, we all think we can do better, that's really. That creates a real potential for energy. And when a successor comes in and finds that people Are you have a different challenge if people are saying like, no, no, no, we're good, and you as a successor, like, no, we're not.
No, we're not. But again, understand, at least understanding that and not making assumptions about where people are, I think is really helpful.
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Something that is, I'm deeply interested in is something we've just touched on. But I'd like to go a bit deeper. There is. How do you ensure in any organization, whatever the hierarchy and power dynamics are, that you can create the conditions of making someone feel safe to express what's truly on their mind? And I'll give you a little more context around this. You know, I've done countless programs where people will want surveys and pulses and anonymous and attributed and you name it, and there's all sorts of methodologies. But I think what ultimately people are looking for, if they're looking for the truth is, did this work? Was it effective? Did it make a difference? Are we doing the right things? And all of that is what people should be pursuing.
I guess I'm thinking about a new leader and looking to establish that sense of trust as quickly as they can with a new team. Understanding power dynamics, understanding people's reticence, you know, what can one do in a new role to really signal genuine interest and also an open forum for people to share what's truly on their mind. Is it, it's not just one modality or one methodology. What, what do you, what have you seen in your experience?
[00:31:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's a great question and it's surprisingly challenging, I think. You know, I do think a really well done anonymous survey can be hugely valuable. You do have to ask the right questions. You do have to ask questions that really get it in a way. And it takes a good deal of thought. Kind of canned surveys may well not do it for you, but anonymity can be very, very helpful.
I think you're hinting at an interpersonal quality or a dynamic of really good strong listening.
And I think that is tremendously important. And I think of. I teach a course on navigating difficult conversations.
I think of a colleague in Israel, Professor Avi Kluger, who's done a lot of work on listening and how powerful strong listening is and the kinds of skills that we hear about, about paraphrasing, checking for understanding, pausing to listen. There's this fun acronym of wait, why am I talking?
Just stop and actually listen. I think that creates tremendous psychological safety and allows people to speak.
I think you can say to people, I really want to hear you. I may not agree with everything you say, but I want to make sure I understand what you're saying. And all of that, that interpersonal thing really, you know, those skills really matter.
The thing that I'm thinking about is.
And yet you, as a successor, may conclude there are people on the team you want to fire. You're often, you know, you may be hired to shake things up. The prior leader may have been hesitant to make those changes. And that's, I mean, so that's a conundrum because I think that, you know, they're. There are times when that is really important to make those changes and, you know, to have psychological safety, to feel psycholog. Psychological safety. At the same time, you think I may be fired. That's hard. You know, that's. That's not terribly likely. I don't know that I have a great solution for that one.
Except maybe saying, you know, I'm going to take some time to make, you know, to make any changes. I will always explain my actions.
You know, your input is really vital.
And not to say, and, oh, by the way, I'm planning to fire some of you. Like, yeah, don't say that.
[00:33:40] Speaker B: Yeah. If you walk into the first staff meeting with a guillotine loaded and ready, I don't think anyone's going to be opening up.
[00:33:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:46] Speaker B: But at the same time, I feel as though a leader's true responsibility is to bring out the best performance in everybody and for the purpose of the team in the organization and who they're serving.
And I've done a little bit of research on this bad apple effect, this idea that one person can really bring down the performance of a team. And actually it's hilariously portrayed on this Saturday live sketch from 25 years ago called Debbie Downer, where one person. I don't know if you've ever seen it, it's hilarious.
Oh, it's. It's priceless. This Rachel Dratch and Jimmy Fallon and all these. But they're all on vacation, having the greatest time in Disney World or whoever. And just one person is saying, you know, like, this is the worst salad ever. And I remember when everyone got sick and got food poisoning. So no matter what the great moment is, but to get back to the research, I do really think about that a lot. When you get a team and going back to the leader, doing a listening tour and being an active listener, it's their responsibility to fine tune the dynamics and deliver on that. So it's probably.
There's no solution for it. But that is one of the key responsibilities, at least from my, my lens.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: Totally agree, totally agree.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I did want to ask, just to get a bit nerdy for a second about the anonymity or the anonymous survey because I agree, I think that there's. When you can feel as though you can share something that won't come back to you that is your true opinion about something. I guess it can be a double edged sword in some ways. You might, you know, capture the vitriol or the frustration of somebody. At the same time they may feel safe to really say what's truly on their mind. And I, I wonder about the design of that. We don't have to go into this, but I'm curious about it. Where are you asking people to judge what's happened, to assess what could happen? I guess I, I think about time frames. When you're looking at something, whether it's a program or whether it's a course or whether it's a speaker or whether it's a, a day session. When it comes to anonymous surveys, what are you asking people to really rate or assess? Is it what's happened or, or what could happen? Or is it a little bit of both or something else I'm not paying attention to?
[00:36:01] Speaker A: It's hard to consider a hypothetical. I think that's part of what you're struggling with and I struggle with that too. You know, I think what we are not looking forward to, I mean we learned, of course we learned some from job satisfaction questions. Of course we can ask questions about commitment or engagement. We learn from.
I think the other thing we learned from is asking people to respond as consumers. I don't know how you would describe this colleagues as people who have experienced X that makes a difference in whatever this thing is. What was the quality? What is the quality of the food you were served? What is the quality of the, you know, does it give you, you know, does it support, respond quickly? Does it respond? Is the it response helpful? If you need X, can you get it done? How easy is it to get reimbursed? How easy is it or difficult is it to get to schedule meetings to coordinate with so and so. So, you know, when I've seen this done really well, there's often been a series of focus groups that get at to figure out what should we be measuring in this survey? What do we actually care about? If you just measure satisfaction, commitment, engagement, you're going to get some sense of what's the temperature, how happy are people, how hard are they working? Maybe, but you won't know what could be done better or worse.
When I've seen this done effectively in organizations, it's often been really effective to compare different units. I'm thinking of a study that looked at mentoring and mentoring of junior colleagues. And we could see like, oh, mentoring works really well in some units and it doesn't work in other units. We looked at IT support. It works really well in some units. It doesn't work well in other units. There's a really strong commitment to service or research or innovation in this unit, and it's weaker in that unit. Those comparisons start to be really illuminating. And those specifics about, you know, is it IT support, is it mentoring, is it, you know, rewards for innovation, is it coordination, whatever those pieces are, that becomes much more illuminating.
[00:38:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you're, you're right with that. And again, what, what you're seeking to truly measure is going to, of course, you know, skew the information back. And I also find that, and this has just been my experience, but the more I have sought to truly partner with people and seek the truth in service of a better product, a better offering, something that will truly help others. And I can't say that if you appeal to everybody's sense of altruism that they just jump in, but if you really can position it through the greater good and a passionate plea, to me, those have been invaluable parts of the formula to extract what I think is a stronger signal in a noisy world.
[00:39:07] Speaker A: Yes, I totally agree. The other, yeah, I'd say two other things about this, this topic. I'm seeing a consistency in what we're talking about, something we talked about a few minutes ago about sort of. This seems to be getting really clear about the questions you need answered. You know, and not just, oh, a survey is a good idea, like, well, maybe, but survey is a good idea to answer what, because what the other thing that I think is thinking a lot about what information communicated how is persuasive to the people in this organization.
So data numbers can be very persuasive in some organizations.
Stories and impressions may be more persuasive in other organizations. Customer feedback may matter a whole lot. When you're trying to motivate people and, and unearth what's going on, it's really helpful to understand, well, what signals, what information communicated how do they really care about.
[00:40:04] Speaker B: The other thing too, that I think about is that, you know, people don't always want to admit how they truly are motivated or persuaded because it will signal something that they don't feel is flattering to them. So I think about, you know, I've asked a lot of clients. We're all in sciences and medicine. You know, they always say the data, the data. But. But the truth is, you know, people are all humans first. We're swayed by emotions and human stories, and we all are. And that's not a judgment. It's just I think people want to believe something about themselves. And so oftentimes to correct for that, you know, you have to observe how they actually operate in reality versus what they say.
And I just think of a. There's a study done years ago with Sony, the company that made electronics. And they asked all these teenagers in a focus group, you know, do you like this, you know, color Walkman, this, you know, personal stereo?
And they, oh, yeah, we love it. And, you know, the bright colors, that's. That's totally how we are. And then at the end, they were allowed to choose anyone for free and they all chose the black one. So they said they liked this, but they did something else. One other thing that's very close to what I've done over the last 15 years in biopharma and for 25 years professional, professionally, which is around communication.
It's truly a first love for me. I have always found compelling communicators just to have this sort of magical, charismatic effect. I know that in the study you covered this idea of vision communication and you did speak about it earlier, but I'd like to get into just understanding what that meant for you in this study. And then if you have other thoughts on being a powerful communicator and sharing vision, if you have any thoughts on that. But maybe you could just, for the purposes of today, define what you mean on vision communication or about vision communication in this study, and then we can go from there.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: Yeah. So one of the surprises in this study is that leaders vision communication, we measure, and I'll say more about that in a moment, essentially had no impact whether you were a successor or an established leader and incumbent. It made no difference.
We saw no change as a result. So bringing in a leader successor who was higher in vision communication didn't actually lead to greater engagement or improvements in performance. It's hard to know exactly what's going on about this. With this finding, we measure vision communication by asking employees, to what extent does this leader present a compelling, inspiring vision of the organization's future? A series of questions that get at like, is this person a communicator? That paints an exciting picture.
I think a couple things may be Going on one.
It may be that vision communication in a school system isn't actually that variable. I could ask you, Stuart, what's your vision for a great school?
[00:43:02] Speaker B: You know, right.
[00:43:03] Speaker A: Kids are engaged, kids learn, parents are feel, you know, connected. Everybody feels included.
You know, test scores are going up. So that may be like in this setting, it may be particularly difficult.
People in this setting may already feel a lot of vision and attachment to the mission. So that may not make so much difference. It may also be that vision at the end of the day doesn't translate into leader actions, doesn't change my. Often may not change anything.
And right. If you, if I don't have a lot of. I mean, this, this maybe can get us to talk a little bit more about this distinction we find between incumbent leaders, ongoing leaders, I mean by that, by the word incumbent versus successors. And basically what we find is that the same behaviors, you know, particularly coaching by incumbents, doesn't make a difference. And I think part of what's going on is that when you're an established leader, if things are going well, they tend to stay like going well. If things are going badly, they stay. They continue to go badly if things are going well. And we have a lot of respect for you as a leader and you present a vision. Good. If you don't have a present a vision, oh, well, you know, we have a lot of respect for your leadership anyway, if things are going badly and you present a vision like, you know, as an incumbent leader, your vision really rings hollow. Like, hello, you're leading our performance and our performance is lousy.
Your vision, you know, rings hollow if you're, you know, and if you're new, it may be inspiring, at least in theory we thought it would be inspiring, but it's not what we find. You know, we find much more juice in this tangible impact of coaching and specifically. But it's specifically by coaching, by successors, I mean part of what are the message of our research, and we'd love to see more research on this, but it's a powerful message which really says if you want to change collective engagement, if you want to build a workforce where people are really changing, not just ongoing engagement, we see a real boost in engagement. We see a real boost in how hard people are working, how enthusiastically, with what dedication. It may well take a successor to do that. Like, it's really hard for once you're established in a role to like, really galvanize people when they've gotten used to your leadership over a period of years, like making a big Change, like, no, no, no. Now we need to do something different and bigger and better, and we really need you to lean in. That's really hard to motivate when you're an established leader to get and, you know, and whereas that message coming from somebody new can make a difference.
[00:45:48] Speaker B: So, in short, if you really want to galvanize change, you probably need somebody
[00:45:52] Speaker A: new if you want to galvanize. I mean, our, you know, that's what our results are telling us. I mean, I realize it's a controversial statement and it, you know, we, and we need more research, but that's, you know, if you want to galvanize them with, particularly with the force of your leadership style, I mean, maybe if you put in a different pay system, maybe you can do that. Maybe a different reward system.
Maybe, you know, you change things. Maybe as an ongoing leader, that really will make a difference.
Maybe if you really communicate to people there's a crisis coming that we need to tackle, and we haven't looked at this and let me show you the numbers, maybe you can do that. But if you're trying to do that by either setting a vision or coaching, motivating with the standard leadership tools, really hard to do that as an established leader. You know, we've gotten in a groove. It's, you know, we've gotten in a groove and it's, you know, it's a little bit like saying, I'm going to parent differently and my kids are going to respond differently. It's like, no, dad, we've known you for a very long time, and we're used to one thing that we're not sure about this new guy.
[00:46:53] Speaker B: I wonder how that, and I'm just wondering aloud here how that finding factors into people who are being promoted.
Right. Effective leader A in regional is now the national leader, or, you know, former COO is now CEO or whatever it would be. But I'm not sure your research has gone there. But I'm just thinking about that where promotion and succession, how do those two correlate?
[00:47:20] Speaker A: I mean, we have this sort of notion of the Peter Principle and being.
I think it's the Peter Principle being promoted to the level of your own competence, which, you know, in some settings we may see. But as a general rule, you know, if you said to me, advise me on, you know, other things being equal, who should I bring in as a successor? I would say to you, you know, we know that it's. It is that insiders do better than outsiders overall. Outsiders often introduce change that backfires. They know less they misread the room. They don't understand, you know, they don't understand employees appetite for change.
So promotion often is, is, is better. You know, there are other challenges that come with it, like you may be leading now, leading your peers. And that can be challenging.
[00:48:07] Speaker B: Of course, one of the glaring takeaways I'm, I'm getting from our discussion, which is a very deep list of learnings, is the delicacy and the intricacy of, of truly reading every room that you're in to intuit where people stand on, you know, their engagement, their commitment, their, their drive, their, their pursuit. And of course, there's so many factors. You know, I have a client right now who has come over from a very successful track record at a previous entity over 20 plus years, but is a new environment where there's new challenges, new pushback and is trying to martial confidence and has experience, has a great track record, but also is in a very new environment, new area, new territories. And so it's very challenging for someone to feel like they have a point of view and a clear value proposition. And at the same time, I don't know what I don't know and I have to be humble and learn and pick up cues. That is not easy.
[00:49:16] Speaker A: Not easy. Absolutely not easy. And you know, our research would reinforce that you have, it's, it's an opportunity.
This, you know, we don't know exactly how long it lasts, but there, this window of opportunity when you are seen as the successor, when you are the, the new person, does that last three months, six months, a year, two years? I'm not sure my intuition would be a year or less probably where you can have a lot of impact. So it is, it is a stressful time because you can make things, you know, you can make things better and hopefully get on this really positive trajectory or you can make things worse. You can.
And I do think some of what we've been discussing about asking the right questions and this balancing act of like, I really want to learn, but I'm also not giving up my own views.
And I'm not just being reactive.
You know, it's, it's, it's a tightrope, it's challenging. Of course there's an overarching message. I mean, one of them I think is recognizing this challenge and this opportunity. Yes. Approaching it with humility, also being really thoughtful about the questions you're asking and figuring out what is it I need to learn in order to lead this organization really well.
[00:50:27] Speaker B: I keep going back to this concept of Shifting your focus on the right level of questions to serve what the organization needs. And to go back to this conversation I was having with a client just a few hours ago, focusing not on necessarily the people or even the dynamics, but trying to look at what needs to happen organizationally.
I guess I'm saying having a bigger conversation to sort of get perspective and say, you know, different personalities, different ways of working together. But ultimately it goes back to these fundamental questions of how do we do our best work? What do we need to do to truly perform? Are we performing at our highest level? And to me, all of these questions can bring forward a bigger discussion, which I think people can then rally around and say, okay, let's not look at it as who's doing what? Are you performing? Am I? But are we? And what will it take to really bring out our best work? And that is a much harder and I think a better question, but a harder one to solve and a richer discussion.
[00:51:39] Speaker A: I totally agree. And I think it's a question that is energizing, is motivating. And I think at the end of the day, we talked earlier about how is this organization going to thrive and survive under this new leader? What does this new leader mean for the organization, yes, for my future in it, but also for us as an organization and our success as an organization.
And I do think that shift to let's talk about what this organization needs or this unit. I'm taking over, what it needs to succeed and to thrive and to perform at the, at the level we all hope. I think that's a really good place to focus a lot of attention.
[00:52:18] Speaker B: Well, two things on my mind are, one, there's a, I guess a famous sort of marketing thought exercise from marketing professors saying, you know, what's the best marketing campaign for, you know, any food truck or you name it. And of course, the best marketing is a hungry audience because it really, you can talk about all the features and benefits of, you know, we have this fancy mustard or it's organic or gluten free, but at the end of the day, what really matters is what does the audience want and what are their hungers. And so I think that to me that that sort of sits as a, as a metaphor for your research in a little bit that, that, you know, at least what I'm gleaning is, you know, how people feel about things and what they want is really going to be far more indicative of how things progress than necessarily a new face, a new narrative, a new, a new story, a bigger vision.
[00:53:13] Speaker A: I think that's right. I think that's right. When it's, you know, how are they feeling about their performance as an organization?
You know, are we convinced that we as an organization are doing great work?
And we see it in, you know, all the indicators that we pay attention to or fundamentally are we thinking like we're not doing great work? And we see that in the, in, you know, in the indicators we pay attention to.
[00:53:37] Speaker B: Is there anything that truly surprised you in your findings that was, you know, just something that seemed out of left
[00:53:46] Speaker A: field or, you know, I think that if we're puzzling about anything in this research, it's, wow, there are real limits to what you can do. Our research suggests as an incumbent leader, you know, I've thought, for example, I teach at a, you know, I teach at a business school. One of the lessons we would, if we were to really focus our leadership research, our leadership teaching around this, we would say to our MBA students, you're going to come in as a successor. Most of the time you have a whole lot of opportunity as a successor to get things right and make a big difference, a positive difference. You have a whole lot of risk as a successor of doing things wrong and making the organization worse off. And this is a time where you have a lot of influence on the organization.
And it's going to be particularly important to read the room and to understand what people's senses of the need for change and the need for improvement is and respond accordingly. And be careful because once you get established as a leader, it's very hard to change anything. You know, once you are on a good groove with people, the good news is, yeah, you're likely to stay. And if you're in a bad groove, if you're, if they're struggling with your leadership, if you're not respective, if the organization is not performing well, it's really hard to shift from that. Take a marriage. You know, when you're in a bad rut with your marriage, it's hard to get out of that bad rut. When you're in a good rut, you know, it's like, oh, honey, I said that. Oh, don't worry about that. I know you didn't mean it. And it's easy, right? And see, a good ruts, like a good rut is a really beautiful thing and a bad rut is really complicated. And, and so what's surprising to me, the, you know, not only the positive effects we feed for the impact that successors have, but the, the how difficult it is to move the needle as an incumbent leader. If you're really trying to change motivation and change, you know, to get out of the bad rut or to get out of the good. Right. The good news, you can, you know, good rut seems to stay as well.
[00:55:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
It just occurs to me that no matter where you are in your leadership journey, whether you're the incumbent or established, it's probably in your best interest to be a curator of the sentiment of your team as best as you can to signal transparency, openness, vulnerability, shared purpose. I'm thinking about Daniel Coyle's research who wrote the culture code that, you know, high performing cultures come down to three things. First is psychological safety. Second is vulnerability.
And third is shared purpose. And those three combine together. So he also talks about this interpersonal athleticism of communication, which I love as a term, which is just effective leaders are always talking and sharing and listening and not just blabbing on, but truly listening. So I'm not suggesting that this is some panacea for incumbent or established leaders, but it seems like a. One of the things that high performing leaders do is stay as close as they can connected to.
[00:56:51] Speaker A: And it can seem obvious, but I think often it's not. It's a shared understanding of our collective performance, achievements and aspirations. Like, are we happy with how we're doing? Do we think like we're good and let's just keep going, or do we, are we looking at our performance and collectively saying we're not where we want to be? So knowing that, you know, along with the kinds of skills and psychological safety and communication and vulnerability, you know, all of that, I think you put, you put all that together, you have a very powerful equation.
[00:57:25] Speaker B: Right. And ultimately, I believe it's co created as if people feel some sense of agency and authorship with how their team is going. I think that's what I'm gleaning from your research, at least in part, is that it, it really does depend on what people think about how they're doing and that ultimately if you can serve that momentum and I think about in sports, you know, if rarely do you get fired in the middle of a hot streak. I don't think it's ever happened. Right. It's always, you know, lost their 12th game in a row and then, you know, two days later, everything get. Everyone gets fired. And so you get, you know, whether that's good, bad or indifferent, I don't know. But ultimately, you know, your job is, like you said, good rut or bad rut. If there's a good rut, keep the momentum going as best you can. Try not to disturb that equilibrium. And if there's a bad rut, you have a few levers you can pull, but maybe not as many as you thought.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: Not as many as you thought. And more. If you're a successor, you know, your chances to get out of. Out of a bad rut are higher.
[00:58:27] Speaker B: So, Dr. Klein, this has been thrilling. I have two final questions, and there's one. Is there anything I did not ask or we didn't cover that you thought would be beneficial to discuss for our audience? For me, anything that would be useful to, to discuss?
[00:58:44] Speaker A: No, I think you did a great job asking questions. I think we've, we've covered it and we have complicated findings, but they really point to successors. You know, the power and the risks, the risk and the opportunity of being a successor and the challenges that, that incumbent ongoing leaders face to making change. So I think we've. We've covered a lot of it and, and I appreciate you bringing this discussion to. Well, how do leaders do this? What. What kinds of questions should they be asking? How do we unearth this information?
[00:59:10] Speaker B: So that's what makes me so excited, because as we've been speaking, I cannot wait to share this conversation not only far and wide, but also with very specific people in my ecosystem who I know need to hear this.
Because ultimately, what all of our listeners and our clients are doing is they're. They're incredibly smart, brilliant people who have a very short window of time to figure out how to be an optimal leader or team player. And so I believe that what you're doing in your wonderful research is we're trying to get at the truth of here's what will actually work. This is what could move the needle, and here's where you should pay attention. And that, to me, is invaluable to somebody who is short on time and short on energy. And they're looking for better questions, better tactics, better strategies. So thank you for that. It's really helpful.
[00:59:58] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:59:58] Speaker B: Last question. I know we'll include links to the article and, of course, links to your website, but where would you like people to go to learn more about you and your wonderful work?
[01:00:09] Speaker A: Well, people can certainly contact me via LinkedIn. My email is. I mean, I can share my email. It's easy to find. You look up Professor Kathryn Klein, Wharton. You'll find my email very easily.
So I would love hearing people's succession stories or other questions they may have. So, yeah, delighted to have people be in contact.
[01:00:28] Speaker B: I Love it. Well, Dr. Kathryn, Klein. Thank you so much for being on Stand up to Standout and I look forward to seeing you soon. Hey it's Stuart again. Before you leave, if you love this podcast, subscribe. And also if you go to dn8.com you'll find a sign up for our newsletter where we give you actionable and practical advice. And be sure to find us on social media. And don't be shy. You can give us a six star review, but we will settle for five. See you in the next one.
[01:01:00] Speaker A: Sam.
