Welcome to our next episode to the Achal focalpoint podcast and I've got two wonderful guests today, Brad Swanson, and Allan Yes, which has practiced or I practiced to properly pronounce your names because usually we just use the first names, so before I let you introduce yourself, um, maybe just for the listeners, today we're going to talk about guiding leaders or helping leaders to develop leadership somehow, because r to guess
 are basically coming from this domain domain, they're leadership coaches, i nearly had said agile leadership coaches and guides and a lot more, but again here we go, who's going to go first? all right, i guess i can take it away, so um, i'm brad swansen, um, a little bit of background, um, i started my career as a software engineer and then found myself kind of...
 going through the the leadership ranks over the years and at some point I realized that uh I was not very good at being a leader um you had been asked to take on these leadership roles but nobody ever offered me any training on what it means to be a leader people just assumed oh well you're you're good at your software engineering jobs so of course you'll be great as a manager of people right what kind of sense does that make?
 take someone who's maybe good at their craft and then just assume that they'll be good leaders of people, they're completely different skills, so um, yeah, I think at some point in my leadership journey I realized that hey, I'm I'm not a great leader and if if I want to be, I better work on my skills, um, unfortunately my my employers weren't offering a lot of that, so I kind of had to seek it out, I was you know reading books and talking to people I knew to find out.
 where can I learn more about being a good manager and leader, and so I i started to discover some of these things on my own, but I certainly wish that you know I had had more of a a formal coach, I wish that I had more formal training rather than stumbling through it on my own, but but I think it's fairly common with leaders that I encounter that they grew through the ranks the same way and often without a lot of form
 training or coaching, so um, I'm, I'm glad I was able to learn things, although I learned them oftentimes the hard way, and now I'm helping to bring some of those lessons to leaders that I I coach through through my practice, that sounds already very interesting, I'm going to dive deeper into this, but first of all thanks brat, Allan, where are you coming from with all of this? yes, yeah, my name is, and pretty.
 story, but I think I took another extreme, I was responsible for qa, quality assurance in organization, and people consider me like really control freak, everything needs to be perfect, and I wanted also to make things in the perfect way, and the leadership, yeah, I would call it more like a dictatorship from my side.
 leadership, but then uh, I became just to curious, I said, I told myself, must be something out in the world where I can learn about leadership, not management, but leadership, start reading some books, got some trainings, but then I just start exploring what else is happening, and currently, I feel that I am...
 evolving in a more more leadership role and creating environments for people around me to grow and to avoid same mistakes as as I made it at that time. Right, right, cool. So, the place where we came together, I think the first time was the platform which is called agile leadership journey, for those who don't know it, you might just look it up on the web, you will find a lot of references, was.
 again you will find out more about scrum alliance if you don't much about it, but it's it's literally a platform here for growing, growing leadership capacities right, and with a strong attachment to agility, agile organizations and everything, and so talking about this, how do you think and why do you think leadership is such a let's say prominent topic now?
 jump in there Mike, so in my experience I've worked with many.
 organizations that have gone through this journey towards you know adopting agile practices like scrum and uh the biggest challenges and failures i've run into have typically been related to systemic, organizational, cultural and and leadership issues and i think the the fallacy i've seen is a lot of leaders believe that oh well this agile thing is is
 just a process that we kind of install uh you know at the team level and then of course they expect will teams are now going to be better, faster, more productive in some way, um, but yet they they fail to see that in order for that to thrive, they need to change the way they they lead, perhaps, they need to put uh different or shape the culture a little bit differently, um, they may need may need to be
 behave a little bit different as leaders, they may need to change some of the structures within the organization, so um, that's where we run into barriers, we can only get so far with a single team before we run into those organizational and cultural barriers, and of course to get through those requires true leadership and effective leadership, we we sometimes refer to it as agile leadership.
 but in this case the word agile doesn't necessarily refer to those same team level practices like scrum, it's more about adaptive, flexible leadership that i think respects people and is accepting of the inherent uncertainty that we're often dealing with in these types of situations.
 and do you guys feel, i mean i think we've been discussing agile leadership already since quite a while in the communities and the market has been offering things over the years, do you feel we've seen a development around what we're talking about, like just as an example we, i think we used to talk about this idea of agile leaders need to be servant leaders, right? that was some dogmatic statement, i think i heard 10.
 15 years ago, is there some development you can recognize when we talk about agile leadership nowadays? in your opinion, in in my experience and opinion, many leaders i met, they are aware only on these agial frameworks, like a scram save for some some other frameworks, they are not aware of evolution that
 is happening around us in the world and they still think that they can continue business as usual and then we will have some teams running something called the scrum or something else uh in a recent year and especially after covid in my experience i could feel that many leaders actually becoming more
 aware that something needs to change within them, so starting with themselves before they start considering any changes in the organization. That's an interesting one, because I just talked a little bit before our conversation here with Brad about 2024 and you know the economy and everything ahead and a lot of leaders might now sit in the exact same seat and position.
 consider you know how i'm going to move this whole organization forward and the question is how would how would a different leadership style or more awareness or anything else help me here or make a difference? not sure about your thoughts, we just think about the people we work with. yeah, to me a lot of this relates to this acronym we hear a lot now, avuka,
 ambiguity, I think probably all of us would agree that we're in a increasingly Vuka world, so a lot of a lot of leaders, going into this situation may not be as comfortable with things like uncertainty, when when things have been more stable.
 in the past, um, I think a different type of leadership could be effective, but in in this, uncertain, volatile, complex, world that we're all dealing.
 with now, I think leaders themselves need to become more comfortable with uncertainty uh and more flexible around um the way that they lead, so it's more situational, um, Mike, you mentioned this idea of servant leadership, which I think some people misinterpret to be in some ways kind of a very weak type of leadership, but but I think like um, like Bill Joiner, your your...
 previous guest mentioned um that the most effective leaders have this much wider uh much broader repertoire of leadership skills that they can bring to bear um for for different types of situations so rather than having just one type of leadership, one approach that they use, they're much more aware of the situation and they can use their depth of skill.
 to bring the right type of leadership, there certainly may be situations where a leader does need to be much more assertive, and there may be situations where they need to be more of what people think of as a servant leader, a more accommodative stance, but they have to first be aware of what is appropriate, and then they have to have the depth of skills to be able to lead in different ways in those different situation.
 so leadership, you know, as such is obviously not new, and I think everywhere we go, most people already say we don't need another model, in addition to the I don't, 2000 we have already at the table, um, but still it's obviously interesting what you already said about agile in terms of more like an attribute, you know, added to leadership, how that might still, and what you just said, about vuka, um,
 be relevant and different from in comparison to what we already saw in the past 50 years, so how is how is an agile leadership model then different from what we already heard and know or you know what kind of models would be helpful, i don't even say better or true, but simply helpful to overcome a voca context, not sure allen, maybe.
 Yeah, I i'm actually evolving myself and I discover another term, which is Voka Prime, which can help actually leaders and organization to add more agility in organization, and Vuka prim stands for the vision, understanding, providing understanding, looking for a clarity.
 and then adding agility to navigate in this uncertain volta environments and these if any yeah models they are as good as we use it and when it's fit for the purpose and situation we are in. there is a lot of at least in Denmark misunderstanding about servant leadership and many leaders feel uh
 you said weak uh, i should serve others, no, no, i am the king of this company, so taking some other approach, but having also things considering situation where are we, and then try to bring agility to navigate in this uncertain environment, many organizations are at the moment, bra do you want to add?
 something or um yeah, I think um, a phrase that has stuck with me around effective leadership is the idea of confident humility, it's this kind of delicate balance of being both confident, I love what Allen said around providing clarity, no, what, what is success look like, what is our direction, what is our vision, being confident in that, but then also being humility,
 having the humility to recognize that I don't have all the answers about how we'll get there, and I understand that things will be changing uh throughout that journey, so that this this delicate balance of both being confident and having the humility to recognize that as the leader, I don't have all the answers, I need um, you know, help, I need input, I need engagement from those around me.
 in order to go through this journey together. I'm confident that that we can get there even if I don't know the exact path that we will take or every step that we'll need to take.
 in that journey together, that reminds me a little bit on this idea of you know differentiating working in the system or on the system, it just you know just a thought like you bring you bring new ways of working into an organization and and maybe the question is to let lose as leaders as former leaders and you know give up control.
 how to create these detailed arrangements and everything and get used to certain methods and everything to the organization and instead as leaders take care for the container, is that something you you're you're referring to, and that might be terribly hard for anyone who's been in charge for 10 years, 20 years and even longer, is that something we're looking after? from my point of view, it's it is about this systemic view.
 you know as a leader take the bigger picture, see what is happening and then start trusting your people they are capable and skillful to do the work, we hired them for, yeah, i would agree, i think this, this idea of working in the system versus on the system, is another is another case where leaders need to find the right balance, what i typically?
 mind when I'm coaching leaders is they will come to recognize that they may be spending too much time in the system, excuse me, and not spending enough time working on the system, but but once they have that awareness, I think they can then take the deliberate action to shift more of their attention to working on the system, letting go of of some of that.
 uh, you know, perceived control or more hands-on involvement in some of the day-to-day and and allowing the people around them to you know do their jobs without needing to have have the leader involved in some of those uh details more day today, so it's not, it's not about either or, it's about what is the right balance, um, there are times when the leader does need to be
 you know hands on again, it's it's awareness situationally, as the leader in this situation, am I bringing a particular expertise or skill to the table that perhaps um the the organization needs where my contribution is critical, or do the do the people around me have the necessary skills and and abilities so that I don't need to contribute in that particular.
 in that manner in this given situation, right? so before we dive a little bit deeper into how you work with clients with leaders, i would i would actually love to dig first into the term leadership, because number one, i think it can be a very confusing term, especially in the English language, as far as i know there is a meaning both towards the line organization, our...
 leadership we sometimes refer to like the managers versus leadership itself can be behavior, i think german we differentiate this, leadership is this sort of hates and action, whereas the other thing is like the führungskrafte, which is terrible term, so the more like a military rank military system, but um and many other people can't hear it anymore, right? leadership here, leadership there, i think Henry Minsberg started talking about fellow.
 Yeah, so it just says we need way more for communities and and less about this hierarchical thing, so just opening it up here for the discussion, what what does leadership, especially when you work with organizations mean for you, from my point of view, it is about internal or mental awareness and behavior over for other people.
 and with the time when I aware who I am as a leader, then i can observe and create environments for my people so they can grow in develop themselves. That's how I see it. Yeah, I i really like that that viewpoint. Um, I think to distinguish sometimes between management and leader.
 to have influence uh on the people around them to align people and and accomplish some sort of goal with the help of others around you, you can do that, purely through influence, even if you don't have positional authority. um, now oftentimes of course those things come together, um, as a quote leader, as a manager in an organization, you are generally given.
 some positional authority, however that doesn't mean that you have the influence, apart from your ability to sort of exert your authority over people, and of course I think the best leaders have both, right? they have the authority so they can get things done in an expedient way, but they also have the influence so that the people they are leading are following them.
 not merely because of their authority, but they're following them because they're inspired by this person, they're motivated by this person, um, they're they're growing in learning because of this person called a leader, um, so they're getting much more than simply um, being told what to do, right? so to me that sounds rather like a burden than right having the authority in order to gain influence.
 on, i could imagine on a on a weekly basis at least if not on a daily basis. now so that's already interesting and i think probably important for everyone who can be a leader anywhere in the organization, because obviously from where we're coming from, um, working on the system also means creating leadership in the system, right? like, you need more leaders instead of just followers, instead of, otherwise you
 be pretty lonesome when it when the going gets tough and you'd be dependent actually on the intelligence of your organization what you basically hired people for right to bring their best to the to the job but I think we talk a lot about today how you work with more senior leaders if not executives probably depends on the size of the organization whatever your experience is but what we said
 already um agil has been rooted a lot in on team level and now we talk about leadership, senior leadership, um, if you think about your experience, how is coaching or working with such senior leaders different compared to you, working with teams or on team level? it's probably a lot of changes you've gone through, i can imagine over the years.
 and that's potentially advised for anyone who who wants to follow your uh your your path right just to say you know i would love to work more with those who've who are given influence right already who are in charge of large initiatives whatever it is so what would i have to consider what should i consider coming more from team level work and now you know working with the leadership team or even with executives if i can edit from my experience uh and
 when we start bringing coaching into the leadership, some leaders, they are scared, they are not ready to be coached or to be open while in the same time they are promoting autonomy and transparency and empowerment to the team, but then themselves they are not ready to lead by that example.
 while some other uh leaders, they are becoming more aware of that something needs to be changed, but they are looking into how can i start with myself first, and then share my wisdom and learning with the rest of of my organization, so i not getting only followers, but actually i'm enabling and creating more.
 leaders who can support me. yeah, i really like what what allan said there. um, in in my experience, working with more senior leaders, um, compared to more team level, at the team level, we often focus on how to get the work done, to use our our previous language, more about being in the system. um, what i find most effective working with the senior leaders is helping them.
 to put more of their focus into working on the system and um and doing that through the example that they said again I love
 what Allan said here about being role models for the kinds of behaviors that um they want to see in others they need to be role modelling these types of behaviors themselves as leaders so as a coach here i can often kind of be a mirror uh to hold up for leaders um your people that get to these leader senior leadership positions they're they're pretty smart the...
 very smart people and in almost all cases, they're they're driven and and they're motivated, so it isn't about giving them, you know advice so much as it is helping to reflect back for them to see what impact their leadership approach might be having on the organization, asking questions to help them consider um more of...
 about how they can be working on the system rather than in the system. um, i also think senior leaders, they have a completely different viewpoint on you know what, what keeps them up at night, what they think about day-to-day, they're going to be more focused on business level objectives, um, whereas folks at the team level are worried about we need to meet this next deadline.
 of delivering this thing, a good senior executive is going to be thinking much beyond that, thinking about much larger time frames and much larger sort of context for what's kind of goals need to be met, right? did you find yourself say this way, maybe challenged in a way when you grew into...
 the position of becoming more of a leadership coach over the years or and or saying this way, even surprised at some points, and I know this is a hard a hard question, I'm probably asking it from my own experience somehow, and I would say yes, yes, probably to both of them, but I'd be curious about your experiences right, to share it a little bit, I mean just to add maybe my position um...
 so give it to make it easier for you to to jump into this question um number one what what what Brad already said about senior leaders usually being pretty smart and you know changing the agenda from team level coaching towards senior executive level coaching you you suddenly recognize oh there's a there's a sort of a chump function in there it's like we're suddenly talking about a totally diff
 level, which number two, that's my surprise, um, they were usually asking very clever questions, they were not interested in how does this and that work, you know, they were really usually asking me about a way broader picture, which I had not thought about, and the challenge I i personally some sharing this not from my side, I I recognized in in in the first sessions in the first...
 client um engagements i had on this level years ago was usually just this difference in you know how can i say in focus you had to bring to the table as a coach if not to say precision and and and everything else like that the demand was way higher you suddenly recognize a little bit of a pressure here and
 at this same time you had to stay in the stands of a coach right, to stay calm, just to say yeah, but they they're trying to squeeze things out of me, but don't fall into the trap to become a consultant now, so I had to learn this over the years to to basically feel comfortable in this area where I was pretty much surprised how how well people had thought through already all these concept.
 all the challenges and everything which i had not expected, so that was my story, curious about yours, it's similar or if there is anything to share here, great, yeah, i also like this word agility as well, i think it evokes the idea of being able to adapt, whereas the word agile has come to connote all of these, frameworks that are out there, safe and scrum and and all these things and that carries so much.
 baggage, but the word agility, i think is helpful, and that it's it just evokes the idea of of adaptiveness, my going back to your your story,
 the coach, this is a constant struggle, i think, this tension between being a consultant and telling people your your advice and being a true coach, which is you know, uncovering and bringing out, the best thinking from from the leader or the person that you're coaching, yeah, this is definitely a struggle, um, and i find I need to be very upfront with leaders.
 um from the beginning about what what approach i will take and and making sure that they're also aware of this distinction, there there are times when it's appropriate to to be a consultant and give give advice, but but I find in most cases, things are, things are different, situations are are not the same, so what what may have worked over here in the past, given this particular situation may not work here.
 so but that's a coaching opportunity there to help leaders understand that in the complex world we're in there is no quote best practice, there is no one answer that will solve your problems, you as a leader need to use that great intelligence that you have, your awareness of the organization, which by the way, leader, you know a lot more about the organization than i do coming in.
 um is an outsider um so my my goal, my my role as a coach is to help you unlock what you what you know intuitively and and objectively about the organization to make better decisions, not just to give you the answer. um, if I do have a recommendation, I'm gonna, I'm gonna present that with all the caviots right of, well, this is what I saw work in this other situation, but this other situation was was different and
 these ways, so how would you evaluate this, this idea leader given your situation, I'm helping to again reinforce the idea that things are complex, there is no one, one one best practice that that fits every situation, right? so for me it sounds like um, and that's also a little bit my experience as especially as a leadership coach, you you need to earn influence too.
 right, so in the first place, it it pretty much sounds like you need to become a leader of the leader, earn that trust in order to be to be let's say accepted as as their coach right, and um, and that probably um is supported by what you said before attaching more to their language, to their world, instead of just telling them, what's right, what's wrong, and then from there be obviously a helpful resonannt resonant spot.
 to help them to see themselves right or to see the system from different angles or something, so if you if you think about that, is there any kind of special skill set you would think about, somebody who wants to help you know leaders developing or coach leaders um to take care for, again maybe coming from where most are coming from coaching teams and coaching...
 around agile methods, but now they want to go forward and work more with really senior leaders. what would you recommend to take care for? of of course it's important as a coach to be very good listener, um, this is something i al also struggle with sometimes, going back to the that that that also tension between being a consultant as a coach is um, i have to make sure i'm really listening.
 I'm I love this idea of curiosity that that Allen suggested, approaching things from that genuine, curious place where where I'm listening and I'm not thinking ahead to what's my answer going to be to this question, what advice will will I give, but I really need to be a true listener. Um, another skill that every good coach needs is to be able to ask good, powerful questions. Um, these are the questions that will you know.
 leaders to think differently, to reflect, to see themselves in a different way, I think Mike, you said to see their organization from a different perspective, that's a a super power, I think of a coach is to be able to help those leaders see things from a different perspective, from perspectives that will, enlighten new possibilities or open up different ways of thinking about solving problems.
 What I just wanted to reflect on what I heard, I liked how you were more relating to, how can I say mental stances?
 for you, working as an as a leadership coach, and that probably relates to how you self get coaching from anyone, frequently uh, you know, look after self-reflection, if not on a daily basis and so on and so forth, develop yourself, right, in order to be a proper instrument for somebody else, um, but i'm i also know, and that's true for every coach, but in this case it's very interesting, um, you know,
 lot of tools you use in your work developing leaders, so I'd be curious a little bit to hear, let's say what's your favorite tool you you usually use or refer to when you when you when you are in the position or have the opportunity to really help one or more leaders to to develop themselves, let's see what comes if there is any tool to be mentioned or if it's even not possible, I'm not sure, let's see.
 I can maybe think of a few um something that comes from the the agile leadership journey program that you mentioned earlier Mike, is something we call the the catalyst canvas, and it's a it's a very simple but but powerful framework for essentially problem solving or creating a strategy, um, it's a great way to help whether it's a single person or a team to.
 think through a challenge and think about um um why it needs to be solved to think about um uh what what the obstacles might be to solving it to thinking of what those small steps might be might be so it's a pretty simple framework for um solving lots of problems that i found useful um another thing is a coach that i again i think is just essential to coaching is to be able to create accountability mechanism
 for the leader you're coaching, um, all we already talked about being curious and asking great questions, but for a coach to have an impact we need to change the behavior of the people that we're coaching, we need to get them to take ownership for whatever it is they're going to do next, they're going to try some new behavior, they're going to do take some action, a good coach is going to create the accountability to make sure that they follow up.
 uh, the coach, you could be the accountability mechanism, you might have them create an accountability buddy, you might um have them do something else like put time in their calendar, but in some way as a good coach you need to make sure that there is some accountability for for the follow through in order to have your your clients develop these new habits, so that's already very interesting.
 tools and i'm i'm aware of you are also practitioners of what brad mentioned today already bill choiners framework as far as i know the uh leadership at chility framework for those might not know there is a book out there just look up on the book store your favorite bookstore i'm not mentioning a name here um or maybe look at yeah one of our conversations we had with bill.
 um, but without looking into this specific model, i think what's that's interesting, maybe maybe adding your experiences with that, it seems like all work with leaders, has built in this reflection mechanism, whether you look at you, bill choiners work, whether you look at the leadership circle, whether you look at Marshall goldsmith, it's all about the idea of hey, i can't get my agenda for what to change from with.
 in and my coach can't tell me either right, but because that would be weird, if i would tell my client what what to change, go here, go there, that would be the consultant, but there needs to be some way to interact with the system in order to find out what what's actually needed, what does the system need from me, and again there are different tools for this, and they are probably a little bit heavier and also theory heavier, because it's not only the tool, but it's more like...
 the thinking behind and what i'm referring here to for you for everyone who wants to look up vertical development is is the term here if you want to look up on the internet we're not going to dive too deep into that but what i'd be here interested here what your experience this kind of intervention are in practice because i i feel this is a very challenging one right asking anyone to literally create a
 error and number two, look into it, which is probably the harder thing, what what your experience with with this kind of intervention? it's an interesting.
 uh, interesting thing you raised up here, Mike, um, I think that this gets to to me the idea of having an intentional, deliberate coaching relationship with with someone where you have a coaching agreement from the beginning, um, and part of that coaching agreement is helping your client to agree uh, that you, we will be asking them tough questions, we will be asking them to reflect on their own
 behaviors, um, we will be kind of holding up that mirror, um, the client needs to be willing to look into that mirror, that's that's the tough part, all of us, I think have been at points where uh, we didn't really want to look ourselves in the mirror and admit to what we were seeing, some of the um, you know, less desirable characteristics that show up in that mirror, um, that's that's uncomfortable to
 confront that reality sometimes, so I think it's important to um make sure that's acknowledged up front in a coaching relationship that we will be looking in the mirror a lot, and there likely will be times that you don't always like what you see, but that's okay, that's that's how the growth happens right, it's it's in the awareness of what it is that you want to change to be a different type of person, a different type of...
 leader, maybe to circle back to Mike's question, um, these leadership frameworks, things like leadership agility or leadership circle, I think the power of those in part is that it it gives leaders some concrete or specific things that they can focus on, it gives them an an idea rather than this vague notion of be a better leader, um, these give us more specific skills we can focus on, maybe it's I need to have better.
 one-on-one conversations, maybe I need to think more about um, my own emotional intelligence, maybe I need to think about how I'm shaping the culture of the organization, so they kind of give us, they give us targets that we can we can aim for, um, and I think that's a real valuable part of the of those frameworks. So where we currently coming from is a lot about working with individuals, right, coaching an individual.
 leader and at the same time, um, leadership is more a systemic capability, maybe you know talk about the whole organization, but let's let's focus on on on the leaders in at this point, do do you do you see a major difference then or do you even maybe have a preference to work with leadership teams instead of going into one-on-one coaching, i mean one-on-one coaching can be obviously a very specific.
 engagement right, you you've been called in, somebody wants you as a coach, and here we go, but if you work with an organization, you might rather say, hey, it's not only the CEO, but it's the C, all of them, right? yeah, and just your experiences would be interesting here, yeah, i i can touch on that, this is a great insight, Mike, I think we we talked earlier about the distinction between team level coaching and executive coaching, or...
 leadership coaching, but leaders themselves typically are working within teams in order to really um get things done, leaders need to work with their own teams and so I think we can we can also bring some of those team coaching skills to executive teams or leadership teams to help them be more effective together so that that group or team dynamic amongst a group of managers and leaders is is incredibly important.
 for the impact it has on on the culture, on the the way that the organization evolves, so um, i i definitely see huge value in being able to coach a team of leaders together, in addition to uh one-on-one, i think the one-on-one can reinforce and and amplify what happens in the the team coaching setting as well.
 Yes, I prefer also working uh with the teams of leaders uh, because uh, it creates situation where they are kind of supporting each other and they can put themselves in the teams, their teams shoes and then when they are evolving as a leaders individually, they are also helping to evolve on the team.
 level buse they are learning from each other. one model you mentioned already, the model from Bill Choner uses the term catalyst leader and it's just one of the stage.
 is of development which are in this model again everybody can look it up and but catalyst itself refers already to a lot of things and it somehow sounds like it is a what can i say influential and effective stance if you are able to act as a catalyst because obviously you're catalyzing change organizational change positive things positive outcomes whatever um
 are you aware of catalyst? have you ever you know met people where you felt like they evolved to a certain degree that it felt like a catalyst and somehow very developed person or you know is it somebody out there whom you whom we might know a prominent person easily related to believe it or not the my previous manager at least
 what i could feel it, he was tr, the reason what i like it about him, he created actually environment for the team to grow, and he was curious for each of us individual, how are we doing, what challenges we are facing, but also of course on the team level, he was also...
 inspiring when he communicated with us with some big vision or some strategic goals we need to reach and all of us we felt so engaged and motivated by having this empowerment or autonomy. in the beginning I must say we were confused because we didn't get used to it, but with the time it was just really kind of beauty.
 sometimes I call it like honeymoon situation and everything is working, but but we work at also extra mile to reach all these goals because of him actually. Yeah, I think you know Bill Joiner says that only a relatively small percentage of leaders out there in the real world have um advanced to that stage of being catalist leaders. Um, but yeah, I think one one.
 leader that's fairly well-known that i think fits the mold of catalyst pretty well that people may know about is uh satia Nadella from from Microsoft I think the more I I hear him speak and and tell his story and and understand how Microsoft has evolved under his tenure I think he exhibits some of those uh strong catalyst traits he's clearly visionary um I think he's very much focused on shaping the culture.
 of the organization, this is another characteristic or distinguishing characteristic of catalyst leaders. um, i think he definitely exhibits that confident humility that i mentioned earlier. um, he uh, he seems to have a very good um self-awareness, emotional intelligence. um, he he clearly is thinking long-term, um, but but he's also...
 so i i haven't seen this myself, but he also seems to have that ability to um to to shift his leadership style as appropriate, so i think he might be a good good example out there that people may be famil familiar with of good catalyst leadership. the point we could make here, and this is probably sort of a tipping point because developing leadership means also a lot of effort, right? i'm not even talking.
 about money, but time and effort, and I think especially uh executive senior leaders might be pretty under stress these days and probably always are given buuka what we mentioned already, and so developing means you need patience, you need time, you need effort, um, what about the uh trade, what about the outcome, the the potentials, the benefits, do do you see,
 connection between investing into leadership, leading to better outcomes, leading to better businesses, or is that something more of a promise but really seen? what do you think? um, it's a great question, i know, i think you covered this with bill joiner in your other podcast a little bit, mike, but i mean he points to some of his research that seems to end
 that correlation between what we call catalyst leadership and the actual performance of those companies, i don't know all the details behind.
 that research of those data, um, but um, hopefully there's something solid there, um, yeah, I don't know, I, I think if we just ask organizations, well, why do you have leaders in the first place, why do you have these layers of management, um, I think that reflects on the perceived important of strong leadership, um, so
 "if that's people's assumption that we need, we need management and leadership in order to be effective, um, well then I, you know, I would ask questions on about, well, then what would be appropriate to invest in, making sure you have strong leadership, um, similarly to you, hiring anyone, even at the at the individual contributor level, people would say, well, of course we want to hire the best, strongest, most skilled people, um,
 think they would say the same about bringing in leaders, so the right question there is, well, what are the right skill, um, and also I think do we have a belief as a company that we're not only hiring you, smart skilled people, but are we continuing to invest in them so that they can continue to improve, um, I think that growth mindset here is really important, it's not just about we have...
 someone's smart and intelligent, but we hired someone can grow and become even more smart and more intelligent and perform even better as they grow along with the organization. Allen, anything to add? I can, I can echo, bread comments and also considering their personal development, invest time for themselves.
 not only money, but time to develop, and when they start feeling their personal development into for example catalyst leadership, it will indirectly create the value because employees will be more motivated, they will have direction where where where to go, what to achieve, how to achieve it together, and that that will start creating more leaders and
 not only followers if we are hiring only for the skills. yeah, i like to think of analogies here, um, and ideally ones that uh an individual leader can relate to, maybe they're they're they play golf for example, um, and then i i like this idea of, if you wanted to be a world-class golfer if you wanted to be you know playing at the PGA pro tour level, um, i bet
 you would probably be practicing on a daily basis, you would be building your skills, you would have expert coaches to help you in that process of growing, so if you want to, if you want to play in the big leagues, if you want to play at the the top level, we we expect people will be investing a whole lot of time and effort into their own growth, so same thing for for leaders, um, if we want to be at the top of our games as leaders,
 are we doing to invest, to practice, to build our skills, to grow, and a lot of times, unfortunately, the answer is, well, we're we're not doing a lot, we're we're doing our work day to day, and we may be growing some, but are we, are we doing the deliberate practice that it takes to become the best uh, in our particular um, you know, particular domain, yeah, yeah, and after the...
 practice, allocate time for yourself to inspect and adapt to the new practice you are going to do it, yeah, that's a very interesting point you make here, Briat and and and Allan, um, especially because if I think more of the maybe advanced organizations, you probably might meet individual leaders who might say, I'm at my best already, and I'm I'm doing all of this, I have the best coaches in the world, but what they'...
 often probably lack is uh working with the other leaders, so they work on themselves, but they don't work on the system right, and it's this again what you mentioned before with the team, it's again a team and I sometimes think about this, what if the organization wants better teams and better teamwork, but the leadership team doesn't go first or doesn't work at all as such, so there's sort of a mismatch and I think there's
 a lot of possibilities to think about for every organization. one of the final questions i i have and i'm not sure about your client experiences, which kind of clients you work with, but
 you know we we're living in fast changing times and i think also generations change a lot, we talk about generation why, x y z set is i think the latest, there is i think there is even a new one, i can't remember which one exactly relates to which, but um, that in my view that you know creates a different demand how organizations, what kind of leadership organizations need and at the same time potentially bring
 different kind of leaders forward, which can be a hope or a challenge, depends on right, and what what's your experiences with that or your your views, maybe it's also just views into what's coming in in the next five, 10, 20 years, I guess one one thing that I i struggle with is some of these broad generalizations of of different generations, um, I think it's...
 in some sense kind of dangerous to to make statements like oh well millennials are this way or generation z is this way and um there may be some truth in that um on average but there's a lot of variation among people and i i think as a good leader um it's important that you understand people as individuals - even if i do have say millennials or or
 z people in the organization, I shouldn't assume that they all act like I hear people say Millennials or generation z people act. I need to know what, what is this person's background, what, what is their motivation, what is their style, get to know them as as individuals and not just treat them as uh, caricatures that we hear maybe in the media about how certain generations,
 behave, i i i see it as well, that's because of this distinctions, generations, different stuff, but it's also, i see it as a positive sign for the leaders as the next steps in their evolution towards better leadership, is it catalist leadership, for example, as long as they are aware what is happening?
 understanding voca world then it might help them to navigate in this uncertain environment with the young people, different demands and so on, and that's also require self-reflection in my opinion, where i am now, what is coming, how can i do my best to enable my organization or my people.
 Yeah, I was just realizing a good quote from from Ted Lasso, be curious, not judge, judgemental, so um, I think as a good leader, I i would want to be curious, what can I learn from people from a yonger generation, what different perspectives do they have, what value can they bring rather than being judgmental about saying, well, oh, those people are this way or that way, and be curious, they might be different, you, maybe, maybe it is true, in fact that...
 generation z is this way, well if so, be curious about that, see what we can do to learn from these younger generations, right? exactly, we can we can only learn, right? right, now that would have been my last question, if not another thing just popped up in my mind, um, maybe we can't, we can't be without these days, talking about the future, and you know already, AI is a thing, and it's not, it's not about.
 AI is technology alone, but it's this sort of generative AI which is suddenly not only putting out text but already putting out video and voice and everything and it just seems like in the future you could imagine a coach being literally created from you know a machine and number two even a leader could be created out of the machine and I won't go further because otherwise we need to spend another.
 six hours here, but to just to wrap it up a little bit and maybe more into the neer future, let's talk about the next 12, 24 months, which is already obviously a lot of time, what's what's your thoughts about these developments and what should we look after here? it is important to acknowledge that everything is evolving, which is positive side, and considering for example AI,
 lot of AI work might be good, but we should also consider that it's learned from the past, from the different scenarios and if we as a human beings.
 can start designing the work for AI, it can actually help us as a human beings to evolve to the next stage of our evolution. if if the leaders use AI to do the coaching, i'm not sure about that, because because coaching it's a forward focus mainly, you are not digging in the past, probably some robots can ask this open-ended.
 questions, but it might be one way communication. okay, but that's that's my view. fine. right, i guess i see definitely AI is going to have a big impact. um, i believe it will, it will help people, humans to become probably more productive um and be better at what they do. in some cases, it may displace.
 people, it may um say reduce the number of jobs in a certain area, but i don't think it will fully replace humans, at least i hope not, i don't know what we will all do with our time if the robots are doing all the work and we're all sitting at home wondering what to do, that would be a strange world to live in, but i do think more generally it's this is a great example of the the rapid pace of change that the...
 world that we talked about, right? I mean, this is just yet another example of why leaders need to be prepared to adapt, um, we need to react to what's happening with AI, and there's a lot of uncertainty about what it will mean in the future, so um, but we we still need to move forward, you still need that um, the ability to move forward as a leader, and uh, I don't, I don't think the robots are going to um take over the world.
 uh in the near future here, so i i hope and and i believe humans will still have a an important role to play moving forward. so right, that was a tough question, i know, and and i can imagine, and i think that's the point here, and that's what what i liked with what you both said, um, we're gonna probably deal with these questions a lot in the upcoming, in the upcoming uh months with our clients and in all organizations, uh, maybe it's more.
 about the stance we find instead of the solutions we need to you know create which is probably impossible um to think about the far future ahead talking future um we'll put out um information how to get into contact with you um probably based while linkedin with the show notes but now that it's the end of the year it's always the easiest question just to say hey and curios out of curiosity um
 as leadership guides, what's coming up next for you in the in the new year? is there, is there anything uh, that's kind of a bigger change, development, anything you're curious about, you just want to mention, oh that is, that is a a good thought provoking question, um,
 especially for a short answer right, let Allen go first here, I don't, I don't know, as a as a AG leadership guide, I will probably start to do some online training with this program what we have, but then uh, I would like to maybe start exploring options to write.
 yeah, small book about the model model i i shared with you today uh and of course share my my experience and also together with this yeah leadership working with the leadership teams and thinking about how they are evolving so it's kind of big big things yeah i'll look forward to seeing allan's book i'm very curious to hear more about this model that you mentioned i think from
 um, I'm looking at being able to do uh team level coaching with leaders, so we we talked earlier about, I think that has can have such a huge impact, um, and and I'd love to, and I hope I will have more of those opportunities to work with teams of leaders together to expand the impact they can have across their their organizations, awesome, and and to create that true sense of team, it's not just...
 a a group of leaders who happen to be working in the same company, but to help them become true teams working together, awesome, so I'm I'm looking forward to hearing.
 more from you and again we're in contact by different opportunities and and I can only recommend everyone to get in touch with you and I know you you will be on some online courts facilitating leadership programs next year again and so who ever got curious um just contact Brad or Allan and see what they they'll be up to next year and might offer you as a as a potential for learning and growing.
 Brad Allen, it's been a pleasure talking to you, um, wish you all the best for the rest of this year and already for the next upcoming year, and thanks again for your valuable time. Yeah, thank you for the opportunity, Mike, and it was great to um get to rif off of Allen, we love the conversation. Thank you, Mike, and thank you Bred for this opportunity and looking forward to continue discussion on another media.
 All right.