Getting Promoted Is the Worst Thing That Can Happen (If You Miss This)

But what happens with internal leaders is you're here, you already know the products or the services and the people and when you're congratulations promoted, you get even less than people coming in from the outside because we take for granted like you should be able to hit the ground running. I'm going to intentionally do some bad grammar here which is you know meetings. How many of you are in like so many meetings now and it feels like a waste of your time, right? But meetings is work at the next level. We tend to promote the best widget maker to become the new widget

maker leader, which isn't actually always a proxy for leadership potential. No one's paid to take a bullet for someone they don't like other than the Secret Service, right? So, you know, when you're in a room and you're needing influence, if you've never even had coffee with this person before or lunch or just simply had a 30 minute chat in their office, like your hill to climb to influence is so much higher. Hey everybody, I'm Devin Kums. I'm a CPA,

MBA, and I work at Google Cloud where I lead multi-billion dollar deal negotiations as a financial expert. But for fun, I also do this podcast, Ambition Aligned, where I try to find purpose-driven professionals making real impact with what they're doing in their lives. Please watch, please subscribe, and I think we're going to get a ton out of today's episode. How did you go into this interesting profession of helping new leaders in new roles? Yeah, great, great question, and thanks for having me. Um so oddly I had started

my career in external consulting and so I'm currently in what I affectionately call the third chapter of my career. So I spent the first chapter of my career almost 10 years with um a small small but global company called PDI Personnel Decisions International. They were eventually bought by a company called Cornfairy that a lot of people are familiar with. So I spent almost the first 10 years of my career I like to say sort of dissecting leadership behavior. I was doing assessments for

both selection and development deep day in the life simulation based assessments where we would be playing roles assessing behaviors um and across multiple leadership levels. and our clients would use those to help make certain hiring decisions or promotion decisions or we would dovetail those into coaching if it was for development. Also did some workshop uh facilitation, high potential succession consulting when I was there. Did that for almost 10 years before I had so much

more of my career in front of me than behind me and decided to go turn to the dark side and go into HR u and spent the next 10 years um in a few different HR shops here locally. I'm in St. Paul, Minnesota. So, I spent a couple of years with Buffalo Wild Wings uh before they were sold to a private equity firm out of Atlanta. Spent almost 5 years with Cargill doing talent management uh and DNI there. And then um spent a couple years with uh General Mills doing both

uh talent management and a little bit of uh DNI in my spare time when I was there as well. And I took the leap to go external and on my own in July of 2024 and haven't really looked back since. And I have this found this sort of passion area if you will for leaders who have been newly promoted. In my experience in HR in particular, you know, we would always talk about how much at every company, right? Every

company terminally unique. Everybody thought they had this unique problem of we really struggle to bring leaders in from the outside and truly onboard them in the organization. And one thing that I noticed over the years was well while that's true and every company probably would agree to you know we could we could spend more money on boarding leaders when they come in. We also spend only a fraction of what we're spending if anything on onboarding internal leaders when we promote them from one level to the next.

And I would say a big backbone of my experience with PDI and cornfairy in the chapter one of my career was right each each level is truly unique and distinct as you kind of grow in your career and the work is different and changes and the need to be sort of intentional to leave the old world or the old work and even maybe old identity behind. and step into the new level, the new

work, the new identity. Um is of critical importance. It's easy to neglect. Um and it it it takes time and if not attended to intentionally, it takes a lot of time. Um but what happens with internal leaders right is is you're here you already know the products or the services and the people and when you're congratulations promoted you get even less than people coming in from the

outside because we take for granted like you should be able to hit the ground running. You know all the people and we spend comparatively less time truly helping them understand what's now expected at this level. How should you behave at this level? And so you find a lot of leaders at every level kind of white knuckling it through in their first 6 to 12 months just trying to do more of what had got them there. Right? It's the what got you here won't get you there, you know, um catchphrase,

right? But it's I'm just going to dig in and, you know, if I'm a first-time leader, I'm just going to be a super individual contributor, right? I'm just going to dig in and white knuckle it. or if I'm now managing managers, instead of kind of coming into the new identity of I manage five managers, it's I manage five teams, right? And and so how do you truly step up into that level? Um and I' I've seen these transitions both um harm careers,

right? people who are promoted and don't get that support and flame out or and I've just seen people sort of, you know, circling and swirling and not truly stepping into their level of potential that they could if they were supported more intentionally. So I um it's it's one of like you know one of the things I do and a passion area of mine is supporting internal promotes. Yeah, that's that's really interesting because I've been on the inside of that a bit of when uh I've supported director plus people in big organizations like Google

and chief of staff in strategic operations roles and that's always the biggest complaint I get when I'm supporting those people is, hey, X, Y, and Z doesn't know how to delegate. They're burning out all of the people. We're getting dragged into all of these requests. We can solve it by ourselves. And why why are they spending so much time doing all of this? And then the optics, they don't realize their optics of if they're sending an email at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. It comes across, even if they're doing fine and measured, it comes across as frantic and it's stressing out the team. And there's all

of these little things that really worked when you were maybe a mid manager or a staff and now as a director, it's actually better to do nothing. It's better to be quieter and in the backgrounds and spending that time with the season's leaders. So, I'd be curious. This would be really helpful for I'm sure a lot of people on here are trying to take that next step to get promoted to a manager or manager to director. What are what would you recommend? What have you seen gone wrong and what would you recommend instead and how do you coach people through that? It's a it's a great question. Um I you

know I would say it comes down to um you know mindset shift, skill set shift, right? Um, you know, anytime you're making, we talk about the the transformation trilogy, right? Anytime you're making a a big change, it you could um you could talk about moving from one apartment to another or an apartment to a home or moving from one home to another home, right? That there's always things that you have that will still serve you, right? It could be your dining table, right? like my my dining

table. I'm moving from this, you know, this apartment to a home, but the dining room in the new home will fit this dining room table. That's great. Um, my bed, I had a king-size bed, however, in the room I need to move into in this home, it's not going to accommodate the king-size bed, right? And then, oh, we actually have a whole second living room now. I've only ever had one. Now, we need to acquire some new furniture over here, right? So, there's always going to be things that you can keep um that

worked for you that you can continue to use and leverage. There's going to be things that you're going to need to acquire, right? Some new skills that you might need to acquire. I'm going to start bringing this back. How do we relate this back to leadership? Um, but then there's going to be some things you need to let go of, right? You know, that that king-size bed I loved. It's not going to fit in this room. I'm going to have to get rid of it, right? And get one that fits here. So, it's, you know, what are the things that made me successful that I need to keep? What are the new things I need to add and learn?

And what are some of the things that just aren't going to serve me anymore at this level that I need to let go of? Right? And so, sometimes that comes in the form of a mindset shift. Right? So, you were talking about leaders who get overly involved in their, you know, direct reports work, right? And that happens at every level because at every level you need to have a mindset shift to what was you know what was the equation for success in my previous role and what's the equation for success now right and you see it most pronounced

with um f you know first level leaders people who are managing individual contributors um the other you know they're much farther up the pipeline you see it pretty pronounced when you move into sort of business unit leading where you're now taking on functions you have no expertise in. It's another place where you see the kind of the biggest challenge in making this transition. But if we kind of come down the pipeline and say so what you know the equation of success right when I was an individual contributor my own effort brute force uh

of getting things done is what equaled success. It's what got my name in lights so to speak. And so what's you know a big mindset shift you have to make when you're stepping up even you know especially in that very first level of leadership is what is success now right because I'm used to meeting with my boss and telling my boss what I've gotten done what are the roadblocks that I need [Music] removed but a good boss you know that

manager level who's managing these first level leaders should probably be wholly unimpressed by hearing about what you got done this week, right? They they want to hear about what your team's gotten done this week, right? And that mindset shift when you start to think about my s it's what my people are getting done is my success is a huge, you know, mindset shift for leaders to make. I I use really poor grammar. I was talking to a a group of leaders the other day. I was like, I'm gonna intentionally use some bad grammar here, which is, you know,

meetings. How many of you are in like so many meetings now? And it feels like a waste of your time, right? But meetings is work at the next level. Like that is partially your work now is is being in these meetings. And so it's this reframe of how do I spend my time? What equals success? And how do I now deliver results through other people is sort of an initial mindset shift that needs to be made. Let alone picking up different levels of skills on like how do I delegate effectively? How do I build

influence among not only my direct team who might not know me or or if I'm an internal promote knew me when I was, you know, one of them. So, not only is there a whole need to build influence among your direct reports, but also starting to build uh that influence, you know, across the organization, across your your peers, whether or not they report to your immediate director. So there's, you know, both these mindset shifts you have to start to make and these skill set shifts you have to start to make and

and frankly the earlier you can get started on these things, the better. Yeah, I think that it's really impressive that you brought up that. I'd completely relate with it all is and it's exactly what I've seen is it's funny enough you said it like what got you here won't get you there, right? And it it very much is I've seen internally technical people, very technical people get a promotion and now they're managing a crossf functional organization, right? Yeah. And they don't know the other work that they're managing and they get a

little flustered and they start trying to dive into the details to understand it all. They don't realize that they don't have to do that. They just have to trust their leaders that their leaders know what they're doing. And so, yeah, I would be curious on your perspective on what it's like. Like, do you need the technical chops to get to that leadership position or is a leadership skill itself more important? That's a that's a fascinating question. Um, it's rare for a leader to be

promoted into a function that they have zero background in, right? Or zero skill level in until you get to a certain level, right? If I think to [Music] um General Mills where I was, they're they're president of retail, right? And the retail group is where Cheerios comes from, for example. like that person can't possibly have background in manufacturing and design and marketing and food science and sales, you know,

and and and right. Yeah. So, it's easy to explain that at a higher level. Eventually, you are going to have to take on functions that you have no background in. um it's less common farther down the pipeline, right, that you would be promoted into a function that you have no background, especially as a leader. But there are certainly people who vehemently uh believe, right, that leadership, you know, you could drop a great leader into any scenario

and they'll be successful because leadership in and of itself is its own skill. It just so happens that we tend to promote the best widget maker to become the new widget maker leader. Um, which isn't actually always uh a proxy for leadership potential, being good at your doing job, right? Well, isn't that interesting? I I think that's so fascinating that many organizations and I think what you're pitching is so different and better is many organizations either promote the best widget maker or promote some other

department's best second widget maker to be the new leader. But then that isn't necessarily what makes a good leader at all. That they could have no qualifications at all based off of your experience or the years you've been in a profession. It's something totally different. And I guess what you're offering is to train that different and and it's not necessarily a trait even though some people might naturally be better at it. It's more of a skill. And so and it's not something you even learn in college really like going to an NBA program. I've done NBA you've learned theory around it but it's an applicable

skill. It's an applied skill. And so um how I guess how do you realize when do organizations realize that they need someone like you and how how do they start taking advantage of that? That's a great it's a great question. Um, so I've had the fortune of working for really big, you know, Fortune 500 companies who had already primarily had this stuff in place with the exception of of Buffalo Wild Wings, right? It was leadership development was brand new when I got there. Somebody had already

laid all the groundwork to, you know, form the function when I was there. Um, but people were really hungry for it, right? And I think what what led a company like Buffalo Wild Wings, this would have been 2015, something like that, to really starting to think about should we be more intentional about how we develop leaders, right? So they're a great ca they're a great case study, a great example of, you know, if you think even down to the restaurant level, like who gets promoted to manage

servers, right? Either the best server and or the most extroverted server. Yeah. Right. because ex extroverts stand out and unfortunately extroversion can be used as a proxy for leadership potential um unintentionally. Um, so they looked at this and said starting to see direct correlation to poor leadership, especially down at like a restaurant level, leading to high turnover, for example, and great engagement, right? Leading to great

great team member engagement leading to higher retention, higher sales, things like this. And so they had, you know, looked at how do we start to improve retention, improve sales and they started to look at leadership there. Usually when we start to look at smaller companies, there's some kind of pain happening. Um there's a a mil a mil works organization that um came to me wanting some some leadership development and a very similar issue was going on

there, right? this this sole HR person was telling me, right, that they they've basically replaced every role in their organization twice this last year, right? And so, usually there's some kind of pain um happening before someone wants to bring in either whether whether it's programmatic leadership development or even a coach, right? Something's going on that is causing other downstream problems. Um, when things are going swimmingly, nobody thinks they

need much help at all. Right. Um, yeah, I don't know if that answers the No, it does. And I think some of the question, what are some of those leading indicators that an organization is saying, "Oh, my leadership is getting capped out." Is that higher turnover? You mentioned one of them. What are some other things that leaders watching this can flag and say, "Oh, maybe this is something I need." Yeah. Um, so I I think you you can almost look to varying team member engagement data points to point at, you know, quite a

quite a few leadership ills, so to speak. Um, so general engagement being low, turnover being high, uh, absenteeism ticking up. Um uh you you can see certain if if results start to dip in an otherwise historically strong team or department or even company when you can't point to external factors right in

the market. It's hard to do these days, but uh when you're when you're pointing to, you know, when you can't exactly point to a market dynamic, you know, there's a good chance that, you know, I don't even want to say leadership is to blame, but that leadership is the key to, you know, turning it around, right? because you might have a great leader who via instinct and just hard work has been great, but you know there's a lot of opportunity to continue

to up your game. Um, right. So, I'd say leadership development isn't only for those or even even coaching isn't only for those where those situations where some fixing is needed. It it also is a great unlock where you're trying to just take it to the next level. be that team performance or company performance. Yeah, that makes sense. So, let's say I'm in you come into a new organization. Let's say I hire you new organization. Um, and I tell you, hey, our our turnover has been a little higher. Um,

performance hasn't been the best. We have a new leader here who's pretty experienced from another department. Um, but and we want you to start working with her. What are some things that How do you start that off? What do you what are some ways that you get some quick wins with a person or where do you where do you normally see that's wrong, you know? Yeah, if I could if I could wave the magic wand, we would start that hopefully be getting that question um as close to that person's start date as as possible, right? Because I think nailing the first

quarter is critical, right, with a a new promotion. Um, so a couple things, right? And and I actually on my uh which if if this is a a time to mention it or not, on my website, I do have a what I call my internal promotion playbook. Uh it's a 90-day success blueprint. Um easily, you know, something a new leader can pick up or even somebody who supports uh a newly promoted leader. But I would say really thinking about how

you're spending those first three months. Um this isn't, you know, rocket science uh per se, right? I think there there's general advice out there of, you know, make sure you're spending your time listening. Don't try to make big changes in your early days, but I would say from a practical perspective, really digging in on, especially from an internal promote, truly getting to the root of what are my goals and objectives in this new role, right? I'm used to how I was held accountable in a previous role. What am

I now held accountable for? What does the team performance or overall performance on the team need to be for me to be successful? Taking a look in the mirror and understanding where where are my skills today when it comes to a leader. I know I had what it took to do the previous role, but what is it that I need to do now? and really taking a hard and honest look to understand your own development needs as well as beginning, you know, especially in this that very first month, beginning to map

out your stakeholders who have the inputs that come into your team, where do the outputs of your team go? You know, who are the people that are either going to be giving you the things you you and your team need to do your work or where is the work that your team is doing going next? because that's going to be a critical group to begin building some relationships with from a long-term influence perspective, but also making sure you're spending time with the team just getting to know them like in that very very first month. Um, one thing

that I often do, especially again, if you can get at this early, um, you know, is is a number of organizations do this. I you know I I learned it um you know from my leader at Cargill when I was in talent management there and I've I've now continued to do this everywhere I've gone and I see consultants doing this very same thing. It's called a new manager assimilation. Right? We've got to let some steam out of the balloon with the team as well. So this is where either an HR business partner or uh a talent management person

or or a consultant and coach from the outside can come in and let's let some steam out of the out of the balloon with the team, right? Right? Because when there's a new promotion, when it's maybe somebody from outside of the team or if it's somebody from inside the team, even even if it's somebody coming from outside the company, there's going to be a lot of thoughts, questions, feelings about this new leader coming in. Yeah, it makes sense. Someone someone wanted the promotion, they didn't get it. That people are asking why was it external or why was it this person versus that person? All that stuff. What does it mean for us? Is our job going to change?

Yeah. Yeah. And it's I think it's important to kind of meet those things headon, right? to in a new manager assimilation process which it's not necessarily in my my blueprint per se but it it is something I absolutely recommend with with um new leaders you know period is you know you start by talking to some of the team members you have a third party talk to the team members and ask just some basic questions around what do you already know about this new leader what don't you know that you want to know what do you think this person needs to know about you or the team in particular what are some of the challenges that this

team has historically had that you think this new leader needs to be aware of. Like it's, you know, you kind of try to uncover where some of the raw nerves are, but it's also a huge opportunity to give leaders some early feedback, not only about them if they're a known quantity, but maybe about some of the historical dynamics on the team or where this team sits in the organization. your your HR person or your external consultant can then sit down with the leader and kind of go through this feedback and organize a maybe just a

two-hour meeting with the team where you then are having the leader kind of lean in and say, "All right, here's everything I heard from the team. let me respond to some of the questions you have about me and tell you a bit more about me, what my expectations are, um what I've heard are, you know, some of the challenges on the team and what I can commit to today or what I can commit to investigating further and it just sort of opens up, you know, a better dialogue with a team. I will say when that is

done the chances for success, you know, there's no guarantees in life, but the chances for success are always higher. Um, because I' i've seen enough of the situations where that's not done. And it's really hard to I'll I'll try to use a better metaphor than I might otherwise use, but it's like it's really hard to unbake a cake. Um, right. And so when you're, you know, when you're six months, six months down the line and you missed some of these critical early conversations even with the team and

even just just setting some basic expectations on who's this new leader and what's their style, um, yeah, it can be it can make what's already a hard transition twice as hard. What's so interesting is I I've been in enough organizations and reorganizations to know what you say is definitely right, but rarely happens unfortunately, right? Like it's so easy for a new leader to come in or reorganization to happen and there to be this top down mandate. Here's your congratulations, here's your

new leader and then maybe some informal conversations, but everyone just wonders what it means for or in limbo for a very long time. And um and that sounds this sounds like the cure to it. I I think you can knock out it's shocking. Yeah, that blows my mind. How rare rare it is. Yeah, cuz it's what what's the saying? It's you know a ounce of prevention is worth you know I can't remember how the rest of the saying goes, right? But it's like we we worry about the time it'll take now

to put the building blocks in place for the longer term, but the impacts of not doing these things farther down the line are even more costly. You know, it's the it's the same reason why um the same basic rationale we used to use at PDI for selection assessments. It's like if you're hiring a, you know, $300,500,000 a year VP or, you know, upwards and upwards, the cost of making a poor mistake, you know, a poor hiring decision is astronomical, right? And the

cost of an assessment on the front end, for example, is, you know, pennies on the dollar if if you can avoid even one bad hiring, right? One one hiring mistake. It's the same thing with, you know, an internal promotion. If you could put the work in on the front end, you can avoid so many headaches down the road. Yeah. I mean, it makes perfect sense. And I I'm curious if you've had to face this. I'm I'm sure you have. What do you do when you face leaders or you're training a leader and it's very clear they're worried more about optics

than outcome? That is a great question. Um, so if somebody's worried about optics as opposed to outcomes, there's a you're primarily probably dealing with a major mindset challenge here. um they're worried about at least in my experience you know how are how do they look because of what's happening right or you know how is performance on the team going to affect their reputation right

and your reputation is inextricably linked with your team now right and so honestly that's a hard thing to address with classic leadership develment- Right? That is where I think coaching can come in. And can you get there with that person's leader coaching them or an HR person coaching them? You probably could, but as with almost all leadership

challenges, how are you balancing the day-to-day needs with also this acute need with this leader as well? Right? So most leaders who would be trying to coach the you know most higher level leaders who would be trying to coach this leader or HR person who's trying to coach this leader are going to have so many other day-to-day challenges that they're dealing with where especially in a in a case like you're describing. You know having an executive coach who can come in from the outside who has no stake in your um success per se

um I think can be hugely beneficial. Right? you're in a position to possibly be even more direct um and candid in feedback with this person than their own people are. Right? I was I was brought in um to an organization to coach a leader who uh we were trying to unbake the cake right 6 months in and here I am probably giving this person feedback that they've never had in their career right and but but being in a unique

situation to say to this person you know I don't know if anybody's ever told you this but here's what I'm hearing in the feedback you know what are your thoughts on that. Um, and sorry, the the whole thing is coming back now and it's throwing me off. Oh, no. I'm sorry. That's a bummer. I don't know where that's coming from. Yeah. Uh,

I'm going to try to persevere. Can you Wait, let me see. Does this fix it? If I do this, it's gone. Wait, that's so weird. I wonder where that's coming from. Well, I'll when you're talking, I'll mute my microphone and hopefully that'll okay have that go and then I need to figure out what that is. So, thank maybe it's the Bluetooth. Did you want to ask the question again? I don't know what's what's best for you for editing. Yeah, let me let me see if I can figure out does that solve it? No, not really. Okay, we're okay. I'm so

sorry about that. I have no post on it. Yeah, I'll just ask the question again and we'll and we'll go from there. Um, and then we'll figure out and post. So, sorry about that. Who knows? Okay. So, yeah, I'm curious. So funny. All right. Sorry. I'll try. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's all good, man. It's so funny how this stuff works out. I technology is so annoying. So, I'm I'm curious. How do you manage a leader who is more concerned with optics than outcome? Yeah. Um, so it's a great question and I

I come back to something we were talking about earlier, which is mindset shift, right? And um needing to sort of remind yourself that your, you know, if you're concerned about optics, there's probably some of a personal reputation concern happening here. How is what's happening on my team or my team's performance or even this one individual's performance reflecting on me, right? and some of the mindset shift that you have to make that your

reputation is your teams but h like how do you recalibrate what your leader is going to be? So you're you're clearly worried about impressing people. So what's going to impress your leader more? Your ability to shut down a problem or your ability to develop someone through a problem, right? and to really dig in to a problem situation and coach someone through. At least that's sort of where my head goes when you're asking this question of um uh optics

versus outcomes, right? And cuz I I I find almost the opposite to be a focus for leaders is, you know, and this is where I see a lot of a lot of leaders fall into the trap of like worrying about how things are getting done versus that things are getting done, right? And that's where, you know, micromanagement, you know, tends to come into place is, you know, we're delegating or we're asking someone to do something or we are correcting, you

know, and now we're dictating how they do it or we're digging in and giving feedback and and picking in on um the minutia of how things get done versus focusing on that outcome. Did the outcome get where we needed it to be? In which case, how do you let go of how you might have done things in the past? I kind of gave you two completely separate answers to that question. Let me know how that works for you. No, no, that's that's great. I'm just curious if you have any specific example of someone that you've worked with and maybe I give you a little more detail from my end.

Um, and hopefully that adds a little more context. But let's say you have someone come in and you it's very obvious that they're looking out for the way to get to their next promotion, right? Like that's their primary concern. It's not necessarily managing the team and they're okay to throw their own team under the bus or even other leaders on the in the same organization under the bus in order to advance their own objectives. I say this because I think it's more common than most people care to admit and I I'm just curious how you manage it as an external professional because I it's obvious when

people do it, but it it can be really challenging for the leader leader, the leader's boss to be able to detect it because they're so busy, right? Um, yes. And that's a hard thing to detect too, right? Because you know, you know it when you see it, right? That's it's that's the unfortunate part is it's hard to like give someone the, you know, checklist of like if you see these things, you know, this is what you're dealing with. It's it's one of these you know it when you see it kind of things. Um, yeah, it's a real challenge and to

your point, way more common than anyone would want to admit. There's a a consultant I've worked with for years who he talks about, you know, leadership success is a lot, you know, how do you how are you defining leadership success? Is it promotability or getting done? Right? Excuse my French. Like, is it the results or is it promotability? Because there's a lot of ways to promotability that have nothing to do with actually getting anything done and producing any level of results, right?

Um, now the question is, you know, can you help someone like that, you know, and and it comes down to I think my my favorite uh joke and I think it comes originally from therapy, but I've heard it applied in, you know, the coaching sense, which is like how many coaches does it take to change a leader? Well, just one, but the leader really needs to want to change. Um, so part of it comes down to does does the leader themselves see the need for change? And sometimes the coaching can be a part of the

process to get that person there. Always better if if they're already there. That's for sure. Um I mean I'm up for a good challenge either way. And have found both from just a personal why I got into this perspective. Both are equally satisfying. Um so I was brought in uh to an organization to coach a leader. So s we you know we were talking about internal promotes. Um, and I was talking about, you know, this new manager assimilation process. I was I was basically brought in to do that process at month six, right? Trying to unbake

the cake, um, so to speak. And this was a leader who had, you know, very clear opinions on what leadership was, what they were there to do, and how they were there to do it. Um, and you know, I I would say the the process in and of itself helped highlight to them some of the impact that they were having too, right, on on others. So sometimes it's some really clear feedback on how what you're doing is impacting the system, impacting

others. I would say it while it's super common for leaders to be in it for themselves, you know, or or at least a certain slice of leaders to be in it for themselves, most people don't wake up wanting to make other people's lives miserably or miserable. And so sometimes the process of of helping them see how they're impacting others, how that's impacting results, how all these things that maybe they've been neglecting ultimately impact this perception of them, the perception that they want to

have more than they even recognized prior. Um, sometimes it's it's it's an assessment or it's conversations with, you know, their team to sort of get to the bottom of what's going on. Usually before I'm brought in, someone has identified, especially in a case like that, someone has identified that something's not quite right. Um, it's rare that I'd be brought in and then uncovering that something's not quite right, but not wholly uncover. Well, and then let's maybe flip it. Let's say you're working with a leader whose boss

is Makavelian or has some of these like inclinations. How do you help them work through that? Hm. So say a little bit more like let's say you come in and you're working with VPs or a man or a senior manager and they come to you and they say like listen I'm trying to get this done but I know my boss is undermining me. Like my boss is trying to undermine these steps or these other people in the organization are intentionally making me look bad while I'm trying to look out for my team. How do I how do I manage up

and to the side while protecting my team or making sure that we're cutting out the noise and focusing on our goals? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's tough, right? Because I I would say there's there's a lot in there, right? And I think a lot of what I'm what I'm hear if you were a leader a lot of what I'm hearing I would I would question how much of that you is the story you're telling yourself versus what you're actually hearing on the ground. Um but either way what I'm

hearing I would start to ask you some questions about how much time you've spent with your peers um and just other crossf functional folks in the organization. So one one challenge I keep seeing in leaders is especially in the early days um first year even is a huge missed opportunity to spend more time with your stakeholders right and actually spending some time to truly map out who are my stakeholders and it's with really good

intention especially with new promotes you're so focused on hitting the ground running getting things done making sure your team's getting things done that the idea of having coffee with your um marketing partner feels like a waste of time, right? It's it's you don't see the immediate results of spending time with those peers as you do with how you're spending your time with your direct reports, right? you you see that the

impact of that day in day out where time with your stakeholders you need to think of that in a much more long-term um think of it like investing in your 401k or your IRA right it's invest early and often um in order to so that that when you need it right when you now need to have influence you have sort of unintentionally or intentionally built

it over time before you needed it, right? You've dug your well before you were thirsty, so to speak. Um, so I, you know, I was even in some coaching conversations with a few different leaders, you know, at different levels, different organizations, different functions, but the same kind of issue where, you know, they're getting feedback on, you know, this person, they need to spend, you know, with a 360, like they need to spend more time with their internal customers, you know, and their peers. And I swear each one kind of had the same thing to say, which was like, I've been here a long time. I've spent a lot of time with those peers in

the past. I know exactly what they're going to want or what they're going to say or what they're going to tell me. And part of the conversation is part of doing it is to do it and to be seen doing it and to have that person that you're reaching out to to have coffee see you making the effort whether or not you end up learning anything new from it in the process. Now, my my wager would be you will, but even if you don't, right, I I think uh I have lots of metaphors that I use over

time, and one of my favorites that I'm sure is a terrible metaphor is like no one um you know, right, than if you had spent the time over whatever that time frame is could be months, years building some rapport with this person, how much more benefit of the doubt are they going to give you versus skepticism? That's so genius and it's something I completely resonate with not just for leaders but for business owners for all all the above. And so many people were critique like critique the consulting model where

the partner like why does the partner spend 20 hours a week taking clients out. It's not it's not about taking the clients out like that's a good partner right because you want to make sure you understand people's problems and you're there and you're visible and you're there for the pain points. And you have to do the same as a leader. It's better for you to spend 20 hours meeting with your stakeholders and your team and building those relationships as influence rather than spending that 20 hours cleaning up your inbox, right? And they don't they don't see the need for it until they need it. And then they're kicking themselves for not having spent the time before they needed it. Right?

And and again, it's it's with great intention. You're trying to get stuff done. You're trying to make sure that your objectives are being met. And so again, you see the immediate impact of where you're spending your time. spending your time with peers. Once you're in the middle of like big cross functional initiative, you know, spending time with your peers, you're not going to see the impact of that. It's a it's a longitud, you know, it's a long-term game. Yeah. And that's the best game to play though because then you're helping people and down the road if you are in that mindset where

you're testing your assumptions, maybe some organiz your organization might be a little toxic, well, you're building relationships to go out of that department or you're building relationships to make that organization better or to test those assumptions. So, um, it's very wise and not enough people spend focusing on their capacity, building up their skills like you're saying, and then also their connections, right? That's key. And so, I know we're already running time. This has been really fun to talk to you, Kent, and I hope we can do it again sometime. I want to give a little minute to just ask about like what you're doing this year, um, where people can find you, how people can engage you, and anything else that you're working on that uh, we the

audience can know about. Yeah. Fabulous. Um, so I I would say uh you know go to kibballeershipadvisory.com, but that is a mouthful. And so I've recently um built the shortcut for that. So kent.coach would get you to my website. Super easy. Uh two mono mono syllables uh right there. And then the the internal promotion playbook that I was talking about is easy as going to kent.coach/playbook bring you right there. if you're a leader who's been

recently promoted or if you support a leader who's been recently promoted or or you're you're staring down the um you know the the tunnel at upcoming promotion, you know, now would be a great time to dig in on that. And that's uh you know 23 pages of just practical advice. So it's it's based actually way less on my time from PDI and Cornferryy and way more on my time in HR being near leaders and next to leaders and seeing what's working, what's not. Um, I'm about to start a podcast. Uh, either

it'll drop May or June this year. It's called The Stepup: Expert Voices for Leadership Success. Um, and that will be, you know, a weekly or bi-weekly podcast where I'll be talking to experts. Hope to have you on, in fact. Um, talking to experts who support leaders in stepping up their leadership game. So that could be consultants, uh, authors, HR talent managers, leadership development professionals, um, just looking to, you know, have more of these

conversations, share more tips and tricks with leaders. Um, you know, I spend a lot of my time doing both leadership development and coaching, both sort of with myself as well as with various partners. So I'm pretty easy to find online, uh, especially if you can figure out how to spell my last name. Uh, but again, the shortcut uh, kent.coach would get you there even faster. Uh, I love it. I I'll definitely put everything in the links below and I'll make sure that people know. Um, everything you said here is completely accurate from what I've I've heard and

there's nothing better than being a leader who can look out for their team, delegate appropriately, help influence to unblock initiatives and reach for outcome and impact rather than optics. So, I think everything you laid out here is so key. Um, few final questions just so everyone gets to know you a little better for for everyone sticks on. Favorite dessert? Oh god, cheesecake. Oh man, that's a good one. Any flavor or just traditional cheesecake? Uh, honestly, just a plain cheese. Nothing better than a plain cheesecake.

Uh, but flavors are good, too. Okay. Okay. Good. Good. Favorite leadership book. That's a great question. Um for consultants I would say the leadership pipeline by Shirandrader and Null. It is a tome in the leadership space. So if you're a consultant or a coach you know it's the backbone of a lot of things that PDI and Cornferryy used to do. Um and then if you're a leader one that I've been um enjoying

recently two can I give you two more? Yeah. Yes, please. All right. So, one is for leaders, one is called Coachability, and I'm probably going to butcher this gentleman's name. Uh, so hopefully he doesn't see this before he comes on my podcast, but his name is Kevin Wy or Wildy, I'm not sure. WDE. Um, and you know, he's done some research and sharing some information on, you know, it gets lonier and lonier the higher you get in an organization and how coachability is a real sort of superpower for leaders. um

because you you tend to get less feedback. Leaders tend to seek less coaching, get less feedback the higher they go. And those who do, you know, the both career results and organizational results that follow um are pretty huge. The other one I share quite frequently is Radical Cander by Kim Scott, right? I think it's a really good call to arms for providing uh direct and honest feedback. one piece of advice that everyone gives that you wish they wouldn't.

Yeah. So I I don't know that um it's like a direct piece of advice but um maybe it is is is feedback is a gift right you know now on the one hand I believe I do believe that feedback is a gift but I also think you need to be somewhat discerning as well with feedback right who's giving the feedback is this someone who I would you know I would otherwise be following their advice right because not all feedback is

created equally. Um, right. So, I would say always make sure you're putting into context when you're getting feedback. Um, do I care? Do I trust this person? Is it, you know, accurate and helpful? Yeah. And when do you give it to? I can't tell you how many times I've seen like a manager lay into someone who just dropped the ball. It's like, maybe give him a night, you know, like let him sleep on it a little bit before he Yeah. Give him a breather. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Um, last piece and then I'll stop pestering you is uh just one word

of wisdom. Everything that we just talked about here, if you had a 10 15 second platform for a piece of advice that you wish the audience could take away, build self-awareness, right? I think and as the folks at the Hogan organization would say is build strategic self-awareness, right? It's it a leader who never questions themselves, who never wonders what could I have done better or differently. It that's a dangerous leader, right? So, I'd say just build

self-awareness. Everybody has room for improvement somewhere in their lives. Um, you know, seek so even though I I just said not all feedback is created equally. However, I did also say coachability that that book's great, right? You know, and and seeking feedback, right? Seek feedback from those who will give it to you straight, who won't sugarcoat things and who want to help you. That's a big thing, too, is feedback usually goes down a lot easier if you know the person's intentions are

good. You know, and that's solid and maybe that's a place to land is self-awareness is a superpower. But if you're going to value feedback, feedback is a gift. But just like most gifts, it's best if you want the gift. So if you want feedback, it's great to ask for it. Great to be self-aware, but don't give out gifts that people don't want. If they're not looking for the feedback, it's probably best not to land it on them, especially if they're your boss. So well, and if and if self-awareness is a strength, it can easily become an overused strength as well. So, you also need to know at at what point do you

just have to trust yourself and move forward because constantly questioning yourself is a recipe for disaster as well. Yeah, that's right. Sometimes action's better than what what was a quote I I heard recently that I really liked. It was uh there's no original thought. There's only original action. So, don't Oh, I like that. Yeah. So, don't get hung up on the thoughts. Well, thank you, Ken. This was really awesome. I think everyone's going to get a lot of value of it and um I'll catch you next time. All right.