Authenticity Is a Practice, Not a Personality Trait w/ Pete Steinberg

Leadership isn't about checking boxes — it's about showing up with intention, clarity, and connection. In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with Pete Steinberg — executive coach, speaker, former national rugby coach, and author of Leadership Shock — to explore the real work behind authentic leadership.

Pete challenges the myths around “bringing your full self to work,” shares how authenticity drives sustainable leadership (and prevents burnout), and reveals why success often leads to leadership shock. He also breaks down the power of feedback loops, relationship-first priorities, and the intentional systems leaders need to grow.

Whether you're climbing into your first leadership role or navigating the C-suite, this conversation is your playbook for aligning who you are with how you lead.

And connect with me for more great content!

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Transcript

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Russel Lolacher: And on the show today, we have Pete Steinberg and here is why he is awesome. He's a speaker, executive coach, and the president of Innovative Thoughts, helping smart companies manage their talent to maximize effectiveness and invest in innovative leadership. He's released his first book, Leadership Shock, Using Authenticity to Navigate the Hidden Danger of Career Success, which of course helps us view leadership as an adaptive, continuous process.

Oh, I got questions. Oh, and he's a former geochemist, or he still is, and he's non practicing. I don't know how that works. Anyway, he's here with us today. Hello, Pete.

Pete Steinberg: A former, it's like a recovering geochemist. I think that's probably, probably the better way of doing it. At least my experience of geochemistry was definitely, I've spent the last 30 years recovering from it. So...

Russel Lolacher: You went to school for it. So you're, you, you are it. You're just not... Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. I appreciate that. Before we get into one of my favorite topics today, which is authenticity. I have the question asked, I have to ask you as I asked all my guests, which is, sir, what is your best or worst employee experience?

Pete Steinberg: This is, this is really interesting because I haven't had a traditional career. I, I went to grad school, I worked at a business school for about 5 years. And then after that, I've been a consultant, a contractor. So I would say that, I have this rugby background and I coached rugby for a long time and I was involved with USA Rugby and, I, I remember there being a moment when I was the national team coach for the US. And so my employer was USA Rugby and I coached the, the women's US women's team. And I was down in Rio coaching at the Olympics and I was the assistant coach and, the Olympics is just such an amazing, but also surreal experience. You would there's a limited number of people that can stay at the village.

So I was at the village some of the time I was at the USOPC high performance training center some of the time. It was sort of like back and forth, but, but what happened in Rio was the, we, we came, the women, we lost our first game against Fiji. It was a bit of an upset and then we had a great game against New Zealand in the quarterfinals, but lost like... I can still remember the past that didn't get a hand where if we'd got that would have beat New Zealand, New Zealand went on to win the gold. Well, I mean, the silver. I remember hearing after that, that the men's head coach had been extended, but there'd be no, I know, because I knew the women's head coach, there had been no conversations with him about extending.

And, and this was year 2016 and it feels like not that long ago, but it was actually a very different time in women's sports. Now there's much more visibility about women's sports and equality. That wasn't the case for the U. S. Women in going to Rio. I mean, it's much more the case now, if you saw the women, they won the bronze medal, the Canadians, Russ won the silver, in Paris.

But back then, I remember being so upset that the the women's team was not getting the same respect. There was this desire to jump onto the men's coach and get them in. Nothing. No knock against the men's coach. He was an excellent coach. World renowned, but just this sense of we have to look after the men, but we don't really have to look after the women.

At least that's how it felt. And I remember I was back at the USOPC  training center and the, high performance director turned up for rugby and I was so mad at him. And he was like, Hey, you seem really mad. Talk about it. I was like, I don't want to talk about it. He goes, talk about it. I don't want to talk about it cause if I talk about it, I'm going to say some things that like, I shouldn't say. And he said, okay, so talk about it. And I just I mean, I just laid it out. I laid it out on him. I was like, about how I thought there was inequality. I thought that the men were treated very differently than the women. The men got more money. The women were as successful, maybe even more successful or had a better potential.

And it was just this, it was, I, I really shouldn't have done it. Russ, it was like one of those things, cause this guy's my boss, right? And he's my boss. On the 15th side, there's two different kinds of rugby rights. He's my boss on the 15th side and my boss on the seventh side. And it was, it, it was interesting.

I give him credit. He, he took it right? He wasn't defensive. I unloaded on him. And I look back at that and, and I just, I felt as I, I just felt like I shouldn't have been put in that position. Like the whole time I like the anger wasn't that something had happened. The anger was, I felt like I needed, I needed to say this.

Because no one else was saying it and it, I think that event damaged my relationship a little bit with the national governing body. And I think it embedded in me, I mean, I I coached women's rugby for more than 20 years. I'm a passionate. Women's leadership advocate, but that was like, 1 of those times when I felt discriminated against, even though I was a man  and so that that didn't, even though it's 1 of those things when often rush, you're like, oh, I unload and then I feel better.

I unloaded and I felt worse. 'cause the stuff I said I couldn't believe was actually happening. And so that was probably one of my worst employee experiences.

Russel Lolacher: Thank you for sharing that, Pete. It's really interesting from a vulnerability standpoint too, because we want to advocate for ourselves. We want to stand up for ourselves. We want to stand up for those people that we represent. And yet it can have ramifications long term for our careers that we may not even realize at the time.

In hindsight, is there anything else? I mean, this is going on, what, about 8 years now for you, 8 or 9 years since this event happened. It hurt your relationships. What's the biggest thing you think as a leader that you took away from that, that you maybe would do again or wouldn't do again?

Pete Steinberg: I think that so I was, I was lucky. Because rugby doesn't pay very much, especially women's rugby. So I had this consulting business on the side that I ran for 20 years. And so to me the rugby was my passion. It wasn't my job and so I didn't really do it for the money. And so someone could fire me and it wouldn't risk looking after my family and things like that.

So I think I had a bit of a freedom to do that. Honestly, I think I would have probably gone up the chain. I think one of the challenges that we had at that time and I think this isn't, explicit to USA Rugby, but, and I think it's evolved, is that, the vast majority of decision makers were old white men. And I think they cared very much about women's rugby, but it, there's kind of a fixed pie. There's a fixed amount of resources. And so when push came to shove, the man ended up getting more. So I think probably I'd have gone up the chain. And I would have probably had maybe a little bit more empathy that the guy I was talking to, he was part of the ecosystem.

I'd have probably had a little bit more empathy and maybe done it a little bit more of a problem solver versus let me tell you all the things that like a wrong and so probably sit down and be like, Hey, help me understand more and be a little bit more curious about the situation. I think that's probably what I would do differently.

Russel Lolacher: It's funny because we get into it today about authenticity. And it's not that you weren't being authentic. You were being your true self. You were really being authentic in that moment but ...

Pete Steinberg: I mean, so it's we'll get onto my book and the work I do as an executive coach and what we'll talk a lot about Russ is intentionality. And so intentionality is about the ability to be like, what's the best outcome I can get to? And how do I get there? And I wasn't intentional. I was just mad. And that's really rare to me. Whether I coached or, or whether I led organizations, I don't get mad. I really don't. I have lots of emotional control. I, I, I might be a little bit too rational. But I think that, I lacked intention.

There wasn't really a good outcome that I was going to get. The outcome was what we had, which was like damaged relationships, like all of those things. It was so obvious that that was going to be the outcome. And so I think being more intentional about, hey, what can I accomplish in this discussion? He's opening it up, right? He opened up and said, hey, tell me. And I don't think I took that opportunity as well as I could have.

Russel Lolacher: And it also speaks to the often misunderstood comment of bring your full self to work because you're like, no, I'm being me. I'm being authentic. I'm being myself. I'm like. Yeah, but you don't work in a bubble. You're not like there are impacts to the words and the actions that you have, good and bad. And if you don't have a bit of, and we're going to get into a lot of this around self awareness, but also situational awareness, you're going to do more damage than good in most situations. Before we get... go ahead.

Pete Steinberg: Can I just, can I just add to that? I think that's... I don't think people when people are like that, that's not their full self, right? That's the thing. Their full self is actually places they don't normally go. To bring your full self to work means to actually explore pieces of you that you don't normally encounter, right?

Maybe there's 60, 70 percent of us that we actually bring on a daily basis. How do you tap that extra 30%? You do it through reflection, intentionality. That's how you bring your full self when you stretch yourself beyond what your natural instincts and biases are. So I'm with you. I was not bringing my full self.

I was actually bringing a very narrow version of myself, right? And, and, and one that wasn't very useful.

Russel Lolacher: It makes me think of that old comment about we only use 20 percent of our brains. It's there's ...

Pete Steinberg: Yeah, exactly. Completely.

Russel Lolacher: Before we get into it too deeply. One of the most important things I've found to do on this show is defining terms because we never do in leadership conversations, i. e. we never define leadership. In this case, I really like to hear your definition of what authenticity is. What are we talking about here?

Pete Steinberg: Yeah. And this actually leads from this idea that we don't bring our full self. To me, authenticity is about connecting to the things that are really important to you, right? And making those connections intentional. There are beliefs that we have. There are impacts that we want to have in this world.

There are things that we bring to the table as people and authenticity is leveraging those things to get the biggest impact you can in whatever that is. To me, authenticity is starts with understanding yourself better, understanding what's important to you, and then bringing that forward in your interactions to others.

It is not an excuse to behave whatever way that you want to behave, right? So that's what it's not. But it is, and so I think it's really hard for most people to be authentic because I'm not sure that they understand themselves as well as maybe they think they can or do.

Russel Lolacher: My favorite question is why? Why do we need to be more authentic? Why is this so important? Why is it necessary for us to be effective as leaders?

Pete Steinberg: Well, I, I I, I actually think in the post COVID world from one of the biggest reasons that we talk to our clients about and I talk when I work with executives as a coach, is it's sustainability. People say, Oh, I'm working 60 hours a week and I'm exhausted. And my response is, if you were working 60 hours a week to some on something that was like authentic to you, that was really important to you, you probably wouldn't be exhausted.

Like when we're working on things that are true to ourselves, that are authentically things that we want to be doing, those are energy giving, not energy taking. When, when at the end of the 60 hours a week, I'm exhausted, it means I've spent most of the time doing things that aren't actually linked to the things that are important to me.

And so I think sustainability in the post COVID world, where things have sped up, where our commute is opening up our laptop, right? And, and we start work when we used to start our commute, like I used to start my commute at 7 30. So I put my laptop at 7 30. I just added, added 3 hours. It's an hour and a half to work maybe or even if it's 30 minutes, I had an hour to my day without being intentional about it.

And so I think I think it is both the impact that you can have. I think when you're more authentic, you can have a bigger impact with the people that you work with and are around you. But I also think it's the sustainability thing. I think authenticity allows us to be at our best for longer. And so making that direct connection between myself and what I do, I think is really powerful for those of us that are in the, long hours, hard work kind of areas.

Russel Lolacher: So why aren't leaders authentic already? Why? I mean, you wrote a book about it. Obviously, there was a problem you're trying to fix, so why aren't they authentic already if they need this, right? I mean, especially in this always bothers me. The most is that executive coach is always about executive when leadership training needs to be happening at all levels and not by the time they get successful and don't feel like they need it anymore.

Pete Steinberg: Well it's interesting. So in my book, we talk about metacognition and metacognition is the ability to think about how you think. And if you look at some of the psychology research that's out there, they're like, we should teach metacognition in schools. Like it should start before they start their career.

So the ability for me to really reflect deeply is a skill. And what's really interesting in the work that I do with executives is that there's sort of like three archetypes that work with me and go through the authentic leadership model, right? So there's the archetype that we go through the model, we talk about intentionality, we practice metacognition, and we go through the whole model, and they finish it, and they do an action plan, and then off they go.

And that's maybe half of the people, but there's a quarter of the people that actually about halfway through the process. I got it. This metacognition piece, this intentionality piece has opened up my eyes. I don't need the rest of the model. I actually have a much better understanding of myself.

And I get it. And this has changed the way I think about as a leader and I don't need to finish the model and I'm like, that's fine because the model isn't the truth, right? There's no truth in the model. The model is there to get you to the point that you can really understand yourself better, be able to reflect, and be able to take feedback, right?

To be able to reflect not just on who I am and what's important to me, but how did that conversation just go? Am I open enough? Can I have an honest enough conversation with myself around what just happened that I can grow from the conversation I had? And so there's, so that's like a quarter of people, maybe 30 percent of it.

And then there's a small group that like, never finish it. They, they stopped. We get into it. We have a couple of calls. I have a client right now. The last call I had was in September. The next time they can see me in December. I'm like, this isn't going to work This is, this isn't this is effort. So I think the reason why leaders don't do it is I think it takes 2 times that they 2 things that they don't have, which is time and energy. And so you have to consciously, like the first thing that I do, and this is and this is true for all of the clients.

So when people are in leadership shock, they don't have time, their calendar is crazy. So the first thing that we have to do is we have to find time to meet with me and I've done that on Sundays, like I've done it in early in the morning, like where they just can't do it. But the first thing you have to do is you have to carve out time.

And then the second thing is you have to think, you have to be able to apply energy to this. And those are two things that leaders don't have. So if you don't have someone helping you do that all you're doing is every week at the end of the week. You're like, man, I was so busy. I was triple booked, but I feel like I kind of got stuff done, but I was really busy.

I'm going to recover on the weekend. I'm going to work Saturday, Sunday evening, and then off I go again. And so that kind of like treadmill that leaders get on, that's  that's really hard. It's interesting because I think part of this is that we value effort more than we value outcome. So if I'm really busy during the week, it's like I checked the box. It doesn't matter if I made an impact or not. Where actually, I should be looking at, it doesn't matter how busy I am. Did I have an impact? And so I also think there's a little bit where our metrics are wrong for leadership, where effort and impact are often, they might be, I mean, I think I could probably make an argument that they are inversely related, right?

If you have too much, if your calendar is too crazy, you can't actually be a good leader.

Russel Lolacher: Well, and that was what I was thinking is, and I've brought this up a few times on the podcast is if you're too busy, you're not a leader, you're barely managing your calendar. So if you can't find, if it's all about, to your point, and I mentioned this a lot, checkbox leadership, that's just a list. You're moving on to the next thing.

You're not a leader at all, even though it might be in the role, it might say whatever... you're not, because you're not. Prioritizing and intentional about the things you do need, which, like you said, time and effort. You are a cog in a wheel. You're not a leader. And to break free from that is the leadership piece.

Pete Steinberg: Right.

Russel Lolacher: And to hire people like yourselves and to get into that's where leadership actually happens up until that point.... and I don't care if you have executive in your title, you're still a manager.

Pete Steinberg: Yeah, and we, and we talk a lot about this with our clients, which is, they often have very good managers, but they're very few leaders. And, and culturally, if the leader, if the head of the organization is a manager, everyone's a manager. So, we work with an organization right now and, the CEO is very detail oriented and wants to know all the details, which means all of the executives are very detail oriented.

And I've been working as a coach with one of those leaders who came from the outside, who's this is nuts. How am I supposed to know? I've got 10, 000 people in my, in my function. How am I supposed to know everything that's going on in my function? And lead? And, and the answer is. can't, you have to at that point, either you leave the organization or you conform to the management approach that they have, because culturally, that's what everyone expects.

Russel Lolacher: Going through your book you talk about the authentic leadership model and I'm reading this and I'm going, Oh, that's self awareness. That's just self awareness. That's just self awareness. And am I missing something or is there, I mean, obviously they work hand in hand, or is it just, this is how you tactfully become more self aware to become a leader.

Pete Steinberg: Yeah so, it's a little bit, like I said, that halfway through, sometimes people say, I got it because they understand themselves better. So there is, there are really two, two parts of it. So one is, understanding myself more effectively. And then the second thing is, and this is the thing that I so we talked about geochemistry.

One of the things that that my science background taught me is the value of systems. And so the way I see the authentic leadership model is it's a system. It's all interactive, right? There's not really a linear path that you go through, but, but it's a way of being able to assess what, what I should do and how I should lead.

So there is both the self awareness. Yeah, it's in fact, it's a foundation, right? So I need to understand myself more effectively, but then I need to connect the different parts of the framework in a way that allows me to get better understanding about what I should do and how I should lead. And so I think it's both of those things.

I think just the self awareness is useful and I think it's and it is obviously critical, but I think the system itself allows you to be able to be proactive where you're like, Hey, something's changing in my context. My role expectate, like my boss has changed and now they have a different role expectation.

Well, that actually changes everything. So now it's well what am I, how should that impact my priorities and how should that impact how I should lead or Hey, we've got a new business strategy and now the vision is changing. So, to me. One of the interesting things I have a colleague who's amazing on purpose, right?

And does really great. And there's a purpose element to the authentic leadership model, but we always have this sort of discussion. And it's sort of like a like nerdy consultant, executive coach discussion where he's purpose is like holistic. It's, it's about who you are. And I'm like, probably true, but not useful.

Like, when you work with leaders, use the purpose to help them understand their context. So their context is what's the expectation of the organization? And what am I trying to accomplish in my role? And that should be linked with my purpose. What are you know, what's the impact I want to have in the life with what are the strengths I bring to this role?

And then what are my beliefs about leadership? So those 3 of the authentic pieces. And then the other two are the contextual pieces. And together as a system, they allow you to build, I think, a pretty robust model about where you should be spending your time and how you should be leading.

Russel Lolacher: In your book, you you talk about purpose being the first start of this authentic leadership journey. It seems like such a personal thing when we talk about purpose. And I'm not trying to pick sides with your friend here. Who's fighting you on purpose and so forth. Why there? Because your purpose might not align with the organization.

And it might be an interesting one as you go down that journey going, how do I do, should I tweak my purpose? Does that not feel authentic to me if I have to change what my purpose is to better align with the organization? Do I have an influenced by?

Pete Steinberg: It's a great question. It's a great question. So, the way I see this is that the vast majority of people that I work with are senior leaders. And they've been in organizations or in their careers for a long time. Purpose is somewhat malleable, right? It changes over time. And so the people that I work with, normally their purpose is relatively aligned to their role.

Now, whether that's because they chose that path because intuitively they knew it fit their purpose or whether spending 20 years in marketing and being a senior market leader makes you want to do those things. I'm not sure, but I, I'm, I have had, I have I'm trying to think in all the authentic leadership models I've done, which is hundreds, I've never had someone that has come out diametrically opposed. Now, I will say that the work that I do is contextual, right? Unlike my friend who would spend hours helping people think through the impact that they want to have in the world, like who they want to like, like some of that stuff. The authentic leadership model isn't designed to dive that deep.

It's it's designed to identify what really drives you and energizes you. And so it would be hard for someone to be in a career for 20 years if they weren't doing something that was energizing and driving them. And so, and so to me, it is a starting place because it's probably the one piece that is most constant. Five years later, their purpose is still going to be the same. Five years later, the strengths that they have or their leadership beliefs might have evolved, but their purpose is probably the thing that's most constant. And so I like that we start there because it's foundational and because it's, it's the thing that is, I think, most important to authenticity.

Russel Lolacher: It's funny how you explain purpose for me. And the reason is, is because you also talk about something else that I think is more aligned with that. And I'm kind of curious as to how you differentiate. I'm talking about vision. So you talk about vision in the book about it's a future state, but you seem to define it more as a goal.

And I've always understood vision as being broad. And not being too specific and it's more aspirational and not achievable. It is this something mission is where this comes into. So I'm just trying to understand your under or, or, or at least Leadership Shock's approach...

Pete Steinberg: Yeah, yeah,

Russel Lolacher: To purpose, which I, how you described it feels like vision. And your vision, which I feel is much more about purpose or mission.

Pete Steinberg: That's funny. So, it is often when I work with leaders that they'll mix those two up. And, and I love these, this, this definition of terms. So vision for me is the future state for what I want to achieve in this role. So it's contextual. Purpose isn't contextual, right? So my purpose, the things that drive me aren't goal oriented.

To me, they're much more, the things that I really enjoy doing or the impacts that I, that give me the most pleasure or the most energy. Vision is very like in your role, where do you want to be three years from now? Okay. So, I, I feel, I feel and I'm... and this is where I think I bring probably a little bit of my rugby coaching background.

Like when you're coaching rugby, the only thing that matters is performance on the field, right? That's the most important thing, like you can do... and it's the reason why I don't think sport is a great analogy for business because great teams lose. Like the Buffalo Bills went to four Super Bowls in the world, lost all four of them. And I said, that must be one of the greatest NFL teams ever. But of course, in society, they're just seen as losers. And I'm like, imagine losing three times in a row and still getting back to the Super Bowl. That's crazy. That, that must be an amazing team. So I think that's one of my challenges. But when you're, when you, when you spend time just thinking about how do we impact performance, I am like the work that I do is very directly related to improve their performance tomorrow.

We're not saying 10 years from now, where do you want to be? We're not saying even five years, where do we want to be? We're saying right now, you're in leadership shock. Right now, you're struggling. We need you to be better tomorrow. And we need you to be in a better, a more effective leader three months from now, right?

Not where do you want to be? So that's not, it is a moment in time and we're helping you think about where do I want to go with my role? What, what are the things I want to be able to do? And so I just use vision. Maybe it should be a small V, right? Which is, imagine what you're like, if you are successful three years from now, what does that look like?

And that's what, that's, that's the way I would have them describe the vision.

Russel Lolacher: This sounds as important for frontline leaders as it does for executive leaders. Like I, I feel like it shouldn't wait to the executive level. Yeah.

Pete Steinberg: Yeah, I think the only thing I would say is,   and this is... so I think the framework is, and we're actually working with a client right now, and we're helping them train their internal people to apply the authentic leadership model to more junior leaders. As they transition, so the goal is to not have them go into leadership shock before you even take that role, be really intentional. That the, the reason why the book says, how authenticity overcomes, the hidden dangers of career success is that the more successful you get, the more assumptions you make. So if I'm going into my first manager role. I'm going to be like, Oh, my gosh, everything's going to be different and I'm open to doing things differently.

So it's well, while the, the context is useful, I'm less likely to get into leadership shock because my assumption is, I don't know how to do this. When I go from the VP of Finance to the CFO, and I've been successful for 25 years, I'm like, yeah,  I can do that job. And the assumption is that the skills and the approach that I had as the VP of Finance, again help me be a good CFO, when actually those roles are fundamentally different. And if I'm not intentional about how I change when I lead, it's going to be a disaster. And I'm going to go into leadership shock. So so the reason why I think has the biggest impact at the executive level is that there are so many learned behaviors and so many assumptions in the way things work that, it's a, it it can blow your mind. In fact, there's a really interesting story in the book, a case study a guy called Jeff Tanner, he's now CEO of Simply Good Foods, and he talks about how he went from Big Heart Pet Company, which was a privately, a PE backed company, and that was bought by Smucker and how he moved to Smucker and he literally went in as I'm, and he was one of the key executives that Smucker bought, and he is I'm gonna kill it here.

And then a year later he almost got fired by the CEO because he didn't, he, he didn't go in with humility. That's this is a new role. And, and, and so I think that's the challenge that we have is that longer our career successes, the harder it is for change. And so this is really a tool to help people that have been successful over many years, go through a process of evolution about how they lead.

Russel Lolacher: And I guess it also depends on how you define success, because as we've just talked about, leaders can be, managers can be very successful without ever being leaders in their organization.

Pete Steinberg: Right.

Russel Lolacher: Because you will celebrate the ends, justifying the means. They could completely deliver and have a huge turnover, tons of burnout, but they're successful.

Pete Steinberg: Completely. Yeah. No, I, I, so this is the thing that like, I spend a lot of time thinking about, which is our metrics for leadership is wrong. We've worked with clients that have tried to do something around this and it's, it really starts with you actually need to create a leadership model for your organization. Like what's leadership for you and then how do you develop that and then how are you going to measure it? But it's still like a little bit of going around asking people, how did Pete do? There's like at some point you're just like, how's Pete doing? And so it, it, it, they're very intangible.

I think, I think leadership metrics are intangible and I think that's really hard. And that's why we promote based on tangible metrics. Hey, you grew the business. You should be promoted. No reflection. I mean, I will tell you that we worked with a very large, very sophisticated client and they were looking to do an internal promotion and they came to us and they said, we want to make... we don't want to choose based on the success of the  role that they had. We want to base... we want to choose based on their potential to be successful in the future role. Well, we said, all right, well, how would you do that? And so what we have we have a bit of a hierarchy ,where we have attributes mindset skills. And then there's sort of experience and other.

And so that is in reverse order of malleability. One of the problems that we do is we often hire on experience. Easiest thing a year later, they have the experience. Then we hire on skills skills are actually trainable. And those are 2, those are really the 2 things. So they have the skills, they have the experience, but what you really need to do are the things that aren't malleable, the things that don't change.

And so those are. Mindsets, the way people think and attributes. And so what we did with this client for one of their C suite is we actually built a model. We said, all right, well, what do you want? Tell us what you want the job to do. And then we did we often use innovation processes. So we use an innovation design thinking ideation process to identify what are the key mindsets?

What are the key attributes? Okay. Let's come up with some assessments, right? So we did behavioral interviews. We were able to score them. We did some situational judgment tests where we're able to score them and they were able to we were able to give them they didn't decide on the metrics, but we gave them a scorecard that made them check their intuition, right?

That said, this person here and this person here, they have two sets of strengths and weaknesses when it comes to attributes and mindsets. So you need to choose based on which of those do you think really is successful in this future role. Now, that is a very progressive, sophisticated company, right?

Investing a lot of time and effort in identifying a very important future role. Not often the case in our experience.

Russel Lolacher: Well, because they're prioritizing what actual leaders are. And this goes back to what we started with, which is defining leadership. And that's the argument I always have is well, we want great leaders. And then I go, what's a great leader. And then somebody will say, Simon Sinek. Somebody will say, Brene Brown.

I'm like, okay, do we promote those people in organizations? And there's crickets because we always focus on job descriptions as the metric for, as you've talked about role expectations and so forth, and I think those actually get in the way. So I absolutely love the fact that an organization is defining it and keeping people accountable to it as the vision they want. I... god, wish I wish organizations did that more often.

Pete Steinberg: And so what was cool about this organization is that they then invested in that person so they could continue to develop the attributes of mindsets that, that were useful. But I just want to hit something that you said. So intentionally in the book, role expectation is not job description. Role expectations is everything that's not in the job description.

So it is literally curiosity. So curiosity, could be an attribute that someone brings and curiosity could be a role expectation. It could be something I want this person to be curious. I want them to go find other things. And so, I, I think that that role expectation fits right into this model of mindsets and attributes as what is it that you actually want this...

how, I was just this week. I'm coaching a leader on a team, and I was, I was talking to the team leader and I asked her, I said, so what are your role expectations for my client? And everything that she listed was about their business about their function and I'm like, all right, so you want them to grow the business, right?

And I'm like, that's it? So there's, there's  two issues. One is no leadership expectations, but the other thing, and this is probably another podcast, certainly another book, no team expectations, right? Often we get called in. We do a lot of executive teams. I have, I have a belief That there are no high performing executive teams.

I actually don't think they exist, not in not in the way of true high performance. And I think that's because we just don't structure them to be high performing. We structure them to be subject matter experts. But it gets back to this idea of what your expectations and leadership are. Every leader on a team should have leadership expectations and team member expectations. And none of those would be written down in a job description.

Russel Lolacher: You talk... Thank you for that. Because it is, I mean, the name of the damn podcast is Relationships at Work. So I'm really curious about the connections. Cause I mean, number one, the biggest relationship you'll ever have at work is with yourself. And that really digs into the whole leadership, leadership shock of things of intention and getting to know yourself, but what do you do with that information?

So for instance, you talk in your model about understanding the value you bring. You talk about aligning your beliefs, aligning your principles and having that all understood, you have that information yourself, what do you do with that information? And the reason I bring this up is because I clashed with somebody online recently that said, your work should speak for yourself. I'm like, I could not disagree more with you. Because everybody's busy. Nobody gives a crap about you. They are busy doing their other things. You're expecting them to be better leaders than they are. So what you can control is advocacy. What you can control is storytelling about yourself, about things.

How do you believe a leader should be expressing themselves, communicating for themselves with this information they have?

Pete Steinberg: Yeah, I, I would just I'm just gonna go back to Jeff Tanner's experience.

Russel Lolacher: Sure.

Pete Steinberg: So, in the PE firm, in PE owned firm, Big Heart Pet, it was an idea driven organization. So if you had a good idea, it could go get executed. But when he went to Smuckers, Smuckers is a relationship organization. People have to trust you.

It doesn't matter how good the idea is. And in fact, we find this so much in the work that we do. We do a lot of innovation in human resources, a lot of talent innovation. And, this concept of relationship is so important because if you don't have relationships, you can't get anything done. In the vast majority of organizations, the vast majority of organizations, if you're trying to drive change, they look at the messenger and say, do I trust the messenger? And if I trust the messenger, if I have a relationship with the messenger, I'm open to change. But if I don't trust the messenger, why would I listen to them? I'm just going to ignore them. So I think that as leaders, the ability for you to build those relationships and tell those stories, I think it's fundamental.

And so, and by the way, when we look at the authentic leadership model and the outputs and things like priorities, often those priorities have relationship events. Their priorities aren't, oh, I need to go do this business thing. Their priorities are, I need to spend more time with my colleagues. I need to build better relationships with supply chain.

I need a better relationship with the CEO. I need to invest some of my time to be able to do that. So those are the things that often come out of it. It is not a because you can look at someone's calendar and you know what their priorities are. And if their priority, if there's nothing in those, in their calendar, that's fundamentally relationship building, then that's going to be a problem for them to be successful.

Especially I always like to like... I, I think that the further up in the organization, the more complex your, your situation is, the more complexity is, the more difficult it is to do anything. If I'm a C suite executive and I am, initiating some innovation or change is going to impact the enterprise.

The only way that works is if I have strong relationships with my peers. That they support me. It's the only way to do it. And in fact and, and in, in our innovation process, stakeholder management, like we look at the implementation, we say, all right, how does this get implemented? And then we start with who do we need to build relationships through the innovation process for that change to be successful. We call it hacking the change curve, because if you do that you don't need a change curve. Everyone's bought in by the time you're implementing. So I think that relationship piece is critical for leaders.

Russel Lolacher: Hey, I named a podcast after it. I couldn't agree with you more. So how do we get consistent? How do we get, or how do we stop ourselves becoming inauthentic? We've doing the work we're going through the model. Again, we want to not be a checkbox leader. We want to continue to be authentic. How do we continue this over time?

Pete Steinberg: Yeah, I think I think it's, yeah, it's, it's a great question. Most of  the clients that I work with they. At the end, they have a mindset shift and that mindset shift is really being open to lots more information about their leadership. So open to themselves and what they say to themselves and how they say it open to others.

I mean I've, I was working with a CEO earlier this year who had transitioned and the biggest shock that he had is he's I don't get any feedback. No one wants to tell me I'm not doing good, like bad. No one wants to tell me I'm doing a bad job. Not even the board. It's kind of weird. So his issue is how do I get feedback? So really good leaders are looking for that feedback and are constantly updating the way they view themselves through that process. And so to me if I'm going to give you feedback, if you're on my team, I'm going to give you feedback.

And I did this as a coach. You have to give me feedback, too. And over time, we create a really powerful relationship where we are honest with each other and we help each other grow. So I think. embedding strong feedback loops into your leadership, finding people that will tell you the truth, building relationships with people that will tell you the truth.

I think that's a critical way to continually grow and, and it means you're getting help in being self like aware, right? Like people are giving you more information. So I think that that's probably a really critical one.

Russel Lolacher: And I'd ask, especially if you're an executive level to be getting feedback, not from other executives. To be looking for a lot bigger of a vision for what you're getting feedback around, because some of those executives get very busy and they get detached from levels of the organization that they may be impacting that they have no idea.

Pete Steinberg: I mean, I mean it's the value of the crowd, right? The more people that you can get, but also vendors, clients, I'll often get feedback from clients about how I'm doing, or the vendors, and I, I, so I'll just give you a really easy, phrase that opens up feedback.

I can say what are two things I did well, and what's one thing I could do differently next time. Not what I did wrong. Because often it might be well you did this thing well, but you should do more of it. You should do more of that. And so that's a really easy phrase to open up feedback mechanisms when you don't have that strong relationship where someone's going to say, hey, Pete, can we have a chat because I've got some feedback for you. But if you just say, hey, 1 or 2 things I did well, 1 thing I can do differently next time, you can get a lot of good feedback that way.

Russel Lolacher: Thank you for this, Pete. I really appreciate it. So to wrap it up last question for you, Pete, what's one simple action people can do right now to improve their relationships at work?

Pete Steinberg: So I'm going to share a... an approach that I used a lot when I was coaching elite rugby and also is has a very strong foundation in team science, which is something called personal disclosure, mutual sharing. And so personal disclosure, mutual sharing is and I do this. It's the start of all the executive team sessions I do. And it kind of like people kind of roll their eyes, but it ends up being really powerful. And really, it's just you get people to answer a question. And so the question that often it's sort of like, hey, what's being. And it depends on how hard you want to be on this. But you know, what's been a big career failure?

And what did you learn from it? Now, if you want to, you can say what's been, what was your biggest career failure? That's harder. And what it does is that people can, it gets people to tell stories about themselves. And I think we're a storytelling species. And if I give space and permission for people to tell stories about themselves and their background and their challenges and how they overcame it and what they learned from it, I really think that builds relationships because it demonstrates I'm willing to be vulnerable in front of you, but it also builds understanding.

Like I learn about people when I do that. I actually have a client that does something like that at the start of all, like all of her in person meetings with her team first hour, because it can take a long time if you've got a lot of... That first hour is personal disclosure, mutual sharing, different question every time. And it's just a way of learning and building that vulnerability. And I think that's a really powerful way of building relationships.

Russel Lolacher: That is Pete Steinberg. He's a speaker, executive coach, and the president of innovative thoughts. He also has a book you really should pick up called leadership shock using authenticity to navigate the hidden danger of career success. Thanks so much for being here, Pete.

Pete Steinberg: It was great. Really enjoyed the conversation.