How New Leaders Can Lead With Intention and Build Culture

Becoming a leader for the first time can feel like being dropped into the deep end—especially in a remote or hybrid world. 

In this episode of Relationships at Work, principle of The Collective Good LLC Britt Hogue joins Russel Lolacher to explore what new leaders often get wrong, and how intentional leadership can build trust and team connection, even when everyone’s not in the same room.

They discuss:

• How remote work exposes lazy leadership habits
• Why relationship-building must be intentional
• What new leaders should prioritize in their first 90 days
• How culture starts with consistent action, not just messaging

💬 “If you’re just sitting in your office all day, that’s not leadership.”

Whether you're new to leadership or supporting someone who is, this episode will give you practical tools and a new perspective on what it takes to succeed in today’s workplace.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: And on the show today, we have Britt Hogue, and here is why she is awesome. She's the principal at the Collective Good LLC, which works to advance social justice and foster cross sector collaboration. They partner with nonprofits, philanthropy, public, private sectors, all to uncover and maximize strengths. Britt brings over 20 years of experience with her working across the social, public, and private sectors as a leader, advisor, and facilitator, including executing organizational transformations as a manager of global teams at Thomson Reuters, which is from her background, but not where we're spending our time... past.

We're spending it our time right now. We're gonna talk new leadership. Hello Britt.

Britt Hogue: Hi Russel. How are you?

Russel Lolacher: I'm good. You can tell I'm caffeinated, but I'm great. Good morning to you. New leaders, such an interesting topic considering that we do a horrible job at providing new leaders with support, onboarding, training, so they feel really lost certainly from conversations I've had of what that first time feels, looks, strategy looks like.

So I've got lots of questions. But I'm gonna shut up because the question I wanna start with is, what's your best or worst employee experience, Britt?

Britt Hogue: Yeah, I, I'm gonna go into the past a little bit actually on this one. And go back to my former life at Thomson Reuters. And I'm gonna give a best experience because I'm in a, I wanna stay positive kind of space these days. So I'm looking for the positive moments. And this really was a positive one and it was really important.

I look back on it a lot when I think about my leadership style and a leadership style that I'm trying to emulate in some ways, in the way that I show up with my team and with clients now. And this was with, with a manager that I worked for at a time in my career when I was moving kind of up the ladder, I was getting a lot of new responsibilities.

I was, I was a reasonably senior manager in my team, but I was pretty young and so I, all the things you just mentioned. I really didn't have a lot of onboarding to that next role. I kept getting just when I felt like I had my head above water, I would get some new responsibility. Some new people would join my team, they'd merge my team with another team, and I'd be in charge of both of them.

A new project would come in. It was fantastic. But it was also really scary at the time because I never felt like I was ready. I felt like imposter syndrome constantly. What am I doing here? What in the world are they doing, putting me in charge of yet another thing? And this manager was... he just spent a lot of time with me and he didn't have a lot of time.

So when I say a lot of time, he wasn't in my office every day. He wasn't taking me to lunch every day. It was probably 30 minutes a week, but it felt like a lot of time. It just, and so there was something about what he was doing. So I often look back to that to try to figure out what was he doing that made me feel like I was getting so much of his time and attention when actually it was a pretty small snippet of time, once a week. And what it did was he would, it was always a, just an open one-on-one conversation, and he would always start the conversation with, so tell me about something you have going on. It was always the same prompt, just a very easy, tell me about something you got going on. And what it allowed me to do was I could come in with a problem.

I could come in with something I wanted to brag about. That had gone really well that I wanted him to know about. I could come in with just some advice. Maybe I didn't have anything that I needed help with, but I just wanted to maybe run something by him. So the fact that he had such a loose structure to it and he let me kind of run the meeting was in some ways empowering. It allowed me to really kind of drive it and kind of take it in whatever direction I wanted. And then the other thing from that is that it was always the same. So I knew what I could expect from him. I never had to get anxious about this one-on-one meeting. Was he gonna bring something up? Did something happen last week that maybe he was gonna, that hadn't gone so well that he wanted to talk about? Was he gonna surprise me with something? It was always the exact same prompt from him. And as I look back, I think that consistency was really comforting to me that I always knew what I could expect from him, and he didn't sort of, throw any surprises my way in terms of that meeting in part, in particular.

And so I think, that it was that experience with that manager that really gave me the confidence to keep, keep pushing. Even when I felt like I was often unprepared for the role that I was being asked to take on, I felt really supported. And I felt like I wasn't being kind of thrown out there on my own. I felt like I had someone who was in my corner the whole time.

Russel Lolacher: I love that from a couple different angles. I've used that technique myself in my own teams throughout my career as well, the consistency piece. What a lot of leaders don't realize is that's actually building trust. Because to your point, you know what to expect. There's no surprises. You can trust the experience you're having. And by extension trust the leader that's providing that space. And it's not only time he's providing, it's providing that space because that's you that gets to drive it. And you're basically getting to demonstrate ... how you are as a leader for 30 minutes every week with them. it.

Britt Hogue: Yeah. And try things. I know what he's gonna ask, maybe I try something a little different this time. And see how it goes. And maybe he kind of gives me a look like, eh, I don't know what you're talking about. Or I would try to pitch him on something and he might just say yeah, no, we're not gonna do that.

And that was fine too. But yeah, it gave me an opportunity to really craft like, how did I want this meeting to go? And to your point about the trust, I mean, that's, that's what relationships are all about is trust. And so if, and consistency is such a big part of trust if you know what you can expect from someone, then you can trust them.

Russel Lolacher: And the other thing is, and I talk about this bit on the show too, is there's the other side of trust too. Like trust isn't necessarily a good thing. Like we can trust leaders to be horrible. We can trust leaders to not have our backs.

So as leaders, we really need to know what kind of trust we're perpetuating and fostering in those situations because as a new leader, you're so vulnerable. You're so looking for any stability because your life is chaos.

And if your boss can provide that foundation, even those 30 minutes a week, you're talking about it, I'm guessing years and years later, and look at the impact it had on you.

Britt Hogue: Yeah. Yep, that's right. That's right. I think it's such an interesting point you make about trust because sometimes we do have leaders who say, trust me when I say this. Or they say, I'm going to do these things. Especially like elected officials or they're on the campaign trail, they're making a lot of promises about things that you may or may not want to have happen, but they're telling you, here's what I'm going to do. And I think it's, can you trust them to do those things, whether they're things you want them, whether you want that, those things to happen or not.

And if there's someone who always kind of follows through and does the things, then you can say, okay, I know exactly what I'm gonna get.

Russel Lolacher: What does trust look like and what does it look like for me? It's such a personal thing, but it is the, like we said, like you said, and it's a huge DNA of this show, it's the cornerstone of relationships. It is trust, but what kind of trust and what kind of relationships are we talking about? Which leads me to my first question because I am a big fan of definitions, Britt. We throw words around like crazy, diversity innovation, but we put 'em on posters and we put 'em on websites, and we never define them. So the teams are going, but what does that mean? What does that look like? What is your definition versus what my definition is? So to be clear, to provide a bit of clarity as we kick off our conversation on new leaders. How would you define what a new leader even is?

Britt Hogue: First, I love that you focus on definitions. We do a lot of work with organizations and we write glossaries.

Because so many organizations throw around these different words and we don't know what they mean, and we don't know what they mean for us, right? So equity can mean different things in different organizations.

All of these things, all of those words. So I love that you focus on that. So new leader is important to break down because you could be a new leader, but not a leader for the first time, right? So you could be of someone who's led in another organization, but you're new to this organization, so they're your new leader.

Or you could be someone who is in the organization and is stepping up into a new leadership role. So there, you're a new leader, but you're not new to the people around you. And I think either way you are someone who is taking on some sort of responsibility. You're either taking on some added responsibility from the role you had, or you are taking, you're stepping into this organization and into this role, taking on assuming this leadership responsibility.

And I say responsibility because a big part of leadership is that you are supporting the team. Your job is to help make sure that this team, this organization has what it needs to succeed so that everyone can show up and do their best work, so that we can achieve those results together. And so thank you for allowing me to take a minute to just kind of actually just even break those two things down, that we actually are talking about two different types and maybe there are other types of leaders.

Russel Lolacher: And I like that you clarified that there's humans when we talk about leaders, because there's a lot of organizations that will call people senior leaders, and I'm like. No, those are managers. They manage resources, time, but they don't have anything to do with people. It's about delivery. It's about the end, justifies the means.

And yet those organizations will still call them leaders, which those who are, to your definition are looking about it. No, it's about my growth. It's about my, like it's about you looking after me. It's about. And yet we seem to define them differently. So I'm thrilled that we have, we are defining the same when it comes to leaders.

'cause I think a lot of organizations really need to give their head a shake as to what a leader is and why are they perpetuating a definition that actually does not line up for a lot of people.

Britt Hogue: Yeah. Yeah. And setting expectations for their leaders. A lot of organizations have, have a combination when they're, thinking about, did you succeed this year? You're going into your review, you have your objectives and you have core competencies and to your point, leaders do have objectives.

They have to hit those sales results, they have to make sure that whatever we've built so many things this quarter. We have to make sure that we're partnering effectively with these other organizations in the space. And so you may have all of those objectives, but then you have these competencies of leadership that you are responsible for. To say that you're a good leader, you can't just deliver on the management things, the things that you're responsible for managing. You also have to be, hitting all of your marks in terms of, am I someone who is supporting the people around me? Am I somebody who is role modeling?

What leadership looks like, because I want everyone to do these things. Am I collaborating? Am I, doing all of those things. So it's, I think it's so important that we're thinking about leadership as more than just the, the widgets, right? Or the, those aspects of the job.

Russel Lolacher: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So what do you feel are the biggest common roadblocks for new leaders when they get into these roles?

Britt Hogue: Yeah. So leaders do have a lot on their plates. You mentioned that before, right? They're spinning a lot of plates. They have a lot on each plate. And so I think one of the big roadblocks is trying to get organized around all of those things. And striking a balance is probably the challenge of new leadership is you're, if you're coming into an organization and you are, you're trying to get to know everybody.

You're trying to get everyone to get to know you, you're also trying to set a vision for. The organization, if you're at the helm of the organization or for the team. So you're casting a vision. You're also learning about the organization. You're also just showing up as yourself and letting people get to know you.

You're sort of showcasing your values and how you're going to show up. And so finding the balance between listening and learning and visioning I think is one of the big, big challenges, and sometimes leaders lean too hard on one thing or another. They spend too long in listening mode. And people start to say what is this person about? I haven't heard them really say anything about what we're gonna focus on for the next year. Or they come in and all they do is talk and they don't listen at all. They say, we're gonna do this and we're gonna do that. And everyone's you just got here. Are you even gonna give us an opportunity to lean into what's what's to come. And I think the same thing could be true for leaders who are stepping up into a new role is you have the benefit of people know you've been in the organization so people know you. Hopefully they trust you. Hopefully they know what to expect from you, but you've also gotta shift into this new responsibility.

And so trying to kind of navigate through that space of OK I am the same person, but I've gotta do something a little different now and I need folks to maybe see me a little differently now. I have to give you feedback and I didn't have to give you feedback before. And that's gonna be tricky when we're friends.

And, but you know, I think being able to kind of establish the way that you are going to do it and just have direct conversations with people to say I'm still the same person. And, let's figure out how we're going to do this going forward, right? I need you to give me feedback. I'm gonna give you feedback. I'm, have these different responsibilities. But let's figure out how we're gonna maintain our relationship, the relationship that we have going forward.

Russel Lolacher: Yeah, it's such a pros, cons list when it comes to what kind of leader you're in the situation you are. For example, if you're from outside the organization, it's great 'cause you're a blank slate. So you get to write your story as a leader, but then you've got an organization going, you don't know our work. You don't know what we do, you don't know how we do things. So there's that barrier. Or you've come from within the organization and people know you, but they also know you. So it's like you, why are you a leader and why am I not a leader? Why did you get promoted, and I didn't? I used to, I trained you two years ago and now you're my boss. Like that also comes with extra baggage that a new leader will have to navigate. It's almost better with an organization not to be leading the same team that you were promoted within because it's.... it still has too much connective tissue, I think is almost too much of an uphill battle for a lot of leaders.

Britt Hogue: Yeah. I was in that exact situation where someone who trained me, who didn't want to be a leader. He said, I'm very happy just doing this job. I like the hours. I like that they come in and I go and and I came in. I trained with him. We worked together for about nine months, and then I was promoted to lead the team.

And he just was like, Ugh, you sold out. And because we'd had conversations about, oh, they're doing that management thing again. Oh, they're just in meetings all day. And he's there you go. You're one of them now. And I just was like no, I'm the same person. We've shared an office for nine months. You know who I am. Yeah, I have different responsibilities, but I also know how we've talked about this. So I, those are the things that I'm gonna try not to do. I'm not gonna be those folks who, come in and only talk to us when they've got some bad news to give us. I'm gonna do it differently.

So, I it is, I think you've got, there is that little challenge there now that you mentioned it. Maybe I probably would've, it would've been an easier time had they promoted me to run some other team where I could just come in without having to kind of debate with him about, now you're one of those managers, but it worked out in the end.

Russel Lolacher: So as a new leader, this is even before day one. What kind of mindset should you be bringing into this position? Where should you be focusing on when it comes to how I'm going to approach this?

Britt Hogue: So there are a couple of things that I always go back to, which is this self-reflection for everyone, for the leader, for the team. Checking in with your own values to say, okay, I, I know who I am, I know how I wanna show up, irrespective of the job I've been given, I'm going to be me.

And really making sure that, even if you have to deliver a tough message, you're gonna do it in your style, you're gonna do it your way so that you are actually just still being you. So I think that's so important as one of those things in terms of the mindset that you bring as a new leader. I think just leaning into the realities of, often new leaders are responsible for bringing about change, and so you know that you're gonna be put into some tough situations, right? We have to cut costs, or we are gonna cancel that project, or we're going to merge with another team, or we're gonna, there's something that, you are going to have to manage this team through.

And so just being prepared for that. But you know, I'm gonna have to kind of stand up in difficult situations and I have to know how I'm going to navigate those. And so then you kind of go back to the first point how can I be me true to myself and authentic? And then I think the other thing, this may be less mindset and more of a, I hate to use the word tactic, but a way of going about it is to deepen those partnerships and those relationships.

Who are your partners in this? Who are the folks who you can really kind of bring closer to you in the moment and say, okay, and I'm talking a lot about change 'cause I think that's often new leaders kind of come into a role and think, oh, I'm just gonna kind of steady as it goes. Kind of keep managing things.

But then you realize, oh wait, there's, there are things changing all the time in organizations and I have to be the one to steer them. I think having these true partners, people who understand the vision, who believe you, who trust you, who with whom you have a good relationship. You can say, you're the folks who I want, to help me do this.

I don't have to go it alone. I wanna have a group of people who can be my partners in this.

Russel Lolacher: I, I wanna throw one other one 'cause you kind of mentioned it earlier, which is curiosity. Because even when you come into a role that, again, like we were talking earlier, even if you were in that team before and now you're leading the team, you didn't have a leader's view of how people worked. You had a colleague or a camaraderie with those people. You didn't get to see how effective they might have really been or not in those ,.

The only caveat I wanna put on and to your point, you were saying, don't be cur, don't listen for too long.

Britt Hogue: Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: From my experience, I did curiosity, but I communicated to the team that I was gonna be curious for a period of time,

IE I'm not gonna say a word for the first month, I'm gonna sit on every meeting. I'm gonna listen. I might have a lot of questions. I'm not going to make any decrees for X weeks. So they knew, at least what they could expect from me around, okay, he's gonna start getting more involved in a week, but he really wants to learn our business first. It's that not giving them a timeline and going, aren't they supposed to be leading at some point eventually, and getting in here. So it's that measured I wanna respect the team I'm joining, but you also have to understand, I'm gonna jump in here and I'm gonna try to adjust as we go along. So I think curiosity tends, but a measured curiosity can be really useful.

Britt Hogue: Yeah. And you're you're, I don't know, setting expectations. You're communicating about what people can expect from you. So I think that's the other really important piece of what, how you went about it was i'm giving you a timeframe. I'm gonna, I'm gonna just listen. I worked with someone who came into an organization. She said, I'm just gonna listen for six months. Six months is a long time, but at least she said that. She said, listen, I've done this before. I've come into an organization and I didn't listen long enough and I started putting changes in place and I hadn't seen enough cycles of the organization to do it effectively. So I wanna do six months. Along the way I hope to start to, understand things enough so that I can be a part of the conversation and start to say what about this? And have you tried that? But I'm really gonna be in listen mode. You can expect no major changes in the first six months. And I think that gave folks a lot of comfort.

Russel Lolacher: And I can see that working, not at the team level, but I can see that working at an executive, high executive level.

Britt Hogue: Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: Because any changes will be much more, have much more ripple effects at that level than it will be adjusting the team or making changes at that level. So I, when you said six months, I'm like, you have to lead eventually, but, but I can totally understand it when it comes to the tectonic shifts that could happen at a larger level when you're just like, I'm just gonna reorg this one person. And then you know, the ripples down the hierarchy.

Britt Hogue: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And she did she actually did end up doing probably two or three org changes in that time. Small changes. This person's gonna go over here, but she didn't say, oh, we're actually gonna, stop doing this whole program and move that whole team over to this other, she waited for a while and she was a the CEO of the organization.

So I think you're right, is to be able to kind of, you have to calibrate this for, what level in the organization you're operating.

Russel Lolacher: I wanna talk about change 'cause you were bringing that up. The thing is this is all about change and it's, to your point, it either could be a leader coming in and having to exact some change or them just existing is change because the team had a relationship with the previous boss, good or bad, and has expectations around this new leader.

So, i'm almost looking at it from a 30, 60, 90, because I think the first thing you need to do before change is build trust. Because if you're gonna build change, who are you? What are you making this change for? Because we have to build trust with you first. What would you recommend a new leader to start down that path of that 30, 60, 90 of going, okay, I need to start. I need to focus on relationships first.

Britt Hogue: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's where, just going back to the, I'm gonna listen for a while strategy really works because you're not trying to change anything too soon. You're not asking anyone to trust you on anything. You are just part of the conversation. You're listening and folks can start to get a feel. Okay here she's in the meeting. She said she was only gonna listen, and she did. She listened, she asked some questions and she left. She didn't say, okay, now you guys should go and do this. She did what she said she was going to do and she's been in listen mode consistently.

So I think that just, we talked about it at the beginning is like, so trust is so much about consistency and just, doing what you say you're gonna do. And I think in the beginning, in those first few weeks and months, if you just are showing up consistently, if you say, look, I'm gonna do a... I'm gonna make sure that I make my way around the organization and every team, or if you're at a team level, every person in this team, I'm gonna get some one-on-one time with. And just making sure that you do that. Like actually make sure that you just meet with every person, even if it takes more than the month that you thought it would.

Just follow through on that. If you say, we're gonna have a meeting every Monday morning where I'm gonna just sort of share some kind of an outlook for the week and it's going to be 20 minutes. And no more. This may seem like a really small thing, but stick to the 20 minutes, don't, take a whole hour of their time and then sometimes take 15. And so just try to really just be mindful of even those small things. I think sometimes we overlook the really small things that, that people are paying attention to. All those small things add up and people start to develop their own picture of you. And so you want all of those you really, I think have to be kind of watching yourself, in those first through few weeks and months as if you're the way that other people are watching you.

Russel Lolacher: So, so far I'm hearing self-awareness is huge. Mindset, situational awareness, building trust, understanding the organization not only from a team level, but from a business organizational level. I don't care where you are in the organization, if you're a leader, you have to know how your work connects to the vision and mission of the organization. Probably some visioning maybe after that. What do you want of the... because we mentioned that a leader needs to have some sort of vision and I think there's a lot of value having it even at a, with a frontline team because they wanna know their work connects to something.

Britt Hogue: Yep.

Russel Lolacher: What shouldn't we be concerned about in the first few months?

Britt Hogue: That's a good question. Right, so self-awareness, I think the curiosity point that you hit so important. I don't know that I would be concerned with, things like resistance in the first few months. I think sometimes as leaders, as anyone who's even run a project you're prepared for, if I'm changing something, I'm probably going to be faced with some resistance.

And so you start to kind of arm yourself for that, right? I've gotta go into this battle, I've gotta convince them, and I've gotta be ready and actually, resist, resist. The same way we're saying, what's under trust is under relationships is trust. And under trust is consistency.

What's under resistance is fear of loss. And so I think if you are a new leader and you come into the organization almost expecting the worst. You say, oh, everybody's gonna be pushing back on me and they're gonna have all these questions and they're gonna think the worst of me. So I'm sort of preparing for the worst.

Then you're kind of just not allowing yourself to get off on the right foot. Just start on a more positive note and kind of assume the best. Just, I'm gonna lean into what I hope will happen here. I'm gonna focus on doing the things to build trust in the organization, to learn the organization.

And I'm not gonna worry too much about folks may resist or folks may push back. I think that would be one thing that, that I would suggest to new leaders.

Russel Lolacher: I would say maybe also not having huge wins in the first like 1, 2, 3 months.

Britt Hogue: Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: To your point earlier and I love, 'cause I also talked about it too, is it's small things. It is the small wins that will build the foundation of the bigger wins later. So don't think you're gonna knock it outta the park right away 'cause they don't know you.

They're not working and motivated and inspired by you. They don't, they, they're still starting out to build and test your boundaries yet. So I think any new leader shouldn't think they're gonna be knocking 'em outta the park within the first little bit. And hopefully their executive isn't thinking the same either, or they're not leaders either.

Britt Hogue: That's right. And actually that you raised an interesting thing of as a leader you usually have someone who's, who you report to, even if you're the CEO, you report to the board or you have other stakeholders. And so being able to sort of manage up.

Manage over to them to say, I want to share with you how I'm coming into this role, into this organization. Here's how I'm going to go through it, and I'm not going to try to. Hit a big home run in the first couple of months. 'cause I don't think that's the most important thing. I think it is, really building these relationships, building a strong foundation so that when we have to do something hard, we can do it.

And when we have to run at that big win, we can do it together. And so I think giving yourself that. Being able to say, I'm gonna make sure that I manage expectations up so that I don't feel that pressure to have to do something and then I kind of lose the faith of everyone that I've, that I'm really trying to make sure that I have these relationships with.

Russel Lolacher: Now you're dancing into my favorite topic, which is communications, Britt. And I think as a new leader, one of the most, I've said this and I'll say it again. Every job is a communication job. I don't care where you are in the organization, you have to know how to communicate. Sadly, that is not a skillset that a lot of people... leadership, like business schools don't teach leadership.

They sure as hell do not teach communication. So as a new leader, communication is going to be a cornerstone of what you do. And as we just discussed both up and down and sometimes sideways. What does that look like for a new leader when it comes to communication and the intent of that communication?

Britt Hogue: Yeah. I, and maybe if I may I'll tell a little story about that.

Russel Lolacher: Do!

Britt Hogue: How I got it wrong once where I was in a role that where I was kind of like an in where I had to have influencing skills. I didn't actually have, I wasn't in charge of anyone. I was in one of those kind of side individual contributor roles, but I was responsible for a body of work.

And so, and it was my first time in a role like that where I didn't actually have a group of people reporting to me and I had to figure out all this and, the mistake I made was... i, and I didn't know how to navigate it, and I kept going to my manager, expecting them to kind of make it so for me. Tell those people to listen to me. Can you remind everybody of my role? Can you remind everyone of these things? And really, what I should have done was really relied on my own relationships. Because I knew all these people and I could have been more strategic in the way that I just went and sat down with them and said, can I'd love to just share with you a little bit about this new role that I'm in and, and learn a little bit more about how this project, it interacts with your project and your body of work and like, how do you see this?

And, where does it fall in your list of priorities? How can we best work together? Should we have a weekly meeting? Could we have a monthly meeting? What do you need from me? Just really kind of investing that time upfront to go around and share with folks, what I had been asked to do, and understand how it fit into their landscape, and kind of make space for it in their priorities.

Almost like asking permission. How can we work together on this? As opposed to trying to ask someone else to kind of force it in for me. It's kind of like a why they're not listening to me, because they don't have to, so you, they have to listen to you, so you tell them to listen to me. And it just didn't work.

It didn't, it was a huge failure on my part, but it was a learning experience. And, I really took away from that, it's relationships. I could have done so much more to lean into those relationships with folks to kind of create my own success in that challenging situation.

Russel Lolacher: I've found myself in those situations as well where it's like we're one team, but you don't report to me, so I have to go to your boss if I have any issues with you, but I don't know how they're gonna communicate on my behalf. I don't know your relationship with your boss, but I know my relationship with you, so I don't, am I working with you or am I working with them to work with you to work? It's so hard.

Britt Hogue: It's hard to do that whole... so if you can you know avoid it and so any, I think that, when it comes to leaders stepping into any sort of situation that's similar to this, where, the point I was making was like, rely on your own relationships and, don't try to rely on something else as a point to kind of force people into listening to you or following you or, whatever the things are.

Really just focus on the relationships that you have with those people and to the extent that you can humanize it. And you said we're all people we're all humans. We're all trying to do the best we can. And so, and we're all gonna make mistakes. And so I think if you can really just kind of simplify it and get down to that very basic, I'm here trying to do my, the best job I can and you are doing the best job you can.

How do we both do that together so that we can both succeed?

Russel Lolacher: So what I'm hearing is communication as a new leader is filled with vulnerability and compassion and not only for yourself, but also just to sort of soft lead others or soft manage others as you're still building those relationships.

Britt Hogue: Yeah. Yeah. I like this. I like the compassion and the soft piece. I think there's so much about just empathy is a word that was thrown around a lot, and so to define it, for me, empathy is just putting yourself in the other person's shoes. How often do we just stop, If you're having a hard time with someone or you can feel sort of like the tension growing... how often do we stop and just say, what is that person going through?

What, what are they reacting to? And just kind of put yourself in their shoes for a moment, then you can kind of approach the situation a little bit differently as opposed to staying on, the offensive or the defensive. Just drop those things and just say, I'm gonna come around to your side and try to understand what you're going through.

So I think that and with leadership, I think that shows up a lot, is compassion. Just understanding that folks are figuring this out.

Russel Lolacher: So you've been a new leader. You've been a leader for that 30, 60, 90, 6 month, whatever timeframe we wanna define a new leader as, how do you know it's going well? How do you know it's been successful?

Britt Hogue: I think you you're checking in with folks, right? I think you're, again, you're listening. One of the best things a leader can do is just stay in that, whether it's that formal like listening zone that we talked about of I'm not gonna make any changes. I'm just gonna listen and learn. I. I think that's the period where you truly are just in learning mode and you're just absorbing as much as you can, but you don't really ever leave the listening role behind, right?

You're always listening and you're always, checking in with folks. How are you feeling about things? Tell me, what's, how can I be helpful to you? So I think that just hearing how folks are responding to you will tell you a lot if you're paying attention.

If you ask folks like, how's it going and people are yeah, it's great and, they're wanna get out of there, then I read it. Read that situation. Don't just pay attention to the words. Pay attention to their body language or, are folks not turning up to the meeting? Are is everyone, are everyone's cameras off?

Are they, what's happening? Read the space, listen, pay attention, and then check in with folks. Again, do you have a group of people who you really trust who you can kind of think of as sort of your partners here where you can go to and say, Hey, I'm, curious, I've noticed people weren't showing up to that Monday huddle. I thought that was like, would be a great time for folks to just hear from me, what's going on, for me to maybe hear from other folks and nobody's showing up. What's that about? Maybe check in with some folks and try to get the real scoop if things are not going the way you'd hoped.

Russel Lolacher: Do you approach, and I was just thinking this, do you approach this differently as a new leader for virtual teams?

Britt Hogue: I think you do everything you have to sort of turn up the dial for yourself on a virtual team. So, so everything that you would normally do to build trust and be compassionate and listen, you have to challenge yourself to do it times 10 in a virtual world. Because you just don't, you don't have the luxury of walking around and seeing folks being able to say, hi. Folks, get to know you.

I mean, one of the things we, we've really lost in folks who operate in a completely virtual world will probably get mad at me about this. And I think that you can manage it if you're intentional about it, but you know, one of the things you lose is kind of the things that happen between the meetings. And after the meetings and, walking to the parking lot or whatever, people have those sidebar conversations that are not scheduled and that are not part of a larger group conversation. And, and so you have to really find ways to build those things back because that's, it's in those conversations where you get to know each other. You notice that someone's walking out with their exercise bag and you say, oh, I'm trying to, get back into the gym too, or what, and you have a personal conversation with someone. And so creating those spaces for that is a little bit harder in a virtual world. Not impossible, but you have to just make sure that you create them.

And I guess the same is true if you're, there certainly, I think we've all worked with managers who kind of come into the office and they go right to their office and close the door. And then they stay in there, in their meetings and then they come out and they zip to the parking lot.

So, you certainly could miss those opportunities face-to-face. So I think whatever you're doing, if you're virtual, if you're in person, if you're in a hybrid situation, it's really being intentional about building those relationships, creating those opportunities for people to build relationships with each other on the team. And yeah, like I said, sometimes it's a little bit harder virtual, and so you just have to be a little more intentional.

Russel Lolacher: I agree, and I'm glad you brought up the word intention. I think if anything, virtual challenges leaders to be actual leaders because we love talking about adaptability, but then we change something and you're like, this is, I can't do this. I'm like, then you are not a leader because you are using, being in the office as a crutch for leadership.

You just sit in your office all day. That's not leadership, but now they're virtual. Yeah, you have to do stuff now.

Britt Hogue: Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: So that is... I think it's more, and it certainly showed up in COVID of who the good leaders were and who the bad leaders were. And it's just a matter of new leaders of what kind of leader they want to be. And virtual... geography shouldn't dictate whether they're gonna be good or bad.

Britt Hogue: Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: Last question before, as we get into the wrap up phase here, Britt.

Britt Hogue: Okay.

Russel Lolacher: And this is gonna be an interesting one, what could organizations be doing to better support new leaders? Because, I'm sorry, organizations, job descriptions aren't onboarding To, to shatter your misconceptions of this. What could organizations be doing in those first weeks or months?

Britt Hogue: Yeah. I love that you said job descriptions are not onboarding. Job descriptions are, and people need to know what the job is, but we do a lot of but what, what is your role actually, and let's all talk about our roles. You mentioned before the word system. Organizations are systems and so, when you're talking about folks understanding their roles, it's more than just the words on the paper. It's roles in relation to other people's roles. And so how do we work together is an important thing that's not on the job description. How does your team interact with that team? How do we make decisions together?

How often do we need to share information so that everybody has what they need? How are we gonna share information? All of those things. So I think one thing that organizations can do to support leaders is give space and time for that. For that the, let's get clear about how this team works. Me as the new leader, I need to understand it, but maybe you guys have never actually talked about this way. So. If we need to take some time to get into a room, a virtual room, or a physical room and just sit, sort of talk about, okay, what is the constellation that is our team? How do we work together?

How do you, how does your role support my role and vice versa? I think giving leaders time to really learn and understand the system that they're gonna be operating in is something that we often don't give leaders a lot of time for. There you are, you're in the role. Especially if you've been a leader before.

You know how to do this. Go. You haven't done it here. I need to learn this system. And then I think giving people time to, we talked about it before, small wins. Don't expect some big thing to change in the first 30 days. It's not gonna go well. Give them some time. I, it's I was reading something the other day of, and it was listing off all these different, idioms, Rome wasn't built in a day, and all of those things of all these different ways that, that we have said over the years that, rushing things often does not get you to the best result.

You can move with urgency, you can move swiftly. You don't have to drag your feet, but. Rushing into something just for the sake of I need to get those things knocked out are probably not gonna get you to the best long-term results.

Russel Lolacher: No, and that's why I love the shift of, they say in the tech sector, which unfortunately most industries have adopted, which is move fast and break things. And I remember there being, I can't remember which TED talk it was, but they shifted the narrative and said, no, you move fast and fix things.

And I think we're focusing too much on the managerial side of things when we talk like that. Leadership doesn't, relationships aren't built quickly. Perceptions and expectations are, but those really meaty, trusted, to your point your leader that you started out with that gave you a sandbox, an established sandbox in which you did creativity and got to play and test boundaries, that is where this should be leading to, not this moving fast to get to that. That's again, we're back to delivery. We're not into the humans.

Britt Hogue: That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting the whole, yeah I struggled for a while with the fail fast thing. I do think, pay attention, learn the lesson and move on if it's not working. But I prefer like course correct. Learn and adapt as opposed to fail fast because it's, you're leaving a mess behind.

If you're just fail, you're fail. If you're okay with breaking things and moving on.

Russel Lolacher: And we love a fancy quick bumper sticker sort of decree when it's okay, but what kind of psychological safety do you need to be creating to be able to fail fast? There is an environment, an ecosystem that needs to be created that we don't talk about, which is the leadership piece.

Britt Hogue: That's right.

Russel Lolacher: We're too busy trying to ends justify the means and it, which is management and not leadership, which I think we're, there's too much of a disconnection.

Britt Hogue: Yeah, that's right. I think you're right.

Russel Lolacher: Love the chat, Brett. I love this. You got me all fired up.

Britt Hogue: Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: Let's put a wrap in this the question I ask all my guests to wrap this up, which is what's one simple action people can do right now to improve their relationships at work?

Britt Hogue: When we were talking before and I said the, just the empathy piece, just getting into other people's sort of shoes, just. Just taking a meat minute. And I, so maybe I wanna simplify it even more because I think sometimes putting yourself into someone else's shoes can be hard. If you aren't someone who kind of practices that on a regular basis, I think it's some try it, try.

But I think that maybe the even simpler thing to do is just slow down a little, just to the point we were just talking about. Take a breath. Maybe just take a breath. And don't send that email right away after the thing happened. Just take a minute, take a beat, calm down a little. I think just things that can preserve relationships are, just slow down, don't react so quickly.

And so whatever you do in that pause, if it's just you take a breath or you kind of try to shift your perspective. Try to understand maybe where they're coming from. Just give yourself a beat.

Russel Lolacher: That is Britt Hogue. She's an advisor, facilitator, and the principal at the Collective Good LLC. Thank you so much for being here, Britt. Appreciate it.

Britt Hogue: Thanks so much. This was a lot of fun.