Brute Force, The Hero or Storyteller: Blending the theory and practice of leadership! (M&O)

[MUSIC] Hello and welcome to this episode of Smith's God Talent, a podcast featuring students, faculty, and alumni of the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business, discussing how they have helped solve actual business challenges and leveraged AI and other tools to bring innovative ideas to the market. I'm Kim DeGroce, the assistant dean and head of the Office of Career Services, the host of our program. Today I am very excited to welcome Dr. Sheedall Singh, an award-winning organizational psychologist, researcher, and author whose work bridges science, leadership, and organizational transformation. As an associate clinical professor at the school, she inspires future leaders with her research, driven yet practical approach, which we love, to leadership, performance, and well-being. We are also joined by coach Michael Loxley. He returned home to become the University of Maryland's 37th Head Football Coach in December 2018. Loxley, a Washington DC native which completely warms my heart, has deep personal and professional connections to the area and has over 30 years of coaching experience. Thank you for joining us to the coach. We are joined finally by James Consoli, one of their students. He's a second year here at Smith finishing his Masters in Management Studies. James works as a sports barcaster. That's amazing for the Big Ten plus through the Maryland Athletics Department. Thank you all so much for coming today. We're very, very excited to have you. Dr. Singh, could you tell our audience a little bit about the class that you and coach co-teach here at Smith? Absolutely. So I teach an undergraduate leadership in Teams class as well. And when I was told that I might have an opportunity to partner with coach Loxley to teach a class on leadership, I was really excited because I thought of it as an opportunity to teach leadership in practice. And a lot of my plus one students, MIM students have already taken my undergraduate class. So I had the opportunity of bringing in subjects and topics that they haven't dealt with before. And so this class is really built as leadership in practice. What would you really do as a leader from your early roles to when you grow into senior positions and how that transition happens? So we don't just touch on topics such as teams and decision making, but we delve into more difficult topics like dealing with fear, anxiety, failure, conflict, things that most leaders don't want to deal with or want to avoid. So we're preparing them for real jobs, real jobs, right, the real world. Coach Loxley, when they came to you with this idea, what was your initial reaction? Well, it first started by my reach out. I had a birthday trip where I took a close friends of mine for my birthday out to New Mexico, a good friend of mine, a businessman out in Albuquerque Steve Chavis, owned a ranch. And so I took some friends out to spend time in sunny Bajaja, economics grad from the University of Maryland, who also is a dear supporter of the Smith School. And I were sitting around and I was talking about having worked under Nick Sabin and having worked under Ralph Friesian and some of these great leaders. And he said, man, you should think about teaching a class at Smith. And I have a marketing background. I got my degree in marketing from Tausen State University at that time. And I thought, what a unique way for me to maybe buy some friends, get back into, you know, where they say meet people where they are for us to become the program. I know we need the students and they gave me an opportunity to meet them where they were, which is in the classroom and basically take the theory that she talks. Sheetle is teaching and practicing and me in real-life time show how it works. And it's been a great, great combination and alignment and it's really been helpful for me as a leader. Well, I imagine I when I read the syllabus, I thought, ooh, I want to take this class. It sounds great for leaders at all levels, and certainly would recommend a lot of people around even the university coming and taking the class based on the syllabus. James, here you are. Student, representative for everybody in the class. Tell us a little bit about why you signed out for the class and, you know, sort of what you thought you'd get out of it. Well, first of all, I've had Professor Sheetle before and when I heard about Coach Loxie joining into the class, I mean, it just seemed like the perfect fit for a guy like me. I love sports, obviously, as you know, but also she brings the sort of psychology and therapeutic background into it where it's not all just about brute force leadership and being the loudest guy in the room, but she's also just brings in sort of the scientific side to it and how you can approach different leadership scenarios from a different perspective, from a nurturing perspective, from growing up with guys, you know, for Coach, for example, you know, guys that come from tough areas, you know, how can they be spoken to best and guys from different areas as well. So for me, I just felt like the perfect blend of the sports culture with a little bit of psychology too. And that's what I love about the MIM program in general is that you have a whole array of topics. It's not just the the technical side of things that you're learning. It's the soft skills. It's the speaking. It's a whole blend of different things. So when I saw this collaboration, it was just, you know, a fit for the stars. Perfect for me. I love what you're saying about not just sort of coming in and pounding the table. I think there's a lot of leaders, right, sports or otherwise that are very used to a command and control methodology of leadership, right? Do as you're told. And my husband played college football and we debate all the time about whether they should be running up the middle or running around the side and you see that style of coaching and leadership in every aspect. So to hear that you're teaching it a different way sounds, it sounds quite intriguing. Can you tell us a little bit about that? So I know in popular culture or as we read about leadership, we glamorize it, right? Leader is supposed to be a hero. He's like supposed to be a celebrity because those are the people that get talked about in the media. Those are also the people that get talked about in books and get written about. Leadership in reality looks very different. It pretty much ends up being one conversation at a time when you talk to an employee who's dealing with something challenging back home. When you talk to an employee who's made a mistake and how do you deal with that? When you talk to your team that can't get long and you figure out ways to make sure they can sync up well together. So the practical aspects of leadership sometimes get lost in that glamourization of the topic. I also feel leadership is probably the most noisy topic there is. Oh that's interesting. So you walk into any bookstore and you'll find at least 10 new books that are launched that week. Each book claims to solve your leadership issues in totality, right? Now so as a leadership professor I think of my role more as somebody who's the noise reducer. So I look out to these topics and what's happening in the world and research and what's getting written about and I say out of this what is irrelevant? What's not going to help you? And I'm going to call that noise out for you. And I'll only bring you what's going to be truly useful to you because my class time is precious. It's limited so I will bring to you what you can truly take away from here and apply in the real world rest is all noise. Right. And I think coach is kind of pulling in that real world part of it. So when you're in class what sort of a role are you playing and how are you translating? So she forces me to become storytelling and as we know that's the new way of leadership is through stories which is why the leadership aisle in most bookstores is full because every day there's a new leader born that can tell their story. And you know unfortunately for me I always say I look at leadership as having a positive impact on others and you tend to do that more from failure than you do from success because there's a lot more people that don't have the success. And what I've tried to do because you don't hope your way to becoming a head coach at the University of Maryland from Beloo High School is that along the way you know I learned my grandmom used to say if some of my aunties would have told me their failures while they were growing up instead of us talking about once they're gone maybe we could add a quicker impact on others. And so I've been able to you know come to grips through some personal tragedies when you bury a child it makes life a little easier to deal with some of this stuff that really is noise as she said. And so for me this class has been great because I've been able to tell the story of a lot of the failures because I've had success. I've won national championships but a lot more failures and I can use those examples as models of what not to do because I say success leaves clues but losses leave lessons and if we can take those put them in storytelling to where future leaders of the next generation can learn from my mistakes before I'm gone. - That is amazing. James, when you're in class and you're listening to sort of both sides of this coin, if you will, how do you pull that together in what you're learning? - Yeah, piecing those two things together like you mentioned when Coach talks about the vulnerability that he showed. I mean, when I talked to Professor Singh, she liked our questions that we would come prepared to. We were asked to make about two to three questions each student and not all of them would be asked, but a select few would get chosen. And for me, I wanted to change things up a little bit. So I asked Coach, something along the lines of, we always talked about the flowery, the side of things. How do you come in as a leader? What's the best success you've ever had? I asked him something along the lines of, tell us about your darkest moment. Tell us about the toughest times in your life. And it was probably the most, I think our whole class is learned, not only just about leadership in general, but about who people are, who he is as a person. Always see your headlines, always see as the press release. But getting behind that and seeing that he's a person, seeing that he's a leader, he's a guy just like us. He's gone through struggles and troubles like he's mentioned. But to piece together what Professor said, bringing the leadership aspect to class is important. But also being a vulnerable leader and kind of what you talked about earlier as well, where leaders don't have to be allowed. They can be quiet, right? You can lead by action, that's something we've heard our whole life. So for me, that's what I pulled out of the class the most, I think so. That's amazing. It feels emotional when I'm listening to you and for those who will eventually see this on YouTube that can see you, there's an emotion that's there. There is a connection that you can feel. And I'm wondering how you think you'll take that forward in your life, right? I think you're getting very graduate. So how do you think you'll take that forward? Yeah, I mean, finishing up soon like you mentioned, but taking that forward, it's just about, who am I in the workplace? And not only just outside, but who am I with my family? Who am I with my peers and my friends? Or people that don't know me, random bystanders on the street, so to speak, who am I going to be as a leader? Am I going to be the guy that just points fingers and tells people to do X, Y, or Z? Or am I going to be the person that models that? And so I think that's sort of who I grew up as my whole life, being an athlete and doing those sort of things. It was always lead by example. But I was also one of the guys that had the loudest voice on the team, because I like to talk, as you guys can pretty much see right now. And you were all in the same boat. That's why we're here. But yeah, altogether, I think for me, taking away the most was I can lead by being quiet. I can lead by doing the different things that Professor instilled in us is just announcing some of our troubles allowed. Our anxiety is saying them aloud and recognizing that they're real and that they're present. And then by that and then my belief in God and all those things, it's helpful for me to move forward and realize that these things are real and I acknowledge them. And we go from there. This is so heartwarming. So real. It is so heartwarming. I finished the class and I'll see she'll-- I'll see if you don't cry. Please don't cry for my stories, because I'm not crying. But it's just great to hear the impact of what a class like this is all about. And it's been more than I could have dreamt of. And I can tell you that I've had to put my student back on because I don't like to come in blindly. And I'd like them. I might kind of have an idea of some of the stories that can relate, but some of the best classes we've had have been the questions that just are listed in authentic response that as they all know, they'll start building this roller deck of wisdom. And that's kind of what I'm pulling it from as a lot of failures with also some pretty good stories, I think, throughout the semester as we teach and go through the theory and the practicality of it. That's amazing. I did want to ask you, what sport do you play? Because you mentioned it a few times, and I never asked you about that. My mom made it a priority for me when I was growing up to keep me out of trouble. I'd play a sport in every season. So growing up for the most part, I played soccer in the fall and summer, basketball throughout the winter, and then some lacrosse in the spring. So I had the trifecta. So as did my older siblings as well, we all kind of had to keep us out of trouble, I think. And as a mom of two female athletes, I'm right there with you. Keep them busy. So I like that. Right? It's-- and part of that is you learn teamwork, right? Which is another topic in this class. And that takes you into the work world in a completely different way. We have recruiters tell us all the time that they love to hire athletes because they've had to learn to deal with failure, learn to deal with people shouting at them, right? Or just generally how to get along as part of a team, wondering coach, how do you pull that teamwork part into that part of the class? Yeah, and that probably has been one of the more rewarding parts of the class for me from the practical theory side of it or the theory side that she'll brings is that imagine-- I've been coaching this will be 34 years, I think, coming up now. And imagine I've had the consistency of what building my team has looked like where you go through four years, cycles, five years, cycles of players that matriculate in your culture stays the same. And it builds almost on a continuum. Well, now I get thrust into this NIL world two years ago while I-- You know, I was going to go there. So I'm glad you brought it on because it changes the team. It changes the team's-- you made it clear. I had 64% of my team that had never signed up or played as a turp a year ago. And I'm teaching a class on how do you build teams? And so when I talk about the real life and some of the things I did based on studying and preparing for this class really resonated with my team because I had two, four and eight teams, but too much different cultures as he would understand from covering it. Two different types of teams which leads me to understand that it takes a little time to build teams. But just-- you have to be very intentional. And that's what the theory side and being a part of this cohort with Sheetle has really been great for me. As a leader and as a God, it has to build teams fast now. Right. Oh, NIL has changed the world in terms of college sports. My daughter played softball in college. And NIL just changes, the portal changes. That's why I'm actually really asking you, like how do you even deal with that kind of turnover but in the management world, right? In the leadership world, we know large chunks of people are getting laid off or the economy is ebbing and flowing. Or quite frankly, the current generation changes jobs every two to three years. That's very common. They don't stay in a same company for 20, 30 years and get a gold watch. So how do you teach our leaders teamwork in an ever changing world from your perspective? So in an idle world, I would have, say, a team of five people and I will get to work with them from start to finish and I'd like to keep that team, right? But that's not perfect. Yes, I'm an integer. We would all like three years. It's just like college football. Yes. In reality, people come and go, like you said, projects change. You lose projects. You lose people. The organization goes through transitions. And all of that is affecting the team as we go along. So a lot of when I'm teaching teamwork and building teams in organizations, that I'm not just teaching them how to build this perfect team, but I'm teaching them more about what can go wrong and how do you respond to that? So we talk about, you know, it's just the team life cycles. And if you bring in one new person, the life cycle brigands all over again. You have to go through forming, storming, norming, and performing. And if you don't go through all of that, you'll never get to performing. So then being aware of that, because we expect, oh, there's just been one person that is shifted. We should just go as usual and this person should adjust to us. That's not how it happens. We all have to now regroup as a completely new team. And I think coached sees that in reality, right? And it's so practical for me. And I've always been one of those guys that the top 20% does 80% of the work. And so you got to focus on keeping that top 20% trying to develop that middle 60% that you're either coming up or you're going down, you don't stay the same. And then you cut the bottom 20% off. And the model land is applying to college football, which never before. I knew how many seniors are we going to graduate. I knew who and what positions I had to replace. And now I have to build a team usually in a three-month window to go out and perform at a high level to meet expectations. And this is new, which is where me joining and becoming part of the Smith School and teaching is utilizing some of the brightest minds and resources. I know I've sent a couple of AI questions over on how to be more creative and how it can help us in game planning, going a week. And we're working together to do some things behind the scenes that may-- where we may not have the funding per se for football, we can be creative and figure out ways to do it with the resources right here on campus. That's amazing. I know Professor Pajmanabano will be happy to hear about the AI questions coming over here to Smith. We've got the talent and the tools. We do. My job is to talk to you about AI. But it's very difficult to follow what we just heard. Coach Locksley, Dr. Sheetal Singh and James took us on an incredible journey that painted leadership in such a unique way with all its ups, downs, personal tragedies and the things that make human leaders who they are. AI's hook into leadership is certainly very intriguing and in some cases frightening. Some of us have seen examples where the future CEO of the year is supposedly likely to be an AI. Can that happen and will that happen? Now there are so many points of departure here. I want to just pick on two aspects. One can AI help with leadership in some sense. And we are already seeing a lot of evidence of humans, executives and others who are using AI as coaches in conversations and there are useful things that AI can do today. For instance, there are people who have been using it to practice how to have difficult conversations at work to get tips from AI about things that they should be doing. And as some of you may have experienced AI can be reasonably good at this in an impersonal way of sorts, right? Even though it may talk as if it seems to be a person, but it doesn't have the authenticity as you heard earlier that humans bring in. And as Dr. Sheetal Singh was saying, the authenticity is not about just being yourself. It's about being true to your values. And humans do that and humans have values. We bring our experiences to situations, to make decisions and we make judgments all the time. Can AI have values? One of the interesting areas in the AI field itself is this field called, is this sub-area called alignment, AI alignment, where there is a big trend to try and build AI that also has values, right? Just like we have a world in which we have several billion humans who look alike, but who differ based on their values. We are likely to be building a world in which we have hundreds of billions of AI that looked the same, but are different because they trained to have certain values. Now, I'm not going to bore you about how these AI systems may be trained with different set of values, other than you can do this. If you want to build AI that can be like a salesperson, right, you can fine tune those AI algorithms so that it has certain values that someone in sales may have. But at the end of the day, the authenticity that humans bring come from our experiences and judgment that's honed over years and years of experience, that these systems will never be capable of. And just to settle the final question, can AI be a leader? I asked AI itself just before coming on now. And here's what AI had to say that I can be a great tool to augment human decision making, but true leadership requires empathy, authenticity and judgment. And these are uniquely human traits. Let's hope it's speaking the truth. James, I'm wondering what's the biggest surprise for you in class? Something you're like an aha moment, if you will, that you just, you kind of have some expectations, but like you just never thought you would get out of class so far. Wow. I mean, I think the biggest aha is just like realizing that, you know, coach is coming in from, like I talked about that vulnerability standpoint, but also from a place where he's got a lot to learn too. And so does Professor as well. It's not just about census. It's the first time sort of teaching this class. They don't have, you know, they might have the leadership experience. You might have the background in psychology and speaking with people, but they're learning as much as we are. So I think like her asking us each week, you know, how could this next class be improved? How can, you know, Coach Locksley's experience be improved or how can he better, you know, and we learned a lot as long as we went through. I think him bringing in players, you know, to talk to us was a cool thing. Him bringing in, I think it was an RD. Our strength coach, he kind of leads the motivation of our team and the ways we motivate at the different messaging. It's alignment in the messaging and how we form it within a team. So I showed them behind the scenes the things that we do. And I think it's been practical for them and it's really helped me. I would say so yeah, just kind of what he, what he kept off saying there, but it was about not just like the students learning each week. They sort of swallowed their pride a little bit and just said, all right, well, we can learn a lot from what they have to offer. They're here for a reason. They're the ones paying to be here, right? So how can they get the best experience out of this? So for me, I think that's what it was. It wasn't just like, oh, they're pointing at me, you know, pointing a finger and here's a slide presentation. It's, you know, it's a conversation. That's the best way I learn. So I just like to add, you use the word vulnerability a lot, coach, use the word authenticity a lot as well. And this might be subtle, but one of the first topics we tackle is authentic leadership and how do you do that? And a lot of people think authenticity is all about being who I am exactly and bringing in the whole, right? Which means if I'm just feeling not feeling it today, I'll just be myself and let you see it. And that's not what authenticity is. And I think, for me, the, I think the biggest benefit of bringing coach into the classroom was he's really authentic. The vulnerability brings out the authenticity in him, which lets people see that authenticity is not about just showing people exactly what I'm feeling inside, but it's about figuring out what my values are, who am I? And then translating it into literally every action that you take as a leader. To me, that was very powerful to see. I mean, the class was built around what coach wanted to bring into. So it's funny how we designed it. You want to talk about it? She told me to basically tell my life in the chapter. She gave me seven chapters. Seven chapters. I want you to tell me your story. And I had to do that over the course of the summer. It was really tough because it was almost, you know, as part of my leadership style, I've a, I do therapy now. And so this was almost working in cohort with my therapy of just telling the story of growing up in the Southwest section, Green Leaf section of DC. And having to go through the things that we went through growing up and end up here as the hey coach at Maryland. I mean, the irony is I grew up on Maryland's campus. I used to come here and scout tickets to football and basketball games when Lin-Bias played here and would hop on the subway from La Fonte Plaza to New Carroll to hop on the bus. And so I kind of grew up on this campus and to be able to now tell my story, like seven chapters. And I'm like, this story is still going sheath. She's like, well, just try to narrow it down. It was hard for me. It was really difficult for me to do. And she kept digging and making me come back and digging to it. And she designed it based off of my story. And it's been easy for me, which means I don't have to do a lot of preparation, but it is where he says, I seem like there's some time I get asked questions and I tell the story that pops up immediately. And sometimes it's tough to tell and hear and share, but it's been great. Cathardic, it's easy. Oh, this day job was like living your life in reverse. Yes. Wow. I wanted to capture everything that the coach wanted to bring me to the class. And so I didn't want to force fit topics onto him. Instead I wanted to say, if I'm bringing him in as a leader, what is it that students can learn best from him? So all those stories, so I started with almost like 11 or 12 chapters. And then I started, I spent a lot of time looking at those stories and say, okay, I can combine this here, this here and create this module. So the course was really brand new because of that because it's really just built around whatever coach Luxley can bring to the students. And I'm just the support cast there. And I think the biggest point for me with this class is I just thought about it as you were speaking was I just kept saying, so failure is not final. I can remember saying that to her how I failed a lot. And sometimes if you look at the totality of it, I mean, failure has never been final for me. I've been a fired head coach at New Mexico and I land my dream job here at Maryland. I mean, a lot of leaders don't tell their failure stories. And that's the part where when my grandma tells the story about if your aunties had told their story while they were alive, if you could have maybe changed lives, this gives me a chance in real time to tell the story of the lessons I've learned while I failed as a leader. But you don't fail unless you quit. And when you quit, you're done. But I've never quit. And that's part of the story that failure is not final, which is why I can stand in front of the media and people like this guy here grilled me about winning. And I'm I've said, and I said before, I use my favorite line is I've done harder. And they don't understand what that means. But again, I say when you bury a child as a parent, I've done harder than losing the game and maybe it made a mistake calling it. And you know what I can show leaders that it's okay. You can make a mistake on it in front of your people. And guess what? More people will learn from that than if you gloss over it, you point the finger somewhere else. You always start with yourself. And these are things I've learned from her theory. And then I'm able to put it into play. I didn't know what it was. She's giving it. models and names that are really cool. I always ask the students, "Give me that question in layman's terms," because they're super smart with the theory and those things. And I say, "Ask me what you really want to ask me so that I can answer it." And that's always when I get the authentic questions that I can help. You're already doing it. I just put the framework on top of it, but he's already doing it all to be honest. I love that. The framework on top of it. Let me take it in reverse just a little and ask you, Coach, what do you think you've learned from being a part of this class? What have you gotten out of it from either leadership, teamwork, personally, students or the reverse? Well, I think one understanding that the theories behind what I'm doing, because again, I was in school a long time ago, and they call them different things now. Like he said, it's a behavioral science type of class. One of my favorite courses at Towson was a buyer and behavior analysis. Why people buy and people want to know, "Locks is a great recruiter." That class always intrigued me because the psychology of being able to lead people is what she's doing. That's been the most helpful thing, whether it's my hand placement because I can tell you, I speak a lot and there's times where because I'm authentic and after a game, I'm probably not as polished and she's shown our class things that you can't stand with your own folded coach. You're a standoff-ish and now I have to be open. I've heard it before, but reinforcing things when I have to do media twice a week and I'm thinking of sheath school and some of her tips that I saw her given the class. I'm a life learner. I'm always looking to learn and I learned a lot from these kids because I told them there are one of one generation. I grew up where it was a dictatorship. I had four kids that I raised in the first two grew up under dictatorship and the last two, I had to adjust to where I'm negotiating with terrorists. I feel like. I had to ask them how they feel. Where are you? I feel that way with this class. It's been a great experience, but it's helped me with leading my team as well. Leadership, the way I see it in one word, is influence. That's all I'm teaching people, how to influence others. We spend a lot of time talking about communication and not in very typical sense, but leadership communication. How do you phrase things? How do you come out as best? What are the subtle things that you're doing that are going to either close people off to you or open people up? Again, teaching them very real word, but coach is being very, very kind. He was doing everything anyways. I just give a leave to it, which is kind of fun. Wow. As you move forward with your career, James, what do you see yourself doing a year from now? How might you apply some of the things that you've learned in class? Wow. A year from now, a lot of things can change. Currently working with a company that helps to fundraise money for NIL, interestingly enough. It's a new space coach knows what I'm talking about above the cap funding. The schools have a select amount of money they can give, but what about the outside partnerships the brand deals players can get, etc. That's just called a new trade. That's what they're doing. Exactly. That's how the playing field I guess, so to speak, comes a little bit uneven again where we had before. Players would get deals and such, but I won't get too much into that. What I'll say is, for me, it's applying all these different things, but most importantly, for me, I know we use the word authentic and vulnerability, just learning that there's different styles of leadership too. We had so many. I can't even name all the different. We had like eight different styles of leadership, but she would hit us with new ones each week. It felt like the diplomat and a bunch of different ways to lead. For me, that's what I resonated the most with, but it's just about being myself, even if I end up pursuing a career in sports broadcast, sports journalism. My first time I was on TV, so to speak, I was so tight I was like this. I went one take through because I was like, just reading the prompt or as best I could, but showing emotion, being myself, being comfortable, sitting back a little bit, breathing. Realizing there's bigger problems out there that people are facing. For me, it's just about taking these little notes and tidbits that I learned from both coach and professor and moving forward with that and breathing and being the best leader for people around me, but also just being the best person. Well, I cannot wait to see how your career takes off and claiming you as a Smith alum is going to be amazing for all of us. Coach, professor, James, thank you all so much for joining us today. And thank you everybody for joining us for Smith's Got Talent. We'll see you next time. Thanks. To learn more about how to hire our students that can innovate in your business, please email us at [email protected]. Again, that's [email protected].