Ep 180, Find the Friction & Address It

Welcome to Conflict Managed. I'm your host, Mary Brown. This week on Conflict Managed, we welcome Jimmy Burroughs. Jimmy has transitioned from commanding military units in difficult environments to steering senior leaders at top organizations like Samsung, Lego, Fenterra, and Bank of America. He's the author of bestselling books, Beat Burnout, Ignite Performance, and Escape the Multitasking Trap. His signature simplified amplify methodology is all about removing friction and complexity fast, leading to an average 47% improvement in leadership performance within just 90 days. With 3,000 leaders transformed across 40 countries, Jimmy delivers real, measurable results rather than theoretical frameworks. His practical, action-ready solutions have boosted productivity by 156%, increased retention rates, and saved organizations millions. Plus, his approach empowers managers to act confidently. No burnout allowed. Good morning, Jimmy, and welcome to Conflict Managed. Good morning, Mary, so lovely to be here. Thank you for the invitation. Absolutely. I know we're going to have a wonderful conversation. You've done quite a few things in your career and what you're currently up to right now. But before we get there, I would like to hear about the first job you ever had as a young person. My first ever job was a paper round. I was probably 12 or 13 years old. When I was much younger, I used to help my child and his daughter do her paper round, and it seemed like lots of fun to hurl papers at front doors when you're a kid. But when I was a little bit older, I think I was 12 or 13, I started working with a local news agent and was given a heavy bag to run around and basically build on my soccer fitness. That was the intention of it for me, and I earned a little bit of pin money along the way. It's so interesting. I mean, quite a few people have paper routes as their first jobs or a fast food restaurant, and I'd like that you said that one of the aspects that you wanted is that fitness aspect of a heavy bag and running around and that extra money. Did you also have to deal with the collection side of it, which is not the easier side of a paper route collecting money from the people? No. In the UK, where I grew up, you would go and pay weekly for your newspapers, and then kids like me would drop them off for you. The hardest part, actually, I think was counting the newspapers when they arrived. They used to come all bailed up in twine or string, and then at the end of it, you had to count them again to make sure you delivered what you said you delivered so you got paid for it. So that was probably the most administrative burden versus having to actually go and ask people for money. Not too bad, not too bad. So where did you go after that? What was another job that you had as a young person? Oh, good. The more interesting jobs I've had was my first job out of university, which was the Second Gulf War. So when I graduated university, I went off to Sandhurst, which is the equivalent of West Point for the US. And when I finished Sandhurst, I was posted off to my regiment and it just so happened that the regiment was deployed in Iraq in the middle of the Second Gulf War. So my first real job, I suppose, my first growing up job was leading soldiers in the area of Basra in Iraq and doing logistic resupplies and setting up supermarkets in the desert for people to come and get their military supplies, a bit like kind of having a Walmart that you could drive through and pick up all your things. So that was probably a more interesting job than doing a paper route. Oh my goodness, your answer could not have been as different from the low stakes of the paper route to extremely high stakes as a relatively young person. Wow. So tell me, how did you find yourself in military service? What did you major in in university and why did you decide to go into military service? That's a good question. So I think when I was at boarding school, one of the obligatory activities was the cadet force, which is kind of like boy soldiers. And I really enjoyed that and I was pretty reasonable at it. And then when I was at university, there was an opportunity to do what's called OTC or I think Americans call it ROTC, which is a reserve officer training college, something like that. And I again, I really enjoyed that. And when I finished my degree, which happened to be in biological sciences, I'd had the opportunity to spend a year in the US and again, met lots of ROTC people and was just thinking, well, when I leave university, I don't really want to be a biologist. I had great aspirations of going off to Africa and doing epidemiology or something exciting like that. But the reality was I enjoyed the military stuff. When I initially joined the military, there wasn't really much going on. So it was a good opportunity to have nice dinner nights, lots of adventure training, lots of physical activity, and good training in terms of sort of the military training side. And I always enjoyed training and development, sort of programs and developing courses and things for the cadets and the ROTC when I was in that. So it just seemed like a natural progression in many ways that I ended up going to Sandhurst. Little did I know the world was going to dramatically change in 2001 and then dramatically change again when we went into Iraq and subsequently Afghanistan. But it wasn't an ordained plan. It was something that felt right. And I've done that a lot in my life. I've gone with what felt right or intuition. And it seems to have worked out okay for me. So I'm pleased. That's so very interesting. I want you to tell me a little bit about this first job in the military and you're managing people in a war. And so there's all so many different components to that versus the kind of management you've done in the civilian realm. And then of course being so young at it versus being a seasoned professional, sometimes it's a blessing that we don't know what we don't know. But as we think back to yourself in that first position, what was that like? I think for me it was three things. Number one, it was a baptism of fire. You have to learn quickly. And I guess part of being an army officer is you're expected to be adaptable very, very quickly because you change jobs every six to 24 months. You can be posted off to do different things. So there's the expectation that you get up to speed quickly and you can lead men and women in an effective way. So baptism of fire. Second one was it was my realization that I had imposter syndrome, which was very interesting walking into I was a little bit late to get to the regiment because of my training cycle. So I turned up and they'd all been fighting this war for a few weeks. And so now I was this shiny, brand new, 23 year old kid. And to me, all of the others that like these, you know, war men, they all have beards and dusty faces. And so I was like, Oh my God, I'm out of place here. I'm not meant to be here. This isn't for me. And I had to just get into it and learn quickly. So hence back to point one. Well, I think the interesting one and probably the one that's unexpected for many people who compare military leadership versus civilian leadership is you learn very quickly that you're never going to be the expert in any job that you have. You're the leader. And I think it's this, you know, certainly what we teach in in our programs is that when you get to leadership, so I'm not talking about management roles, I'm talking about leadership roles that are managing managers. I distinctly remember being a 23 year old young second lieutenant and my staff sergeant who's a very senior, very tenured individual 15 years of experience doing what we were doing. So to me, sir, my job is to give you the information, your job is to make the decisions. And it stuck with me through my career. And it's something we now teach is that you as the leader are never going to be the expert in all of the things that all of your people do. They're there to give you information. They're there to give you knowledge. You're there to make decisions. And, you know, we would sit around quite frequently in Iraq, where we had to move from point A to point B, or we had to go and set up this drive through Walmart in the desert. And I would say, okay, so here's the thing we've got as a liver. It's this, you know, Walmart in the desert at this point over here. What do we think? Ideas. And my job is to sit down with my sergeant, my staff sergeant, my three court pros and say, what do we think? Who's got ideas? And, you know, discussions would happen, which would be, well, we shouldn't go this way because of this. And this is a better route because of this reason. And I recommend we turn up this period before or stay this period after for whatever reasons. And about, you know, three quarters of the way through the meeting, I would then say, okay, so based on what I've heard, this is what we should do. And at that point, we're kind of into micro refinements. Yes, but yes, and, and then I say, okay, so all agreed, it's this route, this time plan, and we're going to end up doing this. Let's go brief the boys and the ladies. And it was, you know, to all intents and purposes, if you were outside of that meeting, it looked like I decided everything. I was telling everybody what we were going to do. But it's a very collaborative effort to get to that result. And I think it's a great lesson for leaders to learn now that you get your managers and your senior managers and your team leaders around you. And you say, okay, ideas, what are we going to do here? Okay, based on what I've heard, this is what I think we should do, micro refine. Now let's go brief. So everybody's got clarity and all of those little pieces that need to come out from underneath the carpet, they all come out and they get aired in a way that we can deal with them. And it means that the person who's got that maybe that thing that they're worrying about can have their airtime and they feel like they've been listened to. And it may be that you don't go with their decision or their idea. But they understand why, because you've talked about, and it feels like it might be slower. But I can tell you it's not because you do all of the legwork for converting people to the cause or for aligning people to your intentions before the brief. So it means that all your team are on board with it versus them feeling, oh, Jimmy's just come up with something out of nowhere. And now I've got to try and make it work, which is what tends to happen in most organizations where we go. And the leader just says, hey, here's an email brief of what we're all doing. And then suddenly everybody's thinking, well, I didn't know anything about this. And we get all this resistance, which is a lot more work to undo than including people at the front end. You know, it's one thing that you said is with adaptability, and I'm thinking, of course, of change management, and things are always changing. And everything that you said is in line with how we deal with the changes that are constant. Because change is here, change is always going to be here. And so preparing for change is that's the one thing that's always going to be the case, right? Shout out to Heraclitus, right? The one thing that stays the same is that everything's constantly changing. But this collaborative effort and this really getting everybody on board, not just on board your vision, but their vision and having the whole real dialogue, the whole is greater than the individual perspectives. So would you talk to me, I want you to say just briefly, because I can imagine some listen, some people listening thinking, we use these words leadership and management interchangeably. So how do you understand those differences? And then also, let's talk just a little bit about change management and maybe how your vision of change management has changed since your time in the military. Yeah. Difference between management and leadership for me is an essential differentiation. Because when you become a manager, you are responsible for making sure things are done. That's the easiest description I can say. So you're, you know, there with your checklists and your numbers and you're making sure things get done. And when something really needs to be done, it's important you roll your sleeves up and you get stuck in to make sure it gets done. Leadership is a different mindset and a different tool set and requires a reset. And what I mean by that is leadership is about knowing where to put your time and energy to get the right things done. Because, you know, if you think about it logically, when you're a manager, maybe you've got 10 people reporting to you. When you're a leader, you've got a series of managers who've all got 10 people reporting to them. So the level of complexity exponentially increases and you can't be across everything. And I think this is one of the mistakes that a lot of managers make when they move into a leadership role is they try and stay across everything and they try and be involved in everything. But unfortunately, the working harder and working longer to get it done doesn't work anymore, which is why we see so many people burning out and we see so many people struggling in leadership roles or floundering and they don't go any further in their careers because they're using management skills to do a leadership job. So I think that's probably the first piece. And I love the fact that you, you know, quoted that idea of the only thing that's constant is everything keeps changing when we talk about change management. Because again, as a leader, the level of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity that all leaders now have to deal with means that there is no, I don't believe in change management anymore. I believe in change leadership. And I've got a very good friend in New Zealand who is a change leadership expert. And she says that a change management is something that HR come and do to you. It's a process. It's, you know, it's a series of frameworks that you go through and you fill in some forms. And 82% of the time it fails. And we know this from the statistical data. Change leadership is the way you navigate your people through change. And it's this acceptance that change is going to be constant. And the only thing that we know is that the pace is probably going to increase. So if you're a leader who's sitting out there saying things like, Oh, if I can just get through this week, this month, this quarter, things will calm down. No, they won't. They're probably going to be the same, if not busier, because we never know what global events are going to happen. We never know what economic events are going to happen. But the reality is you need a new methodology, a new toolset, a new mindset and a reset of how you lead your people through change. And part of that is for us is clarity, trust, decision making, focusing on value, knowing where your impact should be, and making great decisions. And they're the five high performance differentiators that we work with all leaders on, but they all directly feed into leading change. Because essentially everything we're doing now is leading change. It's working on projects we've never seen before. It's solving problems we've never had to deal with before. It's working in environments we've never encountered before. And all of those have a transitionary effect where we go from what we were doing before to a period of flux to what we're doing now and try and lock it in. But then that suddenly becomes what we were doing before stage. And we're back into this cycle. And so I think instead of change management being seen as this kind of linear functional process, change leadership is a cyclical process of understanding your people, creating clarity, helping them trust each other, making good decisions and focusing on value and impact. I really like that because it's so important to set proper expectations. And I think with change management, you're right, it's this implicit idea that we're going to get through this and then it's going to plateau again. And now this is going to become the new normal, and we're going to have it for the foreseeable future. But rather, setting the expectation that this is what we're doing now, and that setting the expectation that this is the management system that we're using now, this is the vendors that we're using now, this is that. And we're going to get good at it. But it is, in a way, temporary. All things are temporary. And it can be difficult because if we want to be experts, we want to be really good, there is something about doing something over and over so that you work out the bugs. And so obviously change for change is terrible, right? You have to have a purpose. And that's why you get everybody on board and have this collaboration. And all that goes into this idea of change leadership. I think that's really interesting. I do want you to speak to this point because we've got this distinction between leadership and management. But of course, we want our managers to be excellent leaders. But they are thinking about different things, and they ought to be thinking about different things. They're in the muckity muck of all the people, right? Middle management just gets it from both sides, and they're properly changed of the messiness of the particularity of the individual. So what are those leadership skills that they or what they should be thinking about to be excellent managers who are also leaders? Yeah, great question. And it goes back to those five differentiators again. And let me go back a step, sorry. The methodology that we've created, having worked with 3,000-odd leaders in the corporate world and obviously numerous leaders in the military world is that generally, most people, not all, but most people are trying their hardest, are turning up to work to do a good job, not necessarily do a bad job. And realistically, they're trying to make a difference in the world of some sort of positive impact. So then we say, well, if there's all these people who are trying hard and trying to make a difference in the world and doing basically their best on a daily basis, why is everything so messed up? And basically, we put it down to this idea of friction. It's kind of like, if you imagine you and your team in a rowing boat, and everybody's rowing as hard as they can. They're pulling those oars with all of their strength, but they're all focusing on a different time pattern. They're all facing in different directions, and the anchor chain is still attached to the boat. That's what's happening in most organizations. And so for you to be a manager who becomes a great leader or demonstrates great leadership potential, the biggest thing you can do, and it's the basis of our simplified to amplify methodology, is find the friction. So we see, you kind of think about it like, go back to our rowing boat analogy, rowing across the ocean and looking for the icebergs, looking for the fishing nets, looking for the things that are going to slow the boat down or sink the boat. And dealing with those, that's important leadership capability. And it's not firefighting the immediate problem, it's looking ahead and seeing what might be coming and dealing with those, because your managers are the ones who should be doing, dealing with the day-to-day operational issues. Leaders, when you're thinking in a leadership potential, or you're thinking about a leadership role, you should be looking further ahead and anticipating what's coming next. So what does that look like in practicality? I worked with a team where they were trying to move a lot of managers into leadership roles, and they had a really aggressive internal promotion dynamic. And the challenge that they had was a lot of their leaders were spending all of their time firefighting and putting a playing whack-a-mole on a day-to-day basis, which never left that strategic thinking time. You know what it's like when you're playing whack-a-mole is that you end up playing whack-a-mole and all of the important stuff gets pushed back to tomorrow, to tomorrow, to tomorrow, and it never gets done. So we set up a challenge for these leaders, and we basically said 20 minutes once a week, leave your phone, leave your laptop, take a notebook and pen, go outside or go somewhere else, away from your people, away from your office, be unavailable for 20 minutes and sit and think about what are the three most important things for me to deliver this week and what are the three most important things for me to deliver next week? Importance being based on impact and value to the business, not necessarily most urgent, most important. And we said to them, 20 minutes once a week. Now, to give you context, these middle managers were in a fairly large organization, so each of them had maybe a thousand plus people reporting to them. So for all intents and purposes, they're pretty senior in the corporate world. And we got kind of three responses from these people. The first one was, that's never going to work. I don't have time to do that. I get 1,500 emails a day. I mean, meetings back to back. When am I going to find 20 minutes? Okay, well, this is the challenge. Another group said, I'll try, but realistically, it's going to be a tough ask. And the third said, well, I'm here to learn and grow. I'll give it a go. 12 months later, we measured all of these leaders again and found out where they were at. And the group A that had said, never going to happen, they were either in the bottom quartile of that group in terms of the results they delivered and their potential to go on to senior leadership roles, or they had been exited from the program or the business because they burned out or flamed out. They hadn't survived. The group in the middle that had said, well, we'll try, surprisingly enough, it ended up in the middle. Some of them had burned out, some of them had left, and some of them had stepped into the third group, which was that we're going to commit to this and give it a go. All of those people, without exception, were the highest performers and deemed the highest potential from the program. I think there's 40 something off of them on the program. And that group that said, yes, we're definitely going to do this, they were all the highest recognized people. Now, why do I tell you that story? The reason I tell you that story is because 20 minutes once a week is the level of commitment, probably most people who are listening, who are really struggling at work right now, can maybe find. We don't ask people to do big things. We ask them to do small things. And we work on the basis of a 1% shift every single day, adds up to a lot of change by the end of the year. And so these 20 minutes were the difference between thinking about what's the most important things, refocusing my energy. But it also has this other beautiful effect that it slows down the stress response. We call it the amygdaloidal response. But basically, it's where you go from your prefrontal cortex, your wizard brain, into your amygdala, your lizard brain. So you immediately go from being a wizard, super smart, executive, capable leader to a lizard focused on bugs and twigs. And this is what happens when you take this 20 minutes out, because your brain calms down, the cortisol levels go down, your adrenaline levels go down, your heart rate slows down, and you can think more clearly. So you're thinking about thinking more clearly and you're thinking more clearly, which is great, which allows you to make some better decisions. And then what we found is most of these people said, well, I came back after this 20 minutes and it was my moment where I could have my team meeting and all the important things could be dealt with there and then. So I could go on for hours about kind of the other five. But I think the key one is clarity. You've got to get clear. You've got to see the friction. You've got to get clear on what's slowing the team down. You've got to get clear on what things are going to make the biggest difference to the team's performance and your own performance and focus your energies there. You cannot keep doing everything. You've got to focus on the things that are actually going to move the needle. And you can't do that unless you're clear. So I would say if you're going to focus on one thing, focus on clarity. I love that so much. It resonates with me when I think about conflict. First, I want to point out I like the distinction between important versus urgent. And we just mistake the fires for being, well, they're right in front of us. And so they must be the most important thing. But if you think about what's important, then maybe you're going to take this longer view and you're going to look at the friction. And if you find the friction, if you're looking for it, then there will be less fires. And I think about this when I think about conflict, the importance of having a good structure, a good system to deal with mistakes and deal with conflicts because they're going to happen because we're dealing with humans. So having a good structure, but then also having good human support for when these things occur, not turning the blind eye, right, until they become fires. So if you're looking, if you know there's going to be conflict and you're looking for it so that we can address it, I say early, often swiftly and justly, then we're dealing with not a fire, we're dealing with just the run-of-the-mill sorts of things that happen at work. We can address it and move forward so that you're not spending all of this time on things that if you had this longer view, it just gobbles up so much time. It's unnecessary because if it would have been dealt with before, you know, the havoc, the unmanaged conflict happens for teams and businesses and the money that is just wasted, let alone the human pain involved in that. So tell us a little bit about how you dealt with conflict in that first job you had in the military and how you thought about conflict, personnel conflict and how you think about it now. Yeah, you know, I think it's so easy when, and I'm glad we went in this direction, it's so easy when you're very, very busy and under a lot of pressure and you're in your lizard brain to be reactive to conflict and to react in a way that maybe you're not proud of. And I've certainly got examples of, you know, my time in the military where arguing over resources, arguing over locations, arguing over all sorts of things and not dealing with it effectively because I took it as a personal slight, you know, I think back to some instances where, you know, I wanted to be here and one of my colleagues also wanted to be here and we had to fight it out. And now I'm thinking back and going, what was I thinking? But because I was in this high pressure feeling like an imposter acting like a lizard and not able to see the reality for what it really was, I reacted in what I would call destructive conflict or what I now call destructive conflict, which is where we were focused on personal agendas and personal well-being and satisfaction versus the bigger goal. And I was taking the disagreements that I was going through as a personal slight or as a personal attack, which again antagonized the lizard response, but also was destructive to what we were trying to achieve. Now, with 25 odd years of experience under my belt, I can see clearly when you encounter individuals who are in destructive or in constructive conflict. And I think it's probably the preface to this is it's knowing that conflict isn't necessarily a bad thing. And so when we're going into those conflict situations, seeking honesty with one's self to say, am I responding like this? Because this is a I feel like it's a personal attack. And the intention of that person is actually to dissuade me or destabilize me or to remove me from this process. Or are we in a situation where we're arguing about the solution to a problem for the pursuit of a better goal. And this is where I think often we end up going down the wrong track, we take it as a personal argument versus you and I are essentially riffing on my idea is a better idea for a better solution versus your idea. And I know I've got instances where I've worked with organizations where you've had the the head of sales and head of finance who have been at loggerheads on should be focusing on revenue or should be focusing on profit or savings cost savings. And they've been tearing strips off each other and undermining each other and trying to discredit each other in the organization building alliances. And there's a beautiful casket. I can't remember exactly there's the steps of conflict where you go from kind of a mild disagreement to all out war. And they're kind of down in the orange and red zone for some of the behaviors that were being demonstrated. And very simple question is like, well, what are we trying to achieve here guys? What are we actually trying to what's the result we both want? And we're like, well, we want the business to be profitable. And we don't we want to make sure everybody stays working. So we can agree that this is about company prosperity. And we can agree this is about keeping people employed 100%. So let's put our energy there. Not how do I discredit this person's ideas by creating like undermining propaganda or against them. And we see some beautiful examples of this happening now in the American political system, where it's about point scoring and discreditation versus this is about running a nation beautifully and effectively and harmoniously. That's the bigger goal. So for me, that's the probably the biggest lesson I've learned in conflict is understanding am I in destructive conflict here? Am I taking this personally? Or should I be pursuing a bigger goal? And can I encourage some common ground with the other person that allows us both to pursue a bigger goal? And we teach a methodology around that. But essentially, it goes around again, clarifying what what is what are we actually here for? And what are we trying to achieve? What's our bigger goal? And then often what we find is the conflict starts to dissolve because we go into problem solving mode. And the methodology we use is called the gallery method. But essentially, instead of saying is you across the table from me and we're arguing is out, we imagine the problem to be solved as a piece of art in a gallery on the wall. And we're looking at the art and what you see and what I see are two different pictures. So we've got to talk that out first. And then we were to try and decide on how do we sell this piece of art for the most amount of money. And that creates a very different what I would call constructive conflict of, well, let's talk about the best sales strategy or the best solution to this problem versus why I see versus what you see. Yeah, I mean, as you were talking, I was thinking about so many times in conflict, I mistake the person for the problem versus the problem for the problem. Right. And that's a lovely way of how you described it of we are and as I'm a workplace mediator, and sometimes I'll be in one room one person, you know, doing some conflict coaching before we come together. And I think, wow, that's what's going on, then I get into the other room with the other person. And it's like, they don't even work in the same place, like the issues they see, what they see is problematic. And so many times, though, we don't take that that longer view as you described in the very beginning of the leader who is collaborative, who asks for, you know, what is the data? What do you know here? What do you know there? And you leave room for disagreement. Should we go to this, go in this direction or go in that direction? And, you know, this psychological safety where we want to hear what people have to say, but doesn't mean exactly we're necessarily going to do it. But right, this conflict isn't bad. And so, while that is the ideal, a lot of times what happens, though, is I feel slighted, I feel like this person really is out to get me and maybe they are. But I think even then, if somebody is out to get me, let's suppose, or somebody has a personality disorder or something like that, there are still some, you know, we don't have to be in that destructive conflict. We can decide that they're not really attacking me, that this issue is really about them. Right. And so, I can decide it, because we act in a very different place if we feel like we're being wounded or somebody is, you know, we're in this defensive... Become lizards, yeah. Yes. Instead of using the problem solving, right? So, in conflict, it's very, you know, to get out of the emotional space so that you can really look in a detached way. Emotions are good information, but if we're trying to try to solve problems and get out of the conflict story of this cycle of how this person has really harmed me, and of course, there is a lot of harm at work getting out of this cycle. So, how do you... And that example that you gave, when there's been a lot of undermining and gossiping and maybe lying and distrust, it just seems so academic to say, "Okay, guys, we're going to look at this goal up here and we're all going to work for this goal, but I don't trust you anymore." Well, what do you tell... I mean, the lack of trust that people... that you find at organizations is pretty common. Yeah. It's one of the great friction points, which is why we use it as one of the differentiators, is understanding that just because you work with somebody doesn't necessarily mean you trust them. And so, we've created framework, which we call service, which is all about building trust back from... We work together to... We actually have a relationship and a sliding scale of depth, which we align to a scuba diving analogy. You go from kind of the snorkeling level of trust to the deep technical diving level of trust. And when you're down deep, it's harder to get out of. And if you make a mistake, it's a lot more dangerous. But to get to see some new things, to reveal the mysteries of the ocean, you have to deepen yourself and you have to go down through the layers of trust. So, this service framework that we use starts off with psychological and physical safety, because often when you have broken that trust, as you say, how do you even get two people talking in constructive conflict to solve a greater problem if they genuinely believe the other person is out to get them? So, we talk about absolutely setting safety boundaries of what will it require for you to feel safe? What will it require for you to feel safe? How do we manage this effectively? And equally, and we kind of use this when we're talking about... I love that you brought up people with disorders or what if somebody is out to get me, because we love to talk about what's my responsibility in this? What's my 5%? So, maybe I did something to that person at some point that caused them to want to come and get me. Well, now I can go, "Hey, look, I can acknowledge that and I can be a little bit vulnerable." And maybe we can start to build a bit of safety between the two of us. And from experience in coaching, I've seen this happen lots of times, where actually just even acknowledging my 5% has solved a lot of the challenges. So, that is a great first step. But we're going into safety building. Then we go into expectation setting. So, what are the expectations of this problem-solving that we're going to do? And what are the expectations that you've got of me and I've got of you and are we aligned there? So, again, it's about alignment and clarity. Then we go to being reliable with each other. So, if I say I'm going to do something, I will do it. If I say I'm not going to do something, I won't do it. So, that helps to reset trust. Focus on values. What do you value? What do I value? What's the of the greatest value here? Inclusion. So, hearing opinions, we could use the sort of the D&I, D&I version of inclusion, but also actually just hearing each other and accepting that we've both got different opinions about this. And it's okay to have different opinions. Let's try and use those different opinions for a greater goal. But I want to hear what you've got to say. And I think your job as a mediator is probably a beautiful example of that. Sometimes it's just actually getting the other person to hear what is being said versus what they think is being said and opening the door for people to share openly and willingly what they really think and how they've got to that. So, the inclusion piece being really important. C is all about clarity. E is about empathy. So, when we work through this framework and we essentially say when you're at level one, do service. When you get to level two, start service again. When you get to level three, start service again. And that helps to reinforce and build the trust. And I just think it's a very simple way of helping people who are in conflict do something practical. And this is what I guess is going back to the military idea that I've got is that you need something that works under fire. Because when you're in the middle of battle, there isn't time to sit down and theorize and become all academic and discuss lots of things. You need something that works under pressure. And that tends to be a similar physiological response, although not on the same magnitude of scale, but a similar physiological response to conflict in the workplace. So, you need something that just works. When you've gone from your wizard to your lizard brain and you can't think of what to say and your brain shut down and your palms are sweaty and your mouth is dry and you're like, I just need something that works right now. Service. It's there for you. Just use it and it will help. Work out, are you in constructive or destructive? Work out your 5%. When you've got those very simple tools at your disposal, often you can get back enough into your lizard brain to realize what's going on and to resolve it as a capable leader versus acting like the person that you maybe were 20 years ago. I really appreciate your focus on practicality because, well, you know, I'm happy to talk about theory. In a real way, I would say I kind of left that behind because I'm really only interested in what's helping the person in front of me, what's helping this team. And it might be different for different people, but learning these basic kinds of frameworks for when you get caught in that conflict or when that thing happens because it will happen. I mean, this is a guarantee. We don't know if we're going to go to war could happen, but we do know there's going to be conflict and we do know unmanaged conflict pops up. So what do we do? And so having that tool about of what works for you, but you're not going to know unless you develop it and you're not going to know unless you try it and it's at the ready, which means I can't just be written down in a journal someplace because you went to a seminar a few years ago. It's got to be something that that is practiced, that is memorized for whatever that is, so that it will come to you when you're having this physiological response of that person's yelling at you or that person's called to a liar or whatever it might be so that you is like fitness, right? You know, just because you used to be able to run a marathon in your in your 20s or you were in a sports team in your teens doesn't mean you can do it now. That's right and in order to be able to do that in your 30s, 40s, 50s, you need to train. You need to regularly turn up at the gym and put in the work. Leadership is exactly the same just because you went on that seminar a couple of years ago about conflict conversations or, you know, having a tough chat. Unless you've trained regularly in that skill set, you haven't got the leadership fitness to be able to execute when it really counts and this is why we very deliberately go to the smallest possible thing you can do that's going to have the biggest possible outcome, the highest value outcome because it's the, you know, if I was to ask you to do 100 push-ups, could you do it? No, but if I was to ask you, well, maybe you could, but most people can't, but if I was to ask you to do one push-up, your level of certainty and commitment to doing one is going to be significantly higher. So if I ask you to do micro leadership actions, like have a challenging conversation today with somebody at a low stakes level, you build up your conflict conversation muscle. So when there is a, when you are attacked or when something does happen, you're like, yeah, I'm trained for this, I'm ready for this. And you respond just like in the military, you respond almost on autopilot because you've trained so hard for it. I love that because the fact of matters, we are going to respond and however we have trained ourselves. So we have a way that we're going to respond. And so if it's, you know, if our nature is to, you know, fight, fight, freeze, bond, whatever it is that we might naturally do, we have natural inclinations, but we're not stuck there. You know, we can develop. And so it's whatever we have trained ourselves is how we're going to respond. And so we can train ourselves to respond and not react. Or if we react, we can move right into what it is that we actually want to do that's commensurate with our values, but it takes intention, right? All good leadership is intention, intentional sustained action. And how are you making yourself today, which makes yourself for the next thing that's coming up. And so I want to transition to talk about your writing career. I looked at your website and I noticed that you have produced over 250 blog posts, which is quite impressive. And when I think about, you know, those daily habits or those habits we can get into, you know, committing to reading, first of all, committing to writing is something quite different, but it's a gift to give people these little snippets of very practical, actionable workplace issues. And so I just want to recommend looking at your blog and just being in the mindset of thinking about how can I continue to develop as a leader? How can I continue to develop? And there's a lot of things you can do, but there's little things that you could do, that little bit. So tell us about your writing career. You've also written books. Why writing? Why that happening? I just think writing is something that I've always been challenged by. I think my brain is quite... I'm neurodiverse anyway. I have a brain that is a little bit scattered. So it's both a gift and a shadow. It allows me to link concepts that other people can't see, but it also means to have structure in what I deliver and to make it cohesive for people to hear, see, read, listen to it is more challenging for me at times. And so when I first started writing my blog, it was a conscious practice of getting my ideas down and helping me to structure up what it was that I was trying to say. When I then started, I kind of got... I think I got to about 50 blogs, and that's when I wrote my first book. And initially it started as a kind of Mark Manson-esque style collection of blogs. And then it became a beast of its own and ended up becoming a book. And then the second book came out. But I kept writing blogs all the time. And the activity was all about crystallization and reflection of things that I had said or done that I wanted to share, ideas that I was playing around with to try and form up into some body of IP, which eventually became this simplified to amplify methodology, a concept that I was trying to link. And so often, I've got so many half written blogs, but it was like, can I make this work with this? Or can I paint this metaphor onto this idea? And I think that as a leader, often just having a scribble book next to you, or a scrapbook, a notebook, whatever you want to call it, I call it a scribble book because often it's filled with random scribbles of ideas or concepts. But just getting out of your head means that they're not taking up cognitive space. And oftentimes, when you scribble something down, you can come back to it later and your subconscious has been working on it to allow you to join the dots or solve the problem, you know, it's that whole, when you're not, when you think about solving a problem and you're in the shower or walking the dog or doing the dishes, when you've got it in your scribble book, you can come back to it and go, Oh, yes. And you know what, since I've thought about that, I can now put it with this. And for leaders, having that headspace, having that few minutes to scribble something down and come back to it, and we're not talking about checklists and notebooks and, you know, activities, we're talking about just ideas or things that you're trying to deal with, getting them out of your head onto paper is literally the most effective way. And as somebody who's always struggled with writing, putting it into long form content often really crystallizes the way you want to explain something. So when we're doing leadership frameworks, so leadership development, and we're using our clarity frameworks, often I'll say to people, just scribble down some of the ideas that you want to say, and just let that mull overnight, and then come back to it tomorrow and write it out how you want to say it or write out the key points you want to hit. And you'll often find you get much more clarity than just going into the meeting and blurting it out, because it's not structured, you haven't allowed it to structure up and crystallize, you're just blurting out. So I think for me, and for other people that I've kind of met along the way, writing is a tool, it's a tool to help you be more clear, it's a tool to help you unload your brain, and it's a tool actually to achieve higher levels of reflection and consciousness versus the immediate kind of fast thinking response that you would have is actually more considered and generally makes you a better leader. I love that, because it also just brings us back around to this idea of important versus urgent. And if we have something that we can just offload, we can write it down, that impulse to act on that urgent thing, we could have a little distance, we can have a pause, we can make some space, and then maybe if we come back to it or when we come back to it, we can see it in its proper place. What place should this be taking? What is the right action instead of the reactionary action? And this whole reflective practice, I see this in conflict. And so somebody decides they want to have a difficult conversation and so they just start blurting it out and it's in a long form. And so the person they're having a conversation with is lost because they say, "From the first day I entered here," and they've been here 20 years. And the other person doesn't really know what's happening and not exactly sure because the other person isn't sure. And so when expectations are so very important and many people are in organizations and they just don't know exactly what they're supposed to be doing, exactly what their leader wants, the leader doesn't even know what they necessarily want. And so taking that time for clarity and self-reflection and thinking about the importance is such a gift to give to those people that you lead so that they can have clarity and align their expectations and then for the people that they lead. And there's a ripple effect. As you said, most people show up to work wanting to do a good job. So why is that not happening? And a lot of it is just a lack of clarity and structure and direction and that does come from the top, right? If it's not up there and then enforced all the way down, it won't be there. Yeah, I think probably the biggest realization I had when I hit my GM role was that there was a lack of clarity and everybody was going, "Jimmy, we need to know what's going on. We need clarity." And I'm sitting thinking, "Well, I have no clarity." And I guess there's a misunderstanding in most organizations. Well, when the boss gives me clarity, then I'll be clear and I can get on with what I have to do. But your boss has less clarity than you and more ambiguity than you. So what we teach in the move from management to leadership is how do I create clarity for myself? How do I sense make what's going on? And again, thinking about the smallest step for the highest value outcome, what's the 1% step I could take or the 1 microstep I could take that's going to give me a little bit more information to be a little bit clearer on, "Am I going the right way, the wrong way or nearly the right way?" And that's essentially what you have to do. It's kind of like being in the Grand Canyon and you're stuck surrounded by these walls that go up in every single direction. You're like, "I can't even see where the path goes." Well, you could stand there and wonder where the path goes forever. Or you could just take a couple of steps and see if you can see where the path goes. And it's going to teach you, "I'm on the path, I'm off the path, or the path's just there." And that's what we need to do as leaders. And part of that reflection could be, "What am I clear on? And what could I do that's going to help me get a little bit clearer so I can at least move my team forward and I can feel more comfortable, less anxious in my own mind, but what's really happening right now?" And I go back to that sort of thing I said at the very start, which is if you're waiting for this week, this month, this quarter to be over so you can get clearer again, it's not going to happen. So you've got to create clarity for yourself. And if it helps, if it gives you comfort to anybody who's listening, the rocket from Cape Canaveral to the Moon was only on course 2% of the entire journey. It was micro-corrected basically from lift-off onward. They were micro-correcting the whole way. So you don't feel like you need to have clarity about your five-year plan, have clarity about your next step and get everybody else clear on the next step, and then deal with what comes next. Because that's the reality of life now, is that we can't make long-term plans. We can have long-term direction, long-term outcomes and intentions, but you can't have everything dialed in and locked in like a project plan used to be. You can't do that anymore because the world is changing too rapidly. So move one step forward. Are we on the right course? Yes, no, or nearly. Okay, adjust and off we go again and get your people used to doing that as well. It makes everybody's stress levels drop and you all start to think more independently and more capably. I love that so much because I think about just the everyday worker and we all suffer with not knowing exactly what versus we're doing or this is just a common issue that is arising. So I think, well, until they tell me, I won't be clear, but the wonderful message about empowerment is, well, what can I do? What is that one thing that I can do? And so if you start looking for clarity, you're more likely to find it than waiting for somebody else where most professional jobs are just not like that anyway. That's the part of being professional. Well, Jimmy, I can't believe my time. I can give you one very quick example. It's a beautiful example for my friend of mine actually who works for the Fire and Emergency Service in New Zealand. And he said, one of the hardest things to do is get clarity from your boss because they've got no clarity. So what I do is I write down all the things I'm working on and I take my list of 16 to 20 things into my boss's office and I'll say, give me 60 seconds. I'll run through this list and you tell me the three you want to hear about. That immediately gives me clarity on what does my boss think is important right now. And then I'll say, what are the three things that you're working on that are most important? Now I've got a strategic view of what my boss thinks is important. So it's the smallest thing to do, right? Write down all things, read the list. What are the three that you think are important that you want to hear about? Done. And then he said, now I walk out now knowing that those 13 to 20 things are not important compared to these three things which are my priorities for this week. I've now got clarity. I can now work. Oh, I love that. I'm so glad you gave that as such a nice practical tip that anybody can use. And I feel like I could talk to you forever and ever. But I want to end on this question. As you look into the future of work, what do you think needs to happen so that not only will all workers be treated with dignity and respect, just a baseline, but more than that, that they will be encouraged to thrive and flourish? I just think it's the most beautiful question. I think the one thing that organizations and all the individuals within those organizations really need to work on is changing the way we develop leaders. Now, if you think about you go to university to study whatever you went to study and you've spent 16 years to get to that point of learning how to learn, learning how to be academic, learning your topic of choice, then you go into a job and you go through technical training to do your job, you know, whatever it might be. And then suddenly you're giving a management role or a leadership role and you go on a one-day course and that's it. Or you go onto a few seminars over lunch hours and you're expected to lead. Even worse, you get promoted to a mid-manager or senior manager and there's no development because you've already had your management training. So you need to know how to do that by now and you should be at level of seniority. And then if you're really lucky, you get an executive coach to try and sort out the kinks when you get to an exact level. And I think that's wrong. And I think a lot of the friction we're dealing with in organizations right now is the direct result of a lack of understanding how to create leaders versus managers at a lack of commitment from organizations to doing it effectively. And I think if we could resolve this, this is my personal crusade and mission, is resolving this at an organizational level. Because when you affect one mid-manager, senior manager, it's like dropping a pebble and a pond. You know, the effect ripples out and we change the course of organizations dramatically in the work that we do by removing work. And this is the irony is we create more clarity. We switch off non-priorities. We take away friction. People and organizations thrive and do better and they're all working less hard. So that to me is where we should be putting our energies. How do we really create great leaders in our organizations? Whether they're team leaders, manager leaders or senior leaders, we've got to shift the mindset, the toolset and do a reset on what's happening. I love that. And I think that it's inhumane how we treat people who rise in leadership without, we ask them to do something without equipping them. I just love everything that you said. Well, Jimmy, thank you so much for being on Conflict Manage. It's been just a delightful hour talking with you. I can't believe it's been an hour. So thank you so much. I'll take care. Take care. Bye-bye. Jimmy, thank you so much for being on Conflict Manage. I really do think I could have talked to you for hours and hours. I didn't get to some of my typical questions, but the vision you have for people in leadership to develop leaders, which helps everybody, is just such a worthwhile endeavor. And thank you so much for devoting your life's work to it. Conflict Manage is produced by Third Party Workplace Conflict Restoration Services and hosted by me, Mary Brown. You can find us online at 3pconflictrestoration.com. Come back. We have new episodes every Tuesday. And if you'd like to check out my latest book, How to be Unprofessional at Work, Tips to Interferior, it's 80 tips of what not to do and considers what to do instead to help a healthy work environment. If you would like to watch this conversation on YouTube, you can find us at 3pconflictrestoration. And if you would please like and subscribe, wherever you listen or watch this podcast, it's greatly appreciated. Our music is courtesy of Dove Pilot. And remember, conflict is normal and expected. Let's deal with it. Until next time. Take care.