Outfield Leadership founder, Dave McKeown is a leadership expert who helps individuals, teams, and organizations achieve excellence by doing the ordinary things extraordinarily well.
And his recent book, The Self-Evolved Leader: Elevate Your Focus and Develop Your People in a World That Refuses to Slow Down is based on the premise that to be an effective leader in today’s busy world requires a uniquely different mindset and skillset than what was necessary in the past.
In this episode of the Leading Learning Podcast, Celisa talks with Dave about the idea of self-evolved leadership, why successful leaders and learners need to be vulnerable, and how to prevent learned helplessness. They also discuss his belief that leadership should be seen as series of disciplines that take time to master, including the idea of attention management and why he views it as the number one discipline for leaders to develop.
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Listen to the Show
Read the Show Notes
[00:18] – A preview of what will be covered in this episode where Celisa interviews Dave McKeown, author of the book The Self-Evolved Leader: Elevate Your Focus and Develop Your People in a World That Refuses to Slow Down.
Highlighted Resource
[01:50] -This interview is really a conversation about leadership. And that’s a topic that we’ve focused on a lot here at Leading Learning, so we want to make sure that listeners remember that we categorize all episodes based on content, and the leadership category is one that’s built up a lot of content.
You can easily find the leadership category by clicking on “Leadership” in the sub-navigation on the Leading Learning site at leadinglearning.com – or you can go straight to leadinglearning.com/category/leadership. So, we encourage to take some time to explore all of the many episodes we have published that focus on leadership.
Reflection Question
[02:35] – You might consider the reflection question/assignment below on your own after listening to an episode, and/or you might pull the team together, using part or all of the podcast episode for a group discussion.
Listen to what Dave has to say about “learned helplessness.” Then ask:
- Where is learned helplessness negatively impacting your own performance and/or that of the people you work with at your organization?
- Are there approaches in the products and services you’re designing and delivering that encourage learned helplessness in your learners?
- And, then, of course, ask how might you encourage empowerment rather than learned helplessness?
[03:29] – Introduction to Dave and some additional background information about himself and his work.
Dave shares that he’s from Ireland and that he started his career at Accenture. During that time, he started to see that the leaders in the organization that had the biggest impact weren’t necessarily the ones that were functionally best at the role they were in, but that they had a whole set of other skills (which later came to be identified as leadership skills).
For Dave, this set off a lifelong learning journey to try to uncover what it really meant to be an effective leader in today’s world—and then to help people get there. After leaving Accenture, he moved to the United States where he’s spent the last ten years or so working with leaders and leadership teams (quite often in fast-growing organizations) helping them to find the balance between the creativity and innovation you need to grow a business with the systems and processes that you need to scale.
And then underneath it all, he’s explored how leaders can really elevate their focus so they’re not just in the weeds of the day-to-day, but that they are giving themselves the headspace to think about the long-term direction of their teams. The constant thread throughout his career has been about finding the humanity in leadership.
Self-Evolved Leadership
[05:59] – It’s your book The Self-Evolved Leader that brought you to my attention, so let’s start with that. What is Self-Evolved Leadership?
Dave discusses how one of the things he’s noticed over the last number of years is how we’ve spent billions of dollars trying to develop our people (Webinars, workshops, keynotes, etc.) but we’ve come to a place where we’re doing our leaders a disservice in telling them it’s the organization’s role to develop them as a leader.
What he sees in terms of surveys and the data that’s out there is that we’re not having the impact that we want to have. One of the big shifts that we need to see in our leaders is this movement towards taking control of their own development, over their own learning. And evolving themselves essentially starting from the premise that they are responsible for their own growth.
Self-evolved leaders start from the premise that they want to become the best version of themselves and they also want to help their teams become the best version of themselves.
Role of Vulnerability in Learning and Self-Evolved Leadership
[07:25] – You write that, “The pursuit of lifelong learning is a crucial component to growing as a Self-Evolved Leader.” (p. 33 [36]) And you also note that in addition to carving out time for lifelong learning opportunities, they also make the time for practice and reflection. (pp. 34-35 [37-38]) I think those points will resonate with Leading Learning listeners—the importance of lifelong learning is at the foundation of what they make possible, and they know that practice and reflection are essential if real learning is to happen. You also posit that “[Y]ou can’t have a pursuit of lifelong learning without vulnerability.” (p. 35 [38]) What do you mean by that? What’s the role of vulnerability in learning and in self-evolved leadership?
Dave explains that you can look at it in two ways—
First, regarding leaders today, in general we’re seeing a shift towards them becoming more vulnerable, more transparent, whereas the old model had leaders in front, operating with absolute surety about where they’re going.
But in our overly complex world, we know that surety is no longer guaranteed. In fact, he says we’re now looking for our leaders to admit they aren’t actually 100% sure they are leading in the right direction and they are asking for input from others. Dave notes we are looking for our leaders to be more vulnerable and to not necessarily have that chest beating, “I will show the way”, attitude.
As it relates to ongoing learning, Dave says the reality is there are aspects that really do require vulnerability. The first one is an objective analysis of who you are as a leader and the reflection that it takes to openly say what you’re good at/what your strengths are, as well as those areas where you’re maybe not as good. And that you want to actually become more well-rounded and develop, which takes vulnerability.
Secondly—and linked to that—is the need to have outside evaluation on your strength as a leader; to have confidence to put yourself forward and allow people from any area of your organization (or another organization) to assess how you are as a leader knowing that ultimately it will get everyone to a good place. Along with this, is to not be defensive but to be truly open and vulnerable. This is where Dave says it plays a crucial role in ongoing learning.
The problem with leading through acts of heroism is that when you say you know the answer and are constantly the one saving the day for your team, over time you begin to become a bottleneck. You end up scrambling in the weeds moving from emergency to emergency, crisis to crisis, and you end up in a place of being overwhelmed and burnt out. But what also happens is that over time, if your people know that you’re just going to tell them the answer or what to do, they will develop a sense of learned helplessness, where rather than trying to solve their own problems, they’re just going to go to you asking for the solution.
This leads to a cycle of mediocrity where, because we want to move quickly in our organization, we view everything as urgent. And the leader believes it’s much easier or faster for them to just solve the problem, so they become the bottleneck and the people aren’t developing.
This becomes problematic because the leader doesn’t have the headspace to think creatively, to think about the long-term direction of their team and the development of their people, and to think about the truly important but not necessarily urgent aspects of their job.
Learned Helplessness
[12:20] – You just talked about the idea of “learned helplessness” and what it is. But what can we do to help others unlearn their helplessness once they’ve gotten that mindset?
Like any good behavioral shift, Dave says it starts number one, with you as the leader, and number two with a perspective shift. In the book he talks about a new mantra, which is that your focus should be on helping your team achieve their shared goals and as a result, develop into the best versions of themselves.
The reason for that mantra is that there’s no room for heroism there because if you succeed (or only a few succeed) and the rest of your team fails, then you as a leader have failed. But also, if you’re getting results just for the sake of getting results, and just doing things through those acts of heroism but nobody is growing and developing, then you’re not doing the job appropriately as a leader.
This is the first perspective shift you have to make and ultimately what that starts to do is help you back away from that “firefighting”, getting stuck in the weeds in that tactical day-to-day leadership, and actually begin to start to carve out some time to think about what’s truly important.
We’ve gotten to this point where, because we are moving so quickly, because we get so many interruptions in our daily work life, where we’re just treating everything as urgent. And we need to get better at focusing on what’s truly important.
Our learning experiences have to push our learners to the edge of their level of comfort. If we aren’t being pushed to that area of discomfort, then we’re not learning, we’re just in that safe zone.
Dave emphasizes that we need to avoid that rote, “what’s the right answer?”, “teach to the test” experience and instead provide scenarios, discussions, and activities that cause our learners to really evaluate what they would do in a particular situation—and what that means about their character.
In order to help folks truly learn, he says we’ve got to get them focused on who they are as a leader, who they want to be, and the character they want to develop.
Leadership Disciplines
[16:25] – Another area you pick on is the notion of leadership as a soft skill. You assert, “When we treat leadership as a soft skill, we get soft leadership. It comes from nothing more than our collective desire to not want to put in the additional hard work to define our own development needs and to practice, truly practice our leadership…. Let’s banish all talk of skill as it relates to leadership (soft or not) and instead start to speak in terms of disciplines.” (p. 80 [81]) What do you mean when you talk about leadership disciplines and what are some that you’ve uncovered?
Dave admits he doesn’t agree that leadership is a soft skill because it leads to the belief that the only real way you can become a good leader is through osmosis.
But you can practice leadership in the same way that you can practice learning. So rather than talking about hard skills and soft skills, he talks about actually building true discipline into what you do.
The reason he talks about this is that getting to a place of truly excellent, truly great leadership (mastering it as a discipline) isn’t actually an enjoyable place to get to. Dave points out it’s the same as mastering any skill—you can be naturally good at something and it’s fun but when you want to be truly great, it can be excruciating and takes a ton of work.
But the result is awesome because then you’re building a legacy, true character, and you can look back knowing you did everything you could do to become the best version of yourself and helped your team become the best versions of themselves.
Attention Management as a Discipline of Leadership
[18:59] – You write about 6 micro disciplines and 5 core disciplines, but you single out attention management as the #1 discipline to develop. Why is that discipline so important/fundamental?
Dave thinks it’s so important because if you just look at life and society and where we are today – and bucket the workplace into that – we’re in a position where we’re being bombarded at such an incredible rate. Whether it’s emails, phone calls, social media feeds, water cooler conversations, etc., there’s so much pulling at our attention.
What he sees in leaders that are really good at this is they have the ability to resist that urge and pull, and simply that dopamine hit that we’re now getting to the point of seeking out. If you’re constantly going to chase those interruptions, you’re never going to get out of the weeds.
For those leaders who really want to get on to developing their people and get on to thinking about the long-term direction of their team, they have to find a way to put a good attention management system in place.
We’ve seen the whole notion of time management and productivity management in the workplace over the last two decades and now Dave says it’s moving much more closely towards attention management.
He recommends a simple exercise you can do is to keep a notepad beside you and note how many pings on a given day you are getting on your computer or phone that are drawing you away from the issue at hand.
He references Cal Newport, one of the greatest experts related to this right now, who talks about a concept called “attention residue” that essentially says that psychologically, if you’re in the middle of something – whether it’s a meeting, important report, etc. – and you get pulled away into something else, there’s this little bit of residue that when you return to the task you are working on, that stays in your head from the interruption.
Researchers are coming out with data that says that it typically takes us about 15-20 minutes to refocus our attention once we’ve been distracted. When you think about the sheer number of distractions on a daily basis and the amount of time then wasted trying to refocus your attention, that’s the reason Dave thinks this is such a fundamental concept. He adds if you can’t get this right, there’s no time to do anything else.
When providing learning experiences, you can’t just ask people to put their cell phones and laptops away. You have to come in and set the context that on a foundational level, what you get out of this learning experience (no matter what it is), is going to be directly related to what you put into it. So if your attention is being pulled in other directions, you’re not going to get the most out of this time.
If Dave is doing a half-day session or full-day session, he acknowledges and is ok with the fact that there are going to be breaks but he asks that if you’re going to take care of something, to do it outside of the room. That way you’re respecting the people who are in the room and their decision to stay present and mindful.
The best way to get anybody to buy into a direction that you want to go in—whether it’s in leadership or parenting or anything else—is to set the context of the why and then give them the option to opt in our out.
Facilitating Team Flow
[24:24] – Is there another discipline of leadership you’d like to tell listeners a bit about?
Dave explains how there’s a bit of a flow with these where once you start stacking a couple of these disciplines together, you really start to accelerate the effectiveness. So the first one is if you can start to manage those interruptions on a daily basis, you’re going to start to get some time to focus on what’s truly important.
The next thing to start to think about then is what he calls “facilitating team flow”. By this he means how you ensure that the workflow that comes into your team gets filtered out effectively amongst your team members and then back out to the wider organization—rather than just coming into you and stopping at your desk.
Another way to look at it is, are you delegating effectively to the rest of the folks on your team? Most leaders either over-delegate and under-communicate or they just don’t delegate at all for fear that it will take too much time, or they will have to do it themselves anyway and fix it. But Dave points out both of these things are really just you responding to your ego saying that your role as the leader is to know the answers and if you give too much out, you’re not going to have value to add into your team or organization.
Dave suggests looking at your to-do list and asking yourself honestly for each item on that list if somebody on your team—even if they need a little support/guidance—could they effectively do it? If the answer is yes, you have to find a way to delegate it out. You want to start to chop that to-do list down 50% or even 75%, so that all that’s left is the stuff that you truly add value to as a leader.
The flow is you get better at managing the interruptions into your workload, you get better at pushing that out into your team, and then you move to a point where you’re supporting your team to high performance. So rather than just micromanaging them and standing over their shoulder, you’re providing coaching moments for them to grow, develop, and learn. For leaders who walk through this process and really get it right, they get hours back in their day to truly elevate their focus and spend time thinking creatively and strategically.
Knowing What We Can’t Control as Leaders
[27:18] – The issue of control comes up in the book in multiple places. And not usually in the context of what a leader or aspiring lead can control, but what they can’t. We can’t control how someone we manage responds to our feedback; we can’t make our team be empowered and take ownership. And this is an issue that can crop up for learning businesses. We can design and develop learning experiences that we think and hope will promote learning, but ultimately it comes down to the individual learner. Does she want to learn? What advice do you have for leaders and learning businesses grappling with this fundamental paradox that a big part of what they need and want to do and accomplish isn’t directly under their control?
Dave thinks the first thing is to strip your ego out of it and understand that in those areas that you can’t control, it doesn’t mean that you’ve failed or that you’re a bad leader. Ultimately if you walk through the steps that are required to be a “good leader” and somebody on your team just doesn’t want to take ownership or accountability, get to the point where you recognize that’s their decision and their choice. And to be comfortable with that and to find then the appropriate place for them on the team or organization.
The other thing that Dave says often happens when somebody puts forward the message that they have no control is that they’re ultimately painting a sandbox for themselves. And in most cases, that sandbox is somewhat imaginary and closer to them than it is in reality.
Dave advises that if you have somebody that says they can’t control X, Y, or Z is to see how you push boundaries and knock up against that sandbox so that you truly know where the limitation is.
The problem is that when we convince ourselves that we have no control and can’t take empowerment, that just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So push up against it and see where your areas of control are. Then as an adult, as a human being, when you truly know where the boundaries are of your area of control, then you get to make adult decisions about what you want to do with that. But the worst thing you can do is just say you have no control but not actually know whether that’s true or not.
[30:39] – What is one of the most powerful learning experiences you’ve been involved in, as an adult, since finishing your formal education?
Dave shares about two experiences attending learning development training workshops; one at ExperiencePoint who does a lot of work around innovation and design thinking. He says it blew his mind how well they were able to link technology and in-room training all in one.
The other was at Box of Crayons at a workshop called The Coaching Habit, which allows you to practice coaching in the skills you are trying to teach. What he liked about this is it isn’t a box taking exercise, rather it’s focused on giving participants as close to real-world experience of what it is they are teaching as possible while reminding them of key takeaways they want to put into place.
[32:33] – How to connect with Dave and/or learn more:
- Book Website: https://www.selfevolvedleader.com
- Outfield Leadership Website: https://www.outfieldleadership.com
- Twitter: @davemckeown
- Facebook: @davejmckeown
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davemckeown/
[33:13] – Wrap-Up
Reflection Questions
- Where is learned helplessness negatively impacting your own performance and/or that of the people you work with at your organization?
- Are there approaches in the products and services you’re designing and delivering that encourage learned helplessness in your learners?
- How might you encourage empowerment rather than learned helplessness?
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[35:13] – Sign off
See Also:
Effective Marketing and Increased Conversion Rates with Tony Paille of AIIM International
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