Navigating Leadership Shock: How to Regain Control | Pete Steinberg – President of Innovative Thought

Jo Meunier [00:00:49]:
I’m Jo Mernier and today we’re joined by the wonderful Pete Steinberg from innovative thought for conversation about sports, leadership and leadership shock. So welcome Pete, and thank you very much for joining us today.

Pete Steinberg [00:01:04 ]:
Thanks, Jo. Excited to be here.

Jo Meunier [00:01:06]:
Fabulous. Well, I’m going to jump straight in, but before I ask you any questions about leadership, I’d love to know a little bit about your life prior to becoming a leadership expert. So can you tell us a bit about that and how it led you to where you are today?

Pete Steinberg [00:01:19 ]:
Sure, I live in the States, but my accent is a little bit weird because I grew up in England and I came to America to go to grad school and to play rugby for the US. I was a pretty mediocre rugby player in England and the US had a pretty mediocre rugby team. And so I went to Penn State and found out that postgrads or graduate students were unable to play. So I found myself at the age of 23, not sure what to do with my passion of rugby, and started coaching. Ended up coaching at Penn State for 19 years, won ten national championships, and then went on to coach the us women at two World Cups and at the Rio Olympics. And it’s interesting because you said before, like my leadership, and actually it developed at the same time. So for most of that time, my, for about 15 years, what I did was I created a leadership consultancy to support my rugby habit. So I couldn’t have a real job. I couldn’t take three or four months off and go and prepare for the Olympics. So I had to create a job that worked for that. And so what I actually did is in parallel, I created this leadership consultancy while I was coaching. And then I retired in 2017 and have been focused on innovative thoughts since then.

Jo Meunier [00:02:40 ]:
I love that creating a job and a business around what makes you happy, that’s just, that’s fantastic. That’s the ultimate flexibility and freedom. That’s brilliant. It is.

Pete Steinberg [00:02:49 ]:
It is. Although, you know what it’s like, Joe, when, when you tell a client, they’re like, oh, can you come and do some work in June? I’m like, no, I’m preparing for the Olympics. Can you come and work in July? No, I’m at the Olympics. Can you come and do some work in August? I’m recovering from the Olympics, but I can do it in September. You hope that they say yes, and then I say no and go find someone else. So that’s the, that’s the downside of it. But I was able to hold it together for, I think I did it for about 16 years, so I was able to hold it together for 16 years.

Jo Meunier [00:03:18]:
As excuses go. I’m sorry, I can’t because I’m at the Olympics with quite a good one.

Pete Steinberg [00:03:23]:
That is true. That is true.

Jo Meunier [00:03:26]:
And so how did you. Rugby Olympic career? What did that teach you about good or bad leadership?

Pete Steinberg [00:03:33 ]:
You know, it’s really interesting, Joe. I actually don’t like using sports as an analogy for leadership, and that’s because I think the metrics are all wrong. So what we do is we look at a team that wins and we say, good team, good leadership, and we look at a team that loses and we say, bad team, bad leadership. And actually, the outcome has very little to do with leadership. Team performance. You know, the best team, the best, one of the best performances I ever had of any team was when we lost the national championship at Penn State in 2006 to Stamford. We lost, but we played as well as we could. And I probably coached that year as well as I could. And so I think we have the wrong metrics. But I do think rugby is a little bit different. When I coached the team at the 2017 World cup semi final against New Zealand, when the game’s going on, I sit in the stands like I am not on the sideline. I can’t call timeouts, I can’t really engage. So I think rugby, because of its player centricity, requires you to lead in a different way. It requires you to delegate, it requires you to empower people. So I actually think rugby is a pretty good analogy for modern leadership. And so that has been very useful in bringing things over, in how you set up teams where you don’t have to be there when they’ve got a difficult decision or how do you set up teams where they can deal with conflict or make strategic decisions. And probably the big thing, and it’s linked to the book leadership shock and the authentic leadership model is, I learned that the way to do those things is to think in principles and build systems. So if you build a system for the team, they can make decisions, they know how to interact with each other, because you’ve built a system that they can leverage and understand how it all works together. And that’s something that I’ve definitely brought. Systems thinking is probably the biggest thing, and it’s something I’ve definitely brought to my consulting and executive coaching work.

Jo Meunier [00:05:33 ]:
Absolutely. And so you just mentioned leadership shock, and rugby has a lot of shocks as well. So we’re going to segue into the question about your. Did you like that? I did. The leadership shock, which is your new book. We’ll get onto that in a moment. What is leadership shock and how do leaders get in and out of it?

Pete Steinberg [00:05:55]:
Well, I mean, I think describing it is easy. Getting, and getting into it is easy. Getting out of it, I think, is really hard. So the symptoms of leadership shock are very similar to sort of when you’re in physical shock. So when you’re in physical shock, you can breathe your heartbeats, but you can’t do anything. You’re surviving. And that’s really what leadership shock is. So leaders that are driven by their calendar, their teams, are confused. They’re not exactly sure what’s going on. They’re confused because they’ve been successful and now they’re not. And they were unable to actually make an impact. And so being like, it kind of feels like everything’s out of control and chaotic. And that’s the symptoms of leadership shock. You often get into it. My experience has been you get into it because something has changed in your context. So something around you has changed, but the system and your principles of leadership haven’t. So, you know, you become the VP of finance from the director of finance, and you are a great director of finance. That’s how you got to be the VPN. But the way that you led as the director of finance is not the way you need to lead as the VP. And because your system is wrong, you can’t control what’s going on outside of. Outside of everything. You can’t control what’s going on in your role. And so I think that’s. That’s how you get into it is something around. Often it’s an elevation, but it could be a new boss or it could be a new something’s changing in the business of reorganization. And fundamentally, the things that made you successful in the past are not going to make you successful in the future. And the way you get out of it is actually finding time to challenge your beliefs, to challenge your principles, and to really understand why your leadership isn’t working so you can make that adjustment.

Jo Meunier [00:07:53 ]:
Okay. And this can apply to people who have been in a non managerial role, who’ve just been promoted to a role of a leadership. It could equally apply to people who’ve been managing and leading all their lives and have perhaps, as you say, stepped up into a slightly different role. And in terms of what does it feel like? What are the hallmarks of leadership shock? Is it this feeling of overwhelm, like, where there’s just too many things going on and you don’t have to prioritize? How can you recognize what it feels?

Pete Steinberg [00:08:20 ]:
Yeah, I mean, I would say if you look at your calendar and it’s booked for the whole week and often double or triple booked and you’re not sure which of the meetings in your calendar you should decline, you’re probably in leadership shock. Right. Because what you. So I like to talk, and I talk about this in the book, about the concept of being implicit and explicit and the concept of intentionality. So, and this is true whether you’re getting into your first management role or whether you’re, you know, you’ve been managing for 20 years and you’re now going to a bigger role. You, you have implicitly created a system that has made you successful. It hasn’t been intentional. It just happened. Right. You’ve learned and you’ve implicitly done these things now, because what’s implicit, you can’t actually control it. You have to make it explicit so you can change it. And that’s, and when you make it explicit and change it, then you can be intentional. So it’s a bit of a journey that you have to go on. The one thing I would say is that my experience is when people come into their first management role, they’re often a little bit, I mean, it depends on the confidence that they bring into the role, but often they’re aware that things are going to be different. Right. And so when you’re aware that things are going to be different, you might find yourself being like, oh, I have to change. It’s a bit harder when you’ve been a manager for ten years and you become a director and it’s fundamentally a different role, but it’s in the same job. I mean, it’s in the same organization, and you might even be sitting at the same desk. Right. But now you have this, and so you think everything’s the same. I think it’s the challenge of not recognizing that things need to change and not being aware that things need to change.

Jo Meunier [00:10:11 ]:
Okay. So that’s. Is that the starting point? It’s, first of all, sort of recognizing that something isn’t quite right. And I appreciate you can’t condense this whole process into a 32nd. Here’s how to fix it. But if somebody wanted to start to overcome this feeling of leadership stock and start to put things on a better footing, how do they do that?

Pete Steinberg [00:10:34 ]:
Yeah. In the book, we talk about the authentic leadership model. And so I’ll take it back to the comment that we, that we discussed before about my rugby coaching. So in rugby, you need to build these systems that lead to principles, and the principles guide decision and behaviors of the team. That’s exactly what I’ve done with the authentic leadership model, is that it’s a system that has some inputs that lead to prioritization, where I should spend my time, and principles of leadership, where I. How I want to lead. And it starts with things that are fundamental to you. So this is sort of where it’s authentic. So your purpose, so you reflect on, you know, what is it that fulfills you, what kind of impact that you want to have in the world. And it’s. And it has your leadership beliefs. Right. So the things that you believe about leadership, and those two are important because you have to be authentic to your beliefs. You have to be authentic to who you are. If it’s linked to your purpose, it’s energy giving, right. So you have to make sure that it’s something that’s sustainable. And then it’s also reflecting and being thoughtful about what are the strengths that you bring to the role, the value that you bring to this role, which might be very different than the value that you brought to the other role. So those are all the things that are sort of the authentic things about yourself, but that to me, is insufficient. And so it also has some inputs where you think about what’s the role expectation, different than the job description, but like, what is expected of you by your boss and by the organization and by your team, and then what’s the vision? What’s the impact that you want to have? And so those five inputs, once you’ve really thought about them deeply, can lead you. Where do I want to spend my time, the prioritization and what sort of leader do I need to be? And those are your leadership principles. So going through the authentic leadership model redefines, in an explicit and intentional way how things are going to be different for you as a leader in the context that you’re in.

Jo Meunier [00:12:34 ]:
Okay. And this, so it sounds like every, every person who goes through this is going to experience a very unique way of doing things. And I imagine some people would sort of take on this deep thinking quite quickly, whereas others might take a lot. I mean, changing lifetime habits takes forever, or sometimes it’s impossible. So is there a ballpark? How long does it take for leaders to change and evolve?

Pete Steinberg [00:13:02 ]:
Well, I’m going to challenge you a little bit, Joe. I think everyone can change, and everyone can change a habit. I do agree that they change on a different speed and a different continuum. So one of the things we talk about in the book is the concept of metacognition. So metacognition is this, is this skill about the ability to think about how you think. It’s deep, deep reflection. And so what actually happens in the process is it’s your ability to be metacognitive that really determines how quickly you can change. And what’s interesting as a business model, for me as an executive coach, is that if people really become metacognitive and they really understand how the, how the authentic leadership model works, they never have to call me again, because it’s just because it becomes a tool that they’re constantly using to reflect on their leadership. So I would say that the only thing that determines whether you can do it is your desire to do it, is if you want to do it, you can go on that journey. Some people pick it up very quickly. For me, it’s probably three to four months for us to really work with someone. When I work as an executive coach to build a new, authentic leadership model, some people, like, two months in are like, got it. Some people, at the end of the four months we’ve done it. But to your point, they’re not really changing. Right. And so it takes a little bit of, it takes more support for me as the executive coach to drive it, but you can start the journey pretty quickly. Like, most, most of the people that I work with, even when we start talking about purpose and we start thinking deeply about their leadership, they start changing immediately because they’re like, hold on. This is the thing that I really want to do in the world. I’m just going to start doing more of it. Right. So there’s an evolution as you go. You don’t need the complete leadership model to start the change. The change starts because you’re beginning to think explicitly about how you lead.

Jo Meunier [00:14:59 ]:
So we’ve started this process. We’re a couple of months in. You think you’ve got it. How do you measure it? How do you know if you’re doing a good job of leadership or a bad job? Maybe when we spoke before, you said that the higher up the rank in the company you get, the less feedback you get. Now, that’s a bit of a challenge because surely that’s your main sort of form of measurement. So how do leaders know if they’re doing the right thing?

Pete Steinberg [00:15:26 ]:
I mean, this is, I, you know, I talked previously about sport and how I don’t like sport because I think we have the wrong metrics. I think the same leadership, like, how do we measure good leadership? And I think organizations generally do a very poor job of even using the right criteria to develop and identify the next set of leaders. What they do is they say, oh, who’s charismatic or who’s done a good job in driving the business, none of which are necessarily the attributes that you want on the next leader. But I think that there are some things that, you know, as a leader, I think part of it is a sense of control. So I think that, you know, you’re out of leadership shock when you can manage your calendar and, you know, you really know explicitly about what you should do and what your team should do. And you’ve got clear definitions of what that is. And, you know, the way we do it, you know, the way I do it with my clients as an executive coach is that we end up with clear priorities and principles. So you can actually track over time. And I’ve done this with clients. How much more time are you spending on the things that are important to you? Like, I work with their chief of staff or their EA and I, and we look at their calendar and we say, okay, so six months ago, you were spending 15% of the time on driving growth in the business, and now you’re spend spending 25% of your time because it’s a priority. Okay, so that’s a movement that’s important. And then you think about leadership principles. Your leadership principles are clear. And you say, well, this is the sort of leader I want to be. Here are the actions that would bring that principle to life. How often am I doing that action? So I think for the individual, I think there’s ways to track progress. I think what’s harder is it’s a lot harder for the organization to identify what’s important in this role and to find metrics and measurements for that. We’ve done that with some of our more progressive clients, but it’s hard to get organisations to think that way.

Jo Meunier [00:17:39 ]:
Yeah. So this once, once a leader has these principles, they can lean on them and keep coming back to them as they go through their career and that becomes their sort of their benchmark that.

Pete Steinberg [00:17:51 ]:
Then, yeah, they can rely on. I think that’s right. The only thing I would say is that if something changes, the authentic leadership model is flexible and iterative. Right. So if my role changes or if my vision, what I want to do is different, then that actually would change my priorities and maybe my principles and the model allows you to do that. So none of this is written in stone. Right. There’s no right and wrong answer. There’s the answer that’s right for now and that may not be right for tomorrow, but you actually know, like your purpose is pretty static. Right. Your beliefs are pretty static. The value and the strengths are pretty static. They can be developed. But if your job changes or your role expectation changes or what you’re trying to do changes, then that should lead to a change in your prioritization and a change to your leadership principles.

Jo Meunier [00:18:43 ]:
Right. Okay. So very dynamic. It’s quite, you have to be quite agile to make this work.

Pete Steinberg [00:18:48 ]:
Oh, look at that. Yeah, yeah. We get paid an extra 5% if we use agile. So yes, it’s definitely an agile system.

Jo Meunier [00:18:55 ]:
Let’s throw that in a few more times.

Pete Steinberg [00:18:56 ]:
Yeah, we’ll throw it in a few more times.

Jo Meunier [00:19:02 ]:
Another question I wanted to ask you. My colleague Astrid actually brought this up and I thought it was a great point. There’s a lot of remote working going on at the moment. Hybrid working people in the office, out the office, working from anywhere. And what’s the difference between leading in office versus remote? Or shouldn’t there be a difference?

Pete Steinberg [00:19:23 ]:
I mean. I mean, this is the question that we’ve been asking ourselves for the last four years, Joe, and I’d love to get your view on it. What I would say is I think remote or hybrid work requires better leadership and more explicit leadership. I think when everyone’s in the office, things happen. Right? They just happen. You engage. What you need to do is be more intentional as a leader. But if you were a great leader in the office, you’re probably a great leader when people aren’t in the office, because being a great leader is thinking about what do my people need and how can I support them? And that leads to just different answers to those questions remotely. I think the more interesting question. So I think the virtual and in person is clearer. I think the hybrid is the space where there’s a lot of tension. You can see all of the companies are putting people back into the office. People don’t want to come back into the office. There’s a lot of dynamics there. And I think what is really critical as a leader is when you have your team, the office, that you use that time differently than when they’re remote. Right. So it is like, like it is. It is. When they come to the office, it is to do different things. They don’t come to the office to sit on teams calls all day. They come into the office, and when they’re in the office, they’re doing things together face to face. And I think that if you, if you identify and you do that with purpose, and you say we’re in the office, and therefore we’re going to leverage that time differently, I think that’s probably the key. And it’s that sort of intentionality about how we, how they use their time. But I’d love to hear your view on that. Joe, what do you think is the difference?

Jo Meunier [00:21:10 ]:
Well, I spend so much of my time working remotely, but when I do meet up with colleagues face to face, like you say, it is very different. And from my experience, I think leadership, a lot of it comes down to the way you communicate and good, solid communication. So that face to face time is very important, I think, especially in terms of strengthening relationships and getting to know people and building bonds. But equally, when you’re working remotely, keeping up the conversations over, you know, like what we’re doing now over video calls, that. That really does help to keep things ticking along in, in my view.

Pete Steinberg [00:21:49 ]:
Yeah. And I think you need to be really intentional about how you build the relationships virtually, which you don’t need to do face to face. Face to face. Joe, you and I are standing in the kitchen before we go over to the office, and we’re chatting about last week. For most people, they jump on a call, a virtual call with the team. And the first, they say, item one, let’s talk. Let’s. Let’s review the data from last month. Yeah, you miss all of that stuff. So I’ll tell you that we have a weekly call for my team at innovative thought. It’s a 30 minutes weekly call, and the first half of it has nothing to do with work.

Jo Meunier [00:22:22 ]:
Yeah.

Pete Steinberg [00:22:23 ]:
Right. So 15 minutes of it. So some people will look at that and say, you’re wasting 15 minutes. But we actually see it as an investment in the team’s engagement. We have a question. Like, we ask questions like, you know, what mythical animal would you like to, like, be true? Things like that. Right. So silly questions, and we talk and we’re laughing and we’re sharing, but what we’re really doing is we’re building a relationship. And I’m very. That’s important to me in the virtual world. Like, we’re all over the place, and so it makes people feel like they’re part of a team when you do that. So I think thinking, being less task oriented and being team and relationship oriented is probably something you have to do when you’re in a virtual team.

Jo Meunier [00:23:06]:
Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. And talking about technology. Technology is a bit of a blessing and a curse. One thing that’s coming up, wiggling its way into the world of leadership is AI. We spoke previously about how managers are able to actually speak to an AI bot to sort of help them make leadership decisions and use it as a bit of a sounding board. How much of an impact is AI having on leaders now?

Pete Steinberg [00:23:33 ]:
Well, I’m not sure that it’s having. So I think, like, right now, I think when you think about generative AI, I would say that the best thing generative AI does, or the best way to think about it is to have, it’s another member of your team, right. So it’s another member of your team that can bring thoughts, ideas to you. And so using it for ideation, I think is really powerful. But think about it, like, as a relatively junior member of your team, like, it’s going to come up with something, but you’ve got to check their work, right, because they’re not that experienced. I think in the future, like, maybe I’m just happy that I’m old, but probably, you know, in five years, will there be executive coaches or will executive coaching be replaced by AI? And I think. I think that probably what will happen is I think AI will lead to a democratization of executive coaching so everyone can have an executive coach. I think at the senior level, the human part of it, because of the stress that exists at the C suite and because of the resources that are available, I think you’re still going to see human coaches working, executive coaches working with senior leaders, but the new manager that’s never been a manager before, the power that could happen to do multiple things. So to have a weekly chat about their challenges, because executive coaching is really a series of questions helping people think, and that’s something that definitely generative AI can do. And so thinking about it as being able to do that, I think is important. But now we’re even seeing now that there’s AI that can look at your meeting and give you feedback on how you did, how you ran your meeting. So I think my ability to say, hey, I’m about to give difficult feedback, hey, my AI, you know, leadership consultant, I’m going to practice my feedback with you and then you’re going to give me the feedback on my feedback. Right. That’s really powerful. That’s going to help me walk into the room with my team member and be more effective. And so I think both in terms of just in time, like skill development and feedback, as well as overall executive coaching, I think we’re going to see a huge democratization that allows everyone to kind of have their own AI assistant that’s going to help them be a better leader.

Jo Meunier [00:25:57 ]:
Yeah. And that’s really positive because there’s a lot of worry and fears at the moment that AI is creeping into, you know, roles and organizations and taking over jobs. But actually that can really help people develop and like you say, become better leaders, which is something we’ll all benefit from.

Pete Steinberg [00:26:13 ]:
I think that’s right. I mean, I’ve done some work with the US AI Safety Institute. A colleague of mine is Adam Russell is there and big into AI and, yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of uncertainty. No one knows. I mean, generative AI. I think people are beginning to understand and that’s really what would happen in the executive coaching. It’s, where’s the data? How can you train the bot to be able to do it effectively? And then how can you make sure the bot doesn’t tell people to do, like, silly things right with their team, you know, stick them together with, with sellotape or have them go and like, jump in the swimming pool together, things like that. But I think, I think that, you know, so I think that’s definitely coming. I think that’s going to definitely come the broader, like concerns about AI and society way above my pay grade. Not a leadership question. I don’t think.

Jo Meunier [00:27:09 ]:
We’Ll stick to leadership and we are coming near the end of our conversation. So last question, possibly an extension of the AI topic is that leadership today is very different to how it was 15 years ago, even ten years ago. So how do you think, as we continue to move forward, what sort of chain are coming our way in the world of leadership?

Pete Steinberg [00:27:34 ]:
Yeah, I mean, it was interesting. I was talking to the client the other day and we were talking about development program for their senior leaders and they were talking about a module called leading through change. And then in our discussion we realized that actually it’s just leadership now. Like leading through. It used to be that change would happen and we’d have to lead through it. And now change is happening all the time. So I think the concept of being more agile as a leader, there we go, another 5%. But you know, that we get. But I think the concept of being more agile is really going to be the future of leadership. I think the ability be, and that’s really what the authentic leadership model can do. It can help you. There’s other ways out there that you can do it, but it helps you just always be reflective. So I think change isn’t going to be a moment. Change is going to be something that is happening all the time. And your ability to be contextual and to change the way you lead to be effective, I think that’s the future of leadership. I don’t think that there’s going to be standard frameworks and models that you can use. I think it’s about understanding the complexity of the world. So that would be one. And then related to that. I think the concept of innovation and experimentation is going to come into leadership. So when you’re more junior, cause and effect becomes really easily understood. Okay. If I do. If I do something with my team that’s directly with me, I think I’m pretty certain this is going to happen. But. But when you’re a senior leader, when you’re in the C suite, cause and effect is actually pretty unknown. And because of the dynamic nature of business, you’re going to have to experiment more. You can have to try things. We’re going to try this and see what happens to our culture. Oh, that didn’t work. Now we’re going to try something else. So I think prototyping and experimentation, you’re going to see people not have less certainty about how they can impact their organization and therefore need to bring in some innovation tools, some prototyping and some experimentation to be able to do that. And that’s where, you know, we talked before feedback so hard. But feedback is going to be really critical when you’re doing those sorts of experiments.

Jo Meunier [00:29:45 ]:
Fantastic. Oh, that’s really fascinating. And I’ve just. Before we finish this, I’m just going to sort of run back to you three things that I’ve learned during our conversation just to prove that I’ve been listening. So I think, number one is leaders may be born, but great leaders can be made so long as they’re willing to work at it, and they follow certain methodologies to help them develop. Number two, you have to be intentional, and you should take steps to become the type of leader you want to be. You can experiment, lean on your principles, tools. If it doesn’t work, try something else. And number three, be agile. Get that in there. Again, old habits die hard, but leaders are agile in their thinking and they’re open to change. And it’s a dynamic process, but you can trust it and give it everything. There are three things I’ve taken away from this conversation. Is there anything else you’d want to add?

Pete Steinberg [00:30:39 ]:
No. You did a great job. No, I think. I guess the only other thing I would add is the start of the journey is to being metacognitive and to stop and think about, like, to really reflect on why you’re leading the way that you are currently leading. I think. I think that’s the start. But I think outside of that, you did a great job of summarizing it.

Jo Meunier [00:31:00 ]:
Excellent. Great stuff. Well, before we finish, can you tell us how our listeners can find out more about your book, the leadership shock, using authenticity to navigate the hidden dangers of career success. How can they get their hands on that?

Pete Steinberg [00:31:15 ]:
Sure. So first of all, you can follow me on LinkedIn. That’s where I post a lot of things. You can also sign up for a newsletter that’s about the authentic leadership and high performing teams. And a bit of my rugby background. You can do [email protected]. and of course, you can seek out leadership shock at Amazon or whatever. Your local online bookstore is fabulous.

Jo Meunier [00:31:41 ]:
Well, thank you so much, Pete, for today. I’ve really enjoyed it and I really hope to have you back on the show again soon.

Pete Steinberg [00:31:47]:
Absolutely, Joe. It’s been fun.

Jo Meunier [00:31:49 ]:
Fantastic. Thank you, Pete. Take care.