Vince Chen (7:37)

How do we deal with judgment? Judging ourselves, judging others. Honestly, this aspect of judgment has come up a lot for me. In fact, in the second episode of season three in which I spoke to Benedict from France, he mentioned the importance of being kind or kinder to ourselves. Yet we often forget that. Yes, if a colleague or someone else makes a mistake, I would say, it's okay, let's fix it. No need to blame, just move forward. But when I make the mistake, what do I do? Yes, I fixed, but at the same time, I start blaming myself. I think, why did I make this mistake? What's wrong with me? I become harsh on myself, much harsher than I am with others. In those moments, I realize I'm not loving myself enough. This constant self judgment can be really detrimental if we don't learn to manage it properly, don't you think?

Jennifer Selby Long (9:12)

Yes, absolutely. And people have asked me, why is it so hard to make this judge go away? And I say, we don't necessarily want to make the judge entirely go away. That's almost impossible. It's a neural network that's in there. But boy, can we weaken that judge. And the reason I say we don't necessarily want the judge to completely go away, because that negative feeling, it's like a warning sign. It's just a little warning sign that there's something you need to attend to. But it's like a hand on a hot stove. You want to feel it. You want to feel the pain, right? You want to feel that negative emotion of the pain so that you recognize there's something you need to attend to. But as soon as you feel it, it's important to just call out, oh, that's my Jodge versus I can't believe I made that mistake. How stupid. What am I going to learn? It is, by the way, it is no better to be a judge of yourself and not of others than to be a judge of others and not yourself. It's all the judge. It's all negative, right? It all is contagious. The judge energy is contagious to others, no matter which direction it's headed. And so it's so vital to call out and recognize, oh, that's my judge versus it's me. There's something wrong with me. That's my judge. And then you can weaken that judge in so many different ways. One is to gently make a little fun, like you would with a little kid. Ah, I see you. I caught you, right? I found you. Hide and seek. You can be dismissive. Of your judge and go, oh, judge, you're so late to the party. I can't believe you didn't bring me down earlier. You can do all kinds of things, but the most important thing is call out that judge. You can just respectfully say, hey, judge, thanks, I don't really need that help. I got this right. So literally it is having these conversations with yourself, because one of the things that the judge does is the judge also calls up what's called an accomplice saboteur. It's another saboteur or two or sometimes three that have taken root in the fertile soil of your brain and wrap themselves around whatever your gifts are. I had a client who went into his first CISO role ever. A number of my clients are in their first C suite role ever. That in and of itself is a huge personal change to manage. And then they're having the surprise of what they learn as they're in that role. And in this case, this client had gone from a highly regulated industry to a fairly regulated industry, which is a whole different ball of wax. And then Vince, as if that weren't enough, he discovered that his organization, which he inherited, which had a 44,0% attrition rate and had many people who were actually too junior for the roles that they had, there was also, they were swept up in a company wide, quote, unquote optimization effort, which is to say cost cutting, headcount reduction. He actually needed to replace people. He needed to spend more because he needed to hire more senior people to manage them. And there was this huge pressure on him, which was particularly being driven by a guy who was a peer of his, who had his boss's ear and who drove him nuts, which is to say he triggered my client saboteurs. So we spent the first three months of our coaching completely focused on recognizing the saboteurs and weakening them. Because one of the things his accomplice saboteur, a hyper achiever, was telling him was pretty much, I have to win, and the only way I can win at this change is if this guy loses, because this guy is my enemy. What was that going to do? I can guarantee you my client is sharp and this guy was right and he was going to win. But what was the cost going to be in that organization, right? What was that cost going to be? So with him, we worked on calling out when his judge was judging this guy. If only that guy weren't here, I could do everything I need to do, right? We focused on calling out his judge when it was judging him. Geez, if only I were a better ciso, ah, we wouldn't have this problem, right? We called out his accomplice saboteur, who was saying, in order for me to win, that dude's gotta lose. And so instead of that, we did something which is the, it is the kryptonite to the judge, which is empathy. We called up empathy for this poor colleague of his who was heading a highly unpopular initiative and frankly wasn't doing it in a very effective way and was triggering people all around him. And my client really, truly put himself in that person's shoes. In one meeting, I even had him speak as that individual to me so that he was completely in that guy's shoes and he was able to make his case and build his argument in a way that was compassionate, right? That was not competitive, that wasn't even about this other guy. The end result was that my client was much happier day in and day out. He was much more successful. Not only was he able to fend off this drive to cut costs, he was able to get the several million dollars additional funding that he needed to do that. The higher level headcount that he needed to add. He was able to switch, blow his attrition a great deal and get that under control. And this is not something that would have come for him so quickly with such success. He becomes the guy who has the boss's ear, where he becomes the guy whose organization is turning around and performing, had he not really faced that judge and that accomplice saboteur and weakened them by calling them out, and then in this case, calling forth his empathy for someone who was, in his mind, incompetent and to really deeply have empathy so that he's not trying to compete against this guy, but to just get the right thing done.

Vince Chen (16:07)

Through all these years, you've worked with so many different people, each with their own unique characters and situations. I'm curious, looking back, can you recall any cases where you feel you didn't succeed in helping a client navigate or take charge of a change? By failure, I don't necessarily mean they disengaged with you, but rather the impact you aimed to create didn't work out as well as expected. Could you share one of those experiences? More importantly, what did you learn from it? Why do you think it was so challenging in that specific situation?

Jennifer Selby Long (17:06)

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And we've had a couple of those. One that comes to mind had such a surprising conclusion in that what I came to recognize was that this leader fundamentally did not want to change and grow and as a result, we would make a few steps forward and then a few steps back. Interestingly, that particular leader was very strong in some other areas. And the individual that person reported to, I guess you could say was my core client, actually concluded that he needed to go find a better opportunity for this guy, because this guy was absolutely not going to change in his own style to what was needed there. And he wasn't going to change in his fundamental beliefs about what the strategy should be of that division. And I learned a lot from that, from watching him, because he was an extraordinary role model of not letting that judge and that hyper achiever neural network drive you to do something stupid, right? Instead of trying to force this guy to go along or to try to butt heads with him endlessly, he saw that he had tried that and it didn't work. He actually went and advocated that this other man should head one of the most exciting new divisions that the company was creating. And this man did go over and do that. And he did lead that division in its early days quite well, because in part, he didn't need to change to lead that. He was already kind of reasonably well suited to it. And so it was extremely enlightening to me because until my client made that decision and that commitment, we struggled. We really struggled. That team had been brought together through two acquisitions. That team was so far behind, Vince. They actually had worked very hard on two software releases that they had to literally cast aside because they fell so far behind because they did not move as one, that the other technology leapfrogged it. And it no longer was appropriate, right? It no longer fit with the company's other technology. So this was an organization that was in crisis, and it was when he was able to just recognize, hey, this is a failed exercise, right? We cannot bring this guy along to where we need to, and I'm going to stop trying. It was. This was, by the way, about 20 years ago. And so I found myself really admiring and recognizing the joy of learning something about change from one of my own clients. Whereas usually I'm the one in the teacher's seat. And I really learned deeply from that experience. Because me, I'm that idealist. I never want to give up on anybody. So it was so helpful for me to see someone willing to say, I think we need to give up on this. This is not succeeding, and we need to not judge the efforts that we made to make it succeed. We need to find a totally different path here. Totally and completely different. It was fantastic and so eye opening for me. So eye opening.

Vince Chen (20:43)

Earlier you mentioned the do's and the don'ts when going through change. That reminded me of an other model often applied to organizations from the well known organizational psychologist Kurt Lewand. I've brought this up in season one, episode two about Tim Pei Ling's own transformation. His model is simple but powerful. There's the first stage, freeze, where you pause and assess. Then comes change where you go through the transformation. Finally there's unfreeze, where you solidify your new identity or the new you. So it's like freeze, change and unfreeze. A lot of business school professors reference this model for organizational change. Are you familiar with this?

Jennifer Selby Long (21:59)

Yes, I think that there are a lot of parallels to Bill Bridges model. But something that you said there about his third, his, you know, unfreeze again, his third and final stage is that you emerge with a new identity. And I think that this is so vital for us as leaders to understand that when we are asking our people to make a significant change, they often do have a change in their fundamental identity or how they see themselves, themselves. And it can be hard to recognize because often in the leadership role we already see them in that way. If we didn't see that they had the potential collectively and individually to make this change successful, we probably wouldn't have started down that path or we would have brought in some different people to lead them. So it is so vital to understand that you're not. Change management is about hitting the target, right? Implementing the change on time, within budget, to a set standard. But this can actually be much more profound for others than we recognize because they can come out of it with new identity. Think of for example, my clients who are financial analysts today. Even just as recently as three years ago, the technology didn't really exist for them to spend the bulk of their time truly advising senior business leaders on what they should be doing in the business. They had very little time to say things like, hey, here's a market force that I see going on in Japan and I think we need to focus 40% more of our sales effort there on this product line? No way. They were too busy being excel jockeys, right? Today that technology has come a very long way. But what happens to someone who for 10 years has been spending most of their time, maybe not real happily, but spending most of their time just getting those numbers accurate. And now suddenly you are telling them that within a matter of months you, they're going to be able, those leaders are going to be able to press a button and see the data that you used to have put together for them, and they are now going to turn to you and say, what should I do? Or what happens when the leader doesn't turn to them and say, what should I do? Now suddenly it's a new identity and they're recognizing they have to earn it. They have to earn that credibility as something more than a master Excel jockey. And that is terrifying. That's terrifying. That's a whole new set of skills. They're going to have to learn how to convert that data into a story. They're going to have to learn how to influence. They're going to have to learn how to read that person and speak in their language. It's terrifying. It's terrifying. And so really recognizing that people are going to come out of this change with a new identity helps you as a leader to have that empathy on the path and to be able to really encourage and support them and put in place what they need to get there that you otherwise might not have recognized, whether it's training and develop, mentoring, coaching, whatever it may be that they're going to need. I'm really glad you brought up the freeze unfreeze freeze model, because that new identity in the last stage is the single most important part of that model.

Vince Chen (25:32)

Would you say that if someone gets stuck in the freeze phase but eventually manages to unfreeze themselves is a win? How would you personally define a successful change or a win when it comes to going through transformation?

Jennifer Selby Long (25:57)

The wind sometimes looks different at the end than we thought it would at the beginning. So I think absolutely, it's fair to step back throughout the change and say, this is what we thought the wind would look like. Is this still true? Or have we come across new information and new learnings along the way that allow us to see what the win looks like differently? So I think that's entirely valid because it might not look like you have a win yet, but maybe you do. Maybe it looks different than you think. Maybe what you have here is a small win along the way that you need to celebrate for the progress, even if they've not quite yet gotten to where you see that they could be in the long run. Because certainly when we look at those, those key elements, as a leader, you're not doing change alone, even if it's a personal change. I bet you have friends or family members that come along and one of those foundations that you really need to attend to is celebrating the dickens out of wins that are so small that you wouldn't normally think to celebrate them, because this, this requires that you focus a lot more of your attention on what's working in the win in and sorry, in the change versus focusing your attention on what's not working. And guess what? Those saboteurs are hardwired to focus on what's not working. But there is ample evidence that a great deal of attention on what's working and doing more of that is correlated with getting to that organizational outcome. Now, the classic sense we're going to define those outcomes as, for example, a positive change in the stock price. But that's a really hard one for say, an individual employee to connect to their progress through the change, isn't it? That's so big, right? One person out of hundreds or thousands saying the stock price moved after we were able to implement this large scale system. But it's hard to see the individual connection. So I think that also speaks to something that is so extraordinarily important, which is connecting your vision to their big whys. Not yours, not the companies, right? They're big whys. What it goes back to that personal vision. What does that success mean to you individually, not just the company, right? But for you as an individual, what's the alignment there? People will move mountains for you if they really understand how this large scale change is connected to something more than a bump up in the stock price or a decrease in operational overhead, but to them, their personal big whys.

Vince Chen (29:00)

So far throughout our interview, we've focused a lot on how you help leaders drive, lead and manage change within the teams and organizations. Many of our listeners might be change leaders or change managers in their own spaces or organizations. Yet the other group of people listening might be experiencing changes themselves. They could be considering making a change, or they may be forced to make a change because they've left their previous employer. You mentioned to me before that a situation often arises when people make a big career leap, sometimes wanting to escape workplace politics or ineffective force. They might land a new job with similar terms, only to find themselves working for another ineffective boss. The goal, the real goal, is to make a change for the better. But these people end up jumping from one lousy situation to another. I know you got some really good insights about that, about how people should try to manage the situation differently. Even if they eventually decide to change jobs, they could and they should aim for a truly better outcome. Could you share with us some common mistakes people make when dealing with ineffective boss and how they might better handle the situation in order to set themselves up for a more positive change?

Jennifer Selby Long (31:17)

I'm so glad you asked about this because I've had this conversation with so many people over the years. And I was having this conversation with someone whose boss was a micromanager and it was driving him nuts. And I sat down and said this would be a great blog post. And this was when people were blogging on LinkedIn. That LinkedIn post garnered 45,000 views and counting. It was shared out on the main thread through that weekend. I have never. I'm a coach and I'm not a famous person. I have never had so many views on a LinkedIn post or a blog in my life. And I recognize this is a really big deal. Everyone faces this, right? Everyone faces this at some time. And you know what happens when we exit a situation because our boss is ineffective. We're running from something versus running to something. But of course, making a change because you're running away from something usually doesn't pan out as well as when you're running towards something. So I think there are three mistakes that I really see that these talented professionals making when they find themselves working for an ineffective boss. The first one is playing psychologists. Oh, passive aggressive, Bad childhood or won't make a decision? Commitment phobic, right? These may or may not be real issues that your boss is facing. Who knows? But when you. Again, this is the judge in action. When you're playing psychologist with the ineffective boss, you're inadvertently disempowering yourself because you're hypothesizing about a psychological issue that even if it turns out you're right, you can't personally treat it. You're not the psychologist, right? So this. So if you find yourself starting to go down that path of that judging, that negative emotion, just let it go. Second one, losing perspective by getting attached to one and only one solution. All right? And I've seen this many times in which the individual is saying, I have to persevere. I have to turn this product line around. No matter how much my funding gets cut or how often my boss and her boss change direction or I must get a big win so that boss can see how wrong he is. Or a common one. I'm going to HR and I'm not giving up until they fight for what's right. Now, there's just rarely one clear cut, superior solution to the myriad problems that are caused by an ineffective boss. But there are probably better solutions and there are certainly more options. Shazad Shamin calls it turning on your explore neural network, where you open up to explore, exploring more solutions to the problem before you jump ship. Right? A Third one is create an emotional sinkhole by making it personal or taking sides in political battles. So we get this little dynamic, right? Your ineffective boss leads to lower performance on the team, which leads to stress, which leads to making it personal and taking sides in what we might call a backseat covering political battle. So when you find yourself thinking about your boss in these kind of sweeping terms, and again, you feel your judge coming on, you recognize that you're only feeding the intensely negative energy that's there, and it does nothing to help you and does nothing to help your teammates, the people around you. So instead, there are really five things that I think you can try to view the situation from a different perspective and then handle it in a way that's going to work well for you, whether that's staying in it or making that leap toward another job or toward starting your own business. The first one, step back from that situation. And first, size up the degree to which his or her incompetence is truly affecting you. Sure, it's disappointing when your boss routine routinely lets you down, but maybe slowing down your professional growth for a few months because they're new to the role and they're not good at it yet. That's one thing, but that's not in the same league as your entire bonus being on the line, or even worse, your personal reputation being put in jeopardy with people you respect because the boss is ineffective. So size it up. It's a reflective exercise. It's subjective. It looks different for you from someone else and even for you in different situations at different times in your life. But it helps you calibrate that situation a little bit, quiet down those nasty saboteurs so that you're calibrating it to your unique needs, right? Is it short term and you just want to let it stop bothering you before you make a big change? Change? Or is this something that's really added up and you need to go and you just need to do that? Secondly, assess if you're in a politically messy situation. Oh, I hate this tip. But if you do think you're in a politically messy situation, you do have to begin some basic defensive action, right? Employees have lost their jobs due to ineffective managers who failed to protect them, right? So if you sense that level of risk and you feel it's important to keep your job. Oh, it pains me, but you gotta start documenting conversations, agreements. You gotta document open items and follow up emails after conversations. Try to have more group conversations. Oh, God, I just wanna gag when I say this, but look, if you objectively size it up as politically messy. Start doing those basic defensive actions. And no matter what, you must maintain your composure in a politically messy situation, no matter how absurd it becomes. The most absurd one to date is one that happened to a client about 24 years ago. He found himself receiving the wrong performance review from his general manager, who mixed him up with another direct report and launched into the review she prepared for the other man. Now, I will admit these two gentlemen were both Scandinavian. They looked a lot alike, but come on, they weren't twins. So he just maintained his composure, told her that the objectives she was covering were for the other man's projects. He also made sure he paid more attention to having accurate data about his performance in writing, which did prove to be helpful later. And please don't become ultra paranoid. Please don't stop trying to build a positive working relationship. Even in this situation, it is still good to try to build a positive working relationship. A couple more Consider multiple ways to deal with the situation, right? Is the ineffectiveness entrenched?

Vince Chen (38:25)

Is it?

Jennifer Selby Long (38:26)

Or is the boss just having a bumpy transition? Look at options like going out of your way to ensure that the team achieves its goals while the boss gets up to speed on new responsibilities. Or if there's something that you recognize, the boss is always going to be ineffective at this part, offer to help out in an area that your boss doesn't enjoy and doesn't do well. I had one client who's great at team building initiate a team building outing. His boss just isn't good at that. I had another one who is great, has an eagle eye on a project plan. Just offer to validate that project plan because she could see she's always going to be better at it than the boss. And then honestly, this one's a little touchy. But honestly, ask yourself, is it that the boss is completely ineffective? Or are you resisting adapting to a change that the boss is implementing? So, gosh, it's painful to admit, right, that it might be that the strategy is sound, but you hate it, or you just don't buy into the direction. And if that's the case, at least you're recognizing you're resisting adapting to this change. You don't want to go along with it. And so in that situation, you have a choice. You can either say, you know what, I'm going to voice my concerns and I'm going to commit to making it successful for as long as I'm here because that's my job, that's what I'm here to do, right? Or you're going to decide from a healthier, more grounded place this change just isn't for you and you are going to leave and maybe that's when you are going to go to build that business. But you're going to do it in a way that is very positive and constructive for those people around you and for yourself, because you'll have made a more intentional, informed choice rather than a choice that's driven by unexamined and unconscious feelings. That's when you wind up just working for a different flavor of a bad boss. Does that help?

Vince Chen (40:27)

Yes, absolutely. There's still so much to unpack, and not just when it comes to dealing with a boss, but also navigating office politics. These dynamics aren't just about one on one relationships. They are other players involved too. Interestingly, some people avoid using the term politics when discussing office environments. In fact, if you search for office politics on Google or LinkedIn, you won't find as much conversation about it as you might expect. But in reality, whether you're in a large corporation or a small team, as long as you're working with people, there's an inherent level of politics at play, and these politics play a crucial role, especially when it comes to driving change. You mentioned how some of your clients, including senior leaders, face power struggles or have to navigate complex stakeholder relationships. Power dynamics come into play, and as they think about leaving a job or dealing with ineffective mods, they also have to consider the bigger political picture they're in. I feel like this is an element often overlooked in the discussion of change management and leadership. Could you share your thoughts or experiences in helping clients manage these risks? How do you support them in balancing personal and organization change while surviving navigating the politics that comes with it?

Jennifer Selby Long (42:33)

Absolutely. Politics can exist for a couple different reasons, and I think it's important to recognize which of those situations you're in. So politics can exist for extremely unhealthy reasons in all seriousness, because you have a leader at the top who quite literally has a personality disorder. Now, people who suffer from that problem often aren't aware that they're suffering from it, but also do not respond to coaching. And the politics that they drive are from a whole different place. And it is going to be extremely difficult in that environment to manage your way through the politics and to drive change. And that's all that is. One whole animal that is, it is just beyond the scope, I think, of what we could cover in this particular episode of the podcast. But the other driver, which I find much, much more common is that politics exists because people have different needs and because people have different skill levels. And so someone who is particularly good at recognizing the needs of the people who wield the most powerful is going to be better at figuring out how to get those people on board with the change, right? And so it becomes so again, it's so funny that politics triggers our saboteurs, make us want to defend ourselves, right? They are all about survival. But in fact, we circle right back to empathy because being able to understand and empathize the competing needs of the many stakeholders involved in a change is the path forward. It is the path forward. You cannot move through the creative process that you need to have to construct that change in such a way that it meets multiple needs. You will not, without empathy, be able to bring together leaders who need to come together and who don't especially want to. So that, again, is the foundation above and beyond that multiple steps. And maybe that's the subject for another podcast. But you will want to defend yourself against politics. But opening yourself up to really putting yourself in the shoes of all of these people who seem to have power that perhaps you think they don't deserve, is the foundation to understanding what's going on and to being able to navigate, or as I like to think of it, surf your way through those political waves and those choppy waters.

Vince Chen (45:26)

Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget, subscribe to our show. Leave us top rated reviews. Check out our website and follow me on social media. I'm Vin, your ambitious human host. Until next time, Take care.

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Vince Chen (46:16)

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