The manager of the future is okay with the fact that they don't know the answers. They're okay with soliciting input from everybody and collaborating to figure out what the real problem is and the real solution.
In this episode
In episode 23 of season 2, we sit down with David Weiss, CEO of Weiss International, an expert in leadership development, innovation, and navigating complex organizational challenges. David’s experience as an author, speaker, and executive coach has equipped him with unparalleled insights into how leaders can thrive amid uncertainty and foster team environments that drive innovation and engagement.
In this episode, David dives into the essential qualities leaders need today, focusing on the power of emotional intelligence and how to lead effectively when ambiguity is the norm. He explores how fostering open dialogue and creating collaborative spaces can unlock a team’s creative potential. David also shares practical strategies for helping leaders at all levels develop the resilience and agility needed to adapt to ever-changing business landscapes.
With actionable takeaways and real-world examples, David explains how leaders can close leadership gaps, inspire their teams, and harness the collective intelligence of their organizations to solve complex problems. He emphasizes the importance of developing emotional maturity and facilitating conversations that lead to impactful decision-making.
Tune in to learn David’s proven frameworks for leading through change, building innovative cultures, and enhancing your leadership toolkit for the future.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone committed to expanding their leadership capacity and fostering team success.
Like this episode? Be sure to leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review and share the podcast with your colleagues.
05:22
The importance of emotional intelligence and why it’s essential for modern leadership
08:15
Building resilient teams
12:38
Strategies for facilitating open dialogue
16:45
Closing leadership gaps and empowering leaders at every level
21:10
How to approach leadership when faced with ambiguity
26:07
Embedding innovation into team culture
30:23
Real-life examples of leaders successfully navigating complex challenges
32:50
The role of emotional maturity in making decisions
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Connect with David on LinkedIn
- Check out Weiss International
- Check out David’s books
- Join the Supermanagers Slack community
- Connect with Aydin on LinkedIn
- Follow Fellow on LinkedIn
Transcript
Dr. David Weiss, welcome to the show.
David Weiss
Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Aydin Mirzaee
Yeah. Super excited to dig in. There’s so many different angles that we can start with, and it’s always hard to choose. But one thing I want to do is actually start with something maybe that we normally don’t talk about, which is the pre show, like how we actually got here, and it was really interesting. Very often for all the listeners getting into this podcast, we typically send out a bunch of questions to whoever the guest is, and then the guest will sometimes maybe leave some comments about the different questions. But then what was really interesting about the pre show coming into this podcast was, David, you. You actually came in and you gave us some pretty heavy edits, and I was very. And. And that came as such a pleasant surprise because it made me feel that you really, really care about how the narrative goes about and how people perceive the content. And, yeah, I just wanted to maybe just dig into that, and it feels like you really care about how you show up into any particular situation. And I’m just wondering, is that something that you’ve always done? I love that you took it so seriously.
David Weiss
First of all, Aidan, it’s a pleasure to be here, and thank you for inviting me on your show. You know, whenever you look at these questions, as a manager talking about super managers, it’s really important to know how you show up and to give it serious attention. People send out emails, and they just don’t read them, and they don’t realize that they’re sending out a message. You sent me a series of questions that showed that you were thoughtful about them, but I felt that as holistically, I could tell the story a little bit differently. And I wanted the story to be told macro to micro, so from the big picture down to specific things that managers might tell. So I was moving around a lot and thinking about the whole discussion that we would have and how that would be shaped.
Aydin Mirzaee
Yeah, I love it. It was a very pleasant surprise and really appreciated that. So let’s kick things off, though. So you have been the author of many books. What is a total book count now?
David Weiss
I’ve written seven books.
Aydin Mirzaee
Seven books and the Leadership Gap. When was the Leadership Gap published?
David Weiss
Oh, it was over a decade ago. And it was at a time when there were a lot of challenges going on at that stage. It was around the time of the meltdown in 2008, and we were faced with challenges of who the next leaders will be. And theoretically, people thought it was because the baby boomers were going to retire and because there were so many layoffs, it was almost like A skip generation that would become the new leaders. And they didn’t have the experience. And that was seen as some kind of a leadership gap. But that didn’t really hold up. You know, when you talk to the baby boomers, they said that there’s a gap. When you talk to the people who were potentially the future leaders, they said, there’s no gap, we can handle this. And I actually asked a bunch of people who were vice presidents who were, let’s say 55, and I’d ask them, you’re worried about the next stage of leadership. When did you become a VP? And they answered, well, at about age 42. And I said, so why are these other 42 year old people not qualified to take on the job? Were you qualified when you were 42? And so we talk about that, but what’s happened is that’s not the real leadership gap that emerged. What really happened was the leadership gap was in thinking capacity and it was in the capacity to deal with what I call complexity. Where when things are process driven, where you know what you’re going to do and you’re a manager because you know the answers and you can give answers, that is useful to an extent. But the world has evolved so significantly where now we don’t know anymore and we’re dealing with design thinking and innovation requirements, where we have to get to the point where people are comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. And the gap is many leaders are not comfortable with things when they’re not clear, when it’s not laid out, where they don’t have the answer themselves, where they can work with ambiguity, uncertainty and complexity. So that became the new leadership gap, which I’ve spent the next 10, 15 years working on and writing about.
Aydin Mirzaee
That is super interesting. And when did you find out that that was the actual leadership gap? In that it wasn’t necessarily age or it wasn’t that we were skipping a generation or anything like that. How did you come to that conclusion?
David Weiss
That’s a very interesting question. After I wrote the leadership gap, I wrote another book with some co authors called Leadership Solutions, which was how to measure the gap. But I kept working on it and then the book that went viral was the next one called Innovative Intelligence. And that was another co authored book I got translated. I was teaching in Shanghai. I was all over the place related to that book. That’s where complexity was first introduced as a redefinition of what the gap is. And that complexity or the ability to deal with that might be something that someone who’s older could deal with. Effectively or someone younger. It’s not an age variable. But we don’t have enough people who can deal with a world where it isn’t clear where people are comfortable saying, I don’t know, let’s talk about it. Let’s figure out what’s the real problem here. What might we do about it? A lot of people struggle with that at all ages. And when we are looking for new leaders, we need leaders who can deal with that kind of complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty.
Aydin Mirzaee
Yeah, that’s super interesting. A very basic level. If you’ve been in a leadership role for longer, there is a higher probability that you have seen some unusual situations that deviate from the norm. And so 2008 was definitely deviating from the norm and so was, you know, Covid and the things that happened in the last few years. So looking into 2024, is this still what you would say the biggest gap is? Just being able to preparing and dealing with the unexpected.
David Weiss
It really was brought out during COVID that what was possibly not the major issue during COVID it became the dominant issue. And in fact, a number of people rose to the occasion and did Covid well, because everybody accepted that no one knew what to do. We all were lost. It was a terrible situation for the world. But managers weren’t expected to have the answers during COVID because we were getting going remote. We were doing emergency response. There were just so many things going on. But what I’m finding is now that we’re sort of out of COVID We’re not really out of COVID but it’s not at the same level. And people are going back to sharing office space together in buildings. There’s a regression that’s occurring where people are going back to the comfortable space they were in in the past, where they’re starting to not utilize some of the capabilities that they fostered during COVID And now we’re going back to let’s do it the way we always did it. As if the way we always did it was good, when in fact, maybe the way we learned how to do it during COVID would help us do even better.
Aydin Mirzaee
Now, I’d love to dive into an example if you have one, because I think you are absolutely right. I remember when Covid first happened and everyone’s remote. All these changes happened. You know, people started thinking about it’s not managing by looking at someone doing the work, but it’s managing the work through managing the outcomes. And there was all these different things that materialized. And you’re right, like it does feel like everybody’s going back to the way that they used to do things and regressing, like you said. Are there examples or are there specific ones that you’ve seen where you’re thinking, why are you going back to doing that particular thing?
David Weiss
Well, remote office is clearly the one that glares in everyone’s face. You know, the idea of hybrid and leaders coming out and saying, well, we must have you in the office three days a week. Or in the office, meaning the office that we’re co located for three days a week, not virtually. And one organization came up with a really nice message instead of return to office, which a lot of people find is offensive because when I’m at home, I’m in my office. So not return to office. Or the worst one is return to work. What do you mean I wasn’t working. That doesn’t work. So one organization came up with a line which I really liked and that is they called it return to people. Because really what we need to do is we need to have engagement of people. So that is an added value of co locating. But there seems to be a number of people who are comfortable with the way they always manage it. They want to see people, they want to be able to drop in on them or whatever they want. And perhaps they are losing some of the agility and the engagement that people really developed in that environment where people were working remotely didn’t work for everybody. Some people want to go back into a co located space full time. But I think we have to mature and recognize what’s the good part, what’s the part that isn’t as good, and leverage it accordingly.
Aydin Mirzaee
Yeah, I think that that’s a key. None of these things are cut and dry. You have to figure out the best parts of both. But I do agree that it does feel a little bit like a pendulum.
David Weiss
Right.
Aydin Mirzaee
Like we swung hard one way, now it feels like it’s swinging the other way. And we’re not quite at the middle point just yet, but that’s it.
David Weiss
I mean, it’s not my theory. It’s a great philosopher, Hegel, who talked about theory, that you have a theory and then you have the antithesis. Usually the pendulum swings. And the real challenge is not to go back to that original theory, but to go back to what we call a synthesis. And it seems like a number of people are gravitating towards what they’re comfortable with and they’re not finding the best of what we learned from that environment and they’re just going back to the way it Always was. And that’s perhaps a lost opportunity.
Aydin Mirzaee
Yeah. So I guess, like the. Just going back to the. To the modern leadership gap of being able to prepare for the unexpected. If you’ve had experience and you’ve kind of lived through these situations, maybe you get better at it. But are there ways that you know, if someone came to you, because amongst the many things that you do, author of many books, international speaker, all the things you do, you also do executive coaching. So if you had a coaching client that said, I want to be better at, you know, preparing for the unexpected so that when the situation arises, I can do well there. Is there anything that someone can do? Or you just have to wait for unexpected things to happen.
David Weiss
So one of the challenges is that rewiring the brain takes lots of time. So if I was brought up in a world where I learned how to do things, I did it. And when there was a question I figured out how to make it right, then it’s challenging to deal with an ambiguous world. So one of the big ideas in the book, Innovative Intelligence, that I quite proud of, that work that we came up with, that we don’t need innovative leaders, in other words, leaders who love this complexity space. Because I hired you and you’re as innovative as you are, I’m not going to make you more innovative. But what I need is a leader of innovation. I need a leader who is capable of drawing out the innovative capacities and the abilities to deal with complexity of my team around me. So it’s about my maturity. So one big idea was I need to develop people who could facilitate the conversation and be open to the complexity, even if they’re not the best at dealing with it, and then being able to work with others to figure out what’s happening. Which led us to a second probably big idea in that book, which was the importance of emotional intelligence and innovation. That in fact, because it’s all about drawing it out of others and being mature enough to be comfortable saying, you don’t know the answer yourself, or I don’t even know the question myself, and we need to talk about it, I have to be okay emotionally with myself and not feel like it’s compromising my authority, compromising my position. The manager of the future is okay with the fact that they don’t know the answers. They’re okay with soliciting input from everybody and collaborating to figure out what the real problem is and the real solution. And they’re emotionally capable of being mature and not feeling that they’re marginalized because they’re not the one who has all the answers to the problems they’re facing. So yeah, it’s, you can develop them, but it’s not developing their own ability to deal with complexity. I’m developing their ability to draw it out of others.
Aydin Mirzaee
You know, I think this is such an important time because the obviously we had the pandemic and I really truly feel, and you know, we’ve talked about this a little bit on the show with various guests, this influx of all the AI tools that are coming into the mix and how it’s going to cause some change. And it is unexpected in the way that it is so rapid, you know, the way that it’s coming. So people will have to change the way that they’re working. And so dealing with the unexpected, with change, with all these things is pretty critical. So I love that you said so. Part of it is you’ve got to be emotionally intelligent. Sounds like you’ve got to be growth minded. You’ve got to be secure in your own abilities and the value that you bring and egoless to facilitate this. What are the ways or habits that you’ve seen that people have or maybe some practical ways to facilitate these innovative discussions or ways to make change happen.
David Weiss
They’re simple things that people can do. It’s not all massive transformation. One thing I tell leaders to think about when they’re dealing with an issue is why do they talk first? Why do they tell their idea first? Because what tends to happen, especially when it’s complex and you speak first and say, well here’s my idea, because you’re the authority and you’re the power. The probability is other people are going to offer their ideas in a standard deviation around yours and you’re going to miss out on possible more diverse ideas because of your authority. So what if instead of talking first, you talk last and you will hear what other people talk about and get their perspectives on what’s the real problem or what’s the real solution. And then you position yourself as adding value. It’s the great line that one leader once said was never tell people things they already know. What does that mean? It means I got to find out what you know and what are you thinking about before I talk. And then I’m in a value add position. So that’s one very simple thing to change. And if you can’t talk last because you can’t hold back, at least talk third. You know, it just let’s hear other voices before yours.
Aydin Mirzaee
As you said it just never tell people what they already know. But Specifically, in order to not tell them, you have to ask them questions so that you know what it is that they know. It’s just such a brilliant point that I feel like is probably a very common error. And you think how much over communication probably happens unnecessary and it probably just bores people. So I think even when going back to this idea where sometimes people are critical of meetings, if the leader comes in, does all the talking and people are thinking, I already know that, you can see why they would walk away and think that was a useless meeting.
David Weiss
As an example, one article I wrote and all these articles. I have 60 articles on the Weiss International CA website under articles. One of them is called Flip Meetings. And it’s a really cool idea. And that idea comes from education, where in education now there’s a lot of people who are talking about Flip Education. And the idea there is that in the past, the lecture was in the class and homework was where you processed it. But nowadays we got better lectures through MOOCs or anything that you can look at at home and let’s turn the class into homework where we’re processing it with the teacher. So it’s called Flip Education. So I wrote an article called Flip Meetings, which borrowed that idea. Because what a lot of people do in the meetings is they do it to share information, to give updates, to hear about what’s going on. And the discussion then happens where someone has a dialogue in the meeting with another person and they say, take it offline. Go ahead and talk about it after the meeting. What if we flipped it and we said, you know, you have to read the material that we were going to present in advance and let’s allocate 80% of our time to our meeting to that discussion that we might have taken offline. That’s a flip meeting, and it totally changes the nature of the conversation. You asked, how do we get more complexity conversations going on? One of the challenges is time. And the real answer isn’t to make new time, it’s to reuse old time. And if our time in meetings is a waste of time, then we need to have expectations of you coming into the meeting ready to discuss and leverage that meeting to do that discussion about complexity and generate innovative answers together rather than taking it offline.
Aydin Mirzaee
Yeah, I love this concept. I feel like if everyone did this for their meetings, they might, who knows, maybe start loving their meetings. What a concept.
David Weiss
When I talk to leaders, let’s say I’m coaching someone and they’re talking about their meetings, and I said, they complain. Oh, my staff Find the meetings boring. I might ask the question, and how do you find the meetings? Are you fine? And they pause for a second and say, I find them boring. No one’s controlling you. You can run your meeting any way you want. No one’s telling you how you have to do that meeting. Why are you running boring meetings? And the answer is they don’t have any idea of how else to do it. So we need to explore that and talk about that to make that valuable time useful.
Aydin Mirzaee
So I think another related topic, again just on this managing complexity, preparing for the unexpected is also this idea of question asking, which I think is also related to the leader not being the first person to talk.
Speaker C
Does this sound familiar? You wake up, take a look at your calendar and see it’s filled with meetings, project meetings, stand ups, weekly check ins, one on ones, town halls, and those are just the internal ones. Some are productive, but some are a total waste of time. How often have you thought about the time your organization is wasting in unnecessary meetings? I vet a bunch. Now consistent consider that in the US there are 55 million meetings happening each day and 85 to 90% have no agenda. Fellow is on a mission to solve the meeting problem by offering the only meeting management tool that optimizes every part of your team’s meeting workflow. With 500 meeting templates, integrated action items, collaborative meeting notes, and AI recording and transcription, Fellow helps teams and organizations get more done with less. Go to Fellow app to start your free trial and start having fewer, more effective meetings today.
Aydin Mirzaee
So one of the things that you advocate, you’ve also written an article about this is just creating a culture of question asking within organizations. So someone in the audience is probably listening and thinking, yeah, question asking. I think people ask questions in my company, in my organization. How do they know if they actually have a culture of question asking?
David Weiss
Are they asking questions or are they always telling people what to do? Or finding a way to ask a question where they’re really telling people what to do in the question. What I really would like people to do is to ask questions that help people go deeper. And this is relevant to group meetings as well as individual coaching. So for example, if someone says we need to really improve that process, a good question. I like what questions. So what does improve mean to you? All of a sudden the person has to go another layer down and they’d have to explain it or you know, I’m really upset about that. What does upset mean to you? So it’s questions that help the person articulate and clarify what are they really thinking about? And a lot of times by verbalizing it, they’re hearing themselves for the first time explain what they’re thinking about. And it works in meetings, in groups, but it also works in coaching. The good coach is someone who actually is asking questions. It’s not about giving answers. This isn’t a sports coach that says you do this and you do that. That’s not what coaching is. It’s about helping the individual by asking these kinds of questions so that they can self discover what might be their options and which one makes the most sense to them to make better choices. So I need these questions to come as the preferred way. One more point. I tell managers that if you have an option of either saying something declaratively or saying it as a question, you can never go wrong by saying it as a question. But if you say it declaratively, people will say, oh, that’ll never work. But if you asked it as a question, then you don’t lose your credibility because it’s not wrong or right, it’s a question. So they’ll say, well, you know what, I tried that, or this is what I’m thinking about, or this is what I’m not thinking about. And you’ll engage in a dialogue which is far more meaningful.
Aydin Mirzaee
This, I feel like, is such an important point. Can we talk about an example of what’s a way of saying something declaratively versus asking it as a question?
David Weiss
Let’s take a situation of someone who is, let’s say, coaching another individual and the person overhears that individual that they’re coaching having an argument with someone else. They could say, I heard you arguing, we really got to stop that. Or I could say, I noticed that you were arguing with that other person. What’s going on? You’re not declaring a position, you’re allowing the other person to ultimately define what occurred in any way they see it. And then you can ask follow up questions like what might have been an alternative you could have used in that situation instead of saying, you know what? I prefer you doing this. These are ways that managers are empowering the individual to basically be able to find their own answer rather than you parenting the individual and saying, this is what you should be doing.
Aydin Mirzaee
And to make this like even more clear, what is the downsides of one we talked about which you said, you’re not going to end up being wrong, but what are some downsides of why doing the declarative version can really backfire?
David Weiss
You’re assuming, you know, one of the things I tell people I’ve designed. And one of the other articles on that website, Weiss International ca, that people might want to just download, they’re all free to download, is an article I wrote called Clear Leadership Coaching. And one of the things I say in Clear Leadership Coaching is that what you really need to do is you need to. When you’re talking to people, even if you want to give advice, I suggest that leaders ask permission. Would it be okay if I offered you a suggestion instead of just giving the suggestion so that you’re allowing the individual to still make a choice about? Is that what I want to do? We need to treat employees as adults, always assume that they have to make their own choices, good choices, bad choices. And we as managers need to help them consider all the options by asking them questions, what else might you do? But then they ultimately need to make that choice and they’ve got to own it. So that applies in coaching, but that applies also with the team where if you make that declarative statement, managers sometimes don’t realize that they’ve got power. And if they’ve got power and they say that this is what I think you should do, people might not push back. They might just do it because you have power. And that ultimately could lead to really bad decisions because you don’t really know what might be the right answer all the time. It’s coming out of your need to tell people what to do and resolve it. But what if it’s wrong? You really want the person to be able to own it.
Aydin Mirzaee
I love this, and I specifically think that we’ve talked about it on the show before, but every manager also needs to be a coach, right? It is a very valuable skillset to have. I love your framework on Clear. And we have this really cool video set up. So for those listening via audio, we’re going to leave it in the show. Notes on how you can access the video portion of this. But, David, you actually have something on screen and you have a whiteboard. I’d love for you to just take us through what is Clear Leadership Coaching.
David Weiss
Well, I’m going to take you through the back of the room and show you what it looks like. So I’ve set this up with two cameras, and this is a methodology, by the way, that I developed during COVID because what happened was during COVID we faced a situation where everyone was doing synchronous learning and it was very boring. So how do you mix it up and make it interesting and even run meetings in different ways? So this is One technique I use in addition to many others. So clear leadership coaching is all about how a manager needs to coach. It’s not the same thing as the way I would coach as a professional certified coach for the International Coaching Federation. I have a cadence. It’s a certain amount of time. People throughout the world would be scheduling their time with me and that would occur. The manager coaches more in the moment and it always operates within a context. And that context is going to be different for each person. So it’s subjective. Whatever you feel about that reality may be different than what I experience. And throughout, we need you to be respectful. And one way to be respectful is to make sure that you don’t give advice. If you’re going to be going into the advice mode, you’re ultimately taking over. And we need to make sure that the coaching as a manager makes the ownership with the person you’re coaching. So really, if we think about a coaching discussion and in a context, we’re always showing respect. What ends up happening is that, let’s say you have 15 minutes to do it. At the outset, I want you to listen to the person. So maybe the first four minutes of the coaching discussion is all about what’s on your mind. What would you like to get out of this conversation? At the end of the 10, 15 minutes we have together, how might you think about doing some actions as a result of that? What do you want to gain out of this discussion? Ask two or three questions to try to really understand what the person needs to talk about when they are talking with you. And if it’s initiated by the employee, then they truly have to define it. But even if you’re initiating it, as a manager, you want to talk to the employee. Open it up by sharing what you noticed, but then go ahead and say, tell me more about that. What’s going on? What’s the situation? And enter into a listening mode right away. The next stage, which is the bulk of it, let’s say seven minutes of your 15 minute conversation is on being empathic. I don’t just want you to listen. I want you to listen and ask questions to help the person go deeper. So, for example, you know, you might ask questions of, you know, the person might say, I’m struggling with an issue. What does struggling mean to you? Or anytime you hear an emotion, what does that mean to you? Or if a person uses a metaphor, you know, I feel like I’m drowning. What does drowning mean to you? By doing that, you’re helping them go deeper or create connections. How does this relate to something else that occurred last week. By asking these questions and asking them to comment on it, they’re going to surface the issues and think about what might be the ways that they can understand this issue differently and come to their own resolution. But in the end, we need to get action. And I give the last four minutes of our 15 minute conversation, 4, 7 and 4 to ultimately say, what might you do about this situation? Here’s a secret in coaching. We’re so used to in strategy and in work to develop long range plans. The secret in coaching, it’s all about small steps. It’s not about big steps. It’s about what’s one small thing you can do tomorrow that will make a difference. It’s like during COVID where you know, you might have been sitting on the couch the entire time and someone said, can you at least just stand up, you know, take one step to get some movement and then you can self propel yourself. So go small on the actions in coaching and that’s what the action is. So within an overall context, you know, what is it? Is it a safe environment? What is it to you? How are you experiencing it? Really listen to the person, use your empathy to take them deeper, to make connections and then get to the action that ultimately would be the small step that they want to try. But throughout, make sure that you’re demonstrating that respect. And that’s what CLEAR stands for, context, listen, empathy, action and respect throughout. It’s a technique that we’ve tested with many, many, many managers. We’ve taught it virtually as a technique to learn how managers can do this in a two hour or even a one hour session and practice it in groups. So it works really well. And I wrote an article on it called Clear Leadership Coaching which I posted on the Weiss International CA website, which is a free download, you’re invited to download it. But hopefully we can really improve the conversations and the coaching that our managers are having with their employees.
Aydin Mirzaee
I love it. I mean, I feel like in, you know, very short amount of time you gave us a masterclass on how coaching is actually done and I love how it’s so practical. The times are even set of roughly spend this much time in each category and yeah, I think that really makes it very clear. So thank you for walking us through that. I did want to, as we get close to the end of our time together, I did want to just ask a few rapid fire questions. So the first one, the first question is, what is something that you believe that many others don’t?
David Weiss
I Believe that the management capability that is most crucial nowadays is dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty. It’s not about knowing the answers. It’s about being comfortable with not knowing and discovering what are the real surface issues that we need to address. And what are those innovative solutions. And the more managers are comfortable with, I don’t know, but let’s work on it together to figure it out. I think the better the managers will be delivering what organizations require.
Aydin Mirzaee
All right, and question number two is something you wish managers would stop doing.
David Weiss
I think managers should stop talking first. Managers typically think that the way that they demonstrate that they’re a leader and smart is put your cards on the table, say what you believe. But you don’t realize, managers, that what you are inadvertently doing is reducing the span of ideas that people will be willing to contribute. If you go first, most people will give a comment that’s sort of related to what you said. And if you went last instead of going first, what would likely occur is you’ll hear all divergent ideas and you won’t be losing that asset. So don’t go first, start going last and learn from others what they’re thinking about before you limit it by saying your opinion.
Aydin Mirzaee
I love it. And so what is something that you wish managers would start doing? Something that maybe not a lot of people do today, but they should start doing.
David Weiss
Managers need to become far more effective at asking questions rather than thinking that they always got to give answers. We’re in a situation where no one knows the answers to a lot of questions. If the manager gives the answer, there’s a reasonable chance that they’re not correct. But because they have authority, people will simply do it because they don’t want to push back against the authority. But if you ask the question, most people will be able to provide whatever they think is correct. And you might get better choices that are made in those situations.
Aydin Mirzaee
I love it. And the final question we like to ask everybody who comes on the show is for all the managers and leaders constantly looking to get better at their craft. Are there any final tips, tricks, or words of wisdom that you would leave them with?
David Weiss
Well, I think always learn. For example, I put up 60 articles that I wrote and chapters from each of my books on the Weiss International CA as a gift. No fee to anybody to download. I learned a long time ago that anything I wrote that’s more than one year old has no market value unless I give it away for free. So ultimately, learn, keep learning. When we talk about innovative capacity, one measure of it is learning agility. You know, I want managers to be hungry to keep learning. Don’t assume, you know, keep learning. Keep experimenting with new ideas and make sure that you have something other than work that is motivating you, that stimulates you. Join a choir. Pick up the guitar. Do something you know. Do not do a sport. Do something that would work well for you. Start dancing, but find something that gives your life other meaning. Be with your family. That is more than just work. And make sure that you’re able to put work in perspective, that it’s the loyalty to work is not always reciprocated. Make sure that your life is meaningful outside of work as well as inside work.
Aydin Mirzaee
I think that’s great advice and a great place to end it. David, thank you so much for doing this.
David Weiss
You’re very welcome. It’s a real pleasure to be here and thank you for hosting it.
Aydin Mirzaee
And that’s it for today. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the Super Managers Podcast. You can find the show notes and transcript at www. Fellow.app/supermanagers. If you like the content, be sure to rate, review and subscribe so you can get notified when we post the next episode. And please tell your friends and fellow managers about it. It’d be awesome if you could help us spread the word about the show. See you next time.
Latest episodes
-
Alan Todd, Udemy Executive and Author, on Cohort-Based Learning, Psychological Safety, and Inspiring Curiosity in Teams
Episode 24
Alan Todd
-
Charlie Gilkey, Founder of Productive Flourishing, on Tackling Productivity Gaps and Fixing Broken Processes
Episode 22
Charlie Gilkey
-
Charlene Li, Disruptive Leadership Expert, on Customer-Centric Strategy, Big Gulp Moments, and AI Transformation
Episode 21
Charlene Li
Fellow Newsletter
Get exclusive interviews and leadership best practices directly into your inbox.
-
Episode 3
Mark Frein, COO at Oyster on Being a Multifunctional Executive and Harnessing Pattern Recognition in Leadership Roles
Mark Frein
COO at Oyster
-
Episode 87
You Won’t Have All the Answers: Why Being Intellectually Honest and Disassociating from Ideas Makes You a Better Lead
Rémi Guyot
Chief Product Officer at BlaBlaCar
-
Episode 10
Empowering Your Team to Lead Fulfilling Lives
Vlad Magdalin
CEO AT WEBFLOW
-
Episode 4
Rob Khazzam, CEO at Float on Building a Culture of Urgency, Customer Obsession, and Risk Tolerance
Rob Khazzam
Co-Founder and CEO at Float
-
Episode 33
Balancing Challenge and Care at Work: The Radical Candor Approach
Amy Sandler
Chief Content Officer at Radical Candor
-
Episode 1
Top 10 Leadership Lessons From the Supermanagers Podcast
-
Episode 80
Are You a Micromanager or a Coach? Why Leaders Should Avoid Giving Advice and What To Do Instead
Dr. Julia Milner
Leadership Professor at EDHEC Business School