Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  00:00

Julia, welcome to the show.

Dr. Julia Milner  02:58

Thank you so much for having me.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  02:59

Before we dig in, I know that you know your leadership researcher, your professor, you had played the role of an academic director of the Global MBA program at HEC Business School you consult with many companies and work to create better leaders everywhere. Before we dig into a lot of those very specific things I wanted to ask you, when you first started getting interested in leadership, what were some of the initial things that you learned and maybe some of the misunderstandings or things that you start believing differently about as time passed?

Dr. Julia Milner  03:35

For me, when I started to grab a leadership role myself, um, I guess, I was falling into the trap that a lot of new-time leaders do. So I felt I have to do it all and all at the same time. And best know, also, like, just very quickly have like, huge successes and just push very hard. And I think often, yeah, you then push yourself too hard. And I think it’s so important, what I learned is to just, you know, just to sit and to listen, or to really listen to everyone who’s in your team and to try and to understand things first, before you put anything into actions that were so important. So if I could give, any tips for your time leaders, I would just listen. Just listen and take it in. 

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  04:25

Yeah, no, that that’s excellent advice. And so you have focused a lot on leadership coaching. You’ve done a really popular TEDx Talk where you, you know, talk about the fact that you don’t believe in advising on a leadership strategy. Would love to hear more about that. How could leaders not give advice that seems a little bit counterintuitive at first?

Dr. Julia Milner  04:47

Yeah, it’s very funny because I just gave a tip right? For new talent leaders, so there you go, but yes,  I mean, the general concept behind it is that yeah, we tend to, as leaders,  we tend to feel like we need to have the answer for everything. And so we give advice. And I like to sometimes compare this to doing a diet because it’s something that you know, the pandemic people can relate to. So maybe you gain a little bit of weight, and you kind of like think like, Okay, well, I, I want to get back into shape. So when somebody comes up with this, you know, specific eating plan and tells you to do this, and then this and this, and that. And then it might have worked for one person, but it’s not you. So for example, I love wine, I’m in southern France, right? So I love having a glass of wine. And I have two young children. So there’s always a lot of chocolate. I don’t know why. It’s just one of these. So if you would give me like a diet plan and tell me, okay, you can’t drink any alcohol, you can’t eat any chocolate- that  sounds bad. But anyway, then I would probably fail. Okay, so it would make much more sense to maybe ask me about, you know, my day-to-day life? And what can I maybe do more of or less of? Because it fits with what I’m doing? That’s kind of like the same with leadership, you know, so maybe you as a leader think, Oh, we could do it this way. But your team member has been working on the project, and has been talking to the customers and has lots of new insights. So by telling everyone what to do, exactly. You’re micromanaging and then you miss out on all of these great opportunities. So and it’s also much less motivating. So going back to the diet, if you tell me, okay, he these many grams in the morning and this much? What is popular right now, not any more than the cabbage soup diet? That was many years ago, but I’m sure there’s something gave men or whatever. But it’s, it’s also not so motivating, right? Because it’s like, okay, they want me to do this. And then yeah, maybe it’s easier to follow in the beginning because you have like a plan. But then there’s nothing else coming from it. So if leaders rather empower others to come up with their solution, you know, so instead of telling them what to do, ask them questions like, Okay, what I’ve been doing so far, what has been working? What’s your opinion, you know, then working that out. And yeah, it’s much more motivating also, for people

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  07:10

In the world that I come from, which is starting tech companies and working with, or having a lot of friends that are founders, it’s, it’s very similar because you’ll often get business or startup advice. And if you follow this stuff blindly, you will fail. Because, like, the advice applies to very, very, very specific scenarios. And it doesn’t work. You know, I find one of the things that I’ve heard is that it’s not that you can’t share experience, but it’s much better to say, Hey, I had a situation and it was similar here was the context, here’s what happened, here’s what I decided. And here’s what the outcomes were. Now take from that what you will do not copy blindly. 

Dr. Julia Milner  07:55

So, this is what we would be calling mentoring. So this would be of somebody you know, who has more experience in the field, like shares their experience with somebody who has like, less experience and what are they doing? And then from there, and so mentoring is similar to coaching in the sense of you do similar skills, like, you know, listening and questioning, and so on. So, yeah, I guess there are some overlaps. But we sometimes say, you know, if you’re coaching you try to less bring in, like your own experience on how it was, but you just really just focus more on the person and try to understand more about their situation and their perspective. So um, sometimes leaders then you know, say to you in the beginning, oh, but then I’m doing nothing if I’m, if I’m not giving advice, I am doing nothing, sorry, but, you know, I’m in a leadership position for a reason, I shouldn’t be doing something. And I always compare it with like, a, to a duck, you know, we’re just like swimming on the, on a lake. And from the outside, it might look very calm, and you know, we don’t do much, but, underneath, we’ll have a lot of paddling to Yeah, to listening and to asking the right question and to challenge people and, you know, to also provide some structure to the conversation.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  09:09

Yes, this is interesting, because, like, this is what I wanted to get at, which is the, you know, does that mean that like, if all you’re doing is listening and asking questions, you know, should we just basically go hire, you know, executive coaches to be the managers at our companies?

Dr. Julia Milner  09:24

It’s so funny that you said if I’m just doing listening, because it’s like one of the skills which are so how can we say sometimes underappreciated, we like to think everybody is like such a great listener right? I mean, if you ask I don’t know your partner or you know I even greatness not usually everybody goes like yes, of course. You’re listening and well, you something else, you know, you go like through the shopping list in your head or so. So even if I wouldn’t be outside, you might like signal things that you’re listening there’s, for coaching perspective want to dig into I guess they are more than more levels, you know, too, to I don’t know, to listen, for example, sends a reframe. So how is somebody talking and should be matching that more and so there are lots of more things, I guess, I guess you can do. So I always would say invest more time into really, really good listening skills, that will be kind of like the first step. But, um, because you mentioned executive coaches, so what we’ve been seeing now, um, I guess, at the beginning of where someone’s executive coaching external coaches coming into an organization, and, you know, working with the high performers, so really like, Oh, you do such a great job, here, you have your executive coach, and then kind of like, also followed into a bit more, or you’re doing such a bad job. So you go and talk to the coach. And, but nowadays, what we’re seeing is more of these leaders as coaches. So these are your normal, ordinary, you know, managers who are including coaching skills in the way they interact. So it was kind of like, part of a leadership style, I always say, you know, it shouldn’t be like the only styles or should not be like, you know, coaching is not the solution for everything. And but it’s nowadays times and the different generations and the way we work on the right change, definitely something that leaders should be Yeah, should be aware of.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  11:19

So I love all of the nuances here. I 100% agree that getting good at listening is a very difficult skill. We’ve had many guests who’ve talked about active listening, and then like investing in learning how to be an active listener. And it’s one of those things where most people are probably worse than average, but they believe that they’re better than average. So I 100% agree with you there. So this is interesting. So you’re kind of like making drawing this line in between mentorship, and leadership. And I found it interesting that you didn’t have a one size fits all answer to leadership. And so coaching, he said, is not the answer for everything. And it’s not like the main modality that you should operate in what are some other I guess, states of leadership? So we’ve talked about mentor mentorship and coaching,

Dr. Julia Milner  12:14

Whilst I’m always saying, you know, you shouldn’t give advice. Of course, there are moments where you have to be much more directive as a leader. So let’s just think it’s about an emergency, you know, and then you ask, so how do you feel about it? I mean, not that coaching is all about feeling. I just trying to give you all the other extremes. So of course, if there’s time pressure, or if somebody is new, and doesn’t know the answer, you know, you can ask them 50 times, how do I get to the I don’t know, to the train station, and they don’t know the city, they won’t know, they can pull up their phone, I guess and put on the map, but it’s about, you know, knowing also when to use it. But my experience and working with leaders and having been a leader and being a leader myself, I think is we tend to often to fall directly into advice. So somebody comes and says, Hey, can you help me, what am I doing, and we go directly into, you should be doing this, or this, or this or this. So we directly go into it. And I think there are so much more opportunities, and to coach people through things, and it’s to the benefit of everyone. So to the leader who, you know, long term saves time, because they can focus on more strategic tasks, and they’re not micromanaging, it’s very beneficial for the team member because it’s more motivating. And they can bring the input in. And it’s also beneficial for the organization. So we know that you know, coaching also leads to leads to good organizational outcomes, if done the right way.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  13:37

For someone who is maybe like listening to this and saying, You know what, like, I want to apply some more coaching tactics, to my management style. What are some things that they can think about? Or how can they start to get acquainted with some tack? With some techniques? I know you talked about it, you know, start with listening, what are some next steps that you think people can take?

Dr. Julia Milner  14:01

I’ve done a bit of research on the topic and I think of course one way is to do a training course of course, but there’s also learning by doing and you know, or reading some books but I think it’s getting more familiar with the concept of coaching because coaching is probably the term itself is probably like listening you know, everybody thinks they can do it or yeah just coach or they think like oh coaching is this you know, the soccer coaches to stand on the side of the lines and you know, it’s good to do it. So what we find in our research for example, when we ask managers to you know, coach somebody for five minutes, just the way they understand coaching because I mean that’s often the reality in organizations you know, people say okay, well we should do this coaching so please coach your team more. So what we found is what people naturally do is what I do when I turn motivational micromanaging, so they tend to talk them a lot of it also they say things like you Yea, and wouldn’t that be a nice idea? And have you tried and why don’t you do this? So it’s like a repackaging you advise behind, like a closed question. So you’re still giving advice, but you just do it with a bit more enthusiasm. And, and I think we do all of that. And maybe we have like cheery leaders. But they are more cheerleaders than right. I mean, this is scored, I mean, but it’s not coaching. So in coaching, again, I would let the person arrive at their solution, I empower them to come up with their ideas. And that’s, that’s a bit different. 

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  15:34

So I just want to emphasize how interesting, like the phrasing you use was that most people, you know, they’re doing motivational micromanaging, their packaging, the advice that they’re giving with enthusiasm, and they think that that’s coaching, I just, I think the I think labels are really powerful. And sometimes, like, labels explain very well, what might not be obvious otherwise, but that, but that’s super interesting, like the way that you go to a soccer game and say, way to go, Jerry, you know, something like that. That’s not coaching. Okay. So you can proceed, let us know, like, what, what are some steps people can take to do coaching?

Dr. Julia Milner  16:18

Well, I think it’s, it’s good if you have a positive attitude. So if we talk about skills, the skills, we kind of, like develop from our studies. And from what we know is out there, around, you know, listening, questioning, goal setting and feedback, then we have things like providing structure, working with strengths, working with values, and working more with a solution-focused approach. So these are all things that come then into play. And what we found is that the basis for all of this is empathy. And I think that’s so so important. And I had like many leaders are saying to me, oh, Juliet, you know what I mean, I struggled before the pandemic, I struggled with empathy, like face to face. But now, you know, I’m leaving, like, virtually, and I’m sorry about how am I going to be empathetic, you know, while I’m there. So I think that’s something so, so important for leaders to Yeah, I don’t know if you can say learn. But I think it’s also a skill that absolutely can be learned. And it might be easier for some than for others. But we know that to be a successful coach and our studies, the basis was empathy. So if you can build that connection, and if you have that empathy, it’s much easier to put the other skills to it. But I want to encourage you this because what we saw in our studies is that in the beginning, he just might not be coaching, but with a very short amount of training, they can improve on all of those skills, some easier to improve or quicker to improve than others, but they can for sure improve. So there’s hope.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  17:58

I like that, I guess one of the scenarios that, like, we probably run into this because we get a lot of managers who are experts in their fields. And then and then it makes sense. You know, there’s, there are some rational reasons for us to, you know, turn them into managers and leaders of teams. But you’ve also talked about, you know, you can’t, you can not be the expert in the room, and be a great manager by, you know, figuring out the expertise of other people. So I guess, like, you know, for the new managers, like for someone that says is your senior leader within an organization, you’re about to promote someone into the manager role. What conversations should you have with that new manager?

Dr. Julia Milner  18:49

It’s kind of like a paradox, isn’t it? So you’re right, we often promote people because of that technical expertise in whatever field that is because they’re doing such a great job that will say, okay, here now we have a leadership position, but it requires different skills, right? So what made you a good team player doesn’t necessarily make you’re a good leader. So it’s really about your supporting people to be able to develop those skills, I guess, what are they looking for? I mean, I will always be looking for you know, willingness to learn openness and interest in people. I think empathy is also a very good one to look for. And to see that but uh, you know, I’m a big believer that you can learn, you can learn to be a good leader, so, so it’s also giving people a chance.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  19:40

[AD BREAK BEGINS] Hey, there. Just a quick note, before we move on to the next part, if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably already doing one on one meetings. But here’s the thing. We all know that one on one meetings are the most powerful, but at the same time, the most misunderstood concept in practice and management. That’s why we spent over a year compiling the best information, the best expert advice into this beautifully designed 90 Plus page ebook. Now, don’t worry, it’s not a single-spaced font, you know, lots of text. There’s a lot of pictures. It’s nice, easily consumable information, we spent so much time building it. And the great news is that it’s completely free. So head on over to fellow dot app slash blog to download the Definitive Guide on one, it’s there for you, we hope you enjoy it. And let us know what you think. And with that said, let’s go back to the interview. [AD BREAK ENDS]  So you outline some of the skills that you might look for in a leader, I’m curious for some things like, say that you’re hiring from the outside, and you’re looking to test for a skill like empathy, because, you know, we’ve identified that that is important. How do you test for empathy?

Dr. Julia Milner  20:56

So hard, isn’t it? I mean, also, a lot of the ways we interview, you know, you kind of like can prepare for a topic. And then you’re like, but I guess I would always do what you were doing with me right now. So it’s about, you know, asking about, you know, when was the time so share with me, how did you do this? You know, when was a time where you were stressed out? And how did you know, so letting people I guess, it’s harder to, to not to lie, but I guess, you know, if you just ask what, what type of leadership do you like? Or do you work, you know, represent, then it’s much easier for people just to say, Oh, this is the standard answer that people want to hear, or what is your weakness? Everybody says, Oh, I’m a perfectionist because it’s kind of like, what we trained or what we heard all this is a good answer. But I think letting people go through examples and tell stories of their own life. I think that that might be one, you know, one way. But yeah, it’s hard, isn’t it? I would, I would also always if I interview people, I always go also towards values. So what matters to a person, you know? And because I think that’s so important, I also love working with strength, you know, and generally speaking, but it’s really about the attitude like, yeah, what attitude a person also brings.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  22:24

Yeah, I agree, like, you know, in a lot of this kind of like, situational interview questions, you often ask about a situation, but what you’re looking for is some underlying characteristic. But if you specifically ask someone, are you empathetic? I mean, it would be not, not a great question to ask.

Dr. Julia Milner  22:44

That’s so easy. I love asking what I found, like, really powerful is asking people about what they regret.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  22:51

Oh, that’s a good question.

Dr. Julia Milner  22:52

I mean, I don’t know I can ask you. So if you think back about, you know, your career so far, what you’ve done, what is one thing you regret? You did do and one thing you regret you didn’t? Do?

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  23:03

You know this is a yeah, this is a good question. I mean, so coming into this unprepared, what I would say is, maybe I’ll turn it into a business question so that I can like just straight up answer it. So yeah, one thing that I think we didn’t do as, as well, before was use drive a lot of our decisions with data. So we were very late to using data and making better software. And so you know, starting the company that we did now, we started with like, I think our data person was employee number two, so we kind of overcorrected. And what’s something that you know, we did before that we are doing again, is, is never build something unless you’ve talked to a customer beforehand, and they’ve agreed that they will use your product even before you build it, but then go and

Dr. Julia Milner  24:06

I think if you want to watch this back with the video, you will see also lots of the empathy you showed me while you were talking about it. So it’s, I think you can, you know, you can tell if a person is, you know, making something out or if they are reflecting upon it. And I think for me, it’s so important. It’s not to be perfect. I think that that’s completely not I don’t want to use the word but you know what I mean? But it’s about what do you learn from it? And what’s your attitude with that? Because, you know, that that’s also how you want to be with yourself as a leader and with the people around you. I think that’s very important.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  24:45

I think that’s such a great question. Yeah, it may end up on our interview bank. So I think it’s it’s a great question. One thing I did want to ask you about is the process of you know, tackling challenging problems within the company is arriving at a plan. So what is I mean, for the seasoned leader that has maybe seen battle-tested approaches, and now you’re coming up with a plan for the team? I mean, it is the end of the year. So a lot of people are, are working on planning? And what are some things to keep in mind to make sure that you have the best possible plan that’s going to keep everyone motivated and engaged? How would you approach coming up with that plan?

Dr. Julia Milner  25:39

Well, I would say it’s very important to engage people when you make the plan so that you’re not, you know, just sitting there and saying, Okay, here’s the plan. Here we go. Because I think that’s where often, you know, you get this pushback, and I don’t know if it makes sense. So ideally, you could, you know, involve people already when you are when you’re creating the plan. But I think yeah, I mean, I guess we saw this also of the pandemic, right? I mean, you have to be your best plan goes out of the window when things are changing. So involve your people in the planning, if you can. And yeah, I see that you are remaining open to change.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  26:19

I guess, as one of the things that you’ve talked about, you know, in arriving at a plan is a good manager poses open-ended questions. And then these giant and then basically using that to guide a brainstorming process. One of the things that I have been curious about is like, a lot of us do brainstorming sessions. But of course, like if you’re the manager, person of authority, or senior leader, and you’re driving one of these sessions, what are some pitfalls to avoid? Or like, how do you do this correctly?

Dr. Julia Milner  26:54

I guess the good example, is the open-ended questions, right? Because if you use closed questions, like, don’t you think this is a good idea? Or don’t you think you should try out the cabbage soup diet? Or don’t you think, then you are kind of like leading, you know, with your questions. So I guess, um, you want to do a brainstorm session is that you must have his role as facilitator or its coach in that sense. And I’m not trying to over you know, power it, because I guess, people also, often, you know, you’re the leader. So they say, oh, yeah, whatever you say is, right. So they, they might even, you know, fear them. So I guess you need to create a sort of culture where people feel comfortable and talking, you know, and where it’s good too, how can I say this to criticize, but not in no means in a negative way. But it’s also good to criticize, you know, the leader in the sense of, hey, you know, my idea is different and, and to bounce it off. Because otherwise, we just create recreating yourself, you know, in a sense of, everybody just says yes, yes to you. And maybe that’s nice at the moment. But does it bring out the best idea? Not so sure.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  28:07

Yeah, you know, one of the nice things about coaching is that if you can get good at it, you know, this is going to help develop your team better than otherwise, right, because they are thinking actively using maybe they’re learning some anecdotes or some shared experiences, and you’re doing some mentoring, but eventually they will be able to make decisions on their own. And so in theory, it may seem like you’re doing a little bit more work, and it may be more time-consuming in the beginning, but, over time, you will get more time back in your calendar. So one question I have then is, like, you know, how do you figure out like, when you should do check-ins or like how often so once you have been working with someone for a longer period, and they get really good and maybe one day they ask the questions that you have been asking, they’re able to ask those of themselves so how do you see your relationship developing over time? If you’ve been a good coach.

Dr. Julia Milner  29:09

Wow, the person will love it. You’re such a good promo of the coaching. So you should come with me to one of the next workshops… But it’s alright, to answer your question. I think it’s very hard to live like Stender stimuli. So you say this in English like a general answer. Um, because I guess it depends on the person. But I’m so happy that you mentioned it because I mean, again, I’m a big promoter of leadership coaching and, but I also don’t want to neglect the downsides. So we’ve just put in a paper on ethical issues on leadership coaching and exactly that is one of them. So it’s around boundaries, you know, what have you empower somebody so much and then they think they make this decision and then all of a sudden, you know, everything derails? So you, right? I get You to have to also reflect in those coaching conversations, you know, when to touch base and what moment, but I guess that depends on the topic that depends on the person. And but it doesn’t mean, leadership coaching is not laissez-faire. So it doesn’t mean like you are doing nothing, and you just lay back and whatever goes, but I guess it depends on the topic. And on both sides, I think it should be not only the leader saying, you know, and Couchbase with me then, but also, you know, hey, feel free to, of course, you know, ask me anytime, and when, when something is going on. But ideally, of course, you create more people who coach

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  30:36

Doing something like this is, is kind of the best long-term solution. And what’s interesting is like, you know, when I think about, you know, this style of management, you know, one of the things of course, for like growing organizations is that you kind of want like this style to be adopted across the board. And wouldn’t it be great if the expert that was on your team, that you’re one day going to promote into being a manager, like learning, you know, how to be a coach, because you had been a coach to them? And this, this can be kind of this self-reinforcing cycle to get everybody to apply this more? So I think it starts from, from the person from, you know, whoever’s listening, 

Dr. Julia Milner  31:21

You are so right, we know that. I mean, there’s also the term like, you know, coaching cultures, so that organizations trying to create a coaching culture, so it’s not like one individual just, you know, fighting the good fight, so to speak, but that there is support and managers can exchange with each other. And then yeah, that you, you know, develop those skills, not only for top management but really for everyone was was open to it. So absolutely.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  31:48

So one question is, let’s say that you, you have this coaching mindset, and someone comes to you with a decision, like, I intend to do blah, and immediately, you know, your expert mind, you know, comes into play, and you want to kind of dissuade this course of action, because it is a has potential repercussions, like, how do you do this without being a micromanager and someone who’s controlling?

Dr. Julia Milner  32:20

Hmm. It’s funny that you say this because the leader is coach role is often referred to as the most difficult coaching role. So compared to external coaches, executive coaches, were interim coaches in my summary from the HR department, and it’s exactly because of that, because what you just described is, yes, okay, I would like to coach on this, and I want to use my coaching skills. But as a, as a leader, I also now know, as you said, repercussions or I know, this is, you know, knock on work. So I guess it’s a fine line between, you know, not censoring yourself too early, and just going, Oh, I know everything, I know everything because I’m the leader. So this is a bad idea. So it’s kind of like remaining open, but at the same time, of course, it’s the thin line, because if you know, this is a bad call. And then of course, as a leader, you also have to, you know, stay within that. And, again, it doesn’t mean being less a fair and letting everything run, of course, as a leader. And that’s why it’s so challenging. You also operate within the organizational constraints, right? So you can’t say to somebody, yeah, do whatever you want. I mean, do I still have time to achieve and so on. But I think within that, within these, you know, goalposts, there’s so much room to again, let people contribute in a way that makes the most sense to everyone. And that we should do more of that.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  33:44

Yes, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, Julia, we’ve talked about, we’ve talked about a lot today, we talked about how motivational micromanaging is not coaching. We’ve talked about, you know, how we should promote from within and like set people with the right coaching mindset before even they become managers. We’ve talked about direct reports, and like how often you should meet and get alignment. So many things that we’ve talked about, one of the questions that we asked, all the guests on the show is for all the managers and leaders out there constantly looking to get better at their craft, what tips tricks or final parting words of wisdom would you leave them with?

Dr. Julia Milner  34:27

Well, the only thing I can do right now is giving advice. I’m sorry. Go against everything I just said. So, I would maybe end with a question, I would ask. Well, yes. When are you at your most kind of powerful moment? When are you the happiest? When are you the most floating and how can you do and maybe more of that and prove yourself as a leader in a situation where you have the time to do more of that and then how can you do all of this in turn of bringing this out and every team member. So how can you? How can we make the kind of like organizations at work happier place by really letting people be in their most powerful and happiest, and, of course, also, ideally most productive moment? And I’m trying to arrange more work like this. So I guess there’s a little bit of advice. But if it says, No isn’t a Christian, so really reflect upon that, because what might work for me, I can tell you what makes me happy. But it might not be what makes you the happiest so. And that goes the same for every team member.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  35:37

I think those are all great questions, and also a great place to end it. Julia, thanks so much for doing this. 

Dr. Julia Milner  35:46

Thank you so much for having me.