Effective onboarding of leaders into SAFe

“Leadership is 'the art of getting people to want to do what must be done' - and this means not just the people who report to them but their peers and those they report to.” - Mark Richards.

In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, Nikolaos Kaintantzis, Mark Richards, and Stephan Neck explore Effective Onboarding of Leadership into SAFe — the essence of pivotal factors and ensuring that leaders not only understand the framework but can also adopt and champion its principles is key to driving long-term transformation.

Key Takeaways:

• The importance of effective leadership: Recognizing that the possibilities of your SAFe implementation are both created and constrained by the leaders who engage with it, and that great SAFe happens when you find a great leader and help them grab hold of the ways SAFe can support them in their intent.
• Key areas for onboarding: Finding the great leaders already present in the organization and helping them amplify their impact by addressing real pain points and challenges.
• Strategies and “The secret sauce”: Build a healthy dialogue between leadership champions and their peers, and help them build the capability of their direct reports as a leadership team to enable them to spend more time focusing up and out.
• Overcoming challenges – No leadership “satire”:  Mastering the patience to wait for the right moment and the insight to recognize it.

Transcript

Mark Richards: 0:32

Welcome Back to take two of season two, episode one of SPC's Unleashed. We just had a false start, so we're restarting the entire episode. And just a little bit of backstory. We've obviously been off the air. We finished season one nearly two months ago. Now, on our journey through the SAFE competencies, it was great to spend some face to face time while were in Washington D.C. For the SAFE Summit. And we had a brainstorming session last week to say, what are we going to do this season? And it was great because we feel really free. We set ourselves a goal of 21 dimensions of the seven competencies, finished the goal and we said, okay, now we're free. What do we really want to talk about? And I think that if you listen to season one of the things you would have heard regularly from us is if you really want to grow in your impact as an spc, sometimes you got to look outside the framework. The framework's a great central body of knowledge, but there are some skills you'll need that it just can't necessarily teach you or that they're never going to write deep articles about. And so with that freedom, we came up with a bunch of topics that vary of us felt really passionate about. And the first one we decided to kick off with was one of Stefan's really passionate areas, which is onboarding leaders. So Stefan, take two, take us away. And hopefully not as a robot this time.

Stephan Neck: 1:59

Thank you very much. Mark, welcome to this show. As you heard, it's a matter of heart, onboarding leaders. We'll dive into certain aspects, structural elements, strategies, hints and tips and tricks when it comes to onboarding leaders. But before we do that and before I would like to frame a little bit this episode. Question to my mates, do you have any challenge, any passion, or even a highlight of the week when it comes to leadership? Who would like to start?

Niko Kaintantzis: 2:33

I have passions, as usual, so I'm genetically agreed. I can't live without passion. So concerning leaders, my passion is really finding the right ones. That sounds wrong, but finding leaders who are really needed at this moment and who are the right ones bringing forward our endeavor, our transformation, our. Yeah, however you call it. And I think that's. That's really a passion because it also influences me because I learn a lot from these leaders and I hope it's vice versa.

Mark Richards: 3:07

Yeah, I'm with you, Nico. I. For me, my passion is amplifying the impact of great leaders. I think we don't create great leaders. You find great leaders. Back to Nico's comment. And when you find great leaders, what can you do to grow their influence and their impact not just in their organization, but globally? And a great example for me was one of the favorite leaders I've coached over the years was Natalie Field. I've coached her across four different companies that she's been with, and we recently had her on an episode of our Shaping Portfolio Agility podcast. And I was super excited to be able to take her voice and her wisdom and share it with a bunch of people who haven't had the chance to hear it before. So it was just another kind of level for me of that.

Stephan Neck: 4:01

And I can throw in a highlight of the week. And it ties into what we already heard from Mark and Nico. I was able to teach some business owners preparing a PI planning. And when went through the duties and their tasks, one of these guys said, oh, we together with the lace, we should have a swim lane on the art planning board. People should see what we do. People should really see we walk the talk. And I was really amazed. And now you know why I really like leadership. So let's dive into this episode. Let's talk about how we create learning journeys for us as coaches, but also for leaders, right? It's not only onboarding, it's creating something that invites leaders into the transformation. Or we talk a lot about how we align leaders to the transformation, to what they are looking for, what they are in charge for. And we probably come back to again, this mind shift, this shift of paradigm, fostering a culture of continuous improvement because the transformation never ends. So let's go into action, guys. When I say leadership, what goes through your mind? What is leadership for you? What are different aspects of leadership you would like to talk about before we dive into how to onboard leaders?

Niko Kaintantzis: 5:35

That's a really great question. So when I was a younger SPC or a younger coach, for me it was always important to distinguish between management and leaders. And management are the evil guys just hurting people and say, go this way and leaders are the good guys. I think it's not really so black and white. I think a good leader is somebody. Oh, I think Stefan, I will quote you, is somebody who earned the right to breathe the same air. That's really a nice quote from your part. It's not something you are promoted, it's something you earned. And an important part for leadership, in my opinion, is having this touch to the ground to feel you people, to feel the earth you're walking or the company you are leading. And that's what the leader is for me, somebody who feels the team and not somebody who pushes the team or pushes the direction, of course you push somehow, of course, go to a direction, but it's because you're connected with the team, connected with the company, connected with the floor, the earth you walk in.

Stephan Neck: 6:52

So for you, Mark, what's leadership? What goes through your mind hearing leadership term?

Mark Richards: 6:58

I've had a couple of definitions that have really just gelled with me over the years. And one of those is Jerry Weinberg. And his definition, he's actually got two or three, depending on which book he was writing at the time. But my favorite one of his is a leader is someone people choose to follow.

Stephan Neck: 7:17

That's a great one.

Mark Richards: 7:19

And a lot of Jerry's commentary was that, you know, leadership is action. It's not something you bestow, it's not something that's related to your role definition. It's the action you can take and the influence you can generate. But then if I kind of flip a little bit to. And really when we think about onboarding leaders in safe, we're generally talking about seniority oriented leadership. At which point I head over to Jim Collins and I've always loved his commentary on Level 5 Leadership in good to Great. But I've been reading Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0 again recently and it's got this great definition. Leadership is the art of getting people to want to do what must be done.

Stephan Neck: 8:04

That's a great one too. Could you elaborate a little bit on this one? The art of getting people to want to do what must be done. Sounds like real effective leadership. Let's stick with that one. Effective leadership.

Mark Richards: 8:19

So we'd love to throw around buzzwords with agile, lean and leadership, right? You go to the Gemba, you exhibit servant leadership, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, there's an aspect of leadership which is those you lead. And at that point you can tell them what to do or you can inspire them to want to do it. And they're two quite different models in terms of what happens. But one of the reasons it really stands out to me is coming back to that leadership is not necessarily dispositional, because you don't want a leader who can just influence the people they lead. You want a leader who can influence their peers and who can influence above. So if you think about leadership as being in the middle, you need to lead downwards, outward and upward. And when you come back to that definition of getting people to want to do what must be done, you can apply that in every direction. And that's I think for me, the biggest reason that I really love that definition, particularly when you're trying to generate organizational changes.

Stephan Neck: 9:28

It's interesting if I listen to you guys, what springs to my mind is what would happen if we don't have to onboard people if they do it themselves, Right. We always think about we have to do something to make them or bring them into the party. But what would happen if leaders do it themselves? Right? So question to you, Nico, and I see on some of your preparation remarks, what happens if they are not on board and what would that mean for us as change agents?

Niko Kaintantzis: 10:05

Exactly. Independent where they are in the organization, True leaders have some kind of influence because people chosen to follow them, if I take Mark's great definition. So if those people are not onboarded, what happens? Usually what happens with children and their parents, they go to the parents and ask something and if they are not onboarded, they just will have not the same opinion and tell you something. And independent of which book I've read the last years, everybody says in a transformation or in a process of change, you need the leaders onboarded. Because otherwise if somebody wants to complain, they just go to mom and dad and tell them, yeah, Stefan hurt me. I'm not, I'm not okay. What he's doing as a coach, whining. And if the leader is not onboarded, he will say, what the heck has Stefan done? Bad boy. So let's roll everything back. And this unfortunately could also be just management or just HR or some powerful people in the organigram of the organization. But yeah, you need them onboarded. And I will say later more about this. It's not only the leaders you need onboarded, but you need them because people chosen to follow them and they have to know what's going on because otherwise, yeah. Are those people who will overrule you not because they have the power, maybe because they have the power, but because people follow them. They're really important.

Stephan Neck: 11:32

Over to you, Mark. I see you raised your hand, so.

Mark Richards: 11:36

I probably want to really add to that. And when you're trying to get somewhere with safe, the boundaries of your vision as an SP sergeant need to be set by the boundaries of the leaders that you have engaged or on boarded. And I know for many years people would come to me and they'd say, look, we want to implement SAFE. And I would say, all right, I need your CIO and 10 of their key leadership team and 10 people from their business partners as a group in the room for two days to do leading safe. And they'd say, oh, Mark, they're very busy and important people. There's no way we get two days of their time. And I'd say, well, that's okay, safe's not going to work for you because if you don't, if you can't get a commitment of two days time from the senior leaders, you might be able to put some of the practices in place and go through some of the motions, but you're not going to get the goodness. And I have probably become a little bit more mellow on that in later times because I think these days you talk to a lot less companies who are embarking on an agile journey. You talk to companies who are somewhere on an agile journey. But it's always that question for me, that first conversation. Who's the leader? Who's reaching out? Where is their head at? What is their motivation? And what becomes possible is driven by the motivation of the leader who is trying to instigate the change and the mandate and the credibility they have in the organization. And if you try and push to adopt aspects of SAFE that are beyond the mandate or the engagement of the leader that's sponsoring, you're going to run into rocky waters.

Stephan Neck: 13:23

Let me pick up this thread, Mark, and I think that's very important when it comes to onboarding leaders. You said where is their head at or what's their motivation? So some of us probably as change agents are working in small and medium business. Some are working in large groups, large enterprises. What about small and medium business, Nico? When it comes to those leaders.

Niko Kaintantzis: 13:47

Yeah. You are now the next passion. So I had the chance the last nine, ten years to work also with family owned companies. And that's where the music plays. It's really cool because when you talk with those leaders, those owners of the company and also managers of the company, they think in generations. So when I, sorry, dear Swiss bank people, when I go to Swiss banks, I don't feel the same spirit. I feel, maybe it's a wrong feeling, but what I feel is shareholder value. I want to have my stakes, my shares, sorry. Increasing my bonus by the way, is also bounded on the value of the share. And you see this short term thinking which we know all, we are knowledge workers. Everybody's a knowledge worker. I love to game the system. I love if I have silly bonuses just to game it and win it. And in family owned companies, in smaller companies you don't have this game. And one of my favorite customers is still one of mine. We have A long distance relationship. We see each other once in a year or twice in a year. Each time I'm there, it's really inspiring seeing how the owner, the leadership there, wants to give the company the hands of the children of the nieces and so on. So you feel this, I'm responsible for something and it's a piece of art I'm having here. My company, my products are important and I want to hand over to the next generations. So in short, they think in generations and that sometimes I would like to have also in bigger companies and sometimes I found those people, but it's unfortunately not so often.

Stephan Neck: 15:29

And I'll listen to you, Nico. It's about understanding where they are at and let me lead that a little bit or open up the horizon a little bit more. Right. Most of the companies have a clear mission. They know what they do. They have a business model, they have operating models, but they also have needs and pain points. So heading over to you, Mark, what does that mean for this onboarding aspect as a change agent?

Mark Richards: 15:57

So if somebody comes to you and says I want to do safe or I want to do agile and they're a leader, obviously your first question should be why? Right. And if the answer is because somebody told me I need to do safe, you're probably talking to the wrong person.

Stephan Neck: 16:14

Right. Been there.

Niko Kaintantzis: 16:19

Done that.

Mark Richards: 16:21

And you know, it's probably not going to be a pretty experience. If that's the leader that is the main driver. You've got to get to the why, which is what's the real problem they want to solve. And part of the problem is going to be their success. Part of the problem might be they want their people to be happier, but usually there's some other motivation, some pain point they're experiencing, which is what the real trigger is for this to happen. And you know, they're about to invest potentially a lot of money and time and you've got to know the real things that they're facing into and you can probably make some guesses. But if you don't tailor every conversation you have with them to solving the critical problems that motivated them to begin the journey in the first place, you're in trouble. And I think a lot of young coaches, they're full of answers. Oh, we should do this, we should do capacity based funding, we should do story point normalization, we should do PI planning, whatever. You know, we've got all these tools, we're desperate to use them. And you know, I've spoken to a lot of SPCs who are like, I really want to do lean portfolio management because, you know, it's another badge as opposed to, you know, what is the real problem? And how do we frame every part of our conversations, our coaching experience into finding and tuning the tools that helps them solve their problems. But I've gone a little bit more with that which is in most companies, the person who engages you, it's not the CEO, right. It's somewhere in the organization. The bigger the enterprise, the more likely it is that you're talking two, three, four levels down the org chart. And if it's a good leader, right. If their answer wasn't because I've got told to do safe and they're looking for a positive change, that's the beachhead for the change in the organization. And the more successful that leader is seen to be, the more likely it is that the influence of the change is going to grow. And so I think that's the other thing is to really get into your head, what do I have to do to help this leader be successful? And innately, all of the goodness that happens should also add up to that leader's getting runs on the board. People notice those runs on the board and they go, I want me a little bit of that.

Stephan Neck: 18:47

That's interesting. And I'm referring to a sticky note from Ali. He said he can't be here, but he left us some good thoughts. He was asking what kind of level of hierarchy are we talking about when it comes to leadership. And there's different levels of leadership and you mentioned that, Mark, probably not C level, maybe one or two or three levels down. So your experience when it comes to onboarding different levels of leadership. Let's have a discussion about this topic, please, because I'm interested in your experience.

Mark Richards: 19:24

Yeah, I can see Miko desperate to go, yeah.

Niko Kaintantzis: 19:29

I don't know if it's a detour, so bring me back if it's a detour because it's still SVC's unleashed and we want to help other coaches becoming better and better. One mistake is you heard from Mark not being really a coach and want to put all the wisdoms and tools you've learned and forcing leaders to do whatever you think you're doing. That's one mistake. You heard it well from Mark. And the other mistake is from people. They are thinking, they are not beginners. They are thinking, oh now I've done many things and now I'm experienced. And they're looking for the most experienced or the most high level leader or a rank or whatever and saying, oh, I don't talk to you because you're not the CEO or eo. I want to C level people because I don't start anything without the mandate of a C level people. And that's also not a wise thing to do. And that's why I like your question about which level of leadership are we talking? And a good SPC knows that he has to fit in first to feel the organization first. Because if you go with your playbook and says, okay, I need the highest leader ever, otherwise I will not start, he will not start at all. Because before you reach the CEO, there are many doors in between and many other people there. You cannot just have a phone call and say, hey, I'm a super coach, I want to talk to CEO because I want to change something and otherwise it will not work. And that's not the way how we talk to leadership and how we connect to leadership. And that's why your question about the levels of leadership is really important. And a good coach, a good SPC should be able to feel this, to recognize the people, to talk on the right level and also realize, okay, maybe I can change everything, but I can change something and it's really important for the company. But I think I didn't answer your question.

Stephan Neck: 21:18

No, that's good, that's perfect.

Mark Richards: 21:20

I could probably add a little bit inspired by some of Nico's thoughts bubbling in my head as Nico was sharing whatever level of leader you're talking to. I go back when I was a sort of grassroots development background agilist. I had a vision that leaders were people who had power, right? And my dev teams didn't have power because were stuck in the world that was created for us by our leaders. And you know, if only we could get to the leaders and get them to see common sense, you know, they could make the decisions that made life better. And the first time that I was coaching safe, my client was a senior middle manager and she was a general manager. And at that point in time that to me was a very senior person, right? She's general manager and a large enterprise and you know, she had a lot of money at her disposal. And I went, oh, that's a powerful person. The more that I coached her, the more that I learned the power she didn't have. You know, yes, there were things that she could do, but a lot of the things that I felt she should be doing, she couldn't because she couldn't make those decisions unless she got the buy in from her director that she reported to. And then I went, okay, so if I can coach at the director level, maybe we can get these real changes to happen. And so I went and I started coaching at the director level. And I realized, well, actually he was trapped because his decision making was limited by the executive director. He reported too. And it doesn't matter how far up the chain you go, every leader that you work with will have some ability to make decisions and act at their own level and some constraints living in the sandwich. And you might think life gets easy when you get to CEO, but it doesn't because the CEOs got the board. And it's actually, for me, one of the first things in starting to build a relationship with a leader is really understanding, you know, what is within the sphere of control and what are the edges and who are the peers that they need to influence. What are the flavors of the kind of one ups. And you might have a fantastic, engaged, passionate, learning leader who reports to anything but that and everything they want to try and change. The person they report to wants to contain. So being really aware, and this is for me, I'm much less concerned these days about how senior the title is in terms of who they are as a person because regardless of the seniority, they're still a person. It's right, where do they fit, what are their relationships? And coming from a position of understanding as much as anything else. So you're not suggesting or pushing them to do things that they just don't have the ability to do.

Stephan Neck: 24:17

I fully agree, Mark. And before handing down the talking stick to Nico again, I can see in his eyes he wants to talk. When I listen to you guys, what comes up in my mind is that's design thinking as a change agent, right? Not jumping to a solution, understanding the challenge, understanding the problem, and also understanding what is my space or area I really can make an impact or what are my limitations before I then jump into the solution space. Doing the onboarding, creating something that helps leadership to onboard based on their points of view, based on their perspective. But going back to Nico and what Mark said, right, it's exactly what you.

Niko Kaintantzis: 25:09

Also said, can I do the impact? And that's really the important question. So I would invite the audience, think about what do you thought your position would be when were younger? So you want to change the world and which position you wanted to take. And mine was when I was younger, when I finished my studies. I want to be a manager, I want to lead people, I want to change something. But I Never ever in my life had a formal leadership position. But when I reflect what have changed in people's lives in companies, I did maybe more than somebody had a formal title. And I think, I'm sure the audience has similar examples. You can change, you can change things even if you have no formal title. And that makes it now interesting for you as an spc, as a coach, who do I need to find is people who can change something, who want to change something. And there's a nice Greek saying, sometimes you don't have to convince the head, you just have to convince the neck. And there's a saying, the man is the head of the household, but the wife is the neck. She can turn the head wherever she wants. So you need the people who are able to change things. And sometimes it's not the head of the organization, it's the neck of the organization. And those are also leaders. So find those leaders too. Because if you were able to do an impact without a formal title, there are enough people, enough leaders who can do this too. But of course there are restrictions. But usually they are so well connected they find a way to bypass these restrictions.

Stephan Neck: 26:40

Now we're entering the areas of hints and tips and tricks Mark effective onboarding of leaders. What could be another hint or tip you would give us?

Mark Richards: 26:53

I'm still thinking about next turning heads. No, let me be serious about this. Just jumping on Nico's point about never having been a leader. And this again, I think is there's a truth that says probably 98 to 99% of SPCs or agile coaches have never been a senior leader in an organization. We might have read a lot more books about leadership than a lot of senior leaders. But if we know anything about agile, there are some things you can only learn by doing. And so, you know, hint number one is don't be arrogant. Recognize that there are things about leadership that whoever you're coaching or supporting knows that you will probably never know and take the opportunity to learn from them. But another one is just that credibility perspective. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is to create a conversation between two leaders. If you're a big organization that's, you know, on the agile journey in various places in various parts of the organization and you know, there is a leader in some part of the organization who has mastered something and you're coaching in a different part of the organization. The number of times that the thing that I've done is to create a conversation between the leader I'm coaching and the leader somewhere else in their own Organization to go, hey, look, this person sold for it. Why don't you guys connect? And they come back so inspired because they can tap into things from their peers that they could never tap into from you. So creating relationships and knowing that different leaders have different strengths in different areas and how do you create the relationships between them can be spectacular, but also when you find those people, how do you use them to put them on stage instead of yourself? And one of the favorite places for me is with business owners. I've long felt that business owner is one of the least appreciated roles in SAFE in terms of its importance and impact. If there's like a number one secret sauce, if you're launching an art and you want a great art that's going to change the world, it's get the right business owners engaged and being part of the mission of that art. And so over the years, I've developed quite deliberate onboarding approaches for, you know, so you're going to be a business owner. And it's actually the first before we start thinking about an art vision workshop to kind of set the scene for the art and begin its journey. Who are the prospective business owners, and how do I bring those business owners into the journey so that they can be part of the starting vision for that art and really see their role play out? And I had one client where they just did brilliantly with that. The first art. We got some brilliant business owners, and particularly the brilliant business owners we had came from the governance and regulatory parts of the organization. It was a government organization. So we had folks from the policy area and the audit and compliance area. But we got lucky, right? We had these people and they were brilliant. And the amount of decisions that they would cut through for the arts, when the arts ran into, hey, is there a question about this? Have we got a policy issue? Is there a privacy concern? And these business owners would just really lean into those things. And magic happened. And then what did we do? Well, what we started doing was every time we launched a new art and we had a business owner onboarding workshop, we'd get one of our superstars from the first art to come along to it and make a little speech. This is what being a business owner means. So it wasn't me at the front of the room having a PowerPoint deck going. You know, these are the roles and responsibilities of a business owner. It was one of their own people who was standing there saying, this is what being a business owner means to me. And that's powerful stuff. Don't take the oxygen yourself. If you can find an existing leader in the company who can take it instead of you, that'll change your game.

Stephan Neck: 31:02

Such a deep truth. And that sparks and reminds me of some of the moments I experienced in the army. Right? We always had this sentence, know your mission, know your people, know yourself. And going back to what you just stated, Mark, that probably a high percentage of us as change agents has never been on a senior level. How can we understand the context we're in, right? And we're acting in that context. As a change agent, what kind of leadership skills am I dealing with and what am I bringing to the table? And thirdly, and probably that's my experience and that keeps me humble as a change agent. Know your limits, right? Collaborate with those who know more than you, no matter if it's leadership, business owners, coaches. So let me act as the devil's advocate and asking you guys if I'm aware of that. I'm probably part of those 98% of change agents not knowing what's really going on a senior level leadership, how can I survive? How can I act in an effective way as change engine as well? We heard some of the tips from you, Mark, but what are further considerations you brought in transformational work you did in the past? What's your experience when it comes to that point?

Niko Kaintantzis: 32:37

I personally, I would like to summarize a little bit what you said. It's really important to be authentic yourself too. So somehow you are a leader. You're not maybe the board leader or whatever. So you have some leadership experience. And we ask from our leaders to be authentic, to grow others, etc. And when you listen well to Mark and to Stefan, you have to be also one of those persons. So you have to acknowledge your limits, as Stefan said, you have to grow others, as Mark said. And just by doing this, sorry, helps also your leaders, your coaching, your transformation with the leaders who are part of it, seeing how you're doing, not only how you're telling it. So I've seen many coaches just going there and taking a playbook and shouting around and saying, you have to do this and this. And then you expect having leaders being different because you're coming in as an external and you're not walking the talk. So now I'm just taking all sentence you have said because they're really great. And I think this is one tip. Be authentic, be authentic and live whatever you want to have from the others. What's this? English. So live the way you expect others should live. I Think this sentence makes more sense?

Mark Richards: 34:00

Walk the talk would be a short way of saying it.

Niko Kaintantzis: 34:03

Perfect.

Mark Richards: 34:06

I think another tip for me is there's been a tendency in the agile world to say leadership good, management bad. Be a leader, not a manager. And it's a pretty easy tendency to somebody who's never been in a senior leadership position. And the thing that most of us don't know much about is management. Particularly if you go back to the Jerry Weinberg definition, a leader is someone people will choose to follow as a change agent. As an spc, you get a chance to be a leader every day. The thing that you're probably much less aware of is what comes with being a manager. And that's been one of my biggest learning journeys over the 15 odd years that I've been coaching in the enterprise agility space is learning to understand and appreciate the reality of management. So if you get time and if you're coaching with leaders, you will get short amounts of time because they're always time poor. The more of that time you devote to talking about what's happening for them as opposed to agile, the more impact you're likely to have what's going on in your world. And sometimes they will just once you've built some trust, they will just vent at you and it'll help you build understanding of what it's like to be a leader or a manager in that company. It will help you to build understanding about what's happening in their life and it will help you to find the places. And maybe you've got an hour a week with a senior leader and some weeks you don't say a single thing about agile or lean. You just talk about what's happening in their world and that will change things because they'll understand you care. You're not just there with your own agenda, you care about what's happening for them. It will build huge insight for you. Because the reality is sometimes the things that they will choose to talk about are things that there are lean and agile tools to help with and you never would have thought about it because you didn't understand that was what they were going through. So you know as much as you can shape an agenda for your conversations, which is their agenda, not yours. And maybe you have three weeks in a row where you don't talk a thing about lean and agile, but on that fourth week you do. And you've had three weeks of understanding so much about what's happening for them that when you do get the chance to talk about lean and Agile, you can really tap into their tools. But the other thing I'd say is find out what their learning style is. Yeah, I read books. I used to try and get all my leaders to read books. Some of them don't like to read books, but they'll listen to audiobooks, some of them will listen to podcasts, some of them will, you know, what is the thing that they can engage with as a learning leader? If you can find that out and then whatever they're doing and engaging with you go and engage with that too so that you can actually have conversations about the things that they're engaged with learning as opposed to trying to get vice versa to happen. So tap into their personal orientations rather than trying to force them into. Tap into yours.

Niko Kaintantzis: 37:01

That's interesting also. Sorry.

Stephan Neck: 37:03

Yeah, go for it.

Niko Kaintantzis: 37:05

Nico, to connect to something you said earlier. It's so easy to gain knowledge by reading, but you will never have the experience the management of the leaders had before. But there is a way to get this experience and I don't know how, it's in other countries. In Switzerland we have a lot of verajme associations, clubs and there you can have leader positions. You're not just not paid for it. And it's really difficult to lead something where you have no given authority and no budget, nothing. But you can learn a lot. So if you're really young and think, yeah, I read every book on leadership and now know everything. Just go to a, to to an association to a club, be the board member, be the responsible person. Having responsibility is something really hard. So the first time I had to fire people because we had people h it was really hard. And I remember as a coach, my colleague told me, transformation. 20% of the people just have to fire them because they will never come on a trip. Being in this position, have to fire one single person was really nightmares for me. And I really need the coaching from somebody who fires every day was somebody from a Swiss bank and helped me understand how you fire people. So you really have to not only be empathic to the way they are learning the way your coaches or your leadership, your coach are, but also being in their shoes. Even if it's a small scale, it's just a small company, a small club, a small association gives you some experience and then you will see the world completely different, independent of whatever you've read. Because having this responsibility, having a responsibility for people, for budget, it's not so easy as it sounds in the books.

Stephan Neck: 38:50

Very Interesting. Preparing this episode, I was thinking about onboarding leadership. And the longer we talk together here, I think about how not to create coaching satire when it comes to transformation. What do I mean? Doing stuff that is not effective or efficient for a transformation. And one of Ali's feedback to the preparation was what could be some early indicators or constraints to consider to overcome challenges in this leadership onboarding. Any ideas, any experience from you guys?

Mark Richards: 39:31

I'm going to jump in here first because it feels like I've made Nico take the first answer all the way today. It's timing. Whenever I mentor a young coach, I will say, the greatest skill that you'll need is patience. And they'll look at me and they'll be, what do you mean? You've got to know how to pick your timing for something. And as usual, Jerry Weinberg had a beautiful way of saying it. In the Secrets of Consulting, he talked about the sixth secret, which was know how pays much less than know when. And knowing the moment when something is possible and being patient enough to wait for that moment or to find the smaller things that are possible now that will lead to that moment arriving. That is the biggest secret you know. Just pick your moment. Don't try and do PR planning unless you've got the necessary ingredients and leadership support to do PR planning or you're going to get a satire, right? Some piece of agile theater that there's nothing agile about. And it can be hard because you can be so excited to go and do these things and you're so convinced, but picking your timing and really importantly, understanding the timing for the leaders you're coaching. So timing, timing. Be patient. Don't push too fast or too far because you'll regret it. That's tip number one from me. What about you, Nick?

Niko Kaintantzis: 40:59

I would just go with patience too. It's something I had to learn during my whole life. Being more patient and not having everything immediately and not reaching the goals immediately. So in my last man that I had with a colleague of mine, he said, but, you know, there's a faster way. Why are we going the slow way? Why are we going this steps? Because they are the right ones at the moment for those people. And yes, you're right, the goal you are saying is the goal you want to reach. But if it's this on the table, it will just destroy the whole movement. Just empathize with them and go the slow steps they have chosen with you. As long as on the right direction, it's the right way we are going, it doesn't have to be the highway. It could also be a different rail and that it's patient and empathy you need. So I will go also with patience. Not many people have them because they see it, because they've seen a lot of. We as coaches, as SPCs, as SPTS, have seen a lot. And sometimes we think we know that's the right way, but even if we know it, the other way is maybe the right one for them. Because going your own way makes space stable. Instead of going one way, somebody is dragging you or.

Stephan Neck: 42:10

Yeah.

Niko Kaintantzis: 42:11

Or kidnapping you or whatever. Patience. Yeah.

Stephan Neck: 42:14

May I second you? May I. May I second that? To be patient and to know when for me has to do with clarifying your duties and your mandate or what's the area you're working in. Right. Transformation is big. It's huge. Where am I as a coach? And if I'm. If it's clarify what they expect from me for this onboarding of leaders, the question will be, is it achievable for me? And by the way, is it's measurable as well? Because at a given time, one day someone shows up and says, stefan, what's your impact? And if I don't have goals and measurable impact that I can show, okay, we're on the way. Yes, I can contribute towards this onboarding of leaders or leadership, then I'm probably lost. Right. It's about impact, it's about clarifying what's the frame. If I don't have the frame, I probably won't be patient, I won't be impactful, I probably won't be showing up at the right time to do so. Right. So further challenges or early indicators, you guys see, when it comes to leadership.

Mark Richards: 43:28

Onboarding, it comes back down to me for patience. That back to that phone call from the person who says, I've been told to do safe. Sometimes it's important to say, I don't think you should do safe or you're not ready and holding people back because, you know, there's a lot of people go, well, I've got somebody who's got budget, but it's not going to be pretty. Right. So be ready to walk away. As an spc, you go, that's not the gig for me. I don't want to take work where I don't believe you can be successful. And if you don't have the right level of engaged leadership, you can't be successful. But you can apply that during the journey as much as at the start, which is to say maybe not yet. And that comes along with the patients. The hard bit is it's a lot easier for us to be patient than for the leaders we're supporting to be patient. Because sometimes they've got a lot of pressure going, go faster, go faster. When will we be done? It's a very unagile question, but it's a very real question. And you've got to be prepared to share your insight in terms of what's driving you, in terms of your pacing, thinking with the leaders you're coaching. It's interesting if you read a lot of the Lean books from really late last century, there was an outpouring of Toyota Sensei who were going in, doing consulting work with other companies trying to do Lean, and it came out pretty strongly in Deming's Profound Journey of Knowledge. They told a lot of stories about it. I've seen a few in some other books as well. And they used to go in and they would explain nothing. They would just tell people to do stuff, right? And the desire for people to copy Toyota was so strong that these very abrasive personalities could turn up and just say, you must do this. And it would happen. And a lot of the time, the things that were being done, the organization had no idea why. They just knew that there was a senior Toyota Sensei telling them to do it, so they did it. But the truth. And for them, it often felt like that these guys were only seeing one step at a time. But you see the commentary and they go, these guys all had a big picture in their head, and these companies four and five years later would go. It became clear to us over time that there was always a master plan that they just weren't bothering to explain to us. And everything that they made us do was something that were ready to do that was going to take us towards some big vision. It just would have been nicer if we got to know what the big vision was earlier. And I think part of the way of managing your way through the patient's question is usually we've got a pretty good idea, right? Within the first few weeks of an engagement, you've got a pretty good idea of what you think things should look like two or three years from now, might be 3,000 steps later, but there's a big picture in your head, and it's going to be roughly right, and it's going to look a little bit different by the time you get there, but you've got to. And if you're clever, you're coaching towards it in a series of very small Steps. Sometimes you need to just create space and go, you know what, I'm going to share a little bit of the big picture with you, but I'm also going to share the reasons why I don't want us to try and chase it too fast.

Niko Kaintantzis: 46:40

Nico, you are everything you're saying in one. Next point I want to say is onboarding leaders. And next tip is onboarding. Usually those leaders have so much to do. Why didn't they communicate the vision? Because they had so much things to do. Why are they not part of this and this interaction? They have so many things to do. Why do they skip some education or some town halls, which we're talking about, this transformation, this mandate? Because they don't have time. So onboarding is a really important part of onboarding. So try to find a way, convince them why they should reschedule stuff, why they should be onboarded. So if you found the real. The real leaders, you need the right leaders. You need take enough time, enough patience to explain why this onboarding is important, why they have to show up. And that's everything you said, Mark, just also paid in. This is patient and also onboard them.

Stephan Neck: 47:42

So let's wrap up the episode. We talked about leaders that are already there. They're engaged, they have their agenda. We have to find them. We have to find out how to support them. Right. It's probably for me more supporting than onboarding, which sounds again like let's go through the checklist, everything done. It's also for me like the interpretation of the implementation roadmap. That's probably another topic which needs a bit more thoughtful thinking in each transformation. It's not a checklist you're going through. As I remember Mark saying, it's like you go back and you have all those cycles going through the implementation roadmap. So I would like to wrap up with the just one key takeaway or key sentence you guys have. And we have a bit more time this time. Not only the sentence. Give us the narrative behind your one key takeaway or one sentence. Let's start with Nico.

Niko Kaintantzis: 48:49

So my sentence is that leaders are not on the top, so you will not find them there if you want to on board. And the narrative behind of this is. Yeah, I said a true leader, which sounds some kind of wrong. But you need the right people who are able to move. You're in Denver, your journey and those are people maybe having not a title, but they're those people who have the most influence on other people, on the company. Yeah, on others. Because leaders are chosen as Mark said before. So, yeah, you will not find them taking the card. So, oh, here's the cx, whatever. It's just the persons who have the standing and you have to find them and you have to onboard them and you have to help them. And that's why I think AI will not take our job, by the way. But it's a different topic. It's not a checklist.

Stephan Neck: 49:43

Sounds good. So my key takeaway, listening to you guys and from our discussion, listen to, learn and understand. Not to respond firsthand, but to respond accordingly. Right? That's my big learning. And I'm still learning. I'm still on that learning journey. Why is that? Even after 30 years in the trade, I'm learning and I'm still having this pitfall of jumping to a conclusion, jumping to a structural element, jumping to, I have to do it, I have to onboard. I have to do this and that. No, first understand, understand what's to do. And then going back to what you said, Mark, patience, still not jumping to a conclusion. Let them onboard themselves. Right. You just guide, you just support Mark. Your key, take away your thoughts.

Mark Richards: 50:40

It would be create networks of leaders. Whatever the first leader you talk to and you engage with and as they go on their journey, how do you connect them to other leaders and create the network of leadership who influences each other. And then when the moment comes to onboard new leaders, as you expand your implementation of SAFE as you stretch into new areas, is to activate that network to do the onboarding rather than trying to do it yourself.

Stephan Neck: 51:10

Perfect. To conclude this episode, I did a little experiment. I went to SAFE Copilot and I asked the questions onboarding leaders to the SAFE implementation roadmap, how to avoid leadership satire. I was really poking holes and guess what? What came back is consider the following. Provide clear communication. Address concerns and skepticism. Involve leaders in the planning process. Hooray. Provide training and support. Yes, we know that. Foster a culture of continuous learning and not to forget, celebrate successes. And with that, I'm handing back the talking stick to Mark.

Mark Richards: 51:54

So hopefully we did slightly better than SAFE Copilot with our advice.

Niko Kaintantzis: 51:59

It's a nice checklist.

Mark Richards: 52:01

That concludes after our opening technical difficulties. That concludes season two, episode one and Onboarding Leaders. And next week we'll be back and we finally get to talk about coaching. And Nico's eyes light up every time the word coaching comes up. It's come through obviously quite a bit. In season one, we get to talk specifically and dive deep into acquiring coaching skills. So we'll look forward to you joining us then. Until that time, thanks for joining us. And onwards and upwards, season two.