Seth Dobbs (he/him): Hi, I’m Seth Dobbs, and this is the Principle Driven Leadership Podcast, where I share principles of leadership along with examples of how to apply them to help make you be the best leader you can be. These principles are based on my years of experience as an executive leader, in building organizations and teams, and coaching others to become leaders themselves. And I believe that not only can anyone develop leadership skills, but that everyone can and should develop leadership skills. I think they’re essential in helping you achieve your best in whatever way you might be trying to make an impact. And leadership is a journey, one that often involves change. Today’s change is that I’m joined by Laura Batruch, producer and my partner in the Principle Driven Leadership podcast, as well as content contributor, brainstormer, all that good stuff. She brings her experience in designing and developing, curating, and facilitating impactful, innovative learning experiences to help make this podcast a great experience for all of you. Laura’s been behind the mic and camera for the entire life of the Principle Driven Leadership podcast, and is now joining me here today to help me answer questions and feedback from you, the listeners and viewers. With that, I’m going to hand it over to Laura for a quick introduction of what we’re doing today.

Laura Batruch (she/her): Thank you, Seth, for the introduction. I’m happy to join you today. Throughout the season, Seth has asked listeners to send us questions and feedback on the podcast, and this is where we’re going to address some of your inquiries. Thank you to everybody who wrote in. We’ve chosen a handful of questions to address based on the concepts that may have been a little harder to grasp or topics that generated the greatest amount of interest.

Seth Dobbs (he/him): That’s right. And at a high level, the concepts I talk about are simple and universal, but they can take a long time to really master, to really get used to kind of engaging with them. And so I think that answering some more detailed questions can help provide more support for all of you in your leadership journey. And also, I’m always asking questions and giving you all homework, so it seemed like it was time to turn it around and give me some questions. So with that, Laura, what’s our first question?

Laura Batruch (she/her): Let’s start with a general one. You talk a lot about the importance of having a vision. Listeners want to know, have you ever lost sight of the vision?

Seth Dobbs (he/him): Yeah, it’s a really good question. The simple answer, of course, is yes, absolutely. We all do. We all can. , It’s pretty easy to do, particularly at kind of a micro level. In the moment, in sort of, the midst of of deep work of things moving quickly, it can be really easy to get caught up in the moment and lose sight of what you’re really trying to achieve. Part of how all of these principles were developed was actually to help myself get better at staying focused at thinking about this kind of thing, at recentering myself around the right stuff. And I, I find that it’s very helpful for me to use my own principles to keep reminding myself to focus on outcomes. Even having said that, you just end up having to do stuff. Like, there’s just things that need to get done, ideally, somewhat aligned, and it’s okay if you need to do that as long as you don’t forget what you’re trying to achieve and ultimately aren’t distracted too long by tasks that aren’t aligned with what you’re trying to accomplish. Laura, what’s one of your favorite tips or reminders?

Laura Batruch (she/her): Ah, I’d say write it down and keep it in front of you. Be it a post it on your laptop, on a bulletin board, just write down a few key phrases and literally stick it somewhere. So it’s always top of mind. Speaking of things on my mind, you had an episode on difficult conversations that really struck a chord with listeners.

How did you get so comfortable with tough conversations?

Seth Dobbs (he/him): That episode was actually very popular. A lot of, lot of good feedback on that. And for those that miss it, it was episode seven of this season, season two. So how did I get there? You know, it’s funny, I’ve always hated confrontation, which I think is different than conflict and, learned at some point that actually confrontation and conflict were different things and that I needed to actually navigate the difficult and navigate conflict to be successful, as a leader. And so I really worked on how to reduce confrontation, sort of that emotional face to face kind of conversation through a clear outcome focused communication style. I realized how easy it is to get bogged down in the emotional side of conflict and make that turn into confrontation. So I really started focusing all my conversations, whether difficult ones or, you know, so called easier ones by always thinking about the outcomes of I’m trying to achieve in that conversation. So over time, while I was in consulting for many years, I was actually brought in for some of the most difficult client situations to help resolve them because I did get very good at managing difficult conversations. And then that, that gave me more practice. I grew more comfortable in knowing what I wanted to achieve going into a conversation, which, one way or another, typically in a work environment was always about regaining mutual forward motion.

Laura Batruch (she/her): Thanks for sharing that Seth. Tough conversations is definitely something I’m working on getting comfortable with, but I found that refraining from assuming what others are thinking has been really helpful.

And a related question. How did you develop the framework for difficult conversations?

Seth Dobbs (he/him): That’s interesting. And part of my evolution as I got better and thinking about outcomes and thinking about the core leadership principles, I started realizing that my approach in difficult conversations was actually deeply rooted in the three core principles of leadership.

And that started making it a lot easier for me to talk about how I handle difficult conversations and to teach people. And that’s basically, approaching a conversation. What outcomes do you need to achieve in this conversation? What’s standing in the way? And how do I empower someone, the person that I’m speaking with to regain forward motion, to kind of overcome whatever is causing the difficult moment and be able to move forward?

Laura Batruch (she/her): So it seems the core principles form a repeating pattern that can be applied in all kinds of situations.

Seth Dobbs (he/him): Yeah, actually, yeah. Realizing that is in large part why I consider the three core principles, the three core principles of leadership, which is that Leaders provide vision, leaders resolve problems, and leaders create more leaders. And you can see that pattern in a lot of what I talk about, whether in that overarching structure or really in approaching a lot of the smaller aspects of leadership that I’ve talked about through the past couple of seasons. All right, what’s next?

Laura Batruch (she/her): So in the podcast, you talk about the need for organizations and leaders to face reality, especially during times of change. Can you give examples of a time when you’ve needed someone else to help you face reality?

Seth Dobbs (he/him): Yeah, it’s a great question. For me, it’s rare that I really try to take on any kind of significant task completely alone for many reasons, but a lot of it is to make sure I have a reality check from someone else, that there’s someone there to question and make sure I’m looking at things from different perspectives. And I think this podcast is actually a great example. I’ll tell our audience, part of what Laura does is actually help me face reality. For this season, there is a story that did not and will not ever see the light of day. I put it down in a script. I thought it was a really great example of a certain kind of leadership blind spot based on a product that briefly flourished and then all but vanished in the market in the early 2000s. Laura took a look at it and was pretty adamant that it wasn’t a good idea that people would be distracted by trying to understand the product that I was talking about instead of the story and sort of the lesson I took several passes at it, but eventually realized she was right. We took it out and the episode was considerably better because of that. I think that’s just a good realization; as a leader, it’s really easy to get enamored with our narratives, with our strategies, with our vision, with the story we tell ourselves of what we’re trying to do and so forth. And in this case, it really literally was a narrative. I was very happy with it. I thought it was really good, but it didn’t achieve what it needed to achieve. And, Laura, you helped me realize that. I’d also say, I think it’s, interesting that you Laura actually became more comfortable with suggesting changes and really making me face reality over time.

And it’s an important thing as a leader, I try to surround myself with people that aren’t afraid to do that for me in whatever I’m doing, or at least can learn and get comfortable with it because I do expect people that are working closely with me and in whatever way it might be to become comfortable with questioning asking me and kind of pushing me. With that,

Laura, I’m curious what’s helped make you comfortable with helping me or others face reality.

Laura Batruch (she/her): I think in terms of working with you, it’s just knowing that we’re on the same team in the sense that for this podcast, we’re both trying to accomplish the same goal of helping listeners understand and apply the concepts

Switching gears slightly, we received several questions this season around the principle “doing less helps you achieve more.”

Now, in theory, listeners think this is great, but they’re struggling to apply it. The feedback has been that their projects at work, just keep piling up, but things really aren’t getting over the finish line. So listeners want to know how can they help their leaders grasp the concepts that they can achieve more if they actually focus on doing fewer things.

What advice would you offer?

Seth Dobbs (he/him): That’s a great and challenging question. And I’d say short of getting their leaders to listen to the podcast, which do your best, leading upwards really can be a challenge, particularly in a structure that isn’t framed with Principle Driven Leadership. And so I think there’s a couple approaches you can use. The first is more of a direct approach and involves asking your leader in that moment where , you feel things are losing focus: what outcomes are they hoping to achieve? And then try to get them into a discussion of the tasks at hand and whether or not they think that a particular task being assigned actually helps reach the outcome. Now there’s risk in this approach for sure, particularly around, the concepts of ego and commitment. With ego really meaning, how much does your leader like to be questioned? How do they react to that? And possibly finding a way to do it in a one on one versus in a group meeting, if it makes it easier.

But the second part of that is commitment, and that’s how much public commitment someone has made to a specific path, particularly combined with ego. Some people have a hard time taking a new tact, regardless of what information you might be able to provide them.

So you can take a direct approach. There’s some risks, know your leader in choosing that path. The second approach is an indirect approach. A lot of the strategy here is trying to find lower risk proof points that can be demonstrated fairly quickly and taking an outcome focused approach instead of taking a task focused approach. Now, there’s a bit of risk in this approach as well, and this is the risk of being punished for not seeking permission for whatever experiment you might be trying to make. I’ve used this technique quite a bit, carving out a small rock, perhaps even just a pebble, a little, little task or a little outcome that you can give enough focus to achieve and , even if it’s a small step, use that as a simple proof point that focusing on the outcomes actually can deliver a result. And then take the opportunity to try to celebrate, and explain that by stripping away some of the tasks that weren’t directly focused on what was needed, you actually were able to create great results. And hopefully with that, you can start laddering up into larger outcomes and achievements.

Laura Batruch (she/her): That last approach is interesting. Indirectly. It sounds like you’re trying to hide what you’re doing from your boss almost

Seth Dobbs (he/him): Uh, not exactly. Your leader should be more focused on what you’re achieving. “Hide” is a strong word, you know, perhaps it’s more like avoid getting into the details of how you’re doing something and try to talk about the goals, your boss should be really more focused on what you’re achieving, not getting into the micromanagement.

Now, if they are a micromanager, they might think you’re hiding, certainly a point well taken, but the challenge is, helping them get comfortable with talking about what you’re achieving rather than what you’re doing, but the thing is, they’re trained that way. I think most leaders are trained to think about what you’re doing. So I would say not hide, but try to politely avoid that discussion, redirect a little bit on what you’re trying to achieve. And note, the size of the opportunity to experiment is in an inverse relation to the degree to which your leader wants to dig into your details. Meaning, if they’re really deep into every little thing that you do, you have a very small window of freedom to chart a different course. If there’s a little bit more space, and if you can create that space with a little bit of that discussion, you have a little bit more room to try to take on something bigger. And ultimately, when you’re done, you want to help them see that what you did wasn’t contrary to what they’re trying to do, but rather in support of what they’re trying to achieve. And if you can get that message across, then you’ll be a lot more successful and be able to enable more change in your organization. A question for you, Laura, of the principles and topics I’ve covered so far in the first two seasons. What is that the biggest impact on you?

Laura Batruch (she/her): The topic that’s resonated the most with me probably relates to both vision and problem resolution. And one of the things I’ve heard you ask both to me and your listeners is if a perceived problem isn’t getting in the way of you reaching your vision. Is it really a problem? And while this seems really simple and almost intuitive, it’s really helped me see through that.

Really, the noise of other so called issues and only focus on what’s actually needed to achieve the goal and the vision that we’re working towards, you know, as it relates to vision, you talk a great deal about the importance of communicating a vision. I’m really looking forward to hearing more about how leaders own their communication, especially the part about being sure they’re understood.

Seth Dobbs (he/him): Excellent. And that’s a great plug for season three. So we’re actually working on this now and in the next season, we’re going to explore more explicitly again the three core principles and introduce some new enabling principles to continue to help you on the way in your leadership journey. So I want to thank first you, Laura, for joining me today. This was really great. A lot of fun. And thanks to all of you out in the audience for joining us, this episode, this season. Please subscribe, comment, share with a friend if you liked it and keep sending your thoughts and questions to contact@pdlpodcast.com and we’ll queue up some for the next season. And join me next time where I’ll wrap up the season by exploring my own leadership journey.