The Happy at Work Podcast
The Happy at Work podcast explores the intersection of organizational culture, positive psychology, and employee branding to create thriving workplaces. Our expert hosts—Dr. Laura Hamill, Michael McCarthy, and Dr. Tessa Misiaszek—bring diverse perspectives and deep expertise to uncover practical strategies for fostering happiness and success at work.
We engage with various guests, including organizational leaders, HR professionals, psychologists, researchers, and employees across various industries. Through thought-provoking conversations, we delve into:
- How organizational culture shapes employee experiences and drives engagement
- Evidence-based positive psychology strategies that boost both human flourishing and business metrics
- Innovative approaches to align brand identity with employee experience and operationalize company values
Our mission is to give listeners actionable insights and tools to transform their workplaces. Whether you're a CEO, an HR professional, a manager, or an employee seeking to make a positive impact, the Happy at Work podcast offers valuable perspectives to help you create a more fulfilling, productive, and positive work environment.
Join us as we explore the cutting edge of workplace well-being and performance, uncovering the strategies that lead to truly happy, engaged, and successful organizations.
The Happy at Work Podcast
Navigating Uncertainty: Kevin Eikenberry's Guide to Flexible Leadership
Kevin Eikenberry shares his expertise on flexible leadership, arguing that flexibility is the essential antidote to uncertainty in our complex, ever-changing world. Drawing from his experiences growing up on a Michigan farm and three decades running his leadership development company, he offers practical wisdom on leading through turbulent times.
• The key to flexible leadership is embracing "both/and" thinking instead of "either/or" approaches
• Leaders must manage tensions between priorities rather than choosing one extreme
• When facing uncertainty, leaders should share what they know when they know it to prevent harmful rumors
• Creating a flexible organization requires having conversations about change, not just informing people
• During change, remind people what's NOT changing to provide stability and context
• Micromanagement prevents organizations from accessing up to 40% of their employees' skills
• If your leadership approach isn't evolving while the world is changing, you're increasingly out of alignment
To stay connected and continue the conversation, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn.
And don't forget to check out our previous episodes for more tips and strategies to boost your workplace happiness. You can find them on your favorite podcast platform or on our website.
If you have any questions, comments, or topic suggestions for future episodes, please reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you!
Stay inspired, stay motivated, and stay happy at work!
Welcome back for another episode of the Happy at Work podcast with Laura Tessa and Michael.
Speaker 2:Each week we have thoughtful conversations with leaders, founders and authors about happiness at work.
Speaker 3:Tune in each Thursday for a new conversation. Enjoy the show.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Happy at Work podcast. Today we're so excited to have Kevin Eikenberry here with us. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us. You're a podcaster, a consultant, a speaker and an author of multiple books. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 4:I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. Let's start by you telling us about yourself. Tell us about you and your career journey.
Speaker 4:You don't want to start when I was born, right? We want to go a little later than that.
Speaker 4:So it is important, it is Well, so that'll be fine and that'll be the only thing we'll do. I think it's important in the context that I'm sure why you're asking the question to know a little bit about where I come from and where I come from as a farm in Michigan, and that experience both the farm experience but also the business experience being a part of a family, two family businesses, agriculture related I have a huge impact on my outlook, on my perspective, and certainly was the starting point for my career. So I had the chance to be around and watch leaders and really grew up with my parents because they're only 20 years older than me, so I had the chance to really spend time with my dad in the business and with other customers, vendors, et cetera, from a young age, and so I think that has had a huge impact on my life and my career. I went to school at Purdue University. I'm a proud Boilermaker.
Speaker 4:I went to work in, I went to work in corporate America for about eight years in sales and marketing and found my way into training and development, and then about 31 and a half or so years ago, I left there to start the company that is now called the Kevin Eikenberry Group, and when I started at Chevron, I fully expected that I eventually would work for myself, I'd have my own company, but I didn't necessarily know it would be this. It was during my time there that I figured out that I was put on the planet to do training and development work. And there fast forward 31 years, a few months to right now on this podcast.
Speaker 5:Fantastic, kevin. So you have written a book recently called Flexible Leadership Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with Confidence, and I can't think of a more perfect title, considering the world is crazy right now, and if there's anything more true, it's the fact that the world is quite uncertain in this moment. Tell us about your book.
Speaker 4:What does it mean to be a flexible leader, and we'd love to learn more about that Well, yeah, I mean, I'm so glad that I had the foresight to put the word uncertainty in the subtitle and because I think that you know, I think I heard someone say a while back that, well, things are more uncertain now than ever, and I'm like I don't think any of us can now, as we're doing this, recording to the start of the pandemic, like literally, depending on where you are in the world, today is five years, you know again as we're recording this. So, but not just then, but everything around us, there is uncertainty in large quantities, and I think that, as leaders, we have a responsibility to navigate it. We have an opportunity to navigate it. We have an opportunity to navigate it, and our ability to do that has a huge ripple impact on our teams and our organizations and, in fact, how that all then plays out in the rest of the world. So I'm super pleased that I think the book can make an impact in this time.
Speaker 4:As it relates to your question specifically, tessa, I would say this that I believe that the antidote to uncertainty is flexibility, and here's how I would like to think about flexibility is that, for the most part, we tend, as humans, to think of the world, as't think about it that way.
Speaker 4:I think we have to think about it in a way that's much more accurate, which is a both and world, that it's shades of gray, that our leaders. I'll give you a quick example and then I'll shut up. Are our leaders responsible for reaching valuable outcomes? Yes, are leaders responsible for taking care of the folks that are reaching those outcomes? Yes. And some would say I have to choose between outcomes and others, and I would say that rather, we have to look to figure out how do we manage the tension between both outcomes and others, managing the tension between them, understanding the tension and then moving in the direction that best serves the current situation, rather than going to the end of the end-ish of that spectrum that we're most comfortable with, that we most like, that we've had success with, or that our style says we should be on.
Speaker 3:So I have a specific question about uncertainty and just to give you a little bit of background, I started working on Wall Street when I was in my late teens, early 20s, and I was merged 12 times. It was late 80s, a lot of mergers, and the same thing always happened that the management never told you anything. My friends at other firms was telling me that I'm going out of business or I'm being bought by somebody.
Speaker 4:But you weren't here at the office, you were here in the bar.
Speaker 3:Right and I thought well, someone's evolved and gotten past that. I have some friends at Nissan with this merger and I said so how is it going there? And they go. Well, we don't know. We read stuff in the news, that's where we get our information from, and we have this massive gossip mill. That's really nasty. It really causes tons of problems. So, with the uncertainty of that, when there is possibly a merger going on or the leader isn't really sure where we're going to go, and when saying nothing doesn't work, what should they be doing when they don't know what the future looks like?
Speaker 4:So this idea that I just was sharing a second ago is what I would call a flexor. There's two ends and to flex somewhere in between. And so, michael, that gets right at one of the flexors I talk about in the book, which is the flexor of withhold and share. And there's a time to withhold. There's a time when sharing you don't really have enough information or any information. Yet I think everyone recognizes that there are sometimes there are things we can't share or it wouldn't be ethical to share. But what you're describing and not just the Nissan example, but all of those examples, the 12 that you were in is a situation where they were withholding because here's what I have found Leaders generally are withholding for one of a.
Speaker 4:I have found Leaders generally are withholding for one of a couple of reasons. There's lots of possible reasons, of course, but I think the two most common are number one is well, I'll withhold it because then I've got some power, and that's, of course, the one that everyone goes to. But I think the other one is I don't want to share until I have everything, because I'm afraid if I don't have everything. First of all, we all got promoted to our levels of leadership because we were good at stuff and we had answers to stuff. And so which gets at another flexor, which is best or good, right, like I have to have the best answer. So I'm going to wait until I can tell people everything.
Speaker 4:But while we're waiting to tell people everything, people are making it all up, like you said, michael, and then the problem is the rumors become real in their head. So even if the rumor or the gossip is false, when I now have decided I'm going to share it, my communication job is harder, because now I have to dispel what people have come to believe to be true because they've heard it 607 times, and so our job actually gets harder at that point. So you're really getting at this idea of how much should I share. I would say, generally speaking, if the rumors are starting to build, I've got to share what I can share and say I don't know everything, but I know something. Here's what I do.
Speaker 3:If I could follow up with that, one specific example. I worked at LF Rothschild during the crash of 87. And I was in the office where our managing director was the big boss and there were rumors that we had gone out of business that day and he took a Wall Street Journal article. He called everyone made a big big, all the brokers are there. He takes the Wall Street Journal article and says this is what I think of this article that we're going bankrupt. He crumbles it up and he throws it out.
Speaker 3:And what I had noticed when I was going back to not my office I was a cold caller, I was very low level, but I noticed all the really big brokers had outside offices. They were empty, they'd left. And I'm curious what you think the impact is on trust Because, as like a 21-year-old kid, I was like he just lied to me because the rich people, the smart ones, already left. He knows what's happening and I felt like I had been lied to. And I'm curious the impact of trust with the withholding or you know, not sharing. You know what you do know. What do you think of that?
Speaker 4:I think you have to share what you know when you know it, and that's what you need to tell people Now. If that's a lie, then don't do that. Like, my advice is tell people what you can tell them when you can tell them and say that's what you're going to do, and when you know more, you'll share more. But if you're not willing to do that, don't say that either, because that's the same gets us back to the same problem, michael, and so I'm guessing the end of that story because I'm sitting here. The end of the story is exactly right that he did lie when he crumpled up the newspaper. Is that correct? I believe he did. Yeah, because I became Oppenheimer the next day.
Speaker 4:With ourselves, we have to be honest with our teams and that doesn't necessarily mean we have to share everything we know all the time, but it does mean that we should think about when should and what should we share, and we should do that not from what makes us comfortable or what we were taught we should do, or even perhaps, what the crisis communication people told us we should do. But what do I see in the faces of my team? What do I see in the actual excuse me context of the situation. And then flexing means to say, in this moment, what do I think is the result? I think is the decision or the response that will get us the best, long-term and short-term result.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so good, kevin. I really appreciate the both and and, the shades of gray and thinking about in this moment. The thing that's hard about that is being in the moment and decide. There's so much judgment, there's so much kind of you have to call on lots of different past experiences, the current situation, to kind of try to make the right call. And so what if you do? You have some good examples of leaders who were able to figure out how to be in that shade of gray, those shades of gray, or do the both, and to make us feel a little bit more positive.
Speaker 4:So first of all, you know this is, this is the happy at work podcast, or do the both and to make us feel a little bit more positive, what's the possibility? So, first of all, you know, this is the Happy at Work podcast, so there's no reason we can't be happy about this, because here's the reality. The world is complex, that's not changing. Being a leader is complex, that's not changing. And if there's going to be uncertainty, our goal here isn't to dispel, ignore, plow through the uncertainty, but rather to recognize it and look at it accurately. And so I think that that's a really critical thing. And I think, michael, to your point earlier. You know, and I certainly don't know the man you were talking about or any of the other 12, 11 other folks, right, and so I'm not really casting dispersions, but what I am saying is that we have to become number one. The first thing that and so I'm really not quite answering your question, laura, because I'm going to do it slightly differently the first thing that we must do is we must have intention that says if the situation, let's do it this way. All of us have had this situation as a leader, where someone has come to us with a question or a problem, or we're considering an action to take and we stop and say, well, it depends, what we should do depends what, does ask yourself well, what does it depend on? What are the possible things that it could depend on? And uncertainty says you can't know which one of these is going to be. It's what I call plausible cause analysis. So what are the plausible things that it could be here? This doesn't make us more likely to get it right. What it gets us to is helping us see the options, because now, well, it could be any one of these six things. So what action could I take? That would best address at least some of those which might not be the thing that we would normally do first. So I'll give you another sort of maybe not a leader, but lots of leaders.
Speaker 4:Again, going back to this, five years ago, we all had to go home, right? I mean, if you were doing some kind of work, some kinds of work, you still went to your job, but many people overnight were now working, and I think that, in retrospect, while that was painful, that all went pretty well. But it's what came after. That is really fascinating to me, because first of all, we had clients that you know. This was like St Patrick's Day, right. So we had clients announcing hey, we'll be back in the office in two weeks, hey, we'll be back in the office Memorial Day after Memorial Day, we'll be back after the 4th of July, labor Day, like this, like they just kept doing this and because they kept thinking and hoping we could take it back to where it was. And that's not being flexible, that's just being hopeful Because was. And that's not being flexible, that's just being hopeful Because every day that passed, our viewpoint, our experience and the world was continuing to change.
Speaker 4:So now fast forward three, four, five years and people want to bring people back to the office, which I have no problem with if it's appropriate.
Speaker 4:But we tried to bring people back in an inflexible way by creating a new policy that says now we're back in the office, as if to think that nothing in the world changed and all we were doing is flipping a switch back to the office. And everyone that tried to do that ended up with all of these unintended consequences. Right, that's because the context of this situation was not clear. The context of this situation was complex, and in a complex situation we can't even know all the things we don't know. Maybe looking at it later and looking back at it with 20-20 hindsight, we can, but, man, we can't know it up front. So the leaders that are having success here are willing to pause their autopilot. Be intentional about that. Look at the situation, consider the context, what does it depend on? And then make new choices which may or may not be the one they were most used to comfortable with. Or is it a natural experience?
Speaker 5:So I have a question for you, kevin, because in the work that I've done, working with clients, I agree with so much of really everything that you've said. I was going to say well, what didn't you disagree with? Oh, everything that you said about flexible leadership, especially at that leadership level. However, oftentimes in change management, what we end up seeing is this kind of frozen middle of the organization, because, while the leaders might be trying to apply this flexible leadership type competencies and skills, it's not permeating into the culture and creating an agile organization, and many middle managers don't have the kind of access to the tools and skills that the upper top management would have. And so, when you think about it, not just at the top leadership level, but also on a cultural level, what can organizations do so that they can create a very flexible organization, not just the leadership at the top?
Speaker 4:Well, first of all, I'm about as optimistic of a person as I know and I would say I'm not so sure I agree with everything you said in that I'm not sure that all senior leaders are all that executive leaders are all that flexible.
Speaker 4:I mean, I do follow your point, I do understand, but I just want to say it isn't only the middle where the challenges might lie. That's all I'm really saying, and yet I can still go to your point. Here's the one thing that I've learned about change management over the years, and that is that and I think it applies to this conversation we really, we really want to focus on the change and we want to say here's what needs to change and here's why we need to change it. And we're pretty good, at least at some level, of communicating the change. We're pretty decent at that generally speaking, and we've generally figured out we need to talk about the why we need to do all that and like that's. I'm not. I'm not glossing over that because it's not important. I'm glossing over that because I don't think there's anything new I need to say there.
Speaker 4:Here's there are two things that I think we need to say. Number one is telling people. Informing people about the change isn't enough. We need to have conversation about the change, and what happens is we tell people, I tell senior leaders all the time you cannot create the perfect PowerPoint deck for your change. It's not possible. Why? Because there's always an emotional component to change and we're not going to deal with that until we have conversation about it and we let people talk about it, and we don't want to talk about it because we're afraid they won't agree with us. And that's not even the point. The point is we just need to. All of us have had the time where, if someone just let us talk something out, we may not love it, but we figure it out and we're not giving people the chance to do that. That's number one.
Speaker 4:And the second thing I would say is this that we are so focused on what's changing that we don't remind people about what's not changing. And it's almost always more that staying the same than is changing. But when we say it's, it feels like everything's changing. When the reality is the stuff that's changing super important, it's not all changing.
Speaker 4:So I co-wrote a book called the Long Distance Leader. That came out back when Corona was still beer, you know, like more than five years ago. And one of the things we said in that book and it certainly remained in the second edition that came out last year is that rule number one think leadership first, location second, Not everything's changing. The stuff that's changing matters a lot. Don't ignore it, don't downplay it, be clear about it. But not everything's changing. And so if we think that everything in our world is changing, we become even more unsettled than the world needs us to be, and so I think those are two things, tessa, that I would suggest, and that first one is so important. We need to have conversations about change, and so many leaders are afraid to have it because they don't think it's expedient or they're afraid what people are going to say. People don't need your answers, they need your ears.
Speaker 3:I love that. People are funny. They just don't like change, even if it's good change. They can be uncomfortable with that. But I wanted to ask you a question about the coercive leadership style, or the micromanager. So for the micromanager that's listening to the podcast now, what would you say to them to encourage them to consider the benefits of being a different kind of leader besides a micromanager?
Speaker 1:Do micromanagers know they're micromanagers? Do they have that self-awareness? I don't know.
Speaker 3:I think you're the best and you're right. But anyhow, if you think that you're the best and you're right, you might be a micromanager.
Speaker 4:I'm channeling my energy of Foxworthy here, so here's what I want to say about this. Michael, it's a really good question and I wish we had more time than I know we have. I'll say this that even the term micromanager begs the question of flexibility. Because here's the thing you could have two people that report to you. One of them thinks you're awesome and doing a fabulous job of coaching them and giving them feedback and all that stuff, and the other one, who you are trying to and an outside video camera, would say you're treating exactly the same. The other person thinks you're micromanaging them.
Speaker 4:So micromanagement isn't only something that we're doing. It's the perception that is caused in the other person that says, well, that's not what I need or that is what I need. It could be exactly the same thing. Two people need different things. Now we have some people that are doing it to pretty much everybody, and everyone would pretty much agree on the outside, and they may be blissfully unaware. That's a whole nother thing.
Speaker 4:But what I would say is, if you've ever heard that about yourself, or even ever wondered that about yourself, the first thing to do is to ask yourself why is that? What's in that for me to do that, and how do I rebalance in the time we have? How do we rebalance outcomes and others, because you're probably leaning too far into outcomes. We've got to do it this way. It's got to be done this way. It's got to be done right. But the biggest problem with micromanagers, at the end of the day, is that their expectation is that you do it exactly the way I do it, and so they're very clear about the what expectation, but they're not very clear about the how expectation.
Speaker 5:What's interesting, real quick, about that no-transcript, and it really comes down to them feeling like they don't have a voice at work because when they come into their job, their boss is like this is how you do the task, this is how you do the job. Just do it my way, versus, just by asking the question how would you approach this work? What we found was that these employees have 40% more skills than the company even knows about, because they're not ever able to speak up or reveal, you know, the full breadth of the technology, skills and everything that they have that they bring to the table and the job, because they're kind of always being instructed on what to do rather than having that conversation with them. So I think you know what you just said really resonates, and I think we're seeing that a lot with the multi-generations in the workplace.
Speaker 4:First time in history that four generations are in the workplace together. And yeah, that creates complexity, right there, without question. And yeah, that creates complexity, right there, without question. I think we can overplay the generational stuff, because I think anytime we start to label groups, that's dangerous. And yet there's certainly truth in there, tessa, without question. The other thing that I always say is people like well, this group says they want to have more purpose at work. The only thing that's different is everybody else wanted it too. It's just people with the color hair of mine never thought they were supposed to be able to ask for it. That's the only. The human need is not different. The human need is not different. It's just that one group of people has figured out that they could, and good for them, that they ought to ask about it Completely.
Speaker 1:I hear you, I agree. So, kevin, our time is already up. Do you want to leave us, maybe with a word, some words of advice around flexible leadership, people who maybe are listening and thinking what's something I could do to just be a little bit more flexible. You mean other than to go buy a book and go to KevinHartinBraycom?
Speaker 4:slash flexible.
Speaker 1:Good job.
Speaker 4:And really you ought to buy two, because if you only buy one, you're learning alone, but if you buy two you have someone that walks along with you. But no, let me say this If the way that you have led, if that's not changing, and the world is changing, do you believe, what are the odds that the way the world is changing is conspiring to come closer to your approach? Not very likely. And so to me, if you're just going to think about placing a bet, I think you'd be better to place a bet on being flexible.
Speaker 1:Awesome, well said Well. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate your really really great insights. Thanks so much for being here.
Speaker 4:This was wonderful, super fun. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thanks so much, Kevin.
Speaker 5:Thank you.
Speaker 3:We hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to hear future episodes, be sure to subscribe to the Happy at Work podcast and leave us a review with your thoughts.
Speaker 2:Are you interested in speaking on a future episode or want to collaborate with us? Let us know. You can send us an email at admin at happyatworkpodcastcom and lastly, follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter for even more happiness.
Speaker 1:See you soon.
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