Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

Learn more about Lesley’s work with Bounce Beyond at https://www.bouncebeyond.global/.

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here. 

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI, or check out the Kindle version at https://amzn.to/44buVz8. The audiobook version is now available at  https://amzn.to/4dTCleZ.

Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

• A Dozen Lessons Learned Running Dunkin’ Donuts with Robert Rosenberg
• When Women Lead: Courage, Change, and Representation with Joyce Beatty
• How Purpose-Driven Women Redefine What It Means to Lead with Karen Longman

For daily wisdom from our guests, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn.

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

Lesley Southwick-Trask is a cultural anthropologist and strategist whose career spans transformation initiatives in more than 500 organizations. She is Co-Lead Steward of Bounce Beyond, where her work focuses on systemic transformation, communication, and engagement. Her approach draws on systems change and Theory U. An author of three books, she has been recognized among Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women and Atlantic Canada’s Top 50 CEOs. From 2010 to 2020, she hosted a regenerative farm and intentional community on the Portuguese Camino de Santiago,an experience that continues to inform her work.

Transcript
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Maureen: [00:00:00] Hi, today, we’re joined by Lesley Southwick-Trask. I’m your host, Maureen Metcalf. And I think Lesley is a perfect guest. She founded the Proactive Group of Companies, starting in the oil and gas sector, and then broadening into all sectors, public, private, as well as NGOs. Over the years, her background as an anthropologist shaped the services and products they offered to over five hundred clients, and the second most successful pharmaceutical launch, Plavix. 

Lesley is truly a trailblazer, and as we think about how do leaders stay current, looking to Lesley for her lessons learned is a great place to start. 

Lesley (2): Well, thanks, Maureen. I’m so happy to be with you today, and what a pleasure to have this time to share. It’s been a very, very interesting lifetime of chapters.  

Maureen: What are a couple of those major lessons for you that you would like to share with our listeners? 

Lesley (2): There are two. The [00:01:00] first is that there is nothing new in the field of leadership. What’s hasn’t happened is that we’re applying or actually doing what we know we need to do. I mean, we’ve been talking about employee engagement for the last 30 years of my career. 

It was a standard, raison d’etre for what a leader has to do. And yet, you know, the most recent study that I read, and this is a global research study, only about 15% of employees are highly engaged. That’s one five. And 65% are on the fence, and the rest are not engaged at all. And so it’s not that we don’t know what we have to do, it’s that we don’t do it. And so that’s lesson number one. And lesson number two is something that I learned over the years as an anthropologist, was doing cultural change. 

And in reality, you do not change a culture. [00:02:00] Cultures are so deeply embedded in the belief system of the people that what as a leader we have to do is align the beliefs that are showing up in the people that we’re attracting to the beliefs of the marketplace. And if you don’t have a match, you don’t have a match. 

And you have to bite the bullet and either shift what you’re doing in the market or shift the employee groups that are not aligning. For years we did training of how to do a cultural change, thinking that we could actually shift these deeply embedded beliefs by taking them to workshops, by embedding, on day-to-day coaching, and yet these very powerful belief systems always take hold. 

That’s something that, I had to learn the hard way, is that yes, you could get a short-term change, but very [00:03:00] difficult to get long-term sustainability if you’re asking people to change their belief system.  

Maureen: I’m having a reaction because I do coach, and I have seen people change.  

Lesley (2): Now let me just clarify.  

Maureen: Okay.  

Lesley (2): (You) can change certain beliefs. Absolutely, no question about it. So do I believe that I’m unworthy, and do I believe now that I’m worthy? Yes. Do I believe that the customer has the dominant position in creating the market? 

Maybe I start with not believing that the customer knows what they’re doing, and I know everything, and then I shift to believing that the customer does have a right to what they want in the marketplace. Yeah. Those are beliefs that we can fundamentally make a shift in. Having said that, to take large scale groups of people and try to bring them to a whole new belief about the market, what they’re producing, how they’re producing it, takes [00:04:00] unbelievable leadership skill. 

Where I think we have a dearth is in the leadership qualities that are needed to do that. So when I say that cultures can’t be changed, what I’m really saying is, the kind of leadership work that’s needed is a very small percentage of leaders that I’ve met who have the wherewithal of knowing how to do that, because it is such a powerful fundamental area of human existence around the core beliefs that cause us to survive. 

Maureen: Totally got it. Having worked just with individual coaching, it’s a significant amount of one-on-one effort- Yes … to, to help transition beliefs. Doable if they want to, but not without major one-on-one time investment.  

Lesley (2): And that’s where, you know, we’re seeing that, uh, again, on the global stage, you know, the increased investment that is being put into developing. 

I mean, the majority of investment needs to go to the front line leadership because the front line is responsible for 80% [00:05:00] of the workforce. So if you’ve got that kind of ratio, you really have to be very capable of bringing that engagement, for example, factor up. And yet we’re seeing that even though we know we need to engage people, the actual ability to sustainably pull that off is still struggling. 

Maureen: To your point, this is not new stuff. No. This is stuff I’ve been thinking about and re- or reading about since I started- Yes, exactly … working in the ’80s.  

Lesley (2): Yeah. Yeah. And- Exactly.  

Maureen: And yet I taught a class two weeks ago and one of the primary focuses was employee engagement, and for many people, it was a new concept. 

Lesley (2): Mm.  

Maureen: As people who are, uh, me, not you, working in the space of leadership education, something has gone amiss. Here’s an example. 

I worked with a client; all of the Gallup engagement stuff was available. And one of the senior executives, uh, the company president in [00:06:00] fact, still thought that people, like, if he heard laughter, clearly people were not working, and they were to be sent back to work. 

Uh-huh. ‘Cause they were messing around and not doing the right thing. So for him, there was no acknowledgement of having a best friend at work or any of that stuff. That was cheating the company.  

Lesley (2): Oh, yes. Let me give you an example. In this particular intervention, we had everywhere from scientists who were working in the lab through to the frontline sales positions in the organization, the pharmaceutical reps. 

And what we realized we had to do was to shift their understanding of what actually happens in the primary care office, the physician’s office, when somebody comes in with a stroke condition, and they’re trying to ascertain what exactly they need to do. So we hired a group of actors, nothing new. 

People do this all the time. Hired a group of actors [00:07:00] with a number of stroke conditions, and had them role play what, if they were a physician, would they be doing in order to understand what the implication of this drug would be on these folks, and what would be the positioning that they would want to have the physician do. 

And they were stuck. They just could not move past the fact that the physician actually was working with a diagnostic model that did not naturally move to their drug. And it took an enormous amount of effort for them to having put themselves in the shoes of the person that they were selling to, who has a 15 to 20-minute timeframe to do this in-  

Maureen: Yeah 

Lesley (2): to actually understand all of this literature that they were giving this physician to understand and work with, and then position their drug in this unbelievable short timeframe was not possible. [00:08:00] And so I guess what I’m saying is, is that it’s this engagement, understanding fully what the people, what they are living with, what they are understanding to be their reality, is often very difficult for us if it’s not our reality. 

Maureen: Totally got it. I think that’s a brilliant observation. And it’s not what we learned in school.  

Lesley (2): Well, no and to that point, it’s changing the mind frame, and I think you know, when I said that it’s really difficult for us to do a cultural change when we’re asking people to shift beliefs if we think it’s just about beliefs. 

Because it’s about the mindset that we have about the situation that we’re in. So as an example, when I was asked to come into National Defense in a situation where our forces had come back from a particularly dysfunctional and grueling operating theater they came back feeling [00:09:00] totally demoralized about their role and about their uniform. 

And they were being asked to step up again and enter into the world stage in a different type of Canadian force. We knew that we could not have them tell their stories of what was going on overseas, because the culture is one of tell no secrets, tell no lies. Ah. Got it. So in order to break that, and not for us to break it to the public, but to have them start to honor what their experience had been, I brought in a well-known actor and producer. His name is John Dunsworth. Anybody who ever watched “Trailer Park Boys,” he’s Mr. Lahey . Anyway, he’s a very well-known actor and a very good producer. 

And I asked him to come in and teach them how to tell a story, not through telling [00:10:00] the story, but through visualizing a scenario in which you have to convey it, but not in your total normal cultural way. And he trained them in acting methods that at first they were, as you can imagine, completely skeptical about. 

But he’s such an engaging director that he broke through and had them start to tell the stories of what they had lived through an acting presence. Two days later, they put on a tell-all, and there was not a dry eye. This was 75 people involved in this intervention, from three-star general down to frontline warrior, as well as civilian. 

And they’re living proof of what they had experienced for those who hadn’t experienced but needed to appreciate the experience, and the letting go of what those [00:11:00] stories had for them, was unbelievable in terms of its power. And so we had to shift the mind frame of tell no secrets, tell no lies, to there are ways and means of letting go of what’s crippling us, what’s setting our mind to be in a certain frame of reference that allows us to free ourselves to open for something different to experience. 

Maureen: Lesley, that is a brilliant story. Can you tell us a little more about this idea of mindset shift? ‘Cause again, this is so foundationally linked to how leaders develop. And earlier in the conversation, you made the point that in culture change, there are very few leaders who have the skill to, on a large scale, make that change. 

The research would suggest that between 1.5 and 5% of leaders have that capacity. So c- it, w- so what you’re [00:12:00] saying is completely, and, and not shockingly aligned with the research that we’ve been talking about.  

Lesley (2): I don’t wanna, you know, paint a negative brush here. I want to say that I’ve met outstanding leaders . I think we’re putting an enormous amount on their shoulders, and I think that the expectation of how you and I as regular human beings have to not only shift our mindset, but help huge numbers of people who work with us shift theirs, is a really tough expectation, and I think it needs different types of stimuli for it to work. 

So I mentioned in my previous example about how we brought a director in to actually take them out of context, and I think that’s where it really begins, is taking people out of context so that they have to rely on some native distinct abilities. And another example of that is where we were asked to do a merger of [00:13:00] a number of telecommunication companies who had to come together and create one aligned organization. 

They were struggling in terms of the cultural rub that was occurring between these various not only different corporations, but different geographic locations. And by the way, none of my work is done without huge resistance. So it takes huge trust that I have to build for people to go where I’m going. 

We took them to an art museum, and had the curator walk us through a number of different forms of artwork. What she did is that she explained what really was going on in terms of form and function, and how different forms were stimulating different parts of the brain to attract it to go to different parts of the painting. 

You know, we went to abstract as well as conventional, traditional art. There was an engineer who was standing at the [00:14:00] back with his arms crossed, apparently disengaged, and took me aside and he said, “I can’t handle this. This is just way out of my comfort zone. I have no idea where you’re going. If you’d asked us to create a Gantt chart of what we’re doing, I would be comfortable. But this is insane, and I think I’m going to have to go.” And I said, “You know what? You’re free to do whatever you want, but if there’s anything here that stimulates you, just allow it to find its home in you. Just see where it can go.” 

The next morning he comes in, he brings with him this blueprint, this massive blueprint, and on it is this absolutely unbelievable diagram, and he says, “Here’s how the merger could happen.” And he walks all of us through it, and it was brilliant. And I said, “How did you come up with that?” He said, ” I let the art find a home in me.” 

Maureen: How beautiful.  

Lesley (2): So I [00:15:00] guess my point is, is that as leaders, we think we have to do it through the conventional way of training. Here’s the workshop conversation. Mm-hmm. Let’s go into a small group. Let’s try and figure this out. And we’re staying with the common intelligences that we use on a day-to-day basis, and we’re not using the other parts of us that are ready to show up if the others are stripped away from us. 

It’s like the high ropes course, you know, where I have to go up that pole and dangle with a teammate, and nothing that I’ve ever learned is gonna teach me how to do that except doing it. It’s putting people into a situation where they’re forced to bring parts of themselves out that they are not used to bringing out. 

Maureen: So I wanna go back to something you said: putting enormous expectations on the shoulders of leaders. We are in an era with a massive amount of change, and because of that [00:16:00] chaos, we as the people in roles of leadership have an unprecedented opportunity to make an impact on the world. 

Lesley (2): Yes …  

Maureen: what I did even five years ago-  

Lesley (2): Yes …  

Maureen: doesn’t work or doesn’t work the way it did back then. 

Lesley (2): Exactly. Exactly.  

Maureen: You and I talked a while back about this idea of the mind of the scientist, that as a scientist, I am willing to go places that as a conventional leader I would never touch.  

Lesley (2): I love that example because what it does is it puts me into the mind frame of somebody that doesn’t know the solution, but is curious about finding it. If I put myself into that mind frame, I give myself the latitude to experiment. 

And when I experiment, I give myself even further latitude to try and fail, and try and make it better the next time, and learn from what I’m doing. And I think that’s what I’m [00:17:00] saying about taking us outside of the described roles that we see ourselves in and saying, “Okay, this is me. No, no. No, I can actually be someone else if I so choose to allow me to experience that part of me.” 

Maureen: Uh, not only can I be, but again, to build on your engineering story, his stepping out of his comfort zone based on the curated art experience gave him access to neural pathways in his brain that he hadn’t explored before, and that created the opening to go merging his deep expertise with an openness to trying something new that facilitated a brilliant outcome that would not have happened in a conference room. 

Lesley (2): He allowed himself to, for a moment, believe that the curator was an expert in what she was talking about, and he could respect that. So it wasn’t that he was listening to somebody who had [00:18:00] just some same idea as he did about what art was, he actually was learning something different than what he would normally go and learn about. 

And this is one of the things that I used to say in training is that, in terms of the people that show up at training events, a large percent of us show up at events where we know we’re gonna do well in , which means we’ve already done it.  

To show up into learning something that we know nothing about forces us into the mind of a scientist, into the mind of the experimenter. 

And so it gives us, again, the latitude to discover parts of ourselves that have yet to show up. And this is what I mean by allowing ourselves to realize that there is so much more to us than we have allowed ourselves to discover to this point.  

Maureen: That willingness to step outside of our comfort zone as leaders: people are l- looking to us for answers, [00:19:00] and yet you and I have both stepped into places where we had no earthly clue, but could pull on the resources of smart and experience in other realms to figure stuff out.  

Lesley (2): Well, e- exactly. In fact, in, in my particular case, I became a supervisor of integrated funds in investment for Manulife many, many years ago, and then I was promoted to a manager, and what that meant is that my office got bigger, but I had- 

I had less skill than I did, than I could possibly imagine. And I went and said to the h- human resources department, ” You have to do something for me. I’m going to lose all these people that applied for my job and not get anything out of them because I have no clue what I’m doing with them.” 

And so that was what began my journey into management development is that I ended up going to University of Toronto, working with them on a management development [00:20:00] program and realized how much I loved what we were doing, and that’s how I shifted my career in that case. We say to people, “You have now more responsibility,” and yet we are not giving them the unconventional tools to allow them to progress. 

Maureen: That’s such an important point. And yet to get a client to take the risk of doing something that is out of the norm because if they invest in it and it fails, then they need to go to their executives or their board and explain how they did this unusual art thing, or in my case I did improv training because I struggled as a public speaker. 

I was terrified of people, which is not helpful.  

Lesley (2): So No, not exactly. But good on you to realize that. 

Maureen: Yeah, the first time I was in front of people, my microphone didn’t work. What? People started to leave, and I was grateful they were leaving. I wish they would all have left ’cause I was scared. Of course. I was clearly not very [00:21:00] effective. 

I needed to get that under control. And so I didn’t do the conventional approach, which would’ve been something like Toastmasters. I went to improv classes. And it was interesting for me as a business leader way outside of what I would do. But it was what I needed, again, to build the neural pathways in my brain. 

The first time I think I did a big presentation in public was in a teen beauty pageant, and nobody knows this, or very few people. I wasn’t a traditional girl, so I didn’t realize that I was supposed to, like, tap dance or something. My skill? How to use a blowtorch.  

Lesley (2): Oh, I  

Maureen: love it. 

Lesley (2): Did you win?  

Maureen: Oh, God, no. Complete failure. Complete failure.  

Lesley (2): But what an experience. I mean, I would much rather watch that talent than watching somebody with a baton, truly.  

Maureen: You, you should have been one of the judges- Yeah … because after that I was then terrified when I realized how uninformed I was about what girl talents look like. 

I was I [00:22:00] mean, just humiliated- Oh … by this whole thing. Yeah. So- Oh  

Lesley (2): my goodness …  

Maureen: so standing up- Great example … in front of people: not my thing, and yet the direction my career was going required it. So it’s taking an unconventional approach that I could navigate. All of us can think back to barriers to our development and ask the question, ’cause we’re all called to be outside of our comfort zones. 

Lesley (2): Yes.  

Maureen: So what are those opportunities to grow in a way that doesn’t kill our career? Fortunately, my blowup was when I was 12 or 14.  

Lesley (2): Yeah, well that’s earlier on.  

Maureen: It left an indelible mark in my psyche.  

Lesley (2): I was gonna say, that, that age is when, it’s like a massive trauma at that age, so.  

Maureen: Not to make this about my fear of public speaking, but the idea that as leaders we are all called to be in situations now that are dreadfully uncomfortable, and in some cases potentially painful [00:23:00] and humiliating, and we don’t have a choice. 

To continue to grow, and for our organizations to thrive we need to get over it and find a way to do that that’s safe and appropriate, so that all of the people counting on us get what they deserve, which is an effective organization, not a leader who is afraid to do part of his or her job. 

Lesley (2): Right on. Absolutely true.  

Maureen: So why don’t you share your latest adventure?  

Lesley (2): It started actually with the death of my husband, and I was, uh, not dealing with that particularly well, given that he had been my business partner, the father of my children and everything that I had to do in my life. 

I met a person who had said to me, “Well, you know in this sit- situation you need to walk.” And I said, “Yeah, well, what does that mean? I take my dog for a walk?” And he said, “No you need to not only do that, ’cause your dog needs it, but you need to walk the Camino de [00:24:00] Santiago.” I said, “Well, what is that?” 

And he said, “Well, you know, you sort of walk anywhere from 500 kilometers to 1,000.” And I, I just said, “What? Like, who does that?” “I mean, that sounds like insanity to me.” He said, “No, that’s actually something you need to consider.” I said, “Well, I’m way too busy. I, I’ve got so many contracts, I’m trying to keep my head above the water. It’s not gonna be possible.” And I had a contract that all of a sudden was postponed, and he said to me, “Okay you have no more excuses. Now you should go.” And so two weeks later, I was in the Lisbon Airport. We decided to do the Camino Portugues, and I put my backpack on for the first time in that airport. 

Maureen: Oh, my goodness.  

Lesley (2): So I proceeded to walk 880 kilometers, and that’s when you learn that it’s one foot after the other. There are days where you just don’t know how you’re going to push through the fatigue or the sense of [00:25:00] where is the next coffee shop? And you realize nature is all around you. 

I took my iPod thinking I’d listen to music, and I ended up never wearing it and just listening to the birds and listening to the chickens and the space around me, which was unbelievably beautiful. And on that walk, we stopped at a particular place that was a fallen down ruin, and I thought it was fascinating, so I took some pictures and finished my walk, went back to Canada and found myself at a very interesting place because just before I finished, I felt completely empty, and I had no clue about anything. 

I didn’t want my career. I didn’t want to live in the same city. I knew that nothing that I had known was going to be what my future was going to be, but I had no idea what it was. And I was told that the real Camino begins when your walk ends. So the aha does not happen on the walk. The emptying happens on the walk [00:26:00] to open yourself up to what is supposed to come in next. 

And little did I know that when I was downloading my pictures, this ruin came up and it had a for sale sign, which I had not seen- Oh, wow … when I was here. I, just for a lark, emailed the real estate agent and said, ” What does a ruin go for in Portugal?” And, uh, he wrote me back, which I didn’t think he was going to do, and the next thing I know, two months later, arrive in Porto, walk again back into this property, which is about 200 kilometers , and walked onto the land and said, “I’m home.” 

Maureen: Oh, my goodness.  

Lesley (2): And I, from that moment on, I shut down my business. I told my children I was moving to Portugal. Took three years to renovate an 18-bed albergue on the Camino de Santiago, eight kilometers before Valencia and the border between Portugal and Spain. 

The unconventional piece for me [00:27:00] was that I would never have considered 880 kilometers, and if I’d known I was gonna do 880 kilometers, I probably wouldn’t have started. 

I had to do it one day at a time, one coffee shop at a time, one night in an albergue at a time. I had to do it so that I could manage each step to my comfort level. And as I got more and more comfortable, my distance increased, and my sense of bravery in terms of walking solo for a couple of days … I guess what I’m saying is, you break a pattern, and then you open yourself up to breaking it further, but not necessarily in one bite . 

Maureen: I think that’s a really important observation . We share this kind of hiking and walking as a way of transformation. 

I climbed Kilimanjaro right as I started my business. Whoa. And it also shaped foundationally. The first time I did something like this [00:28:00] was Costa Rica, and the first day I was worried about getting my boots wet. What I discovered over the course of- Yeah, for anyone who hikes. 

Unavoidable. And I was wearing leather boots from high school, old leather boots, so my feet were wet for seven days or however many days our hike was.  

Lesley (2): The entire time, yes.  

Maureen: Collapse after collapse. We ran out of water the first day. Uh, we had people falling into a creek out of exhaustion at points. 

We just had all kinds of things go wrong. And what I learned on that first one, the Costa Rica one, was things I was afraid of were not scary. Or they were still scary- Yeah … but they’re- Yeah … overcome-able.  

Lesley (2): Yes.  

Maureen: That every day, next coffee shop, next step, that if I were to look at one quality that differentiated me it’s the, “Oh, my goodness, I am terrified. I’m in a cave with no light, and bats- Oh … are flying at my head.” I, literally. Yeah. And there’s nothing I can do, [00:29:00] right? I am here now. And like- And  

Lesley (2): so this is it.  

Maureen: This is it. Okay. Gotta go forward. There’s no place else to go. Putting myself there physically allowed me to do that also in a physically much less stressful environment, but professionally much more stressful, right? 

Bats are nothing compared to boards in some ways.  

Lesley (2): Oh, I would, I would say that’s very true. That’s very true indeed.  

Maureen: I-  

Lesley (2): I’ve been on a number of boards, and one of the areas that I’ve specialized in is governance. Governing is a very interesting domain; you can’t govern something that you don’t understand, and I’ve found so many boards where the people come because they’ve led other businesses, and they sit in the boardroom and think that by looking at the financial pages, statements, and by having different presentations from different members of the organization, that they’ll get to understand that organization. 

And I will tell you, that is [00:30:00] no way to govern. If you don’t walk that organization inside out, you have no, no responsibility for governing that organization.  

Maureen: I absolutely agree. Having done it and having seen the bad decisions-  

Lesley (2): Oh, yes …  

Maureen: which is why I enter. I go in when things are going wrong, and it’s usually relatively apparent, in the very well-intended people on the boards, they aren’t necessarily taught to be board members. 

They were pulled in because they did something else well, not govern well.  

Lesley (2): That’s what we’re going to in terms of leadership, is that I can’t ask anybody to do something that I’m not prepared to do myself. This is where the role of leaders is so critical, is that we have to lead by example. 

And I know, just the same thing I said at the top of the show, we know this, but how do we do it? And I think that if we’re not prepared to step into the unconventional, be unconventional in our own [00:31:00] way, then we can’t ask other people to come up with the next innovation.  

Maureen: So I really appreciate you joining us. In this time of unprecedented change, what’s required for us to move forward is to be open to being unconventional, and then those solutions come through us. Thank you.  

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