Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Maureen: [00:00:00] Our guest this morning is Sebastian Seru. He treats leadership as a research discipline, a critical social phenomena and essential business practice.

Sebastian: I’m a business psychologist. That’s my background. Okay. And I like to do research and write and publish. But specialize in leadership development specifically?

Yes.

Maureen: Okay. What about your life took you into focusing on leadership development?

Sebastian: I work for a number of years in O.D. and in recent years I found that it’s a very, has become a very, very important thing. I also believe we have a leadership crisis that I talk about in my book Leadership results, and I think we could do things much better.

Maureen: So let’s start there because I’ve only been here a couple days and heard people talking about the leadership crisis politically.

Sebastian: That’s one we see in television every day. Yeah. But that is a corporate one as well. You know, our [00:01:00] organizations has spent millions of billions of dollars, literally, and they’re not getting the results they want.

Hence the title of my book, leadership Results. And in fact, there was an article in Harvard Business Review a few months ago. I. Labeling. The industry as a trained robbery, I think is very sad. Companies have been robbed because they’re paying so much money.

Maureen: What do we do about that? We look at the data about the ability to transform organizations and that data is not improved markedly over the last.

20 some year.

Sebastian: The same applies to employee engagement. It tends to fluctuate, but overall fees still low. Like in the country where I live, the estimated cost of lack of engagement is 56, 55 billion dollars, and I would suspect in in the U.S. is much higher. But you know, speaking, generally speaking, I think we have a problem

Maureen: and looking at the amount of suffering people experience during the thing that they’re paying to do, and we [00:02:00] would hope they would lost a ring.

Sebastian: Yeah,

Maureen: but they’d all loved it. And

Sebastian: I was talking about this at the last conference in Spain. One of the things they talked about was about that whatever you look at, you look at suffering, you look at violence, you look at, uh, a very sad thing really.

Maureen: Do you have recommendations for what to

Sebastian: do about it? I do.

I identified at least 10 key areas that need to be looked at, but I think that it’s probably not worth it go into those. But generally speaking, I think what’s happened is. That the world has changed. You know, if you look at in technology, we use new technologies. Mm-hmm. But in terms of developing leader, so to speak, or doing leadership, I.

I think we’re still using very old, outdated ways of thinking,

Maureen: and that’s the foundation for my entire book. This whole idea of are you innovating how you lead?

Sebastian: Yeah, I think most of all in general, we still hold very dearly to that, uh, view of the heroic leader, usually a man. Of course, all [00:03:00] greats attributes.

Superman is gonna go there and fix everything. And I think this is no longer, I’m not saying they might be very charismatic and very good people. I’m not trying to diminish that, but I’m saying that we need to look at new forms of leadership.

Maureen: Well, and the whole leader 2050 focus says that it is not what we saw traditionally, the Mabo Man or Marvel comics, superheroes.

It’s not that it isn’t shock. We’re deliberate more thoughtful. Often quieter, not big ego.

Sebastian: So essentially in times of turbulence, let’s use that term, the other terms like vuca, I say times of, you know, high velocity, complexity, turbulence, all those terms. So that generates a great deal of confusion and fear.

And during those times, people ask a very important question, I think we all ask, and that is, what is the story? So sensemaking is a relatively simple term that is around [00:04:00] providing people with a sense of what’s around there and is actually one of the four dimensions of the model of leadership development that, uh, Ancon uses professional ancon, MIT Sensemaking, inventing relating the sensemaking is one of them.

So I think that an important task of leaders today is to make sense of that reality first for themselves. Then for others,

Maureen: and when we look at leadership maturity, we talk about maturing our ability to make sense of things. Yeah. That resonates entirely with me. The idea of sense making. Yeah.

Sebastian: So then the next question is, well, how they do that?

So first it is about making sense for themselves, but then it’s how they become sense givers, if you like. Invariably, that’s true language. We are linguistic pains. So is the use of narratives and storytelling. I looked in those two literature very, right? Mm-hmm. Sense making and storytelling. That’s why those two literature increase [00:05:00] me a lot, the sensemaking literature and the storytelling.

So it’s about how their leaders develop their narratives, the stories, individual stories and collective stories to help people to first make sense and then to communicate and use them as supreme board for action.

Maureen: Just to restate, we’re in a turbulent or high velocity time. Yeah. And I as a leader need to make things differently than I did five years ago.

More complex, more interconnected, more global, and faster moving, and it’s my job to make sense for myself of everything that’s happening. I. And then how people around me come to a similar sense as I have

Sebastian: Yeah. Held them to make sense. So it, you become a sense giver. And the analogy that I use in the book is that they no longer maps.

You know, people get lost somewhere and, and they found a map and eventually they navigate and they get safe to the base. But when they get there, they arrived. They realize that the map [00:06:00] is a different map. It’s from another mountain. But yet the map helped them to get energized, the confidence, the optimism to get there.

Sounds like

Maureen: me travelling around Brussels. Yeah,

Sebastian: so sensemaking is not so much concern with the accuracy. It’s more about plausibility you like. It is about, we make choices even though don’t understand what happened, but it’s how we make sense of it. So it’s an interesting concept when you look at Eric.

Maureen: So I would say it helps me be directionally correct though, right?

Sebastian: Yeah. It helps you least to centered yourself to believe in something, to have that hope and that confidence to move forward and to tap into the inner resources if you like. Like when those people get lost into the mountain, although the map is not the actual map of the Durang territory, they don’t know that, but the belief that that is something.

Triggers the inner resources, they become a lot more present to the situation. Mm-hmm. More optimistic, [00:07:00] more confident. Start to remember things they’ve learned throughout their lives, help each other collaborate and eventually they make it,

Maureen: it really does seem like my navigating around Russell couple days, but I look at the, the Google thing and it says.

Three minutes, and then it says nine minutes, and then it says 12. Clearly I’m going the wrong direction and I’m kind of paying attention to my phone and not looking at the buildings around me

Sebastian: as a matter also, then using more your intuition and creativity. We live now in, uh, in times where everybody talks about data, big data, and of course data is important, but it’s not everything you ask me personally.

I am the qualitative piece, it’s always on top. What do you stand for? What are you going, what’s your vision? Qualitative P is the one that provides me,

Maureen: I’m listening to the book, uh, by the CEO of Microsoft where he talks about hit refresh. And very much as they’re going through challenges, like how do we deal with government warning information about [00:08:00] terrorists and do we unlock algorithms?

He continually goes back to volumes. Mm-hmm. And it’s, it’s more about what do we stand for and what do I stand for? I value security. But I also value confidentiality. So how do we make that decision on anti violences, but continually, I hear it. Going back to first values and then the data

Sebastian: that centers, I think it was General Schwarz in the U.S.

Maureen: Schwarzkopf, yeah. Yeah. Stormin’ Norman.

Sebastian: Yeah. He talks about strategy and character and leadership, and he says, if you have to choose with one, you go with character. And to me it makes a lot of sense. As a leader, what’s your character? The content is changing so fast that strategy tomorrow won’t be valid anymore anyway.

Maureen: We need to have it but have it held loosely.

Sebastian: Yeah. Yeah. But it’s a Spanish poem, My Child I think it is called, there’s a poem that talks about that you make the way as you walk. There is no “way.”.

Maureen: That’s something. It’s [00:09:00] important for our listeners to hear because so many people wanna get it right. It’s not real.

Sebastian: Exactly. And if we are to engage people, if we are to use more distributive or collective ways of, of fleeting, it’s about everybody having that sense of, you know, there and where they going and understanding that nobody’s gonna be there to hold your hand, you know?

Maureen: Well, especially now when things are changing faster than we can make sense of.

So we continue to refine through the filter of our wisdom and unwise is not helpful. It’s been interesting teaching grad students because they come in thinking they weren’t counting up the books.

Sebastian: Yeah. They won the seven steps. Telling that that How long ago is that? That come lot, you know, and that’s the problem.

We still use those ways of thinking, mental models code. Mm-hmm. Whatever you like mm-hmm. Of 20 or 30 years ago and expect them to use. Today we need to update our mental software. We are very good about updates. Mm-hmm. [00:10:00] Our iPhones and all that. But we still use the old mental software.

Maureen: In fact, one of my taglines is don’t be the flip turn of leadership.

If this room were full at this moment, a full rumor of people cohere you saying, I need to update, but what the heck does that mean? I. What do I do to make that happen?

Sebastian: Well, you need to question what are your assumptions, what are your expectations? You need to be open to look at new ways of, of thinking, being and doing.

Maureen: I have to update myself to update ance making machine.

Sebastian: You are? Yeah. I mean, going back to what we were talking about at the beginning, what we’re doing could be changed. It’s like leadership training. Yeah. I think always people expect that if you like, you know, module one, module two, so when I work with.

People in the leadership space, I tend to work more with, with whatever they work in, but, but see how it emerges as the group rep. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So that sets the agenda, if you like, and that helps them to get the word done as well. So that thing that you go to a training [00:11:00] program and then you go back to work and you better look all this transfer of learning, you know, knowledge and skills and whatever.

That’s a bit of an old hat as well, you know? Then you got all the piece of action learning literature and all that. Yeah. Brown stuff, which. I know that a lot of people use, but I think this needs now to be third prominent and taken up. I like the word both Raelin as well. Joe Raelin, you fold it on him,

Maureen: but many of our listeners don’t.

Sebastian: Joe Raelin is based in, uh, Boston, I think at Northwestern Tools about, uh, leadership as practice.

Maureen: I love that idea.

Sebastian: Yeah. Yeah. And it talks about, uh, leader for organizations. So I really like his work is very, in fact, when I read I thought, oh wow, this guy, now’s how I think. And, and it is more about being tuned to what’s happening.

And this goes with a trend this very today, which is mindfulness. What’s being mindful, being here, being now, you know, being here for each other, you know, and see what it matters out out of our [00:12:00] conversation.

Maureen: And action learning for people who are also unfamiliar with that. I learned something, I put it into practice.

I also talk about the leader taking on the mind of the scientist. I have a hypothesis that this will work. I test it.

Sebastian: Exactly. It’s about keep questioning and working on real time issues. So look, I understand that all this is a little bit more abstract than the way we thought traditionally, but that’s the way it is.

Life is more complex. So I know we’re trying to make it simple, but we need to. Look at things from different perspective. There is another term I like to Yes. I said, you go into this corner of the room. Mm-hmm. You see one perspective. Mm-hmm. And if you don’t shift the mind and you don’t move it, you will never see any perspective.

And a lot of people in a (?) that are aware of it, but they keep looking at the (?) from the same perspective.

Maureen: I work with a

Sebastian: lot of

Maureen: technology leaders for any functional area. Exactly. And as I hit a certain level, [00:13:00] I need to take on the perspective of the general organization. I also have to stand in my corner, but then I have to stand in your point.

Exactly. See your point of view.

Sebastian: And that leads me to another, is that it’s been very popular and that’s the adaptive leadership, which is that we still keep treating all these complex problems or adaptive problems as technical problems. Particularly technical people. Mm-hmm. I.T. people. Mm-hmm. Engineers, they see everything from a technical perspective and that’s why they keep failing, you know?

Maureen: So again, adaptive leadership is it super, the problem solves me. I don’t just solve it, but I need to change in the process.

Sebastian: Yeah. You need to, exactly. I need, and the change takes place in different places. Mm-hmm. And it’s also about what you were saying that you keep hypothesizing, so. Mm-hmm. It’s a bit like a scientist, you know, you keep asking and then.

You expect that you might do wrong, but that’s a good thing because now you have no way been anywhere elsewhere. It’s about, you know, understanding the stakeholders and their perspective is also about putting pressure into the [00:14:00] sister. That’s risky because sometimes you put too much, if you don’t put enough pressure, things don’t change, and you put too much pressure.

Uh, Hy says You blow up.

Maureen: Uh, which is why I say good scientists are not scientists. Well conducted experiment very hard.

Sebastian: Yeah. Interesting was my boo words. Somebody asked me, what about leaders? Like they mentioned Kennedy. I said, well, you look at it, all the ones you mentioned they were killed, they were killed.

So when you’re trying to put too much change resistant, doesn’t want it. Care of that. That’s why it thing out there all excited, I’m gonna do that. It doesn’t work. Most people, you go about whatever you work, if you work for someone in the first thing they’ll do. Step into your shoulder if you don’t jump the same high you did before, they’re gonna get very worried

Maureen: if you don’t jump the same brain well.

And so we talk about leadership training, sailing, but it’s not necessarily the training. It’s putting people back into the same culture [00:15:00] where we don’t always really want

Sebastian: because you start seeing new things. You see. That’s the thing, and that’s what I really try do in my word after the experience of development trend.

Pull it, whatever you like. You see things in a different way. You see things that before were invisible to you or beneath the iceberg, that you like to use the analogy iceberg. So now you see different things. So you can’t be the same person again. And other people may have difficulties with that because they can’t relate in the same way anymore.

Maureen: I, yeah, I’m shaking my head because I’ve been there.

Sebastian: I’ll have to confess, I’m maybe a bit skewed that way. You know, I’m a. A rebellious by nature. We like to do what we like to do, and if we have all these constraints, we get suffocated

Maureen: and it gives you an opportunity to really be a scientist to really hypothesize and test and for clients who are interested in that magnitude of change.

They hire you. [00:16:00] Clients who aren’t may hire you, but they don’t retain you as long.

Sebastian: Yes. Is a price attack,

Maureen: and yet that is the price of progress.

Sebastian: Any change comes that is a, a pain is, is a transition. I talk about leadership transitions and initiations. You know, great leaders always, I believe, been initiated and gone for a great deal of suffering.

People like Mandela, for example,

Maureen: if you were to summarize your initiation,

Sebastian: my initiation was like this. I was exposed to leadership when I was quite young, when I was 13 years of age.

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Sebastian: My father died.

Maureen: Oh goodness.

Sebastian: And that really shook my world. And the first thing my mother said to me was, now you’re the head of the family.

I need to look after me. And you two younger brothers. I failed miserably. I didn’t do a good job, but it took me You were 13. Exactly. But it took me decades to realize that. Not until I looked at leadership. Seriously. And I read things like a Abraham Lincoln that says that it’s not [00:17:00] about whether you fail or not, but whether you content with your failures.

One Nelson Mandela that says, it’s not whether we fail, but is every time we raise. Even Bill Gates talks about that he’s more important to launch from failures than successes. And even Steve Jobs, I’m the afraid of failure. So at that point, I understood that I needed that failure. I needed that initiation to go into that blaming space to experience what is it like to fire?

Because when you fail, you have to surrender to something bigger than yourself. You have to trust others and leaders that have not been initiated abuse their power. We have a lot of them around the world because they believe they can get anything they want for their own self serving, and that’s because they never had an initiation.

They don’t understand that the role is served to others.

Maureen: So you and I should start the corporate initiation.

Sebastian: I call it initiation coaching. And again, so it’s a bit like the question has always been a either this [00:18:00] made or born, you know? Mm-hmm. Well, I say, well either. How about they initiate it?

Maureen: Sebastian, thank you.

This is such a delight.

Sebastian: So if people are more interested, chapter six of my book talks specifically about initiation.

Maureen: So again, give us the name of your book where we can find it.

Sebastian: Well, it’s called Leadership Results. How to Create Adaptive Leaders and High Performing Organizations Run In Certain World.

Again, it’s a one topic, but neither should result is Visit to Remember.

Maureen: Okay, and it’s available on Amazon.

Sebastian: E Isabel at one, Amazon and many online, but,

Maureen: and your name is

Sebastian: Sebastian Salicru: S-A-L-I-C-R-U. Salicru.

Maureen: Thank you so much. It was an absolute delight.