Holy Moly Watch Your Language with Chris Collett

What if the words you use as a leader are shaping your team's performance more than your strategy?

In this episode of Get Amplified, Vic and Sam sit down with leadership consultant Chris Collett to unpack one of the most influential leadership books Vic's ever read: Turn the Ship Around! by David Marquet.

The book tells the remarkable true story of a struggling nuclear submarine where traditional command-and-control leadership simply didn't work. Faced with a crew that knew more than he did and a situation where he couldn't possibly have all the answers, Marquet had to rethink what leadership looked like. 

The result? A powerful shift from giving orders to creating an environment where everyone was empowered to think, contribute and speak up.

Along the way, from his second book 'Leadership is Language', they explore why good intentions aren't always enough. 

Vic shares why this book was a genuine game changer for her, one of the most impactful leadership reads since The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. While she always believed she created space for people to contribute, this book challenged her to look more closely at the language she was using and the unintended influence leaders can have on the conversations around them.

The discussion also dives into Marquet's concept of "red work" and "blue work" – doing versus thinking – and why teams need deliberate pauses to reflect, challenge assumptions and make sure they're still heading in the right direction.

If you're interested in building teams where people think for themselves, challenge constructively, and move forward with greater clarity and confidence, this episode is packed with practical insights. 

More than anything, it's a reminder that leadership isn't just about what you do. It's about the environment you create and the conversations you enable.

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Transcript

Welcome And Weather Banter

Sam 0:10

Welcome to Get Ampified from the Ampified Group. The public asked about the people that have the tech industry. Vicky, it is absolutely hammering it down to the future. Are you going to remember a deepest dunkest lock for sure? Are you similarly down?

Vic 0:24

Um honestly it's driving me potty. I've got my thermals back on again. Where has the sun gone? And I promise you, I've not been singing too much.

Sam 0:33

My little veggie garden is going great again today.

Vic 0:36

Oh, I bet it is.

Sam 0:37

Yeah, yeah.

Why These Two Leadership Books

Vic 0:41

I'm just trying to picture that. It's good.

Sam 0:47

Enough about the weather. Enough about the weather. Who have we got on today?

Vic 0:51

We've got Chris Collette with us, and we have Chris hasn't been on our podcast since pre-COVID.

Sam 0:58

He was one of our early early guests wasn’t he?

Vic 1:00

Really was, yeah. So Chris first did a podcast with us about disc, and my goodness, Chris. I know we were on the same course on it, but I have taken away so much from that podcast. Um, and then he did a series with us on mental health, which was incredible. And then we've stayed in touch for gosh, the last five years or so. Um, Chris has done a little bit of work for us, and we were catching up a couple of weeks ago, and I had seen a post from Amy Edmondson or a comment on LinkedIn where she was commenting about a book list. And on this list of books was a book called Turn the Ship Around, and I hadn't come across it, hadn't read it. And I thought, well, if she's commenting and saying it's worth reading, because Amy's Amy's the professor that leads on psychological safety, I thought, I'll I'll give it again. Anyway, this book just blew my mind because it it takes the five behaviours that puts it into practice and goes deeper in some of the concepts of it. And then I was talking to Chris about it, and Chris said, Well, he's done another book, and it's called Leadership is Language. And so I've read that, and then I said, Come on, Chris, come on the podcast and let's have a chat about it. So that's where we are.

Sam 2:26

So here we are. So welcome, Chris, welcome back. Thank you. Great to have you with us.

Vic 2:31

Yeah.

Sam 2:32

Um might be great if you could just obviously we've had you on before, so it our long-term listeners will uh will know your background, but maybe if you just give us two minutes on on what you've been up to, where you come from, where we've got you up to today.

Chris 2:47

Sure, yeah.

Chris’s Army Background And Work

Chris 2:48

So so my background is the army. I spent 33 years in the army, so I joined as a 16-year-old boy and and left quite a few years later as a I hesitate to say a man, but certainly a different person, a better person from my experiences. And and I was really lucky in the army. I did so many great things. I joined as a soldier, I left as an officer, so it gave me a lot of opportunities in terms of education, having fun. I spent 10 years as an adventure training, teaching teaching people to climb cave, kayak, ski, canoe, and so on and so forth. I worked in the British Alpine Centre in Bavaria. I went to other places around the world which aren't quite as nice as Bavaria. So it allowed me to do lots of different things and, you know, I think most importantly, accumulate a fair degree of experience in lots of different areas of leadership, management, you know, human interaction, just being a good person and learning. And then I I was very lucky. I was offered a job in 2017. So I resigned my commission and left and went to a job. That did that for a year, which was really good in a in a training company. And then since then I've been working with um the NHS, with corporates, as an associate with other companies, working in the world of some leadership, some management, the Ministry of Defence Police have did some worked on their recruit training program, revamping that with some other people, but also things like action reviews, so after action reviews, before action reviews, which which fit exactly with with your work with um um denzioni and so on and so forth. And also uh mental health and well-being. I do a lot with a brilliant company called Strongmind Resiliency Training, where last week, for instance, I was delivering mental health first aid course to teach people to be mental health first aiders, suicide awareness, um, dealing with vulnerable corners and so on. So, yeah, a reasonably diverse portfolio, but which is amazing stuff to be involved in.

Sam 4:41

And I, if I recall rightly, we did uh a sort of a a series of five mini podcasts with you about about mental health, the mental health week about a hundred million years ago.

Vic 4:51

Yeah, yeah.

Chris 4:53

Yeah, yeah.

Turning The Santa Fe Around

Sam 4:55

So let's dig into this book that we're talking about.

Vic 4:58

Yeah, so I came across this book, turned the ship around, and just consumed it in the same way that I consumed the five behaviors books. And it was really inspirational as a true story. Um Chris, perhaps we should we should start there.

Chris 5:19

Yeah, much like you, I was absolutely blown away by turning the ship around. A, because it's just a really, really good story, and its value as a you know, a source of information is because it's such a good story, the things resonate. Yeah, and the the the successes, the failures that Marquet talks about in that book are are brilliant. So essentially, he was uh an A grade student throughout his academic life, joined the um US Navy, the submarine corps, was top of everything he ever did. Eventually got to the point where he was given command of a nuclear-powered attack submarine. So the the best of the best, and he was going to take command of the ship called the Olympia, which was the best performing sheet ship in the fleet. He then spends a year learning every nut and bolt about Olympia. So he basically will know everything when he sets foot on that ship and can be the source of information, the one you know, one single source of the truth for everything for that ship. And then a couple of months before he's about to take over, he gets a phone call while he's on holiday saying, Everything's changed. You're now going to take over the Santa Fe, which is the worst performing ship in the fleet, because I think you're the right person to do it. So he now has two months to do what he should have would normally take twelve months to do. Clearly, there's only so much he can do given the limited amount of time. So he he goes and he takes over this ship and very quickly realizes that the previous mode of leadership that he has been indoctrinated into, which he supported and has employed to great effect to get to where he is at that moment in time, uh is not going to work on the Santa Fe. There's lots of things built up to it in the before they deploy on operations, but he talks in one point about how he gave an order, which you know for me this has sort of really set things in context. He gave an order as a submarine commander would do. I can't think what the order was, but it's it basically, you know, fire the torpedoes, probably. Yeah, well it was it was it was essentially around getting the tor the ship to go into a second gear. So he gave the order, and his executive officer repeated the order as they do. The executive officer then gave the order to the chief of the boat, the chief of the boat repeated the order, who then gave it to essentially the submarine driver, who you know seemingly looked round with a quizzical look on his face and shrugged and then carried on. But what they hadn't realized at that time was it was impossible to execute that order. It was basically asking it to go into third gear, and there was no third gear on the ship. And nobody had said anything to him. And he quickly realized, why has nobody said anything? And looked at you know, the old-fashioned industrial age language plays around, I've got all the answers here because I'm the leader, therefore I say you do it. And nobody came back to him and said, actually, sir, we can't do that. And it made him realize I need to quickly turn this ship around in a place where people can challenge me. So I need to rethink my old leadership style, the you know, in the way that I've been brought up to be a leader, that I have all the answers and I make all the decisions because I cannot do this. We've got, I think it was 190 days to turn the ship around into an operationally capable ship that can deploy as a you know, as an attack submarine, as part of the permanent ATSI deterrent. And so he had to change his ways of thinking in his way, in his leadership. And within you know, within 24 hours, the officer corps, I think, were pretty much on board, and then very quickly the rest of the ship, over a course of the you know of months, bought into what he was trying to describe, this new new way of thinking and his this new way of using language to um get the results that he needed and in you know in and get everybody on board.

Sam 9:01

Yeah, especially, I guess, if he's only had two months or whatever it is to get to grips with that particular ship, there are going to be people on that submarine who are vastly more knowledgeable than he is because they've probably been working on it for a number of years.

Chris 9:15

Yeah, and I mean that that comes down to one of the things he talks about in dealership in language, is about where the information is. Often decisions are made at a point where there is no information, or the information is has come through so many conjoints to get to it. It's it's um it's been weakened, it doesn't have the detail that's required to make the decision. So he talks about putting making the decision makers those who are the ones doing the doing. So moving it down to where the information is. Clearly that is always to work, and he recognises that. But he does say a vast majority of decisions should be made where the information is, and that's as exactly as you described, Sam. That was with the people on the ship who knew what they were doing, knew their individual jobs, because he hadn't had the time he would have done previously to learn and understand everybody else's job and be able to tell them what to do almost because he knew it as well as they did, whereas in this situation he didn't know.

Vic 10:06

So, Sam, you can see why this book has so much appeal, because the the tech industry, uh, I mean, we we absolutely love talking about General Stanley McChrystal's team of teams where he really got those teams executing at speed because he pushed decision making down through the organization. And we see that so many with the with the teams that we work with. I mean, if you just think of things like deal approvals and just even what the strategy is down in the in the field, who's gonna know that best? They're gonna know the people that are actually on the ground talking to customers. And so it it relates to it so completely.

Sam 10:58

I mean, this makes this makes makes perfect sense. You know, I as um a senior manager or uh you know a director or whatever, I bet you often get thrown in or give given projects, given teams that you don't necessarily know your way around. I mean, I remember uh you know, when I was looking after professional services and consultancy at SoftCat, and all of a sudden having the managed services team to look after. And you know, I was not an expert in managed services by any stretch. But the guys within the team were guys and girls within the team. So it was really important to get them to surface the right information, tell me their concerns. Um, and you know, I would hope that with my experience, knowledge of the organization and what have you, I could help coax them to come to the right decisions. But it couldn't be my decision because I didn't necessarily know enough about individual bits and pieces. Obviously, you get to grips with it over time, but very similar to this chap taking over the submarine, only it wasn't a submarine.

Vic 12:05

Yeah. Clearly.

Chris 12:07

As you described, they're using a coaching methodology to help people arrive at the decisions as well, except that you might not know, then you don't necessarily have to know the use and the intellectual capacity that is there in front of you. Rather than I think was it, I think it was Richard Bans who said, why or why would I pay these people a small fortune to come into my work be and bring their expertise and then tell them how to do their job. My role then perhaps as a leader is to coach it perhaps to help them um you know to extract that information rather than tell you. You know, it's in one of his his six plays that he talks about being curious about it. Not compelling people, but being curious about it. And that then leads you to ask open-ended questions, not binary questions, not uh questions that are almost predetermined. He talked that in in his previous commands he would ask questions, but he already knew the answer. And it was almost he was proving to himself that he was capable and he was the expert. But he wasn't genuinely interested in what that person was able to tell him about their job, and he already knew. So it was more about testing them. Whereas on Santa Fe, he genuinely didn't know. So he had to be curious about it. He had to ask questions that contributed to his body of knowledge and trust that the people he was asking those questions knew what they were talking about and were given the right information. But the book is fantastic and he talks about six plays. And you can almost the six plays I think are all equally as important. But the sixth one that comes last I almost think is the first amongst equals. Because back to your point there, Sam, about when you're talking to people and you're asking those questions, and you know, back to your point, Vicky, about Amy Edmonton and her expertise, yeah, if psychological safety is not there, you can ask the best question in the world and no one's gonna answer it. And he talks about, you know, people say my door is always open. Well, he the book is premised around the story of um the El Faro, which was a a container ship which um sank and killing all thirty-three

Psychological Safety And Speaking Up

Chris 14:10

people on board. So the leadership is language uses that as it as its story. And it talks about the captain there, and he doesn't blame the captain, he doesn't he blames you know the old-fashioned industrial language, industrial-age language people use. But he talks there about how um the language the captain used, where he says things, my door's always open, you can always come to me, you know, when he's when he's sleeping, wake me if something goes on. What he doesn't do is create the psychological safety where people are uh feel like they can actually wake him because they don't feel safe to do it for whatever reason. It's not a deliberate ploy, he wasn't deliberately trying to make people feel unsafe, but the language he used put doubt in people's minds. It was more binary. Questions he asked were yes, no, or compliance-based questions, not questions designed to allow people to think and to provide answers. And and and so when it got to the critical situations, people, for whatever reason, didn't ask the correct questions or they didn't wake him up. Yeah, so so psychological safety, which is about the connect play, play six, I think is it's funny that you put it at six, but actually for me, it's first amongst equals because you none of these words without safety.

Vic 15:22

It is it is for us, because all although our formula for speed of execution is purpose, trust, clarity, and simplicity, it needs to be that because we start with purpose because why why are you on why are you on the ship in the first place? Yeah, you you have to have a reason why you're a team, but it's a very loose purpose. But if when we're working with a team, we always start with connecting them and building the psychological safety. And you can do that pretty quickly if you're deliberate and intentional about it. And but if you haven't got that safe place, and then once we've got that, then we can debate purpose much more and really get to the heart of it. But you can't start if you haven't got that at all. So I'm I'm I'm right with you on that. But as as you just spoke about it, I also want to pull out one of the bigger harm moments for me, particularly in leadership is language, is the point he makes, which is in in, you know, as you said, there's six plays, the second play, collaborate, don't coerce. Now, this goes back when when I'm talking about the five behaviors and we're talking about results, I go, well, I I always thought I was a team player until I read the five behaviors, and then I realized that actually I would turn up at a team meeting defending the team that I lead versus my first team, which should have been the leadership team. And I I didn't see that. But I thought, oh, well, I I'm very collaborative in the way that work. But he talks about collaborate, don't coerce. And my God, did I have an absolute aha moment that I use such coercive language?

Chris 17:19

Yeah, yeah. Similarly aha moments linked exactly to this, was he describes he's talking he's dealing with um a group of executives in a Japanese kind of company, I think it is, where he uses a video of tall ships and then he asks a question about how many masts were there. And you know, where where leaders speak first, people don't, you know, let's say they give a figure of seven, people want to leave they'll be around and about the seven mark, yeah.

Collaborate Don’t Coerce

Chris 17:50

Because the leader has spoken first, because they're almost people into their way of thinking. And they're anchoring people to and he uses the he took he calls it anchoring, anchoring people to what they've said first because people perhaps don't feel safe enough to be able to diverge away from what that leader has said because they've spoken first. And so they might not even be doing that deliberately necessarily. No, but I but I I I guess you have to not do it deliberately, if you see what I mean.

Vic 18:16

You do, yeah, you do. So on a team meeting, very often now I will have myself, you'll find this very funny, Sam. I will put myself on mute and stay on mute until everybody else has spoken. And then and it is that me being deliberate and I'm you're not leading the audience. Because I know um we've talked about in a in a team that's psychological with psychological safety, if you do some brainstorming, you get ideas all over the scatograph. It's it's really wide. Yeah, if you're with a team that doesn't have that, you just get a very narrow lens on what the options are. So I kind of I've known that for quite a long time, but this whole actually, if the leader is speaking, you're leading your you're leading your team versus actually letting them come up with stuff to start with. So that's a really good story, Chris.

Sam 19:05

Does that also mean that you want ideally you want somebody within your team who is that maybe a little bit maverick, you know, prepared to challenge the leader, prepared to go a different way. Um in case you don't get that right. So you've got someone who will actually stand up to you. Is that a good thing?

Chris 19:28

Yeah well, he he talks about one of his principal ideas is that we're rooted in the industrial age thinking that you have you have the workers and you have the decision makers. And and the two are separate, and in never the twelve twin shell meet the decision makers and the and the workers do the work, and that's that. But in what you know, Vicky's talking about there is where the leader doesn't say anything, it's inviting the workers to be the thinkers as well. It's allowing them the opportunity to think, it's not rooting them in a decision or an idea that's made by the boss, and therefore we think we have to then um adhere to that because that's the way ahead. It allows people the opportunity to think. And he he talk, he does talk in terms of red work, which is the work of doing, and blue work, which is the work of thinking. And often the work of thinking, particularly you know, in the old industrial age play, is that you don't ask the workers to do thinking. Yet they've got the knowledge. They're the people that are working at the coal flakes, they're the ones who are experiencing the difficulties on a day-to-day basis. So when it comes into the meeting, the leader speaks, puts their opinion across, and everyone coalesces around that. Unless, of course, you know, we're luckily to have somebody who is prepared to challenge that. But in Marquet's model, it's actively encouraged. So what he's looking for, when you're doing the doing in the red work, you want to reduce variability. So you can aim, you can create a hopp hypothesis in the in the um uh the thinking bit, and you're testing the hypothesis in the working bit. So you want to reduce very the variability. But in the thinking, you want to increase variability, you want to encourage that dissent, you want to encourage those alternative opinions. And if you're rooted or anchored to the leaders at if they speak first, it's it then makes it even more difficult for people to go against that. Yet if it's an open shop where psychological safety exists and people can be vulnerable and they can speak first, you don't get the anchor into the the bosses or the leaders' first opinion, and you get that variability, you get that um dissent. Not you know, polite, not not not positive conflict.

Vic 21:36

Yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna say. So you can see how it really relates to to Lencioni. So he's got you've got that psychological safety to start with, and then the next level up on the Lencioni model, the five behaviors, is conflict and it's positive conflict. And then from conflict, you get commitment. But the point between and the link between the conflict and the commitment is that everybody feels Heard and they feel like they've had a say. And so then they're much more likely to commit to the decision, even if the decision is wrong. Now, what I

Commitment Not Compliance

Vic 22:10

also find really fascinating about this book is we do a lot with leadership teams around decision making. And you've got you've got those leaders who are the control and command that are very happy to make a decision, but they haven't necessarily heard everybody. And then you're on the other end of the spectrum, you've got disaders who are worried about making decisions because they're worried about making it the wrong decision. And then the other challenge you've got is you've got people who don't feel like they've been heard. And so they're not committed to it anyway. They're just set, in fact, he's got a term for it, hasn't he? He talks about commitment, not complying. So people comply, but they're not brought into it in the first place. And so if you're if you feel like you've been heard and you're you're contributing to that decision and you're using the lengthy any bit, it just brings it together so beautifully. Because if you feel like you've been heard, you're much more likely to commit to the decision. But what he talks about is rather than making a definite decision, you test a hypothesis. And so, right, we're just gonna try this, we're just gonna test this. Is everybody on board? And that's how you can get alignment so much more easily, and we're just gonna test it. And if what that also means is if we're just testing a hypothesis, it's much people aren't saying, well, I'm right or you're wrong, because you're just testing something. And so it's much easier to pivot. And so I think for us, in our audience and the the world of tech, and we're just trying AI, then testing hypothesis and pivoting, we've got to be agile. And so this is the mentality, I think.

Sam 24:14

And then you've got some data to push you in the right direction to enable people to get behind. Because if if you tested the hypothesis and the test results were positive, you'd be silly not to not to batch it, right?

Chris 24:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm smiling to myself there because it you just gave a brilliant description, Vicky. But in there you said, is everybody on board? So that's the binary language that Mark he he advises again or encourages people to go not do that rather than is everybody on board, which is a binary yes or no, is yeah, how on board are you? On a re on a scale of one to ten, how are you? How how much do you invest in this? How much do you believe in what we're doing? So that invites that level of dissent rather than the the the yes no from that. So I'll just do that.

Vic 25:03

Yeah, I bet you did. I remember you doing that for me when we were talking about disc, and and I said something like um, where you are on disc, and it's not, it's it's your starting point because you move around disk depending on the situation, you flex on it. And that that for me was a massive takeaway from our conversation on disk. But just just so just coming back to the hypothesis if you are testing something and you've got you know what your timeline is on it, and you know what good looks like, so you've got some metrics there to put to Sam's point, it's it's much easier, isn't it, to test it and then and then pivot accordingly. But something else you just talked about there, Chris, which is a real takeaway for me from the book, and we we've been doing this for quite some time in workshops. If I if if we're having an open discussion, say with a leadership team of of 10, and I just throw something out there, if I'm not careful, I will get the same person answering every time. And so you either have the same person answering every time, or two or three the loudest people in the room.

Sam 26:14

Yeah.

Vic 26:15

Or you have um radio silence, and everyone's like, oh, I don't know what I'm gonna say here. So what we do in a workshop is we get we ask a question and then we ask people to discuss it in pairs, which gives them a chance to, and then everyone tends to feed back on it. So, but what what Marquet also talks about is to that point on the how committed you are you, the open discussion, write it down on a sticky note and give me that back, yeah, then you really are getting a better without a a better judgment, aren't you, on on where people are.

Chris 26:58

Yeah, yeah. It's that going back to that, you're inviting people to in a psychologically safe environment actually say what they really believe, not just comply with what you've said and comply with those, you know, if the boss has said that that's what we'll just go with, and therefore you're not built in, you're not bought into it. But but you know, as we were talking before we started, it fits with the deming cycle. Plan, do, check, study, and then act. It works exactly the same way. And one thing that the the the first play that Marquette talks about is control the clock, not obey the clock. So when you're you have these periods of blue work where you do the thinking and everybody's invited to think, not just the decision makers or in the in the old model where the decision makers make everyone maker. Yeah, give them the opportunity and the the ability to express their feelings, to di to to create dissent, invite variability. Then when you go into the periods of red work,

Control The Clock With Pauses

Chris 27:55

instead of obeying the clock, you control the block. So you set pauses in there. So back to the deming cycle, you've got the check, and everyone knows when the check is going to happen. And if the the decision maker, the leader, sets the check, gives it a name, and tells everybody when it is, people people don't have to worry about stopping the clock because something has gone wrong. They know that there's going to be a pause that's built into it, but they also have the latitude to stop it if something does go horribly wrong and they need to stop and then go from from red work to back to blue work, the thinking. And that's really useful as well because it takes pressure off people. And rather than just going and going and going and deal things, you get that escalation of commitment where people just commit to what was said before, keep going, even though they know that something has gone horribly wrong, they've got the opportunity to control the clock and stop. And Marquis says, you know, in the the the case of uh El Faro that sank, had they have gone, have they done the red work and blue work and stopped to do the thinking, yes, it would have taken longer. But in that, you know, it's an extreme example. 33 people would still be walking around now. But because they did stop, because they did they had no language to describe a stop, a pause, a thinking moment, call it what you will, uh a check and a and a study before going back and acting and changing the you know the the the essentially there's was the route to take the old Bahama route into the eye of a storm, which caused the ship to sink. So, yeah, so controlling the clock is a a big thing for him as well, about not not just obeying it and being a slave to it, make sure that you build pauses in. And those pauses as well also allow people to complete an action within a great a greater action, chunking things up so you can you can celebrate what people have done.

Vic 29:39

Yes, that was the big piece, wasn't it?

Chris 29:41

We were very, really, really quick, and we all do it to point the finger at ourselves or other, you know, or or or other people about when things go wrong. And yet we don't take the time to celebrate. And he's saying we need to actively do that, chunk things up, put them into manageable cycles, build pauses in, but also have the latitude to create a pause if needs be because things have changed, but then to celebrate what people do, tell the stories of what got of what has gone well, check out, rethink, test against the hypothesis, recommit, and then you know move on in the light of new evidence or what you've discovered. Or if everything's gone swimmingly, you've still reached a pause where you've gone, yeah, it's going brilliantly. Let's look up your data. Yes, it is, it proves it. Let's continue what we're doing because we we're going in the right direction. And as we talked of before, you've got the the analogy of the open water swimmer.

Vic 30:33

I was going to ask you about that.

Blue Work And Red Work

Vic 30:35

So do you want to just share that?

Chris 30:37

Yeah, a swimming ball. You can see the lanes are marked out. You've got the the ropes either side of your particular lane and you've got markers on the floor. So you don't even you don't have to think about the direction in which you're you're going. You can go fast in a straight line because that's the only option you have. When you're swinging swimming in open water, you're aiming for a boy two, three hundred metres away from you, but there's nothing to keep you on the straight and arrow. So the most efficient way to swim is with your head in the water. You're most you're out your most streamline then. When you look up to take to look at the boy, you then become inefficient in terms of swimming. But what happens is people put their head down and concentrate on their speed and efficiency and go very fast in the wrong direction.

Sam 31:19

In the wrong direction, yeah. That's a great analogy.

Chris 31:22

Isn't it? So they're they're in the red work, the doing, that I'm doing here. But when you when those so I'm a really slow swimmer, so I have to be involved very quickly in both the red work of the swimming with my head down and the blue work of the thinking, looking up to see where the boy is, because I'm such a poor swimmer. And what you can find is I go in a straight line while people are zigzagging, and someone who's much, much faster, we reach the boy at the same time. Because they've been still doing the red work, not doing the blue work of thinking. And so every six strokes, perhaps you look up, think, reevaluate, test the hypothesis. Am I going in the right direction? Yes, I am. Or I need to course correct subtly here rather than drastically, because I've gone gone off in the wrong direction over there. And and he talks about that's the same kind of thing we're doing in the world of work and business is doing, we have to do the doing, the red work, but we also need to make sure we do the thinking and the thinking up front. Yeah, before action reviews, do the thinking up front, a mid-action review, do it in the middle, and after action review, you know, do it at the end to go back over what you've done.

Vic 32:21

But with the with the I'm going to add something else to that, Chris, just before we go on any further. Because yes, it's reviewing, but I would argue it's reviewing with the right people. And so why why why I say that is one of our most popular newsletters was one that we called spiraling and squirreling. And where we see that that's a great title. Because since COVID, so many people work remotely so much, and they can be really busy doing a whole load of stuff that isn't in the right direction. And so getting so when you're doing that blue work, that thinking work, that's with the right team. We've got some phenomenal case studies of where the difference that was made was having the right people in the room to start with to explore the decisions, to think about what the direction was, to agree on what the hypothesis was, to attest it, and then to go off and execute on it because they're all on board and it because they were involved in the first place.

Chris 33:31

Yeah, yeah. And it's it's those people who are uh that where the knowledge is. Those are the people that can give you the insight that you might not be able to have. Stood on the balcony looking at the dance floor, which is a great place to be as a leader, absolutely. So you get that holistic approach. But sometimes you need to see what's going on at people's feet where you know they tap into the right beat and you know, they dancing to the right tune, and you have to you know that's where the information is. So you have somewhere that somewhere along the line, you have to put the two together. Yeah, you're quite you're quite wrong.

Vic 34:01

Do you know the other the other point on the control the clock, and I know we're jumping around a little bit, but on the control the clock, something else that we see is the tech industry is so relentless, and it's the next quarter, and it's the next quarter, and it's the next quarter. Taking the time to celebrate success and the small things, not just we've got to president's club or you know, it we've hit we've hit the quarter, but actually, what are the different things, the activities that we're doing that we can celebrate because they're taking us in the right direction is is super important. And we just don't, unless you're deliberate and intentional about it, you don't find the time to do it.

Chris 34:45

Yeah, and that goes to his play forward, isn't it? The complete. So even if it's a big project, put chunk it so that you have these pauses where you do the the the blue work, but in that in those moments, also celebrate what people do. Uh and and one thing that's punctuated throughout the whole of this is the A, the psychological safety, absolutely. But the key thing is to learn. It's not about blame, it's it's about learning. What do we so in the industrial age says we're proving, so I have to prove I'm good enough. I have to prove that what I the decision I made was the right thing. So I might, you know, that that escalation, um, I I I stick to it whether I want to or not, because I have to prove it worked, because that's what I decided to do. But what he talks about is, well, we want to improve, and we improve through learning. We're not blaming people. We'd improve by talking about what's gone on, discussing the hypothesis, what happened, what what um what went as we we predicted it would do, what didn't, what changes can we make, and then before we improve and learn from it. And I think one thing that's probably in I'm not sure about if he explicitly says this, but I think implicit in this and action reviews and all these kind of things is we learn this great stuff and it becomes lessons identified. We need to share that so it can be everyone can take it and then implement it and becomes a lesson learned. I think there's a different difference between the identifying of a lesson and the learning of a lesson. But often it happens and the team does it here and then doesn't share that with the rest of the organization who could absolutely benefit from all the great stuff that's gone on in that learning environment.

Vic 36:19

So yeah, do you know? Um, I think I can put the success of my career down to what you've just described there, because it was never never my great work. Um, but what I was what I was good at was identifying where great practices were happening and then telling everybody else about them.

Sam 36:39

That's brilliant. Often that's enablement.

Vic 36:42

Yeah, funny that.

Chris 36:44

But that that's really good as well, in so much as you're doing that from you're not protecting your own ego, you're not keeping to the thing to make me look better. Let's make everybody look better. Yeah. And he, you know, in uh in the in his first float, turn the ship around, he talks about legacy. About when I when he steps off of the this the Santa Fe, turns it round into the the single best performing ship that they've ever had in the fleet.

Vic 37:12

And that's on metrics as well, Sam. It's it's really, really strong metrics. Like um, one of the uh biggest challenges they had he had when he took over the ship was attrition was massive. It's like nobody wanted to stay on it because it was such a bad performing ship and it had such a bad reputation. It just changed significantly, didn't it? From from people getting certifications, getting a uh people re-enlisted into the Navy.

Chris 37:39

They were they were leaving in droves after having they saw it as if you got assigned to the Santa Fe, that was the end of your career. But the legacy he created was such that the the boat became the the single highest performing ship they've ever had. But when he left, it carried on because the legacy he left in place was one which people could adopted, they took on and they could they could employ it themselves. So there were several admirals that have fallen out of that. There was the re-enlistment rate was really high. So his point was, and going back to what you were talking about there often, we we've got this information. My legacy is the team isn't doing as well because I've left. I was the I was the cause of it. Marquet is saying, no, that's not that shouldn't be the case. You create the conditions where you leave and it it carries on. It's still as successful without you because people adopt the the processes and the ideas and the thoughts and the methodologies you put in place, they work. And so it's a it's a self-licking lollipop, but it maintains that momentum.

Sam 38:37

Self-licking lollipop. There's a phrase I've never heard before. I like it.

Chris 38:41

I'm not sure it's entirely appropriate, but I rather like it.

Vic 38:47

I do I do think that what one of our biggest goals for the teams that we work with is to build sustainable business. So it in a team that's really performing and that they are an extraordinary team is a team that consistently performs speed check after speed check, quarter after quarter, year after year. And and there's changes in the team, but they keep up that consistency because it's that shared consciousness that crystal talks about. And um and it's you know, the the the premise of the book, turn the ship around. And I know we're switching between the two books here, but it's a it's a book on empowerment and it's pushing the power down the organization. The decisions are being made lower down the organization where the real work's happening. And because of that, he had a culture of learning. In fact, their culture was we learn, and it was everybody. Um, and the power of that, particularly in the world that's changing so much at the moment, is just vital, isn't it?

Chris 40:00

Yeah. I think I was just thinking then when you use the word empowerment, you talk to people and say, Well, I have empowered

Words Leaders Use Have Weight

Chris 40:05

my team. I've told them they can come to me, I've told them my door is always open. But it then it goes back. So he uses, I'm trying to think of the examples he used it on our forum where the captain says, Yeah, you come, you can speak to me, wake me up. But he talks about um, it's only a bit of weather, you know. If we go back for every little bit of weather, we'd never get anywhere. I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm an old mariner. This is great, you know, this is the a little bit of sea coming over the board, it's not a big problem. So although he's saying I've empowered them, the language he's using is making it really difficult for something to go against what he's saying. Now, he probably points out he's trying to motivate, inspire, and encourage, but it's having the opposite effect because it's create the language is creating a barrier for people who are saying, Act to me, Captain. There is a worry here because he's already said, you know, no, no, no, no, we won't stop for every weather. That'll be fine. Well, if I'm worried about the weather, he's just said we don't stop for the weather. Now he doesn't mean he, you know, I don't think he will for one second he meant to stop people from saying what they needed to be said. But the language put up a barrier, whether in you know it's the impact, not whether he meant it or not.

Vic 41:10

Yeah, absolutely.

Chris 41:11

Yeah. His impact was his intent was not to do that, but the impact was such that people take that on board. Yeah, and it you know, he's I think he kind of opens about the language that CEOs use is really important. People pick up on it. People will take it as red. I was told a story, I don't know if it's true or not, but I I can I can certainly see it as playing out. Where and the annual events program for a big company, they've got it annually, awards are are given out at these events. And um nobody makes a speech. You go up, you get your award, you shake hands, you have a photo, and you move on. So the brand new CEO has come, he's been in days, and clearly he's going to this event. And he meets one of the award winners, a lady who he recognises and knows she's gonna get an award. And he jokingly says, Oh, you know, he's really looking forward to this. And I'm looking forward to hearing your speech. So she goes back to her chair now and thinking, but I don't give speeches, but he's just said he's looking forward to my speech. So she now sits and worries about what she's gonna have to do when she goes up and crosses the stage, and she gives a speech to Tumbleweed, because no one gives a speech. Because the CEO in a throwaway comment had said, looking forward to your speech. So the his language, the impact, the language that leaders use, his intent was not to put a maker on cover, his intent was not to um make her make a speech. Because it was just a throwaway, he thought it was a bit of a a joke, a starky comment. She took it as red because the CEO has just said, I'm looking forward to your speech. So the language we use is, you know, if you're in a position of authority, power, command, coin, what you will, people pick up on it, either, you know, subtly, or it hits them in the face that these are the kind of things I need to do because that's what that person has said, or is an intimate that, or I've interpreted it that way.

Vic 42:58

Do you know what the biggest thing is though? You're and and this was me realizing I use coercive language, is it's completely unintentional. We don't realise we're doing it. And it's it's that first step of holy moly, what what have I just said? Right.

Sam 43:13

Yeah.

Vic 43:14

How can I rephrase that?

Chris 43:16

Yeah, yeah. That it's all the book describes how on a daily basis we go through the red work, blue work, thinking and doing action. You know, I think the example he uses is I finish work and I think, what am I gonna do? I need to go to the gym. Should I go to the gym? So you go through the thinking of the gym if I do this, that, and the other, it'll make me, you know, I want to go and I need to do, I haven't been for a while. Commit, okay, I'm gonna go to the gym. And now I go through the the doing, I get to the gym, I do the gym. And at the end of it, I do some more thinking about what I'm gonna do next. But in the world of work, we don't do that. We get to the

Takeaways And Listener Thanks

Chris 43:50

doing and just go for it. Because speed is important, but speed often um sacrifices quality.

Vic 43:58

We can be busy fools, can't we? We see we see a lot of that. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam 44:04

We should probably uh bring it towards a close in the interest of letting Chris actually do something productive rather than run rather than let us pick his brain all day. Um Chris, have you got any takeaways for us?

Chris 44:19

Um I read so I don't know if it was Marquet also, but I read something that that that I thought worked really well. It says great leaders don't just have the answers and don't need to have all the answers. What they need to do or should do is create the conditions for better thinking. So inviting people to the top table, getting them to not get them to do the work, that's not what I mean, but allowing people to think. So you create the conditions where people it's okay for them to think, it's okay for them to supply their ideas to you. And if they're doing that, you're getting the information that you need in order to be better at what you do. They're getting the feedback from you to be better at what they do. You can create these moments where you think rather than do, and then go and do the doing. So I just like that. They I like the idea that leaders create the conditions for better thinking. The other thing I was I was listening to one of your other podcasts earlier, the one on it was in February, Accountability Without Authority. And I have a gentleman's name on there. And he talked about how it's really important in today's world of work and leadership that um we look at humanness and kindness, uh the softer skills that people used to dismiss are so so important. If you want to create the conditions for people to think, then be having some humility, being vulnerable, yeah, yes, being human. And Sam, you said something, I think it was in that episode, and it it said nice is underrated. They used to think it wasn't your leadership, it wasn't a personality contest. And I I know I'm very happy to be shot down over this, but actually I I'm happier to work for people I like than those I don't like. Oh, I'm sorry. My discretionary effort is higher. So yeah, yeah. So but in terms of the book, the kept some some three things, I was thinking of three things to take away was ask more, tell less. So be complete, be curious, not compelling. Ask those questions you genuinely want to know, not because you know the answers already, you genuinely want to know. Speak last. You know, he talks about vote first, then decide, but speak last as you described, put yourself on mute because it's really hard. You spend your whole life trying to get promoted by giving the big ideas. Now we're asking you to not say anything, let other people do it. Yeah, and then replace certainty, the certainty that I know everything, the certainty that my decisions are the best. I'm the leader and therefore I have to know all of this. Replace that certainty with curiosity.

Vic 46:47

Yeah, love that.

Sam 46:49

Yeah, brilliant. I guess we don't need a book recommendation this time out, do we?

Vic 46:54

No, no, we've got two.

Sam 47:00

Thanks again, Chris. Marvelous as always, and it just remains for me to say thanks as always to our listeners. Your comments, clicks, likes, subscribes, and all that shenanigans are always greatly appreciated.