Transcript

Jason Mlicki:
On today’s episode of Rattle and Pedal, Jeff and I talk to Ted Harro of Noonday Ventures on how to become the leader you were meant to be.

Jeff McKay:
All right, Jason. We have another one of those podcasts that our listeners are going to listen… or love-

Jason Mlicki:
They’re going to listen to?

Jeff McKay:
They’re going to listen to. That they’re going to love. You know why?

Jason Mlicki:
Because you’re not going to talk?

Jeff McKay:
Pretty much. And I chose the guests that’ll be joining us today.

Jason Mlicki:
So, despite that, do you think they’re going to have a good experience?

Jeff McKay:
I know that they’re going to have a good experience because the person who is on the phone with us today is the person I want to become when I grow up.

Ted Harro:
You need to get out more.

Jeff McKay:
On the phone with us today is a good friend of mine, Ted Harro. Ted is a listener of Rattle and Pedal. Ted is a thought leader. Ted has had Jeff McKay as a client. And Ted has been a client of Prudent Pedal, and through that entire time we’ve been friends.

Jeff McKay:
So, Ted is one of my favorite people. He is phenomenal at what he does, but what is so great about Ted is just the person that he is. And we are going to have a conversation today that, to some may seem trite, and Ted would even say so, but very important. And you’re going to find out why, because Ted has a very interesting perspective on this topic. Hi, Ted.

Ted Harro:
Hey, how we doing?

Jeff McKay:
I’m doing great. Welcome to Rattle and Pedal.

Ted Harro:
I realized when you said all those things about our backgrounds together, I realized, “Wow, we’ve had a very interconnected history together. It’s pretty cool.”

Jeff McKay:
Yeah, it is. It is. I met Ted, gosh, when I became CMO at one of the human capital firms I worked with. He showed up in my office, I don’t know the first day or second day, because the CEO had brought him in to help develop the leadership team. And I was a new leader on that team. And we just jumped into the deep end of the pool, and we became friends from then and we’ve followed one another ever since.

Ted Harro:
Yep. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jason Mlicki:
I guess, you didn’t really answer the central question of what are we going to talk about?

Jeff McKay:
We’re going to talk about leadership. Jason, you’re going to be the odd man out, because you’re not a friend of Ted yet. And I don’t know, maybe you can pick up something as a leader.

Jason Mlicki:
All right, let’s do it. Let’s talk about leadership.

Jeff McKay:
So Ted, when we jump in, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do and, and what got you to the point where we are today.

Ted Harro:
So I work… I have a little firm called Noonday Ventures, and we worked with senior leadership teams of a wide variety of firms, helping them both find their strategy, and to put that strategy into practice through their most important people. So we are the intersection of strategy, facilitation and leadership development. I got here in a long twisting road starting out in the non-profit world and then spending 10 years at a leading training and consulting firm and then striking out on my own.

Ted Harro:
And I’ve spent a lot of time listening to and thinking and talking about leadership, to the point where frankly it sometimes nauseates me. But that’s where we get to our point in the conversation today, because I think I… When you and I first talked about this, Jeff, I said, “I’m done with leadership.” Which is funny for somebody who works with leaders all the time and, and does a certain amount of leadership development as their work. It’s a funny thing to say, but I am done with leadership in lots of ways.

Jeff McKay:
Gosh, I echo that.

Jason Mlicki:
Wait, what, what do you mean by that though? You wrote a pretty nice article about this defining what leadership is, and what it’s not. So let’s clarify what you mean by that. I don’t think you’re saying, you’re done with leaders. We don’t need more leaders or better leaders.

Ted Harro:
No, I am so far from being done with leaders. But leadership in our, in our world has become like the cult of the hero. And it’s mostly focused on what I can achieve, and what influence I can gain, and what ladder I can climb and what stage I can cross. And I think that’s… I think we’ve pretty much all know deep down, that’s a bankrupt narrative. And certainly, the people who are the quote unquote followers, they know it, which is why comic strips like Dilbert are still popular all these years later, because they skewer leadership the way it’s most often talked about and practiced in our culture for the facade it is.

Ted Harro:
So I’m not at all done with leaders. I’m done with that bankrupt narrative about, it’s all about winning the award and getting more influence and having more of the organization under your leadership. I’m done with that. And I’m way more interested in helping people become the kind of people who, if they were given that kind of responsibility, we’d all say, “Oh wow, that’s a great thing.” Because they’re really exceptional people who happen to be contributing as leaders. I’m very much into that.

Jason Mlicki:
Ted, what I love about the description you just gave, you described what I like to call empire builders. People that seem like that they want to build an empire around them, or build an empire within their organization without a whole lot of thought as to whether or not that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But like you said, it’s all about climbing the corporate ladder achievements. I like the way… I think you had three or four things, influence achievements and what podiums they cross.

Ted Harro:
Yeah, and it’s a double sided problem, because on the one hand it affects the leader who gets in that position and is seeing their role in a pretty selfish way, honestly, and not a very useful way for the people around them. It also super gets in the way of people who don’t have those roles, or don’t have that formal influence from seeing their role as a very important contribution. And I’m actually fascinated by everybody from… I’ve seen of hospital cleaners all the way up to people who are in our firm, and are not in the prestige part of a firm, people who still see their work as contribution. And through that they become the kind of people who, over time will probably have more and more influence, but they were never about that. They’re about making a contribution. They’re about, as I often say, becoming who they were created to be, and along the way they pick up influence. That is when leaders actually make the biggest difference.

Jeff McKay:
You just said, Ted, hospital cleaners are leaders.

Ted Harro:
Absolutely.

Jeff McKay:
Yeah, nobody would ever think that way.

Ted Harro:
Well, there’s a great study about this. They were researchers that went and looked at different hospitals, and why certain hospitals had better outcomes than others. And one of the things they have found was that in some of the best therapeutic areas, there were cleaners who broke the rules of the hospital. They saw their role as cleaners as being part of the healing process. So they would pay more attention to patients and their families. They would do things like change the pictures on the walls around a person who was in the healing process. All these things they would do that no one told them they should do. In fact, sometimes they told them they shouldn’t do them, and they did them in any way.

Ted Harro:
And the researchers said… basically they said, “Where is that in your job? Is that part of your job?” And the person said, “No, it’s just part of me.” And when you have people in your organization, especially in professional services firm, where a very clever marketing genius I know, says that your people are your brand, then when you have people up and down the organization who say, “No, it’s in me. I’m making a contribution,” that has huge impact on the firm, on clients, on the environment, and create just in a thousand little ways that won’t usually make it to the managing partner chair.

Jeff McKay:
I guess I have a question and my question is this, okay, I love the story you told. It’s really powerful, and it’s really interesting. And there’s another interesting article… Or in your article there’s another interesting story about a woman in health care call center and the impact that she has on everyone around her. And I think we should point listeners to that article, but my question is, is the example you shared of the cleaner in the healthcare setting… Usually people think of leaders as having followers, but that sounds like a person who’s behind the scenes, that they’re working to be part of the team and influence outcomes, but they’re not necessarily finding themselves in a position where people are following them. So, do leaders inherently have followers or is that a false definition of leadership?

Ted Harro:
Well, I would say that there are certain leadership roles that have formal leadership responsibilities, and where you can easily see who supposed to follow that person. But I think we all know people who don’t have any formal responsibility, any formal leadership, but have huge influence and people follow them in all sorts of ways. I think I’m actually going one step deeper, Jason, and saying that the kind of person to whom we would want to entrust authority is the kind of person who, even if they didn’t have any followers, would be the kind of person that we’d say, “Ooh, that’s a person we can trust authority too, because they’re exceptional individuals.”

Ted Harro:
So I think I’m saying that the precursor to being a leader of real distinctive impact is to become the kind of person that we all say, giving them authority, giving them influence, giving them followers would be a really good thing to do for the world. And the truth is, a lot of people who are in leadership roles right now in our world, I think if we were honest with ourselves, we’d say we’re not quite so sure if giving them followers is a great idea.

Jeff McKay:
That’s for sure. And I’m sure there are a lot of listeners going, “Whoa, Ted just nailed that one.” Because there are people in firms who become partners, or practice leaders because they just hit their number, not because they’re having a positive impact on the world.

Ted Harro:
In fact, in my experience in firms, the most common way that someone becomes a practice leader, or a managing partner is that they were able to generate the most business or they were the most technically competent. And we all know that’s not the primary role of a practice leader or other managing partner to do those things. The primary role is to create an environment where great things happen on behalf of clients and staff routinely all the time, despite the crap that the firm has to go through in the real world we live in. That’s what the leadership role is about. It’s way too infrequently the way those people get chosen in my experience.

Jeff McKay:
Mine as well, I couldn’t agree more. Let’s shift gears. So what you’re saying, Ted, is if you want to become an exceptional leader, you first have to become an exceptional person. And by exceptional you mean not just living with integrity but becoming the person that you are meant to be, and that you need to do this with intention. Is that what you’re saying? Did I sum that up properly?

Ted Harro:
Absolutely. And it’s actually something that I think most of us really want, deep down, is to become the person we were meant to be, but most of us feel like we don’t have time to do it. And one of the things that I’ve been most excited to discover in my work with clients is that’s just a lie. That’s an excuse to say we don’t have time to do it, because every day at work can be a leadership laboratory for the soul if we want it to be. And that’s really what I’ve discovered for myself and discover from my clients, is that you do not have to go sit in a mountain side for five years. You don’t have to go take 10 weeks out of the field and go to some kind of class. A lot of what can happen to help you become that person you were created to be is available to you every day in your firm as you work.

Jeff McKay:
I love this. And to me, it’s… You take this, as Jason said at the beginning of this, this overwrought leadership noise that exists in our culture and you make it very tangible. You make it really real, and something that you can be doing right now. You can start right now. And you lay out a process for that. So walk us through that process, because we have marketing coordinators that want to be CMOs, and we have consultants who want to be partners, and partners who want to be practice leaders. Walk us through this process. If I’m one of those people, how do I flip that switch?

Ted Harro:
Start by saying, I want to become the kind of person as a marketing coordinator who, if I became CMO, everybody would say, “Wow, that’s a great decision. Please put that person in charge.” So I would start by saying, change your goal. Change your goal from the title or the status, to the quality of person. And then you say, okay, every day, every era of my work gives me an opportunity. And I talk about that usually in the context of imagine that life serves up for you. Your career serves up for you, a class. You have to shape it, because no one’s going to give it to you. You have to shape it, but it’s right there.

Ted Harro:
So I have a client right now who is in a firm that’s going through a certain amount of restructuring and turmoil. And she’s a partner. She’s not the partner, she’s not the managing partner. Someday she probably could be and should be, but she’s in this firm. And she’s one of these people who says, “Okay, in the middle of a tumultuous time at my firm what is the class that I can shape for myself?” And for her, she shaped the class of, how do I be a stable point in the middle of chaos? So she’s working on being that person who is curious, and does what she can do inside her control and is cheerful and realistic all at once. So her current circumstances have given her an opportunity to work on something, and she’s put some intentionality to it.

Ted Harro:
She’s given herself a word she’s going to focus on for this year. And she started to look at situations that she’s going to be in this year and saying, “Okay, in those moments, those are the moments where I get to practice being this kind of person.” But it all starts with saying, “Given who I want to be down the road someday, what’s the opportunity that my current circumstances give me to actually move towards that vision?”

Jeff McKay:
That’s an interesting, because when you think of class, you wouldn’t think in those terms necessarily. Give us some other examples of the types of classes that are served up to people or how they… you said shape them. Give us some examples of that.

Ted Harro:
A lot of people have the class of going from being an individual contributor to being somebody who’s leading others. That’s a very common class. I’ve seen it happen. I had a PhD neuroscientist client once who, she went from being the scientific expert to leading a scientific team. That transition was just a magnificent class for her, because she had to change how she thought in terms of what was important to her, even how she thought about interacting with her peers and with the people who used to be her peers and now are the people she leads. All those things were really important transition for her and how she thought and acted. So we’ve seen that.

Ted Harro:
I have clients who have a class who are really high potential people, but are seen by their colleagues as being slightly arrogant. And they have to go through a class sometimes of humility. And that usually looks like listening more, and talking less. And if they don’t do that, they’re probably going to plateau in their career, because at some point that inability to listen more and talk less will get in the way of them having more and more real influence. They may get authority, but they’re not going to have influence beyond their title. So those are the kinds of things. I list other things in the article I wrote, but those are examples of the kinds of classes that you can intentionally shave. Again, no one gives them to you. You say, “Okay, what do my circumstances give me that could actually help me become the kind of person I want to be.

Jeff McKay:
I had to take that humility class a couple of times.

Jason Mlicki:
Let me know when it-

Ted Harro:
I’m still taking it. Ask my wife.

Speaker 4:
You’re listening to Rattle and Pedal, divergent thoughts on growing your professional services firm. Your hosts are Jason Mlicki, Principal of Rattleback, the marketing agency for professional services firms, and Jeff McKay, former CMO and founder of Strategy Consultancy Prudent Pedal. If you found this podcast helpful, please help us by telling a friend and rating us on iTunes. Thank you. Now back to Jason and Jeff.

Jeff McKay:
So how do you create the syllabus for a class?

Ted Harro:
That’s a great question. I think you start with getting a good teacher. You say, “What are the learning objectives? What am I trying to accomplish?” And then I like to think of it as a couple of other things in the syllabus. There are, just like any syllabus, they’re going to be tests along the way. And tests are those moments where whatever I’m working on are under the bright lights in living color.

Ted Harro:
So for that partner I was talking about who is in the middle of a challenging firm, if she’s set a working on, how does she keep a stable center in the middle of difficult times, she can think about what are the meetings I’m going to be in, with what kind of people? Where I can either be triggered, and I can contribute to the mess or I can actually be a voice of sanity in the middle of the mess. She can identify those, and often foresee them coming and prepare for them. Sometimes they’ll sneak up on her. That’s the way tests are, sometimes there are pop quizzes.

Ted Harro:
But along with test then, we look at what are some practices I can put in place, because no one’s ready to pass the test without doing some practice work. And those practices are sometimes things I do on my own privately. One of the most popular ones that I give for clients, especially in fast moving firms, is I give them the practice of slowing down. It’s one that they at first don’t like, and then they’d come to love, because I asked them to just do some part of their life away from work slower than usual, as a way to stop the national hurry sickness that afflicts most of us.

Ted Harro:
But then there are also practices that we’ll do with other people that they won’t know we’re doing it. That’s awkward, but that will just be doing. So for instance, somebody who’s working on listening more, well, they can actually work on, “When I’m with somebody, how do I hear what they say? Play it back to them, make sure that they know that I heard what they say.” Just normal good things about good listening. So there’re practices that I use to get ready for the tests. That’s how I build the syllabus.

Jason Mlicki:
There’s a lot of concepts in here, classes, practices, and tests and syllabuses. Are these real things?

Ted Harro:
The syllabus thing, that was McKay. Don’t blame that one on me.

Jason Mlicki:
Well, no. I guess my question is, are these metaphors? Or are they actual things where you sit down with a leader and you say, “Okay, we need to work on these,” maybe there’s an assessment that drives it, “We need to work on these areas of, of your capabilities. Now let’s structure a syllabus that’s a plan.” And then with structure how we’re going to practice and then how we’re going to test our progress. Is that what you’re doing, or are these more just metaphors to explain the journey that the individual is trying to go on? I’m just curious.

Ted Harro:
I’m going to give you the answer you’re going to hate, which is yes. So when we work with a client, and we’re working with them individually on how to become who they’re created to be, we will actually use this kind of thinking with them. We’ll figure out, like you said, based on their own perception of themselves, and often the perception of others, what’s the next thing that they could work on to become that person that they want to be. And then we’ll start to shape with them, “Okay, so what are we working on?” Because focus is really important. That’s why most of the time I’m saying, “Pick a class one at a time,” because most of us can’t work on 10 things at a time. We can work on one thing at a time. And then we do foresee together. We say, “Okay, what are those moments of truth,” that I would call tests a minute ago, “Those moments of truth, where this skill or way of thinking is going to be on display?” And we do identify them, prepare for them, debrief them, all those things we do.

Ted Harro:
And along the way, we’re actually identifying those practices. So when we work with clients, we use that language. We put it into a structure for them. But what I… The reason I said yes to your question, Jason, is that anybody can do this. You don’t have to hire someone like me. This is the most democratic learning experience available in the world. Most people don’t take advantage of it. It’s the exceptional people who do. I just assume that I’m working with people who are, and talking to people right now, who are going to be exceptional, which is why I’m saying anybody can do it. It’s not that hard.

Jeff McKay:
So, Ted, are you describing a… Well, you just did. A self-taught class, but it really isn’t self-taught. There are teachers along this way, right? In this class.

Ted Harro:
Yeah.

Jeff McKay:
Who are the teachers? Is it my manager?

Ted Harro:
It could be. It depends on what you’re learning. So let’s go back, since we’re… Let’s stay with that one story of that partner in that firm. If her direct leader is somebody who’s really good at being the stable center in the middle of the mess, then she can tap into that person and go ask them, “Hey, I’m working on this… I just decided to work on this. What do you do? How do you… Because I see you really do that well. What do you do? And what advice would you give me about that?” I would guess that it’s probably the minority of the time in a firm where the thing that you’re enrolling yourself in class for is going to be what your direct leader is going to be expert at it. It’s possible, but it’s not going to be all the time.

Ted Harro:
In that case, you just open your aperture and say, “Who else do I know around me who can teach me?” And it may be the hospital cleaner who can teach you something about, in that case, seeing how to be a contributor even when I don’t have authority. Then you let that person be your teacher, and along the way you, you assemble… really smart people will assemble classmates around them. People who will be… who they’ll say, “Hey, this is what I’m working on. Can you notice when I’m doing well? And then can you also notice when I could do something better? And I’m going to ask you occasionally for your input where I’m doing well on this thing I’m working on, and what I could do better.” And they tap…

Ted Harro:
That’s what a really intentional person does. They surround themselves with teachers, and mentors, and classmates and they even embraced the nemesis in their life. The person whose roles… The person whose role looks like it’s just to make them miserable. They realize that that person probably has something to teach them about this situation as well. Back to our partner, if you have somebody who especially creates mess, that person, as aggravating as they are when you’re trying to be the island of sanity in the mess, that person is serving you lots of opportunities. And you can privately say to them in your mind, “Thank you for another opportunity to be the sanity in the mess.”

Jeff McKay:
I remember when I was at a large firm, we had a practice leader, and there was actually a running joke around his behavior. And whenever you were in a meeting with him, the question was always, “Who’s going to show up? Is there going to be Richard Rich or Dick?” And when I look back on it, that guy really helped me grow. He doesn’t know that he did, but the volatility of his personality in how he approached situations helped me stabilize my team, but also be prepared and be understanding because there was something driving those personality differences on a given day. And I probably would call that class, the class of empathy.

Ted Harro:
Yeah, that’s right.

Jeff McKay:
I think that’s really, really important. Now I’ve got to think that people who are listening are going, “Okay, now I have to go out and formalize this mentorship with somebody, and give it structure and all of this.” But it’s really not like that at all. I remember, there was another firm I was at, there was somebody in the mail room, made the rounds around the office and dropped off mail. And no matter what was going on, this person was always smiling, always upbeat, and you just couldn’t help but want to be around them because they just exuded happiness. And at that point in my life, I would say I was the exact opposite. And I remember pointing out to that person saying, “Man, I just said Meyer, this quality in you. And I wish I had it.” And I think that’s… When I grow up, I want to be like you. That’s saying. You have the attributes that I want. And sometimes that’s all it takes.

Ted Harro:
Yeah. If you want to formalize it, that’s fine. But I bet you the mail room person would have found that a little bit weird, if [crosstalk 00:25:18] But I don’t think the mail room person would find it weird at all, if they’re self-aware at all, they wouldn’t find it weird at all for you to say, “Hey, can you tell… Just tell me, I want to be you someday.” I remember there were people who… the people who sign the in at the security desk at companies, I remember going to a client of mine once it was an aircraft manufacturing company in Wichita. This old crotchety guy, but he wasn’t crotchety, he was actually super cheerful, is at the desk and he was always cheerful. And my boss and I said to him one day, “When we grow up, we want to be you.” And he smiled, because I think he knew he had something. And those people, if you ask them, “So tell me, given what you do and your life, tell me how you got to where you are.” They’d probably share happily.

Jeff McKay:
Yeah.

Jason Mlicki:
Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news, and we’re probably running up on time, Jeff, or well we’re probably pass time. So, Ted, maybe what is one thing I guess that listeners should do now? Other than read the article that that governs this. But maybe where’s the best place to start? I think a lot of times we talked about different ways people can think about their journey as an individual, and has as a potential leader, but maybe what’s the best starting point?

Ted Harro:
The best starting point is always with asking the question, “Who do I want to be five years from now?” Not, “What do I want to do? Or what title I want to add?” Start with, “Who do I want to be?” And then make a choice, make a choice to say, “From now until that point in five years when I’m going to be that person, I am going to make intentional moves to become that kind of person.” Not because it’s going to get me more money or more status or more influence, but because it will get me more joy, because joy is what you get when you’re who you’re created today.

Jeff McKay:
Wow. I’m going to end it right there. Like I said, when I grow up, I want to be Ted Harro. Well, my version of Ted Harro.

Ted Harro:
Yeah, way better looking.

Jason Mlicki:
Ted Harro, super spy.

Jeff McKay:
We’ll post a link in the show notes to the article that we referred to, but Ted has some phenomenal guidance if you’re a leader or you want to be a leader, and I just love his approach. We didn’t get to it, but I think this is really important that so much of the thinking that Ted shared today is not only shaped by his experience as an executive, and his experience working with executives, but to a large degree, his experience of working with his wife who is a therapist and marriage counselor, help young couples prepare for marriage. And we’re going to have to have Ted back to talk about that, because that is a fascinating perspective on leadership. But if you go out to his website, it’s noondayventures.com, again, noondayventures.com, there is just great information that is so relevant to us that it exists in the BS of PS in this professional services world that will be useful to you. So, Ted, thanks for taking the time to join us today. I really do appreciate it.

Ted Harro:
My privilege. Thanks both of you.

Jason Mlicki:
Thanks, Ted.

Speaker 4:
Thank you for listening to Rattle and Pedal, divergent thoughts on marketing and growing professional services firms. Find content related to this episode at rattleandpedal.com. Rattle and Pedal is also available on iTunes and Stitcher.