- Megan Alexa Watson: [00:00:00] Something I fall into myself... concerned with the org feeling safe, supported, protected, all of those things... Often as leaders, we don't actually want to say, "We are fighting for survival."

I think a lot of leaders consider it their job to not have that sentiment and that feeling in the system. As a result, when they then try to activate a command-and-control style, everybody's like, "What the heck is going on?"

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: People are so confused.

- Megan Alexa Watson: They're so confused...

 This is a podcast for leaders who want to drive change in their organization without losing sight of the people behind it, the purpose that fuels it, or the principles guiding it. I'm Megan Watson, joined by Carl Watson, and this is The Watson Standard.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: On a prior episode of the Watson [00:01:00] standard, we talked about the importance of empowerment, in the current environment where organizations are flatter, are trying to be more adaptable and flexible. But there's an important need to be balanced in how we approach our leadership. In this episode, we really wanna focus on the role of the extremes and how command and control, empowerment, and a more laissez-faire leadership style all can be useful at particular times.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yeah. In the prior episode, we talked about the idea of leadership styles as clothes you can put on and take off-

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: ...versus a tattoo that is there for life, minus the lasers.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Brilliant analogy. Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: And so I think it'll be good to just help people understand that while Carl and I both have very strong opinions about a lot of things around leadership, we don't actually believe that there's only one way to do this and only one way that is successful.

It's about the [00:02:00] shifting that really becomes beneficial. I know you've talked a little bit about sort of that shifting.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yeah. The idea really is that the context, the situation, I think going back to Hersey and Blanchard and situational management.

The context matters, and your leadership should adjust to the context. It's the basic idea. But then we have this idea of how flexible you are in order to shift your leadership style or leadership behavior when you're confronted with a conflict or a context that demands a different style from you.

And that behavioral flexibility becomes an important aspect of the ability to meet the needs and the demands of a particular situation.

- Megan Alexa Watson: It's a great framing. One of the things I know we talk a lot about is what are the core capabilities, what are the mindsets that leaders need to have to be able to meet this current moment?

It feels a lot like what you're calling out here in behavioral flexibility is the leaders who will be able to be most [00:03:00] impactful in dealing with adapting situations, are gonna be able to be more effective and by default have more opportunities within a system because of that behavioral flexibility.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes. Yes. There is research that shows that leaders who have more flexibility in displaying or deploying a wide variety of competencies that are aligned to the different styles of leadership are more successful generally. However, there are contexts that are strong enough where certain leadership styles dominate.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yeah.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: And that's important to understand. You know the idea that humans are lumpy. I love this. That's one of my favorite sayings about myself. I'm very lumpy. And that means essentially that like I have a very strong set of specific skills. I'm not a general manager or general sort of leader, in terms of being able to do all kinds of different things. I'm a special purpose instrument. And there are a lot of people like that. And that doesn't mean that's bad [00:04:00] necessarily, but there are limitations to being lumpy. I heard Adam Grant talk about in his press tour for the book Hidden Potential about how people aren't able or don't have this broad set of skills, and the need to understand that people are imperfect. And this idea that, that is not a damning situation.

It's just the reality for most of us, not being, broadly skilled across the vast majority of competencies around leadership and the like. Having the right clarity about where you should focus, where your unique talents are how do you develop those unique talents, and then where you make the investments on broadening, it becomes a very important task. As opposed to trying to do everything, be clear about and intentional about what you do.

- Megan Alexa Watson: That to me feels a lot like the [00:05:00] leadership version of what I talk about of the uniquely you-shaped problems. That is true for leaders, too.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes. There's no way to be infinitely flexible, right?

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yeah. I love this idea of what does it mean to be able to invest in what it takes to develop capabilities or for that matter, mindsets that will be fit for purpose in the moment that is needed, and the recognition that with that does come actual leadership work.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: It requires intentionality to say, "I am going to build, develop, cultivate, evolve certain capabilities and mindsets for the moment when I need them."

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes. Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: What sparks for me when you say that is the leader gets to a moment, and they're like, "Oh, I really need to be able to tap on this. Let me go build that in the next 24 hours." I feel

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Right. Right.

- Megan Alexa Watson: ...so passionately about... we are in a world right now where we're talking about speed of [00:06:00] acquisition of skills.

This is not that.

This actually requires sort of investment at an earlier stage-

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes

- Megan Alexa Watson: ...in development to have time to actually shift and evolve because very often it's going against sort of our natural wired behaviors.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Right. Right.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Like you say, behavioral flexibility, that implies, you've got a certain behavioral set that you have developed over your life through your lived experiences-

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: ...from your personality, from all of those things, the conditions of how you were raised... and so to be able to pull on a tool that you haven't already cultivated at the point at which you are a leader in an organization-

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yeah.

- Megan Alexa Watson: ...You gotta work at that.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yeah. That's why it's costly. It's exactly why it's costly because sometimes it's hard to predict what set of behaviors you may need in the future. From a executive development standpoint, I know that we tend to do this at stages.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yeah.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: We prepare people for the next stage of their leadership, their more senior leadership in the organizations, which is easier to predict the [00:07:00] challenges that people will face as they get greater authority and greater organizational responsibility in the system, and there are contexts and things that are hard to predict. That doesn't mean it's still not useful. As an example, i've been, spent most of my career in teams that require high creativity, high innovation. It's easy for me to predict that I may be in situations where I have teams that aren't in that - creating stuff from whole cloth situation - and therefore I need to expand my leadership to be able to deal with situations where they are the teams I am leading are running things.

Doesn't mean there's not continuous improvement and all those other things, but the leadership requirements on me in that latter situation is just different than when I'm running a small team of high creatives.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yeah. Yeah. It connects me to one of the topics that we've discussed of this idea of as a leader in this moment, you actually may need to run multiple teams at once.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Mm.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Ones that are solving for the [00:08:00] core, ones that are solving for what's next, and ones that are solving for what's on the edge.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Interesting. Yeah, yeah.

- Megan Alexa Watson: And so I'm thinking your example makes me think about even in one singular moment you might have to leverage different leadership styles with those different sort of clusters of your team-

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: ...to be able to get the results and the outcomes you want.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yeah.

- Megan Alexa Watson: I won't go down this particular rabbit hole right now; I can't promise I won't go down it later... but of course the thing that then pops for me is as an employee, or a team member, or a leadership team member of this leader who's having different styles for different parts of their org. What is the lived experience of those team members and those employees as they're like, "That's not the leader I know."

Looking across the aisle at their peers who are getting a very different leadership style, and how do we reckon with that in our understanding of who the leader is?

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. So first of all I think this idea that you have these teams across these [00:09:00] different modes of operation is something that I think feels more new.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Mm-hmm.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: It's more of the moment-

- Megan Alexa Watson: I would agree.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: ...than in previous generations of leadership. That feels like a fresh idea that really demands you need to understand that you're lumpy, you have preferences, you have talents in certain areas, and the situation more and more demands of us to be aware of the flexibility that's required for the situation.

Again narrating what you're doing, and so that people have the context to be able to understand why there's a shift in leadership. Why there's a shift in style based on the work of these different teams.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Mm-hmm.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: And sometimes that shifts in the moment, right? It's not always a shift across teams. There could be a team that has one style that is associated-

- Megan Alexa Watson: Mm-hmm.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: ...with you, but then they run into a problem or a challenge-

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yep.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: ...that demands a different style from you, and just saying, "Hey - I'm a different leader-

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yep.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: ...In this moment for these reasons.

- Megan Alexa Watson: For these reasons.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: And I understand that it's going to be [00:10:00] confusing at times, but I need you to know that that's why I'm doing it-

Yeah.

...and I'm gonna show up differently because this is what this moment demands of me."

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yes. Yes. I love that, and it feels like another critical thing that leaders need to narrate when that happens is there is a difference between behavioral flexibility and moral flexibility.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes, absolutely.

- Megan Alexa Watson: I know that seems super obvious... but let's be really clear-

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes, yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: ...that very often one can be disguised as the other.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yeah.

- Megan Alexa Watson: And so making sure that people don't conflate those things.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: No.

- Megan Alexa Watson: My principles are the same-

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: ...which is helping us be successful with speed to meet this moment, whatever the thing is.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yeah.

- Megan Alexa Watson: How I get there might be different. That doesn't change my principles. That doesn't change my values.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: So that recognition.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yeah.

- Megan Alexa Watson: All right. I wanna pivot us into taking a moment to define what some of those extremes are.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yeah.

- Megan Alexa Watson: I'd love your thinking on that.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: We talk about, command and control...

Essentially [00:11:00] when we talk about that, we're really talking about the decision-making and the direction is very leader centered. That's essentially what we mean when we say that. It doesn't mean the person is mean. It doesn't mean that they are over-functioning. It just means that the situation and the leadership style is focused on decisions and direction being leader focused.

Then we talk about empowerment, leaders who empower their teams, and that's a really a situation where there's shared leadership across, team members such that-

- Megan Alexa Watson: And shared accountability.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: And shared accountability.

- Megan Alexa Watson: As you always say, super important.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: 100%. 100% shared accountability.

'Cause ultimately-

- Megan Alexa Watson: It's not leadership without accountability.

As you said

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: ...it's not leadership-

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yep...

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: without accountability.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yep.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: The idea that leaders really delegate not just work, but their authority for others to make choices, to give perspective, and give direction, when the leader is both present and absent, true empowerment in that case.

Mm-hmm.

Then we talk [00:12:00] about the real extreme that some people say we don't see very often, but it's this laissez-faire leadership type. Which is really about the lack of clarity about how leadership is distributed in a given system or a given team. And so, the accountability and leadership can be picked up and put down by a variety of people based on their own interest and will, and there can be competition, unhealthy and maybe sometimes healthy competition, around who has leadership and accountability in a moment.

This happens a lot in cross-functional teams when the leader hasn't been clear about who has the decision-making authority. It ends up being laissez-faire leadership because there's this internal dynamic where authority isn't clarified and how decision-making and direction flows just isn't consistent.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yeah. I'm gonna push us on this one, and this is also owning my own bias to clarity, and direction, and precision. When is a [00:13:00] laissez-faire approach- can it be adopted intentionally, and can it be adopted for good? I know you said it's not as common, but I feel like honestly, especially right now in the tech space and with the deep need to innovate with speed to outrun the competition in the generative and AI spaces, I actually feel like I'm seeing it a whole lot.

And I'm gonna throw out an idea and I'd love your perspective- Some of it I'm seeing as a talent development, talent management play; I'm thinking of new leaders that are brought in to disrupt an organization, to do a transformation or a turnaround with the org that they're accountable for.

And they're like, "I don't really know what I've got. I don't know if my org is right. I don't know if the talent is right. I don't know if the leaders that are in their roles, and have their accountabilities, are right. Certainly, I could do a multi-stage assessment approach and evaluate them with precision, or I could step back and get [00:14:00] out of the way and see who surfaces." Like you said, the competition.

See who wins, see who thrives. See who has the best idea. See who can deliver things the quickest. Then use that to then inform what is needed next for the org, whether it's org structure, whether it's reporting lines, whether it's ways of working, whether it's the actual talent. I don't know if that's a great idea. I don't know if that's a horrible idea, but I feel like I'm seeing it.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: I think you've hit on the two situations that are appropriate for laissez-faire leadership. But it's contained- ...in the sense that it's not laissez-faire on everything and all things.

For your first example, around emergent technologies, or any kind of highly speculative work - you don't know the outcome. You don't know where you're going, and therefore you also don't know how to choose who's going to lead that work going forward, because you may find information where one specialty and one set of experiences is more important than another [00:15:00] specialty, another set of experiences that you have on a team. Being able to flex that as you find out, I think is super useful.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Mm-hmm.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Right? And then your other example around a new leader, I think there is situations where as a leader you wanna put out the problem, and so this is a shared problem that we all have. It doesn't necessarily fall cleanly into any one of our responsibilities, but I'm going to put out the problem and then allow the team to start to work it, and now leadership to emerge in that as well.

It does two things. It helps create a that sense of joint accountability, that-

- Megan Alexa Watson: Mm-hmm.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: ...joint problem-solving that you talk about as well. That's super important. It also gives people the opportunity to accrue more accountability and to take more responsibility for the leadership team and to thrive in that context. I think those are perfectly useful examples of how it would work.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yeah. It's interesting because when I [00:16:00] initially said it a few moments ago, I wasn't actually thinking about it as separate scenarios, but your articulation of it even helped me realize when are you an emerging space, technology, industry, specialty, whatever, when are leaders being brought into a new org to shift something, change something, transform...

I think the thing that many people are feeling right now is when those two things collide-

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Mm-hmm.

- Megan Alexa Watson: ...it's even more extreme. We're in a space of emerging technology, and we're throwing a lot of new disruptive leadership talent into a system to see if we can figure out what the thing is that we're gonna need to grab as an organization.

Those two things together you're not just sharing a problem, you're sharing an emergent problem- it is even more unknown, and it is even more something that needs to be explored and experimented around.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yeah. And I do think that, just to bring [00:17:00] back our earlier point, that finding and feeling out the boundaries of when you need to flex your style, even those situations, is still super important. There's a floundering and a wandering that is productive-

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yes.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: ...but there are times when that turns unproductive, and it's still the leader's job to give the right support so the team can really find its footing.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Mm-hmm.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: And so that accountability doesn't go away.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yeah.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: The buck stops there.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Exactly.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Regardless of what leadership style you deploy.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yep.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: You just have to figure out the right way to support the team. And that's essentially what the behavioral flexibility idea is all about. What's the right way to support the team given the context that you're in?

- Megan Alexa Watson: Going back to this idea of leadership talent that is being deployed in different parts of the organization, or brought in from outside of the organization to disrupt, it's also the recognition that it's a bit of a clock running.

So let's say a leader comes in they do their own evaluation. They see [00:18:00] they need, ...let me try the laissez-faire approach and see what happens and see if the team meets the moment. That can't be forever.

Yeah.

So to your point of the buck stops here-

Yeah.

...it's not only just yes, you're gonna be accountable-

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: But at a certain point you have to be able to say, "You know what? The time has run out-"

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Right.

- Megan Alexa Watson: ...for this sort of approach. We gotta switch-

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: ...because there's external environmental things that we are racing against-

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: ...whether it's competition, whether it's limited resources, whatever the case may be.

How you determine what that clock is and how long you have to figure it out, I don't know.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yeah. I think that's highly situational, and I think that's right. There's no infinite space to play essentially.

There are times for exploration and divergent thinking and finding your footing, and then there are times that your feet have to be found, and you have to run, right? And whether or not your shoes are laced up, whether or not- ...you are fully ready-

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yep.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: ...you have to run.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yeah. [00:19:00] Did you stretch?

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Right.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Did you stretch?

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Hopefully. If you didn't, you still have to run, right?

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yep.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: You're just running with, not stretched, and one shoe on and one shoe off.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Right.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Go.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yeah, yeah. So with that, I think this is a great opportunity to pivot now to the other end of the spectrum.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yeah.

- Megan Alexa Watson: So what are the scenarios when command and control is valuable, sometimes critically needed?

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Well, let's start with the one we just ended on, where the clock is ticking. When there is high pressure a short timeline, and in particular when the leader also has clear perspective. Like they have the right information, they have the right skill set and so they're in the position to really have a command and control.

Those are the moments when it's really useful. I always talk about being a Marine, right? When you are in war- the hierarchy of a military unit is designed so that when your captain [00:20:00] says, "Duck," you don't ask what or why. You duck, right? And that's so real. I had this experience... I was a commander of a command and control unit in the middle of the desert, and we were going through a minefield. And there was artillery coming, and there was an explosion that was coming closer and closer. I told my driver to duck. He delayed, and so I dropped the hatch on his head, and he complained about it. I said - Did you hear me say, "Duck?" The vehicle in front of us exploded!

- Megan Alexa Watson: Mm-hmm.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Luckily everybody was okay

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yep.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: ...in that vehicle, but it exploded. I said, "Duck," and you didn't duck! The next time I told him to duck, he ducked.

- Megan Alexa Watson: He ducked.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: That's command and control.

- Megan Alexa Watson: I like this idea of when is there critical information that the leader [00:21:00] has that the organization needs to snap to with speed, for whatever reason, that can be a moment where command and control can be not just useful, but critical to use since we are talking about-

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yeah.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Truly mission critical- in those moments.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: The thing I think about the most is the canonical business turnaround situations where you are bleeding cash, and the deadline is... I run out of money in order to run the business. It's bankruptcy or survival.

And so in that context a command and control style can be very useful to quickly get the organization into a new setup and a new direction that can survive for right now. That's not a forever statement, it's like we need to survive this moment. That's it. We can talk about whatever comes next when we get there.

- Megan Alexa Watson: When we get there. [00:22:00] Exactly. Exactly.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: That's the classic example in the business context for a high demand for command and control leadership. Again, command and control doesn't mean that you are a mean person. It doesn't mean you're

- Megan Alexa Watson: yelling at people-

...and throwing things.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: It just means that the focus of decisions and direction is leader focused as opposed to empowered or other focused.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Something I fall into myself... concerned with the org feeling safe, supported, protected, all of those things... Often as leaders, we don't actually want to say, "We are fighting for survival."

Like there's something to putting that out in the system- that

I think a lot of leaders consider it their job to not have that sentiment and that feeling in the system. As a result, when they then try to activate a command-and-control style, everybody's like, "What the heck is going on?"

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: People are so confused.

- Megan Alexa Watson: They're so confused. While you don't want to lead through fear, [00:23:00] the recognition and the ability to articulate when an organization, or a team, or a company is fighting for survival can actually give people comfort because they get why the pivot in style is so extreme.

As we said, ideally we have leaders who are able to build, cultivate, develop, evolve the capability to flex across sort of leadership styles.

And I think we all of us know leaders that are really good at one style, and it might actually break their brains if they needed to pull a lever for another style. So I'm curious, are we entering a space where if you can't flex, you are not useful to the organization?

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: I think that's a very, it feels very harsh. There are places for a wide variety of humans in organizations and systems that can be deployed to maximize [00:24:00] their contribution and their ability to thrive in the organization. 'Cause there's two aspects of it.

There's will and skill, and ability to develop that skill. A lot of the cases where somebody is a special purpose instrument, they do not have the will, they don't have the desire to shift and learn these other types of skills that will lead to them to be more flexible behavior. And that's fine.

Then there are people who are just not able, they're not good enough. The effort it takes them to build these other skills is higher than it's worth for them. So regardless of the situation, an organization, a talent system can then recognize that, and help land them in spaces where they can deploy their unique skill sets and move them to these different kinds of problems. Particularly the people who it's a will problem, they're gonna be so thrilled that the organization supports their kind of skill set.

So I think that is a [00:25:00] particularly powerful way of not assuming that everybody can do all the things. We are not Swiss Army knives. Most of us are not. And sporks aren't particularly useful. It's the worst of a fork and a spoon.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yes.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Right?

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yes, yes.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: And so we don't wanna develop a cadre of sporks. We wanna be able to have both people who are gifted in that range of behaviors. We want people who are willing and eager to make that investment, even if it's on their own time, to be able to create more flexibility. And we want to recognize that there are specialists.

Specialists, specializing is a super useful element and an important part of what makes large organizations work, right? If everybody was a general manager, organizations would not work.

- Megan Alexa Watson: I can already tell we are gonna have an episode in the future around specialists [00:26:00] and expertise, and what that means-

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yeah.

- Megan Alexa Watson: ...in this moment. To loop back to what you said, I think this idea of if systems can identify which leaders have strong capability in certain leadership styles, and who have a strong will to focus on that leadership style - and if the leader themselves has the level of self-awareness to know, that is how they operate, that can be an amazingly powerful lever for a system trying to transform and do things different.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: 100%.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Because they go into a deployment, a role, an opportunity fully aware of why they are there- what the expectation is of them, and what they bring to the moment.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: People are gonna get tired of me talking about narrating, but friends, it's not a shock since I am both comms and development... [00:27:00] narrating to the team, "I am here because y'all need a fork."

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: "And so that is what I am here for-"

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: "...and I am going to be that fork for you-"

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: "...for however long you need it."

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: "And then I will move on, and we will get you something else."

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: 100%.

- Megan Alexa Watson: That can allow people to know what they're plugging into, and likely embrace it for the powerful impact that it can have to make the organization better.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: That's right. I could go back to just treat people as adults. Tell people what's going on, right? They can handle it. Treat people like adults. The other situation I just thought of, I think is really important that's interesting for having command-and-control style, I call it when you need to be a pace setter, is when you are raising the bar - on what good looks like, and you're saying, under the old system or the old moment, good looked like this, but now good looks different, and I need you to hit this new bar. So setting that new pace [00:28:00] becomes important. The reason why I like the term pace setter, 'cause you're out in front, and people are trying to keep up with you, and some people aren't gonna make it.

They're just not. And that's okay. You're creating a new standard for the organization or the team. That's very difficult to do in any other leadership style.

- Megan Alexa Watson: That one I think feels really critical in this moment as we are trying to so intentionally shift ways of working. We're trying to so intentionally shift even the types of tools that people use to get their work done, when folks may not have bought into the new way of working or leveraging the tool, being able to be very explicit about the expectation and being able to call it when that expectation is not being met - becomes core to that leadership style.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: 100%.

- Megan Alexa Watson: I'm also thinking through as you share that, there [00:29:00] is a difference between - I am stopping something, saying no to something, sending something back to be redone because it's not the way I like it - versus it is wrong, or not making that bar.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Right. Right.

- Megan Alexa Watson: That's the other thing that I think people start to conflate.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Preference versus -

- Megan Alexa Watson: Thank you.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: ...versus excellence, and those are different ideas.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Yes! Thank you for those words, 'cause that's what it is. So the ability for a leader when they are trying to pace set... raise the bar... to be able to say, "This is not me saying no because of preference. This is me saying no because it doesn't meet the bar of excellence. Try again."

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: And it's still hard for the team to get the difference. The moment where a leader sees something that they didn't expect, and they go, "Wow, I didn't expect that. That's not how I would've done it, but that is brilliant. That's exactly what we need," that's the moment where the team goes, "Oh, yes, now I [00:30:00] understand it's not about preference. It's about this new bar that is being set."

- Megan Alexa Watson: That to me goes to conversations we've had about what do you story tell, what do you reward -

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Mm. Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: ...what do you recognize in the system? I think really critical to that is the ability for a leader to surface those examples - that are not always tied to the inner circle or the people that always show up just like that leader.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Because it's a way to signal, this is not about I only want work done in the way that I would do it even if somebody else ran it, but it is truly about everyone in this system has the opportunity to reach this bar of excellence in your own way.

I am open to wherever that comes from, at whatever point in the hierarchy that comes from. And that, to me, establishes a motivation to try to reach that bar of excellence versus a feeling of frustration that the leader's gonna keep moving [00:31:00] the finish line.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes, 100%. I wanna link this back to something we said in a prior episode, where we're talking about how letting go of control, letting people experience accountability, which brings us further away from what we were talking about with command and control.

But this is a way, in a command and control context, to release the collective brilliance of the team. And so that can be possible in both an empowered context and a command and control context. You just have to do it differently. So I love that example.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Okay, you just made me feel so much better. Truly, because am sitting here trying to think through, how do you create... that sense of innovation, and the sense of being able to actually surface new ideas and new places in a command and control scenario. But from what you were saying, there is a path to that.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: It requires a level of intentionality, but there is a path to that.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: Yes.

- Megan Alexa Watson: Those things are not opposed.

- Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.: A level of intentionality and an awareness of your preference and the distinction between your preferences and excellence.

- Megan Alexa Watson: And that's [00:32:00] it for this episode of The Watson Standard. We've shared some things to think about, talk about, and put into practice. Follow the series and join us next time as we continue redefining leadership and redefining organizations.