Our Favorite Episodes Revisited, part 2

*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Bill Berthel:
Welcome to the Get Emergent podcast. The Get Emergent podcast guides leaders to creatively strengthen relationships and improve performance of their leadership and those that they lead. We like to provide concepts and ideas that you can turn into pragmatic experiments to help you develop your higher potential in your work and your leadership. And hopefully you’ll find some better practices right here in this podcast to apply in your work. I’m Bill Berthel.

Ralph Simone:
And I’m Ralph Simone.

Bill Berthel:
Ralph, so this is part two. We enjoyed recording, part one so much, of our featured favorite podcasts.

Ralph Simone:
We did. I hope that people will have as much fun listening to them.

Bill Berthel:
Or re- listening to some of them, right. That they’ve listened once before. Perhaps because it’s our 20 year anniversary, we wanted to share 20 favorite podcasts. So part one, with the first ten we selected today, part two, we’re going to share the next ten to get to 20 to match the years that Emergent has been in business.

Ralph Simone:
Love it. Nice round number, and it was tough to pick our top 20, but let’s start with number eleven. The next remaining ten, Bill, is Disruptive Leadership.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah, love the title. Right away. Right. Hopefully these titles are really catchy for folks, but the content is what’s really important here. We don’t get to innovate or I challenge the status quo without some disruption. Right. Some disruption in the work, some disruption. Purposeful change. Right. I think that’s what we’re really talking about here, is purposeful change.

Ralph Simone:
And we want to look at disruption here as constructive and to get leaders to disrupt their own business before someone else does.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah. That can be transformation in the business, it can be in the culture. It can be product innovation. It can be the way in which we send signals to our markets. But for leaders, I think it’s always best if they’re disrupting their own leadership through their own growth and development.

Ralph Simone:
Yeah. And I think so you start, leadership is an inside out job. You start with disrupting some of your habits, some of your patterns, with this intention of getting a better outcome. We’re disrupting intentionally, purposely, as you pointed out earlier.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah, absolutely. So number twelve, our second one for today, Handoffs Don’t Require a Title, is the title of a favorite podcast.

Ralph Simone:
Well, this one gets at delegation and requests and really allowing the task to be the boss. Too often we let structure get in the way of progress.

Bill Berthel:
When you talk about task being the boss in this podcast, you do a really great job of demonstrating how the task or the work at hand really dictates who it ought to be done by what team, what individual, and to have the confidence, no matter where you sit in the organization, to make sure the right work gets to the right seat.

Ralph Simone:
Exactly. And that handoff could be down, up, or across.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah, yeah.

Ralph Simone:
And who’s the best? Yeah. What do we need to do and who’s the best person to get it done?

Bill Berthel:
Beautiful, beautiful. Really effective delegation. Number 13, Stop Solving Problems. That sounds like a big request for leaders.

Ralph Simone:
Well, I think, and we wanted to use that title to get their attention. We do in the podcast talk about that there are still problems to be solved, but I think, Bill, you did a really nice job of distinguishing those from polarities to be managed.

Bill Berthel:
When we get into the idea of polarity management in this podcast, we talk about two forces or two energies that are interdependent but seemingly opposite or at odds. Sometimes it helps to think of them as a paradox or a dilemma different than a problem can be readily or fairly easily solved, and it goes away. Managing these paradoxes or polarities is a continual management opportunity. The real benefit is that we get the best of both energies. We get the best of both. It’s both and thinking instead of either or thinking.

Ralph Simone:
Well, the one that we’ve talked about in some podcast is remote work and in person work both add value and we want to optimize both. And what we want to look at is when has the pendulum swung too far one way or the other? We’ve been working remotely and we’ve been working in person for decades. This is not a new thing.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah, that’s right. So all of these podcasts are available. They don’t go away. They stay on our website or wherever you get your podcast, you can go back and revisit these, you can search them on our website by these title names that you’re hearing from us again today. This fourth one, number 14 on the total list. Fourth one for today. I think it might be the earliest of our entire 20. We chose Fortune Cookie Leadership.

Ralph Simone:
It is. And this, you may be wondering, well, how they going to make this pragmatic based on their intro. But this was one, and this was a lot of fun. We actually did two iterations of it, and actually I did a keynote down in Washington, DC this past year where I integrated Fortune Cookie Leadership. But it really tests leadership agility. Open a fortune cookie unrehearsed, read the little saying, and connect it to some leadership development principle or concept. And it, was a lot of fun because one of our ground rules was that you couldn’t edit them out. You couldn’t change the language. You couldn’t pick another one, a better one. So it really forced you to connect dots that seemed unconnectable at times.

Bill Berthel:
That’s beautiful. So I think it is, you know, it’s really illustrating leadership, agility. It’s also demonstrating having a little fun, getting over yourself for a minute and just, loosening up and having some fun.

Ralph Simone:
Well, I think part of having fun and being loose, we usually perform better. Right. We’re usually more present, less hung up on worry. And that was really part of the fact. Funny story. When I did this, live in Washington, DC, and I’m on the stage, there’s 400 people, and this guy reads this really obscure thing, and he was one of the guys that I had met. And I’m like, oh, thanks a lot. But it came to me, I was able to somehow connect it, and I got a, you know, the crowd went wild, but it was, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.

Bill Berthel:
Love it. Our next one, almost seemingly a, polar opposite. Focus. The title is Focus.

Ralph Simone:
Yeah. And I think we took some license with this Focus, Focus,  Focus, which is off of the theme that Thoreau had. Simplify, simplify, simplify. But this idea of making the essential items of your life number the vital few. You know, our focus is too spread. It’s too, you know, disparate. And as a result, we do many, many things, but maybe at a mediocre level.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah, yeah. It turns out several of our favorite podcasts actually have to do with focus. I’ve noticed this as we’ve been revisiting our podcasts in preparation for this, I noticed a little bit of trend, doing fewer things better, saying no to non essential requests.

Ralph Simone:
Exactly.

Bill Berthel:
Managing our time and energy differently. Right. This is all bundled into focus.

Ralph Simone:
Well, if you tie it to a leader’s role, being purposeful and visionary, and then aligning through teamwork, your organization, it requires some level of focus in order to do that well. Let me introduce the next one, because I’d like you to carry the ball. This title is another one of those intriguing titles. Number 16, You’re Not Paranoid, There Are Patterns.

Bill Berthel:
Right? So from a psychological perspective, paranoia is the ability to see patterns. However, those that are paranoid think those patterns are out to get them, right. There are patterns. Right. We illustrate the beauty that effective leaders recognize patterns that matter. In  themselves, in their leadership, in their teams, in their organizations. In this podcast, we discuss the patterns in leadership models, such as the notorious two by two that Harvard is famous for using. Right. It’s kind of another way of looking at xy axes. We also look at the pyramid. What matters most is usually at the base or the bottom, holding up the next most important layers of whatever the model is trying to illustrate various models or patterns that have been relied on for leadership and organizational development over the years. We can keep coming back to these fundamental patterns that are in our leadership.

Ralph Simone:
Yeah, absolutely. And I believe the other thing that we mentioned in this particular podcast was that habits of thought drive patterns of behavior, and so we want to be able to make that connection. And if we’re looking to change up the patterns of behavior, we need to go upstream and take a look at the habits of thought.

Bill Berthel:
Absolutely. Ultimately, we are the architects of our habits, and those become those patterns of our effectiveness. Right. We are at choice for those habits and those.

Ralph Simone:
I think self-authorizing is the term we would use there.

Bill Berthel:
Love, it. So this next one, Leadership is Relationship is the title. Leadership is Relationship.

Ralph Simone:
It is. Right. I mean, when you accept the mantle of leader, you are in the people business, you are in the relationship business, and relationships are really, you know, a series of conversations.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah, absolutely. We take a cue in this podcast from our friends at Leadership Circle that achieving and relating are two of the most important kind of mechanisms. Are we talking about them M as dials, if you will, kind of on our dashboards of leadership. So we can scale our leadership and work on what matters most. We need to equitably be achievement oriented as we are relationship oriented. And we took a focus on relationship in this podcast.

Ralph Simone:
And, you know, as we think about relationships, we’re trying to influence people. We’re trying to help them solve a problem. We’re trying to align their behavior towards a common objective, and so relating and achieving really, really critical to long term success.

Bill Berthel:
Beautiful. I think this next one is my absolute favorite title of all of our podcasts. Everyone is Incompetent.

Ralph Simone:
Yeah. And I think oftentimes people say, well, they’re not ready for the job. And one of the key points we make, I don’t think anybody is kind of ready for any job when they first get it. I think you grow into the job, hopefully your thinking and your consciousness evolves, your competencies are strengthened, but you have no idea what will unfold in the job until it actually happens.

Bill Berthel:
I think so. And I think if you are fully ready and you can predict everything that’s happening in the work, it might be time to move along a little bit. You’re probably stagnating.

Ralph Simone:
It might be time to become a disruptive leader.

Bill Berthel:
Right. Well, so.

Ralph Simone:
Right.

Bill Berthel:
So you know a little bit about pushing into what we don’t know yet. I think no matter where we sit, no matter how long we’ve been in our roles, I think there’s always the opportunity to push into what we don’t know yet.

Ralph Simone:
My favorite memory of this is I coached a guy early in his career who ultimately became the CEO of a company, and he was telling me how one of the guys in his organization wasn’t ready for the job. I said, you weren’t ready for this job when you took it, remember? I’m not sure he appreciated it as much as I did, but, you know, he wasn’t. But he certainly grew into the job.

Bill Berthel:
But I think that’s exactly the point, Ralph is sometimes we don’t remember that. And I think it’s to remember that there are these positive opportunities of being incompetent and to lean into that for ourselves and those that we’re leading. This next podcast that made our favorite list is titled Creativity is Subtraction.

Ralph Simone:
Yeah. What do we mean by that, Bill?

Bill Berthel:
This challenges some folks because we tend to be in the more is better or the adding kind of mindset. Right. Add on more, say yes to more, do more. Right. This is really looking at creativity as a subtractive process. Where I less is more. Less leaves room for more. It leaves room for more creativity, more possibility, more potential to be realized. pruning allows us to focus on what’s most important and make sure we’re fertilizing the more important parts of the plant.

Ralph Simone:
I learned that the hard way this year with my new experiment with my elevated garden. When I didn’t prune, I got flowers as opposed to fruit.

Bill Berthel:
Elevated garden is a beautiful example because it’s limited real estate, you have to be selective and possibly subtract some choices you would have included if your garden were, say, larger in your yard.

Ralph Simone:
I did, but I didn’t subtract quite enough this year. So next year I got a little more creativity through subtraction next year.

Bill Berthel:
Beautiful.

Ralph Simone:
And where do we land for the last of our, 20 featured podcast, in honor of our 20th anniversary, Bill, we landed where?

Bill Berthel:
I think we wanted to end on a high note and having the title a very positive word. This is The Yes List.

Ralph Simone:
And what do we mean? What did we cover in that podcast that would be useful to our listeners?

Bill Berthel:
I think it’s related to focus again, but rather than focus on what we might say no to, because that can be really challenging for many of us to could feel like a disappointment. It could feel like we’re letting somebody down. But instead of focusing on what we might say no to, when we make a short list of the essential items, that these things must be included for me to say yes to this. What are the essential criteria for me to say yes to a request or to know that that belongs with me.

Ralph Simone:
And I love that.

Bill Berthel:
my yes.

Ralph Simone:
Listen, because those guidelines, either organizationally or personally, like your purpose, your values, they help you kind of sort through those things that are most important. The other thing I like about the yes list, energetically, there’s more anabolic energy associated with what you say yes to as opposed to what you’re saying no to.

Bill Berthel:
Absolutely. Absolutely right. It gets us on the stronger foot moving forward from the start. It also, it really helps identify, well, if this isn’t yes for me, it must be yes for someone else.

Ralph Simone:
I absolutely agree with that. Now, we did not cover this on the podcast, I don’t believe, but I think the yes list leads to the joy of missing out. JOMO.

Bill Berthel:
Yeah.

Ralph Simone:
As opposed to FOMO, the fear of missing out, which I think is more correlated to the no list.

Bill Berthel:
Well, we hope that the Emergent podcast makes everyone’s yes list. We hope that it’s the joy of being included in this and listening to our podcasts. Those were the top 20 that our favorites selecting at this point. But Ralph I’m looking forward to the next group that we get to choose from this point forward because we’re going to keep sharing these podcasts two times a month. Folks can get them wherever they get podcasts, and we’d love it, if you love this podcast, to share it with others as well that may not know about it yet.

Ralph Simone:
Absolutely. And maybe we’d like to hear from you, which were your favorite podcasts. These happen to be our top 20 that we featured, but you may actually have others that didn’t make the cut, and they’ll make it in the 40th anniversary version.

Bill Berthel:
I love that. So you might know how to reach out to either Ralph or I. You  can also reach out to support@getemergent.com to share your favorites. So we’d love to hear back from you directly or through the support@getemergent.com. And hopefully you picked up something maybe you didn’t hear the first time, or this is going to get you to go back and listen to something that’s really important for you at this juncture in your leadership. Ralph I want to thank you for doing this. Top 20 was a lot of fun. Thanks for the podcast. Thanks for today.

Ralph Simone:
Thank you, Bill.

Bill Berthel:
All right, take care. Thank you for listening.