You’re Not Paranoid, There are Patterns

*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. This is the space where we discuss leadership team and organizational topics and better practices. 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. I’m Bill Berthel.

Ralph Simone: And I’m Ralph Simone. And Bill, I’m fascinated with this topic today because I have no idea what it means.

Bill Berthel: Ah, you do. You do.

Bill Berthel: Once we get into the conversation, you’re gonna.

So the title of you’re not paranoid, there are patterns, right? It’s really about looking for and looking at the patterns. The reference to paranoia, right? Paranoia is defined as an ability or a sensing of patterns and sequences. Typically, the paranoid think those patterns are out to get them, right. It’s a negative thing, but we’re going to flip that. There really are patterns in our life, in the world. The way things are structured and really effective. Leaders can read those patterns and utilize them in their leadership to optimize the results of their teams and their organizations. That’s what we’re talking about today.

Bill Berthel: I love it.

Ralph Simone: I’d actually like rather look at that paranoia as an intuition, so much.

Bill Berthel: Is that right? It’s this beautiful ability to tap into that, right? We can take cues from the patterns and the models that are around us when we start to see that, whatever you believe in, intelligent design, divine creation, nature’s blueprint, right? These are all possible sources. Wherever these patterns come from, they’re abundantly around us. They’re very real. They’re very real.

What kind of patterns would leaders be looking for or uncovering in their organizations

Ralph Simone: Preston, I’m curious, what kind of patterns would leaders be looking for or should they be looking for or uncovering in their organizations?

Bill Berthel: I can think of three specific to leadership and really talk about those kind of meta, patterns or models, if you will. But we’ll give some specific examples. But just think about the simplicity of most people on this planet live somewhere where there’s a change of seasons, right? We experience that pattern, right? Especially here in the northeast of the United States. We have four pretty distinct seasons. I guess our winters are getting more mild and our summers might be getting hotter and drier, but still pretty distinct seasons. Summer always follows spring, winter always follows autumn. While not completely forecastable, we can understand whether patterns each season will bring. So a really simple model of patterns most of us could relate to. We can look at just about any leadership model that’s been published for patterns. So the Harvard business School is notorious for their two by two models, right? Almost every theory Harvard provides follows, that specific pattern right. Plotted on a quadrant and x y axes gives us four different dynamics to think about in leadership. I think about Ken Blanchard, situational leadership model. You’ve got the directive compared to or with supportive behavior.

Bill Berthel: Right.

Bill Berthel: So now we have this kind of four areas to be thinking about.

Ralph Simone: The Eisenhower matrix around time management.

Bill Berthel: Right.

Ralph Simone: Urgent and important, two by two. Right. Interesting.

Bill Berthel: Great example.

Bill Berthel: Right.

Bill Berthel: A, more recent one. I love Adam Grant’s work in think again. His four thinking styles. The preacher, the prosecutor, the politician, and the scientist. Whether you’re seeking truth or whether you’re winning, whether it’s belief-based, it’s a four-sectioned quadrant pattern. I think we can see that that’s not too different than seasons.

Bill Berthel: Right.

Bill Berthel: There’s four elements there. I think we can see seasons in our team. I think we can see seasonality sometimes in our markets.

Ralph Simone: So answer the question I was going to ask as a leader, what patterns can we look for so that we can scale our organizations and perform at higher levels?

Bill Berthel: Most leaders are already probably dividing their year into quarters. They’re probably following some type of either formal or informal strategic plan with goals in each of those quarters that make some sense to their team’s capacity and the needs of their market or their client. Like, that’s a pretty standard pattern that happens in the majority of organizations we work with. Got it?

Bill Berthel: I think another pretty commonly known pattern or model are the Venn diagrams. We see lots of leadership models as Venn diagrams. The beauty here is typically three or four overlapping circles that share some sort of commonality in the middle. So, different way of looking at a relationship, not so much like an x y axis, where we’re looking at perhaps opposites or complements so much. We’re usually looking at three or four, sometimes two, but usually more than that. Three or four variables are elements that make sense to a, common ground where they’re overlapping in the middle. One of the oldest is the Japanese model of Ikigai. I think a lot of people know that from a purpose, or meaning. A lot of leaders use this space. There’s four areas that overlap to guide you more clearly to your purpose. You can use this for your life purpose, your leadership purpose. Those areas are what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you’re paid for. And they come together to the central place of more clarity on your life and leadership’s purpose and meaning.

Ralph Simone: It’s a pattern, what I’m hearing, and I don’t know if this was the intent, but these patterns help us include more things. They don’t make something right or wrong, but they start to show the variation in the patterns that repeat and then how to take advantage of some things to optimize your organization.

Bill Berthel: Absolutely it, right? And I think these patterns can help provide a background or a blueprint to some of our experiments as leadership. Can we dial into that pattern? Can we dial into the seasonality? Can we dial into those variables better? I think it’s a way of creating more focus. And we were just talking about focus on a previous podcast, and it’s a way that we can start to get our hands around multiple variables for the purpose of focus.

There’s another pattern or another model we see a lot of in the leadership space, and that’s a stacked triangle. A lot of authors love a stacked triangle, right. Because like think of the shape, right. A triangle is, I think, physically one of the strongest shapes. So there’s there, but the base is bigger than the top, which automatically makes us think that the base is like foundational or anchoring or first perhaps, we’re going to build something. Start at the bottom, right. So we think about Patrick Lencioni’s five dysfunctions of a team, right. With trust being that base layer. What Covey said, a, trust is the glue that holds all relationships together. It’s foundational. If we’re going to build a team, we must start with trust before we can go up the triangle and start working in conflict more effectively together. Ultimately to get to attention of results at the top of the triangle. We like triangles again because they’re strong and they give an order or a sequence. It could help us focus on what’s first m, what comes before something else. So we can really get focused that way as well.

Ralph Simone: It seems like it could also be a pointer to where we can go or return to if we’re having trouble at the next level of that stack pattern.

Bill Berthel: Yeah, absolutely.

Ralph Simone: Gives us a roadmap almost of, what to look towards or what to adjust.

Bill Berthel: It is, and I think at the end of the day, it’s netting this out. It’s really about application and utilization of these patterns that separate highly effective leaders from others. It’s one thing to see it. What are you going to do with it? How are you going to apply this into your leadership? Noticing what season or level you or someone you’re leading is at is great, but then what do you do with it? How do you apply that? Leverage it for the best outcome?

Bill Berthel: Trey.

Ralph Simone: So that supports one of our podcasts on. So what now? What absolutely I also think it’s the fundamental premise of another model, which is the emotional intelligence model. This idea, that’s a two by two by two. We have awareness and we have action. It’s not enough to be aware of what’s working and what’s not working unless we take some action on it, or it’s not enough to recognize what’s going on in relationship unless we also add some action to it. So it reminds me, and I don’t know if this came from a consultant I worked with where he said that all models are flawed, but many are useful. And I think we’re pointing people to the models, help understand the patterns, which help us to take action. But we could probably, if we looked hard enough, we could find some flaw in any model or any pattern that unfolds. we will, we will.

Bill Berthel: No pattern, no model is going to be perfectly indicative of everything we need. But there’s, like, tools. I’m a little bit of a tool fanatic. I love tools like physical tools, woodworking tools, and so forth. The more specialized a tool is usually, the better it is at that specific task.

Bill Berthel: Right.

Bill Berthel: Multi-tools tend to be a compromise.

Bill Berthel: Right.

Bill Berthel: And so when we look at models that are highly specific and they give us some direction and how to apply, that’s usually more useful. But it’s really about that. You know, we want to be able to have this kind of analytical review of a model and a pattern, but ultimately taking a, strategic pause and reflecting on my experimentation, how did it go using that model or that tool, not just where the flaws, but what worked well and how will I continue to leverage that into continued growth and development for myself, my team, the organization? And I think we sometimes just miss that strategic pause to review the application and use of the information and the experiment we ran.

Ralph Simone: It strikes me that companies that are publicly traded and feel the pressure of quarterly performance may not be able to follow the seasonality m of, trends that occur naturally in some of these patterns. I’m wondering if you had some thoughts on that.

Bill Berthel: That’s interesting. There might be some patterns in other variables or other pressures that, or demands or needs that create those.

Bill Berthel: Right.

Bill Berthel: I think when we. This goes back to the title of paranoia. when we look for the patterns, we will find them. They are very real. It’s not that they’re out to get us, it’s how will we utilize them towards the objectives that we’re after in our organizations. Bet there’s some keys to those patterns as well.

Ralph Simone: So, on the positive side, I think some of the pressure on performance, particularly from the market, can create a sense of urgency and also create a sense of importance and focus.

Bill Berthel: Absolutely.

Ralph Simone: Which then gets the organization perhaps letting go of the noise that will get in the way of performance. So that’s kind of an interesting way to reframe that.

Bill Berthel: Yeah, absolutely. Our listeners might be thinking, you know, here’s Bill and Ralph again, kind of giving away the keys to the very work that they sell. Our mission is to raise the consciousness of individuals, leaders, and teams and the people they serve. This content, all of this is out there already, right? This isn’t giving away anything. It’s actually asking our listeners to kind of key in to pay attention some more awareness of their environment and what’s going on and what those patterns might be telling them. You know, our clients work with us as trusted advisors, as trainers and coaches because of what we do with this information. But this information is widely available. How will you use it? How will you use it? Is kind of the end of the.

Ralph Simone: Day question that, seems like an element of organizational awareness in really paying attention to the organizational patterns that are moving us closer to our vision, our goals, our results, and which ones are getting in the way, and then adjusting the systems, adjusting the structure, perhaps even adjusting the culture based on the patterns of information that we are interpreting.

Bill Berthel: Love it.

Bill Berthel: Ralph, thank you. Thanks, Bill, and thanks for listening. You can listen to a new podcast two times every month here at Get Emergent or wherever you listen to your podcasts. This is where we bring you contemporary leadership topics and ideas balanced with what we hope you find are better practices that you can apply directly to your work and your leadership.

Ralph Simone: Thanks.