Become a More Flexible Leader with Kevin Eikenberry
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
Kevin Eikenberry is the Chief Potential Officer of the Kevin Eikenberry Group, a leadership and learning organization. With over 30 years of experience, he has helped leaders and organizations in more than 53 countries improve their effectiveness. Recognized as one of the top leadership thinkers by Global Gurus, Kevin is also the author and co-author of several influential books, including Remarkable Leadership, From Bud to Boss, The Long-Distance Leader, and his latest, Flexible Leadership: Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with Confidence.
Key Characteristics of Leadership
Kevin highlights commitment as the most critical characteristic of a great leadership team.
He emphasizes that commitment to both the team and the organization's mission is essential for long-term success.
Challenges in Leadership Development Programs
Many leadership development programs fail because they focus exclusively on skills, neglecting mindset and habits.
Leadership effectiveness stems from a combination of three essential elements: mindset, skillset, and habitset.
Programs often miss addressing the readiness or motivation of leaders to adopt new behaviors.
Importance of Mindset in Leadership
Developing the right mindset is foundational for leadership success.
A leader’s perspective and belief system must align with the skills they are learning to ensure long-term impact.
Kevin stresses the need to create a strong "why" for leaders, helping them see the value of adapting and improving their leadership approach.
Flexible Leadership in Today's World
Kevin’s book, Flexible Leadership, addresses the need for leaders to adapt beyond static leadership styles or models.
He critiques traditional leadership models, which often oversimplify or lock leaders into rigid patterns of behavior.
Flexibility is vital for navigating today's increasingly complex, diverse, and globalized world.
Defining Flexible Leadership
Flexible leadership involves balancing consistency (principles and values) with adaptability (approach and methods).
Leaders must avoid being too rigid or overly changeable and focus on responding to the context at hand.
Kevin encourages leaders to focus on consistency in their values while remaining flexible in their strategies.
Mindset, Skillset, and Habitset
Kevin’s book is structured around these three core components:
Mindset: A leader must adopt a growth-oriented and adaptive perspective.
Skillset: Leaders must develop the ability to assess contexts and respond appropriately using tools like the Kenevan Framework.
Habitset: Building consistent behaviors and routines ensures that new skills become second nature.
Introduction to the Cynefin Framework
The Cynefin Framework is a tool for understanding the context of leadership decisions.
It identifies four types of contexts:
Clear: Best practices can be applied because the situation is straightforward.
Complicated: Requires expertise and analysis to determine the best course of action.
Complex: Uncertainty prevails, and leaders must explore and adapt as new information emerges.
Chaotic: Immediate action is necessary to stabilize the situation.
Kevin explains that effective leaders flex their approach based on the specific context they face.
Practical Applications of Flexible Leadership
Leaders must assess each decision by first understanding the context (clear, complicated, complex, or chaotic).
The ability to adapt, or "flex," is key to achieving better results and fostering stronger teams.
Kevin illustrates this through "flexors," which represent the balance leaders must strike between extremes, such as consistency versus flexibility or commitment versus compliance.
Planning in Uncertain Times
Kevin offers advice on how leaders can plan effectively in complex or uncertain environments.
Scenario planning and focusing on short-term actionable steps are essential when facing unknown variables.
Leaders must prioritize gathering information, adapting plans as clarity emerges, and involving their teams in the process.
Building Habitset for Long-Term Leadership Success
Creating new habits requires intentionality, repetition, and reinforcement.
Kevin advocates for leaders to incorporate routines and rhythms that support their growth.
Collaboration within leadership teams helps reinforce new behaviors through feedback, accountability, and shared commitment.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Kevin emphasizes that flexibility is about adopting a both-and approach, not an either-or mindset.
Leadership is inherently challenging, but by integrating mindset, skillset, and habitset, leaders can achieve greater impact.
Kevin encourages leaders to commit to continuous improvement, modeling the behaviors they wish to see in their teams.
Kevin’s book, Flexible Leadership: Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with Confidence, is available - visit KevinEikenberry.com/gift for free access to his masterclass on building confidence and links to purchase the book.
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Mike Goldman: [00:00:00] Kevin Eikenberry is the chief potential officer of the Kevin Eikenberry group, a leadership and learning company. He spent over 30 years helping organizations and leaders. From more than 53 countries become more effective. Global gurus has put them in the list of the most influential thinkers on leadership for the last three years.
His blog and podcast, the remarkable leadership podcast are among the most popular on leadership. Remarkable leadership from bud to boss and the long distance leader are among the books he's authored or coauthored. Kevin believes his new book, Flexible Leadership, Navigate Uncertainty, and Lead with Confidence is his best and most important work yet.
So that's where we're going to focus today. Kevin, welcome to the show.
Kevin Eikenberry: Mike, thanks for having me. You know, it's, it's an interesting thing to have coauthors and then say your new book is your best. I don't know how my [00:01:00] coauthors who both get a paycheck from me probably wonder about that, but here we go.
Well, and I know Wayne, I have, I interviewed, one of your coauthors, Wade Turmel on the show, not too long ago about a remote workforce. So, after he hears this, he may be calling you or I pretty angry, but the first
Mike Goldman: we'll deal with that.
Kevin Eikenberry: okay.
Mike Goldman: And he's on your payroll instead of vice versa.
So that, that helps a little bit.
Kevin Eikenberry: correct.
Mike Goldman: So, so let's dive in.
and as always, I'm going to start with the question I always do, which is You know, Kevin, from your experience, what do you believe is the number one most important characteristic of a great leadership team?
Kevin Eikenberry: Well, anytime you ask about the most or the one, it makes me think of, I can only take one book on the desert island. What book am I going to take? it's an impossible question. but I knew you were going to ask. And so I'll go with the first thing that came to my mind. And that is that everyone on the team needs to be committed to each other and to the mission of [00:02:00] the organization.
So I would say, if you forced me to pick one, I'd pick commitment.
Mike Goldman: and what would be that one book? I'm sure it would be, hold on.
Kevin Eikenberry: that's not
Mike Goldman: no,it would be breakthrough leadership team by Mike Goldman.
Kevin Eikenberry: leadership team by Mike Goldman. That's what it would be.
Mike Goldman: so I want to start with, and I know you cover this in your book is, you know, I, one of the things as a coach that works with leadership teams, most days, all day, very often I hear we've got to create a leadership development program. And the thing I hear second most is. Why is our leadership development program not working?
You know, everybody thinks that's going to be, we're just going to create this wonderful leadership development program and we're going to have a bunch of great leaders. why is it that most of those programs don't achieve what we think and hope there they'll achieve?
Kevin Eikenberry: Well, that's a big question, Mike. [00:03:00] I'll say I've been thinking about that question for 30 years and trying to help organizations think about that work through that for 30 years. I'll say a couple of things. First of all, most all leadership development programs are designed around skills, which makes sense.
We want people to have better skills. however skills alone are not really what we should be trying to achieve. So, really, what we want is to create a mindset that leads to. And connects to the skill set like most leadership development programs. There's not. I mean, there are some that are better than others, right?
There's some better content. Some are using your content. So they're better. Some are using my content. So they're okay. But my point is. it's not usually the content. It's not usually the skills. Like the problems are on the front end and the back end.
So we need to have the right mindset to support the skill set. People have to have the right perspective to say, I understand this. I want to do this [00:04:00] before we give them the shiny toolkit. then the toolkit of course, isn't enough because there's a big difference between knowing and doing. And so we believe it's mindset, skillset, habit set and, what's usually missing is two of the three. And so we're pretty good at figuring out how to teach the skills or share, share the skills. Here are the skills.but we don't think we don't put it in the right context. And we also treat it like spray and pray. Like we're going to give everybody the same thing when not everyone's at the same level of readiness, which is related to the mindset piece, right?
Not everyone understands. Why it would be valuable for them to get better or what pain will be erased for them when they become more effective leaders. So I believe the short answer is that most leadership development programs focus on only one of the three important things, mindset, skill set, habit set, and they're only focused on that middle one.
Mike Goldman: And we will come back cause that's a big,big focus of your book. [00:05:00] It's the way your whole book is really structured. Is that mindset skill set habits set.
So we're going to come back to that, but I want to go kind of, you know, step back and stay high level for a few minutes and your book is called Flexible Leadership.
why did, why was that an important book for you to write now?
Kevin Eikenberry: Well, I think, you know, you and I are in a group of people that have been, trying to help. Leaders get better for a long time. And there were people that preceded us and we rest, we sit on their shoulders. And a lot of people for the last 80 or a hundred years have really worked hard to figure out how to help leaders get better.
And they've built all sorts of things and all sorts of tools and all sorts of assessments with wonderful intention. And the problem is that most, many of those have led to a model or a style type. And the problem is that as humans. Styles help us because we are [00:06:00] pattern recognition engines. And if we can recognize a pattern, then it helps us understand something.
The problem is. Any model is incomplete because it's if I collect tractors, antique tractors, and I also collect the toys and I could have, I could show you a toy. I didn't have, it's over here. I could show you a toy right now that, that is a model of a tractor that I own, both of which are older than I am. Here's the thing. The model tells us something about the real thing, but it is necessarily incomplete. It is necessarily oversimplified. And any model that we use in leadership development, in communication styles, all the style stuff built with tremendously useful intent. Gets in the way because now rather than me using that simplified model to understand a little bit of something I now lock in and say that's what I well I'm a this kind of leader or i'm a that kind of [00:07:00] leader or i'm a servant leader or i'm a whatever leader then we are locked in and can no longer be flexible.
And in a world that requires, that is more complex than any model, we have to be able to flex. We have to be able to adapt. And so, all of, you know, it ties to your 1st question or your 2nd question about, like, all of these, all this work, all this investment in leadership development. And yet we don't really get the results we want. It's because the world is inherently more complex than the models. And so what we need is a way to think beyond the styles. I'm not saying that knowing, having some sense of leadership style, isn't useful. I'm saying it's incomplete and it's only helpful until it's not.
Mike Goldman: I also think a good example of when it's not useful is if you think of a disk profile there, there are, you know, and I happen to be a high D I, my D is almost off the charts. And for those that don't know what that [00:08:00] means is I want the facts. I want to make a decision quick. I want to take action.
It's not about Kumbaya. It's not about analyzing. Let's make it happen. And there are leaders that take that knowledge as opposed to using that the way I have taught it. And I don't do much disc work anymore, but when I used to teach it, it was all about how do we use that knowledge to flex to others, knowing that I might be a high D, how do I influence someone who's a high S?
Kevin Eikenberry: Well, I need to flex to them. But when I see leaders doing, which flies in the face of what you're trying to achieve and what you do and in your book is people use that style as an excuse. I'm
Mike Goldman: not a jerk. I'm not a jerk. Yeah.
Kevin Eikenberry: right? You
Mike Goldman: Yeah.
Kevin Eikenberry: you gotta adapt to me cause I'm the boss.
Mike Goldman: Well, and it's also, you know, I, you know, I know I sound like a jerk, but I'm just a high D that's how I am. No, you're a jerk. So, so, so I love that. So, and [00:09:00] is there something about the environment? Today that makes being a flexible leader more important. You know, I always say, Oh, the world is changing faster than ever.
I thinkI'm almost 60 years old and the world's been changing pretty fast ever since I was born. But is there something about the world today that makes this more important or has it always been just as important
Kevin Eikenberry: You know, the book marketer in me would say times are more uncertain than ever and because of that, and I think there's some truth to that. Although. It's pretty hard for us to know that because we didn't live 40 years ago or 50 years ago and we can read about it or whatever, but I do think the world is changing. You know, we can, we don't have to argue whether it's more or faster. I believe the world is more complex because there are more factors involved. Like when people were leading in a small community 60, 70 years ago, there was less diversity of thought. There was less diversity of customer. There was less diversity of [00:10:00] employee.
There was less diversity and lots of factors. And so anytime you add that, you add levels of complexity and a global workforce and a global community and a global economy and all those things. think those things do play a role. the other hand, I think that the best leaders have always exhibited a number of the kinds of traits that we think about and talk about in flexible leadership, being that I have to be intentional.
What's the situation telling me and how should I be responding, reacting? leading, given that context, rather than just saying, well, this is how I lead or going by my first inclination, natural response, high D, high I, high S, whatever, right? But rather say what's appropriate, what's helpful, what's going to be most useful for us, for me right now.
And I don't think that's really changed. I just think need for it has been amplified.
Mike Goldman: [00:11:00] before we, I want to dive into. the model and your way of thinking on how we should think about this, how we should do it.
but sticking again, high level for another couple of minutes is dive a little deeper for me as to how you would define what a flexible leader is. and what I want you to take into account when you define it is in my mind, and I may be thinking about it, In, in, in maybe a different way or maybe even an unhelpful way in my mind, there's a certain amount of flexibility.
That's probably good. And then there's a certain point, which is God, could we ever stick to a plan before you change your mind to go here? Because I've seen leaders that are too rigid. This is our plan. And I've all seen leaders that also seen leaders that chase every shiny object. And it's because they are quote unquote flexible.
So how should we be thinking about that?
Kevin Eikenberry: So for those who are listening and not watching, I'm not putting up my hands on both sides of my [00:12:00] head. and so on one end. We have rigid and on the other hand we have Flexible or adaptable or changeable, whatever we're doing to use, and I would suggest you and this is a core idea of the entire book. Let's call this a flexor and in almost every case. And we've got a whole bunch of these in the book. And I'm sure we'll talk about a few in almost every case. The ends of that continuum. Are seldom the right answer. The right answer is somewhere between rigid and so flexible as to not be able to pin the person down.
that's not what we're after here. In fact, one of the things I talk about early in the book is, well, there's a conundrum. There's a paradox here. I'm saying to be flexible and yet, but yet isn't like consistency important. Yes, consistency is important until it's not, right? And we have to, what I would say is that we need to be consistent, rigid, even if you will, on values, on principles, and we need to be [00:13:00] flexible on approach. So there's a difference between the what the how, and to me that's where the difference comes, because we want leaders to be, we want to be able to have a sense of who they are and what they're about, and I just, you know, would hope that we can be about adapting when necessary, when the context of our situation requires us to do that.
Mike Goldman: I want to dive into something you brought up right, right at the beginning when we were talking about why.
Leadership development programs don't work is as we've already said, your book is separated between the mindset, the skillset, and then the habit set. Dive in and we'll, I'm sure we'll dive into some examples of each of those, but for now, kind of higher level, why did you set up the book that way?
And just give us a little sense of why those three things are important versus, as you said, the typical, we're just going to focus on [00:14:00] skillset.
Kevin Eikenberry: Well, let's start with the second two, right? Because that's where all the frustration comes with the leadership development stuff or any kind of training we send people to, like we gave them the skills, but then they don't go back and do them. Nothing changed when they went back to the workplace, the difference between knowing and doing right. And so there's a difference between knowing how to do something and then actually doing it. Right. And so that's moving from having a skill. And using the skill, creating a habit set. And so to me, that's just so critical. We've known that all of us sort of intuitively know that, yet it gets missed in all of the, in all of the sort of organizational work and even the work that, most individuals do when they leave a workshop or finish reading a book or finish listening to a podcast. Right. but in front of those things, You can't just lead the horse to water. I'm gonna call it not calling our leaders horses. But we can't just lead our horse to water and say now drink here it is. This is really good stuff. They have to have a sense and a need and an [00:15:00] understanding and a perspective to say. This is important. This is helpful. There's something here that I need to change. if I believe I have it figured out, how interested am I in learning anything new? I'm not, right? My mindset is not prepared for that. And I find, because, you mentioned earlier, one of the books that I had the chance to co write a number of years ago is called From Bud to Boss.
So we've worked a lot of time with, and frontline leaders, often one of the biggest gaps for them is to really understand what it is that this role is right. Leadership isn't just being the smartest one in the room. Leadership isn't just I know all this stuff. And so do it the way I did it.
Leadership isn't to take charge. Leadership is something different than that, but until people see begin to have a perspective on what it could be, those skills are of zero interest or value to them, or only a limited number of them are, right? And so that's why we think all three [00:16:00] parts are so important.
I've been sort of preaching that message for a long time, Mike. And,and so when I got ready to write this book, I felt like it was the right way to go. To sort of frame it all, I
Mike Goldman: So give us, so let's start with mindset. Let's kind of go through each one of these,to unpack it. So let's unpack mindset. How is there, what is the right mindset or is there an exercise that our leader needs to go through? how do we build that big why? So the leader wants to.
So the horse run runs to the water and wants to drink versus we leave them there and keep trying to get them to drink and they don't want to drink.
Kevin Eikenberry: will probably not use that metaphor again, because I'm not sure it's a very good one, but that's what came out of my mouth. So there was so there we are. So, so part of mindset is the why certainly right? And we all know the importance of why, but mindset is more than that mindset is. [00:17:00] What is this role?
Really? What is my role? Really? How can I have the greatest impact? and you know, there's all sorts of great work that's been done on mindset by people like Carol Dweck talks about we have an abundance mindset and those things are all part of it. But ultimately it's, what is my belief set? what it means to lead, and if that doesn't match up with the skills you're going to provide people later, then that disconnect will get in the way. It's not that, it's not that your leaders aren't intellectually smart enough or intellectually equipped enough to learn the skills. that's rarely ever the issue. The issue is one of, does their perspective line up? Does it make sense to them, to do this? Because if you've ever been in any kind of training, and I know you all have, we're like, this doesn't make any sense. I don't see how I would ever use this. Then you're, you don't even engage your intellectual [00:18:00] prowess, right? You just say, yeah, okay, we're going to get through this. And in school you had to pass the test, and here you don't even have to do that. You just have to get to the end, right? And then go back to work and kind of do what you always did.
Mike Goldman: How important is it? And it's probably a leading question, but how important is it? if an organ, I have a lot of organizations I work with, look at, you know, I'm working with the senior leadership team and they look at their quote unquote middle managers and say they need leadership development.and yeah, I do the same thing for those.
Yeah, they need. and what I find is, you know, there are so many problems with that,but the two things related to what we're talking about is, you know,if they need it. Well, then they're pushing it on their middle managers, which is not going to start off with the right mindset, but it seems to me like they [00:19:00] need that mindset first, because if they're trying to get their middle managers to make a habit out of some new set of skills, they're not going to do it if their leaders aren't reinforcing it.
So.
How important is it in thinking about this to start with CEO and senior leadership team before you can say, we've got to go train our leaders to be more flexible, all of those people over there.
Kevin Eikenberry: Well, so the first thing I was laughing. There's lots of things you just said that I would kind of could comment on. I was trying hard not to interrupt you. the first thing I would say is I remember when I was a kid, Mike, my dad used to say, Kevin, remember when you point your finger at someone, there are three fingers pointing back to you. So I just started pointing with my whole open hand, right? So I solved that problem. But the point my dad was trying to impress upon me was that it's never just about somebody else. What role in this is yours? And so. The they word is always a word that makes me wary about the speaker's [00:20:00] willingness to be accountable. Because when I say, well, they need to, it implies that I don't need it. the reality is that even if I don't, So here's the thing. A lot of times what those leaders will be saying, and we could do this at any level, right? CEO to VPs to middle managers, front line leaders, whatever. What they're saying is, I already took that training of some kind. I already have those. But to our whole conversation so far, it's not about whether you have the skills, it's whether you're exhibiting them, right? And you said,if my boss isn't reinforcing the training, I'm less likely to do it, right?
It's harder for me to build a new habit set if my boss isn't reinforcing it, but more than just not reinforcing it. Are they exhibiting it? Right? Not just are they, do they, you know, sometimes we'll work with clients and they'll say, well, [00:21:00] and we'll say, well, listen, if you want to help to make this training work, one of the things you need to do is to make sure that the leaders of the leaders or the, you know, those, who are sending folks that they know the content, that they know the stuff that they can, an answer questions, that they can coach on those things.
And all that's completely true. But a whole nother important, more important level is are they doing it too? Right? Listen, my leaders need to be able to give feedback. you giving feedback? Right? And so, I hate the, I don't really love the blanket statement. We should always start at the top and roll down.
And yet at some level, based on what I just said, that's almost what you need to do. Right? Unless you really do have a level of leaders that really are exhibiting those things.at some level, we need to get everybody in the same mindset, skill set and habit set. It's again, it's not just about skills.
this thing about it being about the skills and about taking the class and having the certification and marking it off in the LMS. It's pervasive and until we [00:22:00] get past that, and it's human nature, I understand it, but until we get past it, we're never going to get the kind of leverage from our leadership development efforts that we'd like.
Mike Goldman: Let's move on from mindset.
To skill set and there's a model that you use in the book, which you use throughout the book in a number of ways that, that it's the, if I'm saying it right, is it the Cinefin?
Kevin Eikenberry: Cynefin!
Mike Goldman: Cynefin, I, it's,
Kevin Eikenberry: rhymes with
Mike Goldman: yeah, Kevin, the,
Kevin Eikenberry: the
Mike Goldman: so tell us, yeah. So tell us about the Cynefin framework because it's so, it's such a part of your book throughout such an important part of it.
So tell us what that is and why it's important.
Kevin Eikenberry: Well, the father of the Cynefin framework is a guy named Dave Snowden. And, he would be, I would suggest all of you follow him on LinkedIn if nothing else, here's the thing about, and the framework has been around for 25 years, but it's usually applied. organizationally [00:23:00] or in group work. And what we're trying to do here is help individual leaders think about how to use it.
What it is a framework. Think about it this way. If I, if I put you someplace and say, I want you to get to someplace else, you'd like to have a map. You'd like, well, where am I now? And where do I want, where do you want me to go? And so the Cynefin framework is a way of making sense of the context in which we are. and and this kind of goes back a little bit, Mike, to the conversation we had earlier about how, why now? And I remember 30 years ago, working for a very large and very successful organization where there was a tremendous amount of. Of
effort and time put into best practices. And a lot of organizations have worked really hard to build on best practices, understand best practices. And in the Cynefin framework, if this, if the context is clear, best practices are awesome. We should absolutely be trying to figure out what the best practice is. [00:24:00] When we sort of know all of the pieces, we know all this stuff, then what's the best way to do it. But how often is it that we really know everything, right? There's almost always some stuff that we know,and if we try to apply best practices to all the knowns, the unknowns are the things that keep that from really being. And what we really need to do is find practices that will actually work.
So we're talking about the clear context or the clear piece of the framework.
And then now I'm talking about the complicated, the world is often far more complicated than it is clear. And that's where we know there are things we don't know and we have to operate in that scenario. And yet so often leaders just say, well, here it is.
I'm going to make a decision. Let's go. Cause I have all the data, right? So I have all the data. So here we go. And if it's a clear context, that's a perfectly fine approach. But the other parts of the framework are complicated and then complex, which I believe we live much more in the complex and complicated than in the [00:25:00] others most of the time.
So complex is when we, there's things we don't know, we don't know, right? David, Donald Rumsfeld said a long time ago,the un, the unknown and unknowables. Like we don't even know what we don't know and so often in a more complex world. That's where we're actually living. And so that so in each of these contexts, we need to think about leading differently.
T
he 4th one, just to close the gap is one of chaos, right? If things are in a state of chaos, everyone is looking for someone to just say, what do we need to do now? Let's go. And so where leaders end up operating are either in chaos or clear. And in both cases, they take the lead and take some action in chaos.
They don't know what to do, but they do something right. And in clear, like I know, here we go. And most of the time we don't know everything. that's why we so often see things happen. And in [00:26:00] retrospect, we say, well, there were unintended consequences here because. We didn't know those things yet. Now that doesn't mean that we're always going to get everything right.
And I'm not saying that we should now live in a world of,of never making decisions. What I am saying is if we think about context a little bit more, we can flex how we use those on our team and their expertise and their perspective and their experience differently and better. And if you think about it, everybody, if you've both led and been led, all of us have been right. And in times when you've been led, there've been times when you just wanted the boss to decide. And there've been times you're like, you really wanted to be involved and you really felt you needed to be involved. And if you've got the same leader that does both of those things, what are they doing?
Flexing. And if they're making the, if they're flexing in the right ways at the right time, based on those needs, we get better results.
Mike Goldman: So are we literally saying, you know, using this, [00:27:00] Cynefin framework now that I know how to say it right that when, as a leader, when we are confronted with a decision and we're confronted, you know, with sometimes dozens or hundreds of decisions a day, but when we're confronted, let's call it a significant decision we've got to make is the first step to say, wait a minute, Let me understand the context or, you know, is the context clear?
Is it, complicated? Is it complex? Is it chaotic? Make that decision first because that's going to drive a different way to think about how we move forward.
Kevin Eikenberry: So now actually, there's one thing is just in front of that, and it takes us back to mindset and takes us back to something you and I said at the very beginning, and that is, we have to be intentional to say, because here's the thing, if we operate from what we believe is our style, or what we leave as our strength, or what we believe we're supposed to do, and we operate on automatic pilot.
You said you have a lot of high D traits, right? So [00:28:00] automatic pilot for you is let's go. And maybe if you get a little bit frustrated raising your voice, but not necessarily a bad thing, other than that, let's, we got to keep it. That's your natural intention, right? That's your natural inclination, right?
So all of us have those. And some of us share that others have other sorts of traits. The point is first thing is intention to say, should I be operating on automatic pilot here or not? And then and the way we decide that is by looking at the context, right? So I'm just putting a little bit of something in front of what you said. and that's why mindset matters. if you realize that perhaps I need to do something other than doing what comes automatic or what I've done the last 64 times. Then I can take a breath and say, so do I have, are all the things known here? Where's the team with this? What's the situation? What do we need to do? What expertise do we need to involve here? What brainstorming do we need to do here? Whatever that is, [00:29:00] or chaos. Holy smokes, not everyone is not everyone has your high D traits since we're using disk, right? Others have the opposite end of that spectrum have a lot of S traits We're getting a lot of C traits and so what their natural inclination would be to slow down and wait and think and that applies to sometimes, apply in chaos when someone needs to make a decision and we need to do something And so it's about getting past our initial, natural, learned responses to say, what does the situation call for here?
Mike Goldman: And that's clarifying to me because if, you know, we go and just to kind of step back and make sure we're like,we talked about mindset and now we're on skill set. A
nd the interesting part is the first part of your skillset model is the intention piece, as you just said. And if you don't have the right mindset, you're going to blow right by that intention piece.
So, so you start to [00:30:00] see how it comes together
Kevin Eikenberry: So even if I understand
Mike Goldman: and then, yeah.
Kevin Eikenberry: the model, it doesn't matter because I'm just blowing right by it with my natural inclination
Mike Goldman: Yeah, I love that. I love that. So we've got the mindset. Then within skill set, we start with the intention. Then we've got the context, which is where the Cynefin model comes in. And then my favorite part in, in, in going through your book was the next part, which is flexors. And you started talking about those when I talked to you,what I brought up, Oh, I'm trying.
Kevin Eikenberry: and being flexible, right?
Mike Goldman: Being rigid versus flexible that, you know, those two extremes are not right. So, so you, that's one example of it, but say more about what flexors are. And maybe let's talk through, you know, a couple of examples.
Kevin Eikenberry: So the first thing we have to realize here is I said that there's like a tension between these things, right? So and we'll go back to when we started with, which was, instead of using the word rigid, I'll use the word [00:31:00] consistent versus flexible. Right? and there's a tension between those two things.so, my family and I were in Hawaii on vacation a week before Christmas, and what I have found is these tensions are everywhere. So I'm standing, in the surf. in the sand and the waves are coming in, washing over my feet and my legs and the sand is coming out behind my heels. Because is the water coming in or is the water going out?
And the answer is the water is doing both of them at the same time. And so there's a reason and a time when for us to be consistent and a reason in time for us to be flexible. There's a tension between them. The right answer isn't which one, the answer is how much of each one. not an either or question, it's a both and question.
So I'll use an example. This may, this is maybe the biggest overarching one I've been asking [00:32:00] leaders in workshops and keynotes this question for long time.
Would you rather lead for commitment or compliance. And nearly everyone will say, I wanna lead for commitment. And yet read most, employee engagement studies.
And you will find surveys and you'll find that most people are barely getting compliance, let alone commitment. And yet, here's the thing, are there times when we need people to comply? Yes. Legal stuff, ethical stuff, safety stuff, we need them to comply. But is that all we want? probably not. We want and need both. So the idea of flexors is that there are ends of a continuum. There's a tension between them. And again, the intention says, where do we need to fall on this at any given time, based on the situation, based on the [00:33:00] context, rather than based on what I know, or I'm good at.
Mike Goldman: So that's where the context comes together with the flexors is if I've got these two extremes of consistent versus rigid, well, is the context clear? Is the context complex? Is the con
Kevin Eikenberry: Exactly.
Mike Goldman: that's going to help me? and I love that. That's such a more kind of. Mechanical may be the wrong word, but it's such a more, you know, structured way in my mind to think about it that, Hey, sometimes this is right.
And sometimes this is right. No, we can go deeper. It depends on this context. So I, it's so helpful.
Kevin Eikenberry: here's the thing that I'm, as the trainer in me, Right? knows that what I'm suggesting in this conversation, what I'm suggesting in this book is harder than the way you've learned to lead before. it is. it requires more effort. It requires more thought. It requires more intention than just [00:34:00] doing what you've seen do.
I lead the way I, this guy was pretty good or this guy was pretty good. I lead the way they led. That's the way I, that's the only way I've ever seen. So that's what I do. Well, it works some of the time. Just doesn't work all the time. Right? And so it's a more refined, Approach. It's harder. I'm asking us all, me included, as leaders, holding ourselves to a higher standard with this than what we've done before because the work that we do is important. I mean, nothing, Mike, nothing positive happens in the world unless someone leads. And so if we want to make this work,make our businesses better, make our teams better, make our, help our customers be better, make the world a better place, like it requires us to lead better. And so it's my hope that this book helps us to do that at least a little bit better.
Mike Goldman: How do we go from the skillset, right? We started with [00:35:00] mindset, we got a skillset and then you've got habit set.how do we make it a habit?
Kevin Eikenberry: Well, at this point, it's really not any different than any other habit, right? So, and, you know, there's been a lot of really good stuff written in the last 20 years about habits, and a lot's been learned about how our brains work around habits, and I cite James Clear's book, Atomic Habits, Habits in the Book, and, you know, if you haven't read that, there are other really good works lately on this as well, but, that book is as good as any, and it's the most, It's the most known.
So we'll talk about it, but it gives us a lot of clues and it gives us a lot of cues, right? But the thing is, have to start to recognize. When we might need to do it differently, which is where intention comes in, right? so, the mindset says, you have to have intention. And then the habit set says, when do I need to stop and look before I just act? Right? So what's the cue that tells me I might need to adjust? Or flex [00:36:00] and then go from there, right? And so, to me, when we think about habits, it really comes down to, what am I knowing what my goal is and then replacing what I've always done in this case, an automatic response to create a new automatic response, which is to start by saying, what's my intention here? Right? So, I don't know that I have,in the big picture, of creating new habitset, a lot of new things to say that haven't already been said, in many ways. I think the one thing I talk about in the book that I think is useful, especially useful, is the idea of routine, having a, having rhythm and having routine, which is a step up from, to me, from the habit, like the nitty gritty of doing this and that, and the next thing. and I think that having routine, things that create rhythm for us, I think is really helpful. Knowing the places that we can put ourselves mentally. physically that can help us be [00:37:00] refreshed and revived. And for us to be at our best as leaders, I think is really important.
Mike Goldman: Yeah, I think the other thing I would throw out there that, that jumped into my head as you were talking is if you as an individual leader decide to start thinking this way and acting this way, mindset, skillset, habitset, it's, you're going to have some work to do to build that habit of anyone would, but if as a team.
As a CEO, as a leadership team, you are all shifting your mindset in this way. You're all building that skillset. You're all working on the habits. Now we could reinforce it in each other.
Kevin Eikenberry: Now we can give each other feedback. Now we can hold each other accountable. Now we can, you know, we can show commitment. And then when we start to do that, then the rolling out of the leadership development work will go far better.
Mike Goldman: Yeah.
Kevin Eikenberry: We should be [00:38:00] as a leadership team rolling up our sleeves and getting involved in this with our teams.
and so Size of organization. Are we 1st and we roll down or are we doing it with? I mean, those are things that all could be discussed specifically in your context in your situation. But as you so astutely asked earlier. that has to be a piece of this. If that's not going to be there. And I'm not just talking about flexible leadership, you're doing, like if there's a disconnect between what the leaders that are doing that you're asking to do something different and what you're doing, if there's a disconnect there, they ain't going. Why would they? Right. Changing, changing our habits is hard. And so, if we want to make it happen, we need to have accountability help, we need to have coaching help, we need to have peer help, we need to have all these sorts of things to help create the actual shift. right
Mike Goldman: I want to throw you a little curve ball before we start to wrap up. and I'm going to take this as a [00:39:00] chance for me to get some free coaching from you. So if you want to send me an invoice after this, feel free, I won't pay it, but you can send me an invoice
Kevin Eikenberry: Well, I
Mike Goldman: is
Kevin Eikenberry: outstanding accounts receivable, so we won't send it. That'll be fine.
Mike Goldman: so I have got a client coming up. Next week that I'm going to be working with now, the time people are listening to this, where this will have happened, a while ago, but I've got a client coming up that is, and I won't get too specific. I'll say they're in the renewables industry. We are at a time, depending on when you're listening to this, that in the United States, we are about to have a new administration, come into office.
That is, let's call it. see, seems like they might be less friendly to the renewables industry, more friendly to oil and coal and all the more traditional. So that throw, and there's certainly a lot of, a [00:40:00] lot of what the government is doing for the renewables industry where a lot of,
Kevin Eikenberry: Before you
Mike Goldman: I just say something right there?
yeah,
Kevin Eikenberry: example. There's an example and I'm not speaking for or against the administration. That's not my point. So many things on in our world that we frame as it's this or it's this, but the reality is it, both of those can be true.
Like we can be, we could be drill baby drill. And working to help renewables be a part of the, it doesn't have to be one or the other. And I'm not saying you're saying that so often. That's how we end up framing the world. It's either this or this flexible leadership is about a both and approach rather than an either or approach.
Now, I interrupted you. So go ahead. You
no, that's okay. in the
Mike Goldman: and.
Kevin Eikenberry: Go ahead.
Mike Goldman: Part of the answer is in what you just said. So I appreciate that. But they're about to get this leadership team together to plan the year and, you know, plan the next quarter. And to some degree, [00:41:00] they're members of the leadership team saying We don't know what the heck to do because we don't know if the administration is going to, you know, get rid of the, whatever the inflation act was that, you know, we don't know that they're going to do this thing.
So how could we plan the business when we don't know what this administration is going to do and what it means to our business?
How should that team, especially the leader of that team, how, you know, and let's kind of take it through what is that a, Complex context. Is that chaotic? What, you know, what is the context and how should they be thinking about planning the next year with all of that out there is kind of an unknown to them.
Kevin Eikenberry: I think, I mean,it's a more. a more nuanced situation than we can say, talk about in this this conversation, but I will say this, that if something's in the context, in, in the complex context, that means we need to be thinking about options. Right? And so what anyone who's listening might be thinking, well, we ought to be thinking [00:42:00] about what are our various scenarios.
If this happens, where would we go? This happens, where would we go? If this happens, where would we go? And I think that's probably directionally. Okay. The right thing, what are the things we know? We don't know. Let's talk about what those are. And given that, as those things become clearer, and by the way, they're not going to become clear around January, the 20th or whatever that day is,
Mike Goldman: Yeah.
Kevin Eikenberry: going to become clear over some period of time,given those unknowns or those variables. What are the things we ought to be considering? And if several of those things are unknown right now, what's the best use of our time in the next 30, 60, 90 days, you know, so part of that planning is not thinking out a year. we need to step back. Now there's a big, important thing for us to think long term and sort of the Japanese 30 year, look at our business and all that stuff.
I understand that, but if we're planning out the next year, we really, in this case, I think need to be saying, what are the things we need to be learning? understanding, gathering in the next 30, 60, 90 days to help us, have a more [00:43:00] evergreen sort of approach to what our planning is moving forward.
Mike Goldman: Helpful, helpful. Even just kind of thinking through what are the unknowns? What are the knowns? You know, what's controllable? What's not controllable?
Kevin Eikenberry: think if I were in your shoes and I was going to be their consultant or their facilitator, that's probably where I would start.
Mike Goldman: Yeah, no, that's helpful. That's helpful.
So this is, you know, I am absolutely, will recommend this book and this model to all of my clients. it's a, it's not the same old leadership stuff by any stretch. it's, and I won't even say it's different than that. It's much deeper than that and nuance than that.
So, so I love this stuff where people want to find out. Kevin, more about what you and your company do, especially if they want to go buy the book. I know the book is, you know, as of when this will, when this will go live, the book is going live right around the same time. So where should people go to find out more about you?
Where should people go to buy the book?
Kevin Eikenberry: Yeah, so if people just want to learn more about us, you can go to [00:44:00] KevinEikenberry.com
K E V I N E I K E N B E R R Y.com
and you can learn all about what we're about and what we're doing. You can certainly connect with me on LinkedIn, but specifically related to your question. you can go wherever fine books are sold and get a copy of your book.
Hope you'll do that. Go order it at Amazon or whatever. Or you can do this. You can go to KevinEikenberry.com/gift. And when you go to KevinEikenberry.com/gift, we'll give you the links where you can go get the book. Awesome. But we're also going to give you, right there, a free gift for having listened to the show, of our masterclass that I created about, being more confident, building confidence in yourself and others.
And so that's the last word in the book, right? Navigate uncertainty and lead with confidence. And so, we didn't talk about that much today, but I want to give anyone who's listening, that master class on confidence, building confidence in yourself and others for free, [00:45:00] just for having listened to our conversation.
And then all the links to the book are also there. Hope you'll do that. We'd love to talk to you about how we could help your leadership team, your organization around the ideas of flexible leadership, of course. But hopefully the first thing you'll do is, take a look at that. That course, make that available to yourself. And, if we can be of help, we'd love to do it.
Mike Goldman: Go do it. And if this was helpful, sounds like there's a lot more help out there from the course. Absolutely. From the book. well, you know, as I always say, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. Kevin, thanks so much for helping us get there today.
Kevin Eikenberry: Mike, it was my pleasure to be with you. I love the questions. I love the conversation and, I hope those who are listening found it helpful.
Mike Goldman: Excellent. See everybody next time.