Chris McAlister - Leading for Impact, Not Validation
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Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky. And as always, we try and find people inside and outside the world of HR to give you the latest on what's happening and how it affects the world of work.

Today we have with us Chris McAllister. Chris, how are you? Doing fantastic. It's Friday. I moved one of my kids into her college apartment yesterday. Oh my goodness. So yeah, life is crazy. Well, that means a lot of change. Yes. And we'll talk about that. We're going to be talking about a lot of change, but most especially about leadership.

But first, before we do, tell us a little bit about yourself and tell us a little bit about your company, SightShift. Yeah. So personally, just obsessed with how leaders grow and develop into being a leader who develops other leaders. And as that obsession kind of grew out of working with people and helping them, one day friends were in line, we started a company. And since then, we've built coaching processes and data measurement so that we can

isolate that out and help people with it. Perfect. The people who listen to this podcast love talking about measurement and we're going to get into that a little bit today and effectiveness of leadership. But first, before I get to the one fun thing no one knows about you, talk about your book a little bit because you've got a book out there that people should be reading, right? Oh,

Oh, thank you. Yeah. So the newest book we just released, Lead for Impact, Why Mindfulness, Empathy, and Psychological Safety Don't Make Great Leaders. And we wanted to give people a real way of evaluating leadership that was a template, not temperament-based. So most leaders are evaluating leadership based on temperament, and it's the temperament that they most value.

So if they're extroverted and gregarious and they lead like that, then they'll hire out of their insecurities, build teams and value leaders who lead like that. Likewise, if they're data focused and more logical and more process oriented, the same is true. And that's just an unfair way to evaluate leaders because we know it's more than temperament. So we're trying to offer a template how to do that regardless of personality.

So we're going to put show notes in the show notes. We're going to put a link to the book and to your company and,

And everybody can go take a look at it. But now, before we get going, what's one fun thing that no one knows about Chris McAllister? That fun thing that no one knows about Chris McAllister, and I'm admitting it here on the podcast in person. Breaking news. As ambitious as I am with our organization...

At home, I'm a complete, like, I just want to stand and be a dad meme and grill. It is the wildest thing how something completely shifts for me.

And literally my neighbor just recently asked me, how's life? And I said, I'm standing here in front of the grill and it's amazing. I don't even know fully how to make sense of that experience, but that that's it for me. You know what? I actually do know what you're talking about because I opened the grill for the first time this summer. I opened up the grill last weekend and I grilled corn and I grilled hamburgers and steak and I was in heaven.

Dude, I get it. It was the food. It was the standing there. It was the cleaning it. It was everything was just so awesome.

Isn't that wild? So literally, I think I'm on my third propane tank since Memorial Day. So I'm not even like an OG guy with charcoal and I get why that's better or smoking. I am normie to the core. I want a propane tank. It's super easy and I'm excited to grill. Maybe I could talk my wife into it tonight.

Well, actually, you know what, Chris? There are a lot of people. In fact, I know there are podcasts that do grilling. They talk totally about grilling. Oh, that's awesome. That's not this podcast, but we could. We could. We could start one right now. You could get me. You could get me going there. So our topic for today is one that's quite fascinating. And for those of us in leadership, we talk a lot about what makes effective leaders. And we talk a lot about how to grow effective leaders, how to foment leadership, how to

We're going to be talking today about are you leading for impact or validation? And we're going to talk about the motive of leadership. So my first question is, Chris, what's the problem with leadership today? Oh, yeah.

To tell this, yeah, to tell this, share this just from my own experience, even sharing about my daughter, my mind is going there. So the one that moved out,

I had this experience. This was just a few months ago, maybe four or five months ago. And because we do our own books, we were able to actually put this story in the book. But I am doing a meeting with a business headquartered out of China. And I didn't have an office at home because after COVID, you know, we all kind of worked from home for a while, but I couldn't do it anymore. So anyway. Okay.

I'm at the house, we're having dinner. And I realized I got to do this meeting because if you're going to meet with a company in China, 8 a.m. their time is 8 p.m. your time. You're going to build around their schedule. So I go into her bedroom to do the meeting because she's at work.

and I open up my computer, and on the back of the camera, I see the bed isn't made. And I think, oh, I got to make this look nice at least, so I make her bed. Now, I need to tell you, David, this is a house I pay a mortgage in for. I pay the electric. I pay the water. I pay her car insurance and her cell phone. And now...

I do this meeting. Went awesome. I'm feeling like a champion. I go sit down in the living room. I'm on the couch. It's after nine. She gets home from work. She goes up to her bedroom and she can see that her bed is made. And here's the text I get from her. Dad, next time you're going to use my room, ask.

Now, as only... Oh, by the way, it's a text. It's not that she didn't come downstairs. It was a text. It was a text. As only people who can understand, who have been in some moments like this, I'm paying for all these things.

electricity started to form at the center of the Earth's axis. It starts shooting up through all of the magma, Earth's core, into my ankles. Oh my God. Through my legs, through my hips, without thinking, David, I started to pull the phone that has gotten this text message into my hands and I've got my thumbs ready to fire back a text. Tell me! Whose room do you think it really is? And

I've got so many dumb moments that I've led in such a dumb way out of my own insecurities. And this just thankfully was one of those moments where freeze frame, I didn't send that text because...

She has fought some incredible battles. She's so bad to the bone. She's saving money, pulling down a great GPA. I'm so proud of her. I would hate to have in that moment led her for my own validation. Don't you appreciate all I'm doing? Tell me whose room it is. Right. So I think, you know, for me, it's like that story says so much.

about what we see with the teams we work with, where the CEO is coming in and he's not really directing the attention of the organization in a long form way. She's not really guiding them to strategic brilliance. They're really bringing in whatever is pinging their anxiety the most. And they're starting to very subtly or big ways lead for their own validation, not impact. How can they get the insecurities they have back?

about themselves comforted in some way. And there's a million ways this plays out. Wow. And that's a phenomenal example too, because I think all of us, whether it's at work or at home, have kind of felt that way, right? The how dare you or that moment of not stepping back and saying, yeah, no, I can see their point, but in their own shoes saying,

What is going on with this person? And now I'm going to set them straight. And it probably takes a lot of willpower, a lot of willpower. What's the word? Short circuit, the way in which we're thinking about that. So how does a leader realize that they're going through this? How do they focus on the things that need to be done and not the things that they don't?

I guess, will to be done or wish to be done? Paradoxically, and this is really, really powerful in the data, and we see it over and over and over. It's not to try to conform or contort yourself to show up different, but instead it's to be honest about what's showing up. So you don't need to do it.

But like when you feel that feeling and you want to say to a team member, just shut up and do what I'm telling you to do. Right. Or, or,

You've made me so uncertain about what you've challenged and brought up. I don't want to keep leading this meeting. I want to go hide away for a while so that I can look like I know what I'm talking about and I have what it takes. So whether it's more of an extreme, outgoing form of insecure for validation or more of an inward form, either way, the answer isn't to try to willpower your way, white-knuckle your way to change. It is instead...

to learn to see the insecurity. That's just step one. You just have to see it because after you start to see it, the brain will self-organize new behavior and there's ways to accelerate that

And this goes counterintuitive to the way a lot of people think about change. It's that old parable that says, you know, you've got this good wolf and bad wolf within you. Feed the good wolf, starve the bad wolf. And what we're saying is actually learn to pay attention to what the bad wolf is hungry for. Feed it a better diet, transform it, and then you're going to learn how to show up differently. But I guess one of the questions I'll ask is, which goes to the crux of the topic and the question is,

Do those leaders think of this as a problem? I love that. And by the way, I love all the questions because the more the brain is kind of even protesting or disagreeing or working it out, that's how the mind is making sense of things. So we are not ideologically sensitive or allergic to those challenges. But yeah, the way the brain is working it out is by just starting to see one moment where under stress,

you did not get the result you want. So even if you're not really, really at a place where you can acknowledge the insecurity or feel the ego's insecurity, all we need you to do is to see one moment under stress where you did not get the result you want. Because we're working with high-performing people and high-performing leaders tend to make mistakes and about 5% of the time,

that cause them their greatest harm in getting the results they want. Now, we want to talk about the whole person and what it means to see them for who they are and feelings and all that good stuff, but it has to anchor itself in results. So that 5% doesn't overcome the 95% of good that they've done.

perfectly stated that like we're we're trying to shine a light on that like just let's start the conversation here because that 95 is going to get washed out by that five percent and we hear it all the time like what you hear so far make sure you never miss a show by clicking subscribe this podcast is made possible by salary.com now back to the show

So let's now switch gears a little bit and talk about, okay, so now we understand the problem of leaders being able to kind of challenge how they act and react. How does this manifest inside companies today? What does that leader have to do to either overcome it or, you know, what is the effect of that on the populace, on the company?

Yeah, the first thing is just recognizing how this shows up in the organization. And it's so powerful when you start to grasp this because you've got leaders that are saying, okay, well, the result is I'm not getting heard. Okay, tell me what's not getting heard. And they're so quickly worried about the case they're stating not being appreciated. Well, already we know, okay, that person is so concerned, cliche but true, about being understood.

They don't get understanding. So I asked the CEO how the meeting go and she goes, it was great. I made all my points. Well, there was what was said and what was heard and what was meant. And those are three different things. So communication is one way. Change is another.

How are we changing too much too fast? Someone who values innovation comes in with a new idea every month, or we're resistant to change, right? On both polarities of that. They're changing too much. They're not getting into execution and excellence, or they're not changing enough. So we see it in communication. We see it in change, and then we see it in connection.

Um, people feel reduced down. They don't feel seen, heard, and known. Uh, they wish they could have a deeper relationship with their boss, but that's not happening. And we know the saying people leave the manager more than they leave the company or their job. Right. And if you, you know, go back to your earlier point is if you're measuring this,

What are the measurements that we can really kind of look at that will enable us to understand how this manifests? Yeah. So we measure insecurity. We're looking at where the specific insecurity shows up. And we don't compete with other measurement tools. We complement them. So other measurement tools will say, you know, this is how you communicate and this is how people should communicate with you. Right.

And they say, we can't predict things. We can just tell you what is. And we're saying, no.

This is when you're insecure, how you need to be communicated with. What if you transform the insecurity so you can actually be the kind of leader who communicates with them in the way they need to be communicated with? So we measure the insecurity, we measure the behavior, and we call it proving and hiding. So in what ways are they leading for validation to convince and prove that?

Or they're leading for validation to hide and diminish. And that's a number that we can track. And then we look at how are they activated in regards to what's happening in their leadership role currently? Are they very overwhelmed to achieve? Are they ready for a lot of reinvention?

Or are they in a place where they're kind of coasting? And we can look at all that and see who's in trouble, who's ready for more. And it's really, really powerful. We have a blast with it because once we show them the data,

then the we usually start with the leadership team people laugh and cry laugh at the hilarity of how true it is or there's some tears sometimes because this is making sense of things and of course there's usually somebody who's like yeah yeah yeah sometimes you'll have like a ceo be like well you've described sam perfectly you've described sue perfectly but this isn't me

And then the leadership team members like, hey, you're snickering. It's like, yeah, exactly. Bill, that is totally you. Yeah. So data. And data is good, but data can be manipulated. And so I guess my next question is,

Are you, you know, do you have you validated these models? Do you do you really get I mean, not just with people, but like, have you done benchmarking where you look at higher performing organizations and say, you know, leaders who have this profile with these scores, they tend to communicate better or they tend to have trouble with.

Change or something like that. Yeah. So what we have is we build the data out to what we call culture risk factors. So when their insecurities show up under their stressed insecure moments, they're

it's going to have blank impact on the culture. And we define those risk factors. They're not going to get buy-in. They're going to burn people out. You know, they're going to allow coups to form, you know, whatever. We have nine different risk factors. And then we're looking at those risk factors to say, in your unique culture, these represent the greatest dangers or threats to the goals you seek to accomplish. And,

And that really is what lights us up because we're trying to partner with whatever is that goal or vision they have, what's going to get in the way of that. We want to get that solved, and that's a people issue, so that the people are ready for the success they envision. We're in a very...

I guess you could say highly charged environment. We're highly charged from a political, environmental, cultural perspective. We're charged on even the DE&I, you know, world, right?

Do you see patterns in how these are impacting how a leader has to respond, especially given the fact that their organizations, they're not what they looked like 20 years ago. They're very different. We're living in a very different world. Have you seen an evolution? Have you seen trends on that? Yeah, this is awesome. We just put a piece out on this and it's probably gotten the most response of anything recently.

And the piece is just around this idea that if you're leading a large team now, there isn't any of these larger affiliations in society where you can kind of group people in big ways and they know each other and can somewhat get along. Instead, it's this hyper fragmentation. And so...

The task of leadership is challenging. You now, especially leading a large team, have so many different ideologies and worldviews. And the sophisticated, aware leader understands this.

Throughout the course of human history. This has always been the case different ideologies on the team make a more impactful explosive team because it is all of the viewpoints that are different that can focus into better strategy innovation and products multiplying out into enterprise value codifying things more intelligently with great systems and just getting the work done and

So, what's powerful is for the leader that's aware, this represents a great moment in time to provide great leadership. The hard part is this. A lot of the structures that we've counted on to support us, the worldview, the institution, whatever, as those are breaking and people are disappointed and let down and there's a loss of trust, a leader really has to be secure in who they are to understand that

People are working those things out. And if a healthy leader is aware of this, then they keep it from two ditches. Ditch one, where there's too much pontificating and we have to have basically a giant therapy session and everybody's idea has to be validated. Or the other extreme, we think everybody's getting along just because there's silence when we know that's not the case.

And you could imagine in a large global company with lots of silos, but also lots of matrices, that becomes extremely complex to try and

figure out because it becomes almost a Rubik's cube of a leader being a leader for one side of the fate or one face of the cube. No, they have to be a fate. They have to be a leader for all the faces, even though they may have subordinates that are dealing with one face at a time. They still have to bring them all together. Right? Absolutely. And it comes down to being this kind of leader who leads for impact, not validation. So a leader leading for validation is going to ram a vision through and

And be disingenuous, even heartless, lacking compassion to the unique suffering of others. On the other extreme, a leader who leads for validation and not impact is going to be too passive and let all the committees of grievance that need to form fall.

And then you have 75 committees formed around some certain grievance and they develop a victim mindset and it ends up drawing energy and resources from the overall mission and vision. And so these two ditches are constantly happening in organizations. Well, I've definitely seen the second one where those ditches that are distracting, you know, the mob mentality of, you know, we have to fix this now have kind of driven companies back.

back crap crazy because of something that happened that may not have been a big thing but has grown over time to mushroom to become something gigantic and

and saps all the energy. A couple of companies I've worked at, we've had small issues that have become gigantic issues. I mean, I think all of us can think of an example in our past where that's happened, and it just distracts from, you know, the real needs of the organization. Yeah, well, and what you end up doing is, you know,

on one end, you get tons of rules and policies rather than having effective systems. And all these roles and policies limit the health and effectiveness of the organization because you have a million pieces of red tape to get through. And again, that's a culture risk factor. Like we know the insecurity that a specific leader profile has that will tend to create lots of policies.

And what's so powerful to me, and this is not pie in the sky, this is not hype, this is deep joy, work could provide a place for great transformation that makes all of your life better. We understand what's happening right now culturally is individuals very often are making whatever is the most painful part of

of their identity, the whole of their identity. Right. And so then they're on a crusade to get that part validated. So it's not just the CEO that has to make this shift. It's not just the executive team. It's throughout the organization. I'm here for impact, not my own validation, which surfaces the need to grow up, which is, I think, a current challenge we're seeing with organizations that are hiring large pools of especially younger workers. Right. Yeah.

And we'll follow up to that question. So do you see that differently in the stage of growth of a company or the industry of the company?

Great question. It all comes down to the specific profile of the leader and the executive team. Yes, the stage has something to do with it. Is it a growth company? You know, is this a large enterprise, Fortune 100, whatever? But ultimately, we can measure the leader and the executive team and know, because it starts there, what is the dominating insecurity in that?

that specific organization.

So let's say you're an HR person. You're listening to this and you're saying, okay, Chris, what do I do about this? How can we give them tools to be able to walk away from the podcast and say, okay,

you know, I heard Chris, I'm going to go read his book, but what else can I do that will cause impact and help my leaders out to understand that it doesn't need to be about validation? Yeah, I love that. And I'm thinking specifically of your audience here, HR leaders, and they have to know this, and we know this from the HR leaders we interact with, that much of the narrative in the HR world without awareness is,

is going to shape them. And I hate to put it in a sports analogy because I'm not even a huge sports guy, but it's simple to do. Will shape them to play defense more than offense. In other words, they're going to be naturally with, you know, going to conferences and breakouts and they're going to be hearing the bad things that can go wrong and trying to build policies that protect from these bad things. And we need that.

We just need the foot forward from HR to be more about offense. How do we help people grow and develop? And I don't mean to make this overly simple, but it does come down to the mindset they're engaging the role with. I'm not here...

just in this HR leadership role to protect the organization from harm on how bad it can go. I'm also here. And if we need, can get that to at least 51% or greater for how good it can get. How can we have an atmosphere that helps people grow and develop all they can? And that gets really exciting. Do you see though, where HR asks leaders to, to try and grow and develop around this? Yeah.

Where they're met with a why, why do I need to change? I'm okay. Everything's going fine. Or do you think we need to effectively build the pipeline of leaders that gets it?

Where this, you know, forget about this one. The next one will be better. Yeah. Yeah. Great question. You know, I think more than it's about people that are resistant to growth or not, you always are going to have those. Every team, every organization, we see it every time. But you want to create a groundswell of momentum with the majority who do want to grow.

And the challenge isn't actually in who wants to grow or not. It's the effectiveness of the training. Because like Harvard and McKinsey both roughly over 90%, I think they found, of leadership training doesn't stick. Right.

Like you go to the thing, you get the book, you take, you go through the book, you take the notes, you put it on your shelf and there's no real transformed behavior. And I think about it in terms of like a trust fall. So like if my wife and I were having a big conflict and a fight, we've been married 24 years this summer. Congratulations. Oh, thank you. If I put my hand on her shoulder and I said, Hey, you know what?

At work, they do this thing when we have problems called a trust fall. And I know you're really mad at me that the garage isn't cleaned, but I want to do a trust fall with you. And that is going to make every problem we have better. You know, well, come on, I'm sleeping on the couch and I'm going to have a sore back the next day. I was going to say you're in the hospital. You mean if I'm alive? Yeah, I love it. That's awesome, David. And so the idea for us is how do you how do you do training to

That isn't trying to put a tool in people's hands. They don't have the skill to learn nor the mindset to sustain. And so what Harvard and McKinsey found is like training isn't doing enough at the mindset level.

And it's not about hype and it's not about trying to convince people of something that the door into this is where is the insecurity showing up under stress? That's where the greatest mindset work can occur. So instead of going to a training, getting a book, having it sit on the shelf and through osmosis, that shelf and that head are so close together, it's going to happen. Is this really a.

Psychological issue is to say, and I mean that not to say that they're sick. I'm saying that do they really need to speak to someone who's more of a psychologist or an organizational psychologist? Shout out to Dr. Don Nicholson in the UK who really understands.

The ins and outs, and maybe this is some work you do as well, but maybe understands the ins and outs of how the world of work could work better and helps have that leader see that lens and understand where they are versus where they need to be.

Love it. Do you think it's, do you think it's a couch issue or is it, is it really a shelf issue? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When, when I was in college, my freshman year that summer, uh, so I'm 46 now. Sometimes I have to Google my age. I forget. My wife would be proud. I remembered it. Um, I had a concrete construction job and I showed up first day of the job and I didn't grow up in a handyman's house. They put a 16 pound sledgehammer in my hand and we had to drive these metal spikes into these frames, uh,

So they put the sledgehammer in my hand. Now, I'm 18 years old. This is like 1995. I didn't know then to say, wait a second, I haven't been onboarded. I haven't been trained. Where's HR? So they put the sledgehammer in my hand. I swing with all my might. There's no way I'm going to say that I don't know what I'm doing. I mean, we're working. This isn't practice. I miss the spike.

by millimeters almost miss crushing this guy's hand. And even though I was in college at the time, I heard the most creative combination of the English language I've ever heard. This guy went red, like toes to top of head, boom. Blew his lid, as they say. And the way I would say it is this.

They put a tool in my hand I did not have the skill to use. So I think the couch is important. And I think the couch as a place to graduate from is critical. It's not a place we stay forever. Sure. Therapy doesn't have to be a dead end or a label. Right. Instead, it is a place to get us from non-functioning to functioning. Right.

We're dealing with situations where we're moving people from functioning to high performing. And so it, it, you could say it's psychological, but you could also say it's philosophical and it's all of these things. We just talk about it in terms of leadership because that's the easiest way to engage people in a non-defensive way. Because once you start having some of these other conversations with,

And it's really laden with a lot of therapeutic language. It frames the conversation in a completely different way. And it's more unhelpful once you're doing it that way. So we do it in terms of becoming the best leader you can be. Now, by the way, because this section of the podcast we talked about, what can the HR team do?

But I think good advice isn't to go into your CEO's office and say, I think you need to shrink. Exactly. But what we're saying is that there may be a need for understanding

And that need that they may have and trying to find a way of getting it to them better than sending them to a course or sending them to a book. Yeah. And I think that, yeah, thank you for saying that. And I think a lot of people are going to go, oh, I know he's going to say then they're going to need coaching, right? Because he has a coaching business. And I would stop the conversation there and say, you know what? We step in organizations all the time.

where the coach is really helping the CEO feel enlightened about crappy results to revenue, to engagement score, to the quality of life people have. So even coaching isn't the answer if it's not coming at it from a place of what are the results you're getting? Are you doing this for impact or validation? Right.

I don't think I could say it any better, nor I think we can leave it at that, because I don't know a way to add to that. That's brilliant. That's a mic drop moment. Don't do it. No, no, we don't want to break your mic. Is there anything else, though, Chris, that you'd like to end with? Yeah, you know, I think just to encourage people, like right now, if you can just recognize one moment of insecurity, that's a moment of security.

That's a win. Like, when did you avoid having a direct conversation? When did you circle around the context of an issue rather than being direct? When did you power up and try to convince them of something and kind of shut something down that needed to occur? Just notice the moment. Don't beat yourself up because the ego really isn't the enemy. Once you framed it that way, then you're in a militaristic way fighting the

your insecurities and that's not how you transform it. Instead, the ego is just giving you the clue and the signal to where you can grow and develop next. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Chris. It's been a pleasure to have you. Thanks for the honor to be here. My pleasure. And thank you all for listening. And don't forget, we're going to put all the links to where you can find Chris's book and learn more about his company. Take care and stay safe.

That was the HR Data Labs podcast. If you liked the episode, please subscribe. And if you know anyone that might like to hear it, please send it their way. Thank you for joining us this week and stay tuned for our next episode. Stay safe.