How Do I More Effectively Build Stakeholder Alignment?

MURIEL WILKINS: I am Muriel Wilkins, and this is Coaching Real Leaders, part of the HBR Podcast Network. I’m a longtime executive coach who works with highly successful leaders who’ve hit a bump in the road. My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying their goals and figuring out a way to reach them so that hopefully they can lead with a little more ease. I typically work with clients over the course of several months, but on this show we have a one-time coaching meeting focusing on a specific leadership challenge they’re facing. Today’s guest is someone we’ll call Diego to protect his confidentiality. He’s someone with a background in manufacturing and logistics, and really enjoys the problem solving aspect of his field.

DIEGO: I think that the idea of working with so many variables, because logistics is truly a very multi-variable complex problem. There’s so many things that can go wrong, so many inputs along the way, and I think that ability to diagnose all of them at once and then create a 10,000-foot strategy, logistics was just a fondue of defects to go hound.

MURIEL WILKINS: Diego was an individual contributor for some time and a few years ago he started managing teams, just a couple of team members to start, but that number grew quickly and the new challenge of managing people has been highly motivating for him, but what’s been a bit harder is managing the people around him that he isn’t directly responsible for.

DIEGO: What I think has been the harder part actually is the stakeholder side. Now that I have to coach individuals and not have direct contact to the stakeholders they’re dealing with, that has been, I guess, a longer learning curve. I mean, I think I still have a long way in people management, but I think I’ve been able to make a lot of changes along the way that I’m seen the benefit and the results from that. It’s how I’m able to indirectly coach towards those stakeholder relationships that is taking longer for me to be truly effective in.

MURIEL WILKINS: Diego is an avid learner and has thought a lot about how to adapt his leadership style. I wanted to get more into the specifics around the problem he was facing. So I started by asking him what specifically about stakeholder management is he hoping to improve?

DIEGO: I think for me it’s to understand what are the tool sets we have to influence stakeholders. Tying this a bit to a goal, I’ve been almost surprised and perplexed by, as an IC, you’re measured a lot on your own results, your own ability to be right and act quickly. And as I’ve gone into this role and I look forward to the next level, it seems very much like, and maybe you could validate a bit that my performance now leans a lot on my ability to work with stakeholders and bring results, whereas before it was my own doing. So I see that as a key cog of what are the tool sets I have to work effectively, influence, and sometimes even gauge when I shouldn’t get in the way with stakeholders. That feels like a true director VP skill that is very critical.

MURIEL WILKINS: I mean, look, I don’t know the exact responsibilities of your role, but in general, I would say as you ask, validate whether this is true or not. I think in general, the more you’re leading at scale, the higher the level of complexity. And one of the areas of complexity is the number of relationships that you now have to manage and influence. And as you pointed out, some of them being direct relationships, some of them being indirect. So you almost want to think about it as a web. And if you’ve ever seen a spider, what do they do? Do they weave a web? I don’t know. They do something, they create the web, right?

DIEGO: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: I’m thinking that’s a Charlotte’s Web, but it starts off small and then it gets bigger and bigger and actually more complicated. But there is some order to it,

DIEGO: Right.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, it sounds like what you’re experiencing is as you’ve moved from getting to results through yourself now having to get results through others and by others, it’s not just your team members, but it’s people who fall outside of your team.

DIEGO: Correct, yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: All right, so tell me why this is a challenge right now for you.

DIEGO: I think before I saw it very much bifurcated into leadership would come to me with a problem I needed to go solve and it was in my own skill and will to be able to accomplish that. What I’ve noticed is now there will be other projects or initiatives where another team owns them and I find out through updates from my team of where we are in something and my knee-jerk reaction is, we need to course correct or we need to move more quickly, or we’re approaching this in a way that won’t reap the optimal results. And how I’ve encountered those interactions as in always led to aligning in maybe a combined opinion or approach or course correcting. That’s what is my struggle. How can I decide to probe or question or take over or provide direction in more effective ways? That’s what’s really a hurdle in my job today right now.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. Let me just make sure I’m getting the scenario right. So you run into situations, your team shares with you, hey, here’s what’s happening. You’re like, wait a minute, it shouldn’t be happening this way. Or why is this happening this way? We need to fix it, course correct, and we need to do it quickly.

DIEGO: Correct.

MURIEL WILKINS: So your understanding is you need to fix it and it needs to be fixed quickly. And then you go out there to the stakeholders and you’re like-

DIEGO: The second degree stakeholders.

MURIEL WILKINS: To the second degree stakeholders and you’re like, “Hey, hold up. We need to fix this and we need to do it quickly.” And then what happens? What are you you faced with?

DIEGO: So last year I think that the sentiment was I would come in and sometimes I would bulldoze the initiative into a certain way and sometimes the team would go along the stakeholders and the results would be positive, but I would lose trust in the process because of the bulldozing. That then meant in other initiatives, there was a lot of pushback. And so slowly I’ve noticed that my approach, although sometimes would again reach good results, would be encountered with pushback because of that bulldozing, I don’t know what better word there is for that, that forceful direction, if you will. And so since then I’ve been consciously trying to step away from that overpowering direction and I’m trying to figure out what are the other different approaches that can still yield speed, maybe not as fast, but still relatively fast without losing trust and treating everybody like a team. Definitely something that’s very important to me, but it wasn’t coming across that way.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah, it wasn’t coming. So what would it have looked like if it had come across that way?

DIEGO: I think sometimes it can be perceived that I’m not listening and instead I am too focused on this approach and this answer. That’s I think something that I’ve definitely noticed is by changing instead of directing, asking questions and probing, that in itself forces more listening as opposed to more talking. So it’s been attacked, I’ve been focusing on a lot. And then something else is a lot more one-on-ones, right? Especially in a remote or dispersed environment, making sure you spend the time to not only in bigger forums, but in one-on-ones individually, create a relationship and understand where each individual is regardless of the level. Those are two things I’ve been implementing a lot more and they’re helping. So I think what I’m trying to get out of this and other mentorships is what are other things I should focus on to expedite my ability to do this better?

MURIEL WILKINS: So, this is what’s interesting to me. So what you’re saying is, okay, if I listen, right, if I listen and I ask questions and I focus on the possibilities rather than being tied to my way of doing it, so I engage other possibilities, other solutions, and I have one-on-ones with these critical stakeholders, then I seem to be able to influence them?

DIEGO: Correct, yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: It just takes too long.

DIEGO: That’s a great summary, yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. And when you say it takes too long, what’s the hurry?

DIEGO: What is the hurry? Everything should be fixed yesterday. I think that’s the hurry. There’s so many problems. It’s a Santa laundry list. So there’s always a focus on fixing all these defects for customers, for operators, for suppliers. So there’s always an eagerness to move very quickly. It’s that startup energy no matter how big the company is. So I think it’s almost a self in post speed, but that is the situation.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. That is the situation, right? I mean, I don’t even know what to say you said, and I think in all seriousness, I think the question is you’re sharing that everything needs to be solved yesterday, but according to whom?

DIEGO: Yeah, that’s a good question.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, look, every morning on school days when I wake up, I am ready to get my kids to school quickly. One of my kids has a different agenda. We both agree school is happening and that’s where we’re going. The difference is our conception or perception, I should say, of how quickly that needs to happen. And what do you think ends up happening as a result?

DIEGO: There’s a dispute of how to go about it.

MURIEL WILKINS: Well, I feel like it’s a dispute.

DIEGO: Yeah, there you go.

MURIEL WILKINS: Right?

DIEGO: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: Depends how the person responds, right? So, my stakeholder, my kid, right? Respond by just being like, “Why are you getting so stressed out? We’re good.” I don’t need to be there on time. So that’s one response, another response could be pushback. There are a number of different responses, but the point here is there’s misalignment around timing. And so the level of urgency that you have is not a shared level of urgency. So I know you’re looking for tactics, but I think what you have framed before around, hey, when I listen, when I do what works in terms of influence, and you name them, I think what’s not working is the timing that you have against that, which is the urgency level. You see it as urgent. How do you determine what’s urgent and what’s not urgent?

DIEGO: Some shape of entitlements, I guess meaning some metric we can impact. Or sometimes metrics can hide that even if something doesn’t happen as frequently, when it does happen, it’s catastrophic if you will. So weighing those two things from all the problems we have, which ones have the highest impact or can be the most catastrophic. And honestly, number two with that is only enforcing speed. When I perceive feasibility, I know there’s an actual solve we can do within the timeframe that may be a self-imposed to me, that’s how I deem something urgent. If it’s extremely critical from an impact perspective, but it’s not feasible, it’s important then not urgent using Eisenhower’s matrix. That’s how I’ve traditionally approached that. It’s feasibility and level of impact to a metric or an anecdote.

MURIEL WILKINS: Level of impact. You’re defining impact as the results, the level of impact it has on the final metric, on the final performance?

DIEGO: Correct. Say like meeting deliveries on time to say that if we can make a dent to improving that, to having more deliveries on time, then that would be the level of impact.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. And then the other feasibility is can we do it within this amount of time?

DIEGO: Correct. And there becomes the great discussion of scrappily or scalably.

MURIEL WILKINS: Diego has been drawn to his roles in part because of his love of problem solving, of finding ways to do things more efficiently and effectively. What he’s running into is the fact that that kind of efficiency doesn’t always apply to all situations. He’s recognized where trying to push things forward without buy-in has held him back in the past and is looking for better ways to build that buy-in, especially with people that he can’t give directives to. Next, I think it’s worth taking the time to better understand more about the interactions and relationships he has at work and how his words and actions might adjust to get the results he wants. Let’s jump back in. When you talk to your stakeholders about impact, do they speak the same language in terms of impact? Do they see the same potential catastrophe that you see?

DIEGO: Not always. As many other companies, very metricized organization, which sometimes, although we want to try to take into account all of the customer impacts, all the operator impacts from all over the project, sometimes some teams focus on the responsibility rightfully so. And so it’s sometimes hard to gauge, say, my team’s impact with this.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, when you tee that up to them, you’re not going to get into specifics. But how do you tee up the impact? How do you make it make sense to them?

DIEGO: I don’t spend enough time sometimes there trying to run to the root cost there. Sometimes say I’ll also bring a metric, but sometimes the metric is just a metric if they don’t know the experience that my operator’s undergoing.

MURIEL WILKINS: Right. Or how it’s going to impact them.

DIEGO: Correct. Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, I think there’s a bit around are you framing the impact in a way that’s going to resonate with them? Going back to the example, the personal example I gave, if I tell my child, hey, we’ve got to hurry up and get to school because I have a meeting to go to, I mean, what do you think my kid’s reaction is?

DIEGO: They’re not going to care.

MURIEL WILKINS: And? So what? I guess you’ll have to figure that out.

DIEGO: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, a big part of being able to influence is how you frame your message and the framing has to be in a way that is relevant to the person that you’re trying or the group that you’re trying to influence. And so, my question would be, have you thought about how do you define the quote-unquote “impact” in a way that actually they can feel right because impact is something that they’re going to feel, or even though you might be seeing it as a potential catastrophe or risk, do they see it as a potential catastrophe or risk? And if not, then what is the risk to them?

DIEGO: That’s a good question. I’m reading right now, what is it? A book that talks about the elephant and the rider, so influencing through the logical and the emotional side. So haven’t quite gone through it, but it’s great to hear that you’re talking about that it’s not just about the logic or the metric. How do you make them feel the importance and understand your impact on your side beyond just a metric That makes a lot of sense.

MURIEL WILKINS: That’s right. I mean, it sounds to me like what’s happening is you’re going to them and saying, “Hey, we’ve got these measures that we need to be able to meet – my team, Diego’s team has to be able to meet – and because you’re not course correcting, it’s going to hurt us.”

DIEGO: Correct.

MURIEL WILKINS: And while that’s true, I don’t know if that’s giving the effect of the message that you want, which is that you want them to move, which means that you have to find out how to make it important to them. Meaning how does it impact their metrics? How does it impact whatever it is that they’re working on? And frame it from that perspective.

DIEGO: Almost create that attribution between their world and my world in some shape or form.

MURIEL WILKINS: Exactly. And if you don’t know what that is, what do you think you can do?

DIEGO: I think at that point, what I would do today is schedule some brainstorming session to understand how our processes are linked or not linked, and try to figure out that connection. Because if they’re not linked, then there’s a bigger problem at hand, I would say. But traditionally it’s been more they are linked, we just haven’t assessed in what shape or form. So that would be my first gut feel is to meet and dive deeper into the situation before we step back.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. And so here’s the piece, here’s the difference between leading the situation that you’re in and managing the situation that you’re in. Managing the situation is something’s gone wrong and now we’ve got to figure out where the intersections are.

DIEGO: Okay.

MURIEL WILKINS: Leading it is before anything goes wrong, you’re taking the time to sit down with your stakeholders and figuring out how do you define success? Here’s how we define success, where are the intersections and here are the potential risks that might come down the pike. How do we want to deal with them? And so you are creating or making explicit the interdependencies between you and your stakeholders, rather than wait till it’s very clear that there’s independence and you’re then trying to create the interdependence.

DIEGO: I like the way you framed it as well there.

MURIEL WILKINS: What is it that you like about that?

DIEGO: Often to your point, we wait for a misalignment. I don’t even want to call it a problem. Something doesn’t really need to break, but we wait for that misalignment to happen to then react. And at that point, the self and post speed means there’s no time. I think by you framing that, maybe even before the project truly starts, or as it’s starting, that’s when you actually make the time. And that’s usually when you actually have the time to do this. So I think it’s alluding more to the, am I being proactive enough about aligning and sharing everybody’s top priorities, impacts all those things and how they’re connected and then going to solve the problem. Sounds like that will ease and expedite problem solving when it arises.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yes.

DIEGO: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: And I love that you said it’s about being proactive. That’s exactly what it is. I’ve been a little obsessed with, I don’t know if you know Dr. Peter Attia, I think that’s how you pronounce his last name. Anyway, he’s a doctor. He’s just written a pretty fantastic book. I don’t know if it was just written, but a book called Outlived, and it’s about basically increasing your health span rather than your lifespan. And he talks about how medicine is very reactionary. You wait till the disease pops up and then you treat the disease versus being preventative, which is let’s prevent the disease and even more so not even preventative, being proactive, let’s figure out what are the things that are occurring in your body right now that show a high probability or enough of a probability that if it’s not dealt with now, it will end up at that course correction point, which is what you’re facing.

DIEGO: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: So we don’t want to wait until the disease pops up because guess what? When the disease pops up, it’s actually been in the making.

DIEGO: For some time.

MURIEL WILKINS: For some time. So those situations that you’re facing where you’re like, “Oh my God, it needs to be fixed yesterday.” The reason why you’re feeling the urgency is because you didn’t do the work earlier on in a proactive way to say, well, what could pop up and how do we deal with it now? So that’s the alignment around the impact piece, which is the first variable that you talked about, being proactive around that. The second piece is the urgency and the fact that you are operating with, it needs to be done yesterday, it needs to be fixed yesterday, and that part of that is based on feasibility. So if I understand what you’re saying is if it’s possible to fix it, then we should do it right away.

DIEGO: Then there’s my expectation that we should be doing it right away. Correct.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yes. And where does that expectation come from?

DIEGO: I guess just years in the making of the ability to put it together extremely quickly on my own then is now we should be able to do that. With my team, that’s the fun part because that’s how I get to develop my team and that’s what I truly love doing. I then get to recognize where do we need to go fast and then teach after we launch something and other instances where I say, no, we can actually forego speed for the development play here, but it’s all within my scope, so I get to control it or take accountability for speed or quality, so on, and so forth. When it’s external stakeholders, tough is I believe I can do it. I believe maybe even my team can do it, but the responsibility to do it lies outside of my purview. So that’s what makes it tough, that feasibility, knowing we can, but it’s hard to enforce or make it happen.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah, I mean, I’m sitting here thinking like, huh, what are all the things that I think are feasible but yet not happening?

DIEGO: It’s a lot. I bet too.

MURIEL WILKINS: And is it because something is feasible that it should happen? So is it that if I just take your rule or your mantra that, hey, if I can do it, then A, everybody else should be able to, we can do it and we should do it because it’s possible and we should do it quickly. If I take that, then I would have my whole company running marathons.

DIEGO: Correct, yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: Even those that have never run, but I’m like, but you could do it, so we should do it as a rule. So how is that rule working out for you?

DIEGO: Well, it wasn’t working out effectively last year, I would say. And so now I stop myself and I ask myself, is this one of five things? Is this something I should not interfere regardless of feasibility? Is it something I need to probe and just question to see if they arrive at the same conclusion? Is it something I need to direct as opposed to question, just tell them what needs to be done and how to do it. Is it something I need to take over and do it myself? That has been, I probably want to say the last three to four months, what I’ve been really focusing on is no, the expectation of everybody running a marathon, it’s not a scalable, a healthy or a good expectation. It’s figuring out when to pick the battle. And then the next step of that is how to then approach the battle in one of those four or five ways that I’ve been focusing on because to your point, it wasn’t working.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. Okay. And I love that you have a framework for yourself and a checklist because that in essence is you coaching yourself through those different scenarios. I still think there’s a bit around the urgency, how fast something needs to be done. You could, it sounds like that’s what you were doing is approaching everything as the firefighter who leaves the station. It doesn’t matter what call they get, they leave and it’s like the siren is going… They’re going fast.

DIEGO: Go put the fire out.

MURIEL WILKINS: Regardless of whether it’s the cat up in the tree or a real disastrous apartment building that’s in full blaze. But once they get there, they make an assessment of, oh, how urgent is this truly? And what do you think they make that assessment based on?

DIEGO: Like you said, how many individuals are at risk from a life perspective. So it’s I think tying back to those metrics, but then refining that really well to just, what is that one thing? If there’s individuals at risk, that’s assuming the one thing they look at, right?

MURIEL WILKINS: That’s right. So urgency for the sake of urgency is, I mean, I don’t know, I don’t know what that is unless that’s the definition of your role, unless you’re a sprinter or a race car driver or anything where literally the key to their success is going fast.

DIEGO: Correct.

MURIEL WILKINS: And everything that you’ve articulated, it doesn’t sound like it’s that. It sounds like it’s more a matter of what’s showing up is urgency on your end, but what seems to be underlying it is what is the level of risk?

DIEGO: Correct. Yeah, I think it’s an intensity thing. I’m the kind of individual that every time I go run, I always run at the best speed. I just ran last time to try to improve upon. A previous manager told me, some things are built in your DNA, just don’t let them be a problem. So maybe my urgency and intensity are just in me, but I need to assess that life-threatening piece more adamantly so that my intensity doesn’t become a problem, which it was before, and I’m trying to, I guess, dissipate that problem.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah, and look, I mean, I think I’m going to just tweak a little bit about is it part of your DNA, I think it’s something that has served you well. It’s something that has led to a lot of your successes in your career, particularly as an individual contributor when you were one, which you’re not anymore, and it has served you well in running because you said you’re a runner in your, I don’t know quite how old you are, but I can see from talking to you, you’re probably a few decades younger than I am. It has served you well in the stage of running of your life that you’re in now. And so I think you are holding on to something that has served you well up until now, and now it’s okay. I know I can do that, but what other approaches will help me be a more well-rounded runner into the future, a more well-rounded leader as you scale. And so if we use this metaphor, it sounds like you’re a sprinter, you run with a lot of intensity, right? The research shows you also need to be able to do endurance. You need to be able to have the easy days. You need to be able to, as they say, slow down to get faster. And the same goes with leadership. There’s intensity and then there’s times where you have to slow down to get to the results to make the overall better. And I think that’s what you’re experiencing is how do you slow down when it comes to being able to get to deliver results,

DIEGO: Correct, yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: And it’s everything you said, listening, asking the questions, et cetera. So if part of it then is picking your battles, how are you going through that part of the process of deciding when you take the intense urgent route versus deciding if you take the slower, less intense, more unfolding, more collaborative route?

DIEGO: Before it was my gut feeling, I think now I meet with leaders above my level, spread out across the organization to gauge how they see a situation, if we’re making enough progress, and sometimes I outright ask, do they believe more teams need to get involved like myself to expedite support? So as opposed to leaning on my gut, which meant a lot more things needed to be with that urgency, I try to lean on leaders meeting in a lot of one-on-ones with them, and then I consolidate and I stack rank against if multiple leaders mentioned the same thing or area, then that is the highest urgency. I think what that’s also cost is a top down. Hey, DIEGO’s going to come talk to you. So they’ll tell their teams, hey, maybe we could be doing this faster. DIEGO can come and help you. That has been helpful.

So it doesn’t feel like it’s, again, me bulldozing, no, this is, Hey, be a team effort. You’re getting support. It’s a positive thing that myself or my team are coming to help. So that’s how I’m picking my battles nowadays is seeking leadership direction

MURIEL WILKINS: And how’s that working for you?

DIEGO: Much better.

MURIEL WILKINS: Much better?

DIEGO: Significantly better, yeah. It’s also helping me understand those leaders and how they’re prioritizing, right? I think my goal, a little bit of an output from this is what they say, the proactive and the field approach. My goal is for me to be able to diagnose proactively more accurately, here’s the only things I need to have urgency, and bringing that to those leaders and being on point there, that would be I think, a key outcome. And now if they come and tell me, hey, no, there’s another one, then maybe I correct it too far. So I think that’s what I’m trying to gauge.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. What’s interesting to me, Diego, is we started the conversation with you saying, hey, I want to figure out how to manage my stakeholders more effectively. And I agreed. I was like, yeah, stakeholder management. That’s what this conversation’s about. As you are sharing what you’ve tested out and trying to see whether it’s working or not, and you’re saying, yeah, it is working. What’s coming up for me and reflecting back what you’re doing is that there’s a difference between managing your stakeholders and engaging your stakeholders.

DIEGO: Okay.

MURIEL WILKINS: And I think what you have just shared is what happens when you actually take a stakeholder engagement approach, you engage those individuals in the problem solving rather than manage them to a particular direction. So it’s almost like I would offer to you to think about things in three different ways. One is it’s a self-driven approach, meaning you decide and you just do it right, which sounds like what you were doing earlier on.

DIEGO: Correct.

MURIEL WILKINS: Then there’s a stakeholder management approach, which is you decide, you know what needs to be done and you try to get people there, you manage them, put them in a certain place, talk to the right people to make it happen. And then there’s a stakeholder engagement approach, which is, it is more of a collaborative figuring out of what the impact is, how you define success, what do we think is urgent versus not urgent? What are the interdependencies?

DIEGO: I think that makes a lot of sense with the engagement piece because it goes back to the little things I’ve been doing of listening, asking questions in one-on-one is figuring out how to double down on that. I think if I do engage more and do it more proactively, I think my propensity to have to do your first two of self-driven or stakeholder management should reduce. I think that would be the goal, which means that that is only the true firefighting as opposed to everything being firefighting. So that model makes a lot of sense.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. And so try it out, experiment with it. I do think that stakeholder engagement is generative, meaning if you can do it enough times, it creates its own momentum so that when you do need to come in with the like, “Hey, we need to move on this, and it needed to be done yesterday,” you’ve built enough equity that people based on your track record may attach to it.

DIEGO: Go along with it.

MURIEL WILKINS: Go along with it, right?

DIEGO: Yeah. You can spend a couple of trust bucks on it because they understand where you’re coming from. Yeah, makes sense.

MURIEL WILKINS: Exactly. Versus being all the time there’s a fire, there’s a fire, right? You don’t want to be… There’s so many stories about that us growing up, right?

DIEGO: Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, I’m just crying wolf all the time.

MURIEL WILKINS: Crying wolf all the time. You don’t want to be that.

DIEGO: Definitely not.

MURIEL WILKINS: You don’t want to be that, you want to see that there’s a real wolf and make sure that it’s real, not just real for you, but real for others too. And that’s the part around how do you frame it up in a way that makes sense for others.

DIEGO: With the feel, the engagement, and the proactive aspects, I think what I’m really taking out of this is, to your point, the number of times I’m going to have to spend those trust bucks or have to yell wolf is when there’s really a wolf there that must be addressed, which means also I’ll be able to spend more time in more other things. So it’ll have a ripple effect for sure.

MURIEL WILKINS: At this point in the coaching conversation, I might typically start transitioning into looking at practical steps or actions that the leader might want to take going forward. But in some ways, Diego is already doing what he needs to do. He’s seeing behavior that doesn’t work well, and he’s adapting to different modes of working with leaders and as a leader. So, I wanted to go back to some of the internal reflection that Diego began the conversation with around his intensity and his passion, because as he tries out new approaches to gain stakeholder buy-in, it’s also important that he remembers his authentic values, what drives him and where his value add is. Let’s dive back in as we work through some of his internal motivations and how they might present differently going forward. My question for you is, you mentioned that you innately feel this intensity, that it’s part of what brings the excitement and the going for it, the attitude that you bring to it. So, my question is how do you manage that for yourself, that intensity, that high level of intensity while doing all the things that we just talked about, which is 80% of the time, let’s just say you’re slowing down externally with the stakeholders.

DIEGO: I don’t think I’ve found that solution yet of how to manage my own intensity. I try to read a lot of different articles. There was recently an article in Harvard Business Review about the no pay, no gain, give it 110%, that’s the old mentality. The new mentality should be, hey, how can you do your best work? It’s when you’re giving it 85% effort. Reading the article, I was like, I don’t do that, I just put my intensity elsewhere. Whether it be at work or even outside of work. I run more, I do all these things. So managing the intensity is something I haven’t figured out. To be really honest. It just goes elsewhere. It’s a little bit of just water on a pipe that just finds a way to go elsewhere.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. And listen, I appreciate that honesty and I appreciate the awareness around it. I think it’s important, particularly as you grow as a leader, that there is congruency between what’s happening externally. Meaning if externally you’re saying to your team, hey, we need to, and I’m just saying for simplicity’ sake, we need to slow down. We’re going to take this in a less intense way. If you’re saying those things and acting that way externally, but internally there’s still this high level of energy intensity. Oh, it’s going to show up in some way and it doesn’t serve you well or it’s not going to serve the stakeholders well, something’s going to break at some point. So this is not about getting rid of your intensity. I think it’s how do you make sure that the level of intensity that’s required of you externally is aligned with the level of intensity that you feel internally for that particular situation.

DIEGO: Got it.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, I think this is a little different than you just need to not be in touch.

DIEGO: So, I need to seek to understand what is the… sometimes I also label it passion, I guess. What is the level of passion that’s needed for me from this individual in this situation? And then knowing how to communicate it and orchestrate it to meet that need in that situation.

MURIEL WILKINS: It’s interesting to me that you use the word passion though. What’s your definition of passion?

DIEGO: Yeah. I guess that is rather ambiguous. I think I work best in greenfield environments as opposed to more established, more mature environments because there’s so much to fix. And so if I find a greenfield area that I am excited about, I will want to go and work on all of it and fix all of it and make an exciting vision strategy that I know we can come to fruition in five to 10 years, and then that means in the next five to 10 years, it’s just going to be chipping away constantly at making that happen. That brings me a lot of energy and excitement, and it comes across as the let’s go, but all the time. So I think the passion is in fixing something I really believe in and being very excited about it all the time.

MURIEL WILKINS: So the question really for you becomes, can you be passionate about something, and believe in something, and be excited about something, and not feel a high level of intensity towards it? Which if you didn’t feel intensity, let’s come up with another word. When you’re not intense, try to imagine that one time, Diego, when you don’t have that intensity, how would you describe it? What’s the adjective?

DIEGO: The first thing that came to mind honestly would be bored.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah.

DIEGO: If I am not excited or I’m not intense, it’s because I’m bored with the idea of it or how it’s being approached. So it is very much a zero to a hundred and nothing in the middle. So, yeah, bored would be the easiest way word to come up.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay. And so we don’t want you to be bored, although sometimes being, I mean, I don’t know what does it mean to be bored sometimes? Maybe it makes things clearer, right?

DIEGO: Correct. Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, what would be the alternative to feeling intense around it?

DIEGO: I think that to your point in some of the best moments with a bigger scope in which you really shouldn’t be intense about everything, which I think is what you’re trying to chip away at here, is when you just pause and try to collect yourself and understand the situation, listen to stakeholders, that cool, calm and collected approach, lets me do two things, understand the collective path forward and how to empower people to make it happen. So I have noticed that when my intensity is too high, it doesn’t let me do that well. And I think now, for example, at the next level, the director level, when you’re managing hundreds of individuals in a very big scope that’s needed, and your intensity should only be one or two things at most at one time with such a big scope because you need to be cool, calm, and collected to know how to empower the hundreds of people that are working to make those things happen. So I think that would be the opposite of intensity, I guess, is when I’m not there, I need to be cool, calm and collected, but with the purpose of empowering people. Whereas intensity usually comes with, I still own some ownership of something.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. So it’s at a hundred.

DIEGO: Correct. And that means if my team or myself owns something, intensity starts creeping in.

MURIEL WILKINS: So when it’s all on you, you’re at 100 with intensity.

DIEGO: Correct.

MURIEL WILKINS: Then there’s this thing of, if I’m not intense, if I’m not at a hundred intense, then I’m bored, and it might mean that I’m not passionate about it, and it’s not even like what are we doing, right?

DIEGO: Yeah. And I think what you just said maybe, or I don’t own it, which maybe at that point, bored isn’t the right word, like you were saying, but there’s just something different of if I own a percentage or cut of something, intensity is there. If I don’t, I’m not excited about the problem statement, then that is when I’m not intense.

MURIEL WILKINS: And so, here’s the thing, right? The more you lead and the more you lead at scale, the less you own.

DIEGO: Yeah. Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: Right? I mean, in a different way. And so part of it is as you grow as a leader, you are going to have to figure out how to be comfortable with not owning everything and still retain the level of passion and excitement and energy that you bring.

DIEGO: Correct.

MURIEL WILKINS: So, the formula that you’re using, it just doesn’t carry, it doesn’t carry over. And I’m going to backtrack a little bit on what I said. Like I said, “Oh, what’s the opposite of intensity?” And I think as you’re talking, what might be more useful for you is think about levels of intensity, almost like a scale. I don’t know if you play any instruments.

DIEGO: Yeah. I play the trombone.

MURIEL WILKINS: You play the trombone? Oh my gosh, I’m acting like I know a bunch of things about the trombone. I don’t, but my son plays at saxophone, so it’s same little family, but they’re scales and I hear him playing scales all the time. And I’m sure when you practice you have to practice playing scales. Scales are different notes. There are different scales to your intensity. It doesn’t always have to be on a hundred. And what it sounds like is the level at which it needs to be is not only determined based on your level of ownership, it’s also determined on the others and the level of risk and that beautiful criteria approach that you outlined earlier in the conversation. And so part of what I would encourage you or offer you to do is to start thinking about what are the different scales of intensity?

What are the different level rather than getting rid of it, where are you and what’s necessary for this particular situation? Because if you do it that way, you’re still playing music, the excitement is still there. So let’s just keep that as the theme. The excitement is still there. There’s still a level of engagement. It does not mean that the engagement goes away on your end or the passion goes away, it’s just how does it get expressed? And that expression depends on the scale. How does that land with you when I offer it in that way?

DIEGO: No, the scales of intensity is something I hadn’t thought about. That’s honestly why I wanted to come and talk to you, because I think it took me too long to realize this approach that you said I mentioned earlier. And so what I wanted to get out of today was what are other things I need to keep in mind? I think the scales of intensity is something I hadn’t thought about. Becoming disattached with owning is something that I think as a people manager, it’s when you get your truly first taste of needing to do that, but it’s within your team still. So there’s some attachment still there. So the level of intensity with the attachment, knowing how to do that I think is what I really need to focus on. And if I do that now with the proactive approach that you mentioned earlier, it means now I have multiple concepts I get to use as I go through that. So that makes a lot of sense.

MURIEL WILKINS: Beautiful. Beautiful. And look, detaching does not mean you don’t care.

DIEGO: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: Let’s not make attachment and holding onto it and owning it and having to choke hold it till the end equate this shows that I care about the results. That is not it. All right? I think what you’re understanding through this and what your approach is giving you is actually if I give it room to breathe, if I give it a little more space through time, and I take the time to have those one-on-ones and the listening and all that, that actually also shows that I’m engaged and I care. It’s just a different level of on the intensity.

DIEGO: Yeah. No, that makes too much sense. And sometimes you don’t have that framework, and now that you put it this way, I usually use post-it notes as I’m trying to work on something, I’ll try to figure out what are my scales of intensity, look at a situation and look at my post and I’ll be like, I’m going to use this one. And then usually what I honestly do is a little bit like biohacking. I will write down how it’s been going week over week and see and adjust that barometer. So I’m almost very excited about trying this out.

MURIEL WILKINS: I love it.

DIEGO: In real time in some meetings.

MURIEL WILKINS: All right, great. So I think we can wrap up and you’ve already laid out an action plan. I love it.

DIEGO: A 100%, yes.

MURIEL WILKINS:

Although you said, I’m almost excited. What would get you really excited about trying this?

DIEGO: Mastering it. I think that’s just again, the urgency and the expectation person, but I’ll work on that. But I’m excited about the proactive focusing on the field, this level of intensity piece. Definitely the next tool sets I think I needed on my end. And maybe to your point, they weren’t tactical things, but there were things of how can I be a better leader on a day-to-day basis? Thank you.

MURIEL WILKINS: Absolutely. No, thank you. And when you get those post-it notes up, take a picture and send it over to me. I’d love to see what it looks like.

DIEGO: Definitely will, yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: Diego is someone who, like many high achievers, is committed to learning as much as he can and advancing his career. I think the point of the conversation that stuck out most to me was this, the idea that you can’t always sprint or always be at the highest intensity, no matter how much you want to grow and achieve. Sometimes it’s about taking that step back or slowing down. In this case, it’s about realizing that you can’t just push everyone else into being on your timeline or having the same goals as you. And only by slowing down is Diego going to be able to understand what stakeholders really want and to better position his needs as aligned with their needs. He can keep that intensity and stay true to himself in the situations where he needs it, but also learn to adapt to really help him move forward and have a bigger impact at his organization. That’s it for this episode of Coaching Real Leaders. Next time:

NEXT EPISODE’S GUEST: I feel like I’ve got to this point, and it’s not the thing, but there’s part of me that says, “Well, you can’t just keep pivoting every two seconds until you find the thing, you need to settle in and make a living and rise up through the ranks and continue getting promoted.” And so I think what I’m really finding myself in is this spiral of uncertainty of where do I go next? What is the next step?

MURIEL WILKINS: Want more of Coaching Real Leaders? Join our community where I host live discussions to unpack the coaching sessions, become a member at coachingrealleaderscommunity.com. You can also find me in my newsletter on LinkedIn at Muriel Wilkins. Thanks to my producer, Mary Dooe; sound editor, Nick Crnko; music composer, Brian Campbell; my assistant Emily Sofa; and the entire team at HBR. Much gratitude to the leaders who join me in these coaching conversations and to you, our listeners who share in their journeys. If you are dealing with a leadership challenge, I’d love to hear from you and possibly have you on the show next season. Apply at coachingrealleaders.com. And of course, if you love the show and learn from it, pay it forward, share it with your friends, subscribe and leave a review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. From the HBR Podcast Network, I’m Muriel Wilkins. Until next time, be well.