Kevin Eikenberry
Appearances
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. So again, intention is making a conscious choice to say, what's the best approach here? Rather than, to your point, relying on muscle memory, relying on our natural habits. And the other thing that I talk about early in the book that we haven't mentioned that probably should, and that is that
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
Many of us, many of you who are listening have taken some or maybe several assessments. You've taken a strength finder. You've taken a Myers-Briggs or a DISC. You've taken some sort of leadership style assessment. And so you have your strengths. You have your style. You have those things. And those things are very helpful. Until they're not. And they're helpful when they help us.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
See, all of those are models and models are a simplification of the world. And what we too often do is we take the model and we make the model truth. We lose the complexity and we lean into the model. And not only that, but now we identify with that style as who I am and how I lead. And if I am identifying myself by this style or approach, the ability for me to flex is dampened significantly.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
That's why we have to get past that with the intention to say, okay, that would be what I would do naturally, but is that really the most effective thing for me to do right now? But if it's my identity, then I don't really have
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
choices like this is what this is what a facilitative leader would do this is what a coaching leader would do this is what a servant leader would do and there's nothing wrong with any of those things except that they oversimplify the world and we have to be really careful about that let's talk about flexors what exactly are they can you walk us through a few examples maybe specific situations so we get a clearer picture of what flexors look like in action
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
I'll use an example. So I think there are 19 in the book that I talk about in one place or another. And I say later in the book that even though I've identified 19 and I've identified 19 that I think are really useful to us as leaders, they are by no means all of them.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And in fact, I'm going to use one and then I think it will help you see how they all would work or how any you might see in your world would work. So here's one. Do I lead for commitment? Yes.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
or compliance do i lead for i'll do it this way compliance or commitment and i've asked that question of thousands of leaders and they almost all region i i want to lead for commitment i say awesome and yet oftentimes what we see in the world is leaders that aren't leading for commitment they're leading for compliance they're leading for people to say yes sir yes ma'am yes boss
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And then moving on. And what I would say is that if we think about those things as compliance and commitment, and that's one of the flexors, the compliance commitment flexor. If you think about which am I leading for, we're on one end or the other of the continuum. I would suggest that while I think most of us would be better served by leaning in the direction of
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
commitment, there are times when compliance is all we really need. And, you know, people don't need to, if you have all of the information and people trust your judgment and know that you know what you're doing, there are many times when they would say, honestly, just tell us which direction you want us to go and they will comply. And that will be all that's needed.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
You know, I believe Vince is the best work I've done, and I think hopefully can be the most impactful work I've done. Because, you know, the subtitle of the book says, navigate uncertainty and lead with confidence. And certainly we're in a world that's more uncertain than ever. And so it's super important for us to think about that and acknowledge that.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
Now, if we always are just trying to get them to do what we say, then we know there will be all sorts of unintended consequences. So the idea of this flexor is, what's the situation tell me? If the situation is truly chaotic, people just need you to give, which by the way, doesn't happen nearly as often as we like to think it happens.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
then in that moment, people would just say, Kevin, tell me something, tell us what to do right now. But that doesn't mean we need to live in or stay in that leading for compliance forever. We probably wanna be shifting across that flexor over time as the context changes. So while generally speaking, I might lean toward, and I might even hope that you would lean to the commitment side,
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
of this flexor all the way to the end of that probably doesn't get us the best results. And certainly we can come up with times when the other end is actually perhaps better in that moment. And so that's an example of one of the flexors, which gets at the big idea that the right or best answer is really what I should say, that the best answer isn't at the ends of either one.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
but rather somewhere in the middle based on the context, which takes us back to the context. Just think about it like a scale and like, where would I put where would I put my dot for this situation? Do I need to lean more in the direction? Do I need to be to go back to your political gamble? Am I more left of center here or right of center here? I have a natural inclination.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And that's the politics thing is a useful one. Like I have a natural inclination in one direction or the other. And. And I might even have identity associated with one end or the other. And too often the identity is limiting us in the context of a situation.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And I would even go as far, and I've said this out loud and maybe even thought about it quite this way before, but if you think about right and left politically as a flexor, that We are almost always better able to make real progress with a group by everyone flexing and finding a place that works.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And sometimes we might be left of center, sometimes we might be right of center for a given situation in order for us to actually get agreement enough to move forward, right? And again, I don't wanna make this a political conversation, but if you wanna think about it in that context, right? So yeah, everything else being equal, I'd rather have people be committed.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And yet sometimes all I need is for people to say, I'm in, let's go, let's do this. I don't need to have people saying, man, this is the greatest thing ever. I just didn't need to have people saying, I'm glad we know where we're headed. And if we stay there all the time, I know where I'm headed at least. That's not where we want to be all the time forever.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
But in that moment, that might be the most expedient moment. effective and productive thing for us to do. Even though my tendency, my natural inclination might be, I really need to build commitment around this decision. No, at this moment, all we need is for everyone to say, we can follow this direction. Let's go.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And if the world is changing and uncertain today, That means that we likely need to do something different as those things change. And I'm trying to give people a playbook to think a little bit differently about what they need to do to lead in and through that uncertainty.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
There are, as you mentioned, great books written about what we are really learning and what we know about how the brain works around habits. What we've learned about that in the last 15 years has really exploded. And so there's been great books. Atomic Habits certainly being one of those by James Clear, although not the only, is a great book around this idea.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And I lean in to James's book in this book by making some comments and connecting to some of his ideas. The big thing I'm after here is, and I think you're right, there are certainly some books about mindset, but they're basically a whole book about mindset. And there are certainly books about habits, and we just talked about one of those there.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
But most leadership books are about, you ought to do these things. They're mostly about skills. And so what I've tried to do is say, the skills alone are not enough. Because even if you understand and can apply them, if you don't believe they will help you, you will never apply them. Why would you? And if you have them in your little toolkit...
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
But they gather dust and rust because you never try them. What's the point? I believe that for us to be successful in as a leader developing our skills, we must develop first the mindset that matches the skill set and then we must move toward a habit set. And if we're doing it organizationally, we need to think about that more than just here's the tools I want you to have, Mr. or Ms. Leader.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
The habit piece that I want to talk about, I know our time is about up, is this idea. The idea that my hope that as you become a flexible leader, your habit is intention, context, flexor, right? Rather than doing what comes natural, what becomes your new natural, what becomes your new normal is to say, what does the situation tell me before I decide what to do? Rather than just
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And if we can get to that point, we will more often make more effective decisions and lead in more effective ways.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
100%, yeah, 100%.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
Yeah, I love that question. I ask that on my podcast all the time. What did I ask that I should have? And I think you did a great job, and we obviously covered a lot of ground. I just want to go back to this idea that I'm guessing that if you're listening to this show, that you are... dedicated to wanting to be a better leader. Otherwise, you wouldn't be listening to this.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
You'd be listening or watching something else. And we're both thankful for you to be dedicated and interested in being more effective leaders. And what I really hope is that you find that what you heard here helps you think about that a little differently.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And so I hope that you don't get too locked into whatever your style or approach is and say, maybe, just maybe, probably there are times when I need to flex what I do because I don't need to change the things that aren't changing. but I need to change the how. The why and the what of leading is not changing nearly as much as our need to change the how of our approach in any given time.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
In my book, Remarkable Leadership, a number of years ago, I wrote that as we become a better leader, we become a better human being and vice versa. And so I do believe that the things that we've talked about today absolutely apply in all parts of our lives. It's just that as a leader,
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
The things that we do and the choices that we make have such leverage for others that it's especially important that we think about them. So I hope that this has been useful, Vince, for everyone in that way and giving them that thought a little bit more clearly.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
I appreciate that. I'd be happy to come back anytime. And so for everyone who's here before we go, before I go, I just want to tell you that because Vince has invited me here and you've chosen to listen, I have a gift for you. And that gift you can find at kevineikenberry.com slash gift. And what I have for you there, there's information there about the book Flexible Leadership.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And of course, if you've written that name down or have in your head, you can go find it and buy it wherever you buy books. But if you go to kevineikenberry.com slash gift, What I have for you there is a chance to have a free, to have the chance to use our masterclass on building confidence in ourselves and others that we sell every day for $79.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
But for you, because you're listening to us here, it's my gift to you. I hope you'll take advantage of that. Kevin, I agree. Slash gift.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
I'll answer that, but I want to say something else that's really important about change in general. And that is so often when we're leading a change or even thinking about change, we say, oh my gosh, everything is different. And the reality is it's almost never all different.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And in fact, we make the change efforts harder when we only talk about what's changing and don't talk about what's the same. So the first thing I think is an important point is that we're introducing a new process in our organization. And one of the most important things we can do is say, okay, there's 12 steps in this process and we are drastically changing four of them.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
But everybody, eight of these steps aren't changing. And so we lower the anxiety level and we raise the clarity level simply by doing that and reminding people that not everything's changing. So there's an underlying truth there that is inside of that statement. But to your point directly. People have been leading other humans for centuries.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And while context is changing, which is a big part of the idea of this book, while context is changing, when I started leading 30 years ago, I did have a fax machine. I didn't have email yet quite, and I didn't have a website, and there weren't podcasts, and we could go on and on, and we didn't have the phones that we have now, all that stuff. But what was the same as now is that
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
Teams behave in certain ways based on team dynamics. And human beings are still human beings. Amazing, wonderful, remarkable, and messy. And all of that is still true, will continue to be true. And there are truths about leading. There are truths about influencing. There are truths about human behavior and group dynamics that aren't changing. And so when we try to say everything's changing,
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
We are missing the boat and losing sight of the foundational stuff. Your values as a leader are likely not changing. And those most important things, you and Wayne talked about the long distance leader. And in that book, we say rule number one is think leadership first, location second. And most people want to flip that around. And say, oh my gosh, it's all different. Nope, it's leadership.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And then the nuances that are important based on the fact that we're not in the same place matter a lot. But we got to start with what's not changing and probably not going to change. Certainly not in my lifetime.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
Yep, I agree. I'll just take an example from what you're just talking about. And that is I was in a meeting with a bunch of clients last week, a listening session. And there was all this conversation like all of our people want to learn now by watching a three minute video. They didn't say this, but fundamentally the world is changing because now it's all about a three minute video.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And I would say no, because what people have wanted forever is give me a way to access quickly what I need to know to do this job right now. And if you'd given people the ability to watch someone else do it next to them 10 years ago, 20 years ago, that's what they wanted.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And now if that person can't be next to them, but is on this phone on a video that's easily created, that the fundamental need for people to see a demonstration and to get advice from someone in like real time that is practical for their needs, that hasn't changed. All that changed was how we were able to deliver it. And that's the kind of thing I'm talking about.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
Yes, the medium in that particular case, the medium has changed. And I'm not disagreeing with that person who said my employees would like to have a three, four, five minute video to help them with this task. I agree. I do it, too. But the core idea of how we learn and what we would value in that hasn't really changed. And that's that I think is important.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
What leaders need to do is to be able to look a little higher and to gain a little new perspective. I believe that's one of the ideas that we're trying to get across in this book is that you have to think a little differently. You have to not say it's either this or it's that, but rather it's probably some of both of those things.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
And that's just since you were talking about education, that was an example that pops in my head because it describes how not everything's different just because some things are changing.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
So I define the flexible leadership approach. It is, as you said, intention plus context plus flexors. And I know flexors is something new because I made up the word. So back and start at the beginning. The first thing is we have to. Here's the thing about being a flexible leader. I'm challenging us to do something that is against our nature.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
Because our nature is to do what comes natural, to do what our first inclination is, to do what we've always done, to follow our habit, like in any situation as a leader, to do what comes automatically. And to be flexible means maybe that natural response is okay. Maybe that natural response is a great answer or a great approach. but we can't know that until we stop long enough to think about it.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
So we have to have intention and we have to believe that being flexible is actually to our benefit. And then we have to say, yes, that being a flexible leader is being a more effective leader. So we, and then we have to say, I'm going to stop long enough. And it may be a half a second. It might be a half an hour, or it might be till tomorrow morning, but we need to stop and say, okay,
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
let's think about what the best approach that I could take is. And that means that we have to look at the context of our situation. So intention plus context. So context is what is the actual situation that we're dealing with? And what could we know or see about that context or situation that might lead us to think about something differently?
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
So for example, we have a whole framework that we use in the book. We don't have time to go into, but I'll simply say this. Is it a situation where everything about what's going on is known and you have all the information? Then you can lead in a certain sort of way. Is it a situation where maybe there are others who have information or I need to get information from the larger group?
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
There are things that I don't know, but are known. Or that we don't know that are known that we need to gather some information and we need to come at those very differently than if it's a clear context. And if a situation is chaotic, like what do we do in a moment of chaos? But I think the one that.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
The fourth one, the one that I think is the most important for us to consider is what we call the complex context, which is where there are things that we don't know and that we don't even know we don't know. And so the question then becomes, what could we try?
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
We don't necessarily know what dominoes are going to fall from what actions we take, whether that's an individual interaction that I'm having with a member of my team or whether that's a decision that we're making. or that I need to make for our team or our organization in a situation, like how do we think about what's possible and what's plausible a little differently?
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
All of that requires us to interact with our team differently, make some, maybe make some different decisions. And so that's context. So intention plus context plus flexors. And so we've identified a bunch of things where, how do we, On what dimension might we need to flex? So I'm guessing that you want to talk a little bit more about that.
Chief Change Officer
#332 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part Two
But it's those three things together that allow us to be more flexible as a leader. In other words, I recognize it's possible and even perhaps more effective for me to flex. And then secondly, what does the situation tell me or dictate to me that would lead me to flex? And then in what ways might I be able to flex?
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
Yeah, that's 100%. In fact, I would say that if there were no change, We wouldn't need leaders. Now, we might still need managers, but we wouldn't need leaders because leadership at the end of the day is about reaching valuable outcomes, which means that we're moving to a place that we aren't currently.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
So whether the change is external or not, right, even if there were less external change, unless your situation as a leader was positive, perfect. Your team was doing everything that they could possibly do. And you're reaching every possible goal and outcome that you have in mind. There's still leadership. And since that's not going to happen, right?
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
There's always the need for leadership to move us closer and moving toward to set that objective. And to keep doing the things it takes to move towards it. And that's not even thinking about all the other external changes that we know are a big part of what we're about.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
Yeah, I don't think there's any question that change is an omnipresent and ever probably more important piece of our role as a leader. And therefore, it makes your show so useful to leaders around the world.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
Yeah, I would say that it is more three-dimensional than a flat jigsaw puzzle. And secondly, I would say that it... I don't think I can write new things that aren't connected to in some way what I already know about leadership and that I've in many cases written about. And so there's no doubt that there's connective tissue to other stuff I've written.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And yet, as I said earlier, it does completely stand on its own. You certainly don't have to have read anything else I've written to have it make sense. There are a few places where I tie back to things that I've written or said in other books. But it really is, it does set on its own.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And it's defining a new way to think about leadership that, as I said earlier, I don't think has been quite described in the way that I'm describing it here. And I know that's a bold statement given all that's been written about leadership over the years. Much of it written by people that I know and value, right? It is the evolution of my thinking to this point.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
Vince, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
It's the evolution of my observations about leadership. And it's the evolution of my own leadership practice put into a format that people can use, I hope, practically.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
I'll answer that, but I want to say something else that's really important about change in general, and that is so often... When we're leading a change or even thinking about change, we say, oh my gosh, everything is different. And the reality is it's almost never all different.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And in fact, we make the change efforts harder when we only talk about what's changing and don't talk about what's the same. So the first thing I think is an important point is that we're introducing a new process in our organization. And one of the most important things we can do is say, okay, there's 12 steps in this process and we are drastically changing four of them.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
But everybody, eight of these steps aren't changing. And so we lower the anxiety level and we raise the clarity level simply by doing that and reminding people that not everything's changing. So there's an underlying truth there that is inside of that statement. But to your point directly. People have been leading other humans for centuries.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And while context is changing, which is a big part of the idea of this book, while context is changing, when I started leading 30 years ago, I did have a fax machine. I didn't have email yet quite, and I didn't have a website, and there weren't podcasts, and we could go on and on, and we didn't have the phones that we have now, all that stuff. But what was the same as now is that
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
Teams behave in certain ways based on team dynamics. And human beings are still human beings. Amazing, wonderful, remarkable, and messy. And all of that is still true, will continue to be true. And there are truths about leading. There are truths about influencing. There are truths about human behavior and group dynamics that aren't changing. And so when we try to say everything's changing,
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
We are missing the boat and losing sight of the foundational stuff. Your values as a leader are likely not changing. And those most important things, you and Wayne talked about the long distance leader. And in that book, we say rule number one is think leadership first, location second. And most people want to flip that around. And say, oh my gosh, it's all different. Nope, it's leadership.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And then the nuances that are important based on the fact that we're not in the same place matter a lot. But we got to start with what's not changing and probably not going to change. Certainly not in my lifetime.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
I have been leading others for a long time, helping others learn how to be more effective leaders for a long time. But something that people may not know, or unless they come to know me over time, is that I grew up on a farm. And it actually has a huge impact on who I am because it helped me understand a lot of things about cause and effect. It helped me understand a lot about business.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
It helped me because I had the chance to be not that much younger than my parents, really grow up with them. And my dad had me very involved with stuff at a much younger age than most would have the chance to be. So my kidhood, especially having to be on a farm and in a farm business, has had a huge impact on my who I am.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
We don't have the time for all the memories, but I will tell you that, yeah, we had cash crops of a variety of them over the years and we raised hogs. One of the things that I think that you learn if you raise livestock, is that you might have a lot of things going on.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And you might, on farm and certain seasons, there's a tremendous amount of activity and work and things that have to be done on a timely basis. But you can't ever forget the most important thing, which is you have to tend the animals. You have to feed them, in our case, twice a day. And I think I learned a really important lesson early about farming.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
being clear about priorities, that there can be a lot of things that you need to be doing and that are super important to be doing, but some things that must override them all because if you mess that up, everything else will fall away.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
Yeah, there's no question that my farm background led to me studying agriculture at Purdue. And there was a time when I thought that I might go back home and be involved in not just our farming operation, but a related agricultural business. The world didn't work out that way, and that's fine. But yes, there was no question that when I left Purdue, For Purdue, that was a big part of the plan.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And people have often asked, how do you get to doing what you're doing now, Kevin, when what you started out studying was agriculture? And I said, I went to school to learn about systems, biological and mechanical systems. And now what I work on are human systems.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And so I don't think it's actually I think my degree and my time at Purdue served me extremely well in a variety of ways, including in the classroom, even though people might not necessarily make that tie immediately.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
Yeah, so I actually was still in agriculture and I was in sales and marketing in the fertilizer business. And while I was at Chevron, a very large organization in that part of the business, doing sales and marketing, I found myself with opportunities. I was asked to and took opportunities to do some training of customers for customers, sales training for customers.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And as is often the case in organizations, once you do something and you do it well-ish, you might get other chances to do it, especially if you raise your hand. And so that sort of happened. And I started finding myself getting the chance to facilitate things and to be involved in training.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And so I moved myself in the direction of that to get myself into the training and development group at Chevron. Took some coursework, some master's coursework in adult learning and that sort of stuff. And it's during that time, like I went to work for Chevron without the intent of being there forever. My goal was to start a company. Of course, that is what I ended up doing.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And what I discovered over that several years was that doing the work of Training and speaking and developing others was really what I was put on the planet to do. And so after about eight years in corporate America, I left to start my company.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
I would say no one should do it the way I did it because I didn't do it well. First of all, when I started a long time ago, there weren't near as many that whole genre of coach. That didn't really exist, but there were certainly plenty of people that had gone out to do the kinds of things that I was doing. The first clients were all internal Chevron clients.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
So I left the company and I was working at the corporate level. And I was doing a number of projects for other parts, operating units, business units in the organization. And when I let them know that I was leaving, they asked me what I was doing. I told them what I was gonna do. And they said, we don't really want your replacement. We really want you.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And so I actually left with a bunch of work, which was great in the short term, but wasn't necessarily great in the longterm because it got me, first of all, it made the exit very easy in reality. But it postponed my need to really think about how do I market myself beyond those clients. And that's, I think, something that I've advised many folks over the years since.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
That you can't just do the work. You want to just do the work because that's why you started to do it. But you can't just do the work because. Because if you're not always marketing, you're going to have these cycles where you've got a lot of work and no work, a lot of work, no work. You really don't want that. You want something a lot more consistent and a lot more sustainable.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
So that was a life lesson, a business lesson that I suppose I knew back here, but that I learned much later than I might have learned when you first start like many do. Yeah, we certainly had cycles. And it was always my goal to get people to the point where they didn't need us.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
In other words, to work ourselves out of a job that we were then doing the work we were supposed to be doing if we were getting to the point where we weren't necessarily needed. And that's been sort of one of our core goals.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
competencies and kind of our core beliefs is that we want people to become self-sufficient and not to simply rely on us for the long haul, which strategically has led to times where like, how do we get a new piece of business somewhere else in that company or whatever?
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
But fundamentally, the approach of we want to develop you to the point where you don't need to rely on us as a crutch or in any sort of way has always been our approach.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
Sure. First of all, to stay on the marketing mode for just for a second, you're right. One of the best things that you can do, I've often said the best business card in the world is a book that's got your name on it. It doesn't necessarily mean you're smart, but it means people think you are. It's a part of our business strategy and for me as a thought leader to be writing.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And I write probably the equivalent of a couple of books a year just on our blog and for other people. But yes, there was the need for me to write a business reason to write another book. But that doesn't answer the question about this book and necessarily why this book at this time. It isn't necessarily. In some ways, it's a culmination of everything I've written to this point.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And yet it's not a sequel. It's not directly connected to anything I've written for. And in fact, I think it has some ideas in it that no one is quite elucidated in the way that I've done. And so I'm super excited about this book. I believe it's the best work I've done and I think hopefully can be the most impactful work I've done because.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
You know, I believe Vince is the best work I've done, and I think hopefully can be the most impactful work I've done. Because, you know, the subtitle of the book says, navigate uncertainty and lead with confidence. And certainly we're in a world that's more uncertain than ever. And so it's super important for us to think about that and acknowledge that.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And if the world is changing and uncertain... that means that we likely need to do something different as those things change. And I'm trying to give people a playbook to think a little bit differently about what they need to do to lead in and through that uncertainty.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
So that's a really good question. I think if you go back and you look at the fact that we wrote The Long Distance Leader in 2018, you'd say they were really smart because they didn't know, here comes COVID. And yet we wrote that on Facebook.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
because we knew that the trend of more people working away from each other more of the time was real and we wrote it because we had a bunch of experience in helping clients with those things we want to write i want to write from things that we no work. We have relevant experience working with clients on.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And as a business owner and leader myself, I'm always trying to make sure that what I'm sharing is relevant and is based on what I'm trying to accomplish myself as well. Our approach has Always we're thinking about what we think the trends might be.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And so after The Long Distance Leader came a couple other books in a series about long distance, that was maybe you could say at some level opportunistic. And yet we felt like it had a level of evergreen to it. And I think that's correct. But we've always been careful to write long.
Chief Change Officer
#331 Kevin Eikenberry: How Great Leaders Flex Without Losing Themselves — Part One
And I've tried to be very careful to write in ways that are timeless, rather than evergreen, to use your word, rather than timely, specifically. I happen to believe this new book is very timely, but I believe it will also stand the test of time.