Leaders can generally be categorized into one of two types: servant and authoritarian. We'll discuss what drives people to develop into each type of leader, the differences in their belief systems, and importantly, how their brain processes differ. The NeuroLeadership Institute has spent the last 25 years leveraging neuroscience to understand how to develop better leaders, and we do so with organizations in three impactful ways. In this episode, we'll walk through each, from specific customized pathways to a set of leadership principles, all of which are designed to scale and embed fast.
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Erin Wickham: Everyone welcome back to your brain at work. Live! I'll give us all a minute to get out of the waiting room and into the session.
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Erin Wickham: I see the numbers climbing as you join. If you are willing to share where you're calling in from in the chat. That is great. It's always nice to see where everyone is joining us from.
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Erin Wickham: Got Bethesda, Maryland, Boston. Excellent!
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Erin Wickham: All right. New York, Minneapolis.
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Erin Wickham: Johannesburg, Chicago. Excellent. Feel free to keep adding all of that information into the chat, and I will walk you through some housekeeping welcome back to another week of your brain at work. Live! I'm your host, Erin Wickham, Senior Director of Insight Design at the Neuro Leadership Institute. We're happy to have you back for our regulars and for newcomers. Welcome. We're excited to have you with us for the 1st time today in today's episode, we'll discuss 2 very different styles of leadership, authoritarian and servant.
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Erin Wickham: We'll discuss what drives people to develop into each type of leader the differences in their belief systems, and, most importantly, how their brain processes different
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Erin Wickham: are different. Now, as I quickly share some housekeeping, drop into the chat or the comments box on social and let us know where you're calling in from today.
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Erin Wickham: We suggest you put your phone on, do not disturb and quit any email or messaging apps so that you can get the most out of today's session. We love interaction so feel free to share your thoughts, comments, and questions in the chat. We'll pause as we go through and refer to what's happening in the chat as well
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Erin Wickham: as for our speakers today. Our 1st guest, you all know him well coined the term neural leadership when he co-founded Nli over 2 decades ago with a professional doctorate for successful books under his name, and a multitude of bylines ranging from the Harvard Business Review to the New York Times, and many more a warm welcome to our co-founder and CEO of the Neural Leadership Institute, Dr. David Rock. Thanks for being with us today, David. I know you're calling in from Denmark. It's very exciting.
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David Rock: Indeed, indeed, hoping to meet the Australian Queen at some point, but no luck so far. But thanks, Aaron, good to be here.
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Erin Wickham: Good to see you. And finally, our moderator holds a Phd. In neuroscience from New York University. She leads the research team at the Neuro Leadership Institute, where she focuses on translating cognitive and social neuroscience into actionable approaches for organizations. A warm welcome to our senior Director of Research at Mli. Dr. Emma Saro, hey, Emma.
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Emma Sarro: Hi, thanks, Erin. Hi, David, welcome back!
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Emma Sarro: Thanks. So we'd have a nice light conversation today, just, you know, close out the week with some just, frivolous, light thoughts and.
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David Rock: See what's going on in the world.
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Emma Sarro: Well, I think that was last week right? That was the humor episode that we posted. So if for anyone who missed it, you should definitely go on our podcast channel and listen to it. It was great, you and Ben Ghalieb, right.
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David Rock: Yeah, yeah. Actually, I'll put it in the I think this link works. We did an interview with a comedian fairly well known comedian, Ben Glee a couple of months back. We recorded it, and we finally got it out as a podcast and we put it in, we thought, a little bit of levity
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David Rock: this crazy time might be might be nice, but it's actually a fun session. We talked about the boundaries of humor where you shouldn't go as well as how you actually how you actually bring more humor in, and also, of course, its value, and why it's valuable and all that. So it's a fun session a little bit different for us. But if you want some levity, this weekend, that's a great one.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, yeah, I think it's important. I think we forget how how important it is for leaders to to bring humor. And you can still do it. You don't have to cross any lines, you can. You can do it well.
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Emma Sarro: A lot of self deprecation right.
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David Rock: Especially for Australians.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, that's right. So what are we talking about today?
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David Rock: You know we
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David Rock: I I guess I'm a little self serving sometimes with these sessions. It's like I I schedule these based on, or we schedule these based on things that kind of we want to unpack like things that we want to make sense of. And I think that you know, a lot of people, including myself, you know, trying to make sense of different things in the world at the moment. And is this really interesting sort of question about.
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David Rock: So you know, how do kind of more authoritarian leaders get in power, and why do they exist? And there must be something that's good about it, or they wouldn't exist. There's some some, you know, reason and what goes on in their brain, and just like trying to understand that versus, say, a servant leader, right? And there's these kind of 2 different types of leader.
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David Rock: We're not going to name names. But there's a you know. There's a i was hearing about the Danish Prime Minister at the moment who goes to the gym.
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David Rock: Normally, no bodyguards just hangs out and goes to the gym, and you know, in town here somewhere I don't know which gym. I'm not stalking her, but A Danish friend said, Yeah, she just goes to the gym and hangs out and showers with everyone else. And that's the Prime Minister right? And can you imagine that, like
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David Rock: happening in another country that will remain nameless. So you know, really different kind of leadership with really different kind of outcomes. But anyway, we so we were thinking about it. And I asked Emma to kind of dig into the the literature. In preparing for this, to sort of give us, give us all some increased clarity.
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David Rock: By the way, I am in Denmark. But this is apple juice in case you're wondering. Not beer.
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David Rock: So I guess. Yeah, I mean, the 1st thing is, define the 2 like, what did you find in the literature? And, as you know, as a head of research? Right? What did you find in the literature in terms of
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David Rock: It's in terms of the definition of the 2.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah. And I'll say, Elizabeth, we'll try to include as much humor as we can in this to increase the levity, because it can be distressing. But I think it's also important to understand how we can, you know, maybe shape our own leadership style, too. But yeah, these 2 very different leadership styles.
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David Rock: Yeah, I think I think that the purpose of today's session is actually to reduce the distress. So to gain some understanding, to gain some insight, so stay with us if you can.
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Emma Sarro: Right, absolutely. But yeah, authoritarian as you can imagine, they tend to lead by control and their authority. And so they kind of depend on and demand obedience. One interesting thing about how they like to lead is by centralizing their power right? Whereas servant leadership is totally a totally different drive. It's the drive is all based on their morals, moral based leadership, and they tend to prioritize others, needs of growth.
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Emma Sarro: and development, whether it's employees, customers, other stakeholders, and, you know, bringing ethical treatment in along the way.
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David Rock: Right. You reminded me of the whole field of distributed leadership. Right? There was a whole kind of
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David Rock: there's a big study of the concept of distributed leadership. A lot of it came out of Mit. We had some of the big researchers in that space at our summit years back and distributed leadership is, like, you know, really pushing leadership down into the organization. So there's not one bottleneck. There's hundreds of really smart, adaptive people responding, you know, really in real time to situations. And so the sort of theory is that the whole organization will
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David Rock: more adaptive if if there's lots of you know, if leadership is distributors. Whereas authoritarian leadership, it's like someone trying to control the decisions.
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David Rock: It's almost like the opposite of distributed leadership. What what does the science say? Like I was curious. And I was. I was asking about this
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David Rock: recently. I'm sure other people are curious. Is there some secret reason that these that authoritarian leadership exists like, is there? Does it actually create, like better shareholder value, that all of us are missing, or some kind of kind of financial benefit? That is non obvious. What do we know about that?
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Emma Sarro: Well, it's really interesting, because I mean, as you can imagine, if we dive into the benefits of servant leadership there, it's overwhelming, right? And that's clear. But I think in some conditions more authoritative leadership can kind of emerge. And maybe we should also define the fact. Authoritative leadership is one kind that's very power driven. But you can also be directive, maybe, and provide heavy guidance, which is still similar, but may not be leading with fear as.
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David Rock: Rowdy.
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Emma Sarro: Just being heavy in guidance. You can imagine that can be incredibly beneficial for some types of maybe larger teams or organizations where it's really task oriented work. But yeah, it seems that it's actually not as easy to find very direct relationships to financial gain. But in some cultures that's very traditional, and I think short term financial gains that that
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Emma Sarro: can be clear. But you might not really benefit from long term employees. So the turnover is relatively high. If you don't care about how long employees are there, you can maybe get some financial gain. And I think so. In some cases where economic uncertainty is high authoritarian leadership tends to emerge. So those are in some situations
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Emma Sarro: and also really interesting industry research. Looking at where in some cases where where individuals will tend to follow authoritarian leaders if they tend to trust them. If their behavior is, they trust their behavior, or if they're if they're dependent on them in any way.
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David Rock: There's no. So what you're saying, there's no evidence in this like financial literature that a more authoritarian leader is actually better for organizational performance. But there's lots that says that servant leadership is better. I think you. You mentioned recently some actual financial data that came out.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah.
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David Rock: There's a lot of data about creativity and engagement and employee, sentiment and turnover, and all of that for the servant leadership side. And recently, just recently, some financial data showing. It's also better. But nothing really on the other side, in terms of authoritarian interest.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I think it's it's less likely to find a very clear, and I think some of the research is a bit more recent for servant leadership. I think in general, studies of servant leadership are a bit more recent, and maybe those behaviors are a bit more recent. I can imagine authoritarian is a bit more traditional and more like very clearly hierarchical.
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Emma Sarro: So you can maybe see an emergence of this. And now you're you're actually seeing. Oh, there's evidence. And this one recent study showed a 6 6% revenue difference with organizations that had more servant leaders, servant leader behavior as opposed to others. So that's pretty. That's pretty impressive.
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David Rock: Yeah, interesting. There's probably a continuum here, right? And you can imagine there's a continuum, right? You got a sort of midpoint. You've got like servant leadership, you know, to the right and and kind of directive to the left, and then further on from directive is like authoritarian, like controlling, whereas directive is sort of maybe halfway between kind of neutral and
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David Rock: authoritarian, right? And then on the right hand side, you've got, you know, servant leadership. There's probably something further out from servant leadership that's like leadership by abdication, like just letting whatever happen. It's also not good, right? Too much freedom in a way. Right, too much control on one side, and kind of too much freedom like not setting clear objectives and not defining a future on the other. And you've got maybe servant kind of halfway, and on the other side, maybe directive halfway. There's probably a time for directive leadership. If you're in an industry
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David Rock: that everything's extremely well codified and kind of defined. And you actually don't really want people to innovate, do things differently or think for themselves. You just want them to follow your orders, and the leader knows exactly how things should go. Not just they think they know, but actually knows how they think it should go. You can imagine that a more directive
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David Rock: culture in that instance, in that kind of industry might be more efficient. People aren't going to be happier necessarily. Maybe it'll attract certain people. But I don't know that there's ever a role for authoritarian leadership where things in terms of you know the efficiency of a business. But anyway, I apologize. We're talking about extremely emotional, difficult things right now, in very dry terms. So that's kind of the point of the session to sort of try and unpack some of the things that are that are happening. I think there's some really interesting
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David Rock: science about kind of those 2 brains, though, if you, if you contrast, like servant, leader, brain. So the person who is a servant leader and the person who's authoritarian, there's some really interesting things to to kind of think about those those 2 brains. Where do you think we should start? I mean, there's there's a bunch of different topics we want to get into.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, so many. You can imagine where each of these different things, whether we're talking about growth, mindset or scarf, or anything where they might pick out. So let's talk about let's talk about growth mindset like, where does that that fit.
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David Rock: Yeah. Yeah. So I think you know, I think about certain industries that are like
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David Rock: star industries, like, like, the industry is based on star talent, like a certain kind of hedge fund, where you know individuals who make, you know, millions or billions of dollars, you know, for that business, right or ad agencies. You've got that incredibly creative person who, just, you know, produces the most outstanding work right? And it's been really interesting in those kinds of organizations
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David Rock: across. You know those industries and a couple of adjacent industries. There is much more of a kind of fixed mindset is that they're looking for star talent, and they're really like assessing talent all the time. And there's much more of a focus on buying in incredible talent. They don't focus as much on growing people.
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David Rock: You know, we we do not much work in that space because they're not that focused on growing talent. It's just kind of trying to find the very best people, and you know, and and get them going. And I think about that. And I think about the mindset of a CEO in that kind of place. It's like we've just got to. We've got to find an incredible talent and just sort of we don't really care about everyone else. I think it's a little bit of the mindset of an authoritarian leader that they are.
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David Rock: They've gone more of a fixed mindset. They're not believing people have potential right? They believe that there's a massive difference between top performers and and others. And they just, you know, and they think they're a top performer, obviously. And it's a fixed mindset of trying to look good
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David Rock: and trying to see who else is good. So there's not much of an interest in kind of helping people get better right? There's not much of an interest in human potential in that sense, whereas the servant leader is more of a growth mindset. They believe people have potential, and that potential should be nurtured
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David Rock: right? So now you're thinking about, you know, technology companies and all kinds of businesses. Really, you know most businesses will benefit from a growth mindset. And so I think that the servant leader really believes in people's potential wants to see them grow, believes people can get better. The more autocratic leader, authoritarian leader
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David Rock: doesn't think about people having potential doesn't even care that much about people just wants to get the job done and and I think I think there's a connection to this this piece of research we did years ago. I couldn't find it. It's gone off the web, but we wrote.
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Emma Sarro: We wrote a piece years ago called Why Organizations Fail.
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David Rock: And it was based on some research that we did with this really interesting assessment company. And basically
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David Rock: what what we did was we looked at.
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David Rock: we we looked at like 2 sets of of
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David Rock: of of competencies. There's there's competencies about goals and competencies, about people, right and
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David Rock: what what we just try not to go into too much detail. But essentially, this company had thousands and thousands of data sets about leaders that they'd collected over the years. They were, you know, long term leadership, Competency Assessment company. And we looked at their data. And what we found was that there were very, very, very few people
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David Rock: who had a set of goal focused competencies as well as a set of people focused competencies. And they were kind of unicorns. There's like a couple of percent of people and most leaders had very strong like getting things done, capabilities. And a smaller set had kind of, you know, thinking about people well, capabilities but very few had both.
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David Rock: And we looked at the brain research on this. And it turns out that when one of these these are 2 different networks in the brain. Thinking about
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David Rock: concepts activates a network of the brain. That's the same as thinking about your goals. That's the same as thinking about the future. That's the same as thinking very big picture. Right? So concepts big picture the future, maybe thinking about politics and the history of them, like really big picture stuff activates a certain network when that network activates. And I'm pointing to the outer region of my prefrontal. When that network activates, it actually turns off the network for thinking about people
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David Rock: and and what you have is a situation with a lot of like driven people in, say, in, say, law or engineers or accountants, or you know, other people. And I just described pretty much all the kind of leaders who run the world like those people spend a lot of time in goals in the future and in concepts.
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David Rock: and not a lot of time thinking about people. No. So thinking about people activates the medial prefrontal which
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David Rock: essentially you're thinking about people's motivations, which is their past and their goals, which is their future. And it's quite rote. It takes quite a lot of effort to think about both those things. Now you're trying to think about people's goals and motivations. And now you're trying to think about 10 or a hundred, or a thousand, or a million of them. It's very hard to hold in mind, right? And so you can't. You conceptualize them so, anyway, a long way of saying that. That a lot of leaders are, you know.
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David Rock: sort of very, very goal focused. And if they're very goal focused, they often just haven't spent much time thinking about people. It's not part of their network
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David Rock: anywhere near as much in the brain. There's only a few percent, you know, had both. And those people, by the way, were outstanding leaders. So in the results, the people who did have both were incredibly successful leaders beyond any others. What are your thoughts on that, Emma? What are your questions? There.
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Emma Sarro: That's coming up. I mean, I think I can imagine it being very easy, as individuals move up some kind of leadership hierarchy to begin to lose focus on those people goals right? Because you get just further and further away from those smaller goals around people. So you you almost need to continue to practice that shifting back and forth. And if it is
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Emma Sarro: very cognitive resource using, you can imagine that when when it gets overwhelming it's harder to continue to switch. So you can kind of see that there might be that might
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Emma Sarro: trigger some of that like emergence towards something that's a bit more goal focused or vision strategic.
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Emma Sarro: You do want leaders to think strategically as well. So how can you? How can you encourage that strategic thinking without being authoritarian. So how can you encourage both.
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David Rock: It doesn't.
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Emma Sarro: Behaviors. You would kind of need, like a good combination of both, or of switching.
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David Rock: I think I've got 2 hypotheses for what goes on. It's just kind of coming to me. I think I've got 2 hypotheses for what's going on in the mind of the authoritarian leader. Let's talk about that
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David Rock: that brain and sort of why, why do they get there right? What got what's going on. I think, firstly, that and I was just talking about this today at an event with a bunch of of thoughtful leaders here. But
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David Rock: as you go up in an organization, let's focus on organizations right? As you go up in an organization
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David Rock: from contributor to manager, manager to manager, manager, etc. As you go up you get these phase shifts right? A shift in in like a quantum difference in how much you have to think about right. So you get a big like, a lot of pressure on working memory, on self regulation. So how much like stress you're dealing with and on social cognition, which is how many people you have to think about.
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David Rock: Right? So you know, when you're first, st when you're an individual contributor, you got to think about your job. You got a certain amount of stress about that, and you got to think about a few people. Now you manage 10 employees. Now you got a lot more to think about. It's much more stressful. And you're a lot more people to understand.
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David Rock: And so working memory, self regulation and social cognition, those 3 things have really increased pressure as you go up in an organization. And I think partly what happens is you. You get to this point of just it feeling out of control
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David Rock: of, like you just feel out of control to a certain level of kind of seniority, a certain level of status. And you just you can't think well, you can't manage your emotions well, and you can't understand people. Well, what do you do when you feel out of control? Is you want to control right? When you feel no certainty, no autonomy, you're going to try and control everything. And and I think that's partly what what happens is sort of as you go up. There's a second half of this that relates to power.
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David Rock: And we actually studied this. And you're alluding to this. What you were just sharing, that there are these 3 things that happen even at low levels of power that are really really interesting. And we've written a bit about this. And this is even like, like in a study like, you know, get 6 people together and then choose randomly someone to be in charge and look at what happens to their brain as a result. And
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David Rock: some really specific things happen that are quite telling. And all of these 3 things are actually important for leadership, but have a dark side.
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David Rock: and as as the power becomes stronger that dark side can become stronger, so the the 1st one is that you? You stop thinking of people as people. And you start thinking of people using that conceptual network.
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David Rock: Right? So you you don't think of people with their motivations and goals. You think of them as kind of straw person concepts that you can move around right? So you depersonalize people when you think about them just because you have a bit more power. So that's 1 thing, right? So the second one is that you become very, very optimistic.
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David Rock: And you the extra power that you have actually produces the type of optimism in your brain that other people without that power don't have.
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David Rock: And so
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David Rock: so you don't notice risks as much. And so something else, something that someone else might say, that's a crazy risk you're like, no, it's going to be fine. It's going to be fine, right? Because your brain is just attuned to the positive, and it takes a lot more to bring you down from that.
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David Rock: And the 3rd one
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David Rock: is interesting one, and you alluded to it. It's construal level, or sort of the level at which you're thinking.
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David Rock: And what happens is you give people a little more power, and they start lifting their thinking to a more abstract level. Right? So they're able to think in about really complicated things more easily by simplifying them up to chunk level
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David Rock: and and so they don't think about details as much right. They're thinking about sort of big picture, right. So so 3 things they don't think about people. Well, they don't think about risk. Well, well or not. Well, they just. They just don't notice risks as much. And they don't process details right? They stay very high level. So those 3 things are actually necessary to lead.
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David Rock: But they have a dark side, especially with a lot of power. And I think there's probably a combination, you know, without anchoring on any one person. It's very a combination, you know, when people are given a lot of power, and you know their brains can just really be overwhelmed, and they feel like they have to control everything to offset that threat right? And then, secondly, you've got this mechanism of just not thinking well about people risk or details. So that's yeah. What are your thoughts, Emma?
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Emma Sarro: A lot. A lot is coming up. I mean one. I think maybe this is somewhat speaking to why, they sometimes are successful, and we talk about taking the need to take risk need to mitigate our safety bias to take risk, for instance. So if they're more willing to take a risk. Maybe maybe that's why. Sometimes they are successful because they take that risk.
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Emma Sarro: And if they're better at seeing that vision level, we often talk about that as really being great for reaching your goals. So it's interesting that sometimes those behaviors, they might actually help an individual reach their goals. But in the process they're not looking at the details of who is in the way, or also what other things that they're taking a risk. What other things to think about. So it's interesting that some of
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Emma Sarro: those characteristics might actually help an individual reach their goals. And maybe that is one of the reasons why in some cases they can be successful. It doesn't mean that they'll keep their employees or engage their employees, but maybe they'll be able to reach certain goals.
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David Rock: Right. But I mean, certainly there are industries and individual companies as well, where there's an abundance of talent, and people being unhappy. Working in your organization doesn't matter to you as the leader on one level, because there's 2,000, you know, highly qualified people for every open job. So you don't really care about losing people, so you'll act really differently as a leader
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David Rock: in that situation than a leader where there's a huge war for talent, and they just, you know, it's really hard to find qualified employees for important roles. So you can imagine different kinds of leaders could also emerge from those 2 different cultures. And then also the culture where everything's super well defined, it's going to be much more tempting to be that authoritarian leader versus a culture where people need to create innovate locally.
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David Rock: You know. You'll you'll see that happen. And I I think a lot of companies are shifting from one to the other, like the Microsoft transition from just, you know, selling licenses to having to innovate
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David Rock: for a decade or so. There's a story about Microsoft's lost decade for a decade or so when Steve Ballmer was running things he was really driving, driving, driving. I wouldn't call him an authoritarian leader necessarily, but he was. He was very directive, and in that time they missed.
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David Rock: you know, search and mobile and social, and you know, huge numbers of important things they missed. And then satin. Zilla came in. He's a classic servant leader, and they started to innovate much more. And then, you know, now they've been incredibly successful in the 10 years since his time. So I think outside conditions could support a very directive leader at certain times, and then the conditions change.
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David Rock: Company needs to be much more creative, innovative, adaptive. And that authoritarian leader probably doesn't work well.
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David Rock: So it might work for short term performance, but for innovation and long term, I think there's going to be a problem.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I completely agree. I think that the need for innovation and the need to be creative when we talk about this, this is only increasing, I think, more and more. That authoritative leader might not actually gain as much success because of the need to be competitive. So we talked about, you know, hiring you mentioned that they might have more of a fixed mindset. So they're going to hire individuals that are the best in their skill set. But
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Emma Sarro: but but just by doing that you're you're also fixing how far they'll necessarily go, whereas hiring individuals with potential embedding a growth mindset in them you'll actually gain better performance over long term.
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David Rock: Over long term. Yeah, let's let's think about the 2 brains from a scarf perspective for a minute. I think that's going to be helpful, and I think that you know we talked a bit about this already, that the authoritarian leader is feeling overwhelmed. So they're feeling not much certainty and a drop in autonomy feeling out of control. And so they're trying to maximize their sense of autonomy. They're trying to maximize control so that the more out of control, they feel the more they try to control the environment. And
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David Rock: that's also going to help them increase their sense of status. So controlling people is going to increase your sense of status, and it's not going to do. And it's going to increase your sense of certainty as well. So you know, trying to control really tightly is going to increase status, certainty, autonomy probably neutral on relatedness, and probably neutral on fairness. You're getting, you know, a bump from 3 positives, which is interesting. What about the servant leader?
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David Rock: You could imagine the servant leader. Maybe their status. You don't get a status bump. Maybe they're they're helping other people's status rise like they're literally just do they get a status threat, you think? What do you think? What do you think.
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Emma Sarro: No, you know, I actually think that I mean, if if status is a sense of value, I mean, maybe that goes along with a sense of relatedness and fairness. Right? I mean, they feel valued by being part of the group, by being loved by their their employees. They want that strong sense of relatedness, and they feel a very strong sense of fairness. Right.
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David Rock: Yeah. Yeah. So they're they're definitely getting a big bump from relatedness, right? And they get their feeling, you know, like they're feeling the connections with people. They're getting joy of seeing people grow and learn and improve. So, getting a big bump in relatedness, they probably get a bump in status from that over time, and I think what's interesting is they do over time, get a greater sense of certainty and autonomy. As people grow and improve.
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David Rock: it is more of a coaching style of helping people get better as a servant leader. And so, as you see people growing and improving, you have less and less pressure on you. So you actually feel more certainty, more autonomy, probably more religious in that way. So you know, interesting. I see lots of questions and comments coming in. We'll actually jump to them in a minute, I think.
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David Rock: there's some. There's some good questions. Maybe Emma, have a look at those, but I think there's there's you know. Interesting question from Laura, you know. Does authoritarian leadership ever end? Well, what I can say is, there are certain conditions in which people appreciate or people feel like they appreciate, a more authoritarian leader.
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David Rock: And that's when like things feel completely crazy. And there's examples throughout history of, you know, when sort of the world's on fire they want that strong leader to come in, and, you know, take control. And so it could be, you know, in a wartime it could be. You know, there's definitely research that you know, wartime people want a really strong directive leader when there's yeah. September 11.th Absolutely. So when you know, when we feel under attack.
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David Rock: when when things just feel completely out of control, there's definitely a tendency to prefer that kind of leader that's happened. Now, does that make that a better leader in that situation? I'm not so sure that there's no evidence of that. But that's certainly when those leaders tend to come in. And so there is a history, you know, there's a history throughout history of people creating chaos and then coming in and
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David Rock: being the Savior, being the strong person to save everyone from the chaos that they just created. It's sort of like an arsonist, you know, putting out fires and being the hero. So there is. There is a
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David Rock: there, you know. There's definitely a little bit of that. I mean, we're talking the continuum we're talking about is like authoritarian, you know, directive versus neutral. And then, you know, servant leader versus sort of abdicated leader on the other side. So not not authoritative, but authoritarian. As a as a sort of example, there.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, you know, what's coming up interestingly, is just this idea of like, how long either one can, essentially, because each of them are going to hit roadblocks right? If you are more authoritarian at some point, you're going to lose control, or you won't be competitive with that organization. That's more creative than you. Right? You're a fixed mindset. You won't be able to grow, whereas the servant leader is going to be overwhelmed by
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Emma Sarro: by having that empathetic approach right that can be overwhelming. You are serving your employees by considering all of their growth and all of their needs, so that can also be incredibly overwhelming. Right? So can you imagine that over time one of them just might lead to some kind of burnout.
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David Rock: Yeah, yeah, I think it can be. It can be really overwhelming. Yeah, it's a.
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David Rock: it's. It's an interesting, interesting challenge. You? You asked a really big question.
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David Rock: you asked a really big question when we were sort of briefing for this. I think everyone's probably interested, which is is, how do you change from, you know? Can you change people from one to the other? And can people change from one to the other? Right? It's a really interesting question, and I think, firstly, the question has to be, do people sometimes change from one to the other?
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David Rock: And and the answer to that is, yes.
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David Rock: so people do sometimes change from one to the other. I'm reminded of
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David Rock: remind you of Sarah Matthew, who at the time this was some years ago it was 2,000, and
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David Rock: before 2010, sometime she was the CEO of Dun and Bradstreet. At the time she was incredibly incredibly intelligent. One of the smartest people ever meet. Very powerful woman.
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David Rock: and she was very, very, very directive now. She was actually, very, very successful. She had been, you know, incredibly successful career. She was running a very successful company. She was doing well.
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David Rock: and she was just very frustrated all the time with people. She felt like people wouldn't answer questions. People wouldn't kind of challenge. Her. People weren't listening to her. And in her meetings with her team I think I had 5 or 6,000 people at a time in meetings with her senior team. She was struggling, and she read one of the original pieces we wrote about scarf back in. I think it was like 2,008 or 2010 somewhere there.
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David Rock: And she wrote to me and said, Hey, I need to talk to you about this. Could you come and see me? And I was at the time. I thought it was great compliment, and I went out to see her out in New Jersey somewhere, and we sat down, and she said she was. She was kind of pale. She said. I've had the strangest insight from reading this paper, and I need to understand if if I'm right or what's going on, she said, like
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David Rock: I didn't realize that by virtue of my higher status, that when I question people, it puts them in a complete threat state.
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David Rock: and that that's why people don't say anything, and they just hide things from me, and I can't seem to like debate with anyone she was like. Is that right? Or what's going on here? And we had this big conversation. It's very powerful conversation, and she actually decided in that meeting to change her leadership style. And she said, Wow, I didn't realize I was making people less intelligent.
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David Rock: That was literally the phrase, she said. I didn't realize I was actually making people less intelligent. I want all their smarts like by actually by accidentally creating even worse status threats than they already feel.
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David Rock: I was just helping them make worse decisions. So she said, I'm going to address this. And she literally changed her style, and she went on the next year to literally create the most value out of all the fortune. 500 Ceos, and she won an award for the most value, creating CEO of the year with this new style. So she was already doing really well.
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David Rock: But she just realized that she was being very directive, very authoritarian, you know, challenging people like the Bill Gates style in meetings early Microsoft days of just challenging people and challenging people very directive, very controlling. And she just didn't understand the threat that that created and the damage that they did. So. You know, that's 1 story. There's many, many stories I've witnessed thousands of people in different leadership programs firsthand, you know, come back kind of pale and go. Wow! I had no idea I was
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David Rock: accidentally working harder than I needed to by trying to control everything, and by letting go a bit and trusting and and believing in people, and, and, you know, still give them clear direction, but letting go a bit, I actually have to work less hard. I don't have to solve everything, and they come back kind of anxious and disorientated about that. But I haven't made that happen. I haven't forced that right. We've created some conditions where they've had their own insights.
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David Rock: That insight's been a level 5
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David Rock: right on the Eureka scale. It's a big, big insight. So so I do think leaders change
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David Rock: I do think leaders change, but they change when they have some really, really big insight, and it's very unlikely that they do that under an incredible amount of pressure. It's when they
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David Rock: or maybe that it can happen, but it it definitely can happen. And if you ask me what makes it happen, I'm going to say a moment of insight, and in particular, where they see that they could be more effective as a leader with a different style. So not necessarily that there's something wrong with them. But like wow! I could be even more effective if I adopted this new style. That's kind of what I see.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think if if you relate that with their ultimate with their goal for, like focused right, they're like higher goal focus. If they realize that the way that they interact with their teams, if they change that, they'll actually reach their goals better, they'll engage their teams better, which will have better outcomes for them. They can actually see the benefit of changing their style. And I think a lot of the
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Emma Sarro: comments in the chat are really interesting around the the need for flexibility. Right? I mean, you would agree that in some cases there does need to be some flexibility right, and to be able to be aware of when certain types of styles, maybe more, maybe more, leading with guidance as opposed to leading with fear, is necessary versus, you know, enabling creativity and autonomy on your team.
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David Rock: Yeah, I mean, I think the ideal style is adaptive between directive and servant. Right? There are times you should be directive, you know, even in just, you know, there's definitely times you should be quite directive, and times you should be, you know, very much servant leadership. Right? I don't think there's a role for authoritarian leader in a healthy organization. I think it does significantly decrease psychological safety. And the authoritarian style
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David Rock: of leadership is the is the sort of culprit that reduces psychological safety and has people leave. Let's go on a tangent. Let's have some fun. What kind of leadership style do I have? Emma?
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Emma Sarro: Oh, no! You're putting me on the spot.
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David Rock: Absolutely totally not brief.
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Emma Sarro: Hi.
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David Rock: Discuss.
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Emma Sarro: Everyone from analyze listening to. I think that I think you do. You have flexibility. I think you definitely provide a lot of autonomy, and you, you enable creativity. So I think that in that case, and you're you're relatively empathetic, too. I can.
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David Rock: I'll take that. I'll take that.
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David Rock: I know I can be directive at times. I'll I'll come back from like some time away, and I'll come back with 12 different ideas. I want to drive. And and sometimes when I drive those ideas, they actually happen much better. I do notice that. So sometimes, being like super directive, and just like things for a minute. But I'll do that for like a week of like we got to get this thing done, and we'll do that, and then we'll kind of loosen up again.
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David Rock: And then it was sort of like doing a push through on something and an example recently was the the Dei Now Series. I was like, we've got to do something. It you know. I came back from some time off, and I realized, like we should be doing a lot more on Dei and dreamed up that we should do a you know, much more solution focused series on
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David Rock: what we actually have in Dei, because we we had the insight a decade ago about the right way to do Dei, which was not how everyone else was doing it. And then we're being really shy about sharing that in this time. And we always said even a decade ago, we said, Hey, don't do inclusion programs that have anyone feel excluded because you're going to get backlash. And we've been doing that differently. So I came back and said, Let's
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David Rock: let's do something different. And we we did a huddle. We did an intense thing, and I was definitely super directive, but then I chilled out afterwards, and it rolled out so hopefully. I'm a balance.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I can see that you definitely jump in and and provide guidance. Given your experience. And then you and then you allow teams to to innovate and be creative.
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David Rock: Yeah, yeah, I don't.
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Emma Sarro: 10 years.
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David Rock: Controlling is that I, I can barely control myself, controlling everyone else, is a terrible idea.
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Emma Sarro: Like.
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David Rock: Trying to control every little thing it would just it would just be too much work. I can't possibly control everything. You've got to let go.
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David Rock: You know, and this is a team of 200 or so, trying to manage 2,000 or 200,000, or whatever like. How do you control? And so I think it's quite delusional to imagine that you can control large numbers of people and everything having to go through you because you also just don't know context of the decision. So the distributed leadership is a really interesting body of knowledge, and some really good good academic research was done on the benefits of distributed leadership. And a lot of it is just people closer to the issues
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David Rock: make better decisions if they're empowered. Whereas people further away. Controlling things make worse decisions in that way. So I wasn't. I wasn't fishing for compliments. I was just thought we a bit lighthearted to actually ask that sorry.
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Emma Sarro: Jessica, you could have prepped me a little bit. You know it was coming up a bit. Is the the need to be able to delegate. Well, too, it seems that if you, if you tend to swing in the direction of being a bit more authoritarian, you likely have a difficult time delegating, because no one is able to do the work as well as you. Maybe, if that's the if that's the mindset.
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David Rock: Well, you, you dictate in it. You you, you delegate! Did, I say, dictate you delegate, in a very
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David Rock: specific way, which is more dictator, dictator. So you're very, very specific. You're micromanaging, and you're really angry if people miss the mark at all. So you you're dictating like not just the outcome. But the process, like you've got to do it this way. So with an authoritarian style, the way you'll delegate is kind of micromanaging right? And then fear so. It's punitive accountability. In that in that side, whereas the way you should delegate as a servant leader is, you should delegate
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David Rock: in a way that people are really clear on the outcome, but
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David Rock: flexible on the process. So you should delegate there, and we've done a lot of work on accountability. And I think to my mind, like punitive accountability sounds like authoritarian accountability, right? And proactive. Accountability sounds like
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David Rock: sounds like servant leader accountability. We've done some really interesting work on what those habits are. And in fact, I just did this at lunch today. I've asked like hundreds and hundreds of people. Now, how many folks. Can you completely count on to do what they say? And it's always a 1 hand. Answer that people. It's always been less than 5 people have less than 5
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David Rock: folks around them that they can fully fully count on. And then the question became.
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David Rock: What are the qualities of those people? And it it turns out there are some very specific habits that they have.
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David Rock: That we, you know, we built into a solution. But I think there's a way of delegating. That is more, that proactive accountability where you're being really clear about outcomes, but letting people have flexibility on the process. But you're also like continuing to remind them of the goal of things. And you, you know, you're continuing to learn as well. So I think there's a interesting connection to accountability, to growth mindset all of this. Should we take some questions? We've got about 10 more minutes. What questions out for you?
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Emma Sarro: Yeah. And I think we can. Also, I I know that one of our team members in the back is going to want us to drop the the poll in the chat.
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David Rock: Don't we do that? Now? Yeah, just throw the poll in the chat. And we haven't been talking enough about lead leads are incredible. 6 month digital solution that includes our AI called Niles. That'll help you like many times every day. Be a better manager, leader, parent, partner. Anything but lead is a really powerful program
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David Rock: for just like digging into all our science. And it's a 6 month digital experience. I'm not sure it's even in the poll. But it's an educational program for yourself. So it's available to individuals to get in and try. So you'll learn all about managing yourself, managing your brain.
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David Rock: mobilizing other people, leading teams, driving results. All that so lead is available for individual contributors to get in and check out. Maybe my team can put a link in the chat to explore lead doesn't have a lot about. Thanks. Tony doesn't have a lot about
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David Rock: servant and authoritarian leadership in it, but it does have a lot about how to manage your own brain to be a better servant leader. It definitely doesn't teach you to be an authoritarian leader. It teaches you to be a servant leader. It teaches you to create psychological safety and do it all with a growth mindset and but also create accountability. So that's something to think about as an individual option there as well. Thanks. Des, yeah. So what questions are coming up in the chat for you?
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I mean a lot of great comments in the chat. You know. One thing that Eric brought up is this idea of the return to office debate, which I think is an interesting thing to bring up, for you meant you were talking about the loss of control. So I wonder, do you imagine there being any kind of connection between individuals taking on a more authoritarian behavior? Or maybe those types of leaders are going to be the ones that need to get individuals back in the office.
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David Rock: Yeah, yeah, I mean the whole back to the office thing is, you know, still a dilemma for a lot of companies. And you know as as a leader when people are not in the office, it's a threat to your status and certainty and autonomy and relatedness. And if you're there, fairness. So it's quite threatening to the leader.
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David Rock: If people are not there a lot, they're literally uncomfortable, imagining how much more powerful they'd feel how much more connected, they'd feel how much more certain they'd feel how much more in control they'd feel like if everyone was there. Right? So the leaders experiencing a threat, the employees kind of being brought back. Experience a big threat to their status, especially if they're just being more productive at home and a big threat to autonomy, and the autonomy is interesting because it's across their whole life.
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David Rock: And and I think what what you'll see is that that requiring people back into the office can work just fine in terms of a company's numbers. If you have huge numbers of people for every open job.
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David Rock: right? Because you'll just skew to the people who live closer to your office. You'll skew to the people who, who, you know, are fine to be in an office 5 days a week that won't be working parents as much, or parents with young children. It won't be people further away which tends to be more diverse populations, but you know you'll fill seats, and you will feel more certain and more in control, and all those things as the leader. But you know the employees being forced back. Big big drop in status big drop in autonomy.
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David Rock: And that autonomy, of course, is control over not just when you work, but your exercise and your health and your well-being, and your parenting, and all those things. So it sort of feels like, you know, it sort of feels so much better to lead it. But most of the companies, or a lot of the companies kind of requiring that have either done so fully in the knowledge they're going to lose a lot of people and actually wanted to lose a lot of people.
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David Rock: or or they've got unending amounts of, you know, never ending amounts of employees either way, that are certain. They don't mind very few companies kind of in a war for talent, said, Hey, you're all back in the office. It's just just not happening. The mandates are always in air quotes. We put in a mandate that you need to be back. But no, they didn't.
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Emma Sarro: Oh, interesting, I wonder? So we had a question in the chat around the growing. Do you feel that there might be a growing appeal for authoritarian leadership, maybe in certain countries right now. And do you think that's maybe due to kind of a misunderstanding of what happens in cases of power, like a misunderstanding of power in general.
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David Rock: Yeah, I mean, there's a you know, we can get in some deep philosophical debates. But there, there are people, you know. Some of this stuff comes down to kind of people's foundational beliefs about humans. You know there, there are folks that
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David Rock: that there are folks who believe that democracy is a bad idea that leaving things to the masses is not going to be as effective as one person with good ideas in charge. Right? There are people who believe that, and there's no talking them out of that. And there's not necessarily a way to unpack. Why, they believe that it's just what their belief is, there are other people that believe that
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David Rock: you know that things should be democratic, and people should vote. And we should, you know, agree. And there's a big element of autonomy and fairness in that whole conversation. Right? It feels fair to vote. People in it feels like you've got some control right where those things are taken away. But what happens is, I think, when the outside world becomes very uncertain, people are more willing to accept that you know. Kind of strong one voice.
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David Rock: This is a theme we've seen throughout history, and and this is not the 1st time in history that we've seen this as many, many times like repeated over thousands of years, that a strong individual will come along when times are really uncertain and try to take control.
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David Rock: and and sometimes that, as I said, that person creates that, you know, uncertainty.
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David Rock: and a lot of people will appreciate the clarity that comes from that person, even though it's costing, and they sort of discount the downsides and all that. So it's happened a lot through history. It doesn't mean it's a good thing it's often come at the cost of huge numbers of lives and progress. You know human progress and cause, you know, a huge amount of pain. And I think one of the real challenges is that amount of power
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David Rock: does make you not think well about people does make you not think well about risk does make you not think well about details, and has you make decisions further away from the people. Those decisions affect right? That makes you not as effective as a more distributed model. But you know, we're up against people's fundamental beliefs about the way the world should be run. And wow! Those things can get argumentative, and people are willing to fight and die for those beliefs, so
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David Rock: I don't want to get too close to all that. But I'll just say that's, you know, very, very foundational beliefs in you know, in that's driving some of this.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, yeah, really interesting. I mean, we. We will be talking about difficult conversations, which is kind of what this this kind of conversation could could lead to next week. But you know something that's coming up in the chat a little bit is just the difference between men and women, and I don't know the answer to whether, and I have maybe a prediction that you know, women might tend to embrace more of a servant type of leadership, but we had a conversation
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Emma Sarro: a couple weeks ago around women leaders right, and the the characteristics that they brought to their leadership.
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David Rock: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I haven't looked at the data on this. If I think of the authoritarian leaders, I don't think of many females in there. I can think of quite a few males, you know, pretty quickly, you know, Margaret Thatcher. Maybe in Britain, you know, in the seventies and eighties. But there's not a lot, whereas you see a lot more males. So you'd imagine it's more skewed towards, you know, towards men in there.
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David Rock: I think that's that's a big thing, you know. The one thing I'll say is is, you know, particularly for everyone who's feeling a little overwhelmed. It's, you know, an authoritarian leader wants you to feel overwhelmed.
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David Rock: They want you to feel overwhelmed, so that they become the source of safety.
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David Rock: and what I would say is, keep your rational brain working, doing whatever that takes. And it feels like we're almost back to the early pandemic levels of stress, certainly for some people. And we've got to manage our sleep well and get those walking meetings in every day. So we're
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David Rock: getting the cortisol out of our system, so we can just stay calm and authority. Authoritarian leader wants you to be overwhelmed, wants you to be super anxious, and then they want to come in and solve it all, and you know the it's really important to as best you can to not fall into that cycle and maintain a, you know. Calm even thing. Certainly, if you run a family or you run a team or you run a company.
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David Rock: Then you want to keep a clear. Mind you're going to make the best decisions, not at level 2 or level. 3 threat, but at a slight towards state, you know, slightly open. And what I'm hoping with today's session is, we just kind of see the rational rationally. See the landscape a bit more to sort of calm the brain a bit, and see what's going on, and kind of lift up a bit, and that, you know, we're in a cycle. That's happened a lot. It's not to say
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David Rock: don't take action.
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David Rock: If that's what feels appropriate to you should do that, but I think you know, do our best we should. We all got to do our best to keep our minds calm in this time to, you know, to make the kinds of decisions, especially if we're stewards of people and families and organizations. So
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David Rock: it's it's an important thing. So, Emma, I think I'll hand back to you to close off. I think that's about all I got to say today.
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Emma Sarro: Yeah, I think we had a great discussion. I loved all the chat. And yeah, definitely an interesting one. I think we could continue talking about all the different styles of leadership definitely interesting. It's thought provoking, and much more to talk about here, and much more to research. So thank you all for joining us next week. We talk about difficult conversations, so we bring up that
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Emma Sarro: it's a continuous theme that we hear from our clients and people that we work with is, how do we have these difficult conversations? They're coming up. They continue to come up, and there is a science to it. So please join us next week, and I will hand back over to Erin.
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Emma Sarro: Thanks, all.
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David Rock: Thanks, Emma. Great job. Thanks everyone. Bye-bye.
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Erin Wickham: Unmute. I'll start over again. Thank you, Emma, and thank you, David. That was a great conversation. We appreciate both your time and everyone who is able to join us today. If you haven't already. Please take a look at our poll, which should be up on your screen and let us know how Nli can help you in the future. The poll will stay up while I do some closing announcements.
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Erin Wickham: We are 2 weeks into our 5 week. De and I, Webinar Series, where we will share in 30 min the right way to approach de. And I. Today we have upcoming this week lift psychological safety today, and then next week, the right way to build a business case for De and I. Those links should be in the chat, and we welcome all of you to join us for those.
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Erin Wickham: And if you enjoyed today's conversation, you'll love our podcast so make sure, you subscribe. You can hear past your brain at work lives for webinars on demand wherever you get your favorite podcasts. This is where we officially say goodbye for this week on behalf of today's guests and everyone working behind the scenes. Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you same time next week.