72. Leadership Skills Every Entrepreneur Needs to Succeed

0:00It's actually never been a more exciting time for someone who is keen to lead. I mean, companies are looking for leadership. They are keen to develop the next pipeline. They're investing in you. If you want to lead, like you've also never had more access to resources. So it's a great time for you to move into leadership. Since 1988, the Humphrey Group has helped entrepreneurs and businesses develop a more inclusive approach to leadership built around inspiring communication. 30 years later, they've worked with leaders in 20 countries and helped countless executives become inspiring leaders. I'm your host, Alex Freeman.

0:35And on today's episode, I'm talking to Bart Agnum, who's been with Humphrey Group since 2001. His decades of experience in leadership communication training have given him deep insights into what effective leadership development looks like in today's business landscape. And he's sharing those insights with our listeners in this interview. Bart, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me, Alex. And I have to say, it's great to be on the other side of the mic. So often I'm the one doing the intro and recording for the Inspire podcast. I've really enjoyed this opportunity to sit in the other side of the chair.

1:05So thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. Enjoy the seat over there. To get us started, can you kind of just give us an overview of the Humphrey Group, what it does, and then how you came to be involved in the business? Sure. Yeah. And I think you set the stage well. The firm has been around since 1987. Always our focus has been on building the skills that sit at the intersection of leadership and communication. And what does that mean? It means whatever you do, if you want to be successful, you've got to move people, you've got to inspire them to act. And the way that you do that is through how you communicate your ideas.

1:37And so we think that's not a skill that's innate. It's something you can learn, develop and nurture. And we teach people how to do that. So that's today. The business still is at the core of what we did and what we do. The skills that we work on have broadened. We've also really gotten well-earned reputation in diversity, equity, inclusion space. And it's a business that spans North America. We work globally. there's about between our employees and contractors over 50 people involved and I'm proud to lead it. Incredible. So one of the terms that I think we're going to throw around a lot throughout this interview is along the lines of exceptional business leadership.

2:08Could you go ahead and offer us a definition of that and what that might look like in action to kind of frame the rest of our conversation? Well, I think you ask every guest on this podcast, what is exceptional business leadership? I'm sure you get a whole host of different answers, which probably why it's a great question to start with. So I should qualify that my expertise and the focus of the work that I do is a quality, I believe, is essential in leadership. And that is, can you move people? Can you inspire them to act? And so what does that look like in action? It's a wide range. If you're a sales leader, it's can you inspire your sales team to bring their best?

2:42If it's you're a CEO, can you unite a whole organization? People have very disparate priorities behind a vision. And if you're just starting your career, it's, hey, can you convince someone in an organization that an idea that you have is worth investing in or that position you want is one that they believe in you for? So I think whatever the role, leadership is that ability to move people and inspire them to believe in you and follow you. So that's where I'll put my stake in the ground. And I kind of want to take a look at the flip side of that. Bad leader is a clunky phrase, but what makes an ineffective leader and what do those qualities look like?

3:17Yeah, and I've been fortunate to be in the world of leadership development for over two decades. And my answers really change. I mean, when I started in 01, I started as a speech writer, I was writing for CEOs and then became a coach and built out training for organizations. I would say that the view of leadership, it was very clear what was good leadership and what was not. And good leadership was very much personified by someone like Jack Welch, you know, he ran GE for many years. At the time, he was perceived to be incredibly successful executive. History maybe shows that there was some manipulation of the results, but it was, frankly, it was a command and control, totally confident leader, always on, always corporate, gave the direction, never a doubt, you know, and it was also, by the way, I should say, usually a white man, a middle-aged or older white men.

4:02And I would say now the view of what effectiveness is, that is much less monolithic. I think we've come, particularly in the last five years, to a place where terms that are synonymous with ineffective are directive, are never wrong, are always on professionalism. And the flip side is we want people who are authentic, who are human, who represent a diversity of perspectives, who are inclusive. So I think bad increasingly is anyone who does not bring themselves, their authenticity and whatever perspective that they have to leadership and people reject that now. So I would say that if you're not being yourself, if you're separating who you are as a person from the work that you're doing, you're probably not going to be as effective as you need to be.

4:45One of the main things that the Humphrey group emphasizes is communication. Why is effective communication absolutely critical for a business leader? Well, this may sound obvious, but nothing gets done without communication. Nothing. Whatever business you're in, I know you have a wide range of audiences here, you will not be successful if you don't communicate. And whether that's verbal communication, whether that's written communication, whether it's the content you produce, nothing happens without communication. And I think, you know, that the imperative to communicate effectively has only intensified.

5:17You know, when I started, the cadence of communication was slow. Executives might give a town hall once a quarter. There might be a letter that went out. You know, then email kind of started percolating. But today, I mean, the frequency is just on overdrive. The clients we work with, it's, okay, I have a town hall, then I have meetings all day, then I have to be on Slack, then I have to produce content, then I'm on a podcast. The number of interactions for people at all level presents both a great stress and an opportunity like never before. So nothing gets done through communication and it's become even more critical that you're good at it.

5:50Are there any easy do's and don'ts of leadership communication that you could run us through? Sure. Just take all of our courses and it'll be... Yeah, that's it. You'll be sick. No, I mean, I think, look, do's and don'ts. Rather than kind of giving you a few prescriptive points, I think it's best to think in terms of a couple principles. And I think the first thing I would say when people come to work with us, the first thing that we emphasize is you need to be intentional about your communication. And what I mean by that is most people just show up, you know, the worst is show up and throw up.

6:22You know, you go to a meeting and just talk. But even when people think about, oh, yeah, I'm going to talk about this topic, you really need to shift to saying, all right, what role as a leader will influence and leadership play in my success? And how does communication be a part of that? So I think that's the first thing you have to do. I think the second thing you have to do is you really do have to put time in to organizing your thinking ahead of communication. You listen to people who sound great and you're like, oh, they're naturals. They're naturals. Well, they probably work unnaturally hard to get clarity of thinking so that they sound natural.

6:59And I'm honest with my clients because they're incredibly busy. I was coaching a CFO the other day and literally he has two 90 minute windows a week where he's not scheduled. And I said to him, look, you're not going to prepare for every meeting because not every meeting is of the same relevance. But each week I want you to set aside just 30 minutes. I want you to identify the most significant impact, audience and opportunity that you have. And I want you to get your thinking straight on it so that when you're in the moment, you can be as effective as possible. So that's the second point. And I'll give you one last one, which is you want to think about when you prepare that communication, moving from what I'd call information to inspiration.

7:34And what I mean by that is most people communicate content. They communicate expertise and knowledge about a topic, particularly as they're starting their careers, where they're establishing themselves as credible subject matter experts. And then they begin to move up. And success is no longer about what you know. It's about your ability to synthesize and articulate ideas that are clear and move people to action. And so you need to be thinking about preparing your communication, not in terms of what you want to talk about, but the ideas that you believe in that you want the audience to have. So those are my three principles for making an impact on your communication.

8:04I want to focus in a little bit on that person you just mentioned. That's a person who's sort of at the beginning of their career. For the young professional who wants to move into those leadership positions, what are the best ways for them to get started proving themselves as an effective leader and to start moving into those opportunities as they present themselves? Yeah, I think we're in a time now where it's never been a better time in some respects to be an early career professional because advancement is quicker. We're in one of the tightest labor markets I've ever seen. We know labor mobility has never been higher.

8:35And so the top three concerns of CEOs now are attracting talent, retaining talent, and preparing for demographic shifts. Number four is digital transformation. Number five is a recession. So what that means is if you're a strong performer, you have the opportunity to move into leadership earlier than you probably ever have. So how do you do that? Well, first, you got to deliver results. You have to earn the right. Put aside communication. Earning the right to be considered for leadership starts with delivering results. And early in your career, you're just going to have to put the work in. I mean, every industry, I work across all industries, you have hard work and expertise built up.

9:10I'm thinking of people in their first five to seven years in the company. But once you're doing that, once you've kind of met that bar, I think the second thing is to articulate to your people in leadership that you are keen to move into leadership. And that may sound obvious, but I can't tell you how many times executives will kind of say, oh, this person left. And I said, well, when you did the exit interview, what did you learn? I learned she wanted a leadership role. She never told me. She never told me. And had we known, we would have given her stretch opportunity. So a lot of times people wait to be recognized and they grow frustrated.

9:42So you need to be articulating within the organization that you want to move into leadership. And then the last thing is find ways to practice leadership outside of work. Because I'm never going to build the Humphrey Group and, you know, bring people in. Eventually, I was fortunate to do that and grow the company. But I didn't anticipate the realities of what leading people meant. But I kind of anticipated some of the exciting things, but really the redefinition of the relationship between you and people you lead. You go from having peers, you go from having people who you're kind of working together with to you have to sit in between the organization and your people and balance helping them perform with meeting the needs of the organization.

10:20And so if you can find a place outside of work where you can practice leadership in a low stakes environment, so volunteering on the charity board, being part of a community group, being part of organizing an event, you know, something like that where you can practice leadership. That will just give you a valuable, safe space for when you actually have to do it in the workplace. How do leaders of Fortune 500 companies plan and run their businesses? Libby Gill has served as a leadership consultant for iconic brands like Disney and Marriott, and she shared her billion-dollar leadership insights in episode 14 of our podcast.

10:54Make sure you go check that one out as well. Bart, we were just talking about that kind of transition into leadership, and that transition can be particularly challenging when it's been a promotion within. So somebody goes from being a part of the team to being the manager of the team. What advice do you have for navigating that transition? It's a really tough transition. I mean, I think a lot of times someone who's in a team, they'll say, oh, I was in charge. I could do X, Y, Z. And, you know, their colleagues say, oh, if you were in charge, you could fix this and that. I remember that happening.

11:24I was anticipating it was kind of a two-year transition from when I was running our Western Canadian operations to when I took over as the owner and CEO in 2014. team. And I faced that same thing where it was like, oh, you'll make this happen. You'll make that happen. You kind of anticipate this. And then reality hits. And I think a couple of things that will hit home for you. First is you really do have to create some distance between yourself and your former co-workers because you are not their peer anymore. And no matter what relationships you've had, you know, if you hang out with them outside of work, if you share things with them about colleagues, if you gossip when times are tough, that all just has to come to an end because you have redefined the relationship.

11:59You've gone from a military analogy, you've gone from enlisted to officer. And there's a reason there's a non-fraternization policy. So I think that's the first thing. I think the second thing is you have to recognize when you're in a leadership role, your priority is to support the goals of the company. And sometimes the tough part about that is you may not agree. In fact, if you're in leadership long enough, like a couple months, at some point you're not going to agree. And so a lot of the work we do with clients who are new to leadership is helping them reframe their identity. Like what does it mean to be a leader and how do you still preserve your authenticity?

12:28And then how do you deliver messages that sometimes are tough to deliver. You know, like I remember one time we were working with a person who was told there's a restructuring and they had to fire or lay off a large part of their team. And this person came in for the coaching and said, I'm going to tell them I'm totally against this decision. I think this is BS and they're getting screwed. So I let that sit there for a moment. I said, well, okay, so when are you resigning? And he looked at me and he goes, well, what do you mean? I'm like, oh, you don't support the decision. So I'm assuming you're resigning.

12:56He said, no, I'm not resigning. Well, either you support this decision because you're choosing to stay or you resign. You can't have it both ways. And so I think, you know, when you think about being in leadership, it is change. And the last piece I'll say is you really have to reflect on if you want it. It's unfortunate in the corporate world and government to a lesser extent that often advancement and more financial remuneration and growth comes only with beginning to manage people. There are some progressive organizations, I think, that are separating that track, but it's not always the more satisfying.

13:25It's kind of like it's unpleasant And often it may be more rewarding in the long run, but you've really got to ask yourself if it's a shift in the role and the relationships that you have that you really want. You've talked a lot about authenticity and leadership. How does somebody identify what leadership style best suits themselves and their team that they're trying to lead? And the follow-up question to that, I'll just give it to you now, is what if that's not necessarily 100 % who are naturally authentically? Yeah, well, you know, let's take the second question. What if your style is not the one that works for the team or for the company?

14:02That's another one, you know, because companies have cultures and your style may not work in the culture, even if it works for the team or it may work in the culture, but not for the team. And in my experience, first thing I'll say is once you know what your style is, you can flex here and there for specific interactions, but you're probably not going to change your style. And so early career in some ways is about trying and early might not mean in your 20s. It might mean if you enter the corporate world later in life or you enter leadership, it might take you five, 10 years to figure it out. But once you know it, it's like you're not for everyone.

14:32And if you find that there's a significant mismatch between what kind of leader you are, your values and the company, you probably need to leave because it will be painful to contort yourself for a protracted period of time. Now, if there's a mismatch between you and your team, that's a little bit different. Then you've got to look at and you have to say, huh, do I need to change the team? I mean, I find there's a lot of particularly new leaders that are passionate about leadership. And I was like this, too. You're like, I can lead. I'm going to get the most out of these people. I'm going to read every book and take every course.

15:05I'm going to prepare and I will make them successful. You know, the frank reality is that's not going to happen. It's like I liken it to personal relation. No matter how good a friend you try and be, you're not going to be friends with everyone. It's just not going to work. And one of the things about a corporation, you know, I read Hastings at Netflix, always said we're not a family. We're a high performance sports team. You know, not every player should be on your team. So I think, you know, you don't blame yourself when there's a mismatch. You just say, this fit isn't there and I need to hopefully change out some of the team.

15:31Some people will already be a fit. Some will never be a fit and some may be able to flex to meet your demands. But yeah, so that's my thought on the team. Going back to your first question is how do you learn your style? You know, there are a whole host styles. And think, as I was saying earlier around where we are with leadership today, there's a much more appreciation for your allowing you to adopt a style that is more authentic. So I think that's a great thing that world we are in today. Right. There's no, you know, you can take a personality profile, but I think there's no short way to do it other than you spend years wrestling with whether the decision's being estimated, how am I most comfortable making them?

16:10Now, some of them over time you build muscle in. So for example, my kids sometimes, oh, daddy, you fire someone. I'm like, oh my God, you know, I think they have this apprentice-like view of what running a company is like. I'm like, it's not like that. Whether it's a performance conversation or you have to let someone go or someone's telling you they need to move on. These are never easy conversations, but they're ones you can build muscle around and get good at. So there's the skill part of how you communicate decisions that you can build that muscle over time and get comfortable with it. But there are style patterns around how closely do you manage or not?

16:45How detailed are you versus generalist? How much time and contact do you want with people versus not? How cautious or aggressive argument. These are things that are more innate in my experience. So when we're brought in to coach someone, we work with very senior people on the coaching front. It'll be, you know, a bank has a senior vice president who brings us in to work with someone on their polish when they go before the executive committee or will partner at an accounting firm who's great internally, but just needs more presence with clients. So these are strong performers. What I often say when I start working with them is, look, we're not here to change your style.

17:17You're successful because of your style, but there are ways to be more consistently effective in how you communicate your ideas. So I think, you know, all that to say, you will develop awareness of your style and probably more innate to who you are. And then you want to look for that alignment with the organization and team. I want to ask about that muscle building, skill development, and how you identify something that is not within your stylistic wheelhouse versus, oh, this is a skill I like, I do need to build out. I think when you look at the skill, for example, a skill would be, can you prepare and focus your thinking ahead of time?

17:57You'd have an executive who comes to us, very knowledgeable about the business. Now they're going out in an investor relations capacity. They have to talk to analysts. They have to talk to institutional investors. And those interactions are short. You've got three minutes on a quarterly call. You've got 10 minutes at a conference. You've got two minutes on the phone. So that's a skill where you can take that expertise and teach them how to organize their thinking so they can be effective in the moment. But that person, back to the style, if they're naturally loquacious, if they like to talk a lot and they tend to talk themselves into their point and they enjoy that, they're not suddenly going to become economical in their language in an everyday basis.

18:36But they can say, hey, this interaction demands focus. This interaction demands precision. So I'm going to apply the skills that I learned to be effective in the moment. So that's the contrast. I really love that contextualization of needing the skill versus your kind of natural default. That's really a nice way to think about it. You know, like if you're into sports, you know, you watch basketball, right? You know, all the players develop free throw shooting routines, right? They all have a routine. They all build muscle memory. But they all like when you watch people shoot free throws, they all shoot free.

19:07Like they're very different. Like the release point, the consistency, they're all slightly different. Right. And so there are fundamentals of teaching someone to shoot a free throw that they've learned and they've practiced, but they all have a very different style in how they do it. So that might be a contrast there. One of the things that has struck me throughout this conversation is, and I'm not necessarily surprised by this, but that so much of leadership is company culture, team culture specific. Is there also like industry culture to think about as well? Or is it still within the company?

19:37I would say no. I would say no. You know, we've worked across finance, insurance, telecommunications, mining, you know, and you can have two banks, both here in Canada, for example, two big banks, regulated oligopolis, radically different cultures. And you would ask someone, I mean, look in Canada, you know, if you ask someone in RBC and TD and Scotia and CIBC, I would bet you if you took four people who did the same job and you asked them to describe the culture, you would hear very different things. Similarly, if you took Bell and Telus, I'm sure you would hear different things because culture really is a product of the people, the leaders and their values and how that's carried out.

20:19And those cultures change. You go through a CEO change, you go through leadership change, the whole culture in the company can change. So I don't think it's industry specific. And I think the fascinating thing that's going on in the world today is mobility between industries. So we say banking, these banking giants have tech teams in them. They have salespeople. I mean, there's all the functions, they're marketing experts, they're communication people. These functions exist in all these large companies. And so someone saying I'm a banker, I think, doesn't even do justice to the breadth of careers and different pockets of expertise that exist.

20:56So I think if you're looking to understand culture and you're saying, hey, I'm in this company and I love the culture. I love that. Yeah, I'm in, I don't know, let's just say mining. And I love the culture in this company. I'm going to go to another mining company and get promotion. Like there's no guarantee. The culture is going to be different. There may be more in common in the corporate development group, you know, in an agriculture company than in another mining one. So there's no substitute. if you're thinking about switching careers to another company, there's no substitute for having conversations with people about culture and what it's like.

21:25Now, as you get more senior, you do have the ability to shape that culture. It's one of the nice things about being a senior role. I think that's one of the things that attracts people to advancement is as you define your values, as you define what you think leadership should stand for, you can have a voice around reshaping culture. I've been really privileged to work with a lot of executives over the years who have, in some cases, in relatively short order, fundamentally reshaped the culture of an entire large publicly traded company. It's easier on a small scale, but that's one of the things that gets people really excited, right?

21:53It's not just business as usual. It's how do we move the culture here? And like, you just think about an anecdote from the past, like when Steve Jobs came back to Apple and they had this whole mess of corporate products, essentially a soulless company. And he's like, forget that. You know, we're going to do four things. We're going to do them exceptionally well and totally reshape the culture in a short time. So it's doable. And if that's something that excites you, it's worth seeking out more leadership for it. How does it differ between small businesses versus large corporations? Does finding your leadership style differ in the impact that you can have as a leader and be an effective leader?