230. Transformational Leadership: Embracing the Catalyst Role with Mick Spiers

Unlock the secrets to evolving from an expert to a catalyst in leadership with insights from my conversation with Dr. Carol Parker Walsh. Discover how you can empower your team to thrive by asking the right questions and creating a supportive, people-centered culture. Inspired by Liz Wiseman's "multipliers" concept, we explore how to prevent becoming a bottleneck in your team's growth. By fostering an environment where team members feel psychologically safe and valued, leaders can bridge the gap between lofty expectations and the real experiences of their employees, leading to a more cohesive and motivated workforce.

Join me as we discuss the transformative leadership journey, emphasizing trust and transparency as the pillars of success. Reflecting on the shift towards catalyst leadership, we highlight the importance of aligning individual strengths with team goals and embracing vulnerability as a strength. This episode promises to challenge your current leadership mindset and inspire you to create an environment that not only motivates but also multiplies potential. Stay tuned for our next discussion with business philosopher Anders Insett, where we'll further dissect the mindset behind high performance.

Chapters

• 0:01 Expert to Catalyst in Leadership
• 13:22 Shifting to Catalyst Leadership

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

Today, we're going to talk about one of the most important shifts that a leader needs to make in their career, and that is the shift from being an expert to being a catalyst. Your role is not to be the smartest person in the room. It's not to have all the answers and it's not to do all of the heavy lifting. Your role as a leader is to be a multiplier to create the environment where other people can do their very best work. Today, I'm reflecting on the inspiring conversation with Dr. Carol Parker Walsh, where she shared about this vital shift that leaders need to make, moving from being the subject matter expert to becoming a catalyst for their team's success. Welcome back to the leadership project. I'm your host. Mick Spiers, today's episode is going to be a solo cast where I reflect on the amazing conversation with Dr. Carol Now, all of a sudden, there's seven of you. So how do I make the most of seven people's time? How can I be a multiplier where my impact and my vision and my leadership allows seven people to do their very best work. Now we can have a real impact if we don't unlock this power of being a multiplier. The opposite is also true. If we become the answer to every question, we become the choke point. If the team are relying on us for all Parker Walsh. One of the biggest takeaways from my chat with Dr. of the answers, if the team have to come in and check in with us on every single topic. We become a choke point that throttles the business. We suffocate the team. We suffocate the business. We suffocate the possible growth and impact that the team could have. I want to refer you to the work of Liz Wiseman in her book multiplies where she captures this beautifully. She uses things like the extreme question experiment, where, instead of giving more direction and giving more instruction, we convert Walsh is the need for leaders to transition from being the expert everything into questions. Instead of saying to your team, hey, this is what we need to do this week, ask them, hey, team, what do you think our biggest priority is this week? Hmm, interesting. What makes that important? Hmm, okay, how do you think we might go about it? What challenges do you think that we might encounter? How might we overcome those challenges? What positive impact will come if we're able to achieve these things? So instead of being a director who is giving direction to being the catalyst. You see as leaders, it's easy to rely on on every single point in the business, we become a multiplier by asking the right questions and empowering and enabling people to be successful. So the key question for you today, are you the expert, or are you the catalyst? Are you someone that's a manager and giving direction? So the key question for you today is, Are you the expert, or are you the catalyst? Are you the choke point in your team, or are you the multiplier? And what can you do to be that multiplier, to create the our own expertise and take the lead in everything, but that environment where others can do their very best work? Dr. Walsh also stressed the importance of creating a people centered culture. It's not enough to focus solely on profits and productivity. Whilst these are important, we also need to invest in the people who make the work happen. If your team don't feel supported, valued and engaged, you're setting them up for failure no matter how hard they work. As leaders, we have a responsibility to ensure our teams have the resources support and psychological safety they doesn't always help the team grow. Leadership is about need to thrive. This includes creating an environment where individuals can bring their whole selves to work and to contribute fully without fear of judgment or failure. So we're setting themself, so we're setting the team up for success. We're engaging them in the conversation, we're empowering them, and then we're giving them the right resources that they need to be successful. So. There's a lot of talk in creating an environment where others can thrive. You should be industry about people saying that people don't want to take accountability, they don't want to take responsibility, they don't want to step up. And what often is missing in this is empowerment, engagement or enablement. Why would someone take on the responsibility and the accountability for a task where they don't feel empowered to make the decisions. Why would someone take on responsibility and accountability if they don't feel engaged in the conversation about what we're doing and why empowering your team to be autonomous, to make decisions we're doing it, and why would someone take accountability and responsibility if they don't feel enabled? They feel like that, you're not setting them up for success, that you're actually setting them up for a fall. So when you're looking for your team to take more accountability, to take more responsibility, to step in more ask yourself those three questions, do they feel empowered? Do they feel engaged? and to take ownership of their own work. The shift is essential Do they feel enabled? Another important point Dr. Walsh raised is the mismatch between leadership expectations and employee experiences. So often, leaders expect employees to perform at a high level without providing the necessary support or guidance. Meanwhile, employees may not feel equipped to meet those expectations, this disconnect can lead to frustration, disengagement and eventually turnover. To avoid this, leaders must have honest conversations with the team, what do they need for long term success and growth. The more you can step to succeed, what support is missing, and set clear expectations, along with open communication to bridge the gap and create a stronger, more cohesive team. Mismatch of expectation brings a lot of teams down. The leader might have a clear thought in their mind as to what they expect from the team, but if they haven't communicated to that their team are not mind readers, so we need to have this clarity of back and let your team step up, the stronger your team will expectation. Equally, we need a conversation with their employees about what they need, what support they need, what guidance they need so that they can be successful. So expectation setting goes in both directions, setting expectations and asking lots of questions about what your team need so that they can be successful. Another key concept that Dr. Walsh and I discussed was trust and psychological safety. Trust is the foundation of any high performing team. If your team become. You always have to remember that you're a human doesn't feel that they can trust each other or you as the leader, things will inevitably fall apart. Dr. Walsh highlighted how psychological safety, the freedom to speak up, share ideas and make mistakes, is crucial to building trust as a leader, you must model this by being transparent and vulnerable. Role Model this behaviors by sharing your own challenges, admit when you don't know something, and encourage your team to do the being, and you're only blessed with 24 hours in a day, so same. When people feel safe, they are more likely to contribute their best ideas and to take risks that ultimately drive innovation. One of the biggest fears here is that people feel that asking for help is a sign of weakness, but it's not. It's a sign of strength. So what can you do as a leader to role model the behavior of speaking up, sharing ideas, owning mistakes, admitting when I need help, and then encourage there's only so much that you can achieve individually, others to do so as well. So what does a high performance team look like? According to Dr. Walsh, it's a team that is highly engaged, productive, innovative and self accountable. They have an element of interdependence. These teams don't rely on the leader to make every decision. They are self sustaining and can solve problems interdependently, but to build this type of team, leaders need to create the right whereas if you have a team around you, let's say it's a environment. This means fostering open communication, promoting collaboration, and ensuring that everyone feels seen, heard and valued. It's not about individual contributions alone, but how those contributions align with the collective goal? When everyone understands how their work fits into the bigger picture, you create a team that can achieve extraordinary things. A high performance team is able to ask team of seven. and answer the following types of questions, why are we here? What's the purpose of this team? Why am I here? What do I bring to the table? Why are you here? What do you bring to the table? And when we have a good understanding of these things, we can then work on ways of working that are going to unlock the full capabilities the. Superpowers of each of the individuals. Once we understand why we're here, why I'm here, why you're here, we can then start co creating a solution that is bigger than any of the individuals could have done by themselves. You're locking into the superpowers of each of the individuals to create a superpower team, one that's tapping into each of the skill sets. Everyone has a superpower. Sometimes it takes a while to find it, but everyone has something that they're extraordinarily good at. Otherwise they wouldn't be here. If we understand those, we can then co create something amazing. Another key aspect is about vulnerability and humility. It's easy to think, as leaders, we have to have all the answers and project an image of perfection. But as Dr. Walsh pointed out, vulnerability is a strength, not a weakness. When you admit that you don't have all the answers, or that you've made a mistake, you build trust with your team. You show them that it's okay to be human, that growth happens through failure, and that it's okay to ask for help. In turn, this creates a culture of openness and continuous learning, which are essential for high performance. Another key aspect is aligning individual and team goals. One of the most powerful ways to create high performing teams is through alignment. Dr. Walsh spoke about the importance of understanding not just why you're here as a leader, but also why your team members are here and what they bring to the table. When each team member knows that how their skills contribute to the broader team and organizational goals, it leads to greater ownership and accountability. This sense of purpose fuels engagement and collaboration. It's about creating a shared vision where everyone understands how their individual work impacts the bigger picture, and how the work of their team members help impact the bigger picture. Creating a high performance culture doesn't happen overnight, though. Dr. Walsh emphasized that the process can be messy. When you're moving from a traditional top down leadership model to a more people centered approach, there will be bumps along the way. Trust needs to be rebuilt and old habits need to be unlearned, but that's okay. As leaders, we must embrace adaptability and resilience, both in ourselves and in our teams. If we accept that change is a process, not an event, we can approach challenges with patience and an open mind. You're not going to get it right every day. You are not going to get it right every day. But the key here is to reflect at the end of every day, what went well today, what didn't go well, what would I do differently next time? What did I learn about myself, what did I learn about others? And you progressively get 1% better each day. You get better as a team, you get better as individuals, you get better as a leader. So it's a journey. You're not going to get it right first go. You're not going to get it right every single day. The most important thing is to learn and grow every day. So what does this all mean for you as a leader? It's about embracing a shift in mindset, moving from being the expert to being the catalyst. It's about creating an environment of trust, psychological safety, transparency and interdependency. It's about aligning individual contributions with team goals, celebrating vulnerability and fostering a culture of co creation, where everyone is playing their role and they're interdependent on each other to co create something that's greater than the sum of the parts, something bigger than any of the individuals could have created themselves, including you as the leader. As you reflect on today's conversation, ask yourself, what kind of leader do I want to be? How can I create an environment where my team feels supported, empowered and motivated to do their very best work. And how can I create that environment where we're co creating something that is greater than the sum of the parts to tap in to all of those individual superpowers, where we're creating the environment where all of those superpowers add together to create something amazing? You've been listening to, The Leadership Project in the next episode, we'll be joined by business philosopher Anders inset, who goes into the more, who helps us unpack the mindset of high performance. If you've been. Getting great value from our content. We would love it if you would leave us a rating and review on Apple podcast or your preferred podcast service. 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