339. Ask More, Tell Less: How Curiosity Creates Leadership Clarity with Dusty Holcomb

Most leaders think they’re fixing a performance problem when they’re actually managing a clarity problem. Dusty Holcomb, CEO and founder of The Arcqus Group, joins me to break down a deceptively simple idea: remove ambiguity and performance follows. We get specific about what “clarity” really means in leadership and why it has nothing to do with barking orders or tightening control.

We talk through one of the hardest career transitions, moving from the person who gets results to the person who creates the conditions for other people to get results. That includes letting go of the spotlight, hiring people who are better than you, and shifting from “how to do it” instructions to clear outcomes that give your team agency. Along the way, Dusty shares a practical lens that instantly changes how you communicate: your question to statement ratio. The higher you go, the more questions you should ask and the better you must get at listening.

We also explore the hidden friction that comes from expectations trapped inside a leader’s head. Dusty explains how “rules of engagement” act like a decoder ring for your team: what you value, how you make decisions, how you prefer to communicate, how you give feedback, and what your non negotiables are. If you’ve ever felt frustrated that people “should just know,” this conversation gives you a better path, plus a simple two minute meeting prep framework you can use today.

If you found this useful, subscribe on your favorite podcast app, share the episode with a leader who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

🌐 Connect with Dusty:
• Website: https://arcqusgroup.com/
https://rulesofengagement.com/en/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dustyholcomb/

Transcript

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Mick Spiers: 0:01

What if the performance problem in your team isn't actually a performance problem? What if it's a clarity problem? Today we're joined by Dusty Holcomb, CEO and founder of the Arcus Group, host of The Leadership Unlocked podcast, and a leader who has spent more than three decades studying what allows people and organizations to perform at their best. Dusty's central premise is deceptively simple: when you remove ambiguity, performance follows. But as you'll hear today, clarity doesn't mean telling people exactly what to do. In fact, it might mean doing considerably less telling. We explore one of the most difficult transitions any leader has to make, moving from being the person who gets results to becoming the person who creates the conditions for other people to get results. We talk about why the skills that earned you the leadership role may not be the skills that make you successful once you're there, and somewhere along the way, Dusty caused me to diagnose one of my own leadership frustrations live on the podcast. This conversation is practical, challenging, and wonderfully human. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. Have a special treat for you today. I'm joined by Dusty Holcomb. He's the CEO and founder of the Arcus Group and the host of the Leadership Unlocked podcast. He's also a five-time Ironman finisher, which is going to spark some curiosity from me, I'm sure, at some point in the show. And he has a fundamental principle that he believes that organizations don't have an execution problem, they have a clarity problem. After leading teams for more than three decades, he discovered that it's this clarity problem that, that most people have, and he's now transformed to train and coach other executives to find this ability to unlock the secret of clarity to bring out high performance in their teams, and that when you remove ambiguity, performance follows. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. What does this mean? What does this mean to bring clarity? And is this the missing ingredient in your leadership. So, without any further ado, I'm dying to get into this. Dusty, will you please say hello to the audience? Give a little bit of a flavor of that three decades of experience, and what inspires you to do the work that you do today?

Dusty Holcomb: 2:39

Thank you, Mick, and it is an absolute delight and pleasure to be here. I, you know, I love talking about leadership. I would say that it has been my magnificent obsession since I was probably 20 years old and tucked under the wing of a retired colonel who taught me the most profound and, I believe, the most important leadership lesson I've ever learned, which was this first principle belief that it's not about you, and and I'll admit that up until that point, you know. I was you know trying to get supervisory roles or manager roles because I needed more money or I needed you know more title or influence or all these things that I thought were important, and then he flipped it, and that really planted the seed that has led me to just study and obsess over and learn and really dive deep into understanding how do we as humans and as leaders create influence and impact for the benefit of others. And you know, if I'm honest, a lot of that comes out of my own upbringing. I was homeschooled from fifth grade forward, so I didn't go to a primary education. I was self-taught, and you know this idea of learning how to help others be more impactful has really led me to this journey of understanding that the more time and energy we invest in creating clarity around what's really important, and then aligning our choices to that clarity is what enables us to execute. And I have been obsessed with this. I've had the privilege and benefit of leading very large teams and large organizations, but always with this mindset that my job was to ensure that the people that I served had everything they needed to be successful, and that's just been what I've been obsessed with since that beneficial day I've been tucked under Colonel Camp's wing.

Mick Spiers: 4:27

Really good, Dusty. So we need to unpack that quite a bit, and I'm going to talk about that that challenge, that first transition to these words. It's not about you. The challenge here that I'm going to present to you is when people first shift into a leadership role. When they were an individual contributor, it was all about them. But even more than it was all about them, they were getting applauded. They were getting stood on stages, and there's a good chance that if someone's just been promoted into a leadership role, that they were. A prolific individual contributor who is winning awards, and wow, that is awesome for their individual output. And now, all of a sudden, it's not about you anymore. So that there's two tensions there. How sometimes it takes a while for people to realize it's not about them anymore, so there's a challenge. And then, secondly, the the things that they used to get applauded about are actually now going to hold them back. How do we transition from that?

Dusty Holcomb: 5:32

Well, it's I love this cool the way you frame that because it is tension, and it's it's almost like any time. And I work with a lot of CEOs, and you know, have a number of folks I work with who are first-time CEOs, and we often talk about. Hey, everything you've done up until your this point in your career is what has earned you this seat, but now that is no longer the necessary skill or capabilities that will keep you in this seat. You now have to learn an entire new skill set. You have to learn new capacities and new ways to think, and I think that same approach happens whether you're a first-time leader or you're going into the you know the CEO seat for the very first time, or even to a new org within the CEO seat. It's this belief and understanding that everything that has gotten us to this this level is now only earned us the right to be there, and now we have a new floor, and now we have to change our entire paradigm of way we think about it. And the way you frame this, like when we're thinking about it as individual contributors, we have been rewarded and recognized for what we could do. When we go into a leadership role, we are being rewarded and recognized for our capability to create exponential impact, people want us to create in others the capabilities that we demonstrated. So we have to fundamentally solve a different question. We have to go and say,"How do I unlock this capability within someone else?" And oh, by the way, I can't just make them a mirror image of me, and tell them to do everything the way that I did it. That's not success here. I have to really help as a leader connect the dots to understand how to connect them to that next level of performance. And it's it's a paradigm shift. It's it's tough. I did not I did not get that right the first number of transitions when I went into these roles in my career, because I was so interested in being right. I was way more interested in being heard than I was in listening. And you know, I can tell stories about how I learned some of these things the hard way. But that's the shift. It's no longer about what we can do. It's about how we can multiply the effects of others by unlocking what they have, and so we have to solve that problem. Meaning, it's about how do we get them to do it.

Mick Spiers: 7:49

Yeah, really good, Dusty. So this concept of a multiplier really resonates with me. And just to you know, for everyone out there that you might be very mathematical, just think about what Dusty is saying, "How much can you, as an individual, achieve in let's call it a 10-hour day, just for simplicity? How much can you achieve in a 10-hour day? Now, all of a sudden, you might have seven people in your team, 28 people in your team, 50 people in your team. As you go up the ranks, your job is no longer to maximize your 10 hours, your job is to create the environment where seven people can make the most of 10 hours. And for those that aren't good at math, that 70 is bigger than 10, right? So now we're a multiplier, and we're trying to create the conditions for impact. So let me-I'm going to say reframe. It's not a challenge here. Let me reframe something. So you said it's not about you. I'm going to say it's not about you, and it's all about you. But the all about you is now different. It's all about your ability to create the conditions and the environment. Let's keep on using the seven for simplicity, where seven people can do their very best work.

Dusty Holcomb: 9:03

All right. So you said something there that I really want to push in on, which is this about you. Here's where I see, and I struggled with this, and I see people challenge. If you want to create the impact where seven are creating output better than you, you've got to get to the point and place where you're able and willing to hire people who are better than you at that job, and so like that's where you start getting exponential impact. So there is you have to surrender your own ego and say, I don't have to be the best at that job. Even if I got promoted out of it, that's not my job anymore. I need to hire people better than me, so I have to be confident and secure in my role, not based on the role I was in or the person I used to be or the responsibilities I used to have, but in understanding that this is what I'm creating and building. And I find that, that's one of those fundamental shifts is when people flip to being able to hire. People better at something than they ever were. That's where we really start to unlock executive capability because we're putting the right resources in place. So that's that's where I think about this tension when it's it's all about you. It's all about your ability to put the right people in place for success, which means you have to find people who are better at the task at hand than you are, and be comfortable with that.

Mick Spiers: 10:27

Nice, and yeah, that's very powerful. So I'm so I'm picking up a few things from our conversation, right people, right environment, right conditions, and the it's not about you anymore is going to also mean maybe letting go of things that you thought you were the expert at, but someone else has got better ideas.

Dusty Holcomb: 10:50

Yes, and when you think about this, what you have to shift from is telling people how to do things, but to be very good at articulating where we're going, why it matters, and what great looks like-it's that clarity of the objective that's the leadership imperative. Because then you allow that person to solve it; you allow them to bring their best selves to work, and that's that's hard. In fact I, I work with some really amazing CEOs, and I'll say that one of the most common things that I have to coach on, and had to be coached on this myself, was are we talking about the outcomes? Are we talking about the activities? Which one of those is more important to you? And then universally, people always say, "What's the outcome? Then why are we spending 80% of our time telling people how to do things? We need to be talking about the outcomes that matter. That's your job as the leader.

Mick Spiers: 11:42

Really good. I think this is going to come through again. We'll get to the clarity point in just a moment. I want to unpack one more element of this letting go. There's also going to be an element of letting go of the spotlight. So previously, I might have been that expert and applauded, etc. Now, what I'm hearing is, okay, we're going to set the conditions and give some clarity around the outcomes, but then we're going to step back and let other people take the spotlight and give them the opportunity to shine. That can be challenging, Dusty. If you've been one that's gotten a bit hooked onto the, what would you call it, the the dopamine hit of being wow, Dusty knocked it out of the park. Now you're coaching someone else to knock it out of the park and creating the environment for that. How does someone cope with that transition?

Dusty Holcomb: 12:38

You know, it's not easy, and it's different for every person. And so, what I always tell folks is, don't assume that the person who's getting the spotlight wants what you wanted and is wired the same way. So, like, make sure you're understanding what their spotlight is, because that's a really important distinction to align on. But I think you have to really step back and again anchor on those outcomes, like what does success look like if by surrendering the spotlight, even though I previously may have been addicted to it or really you know enjoyed that moment, how do I enable the team to continue to grow to achieve these great results and give that away? What are the other places and spotlights that I should go find that are uniquely tied to my role, and so that I think you have to go then search and go "Hey, my floor is no longer that stage." What are the other stages that I should be on that can create a broader, bigger, more impactful impact? That's where I challenge people to go. Say, hey, you don't have to give up all the spotlight. You just need to find a different stage to be on. What does that look like? And you know, for me, one of those stages for many years was, hey, I would give all the credit to my team, let them go take all the accolades. My stage became talking to all of our new hired employees. I enjoyed that moment being in front of them, doing what only I could do, casting the vision, talking about culture, sharing our core values-that was became my stage. So I think it's not about giving up a stage; it's just finding the one that now is appropriate for you and your role and how you want to create impact.

Mick Spiers: 14:16

I heard two things hidden in there, Dusty. Two powerful messages. One is find your stage now, so your role is pivoted. So make sure you make that pivot because you're going to create space for others, but you're also going to have impact on your new stage. But the second part that was threaded in there was making sure that you get take the time to get to know your team individually because human beings we're all different. We all have different things that that give us a buzz and drive us and motivate us, etc, etc. And you might be pushing someone onto a stage who that's their worst nightmare. They don't want to be there. So there's an element of knowing, you know, how do you like to work? How do you like to receive feedback? How do you like to be led? How do you like to be rewarded? Because you might be giving them a reward that you would have thought was amazing, and that's their worst nightmare. So taking that time to get to know your team as well.

Dusty Holcomb: 15:15

Its incredibly important, and it's the marker of what I would call-you know-the word "boss" may or may not be the right word, but it's the marker of a great boss is when a person knows that they care about them, they know them, and they're putting that person in for success. So I had the same amazing executive assistant for 17 years. She could read my mind. I didn't know 90% of what she did on a daily basis, everything happened as if by magic, and I thought that a great way to recognize her would be to bring her on stage, literally at our annual conference, and you know, give her flowers and you know, do the thing to say thank you because everybody knew Suzanne and they knew that that thing happened because of her. I could not have put her on in a bigger, deeper hole, and she was so embarrassed. She was so mortified, and it was the exact opposite effect of what I was trying to accomplish. I just wanted her to be appreciated. That's not the way she wanted and needed to be appreciated. The beautiful thing was that she also had the courage, you know, and the strength, and our relationship to come up to me after that and go, "I love you, Dusty, but please never do that to me again." That's just not what I want and need.

Mick Spiers: 16:31

I'm glad she said something, and it's interesting because, like, let's just take two individuals now. Like, for one individual, they would have taken that experience and they would have been in their element, going, "Wow, this is awesome! What can I do to have this experience again sometime?" And then you've got another one that's going, "What did I do to deserve this?" And how can I avoid this ever happening again? Right. So, so yeah, just get to know them. So that's going to lead me to another challenge that happens in this transition, particularly from individual contributors to to that leader, is that humans are not machines. Humans are not deterministic as well. So they all have different desires, like we've just said, but they're also seemingly erratic. They're seemingly erratic. So what works for one individual won't work for another individual, but worse still, what works for one individual today may not work for the same individual six months from now because they're growing, they're evolving, and their needs are changing. And the challenge I'm trying to highlight here, Dusty, is that if you are an outstanding, let's go software engineer, because this was a good one to to explain. If you're an outstanding software engineer and you're there coding, if you put the same inputs into a machine, you get the same outputs, and you start playing with variables to influence the outcome. You get to human beings. We are we are seemingly erratic. There's usually a reason behind it. They're dug in there somewhere, but you're all of a sudden you're going. Well, you know, your spreadsheet or your software code did what you asked it to do. Now you got these people that have got brains of their own and they don't respond the way that you thought they were going to do. How do we make that transition from deterministic. I was good at my craft. Now I'm dealing with human beings that are far more complex than what my craft was.

Dusty Holcomb: 18:30

The first thing that comes to mind, and I love this question because I think the software engineer is a perfect metaphor for this. Is the very first thing that comes to mind is being aware of what I call your questions to statement ratio, and as you go into leadership role, as you start really thinking about what you used to be as an individual contributor, you made a lot of statements. Here's what we need to do. Here's what success looks like. Here's this, you know, all these things. How many questions are we asking now? That's followed by you've got to actually listen, right? You know, questions can be wonderful tools or they can be powerful weapons, and so we really have to be thoughtful in how we use these. But that questions to statement ratio, and I always tell leaders whether they're going into a leadership role for the first time or they're in the the CEO seat, you've got to be mindful of your question to statement ratio more questions than statements, and the higher you get in the organization, the higher that ratio needs to be. You know, it can start out at one to one. It can go to two to one. You know, you get to the CEO seat. You may ask 10 questions before you make a single statement of fact. So when you're talking about human behavior, it's asking the questions that matter, and then listening to the answer, and then allowing yourself to stitch these answers together over time. The motivations may change. A person may learn something over the last six months. You know, it's it's all these things. You've got to really pay attention. When I my last couple of executive teams. Our one to ones with all of my direct reports, we met together once a month. It was an official one to one. They owned the agenda. That was not my job. It was their time set aside for them to talk about whatever it was that was most important for them to create success in whatever they were working on. Sometimes it was purely tactical. Sometimes it was, hey, we're dealing with stuff with an adoption, and it's just taking a little time. I want to talk about what that's going to look like. My job was to ask the right questions. In fact, I would put on my hat, so to speak, before going into those sessions and put on my role as the chief question asker. You know, I was not the CEO; I was the chief question asker, and I really spent a lot of time thinking about that and how to do that from a place of curiosity, desire to understand, and the ability to listen. And I think that individual contributor to leader role will be made so much more powerful if they can start thinking about the number of questions they're asking versus the number of statements they're making.

Mick Spiers: 21:04

Yeah, some really powerful things. Then I'm going to turn to the audience here and start maybe asking yourself that question. What is your question to statement ratio? Are you asking more questions or making more statements? So that's a great question for people to ask. There's the element there that you said it can be a powerful tool, but also a powerful weapon. So asking these questions at the heart of curiosity here, but also doing it very intentionally and carefully. It comes with power and responsibility. A well-worded question unlocks creativity. I'm going to say, Dusty, and unlocks a thought pattern, unlocks self awareness. Unlocks I could I could continue with with different statements as what it unlocks, but a I'm going to say a poorly crafted question sounds like an accusation, and the person's going to get defensive and then going to shut down. They're not going to open up. They're going to shut down. How do we play that? How do we be careful? And I don't want people to overthink it where they don't ask the questions. So you don't, yeah. But but how do we be careful with our choice of language?

Dusty Holcomb: 22:09

Yeah, this is a great specific example because Mick, if I ask you, what were you thinking?

Mick Spiers: 22:15

Oh my god, yeah, I'm on, yeah, I'm defensive already.

Dusty Holcomb: 22:18

Yeah, you're like, yeah, you're immediately on the defensive. Make this situation happen. I'd love to understand what was going through your mind as you made that decision.

Mick Spiers: 22:29

Beautiful. That's not confrontational at all. Yeah.

Dusty Holcomb: 22:32

No, it's seeking to understand. And you know, I saw Jim Collins give a speech years and years ago, and he talked about the difference where one of his mentors told him that he needed to spend more time being interested and less time being interesting, and that was one of those like bright lights that lit up for me. That curiosity question helped me understand. I'd love to know what you were thinking about. Tell me what I'm missing, but you know, tell me what I'm missing versus tell me what I'm probably missing. I know I don't have all the context, the knowledge, and insight that you do about this situation. I'd love to understand from your perspective what's really going on here, and it-you don't have to overthink it. You just have to. I like to imagine myself in their seat. What is it that I need to extract. What is it I need to know? How do I help them unlock that for me?

Mick Spiers: 23:27

There's something doubly powerful there. When I was listening to your words and I was trying to embody it, like if I was the one that was on the receiving end, Dusty, it went from here's an aggressor coming at me, so I'm going to get defensive, not just to, you know, kind of. It was more than just non-confrontational. It felt like we were now co-creators, that we're going to work on the problem together. It's not us and them, me and you. It's now we, in the way that you framed those questions. Yeah, just just an observation. I think your wording was very powerful.

Dusty Holcomb: 24:03

Well, and it's it's actually I'm really glad you picked up on that. I think there's metaphor. That's the metaphorical way of thinking about it. Then what I always challenge leaders is like, how are you creating the conditions to sit next to the person and they'll look at me kind of cross-eyed like a dog watching TV and go, "What do you mean? Like literally manifest the the room. Do you sit next to the person? How do you visually sit next to them?" Like never sit across the table because you are automatically, you know, physically at odds. How do I just sit next to the person? And and that's the mental model that I want to sit down with a person with, or a customer with, or a client with, and go, I'm gonna sit next to you. I'm here to serve you. What is it that we're gonna work on together? And I think that's a really important distinction. The other thing that I think is really important here is your own self awareness. And you know, I learned at a very young age because somebody walked into you know my office after a particularly contentious. Meeting and that I was not handling well, and said,"Dusty, you're a bit of a jackass." And I went, "Oh my God, what? What? Help me understand?" Tell me more, because there's clearly something I've done, and I, I'm a high D on the disc scale, and so I had to learn that in order to create influence and impact for others, I needed to meet them where they were, not show up how I was, and that's another way of sitting next to the person and understanding what their little behavioral tendencies and desires are, so I can communicate most effectively.

Mick Spiers: 25:36

Yeah, very good, Dusty, and I I love the experience that you're sharing in terms of how you've evolved in this, and having that discipline to pull back, because you could have had an emotional reaction. What do you mean, am I jackass? Or you could have gone, ah, oh, there's something here. There's something here. So yeah, really good. Now I'm going to say, going to hazard a guess here. We might have confused some of the audience along the way here, and I can see where these these roads are going to converge. By the way, but we we need to now do this. We've spoken at the start of this interview about clarity. The heart of everything is clarity, and now we've spoken a lot about curiosity. Where does clarity and curiosity converge, Dusty?

Dusty Holcomb: 26:19

I love that question, and I'm so glad you asked it. You know, clarity is the ability to articulate with a clear vision of what it is we're trying to do, what it is we're trying to achieve, how we're going to get there. The only way you can achieve clarity is to ask questions, is to get clear for yourself. And so, whether you're getting clear for yourself, clear for your team, or clear for your organization, it's asking the right questions and then helping others connect the dots. So I believe that you know we talked about this at the very beginning. You know, execution failures are the easiest place for us to point fingers at and you know start poking on, going, "What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? What are we going to do?" We have to swim upstream and go. Are we really clear on what we're trying to achieve? That's a question. What does great look like? That's a question. How will we know if we got there? That's a question. These questions are rooted in curiosity with a desire to answer and understand that basic premise of what does great look like? What is it I'm trying to achieve? So the heart of clarity is a great question, and it's answered honestly and openly. And that's what curiosity is for me.

Mick Spiers: 27:35

Yeah, really good. So curiosity. I'm going to say asking the right questions at the right time, in the right way, from what we're saying, including one thing I picked up from what you just said, you're asking the questions to yourself as well.

Dusty Holcomb: 27:50

100%

Mick Spiers: 27:51

Yeah. So, because you might, yeah, the clarity might not be there. You you have these light bulb moments yourself. You would have everyone's experienced this at some point in their life or their career at the end of one of these well-worded questions, there's a light bulb moment for yourself, not just for the team. You go, oh, now it's really clear. Now it's really clear what the outcome should be, and and what's most important, and what the highest priority is. You know, whatever the circumstances was. So the right question at the right time, asked in the right way, is going to unlock clarity. They're not opposites. They're actually a. It's a pathway to clarity.

Dusty Holcomb: 28:27

It really is. And you know, I have a first principle belief that in order to lead others, you have to lead yourself first. And so, how can you expect anyone else to have clarity about what's important or clarity on where we're going if you can't articulate it and, and so that self leadership before team leadership, before organizational leadership, those things are really important, and it is an investment of time. But it's amazing how much it unlocks, and it goes back to that. You know, as a team leader, you're unlocking the efforts of others. You, as the leader have to have that clarity, and then you have to cast it into the others. You have to create that alignment because that's what allows them to achieve the results that you were going for.

Mick Spiers: 29:10

Yeah, there's something else that's emerging for me, Dusty. I'm going to ask it as a as a can you help me understand question. I'm going to practice what you did. So, with the clarity, one of the things that I was worried about when we use the word "Ah, the answer is clarity." It's just you know, if you want to be a better leader, being more clear is the risk of micromanagement. So, how do we how do we unlock this clarity without it turning into micromanagement?

Dusty Holcomb: 29:40

Well, I think I'll link it back to what we were talking about a minute ago,clarity on outcomes versus clarity of what to do. We have to really focus on the outcomes, and that's that's the question. Do we know where we're going? We may not know exactly what it looks like, but we can we can begin to answer what does great look like, and then. You switch from here's what great looks like, team. To this is what I'm thinking about, team. How do we get there? What is it that you think, and what am I missing? You know, I've painted this picture, but you know, I may not have all the colors that you have. Tell me more. Help me flesh that out. Help me build that in. So I like to think about it as a place of we're putting a north star out there over the horizon. We're creating clarity of the vision where we're going, but what we're really then doing is inviting others to participate in filling out what that picture really looks like to provide the vivid detail, the crispness. That's where you start to get the magic, and that's not going to be something where we're being a dictator and we're micromanaging. We're inviting people into that process, and that's the that's the where the critical magic happens.

Mick Spiers: 30:54

This is what I wanted to hear. I got to say, Dusty, I don't want people to listen to the headline of this podcast interview and go. It's obvious. I just need to tell people what to do and how to do it. That's not at all what Dusty is saying. So what we what we're saying here is curiosity is going to unlock the clarity, but the clarity is about the outcome, and then we're going to pivot straight back to curiosity again and go and to preserve people's agency, their creativity, their diversity of thought, that they're going to have multiple ideas about how to get there, and when they come up with their own ideas on how to get there, they take great ownership. Dusty, it's not, it's more than just unlocking the great ideas in the room. They're also going to take great ownership if it was their idea, so we're going to pivot into okay. That's where we need to get there. How might we get there, team? And if you don't mind, I'm going to extrapolate not only how how might we get there, what roadblocks might we encounter on the way, and how might we overcome those roadblocks? They're all still questions. My question to statement ratio is still very high. How does that sit with you?

Dusty Holcomb: 32:04

That sits beautifully. And what you're really doing, Mick, when you say that, and you're you're unlocking one of my favorite metaphors, is as leaders, our job is to shift our team members from being at a mindset of being a mercenary, paid to do a task, to instead become a missionary who is out there, you know, bought into this purpose, this place that we're going. So, our job as leaders is to connect the dots from where we are to where we want to be, and to enable the missionaries to evangelize and to go forth and do. And when we do that, and we do that well, what we're really getting, what we're unlocking is discretionary effort. When people bring their best selves, not at a mercenary level, paid to do the job and fulfill the task, but they're bringing their choice effort, their best effort, the extra little bit. It takes leadership to unlock that, and that's when you say that. That's what I'm hearing. I'm going this shift from a mercenary get task done work to be accomplished to alignment that allows us to unlock discretionary effort across an organization, and that's incredibly powerful. And that's what leadership brings to the table.

Mick Spiers: 33:16

Yeah, I love it, Dusty. As a as a great metaphor, are they mercenary? Think about that yourself. Listening to the show, do you have a team of mercenaries or do you have a team of missionaries? And ask yourself, you know, are you paying their salary for their arms and legs to do a task, or are you paying for their brain, their brain, their experiences, their ideas, all of this kind of stuff? And I'm hoping it's the latter. I'm hoping that's what you're doing, and the net effect is not just better ideas; it's better ownership, and unlocking the the discretionary effort that you're talking about, Dusty.

Unknown: 33:49

Well, I'll say this and put a bow on this. It goes back to this ability to be comfortable not being the best or not being the you know the highest paid or whatever that is. Is that when you enable the person who is closest to the problem, the opportunity, the customer, whatever that is, to make the optimal decisions because they understand where we're going. Because those dots have been connected, because they have bought in as a missionary, when you enable them to do it, they will make a better decision than you ever could because they have something you can never have, which is context. They have the knowledge and ability to make a better decision. So that's our job as leaders. That's how we get that exponential impact and effect, not by being the one who makes all the decisions, but by ensuring that the people with the most contact make the best decisions.

Mick Spiers: 34:39

Yeah, the ones that are closest to the action, they they know more things, and and quite often they've got better ideas. They just don't have the platform to share them. Yeah, really, really good, Dusty. All right, one other thing that I've read in your in your work and seen your talk about, I want to unpack is the idea that. Expectations are often trapped inside a leader's head. What does that mean, and what is the risk of that?

Dusty Holcomb: 35:06

Yeah, it's funny that we have these things that run in our mind, and we go,"Well, they should just know." I shouldn't have to say this, or maybe I haven't even articulated it out loud for myself. So when I'm working with teams, and I've done this for 15 or 20 years. I would always ask for what is the expectation that you have about how this job should be done that you've just never shared. And people look at me and they'll go, "Well, I think it should just be this." I said, "Have you ever shared that?" Well, they'll know they should just know it. Why should they know it? What was it that allowed them to read your mind to know exactly what you were thinking about, why you were thinking it, and why it's important. It's your job to remove that friction, remove that waste. It's actually, you know, one of the things that I learned 15 or 20 years ago was we would have myself and then my entire leadership team. We would write our leadership rules of engagement, and that was our way of sharing a decoder ring with everyone else, our expectations as a leader, the things that you know pissed us off, the things that you know really you know how we show up, not because it was about us. But because it would remove the friction and waste for them, and it would give them more clarity about how they could manage us or how they could, you know, get more done, and so this idea that we have these expectations in our head. We have these things that are never said, and when we say them and we communicate them very clearly, what we're doing is we're helping another person be successful. So I'll give you an example. I was speaking at a CEO conference a couple months ago, walking through this rules of engagement framework, and one of the the managing partners at this private equity firm, he goes, you know, I've never shared with my team, but I really like it when they send me an email. If it's really important, if they'll just send me a text, you know, so I know to go check my email because I'm not always doing that. And some of his team was in the room. They said, yeah, we figured it out. It would have been nice if you'd have told us this on day one because we had to take a few lumps along the way because we were waiting for things. That's an expectation he had in his head, and he had just never made clear. So he clarified it. He said it, and now just people did it, and it was much more impactful. So we all have these. We have these things that we just don't think we have to share. We're doing the other person a favor, a benefit, a gift when we get it out of our head. Not with ego, not with it all about being about us, but with the opportunity to help them be more impactful.

Mick Spiers: 37:37

You've got me self-diagnosing a little bit here, Dusty. You got me thinking about something that I get frustrated with, I get frustrated with this, and it must be frustrated, frustrating for the other people as well. And it's a really simple thing. It's it's signing off purchase orders that I I get 10s of these purchase order requests. They they land in the EA, ERP system, and it comes to me with next to no context, and I have to try and work out what is this one, you know, what is this all about before I sign off because it's you know company's money here. I want to I want to take my responsibilities seriously, and I get really frustrated. And I just want, why don't they just send me a Teams message with the three bullet points of this is the purchase order. This is why. This is like um, and but have I ever said that to the team? The answer is probably no. So I'm sitting here, you know, getting frustrated. They're getting confused. Why does Mick take so long to sign off purchase orders? Why don't I just tell them? Why don't I just tell them? So you got me thinking of I'm going to say three things, and I'm I'm going to come to the rules of engagement. I want to know how to do that, but let me explain some things that were jumping in my head when you were discussing this, Dusty. The first one was in psychosocial safety, which is hugely important. You're responsible for the place where people are spending up to 1/3 of their lives, and you you can be the difference between whether that's a good experience or a bad experience. And role clarity was jumping into my head here. Role clarity and expectation management that the person shouldn't be in a situation when it comes to the clarity part, where they're driving their car in the morning and they're going in with anxiety because they don't know what's what their role is, what the clarity, what what outcome are we trying to achieve today? That creates anxiety, and now I'm going to build the expectations in. Now I'm driving home from work at the end of the day, scratching my head, going, I have no idea if I did a good job today or not. So clarity for me is this outcome. Expectation is now behaviors, and if I've got role clarity and expectation clarity, I don't have anxiety about what I need to do and what's in. Important, and I don't have kind of this nervousness of not

knowing: 40:04

did I do a good job, or should I be proud of myself today, or should I not be proud because I don't know? So I don't know.

Dusty Holcomb: 40:12

I love it.

Mick Spiers: 40:13

Okay, and now I want to know about this rules of engagement. Is this the key to unlock that? And how do we start? How do we start with this?

Dusty Holcomb: 40:21

Let me go there. Let me just say something based on what you were just saying, because I get goosebumps watching you do this in real time. What happens? And so, if we put this in a through the lens of understanding why this is important in business, because people could say that's fluffy. Why you know we're talking about feelings. What we're really talking about is non-value-added activity or non-value-added effort. If our team is spending any effort or energy wondering about where do I stand, why is you know Mick mad at me, why isn't this getting done, that's not effort and energy that's being released on their most important outcomes, they're responsible and accountable for, or it's not effort and energy that's being spent on their families, right? So we are creating a diminished output by design. So when we do this work, what we're actually getting is a more effective organization. And so when I hear you talk about, hey, these purchase orders are a real pain in the butt because you know they're going to be a pain in the butt. You probably put off doing them. I mean, you don't get to them as quickly as you would like to because you want to bundle them, and so then all of that happens, and it creates a friction point in the organization that just doesn't need to be there. And so you articulating this and going,"Hey, this is what success looks like." I won't, you know, I'll respond to these once I have these three things. If you look at it and it's not in there, you just push it back and go, "Hey, see the, see the rules." Go do this thing. And that way, there's no friction. There's no waste. And I think that psychological safety is really, really important because it's not just about how we feel-it's about creating a diminished impact at work, and I believe that everything we do is leadership, and it's an intentional ceiling that we're putting in our organizations if we aren't very thoughtful and intentional about how we address it. So, with that, I'll talk about rules of engagement in this approach. But I just think it's so important what you were touching on there. So this process is really simple, and what I do when I'm working with teams and have done this for years is I'll actually like interview the CEO and say I want to just interview you, and we'll suss out what pisses you off, what really you know, what is your purchase order moment, for example. It's just a few simple steps where we clarify for ourselves these elements that we can then communicate and give to someone else. And so, where I start with this in working with teams is, as a leader, what do you value? What does great look like at a behavioral level? And you touched on this a minute ago, and I think it's so incredibly important. These aren't the words. This is not the micromanagement. But what does behavior look like when it's done well in your organization for you? Well, it looks like this, people proactively communicate. They just handle things without having to be followed up on. Amazing. That's what needs to be in your rules of engagement, and so this entire process we work through builds the decoder ring that then you give to your leaders and your leadership team, and say, "This is how you can expect me to show up. This is what's important. This is how you expect me to do. And we walk through a process of going, you know, what do I value? What do I expect of myself? And I can go deeper on that one because that's a really important one, and it's one where I see people shift a lot. What do I expect of my team? How do I give and receive feedback? How do I make decisions? And those are different because these are all human level behavioral things. If I work for a person who's made snap decisions their entire career, and then I go to work for someone who is very pensive and likes a lot of data, I'm going to be all kind of confused. I don't know how to get them the information they need. How do I want to be approached? Do you text me? Do you call me? Do you like little things, and this is almost feels like that same tension from earlier, where it's it's not about me, it's about understanding yourself so others can be more impactful. And then the last one is this idea of what are the non-negotiables? What is it that you need to know about how I'm going to show up as a leader that is non-negotiable? For me, one of my non-negotiables is everyone will be treated with dignity and respect. Period. Full stop. Like it's it's a non-negotiable that we're going to have any behavior that isn't allowed with treating every human being with dignity and respect. And I'm just going to tell people this right out of the gate. And so this process of. Building is giving that decoder ring and it's super fuel for your leadership team because you're removing opportunities for friction and waste. And I've used it in hiring. I know I have clients that use it in hiring. I have clients that you know make this part of their standard leadership operating system in their whole company. It really is about how do we work more impactfully and effectively together as humans, recognizing we all have very different backgrounds, and so how do we just get the noise out of the way and get those expectations clear? So I can go as deep as you want on any of it. That's the process.

Mick Spiers: 45:35

That's really good. There were some deep things that I picked up there, Dusty. If I can, firstly, I was self-diagnosing myself as I was listening, and I hope the audience was as well. I'm going to tell you, I've been very clear about my non-negotiables, and I've missed a trick on the rest of it. So I'll explain myself a little bit further here. My non-negotiables, I tell it to everyone. I have zero tolerance for any willful breaches of safety, zero tolerance for any form of discrimination, and zero tolerance for any form of harassment. I tell that multiple times per year for the avoidance of doubt. These are my three golden rules. But have I told people about? I have a preference about the way I get emails. I have a preference about the way we process purchase orders. I haven't removed the ambiguity that of the frustrations, the interference that would actually be making everyone's life more difficult than it needs to be. The second one that I love, that I think I don't want people to miss out on you in your rules of engagement. I heard you say,"What are your expectations of yourself?" It wasn't just what are the expectations of the team. You're setting a bit of in the decoder ring. You're you're setting a bit of a framework of this is how I'm going to show up as a leader, and if I'm the one in the car driving home today as the leader. Did I live by my own set of accountabilities? My own, I said that I was going to be. These are my expectations. Did I live up to them today? So it gives you a level of personal accountability, not just team accountability.

Dusty Holcomb: 47:18

I'm going to double click one level deeper than that and say when you roll this out to your team, what I encourage leaders to do is say this is what I expect of myself, and I want you to know that, and I want you to also know that I will at times fall short, and I am inviting you to hold me accountable to the standard that I aspire to live up to, because that vulnerability of humanity and saying, "I want you to give me this feedback. This is what I expect. It makes it so easy when you screw up, and you will, for your team to. They've already been given permission to go"Hey, Dusty, I know that this behavior that you're demonstrating isn't aligned with who you are." You've told me that, but I wanted you to know you may not have seen it or noticed it, and it's happening. And so, like one of mine is I expect to put the other person front and center in my attention when I'm with them. I want to focus on them and mull out all the other distractions. Our technology laden world isn't good at that, and our my COO called me out on this about 10 years ago. I had just gotten an Apple Watch. We were in his one-on-one meeting. I expected myself to be fully present with my leaders, with my team. It's all about them. My Apple Watch was dinging, and I was looking down. And after about 10 minutes of this, George very graciously, very firmly said, "Hey, Dusty, I can tell that there are things going on in your life right now that are more important than me." With your permission, I would like to reschedule this meeting for a time when you can be fully present, because I know that's the standard you've set for yourself.

Mick Spiers: 48:59

Wow, I love that he said that. That's really good. Yeah, that's really good. And presence is important, by the way. Let's say that as we go past, but it's just that ability to empower people to hold you account. Here, here is my values, and hey, Dusty, just so you're aware, you're not living those values right now. That's really good. It's really good.

Dusty Holcomb: 49:21

It changes how other leaders show up because then they are-they're not working for you as an employee. They're working for you for your success. Like that's the up level that we do with that, and it-it works so powerfully well. And I'll take the example you shared with, like, hey, your non-negotiable is safety. You know, no willful breaches of safety. One of my because I was in operating environments for most of my career, where we had people who would have life and limb at danger. One of my communication preferences was if there are ever any injuries that would necessitate anyone going to any type. Medical care. I don't care 24/7, 365. I want a phone call. I do not want to get a text message. I don't want to get an email two days later. We've got 1000s of employees. If someone has been hurt, I want to know about it. And that was one of my non negotiables. It's one of my standards.

Mick Spiers: 50:18

Yeah, very good. And clarity of expectation, right there. Okay. All right. So I'm going to summarize a couple of things. I've got one more question that wraps this up, Dusty. So let's think about everything we've spoken about today. We've we've spoken about, you know, is your question to statement ratio high? That's a great question to ask you ask yourself. That those questions, when you ask the right question in the right way at the right time, it unlocks clarity. It unlocks of clarity. What what is it that we're trying to achieve here? But it's clarity of outcome, not clarity of what and how we're going to get there. But where are we going, and and what makes that journey important? Right. So clarity of outcome. We've then spoken about clarity of expectation. So, if we've got clarity of outcome, we've got the curiosity to get us there. We've got the curiosity for then the team to have their own agency and creativity about how we're going to get there. So, you're not micromanaging. You're not micromanaging. You're giving clarity of outcome, and then you're remaining curious and asking the right question, but then you're also going to use clarity to unlock clarity of expectation, so people are confused about. And it's going to remove ambiguity, but I'm going to use the word friction. It's going to remove friction. It's going to remove frustration and friction, so that we have these rules of engagement using Dusty's framework to help us with this curiosity, clarity, clarity of outcome, clarity of expectation, and then we're just creating the environment where people can do their very best work to achieve that outcome. And we're not telling them what to do and how to do it, but we've given them the clarity that they need to work efficiently, effectively, and collaboratively with each other to achieve the outcome. Now, tell me, Dusty, there's going to be people listening to this, and they might be doing some of the things I was doing, self-diagnosing and going. Sorry, I'm going to swear for a second. They might be going, "Oh shit, I do that. I do that stuff that Dusty's talking about." How do they take the first baby step. If if they are, let's go statement versus question. If their statement versus question ratio is high, so they're giving statements all day and they're not asking the right questions, how does someone start? Do they start with the rules of engagement? Do they start with how do they pivot?

Dusty Holcomb: 52:38

Yeah, I think to that question to statement ratio first. So let's just start with that. I think rules of engagement is important, but the thing that comes to mind immediately is take the two minutes. It doesn't have to be a lot of time to answer and put on a like sheet of paper. What is it I need to know? Go as an outcome of this meeting. What is it I need to know? What is it they need to know? And so, what is it I need to know first frames what are the questions I need to ask before you allow yourself to answer at you know answer the question what is it they need to know because that's going to statements. Oftentimes, we find that those statements are reframed or changed based on what we have approached and asked with curiosity. What is it I need to know? And then the second part is that what is I need to do? And so this is a framework a mentor gave me many many years ago. What is it I need to know? What is it I need to do? What is it they need to know? And what is it they're going to need to do? And so when I take the two minutes to prepare for a meeting. Prepare for a conversation with curiosity of going. If I'm going to create the outcome I want, what is I need to know? Just allows you to ask that a question first before you just roll in and start going. Hey guys, we have a problem. Here's what we're going to do because that's not the real issue.

Mick Spiers: 53:58

Yeah. Okay. Really good, Dusty. I'm hearing two minutes. That's not a huge amount of time. And one of the things that jumped into my head when you said that was, you need to stop. I do. I fall into this as well. Guilty is charged. We need to stop rushing from meeting one to meeting two to meeting three to meeting four. We need those little pivots. You need to decompress the meeting you just came from, and you need to spend these two minutes that are going to set up the next meeting for success. Otherwise, you just need firefighting mode all day, all day long.

Dusty Holcomb: 54:32

Yeah, you're on your back of your heels. You never get to the balls of your feet. You're never being proactive. You're always reactive. The reason I choose two minutes, and it's very intentional. Is we can use time as a forcing function. It doesn't mean that we need to spend 30 minutes on everything. Some things might take 30 minutes of preparation, but if we just stop and set a timer, even for two minutes, and go in two minutes, what are the three most important questions I need to understand? Coming out of this conversation, you can answer that in two minutes, but you need that time to context shift.

Mick Spiers: 55:06

Yeah, really good, Dusty. All right, you've given us so much to think about. You absolutely made a stop and rethink this whole world of clarity without micromanagement. It's been really powerful, Dusty, and you've given us some steps that we can all take to lean into this and start shifting the way that we lead. So thank you so much for that. I'm going to take us now to our rapid round. These are the same four questions we ask all of, I guess. So what's the one thing that you know now, Dusty Holcomb, that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Dusty Holcomb: 55:40

What I wish I knew when I was 20 was how powerful it is, and it would have been for me to truly know myself, to understand my behavioral tendencies and how I show up. I was unaware, I was not self-aware, and didn't understand the impact of my own behaviors on those around me, I just thought everybody thought like I did, and I had to go through that. "Hey, Dusty, you're a jackass moment." I had to, you know, really go deep on all the behavioral assessments. I wish I'd known that years earlier than I did. I got blessed to know or learn these things in my early 20s, but at 20 years old, if I'd have been more self-aware, I would have been more self-confident, and I would have been more impactful for those I was serving then. And those are compound effects. Like this, you do something better; it just continues to grow. And so, I would like to have known that at 20.

Mick Spiers: 56:37

Yeah, very good, Dusty. And thank you for sharing that. What's your favorite book?

Dusty Holcomb: 56:42

This is probably the hardest question anyone can ask me because I have 1000 favorite books since I learned everything I know from reading. Here's what I would say, my favorite book that I reread every single year, and I'm in the process of rereading it right now. It's a "Summertime

Read for Me: 56:58

Is Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. And I love that book because of the power of agency. And every year when I read it, I read a slightly different book because I'm thinking about my own agency and my own choices differently. And it's a different book when I read it every year, and that's that's why I continue to do it. I could probably quote from it verbatim, but that's my favorite book because it makes me focus on my choices and what I have control over and what I don't, and so makes me more present in the moment.

Mick Spiers: 57:36

What I love there that you said is that you read it every year and you read a different book every year. That's very interesting. I turned 53 last week, Dusty, and I have this funny thing that I say to people. I say, version 5.3 of Mick is hopefully more mature, wiser than version 5.2, and hopefully there's not too many bugs in the new software release, kind of thing, right? But we are we we're different. I'm very different to the person I was when I was 20, so I can imagine like if you pick up the same book a year from now, you're gonna you're gonna pick up different things. It's really interesting.

Dusty Holcomb: 58:14

You do, and I and that's there's so many great books to read. I always get taught caught with this tension of you know by choosing this, I'm choosing not to read something else. But that book is one that has reframed for me, and I don't remember if it was Epictetus or one of the other great Greeks or Romans who said,"You know, you never step in the same river twice, and it's the same way with a great book." It's never the same.

Mick Spiers: 58:39

Yeah, it's really good, Dusty. You've really got me thinking. What's your favorite quote?

Dusty Holcomb: 58:45

My favorite quote, and I again, I have a love affair with quotes. I've been sending a daily quote for almost 30 years. My favorite quote is from John Maxwell, and it is very simply that leadership is influence, nothing more, and nothing less. And and I use that to check myself and to remind myself that everything I do has influence. Do are the things and choices I'm making creating the influence that I want? And so that's my favorite quote.

Mick Spiers: 59:19

I think it's double edged. I'm going to say as well, Dusty. That yes, it's influence, and I'm and when I use it intentionally in the right way, I'm going to be influencing and inspiring people towards a virtuous outcome around a meaning a meaningful cause. Let's say, but the other the double edge of it is with great. I'm going to go Stan Lee here for a second, with great power comes great responsibility. It's also a responsibility.

Dusty Holcomb: 59:44

Yeah, yeah, it is that double edged, and that's why I use it because it can, you know, they'll check yourself before you wreck yourself. If I'm doing something, and in a role I'm influencing, and it's not good, that's not good leadership.

Mick Spiers: 59:58

No, good. Okay, great. Very good. And finally, Dusty, there's going to be people that are really inspired by this conversation, going,"Wow, yeah, I need to make some shifts here. How do people find you if they'd like to know more?

Dusty Holcomb: 1:00:12

Yeah, they'd like to learn more. The first thing I want to do is give a gift. And so we've talked about rules of engagement. I believe, and I've seen such power that can come from this. So I actually want to give that to anyone who's interested in downloading. They can simply go to myrulesofengagement.com, download the playbook. I even include in that a the same disc assessment that I use with CEOs and leadership teams because I think the power of understanding yourself is so incredibly important, and it's the you know it's that thing I would tell myself if I were 20. So that's embedded in there, and I would invite anyone to go do that if they want to connect with me. LinkedIn is a wonderful place, very active there. And then check out our podcast, Leadership Unlocked. I'm always talking with great leaders like you and people who are doing really interesting things, and then also sharing these frameworks and these lessons that I've learned by paying a lot of you know tuition for my own misery over the years that you know I want to make sure that others can benefit from. So those would be the three things: myrulesofngagement.com, LinkedIn, and then check out Leadership Unlocked.

Mick Spiers: 1:01:17

Yeah, brilliant, Dusty. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for your gift of of your time, your wisdom, and your experience today, and giving us very practical things that we can implement. I personally feel very richer for this conversation, and I know the audience will as well. Thank you so much

Dusty Holcomb: 1:01:34

Mick. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I really, really appreciate it.

Mick Spiers: 1:01:39

What a wonderfully practical conversation with Dusty Holcomb. There are several things I'm taking away from this one. The first is every time we step into a new level of leadership, what got us there may not be what makes us successful once we're there. As an individual contributor, our value may have come from our expertise or our own output. As a leader, the equation changes. Our impact becomes multiplied through the people around us. Our job is no longer simply to do great work; it's to create the conditions where other people can do their very best work, and that requires clarity. Clarity of where we're going, clarity about why it matters, clarity about what great looks like, and clarity about the expectations we have of each other. But importantly, clarity is not micromanagement. We can be crystal clear about the outcome while remaining curious about how the people around us might achieve it, I also love Dusty's challenge around our question-to-statement ratio. How much of your day are you spending telling people what you think, and how much are you genuinely asking questions that allow the wisdom, creativity, and capability of others to emerge. And finally, my personal challenge from today's conversation came from that very ordinary example of approving a purchase order. I found myself getting frustrated because people weren't giving me the information I needed, and then came the uncomfortable question: Had I ever actually told them what I needed? Probably not. So here's my challenge to you this week. Think about one recurring frustration you have with someone in your team, and

ask yourself: 1:03:39

Have I made my expectations genuinely clear, or am I expecting them to somehow know what's inside my head? That one question might remove a surprising amount of friction. Thank you again to Dusty for his generosity, his wisdom, and for giving us tools we can all put into practice immediately. And join us again next week when I'm joined by Monique DeMonaco. Monique challenged us to rethink emotional intelligence, not as a soft skill, but as a life skill. You've been listening to The Leadership Project. If today sparked an insight, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with one other person who would benefit from listening to the show. A huge thank you to Gerald Calibo for his tireless work editing every episode, and to my amazing wife Sei, who does all the heavy lifting in the background to make this show possible. None of this happens without them. Around here, we believe leadership is a practice, not a position. That people should feel seen, heard, valued, and that they matter. And that the best leaders trade ego for empathy, certainty for curiosity, and control for trust. If that resonates with you, please subscribe on YouTube and on your favorite. Podcast app, and if you want more, follow me on LinkedIn and explore our archives for conversations that move you from knowing to doing. Until next time, lead with curiosity, courage, and care.