342. Hold the Vision, Loosen the Plan: Leadership in a Changing World with Jeanine Becker

What if the most effective leadership move in a messy, fast-changing world is simply admitting, “I don’t know yet”? We sit down with executive coach and systems change practitioner Jeanine Becker to unpack emergence, complexity, and why certainty can quietly make leaders worse at the very problems they are trying to solve.

We talk about the difference between having purpose and pretending you can predict the future. Purpose can stay steady as a North Star, while strategy becomes more agile, iterative, and experimental. Janine shares how leaders can use a simple question, “What is true now?”, to update decisions based on reality rather than old assumptions. We also dig into how metrics are signals, not answers, and why teams stay aligned when the purpose feels lived instead of repeated like a tagline.

Then we get practical about the human side of change: why some people feel energized by uncertainty while others feel threatened, how to name what is known and frame what is open, and how to invite resistance with genuine curiosity. We draw a hard line between performative consultation and real co-creation, where leaders accept that what emerges may not match the answer they walked in with. Along the way we explore presence, listening, confirmation bias, and how leaders can create conditions for people to show up stronger over time.

If you want better leadership tools for complex times, subscribe, share this with one person who will use it, and leave a review so more thoughtful leaders can find the show.

🌐 Connect with Jeanine:
• Website: https://www.onpurposetogether.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beckerjeanine/

Transcript

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Mick Spiers: 0:01

What if one of the most important things a leader can say is, "I don't know yet" We often associate leadership with certainty, have a vision, make a plan, set the direction, know what comes next. But what happens when we're dealing with something genuinely complex, when the information is incomplete, the environment keeps changing, and the answers we're looking for may not even exist yet. Well, today we're joined by Jeanine Becker for a fascinating exploration of emergence and what it asks of us as leaders. Jeanine challenges us to distinguish between having purpose and pretending we can predict the future. In today's conversation, we explore what it means to ask what is true now. We talk about experimentation rather than rigid planning, curiosity rather than defensiveness, and what happens when leaders genuinely invite people into the process rather than consulting them after the important decisions have already been made? Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Jeanine Becker. Jeanine is the founder and CEO of "On Purpose Together", a partner with "Weaving Futures Together" and the host of the"Fire That Gathers Podcast." She's an executive coach with decades of experience of helping organizations and helping leaders with leadership transitions and to to find themselves and to find their own purpose, their own mission, and to get out there and to take that passion and turn it into something meaningful. Today, we're going to explore something very interesting, which is this concept of emergence. What does that mean? And as a leader, what do we need to do to sit with emergence so that we can work with the art of the possible? How can we bring new things into the world by making sure that we are sitting with that, sitting with this emergent property, emergence of the people in front of us to make the most of co-creation in the world that we are trying to create, driven by that purpose, so it's going to be very interesting conversation. This is going to be completely unscripted, as usual on this show. We're going to be having an emergent conversation about emergence, so I'm really excited to get into this. So, without any further ado, Jeanine, I'd love it if you'd say hello to the audience, give a little flavor of your background, but mostly I want to know what inspires you to get out of bed every day and do what you do.

Jeanine Becker: 2:51

I love putting the attention right now into the emergence, so I can see. Like even if I had thought I had an answer to the question, to see what's more true in this moment, what inspires me to get out of bed, part of it is my eight-year-old daughter. Part of it is a sense of where we live in really interesting, scary, fraught, hopeful times. And so, I guess my question is like, how do I bring my peace to making the world better in this moment? And how am I a catalyst for my clients to bring their best to be the highest leverage they can be in the systems they work. You asked a little bit about my background, so I feel like I have an academic track rate. I taught collaboration negotiation at Stanford for a decade, but on a personal level, I've really been working this skill of interdependence and collaboration as a solo parent, and I've studied systems change. You know, at the Academy of Systems Change, I'm learning kind of academically and been deep with clients in the question of how do we create the conditions for systems to transform. But I think I really learned this idea of sitting in the wonder and in the inquiry in a six-year fertility journey, so it's been a mix of academic and practice, and then very personal growth. That that girds that kind of is the foundation for the work that I do now.

Mick Spiers: 4:16

Yeah, very good. The topic about your daughter came through loud and clear, also in a lot of the notes that you shared with us. Tell us about how that did change how you see the world.

Jeanine Becker: 4:28

I'm not sure if you mean having her, just the fact that she's here. But I think the process of having her-you know-I was think maybe like a lot of your listeners. I'm used to setting an objective, driving towards conclusion, being able to control an outcome, like my former work was sort of there's a problem. People came to me as a corporate attorney to solve a problem, and I could put my expertise towards that. And you know, fertility is one of those things that like I had to keep showing up with my piece of the puzzle with what I could do, and. To know that I'm not in control, that I have a lot of influence. If I don't take steps, things won't move. But I don't get to dictate the outcome, and certainly don't get to dictate the timing.

Mick Spiers: 5:12

Yeah. So it's kind of somewhat. I can see the connection here into then the world that we live in, in terms of when we're helping leaders, leadership and control are two words that often go together, but we can't always control all of the variables around us. The world is changing at a pace that is incredible. It's it's faster than it ever has before, but the scary part is it's probably slower than it ever will again. So we're we're living in this world that's evolving around us. Your daughter now, as she grows up, is also changing every single day. The workplaces that we work in are changing every single day, whether we like that or not. So how do we make there's this dichotomy here of we want we're trying to achieve an outcome, but the environment that we're working in is is changing constantly. How do we work with that, Jeanine?

Jeanine Becker: 6:11

I love the way you're holding that. Both Anne, right? I have an intention, I have a desire, I have an objective where I want to go, and I'm living in a level of complexity, uncertainty, and change that feels unprecedented, and so I think this is part of why, even with my work with some teams and organizations that are more looking at strategic planning, that it's more-it's not the five-year strategic plan. It's iterative. It's agile. There's we're testing experiments. We are making room for new learning, and I think that's part of the shift in leadership in this moment. Is the willingness to say, you know, to know kind of a direction I want to go. I want to expand to these territories. I want to expand to this new city or state. I want to grow my revenue to this, and there's going to be new information, new markets, new government policies that are going to shift what the opportunities and what the challenges are. So how do we keep listening for and paying attention to the information as it comes in?

Mick Spiers: 7:17

Okay, so I'm hearing two things, Jeanine. That yeah, we can still have that outcome focus of okay, what we're trying to achieve in this world is X. There's a top of a mountain that we want to get to, but some of the previous thinking and strategy where we might have been going, oh, there's the top of the mountain. It's really easy. We just have to take the following seven steps. May not serve us anymore. So the idea of a five-year strategic plan, you might still have a target that you're trying to achieve in five years, but it's not going to be a structured path that's going to get there. The world is going to throw you all kinds of curveballs. The world is going to be a different place by the time you think you're going to get to the top of that mountain. So that path that you're going to take is-it's not going to be linear anymore.

Jeanine Becker: 8:07

No, absolutely. I think that's exactly right. I think the idea that we can plan it out and know where it's going to be in that period of time, that extended period of time, I think that's a fallacy. I think the bigger question is, can we keep taking the steps and then reorient. Okay, what's true now? Where are the opportunities in this moment? I think the leaders that I see really thriving are the ones that have the ability to hold a vision and to seek input from unexpected places. Right to pay attention at the same time.

Mick Spiers: 8:37

Okay, so holding the vision, and I'm almost going to say the presence and the mindfulness to go. And I like what you said. Well, what's true now, and it may be something that was different three weeks ago. What do we know to be true now? Because the world changed in the last three weeks, but my vision did change or didn't change. Like, are we holding that vision to be also like pinpoint that vision's not shifting, or is there going to be some level of shifting reality with the vision as well?

Jeanine Becker: 9:11

I mean, I think it depends on the work and depends on the role, right? So, I have one former client. He was the SVP of customer experience, he had looked at the start of the year at like five big levers he thought would really move. They picked one that felt like it had the most impact. So it was first contact resolution rate, right? Okay, we're going to put attention here. So he had his vision. He gave the whole organization a directive, we're going to improve this one piece, and he didn't give them a lot of commentary on how he let them define it. And what he noticed is unexpected groups and people that were newer to the organization had ideas, they had input, they had possibilities that he didn't expect. It was 200 people experimenting. And the path forward emerged, right? Like the number one possibility that they really seized emerged from the group. So it did have a clear vision. Like that's one that didn't didn't change. It was the how that emerged from the conversation. But I think there are times when, as you get more information, or I have clients in health technology or healthcare, where the landscape is shifting significantly based on policy and funding, but actual the vision itself can, you know, we want to help with health in a particular area, but how we do that, with whom we need to do that, may shift significantly.

Mick Spiers: 10:37

Yeah. Okay. All right. So I'm hearing directionally the vision is going to be that north star. That having the ability to hold space for people to go, okay, that's the mountain I want to climb. Work with me to work out what are all of the different ways that we could get to the top of that mountain, but also the ability, if necessary, if the world changes dramatically in that time, that we might pivot two degrees left, two degrees right, but the purpose is somewhat still there. The top of the mountain might shift a couple of degrees, but the purpose was still what was getting us out of bed. So it's not going to it's not going to be like oh, for the last three years we've been heading south, and now we've decided we're going to head north. It's still directionally south. It just might pivot a little bit because the world might change. If you are trying to build a, I'm going to use a famous one that we all know about. If you're trying to build the world's largest chain of video stores, you're not going to just belligerently, or maybe they did, didn't they, with Blockbuster? But you're not going to just belligerently go, no, we only do video stores. If the world changes, you're going to have to go, okay, no, we're going to acquire Netflix as an example, but the purpose was still entertainment in people's living rooms. Am I making sense?

Jeanine Becker: 12:01

Yeah, I mean, I think that's where you just did it. You pivoted the purpose to a bigger picture that still is true. So, if the purpose was to sell videos, then it looks like I made a really big pivot. If I'm actually going to stream into someone's home, but if I step back and I say, "Wait, what? What is actually the deeper purpose here is around entertainment and bringing information and that sense of entertainment to people where they are." Right? Then you can stay true to the purpose.

Mick Spiers: 12:33

Yeah, really good. Okay, so how do we do that? I'm gonna now because I'm gonna we're going to talk about this emergence and that the world is changing all the time. How do we make sure that the team don't forget the original purpose? That you don't wake up one day and find out that you were you were trying to sail to Hawaii and you you missed it significantly and ended up in New Zealand.

Jeanine Becker: 12:57

Yeah, I mean, I will say I think for leaders, often the more challenging piece is that they set out for Hawaii, and then they're 200 yards off the coast, and they get stuck in the rowing there. Then they actually ended up way far. So, but I think the leader's job is to continue to come back to that vision again and to help people feel their own connection to it. So I have one client that's a health technology company that I've been working with for the last four months more intensely, and one of the first things I did in leading their their leadership team offsites was to actually have them go around and ask, you know, why this purpose for you? We can talk about the values, we can talk about the mission in the organization, but what really shifted their level of vulnerability, collaboration, sense of each other as humans, and not just wearing the hat of the role that they were wearing, was hearing the story of why that why it mattered to them, and to have them bring that conversation to their teams. Why this for you? What is it that gets you out of bed? That kind of internal motivation, their sense of their autonomy, and how much they belong to the team and their competence-those pieces. But actually, that I'm not going to sell a vision because of my why. I'm going to sell it by tying it to those on the team. So that's what I would say. I think the other part is I think often leaders feel like I've done that, and I feel and I notice that in coaching, one of the places we talk about is the sense of it feels repetitive. It feels like you know I've checked kind of a I've checked the box, and yet I get curious about like how is it actually part of not something you did, but an ongoing part of the conversation. How is building the customer story or customer success into the part of every one of your quarterly offsites? How is the deeper purpose in the work? We have one of my leadership teams is actually that I work with is going and doing. Ride-alongs in the field, so they can see personally the impact that it makes. That it's different ways of bringing that purpose and vision back to the team in a way that they feel it.

Mick Spiers: 15:13

Yeah, really good. Okay, so there's there's a few things I'm picking up there, Jeanine, that I think could be powerful for everyone. So the first one is that the vision can't become just a repeated tagline? That, that doesn't. That's not it. Okay. The, the second part was the mountain itself. Climbing the mountain is actually the outcome. Is not the purpose. The purpose was why you started climbing the mountain in the first place, and to remind yourself of that, and to remind yourself that the people that you've inspired around you to join you on the journey, they have their own personal reason why this is important to them. What, what makes this important to you, and they'll all have their own narrative of that. It might be something about themselves, about their past, about their daughter. It might there could be all kinds of reasons why they're in the room, and that we should remind ourselves of that-the purpose, not the journey, not there. Sorry, not the destination, but the purpose-and then blend that into okay, this at you know this month's meeting, we're going to talk about our staff engagement surveys. How do we connect that back to why we're trying to do this in the first place, not so that the staff engagement survey becomes a metric that we target. It's about making sure that we're trying to get our staff engaged because it's important, because it matters, because it's going to help us achieve our purpose. So we're no longer focused on a metric; we're focused on our purpose. How's this sitting with you?

Jeanine Becker: 16:45

And if I think, I guess, I'm going to lean into this piece around the metric. Like the metric is a signal, right? And it'll give you right. So the engagement survey will give you a signal that it's high or it's low, but it doesn't tell you why or what to do next.

Mick Spiers: 16:58

Yeah. Right. Got it.

Jeanine Becker: 16:59

So that's a place to like. Great, even if it's really high, why? What are we doing? If it's lower, or if it's different from one team to another, you know. So it's the that metric is your doorway for more curiosity, for more for fine tuning. But yes.

Mick Spiers: 17:17

Okay, good. So this this word fine tuning, I think, is going to come up a lot as we go through here, Jeanine. So, so the first thing I'm hearing very purpose-driven vision, but the ability that we need to fine-tune, and it could be to fine-tune the vision, but it's certainly to fine-tune the way to get there because the world that we're trying to navigate keeps on shifting, whether we like it or not. The world that we keep on trying to navigate keeps on shifting. There's going to be new obstacles, new market entrants. What it could be anything. The world is changing so fast that we need that ability to sit with the here and now and what's happening around us, so that we can make those little pivots. The thing I want to test with you, and I think it's probably going to be in a lot of people's minds. Is that doesn't feel great? I'm going to say, like, so so people like certainty, they fear loss, they fear the unknown. How can we sit with this unknown when I'm going to say almost physiologically that fear doesn't feel good. We don't like going into situations where we don't, or most of us don't like going into situations where we're so uncertain about the outcome. How can we enter this in a way that I don't know doesn't feel so fearful, and that we can live with the fact that we have no idea how this is going to finish. If I can use a Hollywood metaphor for a moment, Hollywood movies. There's some exceptions to what I'm about to say, of course, but I'm going to say 98% of Hollywood movies finish with the good guy winning, and it's almost formulaic, and somehow our brains like that. What the world is not like that.

Jeanine Becker: 19:05

Yeah. So maybe I'll answer this in two ways. Because as I first hear you frame the question, it's that people don't like the lack of certainty, and I think for some that's true. Like I get excited. I think often right there are leaders that are more visionary. That like, if the answers are already known, they're bored. You have some people on the team, and maybe the way I frame it is like, if this was certain, anybody could sit in your seat and do the job. It's a machine. We can just turn the crank. You, who you are, your experience, your perspective, your resource matter. So you, in the seat are essential. We can't just swap you out. Like this is an opportunity to take what you know and inform and make it better. So that's one side, and on the other side, there are people for whom the change and the uncertainty is scary. And so I often ask leaders to be. To speak to what do we know and what we don't, to be able to come into the room and say, here are the things we know, here's the timeline, here's the resources, here's like what is known or not changing, and what is open, so that it doesn't feel like we're just right floating. The business is still going to turn the quarterly profit. The organization is still going to run X number of programs. There's an area that's new and different, and I think for those that are really looking for certainty, being able to name what's known or certain and then define the box. So for the next hour, for the next 30 minutes, we're going to talk about this piece that's unknown. I've already drawn a frame around it so that it actually can feel less scary and be held in a bigger picture. And I think those are the two tools to remember that some people in your room, in the room that you're leading, are thrilled that it's uncertain, and for those that aren't, there's a way to give it a frame so that it doesn't feel like nothing solid, a lot solid, and a few things are open.

Mick Spiers: 21:13

Okay, that's a really good reminder that we're not all the same, right? And we've got to be careful not to project our own view of the world onto others and just assume that everyone else is is just like me. I'm also going to say that we can't ignore that, right? So we would ignore that at our peril. I'm hearing from you that we're going to have an open dialog about it. We're going to discuss it, and in that discussion, maybe we would add that you should be curious about where people are sitting with that. How is it sitting with them? And you might have the full spectrum of this is very uncomfortable for me, and this is the most exciting thing that we've done in years. You're going to have both ends of that spectrum and a bunch of people in between. But if you have an open dialog about it, you can walk through it. So if I put it into a real world, real world expectation, you're going to be some people. You're going to have some people that are at the end where we're going. Oh, we've done our project reviews this way for three years, and now the boss wants to do it a different way. And then you're going to have other people that are going. It's about time we reset the way that we do our project reviews. They're excited about it, but if you discuss that, if you have an open dialog, you can, I'm going to say, address the elephant in the room by talking about it. But you're also going to be learning something. Going to be learning something about those people that liked that. Oh, I like the fact that we do it the same every time, and you're going to find the people in the room that want to shift and they want to move. You're going to learn something about your people at the same time as having a constructive dialog about the uncertainty or about the change.

Jeanine Becker: 22:54

Absolutely, you're going to have the champions, and you're going to have those who are resisting. I think what I would name is that often you know you're talking not just about navigating uncertainty but this kind of change management. It's often the leadership has done of a team or an organization has done a lot of work to clarify where they're going. They've moved through that uncertainty. They move through their own resistance. They're already on board with the change, and then they imagine that as soon as they like put it out there, people are going to be excited too, and I think you know the team has to go through that same change arc. Some people at least do. They're they're going to come in resistant. So my advice there is the same one. I'm guessing you might bring, which is like, how do you bring curiosity there? What do they know? What is their contribution that I haven't thought of? And I feel like the leaders that do the best, the easiest time bringing people with them are the ones that invite that resistance with a level of curiosity. Now, not forever, right? There's a moment of just like this is where we're going. Time to get on board, but there is a a moment for genuine question.

Mick Spiers: 24:02

Yeah, good. I like this invite curiosity. It's definitely sitting well with me. I'm going to play something out here, Jeanine, and see what you think. So, listening to what you're just saying, there's quite often there's a change that a leader might have been thinking about this change for three months, and they've been thinking about it every day for three months. The people in the room are hearing it for the first time. They're at a completely different stage of development in terms of this idea. Sitting with them, if they're hearing it for the first time, you're convinced already that this is the right course of action, and the leader might get frustrated and go, "How are people not getting this?" And they're, they're forgetting it. You've been thinking about it for three months. They're hearing it for the first time. And then the second part I want to add is the leader could fall into the temptation then to go. Oh, I know what I need to do. I just need to explain it more. But I'm not hearing explain it more. I'm hearing. Get curious and then ask questions, and then I'm going to say, "Shut up and listen. So, hey team, I've got this idea." Here's the rough frame of the idea, not the 27 point plan, but here's the rough idea of the plan. How does this sit with you? And what are you seeing? And what do you think will work here? What don't you think will work? What obstacles might we encounter if that's where we're trying to get? How do you think we might get there? So I'm hearing a lot of curiosity, not just explain it 27 times.

Jeanine Becker: 25:32

Great, I'm not selling it. I'm genuinely curious. I mean, it reminds me when I was teaching negotiation at Stanford. One of the exercises we did was around you know think about the object you have that's the most valuable and you're going to turn to the person next to you and try and sell it and usually what the students did was take the five minutes they had to talk so most of them would think about their car and they would talk they wouldn't ask you know afterwards I I kind of asked how much time did you spend listening versus talking do you know if they like to drive? Do you know what they like to drive? Do you know what would motivate them about driving? They hadn't taken any of the time to ask the questions, and it feels really similar to this. I think the leader comes in and just I'm going to present it, and if if people aren't happy, I'm going to present it harder, as opposed to you know what I hear and what you said was like a a slowness and a sense of it's not perfect. So my favorite language for that is here's our current best thinking. Like there's been a lot of thought, a lot of effort put into presenting this, and it's not final. So there still is room to you know to be honest with people about where there might still be room to shape it. Maybe there isn't, but if there's a couple places where people have where there's genuine room to contribute, there's a lot of value in naming that upfront.

Mick Spiers: 26:51

It's an interesting interesting thing you're putting there about the variables. I think that's interesting as well, and that might help answer a question that popped into my head as well, which is the leader is still trying to achieve something, right? You might have called a two-hour brainstorming workshop as an example, but by the end of the two hours, you are actually trying to achieve an outcome. But we need to not then assume what the outcome is going to be. We need to sit with the emergence to be able to go, okay, I need to come into this room thinking or believing that there's going to be new information that comes out of this that might pivot the outcome a little bit, but I still want to achieve the outcome. And what I'm picking up there, Jeanine, is then have a adult conversation about the things that you can't control. So there might be some some variables that you, or or some things that are not variable, that are things that okay. Here are some constraints. The

following constraints: 27:47

we are not going to change our policy on topic one, two, and three. What is up for discussion today is topic four, five, and six. So you're also framing that curiosity in the ones that there is some room to move. Is that what I'm hearing?,

Jeanine Becker: 28:04

I think I think you're giving people a room to contribute, and you're still guiding the conversation. You're shaping it. So you know, the three assumptions I'm assuming are fixed. Now, if they aren't right, or some, if I've missed something, let me know. But assuming that this is what's fixed, here's where here's where it's open. Here's where that inquiry is live, and you're helping. I think people feel there's something really powerful about being invited into the dialog, where you're like, where your input, your perspective, your experience is actually valued and wanted. I think so often our leadership team meetings are just kind of stoplight chart report outs and shifting those conversations into a genuine wrestling with open questions. People there's a really different level of engagement, so that's what I'm seeing with clients right now.

Mick Spiers: 28:57

Okay, I've got endless curiosity on a couple of topics here, so I need to explore that a little bit further. The first one I've seen a lot of mistakes with in organizations and from leaders when they do this. I'm going to call it consultation, and they go in potentially with the right intentions that we're going to do consultation, but they go into the meeting with an end in mind, a prescriptive end in mind, and they do the consultation. Go, "Oh yeah, we've got this idea team, but we want to hear from you and tell us more" etc. And they they listen for the entire meeting, and then at the end of the meeting, they go right. So the answer is, and the answer was the same as the one that they started with.

Jeanine Becker: 29:42

Right? Nothing shifted. Yep.

Mick Spiers: 29:44

And now, if I'm one of those people that were, I'm using air quotes for those on the listening on the audio podcast, I feel like I've been consulted, but nothing changed. So why, why bother in the future? So how do we make sure that there's a genuine. Willingness that our so-called prescriptive answer may not match what we went into the room with, so that people don't feel like "Oh, that was a waste of time. That was performative." That wasn't consultative. That was performative.

Jeanine Becker: 30:15

Yeah, I mean, I guess I have two pieces. One is the mindset of the leader, which is, do you actually think you're the smartest one in the room? Do you think you have the answers? I mean, you might. So, like, I as a coach, that's where I'd push first. Is do you do you genuinely think that your ideas can't be made better? If the answer is no, then just present it. So I talk about a decision making spectrum from like I'm going to tell to I'm going to consult to I'm going to collaborate. I'm going to co-create. I'm going to delegate. There's a spectrum of ways we're going to engage, and I would say for this for this question, if do you is the answer already fixed? Is in which case present it honestly. This is what's so. That's okay, but let's be real about it. And then I would say for the if you want to be consultative, then the question is what are actually open questions worth wrestling with. So, a leadership team I'm working with right now that's moving from the stoplight charts in their leadership team meetings to something different. I, you know, instead of going through and just where are we at in our goals, it's like okay, we you want a genuine conversation? Then here's the questions we're going to play with. We're going to play with what do you want to celebrate, what is important for others to know. That's just the report out. And what's one question you're wrestling with that you actually want the input on? And it has to be a real one. And so each leader in the team was tasked with coming up with a question that they needed input on to be more informed, and that's part of just building the muscle that it's okay to come into the room and say, "I don't have all the answers." I actually need you to help me make this better. But that was something that you know the CEO started framing, and we started choosing as a question, and now people have gotten more comfortable with showing up with questions they don't have the answer to, and knowing that they'll get better answers. They have ideas, they have perspective, they don't have all of the answer by themselves, and I think that at the beginning can be scary for a leader or unusual, different, and it's a muscle to to flex.

Mick Spiers: 32:25

Yeah, really good. Okay, so the key things I'm taking there around co-creation that that we can co-create something that's greater than any of the individuals could have, including the leader. Right. So that's the first most important thing. The Second is that you need to have that presence to be able to have to park any prejudice or any kind of fixed ideas that you might have to be open-minded in that moment for it to for it to come, and with that, what I I use this term quite often that we're smarter together, but I think we are only smarter together if we're truly listening to each other. Once again, this is not a performative listening. It's not listening is not the same as waiting for your turn to talk in that meeting. It's truly listening. Oh, what Jeanine just said is that's really interesting. I want to sit with that for a moment. If what Jeanine said is true, then maybe this is also true. So we're actually now the co-creation is actually building on each other. It's not there's seven people in the room and seven people have their turn to give their perspective. It's actually a perspective that's building as we go, it's not seven perspectives. It's now a co-created collective. But it only happens if we can. Now it's not just the leader. It's everyone. Everyone has to hold space for each other, not just wait for their turn to talk.

Jeanine Becker: 33:56

The image that I have in my mind, as you say that, is one that often comes to me with this work is that we each have a piece of the puzzle, right? I don't have the whole puzzle. I know I have a contribution. I don't have the whole thing, and so I think that's often where having a facilitator, somebody in the room that's playing the role of making sure the voices are all in, who's staying quiet, who might be sharing more, who right to draw in the different perspectives and to see how they might add is useful.

Mick Spiers: 34:27

Yeah, really good. Okay, it's making me think a lot about Otto Sharma and his theory around theory U and and you know whether in listening he talks about four levels of listening and listening is level one is just listening to things that confirm what you already believe, but level two, three, and four is to truly listen with an open mind, an open heart, and an open will to imagine a new reality. And if we can't do that, we're going to walk out of the room. Come back to my example before. We're going to walk out of the room with the same idea. That we walked in with.

Jeanine Becker: 35:02

Absolutely. I think part of that is is about a shift in state. So, right, if I'm a place that's reactive, I'm closed, I'm defensive, versus I'm in a kind of we. I talk about it as above the line, below the line, not just me, but pulling from the field, right? So, above the line is that place where I'm open, I'm curious, and so the question is: If you're leading a meeting, how are you helping people go from the hustle, whack a mole, whatever it is of their day, to a place where they are spacious enough to be curious and giving, recognizing that that's it's a slower speed, it's a more open place. So how are you as a leader? You know, I'm not responsible for everyone's state, but I can help create conditions where that's possible. That's why I start. The question is, you know, what are we celebrating? Because usually that has people pause and shift a bit, right? I'm not starting with like what's most broken. Okay, now let's move into being generative. Now let's move into curiosity. So there's a bit about how do you help your team, starting with yourself, be in that place of genuine curiosity.

Mick Spiers: 36:10

Okay, really good. Now, now I want to test one more thing with you before there's a couple more topics, but on this one, I want to think about how we can almost control our brains in this moment. So, so bear with me as I explain what I see as a phenomena that happens. I experience myself, and and I know others do as well. One of it is an element of confirmation bias, where we only start hearing the things that confirm what we already believe. So, so we already think we know what's going to happen, and we start seeing the things that confirm what we thought was going to happen. So that's one. The second real time element of it, the brain's ability to extrapolate. Now, what do I mean by that? So, if you go into a meeting, and you know, listening in the audience right now, I know that every one of you is going to say yes to this question. That when you sit in a meeting and someone else is talking, and your brain is already extrapolating things that they haven't said yet, and you're asking yourself this question of where is Jeanine going with this, and you're already drawing your own conclusions, but she hasn't said it yet. So how do we hold that space longer? So instead of our brain getting ahead and going,"Oh, okay, I know Jeanine's point here." I already know what she's trying to say. How do I hold space longer, almost the judgment longer, to truly listening to what you say instead of my extrapolation of what I thought you were going to say.

Jeanine Becker: 37:42

I love this question. Has me sitting with what do I what do I do and what do I coach in those moments? Because you're really asking a question about presence, right? How do I slow down enough to be with what's here in this moment? Makes me think of an exercise I do with clients where I say, you know, what do you do instead of listening, are you judging? Are you fixing? Are you coming up with the next thing to say? Like, what is your to notice what we do instead? And if we can name it, it's sometimes easier to catch it in the moment. So it's it's more like a meditation in the sense of somebody's talking and I'm going like, I know 10 steps. Oops, I did that thing. Come back. So it's can I know what I do instead of listen? Can I be aware of it enough that I can just as a meditation back to the breath, back to what's here, and back again and back again? I find it when I'm coaching leader. Part of what I would say to them is before they're speaking, is to ask people what to listen for, or to give them a bit of the punchline upfront, so that people aren't just running ahead in many different directions. You have to kind of corral them back. But at the end of this, we're going to make this decision. I'm going to start with three points I want you to consider. Here's where I want you to be paying attention to. Here's where your experience or your background is really going to help inform it. So as I'm talking, think about this. So what I'm helping people do is take that natural inclination to add to what's being said, and I'm shaping how they use it. So as the speaker, I'd be thinking about how do I help shape that process? That very natural, very human process. And as the listener, I'm knowing this is what I do instead of listen. How do I come back?

Mick Spiers: 39:30

Really good. So I'm hearing two things here: is a mindfulness and presence in the individual to catch yourself. I'm going to say almost doing this. If your mind drifts to I know how this story is going to end, so catch yourself in that moment and go, Do you really, or are you are you getting ahead of yourself, right? And then the second one was interesting as the framing. I do this when I'm going to ask someone for feedback instead of catching them on the spot and say. Like some feedback on topic X. Let's say I'm working on my presentation skills. I'll say to the person, "Look, I'm trying to get better at putting more deliberate pauses into my presentation." Can you watch my presentation tomorrow? And that's what I want you to do. So I'm framing it a little bit instead of just generic. "Hey, how was that?" It's a bit more specific now. So, I've got two things there. One, one, the individual presence and mindfulness, and to catch yourself in those moments of extrapolation, so you can bring your back yourself back to the immediate moment, and then the framing. That's two powerful things there, Jeanine. I want to explore something else with you now. It's around the same topic, but it's a it's about the human beings, okay? And this is something I've been playing with for a while now around emergence and the people that are around us. So we spoke about a world that is changing around us, and and we need to be ready to sit with that uncertainty to see where we need to make little pivots in the world. The thing I want to add to you is the world is made up of thousands of organisms, including 7 billion people that are also emerging every day, including yourself. Right. So I turned 53 last month, Jeanine, and I have this funny little saying I share with people that I'm hoping that version 5.3 of Mick Spiers is a little wiser than version 5.2. But that's year by year. It's even I'm not the same person that I was last week. I've had another week of experience and emotions and feelings and thoughts that have shaped who I am today, and the person that's in front of you is also emerging and evolving every single day. And by the way, they're impacted. The two organisms now are impacted by each other. So the conditions that I create and my behavior impacts their evolution, and their evolution impacts mine, and they're impacted by their teammates. Like it's a living, it's a living ecology. It's a living ecosystem of a bunch of people that are all emerging in their own way. The thing I want to test with you is, and it comes back a little bit to confirmation bias again, but when we get stuck into a pattern of, oh, that Jeanine, she always does this, or that Jeanine, she's good at this, but she's not good at this. But the person that I'm leading in front of me is a live human being that's, that's growing every day. So I'll try and give a real example of if I go into a project review where I go, here's this guy. He all he's terrible at at delivering his project reviews. If I start with that thought, it's going to come true. I'm going to see all the things that show that he's terrible at presenting his project review. Whereas if I hold space and go, well, let's see how he goes today, I might be surprised and pleasantly surprised with the person that's emerging in front of me. As a leader, how do we how do we embrace the fact that we are changing every day, but so are our people? How does emergence come into the way we lead individuals?

Jeanine Becker: 43:16

Just taking a pause of that for a moment, I appreciate the inquiry and the right. I know whether it's in parenting or in leadership. If I expect something to go a certain way, I'm I can be a catalyst for that to be true, right? And we also have experience with people, and we know where they struggle, and we know what's where they shine, and we can have some perspective on it. And so, what I hear in your question is, how do we get humble enough to say, "I don't know what's going to be true today, or how can the way I'm relating with you be more of a catalyst for what I want to see, right?" In both of those, so whether that's you know, as a leader, you said somebody who is not good at a particular thing, and they're never good at a particular thing. Part of what I'd be curious about is how am I creating it that they're never good at that thing? Have I provided the training, the setup? So I'd be curious about how can I be a part of creating a different outcome. I heard you naming that kind of like there's a there's an ecosystem there, so there's a bit of that. I think there's also times where, for a leader, I would say out the judgment if you can say, you know, we have a pattern of it going this way. What can we do differently, or what might tell me how today is going to be different? But I might, in certain circumstances, you know, sometimes I try and get humble and curious, and sometimes I'm just honest about here's my expectation, and maybe if I say it, we can then choose how we want to create a different outcome.

Mick Spiers: 44:50

So I'm hearing a few different things there, Jeani. The first question of what can I do differently to get a different result? Because I'm I'm the one. Creating the conditions, so I'm oh I'm part of the ecosystem that is creating the conditions. So was it something about the way I sat in the meeting, the way the look, the puzzled look on my face, or something? Am I actually impacting the performance? So what can I do differently to create the conditions where the person can do their best work, and then to have the objectivity to park my judgment, to park expectation, and replace expectation with emergence, and to watch in real time for it to unfold in front of me without expectation. Am I getting it right?

Jeanine Becker: 45:37

Yeah, I think so. I think it's hard for humans to not have expectation, so I think that in some ways, what I'm what I'm sensing into my own answer is you as you repeat it back to me is the sense of like I want to sit in this meeting in a way that I'm the catalyst for a better outcome. So what do I need to do? Is it my level of presence? Is it my perspective? Is it the questions? Is it the setup? Right. If I assume somebody's going to come in and it's not going to go well, and I've already decided there's a pattern of it not going well. I had a client recently who had somebody on his team was going to present in front of a leadership team, and he's like,"I know this is going to be not good, and it's tomorrow." And I was like, "Great! Now that you know that, what are you going to do about it, right?" Like, how are you going to practice? How are you going to set the context? How are you going to change the assignment, right? Like, to just set it up and watch it. You know, I don't watch. The thing for him wasn't to simply suspend judgment and see if it could just be better than he imagined. It was to use the agency had as a leader to create a different outcome. Now, in the moment, in the meeting, that was still to me that was still true. Is right. We're gonna see if this is a different outcome, but we're also gonna set this person up and step in in a different way.

Mick Spiers: 46:55

Okay, I really like it. All right, so it needs to be somewhat of a preemptive creating of conditions, and then allow emergence. Not not just cross your fingers and hope for the best. It's you're actually trying to do something different to get a different result first. All right, really good, Jeanine. I'm got to ask you one more question. On people are going to be listening to this, and they're probably going to be doing some of the things that we say. They're probably going,"Oh, wow, yeah, I do this. I, I do this all the time." What first step can a leader take to be better at sitting with the unknown? Whether it's in one of those meetings, what first step can they do if they if this is not their normal mode, and they want to try it. How do they start?

Jeanine Becker: 47:45

You know, you and I talked earlier. I think you know one step is that breath. It's like noticing the state I'm in, but I actually think it's coming back to this place of curiosity of how can my best idea get better because of the way I show up here? I'm not making my perspective wrong, or that it has to be thrown out. But how can whatever whatever point of view I already have be improved, informed, contributed to, tested by the way I show up in this conversation? And that that humility, that curiosity, that doesn't make right. I'm not trying to make mine bad or wrong. To say, can we improve this together? Might be the place to start.

Mick Spiers: 48:30

Yeah, really good. All right, thank you so much, Jeanine. This has been very powerful. I'm going to take us now to our rapid round. These are the same four questions we ask all of our guests. So, what's the one thing that you know now, Jeanine Becker, that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Jeanine Becker: 48:46

I wish I knew to watch the leaders people wanted to follow and those that didn't, and to get curious about what brings me energy in my work and what drains me, and to let one inform how I lead, and the other inform what I do.

Mick Spiers: 49:05

I love it. There's an element of situational awareness there of observing the world around you, but there was also observing the inner world of very powerful. Okay, what's your favorite book?

Jeanine Becker: 49:17

I think right now, and also based on our conversation, I would say"Simple Habits for Complex Times by Jennifer Garvey Berger.

Mick Spiers: 49:26

Very good. Okay, and you've done work with her as well, right? I understand.

Jeanine Becker: 49:31

I've studied for two years in her kind of cultivating leadership program. So yeah,

Mick Spiers: 49:37

Yeah, very good. Okay, and what's your favorite quote?

Jeanine Becker: 49:42

I'm thinking to Donella Meadows and her idea that the highest leverage point in the system is our paradigms. But maybe for this moment, the quote that's got my attention is, I keep thinking back, and it's on my wall in my office here. Is one from Alice in Wonderland? It says, "You know, I can't believe in impossible things." and the queen says back, "Why, at your age, I practiced. You know, I thought at least six impossible things before breakfast." I love the idea of a lot of my purpose-led leader clients. It's right. What would it be to practice thinking six impossible things before breakfast?

Mick Spiers: 50:19

Yeah, very good. Okay, and finally, there's going to be people that are are deeply curious by what we're saying. How do people find you if they'd like to know more about you and your work?

Jeanine Becker: 50:29

Yeah, you can find me at onpurposetogether.com or on LinkedIn, and you can also check out the podcast "Fire the Gathers."

Mick Spiers: 50:37

Well, thank you, Jeanine. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show, I'm going to say that I believe that the two of us practice exactly what we're talking about there. Neither of us knew where that conversation was going, but something emerged, and something emerged, and we allowed it to emerge. And want to thank you for your gift and your wisdom in those moments today, as we let that conversation emerge together. Thank you.

Jeanine Becker: 51:01

Deeply grateful to be here. Thank you.

Mick Spiers: 51:04

What a great conversation with Jeanine Becker. There, there is an idea from this conversation that I think is worth sitting with. We can have agency without having control. Those two things are not the same. As leaders, what we do matters enormously. We create clarity. We can ask better questions. We can bring people together. We can create psychological safety. Run experiments. Listen. Respond to what we're learning. We can create the conditions for something different to become possible. But what we cannot completely control is how another human being responds. We cannot know every consequence in advance, and in a complex and constantly changing environment, pretending otherwise can sometimes make us less effective rather than more effective. I loved Jeanine's question. What is true now? There is so much humility contained in those four words, because something may have been true six months ago. It may have been true when we wrote the strategy. It may have been true when we made the decision. But has anything changed? What have we learned? What are we seeing now that we couldn't see before? And what are we willing to update in terms of our thinking? That doesn't mean abandoning purpose every time circumstances change. Quite the opposite. We can remain deeply anchored to purpose, while becoming more flexible about the path we take to get there. And that brings us to another important distinction from today's conversation, the difference between consultation and genuine co-creation. Sometimes leaders say they want input when, either consciously or unconsciously, they've already decided. People can feel the difference, you know. Real co-creation requires us to accept the possibility that what may emerge might not be the answer we originally had in mind, and that can feel very uncomfortable. But it's also where collective intelligence becomes possible. So here's my

challenge for you this week: 53:31

think about one important issue you're currently trying to solve, and instead of asking,"How do I get everyone aligned behind my answer?" Try asking, what might become possible if I genuinely don't assume that I already know the best answer. Then create the space to listen, really listen, listen with an open mind, an open heart, and an open will to imagine a new reality. A huge thank you again to Jeanine for such a thoughtful and challenging conversation. Jeanine's interview brings us to the end of this month's great conversations on the leadership project. So next week we'll be back with a special solo cast where we reflect on what we've learnt from Dusty Holcomb, Monique DeMonaco, Uma Subramanian, and Jeanine Becker for very different conversations, for very different perspectives, and then when we put them together alongside each other, some fascinating patterns begin to emerge about ourselves, about the people we lead, and about the conditions we create around them. You've been listening to The Leadership Project. If today. Barked 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.