Well, welcome to the Potential Leader Lab, and I'm your host, Perry Maughmer. And this is where we don't just talk about leadership. We explore, experiment, and hopefully, evolve our thinking and our behaviors. And now this is not your typical leadership podcast. We don't throw around feel good quotes or teach how to climb the corporate ladder. Here, we're here to talk about evolution, figuring out what it really takes to unlock the leader within you. We believe leadership is not reserved for those with titles or authority. It's really about action and owning the moments when leadership is required.

Now this lab is really built for what I call the relentless few, and those are folks willing to explore every edge, experiment with boundaries most people won't touch, and evolve through sheer, what I'll call, force of will. The ones who break the mold grow stronger with every challenge and leave the world transformed in their wake. It's messy, uncomfortable, and sometimes messy. Just messy. I think that's a good word. But that's where real growth happens. Leadership is not something you become, it's something you do, and we're gonna talk a lot about that today. And here in the lab, we're gonna explore and experiment with just how to do it.

So if you're ready to unlock the potential you already have inside of you and embrace leadership as a moment to moment choice, then we can start exploring. So today, we're gonna talk about leading from the inside out, the raw experience of leadership. Now, here's what's funny. We we have to think about is leadership something we do or something we are? And that's really what we're gonna frame the frame the conversation around. We're gonna because it often focuses on roles, authority, hierarchy, but we rarely dive into the lived experience of being a leader. So I'm gonna introduce, a concept in its, phenomenology. Right? It's a philosophical approach that explores experiences as we live them. Now, excuse me, I don't get hung up on terms or concepts.

I'll explain them. They're real simple. It it's a difficult word to wrap your head around, but I think you'll find it's very useful. And, and it's just kinda cool, because we're gonna talk about how you know, I'm a firm believer leadership can't be taught, but it can be learned. And I think there's a big difference there. And we're gonna explore this, leadership from a phenomenology phenomenological perspective. Say that five times. Breaking it down into everyday lived experiences.

Now, again, we you know, leadership is more often looked at through a lens of action and results. But it is equally about the personal, existential experience of decision making, uncertainty, and the human connection. Because leadership only exists in the context of other people who are rallied around a vision to create a world. A new world, a new vision, something that's worth the work that we're doing. So let's start with, understanding phenomenology in and of itself. So it's described as a state of phenomena as they manifest in our experience. The way we perceive and understand phenomena and the meaning phenomena have in our subjective experience. So simply stated, it's the study of each individual's lived experience of the world.

Right? So a couple of examples would be, the best way I can explain I'll give you a couple examples. One would be a sunset. So when we watch a sunset, we could get caught up in, oh, what colors are those, and what time is it, and what's our location, and all of those things. That's that's fine. But the other part of that is, how did that sunset make us feel? And that's really phenomenology at its root. And and everybody has a different experience of the world. Every person has a different lived experience. And the other one I'll give you there's 2 other examples I'll give you that really probably clarify it.

One is, you know, my wife, grew up in Columbus in a in a suburb called Bexley. If she drives through Bexley and I drive through Bexley in the same car, the same route, she has a very different experience than I have. Because I look at things and and they're very they don't carry any emotional connection for me. Right? So when I drive through there, I have a very different experience than she does having grown up there. So that's the way to kind of wrap your head around phenomenology and the lived experience. The other one would be a song on the radio. You know, I can hear a song on the radio, and I it can be something from 1984 that transports me to another time that generates feelings and emotions inside of me that somebody else, like, you know, my, one of my kids might listen to and go, yeah, it's okay. It's not a bad song.

Then I'm like, what the hell do you mean it's not a bad song? It's an awesome song. But that's because it's connected to something for me. So why I think this is really critical for for the theory of leadership and leadership development is because we have to take into account the lived experiences of people and what you do as you're learning how to lead. I once sat in a room when I was doing some teaching, and we were talking about, organizational behavior and development. And, everybody in the room we were actually talking about, you know, layoffs and and things like that. And I asked somebody I asked everybody in the room. There were about, you know, 25 people in the room. And I said, how many of you have actually laid somebody off? Sat across from somebody more than once and had a conversation about how their job was no longer 1 in the company, and here's what we're gonna do, and here's the package and all that stuff.

And, nobody raised their hand. And I said, okay. Well, I just want you to understand that we can read about this, and we can be trained, and we can watch videos on how to do it, but that is not gonna be the experience that you have when you do it. And reading all of those things doesn't mean you're ready to do it. And even if you do it 5 times, the next 5 times you do it, it's gonna be different. And that's really the challenge with leadership development, and also as we, as individuals, learn how to lead, because it is experiential. Right? It it can't just be about reading a book or checking things off a list, because it involves perceptions, emotions, and interactions with other people. You know, how how often do we can really consider what leadership feels like rather than what leadership looks like? And I think that's something for us to to kinda think about and ponder.

Because we often we need to think about not only how does it feel to us, but how does it feel to other people? How does it feel to the other people in the room? Because, ultimately, that's that's the beginning and ending of it. Right? I think it was, the the one of the best, phenomenological statements or quotes, I think, that ever happened in terms of leadership is Maya Angelou. And she said, essentially, I will forget what you said. I will forget what you did. I will never forget how you made me feel. And that's what it takes to lead effectively. It's it's what impact do you leave with people? You know, so it doesn't matter. I've often said, one of the biggest challenges of leading is that what you meant or intended is irrelevant, because other people's perceptions are your reality.

It what whatever they walk away with is your reality, not vice versa. You do not you do not create reality for them. They create reality for you as a leader. Because leadership doesn't happen in a vacuum. So the the second part is let's let's talk about some themes here in the phenomenology of leadership. Leadership is a relational phenomenon. Like, it it doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens with other people, with with peers and stakeholders and followers, whatever you wanna call it.

There are other people involved. It doesn't happen by itself. So from an existential standpoint, and phenomenology and existentialism are are tied together, It's what they call in the existential realm relatedness. Our experience of relatedness to other humans is an important aspect of our existence. Interactions and connections with others shape our identity and give meaning to our lives. So we we we don't actually do that ourselves. We only exist in context of other people. That's how we get data.

That's how we get feedback. That's how we understand our place in the world. And all of those things shape the leaders' decisions and experiences, and vice versa. So it's a it's a their interconnectedness. Right? We're we're doing things, and those things are impacting us and other people, and we're getting that feedback, and we're, hopefully, you know, explore, experiment, evolve. We're evolving as we do that in real time, which is one of the biggest challenges with leading because we can't go practice it somewhere. You know, we can we certainly can role play, and there's nothing wrong with it, but it isn't authentic and real. It isn't raw.

You're not gonna get the feedback that you're gonna get in real time when you talk to somebody about something that's challenging. And the a leader's being is defined through your interaction with others. And just think about how your leadership and how you lead and how you behave changes depending on your environment and your relationships. We never we never approach the same sit or, actually, let let me rephrase that. We we should never feel confident that we can just repeat behaviors regardless of the situation or people. Right? So, you know, Heraclitus say, we can never step in the same river twice because it's never the same river and we're never the same person. And that's much the same thing with leadership. You may have a you wanna call it a challenging, a crucial, or critical conversation with person y on Monday, and then you have another one that comes up on something comes up on Wednesday with another person, that conversation is gonna be vastly different.

And if you try to use the same guidelines and and and rules that you use for the one on Monday, it may or may not turn out well because it's a different person sitting in front of you that's in a different state of mind on that day. That meeting can only happen one time, and it's that moment, in the present. And if you try to have some formula in your head of, I'm gonna say this, then I'm gonna say that, they're gonna say this, and then we'll get to this result. I mean, certainly try if you want to. But I think it's not gonna probably end the way you want it to. And the one thing I tell people about those conversations, we have all this anxiety about the those types of conversations, the easiest way to ease your anxiety, and also the way to have a much more productive conversation, is give up the outcome. Never have a conversation like that where you're trying to drive to a specific outcome. Because if you do, you disregard the other person.

Because it then it turns into a battle of wills. Because you say something, and you're hopeful to get a certain response to get you to an end result. And if they start moving away from it, you just try harder and harder to bring them to it. Right? So we're not honoring the other person. We're not we're not in that moment. Right? We're not thinking about how they're feeling and then letting that impact us, and and we're not adjusting. We're not evolving in the moment. Because evolving you know, we talk about evolving in in our framework as over a longer period of time, you know, when we change behaviors and things like that.

But that's what I love about the word and I love about the framework. Explore, experiment, evolve can happen within 90 seconds. Like, you can run through this you can run through this very quickly in the course. You can use explore, experiment, evolve in a in within a conversation. Like explore explore what you think that person's gonna do, experiment with a couple of ideas and questions, and then evolve into the next phase. So this is not about taking a week or 2 weeks or a month or 6 months or 5 years. This could be about taking 3 minutes and cycling through that quickly and using those same concepts. If you're willing to do that because that's that's where you're embracing existentialism and phenomenology because you're in it's the it's the lived experience of the other person that's impacting you.

Because there is and you guys know this. Right? There is there is a emotional and psychological weight of leading. It's heavy. If it was easy, everybody would do it. And we all have doubt and fear and pressure that we carry when we're when we assume that mantle of leadership. And I don't mean a title or authority, I mean taking responsibility for your actions as they impact somebody else. And that's what phenomenology reveals to us as part of that integral human leadership. I mean, have you ever stopped to consider for yourself or other people if you work in an organization, you have peers that are leaders, or you report to a leader, or you or yourself are a leader? What's the emotional toll of that leadership? How do we make space for that in a world that expect leaders to be infallible? How many people walk around all day believing they don't have the opportunity to feel that way? They can't they can't acknowledge the emotional toll of leading because they don't think it's supposed to be there.

I mean, if you think about this, again, phenomenology helps us understand how leadership is something that should evolve over time. It isn't static. It changes moment to moment based on context, challenges, and decisions. And that I had this conversation with Lisa this morning. It was interesting because when I what what this for me is very freeing. A lot of people, it's it's anxiety. It induces anxiety. But for me, I look at it the other way, which is you can literally give up control and the need for control.

Understand that that is not your job. Nobody assigns you to be the arbiter of the universe. So this isn't about you being in control and knowing everything and doing everything correctly. It's about participating in a shared experience that depends heavily on everybody involved, and you don't get to say how they feel, what they feel, or what they do. You simply influence. Right? That's that's the real crux of leadership is being able to step out on that ledge and look into that abyss and know that I have no idea what's gonna happen, but I'm willing to take action to create a better world for those that I care deeply about. Because that's all I can do, and I have no idea if it's gonna work or not. But I'm willing to take the risk.

That's all you have to do to be a leader. You have to be willing to own the risk. We are constantly negotiating between past experiences, present challenges, and future uncertainties. We are always on that continuum, and and that's and we have to acknowledge that. We have to acknowledge that it's okay to be there. So just think about that. You're always negotiating with past experiences, present challenges, and future uncertainties. So, what are the implications for people today? What do we do with this? So there are practical ways that we can focus on I mean, we can encourage people we can encourage our first of all, let's do this.

Let's encourage ourselves to focus on the lived experience, becoming more mindful about our responses and interaction with other people, paying attention to to how we feel, paying attention to how we imagine other people feel, being interested and curious in how they feel, reflecting on how our perceptions of leadership, the the role itself shifts depending on different contexts, at home, at work, in in your community, at your place of worship, anywhere. Imagine how that imagine if we pay if we if we understand and reflect on the perceptions of how that shifts from time to time. And then embracing the complexity and uncertainty that comes with leadership rather than avoiding it and trying to control it. That that fallacy of control. Giving up that need for control. We could have a whole another conversation, and I mentioned this to a a group I was talking to this week that existentialists, the core argument that they make is that our whole life, all of our planning, all of our budgeting, all of our checklist, all of our to do list, all of those things are simply a way for us to feel better about death. We we're that's the biggest uncertainty in life. So we spend our entire life trying to get control of our existence because that's the thing that that we fear the most that is out of our control.

So I would ask you to think about this. How does leadership feel to you on a day to day basis? And then think about how do your relationships shape your leadership. Because even if you're not thinking about this, it it that is happening. Whether you think about it or not, your relationships with people are shaping your leadership. So just consider, how are these relationships shaping my leadership? What is it what is it causing me to do? How is this part of the Explore experiment evolve? How is this influencing my evolution? Because it is. We just have to acknowledge that it is if we wanna do something very intentional with it. So if you think about this and you try to think about, well, who who embodies this phenomenological approach? And I can tell you, in my experience, and I've been doing this more or less for 10 years in this space with people, almost nobody. And the reason is is because it it flies in the face of, and it and it won't allow us to have 2 things that we want.

1, control. 2, predictability. So, if we embrace this, if we think about the context of developing as a leader, either formally or informally, and the approaches that we use. So, think about the approaches that everybody uses. Number 1, books. We're gonna read a book. We're gonna take a class. We're gonna take a course.

We're going to listen to a podcast. All of those things are external to us. They're not taking into account our lived experiences. And we are not leveraging our lived experiences. And that's the paradox, because the only way the only way to develop a leader that is both sustainable and scalable is about sharing the responsibility for development and creating a new paradigm that actually delivers results. And that means that if you're the employer, if you're the person, if you're the leader and you're trying to create other leaders, your job is to create the ecosystem for them. Their job is to engage in the ecosystem. Now the other part of this that is really challenging for people is that if I have 10 people, they're all going to develop at a different pace.

They're not gonna all develop in 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months. Doesn't mean there's a right or wrong, doesn't mean there's a good or bad, but it means, again, back to predictability and control. There is no predictability here. So if we say we're gonna give somebody, you know, 3 months of training, and then they're gonna be put in a role where they're expected to lead an organization, or a piece of an organization, or a crew, or whatever you wanna call it, we're pushing a rope uphill. I mean, we can do it, and we can say it, but we're not doing anybody justice. I mean, this is the old, to be honest, the best way for leaders to develop. Really, is about the apprentice model. Right? It takes as long as it takes.

Everybody works at a different pace. It doesn't mean that nobody that people aren't gonna be a good leader. It doesn't mean they can't be. It just means that might take them a little longer. So if you want some ideas on, you know, what do what do we do? So how do we do this? Well, let's think of let's let's talk about some steps. So focus on the lived experience of your team. So do listening sessions. 1 to 1 listening sessions with your team.

Or and if you and if it could be your family. It could be it could be whatever it is. Right? But you wanna have a one to one listening session where the goal isn't to discuss performance, but understand each person's day to day experience. Not what are you doing, how are you feeling. But we we tend to gravitate to metrics. I was in a discussion with a group of leaders the other day, and we were talking about how what we talk about is determines what people believe is important to the organization. And I said, we were talking about values and mission and vision and those big things that we wanna really talk about that are important to organizations. And they said, that's really important to them.

That's what they stand for. And I asked the group, I said, what do you talk about mostly every day? And it was, labor cost, efficiency, KPIs, revenue, gross margin, all of those metrics. Right? And I said, okay. Well, just recognize that if that's what you spend 80% of your time talking about, that's what the people in the organization believe are important. That's what they're gonna attend to. And so as leaders, there's a little bit of, again, a little bit of a paradox, but if we were to ask people, if we did this in a listening session and we said, hey, tell me about your experience. What do you feel? You feel anxiety? Do you feel pressure? Do you feel, do you feel like a failure? Do you feel like you're winning? You know, what do you feel like? Do you feel good about being here? And then we just listen. We don't try to solve, we don't try to defend, we don't try to deflect, we just listen.

The second one, I'm sure you and this is not news to anybody, but you have to engage in a little self reflection as a leader, and that is being mindful. And what I mean by that is being aware of your own emotional responses and biases. Reflect on how your leadership style influences others and consider how how your own experience shapes your decision. And there and again, not for the goal of judging it, but for the goal of awareness and acknowledging that certain things in your environment are impacting your decision making and how you feel yourself, which then feeds back into how other people feel. Next would be understanding leadership as a relational phenomenon, and you you build relationships through empathy. So instead of solely focusing on task completion, you build genuine relationships. You you listen actively and and try to understand other people's perspective without offering solutions and feedback, without solving, without fixing. Because again, as a leader, we often think that's our job.

Our job is to fix things. Our job is to is to solve things for people. That's not it. Is that something you do from time to time? Yeah. Absolutely. If they ask you. But that's not that's not building leaders, you're building followers. And leaders don't don't create followers, leaders create leaders.

That's what's scalable. That's the scalable approach. So the next thing would be, you know, navigating uncertainty and change. When when you're faced with these things that that the external changes that we face everyday, use a phenomenological approach to understand the team's apprehension. Instead of presenting as some top down mandate, explore how the team feels about transition and invite them to share their concerns. It doesn't mean that you can't do it. It just means you're giving you're allowing them space to feel because it will impact what you do, and that's oftentimes why we why we avoid it. Because we don't wanna acknowledge it, because then we'd have to do something with it.

Well, here's the thing, it exists anyway. Whether you acknowledge it or not, it's still there, and it still shows up as friction. So if you really if you truly want to drive the organization to be relentless and figure it out, then we have to acknowledge there are certain things that come along with it that that aren't bad. They just are. And then you wanna foster authenticity and trust, being transparent about challenges. Share your experiences, your struggles as a leader. Discuss times when you feel you felt uncertain or overwhelmed. And then encourage other people to do the same thing.

Create an environment where vulnerability is seen as a strength. Because I guarantee you, there's not a lot of them out there that do that. Now, again, I can't stress enough. This exists already. It's already it's already the undercurrent for everybody. Just because nobody tells you or you don't you don't talk about it or you don't acknowledge it or you don't create openness to discuss it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Which again, causes more and more friction. Because the overall value of doing this, of adopting kind of a phenomenological approach, is you can move beyond traditional metrics and techniques to understand your team's lived experiences.

And it fosters a more empathetic and and human centered leadership style. Because now we're talking to people as people. We acknowledge the people in the organization, not the product or the service. This not only improves the culture, but it drives better outcomes. People are more engaged, they're more innovative, they're more committed to the organization's goals because they truly feel like they're seen and understood. And in this way, your leadership evolves into something that's more than just guiding others. It becomes a journey of shared experiences, mutual growth, and a deep meaningful connection. And isn't that what everybody wants? It aren't all those other things, all those KPIs, all those objectives, all those metrics, all those goals, won't they come as a result of the pursuit of those things instead of the pursuit of those things themselves? So if we pursue revenue, profitability, KPIs, metrics, whatever you wanna throw out there, goals, objectives, whatever it is, do we get them? And if we if we do get them, at what cost? But if we focus if we focus on mutual growth and a deep meaningful connection and a journey of shared experiences, how could that go wrong? Because even if we don't hit the objectives, we still have deep meaningful connections built on shared experiences and mutual growth.

And isn't that sustainable and scalable? And it helps us to humanize leadership. Because if you're trying to grow other people, if you wanna build if you wanna have something that's scalable and build out for other people the ability the desire to lead, by the way. Because if you make it look like you have to be perfect to do it by the way, nobody wants to do it because they don't want that kind of stress in their life. But if it's about being fully human and you allow people to see you experience fear and doubt and vulnerability, and yet you still move forward, people will sign up for that. I got news for you. Perfection is perfectionism is not a leadership trait we desire. It's not something you should strive for. Because if you have a growth mindset, you know, back to, you know, I've I've referenced it a number of time, back to Carol Dweck.

If you if you have a growth mindset, failure is an inevitability. It's something that we seek out because we thrive on those challenges, and we see failure as not as evidence of of a lack of intelligence, but as a catalyst for growth. So we we seek failure. We seek the point of failure because it shows us the opportunity. That's what a growth mindset is. So you have to you have to exemplify that to the people in the organization if you want them to do the same thing, if you want them to grow at the point of failure. If you wanna think about the humanity of leadership. So, sir John Buchan said, the task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, it's to elicit it. The greatness is already there. And then the Dalai Lama said, love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive. Now, what the Dalai Lama didn't say is, only outside of business love and compassion are necessities. He said, love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive. In your business, outside of your business, humanity exists.

So I would I would encourage you to consider embracing this kind of phenomenological approach to leadership and leadership development. And it means not just embracing success, but also doubt, and then focus on connection and growth. And reflect on your own leadership experiences this week. Pay attention to how you feel, how you relate to others, how you navigate uncertainty, how those things make you feel, not what you do. Right? Think about how you felt this week. In your journal, think about this happened and this is how I felt. Now, I wanna leave you with a couple of, of a couple quotes that kind of sum up for me. This is from an article on leadership and phenomenology.

So there's 2 of them. The first one is leadership is not a solitary act, but a relational journey. It emerges with the interplay of human connections where both leader and follower shape each other's experiences and ultimately their understanding of the world. And the second one is this, leadership is not a fixed state or role, but a fluid process that changes with each interaction, decision, and challenge. It is a journey of becoming, where one must continuously explore, reflect, and adapt to the shifting landscape of human experience. So that's it for today's exploration. So now it's up to you to create your own experiments on the way to your own personal evolution, if you so choose. And remember, leadership isn't something that happens to you.

It's something you step into. You already have the tools, the influence, and the potential. The only thing left for you to recognize is the moment when leadership is needed and take action. So what's your next move? Where will you step up? Because leadership isn't about waiting for permission. It's about recognizing that you're already capable right now. The only question is, will you act? Now if you found today's lab session valuable, make sure you subscribe, share, and keep coming back for more raw, unfiltered conversations on how to unlock the leader within you so you can create a better world for those you care deeply about. Until next time, remember, leadership is a verb. Go do it.