Dan Lawner: Organizations with high engagement are 21% more profitable than organization with kind of middling or low engagement. And then the greatest source and 70% you can track of an employee engagement comes from management and leadership, sort of that line above the individual in the organization. So it’s very well researched and very well documented.
Introduction
Brian Washburn: Welcome everyone to another episode of Train Like You Listen, which is a podcast about all things learning & development in bite-sized chunks. I’m Brian Washburn. I’m your host.
I’m also the Co-Founder and CEO of a company called Endurance Learning. We’re an instructional design company that will help you put together all sorts of training programs, whether it’s classroom to instructor-led training to elearning. But enough about me.
Today I’m joined by Dan Lawner, who is Founder and Principal at Bevel Talent. He’s also led learning initiatives at DT Global Pathfinder and International Population Services International. Welcome, Dan. Excited to have you.
Dan Lawner: Excited to be here, Brian. Thanks for having me.
Listen to the full episode or watch on YouTube.
Dan Lawner’s 6-Word Biography
Brian Washburn: In the spirit of keeping this bite-sized, how would you describe yourself, Dan, in your work, using a sentence that is exactly six words.
Dan Lawner: I am a coach and facilitator making organizations healthier.
Brian Washburn: I love it. Perfect. And so we, we talked a little bit about Bevel Talent as I was just kind of giving the introduction. Can you share a little bit about what Bevel Talent does and, you know, what you’re doing to make the world a better place? Like what’s the problem that you’re looking to solve?
Helping Mid-Sized Organizations Strengthen Managers and Leadership Teams
Dan Lawner: Yeah, so Bevel Talent is the partner to mid-sized organizations on all things managers, leaders, and teams. And mid-sized organizations, agnostic or independent of sector, as they’re growing, face pretty much the same challenge where the executive team wakes up one morning and realizes that they have different layers of leadership.
They have a director layer, they have managers, they have discrete teams within the organization. And this feeling that I have the privilege of having right now as a small business owner where I have full control over everything. The senior leaders at mid-sized organizations, kind of as you get more than 50, 60 people, they have other privileges, but no longer have it have that sense of immediate control over what is happening, especially at the different layers of their organizations. They just can’t be in all of the rooms.
And so what Bevel Talent does is partner with either the Head of Human Resources, the CEO, the COO, who, whoever has bitten off that challenge to create more alignment. So it feels like the organization can start rowing in the same rhythm, in the same direction because there’s gotten to be agreement and support around what are the behaviors that different layers of leaders and just leaders in general at that organization are expected to demonstrate.
Brian Washburn: Okay, so this is really interesting, and this isn’t actually one of the questions that I sent you in advance, but–
Dan Lawner: Sure.
When Do Mid-Sized Organizations Realize They Need Leadership Support?
Brian Washburn: It’s a point of curiosity because we’ve worked with a lot of organizations that are kind of small, mid-size so I know exactly kind of what you’re talking about when the person’s like, oh my gosh, we need some help here. Do you find that there is any rhyme or reason, there’s any pattern to, at what point do they reach out? Is it when they’re going through a period of like large growth? Is it after they’ve grown and, and you know, they’re just kind of taking a look around and, and they have a chance to breathe and like they’re like, oh my gosh, we need some help?
Is there a certain point that you find that people are, are reaching out for help, in kind of the organization’s life cycle?
Dan Lawner: It is, first off, it’s quite a while after they felt the need, where the actual need has kind of built up to a pressure point where the same conversation, which is often coming through that head of HR where it’s saying, you know, either we’re hearing complaints from managers, complaints from or about managers or directors.
And the conversation keeps happening where it’s like we really actually now need to do something about it because it– the pain and difficulty of it makes it a priority, but it is difficult for it to become the top priority. And so for it to become that top priority, it kind of comes up again and again.
And it is often when I have that initial conversation where if it seems like Bevel Talent is sort of the right vibe and offering for that organization. They’re like, okay, yeah, we’ve been ready for a while and we just needed somebody to take this off of our plates and drive this in partnership with us.
How Direct Managers Shape Employee Experience
Brian Washburn: Yeah, it’s one of those things where it’s like the first step to success is being able to admit we need some help. And one of the things that you have mentioned is that your experience has led you to believe that a person’s manager or their leader or their team is their major source of joy at work or their major source of suffering, which all makes sense. Could you offer some specific examples of why this is, why this is the case?
Dan Lawner: First off, that direct manager relationship is that major source of joy or suffering because that is the person in your work life who has the most immediate power over you.
Brian Washburn: Mm-hmm.
Dan Lawner: They are probably the person you’re having the most or almost the most contact with. And so outside of close family and friends, that person is gonna be a really, really vivid presence in your life, especially if they’re not sort of a neutral presence.
If they are somebody who challenges you, who builds you up, shows you, or helps you see new ways of seeing yourself or the world or how to operate as a professional. Or if they’re just somebody who you feel like it is just awful to have that person have power over you. And so that’s the, so anyway, that is sort of the reason, and I have experienced this myself.
I have left an organization to get away from a manager. I know a lot of people have had that same experience, and when I’m getting a drink or a coffee with friends or just connecting with friends, when the conversation does turn to work, especially when I mention I’m in this field, the manager always comes up because it’s just somebody people have a lot of strong feelings about and want to talk about.
The Business Case for Investing in Leaders
Brian Washburn: That’s what they say, that people leave their manager, right? They don’t necessarily leave their job. They leave their manager, and I don’t know how. I don’t know. I can see that there’s a lot of truth in that. And one of the things that I think organizations do a lot of times to try to make sure that they’re an organization that people wanna work for is they invest in leadership development programs. And from where you sit, and there’s obviously a difference between manager development and leadership development. But from where you sit, you know, we’ll kind of use this catchall term of leadership development. Do you think that leadership development actually works? Like is investing in leadership development programs, is that a good use of an an organization’s resources, whether that is money or time?
Dan Lawner: I obviously am biased here, but yes. The, so, uh, the Gallup Organization is the organization that thinks and focuses on and has millions and millions of data points around the connection between employee engagement and revenue and profitability.
So organizations with high engagement are 21% more profitable than organization with kind of middling or low engagement. And then the greatest source and 70% you can track of an employee engagement comes from management and leadership, sort of that line above the individual in the organization. So it’s very well researched and very well documented.
And from what I have seen in my own experience is when organizations do make that investment, what they see is alignment, what I mentioned earlier, that feeling and that ability to have the executive team take a decision and have those decisions flow smoothly through the organization.
And so that’s something that you can kind of intuitively and very clearly see is a way that organizations can be more agile, can kind of make smart business decision and actually execute them quickly and effectively because the leadership layers are aligned.
Brian Washburn: Alright, so, you’re team pro leadership development.
Dan Lawner: Yeah.
What Are the Signs of a Well-Designed Leadership Program?
Brian Washburn: And so, which I’ll buy into that, because I think that like anything, you can do it well or you can do it less than well. So what is the sign of a well designed leader development program? Like, who should be exposed in an organization who should be exposed to this kind of program? I,
Dan Lawner: I hear two questions, and I’ll take the first one first, which is, what is the sign of a well-developed leadership and well-executed leadership development program? And to me, the sign of a well-developed and executed program is that it actually lives outside of the training room.
And so I– many of the clients that I’ve worked with have had leadership development interventions and they’ve had trainings and it has been one off and off the shelf where an outside person has come with little connection to or knowledge of that organization has come with the right stories and the right frameworks that actually are probably the right content or some of the right content for that organization, but you have not connected what has happened in that training room and held people accountable afterwards.
So, a well-developed program has actual cohorts of managers and leaders who are going through that experience, and then the things that they’re learning, whether it’s how to have a difficult conversation effectively, how to give feedback, how to lead adaptively when things are changing really fast, that the specific behaviors that you trained on in that room, you are actually.
Walking the talk and holding those leaders accountable to demonstrate those behaviors through your performance management that you are using those behaviors to design interview questions when you’re bringing in new leaders, and the executive team who should have, should always be in that room, at least for part of the time that they’re role modeling those behaviors. That they’re in no way exempt, but actually held to the highest standard for demonstrating whatever behaviors you kind of help people develop.
You teach them, you give them space to practice. So it, it is all about wrapping around what happens in the room with actually building it into the way that the organization does its business.
Brian Washburn: Yeah. This idea of of not thinking about accountability until after it’s done, but going in thinking about how are we gonna hold people accountable for this, I think is, is, I, I love that answer because it– leadership development programs do need to be more than people walking away and saying, “I’m INTJ,”right?
Dan Lawner: Yeah.
Brian Washburn: Or whatever it might be. There needs to be some sort of accountability. And, from the beginning, from the design of it, how are we going to do this?
Dan Lawner: Exactly.
Which Leaders and Managers Should Be Included in Training?
Brian Washburn: Now when you think of who: who should be involved? who should be engaged? who should be participating?
Who should be selected in going to a effective leadership development program?
Dan Lawner: The great benefit of primarily working with mid-sized organizations of, yeah, maybe around a hundred people, is that you can get everybody who has direct reports or is a leader in that organization through a program, you might need to run a couple of cohorts. But that is the best practice and the reason why it makes sense to do it early, because you can get everyone through and actually create that alignment where everybody leading, everybody overseeing people and teams is doing the same things in the same way, bringing their own style and excellence to it, of course.
But that is the best practice to get everybody through, even if you need to run multiple cohorts and in a larger organization, kind of who to put through first. The main criterion I would apply is who has influence.
Brian Washburn: Mm-hmm.
Dan Lawner: Who are the people that leader other leaders and managers look to who are the natural role models? And so when those leaders get out of that program and are doing things differently, they can have that sort of circle of influence where those things are showing out of the room, and then that creates the FOMO to build greater momentum afterwards.
Brian Washburn: Yeah, no, and I think that there’s, there is some, uh, some wisdom in terms of, especially in a, in a larger organization where you can’t fit everybody into one, in one, a one-time cohort, to be able to find the influencers, right? So “influencer” seems to be like this, um, this term has come out with the, the advent of social media and things like that, but organizations, you know, have had influencers within their walls since organizations have been around. And so being able to identify those influencers, I think is, is great wise sage advice.
First Step to Addressing Leadership Gaps
Brian Washburn: Now for people who are listening and thinking, man, this Dan guy sounds really smart, and I wish we could bring him in, although we’re not– We’re either not in a place to do that or we don’t have the resources to do that right now. But I, I would really, I like what he has to say. And, um, and so is there, is there something specific, like one specific thing that somebody who’s listening here might be able to do for themself to begin to diagnose and address whether it’s manager or leader shortcomings?
Dan Lawner: So to diagnose where they’re at right now it’s a good question. I think one thing, if an organization doesn’t have, like, really doesn’t have money to invest in this sort of thing, to bring in outside help–
Brian Washburn: Right
Dan Lawner: One thing you can do right away, because I’m gonna step past the diagnosis question because if you know there’s an issue, you know there’s an issue and so the people listening, if this is resonating, they have experienced this– the pain of not having aligned leaders and that support for leaders and managers.
But a thing that they could do right away is, I found one of the most powerful things of doing cohort-based programs is the cohort itself. That all of those managers or leaders across different functions actually don’t have occasion to come together and peers and talk honestly and openly about what is hard about managing and leading in general or in that organization.
And so what I would suggest is just finding occasion to bring those folks together for just like a book club. You know, just like this, this is Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead. And for management, I’d say Julie Zhuo’s Making of a Manager and just get folks together for— You know, you could read this over a quarter or something like that, and then just come together once a month and go through a third of the book.
But just get the conversation started. And that internal peer support, or you could do the same thing with kind of informal mentorship relationships where you can have managers pairing up with stronger and more experienced leaders. That sort of stuff is a great place to start.
Brian Washburn: I love that idea, especially the idea of, you know people talk about, you know, organization-wide book clubs or book clubs for certain groups and, and organization. And the reason I like it, I think it’s so powerful is because when I read something, a lot of times I get a different takeaway than what some of my peers do.
And so being able to have some structured time to be able to talk about some of these concepts I think could be really, really helpful.
Connecting with Dan Lawner
Brian Washburn: Now, on the flip side of that question, for those folks who are thinking, man, Dan makes a lot of sense. I’d love to talk with him a bit more. How can people find you? Where can people look you up?
Dan Lawner: Yeah. So if folks are looking to get a better understanding of what Bevel Talent does, how we’re different, what we offer, and some testimonials, BevelTalent.com is your place to go. And then if folks are looking to connect with or follow me as I put out pieces that are coming out of my client work or research that I’m doing, LinkedIn is the best place to follow me.
So just gimme a follow or connect. And if you want to have a chat, low pressure, just a little bit of thought partnership around this, you know, these kind of challenges. You know, feel free to drop me a direct message on LinkedIn or email me at dan @ beveltalent.com and always happy to have an informal chat with folks.
Brian Washburn: I love that. Dan Lawner, thank you so much for just giving us some time today just to talk about what it is that you’re doing as well as through your eyes, what makes for really effective leadership or manager development. And for everybody else who’s listening, if you found this helpful, we would love it if you could share it, probably on LinkedIn might be the best place to share it.
And if you ever wanna nerd out over anything training related, let’s grab virtual coffee. My email address is brian @ endurancelearning.com. And until next time, happy training everyone.
