Bonus Episode – Flexible Leadership featuring Kevin Eikenberry

What separates good leaders from exceptional ones?

The answer might be simpler—and harder—than we think. In this illuminating conversation with leadership expert Kevin Eikenberry, Chief Potential Officer of the Kevin Eikenberry Group and host of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, we dig into the critical skill of flexibility that so many leaders understand conceptually but struggle to practice.

Kevin reveals why most new leaders get trapped in rigid thinking patterns from the start. Promoted for technical expertise rather than leadership ability, they feel compelled to have immediate answers—creating a pattern of quick decisions based on limited perspective. This pattern becomes particularly problematic in today's complex world where old solutions rarely fit new problems.

Using the powerful metaphor of a mature tree, Kevin reframes the relationship between consistency and flexibility. Much like a tree with strong roots yet flexible branches, effective leaders remain consistent in their values and purpose while adapting their methods to changing circumstances. "We should be consistent in our what and why and flexible in our how," he explains, cutting through the false choice between being principled or adaptable.

Kevin’s Episode Links:

1. The Kevin Eikenberry Group: https://kevineikenberry.com

2. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevineikenberry/

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Land Acknowledgment
• 0:52 Welcome and Meeting Kevin Eikenberry
• 3:43 Leadership Intentions vs. Reality
• 8:14 Context Matters in Leadership
• 15:00 Breaking Free from Identity Traps
• 24:50 Consistency vs. Flexibility Paradox
• 33:57 Assumptions and Plausible Cause Analysis
• 42:56 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Transcript

Simon Kardynal: 0:07

I would like to begin this episode by acknowledging that I am located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and I am privileged and honoured to live and learn on the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.

Glen: 0:24

Hello, you're listening to Trench Leadership: A Podcast From the Front, produced by iglen studios, a show for emerging leaders from all professions to hear from other leaders who have led from the front, made the mistakes, had the triumphs and are still learning along the way. And now here's your host, Simon Kardynal.

Simon Kardynal: 0:52

Hello and welcome to another episode of Trench Leadership: A Podcast From the Front, a show for emerging leaders, and this isn't just another episode that we have in our episodic line. This is a B onus Episode with Kevin Eikenberry, and I'm so excited to be able to do this because, Kevin, we and I you and I, we chatted a little bit earlier. Well, and I say a little bit earlier, I mean over a year ago, we recorded an episode and, for all kinds of reasons, we weren't able to get that out there to the public. But I'm ecstatic to be able to say to people that not only are you out there for the bonus episode to talk about flexible leadership, we're also going to have the other topic that we talked about that we recorded a year ago. But that's for people to go to spotify and apple to pull those episodes up.

Simon Kardynal: 1:34

But right now, as leaders, we often hear about how vital it is for leaders to be flexible, and it's true. We all need to be fluid in doing all the things we do in life and as a leader, that fluidity is, in my opinion, the secret sauce to being a successful leader. That sounds great, but the reality is that being a flexible leader is much more difficult to do in practice than to just say it. And so in this episode we're going to talk to Kevin and we're going to have a great episode. We're going to chat about all the different ways how we can avoid being inflexible, how we can increase our flexibility, and maybe we'll have some fun along the way. But, as always, no one wants to hear from me. They want to hear from the guests. So with that, I'd like to go ahead and welcome in Kevin. Hey, kevin, how's it going out there?

Kevin Eikenberry: 2:23

Simon, thanks for having me. I'm glad to be back with you to have this conversation. This has been. I was nodding my head, agreeing with what you were saying in the intro, so I'm excited for our conversation.

Simon Kardynal: 2:32

I completely agree with you. And then, when you were nodding your head, I was thinking to myself wow, this is it, I'm saying the right things, and that's a great boost of confidence for me. So fantastic, Kevin. Listen, before we get into it, why don't we just take a moment and tell people about yourself? Who is Kevin? What is Kevin?

Kevin Eikenberry: 2:49

Well, like all of us, we have a lot of labels that we might put on ourselves, and some of them might be helpful. I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a business owner, I'm an author, a speaker, a trainer, a coach, a farm kid For those in the United States. I'm a boilermaker I went to Purdue. So there's lots of labels that you could put on me, I suppose, and those I would put on myself, I suppose, as well. But I am in the business, and our team is in the business of helping leaders make a bigger positive difference in the world, because leadership is the biggest lever that organizations can to create better results, and when leaders are leading closer to their capacity and to their potential, they can make a real difference for their organizations and for the folks that they lead.

Simon Kardynal: 3:42

Absolutely, and I would hope, and I really do believe, that most leaders they want to make a difference. More often than not, the goal is to not self-aggrandize, not get all the accolades. It's about trying to make a real, tangible difference in the lives of ourselves and the team that we're fortunate enough to work with and the organization that we're connected to. Would you agree with that?

Kevin Eikenberry: 4:10

I have long said, and I say this about people in general. I say this to leaders about their folks. I say here's Kevin's belief 95% of people want to do great work 95% of the time Not everybody, not every day and I would say the same thing about leaders. Like, nearly all of us have good intention. Nearly all of us really want to do really well. One of the challenges is we don't always know what really well or really good or success looks like, and perhaps this conversation will help to unpack that for people a little bit, because, as you hinted, there are some leaders that might have a little bit of an ego thing going, and yet I would actually say all of us as leaders have a little of that that we might need to be aware of. Having an ego isn't all bad, but it can get out of hand and become a problem rather than an aid.

Kevin Eikenberry: 4:51

My belief is that nearly all of us as leaders and certainly everyone who's listening to this right, like no one's listening to this podcast because they want to suck as a leader. Let's just be honest, right? So all of us here certainly want that to be the case, but here's the other side of that. The other side of that is society, and I'll talk about that in terms of Western society. Which is what I know the most about is that you know, people have grown up in their life and in the movies, the business people and the leaders are often the bad guys. And people have all these things in their head like, well, we're working nine to five and I'm going to get off and take this job and shove it. And you know, they made a movie, Simon, called Horrible Bosses, and it was so successful they made a sequel.

Simon Kardynal: 5:39

I watched them both all the time they never made a movie called Awesome Boss Totally true.

Kevin Eikenberry: 5:45

So while I believe that most leaders do want to do right by their organizations and their teams, that their intentions are good, it's far from a myth that not every leader is really, at the end of the day, awesome, regardless of their intentions.

Simon Kardynal: 6:02

And that's the kick awesome, regardless of their intentions. And that's the kick when we're in these leadership roles, especially as emerging leaders. We're into these new roles. I say it all the time the vast majority of the time we are put into those first leadership roles, it's not because we've proven ourselves, because of our vast leadership experience, it's because we've proven ourselves and our technical skillset. And the example I love to use is when I was a really great welder that he came to me and said hey, Simon, you should totally lead a group of welders. That in no way means that I am good at leading a group of welders. That's a fact Like what are your thoughts on that?

Kevin Eikenberry: 6:34

Well, it happens everywhere. It happens with welders. The best accountant becomes the accounting manager, right, the best salesperson becomes the sales leader. We could go right on down the line. And it causes the problem that you just described. It causes the problem that we've tried to help people with my book From Bud to Boss, and that transition from being a peer to being the leader, moving from last week we had a beer together, next week I'm doing your performance review. That's hard. I would say it's the hardest transition of our careers. But there's another challenge inside of that that maybe we can unpack a little bit.

Kevin Eikenberry: 7:09

And here it is that we were promoted because we were really good at the other job, we were a really good welder, but also because we had a lot of the answers, like we were a subject matter expert. And so we, whether it's conscious or not, we feel like once we're the boss, we're supposed to have all the answers, we're supposed to know all the stuff. When people have a question, we should have an immediate answer and that, by the way, there is a right answer, like two plus two, we know the answer too. We know the answer. So that whole thing right.

Kevin Eikenberry: 7:50

There is one of the things that keeps us from being flexible as a leader, because we feel like we're supposed to have an answer, so we have an answer, and so we don't get curious enough because, listen, we got promoted because we had answers and so now we're expected to be the super answer person. And all of that has unintended consequences in our heads, in our internal expectations and often what we think we're supposed to do as a leader. We lean into that stuff at first in the transition, because that is what we know, that's the solid footing we've got. We have to figure out the rest. But even as we start to figure out the people stuff and the other leadership stuff, that other thing lingers and that other thing is sitting there for many of us as a big impediment to us actually becoming more flexible as a leader.

Simon Kardynal: 8:37

Yeah, and that inflexibility is paralyzing, especially once it starts to take over. And especially in my experiences and what I've seen with other newer leaders, is, once we start to stumble and don't know those answers, most often we start to fall on what we know, and that might not be anything when it comes to leadership, because we have been placed into those roles and that becomes a problem. What are you thinking?

Kevin Eikenberry: 9:00

So we feel like we're supposed to be infallible and so if we don't have answers, we will often sort of act bolder Right. What we will definitely do is go to our natural habit and, being intentional and considering that there may be other things for us to think about or try as opposed to just sort of diving in to what we've always done, our natural experience, our learned experience and, oh, by the way, what we've seen from other leaders which unfortunately sometimes aren't great role models.

Simon Kardynal: 9:42

Yeah, absolutely. And, as I'll be honest, earlier, earlier today I was listening to your latest episode from your podcast called the remarkable leadership podcast, and one of the hosts you had was a Dr. Christy Smith. In the episode, the two of you were chatting about contextual competence and that really struck a chord with me, because I think there's something to be said about having a competence and understanding the context of why we're doing things, and I'd like to know your thoughts on this that it's the leader's role to take the time to get the context of something, not just blindly follow. I'm in the military so, as one could imagine, there's an expectation to certain degrees to just blindly follow the legal orders that I've been given. But in my role at my rank level now, because I'm a little bit on an age, there's an expectation for me to know that context so that before I make a decision, I know why I'm making a decision. Does that make sense? Am I rambling a little bit?

Kevin Eikenberry: 10:36

No, a hundred percent. So in the book Flexible Leadership there's three components to being a flexible leader from our perspective, and the middle one of those is context. What is the context? So let me give you everybody the simplest way to think about this, and that is that someone comes into your office with a question and they need you to respond or decide or do something as the leader. They're wanting your advice, perhaps, and they're looking at you across the table or across the desk and your first thought is well, my answer depends. So if you say, or when you say, it depends, which we've all done, what does it depend?

Kevin Eikenberry: 11:18

It depends on the context. So that's a moment when our brain is open enough to say, well, the answer, or the best answer, or the answer that would give us the best results or gives us the best odds, well, it depends. So what does it depend on? See this situation from different perspectives and say, well, given that this is the direction we should take, which might be the same direction you would have taken, naturally, habitually, but not always. And so when we have that moment of well, it depends, we're fundamentally saying it depends on what the context. And so recognizing that context matters a lot is step one, and then step two, having a way to sort of read that map so we can then make different choices or at least give different choices to be for consideration. And I've come to believe that context makes us a lot smarter. To believe that context makes us a lot smarter, right, and that when we're, number one, willing to look at context and then make decisions based on that context rather than based on our comfort, past experience or auto-response habits, we'll get better results.

Simon Kardynal: 12:41

I completely agree with you. Often I can be heard saying especially when I'm talking about getting a bit of a story to get to a point, I will say the context matters, so the little details, and one of the things that I think I've gotten better at throughout my career is relaying what information is important for the context of whatever is happening and what isn't. Do you have any advice for folks who are now thinking, hey, maybe I need to provide more information to give that full contextual experience, or the concept rather, how might a leader look at that? How do they do that?

Kevin Eikenberry: 13:14

So two things. Let's talk first about how do I help give better context to others and then, second, talk a little bit more about how can we make sure we have that context. So what I would say is and again back to if we're a new leader or we've been in the leadership role for a while, oftentimes we know stuff and so we assume everyone else knows the same stuff, like it's obvious. To us, it's like profound knowledge and we need to step back. So here's the situation and here's why I'm suggesting we go this way. Or here's the situation that leads to the decision that we're making figure that everyone else knows it.

Kevin Eikenberry: 14:07

That is when, unintentionally, we end up being a leader that people may see as being overly dominant or overly directive, because you haven't given them the context to understand how you got where you got. So that's the first thing, and the other thing I would say is that in the world that's more uncertain and changing and is more uncertain and more complex than ever, the context that we used to live and work in was pretty clear and straightforward. We had a best practice, we had a process, we sort of knew the cause and effect and, as a leader, oftentimes we knew those things. That's not the way the world is anymore most of the time, and so the world is more complex. So there are things that we know, we don't know, or there are things we don't even know that we don't know.

Kevin Eikenberry: 14:43

That's what I would call complex. Or there are things we don't even know. That we don't know. That's what I would call complex. And so we have to then start to ferret those things out. And if we try to treat it as if it's clear, we end up with things like all of the mistakes organizations have made in a return to office, when all they were trying to do is take it back to the way it used to be. But it's never going to be the way it used to be again. The context will never be clear like it once was, because in a weekend we changed the societal view of work.

Simon Kardynal: 15:11

Yeah, exactly.

Kevin Eikenberry: 15:12

And we can't unravel that. And so for leaders to assume that we're just going to go back to where we were and I'm not picking on any individual leader there's lots of reasons why leaders, maybe of my age, for example might say, well, like, let's go back to what I know that worked for me, but what will work for my people too? They're not just being old school and they're not just being stubborn. They're trying to get success for others in the way they got success for themselves, Except that the context isn't the same, which means the way we did it before won't work or might have unintended consequences.

Kevin Eikenberry: 15:54

Dominance might fall in directions we didn't think about. If you want to know in retrospect if something was a complex context, think about something that you did a few months ago and look back at it and say, well, man, if I had known those things, I'd have done something different. Well, now you understand the picture better than you did then. Right, but maybe then, if we had stopped and asked a few more questions, engaged people a little bit more, looked around the corner a little bit more, we'd have had a better picture of the context we might have had better success.

Simon Kardynal: 16:25

I totally agree with you. I have two stories which will, coincidentally, help with the context of where I want to go next. So I remember when I was a young private in the infantry because I started in the Canadian Army and my sergeant who was the section commander so the person in charge of the 10 of us was a hard ass For all intents and purposes he was gung-ho. He had 10 of us was a hard ass for all intents and purposes. He was gung-ho. He had been in the military a long time and the training that he had received was just go hard and if you're treating them rough, go a little bit rougher and that will make them tougher and rougher and therefore eventually turn them into me a good hard soldier.

Simon Kardynal: 17:01

Well, flash forward a bunch of years. I mean that thought. That process is not completely gone, because there are some now. I can't believe I'm about to say this. I am the old guard of that old attitude and there are still people from my time in the military and they're still carrying that thought process forward. It's hard to let that go and some people they just can't, for whatever reason, and that's fine, uh, but some it's just that is their contextual belief of what success? How to make someone be a successful soldier and a successful leader eventually. It's interesting how that works itself out. What are your thoughts on that?

Kevin Eikenberry: 17:37

I call that the hazing syndrome, right? Well, it worked for me, so it worked for everybody else Besides, I had to go through that pain, so everyone else had to go through that pain too. I think there's a little of that. But I think the other thing is that we can't be flexible if we don't know what our options are. And so if that's all I've ever seen and, by the way, and you know this as well as I do, that example doesn't only happen in the military and I'll take it a step further that I was never in the military.

Kevin Eikenberry: 18:05

Right, you're in Canada, I'm in the US. I can still say thank you for your service. And what I would say is that, from people that I've talked to who were in or are in the service, the world in which they serve in the military is quite different than it was 15, 20 years ago. When you started. It was very different, it was clearer, there were less shades of gray.

Kevin Eikenberry: 18:31

And so, quite honestly, when we go back to context, if the situation is really clear and best practices we know are going to work and there's no, it depends moments then leading in that command and control way not necessarily the roughness of it, but leading in a command and control way works just fine. There's a reason why. That's how much of leadership happened and worked 50, 60, 70 years ago, because the world was clearer, the world wasn't as complex. But as we move into a world with more unknowns and more of it being unordered rather than simply ordered, then those approaches don't work in those contexts. And so why are people still there? Well, that's the model they had, that's the habit they have, and they're saying well, it works for me, it'll work for them. Well, except that the world's not the same anymore. Again, no disrespect. And to your point earlier, it's not like people are trying to be poor, it's not like they don't want to be effective leaders. Their belief, their mindset says this is what I know, so this is what I'm going to do.

Simon Kardynal: 19:47

Exactly and I completely agree with you and everything you're saying there. As I was flashing forward the example I gave, I was a young private, it's 1994. I'm okay with admitting that and then flash forward a number of years. I joined the Air Force and I get promoted to Master Corporal In the Canadian military. That's our first formal level of leadership. We're generally put in charge of a group of five to seven people. There's some exceptions to that, of course, for the Canadian military all the non-commissioned members.

Simon Kardynal: 20:18

Every time we get promoted it's mandatory we have to take a leadership course on how to, in theory, get ready to, not to lead in the level we're at, but lead at the next level. So should someone go away, then we're able to take one step up, and so the leadership course is called the junior. At the time it was called the junior leadership course and it was to teach us how to lead a group of seven to 10 people the next size up. When I was going through in 2007, I remember very clearly that they were talking when the lesson was don't be a transactional leader. That was the name of the lesson and that was because at the time the Canadian military was. Their minds were blown away to talk about transformational leadership, that a leader, excuse me could be talking with a subordinate and that's the term we used, not at a subordinate right and have an actual conversation and still relay an order in an effective, efficient manner. And so transformational leadership, that was the talk of the town.

Simon Kardynal: 21:12

And then, as we flash forward, quite a number of years later, we've heard, of course, we've talked about servant leadership and humble leadership and all the different styles of leadership that are out there, and I'm not knocking any one of them. The problem we've run into is people will tend to, especially when we give training, not education, training, specific training to how to do a job. The challenge my experience has been specific training to how to do a job. The challenge my experience has been the challenge has been that we get stuck in that Okay, I've been trained to be a transformational leader, I don't know how to do anything else because I haven't been shown anything else. That limits our ability to be flexible. That's my perception. What do you think on that?

Kevin Eikenberry: 21:48

Well, what?

Simon Kardynal: 21:49

it does all that.

Kevin Eikenberry: 21:50

But there's something else that it does, because now I am saying to myself not anything other than I am a transformational leader. Like I bought in, I get it. So now, that is my identity. And so even now, if I see something else like no, no, no, no, I'm a transformational leader. That's who I am as a leader. And if, once I have an identity, it's even harder, for it's now, it's not just me trying something else Like no, that's counter to who I am, right. So that could be about things like humble leadership, servant leader, transformational leader, facilitative leader, all those things. And so there was probably an assessment that you took to tell you how transformational you were.

Simon Kardynal: 22:35

And so it was yeah.

Kevin Eikenberry: 22:37

And again there's no disrespect or or all of what those models are trying to do are helpful until they work so well that it becomes someone's identity, right. So the same thing could be true If you've taken a disc assessment, if you've taken a DISC assessment. You've taken a strengths finder. You've taken and, by the way, we have a DISC assessment we sell DISCpersonalityTestingcom. Like you can go there and get DISC stuff from us, but we work really hard to say this isn't your style, but you have a lot of these traits.

Kevin Eikenberry: 23:11

Like there's a difference between saying I'm a person with a lot of D traits and saying I am Because the second is now my identity, which means here's what that means from a leadership perspective. This is how I lead everybody. You might as well get used to it. Like this is how it's going to go, Like that's just my nature, that's how I lead, that's how I was taught to lead, that's what leadership looks like to me, All of those things, and if that's where my head is and the far end of that spectrum is that's my identity, it becomes extraordinarily hard to shift. So you could say a cynic would say well, Kevin, aren't you selling a book to say to be a flexible leader? Yes, except there's not a model for it. It's simply a framework to say that, oh, I have a plethora of approaches. What's the best one for me to use in this context? That's the difference.

Kevin Eikenberry: 24:07

It's not prescriptive, it's providing you with options to help you move past that identity or automatic response for an episode that you feel is vital for emerging leaders. Leave the idea in the comment section and, if your topic is chosen, you will have the opportunity to join us as a co-host during the recording session. So drop us a note and let's talk. This podcast is made possible by listeners like you, and if you feel we've earned it, please tell your friends and leave a review to help us grow our following. And now back to the show.

Simon Kardynal: 24:59

You know, as you're saying that, I'm thinking back to when I was doing my master of arts degree and in that the program happened to use the Myers Briggs program. When I did the program I had never heard of any of these different types of programs. I was very new and actually in hindsight I was really happy about that because it let me come into it really clearly minded and open to the whole thing. So I did it and I'm an ESTJ and so that's all fine and dandy. I remember we all did the questions, we show up at the course, we're doing our thing, and then they gave everyone our results as one of our classes.

Simon Kardynal: 25:32

Immediately there were two camps the I's, the introverts, and the E's, the extroverts. We spent the next two weeks kind of chucking crap at each other because you're an introvert versus I'm an extrovert, all kinds of jokes and stuff, and at the time it was all meant to get humor. There were probably some folks that took that a little bit more to heart. That's okay, we figured it out. But what it took me a while to realize was that, myers-briggs, those four letters were not defining who I was, not as a leader, not as a person. It was an assessment to help me understand portions of my personality, but not defining who I was. And that was a big deal.

Kevin Eikenberry: 26:10

We are far more than four letters, a color, an animal or whatever the assessment is that you've taken.

Kevin Eikenberry: 26:17

That doesn't mean they're not helpful, but they're only helpful to a point. To use Myers-Briggs or DISC as two of the most common in that area, how they most help us is to help us understand our first response or natural tendency, which doesn't have to be who we are. It doesn't mean just because you are more extroverted doesn't mean there's never a time that you want to have some quiet, and it doesn't mean that you can't enjoy a vacation on the beach by yourself. Your first tendency might want to be with a group and to take a class rather than read a book, and even those things are like it's silly to say that, and yet those are the kinds of examples that we sometimes use to describe those differences. Those don't describe us. They talk about our first natural tendencies, and knowing that is super helpful. And if we want to be a more flexible leader, it's important to know our natural tendencies so that we can say wait a minute, is that serving us right now or not?

Simon Kardynal: 27:25

Yeah, absolutely so. A number of episodes back. I went and I did a series on a lot of the different personality tests. I ended up doing eight of these different ones. I had episodes for each one of them. I did disc, I did all the colors and all the different things and it was fantastic and well, ultimately there were a lot of similarities. I what I noticed was, depending on the mood I was in, depending on if I felt rushed, depending on what was going on around me, it ske skewed some of the answers.

Kevin Eikenberry: 27:53

I will say the assessment is based on X number of questions and how you answered those or thought about those in the moment. Right? So when people do a disc assessment, like with ours, sometimes people will say, well, I, but I was doing it thinking about work. Well, our instruction is just to just answer them naturally, without much thought. Instruction is just to just answer them naturally, without much thought.

Kevin Eikenberry: 28:15

And yet the minute that we say, well, at work, I or any of those things, or I was tired or I was frustrated, or I was a little angry about something else, like all that's going to impact those responses. So to think that then we're going to take an algorithm or turn that out and say, voila, simon, this is who you are, it's kind of silly. The whole thing with a model is this, and that is that a model is designed to simplify something more complex so that we can put our arms around it and understand it. The problem that we take is then we take, and so there's already nuance missing when we do that. Again, no disrespect to these models. Like they have great value as long as we use them for what they are as opposed to what they're not 100%.

Kevin Eikenberry: 29:01

So they nuance is lost for us to be able to put our arms around it.

Kevin Eikenberry: 29:07

But then when we turn that into our identity and say I am a E whatever you said, I am an ESTJ we took even more of the nuance out. And now we threw the model out and said, well, this is me, and so that's the slippery slope. So, for example, there are organizations that and again, regardless of these tools, and you may be in an organization that's done this, where we've all taken the same assessment, so we have some common language. That's cool. But now in our email subject lines we have those, or we have the people used to put them on the on the doorways and they walked into your, into their office. Well, now the slippery slope we're going down to is now we're just typecasting everybody and we're we're. We're sort of saying to each other I am four letters, or I am blue, or I'm yellow or whatever, and that slippery slope is a challenge, and the further down that slope we go, the less likely or the harder it will be for us to flex.

Simon Kardynal: 30:06

Yeah, absolutely. You know, when I was doing all those different assessments, the one commonality thing that I came across and I don't even know if I totally believe it I said Simon is a pragmatic leader, okay, and that popped up quite a few times and I mean, all right, I'll take that. What I choose to get out of that is I get results. It was an interesting thing that that popped up all the time. However, when I had completed all of the different assessments, the challenge I ran into was what I was doing when I was going to make decisions. I remember thinking am I making a pragmatic decision? Okay, how about I just make the decision?

Simon Kardynal: 30:43

This hasn't changed who I am. It was drastically affecting my ability to be flexible and the job I'm in now. My role is to advise the commanding officer of our squadron how to do his job. In this case, it happens to be a guy. So if I'm questioning, if I'm more thinking about, am I making the decisions based off four letters? It's affecting my flexibility, which, ultimately, is not what any of us need to be at these levels of leadership, and especially at a new leadership level. We need to be extra flexible to be able to go forward. Would you agree with that? Do you have any thoughts on that at all? For sure, for sure.

Kevin Eikenberry: 31:17

And so. So here's so if I can step back and answer that question kind of through a different direction. So in order for us to be flexible as a leader, we have to recognize the value in doing it, and you said at the top of the show that you know, we also want to be flexible and yet we aren't always, for all the reasons that we've been unpacking throughout this conversation.

Kevin Eikenberry: 31:46

So, if we think it's a good idea but we're not really doing it, we got to get clearer about what is the mindset of doing it to start with. Yeah, but we're not really doing it. We got to get clearer about what is the mindset of doing it to start with. And so here's what I would suggest to you that the tension in your head and anyone's head right now, not necessarily in your assignment, but in people's head right now, might be this well, flexible sounds good, but aren't I supposed to be consistent?

Kevin Eikenberry: 32:10

to which I would say, when you frame it as I'm either consistent or I'm flexible, you're asking the wrong question. I want you to imagine and, depending on where you are, if you're driving you can't do this. But if you can see a tree, look at a tree like a mature tree. If you can't, see it in your mind's eye, if you're driving, don't close your eyes to see it in your mind's eye, just keep driving. And here's the thing Imagine or think about a mature tree.

Kevin Eikenberry: 32:38

We would say in lots of ways that a mature tree is consistent, like it's not moving, it's in the same spot, it's stable, it's consistent, it's strong. And we would say man, those are good things for leaders, but look at that tree just a little bit longer. If there's a bit of a breeze, that tree is also flexible. It's not consistent, stable or flexible, it's both. So the tree is stable because it's rooted. A leader is consistent or stable because of its roots. What are our roots? Our roots are our values, our principles. Our roots are our values, our principles, our why, our mission, our purpose. So we should be consistent in our what and why and flexible in our how and so it's a false question to say should I be consistent or should I?

Kevin Eikenberry: 33:32

because, see, once we have that identity thing, then we're doing exactly what you were saying, simon. Well, but is that what a pragmatic leader would do? I'm supposed to be pragmatic and so flexible on approach, flexible on how, and so the first piece of that is recognizing that the world, in most cases for our work, is not an either or it's not consistent or flexible. It's consistent and flexible. It's be willing to speak and be willing to listen. It's be focused on the customer and be focused on the team member. It's truth and grace, and all of those are just what I described, our examples of what we call our flexors. And so the ends of those flexors, the far ends of those often defined by a style, are almost always less than optimal, like the far ends of the spectrum.

Kevin Eikenberry: 34:36

Here's an example for any and I know a lot of people listening here are new leaders or, you know, first-time leaders, frontline leaders. If that's you, this applies to all of us, but especially applies to you I often will ask new leaders like what are the mistakes that you've seen new leaders make? And one of the things people say is is we make too much change too fast. So either end of that, both ends of that, are less than optimum. The better answer is somewhere in between that. And so a flexible leader recognizes the tension between those ends of that flexor and says, given this context, where do I need to be? So I might move into leading a brand new team or a new team to me and my nature might be to make more change more quickly.

Kevin Eikenberry: 35:21

But what if I looked at this context and say, well, maybe with this team, maybe I don't need to. Maybe I need to flex a little bit more toward the status quo, not never change anything, but maybe I don't need to change much right now, maybe I need to wait a little longer. The status quo, not never change anything. Maybe I don't need to change much right now, maybe I need to wait a little longer. Maybe this organization is already going through a major change and adding more, even though it's important and useful, isn't going to serve us right now. Or maybe you've got an organization that's kind of stayed and a team that's kind of stayed, kind of living in their status quo, and you might like that, that might be kind of good for you, like that, but you need to push them and move a little more, change a little more rapidly, maybe even than your personal preference or comfort level, but that's what the context tells us. That's being a flexible leader.

Simon Kardynal: 36:11

You know, as you're talking about that, and it reminds me of a couple of different things, and one of the things I've learned as I've gone through my leadership journey and figuring out how to be flexible, to realize that I need to be a flexible leader in all the ways was learn how to ask questions, and you know there are many documents and many tools out there to talk about how to ask the right questions. That's not where I'm going with this. I promise that's a whole other podcast series, I'm sure, but I'd like to come back to when I was listening to your latest episode and you were talking about contextual competency. What I got thinking about was talking about assumptive competencies in that learning, when we're making assumptions about things, what do I really know and what am I making an assumption about? And if we go all the way back to the episode with the expectation that we put on ourselves to have all the answers, often my experience has been that assumptions will be made and then we start making decisions based off of that. What are your thoughts?

Kevin Eikenberry: 37:07

A hundred percent, and so one of the things is that we, as human beings, we are really good at pattern recognition. So when we see the pattern, oh, that's what we need to do, like once we see enough that that reminds us of 17 other times, then it must be like those 17 other times.

Simon Kardynal: 37:29

Maybe A hundred percent.

Kevin Eikenberry: 37:31

Maybe right, and so that, by the way, that's human nature, and pattern recognition is very powerful for us. We need it, but we've got to be careful with it, right? So OK, so here's the thing. I've seen this 17 times, but I haven't seen it in a couple of years. Has the world changed in the last couple of years? Yeah, are there different people in the organization that are involved in this? Do you think they're automatically responding and reacting and making exactly the same decisions that the last 16 groups of people did? The trend from the other 16 is useful for us to take into account. I'm not saying to forget all that, ignore your past experience. I'm saying well, we all know, you've probably all seen. If you take the word assume and you slice it up, it makes you know there's a thing that it does to us. Let's just put it this way assuming doesn't serve us.

Kevin Eikenberry: 38:20

Agree and as leaders going back to the stuff we talked about earlier oftentimes we will make that assumption because we think people want us to make decisions now, be decisive, make, help us moving forward. We don't want to slow down. Sometimes we need a speed bump, sometimes we need to stop just for a second, take a pause. And if we'll stop and take a pause and look at that situation a little bit longer, we might very quickly see that some of the assumptions that we're making will melt.

Simon Kardynal: 38:46

Oh yeah. And when that happens, I believe that's the nexus point where we can to be flexible, to say, ok, maybe we need to take a knee, maybe we need to stop, maybe we need to keep going, who knows. But that's about recognizing those moments, that I believe, where that flexibility comes into play. What are your thoughts?

Kevin Eikenberry: 39:01

A hundred percent, which goes back to what I said about when you save yourself. Well, it depends. If you assume this to look just like the last 16, there's no, it depends Like you're already passed. It depends, know, it depends, like you're already past it depends. You've jumped past it, right? So come back and say well, what could it be? So let me give you I like to think of what I call and I don't believe from a Google search, I don't think anyone else has ever coined this phrase, so I'm going to claim it what I call plausible cause analysis.

Kevin Eikenberry: 39:34

The goal of plausible cause analysis is not like root cause analysis. Root cause analysis, there's a root cause and we're going to find that thing. With plausible cause analysis, all we're trying to do is say what are plausible reasons why this is happening. So here's the simplest one that comes to my mind. You're driving down the road minding your own business and all of a sudden, someone comes zooming past you. You see them in the rear of your mirror and they're zooming up behind. You're on a four lane and you see them swerving in and out. They're going 20 miles an hour faster than you. They go flying by you and what's the first thing? What's this crazy person?

Kevin Eikenberry: 40:05

This is not the Indianapolis 500. That person is crazy. Someone needs to pull them over. That's possible. I'm not questioning that. That's not possible. But what if you knew that that young man who may have been the picture who you had as I painted that word picture for you, that that young man had his wife next to him about to give birth to their baby, would that change how you thought about the way he was driving? It would absolutely change the way you thought about how he was driving. Does that mean that that car going by you has a pregnant woman there? No, does that mean that that person driving past you is a crazy driver? Maybe? The thing is, there's all sorts of things it could be plausible causes for this, and the minute we lock into one and we take action, we're not even considering the possibility of something different, which takes us back to your, to your military peers and saying I've got to lead this way because this is the way to do it. It's's the only thing I've got, the only thing I've seen.

Simon Kardynal: 41:15

This is the way.

Kevin Eikenberry: 41:16

Well, it is the way right and so plausible cause analysis says what are the possible or plausible things that could have led us to this point, and I'm not going to be able to tell which one it is, but if I listed seven things it could be, then let me make a decision based on what might impact many of those rather than the one that I initially thought.

Simon Kardynal: 41:40

I really love that, other than the fact that when I was a younger driver, I was the guy that if someone cut me off, I'm going to chase him down and I'm going to teach him a lesson. And it took me, I'm going to say, maturity and a little more gray in my beard than I want to admit about the realization that I don't know what's going on with that person. Was it possible? They're just a jerk? Possible. But, like you said, there could be any number of reasons. But it also took me a long time to realize that if I go and I cut that person off because they cut me off, did they all of a sudden learn a lesson and say oh, thank you, simon, I get it. I now understand. We don't know why they were doing those things, so I don't think that was the lesson they were going to get.

Kevin Eikenberry: 42:18

Just saying the odds of that being the lesson not high.

Simon Kardynal: 42:22

Yeah, I love to say I was doing it for the right reason, but that's what I was telling myself. If I'm being completely honest with myself, I knew I was also now perpetuating the same jerkdom that was happening to me potentially. Yeah, listen, you know, kevin, we have had a great conversation. We've been chatting for I can't believe it 45 minutes now about flexible leadership, about not getting stuck inside one particular style of leader, being flexible in how we lead. Before we wrap this up, if people want to reach out to you, how might they do that?

Kevin Eikenberry: 42:54

Well, you know, we have this thing called the World Wide Web. So let me give you a couple of links that if you wanted to learn more about our company, you can just go to KevinEikenberrycom. I'll spell it Kevin E-I-K-E-N. B, as in boy E-R-R-Ycom. You go there. You can learn all about what we're about as an organization and the variety of things that we offer.

Simon Kardynal: 43:14

If you want to learn more?

Kevin Eikenberry: 43:15

Very specifically about the book Kevin Eikenberry. com/flexible, and from there you can see how you can get a copy. You can see what benefits and bonuses you get if you buy more than one copy. You can even get a sample chapter at KevinEikenberrycom slash flexible. One more place.

Kevin Eikenberry: 43:41

If you go to, KevinEikenberrycom slash gift.

Kevin Eikenberry: 43:42

I have something as a gift for you. It's free. It's the best kind of gift. It's a free gift. I created a masterclass a couple of years ago on building our confidence in the confidence of others. So it's for us, as leaders, to be more confident and in the subtitle of this book, flexible Leadership Navigate Uncertainty and Lead with Confidence. So we're giving you that access to that masterclass that we sell every day for $79 for free, if you just go to kevineckenbergcom slash gift.

Simon Kardynal: 44:09

Thank you so much for that gift and for your time today. This has been a true pleasure, Kevin. I know this is the second time you a true pleasure, Kevin. I know this is the second time you've been on the show. I hope this won't be the last time. Do you have any final thoughts before we sign off?

Kevin Eikenberry: 44:22

Well, first of all, thank you, and what I would say to all of you listening is the same thing I say at the end of my show, which is to ask yourself this question Now, what action will you take? Now, obviously, I'd love for you to take the action of buying a book, but that's not what I'm saying. What I'm really saying is what did you get from this episode that you will go try? That you will go do, because if you don't go try it, you might have found this interesting. You might be a big fan of Simon and say Kevin wasn't awful. You may use this as entertainment, all that's fine, but where this becomes really valuable is when you take action on what you want. That's what I hope that you do well.

Simon Kardynal: 44:56

Thank you so much for that, and I cannot wait to hear from the listeners about what action they've been able to take away from this episode. Thank you so much, Kevin, for all of your time, and until the next time, my friend take care.

Simon Kardynal: 45:09

Thanks, so much well, that's a wrap from the front. In this episode, we talked about being flexible. We talked about how, as a leader, it's important to manage our ability to go with the flow, to be fluid, to do what we need to do to be successful and achieve the success that we're expected to be able to achieve, while at the same time not having all of the answers. But how do we be successful? I think Kevin said it best when he said we need to be consistent in the what and the why, but we need to be flexible in the how. As always, thanks for tuning in and remember leadership without passion limits the depth of your vision.

Glen: 45:50

Never miss an episode by following us on all of your favorite feeds. While you're there, please consider leaving an episode review and let us know what topics you would like to hear about. Be sure to join us next week with your host, Simon Kardynal, for another episode of Trench Leadership: A Podcast From the Front Produced by iglen Studios. Music provided by Ashamaluev Music.