In this episode of Value First Leadership, Chris and Tony dive into one of the hardest (and most critical) commitments in modern leadership: replacing formal hierarchy with authentic human connection. They explore how conversational leadership, vulnerability, and daily presence reshape trust, accelerate alignment, and help teams move at the speed that today’s AI-driven world demands.
If you’ve ever struggled with being accessible as a leader, navigating power dynamics, or fostering real transparency—this is the conversation you’ll want to study.
Why authentic connection—not hierarchy—is the new foundation of leadership
How to build trust by talking to your team every day
Why transparency collapses hierarchies and accelerates decision-making
How to “control the narrative” inside your organization without being controlling
The surprising link between AI, speed, and daily leadership presence
Why public forums work only when backed by private, honest conversations
Practical ways to dismantle distance between leaders and teams
00:00 — Introducing the final Value First leadership commitment
03:00 — Security, confidence, and the internal work leaders must do
10:00 — Why caring about people and the organization matters
14:00 — The communication gap between leadership and teams
17:00 — The power of structured forums for honest feedback
23:00 — Conversational leadership: where the real work happens
28:00 — Authenticity as “doing what you said you’d do”
34:00 — Daily presence vs. quarterly “performance theater”
41:00 — Why AI accelerates the need for conversational culture
55:00 — Hierarchies collapse when curiosity and access increase
1:05:00 — Actionable starting points for leaders
Conversational leadership as a framework
Open-book management
Radical candor for delivering care through honesty
Flattened organizational design
Public ratification vs. private conversation
Authentic leadership and consistency
AI-driven transparency and speed
Authentic connection is not a “nice-to-have”—it’s the backbone of modern leadership.
Private conversations build trust; public forums reinforce it.
Consistency is more important than perfection. Showing up daily matters.
AI will only increase expectations for conversational, transparent leadership.
Leaders must not only care about individuals—they must care equally for the mission.
Hierarchy becomes unnecessary when leaders stay connected, accessible, and aligned with values.
The hardest part isn’t the mechanics—it’s deciding to lead this way in the first place.
Chris: Good morning. Good afternoon, LinkedIn friends, Value First Nation. Welcome to another episode of Value First Leadership with Mr. Tony Dowling. How are you doing today, Tony?
Tony: I'm doing very well. Good afternoon, everybody over this side of the pond. And good morning if you're over that side of the pond. Looking forward to getting started again. I can hear our music, Chris. I don't know if you've still got that running.
Chris: I don't. So hopefully we're okay. Um, number seven today commitments, number seven, uh, we will foster authentic connection over formal hierarchy. We believe leadership influence comes through relationship, not position. We commit to building genuine human connections across organizational levels that enable truth telling. collaboration, and shared purpose. This means we will prioritize authentic relationships over positional power rather than relying on authority for influence. We will make ourselves accessible across hierarchical boundaries rather than maintaining executive distance. We'll create forums for honest, multi-directional feedback rather than top-down communication only. We will demonstrate vulnerability and growth mindset rather than projecting infallibility. And we will build trust through consistent action aligned with stated values rather than relying on position for credibility.
That's why this one is last. if you uh you need to like the other six need to matter probably if you're gonna even sniff close to what i just described right like i couldn't help but smile just because it's like Yeah, if you get here, you're going to win. But most are just so far away from us right now.
Tony: Yeah, I was thinking as you were reading it and smiling to myself, this is, I think, the value that kind of sets apart those great leaders that are in our life, in our work, at home and where we go and have fun and all that kind of stuff. Because to achieve this, you have to be secure in yourself and secure within your organization. And it's very difficult to achieve that status.
Now, when you get up to my vast age and experience, perhaps it's a little bit easier. But for younger leaders especially, maybe it's a little bit unfair. But for younger leaders especially, I think this is the key. This is the trick to it. Having relationships doesn't mean that people walk all over you by the way. Having truthful, radical, open, transparent communication, in fact, means you're probably developing yourself as a leader far more than you might think because people will hold you to a higher standard because you're the leader in the organization and you should hold yourself to that higher standard.
And that means, this is so difficult, but it means maintaining a distance with the relationship. This is a really Zen idea, Chris. It's kind of being something and not being it at the same time. And when I was coming up as a leader, I made a fatal mistake. It's not a mistake. It's just what happens, especially as you get promoted, you know, where you're friends with the people that work for you. And that makes it really hard to do some of the things that we just talked about as much as they sound like great and highfalutin ideas. But, you know, being really honest with somebody who is a friend from a work perspective, maybe maybe not so much personally, but it's really hard. It's really, really difficult. So this is the primary value I would say.
Chris: Yeah, and I can't help but be reminded, of course, all this value-first stuff is starting to just... Roll all together. Great conversation last week on Value First Humans with George B. Thomas and special guest Dr. JJ Peterson from StoryBrand. And he started a new podcast called Badass Softie, which is about like being unapologetically ambitious while also being sensitive and like, you know, the leadership that we've been talking about and, uh, out of all the things, especially in conversations with George, it's like, it's not only okay, but it's a requirement to care about the people that are working for you with you around you. And like you said, that doesn't mean it's, it's like, Oh, just care caring is constructively providing feedback in critical moments that aren't comfortable and that ran radical candor kind of situation. Right.
And again, it's like one star. Like if you could just be like, oh, okay, it's okay for me to care. And it's actually like super beneficial that everybody involved, if I take this additional level of care into the work environment with me, it could be as simple as that.
I think the reason it's not, and I know you'll share some stories, is all of the baggage that we all have about how that's not the way We're supposed to do it. Some people, this is the security thing, you know. Before you do something, there's that famous saying, and they fake it until you make it. Until you do something comfortably, perhaps, or, you know, you put your ten thousand hours in or whatever, you feel, I always felt a bit of an imposter, you know. And you kind of act the way you think. you should be acting sort of before you act the way that you've learned you should act, you know, and we were very conscious. I remember my first day being going into an organization as a manager, as opposed to having been made a manager. in an organization, right? So I was new to everybody. I'm walking across the floor into my office and I made the fatal mistake. Well, it wasn't fatal, clearly I survived. But I made a mistake of closing my door behind me because I was so intimidated walking across that floor.
Tony: There was twenty-five people in there who were suddenly going, I could feel every gaze. So this is the guy, this is the new guy, this is the new manager. And it's really difficult. It's really, really difficult. And the temptation is to act the way we've learned or we've observed other leaders. And the problem with that, they could have been really bad leaders. So, for instance, I shut my door. I shut my door because I was so intimidated. But what did that look like to a bunch of people that have just, they haven't even met me, I've just walked across the office floor. Well, who the hell is this guy?
Now, if I'd had, and I would have later on in my career, if I'd had the security to say, to puncture that atmosphere, you know, as I did a lot of times later. Whoa, this is a bit intense. Have a bit of a laugh and a joke. It would have gone so much better, you know, but I didn't have that security. I didn't have that confidence. I didn't have that confidence in myself.
And just as an aside, in case I miss it, you mentioned about caring about people. It's really important to care about people, clearly, but it's also really important, I think, to care about the objective of the organisation. Mm-hmm. That's the way that you have, you get this parity between the people and the decisions you must make for the organization. And ultimately, that means the customer, right? That's really what we're talking about here.
So you care almost as much for the customer, because I don't think you do care as much for the customer as you do your teams, almost as much for the customer as you do for the teams. That leads to this decision-making becoming easier. I don't want to upset Johnny, but equally, There's Frank over there who's just bought from us. And trying to be value-driven is the only route to achieve this.
So always, always, always asking yourself, what does it say in the book? What does my North Star say about this? What does my value set say about this? It's the only way to circumnavigate it and for everybody to be aware that that's what you're doing. You know, I'm trying to be brutally fair here, but not just brutally fair to you, to all of those guys and to all of those guys and to our investors and to the, you know, the receptionists and to the customers and to the suppliers and to everybody else.
And once I think once that's open, once that's on the table, it's far easier. But to get that is really, really difficult.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah. And this is where. Again, I think it can be simplified because what you're describing is, for me, when I think about what CEOs, what the head person is responsible for, it's developing the vision and the direction in the North Star and then communicating it and making sure it gets resourced. That's to external stakeholders and internal stakeholders right um and it's this communication is almost always like the weak point right um and a mistake that i've often seen and heard of is uh Because again, we're in a spot where it will foster authentic connection over formal hierarchy.
You have to create the space for the authentic connection. A lot of people appreciate, in principle, open book management to make it easier for people to understand. And so we do our town hall once a month. And then the town hall is just management talking to everybody. And it's a one way conversation.
And that has happened several times with me. Sorry, Chris.
Chris: Yeah, no worries. And when I first experienced it, I got excited. I was like, oh, this is going to be different. And then I sat through a couple of them and then I could understand why it wasn't different and how it was you know almost created worse scenarios of like now we're reminded of how little control we have as like internal stakeholders but recently i have watched it happen in a group where there's twenty people in the room and i started talking about these training sessions i'm watching this week where as the leader of an organization this person went one by one like Tell me your thoughts. Give me your thoughts. Now you, now you, right? And it wasn't the first session that this happened in. Like maybe it would have been successful. It really depends on culture, right? At this point. But since it was the second one, I think it had way better chance of being like,
We're meeting two weeks in a row. This is normal. It wasn't just out of nowhere. So I feel safe to answer this question when I'm being asked, what do you want to be better? And there was a range from people who've been there for eight years all the way down to two weeks. And just the power of creating that true forum where everybody can hear, everybody has space, Like that's where connection starts to come from. Not only to develop it, but also to have some sort of control over it because what you you know you don't necessarily want everybody to share like something really bad and then there's like you know revolt inside the organization right so that effort goes so far to not only creating the space but for developing trust yeah through that space and it's just really powerful and just as simple as saying like starting with like here's what I want to be better as a leader.
And, you know, being a little bit vulnerable in that moment of, first of all, it's my responsibility, like that this hasn't happened before. So that's on me. Now we're doing it. Here's what I would like to see better. And usually it relates to something like, you know, company related, but often like a little self-deprecating, right, to just build that safe space. It's just so powerful to watch it work.
And that public performance, in effect, is that, you know, that's what really sets, this is what we live. We say this thing and then we do it and we do it in public for everybody to see.
Tony: But there's an approach is called, I call it conversational leadership. And I used to believe that all of the decisions, all of the work, all of the managing, all the leading of people happened more or less behind the scenes. Maybe you'll take somebody for a sandwich or they'll walk past the office and you'll call them in back in the day when you used to have offices. Or maybe you'll catch them on the way to the car or wherever it's going to be.
By having a conversation with that person, you'd understand what was going on. You'd flush out whatever the issues were. You'd get the inside skinny on everything else. So it's like a finger on the pulse approach, right? Conversational leadership. But then what you use the public forum for was to ratify the things that you then decided.
So rather than necessarily calling people out individually which which is fantastic i mean how transparent can you get but everybody is comfortable talking in that uh scenario and there may be people that you just never get anything other than a platitude out of if you if even if you can get that out they're having a one-to-one conversation with them you'll you'll bypass that um that that resistance to the communication and then in the public forum that's when you can bring their input up that's where you can add what they had to say or their insight or their perspective to the to your public performance you know so it was kind of like do the hard work almost in in the in the background and then in the meetings ratify things get get them rubber stamped get get everybody to agree and understand it publicly you know
So that was the way I was approached it. So sales meeting, for instance, I would never, I mean, not who would do this, but I would never criticize a rep in a public forum, right? Private criticism, public praise. But you talk to the rep, or I would talk to the rep, conversation with the rep about what I'm going to say in the meeting.
And look, it's being prompted by you, but I'm not going to single you out. I want to support you to achieve this thing. And by the time it's happening in the meeting, everybody's cool with it. The rep is cool with it and stands the context and stands why I feel like I've got to do it and understands what the outcome is going to be. There's no kind of agenda in there. There's no single anybody out or pointing anything.
So I always used to think that, you know, let's do the hard work where nobody's watching. Let's do the hard work with a conversation and then ratify it in a meeting. I don't, I don't really want a meeting to be too long. I don't want it to contain arguments. I don't, you know, It doesn't mean they weren't public forums. It doesn't mean that you don't have to have an opportunity where maybe there's nothing, anything, or, you know, you, you have to pass disseminate as, as is the role of leader. You have to sound it some information, but generally speaking meetings for me are for that signing off, underlining rubber stamping, because you've already done the hard work.
And that's where I think the authenticity comes into it because you can have an authentic conversation with somebody. You can drop your guard. They will have dropped their guard. You've got a relationship. It doesn't mean that they're walking all over you like we said. You've got a relationship where you can have a frank exchange of opinion, frank exchange of beliefs, insights, whatever it is you want to talk about.
And then when it comes to the meeting, you perform. You've taken that conversation on board. You've taken those insights on board. Maybe you've talked to the fellow leadership team or wherever, and you pronounce on it.
You don't have to do that in the conversation. You just listen. And then when you deliver against it, you know, this is the other thing with authenticity. What does being authentic mean? Well, I think it means doing what you said you were going to do, you know? And if somebody comes to you and says, I've got a problem with X or Y or whatever yourself, I'll fix it. Well, you have to fix it then. You can't just ignore it. You know, that's a big part of authenticity, I think.
Chris: Yeah. And that’s when it comes in to these conversational moments. You go back and, you know, Was that what you were after? Is that what you needed to hear? Does that help? And I'm so gratifying. It's so absolutely.
And that way, I think the organization has a very, very tight network underneath, holding the tent of the organization up. The foundations are really, really strong. Because I have a relationship with you, with you, with you, with you, with you, as well as this overall relationship.
But it's hard, Chris. It's really hard to do. And I think sometimes I don't think leaders, great leaders, good leaders even, have enough credit for the skill set that they bring. Because not everybody can do the stuff that we've been talking about in these last seven sessions.
Chris: Well, that's the thing. As you talk about the importance of both sides, most managers I've met, leaders I've met, are super comfortable with the one-on-ones, but not necessarily they know how important the relationship is with the person, but often it's very easy to tie it to micromanagement and control because you don't have the public response that brings it all together.
And thinking back to what the challenge was for me and why it's so different now and AI is kind of forcing the issue at the speed that everything is going at, you have to find a way It is so much easier to make good on your promise when you've got to show up next week and talk about it versus next quarter, next year. Right. At most town hall style conversations, most performance reviews do not happen inside of ninety days. Right.
So you might have done the thing that you said you did, but ninety days have passed. It's a different world.
Chris: Exactly. That thing might not even matter to that person anymore. So you can show up. Yeah, I did that thing. It's like, oh, we realized day forty five that it wasn't a good idea anyways. So in that moment, you're like, OK, so I can either do the thing that we know doesn't care about or I don't have an opportunity to make good on the promise. So now I'm here. Right.
And as we think about Like AI just enables this speed that if you can sign up for that, it forces you to develop the process and the communication around having to show up that often. Right. But when you don't, when you think you don't have to, everything else is speeding up, you know, Indirect communication is happening at greater rates. So we can see you, whether or not you're coming through on the thing that you just said or not.
Transparency is happening whether you want it or not. Speed is happening. So finding a way. Man, it's the most common advice I give right now. It's finding a way to show up every day. Like the rest will, as long as you're aligned on the why. the vision and that like values value first and this connection authentic connection like just put that as a north star say i'm showing up every day in this way and people will they might be uncomfortable in at first if you've never shown up in that way before but they will get used to it very quickly as long as you continue to do it yeah consistent consistent and and brutally fair as we said last week and and i've revisited again today i think you know pierre used to say i spent all day talking to the team all day i used to do do my work if i can call it that before everybody came in and after everybody had gone home.
Tony: Because I believed my job was talking to the team, the conversations that I was having. And it could be back when I used to smoke, you know, it could be outside having a crafty cigarette or over lunch, I'd take somebody to the pub or wherever it was. That was work to me.
And people would, you know, they would apologise. I'm really sorry to take up your time. And I'm thinking, No, because that's what I'm here to do, you know, is to talk to you and to build that connection, to understand where your issues are. And it's kind of a little bit, it's almost a bit ambiguous, you know, because you're sort of thinking at the same time, because we care for the customer and the organisation and the team. we're sometimes listening to what somebody's got to say, and we're thinking of it through different lenses.
We're thinking, okay, how's this going to impact on my ability to deliver? Not just how is this going to impact on you as a human being, how is this going to impact on your mental health or anything else, but also what knock-on effects are these going to have? But it's because of that daily showing up, it's because of that, you can't have these relationships when you're just checking in every quarter.
Hey, I saw you all three months ago, and this is what we took away from the meeting. As you say, within thirty days, it was all... And the other thing, do you know what? Not everything can be solved. Not everything can be solved, not even by the best leaders. But it doesn't mean that they have to be fixed.
If you're talking to somebody on a daily basis, even if it's to say, I still haven't figured this out. I still don't know what... It's like going to a therapist. Having conversations about these things reduces the pain, reduces the impact, reduces all that other conversation, as you were mentioning.
Well, he's not doing anything, but do you know what? He's turning up every day and talking to me about it. He's telling me what progress he is making or isn't making and telling me where things are going well or not going well. I think that's vital, to be upfront about people when you can't help them as well.
If somebody comes to you and says, I want to be promoted, It's the worst conversation in the world sometimes because it's often the people that you ain't going to promote in a million years. How do you deal with that? Well, the only way I know to deal with it is to talk to that person every day. Talk to them consistently about what you need to see if they're to be promoted.
Why maybe promotion isn't necessarily the best thing in the world. And you can't do this on the basis of fripperies. You can't just poo-poo this stuff for people. It's really important to them.
So this is why I think this value is the hardest one to deliver against as a leader, because you expose yourself so much. You really have to be strong and probably have to have a great leader behind you as well, because everybody's got a boss.
If you're to do this effectively in a corporation, you need to know the corporation is behind you. Otherwise, you're siloizing yourself and your teams. And that way, there's madness.
Chris: Yeah. But conversations. For me, my North Star is conversation, connection, whatever you want to call it. You just have to talk to people. Right.
And this is I was Googling yesterday. checking on one of my, if I were to be an NFL fan, I would care about the Detroit Lions. So I just Googled yesterday on my phone just to see what was happening on NFL Sunday.
And I noticed when I got to a certain page, there's a beta inside of the Google search called discussions.
Tony: Oh, okay.
Chris: Right? And it reminded me immediately of Reddit-like discussions, like threads, like boards, all that stuff. It is becoming apparent everywhere you look how important conversational experiences are.
And if you can enable this, like it is a, I would say it's a must for you to enable this kind of thing inside of your organization in a... in an intentional way.
Tony: Yes.
Chris: Because everybody in the org is going to have access to that experience outside of the organization and even inside as they're doing their work and that like Google's putting it in front of them, chat GPTs here, like everything is conversational.
If they then look to their leadership or their manager and like, why can't we have a conversation? It's just an inherent disconnect, dissonance that'll show up and add to the anxiety and the fear of like, why aren't we talking more? So you don't really have this luxury for very long if you ever had it in the first place. of not creating this kind of conversational culture.
Tony: It's such a good point, and I've not even thought of that, right? The devil makes work for idle hens. You know, if you're not putting something into their head, as in your team, somebody is. And how do you control the narrative in your organization? How do you control the conversation? By having the conversation.
You know, I think the most... I'm a huge fan of AI generally, and I think it's the future. The thing that has really worried me that I've read, probably because I'm a dad as well, is the impact on youngsters who've taken to ChatGPT or whatever for therapy, for some sort of conversation.
And you can see why it would happen. They've got nobody to talk to. They're disassociated. They haven't got a job to look forward to. Their education is subpar, whatever it's going to be. And suddenly there's this, and we all know ChatGPT is a little bit on the positive side.
Suddenly you've got somebody who is more interested in them than anybody ever has been. And this is going to happen in your organization when they go in and say, why doesn't my boss talk to me about my promotion? Why doesn't my boss talk to me about pay rights? Why won't my boss return my email about this or that or the other? Before you know it, somebody else is having that conversation.
So it's imperative. You must be having those conversations, if only to block out. And this is the whole thing with disinformation. It's the whole thing. People are flooding our space, flood our perception with all sorts of nonsense, utter nonsense about everything. So the only way you can keep that out is by having the authentic conversation, the authentic connection.
Nobody knows better than me. Nobody knows this organization better than me. You don't want to be talking to ChachiBT or anybody else. Come and talk to me. right um and and let's say it's it's such a good point well made because otherwise and the empty vessels make most noise i got i got loads of these you know all this stuff will be rattling around within the organization and never more so than today never more so than today when you've got chat gpt that will just fill in the blanks yeah and i'm so glad you framed it that way about leading the narrative because this was always my response to Every leader who says, Oh, we can't post more. We can't show stuff more because then our competitors will see it.
Chris: It's like the easiest way to lead the narrative is to talk more than everybody else. Like, cause I've seen that like throughout industries and it's not even, and if it's the guy you don't like who might not be telling, who might be telling half truths about your business, if you're not, if you're not out there in the open, Like trying to combat it through that, like you're not winning that battle, right? Because that's how you lead the narrative.
And especially as you describe it, like it's almost like when we talk about the best way to increase loyalty is to like fix a problem correctly, right? If we're at the customer service desk, right? Instead of preventing everything, just being Johnny on the spot to solve the problem. It's one of the best ways to increase loyalty. you know, satisfaction and loyalty, in the same vein, you could probably, like, just, like, ten X trust in you and the space that this person is operating in.
If they ask for say they ask for a promotion and they probably ask gpt about how to ask for promotion yeah yeah in their exact scenario that they're in it from their lens right and then you say no uh or you you don't necessarily handle it well and then they come back and then they tell gpt what happened If there's space there to figure out why they are saying the things that they're saying and you get to GPT being a source, and then you can have a conversation that's, well, here's why that response doesn't make sense for the organization that we have right now and our goals. Man. like you will get buy-in like you wouldn't believe in a way that gets trust.
Chris: And it just like, And that's the kind of stuff that will flow through an organization. So what you're talking about there is the replacement for the hierarchy, right? So we have had to have hierarchy from ancient times up until today because of so much failure within leadership particularly, right? So you have to prop it up with these hierarchies. You have to move the most senior person so far away from the most junior person so that it takes three days for the messages to reach them and stuff.
And what it does is it creates organizations that die really, really quickly. Not then. It would last for generations. And now they'll die really, really quickly, right? So I remember back in my newspaper days, and we took the news desks in our newspapers, and they were in lines, you know, perfectly sensible lines. You had an editor in his office and then lines of journalists. And we put the ad, it says, in the middle of a circle.
Tony: Right?
Chris: So now everybody has equal access because we're a twenty-four-seven operation. We're not going to press twice a day or three times a day. We're publishing online. We're publishing every five minutes, every thirty seconds.
And that breakdown of the hierarchy was physical then. But this is the mental or the modular breakdown of the hierarchy. When you can set the narrative, when you set the agenda of the conversation as opposed to bad actors or just gossip or anything else, that's when you replace hierarchy. You don't need hierarchy because you're the source. You're the person that everybody looks at. You're in the middle. of the web, of the net, or the desks, or whatever you want to call it.
So you don't need hierarchy then. You have unfiltered access to the teams. And in fact, we now know the flatter the organization is, the more agile it is, the faster it can move, the faster it can adjust. And then you've got various sort of versions of that with teams and using agile and so on and so on.
We know a lot about this stuff now, how to move really, really quickly. But it doesn't work without the authentic connection.
Because people will just go off and do their own thing. Or people will go off and listen to the wrong person. Wrong, inverted commas, person. Or people will go off and listen to the bad actors. And before you know it, there's talks of... takeover or redundancy or any of these other horrible things that just aren't the case because you're not controlling that narrative.
And not controlling the narrative, not because you're not a great orator and you're not standing up having the monthly Q&As or whatever it's going to be, open houses or whatever. It's because you're not having the conversations. You don't have the authentic connection.
So somebody comes in and just heard one of our suppliers, I was on a sales call, just heard one of our suppliers saying that we're going to be taking over. If you can say, crap, we're a load of nonsense because of this and this and this and this, that's controlling the narrative, or vice versa. Well, actually, I feared that myself. That's how you get that authentic connection.
And that's what, inverted commas, controls the organization. And by control, I mean help it achieve its objectives, not anything else. So it's so fundamental to what we're talking about. And without it, you just cannot.
And this is why I believe so many organizations are still hierarchical, because they lack that authentic connection. The leadership's just not strong enough, not switched on enough, not fast enough of thought to appreciate what's going on. And they rely on, they're like, well, don't talk to me. Talk to your sub-editor, and then your editor, and then the news editor, and then the editor, and then you can come and talk to the MD.
Chris: I think it's easy to point to specific humans and say, oh, that's just how they are. They don't care. So many of the ones I've come across, it's like they don't know that it's their job. Especially when you bring in the people that raise the money. Those are some of the best speakers likely like around right and to suggest that they can't then turn around and speak to the organization in ways like if you find yourself in a scenario like that i think this is a good opportunity to uh wrap um this this section of the series because like you mentioned like if you're gonna get up there and talk every month like you gotta connect it to these seven commitments, I think.
I think this is a way to say if you don't know how to do this, like, right? Are you? Are you speaking about how people are creating value in the organization? Or is it you? Like, like controlling these outcomes? Right? Are you giving people a chance to make their own decisions on behalf of the organization?
Um, instead of holding that all at the top, like are people showing up to that monthly meetings? Like, all right, let's see what he's decided for us this month. Right. That we likely won't agree with because he has no idea what's going on with the front lines. Right.
Uh, are we illuminating these paths for people? Like this is what's actually happening in our organization. you know, I love doing that for HubSpot product teams that don't know what the other product teams are doing. Right. like, uh, instead of saying like, no, this is your path, stay in your lane. You don't get to worry about anybody else. Um, asking the questions in those sessions, super powerful.
Tony: Yep.
Chris: Right. Um, and being super intentional, not just like, how are we feeling today? How are we doing right now? Like nobody knows how to answer those questions with any kind of substance. So you're like, okay, crickets. Oh, you're feeling good today. You're excited about the weekend. Cool. All right, let's get to business. Like, no, it's not what you want to do. Not in those moments.
I'd say that's what the one-on-ones that you described, like that's what those are largely for is rapport and stuff like that, right?
Tony: Yeah, yeah. As you were talking about four, this is the skill you have to have. You don't have to have the answers. You have to have the ability to unlock the answers within that person. And you do that because questions are the answer, a hundred percent. All of this. all cascades into itself yeah yeah
Chris: and so removing those barriers again like if you're always behind closed doors and i only see you once a quarter once a year like that's there's a barrier there when you start showing up that's why so many of these are powerful if you can just hit on one like you start showing up every day yep all of a sudden there's less pressure yeah right like uh And last week we had a good session about learning over controlling right are we giving our people space to learn.
And if that's once a month, right now, because that's time that we've allotted to get together it's once a month, but that's where the value of that once a month changes dramatically if it's becomes an open space. And that brings us to today. So all these do fit together.
And I haven't done this yet, but I keep on finding I've already done a lot of content that could just like guide us on the path forward. So there's an implementation, you know, suggested way of going about this that I would love to dig into with you, Tony, as we move forward on the series.
Tony: Fantastic.
Chris: Because we know it's, we're not highlighting easy apps necessarily. Um, but I think the hardest part seems to be the decision to do it in the first place and hopefully, uh, what we talk about, what we talked about so far and what we'll talk about, um, moving forward is helping you make that decision uh so that the teams that desperately need you to make that decision can can do bigger and better things.
Tony: yeah fantastic look forward to it what's been uh as we wrap what's uh and we get into the practicality of this and like things that people can try like where does your mind go in terms of like first out the gate
Chris: I love the idea of authentic connection as a North Star, as you put it. I thought that was really cool because they all kind of revolve around each other, as you said. But if you're going to start somewhere, start there.
But I also believe it's the hardest of the steps to take for the reasons that we discussed. You have to be secure. And that probably means having somebody great behind you. Um, or, or, you know, a backstop, uh, or what have you, if you lack the experience, uh, um, or whatever, but just talking to your teams will unlock so much of this stuff.
Talk to them like a human being, talk to them authentically. And again, it doesn't mean. not talking about rolling over and letting them do what they want you know it it's about as much about saying no as it is saying yes but learning to say no in a way that doesn't crush somebody and their spirit and their innovation and their creativity and setting the agenda for the organization, you know?
So I think out of all those, that's the choice you want to take. Can I connect myself into the matrix? Can I connect myself into the organization in this really, shown at every day, authentic manner?
Chris: Yeah, so key. And again, that was something that came up in the conversation of Value First Humans last week, like, hard part for most is can you show up every day as yourself?
Tony: Yes.
Chris: As your true self and not somebody that you think everybody wants you to be. And this is where I'm starting to understand leadership coaching. There's a reason that the good, well-performing businesses invest in things like this because it is next to... it is a huge mountain to climb if I've got to be the one to have to create all the space to have this connectivity. And then I don't have any opportunity to do that myself.
So this is we're all learning here, folks. I'm learning how this all this stuff connects. And I appreciate you so much, Tony, for helping us on this journey.
Tony: Absolute pleasure. See you next week.
Chris: See you next week, folks.