Why Reality-Based Leadership Is The Path To Accountability w/ Cy Wakeman

In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with best-selling author, drama researcher and headline speaker Cy Wakeman on focusing on a reality-based leadership approach to improve accountability at work.

Cy shares her insights and experience in:

• Why we need to self-reflect and be personally accountable.
• Reality-based leadership practices.
• Cultivating curiosity and compassion to understand different perspectives.
• Collective Genius for reducing risks and driving innovation.
• Achieving post-traumatic growth.
• Co-creation and simplification for the greater organizational good.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: Hi, Cy. Welcome to the show.

Cy Wakeman: Hi, Russel. I'm so glad that you asked me.

Russel Lolacher: I'm thrilled to have you here. Especially considering the topic we're going to get to today, because reality's an interesting thing. Uh, and we're going to be talking about reality based leadership because what reality are we talking about?

Cy Wakeman: Exactly. This will be interesting.

Russel Lolacher: But before we get there, I have to ask you the question I ask all of my guests, which is, what is your best or worst employee experience?

Cy Wakeman: Oh my gosh, I am so fortunate that I've had amazing employee experiences. I had a group of women early on in my career who saw greatness in me, gave me more than my share of fair, my fair share of feedback, and really called me to greatness. And so one of the experiences I tell a lot, I tell a lot of people the story is I was doing kind of a march on the CEO's office to express that my team is being thrown under the bus, and we're undervalued, and, and we're being asked to move all the time, and we're an award winning HR team, and how could they treat us like this, and my engagement stories were going to suck, and I was like racing to the CEO's office. And I was a young leader, promoted with no training, fiery attitude, fierce loyalty to my people, so I was about to commit career suicide. And one of my mentors, when I was promoted in the talent development discussions, said, You know what, she's got great skills, but she would have a tendency to commit career suicide. We should put a safety net in place in case she's ever going to march on the CEO's office and do something stupid. Talk about foresight.

So they told the assistant that if I ever was up there about to do something stupid, to pretend to call the CEO, but call my mentor instead. So my mentor showed up and she said, what's going on? And I said, well, we've got to stop the moving. And she said, but, what's, what's wrong? I go, my team is suffering and she's pray tell, how are they suffering? It's a first world country. You have food, you have shelter, like we're in healthcare. And I'm like, we move all the time. And she was the first leader, the biggest lesson in my life. She separated that reality. And she said, but why are you suffering? And I was stuck because we are moved all the time. And she said, you got to reflect. Why are you suffering? And I was not suffering. My team was not suffering because we moved all the time. We were suffering because we had not yet gotten mobile. We had refused to evolve into the situation we found ourselves in. And so we'd refused to grow. We wanted to stop reality. And she was the first person that said, stop focusing on stopping the change. Focus on being skilled in walking through the change effortlessly and she said go back and get your team ready to be mobile rather than up here in the CEO's office stopping the moving and it blew my paradigm for the rest of my life. Like, big lesson.

Russel Lolacher: I have a question though, in the sense that, so if somebody's listening to this and they're like, it's great that you were mentored in that moment and that somebody had your back in that moment to educate you, but also you were technically bringing your full self to work by leaning into your passion, leaning into your defense of your team, wanting to go to the source of power, and find out what's going on, because you obviously weren't getting it from the people you normally went to, or you wouldn't have to go to the CEO.

Cy Wakeman: Right, right.

Russel Lolacher: So, how do you ... now with your experience, now that you've, you know, you've explored this, you've researched this, you know what reality based leadership is, as we're about to talk about, how do you rationalize the being true to myself versus having to adjust?

Cy Wakeman: I teach this a lot. A lot of people are like, I want to bring my whole self to work, passionate self. And I'm like, do not do that. Okay? Bring your most evolved self to work. Now, it was the key leaders in my life and we can teach this where you can do this to yourself. You do not, you can be a self, know evolved leader. Like we're so over dependent on what the company gives us or what the company provides us in development. It's not coming right now, but you got, you have everything from LinkedIn and there's so many resources. It's like your podcast, Russel, to become a self evolved leader. And so what I tell people is don't bring your whole self to work, bring your most evolved self to work. And what my leaders help me do is they help me at first self reflect, but then I could do that myself. How do I separate my own reality from suffering? Now do they still need to go with passion to my CEO? Yes, but with a different question. It wasn't about stopping the moving and having the story that you don't care about my team because you don't secure us a nice office. I mean, we were in healthcare, the OR suites were growing, like they needed space more than we did. I went with a different question. I'm getting my team mobile, and we want laptops. And that was a different question. It wasn't stop the move. It was, I'm here with passion and I will fight to get my team the resources they need because we will be willing and skilled and able to deliver on what you need in the future and here's what that will take. And it was putting my passion into how we can, not why we shouldn't have to. And a lot of us misdirect our passion. We misdirect our passion into accusing people of feeling like undervaluing us instead of saying, what do we need to co create here? And I'm going to give my passion to the innovation of how we can do that.

Russel Lolacher: And it's that context giving that you were provided, that you didn't have because you're, you're like you're just feeling undervalued. You're just going in there going. I'm being marginalized. You don't care about us. We're successful What do we have to do to prove ourselves to you? Literally, just I don't have the tools to do the job that you're asking.

Cy Wakeman: That you're asking me to do. And we do this a lot and we mistake it for leadership is we take fact and we add story to it. Like I'm being asked to do something hard and, and potentially unsupported. That's fact. And I attached to the story you don't value us and you discount us and you think HR doesn't work hard and... and so the leaders that really helped me were the ones that said, Let's separate out fact from story. And what happens in those moments then is that a lot of the problem dissolves. And what you have to resolve is usually just like a science problem or a math problem. And we have formulas for that. And so, I think back like when we were in secondary school or in the States we call it junior high. And uh, you were introduced to story problems. And they just really throw in tons of irrelevant information. If you remember your first story problems, really. There's a woman in a red hat eating a peanut butter sandwich. She has two cats And three kids. And her train is leaving Brussels at one o'clock, going 30 kilometers an hour. And then they give you this other train leaving, and they want to know when the trains meet.

And I coach a lot of kids. And I'm like, so first thing we're going to do is dissolve all irrelevant information. Things you made up, things that aren't relevant because we got to get down to the formula. And kids are like, well what about the red hat? I'm like irrelevant. Like we just have four things we need to take, it's A, B, C, and X right? And as leaders, a modern leader... and leaders are not just the position but they are people involved in evolution that know that the first step before problem solving is clear thinking Separating out fact from story. Then finding place of impact. Where's my personal accountability? How did I create part of this mess? What's my part in it? And where can I actually have impact? What's my role? What's my point of impact? And then, let's toggle up, I call it get into the higher consciousness, and think about innovation and how we could.

And so you're managing energy away from why we can't to how we could. That's a leader's job all the time.

Russel Lolacher: We're already starting to dip our toe into what we're talking about today. So let's, let's get back to defining it. Because you've written about reality based leadership. We're at WorkHuman right now.

You did a, already talked to many people about this. So I want to get back to, before we get further, is go back to defining what are we even talking about?

Cy Wakeman: Yeah. Cause a lot of people go, well, isn't perception reality? And I'm like, no, that's the problem is that as adults, we haven't learned self regulation to know that our perception is hardly ever reality. And that when we're taking in information, there's so much of our past, so much of our ego, so much of our anxiety, so much of our fear. Like we need first practice at seeing reality for what it really is. And sometimes it's an unpreferred reality. And people name it you know, this is this is immoral or unethical, or I'm like, is it really or is it just an unpreferred reality?

And then as humans, we do things that waste energy. We argue with reality. Which is an argument we'll lose like 100 percent of the time. Or we just hope somebody will figure it out. And we outsource our success because we're like, Oh, somebody should realize and somebody should change our comp structure. And somebody should do this push. Those are two colossal wastes of energy. And what I ask people to do is take a look at the unpreferred reality and the future you want, and then there's a space between those two, that's the point of impact. That's where your choices and your imitations as a leader connect an unpreferred reality to a different future. So to define reality based leadership, it's seeing reality clearly, and then correctly identifying your point of impact, and then co creating something improved for the future, that continuous improvement. And, and, and so I grew up as a therapist, that's my training, and so many people wanted to solve problems that they weren't yet seeing clearly. And so I just said, to get reality based, and I use that term a lot, let's get reality based here, what do we absolutely know for sure, and then what could you do next that would be helpful, and if you were really great right now, like what would great look like? That bringing people down to reality, and and being reality based...

I'll add one more thing to that. Not only being reality based, but not confusing leaders and reality. And what I mean by that is you maybe are my leader, Russel, and you come to me and you go, our reality right now is we thought we'd renovate this building this year, but since we bought another company, it's probably going to be capital budget 2030.

I'm like, I can't believe you're doing this to us. Well, I just now confused you as my leader with reality. And instead, all the tools we teach at reality based leadership puts reality on the wall so that you and I can be the team solving for reality. And so we teach a lot of tools like, given this reality that we won't be renovating this year, how could we? And it's really getting a leader out of the business of being mistaken for reality and really the thought partner and given this reality, what can you bring to the table? Because everybody wants their opinions to count. I want your expertise to count and opinions are how to stop the action and why we shouldn't have to.

And expertise is if we're going to do that, how can we do that well? And that's really what we talk about in reality based leadership. I hope that defined it a bit better.

Russel Lolacher: It did, and it's funny you say, a lot of that resonated. A lot, a lot, one is that people not thinking, just acting and not thinking ahead of time. The, what is it, fire, aim, ready. It's... ha ha ha ha ha.

But what, but what it also brings up is this gap we talk about. And, and I'm looking at it more from leadership versus the rest of the organization. The studies that have come out since the pandemic, where the divide between what employees know and what executive think seems to be getting wider and wider and wider.

We've done a great job during the pandemic employees. No, you haven't. And that just seems to getting worse and worse. So the reality, the executive are telling themselves versus what work is doing and understanding in the field, how do you bridge that gap? Because it's not based in reality.

Cy Wakeman: It's not and and I would tell you that both if we're going to make it about, I don't like sides, but, you know, employees and leaders no one's right in that situation. Because, anytime somebody decides they know something, they're into mastery and they're already outdated. And it's all about the curiosity. And so, and it's both ego driven. Leaders are like their big fear is we haven't done well. And so they only look for evidence at times that how they did do well, right? Well, where they find the metrics that work for them. And employees a lot of times have a vested interest in finding how leaders were wrong, rather than, you know, what they can do to join the group. And, you know, I started out as a marriage counselor, and it's just so typical when you have two parties come to the table to talk. It's so much easier to focus on how you're being underserved rather than how you're underserving. And for me, we teach everybody to get back to curiosity. How could I be wrong in this? What part don't I know? What part may I be oversimplifying? Curiosity brings us open minded and open heartedness. And then you've got to combine that with compassion. Stop judging and start helping. And and, and how do we then lead that to innovation? And those are all new skills in the workplace right now. A lot of people are like, but leaders don't get developed before they're promoted. I didn't either. But I was very involved in my own development personally because I was a therapist in self evolution. And the good news now is that evolution trumps development. And so leaders, work your own program, find out about your own trauma, find out about your own codependency, your own boundaries, your own lack of communication.

It'll improve your relationships, it'll improve your work life. And we can't take people where we haven't gone. And so a lot of, leaders want to learn how to kind of manipulate people in the unprepared reality. That's like leadership development. I'm like, no, how do you get into the messiness? And what I'll be talking about in the next couple of years, my session at Workhuman is modern leaders and the new competencies and the new competencies are not what you tell people. They're what you get them thinking about and reflecting about. It's like very different. But the new things can't really be just taught in the development class. They've got to be a lived experience by the leaders. And we've all had that leader who has, you know, had a failure themselves. And so when we failed, handed that completely differently than the one who shames us because they've never acknowledged that they had a leader, like getting your own humanness in check and understanding yourself is best thing you can do to be a better

Russel Lolacher: Does reality based leadership look different based on where you sit in the organization?

I mean, we talk about leadership, it's, there's no such thing as, leadership's at every level. And I don't want to, and please, I don't want to think I'm throwing leaders under the bus, because I actually feel bad for leaders, they don't get the training they're supposed to get, and they're put in positions they are not prepared for most times.

So...

Cy Wakeman: And we've outsourced to them like happiness like the happiness of your employees is your responsibility. I remember the first time I heard that I'm like, I'm a therapist. No, I can't make anybody happy. That's codependent. How can I be responsible for their happiness? What are you even talking about? The research says something different. But I cut you off. But reality based leadership, the cool thing about it is it's not different depending on where you are in the workplace. The tools we use, edit your own story, and stop judging, start helping, and lead people to higher thinking, can be done from any place, in the organizationn. And it can be done colleague to colleague. It can be you check yourself before you wreck yourself, and then you invite other people into a different reality. And reality based leaderships are most known for the ability to do two things. Anybody can do these things. Love people up. Seriously, walk around and quit being silent. Love people up. Glad to see you today. I've missed you. I care about you. Thank you for bringing your talent to our organization. We've gotten shy about professing our, you know, I call it love to shock people, our love for one another. And what we know in relationships is that it's seven to one, one negative comment outweighs seven.

Like people have to be convinced that you love them. And only after you love them up, can you call them up? Because, you know, if I really am, you know, calling you up and you aren't convinced that I care about you. So like rules without relationship, that's what creates rebellion. That's what we teach. Like step parents, like you got to form the relationship. And so for me, it's about loving people up and calling people up. And if you're doing that at every part of the organization, you're a leader, you're an influencer.

Russel Lolacher: Whose job is this? So, from a reality based leadership standpoint, and I ask this question because you talk about it a bit in some of the resources I've been reading, is accountability.

So there's accountability for ourselves, but there's also the organizational accountability when it comes to leaders. And I find we talk about responsibility a lot, but we don't talk about accountability a lot. I think that's the missing piece for good leadership. How does it fit with reality based leadership?

Cy Wakeman: So first of all, you know, accountability is like... it's not often talked about when it is, it's really according to our research. And it's kind of a dirty word. We have five core competencies in reality based leadership, and one of them, the motherlode, is personal accountability. And how it fits in is that everything in the workplace is shared accountability. Leaders about 51%, employees about 49%. It's pretty equal. But leaders get special information. They get special resources. They still have some control levers that employees might not have. But accountability isn't what we think it is. Accountability, we know starts with the commitment, the willingness to do what it takes, knowing there'll be barriers. And a lot of people come in undercommitted. They're like, well, I'm committed as long as I have all the information I need and I never have to have surprises and I get paid equally. And I'm getting, you know...

And I'm like, you know what? I can't guarantee any of that in today's world. We're going to get shocked all day long. We'll get new information. We're going to have to rework. We're going to have to continuously improve. We're going to be wrong a lot. We have to live in mystery. I need you to be committed, knowing that it's going to be messy and we're going to learn stuff together and I will fail you and I need you to give benefit of the doubt.

And the second piece of accountability is resiliency. The ability to stay the course, but resiliency is not about grit. Now, I love the work on grit. That's a part of it. We found the most resilient people are the ones who ask for help most often and have the largest network of positive relationships so that I can just say, Russel, I don't know if you remember me? I was on your podcast once. You told me, and I listened, you're in broadcasting one time, I reach out to you, you pick up my call, I need help. Give me an idea. And the last thing about resilience is that resilience is not about your individual talent.

Resilience is about the genius of the collective. And the ability to, to team source and crowd source things. And so only then do you get into ownership. And that's the third factor we saw in accountability and then continuous learning. Well, you can't learn if you can't own it. If I can't own something and reflect and know my part in it, I can't change it. So there's no learning. And so a lot of times it's Groundhog Day. I got failed again. and people have no way to unpack that. So we go back and say you know, resiliency, if you were all in, and you crowdsourced, and you tried whatever people were telling you, then when the day of reckoning comes, and you're going to look at my results, and I'm going to reflect on them and say, what did I do well, and what did I need to have done, you know, differently, where do I need to be more skilled? There's no harm, no foul. There's no shame. If I was all in, and I did the best I could crowdsourcing, That's just learning. But what most people do is they don't want to take accountability. It feels personal, and that's because it is personal. Because they weren't all in, and they didn't use their resources. Now as leaders, we don't need to shame people, but as leaders, our job really is not necessarily holding people accountable. I'm hoping there's systems to do that in your organization.

Our job is to stop enabling people when they aren't accountable. And a lot of times our enabling is we stay silent and we don't, help people self reflect. So if you're under committed, I might say, what's your level of willingness right now, a scale of one to 10? And what are you going to do to get yourself more on board with? If it's resiliency, I'm like, and then what'd you try? And then who'd you connect to? But a lot of times instead, we collude with the people and we go, I know we were set up from the start. It was a failure. We enable lack of accountability instead of fostering self-reflection and self-reflection is the foundation of accountability.

Russel Lolacher: I feel like self awareness is such a key part of part...

Cy Wakeman: ...of reality based leadership.

Russel Lolacher: Key part of this. How do you bridge that gap for leaders in the sense that they're not there yet? Because if you foundationally need self awareness, and there are people in positions that do not have that get to that point, how do you, as somebody coming in to help them, lead them there, connect those dots for them?

Cy Wakeman: So the good news is, is people are like, Oh, it takes years to build self awareness. It really doesn't. Things can change in a minute. Most people don't know how their mind works, so they're being played by their ego all the time. And so they look like they lack self awareness. All they lack is knowledge that they should stop believing everything they think. And so when I first introduced, here's how your mind works. You always are being thought. You're always having thoughts. Your job is not believe them. Your job is to question them. So Russel walks by me after this great interview, doesn't say hello. I immediately am like, what a jerk. I just gave this guy a great interview. And now he thinks he's too big to talk to the little people here. Well, now I'm like going to treat you rudely. You're going to respond, really? I'm like, see, I write about the stuff I make up. Self awareness is simply what do I know for sure? He walked by me and didn't say hello. If I give him benefit of the doubt, he might be deep in prayer and meditation for peace in the world.

I don't know. How would I react differently? I would just be like, go on and help people have a great day. Withdraw all energy. Once I teach people how their mind works and they can stop believing everything they think and we give them the tools, like what do I know for sure? Self awareness, it's there. They don't to develop it. It's already there once they move beyond ego. And that's my main message. Your people aren't broken. You as leaders aren't broken. You, you've potentially been undersupported, but now support's everywhere.

Your natural state is accountability as a human being. It is innovation. It is collaboration. That is your natural state, the best you in there. We don't have to develop that in you. We just need to reveal that in you and if you're into ego thinking and you're operating out of the lens of ego, you're not tapped. You're using the most primitive part of your brain. And we can teach you how to toggle up, which is just self reflection. Then you can tap it into all of your intelligence and all of your intelligence is beyond the emotional and intellectual. All of your intelligence is knowing how to be present in the world and knowing how to be curious and compassionate and which is what we do in therapy to teach people, you know, internal family system therapy is all about curiosity, compassion, you know, these universal principles have been there forever and you don't need an organizational leadership development class to teach you this. And in fact, a lot of them, don't have that big of ROI.

Russel Lolacher: Does diversity matter in all this? Generationally, culturally, How so?

Cy Wakeman: Well, the cool thing is, is that we need all of us. We need the genius of the collective. There is not one of us that can operate with missing pieces. That, that by definition is a risky strategy. So if you want to decrease the risk of your next move and your solutions, bring folks in. It really is the collective of the genius, but it's the collective of the genius, which means all of us at the table with our evolved self, not with our preferences, not with our opinions, with our expertise, with our collaboration. And and, I find that diversity, obviously, is important, not just to have, but to actually use and create belonging and, and that starts with stop judging, start helping. It's pretty simple. But what is not a diversity element for me is accountability.

And a lot of times, we confuse accountability with the diversity element. Well, they're just, you know, culturally lower in accountability. I'm like no, that's a competency. Accountability is not a diversity element. It's a competency that anyone, regardless of all the intersections that make them, them can step up into accountability. And so that's why I think we get confused.

Russel Lolacher: I know I talked earlier about studies that show the gap is, I don't know if it's growing, but it's certainly there. Are you hopeful based on your work that we're getting at least closer to reality base? Considering all the, I mean, we had a pandemic, can't avoid that reality. That was a litmus test for a lot of leaders. So you are hopeful?

Cy Wakeman: I'm so hopeful. And I think it's leaders' job, especially to help hope make a comeback because most of us don't realize like when something disruptive happens, the research would tell us the most likely outcome is not post traumatic stress. The most likely outcome is post traumatic growth, and that's where leaders play a role. So I got to be part of a study where we looked at spinal cord injury patients and why some emerged for the better and why some emerged kind of bitter. And we found real places of impact. The ones who emerged transformed for the better, which we would call post traumatic growth... and people who held space for them. They weren't like toxic positivity people. They weren't like, well, someday you'll appreciate that God broke your neck. They were not that. They weren't like, we'll pray for you. They were like, this sucks. And so what we know about leaders is we need to be able to help people hold space. And we need to validate people's experience, but not validate the sense they make of their experience. So this happened to me, that means God hates me. Right? Now, this happened to you and it sucks. Let's suspend judgment on what this might mean going forward. The second factor is somebody held space, and then somebody the person respected, invited them to imagine multiple positive possible outcomes. And start dreaming and scheming again. And then introduce them to people who had achieved those outcomes. So they could see it. We can't be what we can't see. And that's what we saw was the key indicator. Talk about a role for leaders. That we can help, hope, you know, make a comeback. And, I, saw a lot of people die. I'm in health care. The world pandemic was horrendous. I'm not taking that away. I was thrilled at all the undoing and the decomposing and the falling apart. I'm like, bless the unlearning, bless the falling apart. I love that millions of people had to be home in front of their TVs for the George Floyd murder.

That would have been like somebody's, you know, pass along headline, but no, we all were stuck in our homes to get some of this education. I'm like, yes. So, I am super hopeful, but I know it's going to be messy, and I know a lot is falling apart. And we've got to get really good at blessing the falling apart.

And what I taught people during the pandemic is still true. First thing you do is safety. Are all people okay? Let's check on our people. I don't care if you work in a hybrid environment, but call your people, check on your people. Secondly, it can no longer be about you later. Connect your people directly to the people they need to connect to. Third, radically simplify. This is the perfect opportunity to get rid of everything you can. And before you bring anything back, question everything. And then most importantly, curate a different future. So I love that things are falling apart. I love we're really challenged because I think this is our time as people to come together and say, you know what, we're not going to outsource our happiness. We're not going to outsource our workplace, our lifestyle. Like we're going to come together and co create something, but we can't, We can't stay home and be mad that we're asked to come back to work. We can't be at work being mad that people won't come in. There's no two sides to this. There's one side. It's us. And we've got to invite everybody back to the table, both with great responsibility. And it can't be a leader's job to engage somebody because engaging without accountability creates entitlement. So it's in my mind, we've got to come back to the table. And if we've been in a conversation that's exhausting, we need to end the conversation and start a new one.

Should we work three days a week, two days a week? Stop it. Just stop that conversation. What kind of work do we want to do together and how can we best do that together? And given our reality that it won't be fair to everybody, how do we make this work for most? Like, how do we do this? It's those questions that we aren't asking.

Russel Lolacher: I've loved this conversation, Sai. so much for this. And because you've mentioned a few times, and it did my little heart proud, you've mentioned relationships a lot. So I have to ask the last question, which I think is perfect for this. What is one thing people can do right now to improve their relationships at work?

Cy Wakeman: I'm actually going to give you two things. So when you find yourself judging somebody and you're like, well, you know, they should give me the information quicker. They should do this to go back and say, if it's so easy, you go first. Be the change you wish to see. I will provide people timely information. I will do my best to be there. And the second thing that I would say is get really good at owning your part and making amends.

Think about today, the amends you need to make to have better relationships as a leader. I need to ask for a mulligan. I need to go into my staff and say I've been self reflecting. I think I've been too radio silent for the last couple of weeks online. I haven't been checking in with you and I've been ignoring some of your requests and I just want to apologize and have a do over.

Can we start this conversation again? And so I think one. Be the change you wish to see in the world. You go first. And then secondly, I think it's so important to repair relationships right now. Do your, you know, inventory, and then go make those amends, and ask people to begin again, and do that weekly.

Like just, instead of one on ones being about, like, how are you doing? Have part of your one on ones being, here's what I want you to know, I'm working on doing better for you. And I think that would be important.