Lori Walsh: Business leaders have rapidly become Covid-19 business leaders. Leaders during a time of massive transition, chaos, uncertainty, and yes, grief. Many are seeking to build skills they can apply right now and in the days ahead. Project management and organizational psychology experts, Rachel Headley and Meg Manke are leading an upcoming business education series, online of course, Rachel Headley is CEO of Rose Group International. Meg Manke is COO and head of training for Rose Group international. They've been on the show several times and they're joining us today. Dr Headley, welcome back, thanks for being here.
Rachel Headley: Hey Lori, thanks for having us.
Lori Walsh: Meg Manke, thanks for being here as well.
Meg Manke: Yeah, thanks for having us. We're excited to visit with you this morning.
Lori Walsh: So, Rachel, I want to start with you because there's so many things when this crisis began that I was really happy I had done before the crisis began and other things that it was immediately obvious that I was going to have to make up for lost time in the things that I hadn't really fully prepped.
Like, cooking from home was not my best skill for example, and I'm getting better every day, but I had done a lot of work talking with you guys and reading your book about organizational culture and I had spent a lot of time thinking about how our team functions. Our team has spent time thinking about that and we were ready as a team to move into this area with a really smooth transition, which was very fast-paced and workflow changed every day and then 10 minutes later it changed again. So, I want to start with you Rachel and talk a little bit about the investment that people make when they work on building some of those skills and think about what kind of culture they have and want to have in an organization. A lot of people came into this time fairly solid because of that work.
Rachel Headley: Yeah, thanks Lori. I think the really important thing about what's going on now is, and trying to be ready for these chaotic changes is what we've really seen in business in the last, probably since the recession in 2008, is that business is always changing. It's constant. That's probably been true long before that, but it feels like the pace of that changes is higher.
And of course the other thing I think that's grown a lot is the recognition that you can't do it yourself. That you have to have a team of people that are really good at very different things and so I think the people that were prepared, the people that have been actively thinking about how to lead very different people together and keep them together through changes are pretty well-positioned. Even though this is completely insane right now as far as what we know, what the predictability, as far as the politics and the guidance. And the who's going to tell us to do what, when, and when we can do all the things and even the disease itself and where it is and how hard, how bad it is here versus wherever, East river, West river.
There's a huge amount of uncertainty in that sense, but for how your team works together, to your point, there's a lot of ways that you could be prepared for it, have it be predictable, how to transition while as a team. So if you've done the work ahead of time, I think there are teams that are much more prepared than others for sure.
Lori Walsh: And I think what I want to ask you about is this idea that we keep saying the word unprecedented and that's true. That's not inaccurate, but I'm wondering about the context. It sets for us feeling like everything about this is unprecedented and we have no idea to how to handle this and we've never handled anything like this before, which can give people a little bit of a sense of hopelessness when many of the smaller pieces of this puzzle we have handled before.
We do know how to deal with a rapidly changing environment or we do know how to handle a crisis when someone gets sick. For example, there are doctors who have skills and have ICU beds and know how to work ventilators. It's not a brand new thing, it's just so much about it is new. And Meg, you recently led a webinar about tolerating change and navigating change and the chaos spectrum and I'm wondering if you could give us a little bit before we look at this five part series coming up about some of the work that you've been letting people and talking to people about about change and chaos and how to move into it in the most effective way.
Meg Manke: Yeah. Well, the neat thing that we talk about all the time with change is that it's predictable in that it kind of follows the same pattern every time it happens. And that based on different people's preferences for their workplace or how they like to engage with people, we can kind of predict how people are going to respond to change. And so all of those pieces that stay the same and change every time give us an opportunity to control a few things. The thing that makes us feel anxious as humans is our emotions runaway with all of our logic and say, "Oh my gosh, we can't control anything, which isn't true."
So we talk about, with our clients and folks that were doing webinars with right now is that, think about, really sit down with yourself, with your team, teams, spouse, whomever it is, kids, in a lot of cases right now and talk about the things that people can control. You can control who you talk to, you can control who you see, you can control how many hours a day you're really going to sit down and work from home.
And so I think really the foundational piece of what's predictable about change, what makes this ... while it feels unprecedented and what makes it the same as things that we've mastered in the past is that there are things we can control, there are things we can influence and there are things that are completely out of our control and influence. And being able to separate those from each other and realize where you should focus your attention as a business leader or as an individual or as a business all together really helps put some defining characteristics about what success looks like in the future.
Lori Walsh: Rachel, tell us about this upcoming five part series. Let's do a quick overview and then I have some specific things I want to dive more deeply into as a preview for that.
Rachel Headley: Well, the five part overview is really for leaders who are looking at their people. The first part of the series is about reflecting on where you are in your transition because like Meg was alluding to, there's a predictable way that we all move through change, but a lot of us don't know about it. And so there's so much power in the knowledge. So part of the beginning of the week is about how your mindset, how you're dealing with change personally. And then we transition into how your team is probably doing. There's a lot of people we've been talking to that they don't understand their behaviors of their employees or someone who was a high achiever is now working from home, it doesn't seem to be able to make that transition. And what does that mean? And is this a reflection of who they really are and did I not understand?
And so you really start looking at how everyone's going through these transitions in different ways and what behaviors mean. And then, towards the end of the week, we really shift into how do you start looking ahead? So, what does what you're going through now change how you want to do things when you come back from Covid or the coronavirus environment, whether you're ... our company, we work throughout North America. So we're really kind of waiting to see how the really big hotspots in New York and on the East coast and West coast kind of come through it. If you're a local, it might be you have a different sort of environment, but this is your opportunity to look forward and say what do you want to be and how do you want to work later when this ball kind of settles down? And so that's sort of the arc of the story about the next week.
Lori Walsh: Right? And when we talk about predictability, when we talk about bringing people back to work, and that might not be for ... I'm not saying that's next week, but there is a predictability based on what we know about the people we work with on the kinds of questions they're going to ask about coming back to work and the kinds of challenges that they are going to have. And that predictability gives us some kind of sense of control in a time when we don't seem to have a lot of it. Meg, I want to go back to you and ask specifically this idea of different people moving through change in different ways. And I want to go into the book a little bit and talk about some of those different types and how they navigate change. Can you give us some a broad look at how some people navigate change differently?
Meg Manke: Sure. So in all of our theory and application, we've got four different types. We call those the culture types and the spectrums take us from team-driven folks to self-driven. And then the other one goes from order-tolerant people to task-tolerant people. And as I said, it's a whole spectrum so you can land kind of anywhere in one of those four culture types. So, are people who are fixers are team-driven and task-tolerant and they like to collaborate in a group and they like new big challenges and helping people. And so they process change differently than the other three types. And then, we move over into independents and they're also task-tolerant, but they're self-driven. So, they really don't love the thought of being controlled. As an independent, I can tell you, someone telling you I have to stay at home right now it's a bit of a struggle.
So, independents are self-driven and that task-tolerant, so they like an opportunity to create new things and be innovative, think about how to do things differently. And then we move into our team-driven, order-tolerant, those are stabilizers. They're really concerned about how all the people are processing a big change and they like to have things sort of in order. They like to have a plan or an agenda in place. So as you can imagine in these uncertain times, those folks are struggling quite a bit and they're worried about all of the people in their life. They're worried about them and where things are going to go from here. And then we have organizers and those are self-driven, order-tolerant. Also really liked to have a plan for what's going to come next, but because they're self-driven, they're really pretty intentional about making that plan themselves. They don't require a lot of feedback or input from outside sources.
So, we go all the way from, fixers who are just really looking for opportunities to reach out to people. They're jamming up the Zoom call line. They were trying to get in contact with you. They're using Facebook for everything to just see other people, see pictures of people's animals and whatever and they really want to know, well how are we going to tackle this next. Independents and organizers on the self-driven side are happy to have retreated back into their home with the exception of don't control me. And they might seem a little bit ghosty like why does Meg not ever show up for our Zoom calls or on time? And then stabilizers are really, the team-driven, order-tolerant. They're really looking for opportunities to connect with people, but also minding the rules, if you will, of the of the Coronavirus, the global pandemic. So they're cautiously waiting for someone to say you can hug again, I would say.
Lori Walsh: All right, I want to make sure people know that it's been a couple free webinars and I haven't checked to see if you can go back and listen to the recordings of those. So, my first question is can you? And then how do people sign up for some of the upcoming training? Because Rachel, this is one of those situations where you might need skills that you didn't have or you might just need support as a leader and you need it right now and you need to be able to apply it today or tomorrow. So tell us a little bit how people can sign up for the upcoming series and then can they view the free webinars? Are there recordings of those?
Rachel Headley: Yeah, the tricky thing too, Lori, that as you can imagine, a lot of us don't have a huge amount of space for intellectual development right now. So, we're really focusing on ... so the five part series is every day starting next week at two o'clock central, one o'clock mountain. And that we're just going to meet all together with the Zoom so we can connect and have a conversation. We're going to do a little bit of training around the transition and understanding behavior and predictability and planning and then looking ahead and that you can sign up on our website.
It's just rosegroupintl.com and we have a products page out there. It's all over our social media. So you find us on LinkedIn, there's links all over. And then actually we've done I think over ... we counted the other day over a dozen free webinars about the culture types that Meg mentioned about how to think about them, what that looks like in this time of major transition and chaos. Most of those can be found online link somewhere. We've have those on our media page on our website as well as Elevate Rapid City. We've been doing a lot with them. I think we've got seven with them, six or seven with them alone. So, they have all of those on their YouTube channel. So check out Elevate Rapid City for a lot of those webinars.
Lori Walsh: And the book is called?
Rachel Headley: iX Leadership.
Lori Walsh: Thank you. I don't have it sitting in front of me. I do have it at home though and it's one of the things, I'm very glad that was at my home office instead of my work office because I've got a lot of books stuck at my work office right now that I can't get to. iX Leadership is one that's here in the pile in the office. So, thank you. Thank you both, Rachel Headley and Meg Manke. It's a great to have some uplifting things that you can control and you can learn a little at this time.
And so many business leaders and team workers from grocery store workers to every kind of business are just doing phenomenal work right now, and that should be applauded. And a lot of times we applaud the healthcare workers and the grocery stor people, and the first responders and the teachers, but we forget about those business owners who are just kind of grinding it out and keeping their employees at work in some very difficult circumstances. So Meg and Rachel, thank you so much for doing what you're doing to support those folks. And for the work that you put in the world. We appreciate your time.
Meg Manke: Well, thanks Lori. Stay safe and be well.
Rachel Headley: Talk soon.