What are Leadership Commitments?

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Audio transcript:

What are Leadership Commitments?

Z Tinoco

What are leadership commitments and how can they help you lead? We're going to answer that question for you in today's episode.

Hello, my name is Z

Richard Rieves

And I'm Rich. The temperatures are rising here in Arizona. Arn't they Z?

They sure are. Man, it's you know, if we're not at 100, we're flirting with 100. And we have to do a lot to adapt here in Arizona.

Richard

Exactly what are you doing to stay cool?

What? I do everything I can, you know. First of all, I prepare to. I save money just like, you know, a lot of animals save for the winter. I save for the summer because I know those electric bills are going to be expensive. I'm trying to stay indoors as much as I can, sunscreen as much as I can, and plenty of water.

Well, what do you do? Water.

Richard

Water is definitely key. Cold water all day long to try and lower my internal temperatures there. So, yeah, I'm on the same page as you, man.

Right on, man. Well, speaking of adjusting, we did have some feedback from our first episode. It's already our second episode. I can't believe that. Yeah. First episode, we receive some feedback and we've made some adjustments, right?

Richard

Yeah, absolutely. So we will recap. But before we get into that, the feedback that we did receive from the last episode was that we were focused a little bit too much on insight being insight centric. So we do take that to heart and.

Well, I mean, again, it's who we are and the company we work for, but we have to remind ourselves that our audience are just not just inside. Yes, that's part of it, but everyone else and the concepts, the stories and the things that we will provide, you are going to help you as a leader, whether you're aspiring or current leader, just to continue to develop yourselves and gain more insight.

Pun totally intended.

Richard

Exactly. And this podcast is not just for inside people, inside external and internal. So everybody covers everybody.

It covers everybody. And you know, when it comes to feedback, it's interesting. Typically in the past previous life, Izzy would have been like, Oh man, that hurts. I can't believe it. They don't. They didn't like it. Or all these things are going through my mind. But current state see and what the culture that we that we build here in our organization is that feedback is key and it's only going to make us better allow us to produce better product and better service for all of you better episodes moving forward.

And we look forward to that. So, you know, continue to see us improve and get better. Well, if you haven't noticed, we have lights now. See this?

Richard

Absolutely look amazing.

And we have a signed is You don't know who we are. We're inside.

Richard

Yeah. Okay. So actually in today's episode, we'll talk about our leadership commitments and how they can help you be a more effective leader.

Correct? Yeah. And I think that's a great way to start off. Right. People are wondering what the heck are leadership commitments? So we'll start with that. You know, and pretty much what the word or the title says. There are commitments that us as leader, we're promising to commit or to deliver to our teammates, to our clients and to ourselves as well.

Right. So quick story, just kind of the origin or the history of our commitments. Several years ago, our previous CEO, Ken Lam. Nick, shout out to Ken. Hopefully you're enjoying your retirement. He is a previous West Point graduate and several years ago he did a team builder with a lot of his executives and then went out to West Point and we're part of the Theta Leadership program that is offered through that amazing program and that partnership that we have with them.

And they came back really energized, ready to like any kind of conference or event that you go to. You're ready to conquer the world. You're ready to put into practice what you learned. And they came back from that experience in West Point and wanted to apply it and put it to practice. So from there it sparked the curiosity and energy, the enthusiasm, and we started working on these commitments.

How can we take what they what we learn leaders and say here in West Point and apply them to insight in our culture? And that's where the work first started and that's where my team, our instructional designers, everybody started getting involved and came up with these four leadership commitments. So that's the that's the initial story of how I got started.

Did you know about that? Sorry.

Richard

No, I didn't. That's that's pretty amazing. I mean, you know, anything coming out of West Point Academy is, you know, prestigious. So, yeah, it's pristine always, you know, I'm certain the leadership commitments are, you know, top of the top of the top, you know.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. They're definitely, you know, they're very they're, they're really good concepts. And I had, I had the opportunity to go also, like in 2019, right before the world shut down a part ago and experience the program itself. And I gained so much knowledge and understanding and appreciation already had some appreciation for our military and our army, but the US Army.

But then from there I appreciate even more, and I learned that I had a lot of misconceptions of, you know, what that looks like, right? You would think command control? Yes, ma'am. Yes, sir, all that. But it's not at all. It's a lot of collaboration, working together, giving others autonomy to create it in a way which really changed my mindset and how I looked at the military or the army and what it really is now in me.

There has been some evolutions as well, but cool experience, man. Awesome. Hopefully one day you get to experience it and get out there.

Richard

Yeah, I hope so too. Sounds very strategic, so I would definitely love to be a part of that.

I know, right? It's going to be part of his goals here. Yeah, sure. But a couple other things. What I enjoyed about that is of course might change my perception, but I also learned a lot and there was a lot of history involved, right? We think about the American Revolution. There was places that I was at standing where literally this was where General George Washington was literally walking down with troops.

But also it's like, oh, my gosh, Benedict Arnold was also here when he betrayed the Continental Army and went in and, you know, converted CI to the British Army. So the whole time, like this is where it happened, like literally people were walking by here. So awesome experience. But now back to our commitments. We came back and started the workflow in saying, okay, how can we now make this insight, our culture?

And we started, you know, having a conversation. How did they align with our values, what our our mission and our purpose and eventually after, you know, several, several, I don't know, ten months, we came up with our fourth leadership moments that we have now, which are, number one, create clarity, which is all about sharing a clear vision and helping your teams set them up for success.

Right? By providing clear instructions of why we're doing something, why the change, why the project, whatever? What's the goal like? What are we trying to accomplish? How do we know we successfully completed the mission and that we're all aligned right, That there's minimize that communication gap or miscommunication gap number two of our commitments is inspire people. One of my favorite I think that's one of my strengths in as we go through that, I want to know what yours is.

But inspire people, right? Is energizing. Leadership is, you know, encouraging others to be a part of the process, sharing experiences, bringing out the best out of everyone. Number three is demonstrate that leadership. And that is all about challenging the status quo, not conforming to this is the way we've always done it. The old ways of doing it, which we learn from the past, but we also learn from the future and we adapt and we we up, you know, we stay up to date.

We don't fall behind. So also with that is also where we capitalize. And we understand that we need diverse talent. We need a diverse, diverse experiences. And that is not only from the height, from the recruiting, but the hiring and also the development of our teammates. In number four is deliver results. And I think it kind of builds up to that, right?

If you look at the sequence, we if we can't deliver results, if we're not clear, we can't deliver results of our people aren't energized and ready to go in and participate and get involved. And we can't do that without hiring and challenging the status quo. We will deliver those results. So those are our four leadership commitments. But for you listening, right, find out what are yours.

You know that maybe all four apply. That's great. Maybe three out of the four maybe. Do you have a different way of. So bring that. Whatever you've learned, all the development and training and leadership that you do bring up, bring those concerns back and come up here. What are the commitments that we want to keep to our teammates, our clients ourselves moving forward?

Right. And what they are in the final 3 to 4 of them. So those those are ours, which resonates with you, which is your strength?

Richard

Oh, my personal favorite is creating clarity. I think there's there's so much value in that. You know, obviously, you know, when you develop a game plan, you communicate that to your team. You definitely want to make sure that we're all aligned, we're all on the same page. And that what you said, they have the same perception or the same outcome.

Richard

And in the back of their minds as you intended, you know, when you set out, when you told them what whatever, whatever task, whatever they're trying to accomplish.

So that is that is, I would say, a lot of people's favorite. Right. And it's a great starting point. If you don't have creative, you don't create clarity. In the beginning, people are going to be doing so many different things, right, working on something they shouldn't have, or maybe they heard it differently than what you intended. And that leads me to the next part, right?

Is first of all, identify what those four are. But then you have to come up with strategic tools that are going to help your leaders set them up for success, to deliver those commitments. Because, again, they're a promise you're keeping to your teammates, to your organization, to your clients and so on. We have to come up with those tools.

What are the tools? How can I as a leader, be really good at or and be clear, right, Increase my career clarity. So some of those tools we're not going to go over all of them. We're actually going to start unpacking these throughout our episodes. But one of the tools that we start off with immediately is, is start with the leaders intent clearly State What is it that you want your team to work on?

Why, like I said earlier, what is the goal? And then maybe identify some clear task along the way of, you know, we want some milestones or accomplish these things along the way, don't want to lose sight of them. And then what are some constraints or things we need to look out for that, you know, for us that we can't cross these lines or these barriers clearly outlining that.

And then the next step is once you deliver that understanding that maybe you weren't as clear as you as you think you are. So asking your team, Hey, can you can you do me a favor? I want to make sure that I was clear. I'm working on you know, I want to make sure that we're aligned. Can you restate what I just went over?

Why would you think that's important? Do And especially with some great clarity.

Richard

Well, the same. Yeah, along those same lines. Just that interpretation. Right. What I say might mean something different to you. So please repeat. Or what? You understand what I'm asking. So I know that you're. We're on the same page. We're playing on the same team. You know, you're not going to go off and do your thing and.

Exactly, exactly. And and it's funny, I think I shared the story with you last time I thought was we both have kids. Yeah. You know, some of you might have kids as well. Or if you don't, you maybe have nieces and nephews. You know, sometimes certain kids or kids take things very literal. My middle son. My middle son, I'm going to say his name because maybe one day he'll listen to this episode about you're talking about me, that my middle son one day we're making breakfast and everybody was assigned a task, right?

Hey, you know, let's go back to create clarity for a second, right? Our our end state. You know, the purpose of of of us creating or making breakfast together is to do it as a family, right? To collect to all kind of work on this together, have an awesome breakfast. And then the end state is that, hey, we all like do something involved so we can all say, Hey, we all make breakfast together that morning.

So everybody has their task. My middle son love him to death. Very analytical, very matter of fact. I said, you're responsible for for the muffins or not muffins. I'm sorry for the biscuits. So as we're as we're getting this stuff done, I'm making the, you know, the making the. We're making the sausage, the gravy, all the stuff your job is.

And once the once they're done baking, we're going to take them out. And I want you to cut them in half because we're going to then you know, deal to what we need to do. Well, they're done baking. We hand it off to him. You know, he has one job cut, you know, cut them in half. He took it so literal.

When I turned around, he'd literally cut it in half vertically right from up to down. So I'm like and it took me a second. I got to. What has he ever had? Like a bagel, a muffin? I mean, does he not know how to cut it, you know, sideways? He went straight top of. Yeah, Yeah. So I stopped immediately and be like, What are you doing?

Right? But then I just going back to I should have been clear enough to say, Hey, can you give me when I say tell me what you're responsible for. Yeah, I'm going to cut it. This is my no. And this. Yeah, you kind of from top to bottom. Are you going to make it open like a hamburger? Yeah.

So that was interesting, right? That was something that right there. That reminds me how important create clarity is and that will we call that as a confirmation brief? Can you confirm that we're aligned for a second? Yeah. Have you had anything like that with any of your kids or that situation?

Richard

Oh, too many times. You know, even back to the go clean your room. Okay. Yeah, I go upstairs and everything's shoved in the closet. Okay. You cleaned up the area, but now in the closet. Now we got to work on that, so. Yeah. Yeah.

Or sweep it under the rug. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's one of those days. It's clean. I mean, there's nothing there, like. Yeah, but you didn't do it, right? Exactly. So that's just an example, right? And definitely another big favorite of ours. And it has the most also the other thing is, yes, having those tools, like I said, what are things that we can teach our leaders to help them become better, create clarity, more efficiently, to inspire people more efficiently?

Another one that I like, since I said Aspire People is my favorite, is storytelling. You know, I want to I want one of the best ways to connect with individuals and with teammates and with others is to share stories just like I did with my son. Again, that right there is a lesson learned one of these days, and one of you are going to be making breakfast with your kids.

Or someone would be like, Hey, I just remember there was a story about somebody literally cutting it, you know, vertically instead of horizontally. So I might need to be more clear there. Right. So that that's that's really it. Those are the commitments. I said if if you align with with your organization's culture and values, start to create these, say, 3 to 4, you don't want to get carried away and do 1015.

As we talked about last episode, it's important that we simplify it right and focus there.

Richard

Yeah, absolutely. Keep it in the scope. You know something that's easy, easily to easily remembered and you know, just expand upon that.

Yeah. And just before we go on to some more examples, another thing that you can do, once you have those those commitments, you can start using them to measure your leadership in how effective your leaders are doing. And you're doing that as a leader as well. So we've implemented and implemented them in our three sixties in several the feedback that we receive as leaders to determine how clear are we and how good are we in creating clarity, inspire thought and deliver results, and how will we have an area of focus right in our mind?

I might be thinking I'm really good at creating clarity, but then we're getting feedback and saying Actually need some help? Yeah, okay, that's an eye opener. But now I know what to focus on, right? Yeah. So that's what I recommend. Now regarding examples, we already give you a few, but there are several, you know that we've, we've, we've done here over the years.

I mean like any organization, there's probably going to be acquisitions, integrations with teams change, you know, a lot of change happening between departments and things like that. So we use it all the time. Recently we acquired a company in India called Hanyu, which are now a full time inside teammates this year. But it's been all using all these commitments throughout this process, you know, creating that clarity like what was it that we want to do?

How do we want to be successful here with integrating our teammates, walking them to insight in all the programs, the systems that we have, how to have one on ones. All these things are just all part of this. Our from systems tools h.r. Systems. I mean, the list goes on and we had to clearly use create that clarity.

Yeah, clearly there's intent, right? And i don't know. Have you been a part of any? Yes, you have been part of different changes and stuff. Sure. One does one come to mind. That definitely helped that having these commitments have made it easy for you.

Richard

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, we've we've done things like performing action after action reviews, so that's a huge one as well. Did well do betters similarly, that's how the structure is. You know what what was the purpose? What was the intended goal? What did we do well, what can we do better and just expand upon that and learn from it.

Richard

Each lesson, you know, whether that be transitioning different agencies or, you know, pivoting campaigns, things of that nature, always really important to keep the full scope and, you know, always celebrate those small wins.

So I love that man. Yeah. And I think that's that's a big one, right? And then going back to our commitments for several years, since this is the first time hearing about these, the after action review is a tool that is used under the deliver results. Right. And that is all about and a lot of people are very, very familiar with with something similar, which is maybe a call it a postmortem.

I do well do better, You know, lessons learned. I mean, there's so many of them ways of that people word it. But what makes the after action review so important and and why it's part of deliver results is that it's an exercise or an activity or even tool that helps us learn not point fingers, not put blame. Hey, why if something failed, hey, you know, we totally failed to drop the ball.

Who's to blame? Not now. What it's meant to do now.

Richard

And that's also not the environment that we create here at INSIGHT. So which is why we have, you know, such great talent and such great, you know, results with these things like this, especially that because it's. No, it's no, it's not a finger pointing. It's not a blame game. It's okay, let's learn from this and let's get better and let's do better in the next iteration.

Richard

Yeah.

And using the language and making part of it now. Okay, perfect. No, not at all. Are we ever going to be perfect? No, not at all. And honestly, I think we never really want to be perfect because just thinking about it, if we were perfect, that means that there's nothing else to improve. There's nothing else to get better.

I wouldn't want to live in a world that everything is perfect because then you're just like, kind of not. You're not challenged anymore.

Richard

It's boring.

Right? It's like, What do you mean is boring? Perfection. Everything's perfect. The sky is perfect color, the weather's perfect, but you never get to experience different new, exciting things, right? And then it'll learn from those things. And I mean, there's tons of examples that we've experienced individually, and you probably have as well, where you've been challenged, but you overcame that or you work through that, change that adversity, or when you had a we all had major fails on our failures, but it's been okay with that and learning from it.

Yeah, adapting and becoming better. And that's what it's all coming in. That tool right there. Specifically being that it's a learning exercise, what happened, what took place, what was supposed to happen, Right. What, what worked well is capture that gold or those you know, that important thing that worked well, let's keep that. What did it? Well, we're not going to do that again.

Right. And then what are we going to do for the future moving forward and the lasting about that. This is another episode and we can dive deeper into this is that you store it and you find a place to keep it, too. How's it for others in the future that are going to experience something similar can learn from?

And then you set them up for success, right?

Richard

So, absolutely.

So that is just one example. I'm trying to think about several other ones. I mean, we are, you know, recently transitioned to the leading solutions integrator. So that again, we had to be very clear in our communication and make sure we're aligned and constantly making sure and testing it out as we clear. Are we inspiring our teammates, our in our leaders to, you know, we're moving to this direction?

Are we constantly looking for better ways to to, you know, to be in a system integrator and all that solutions integrated so that that's really what it comes down to, right? Yeah, I know we have we've covered a lot here. And one of the things there, which is like where can people like let's say that they're hearing this stuff, where can they find out more about maybe some of the stories and things that we've done that they can learn from?

Richard

They can actually check out some of their content on the corporate citizenship report on Inside.com. So be sure to check that out. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's one small area. Also, anything expanding on the business or future of business, they can visit the tech journal which is also on Inside.com slash tech journal.

Right on Yeah and it just a couple of things you know we do have amazing leaders here at inside so we have to give them a shout out in this too. Hey, you know, they're getting tons of recognition out there and it's is it? I honestly feel it's part of our culture. It's definitely who they are and what they've done and how it's around the table.

But it's also part of hey, this is this this these commitments are being are being delivered, right? So Suma, for example, our CEO has been recognized for our name, the National Diversity Award, a power 50 this year. So with that, I mean, it just shows that from when it comes the C-suite, she helps out. She helps our company improve and help our communities as well through progressive hiring initiatives and minimizing that that gender gap.

So again, just showing that, you know, our leaders are doing it right and they're leading by example and they're leading through our leadership commitments.

Richard

Yeah. And another great one is see our end recognized. We have five women in the Power 84 CRM that are being recognized and 23 total in the overall list, including two from Canada, two teammates from Canada. So that's.

Awesome. Yeah. And similar was in that list as well and several other world leaders. So again, we'll be happy. We have all these articles on our site if you want to learn more about that and what they've done in their leadership journey as well. I guess one last thing too. You know, when it comes to Aspire people, I think about how to you know, we recognize in our teammates and showing them that we value them.

We have a tool here that we call that we use. It's called a recognized tool, and it's through achievers. And Achievers has also recognized, as I said, hey, you know, and is doing it right. You know, they're actively using this this platform. They're finding innovative ways to recognize to showcase what they're doing in the values, but it also aligns with our leadership commitments as well.

So again, this is something that when it comes to your leadership commitment, you can put it in so many different parts of the organization and what you do to showcase that, but also to lead more effectively to become a better leader. One last thing, as we wrap up, people are probably wondering how do you implement this or how do you apply this, these commitments?

Right? So I gave you the history. It came back to us. So if you're looking at, okay, what are the steps and process? Just a recap. First. Number one, you want to create a leader's intent, right? That leader's intent, like we mentioned, and we can give you we'll talk more about this in future episodes and elaborate, but it's you creating that clarity to say, what is it that we want to do?

What we want it. We want to create leader leadership commitments. Perfect. When do you want to do it by? So give some kind of timeline and address the why. Like, why do we want to do this in the first place? We want to become better leaders. We want to have a culture of leadership. Whatever your why is articulate that?

And then from there, okay, how are we going to make this happen? And you start start putting down some task? Well, we need to create a task force of individuals or teammates who can really make this come to life. Right. So it's folks in your h.r. Team instructional designers, facilitators, but also leaders to get their insight and start coming up with the plan and then narrow down.

Okay, how do we create these leadership? 3 to 4 commitments. How do they align with our organization and our culture? Then once you have those, what current tools do we have that will help our leaders achieve these commitments and become good at them? The next thing is, if we don't have some of these tools or resources, where can we get them or learn them so we can apply them and introduce them?

And then as you're doing that, one of the other tools that we use is called red teaming, which some people call the devil's advocate, or just being an adversary. Is this challenging that, Hey, are you sure you want to do that? Did we forget this? Here's something that I don't see that working because of this. So people that are challenging it so you don't miss anything.

So as you're developing this, implement a red team so you know that, hey, this is really, truly going to benefit our organization and our leaderships, our leadership. And then the last thing is, once you implement it and you act, you're executing it and it's happening, let it take its course. But don't forget, do an after action review, like you said, Hey, let's come back together.

What's working, what's not? Let's continue that. Let's continue momentum. What are we going to shift? And you're going to be better for it. And that's happened with us a few times. We've we've made some iterations along the way.

Richard

Thank you for those examples. Yeah. And so today, I mean, we've discussed our leadership commitments, how they can help you be a more effective leader. We've shown examples of how you can produce those in action. Any final thoughts here to wrap up?

Yeah, I said. All I said is just be patient or follow the course. You know, continue working through this process. It's not going to happen overnight. Just remember, right, what you've what you're currently at in your leadership and your organization and your personal business. You know, it's these habits and things have they've have been, you know, build up over time.

So it's going to take some time to shift that mindset, shift the culture, shift the way that you lead. But once you've implemented this stick, stick with them and you're going to see those results over time, yet get get the buy in of your teammates, introduce it to them, have speak the same language and before you know it like it's they're like that's where am we're out right now I feel in our organization it's they're like you mentioned these these commitments these tools people aren't people know what they are now and they're speaking that language.

Where's my you know can you do it leaders in ten for me. Hey I think when you're doing an air which is after action review acronym, you're hearing that you're knowing, oh my gosh, like it's here. Like it's really now part of our culture and what it is. So just be patient with it.

Richard

And be sure to follow us on all of our social media to hear more stories and how we carry out those commitment examples. So stay tuned.

Building ambitious leaders for life.

Leading With Insight What are Leadership Commitments?

As technology leaders, we’re constantly looking for new ways to think creatively about digital strategy. But how can we be more influential and effective in our roles? Listen in to discover how leadership commitments enable clarity, team inspiration and more.