[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Welcome to the latest episode of the Few and Far between podcast. I'm your host, Chris O'Brien. What is one of the biggest challenges facing today's small biotechs? The answer might surprise you. While getting the science right is obviously critical to both forward momentum and future funding, many biotechs struggle with two key elements for success that apply across industries leadership and management. My guests today understand that leadership doesn't necessarily happen overnight or automatically. Instead, it's something that needs to be developed and nurtured over time to encourage strong company cultures and teamwork. Ben Olds and Amy Fenollosa are managing partners and coaches at Haven Human Asset Ventures, a Boston based professional training and coaching company that has worked with 300 plus biotechs and their leaders or over the past decade. On today's episode, Ben, Amy and I dive into common leadership challenges faced by biotech leaders, from the risks of maintaining psychological safety in an organization to identifying what good behavior is celebrated and what bad behavior is tolerated in your own corporate culture. We'll also examine how the timeless Golden Rule may not be an effective leadership mantra, and how conflict avoidance and ruinous empathy can kill a company. I hope you enjoy this episode. It was a lot of fun. And please be sure to check out the show notes on your social and streaming platforms where we've linked to lots of useful stuff to learn more about setting your company up for success. Okay, let's start the podcast.
Ben Olds and Amy Fenollosa welcome to Few and Far Between.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: Thanks for having us.
[00:01:55] Speaker C: Hi Chris, Great to be here.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: It's exciting to have you guys on. I think one of the things that many listeners to the program may be able to relate to is many of our biotech and pharma companies, particularly smaller ones, may have world class science, or at least we think they often have world class science. They may struggle more with leadership and management. I think that's something that we hear often from CEOs, founders and other senior leaders in those organizations is, hey, I haven't done that much of this, so that's what you guys do. And I'm delighted to have you on for some suggestions, ideas, frameworks for thinking about leadership and management, particularly in the biopharma and biotech world. So let's start with a little bit of background. So Ben, would you please go first and just tell us a little bit about your experience with biotechs and with this space and then we'll ask the same of Amy. Sure.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Happy to Chris, and thanks for having us. So I've been in Biotech for about 15 years now. I started as an internal leadership development coach, worked my way eventually to head of HR for a public biotech, and then ultimately decided I wanted to do this at a greater scale. So I co founded Haven with a partner, and we focus on leadership development for tech and biotech companies. We worked with over 100 biotechs, probably over 300 biotechs, to be honest, at this point, and well over 500 leaders within those biotechs over the past eight years.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Amazing. That's quite a pool of knowledge to draw from. And Amy.
[00:03:17] Speaker C: Thanks, Chris. Yeah, I joined Haven about four and a half years ago at the very beginning of the pandemic. Prior to that, my background has been in leadership development, adult development, and helping people thrive in their work environments. So it's been so much fun to come to Haven where we really get to work closely with leaders who are trying to level up these scaling organizations and see some of the challenges. So, like Ben said, I've worked with nearly all of these biotechs that he mentioned over the last five years, helping leaders become more successful. Personally, I've probably gotten to know people in about 50 biotechs over the last four or five years.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: That's fantastic. So just to frame this for the listener, can you guys talk? Maybe Amy, you can take us in first with how often you think failures, when failure happens, are driven not by the science, but by other factors, including management. So will you riff a little bit on that for us?
[00:04:05] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks. So we work with so many biotechs and we see some just pop off and become so successful. But as we all know, not every startup is successful. And so we tend to see maybe 70% of failures in biotechs happen because of science. And we can all know that that is a possibility. But then there's the other 30% and kind of thinking about it, what goes wrong in those organizations and what we often see is that it is this challenge of leadership. And one of the things we discover is that many leaders come into these roles with the baseline assumption that they can do the job really well. They know the science, and they innately have leadership skills. And yet what we find is leadership doesn't just happen automatically. You know, some people think, oh, they're born with it. They know they're charismatic, they're strong leaders, but it really and truly takes work. And so we can see that there are circumstances where there might be a failure in leadership that really leads to the downfall. And Ben may be able to talk a little more about the specific leadership challenges but it takes intention, it takes work, and it takes not only building your own leadership, but building a team of leaders to work with you in order to be successful.
[00:05:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I want to double click on that and then hand it to Ben. But I think lots of people assume that leadership is a sort of gift you are born with. And certainly that's not my experience and not the experience of most of the good leaders that I know. I definitely want to underline that point. So Ben, do you want to expand on this?
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I think there are innate skills and attributes that people might be born with, but you need to then hone it and develop it. And I think just because I can do doesn't mean I can lead. And even just because I can lead doesn't mean I can build a company of leaders. Both of those are steps. Taking my innate skills and turning myself into a leader is a process of development. And then taking my leadership capabilities and scaling it across a company is a process of development. I think often companies under invest in that process.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Do you guys find when you're brought in to maybe provide some help, is that usually that a senior leader recognizes the deficit or do you get called in for something else and then you realize, oh, this is actually a fundamental leadership thing. I'm just wondering how that works.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say we are often called in because a leader is self aware enough to know that they need some work, but they don't know where. And so we're called in to start with an assessment and then make some recommendations. Sometimes we're called in by an executive who says, other people need to change, I need your help changing everybody else. And sure enough, we find out that they themselves are contributing to the dynamic. And so we kind of work with the whole system.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: That's fantastic. Yeah. I think there's a line in poker that if you can't spot the sucker at the table, maybe you. And I think if your view is like, well, I'm doing great and everybody else is an idiot, that's probably an analogous error with leadership and management. Okay, so talk a little bit about what are the broad categories that you guys get deployed into. Ben, maybe we can start again with you. What are the kinds of issues that you see?
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. We work across four different categories. One is we work with executive teams. So we'll be called in to help a team either form, storm, norm, perform, et cetera. Another is we do quite a bit of work with individuals. So individual executive coaching. So an individual leader is wrestling with certain challenges or trying to lean into certain strengths. We'll work with them. Sometimes we'll work in a line of business that Amy actually is quite deep in, is we'll do leadership development programs. So that's less with an executive team or individual, but with a broader section of the population, say, you know, all the high potentials or all the VPs. And we'll run a program over a number of months with teaching a number of different skill sets, et cetera. And then we'll do some HR advisory work as well with both startups and also with established companies doing kind of discrete HR projects. And so the types of things we get called in for varies across those four product lines. But it is often areas where leaders, they want to achieve something, they're not quite sure what's getting in their way. And so the first thing we typically do, whether it's a team engagement or individual coaching or even leadership development, is we'll do an assessment to try to help them understand where they're particularly strong and where they have room to grow. And then we can kind of tailor some recommendations around the growth.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: Ben, you mentioned norming, storming, forming, etc. Will you just explain that framework for folks who might not be familiar with it?
[00:08:00] Speaker A: Sure. I'm actually not sure how to cite it where it comes from, but it's just an old adage that teams go through different processes. They form, and there's a whole strategy around how to form effectively for a team. They storm, so they start to reach conflict and some of the friction that emerges, they norm, so they start to figure out how to resolve that conflict in a productive way. They perform. As they make it through there, they really start humming. And each of those phases of a team's progression requires deliberate focus on how to make it through that process most effectively.
[00:08:27] Speaker C: And I'll add to that, Chris, which is sometimes people neglect to think about the fact that you may have worked really hard on forming your team and then you hire somebody new or somebody leaves, and people think we're going to continue performing at the level we have all along, when in fact we need to go back and spend a little bit of time reforming as the team dynamic and cohesion evolves.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: That's a great point. I guess especially true for startups. Right, because you're often going to have significant additions or departures over the course of the initial years that something is getting going, because that makes a lot of sense to me. Ben, talk to us a little bit about advice for starting a new company. How to think about culture specifically.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I Think. First of all, I would say think about culture specifically.
Too often leaders are so focused on the science, and not that they shouldn't be focused on the science, but the culture is important to deliberately manage. And if you don't deliberately manage it, it will form on its own. And I always say it's easier to kind of prune the bonsai tree as it grows versus wait to see what you get and then start hacking at it to try to get it back to what you want. And so a couple pieces of advice I would say is culture is not defined by whatever words you put up on a wall. It's going to be defined by behavior. And specifically the behavior that gets celebrated and rewarded in the organization as well as the bad behavior that's tolerated in the organization. Those two things will actually define your culture much more than your value statement you put up on the wall.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: That's great. So do you think companies and organizations should spend time with value statements and mission statements and all that stuff or do you think just be mindful about the stuff you're doing? How do you think about that trade off? Kind of analytical versus practical?
[00:10:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I would say I don't like to think about it as a trade off. I do think that's important to do, it's just not sufficient. So I think it is important to deliberately, consciously define the culture you want and maybe write it into some words that can guide behavior. But too often companies stop there. And where I think where the rubber meets the road is then how are we going to reinforce this? How are we going to hire against it? How are we going to develop against it? How are we going to reinforce it in our compensation and our performance management and even our cultural celebration? That's where I want to see the words on the wall actually celebrate.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: How do you think about the trade off between highly specific words versus I've seen a lot of big companies in particular will have words like innovation. You know, it's like. And of course, who's not pro innovation, especially in a startup. How do you think about that? Do you think it matters? I've also seen people come up with very quirky value statements that are much more memorable but are quirky. So will you talk a little bit about that?
[00:10:53] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great question. And it's funny, right? I mean, everybody wants to differentiate and sometimes they go so far that you wonder if they've lost the ground.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: I think if you're going to have a set of words which are great, it's remember the purpose of this is to guide behavior. You know, there's that old saying, culture is how people behave when nobody's looking. And so if you want this to be effective, the words have to be specific enough to actually guide behavior. And guiding behavior typically involves recognizing the trade offs you want to accept. And so if you're going to have a value around innovation, then you probably need to accept a trade off against efficiency because innovation is often, you know, always come up with a better way of doing it. And that comes at the expense of running the process the way we run it over and over again. And so if you're going to have kind of more vague words, I would encourage you to recognize the trade offs you're deliberately asking people to make.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: That's great. I guess, also related to that, be very careful about words that negate each other. So if you can't have innovation and efficiency, or if you do, you better have a pretty compelling explanation of what that. Then what am I telling people to do? Right, Exactly. All right, well, let's move and talk about another really important concept that you've brought up and I know believe is important, psychological safety. So what does it mean first? And then talk a little bit about why it matters and how you think about it.
[00:12:03] Speaker C: Yeah, I've been seeing a lot of this recently. We're being called into organizations and they're talking about many topics, but what ends up being kind of the root cause of much of this is this psychological safety and whether or not it is present in an environment. So when we think about psychological safety, we think of an environment of rewarded vulnerability, where people are comfortable taking risks, asking questions, really bringing their whole selves to work, and feeling as though they can learn and grow and contribute in that environment. And if you come back to Ben's comments about culture, many organizations may promote elements, elements of psychological safety, and yet they are not actually creating an environment where people feel safe and are capable of innovating or taking risks. And so you have to really do the work behind the words and think about how do we cultivate this environment where people really can feel like they can be themselves and they can take risks. So what I'm often seeing is at the executive level, there may be deep safety among those team members, and they may assume that that safety trickles down throughout the organization, and yet they are not realizing that there may be people, people who don't feel comfortable leading up and asking the questions of their executive team or asking questions of their own direct manager. And so we see this disconnect between safety among an executive team and safety beneath that executive team. And so we like to encourage more open dialogue and more honest communication between those levels in the organization and making sure that the same degree of safety really exists throughout. The other thing we sometimes see is that there may be great psychological safety on a team and yet the executive team lacks safety with one another. And so there can be these fractures in safety. So I encourage clients as they're beginning to explore this topic, it's not enough just to teach it, it really is about excavating and understanding what's going on throughout the organization and then thinking about how can we really reinforce this not just with my team but beyond. And that's where the real challenge lies.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: Amy so imagine there's a very worried CEO listening to this who thinks, I feel really confident that my immediate direct reports all have psych psychological safety and they can raise, they can disagree with me, they can do all that kind of stuff. But maybe I don't, maybe that doesn't exist in their teams or in the broader organization. So what advice do you have for that person for how to diagnose that? And then if in fact that's the case, are there things that you think the top of the house that the CEO or other senior leaders can do to encourage that?
[00:14:27] Speaker C: Yeah, I think part of it is the self reflection and really tuning into what's happening in your meetings. For example, are people challenging you? Are people asking questions? Are people kind of silent and not speaking up? Those non verbal cues can be really good indicators of what's going on. Right. And so if you start to pay attention to what's happening when you walk into a room, whether it's a formal meeting or an all hands or just a casual like having a conversation over a coffee, what's going on? And if you're noticing the silence, then start to probe a little bit further. And what I've found to be successful is one on one conversations or starting in a smaller group dialogue and really inviting people to share candidly with you. And as you are hearing things that may be difficult to hear, rewarding that with acknowledgement and action. Right. It's not enough just to go to those meetings, but once somebody tells you something that feels a little risky, what do you do with that? Reward it by acknowledging it and then making change.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: I'd also add to that, I think it speaks to what we mentioned earlier. If the CEO is quite good at establishing safety among her executive team, her direct reports, that doesn't necessarily mean the company has A strong foundation in psychological safety. Right. The CEO needs to develop that capability in her next level of reports and then they need to develop and it really, at every level, psychological safety needs to be.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: To cascade that. Yeah, that's a really, really profound point. I can imagine some folks who are listening are going, huh, what is, how does that work? One or two levels away from the meetings that I'm in on a day to day basis. So that really resonates.
Hi, this is Chris O'Brien, host of Few and Far Between. We'll be right back with this episode in a moment. I personally want to thank you for listening to our podcast. Now in our fourth season. It continues to be an amazing opportunity to speak with some of the top thought leaders in the clinical trials industry. If you're enjoying this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps people discover the podcast. And don't forget to subscribe to Few and Far between so that you never miss an episode. One last request, know someone with a great story you'd like to hear me interview. Reach out to us@fewandfar betweeniro.com thank you. And now back to the podcast.
I want to move us now to conflict management, conflict avoidance. And Ben, can you talk a little bit about that? You mentioned that core to culture is the bad behavior that gets tolerated, which undermines, of course, whatever values you're articulating. Can you talk a little bit about how to manage that? And I want to get into this in terms of, of specific advice on feedback from both of you. And part of what I think folks struggle with is, okay, I want it to be a psychologically safe environment. Also, sometimes people are gonna say things or suggest things. They may suggest ideas that I don't think are good ideas or actively bad ideas. Right. That can happen. And also people can sometimes say things in ways that are unkind or harmful to their colleagues. So let's start a little bit with conflict avoidance as a risk factor. Ben, this is something I know you feel strongly about, so let's talk about that first and then maybe we can get into feedback and all of that.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: Sure. Happy to. And the reason I'm glad you brought this up is I would say it's one of the leading challenges that we experience in biotechs is that the members of the biotechs are so focused on having this kind of respectful, enjoyable workplace that they go so far as they stop challenging one. And in Kimberly Scott's radical candor framework, she would call that ruinous empathy. I would say ruinous Empathy is a very common problem we have in companies, and it speaks to the importance of training. Right. Because they're making a conscious trade off these employees to say, I don't know how to challenge directly without hurting feelings. And so I'm not going to challenge directly. And I would say, well, there actually is a way to challenge quite directly and respect one another and actually maybe even build a relationship. But it's a skill set, and you need to develop that skill set. It's actually not something many of us are born natural with. We are either very confrontational and comfortable there pissing people off, or we're very comfortable being kind of empathic and respectful. But then we really don't challenge. It is a skill set that needs to be developed. But I would say without that skill set, it will kill a company. Because these companies thrive in innovation. They need to be able to engage in productive disagreement.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: I love that. And we'll link to Kim Scott's radical candor framework in the notes. I think that's a really helpful, especially for people who see themselves as fundamentally nice and who therefore are hesitant to give feedback. That's a great reframe on that. You're not being kind to someone by not giving them feedback. Can you expand a little on that, Ben?
[00:18:57] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. I'll add to it. The only reason teams outperform individuals is because of conflict. If everybody agreed with one another. There's that old saying, if eight people agree with one another, seven of them can go home. The only reason teams outperform is because we all come with different perspectives and opinions and thoughts. And I see some of the blind spots you have, but I miss some of my blind spots. So you're there to tell me about those. We need to be able to engage in productive conflict conflict if we're going to kind of harness the power of this collective team.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: I think that's a deep point and one worth worth underlining that teams only outperform because of the disagreement. That enables you to get to a better answer. I really like that. Amy, do you want to jump in here?
[00:19:34] Speaker C: I think you mentioned that feedback can be really powerful in helping with this productive conflict. And one of the things we hear clients struggle with is the ability to give candid, comfortable feedback. And like you said, they assume feedback can be taken as sort of a threat. And there's really a positive way to help people grow. So when we consider what is feedback, it's just sharing data with people that they didn't have before. And so if you can shift your mindset around feedback and think I'm actually giving someone something by providing them with a different perspective or new insight. I'm not set up to hurt them. I'm coming with a positive intention. Then we start to see the learning happen. And we know human beings want to learn and grow, right? We want to get better at our job. So if we can create and cultivate this community where everybody's able to give one another feedback, we'll get to the thing Ben talked about, which is a team that is thriving because they're comfortable bringing up something that might feel a little uncomfortable.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: Okay, so if somebody's listening to this and what you just said makes them break out in hives because they are so uncomfortable with conflict, can you guys expand on some tools? The framework is really helpful that you are trying to actually help the person and share data and share context. That can help everybody to get better. But what do you do if you're like, oh, that's. I hate this.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Well, Doug Stone and Sheila Heen wrote a great book called thanks for the Feedback. In it, I don't know the exact quote, but it was something to the extent of feedback lies at a fundamental intersection. Whereas on the one hand, we all want to learn and grow, and we know that feedback is a necessary part, we also, on the other hand, we want to be accepted for who we are. And those two things could be in conflict. And so I think one technique when you're engaging in feedback is to recognize that you don't want to violate somebody's threat response. You do want to give them feedback. So how do you give it in such an empathic way where you can actually be clear and direct with the feedback, but do it in a caring way that doesn't trigger their defenses and make them worry they're going to get kicked out of the pack?
[00:21:28] Speaker B: That's great. That's really helpful. And again, we'll link to all the stuff you guys are sharing. I think one way to think about this podcast or this episode is a set of tools that we hope folks will take advantage of. And if you're listening and you think, I probably don't need that, think about talking to people in your team to find out if you do, because you may need it more than you suspect. Okay, so let's move a little bit towards. I had called it hiring, and, Amy, I think you edited me to teaming. So we talk about why, and then let's talk about how to do that when times are easy and when times are hard.
[00:21:56] Speaker C: Yeah, we like to think about teaming as bringing the teams together. We talked before about forming, storming, norming. So how do we create a high functioning team where people are comfortable, challenging and asking questions and being most productive? And many times organizations will call us in when it's getting rough. Right. Things are difficult and there's a crisis or there's a lot of interpersonal friction. And we need you to help us. We recommend that you start to take a look at the team before the time gets tough. Right. You think everything's going great and everyone's getting along well and they're comfortable raising questions or they're speaking back to one another. Fantastic. But why not start to look and think about how we can actually be even more effective in that moment? And so when you are most highly functional, then when the moment of adversity comes, you're better prepar prepared to deal with it. Nobody's at their best under stress. And so if you are building the ship and helping it weather these rough seas before you need to, then you're going to be in much better shape. So we think teamwork is really essential and working on that early and often helps to reinforce that team throughout those difficult moments.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: That's great. I'd love some examples from either of you of how leaders can do that. What are the kinds of activities or actions that a senior leader can take that help help build that team?
[00:23:11] Speaker C: Yeah. One thing that I find to be really helpful is starting to explore the component of trust and how these team members learn to build trust with one another. So we've had really cool exercises where we bring executive teams together and think about what are my trust bridges and what are my trust walls, what's going to absolutely destroy trust and what's going to help me build it up. And then start to articulate that out loud in front of a group. So then you begin to understand what moves or destroys the relationship between other people. So that's just one example of kind of a foundational skill that you can bring and start to articulate things that we may not ever even bring out to the surface?
[00:23:46] Speaker B: Amy, that's such a cool idea. Trust bridges and trust walls. Do you find that people are mostly able to clearly articulate those or are they kind of like, I haven't really thought about this much.
[00:23:54] Speaker C: What's the experience like, what we find? I often find it's helpful to give people an example. So start out with a video clip or an article or something to sort of prime their thinking and then ask them to do a little bit of individual reflecting. Because it is hard to come up with off the top of your head and people may feel pressure and put on the spot and then bring it to the group convers. Yeah, it can be really hard. And maybe it is because when I was early in my career, someone like cut me off at the knees and that's the thing that destroyed my trust. Maybe it was something else that happened at a different stage in my career and I never even reflected on it. But now I begin to realize, whoa, that is a big trigger for me and I need to make sure my team is aware of that so that we can work together more effectively.
[00:24:34] Speaker B: Yeah, that's great, Ben.
[00:24:35] Speaker A: Yeah. I would also edit if you're looking, let's say that the waters are calm and you're saying to yourself, I know that we have adversity coming, so how can I best set this team up for success? I would say it starts with measuring or assessing. We typically assess teams along the three I's, individual, interpersonal, and institutional. And so I would look at individual. Do we have the right people in the right roles with the right skills for what's coming, not for today, but for what's going to come down the pike six months from now? And if not, how do we invest in those individual capabilities? Do we have the right interpersonal dynamics? So you can imagine, Chris, if you and I are both individually qualified for our jobs, we still have to work well together and so are we prepared for. Does Chris know how I like to receive feedback? Do I know how to call Chris to account and how to let him know if he's letting me down or if he's. How do we engage productively with one another? And then institutional. Do we have the right swim lane set up? Does everybody know their roles? Are decision rights clear? So you can measure, Even when the Cs are calm, you can measure how you're doing on the three eyes and then differentially invest in whichever one you have the biggest room to improve.
[00:25:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's super cool. And especially I think if you're in a high growth mode, because to your point, the team that got you here might not be the team that gets you to the next step. Will you expand on that a little bit, Ben? I'm sure sometimes that's a finding that you guys have. What do you do when you discover that, that like. Well, some of the folks are absolutely geared for the next stage and maybe some aren't.
[00:25:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I think there's two ways to get the team you want. There is. One is you hire exactly the right people. The other is you take the people you have and you turn them into the right people. And so I think that depending on how big the gap is, you can either set out on a strategy to develop people towards the skills they need to have for this next stage, or you can have an honest, sober discussion around, perhaps these aren't the right people. You know, I, for example, my skill set is in taking companies, you know, the company that I co founded as well as when I was ahead of HR, really from that kind of 100 employee to 300 employee phase, not the 300 employee to 1000 phase or the 1000 employee to 5000 phase. Those are different leadership skills you need. And so part of it is kind of diagnosing the gap and then deciding is the best strategy to try to develop people into this new role, or do we need to hire new people?
[00:26:44] Speaker B: If I can ask for a weird generalization, do you think that it's more common to be able to develop people towards the next step in that scaling of the enterprise, or less common, or is that not a helpful way to think about it?
[00:26:55] Speaker A: I don't know if it's helpful or not helpful. I think it is common depending on the person. It's not so much depending on the issue so much as is, do they have the humility to recognize that they need to change? Do they have the confidence to recognize that they can afford to take some risks and get out of their comfort zone to try some new things? You can imagine if they're either lack the humility or they lack the confidence to actually try some new things, they're gonna fall down. And can the company kind of afford to wait for them to climb this learning curve? Because we might be in a situation where even if I could get there, the company doesn't have time to wait for me, in which case bring somebody in who could do it.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: So it's a mix of the leader providing the candid feedback, the person on the other side receiving, being open to receiving that, and being able to implement that feedback, and then the timescale that would be required for the change. It's sort of thinking about those things. All right, well, that brings us to coaching. So, Amy, let's talk a little bit about that. I'm sure there are times when you interact with someone you're potentially going to coach and they're delighted because they're excited about getting better. They recognize a gap. I would imagine there are also times where they're not delighted. So tell us a little bit about Coaching and how to think about it.
[00:28:01] Speaker C: Yeah. So we started talking a little bit about leaders who have the humility and the willingness to grow and take risks and try new things. So when we start to think about, is someone a good candidate for executive coaching? We look at their self awareness, their willingness to receive feedback, their willingness to be open to trying new things and taking risks and becoming a little bit vulnerable. And so if they go into it with this growth mindset and thinking about it as an opportunity to change, then we see tremendous success. Ben often says, don't ask someone if you want a coach. Ask someone if you want to change. Because we think, sure, anybody will say, great, give me a coach. This sounds like a fun way for me to grow my career at someone else's expense. Right. So think about what it is that you're asking of the person and what it is they're motivated to do. If change is what they're inspired to do and they're willing to try, then that's someone who's a great candidate for coaching and we can support that growth. It is a big investment for the individual in terms of their time and their commitment and the organization. It can be expensive. So really thinking about, what are you hoping to get out of it? We do sometimes see clients come to us and they're like, well, we really want remedial coaching. And that's not always the best approach and way to invest. It's really about what's the chance here for change and growth.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: That makes a lot of sense. So asking about change, not about coaching, a big tip and takeaway there. And if a CEO does that or a manager does that and the person says, not really, I don't really want to change, how hard of a red flag is that? What do you. What do you guys think?
[00:29:30] Speaker C: I mean, that sounds to me like a pretty significant red flag, right?
I'm pretty good, thanks. Then I would suggest coaching is not the best thing. And then we've talked about this. How do we really want to work with this individual? Are we changing their responsibilities? Because there's some area that we think may need opportunity for growth and they're not going to go for it. So give them different job responsibility or are we going to think about how do we. We challenge them differently? It's an open conversation and dialogue. But I would say if someone's really resistant to change, it's not until they're ready are they a good candidate for coaching.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. All right, let's switch gears a little bit. And we're gonna focus in on Ben. So, Ben, you are not just a teacher here, you are a company co founder. Now is the time where we find out what's the old line. The cobbler's kids don't have shoes or something like the dentist kids have cavities. So let's talk a little bit about founding Haven. Co founding Haven, what your experience was like and in hindsight, what worked and what didn't work.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: Yeah, we wouldn't be very good coaches if we weren't able to look back and take leadership lessons from our own experience. So I could tell you, first of all, co founding Haven has been the most enjoyable and successful endeavor of my professional career. And I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. And it wasn't perfect, Right. We definitely made some missteps along the way. I would say on that, on what we did, right. The first thing I would point to is we built this thing with partners that we trust implicitly and completely. And I think if you have a business partner and you're thinking about starting something and you don't have that foundational trust and kind of respect for one another, you have work to do before you can start a business. And the reason is because we don't know what we're doing. It's the first time we've done this. We have on a daily basis. We were faced with challenges that didn't have a clear answer. All the clear questions and challenges were solved before it got to us. We were weighing in on things that were really difficult. We didn't know what to do. And if I had partners that I didn't, you know, have so much respect and trust for, then when I had an idea, if they disagreed with me, then I would just try to convince them of my idea. Instead. What would happen is I would have an idea if they didn't agree with me. That would leave me really curious about why these really smart, well intentioned, highly informed people had a different perspective. And that would enable us to have this rich kind of back and forth and we would get the best out of all of our brains to make the decision. So. So I think having partners you really respect and then trusting them so you can approach them with open minded curiosity as opposed to closed minded advocacy, that's probably the best thing we did as a company. So the golden rule, do unto others as you have done unto you. I started managing people in Haven the way I wanted to be managed, Pat myself on the back, what a great leader I'm being. I'M treating everybody the way people treated me. And what I realized is actually we built a diverse team on purpose because we want a bunch of different people with different perspectives and life experiences and values, etc. And that means I need to manage each of them the way they want to be managed. And even the word manage probably isn't quite right. I need to set up the culture to pull on the strengths of different people and harness the capabilities of different people as opposed to setting it up as if we had a bunch of little me's in the company.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: This is a really deep point I want to really emphasize here. I'm going to now editorialize and you guys tell me if I have this right, strong my sense. It's particularly common in biotech. And I think one of the reasons is many of the senior leaders, founders, et cetera, spent a lot of time in academia before they sometimes right before they started a company or until shortly before they started the company. So they've had less management experience in many cases than you would find in other industries, you know, in CEOs and senior leaders. And I think it's a natural but fallacious thinking to say, well, I like to be treated this way. So I assume everybody wants to be treated that way. Way, not so. Right. So please say a little more here.
[00:33:15] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think what we've learned is not to abide by the golden rule, but in fact the platinum rule. Not do unto others that you'd have done unto you, but do unto others as they'd have done unto them. Right. For example, a coaching practice where we have 19 different coaches in the organization, most of whom are far more talented than I am with certain phenotypes of leaders. Right. You know, I'm the right coach for a certain subset of the population, but many of the coaches on the team are 100 times more talented with different phenotypes. And so I needed to set up an environment that works for each of them. Even if that environment wouldn't work for me in terms of what kind of guidance I provide, what kind of structure we put in place, what we ask of our coaches, what kind of process we ask them to abide by. It really needs to work for each of them if we're going to get the best of them, which is what, you know, they deserve and what our clients deserve.
[00:34:01] Speaker B: So what's the process of discovery like then? You know, you start working with Amy, you start working with me. We're different people. How do you figure out how to apply the platinum role?
[00:34:09] Speaker A: Well, it starts with asking. And if Amy. And if you don't yet know, then I put it on you to kind of figure it out. Right. So, Chris, like, how do you best need to be managed? And again, I use that word managed loosely, but what's the environment that you thrive in? And what are some watch outs and things that really kind of set you off your game that I need to be careful of? Then I can share the same about me. And then I have the same conversation with Amy and it might be wildly different answers. And so my job then is to negotiate between how much of this do I need to get Amy and Chris to accommodate me or Haven? Or how much of it can I or Haven accommodate Chris and Amy? And so where do I have flexibility versus what's fixed?
[00:34:45] Speaker B: I think that's a really good one. And I think that. I suspect that even some very senior people who have actually got a lot of management experience might struggle to come to that conclusion without a little bit of. It's sort of, you know, like many really good ideas. When someone explains it to you, it feels pretty logical. Like, of course people want to be managed the way they want to be managed, not the way I want to be managed. But we only have ourselves, as we are a focus group of one on all these kinds of things. Right. And very tempting to assume that it applies.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: Yeah. But there is a watch out. I want to mention I learned this from working with a wonderful nonprofit organization, Junior Achievement. In that organization, they have the saying fixed, flexible and freestyle. And what they mean is they try to be very clear with their federated organizations which elements of operating in our organization are fixed. You need to accommodate and flex to us. Right. Which are flexible, you can be flexible within these boundaries and which are freestyle, you do however you want. And I think if you're going to take this platinum role, you have to be clear with folks on which elements of your approach to coaching Haven clients are freestyle. You know, we hire great people and get out of their way and let you do what you think, which are flexible. So you have a degree of flexibility and within here you can play, but not outside these bounds. And which are fixed. For example, like Chris, I know you don't love this part of it, but you need to accommodate.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: This is how we do this. This. Yeah, right, right, right. That's really great too, because I think you're right. A sort of managerial, trite managerial expression, a commonplace saying is like, I hire great people and get out of their way. And that should not always be the case to Your point? Right. You want to do that in a way that's consistent with your values and your practices and all that stuff. So the golden rule out the window. You heard it here. Few and far between listeners, at least in this context. What other couple, other learnings or things people should be thinking about?
[00:36:26] Speaker C: One of the things that we talk a lot about at Haven and with our clients as well, is, and it comes back to this idea of knowing your people and being open to communicating with them is also this concept of intelligent failure. And so one of the recommendations I always think of is a recent book by Amy Edmondson, which is called the Right Kind of Wrong, and creating and cultivating an environment where people are okay to take risks, but failing smart so you are not in the operating room and somebody's bleeding out. You have intelligent failure where people can learn by doing and adapting, adapt and evolve. And I think we create that in the Haven culture and with the clients we work with as well.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: I love that idea of intelligent failure because I guess implicit in there is that failure to do something or having something succeed doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying, and it doesn't mean that somebody's necessarily in trouble if their new thing didn't work. Coming back to your core concept of psychological safety at the beginning, so great, let's make sure that one is on our list as well. Would one of you talk a little bit about incentives, structures, processes, thinking about that kind of stuff? Ben, maybe that's to you.
[00:37:27] Speaker A: And be careful about both the carrots and the sticks in your organization. You know, both are available to you, and both can be effective. You know, most of us prefer using carrots versus sticks, but both can be tools. But if you have a set of, you know, behaviors or practices that you want people to employ, well, what's stopping them? Are there obstacles that you can actually offer? You can kind of smooth the way, make it easier for them to get over the barriers, or are there incentives for them to do the opposite of what you want? Can you remove those incentives or change the incentives? So think about. People are responding to carrots and sticks. So if they're not doing what you think they should be doing, look at the carrots and sticks. Are you asking for A but somehow incentivizing B? Or are you asking for A but then inadvertently penalizing A? Or are they getting an incentive to do B or C? People are motivated by, you know, what's in their best interest. I often say you can't get people to do what you want. You can only get people to do what they want. Want. So you have to line up what they want with what you want.
[00:38:22] Speaker B: That's great. And that really does resonate. I remember earlier in my career being in a very adversarial culture and the leader complaining that people weren't sharing information. It's kind of, well, pick one. You can't sort of make it dog eat dog and then expect everybody to be collaborative when you want them to be collaborative. So, okay, that's great. And maybe look for, is, I think you're saying, look for failure points. So when people are behaving in ways that are not consistent with what you want, then look at the incentives, the carrots and sticks, and see if that's what's, what's driving that behavior.
[00:38:51] Speaker A: Yeah, this all comes back to just kind of take the finger pointing out of it. It is easy to say, well, these people are being difficult. To which I say, yeah, and part of being an effective leader is to work with difficult people. Anybody can lead an environment of people that are exactly like you.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Those tend to be very small organizations.
[00:39:07] Speaker A: Yeah, there you go. And so part of looking at that is thinking about the system. Right. They are responding to a system that, by the way, you helped create and you helped reinforce. How can you tweak the system? How do you first understand the system and then how can you tweak the system, including how you're contributing to it?
[00:39:21] Speaker B: Amy, I want to give you a chance to weigh in on this one and then we'll move to the closing section. Advice for CEOs and coaches in a second. But anything else you wanted to add to that?
[00:39:29] Speaker C: I think it is just, as Ben said, easy to create a culture where everybody's following along if you have this narrow minded focus. And what we really want to see are the diverse teams with multiple perspectives and different points of view. So it all ties back to the idea of the platinum rule and creating an environment of safety and transparency and open dialogue and difficult conversations and productive conflict. Like all of these pieces are really interrelated and it's so easy to neglect them because we're under pressure and we're super busy achieving our goals. And so how do we get to that and accomplish what we're trying to while simultaneously paying attention to what are sometimes thought of as the soft skills? But I think they're all the essentials.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: Very well said. Completely agree. All right, guys, in closing, some advice for CEOs or aspiring CEOs who might be listening to this or other leaders in smaller Organizations. Ben, why don't we start with you?
[00:40:22] Speaker A: I would say if I could simplify everything down to one piece of advice, it would be get proactive. You have a bunch of strengths as a leader. You wouldn't be here if you didn't. Your company has a bunch of strengths, but you also have blind spots and you also have development areas, as does your company. Don't wait until these are causing issues. Get ahead of them. Proactively invest in leadership development. Practically invest in the development of your people. Proactively think about the culture that you want to build and how you want to reinforce those behaviors. Proactively think about the strengths that you and your company needs 12 months from now and think about how those are different from the strengths you have today and start to build towards those. Always be on that front foot. If you do, you're likely to have a much smoother experience. You don't want to be in this reactive mode of trying to hack back at the bonsai tree to get it back to what you want.
[00:41:03] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. That poor bonsai tree sometimes gets hacked pretty badly. Okay, great. I love that. Amy, over to you.
[00:41:08] Speaker C: You, I would like to say just get curious. It's really important to get out of your know it all attitude or I'm the leader so I should have all the answers and be okay with not knowing. Be comfortable asking questions of other people if you're not certain about what's going on in the culture. Spend some time walking around, having coffee, talking to people. Just get curious. And I think you will learn a tremendous amount that way. Not only about yourself, but about the organization.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: Yeah, that's particularly strong advice. And I think for folks who are maybe first time CEOs or first time leaders, I think it's very natural to think like, well, I can't show weakness. I have to show confidence all the time. And the truth is people can tell if you don't know what you're talking about pretty often. Right. So leading with curiosity, I think is a wonderful way to close this portion out. Okay, guys, so now if someone is listening and thinking, I need help, I'm going to go and read all these things. I'm going to implement the platinum rule. I'm going to lead with curiosity. I'm going to do all the kinds of things that I just heard about. But I also would really like some direct help from Haven. Where can they learn more about you guys?
[00:42:07] Speaker C: Thanks. Our website is havenhumanassets.com and so that's a great place to get some more information. People are welcome to connect with me and Ben on LinkedIn and certainly email. You can reach out to us and maybe Chris, you can put that in the show notes.
[00:42:21] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:42:21] Speaker C: But we're happy to be a resource and we love to have these conversations, so feel free to reach out.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: Well, listen, this has been a terrific conversation. Ben Olds, Amy Fenollosa, thank you so much for joining us today on Future and Far Between.
[00:42:33] Speaker A: Thanks for having us, Chris.
[00:42:33] Speaker C: Thanks, Chris.
[00:42:34] Speaker A: Great to be here.
[00:42:39] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the latest episode of Few and Far Between. Our podcast is now available on Apple Podcasts and other major streaming services. Please take a moment and leave us a user review and rating today. It really helps people discover the podcast and we read all the comments. Those comments help us to make Few and Far between better and better. Also, be sure to subscribe to Few and Far between so that you don't miss a single episode. Got an idea for a future episode? Email us at fewandfarbetweeniorossi.com or contact us on our
[email protected] I'm your host, Chris O'Brien. See you next time.
