IT Leaders

00:00:00:08 - 00:00:35:20
Loren Sanders
Good morning. Oh, there. You're going to learn nothing from me unless you participate. Challenge accepted. Yeah. Anyhow, I met your mother. Fans. It's going to be legend. Daring red, daring. I want you to answer the following question at your table. What's a real work problem that keeps you up at night? And that's about all I like. Okay, I've got another question that goes on top of that.

00:00:35:22 - 00:01:02:17
Loren Sanders
I want you to tell tell each other the root cause of this problem. Sleeping that I'm seeing a lot of passion in the ground. Stop it. Well, it's pretty obvious that you keep going, right? Yeah. Keep talking about this, but I have a question for you. 30s with you. How many of you listed last? The lack of something.

00:01:02:17 - 00:01:08:26
Loren Sanders
Something as a reason. Call.

00:01:08:28 - 00:01:52:17
Loren Sanders
Lack of time. I quit. Lack of communication or resources. And lack of respect and. You're laughing. But I did crowdsource before this. And I know that's a thing, too. But all of this is blame. We're going to talk about stopping this and making better connections with people, so that we can get more work done through them, because we're not doing work to them, but we need to get work done through them.

00:01:52:19 - 00:02:28:16
Loren Sanders
We have a human operating system. And mine is not necessarily the same as yours. As I've learned, this is the first time I've had all IT people in a row. Usually the people are peppered throughout the room when I'm talking, and there's a little bit of challenging thought processes across the organizational structures, because what I've learned is think about it is we don't appreciate you until something breaks.

00:02:28:18 - 00:02:45:11
Loren Sanders
You are the most taken for granted group of people in an organization until something doesn't work, and then it quickly becomes your fault and then we can't talk to you. Amen.

00:02:45:13 - 00:03:00:29
Loren Sanders
But I also ask for this, and I'm going to share a lot of what I learned. But our human operating system is the interface between our mind, our body, and our connection with the world. And we see it only from our own purview.

00:03:01:02 - 00:03:20:01
Loren Sanders
This is the typical problem of a human being. And the example I'm going to use is micromanagement. I'm a micromanager. Well, when you tell me that or I'm coaching on it and I don't believe you, I distance myself from my own behavior. That's really not what I want to do. I'm just trying to help people. I'm not micromanaging anything.

00:03:20:01 - 00:03:45:11
Loren Sanders
I don't need to control it. I just want things done right the first time. I reject you. I reject your recognition of my behavior. I am not going to accept it. So I'm going to create my own adjustment to your perception. Because I believe you until I believe you. Nothing's going to change until I'm self-aware. Nothing's changing. So what happens is my behavior continues.

00:03:45:13 - 00:04:16:05
Loren Sanders
We start this whole process again. Who has seen this in real life? Do you ever try to coach somebody that is coachable? This is why those of us who do coaching, and I know there's a couple of you in the room. We usually start with a chemistry conversation because I know pretty quickly, if you're somebody I can work with, if you don't have any self-awareness, then I'll refer you to somebody else, maybe a therapist that was supposed to make you laugh.

00:04:16:08 - 00:04:47:07
Loren Sanders
This is my favorite quote of all time. Has anybody ever read the book Leadership and Self-deception. If you've never read it, it's by the Arbor Institute. It is the book of moments. Here's me reading it. Oh, crap. Oh, no. You come to very quick realizations that no matter how good you are, you're never as good as you think you are.

00:04:47:09 - 00:04:55:28
Loren Sanders
And if you think you don't have something to learn from everyone around you, you're done. Before you get started.

00:04:56:00 - 00:05:16:19
Loren Sanders
Now at your table for next year table, I want you to find someone to talk about for the next three minutes. But every time you want to use a verb, I want you to replace that verb with two other ones that mean the same thing. Can't use the original word that came in your mind. Are you ready? You've got three minutes.

00:05:16:20 - 00:05:30:02
Loren Sanders
Go! Oh, no. That's okay. All right, so we get one, five, four, three, two time.

00:05:30:05 - 00:05:54:13
Loren Sanders
How many now? Say three minutes is a very long time. How many of you thought that was fun? Kind of terrible. How many of you found that really frustrating? Yeah. How many thought it was kind of fun and frustrating. How many abandoned ships? Completely.

00:05:54:16 - 00:06:20:25
Loren Sanders
I saw it. I either saw complete silence. Horrified looks on your faces, or I'm going to look at my bottom. I'm pretty much done with this. Or I'm going to talk about something else. How many of you do not have English as a first language? So not that many. This is very much what it's like to speak a different language, and to be in a space where it's not your first language.

00:06:20:27 - 00:06:53:13
Loren Sanders
For most of the people that you're talking to in it, technology is not their first language. I want you just to take a moment and feel that sense of frustration that you just went through. I think about that from the perspective of the person you might be talking to. This might be very much what they're experiencing. And until they can really take that feeling and do something with it, nothing's going to change.

00:06:53:19 - 00:07:01:04
Loren Sanders
As the saying goes, if nothing changes, nothing changes.

00:07:01:06 - 00:07:31:01
Loren Sanders
This is culture in the workplace. Have you heard of the jaws of culture? That's a common phrase. We think we have this great culture, and then we throw it into the jaws of culture and things happen as the jaws of culture come through. The research tells us some very interesting things about working on projects with people. Some of the PMI tells us 1 in 5 projects fail because of communication.

00:07:31:04 - 00:07:55:08
Loren Sanders
50% of projects chaos report. That's staggering right? I don't have to read these to you because you can read KPMG or Linda. And another KPMG. Is there anything new or stunning to you there?

00:07:55:10 - 00:08:17:25
Loren Sanders
How many of you have lived some of this or all of it? How many of you sometimes go home and just want to bang your head on your desk at work, or at the table? Feel like you're running up against a brick wall? I think of the little Mario guy. When you got the cursor too far and he's just walking and walking and going nowhere.

00:08:17:27 - 00:08:31:00
Loren Sanders
I crowdsourced for this. This was the question I asked people. What do you think they said?

00:08:31:03 - 00:09:04:07
Loren Sanders
Any ideas? Difficult to understand, but there's this. The use of the communication. They don't know what what we're saying to them. They use our jargon. Do you think the first response was, okay? Oh, no. Oh, no. That's. I do that. Here's what they said. Some of my favorites I better make cookies. Oh my gosh. I hope we have a really good project manager who translate what I already turned off on my months.

00:09:04:10 - 00:09:25:17
Loren Sanders
I already turned it off and on. I rebooted it. Do I have to? I think I need to quit my job now. How does that make you feel? I think for me. Remember that last activity you just did?

00:09:25:19 - 00:09:48:27
Loren Sanders
This is what became of that conversation that you had with that business person that didn't want to work with you? Now, I know this goes both ways, but what I'm trying to get is the emotion that I want you to feel about this. So I dug a little bit deeper, and I asked some of the questions about what is driving these feelings, and this is what they told me.

00:09:48:27 - 00:10:01:23
Loren Sanders
The problem is. Just a couple that I want to point out to you. The first one is technical jargon versus plain language.

00:10:01:25 - 00:10:27:29
Loren Sanders
The fact that they often think you're very detail oriented when they need high level information. They want a better cadence than just communicating milestones. And I think Doug is making this presentation. So you will have this. You don't need to remember all of it. You can print it later or look at it or share it with your teams.

00:10:27:29 - 00:11:03:00
Loren Sanders
But this is really what the biggest challenge in communication is between it and non-it people. Now I know all of you as well. You're solve this problem right? We haven't built problems. There are no problems. Word in it involve our empathy. And I'm hoping by now that you're starting to feel it a little bit, especially based on that last activity where the three minutes felt like three hours of conversation.

00:11:03:02 - 00:11:27:24
Loren Sanders
But without empathy, we cannot build better relationships if we don't have the ability to understand other people's perspectives and stories, even if they're not our own. And even if we don't agree with them, we still have to believe them, because that's where the person that you're working with is.

00:11:27:27 - 00:11:34:07
Loren Sanders
Where do bias and empathy intersect? What do you think?

00:11:34:09 - 00:11:44:19
Loren Sanders
Anybody? I don't like talking at people. First person to talk to me gets a book.

00:11:44:21 - 00:11:55:07
Loren Sanders
Where do empathy and bias intersect within yourself? Within yourself? What about that?

00:11:55:09 - 00:12:31:16
Loren Sanders
How do you know if you're biased? You are just starting. Hey. Sorry. I'm sorry. How do we know if we're struggling with empathy? Do we know? My wife tells me repeatedly. Wives are very good at that. Frustration? Yes. Frustration. I would say positive feedback isn't a feedback. If they're getting a like a cohesive feedback from the team with multiple people like me, be more if it or maybe you don't realize.

00:12:31:18 - 00:12:55:00
Loren Sanders
Like for me, it's like I just left my company. My team begged me to say so. I had more than I even thought I had with my own team. As it came out, as I'm leaving, please stay. We can't do this without you. I got time this morning for something. I don't work there anymore. So sometimes it can be the other way to.

00:12:55:02 - 00:13:22:06
Loren Sanders
How many of you have felt this as you've left someone? How many of you wish somebody would have said something while you were still there? How many times have you felt this about someone and not expressed it? Only I think the stat is only one inch seven appreciations are ever actually given. We think them all the time, but we rarely express it.

00:13:22:08 - 00:13:54:13
Loren Sanders
How to know if you're struggling with empathy. Anybody feel like you don't have to raise your hand? Feeling highly emotional. Bottling things up. I have a whole other presentation on stages of burnout. If you need that one, hit me up. After this, we'll talk about it. Is it hard to concentrate? Are you mentally exhausted? But this one. That's eating too much.

00:13:54:13 - 00:14:24:09
Loren Sanders
Drinking too much, spending too much preoccupation. Multitasking more. Which we all know nobody's good at. The frozen part. We don't always talk about the freeze and the fight or flight. A lot of us live in this space of fight or flight. We either are going hard or we decide we want to crawl into a hole. But we don't talk about the freeze in the freezes.

00:14:24:09 - 00:14:52:06
Loren Sanders
That anxiety state. And a lot of people live in that constantly. And it's easy to recognize and other people. That's your person on your team who used to do a great job and all of a sudden can't execute, can't get anything done. They're probably struggling a little bit. Can you use some of your empathy or an opportunity to work through some of that?

00:14:52:08 - 00:15:01:28
Loren Sanders
How about extra judgy or complaining? How many of us sit in meetings every single day where we're like, oh my goodness, I can't believe that person said that.

00:15:02:01 - 00:15:21:06
Loren Sanders
Or would you please she. I really want this to be over. You're at the end of the meeting. And then there's that person that has the last question, and the whole room goes. You're laughing because you've seen it. It's true. It happens.

00:15:21:09 - 00:15:46:25
Loren Sanders
But empathy isn't kindness, and I don't want us to mistake it for that. We can be empathetic and kind, but they're not mutually exclusive. I talked to a lot of leaders who don't want to give people feedback. That's hard because they're afraid it's going to hurt someone's feelings. Well, I'm a super empathetic person, so, you know, I don't want to hurt their feelings.

00:15:46:25 - 00:16:12:16
Loren Sanders
I don't want to keep them from being able to do their job. I want to be clear, it is an empathetic do not give people the feedback they need to get better at their job. This is what I call. People always talk about walking in other shoes. What I'm talking about is you're walking in your own shoes. Keep on tied and keep them on.

00:16:12:18 - 00:16:27:25
Loren Sanders
You need boundaries, and you need to be able to tell people what they need to hear. It's the intent behind how you do it. Often our intent and our action don't match.

00:16:27:27 - 00:16:38:12
Loren Sanders
Can I get a volunteer to give me a two minute rant about anything that bothers them at work? Anybody?

00:16:38:15 - 00:17:03:19
Loren Sanders
Come on. Come on. Somebody surely has a two minute rant. Doesn't even have to be two minutes. It can be one minute. All right, now give us your rant. All right. I'm in some situation where I've got employees at one day. They do a fantastic job. They knock it out of the park and you're working great. And then all of a sudden, the light switches and they're just doing stupid decisions.

00:17:03:22 - 00:17:21:24
Loren Sanders
I just come from. And I know it's personal. Always the first moment to get that kind of shift. And it's just one of those things. It's like, all right. How do we fix this? How do we offer it at the opportunity to be able to have a conversation, say, hey, I love the fact you do great work, but Mondays suck.

00:17:21:28 - 00:17:42:12
Loren Sanders
You're always tired or, you know, sort of the afternoons. There's something about it. You're drained. I don't know what you're doing during lunch hour, but it's showing you productivity. And, you know, having those conversations are fun, right? There's usually tears involved because we're not making any expectations. It's like, okay, all right. Out there in this box. Let's move on.

00:17:42:14 - 00:18:06:04
Loren Sanders
Right. And then let's see what we can do. And it's like, all right, how can we help you with this. So that's a conversation that happens. Perfect. Thank you very much for that. Now those of you who are listening, I want you to think about this differently. Think about everything you heard. And that wasn't even two minutes. I could have let him keep going, but I didn't want to get that feeling.

00:18:06:07 - 00:18:12:02
Loren Sanders
What values were at stake for him?

00:18:12:05 - 00:18:32:29
Loren Sanders
What did you hear? What values were at stake? It's just consistency. What else? Quality of work. Quality of work. Possibly. Loyalty. Loyalty. Expectations. Expectations.

00:18:33:01 - 00:19:02:05
Loren Sanders
His concern for the staff. That we know something else is going on. That I don't know. Concern. Often when we find ourself ranting about something or being really upset about something that happened, it's usually tacked to value at stake for us. A lot of times we expect ourselves from other people, or we expect that someone's situation is approached in the same way we would approach it.

00:19:02:05 - 00:19:26:00
Loren Sanders
That doesn't always happen. So when we're feeling and empathetic, when we're feeling judgy, when we're feeling like we cannot walk into that meeting because we are just sick and that person or these people, that's a really good time to check what values are at stake within our own situation.

00:19:26:03 - 00:19:30:28
Loren Sanders
What happens on a team?

00:19:31:00 - 00:19:57:28
Loren Sanders
One person gets upset and ranty, and then what happens? You join my team. Do you have any joins in? My team? Because we can rant together. And then Calvin joins my team and we rant together. And then Patrick joins my team and he just. And it spreads through an organization. You wonder how you get to toxic. Any leader can tell me that culture is top down.

00:19:58:00 - 00:20:28:13
Loren Sanders
I love talking to the C-level about how culture is top down. It's not. It's bottom up. You can espouse all the culture you want, but it's your people that make it happen or not. And when this is happening on a team, we lose our ability because of our bias. We lose our ability to be empathetic. We lose our ability to listen here, work together with people.

00:20:28:15 - 00:20:36:09
Loren Sanders
And I'll just let this sit for a minute.

00:20:36:11 - 00:20:45:08
Loren Sanders
We have to connect or we cannot collaborate.

00:20:45:11 - 00:21:14:09
Loren Sanders
For more empathy, click here. Only tourists look up. This is a quote from a music artist named Dessa. She's out of Minneapolis. Let's put in the world. Think about that. You always know the tourists because they're going like this. But where's everybody else? Here at work. Everyone is in their own silo. Nobody's looking up. Nobody is looking across.

00:21:14:11 - 00:21:28:19
Loren Sanders
We're so focused on what we have to do. We often don't consider the other people in the mix. So we have to change our perspective.

00:21:28:22 - 00:22:00:17
Loren Sanders
If you've been coached by me and al-Faisal over here in the corner, you know that I often talk about the hidey hole. I like to use the Groundhog Day analogy. The groundhog sits in their little hidey hole, and then February 2nd comes on and their hidey hole is comfortable, and it's dark and it's safe. And then they peek their head out of the hidey hole and they decide either I'm going to walk out into the sunshine and not see my shadow, or I'm going to see my shadow, and I can't remember right back down into the hidey hole.

00:22:00:19 - 00:22:22:26
Loren Sanders
Does anybody ever seen this before? This is the ladder of accountability, sometimes called the accountability ladder. On the bottom half, things are happening to me. And on the top half, things happen because of things. What is the first thing that has to happen for somebody to actually get out of the hidey hole?

00:22:22:28 - 00:22:45:28
Loren Sanders
The answer is out here. Be aware of their intent. Be aware that they're in it, right. Unless we acknowledge reality, we will never own it. Find a solution or take action. If we don't acknowledge reality, we do all of the things that send us down back into the hidey hole, hoping somebody else is going to take care of the problem.

00:22:46:01 - 00:23:18:12
Loren Sanders
Question. This isn't one of the challenges, though. Your reality may not be, as you say, knowledge, reality. It's different for different folks and it might be reality. It might be accountability. That's a whole other conversation. Did anybody ever take a whole entire other other direction? But it is really important to help people build self awareness. So I'm going to I'm going to call on that little conference that you have coming up where people learn to be more self aware, because it's really hard to ever acknowledge reality.

00:23:18:12 - 00:23:46:22
Loren Sanders
If you are not a self-aware human, you will just twist and stay in your hidey hole, and you could be a productive member of any team because you're blind. But it is the one that connects all of the pieces of the organization together. And I'll talk about that and say whether they know it or not. And if you are the underpinning thing that ties them all together.

00:23:46:25 - 00:24:15:24
Loren Sanders
So you have to be the great communicator, or you have to be empathetic. And yes, we need to expect it from others too. But it has to start somewhere. This is how we increase collaboration, decrease frustration. And I love the technology adoption curve. Have you seen this before? Sure you have. We want it to go up. We don't want it to go in the bell curve.

00:24:15:26 - 00:24:26:08
Loren Sanders
So what actionable steps can it leaders take to cultivate empathy and connection? Any ideas?

00:24:26:11 - 00:24:58:11
Loren Sanders
Better communication. Better communication. You have to be a translator between the idea jargon in the business. Yeah. It's like they're aware that it's there. I think understanding your team and understanding your team at its core. Setting. Example. Setting examples. Yeah. Demonstrate accountability. Yeah. Vulnerability. Humility. Authenticity. I want it from all the listeners. They want to be gold. I want to connect.

00:24:58:14 - 00:25:25:09
Loren Sanders
I want to trust. And I would challenge you to put I will make an I will statement out of it. I will do these things. I'm going to be the Yoda here. There is no try. Right. I put domain expertise on what is to build up earlier. Call it. I think in the last 15 years, the not the business community has become much more technologically savvy.

00:25:25:09 - 00:25:49:22
Loren Sanders
But the IT community has got the business savvy. We're still in our own. And I would say we hire people for their technological expertise and we fire them for their soft skills or their inability to connect and collaborate with people. So I have a challenge for you and then I'll give you the steps to this. Are we build something, say here to business and I'm like I games.

00:25:49:23 - 00:26:15:11
Loren Sanders
That's right. So we don't understand it. I will challenge you to stop asking why questions? Because why? And let's push back. Ryan, why did you sit in that chair for Ryan? Out of all the chairs that exist here in this room. You pick that one. What made you choose this chair? That's how we start a conversation. If I say why, why did you sit there?

00:26:15:14 - 00:26:28:07
Loren Sanders
Feels totally different. Last point really quickly. Because I'm out of time. These are the things that you should do to get better at empathy.

00:26:28:09 - 00:26:42:10
Loren Sanders
All of the things you already talked about. Yes. And is building on other good ideas. You didn't really talk about that one. I'll leave you with this.

00:26:42:13 - 00:26:57:29
Loren Sanders
Just let that last statement sit. The wisdom to know that person is me. Feel free to connect with me. I've got the LinkedIn QR code on my phone if you want that. But thank you very much for your time and.