Achieving Breakthrough Moments with Dr. Mike Ashby

Ever wondered why your leadership training efforts aren't yielding lasting change? Listen as Dr. Mike Ashby from The Breakthrough Co. unravels the mystery behind the ineffectiveness of traditional leadership development programs.

Promising more than just theory, Dr. Mike shares how aligning training with real business goals and fostering emotional intelligence can create workplaces that are not only more human but also more productive. Discover how adopting a growth mindset can transform challenging roles into rewarding experiences and why bridging the gap between learning and application is the key to overcoming management failures.

Step into the world of transformative leadership with us as we explore the art of delegation and the journey it initiates. Through powerful stories and actionable insights, we uncover how coaching can empower leaders to transition from mere task assignments to inspiring team autonomy. Delve into the dynamics of self-awareness and deliberate practice as essential components of leadership evolution, while addressing the potential vulnerabilities that leaders face when embracing change. Reimagine what it means to lead in HR and people-intensive industries, challenging the traditional bias towards authoritarianism and championing empathy, integrity, and humility. Tune in for a fresh perspective on how tailored training can elevate leadership capabilities and drive organizational success.

Learn about The Breakthrough Co at thebreakthrough.co

Chapters

• 0:03 Improving Leadership Training for HR
• 13:37 Evolving Leadership in Coaching Programs
• 17:59 Reimagining Leadership in HR

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom and visit hrgazettecom.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Thanks for tuning in. In this episode of the HR Chat Show, we consider developing leaders, why traditional training models are failing and how organizations can drive real change. Today's guest says that training is broken. If we're serious about developing leaders, he says we need to stop wasting time with ineffective methods. His message is broken. If we're serious about developing leaders, he says we need to stop wasting time with ineffective methods. His message is simple Focus on making leadership learning practical, sustainable and aligned with business goals.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Hey, this is Bill Banham, your host today, and joining me on the pod is Dr Mike Ashby, director over at the Breakthrough Co. I hope you enjoyed this conversation that I had with Dr Mike. Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazettecom. And now back to the show. Dr Mike, how are you doing? Welcome to the show today, g'day, bill Mike. Why don't you start by taking a couple of minutes and introducing yourself? Let's not talk too much about the Breakthrough Code just yet. We'd love to get a sense of you, your academic and career background.

Speaker 3: 1:42

My academic career. The doctor comes from a PhD in international relations that I've used twice and actually the second time was a bit of a stretch. My career has been spent really studying and observing and doing leadership management strategy change. Really, I came into the workforce at a time of huge change in the world and New Zealand was no exception. So consulting and working in organisations that were managing organisations that were undergoing change, I got to vice president or partner of Ernst Young Consulting, leading their strategy and transformation business, and then I ran a big health insurer and, like a lot of people, at the age of 43, I decided that the corporate life wasn't for me, that it was time I created some benefit for myself.

Speaker 3: 2:38

So I've spent the last 20 odd years teaching leadership, teaching business strategy, those kinds of things, and I would have to say, bill, that 19 of those years I was teaching the wrong way. I was teaching in traditional workshops. I bought a business that had business owners on it, one of whom is now my partner. He's in Boulder, colorado. It was quarterly workshops. They were great events but I noticed that they didn't stick. So, as I say, 19 years teaching it the wrong way, we think we've worked it out.

Speaker 2: 3:17

Let's talk about the Breakthrough Code. Can you tell our listeners about the mission of the company?

Speaker 3: 3:22

Our mission is simple. Our mission is more human workplaces, and that's about creating workforces led by better managers who've got greater emotional intelligence than they have at the moment, and that's about how do they develop greater self awareness and empathy for others. So that's right at the heart of it. For the big big picture, others so that's right at the heart of it. You know, for the big big picture, it is about creating places that are more fulfilling for people, more satisfying, more challenging. You know, every chat GPT thing that you start with will go unleash human potential. So I avoid that. But that's what we do, and we do it through making training stick. That's our, that's our kind of byline.

Speaker 2: 4:07

Make you know, training that sticks okay, just a quick follow-up on what you just mentioned today. You said. You said that jobs can be more challenging and therefore more enjoyable and inspiring. I think were your words. That's interesting. So are you saying the more challenging the job, the more you're getting out of it?

Speaker 3: 4:31

Oh, absolutely. I mean, we're at our best. You know, that's the flow, that's the old theory of flow. We're at our best when what is it? Challenge and capabilities meet at their apex. So the bigger the challenge and you're called on to really, really deliver oh, that's gold.

Speaker 3: 4:50

And look, I guess you know, to be fair, there's lots of people in workforces who are there to clock in and clock out, pay me my money down and then they're off, but they're not the people who lead the organisation. If you've got a leader who's clocking in and clocking out, you should fire them. So you know you, you particularly your leaders. You want to have people who are open to growth, have growth mindsets and are willing to try and again.

Speaker 3: 5:20

It's fair to say there are a lot of managers who've got one year's experience that they've replayed 20 years as opposed to continue to grow and develop, and they are typically not great leaders and they are typically running people who don't get the opportunity to grow and develop as they should, which is why they tend to have lower engagement and lower productivity and higher turnover, et cetera. You know all the problems that we grapple with. I think all of them come back to how well are these people being managed? I think stress is a management failure. Workload stress is a management failure. Why does most leadership training fail why does most leadership training fail?

Speaker 3: 6:11

we all, we all know that it's in the way adults learn and the way adults get taught. Somebody in the hbr a few years ago talked about the problem is the distance between where things are learned and where they're applied. And the greater the distance, the greater the leakage, if you like, or the scrap, the scrap, learning scrap. So we all know that. You know you go to a workshop, including ones I ran. This is how I know this. You know we ran day long workshops and then we thought, oh, we need to kind of increase the amount of learning. Let's make it a day and a half. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Because the more you try to tip into people, we call it the, what we would in new zealand, we call it the sheep dip approach. I don't know if you have sheep in canada, bill, but they, uh, you know that we send them through these shoots and we just drench them as they go past and hope that it sticks. Um, it's the same in a lot of the kind of workshop based I'm really talking about workshop based management training.

Speaker 3: 7:07

Workshops have many, many uses, but they are poor at training because people don't take in very much and whatever they take in, they don't retain so typically and I ask myself, why don't people change? Why don't we do flipped classrooms more? Why don't we use more video? I think it's because people who do content love content and they feel that because they learn through content, everybody learns through more content. So there's too much content and there's not enough practice. There's too much interesting theory and not enough application.

Speaker 3: 7:51

So, you know, they come out of something. They're all fizzed up because they've got all these new ideas and they can see these development opportunities and their world is going to be different. It's full of possibility. And they get back to work and it hasn't changed at all. That's part of the problem. They've already gone, they've already left most of their learning at the workshop door. Problem one. Problem two they get back to their office. They talk to their manager about it and their and they talk to their peers about it and their peers go.

Speaker 3: 8:19

Huh, so within days and they're back at the. You know they've been away for two days and there's this pile of stuff that's got left behind and they plough through that by day five. It's the you know, the eating house forgetting curve. But we race down that curve at work because our busyness pushes out whatever we might have learned, because we haven't had a chance to practice. Actually, you can put it down to that, really. Why does most leadership training fail? Because there isn't a cognizance of the importance of deliberate practice. There isn't a structure for repeating a particular skill, there isn't an accountability, there's no follow-up, none of those things. And for adults, the only way they change their behavior because that's what we're talking about in management training is changing behavior. The only way people change their behavior is through deliberate practice. The only way people change their behavior is through deliberate practice.

Speaker 4: 9:25

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Speaker 2: 9:53

Learn more at disrupthrco how are you guys different? Then? We're going off script again. I'm sorry, but you're interesting me. So how are you guys different than that? How do you make sure that there is a follow-up, that people remain motivated, that there's a correct cadence in terms of touch points to make sure that people, leaders, other members of the team are continually feeling inspired to learn and develop?

Speaker 3: 10:25

The bigger challenge I had was minimising the content to only what matters. Our core programme is. We call it the Active Manager Programme and it's the management essentials. There's nothing different in the topics we cover. It's the same as every fundamental management program you'll ever see. The difference is that it's spread out over 12 months, that each month is one course, and one course only.

Speaker 3: 10:48

And that course is about 20 to 30 minutes long in five minute chunked videos and that course is in language that is designed to appeal to somewhere between a high school graduate and a college graduate, but usually aiming towards that kind of high school graduate People. We're not assuming that people are tertiary qualified and that course doesn't waste time on stuff that doesn't matter. So one of our fundamental principles is 80-20. That 20% of everything I've learned about management and leadership creates 80% of the value. So why tell people about all the other stuff? Tell them the things that matter and get down to the practicalities. And as a leader and someone who's watched leaders and coached leaders and taught leaders, it comes down to how should you behave here and you know practical example um delegation. Uh, you know, we get people to think about the minute we've finished talking. Only do what only you can do.

Speaker 3: 12:02

Next thing, the next activity you go to do, ask yourself, is this something I can do or can somebody do it? 70 as well as me? And if not now, then with training. So they, they put the thing, they put the phone down, they've watched the video and they go. I can do that, and that's the bit in our content is whenever they put their phone down, they go, I can do that, so they go and do it. And and that's the bit in our content is whenever they put their phone down, they go, I can do that, so they go and do it. And that's where the learning and development happens. It doesn't happen on the phone. The learning and development happens when they go and try to delegate, or they try to listen actively to somebody, or they try to have a coaching conversation and they fail. Right, try again, ref again, reflect. What would I do differently next time? Okay, I'm going to try smiling at them. That seemed to work. I'll do that again. You know, that's how we learn as adults, isn't it? It's not. You don't learn to juggle from reading a book, it's only by practice. So the the next bit is so that's the content piece, and I've got to get that out of my system. You decide as a learner okay, I'm going to practice, I'm going to practice delegation and I'm going to kind of, I'm going to take this area of, say, rostering, I'm going to delegate that Next piece you do is you've got a 15-minute conversation with your we call them the lady coach, your boss, and your boss is on this companion program because we recognize that most bosses are actually, let's just say, there's a gap between how good they think they are at coaching and how good the world thinks they are at coaching.

Speaker 3: 13:37

So they've got this companion program how to coach and, in particular, how to coach this subject of delegation in this case. And I go along and I say, yeah, I'm going to delegate my rostering to Wendy. And he says, hmm, okay, well, I'm not sure that that's the thing you should be delegating just yet. That's the thing you should be delegating just yet. Why don't you look at another? Why don't you look at I don't know, leave scheduling or something like that and give that to somebody else, or it might be. No, I really need you to hang on to this and fix it and change it.

Speaker 3: 14:15

Okay, fine, so this leader coaching bit 15 minutes, focused coaching, a month fantastic. I've just started doing it myself with my own people. Oh my God, what a wonderful opportunity in just 15 minutes to have a chat about the course. And then they say what they're going to do differently and you go yeah, you know what? I think you can go a little further. I think what I see in you is you know, it might be. Oh, practical example sitting right in front of me. You know, yeah, you're delegating pretty well, but actually the next level is getting your people to plan the activity instead of you doing it with them. Step back, let them do the plan. That's the next level. Oh, okay, that sounds good. So off they go, and then a couple of weeks after that, they meet with their peers and they talk about oh well, you know, what Mike said was I had to, kind of you know, get them to plan and others will go, yeah, and or they'll go oh, yeah and yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 15:23

So one of the things in all those 20-something years, bill, that I've always done is have group coaching, peer coaching, because moral courage is found in a group and these groups, this program is all about change. Any training ought to be about change and it's behaviour change. All behaviour change involves loss and people need courage to let go of the way they've been. I love the Lao Tzu reference when I let go of who I am, I become who I might be, and people need help to let go of the way they've done things in the past. So that's where the peer group, all of the stuff, these are multiple points of reinforcement about a behaviour. The behaviour evokes some stuff in their heads, particularly about how they work and how they operate, and that's the most important part. The skill is. That's pretty important. That's 30% of the gig, actually, the self-awareness they learn through the process of deliberate practice, that's the 70, that's the gold man, I am going so off script today because of all the things that you're saying I'm interested in.

Speaker 2: 16:54

So we're chatting before we hit record today and we're giving some general directions where this conversation might go, but actually you're taking it in different directions. I hope you don't mind. Uh, one thing you just mentioned a moment ago is how important like it is to for leaders to let go of how perhaps they previously operated. That's very interesting, because what's the question? I guess the question here is are they not leaving themselves vulnerable to being questioned if a ceo, for example, is hired based on a certain skill set and how he or she has previously led an organization, but they're now at a point in their career like you know what actually, I'm okay with changing things up, I'm okay with showing I didn't always get it right in the past are they not leaving themselves open to the board, to whomever who hired them, saying hang on a minute, this, this is not the person we thought we were going to get in the first place. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3: 17:58

I absolutely. And again, there was a blog I wrote recently it was called how Did he Get that Job, and it relates to a study done at McKinsey about why males dominated the CEO spots. And it turned out that, surprise, surprise. When they looked at all the various characteristics of leadership, it turned out that the dominant characteristics that people chose were a tendency to overconfidence and a tendency to authoritarianism. And, lo and behold, that was mostly males. So the reason males get such a share is because the boards think that those things are valuable.

Speaker 3: 18:48

The people skills piece they didn't rate as highly, but actually the most effective leaders are the people who've got self-awareness, empathy, integrity and humility. Empathy, integrity and humility. The trick is so that kind of you know, bias overlooks a whole lot of people not just obviously women, but men who've got these skills as well. It just overlooks people who've got those skills. But the problem is that those skills only become apparent in leadership. So you have to be able to the most successful leaders, build teams of people who are better than them. And a good board, you know, even though they might want to appoint the swaggering kind of yeah, I can fix this, turn around in three days flat, et cetera. They would be better advised to choose people who can build teams of leaders, people who can lead even better than them. In other words, what we know about organizations is that their whole workforces are incredibly effective. Yeah, steve Jobs may have come up with Apple, but he didn't come up with the Apple phone. He created an organization that came up with the Apple phone. So that's a kind of different definition of leadership. We are still too attached to the command and control and the you know the chap on the deck rather than the person who is building a team of navigators.

Speaker 3: 20:26

This will surprise you, bill, but I'm a bit of a fan of the New Zealand rugby team. It's called the All Blacks. They have always dressed in black strip. A few years ago not now, but a few years ago they had a world-beating team. They were just phenomenal, and one of the characteristics of that team was they had leadership everywhere. They had one captain, but they had a senior leadership group off the field and on the field, and that was the difference. I'd better stop talking about the All Blacks, because I could, you know.

Speaker 2: 21:03

So I have heard of them. I think I read somewhere that the All Blacks have got the most successful win percentage of any male or female professional national sports team in any sport In any field.

Speaker 3: 21:20

that is correct.

Speaker 2: 21:22

That is not too bad for a country with a population of if I'm wrong, is it about 4 million, 5 million? You don't do too bad there. You don't do too bad for a country of population of great, if I'm wrong is it about four million, five million?

Speaker 3: 21:31

no, you don't do too bad there, you don't do too we do. All right, we're pretty rubbish at everything else, but we do, we do well, you've been england, um, so okay, you, uh.

Speaker 2: 21:44

By the way, uh, shameless plug you. You mentioned McKinsey just a moment ago. Listeners do please check out my latest interview with Dr Patrick Simon, director over at McKinsey. Continuing on with the conversation here, your team focuses on training in the following industries construction, manufacturing, agriculture and logistics. What are some of the unique HR leadership challenges in those sectors and can you share any use cases?

Speaker 3: 22:13

What they all have in common, for a start, is that they're all people intensive industries and we work with people intensive industries. We don't work that well with knowledge workers. Having said that, we have had a really big engagement with a science organisation and boy are they different. But generally, the people in construction manufacturing, they've got teams of people, they've got team leaders. People are their greatest asset, which is very seasonal. Their biggest problem is that they've got a permanent establishment and then, before their season starts whether it's packing season or whatever season they get an influx of probably three times that size. They probably swell three times the size of the core establishment and are there for three to four months. They've got to bring in a lot of team leaders. The team leaders are really just operating out of instinct. The team leaders are really just kind of operating out of instinct. So what we've done is, within our 12-month program, we train the establishment team, we take a break. On that break, they get micros, usually on WhatsApp or whatever platform that suits them. They barely have time in these organizations at pack season to look at a, you know, even look at a single screenshot. But that's what we give them to keep the learning alive, because that's when they need it most.

Speaker 3: 23:56

With the seasonal team leaders, what we're doing is essentially for a month beforehand, before they even arrive on site, we're delivering this training remotely. So their content, they're getting their content wherever they are, they're having their conversation with the person who will be their boss when they arrive and they've got a conversation going with their peer. So it's a mini version of the program and it's cut right back. If it was 80-20 before, cut right back. You know, if it was 80 20 before, it's 10, 50 now. Um, there's just not the time to do the practice. But it means that they walk in and they're on site and they're already, let's say, you know 25 better at managing people than they were when they then they would have been otherwise and in that game that kind of marginal improvement is really significant. It drives retention, it drives productivity, it drives profit and it's a really obvious thing. So that's one of the differences that we see there and that's how we've kind of met it.

Speaker 3: 25:05

I've got two questions left for you.

Speaker 2: 25:07

I'm going to challenge you for the next one to answer in one minute or less. The question is you've got a podcast. You host a podcast with Ryan Castle called Business Leader Breakthroughs In 60 seconds or less. Tell us about it.

Speaker 3: 25:22

Ryan's been my business partner since 2013. I've known him for 20 years. Our relationship is the strength of our business. It's a wonderful thing we are not at all alike and totally similar. We talk about aspects of the program. We talk about things like delegation and draw real-life examples from our work in the field. And we have a lot of fun doing it because we connect really well. And we have a lot of fun doing it because we connect really well. We're one-take wonders in the podcast and we just have a lot of fun. So that's why you should listen to it. It's very engaging, very authentic, very conversational and, at the same time, real world.

Speaker 2: 26:07

How was that? I think you had about 10 seconds to spare. I'm assuming folks can find it on Apple Stitcher and Spotify and all those other places, correct?

Speaker 3: 26:15

And they can also find it on our website, wwwthebreakthroughco.

Speaker 2: 26:20

Okay, which helps me with the final question, which is how can our listeners connect with you and learn more about the Breakthrough Co? We've got your URL. What about you? How can folks connect with you? Is that LinkedIn? Do you want to share your address?

Speaker 3: 26:33

Yeah, If you Google Dr Mike Ashby. But actually we're just about to launch a new version of the program. So we typically work with companies. We realize that that leaves out a whole lot of individuals. So what we're about to do is launch a programme called Dr Mike Hyperdash Leadership. We're literally days, you know kind of hours, away. Ryan's back in the country, he's coming to stay with me and when we get together we have these ginger crunch sessions where we kind of bring along the slice. That is endemic in New Zealand and we spend two hours crunching through things. Well, we've got three days, so we're going to have this site live by the time we head up to Auckland. Dr Mike Leadership. Google that and you'll find the cut down cut down version.

Speaker 2: 27:27

So we're right into the core essentials that are going to make the biggest difference rock and roll, and there will, of course, listeners, as always be links to dr mike's linkedin profile, to the website and a whole bunch of other things in the show notes and in the article on the hr. Because that, mike, that just leads me to say, for today, I have very much enjoyed this conversation. You're a good man. I like what you're doing. You're a direct speaker. I'd like to do it again with you soon. I want to get you involved in my events, but for today, that just leaves me to say thank you very much.

Speaker 3: 28:00

It's been a great pleasure, Bill. You were a joy to talk with.

Speaker 1: 28:30

And listeners as always, until next HRGazettecom.