Join Sarah Noll Wilson and guest Dr. Cris Wildermuth for a wide-ranging discussion on leadership, followership, authority, and the concept of Shared Leadership.
About Our Guest
A passionate professor, researcher, and leadership development consultant, Dr. Cristina (Cris) de Mello-e-Souza Wildermuth has engaged audiences and students for over twenty years. Originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Dr. Wildermuth immigrated to the United States in 1992 and has traveled extensively, facilitating leadership and diversity/inclusion programs in Latin America and Europe. Dr. Wildermuth’s main research areas include leadership development and education, ethics, and international/intercultural relations. She has written a book on Diversity Training (published by the Association for Talent Development) and published in peer-reviewed publications such as the Journal of Business Ethics, the Journal of Leadership Education, and the Journal of Psychological Issues in Organizational Culture. Dr. Wildermuth holds a Master’s in Technology Education/Training and Development and a Doctorate in Leadership Studies from Bowling Green State University, with a dissertation on employee engagement and personality. She is the chair of LinkedIn’s 1M+ group for HR professionals, Linked:HR, and a member of the International Leadership Association’s Leadership Academy facilitation team. Dr. Wildermuth lives in West Melbourne, Florida, with her husband Mel and furry family members Friskey, Bambi, and Buffy. She loves discovering new beaches, making impromptu trips to the Disney Parks in Orlando, and learning painting from Bob Ross.
Transcript
Sarah Noll Wilson
Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of Conversations on Conversations where each week we explore a topic or topics to help us have more powerful conversations with ourselves and each other. I’m your host, Sarah Noll Wilson. And joining me again for her her second episode. (laughs) It’s gonna be good Cris, is Dr. Cris Wildermuth, my, my dear friend, mentor and colleague. So for those of you who may remember, she was one of our first guest when we talked about humanizing workplaces. And that will certainly be a theme in our conversation today as we explore the topic related to ethics and leadership. And we see where that conversation goes. But for those of you who it’s the first time meeting, Cris, let me tell you a little bit about her. She’s a passionate professor, researcher, leadership development consultant, has engaged audiences and students for over 20 years.
Originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Dr. Wildermuth immigrated to the United States in 1992, and has traveled extensively facilitating leadership and diversity inclusion programs in Latin America and Europe. Her main areas of research include leadership development, education, ethics and international intercultural relations. She has written a book on diversity training published by the Association of Talent Development, and published in peer reviewed publications such as Journal of Business Ethics, the Journal of Leadership Education, the Journal of Psychological Issues and Organizational Cultures. She holds a master’s in Technology Education, Training and Development and a doctorate in Leadership Studies from Bowling Green State University with a dissertation on employee engagement and personality. She is the chair of LinkedIn’s One Million Plus group for HR professionals and is a member of the International Leadership Association Leadership Academy Facilitation Team. That’s a little bit of a mouthful. But! Here’s what you really should know about my friend and colleague, Dr. Wildermuth. She lives in West Melbourne, Florida with her husband, Mel and furry family members, Frisky, Bambi and Buffy. She loves discovering new beaches, making impromptu trips to the Disney parks in Orlando and learning painting from Bob Ross. Welcome to the show!
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Thank you. And of course, they have not included the favorite thing about me for you, Sarah, which is my love for weird technology. Let’s see which one I bring up today.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, so one of Cris’s favorite things is just technology, novel technological solutions. So every time that we meet, you will ask the question, Oh, do you use? And then it’s some goofy word. So today in our meeting, it was Scribble and Scrivener, which I actually knew one of those. So I felt pretty good about that. But if you’re somebody who is interested in novel, unique, up and coming technological solutions to your training, learning, research needs, she has an ongoing inventory of the boobly. The (laughs) but it’s, I love it. I love it. I just can’t keep up with it. Also, folks, you can hear it in her voice. Cris and I have known each other a very, very long time. We are family. We are sisters and in full transparency. Y’all. I’m here because of her. She was my mentor and professor at Drake when I was getting my master’s and she is the one who said, “You should think about speaking.” So if you like what I do, you have her to thank. If you don’t like what I do (laughter) you have her to blame. (laughter)
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
I smile when you say that.
Sarah Noll Wilson
So okay, Cris, you know, we we haven’t talked on the show with you since we literally started and there has been a lot that has changed in your life. There has been a – you’ve moved. I think since last time we had you on the show, or maybe you had just moved, but you are in the throes of some pretty massive research for a book you’re working on. And I would love to hear all about it.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Okay, so yes, so about a year ago and it was after a conversation because I remember where that conversation took place. I moved to West Melbourne, Florida to direct the Bachelor of Science in Organizational Leadership at Barry University. So Barry University is actually in Miami but I live in West Melbourne, near the beach and most importantly near Disney (laughs) because when given the choice between near Disney and far from Disney. I’m like I’m gonna go all the way to Florida and I’m so far from Disney. No, that can’t be. So I live about an hour actually, I know exactly. I live an hour and nine minutes away from Disney Springs. An hour and 20 minutes away from, I think Animal Kingdom is the farthest one because it’s really really fun. And one thing I’ve been working for the last year, and one day I’m going to finish and buy not a bottle but probably a case of champagne, is a book on – it’s tentatively titled Against All Odds Leadership and The Handmaid’s Tale. So I’ve been connecting various topics related to shared leadership, alternating leadership and followership, complexity leadership, like if you can think of non traditional leadership and the characters and situations in The Handmaid’s Tale. So that’s what I’ve been doing.
Sarah Noll Wilson
I love it. So you know and I had shared with Cris beforehand, I have not read or seen The Handmaid’s Tale. So I can’t engage in conversation around that, however, I can engage and would be curious to engage and explore some of these topics. Things like shared leadership or alternating or even followership, because you and I have lots of conversations informally about the challenges of leadership in organizations, how often, you know, just today we were talking about the impact of coercion in in the or, you know, in organizations. And so are you comfortable for us to just talk about first just starting with this idea of shared leadership and this concept and what does that mean for people who aren’t familiar with it?
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Yeah, and I am but with with the sincere caveat, that I’m not an expert in shared leadership. So a lot of the topics that I’m exploring now have to do with my trying to make sense of leadership within the show. And just to give you a very brief synopsis. It’s The Handmaid’s Tale takes place in a fictional dystopian world, in which people are oppressed. And imagine like of fundamentalist, religious, pretty toxic group. I told a friend of mine yesterday that it’s kind of like the Nazis married fundamentalist religious people who married the Taliban, I don’t know I don’t know how to explain that. So it it’s it’s a very, very, very oppressive world. And in particular, it’s a very oppressive world for women. But what’s what’s interesting about The Handmaid’s Tale, and that’s what kind of inspired me is that you can’t really say that there is a leader in that story. There is a protagonist, there is somebody on whom the light is shining, there is somebody who appears in many of the scenes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that she is the leader or at least not the leader all the time. There are multiple other leaders, so then that got me interested in, okay, so what is that? Is that shared leadership? Is that, is that followership? Is that like, what is that? How do I find out what that means in terms of literature? And that’s when I got into shared or distributed leadership. And then I got into various models of followership. And then yesterday, I was reading about leadership moments and the relationship between the leadership and follower and how it alternates. So that’s kind of like my world right now. Actually, today, I got into complexity leadership theory. So it’s, it’s been kind of fun, because by now I’ve gotten away from the first chapters that I wrote, are naturally the ones that I knew more about, the ones about ethics and leadership. I’ve written a chapter about role theory and leadership. So those have already written and now I’m embarking into this, you know, journey with yet another software called Rabbit.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Oh, that’s a third one. Alright, ResearchRabbit. What is it? How do we use it? This is now going to turn into an episode of just what are all the tools we should be using. (laughs)
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
So what ResearchRabbit does is you go in there, and by the way, this tool is absolutely free. It’s totally free. So you go in there, and you look for keywords of whatever research you’re doing. And I have like different libraries for each of the chapters. And, for example, I could be looking for distributed leadership or shared leadership, right? And it’s going to start populating with articles. Now it doesn’t have the PDFs of the articles for copyright reasons.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Sure, sure.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
But then I can go to the library, to the university library and find the articles that I want, right. Once I discover which articles I want and I don’t need too many, five, six, you know, at most 10. Now, that crazy thing starts populating it with similar articles later articles, earlier articles. And not only that, but it creates this graphic in which you can see like the little bubbles, the little circle. And the bubbles are bigger when they are more cited articles. And then you can see like the articles that are the hubs that a lot of people read. So very quickly can see oh, man, if I’m talking about complexity leadership theory, I really need to read these five, like cited by everybody. Now, are there other tools for that? Yes. But either my university doesn’t subscribe to them, or they’re crazy difficult to learn and ResearchRabbit isn’t.
Sarah Noll Wilson
I love that. I, so, thanks for that tip. I’m totally gonna download that. Not tonight, because I have a lot of work to do, but this weekend and play around with it. Okay. So –
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Okay.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Let’s, let’s take us back to this idea of shared leadership. And I understand that you’re not an expert, however, it is probably safe to say that you are more familiar with it, then you’re certainly more familiar with it than me, and probably others. And some people might not even be familiar with that phrase, or that title even. So let’s start with what what shared leadership mean? What does it look like? Why, why and when is it important?
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Okay, so the, let’s take a step back and talk about what leadership means. Like have the shared definition of what leadership means. Different definitions by different authors, but maybe a simplified definition is that leadership means influencing others. But when people follow a leader, or the followers, by definition, do so voluntarily. We were talking, you and I were talking about coercion before, if there is any sort of coercion, and by the way, by coercion, I don’t necessarily mean you’re putting somebody against the wall and you know, threatening them with their lives. If somebody could lose their job, if they if if whatever they’re doing could damage their reputation, or their career, or their opportunity for a promotion, or even their chance for, I don’t know, some free time or resources. That’s coercion. So basically, when you have leadership, it’s because people are following you, regardless of authority. And voluntarily and freely. It’s kind of like, the question you could ask yourself is, if you’re really talking about a leader, you would follow that person, even if that person were not your boss, did not have any authority over you, was not hierarchically superior to you in any way. And yet, you would follow that person.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Folks, if you’re, if you hear us, if this conversation feels a little disjointed, my friends listening to it, it’s because we’ve run into some audio challenges. And it makes us giggle and then we come back to it. But I do want to come back to your definition. And that combination of definitions, that leadership isn’t just influencing others. That there also has to be followership, which, as you described, is freely, voluntarily, regardless of authority, following someone, and I want to take a moment, because you and I talk a lot about and people have heard me say on the show, leadership isn’t a role. It’s an it’s an act, right. It’s a it’s a verb. And and just to pause a little bit on that coercion again, because I think that that is a phrase, like you said, that people will think looks much more aggressive than it can. We know a lot of companies who are coming back to the office and expecting people to come back to the office. And if you don’t come back to the office, you could lose your job. And that could be could be perceived as an act of coercion. Right?
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
It, not only could it be perceived, it is an act of coercion.
Sarah Noll Wilson
It is an act of coercion.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
So the question that you ask yourself of what coercion is, would you do it voluntarily? Like for example, today, now, you you invited me for this for this podcast, which is always a lot of fun. And I did it voluntarily. There is absolutely no consequence to me of being here or not being here. You invited me voluntarily. There’s no, there’s absolutely no coercion in our relationship. Pretty much ever, but especially in this moment that we’re using as an example. So the question is, when you when you’re trying to ask yourself, is there coercion? The, what you need to ask yourself is would this person do this voluntarily? Would this person do this regardless of the consequences? Are there any consequences that would be dangerous for that person of not doing this? If the answer is yes, you’re not talking about leadership, you’re talking about authority.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
And leadership and authority do not mean the same thing.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Right.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
And followership does not and that was a distinction. And now I’m trying to remember from whom Lucier, I think is the author of the book. He’s the author of a well known textbook, published by Cengage and now I apologize, but I can’t remember the author.
Sarah Noll Wilson
That’s ok. If you think of it, then we can add it into the show notes and give them credit.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
It’s a well known textbook for leadership and he was differentiating, not only leadership and leading but also followership and following. You could follow someone, you could follow somebody following would be, somebody told me to do something and I’m doing it.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
But followership is a voluntary submission to somebody else’s leadership, and there’s a lot of power in that word. What’s also interesting about leadership and followership, first of all, there is a lot of agreement in the literature that you cannot and that makes a lot of sense, you cannot have leadership without followership, just like you cannot have a teacher without a student or a student. Right. Like, there are some roles in society that that are interconnected. So I think I read it in a book by Maxwell a long time ago that, though, who is it though, who lead us and have no followers, is just taking a walk. (laughter) So if if you have a leader and doesn’t have a follower, then that’s not a leader, right. And likewise, a follower will, will include a leader. What I’ve been seeing in the literature is the idea that leadership is a state. Just like when we talk about engagement, you talk about this, the state of engagement and the trait engagement, where the trait of engagement is traits that lead somebody to probably be engaged more likely than others. And the state of engagement is are you engaged in that moment? Well, the state of leadership is are you leading in that moment, and that state does not need to be permanent. In fact, leadership and followership can alternate, the leader can become the follower of the same leader and the follower can, like they can take turns. One of the problems that we have when we look at the literature, though, is that a lot of the literature on leadership is focused on leadership within organizations where it’s very hard for you to differentiate leadership from authority, because authority is part of the it’s part of the picture.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Right.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Hierarchy is part of the picture. So it’s very hard for people to imagine. So what is, of course, there is authority in this picture, right? But when you have a situation of crisis, in which random people are rising in resistance, you don’t necessarily have a leader, it would be too dangerous to have a leader. So then what you have is, is, is people working towards the same purpose. Another interesting thing that I read yesterday is that in the way, both the leadership and the, both the leader and the follower, are followers of the same purpose. They are both followers of the same goal. And that’s what binds them together.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Which is, I feel like often is a disconnect when we think about that from a workplace perspective, that there’s not always a joint sense of purpose. Again, because somebody might be following because of authority, or coercion.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Exactly.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Instead of – now, sometimes, you know, I think about my career and times when I was following and was very clear, we were on a shared mission together, right. We are in a really focused purpose. But I think yeah, I think that is interesting. In organizations, we use the language of leadership so directly tied to positional power and authority. That I think that creates barriers to people being intentional about creating acts of leadership. Because I feel like it is a role instead of a state, as you’ve shared, right? That, that, I wonder, I’m just chewing on right now, the relationship of the overuse of the word leadership to role authority, and the impact that that has on actual leadership in an organization. Does that makes sense?
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Yes. And the thought that is coming through my head is that there has been kind of vilification, I guess, if that word exists, that word exists?
Sarah Noll Wilson
Vilification.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Of the word management, so nobody wants to be a manager, a manager is seen as kind of a lower level, besides you even see that in the leadership, the leadership development literature, right? It’s that manager, you have the supervisor, and then you have the management, and then you have the leaders. And usually that’s equivalent to the people higher up. But all those are based on authority. And that also colors the research, because a lot of the research is done where? Where, where that is taking place. So then now, how do you separate? It’s like, when I did the, my work on engagement my favorite question was, would you continue doing what you were doing if you won the lottery? And of course, that’s kind of a simplified question. Because you, the answer might be no, but for reasons that have nothing to do with your passion for what you do, maybe a family member needs you or something else. But in general, if you think of what is it that you would continue doing, regardless of how much money you made? Because money is a sort of coercion, in a way.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
The question is the same for leaders. Hey, leaders, if you really want to be a leader, ask yourself, what would be people doing if they didn’t have to? If you were stripped tomorrow of your authority, what is, who is it that would continue with you? And what is it that they would be doing? And anything that has to do with your position, your formal power and and using formal power or positional power because of course, there are different types of power. Whatever it is that people would be doing because of your positional power, your ability to reward, your ability to punish, that’s not leadership.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
So, going back to your original question, so then what’s shared leadership? So shared leadership would be when, for example, you have a team that has a common goal, and they’re literally sharing leadership. It’s not even that they’re alternating it in which one person is a leader now has a state of leadership now and the other has a state of leadership later, is that they’re literally making those decisions together, or that different people take charge of certain aspects of the project or certain aspects of what they’re doing. It’s what some of the literature will state is that the concept of a top down authority based, coercion based method of influencing others – I’m trying to look for a word that is neither leadership nor management does not work as well, in an Information industry. Does not work as well with a highly complex, highly volatile world in which change is constant. And there are wicked problems that we can’t seem to solve.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
So and one thing that occurs to me right now, as I’m talking about that is when you talk about an organization, say company, a little company X startup who has a very charismatic founder, and everybody’s doing what the founder said, you can imagine that authority working, right. But let’s think about things such as climate change. It’s a wicked problem. Would climate change, is it conceivable to think of a leader to solve climate change? So because we can’t think of a leader, the only way to solve that problem is by having the word that comes to my mind is popcorn. (laughs) Is having like emergence of local leaders who are going to be in the state of leadership in different times in different places in different moments. And that’s the only way that we can possibly address this challenge. Different inventors, different visionaries, different idea makers, different people influencing their little areas.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Do you feel If that’s possible in the current corporate landscape to have shared leadership?
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
That’s a tough question.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Or what, or what would need to change? And certainly we’ve seen organizations who have tried to remain flat. And I often see them at odds with still wanting to maintain the traditional sense of authority on some level, right? And that becomes that that tension point, or I think about, you know, back in the early aughts, when you had holacracy, coming to the forefront, the whole movement of leadership circles, essentially, right, Zappos was really, that shoe company was really big at the time exploring that, but it doesn’t feel like a lot of those took hold. And, you know, because let’s, I mean, let’s also be real when we talk about what leadership looks like, and what we’ve researched, it also is what leadership looks like, from a largely predominant white male perspective, as well. Because that’s who’s been in power for ever.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Yeah. And in Western and it also, if we’re going to talk about positionality, let let me express, like, what is mine. Like, I am a woman, I’m a Latina, I grew up in a very patriarchal world, I grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Only came to the US as an adult. And it’s not like the US is not patriarchal, also. So I have my own biases. And I also have, if you look at the research on gender and leadership, you will see that that women tend to be more communal, and they can in general, statistically speaking, obviously.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
So am I impacted by that? And fascinated by the idea of community decision making as the one? Yes. And are corporations like that, at least in the US no, and in other countries where the power distance is even stronger than in the US? Probably not. So I don’t know necessarily that, first of all – power based on on authority is not necessarily a dirty word.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Sure, sure. That’s fair.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Right? You can exercise that power ethically. We’re talking about ethics. You can be ethical about it. You need to be, my my old professor at Bowling Green State University, Dr. Patrick Park, and a shout out to him. He used to ask us all the time, what will you do with the power you were given? So if somebody’s given the power of authority, the power to reward, the power to punish, the power to take somebody’s job away, they need to really be conscious of what, what that power means. Are there situations in which authority will be the fastest way to get something done? Yeah, I’m leading the situation like that right now. I’m changing the curriculum of my program, and like making all sorts of changes. Is it easier for me to just say, Alright, guys, here’s what we’re gonna do, boom! And get it done? Of course. I think the question is, if you are in a situation in which if we think about adaptive leadership, if you are in a situation in which there is no expert, in which you really don’t, nobody really has a magical telescope, nobody has the magical map that tells you where to go, then to have somebody who is just acting on authority, and everybody’s just following that person, because that person has authority can be very dangerous.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. It’s interesting, because a situation is coming up for me as I think about my own life, and reflecting, Have I ever experienced shared leadership? I think, as a company, we’re trying to move more towards that. And I’m very aware as the business owner, I have an incredible amount of authority, right? And how do I use that in a way that will benefit more people than not? When I reflect on my career before starting my company, I think there’s only one situation where I experienced probably what was close to shared leadership. And that was when I was at my last company, ARAG, but it was in a specific project, right? It wasn’t the whole scope. But it was when we were doing all this culture work because none of us had ever done it in this way. So it was this sort of triangle, (laughs) if you will of myself, my boss, Lisa and Aaron. And it was this constant sort of stepping in taking, you know, right, like it was just it was a, an organic way of people stepping up and leading different parts of it because of the complexity of it. It wasn’t, it wasn’t an easy fix. It wasn’t a oh, just do this and then we’ll create the culture. And and what I will say, for me personally, anyway, that was without question, the most meaningful work I’d ever done to that point before starting my own company, that felt like fulfilling, right, and so I’m just reflecting on that, that relationship between shared leadership and engagement.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
And I think you said a couple of words there that are, that I’m thinking of, one of them is commitment. So that works well, when everybody is highly committed to purpose. And that purpose is clear, crystal clear. I see in my career a lot. So many times I’ve been engaged in mission writing processes and vision writing processes used, usually followed by two years of strategic planning. But instead of really discussing what values are guiding that group, and what really, what really get those people excited when they wake up in the morning, we mess up with where the commas are, and how it is actually the wording is going to be. If the group really has a sense of shared purpose, then shared leadership can work. But you do need to have that commitment, you do need to have the shared purpose. The other thing that you said is complexity. When it is a very complex project, you you need shared leadership. You know what’s, what’s occurring to me? You know, when we met and you were doing improv theater, and I went to see you in the improv theater in Des Moines?
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yep.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
It was so much fun. Can you imagine an improv show guided by a theater director, like –
Sarah Noll Wilson
It’s the worst improv is where somebody is trying to drive the scene. I mean, it happens not in a formal way. But some of the worst improv I’ve ever seen is because somebody wants to direct the scene, basically, instead of letting the scene emerge to whatever. And the best improvers are the ones that go, well throw this out there, we’ll see where it goes and will evolve and expand and grow, right? It’s the whole Yes/And idea.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
So that’s the quintessential example of a shared, shared process. Like imagine that you and I were engaged in, I don’t know doing something that really difficult. And maybe you have expertise in this one area, and you are more familiar with this thing. And I’m more familiar with that thing. And then we alternate. Neither of us has authority over the other, but we have a very strong sense of commitment to our purpose. That’s what shared leadership would be. I remember when, when I was still at Drake, I did an exercise. I don’t know if you remember an exercise called marooned in which people had to decide if you were marooned – it’s an exercise by HR DQ. It’s an online company that sells like training materials and so on.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Is that like, you’re on an island?
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
You’re on an island, and you have to decide to escape from the island. What is it that you do first, right? And one of the and one thing that and we did it to explore personality, and we were talking about people who were lower in agreeableness, and like super challenging, and so on. The challengers worked great when they were right. But when they were wrong, they led the whole group astray.
Sarah Noll Wilson
(laughs) Sure.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
I’ve even done some exercises in which some some simulations in which I would give one person who was a challenger, I would give them the wrong answer. And then I would cheerfully see them lead the whole group astray. So the tragedy of authority based leadership is, or authority based, whatever the heck we’re going to call that. I can’t think, I will call it management. Is that authority based, whatever it is that if you are an expert, and you know where you’re going, and you have the right map, if you’re right, it is the most efficient way to go from point A to point B.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
The tragedy is if you’re wrong, it’s going to be nobody’s job to tell you you’re wrong.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Right. Well, and the other you know, what’s also coming up for me as you talk about that is the formal authority and also the informal authority, right? I, in preparation for the webinar we did last month on remote relationships. I was very familiar. I’m familiar with a lot of different types of bias. Right. But there was one that I came across that I, as soon as I read it, I thought, man, yeah, no, I’ve seen that. Is the bias of visibility bias that we tend to prefer and defer to people who speak up first and who speak often. And, and right, which also gets into, I mean, we know this from a personality perspective, right? There’s the perception that extroverts, people who lean more towards extroversion are better leaders or people who lean towards more challenging, make better leaders. And, you know, and again, this idea of shared leadership is so beautiful to me, because it’s about tapping into everyone’s gifts that they bring to the table, when they need to be brought to the table, a bit. Like that’s the image that’s coming to mind is creating the space for other moments of leadership to emerge. That might not look like quote, unquote, right, the traditional leadership we think of in American western culture, of what it means to be a leader. So that’s the other thing that’s coming up for me is, again, to that point of, if the person who speaks up fastest has the expertise. Great. That’s not always the case. And I say that in full disclosure, as somebody who is very comfortable in many situations, speaking up quickly, right? Processing verbally, that just because I speak first doesn’t mean that I’m speaking the best. But there’s an advantage that I have, compared to say, my colleague, Teresa, who is a thinker. I mean, we’re both thinkers, but she’s a, she processes in a different speed than I do. And yeah, and I’m just, I’m imagining and and I’m also thinking about, we know that teams that are able to tap into their diversity of all intersectionalities, if they’re able to lean into that will be more effective. It’s not just bringing together a diverse group of people and saying, Go. And I’m, and I’m just kind of thinking out loud. Again, where are those moments of shared leadership? And how many people might really struggle with that idea? Because they like the authority.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
I understand that.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, for sure. It’s easier.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
It’s easier, like there’s, especially when you’re pretty convinced you’re right.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
It can be super frustrating, like, imagine a situation of crisis. You know, the organization is in bad shape, for whatever reason, right? There is a crisis in the air. And you have a lot of experience and a lot of expertise. And you’re pretty darn sure you’re right, then a democratic process in which different people are going to take the lead can be incredibly frustrating.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Because their like, just follow me. Right? Just follow me. And I’ll show you what the right thing to do is. The real issue is, are you really right? And do you really know where you’re going? And if you do, awesome, then there, there could be a zillion situations in which you do. I think, in today’s organizations, with all the changes taking place, like think of COVID, for example, that we’ve all lived in, all of a sudden, you disperse all those people.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
And everybody is working independently and trying to relearn how to work. How – that happened from one day to another. How does the organization recoup from that? How does it continue operating? How does, does it handle the crisis? At that point, there wasn’t anybody who knew what to do. Nobody did. It was a completely new territory. What’s gonna happen tomorrow, what will happen when we have our next crisis? And it’s not if but when?
Sarah Noll Wilson
Sure, yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
How are we preparing people to operate without a strict, a strong authority, and perhaps, organizations should be spending more time focusing on purpose and values and getting people excited about what they do and who they do it for and why they do it. Because if we really had that, then you don’t need authority.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. How? What does that look like? And again, I’m just I’m speaking from my own personal experience. I spent 15 years in insurance. So I’ll talk to my first eight years. Insurance doesn’t move my soul. I’m just going to say it, I’m happy to support those organizations. For me personally, that never gave me a sense of purpose, right? The thing that motivated me, truly were my peers. You know, I developed such close relationships that it was like we are in this together. Now that changed when I went to ARAG, because the type of insurance actually felt like it was beneficial to humanity, because it was legal insurance. And we were helping people in moments of crises. How do we create that sense of purpose and meaningfulness? Perhaps when people are doing jobs, that for all intents and purposes, our our jobs, our industries, where they go, it’s good money. It’s a good paycheck. Like, what is that? What’s your perspective on? What does that look like? And I’m and to be clear, I know there’s a lot of people who get excited about a whole host of things. I know, I’m not speaking for the masses here. I’m just saying for me personally, right. An industry like insurance never never fed my soul. It was it was what are we doing as a company to take care of our people? That’s what was motivating to me. So how do you how do you navigate purpose and values? Perhaps in a situation like that?
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Ah, yikes.
Sarah Noll Wilson
(laughs)
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
In an ideal world, your people are going to have like, they are going to have that sense of what they’re doing that for.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Because you can think about insurance in a way that changes lives and protect people in moments of crisis. If you think about insurance. And you think about it ethically, and not the stereotype that that comes into many of our heads when we think about insurance. Heavens, it’s important.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
And does it change lives and doesn’t protect people? And is it there when people need it? So it’s –
Sarah Noll Wilson
And that’s not usually the story companies are telling. Usually the stories companies are telling are, How much money did we make? And what’s our profit margin?
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Right. Because I don’t think you’re going to get people excited about the purpose of making money for the shareholders, and making sure the CEO makes more millions. I don’t know about you, but that does not – like it’s not that necessarily through my career. And granted, I don’t work in insurance, I work in academia, and there was nobody making millions. But like, I don’t care how much the president of the university is making or not making. It doesn’t doesn’t matter to me. But it’s not what inspires me. I don’t wake up every morning thinking, yay, I made, I worked more. And now the president can make more money.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Shareholder value by two percent. Now some people are motivated by that, right. I mean, I’ve talked to some people, they’re like, I just want to win. And I want to win for everyone. And the way that – and that’s great, right? I mean, and that’s, I think that’s part two of, of being an effective leader is is really understanding and tapping into. You always use the language when we talk like what what lights up your eyes? Right? And how do you pay attention to that? And you know, and I think about, I had a leader Eric Wishman. And I remember him once saying, (laughs) he said, I learned real quickly with you not to come to you with a project about how it’s going to increase our bottom line, but how it was going to impact people. Because if I came to you, Sarah, with like, Yeah, we’re gonna save 20 some percent, I would just get a glazed over face. But if I came to you and said, Hey, this is going to make people more effective, more successful, like I knew I could get you on board, because he knew he knew it inspired me. And again, that’s going to be different. And I think that’s part of the challenge, too, right? Of creating a culture that motivates. I look, I look at my own colleagues, right. Mary on our team is very, she likes she likes winning, she likes closing the deals like that’s what motivates her. Teresa, and I love the moments of learning, right? Amy loves being able to support the team and doing the work and making sure that we’re slowing down enough to pay attention to that and tap into it. That’s that’s, that’s what I think it should look like, right? It’s not going to be this blanket statement.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Maybe that’s that’s the main that’s the most important job of a leader is to figure out what is it that lights, the light in people’s eyes? What is it that they’re passionate about? What is it that would get them excited about going to work and if – because if you can’t find that, all you have is that sad you work for me and you come here and you punch the. And we’ve all experienced people in random times that that made a difference in jobs that you would never think. Like, I’m always thinking, I don’t like flying that much. I fly a lot for, you know, conferences and professionals and so on. But it’s not my thing. I don’t really, I don’t think I’ll ever really, really like it. So I remember recently, I was at an airport, and there was this guy in the, whatever the name of the store is Paradise store, you know, they have a zillion of those in airports. And that guy was so great.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
And he made such a difference in my life that day, because I was nervous. And he cheered me up. And all of a sudden, I had this rush of, whoa, this is so nice. He’s a salesperson in an airport store. Somebody, some smart leader who is really influential in that if he’s a young person, and that young man’s life would tap into, you’re making a difference in the travelers lives.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
And not, you’re making money for the president. Or the board of trustees or whoever. (laughs)
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
So I think that the the, there was a lot of discussion on whether the leader sets the vision. And of course, that’s kind of controversial, too, because vision and the ability to have a vision are considered huge, very important leadership competencies. But again, in times of crisis, and in times of mess, nobody has that magical telescope, nobody has the crazy vision. So I think it was Sharon de la Spark, who wrote her leadership can be taught, she was at the International Leadership Association Conference. Or maybe, no, it was that conference that we went to together. That conference on case in point, remember, at the University of Minnesota?
Sarah Noll Wilson
You bet I do.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
And she said it’s not about vision, I hope I’m not misquoting her. It’s about purpose. And that really stuck with me, that idea that it’s not necessarily the leaders job to establish the vision because the vision could be collective because the leader at some points may not know where they’re going, either. But it’s that sense of common purpose that you absolutely have to establish if people are going to follow you voluntarily, regardless of whether you have the authority or not. One important thing to say is that the fact that the word leadership implies involuntary followership does not mean the leader cannot have authority also. It is possible to be a leader and have authority. But if you’re truly a leader, your authority is irrelevant. People will follow you anyway.
Sarah Noll Wilson
And you hear that I, you know, it’s always I love when somebody will say, I would follow that person anywhere. If they leave, I’ll leave. If they wanted me to do this, I would absolutely do that. And not that that said often, but when it is it is said with conviction, right? Or somebody who says, Oh, you’re you’re starting something. Yeah, I’m behind you. What do you need? Right, once the support you need?
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Now, of course, we, it’s dangerous to also romanticize that and ignore the pitfalls, because that is also a sort of, that is also a type of power.
Yeah, sure.
Right? So authority is a type of power, but being charismatic and being liked, and having people get excited about you. That’s all, that’s another source of power. And it’s possible for somebody to use that power in nefarious ways.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Sure.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
So, basically, at the end of the day, whether people are following you because you have authority, or whether people are following you because you’re exciting to them, there is a very similar danger there. And that is you could be leading people astray. You still need to use it ethically, and you still need to ask yourself, could I be wrong? And honestly, maybe this is a woman talking again, I can’t take I can’t go away from my positionality and from how I grew up and so on, but I do think high confidence is overrated.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, I do to. I do. You know, and here’s why. Well, here’s one reason that I’ve observed. I mean, I say this with love, but intellectual humility is sexy like, and I don’t mean sexy in like a romantic sexy way. But it’s – yeah, that that overconfidence. I mean, part of that is many of us have discomfort with uncertainty. So if you feel certain than then I’m going to feel more certain. I share this often, when, when somebody tells me, “Oh, I’m really self aware. No, I’m a good leader.” Like definitively, 100% of the time they’re not. (laughter) Like, I shouldn’t say that. I won’t say all, but like, 99% of the time, the person who comes from an incredible place of confidence and how they say it, now, are there people I can think of some friends. However, they act constantly in ways of, of intellectual humility, or like, and I get it wrong too. But the people who are like, no, I’m good, period. But the, but the, the people who always show the most self awareness, the the people who I personally go, Yeah, I would love to work with you, are the ones who go, I try. I don’t know if I always get it right. But I try or I know, I’m aware in someway. Like the humility language shows up, right? And not not from a self deprecating perspective, not from like, a an extreme position of what do I want to say like beating yourself up, but just this, like, I try, like, I don’t know, if I’m there. Sometimes I get distracted, or whatever the case is, and but I do I do wonder if the desire for people who are confident and sometimes overconfident, and that can be a trap I can fall into to to be very clear, when I get really passionate about something, you better believe I can just like, if I believe it, I will say it like I believe it. And I have to be really, I have to make sure that I’m constantly challenging myself and surrounded by people who go, Yeah, but I have a different perspective on that. But I think it’s because that confidence calms down that fear of uncertainty a bit.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
And then we go back to the whole issue of coercion, like coming back and full circle. You not only need to be surrounded by people who will challenge you, but you need to create an environment in which those people will be safe enough to challenge you.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Right.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Otherwise, yeah, we can all fall into that trap. We were all I don’t know, I shouldn’t say we’re all. I’m gonna speak for myself. I am very confident in some things to. I’m not confident in everything. A lot of stuff that I’m not confident about. But there’s stuff that I’m confident about. And I could be wrong. And, right and wrong or relative anyway, like, I could be right in some contexts. And not right, and some others, and I need people to yin and yang here. To balance it out. I really like for example, the relationship I have with my own boss, in which I feel very comfortable challenging him. But I also deeply respect him. So like, I really like that, that kind of relationship. Now, does he have authority over me? Yeah. Does it matter? Not really.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
I do my job with or without him. Yeah, that is something that I think can be really magical. And it doesn’t have to be with your boss, it can be with your colleague, it can be with your team, it can be with other people in your organization. And even though I’m saying, Hey, this is academia, academia is very hierarchical. So this experience is not necessarily the experience everybody else has.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. Yeah, it’s very hierarchical, and sometimes very ego driven, depending on the, the group. Well, and you know, I mean, what you’re speaking to is, I mean, it goes, it goes to that, the consistency of psychological safety, right? When we can have cultures where people can challenge and be challenged. Yeah, it’s interesting to think about, I want to, I want to chew on that the relationship between shared leadership and psychological safety. Because when I think about relationships that I experience as feeling high levels of psychological safety. I say I because I maybe the other person doesn’t feel this way or project teams I’ve been a part of or even clients, you know, even some clients where I have felt and have seen people demonstrate to high levels of psychological safety, there, there was almost this shared leadership happening. I want to chew on that a little bit, I think, because I think that’s interesting. It’s not something I feel – what I feel like I see organizations talk about is we want people to be empowered. We want them to take ownership, we want them to act like a business owner, right? These are the kind of quintessential phrases. But what would it look differently to say? No, we want to create a culture of shared leadership. And and what would that look like? And what might that, what kind of, what would emerge, right? Or when when, when have teams done that really, really well and what was possible because of it? And also, like, what were the traps?
Yeah. In what moments, that’s not a good idea.
Right.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
The example that we usually come up with is if the building is on fire, I’m not gonna sit down and have a democratic discussion.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Right, right.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
But then if the building is on fire, and then then – and there’s a firefighter in my building, then that person knows where to go. And at that moment, in fact, that’s that’s kind of a good example to me, because in my, in my classes now, I have at Barry, I have quite a few firefighters, I have quite a few military people. I have police officers, right? Like many of my students are in public safety roles. And in the class, and in, right, in the context of the program I’m the leader, and I’m also the person with authority. If the building were on fire, I would stop being the leader very fast.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
And perhaps the question then becomes how does shared leadership or even a switch between the leader and the follower, it’s not even a shared leadership –
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, you talked about earlier, alternating.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
That alternating. How does it happen in the context of authority? So the leader who voluntarily gives up their authority to follow somebody else, who at that moment would be the best person for that moment? And how can you bring that to organizations? Because organizations are going to have fires too.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
You’re gonna have moments in which somebody else should be leading that conversation, that project, that system. And not just the person whose job it is to do it.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. Well, Cris, I mean, you and I can talk all day. I’m just I’m really proud that we didn’t buy any domains during this time. No, just kidding. That’s an inside joke, folks. That’s a joke that anytime Cris and I get together, we brainstorm and get excited about ideas. And, you know, it was a good session, if we bought some web domains that we may or may not use.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
We haven’t bought domains in ages. I mean, what happened to us Sarah?
Sarah Noll Wilson
We need to spend more time together. No, but I think that this idea of shared leadership, I do want to bring you back on and dig deeper into ethics, because for a future episode. Only because I think that that is a concept that is so – well, I don’t think, I know, right? And we know that it’s such an important concept. And often I feel like I don’t know people think about it in terms of lawyers have to go to ethics training or right, certain industries have to go to ethics training, instead of really thinking about that. So future future conversation a couple weeks or a couple months, we’ll have you back. And we’ll talk about ethics. But I really appreciate this dialogue around this concept of shared leadership. I’m curious to personally dig in more to that and just reflecting for myself of I think you’ve given, you’ve given me a name to something we’re trying to evolve to, even within our company, because, you know, it’s my my company, I started it. So there’s a lot of deferring to me and my authority. And that’s not the kind of company I want all the time. And so what is that? What are those moments of either alternating leadership or shared leadership? What does that what does that look like? And how do you cultivate that? Yeah, I think that’s the question I’m really chewing on for myself as as the person who has a lot of authority. How do I, what does it look like to give that authority up? Right, or to shift it? And yeah, you’re just given me a lot of stuff to think about. So thank you.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Well, thank you. And I love how we have these conversations and they kind of organically grow. And we have necessarily no idea of what we’re talking about as we start. So this is super fun.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah, no, this was great, Cris, for people who want to connect with you, who are maybe interested in following you and your research. Well, okay, so here’s, I’ll give a plug. Cris is going to be facilitating our second webinar in October, our third webinar in October, where she’ll be exploring the idea of decoding personality and understanding the big five. So if you liked our chat today and want to learn more from Cris, be sure to go to our website, and you can sign up for the the webinar series so you can learn directly from Cris, but Cris, what’s the best places for people to connect with you?
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Um, LinkedIn obviously, is a possibility. Or honestly, if you professors are very easy to find, right? If we wanted to hide it would be bad. So if you just do a search on Cris Wildermuth Berry University, you’re going to find me very quickly. Just make sure you don’t add an H to my name, or you’re gonna go to cyber nowhere.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. (laughs) I love you, Cris. I love you so much.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
I love you too.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Thanks for being on the show today.
Dr. Cris Wildermuth
Until the next Disney.
Sarah Noll Wilson
Yeah. Soon.
Our guest this week has been Dr. Cris Wildermuth. And there’s a number of takeaways I’m holding on to from this conversation. I wasn’t familiar with the term and practice and research behind shared leadership. And I’m just really excited to dig in and explore what does that look like and and how we can weave that into our work not only with clients, but our own world. So that that was just a real gift. And we want to hear from you. We’d love to hear your thoughts, what resonated for you? What questions do you have? Maybe when was a time when you experience shared leadership? And what was that like? How did it come about? You can always send me an email at podcast @ Sarah Noll Wilson.com. Or you can send me a message on social media platforms where my DMs are always open, you can find me most prevalently on LinkedIn. And if you haven’t already, please be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the show on your preferred podcast platform. Another way you can support the show is by becoming a patron, you can go to patreon.com/conversations on conversations where your financial support goes directly to supporting the team that makes this show possible. Plus you get some pretty great swag.
A big thank you to our team that makes the show possible. To our producer Nick Wilson, our sound editor Drew Noll, our transcriptionists Becky Reinert, our marketing consultant, Jessica Burdg and the rest of the SNoWCo. crew. And just a big final thank you to my colleague and my friend and my mentor, Dr. Cris Wildermuth. This has been Conversations on Conversations. Thank you so much for listening, and remember my friends, when we can change the conversations we have with ourselves and others, we can change the world. So be sure to rest, rehydrate and I’ll see you again next week.
Sarah Noll Wilson is on a mission to help leaders build and rebuild teams. She aims to empower leaders to understand and honor the beautiful complexity of the humans they serve. Through her work as an Executive Coach, an in-demand Keynote Speaker, Researcher, Contributor to Harvard Business Review, and Bestselling Author of “Don’t Feed the Elephants”, Sarah helps leaders close the gap between what they intend to do and the actual impact they make. She hosts the podcast “Conversations on Conversations”, is certified in Co-Active Coaching and Conversational Intelligence, and is a frequent guest lecturer at universities. In addition to her work with organizations, Sarah is a passionate advocate for mental health.