Understanding the Importance of Vulnerability in Leadership with Erin Leslie

Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Maddison and Daved Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of Definitely Maybe Agile with your hosts, Peter Madison, Dave Sharrock, and joined today by Erin Leslie. So Erin, would you like to go ahead and introduce yourself?

Thank you so much. And thank you for having me. Definitely excited to be here. I'm a leadership coach and a career strategist at heart. And so I help my clients really achieve success in being self-aware and understanding how to leverage emotional intelligence in their day-to-day work life. That has been a great experience that stemmed from 25 years in technology leadership. And most recently, that has been played out with federal government leading application development teams in Transport Canada, which has been a really, really positive experience for me. I enjoy being a public servant. And although much of my past has been in the private, the private sector, I enjoy serving this nation from the federal government perspective. So I'm very happy to be here and sharing this topic of agile with all of you.

Yeah, and I think that's a fantastic background to this uh because we often hear about these differences between private and public sector and how transformation changes or is different between these different uh these different spaces and how we approach things differently. So I'm I'm quite looking forward to this conversation today and uh seeing where it takes us. With that in mind, um if you if you think of some of the the highlights of um you you said the Transport Canada piece has gone really well and you've really enjoyed it. What have been some of the highlights of that?

Um given that for me, um federal government has been a three-year journey so far. So prior to that I was in municipal government uh with the city of Toronto. So my overall experience in the public sector has been quite short, relatively short compared to my colleagues. And so just kind of getting in there and understanding the dynamics and the culture, the processes for sure, how to navigate things in a way that's ethical, but also, you know, being agile, being nimble so that services can be modernized and digitized swiftly and with the user in mind. So the things that have really gone well for me in all of that learning from a public sector perspective has been the ability to shape positive teams, creating vulnerable teams that are open, that can apply agile methodologies to the software development lifecycle, particularly in my back-end space that I'm managing now, and improve the processes around technology development and digital enablement and deliver great products to the to the public, like the zero emissions vehicles uh updates to the medium heavy duty uh inclusion for that zero emissions uh incentives product, as well as launching a new enterprise grants contribution product to the public that will improve the assessment and intake for granting at TC in a more rapid and efficient manner. So really looking at how to, you know, take some of those manual processes and make it easier on the on the back-end administration teams, but also improve the outreach to the citizen and the businesses that interface with us every day. So those have been some of the major highlights for me over the last few years.

Erin, can you uh maybe just touch a little bit on the big difference that you've experienced between private and public? So I've also been working in that public sector on one of the first, they are different environments, right? But also there's so many similarities as well. So it's this sort of you you can certainly transfer experience you have in one sector into the other, but there are significant differences. So what would what really stands out about the differences you saw and the similarities you saw as you've made that transition from private to public?

Yeah, that's a good question. I think one of the foremost differences is the ability to leverage partnerships easily. Um, so external partnerships, third-party partnerships, partnerships that engage with you know an aspect of using something to prototype in order to determine if it's the best outcome for to meet the needs of whatever you're improving, whether it's a service or a product or a process. In the private sector, there's all kinds of trial and laboratory and um, let's get our hands dirty and see how much we can innovate and then bring to a functional, meeting, uh meaningful product and valuable product. Whereas in government, it's a little bit trickier to do that. But I think we are getting better. I think a lot of it has to do with culture too. And so the ability to establish trust and be mindful, yes, we understand we have, you know, really important procurement and uh procurement guidelines and we have to follow a very transparent and rigorous process, but it doesn't preclude our ability to test things, to fail, to fail in a way that doesn't um eat away at uh you know very precious taxpayer dollars, but improves on concepts that we would be able to implement and that are going to be improving uh the outcome of services for all citizens and employee and enterprises. So that ability to build more partnerships with third parties and get more um laboratory-like experiences and prototype has been more and more easier to manage and to bring into government, which really helps share with our executive teams across the departments our ability to create a day, digital enablement that works, that isn't just about redoing what we already have, but improving and injecting more human-centered design and user experience thinking uh and practices around that.

Now, what and and um we're talking about leadership. We're looking at, I mean, this I'm sure we'll cover lots of things, but when we were just kind of teeing things up, we were talking about you mentioned vulnerable leadership, but also emotional intelligence and that sort of thing. There's some really interesting things that you're touching on there as we we talk about leaders leading digital transformations. We talk about them needing to role model the right behaviors and so on. What do you see as what what is a vulnerable leader in your eyes? What are you looking for or helping coaching leaders to be when it comes to that sort of vulnerability that you mentioned?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think um applying emotional intelligence to our jobs and our careers isn't necessarily intuitive. I think uh individuals look at um emotional cues and somewhat take them in a subconscious manner. But when you get more conscious about the meaningful aspects of using emotional data to make informed decisions on what people are trying to tell you and be able to pose questions that include feeling responses to elicit more packed information and data around why people are saying things and what that means for them and are they being seen, then a leader can really shape and understand the world in which they work in, the experts around them, and uh, and be able to uh demonstrate their ability to listen actively and hear and elicit the information that is beyond just the functional terms or the technical terms of what they're doing. A lot of what a leader does is enable and provide a safe, you know, psychological, healthy, safe uh environment for people to work in so that they can do the good work that they do. And part of that is also risk management. And a vulnerable leader can be a little bit less risk averse and can be a little bit more creating space for creativity and not trying to stifle interpretation or make interpretation so prescribed that whatever you're communicating, there's only one outcome. A lot of interpretation and feedback that we get from teams and individual contributors provides valuable input to how things are going or how they need to be shaped. And so, as leaders, you know, focused on creativity workspaces, asking in the room, designing in the room as opposed to always bringing in third parties, asking the people on the ground that are working with you, you know, how would you do this? What are some things that you're seeing? And being more engaged as a leader and providing that safe space, I think really creates a vulnerable leader persona that people can relate to. And definitely being able to share, you know, the failures that they have seen across the their experiences and create anecdotal information from their life that will connect people on a human scale, on a human level, that says, Oh, yeah, I this person knows what's going on. We can relate to this person, we can work with this person and create that collaborative spirit.

And I um Peter, you're gonna jump in or Yeah, I was I was I was curious following on from We didn't want to give you a chance. We were just No, well, no, no, the two, I could leave the two of you chatting for a while.

I think that's right, you're here. No, I'm checking.

So we're when we when you think of the leaders that you work with, I mean as um and humans are humans, whatever role or sector or wherever they're working. Um, but I was curious if you, when you've moved from private into public sector, whether you've seen differences in the leaders uh and their receptiveness to start to think about uh operating differently and having more awareness and more emotional intelligence.

Uh I think there is a lot of similarities just because people are people, careers are careers. Some are defined and very, you know, informed based on where they come from from an educational academic standpoint and their personality types, like, you know, a type A or somebody who's like, you know, a perfectionist and someone who's like rise to the top as quickly as possible. I think those kind of personas and leadership styles exist in all areas. Where I see a major difference between the private sector and the public sector is leaders in the public sector spend tend to speak a little bit more with compassion at the top of mind. And that is a really interesting perspective because yes, we are serving the citizens and businesses in Canada and beyond. And I think public service just ingrains in you that need to know that you're serving Canadians and you're creating partnerships globally. And this is important business. If you want your nation to be successful, that compassionate lens, the people that are visiting your country, the people that are immigrating to your country and living in your country, um, have to know that their needs are being heard and felt and being cared for. And so leadership reflects that compassion so much more in the public sector. I think it exists in private as well. But I think sometimes um, you know, it's it is uh sheltered a little bit by the need for, you know, ROI and cost savings and pragmatic economy changes. And so the shift for private sector is a little bit more cutthroat from a capitalistic or in you know economy standpoint versus a non-for-profit versus the public sector, which you know are more about how do we leverage these funds in a way that is going to enable the most services and capability for our nation.

I think there's some great, I mean, I I'd certainly I've been fortunate to work um within the federal government of Canada for now for um two or three years, just um supporting a couple of different departments and organizations. And it's fascinating how when you come at it from the private sector, it is super clear what their the goals are and what they're aiming towards. And everyone, it's almost like a needle on a compass. They can it just kind of flicks right to where it needs to go. Whereas I always think of purpose-driven or mission-driven organizations. All of a sudden, there's space to recognize the bigger picture of where things are going. And I think that's I actually found it, I find it really, really a great balance to that sort of really tight focus that you see in in many um private organizations.

Some of the greatest leaders I work with today in public sector have the compassionate capability, but they have the business mindset. Yes. They're able to think pragmatically, swiftly, and nimbly, and they're able to have compassion. And for me, that's really um is someone I want to align with and I, you know, I want as a mentor, and I want to really understand how we can move faster with that kind of capability and leadership at the at the helm.

For sure. Um, yeah, and and as you're talking about that compassion, I I feel I wanted to tie it back to a comment that you made earlier. So, and this is to do with feelings and that emotional intelligence. Um, part of the reason that this is top of mind at the moment, in the last couple of weeks, I happen to have run a few workshops where we're beginning to do things like empathy interviews. What's really interesting is seeing how difficult it is to have a conversation around feelings and emotion. And I see that in my own experience in in trying to role model these conversations and how you can almost feel there's there there is this sort of like a slight barrier to stepping into that domain of understanding people's feelings and emotions and so on. And I think this is natural. You know, we're we're in a leadership role, in any sort of business role, there's this very distinct difference between work and home and where you bring emotion and feelings and so on into things and where you don't. So, when you're working with leaders, how do you free up that ability to be able to step in this sort of you know sparsely experienced domain of talking about emotions, talking about feelings in a business context?

That's a good question. And it's interesting when you said earlier when you apply emotional language to the conversation when you don't. I'm not paraphrasing you it identically, but I think emotional um context is is applicable all the time. Um, and I think, you know, one of the things that we struggle with is how language has been the societal view of certain words, like vulnerability is considered a bad word. It has a lot of negative connotation. And I'm trying to create it as a power word and say the vulnerability actually allows us to kind of let down our guard and let us kind of expose some of the things about us that bring us closer together so that we can work more effectively and collaboratively. And to your point, how does that get injected into business through the different meetings and priorities and tasks? And um, I think it happens in a number of ways. So, for example, if somebody is demonstrating to me their goals for a certain project, my ability to validate their goals, my ability to validate their client base or their service base, my ability to see beyond just the products and the technology and see what the citizen is doing on the sidewalk, walking into their facet of government is my ability to demonstrate empathy and think beyond my realm, because I'm mostly technology focused, that there's a bigger picture. And I'm applying that lens in a very empathetic way. And so people's ability to go beyond just one scope demonstrates empathy. It demonstrates their willingness to connect to another world. And that's a humanity-level connection. And furthermore, I think in leadership, we have to acknowledge in the room equity and diversity as being a really important space and acknowledge that the more different voices at the table, the better the outcome, the better the product, the better the service. And so the ability to be an ally and to demonstrate great ways of bringing in lots of talent to government that has different viewpoints, has different backgrounds and cultures and perspective is a huge way to create an emotional intelligent strength throughout government and to provide that further elements and scale on how you're gonna be able to build a product and service that works for everybody. So, in in the different activities and tasks and meetings, it's it's also the ability to ask questions that is simply say, How did you feel about that? So it could be as simple as someone saying, you know, I'm hoping, you know, that people are gonna read this document and come prepared for this meeting when we talk about this product. And if five people come prepared, the question is, how do you feel about that? Their responses could be, you know, well, I was hoping more people would be engaged. And so just being able to understand like what is your perspective and why do you think they're not engaged if only so many people read the document? Perhaps it's really just about being in the room and seeing and experiencing the topic. And so having different viewpoints. So being able to elicit that information from someone from a feeling perspective gives you more ability to coach and mentor them through outcomes.

Yeah, inviting people to uh to speak and ensuring that everybody gets a say is a large part of that from an inclusivity perspective, like making sure that we have this. The the concept and a lot of this is uh embedded into um and agile practices in a lot of ways. Um in when we think of things like uh retrospectives being introspective, looking back at like uh why did things go the way that they went? Like why did uh uh why why did this occur? Um and then uh the and the concepts, even just the simple things like stand-ups and stuff like that, out of a this idea that everybody gets an opportunity to speak. Everybody gets an opportunity to bring their uh opinion forward as to what it is that we're doing. Um what sort of things have you seen uh help when leaders uh are resistant to uh sort of coming forward and having these conversations?

That's a great uh question. I think one of the things that governments still looking to understand as they adopt agile methodologies into their projects and become more of a product manager over a project manager. Um, we're also seeing, you know, the need for more training on what is product ownership and the value that a product owner plays in all of the different um rituals that go on to build those products and services. And so I think one of the hardest um questions at the table is like, you know, what is my responsibility as a product owner and how far do I take it? And really emphasizing to the service owners within government, you know how this works today and you know what your client is asking for. So you really need to be engaged. You're a part of this project. You, you, it's not a part-time job, it's a full-time job being a product owner. And in order for the service to be developed in such a way that transforms and enhances the way you deliver it, you've got to think outside the box. So creating more workshops for the opportunity to get out of the now and into the anything is possible. What if anything could be possible? What would you do? And urging people to go there, to stretch themselves, to say, you know, I know in the past you have been constrained by budgets and lack of resources and lack of engagement. And now clean the slate. If you could have it all, what would you do? And being able to really inspire that so that we can actually implement those things. I think transforming from, you know, this this ritual of following a certain pattern and being democratic and conservative as public sector is seen, um, and moving into more of like, let us all know what you really think is important and bring it's okay to bring the complaints and the concerns of the public into that so that we can we can really develop for something that's going to make a positive change.

I think I the your description there, um, probably so we do a lot of work around product, right? And and product owners, product management and things. So I'm in the process of doing a number of things in that exact domain. And what's really a realization that's becoming more and more clear is the days of kind of coming up with what a product is in a room, you know, and doing doing that definition once and going and building it and rot rolling it out are it just doesn't work anymore at all. Right. And by the time you get anything out of the door, every everything has changed. We see that all the time around us. And that really leads to that hunger or the the space, giving the space to be continually listening. It's almost like that shift from instead of saying what it is we're doing, staying quiet and just listening an awful lot more. And and it's interesting what Peter was just saying about that creating the space. I think that's part of it, isn't it? It's just actually not coming to the table with an idea or a solution or something, but coming to the table to listen and and just absorb what's going on.

Yeah.

So and that obviously didn't lead to a question. I was just, it was an observation. I think it was so fascinating. I'm just having to sit and think about it.

It it reminds me of a a uh topic which take us off in a different tangent that we might want to uh go into on a on a different day around the product manager, product owner split and the concept uh of uh brand managers and consumer packaged goods, which uh I encountered in an engagement I did a what a little while back with uh Procter and Gamble. And the there's the I this is this is it's interesting, just a very brief piece around how the increasing technology has impacted that and the complexity of technology has resulted in what it used to be, the person who could be, as you were describing it just that day, the person who would understand and build the product and be able to do all this, they could have all of that knowledge in one person. But the introduction of the complexity of the technology platforms underneath has meant we've either rightly or wrongly, as technology has become more and more involved in that, become gone from being a productivity supporting tool to being an enabler of the actual delivery of the capability. That piece has meant that we've now ended up with this kind of split, rightly or wrongly, between this product manager and product owner. And that role of how do I define and support and understand the customer's needs and translate that into what it is I'm gonna deliver as a product, and whether in public or private sector, is uh it's an interesting space to explore. And and yet again, I don't particularly have a question out of that, but just an observation.

So uh maybe Erin, just to I'd love to if if you're working with a leader in that sort of helping them understand emotional intelligence and vulnerability, do you have you know two or three things that you say over the next say two or three weeks, focus on these things? What would that guidance be?

Yeah, it and it's an interesting way to come at it because I'm usually coming at it with a problem, right? Like tell me your barrier right now. And that's usually the distinction to get to, you know, the tools that are need to be applied. But for the sake of saying that someone is just sort of unaware of how to be more vulnerable as a leader, um, I think it's really important to do some journaling on self-awareness. And I say journaling because it's always exciting to reflect on what you wrote down after you write it. So if for anyone who's never done that before, write a bunch of things in a list of a decision that you have to make or of a topic that you're trying to determine. And in this case, vulnerable leaders can write down what do they think it means to be vulnerable or how do they think they're connecting to people and being more self-aware about their own personality traits and their own emotional intelligence and just ideating on what they think that is and then put that aside. And when you go back a few days and you read what you wrote, there's a lot of things that you'd be like, oh, I'm not quite sure what that was, right? Like I'm not conscious about what I think I know. I haven't defined yet certain things. And a lot of leaders, when you ask them what's your leadership style, unless they're super in tune to those types of themes and uh, you know, lots of books on different types of leadership styles, they don't necessarily know. They don't, they can't really articulate definitely what kind of leader they are. They know some of the qualities that they uh like to exude and some of the ways in which they think that they support their teams. But in actuality, they don't have a brand. And so once you ask them to reflect on what it means to be self-aware and how do you think you're self-aware? Now tell me, what is your brand? And think about do you have a brand and are you projecting something to your audience every day? Are you being an authentic version of something that you really aren't passionate about? Because that's really important. Um, people connect with the brand, people connect with your stories. If you use a certain language over and over again, that language is going to be heard and it's going to be associated with you. And so depending on what kind of language you're using, uh, people just automatically connect that. And so you want to be very implicit about the kind of brand that you're putting out because that's part of your leadership capability is instilling that, those qualities and those um great things that you want your teams to reflect. And then thirdly, I would say when you're presenting yourself and when you are orchestrating activities or interactions or communications across your organization, don't just think about the tasks that you need to accomplish or the goals or the strategic outcomes that you're trying to uh foster, implement, and deliver, but also what are the things that you're overseeing that your team needs to tell you about that might be more impactful and might impact the strategy. So a lot of times teams are doing work that leaders don't necessarily know about because they've figured out ways to overcome process gaps at their level. And instead of saying, you know, hey, let me bring this up to my leader because I think we need to fix this process gap or the system gap. I'm just gonna go about it my own way and it becomes part of my daily tasks. And so when we get into some of those nuances that are driving and bleeding people's time, um, we realize, oh, we could fix this by, you know, getting a developer or getting someone in to do data analysts and resolve that problem. It it becomes the leader has to then ask the team, what is it that you're doing that we are not seeing on this strategic roadmap? Bring up those things that we need to analyze and see are they impacting and eating our, you know, eliminating good time to wasteful time that you could be doing something else with that's more proactive or more productive. And we can eliminate this once and for all. So it's really up to the leader to create a space where people feel comfortable to say, hey, yeah, you know, this whole time, I've been going the system and fixing that every time I do that. And so, you know, those are some aha moments for leadership to really be able to empower their teams and say, yes, I can help you with that. And then we don't have to worry about it anymore. So those are just some ways that leaders can demonstrate more vulnerability and openness with their teams to get back productivity and and reinforce collaboration.

I like, I mean, do we we do a lot of that when we do uh like value stream management and value stream mapping exercises and getting people together and having that conversation around like, so what exactly do we do to actually get things to a person? And like how does that actually work? And and starting to understand this and hey, it always generates lots of aha moments as to, oh, I didn't realize you did that. And really, you mean because I because I'm creating all this piece, you're having to manually enter all of this over there? That type of thing is always very uh eye-opening. Uh so I think uh we're coming to the end of our time here. So perhaps if we wanted to wrap this up with three key takeaways, and uh, and while we've been having guests on, I've been I've been liking to to go out and uh and ask people individually. So um, so Dave, what would your key takeaway from today be?

Um I'm going to hark back to uh a statement Erin was making right at the beginning. And I asked a question around an observate uh um shared some observations on it, which is that emotions and feelings and how to overcome the the difficulty of being able to bring that into the conversation. And I really liked just what struck me as that kind of giving of space. It's not about coming in and knowing the answer, it's about coming in and listening for the answer, I think would be what I'm sort of taking away there.

And how about you, Aaron?

Um, I really enjoyed the discussion around um, you know, how some of these new roles in government has allowed public servants to do things that the private sector's been doing for a long time, like being a product owner. You'll never see that in a classification for, you know, an employee in the public sector. Um, but it it is something that is needed. It's it's an identity along with the business service or the service offering to the public. And, you know, getting that mindset around you have a brand, you have a product, and you're here to make it better. And think of all the things that you could do with that space and don't constrain yourself because there's there's nothing holding us back in this thinking space. Um, I think that's something that's really positive and really encouraging about where we're going in government. And you see more and more departments in ICED and in NRCAN and in TC and other areas across um government where we are creating spaces for that thinking and we're investing more in digital enablement that will transform these services for better sustainable outcomes.

Awesome, man. I I think I I would add the piece around compassion and leadership and the kind of the differences between uh the public and private sector and and the fact that there aren't really as many differences as people would uh often think. So it's uh I think that's an interesting observation too. So so with all that in mind, if uh we'll wrap it up here and if uh anyone would like to send us feedback, they can at feedback at definitely maybe agile.com. And uh look forward to next time and don't forget to hit subscribe. So thank you. Aaron, thanks again for joining us.

Thank you too. Have a great day.

You've been listening to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where your hosts Pete Maddison and Dave Sharrock focus on the art and science of digital, agile, and DevOps at scale.