TSLP Season 4- Unintentionally Set Leaders Up To Fail

🎙️ New Episode | Unintentionally Set Leaders Up To Fail with Michael DeLisser
Sometimes the greatest obstacles leaders face are not intentional attacks—but unnoticed patterns, assumptions, and habits that quietly position them for frustration, confusion, or missed opportunities.

In this insightful episode of the Transformation Station Leadership Podcast, I’m joined by Michael DeLisser for a powerful conversation about how leaders can unknowingly become “unintentionally set-up” through mindset, communication gaps, pressure, expectations, and lack of clarity.

If you’ve ever felt stuck, misunderstood, overlooked, or frustrated in leadership, this episode will give you practical insight and perspective for moving forward with greater awareness and confidence.

Learn more about Michael DeLisser:
Website- https://www.delisserconsulting.com/about
LinkedIn-   / michael-delisser-62b4297 
YouTube-    / @delisserleadershipconsulting 

Podmatch Affiliate-https://www.joinpodmatch.com/abentontslp

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Until next time, stand tall, step bold, and own your transformation.

Transcript

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Organizations don't grow beyond the strength of their leadership. It's sustainable success that is not driven by strategy alone. It's driven by the people who bring that strategy to life. Listen, when leaders and managers develop intentional performance, it improves and strengthens the culture. I am so ready to get into this conversation. Come on, let's talk about it. Welcome to Transformation Station Leadership Podcast, where leaders don't just talk about transformation. We lead it, we live it, and we ignite it in others. I'm your host, Adrian Benton, and today we're exploring a topic that is essential for long-term organizational success. That's right. We're talking about leader and management development. Joining me today is Michael, and I can't wait for you to meet Michael DeLisser. He's a leader who understands that building strong organizations begins with building capable, confident people. His experiences, which he'll tell you a little bit about, highlight the importance of aligning development initiatives with strategic priorities, strengthening leadership capability at every level, and creating systems that support both growth and accountability. I'm ready for you to meet him. Michael, thank you, and welcome to coming today to Transformation Station. It's great to have you with us. Thanks for having me. I'm I'm excited to have this conversation. So I'm ready to go. Absolutely. Well, listen, as I was thinking about our session today, what struck me is that when we talk about leader and management, the manager development, it's it's more than just training, Michael. It's it's a continuous investment in organizational and personal effectiveness. And so I want to start off by asking you this question from your experience and perspective, why is it important for organizations to align leadership and management development programs with their strategic priorities rather than using a one-size-fits-all approach? Yeah, it's a great question, Adrian. And I say that because I see the same mistake being made in organization after organization, which is they see leadership development as an add-on, and they see it as something they need to do to keep people happy, perhaps, or you know, and maybe they have some specific needs, but they don't take that extra step to really stop and say, where are we at as an organization? What are we trying to achieve? Where do we need to be five years from now or three years from now, whatever, or even six months from now? And what are the skills we need to be able to get there? And do we have them and do we have gaps? And so if you're thinking systems thinking and you're thinking big picture, the value of tying your leadership development programs to your strategy is you can have those programs directly contributing to your organizational success. If you don't make that connection, people might feel good about their development opportunities, they might get some skills. But uh really what it comes down to, people need an opportunity to immediately apply what they're learning to what the organization needs to achieve. And when you create that connection, when you connect those dots, it makes it so that program is suddenly an additional tool that's going to help you make that transition happen and help you achieve those outcomes, as opposed to just something that's just burning additional resources without necessarily being able to connect the dots between that learning experience and what the organization needs. I love that. As you were talking, I was thinking about this quote here, because I think it aligns with what you just said. Leadership development creates real impact when it strengthens the capabilities required to achieve the organization's um vision, right? As we're strengthening the capabilities, that goes more than just getting the mission done, meeting the metrics, right? Those who are on your team, when their capabilities are strengthened, there's development that happens internally and it will naturally have an external um achievement and external enhancement and growth. So, you know what? I want to ask you this question next, because I'm really curious about this. How can leaders identify the specific development needs of their managers and teams in order to ensure growth initiatives are relevant and impactful? And before you answer that question, I just want to, you know, just say from my own experience, I have been a part of organizations where we had all these initiatives. There were all these things that were introduced to us that were supposed to make us better and do a lot, but it it really wasn't specific to what was happening in our organization or our culture. It was just like the next great leadership initiative to try. So, so how can I, as a leader, identify the specific needs that will ensure growth is relevant and impactful to my team? Yeah, and I'm glad you brought up the organizations having lots of initiatives because I would actually challenge the listeners today to go back and look at whatever initiatives they have, whatever their strategic plan is. And I will put money on it that 90% of them would find that their initiatives are more related to growth, to marketing, to sales, but it's not related to internal development of their people, right? And that's part of the challenge, right? It's it's seen as something that's not a strategic initiative or need. So you make that connection, you're saying, okay, I am going to invest in the growth of people. You know, the way that you make it really relevant to the organization is starting with the assumption and knowledge that you will always get better results out of developing strengths than if you work on weaknesses. And the biggest I see leaders make is they they bring someone in, they say, okay, let's put together your annual development plan. And and it focuses on three weaknesses that the person has, right? There's a lot of research out there that will tell you that the ROI comes from giving people an opportunity to use their strengths, right? And so a couple examples. Um, there was a Harvard Business Review article by, I think it was Zenger Fulkman article that that talked, it was called Making Yourself Indispensable. And it talked about if you as a leader have one outstanding strength, then you will typically be seen as you know, the top third of all leaders, right? And when I say outstanding strength, everyone in the organization sees you as the go-to person for that, and they all see you're the best at it. If you are a person who has zero outstanding strengths as a leader, typically you're going to be in the bottom third of all leaders in terms of rankings, meaning there's nothing you stand out for for being uniquely strong at. And so that talks a little bit about it. And there's also uh Diane Hill, um, sorry, Linda Hill, who's a Harvard uh professor, she talks about how uh creating collective genius, it's it's giving everyone an opportunity to, everyone brings some unique genius to the table. It comes from their strengths and their passions. And so the first thing you have to do is make sure that you're giving people an opportunity to build their strengths and passions. When you do that and you aim that at an organizational need, that's when you have huge benefits to the person and the organization. And so, one of the first things you have to do is get to know what are the strengths your people bring, what are the unique individual things they can bring to the table that no one else can, and find development opportunities that give them a chance to use those strengths for the good of the organization in a way that helps achieve those strategic initiatives we talked about. If you can do that, that's where you're gonna get the most out of your leadership development. You could have them work on a weakness if it's like a fatal flaw that's gonna cause them to fail. But when you have them work on a weakness, you get them to the point where it's less noticeable. You don't sit there and have them work on it forever. You want to make it so they create workarounds or they learn to tap into other people to overcome that weakness. But really, where you want to do is you want to focus your energy on building their strengths that's and aiming those strengths at organizational initiatives that have the need for them, even if it's outside the department. This is like a masterclass right here. I mean, we we could end the podcast right here, and I'd be like, you know what, we learned a lot. So here on Transformation Station, we always invite our listeners and viewers to really stop and take an assessment, you know, hone in on what they're hearing, the discussion, and and and to all of our leaders, I'm gonna invite you to really tell us right now in the chat what is resonating from what Michael just shared with us, because that was serious gems. And you know, Michael, as you were talking, I was thinking to myself, this is intentional work, right? Getting to know your people, being able to understand what their strengths are, being able to see their capabilities and how you can strengthen that. Like that's intentional. It's more than just saying, hi, how are you? Good morning. Like, you really have to take the time to not just ask a question, but to listen. You have to take the time to just be in the workspace and be aware and to watch. You also have to take the time to be able to give authentic feedback, right? There is a um uh a quote that says here, or best practice rather, implement regular structured feedback cycles that include performance data, coaching conversations, and employee input. And you know, Michael, I have found over the years for many high-driven leaders, especially the last two, coaching conversations and listening for or having opportunities for employee feedback, that is where for many leaders the tension, the struggle lies. I was talking to a leader this week, you know, and they were saying, I mean, they they work in a very demanding environment and they kept saying to me, I just don't have time. I just don't have time. I said, But you do you understand how critical this is? Like you have to find and make the time. Because if you don't have those conversations, if your employees cannot give authentic feedback without feeling like if they say something, they're, you know, that they're gonna be pulled to the side or you know, but if you don't do that, then you never really know what's going on. Yeah, and if I can add to that, um one of the one of the big values in doing that, so a lot of people say, I don't have the time, right? But when you stop and think about it, it's a front-end investment in time that gets you a big return on your time in the in the back end, right? Because you're putting a little time in front to give a little more feedback, a little more coaching. But with each one of those sessions, if it's successful, it causes exponential, potentially improvement in the person, which leads to less need for you coaching of them later and more production out of them later, right? So you're investing your time up front to develop that person, give them feedback that helps them develop as quickly as possible. And the return on that is tenfold because once they've developed those things and they've implemented that feedback, it puts them in a position to deliver at a high, much higher level. Mercy. I have to go back and watch the replay on this because again, these these are some serious gems. So I'm gonna ask you to really hone in on this next question and teach us, okay? Here's the question: What are the key differences between developing leaders and developing managers? This is another tension point for many leaders, right? What's the difference between developing a leader and developing managers? And why does an organization need to do both? Yeah, and and uh it's what I love, what I love about the way you frame the question, it's not just what's the difference between leading and managing, it's really the need for developing both. Because the the reality is if you're in any role where you your role is requires you to get results through others, you need to do both, right? You need to be a leader. And again, when we talk about leader, we're talking about focusing on the future, um, being innovative, you know, bringing out the inner, you know, uh strengths of individuals, things like that, right? And when we talk about managers, you're usually more talking about can I execute on a daily basis the things we need to execute and make sure that goes well. And so, as a leader in any level or project manager, I don't care what it is, if you have to get things done through brother through others, you must be able to do both lead and manage. So, you know, when you only develop management skills, if you're entirely focused on getting the task done in an efficient way, what ends up happening is your organization kind of develops almost a culture around getting things done and being efficient in how you get things done, which is not a bad thing, except if you're not also doing the leadership piece, then what you're not doing is building in the people management side of that. You're not building in the how are we inspiring people, how are we helping them connect to the vision and see the purpose of the work we're doing. If you do the leadership side, people get more enthusiastic about doing the management side, you know. But if you have a team that's just focused on managing, teaching people to manage, you're gonna be very task-oriented, you're gonna miss the opportunity to get people on board and get people excited and even increase their engagement to the organization. If you only focus on the leadership side, you'll have great ideas, people will feel inspired, but you're not gonna be executing for the organization. And so you need both. And when I teach this, a lot of times I teach it using a personality tool. But when you look at uh most personality tools, they have four personality types. Two of them are task focused, two of them are are more people focused. The task focused personality energies, one would be results driven, very focused on bottom line, getting things done. They're interested in answering the what question. And if you are, you know, what do we need to do? What do we need to get done? The other, the other uh management-focused one would be more uh structure driven. If you're structure driven, you're focused on how are we going to get things done? What's the process to get that done? And if you focus on those two things, you'll be great at rolling out the technical side of change, but you'll forget to get people on board. The other two personality types are more focused on people, and they're more concerned on who needs to be involved, who need how do we make them feel like they're part of it. And then the other one is also focused on people, but it's more focused on the why question, getting people to understand the reasoning and the meaning behind it and attaching that to the organizational purpose. Long story short, you must do the leading ones to get people on board and excited about it, you must focus on developing management skills in order to execute. And if you don't do both, you're gonna struggle as an organization. You're either gonna have everyone feeling great but not being very productive, or being productive but not feeling great. And you really need to develop both of those skills. So I'm gonna put you on the spot here, right? Because you talked a moment ago about the struggle. From what you've seen, what is some of the struggles that you've seen when an organization does not focus on both? Well, I I I have I'll give you an example. Um, I see a number of executive teams that are very heavy on individuals who are task-focused. They're either very structured or they're very results-driven. And so when you have that combination, the reason they got to those positions and the and they moved up the organization was their ability to get things done. But the reality is, is those same skills that got them there could be the ending, the thing that ends up bringing them down if they don't develop the people management side, right? Because if you're so focused on the task, you get to the point where you're pushing the task through your focus on the task and you're steamrolling people or not including them in the process, right? And that makes them actually not want to make the change or not want to be on board. So that's the risk of that. Um, the other piece of it is um if you as I I think I alluded to this, but if you are really big on trying to get everyone in agreement and everyone on board and making sure it's collective, that slows the process down, you become less efficient as an organization, and you won't achieve the results you need to achieve. And so it's a balancing act, right? You need to understand what is the task that's being rolled out and how do we make sure that not only do we roll it out in a way that's technically efficient and effective, but also gets people excited about wanting to give discretionary effort to get on board with it. And that's why you have to do both. I mean, if you miss one or the other, you're gonna feel that, you know, that cost. Where I've seen people leave leaders that they loved working for as a person, but hated working for because they never got anything done and they felt like it was, you know, they weren't holding the low performers accountable because they were all worried about harmony, things like that. I've also seen people that left organizations because their leaders were so focused on the task, they felt like they didn't care about them as individuals or the impact on them. So it's it's a two-way street. You got to do both. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I saw this quote, and the quote says, Strategy leaders set direction, but management delivers results. Organizations succeed when they are developed, when both are developed internally. Um, leaders, listen, Michael just really laid it out flat. He made it extremely plain and simple. And I know that there may be some of you that are saying, Oh my gosh, well, how do I do this? You know, it just feels like it's so much work. I'm trying to have balance myself. Well, we're gonna look at this next question, Michael. How do customized development programs contribute to employee engagement, performance, and long-term organizational success? Yeah, and this is another thing that a lot of times people say, does leadership development really make a difference? And I would argue it comes down to how you do it. If you're throwing out generic programs, you know, off-the-shelf programs, things like that, you're you're giving people learning, but you're not putting it in the context of their everyday roles and how they would apply it, right? And so the only thing I do is customize leadership development programs. I custom build them. And when I mean custom build them, the examples will all be real examples that they're dealing with on a daily basis. The case studies will be tied to somehow how they personally can immediately turn around and learn from that case study and apply it. And so when it's generic, you're giving learning out of context. And then that might get applied or it may not. But when it's customized and specific to the exact example of a challenge they're dealing with as an organization now, you're literally helping solve the problem during your leadership program, and you're sending people out with ideas on how to fix that problem right now. And that's why, you know, when I go in, the first thing I say when I'm putting together a custom leadership development program, you can ask any one of my clients the first question, one of the first questions I say is, can you tell me what your current strategic needs are or what your initiatives are or this year's objectives are? Because I don't want to build anything unless I know that for context. And then I ask questions about where are you struggling? Where do you really need to think about where you need to be six months from now? And I can't and I continually build it towards achieving things that are very tied to their strategic initiatives. If you don't customize it, it just people might give you strong remarks for I love that training, but when it turns around to did they turn around the training to create ROI for the organization, the likelihood is no. Yeah, 1000%. I can't tell you how many times I've been a part of training and then the training is over, and somebody will say to me, So, how's that training? I'm like, it was good. And my mind is thinking, I like the person's delivery, you know, maybe there was well, so when they talk about it, it's like, what did you learn? Um, right? And there was a disconnect into how this is real and how this is practical. And so, you know, leaders, Michael is encouraging us to very be specific. And how can you do that? A best practice would be to link development programs to real projects, stretch assignments, and practical leadership challenges. You heard Michael say that when he builds these programs, he wants to know. Tell me, what's your mission? What's your goal? What are you working towards? He wants to know so that the training, the developed programming is in alignment with what the culture is focused on. And then we also know that people commit more deeply to organizations that intention that commit intentionally to their growth. And when your trainings are specific, when the development is specific, your people grow. They grow in knowledge, they grow in psychological safety in the workplace, they grow in feeling as though they can commit to the goals because they understand, and then they just grow individually. Michael, what do you think about that? Well, I mean, um I think when people don't think you're engaged in your in their growth, they're not going to stick around. They're just not. You know, I I'll I'll tell you a quick story that was uh was kind of interesting. Uh I when I one of my first roles out of college, I worked for a uh advertising agency. And I went in, and my first meeting with a senior leader was uh is and this is in New York, so it's you know, this there's no there's no cookie, you know, he's not trying to be nice, he's being directed. He said, Look, Michael, thanks for joining the organization. Let's let's be honest here. What we have is a mutual using. We're gonna use you to get results for our clients, and you're gonna use us to get development for your career. And at some point, one of us will feel like that mutual using is no longer valuable to us. And you either you'll choose to leave the organization or maybe we'll let you go. But until that happens, I want to know that you're gonna do everything you can to help serve our organization and our customers. And in return, I Do everything I can to develop you as much as I can, you know, and that way it's value added for both of us. So the initial message kind of shocked me, and it was kind of like mutual using that's a horrible way to look at it. But what the second part is the important part. Give everything you can to us while we're working together, and I will do everything I can to develop you and make sure this is valuable for you. And really, when people feel like you're committed to their growth and you're making an effort to show that you want to help them develop their strengths and you're showing an interest in their passions and their career interests, then you get loyal people that will give more discretionary effort that will stay with the organization longer, as opposed to if you're just not committing to their development and you're so focused. And look, nobody wants to be a manager that's just focused on getting things done. But we're being pulled in so many different different directions. Sometimes the thing that gets put aside is developing our people. And what gets measured gets you know matters, right? And so if you're getting measured on hitting these numbers, you're not thinking I need to develop my people. But if you can, if I could play with your brain a little bit there, if you develop your people, you're gonna hit your numbers, right? And so part of that is a mind shift, understanding that it's not you that gets the results, it's the people that work for you. And if you can unleash their strengths, you're gonna get better results. You're gonna look better for the numbers you get because you invested in them. I like I almost need you to repeat everything you just said all over again, right? You know, I had somebody recently who told me, and I think that there may be like a famous quote, but they said the way that you know you're really leading is when you don't have to be there for things to still move forward. Yeah, in fact, uh, if I could just share one other thing with you. Um, there was one organization my entire career, I've seen them do this. It was a requirement for you to be promoted, you had to have at least one or two people developed to immediately step into your role. They were measured on that criteria. And if you couldn't demonstrate to the organization that I already have developed these people and they're already ready, they would not promote you. And so that that put in the manager's brain, I got to develop these people, I gotta make it so if I leave tomorrow, if I go on vacation, if I leave the organization, if I get promoted, they can keep moving without me even being there. I mean, we as leaders should be saying to ourselves, I need to make myself unneeded by my team. If you've done that, then you've succeeded. Leaders, you're listening, you're watching right now. I need you to go ahead in the comment section, go ahead and share with us what is resonating with you right now, what insights, what are you feeling committed to do tomorrow as you continue to lead your teams? Go ahead, send in a private message, DM if you are listening and can't put it in the comments right away. So, Michael, as we turn the corner on this masterclass right here, I want to ask you this final question. Please talk to us. What practical steps can organizations can leaders take to create a culture where continuous leadership and management development becomes a part of everyday operations rather than a one-time initiative? Well, it starts with making it a strategic priority, right? And so if you don't elevate it to that level, it's always going to be an add-on, right? And so um, and again, I started this program by by suggesting that most of the people listening do not have a people development piece as part of their strategic initiatives in their organizations. I've been probably five or six of my last clients that I've gone that I've worked with, I did not see anything about internal development of their people. What I did see is a lot of round growth and a lot of sales and things like that. And and look, they need to do that. There's pressure, especially if you're a public organization, you need to focus on those things. But um, the steps they can take to make it really value added is A, you have to have someone at the executive level championing it and pushing it and showing that it's important as anything else. The second thing I would say is somehow put metrics in place at every level of leader around development. So it's part of their evaluation. You're not just getting evaluated on did you hit your numbers, is did you develop your people? And can you show us the impact of that? That would be a second thing that you're doing. Um, a third thing would be finding ways to integrate the aspects of your leadership programs into your daily managing operating system. And I'll give you an example. I had one client who's very committed to introducing situational leadership, the model to the whole organization, all the way down to the employee level. And it's a leadership model, but they want all their employees to understand it. And what it did is it created a language around the organization that they could walk into the manager and say, you know, using words from that model, and they'll know exactly what the person needs in terms of their development. But they also integrated it into their onboarding process, they integrated it into how they do change, you know, and the model basically says, you know, that we are at different development levels. If you don't know what you're doing, you just need lots of direction. If you know what you're doing, but you're losing kind of your motivation, then what you need is more supportive behaviors. And so, long story short, it helped people diagnose where people are at with given changes and how they can immediately respond in a way that gives that person what they need to get through the change and be able to execute it more effectively. So, long story short, you know, if you're doing something in leadership development, find a way to integrate it into some process, whether it be your onboarding process, whether it be your change management process, but find ways to integrate it in. And that will also encourage the likelihood that it sticks and it stays and it creates a learning culture. Even the way you run your meetings is critical. You know, um, I'm a firm believer that everyone should go into every meeting with a mindset there that there should be at least three things I can pull out of this meeting that'll be value added to me. But if you're leading the meeting, you can set the expectation at the beginning of the meeting. When we're done with this meeting, I'm gonna take five minutes and go around the room. And I want you to tell us what you thought was the one thing that was most valuable for us to turn around and apply that you learned from this meeting. And when you set that up, in every meeting you have, people come in knowing they have to listen for the lessons because they're gonna be asked about it at the end. It creates team growth, it creates an environment of learning, and that also uh will make it drive through the organization. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. I'm taking I'm taking that away from this today. I'm gonna implement that. I absolutely love that. Michael, thank you so much for joining us. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are leaders that are listening that and watching that are curious, the curiosity has been piqued and they want to know more about you, what you offer. What's the best way for our audience to be able to engage with you and tap into the resources you provide? Yeah, and so there's three things that I do. I facilitate strategic planning for leadership teams. I custom design leadership development programs, and I do a lot of one-on-one coaching uh with leaders in any area of leadership development, but a lot of times it's around communication skills andor people management. But those are the things I do the most. The way you can reach me is you can reach out to my my uh website, which is delisser.com or delisserconsulting.com. And last name is D-E-L-I-S-S-E-R. Um, I put out, I recently published a book called Leadership Accelerators. It focuses on the three areas of leadership that I see making helping people make the jump from good to great, and that is increasing their emotional intelligence, improving their self-awareness of their communication habits, and learning to leverage their um personality strengths. But in any case, that book, the link to it is right on my website. So go to delisser.com and uh you can also look for me on LinkedIn. Um, I post a lot there. I also have a YouTube page. Uh, if you just look up Delisser Consulting on YouTube, and I have snippets of podcasts like this, and just some of them are just messages you could focus on one thing at a time, or you could listen to the entire podcast. Fantastic. All right, listeners and viewers, you know that we love to support our guests. So again, I'm gonna invite you. This the link is on the screen. You also see multiple links from Michael in the description box. I want you to go ahead and tap into those. You know that we love to grow, right? Also, I'm going to invite you to reach out to Michael, send him a note, let him know that you saw this particular episode, share with him what resonated with you, and also ask him questions. He's a wealth of knowledge. Michael, thank you so much for joining us. It's been wonderful to have you here on Transformation Station. Thank you for having me. I I love just having an opportunity to provide any amount of information that can help someone be even that much better as a leader. And uh, and I hope everyone came away with something from this session. Absolutely. Thank you. All right. Well, listen, this has been a most amazing session today. Transformation we learned in any organization begins with the development of its people. Michael reminded us that strong leadership and effective management are not accidental. They are cultivated through intentional effort, continuous learning, and a shared commitment to growth. If there's anything in this episode that resonated with you today, I'm going to invite you right now to go ahead and subscribe. Also, share this episode with another leader in your community. Until next time, keep on leading with impact, keep on moving forward with purpose and continue your transformation journey.