Mike Leber:
Welcome to the agile focal point podcast. This time with our guest, Bill Joyner and our session today will all be about leadership at agility, which I would say is more or less Bill's baby product thing has been working on over decades now. And I'm very excited to welcome Bill and dive into the topic. Welcome Bill.

Bill Joiner:
Thank you, Mike. It's an honor to be here.

Mike Leber:
Great. Yeah. I think we'll, we would love probably to talk a little bit about, about you, about your background, where you're coming from, what are you doing and everything else so that we get a better idea. Not everybody might know you. I know you since quite a while to, to state this already upfront, because I also went through your programs and, and can enjoy a lot of learning. But let us know who, who is Bill Joiner?

Bill Joiner:
Well, I got interested in the field of organization development when I was at university. So many years ago, as you can tell by my hair, and I decided to the training I needed was going to be at Harvard. So I went there and after an MBA got my doctorate at Harvard, studied with Chris Argeris, which some people may have heard of. He's no longer with us. But he was a real sort of father of the field of organization development, focusing on what I call pivotal conversations, just some groundbreaking work there. And so for a couple of decades, I did organization development consulting, which included work on leadership. I focused primarily on three areas that are still key areas for me today, because they're part of the leadership agility framework, and that is, Pivotal conversations, meaning ones where people don't readily see eye to eye and they need to resolve their differences. High performing teams and organization change. So I got a lot of experience in all of those areas. But even back when I was at university, I got interested in this field called stage development psychology that nobody had heard of. which is about stages of adult development. And they're not, you know, there's some thinking that's kind of like, well, if you're in your 40s, you're gonna be dealing with these issues. This is not that. This is developing new levels of complexity in your thinking and new levels of emotional intelligence. So that really forms the backbone of the Leadership Agility Framework, which I'm sure we'll talk about in a few minutes. Since the book came out about 15 years ago, I've been solely focused on leadership agility and we have developed the Leadership Agility 360 and we have a three and a half month coaching program. They're very specific methods for helping leaders move from one stage to another. So I have had the pleasure to visit Europe a number of times. to give talks,

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
but not since the pandemic hit.

Mike Leber:
Right. And I remember

Bill Joiner:
So

Mike Leber:
we

Bill Joiner:
that's

Mike Leber:
met in

Bill Joiner:
a

Mike Leber:
Zurich,

Bill Joiner:
little bit about

Mike Leber:
right?

Bill Joiner:
me.

Mike Leber:
Yeah. I think

Bill Joiner:
Yes,

Mike Leber:
we met

Bill Joiner:
we

Mike Leber:
in

Bill Joiner:
did.

Mike Leber:
Zurich

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
before the pandemic, probably was 18 or 19 or something. But

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, something

Mike Leber:
that

Bill Joiner:
like

Mike Leber:
was,

Bill Joiner:
that.

Mike Leber:
that was a thing about this course you're giving for coaches and leaders to get started, right? To get started understanding the framework and then understanding the 360 to apply it.

Bill Joiner:
Right,

Mike Leber:
That

Bill Joiner:
that

Mike Leber:
was

Bill Joiner:
was a 360

Mike Leber:
very,

Bill Joiner:
workshop.

Mike Leber:
right, right. Exactly. recommended concept and offering. And so let's dive into it. Leadership agility, and there is already this little term agility, which is obviously different from agile, which means something very specific in the community, right? The agile manifesto

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
is always a difference between upper

Bill Joiner:
Right.

Mike Leber:
A and lower A. And a lot of people

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
talk about agile leadership since years. And I'm not sure about you, but what I always hear then is servant leadership. There is this recognition, oh, agile leadership

Bill Joiner:
You know?

Mike Leber:
means, for example,

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
you know, stepping back, giving space and everything else, quite, quite specific. And maybe also a little bit limited or let's say my, my way,

Bill Joiner:
It was

Mike Leber:
my

Bill Joiner:
a word

Mike Leber:
view.

Bill Joiner:
that was coming to my mind.

Mike Leber:
Right. So

Bill Joiner:
Limited.

Mike Leber:
the question would be

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
what's, what's the, what's the difference to a leadership vice versa, where is leadership agility similar or different?

Bill Joiner:
Well, lots of Agilists come to our workshops, and I've spoken to a lot of Agile groups. So I have a pretty good understanding. I don't come out of the Agile movement, as I just said a few minutes ago, but it's turned out, and that leadership agility was developed sort of in parallel with Agile, without either of us being very aware of the other, but it's a great fit. And... Bottom line is what I'm hearing from a lot of Agilists is leadership agility is the missing ingredient in Agile transformations. We'll talk some more about

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
why that might be.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
But what I hear most from Agilists is Agile leadership is, first of all, it's more than just using Agile practices. It's important to also be Agile yourself. And to be agile, you need to adopt an agile mindset, which is sort of an experimental approach, getting lots of feedback and collaborating with others. So leadership agility is consistent with all that, but it's much more elaborated. And not only does it have these three levels that we'll talk about. So it's not just agile or not agile. It's...

Mike Leber:
Mm.

Bill Joiner:
degrees of agility.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
And it applies across three, what I call three leadership arenas. These are really nested systems that leaders operate within and need to be skilled in. So that's the Pivotal Conversations Team Leadership and Organizational Change. And there are different skill sets needed for each of those arenas. So that's one difference. Um. Because we're talking about stages of development, these stages really have to do with cognitive and emotional capacity. So the three levels are expert, achiever, and catalyst. And expert, which is the about 55% of leaders, operate pretty much exclusively at this level, is a tactical type of leadership. interactive with stakeholders, very focused on solving one problem at a time. Excuse me. and using a kind of hub and spoke approach to team leadership that doesn't really create teams. So that's kind of a quickie

Mike Leber:
Mm.

Bill Joiner:
on the expert. Now each level, the cognitive and emotional capacities as you go through the levels allow you to zoom out more and have a broader and deeper perspective on things. You don't lose as you move from expert to achiever, you don't lose your capacity to operate at the expert level.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
So these are cumulative or they build on one another. But at the achiever level, you're now taking a strategic approach. You are trying to get buy-in from stakeholders. You are trying to create real teams. And you are periodically scanning. your environment, wherever you are in the organization, looking at new developments and creating new strategies and adapting to the environment as it changes in a sort of episodic way. So that's the first two. And together, they make up about 90% of

Mike Leber:
Right,

Bill Joiner:
today's leaders.

Mike Leber:
right. Is that something that sounds already interesting? Is that related to, how can I say, the typical places in the hierarchy where for example, expert leaders would you would rather find on middle mid management level and achieve a leader is more the, you know, overarching and responsible people for bigger business areas or whole companies? Is that a sort of a result of your research.

Bill Joiner:
There's some degree of correlation, some degree, but only a small. So as you get higher in the organization, there's a better chance you're going to be operating at a higher level of agility, but it's no guarantee.

Mike Leber:
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
Lots of expert executives running around and CEOs.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
But excuse me. As a generalization. you're most likely to find. in a senior team, I mean top executives in a company, these people are most likely to be achievers and people at the middle level are most likely to be experts.

Mike Leber:
Right, right, right.

Bill Joiner:
And this sort of ties in. And then the system also has an effect on the person's agility level. So you may have a, because I'm working right now with an executive who is perfectly capable of thinking and acting at the achiever level.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
But because of a variety of systemic issues he's dealing with, including poor leadership from the CEO, he's doing most of what he's doing is expert level leadership.

Mike Leber:
All right,

Bill Joiner:
And

Mike Leber:
all

Bill Joiner:
he's

Mike Leber:
right.

Bill Joiner:
learning through the coaching to tap his full capacity

Mike Leber:
Right,

Bill Joiner:
as

Mike Leber:
right.

Bill Joiner:
an achiever. That's kind of what we're working on now. And then, you know, maybe someday he'll work on Catalyst.

Mike Leber:
That brings me to an important question, probably also to make it clear. As far as I understand,

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
um, it's expert achiever and maybe also the other levels doesn't mean you are this kind of person, right? And you, you are in this kind of stage all the time, right? Probably

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
in some situations more. than in others and then it's probably also

Bill Joiner:
Uh huh.

Mike Leber:
about consistency, probably, right? Maybe tell us a little bit about that.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.

Mike Leber:
How that works.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, so I think of it as a center of gravity. So let's say,

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
if we say that somebody is an achiever leader, that is an abstraction from reality,

Mike Leber:
Yes.

Bill Joiner:
because there's some variability on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis. And sometimes that's because you really need to be operating tactically for a particular

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
conversation, let's say. Sometimes though, it's, you know, what Daniel Goldman calls emotional hijacking, in which case you kind of get hooked on some negative emotions, and you start kind of operating at a lower level of emotional intelligence than you would if you hadn't gotten hooked. So, you know, life is fluid. Frameworks are extremely useful if they're accurate. and then the map is not the territory. But that's the way I think about it.

Mike Leber:
Right. So it's more like an orientation, right? It's not about this is me, this is I am an expert is more like.

Bill Joiner:
Uh-huh, it's not like you're in some fixed box that you can't get

Mike Leber:
Right,

Bill Joiner:
out of.

Mike Leber:
right, right.

Bill Joiner:
But at the same time, we see, for example, from the results of the... Well, here's another way to talk about variability. In the Leadership Adjournity 360 Feedback Report, we see which is divided into these three arenas. Some people may be a little bit more agile in one of those arenas than another. But there are no dramatic differences that we find. So that's what I mean by center of gravity. It's sort of like you can vary from that center, sort of higher and lower, if you will,

Mike Leber:
right.

Bill Joiner:
and you keep coming back to that center of gravity in

Mike Leber:
Right,

Bill Joiner:
your

Mike Leber:
right,

Bill Joiner:
action.

Mike Leber:
right. And I think what

Bill Joiner:
But

Mike Leber:
is

Bill Joiner:
it's

Mike Leber:
important.

Bill Joiner:
not an evaluation. I just want to say it's not an evaluation of you as a person, which is maybe what you're getting at. It's not like catalysts are better people,

Mike Leber:
Exactly.

Bill Joiner:
right? They just have they have a little more capacity and they that gives them a broader leadership repertoire.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
And so in today's environment, you know, with everything moving so fast and being so complex, that's really what these new cognitive and emotional capacities give you is the ability to operate more effectively when there's complexity and when things are changing quickly.

Mike Leber:
Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
So it's a pragmatic thing, not a identity thing, if

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
that makes sense.

Mike Leber:
And I think, I mean, again, talking about your 360, which is a special format of a 360, basically built upon

Bill Joiner:
Right.

Mike Leber:
the leadership agility framework. I mean, what

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
people get is feedback of, I would say, observed and perceived behavior, right? That's basically it. It's not about

Bill Joiner:
That's right.

Mike Leber:
I'm saying you are wrong or right or bad or good. It's about this

Bill Joiner:
Right,

Mike Leber:
whole

Bill Joiner:
yeah.

Mike Leber:
perception of how you show up over probably a longer time of period with across multi, a multitude of stakeholders,

Bill Joiner:
Thank you.

Mike Leber:
which could probably also be

Bill Joiner:
That's

Mike Leber:
your

Bill Joiner:
right.

Mike Leber:
wife or your children or wherever or friends, but

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
people you spend a lot of decent amount of time around work with. And then we'll get probably also specific commands, where people relate your behavior to certain maybe results, right?

Bill Joiner:
You want that?

Mike Leber:
No struggles not, you know, solved. you know, sort of behavior where dominate or.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, I used a lot of 360s before I created this one and sort of had my pet peeves about 360s, even though I think they can be very useful. They tend to be the categories that you're using if you're giving feedback are pretty abstract. And then when you get the feedback, the person and their coach have to kind of figure out, well, what does it mean to play well with others? more effectively than I do now.

Mike Leber:
Exactly.

Bill Joiner:
You know, it's just, it's very abstract. So

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
we did a couple of things to make it more concrete. One is that when somebody's giving feedback, they're looking at very specific behavioral descriptions and saying which one best matches what this person does most of the time. And those descriptions are divided into those three arenas. So rather than getting sort of overall feedback about everything you do as a leader kind of

Mike Leber:
Mm.

Bill Joiner:
into one rating. It's like, well, how does this person act when they're in pivotal conversations?

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
How do they act when they're leading a team or leading

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
change?

Mike Leber:
That's right.

Bill Joiner:
So that all makes it a lot more concrete. And then the written feedback, which is such an important part of a 360, the written comments, again, are not general. They are arena specific. And so a lot of people say that this really makes it a lot easier for a leader to... take feedback and decide, oh, this is what I need to do with it. This is what I want to do with it.

Mike Leber:
Right. So it's just interesting, maybe one question and most of our listeners might even not know too much about vertical or stage development. I think these two concepts

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
are, it's two names for the same concepts. And I know you built your work and research on a variety of all the different, you know, developments and authors and

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
researchers. But these stages, I think, and I think this is what I often hear on the market, and I'm not sure about you, should not be confused with typologies, right? I think that that's what just

Bill Joiner:
Oh yeah.

Mike Leber:
came out of your rephrasing. They say, you know, everybody knows Myers-Briggs. I think most people I know are pretty unhappy about these kinds of... analysis, like saying you are this kind of person, right? Because it's probably never true and also not too helpful if you're put into a box. Right. So vertical stage development is something totally different, right? It's got totally different

Bill Joiner:
That's right.

Mike Leber:
angle.

Bill Joiner:
You can almost think of it relative. The term vertical development is sometimes used for stage development.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
And it's contrasted with horizontal development. So yes, typologies are, I guess, relative to vertical development or kind of horizontal. In other words,

Mike Leber:
Hmm

Bill Joiner:
you could be any type. move through these stages I'm describing. And it will look a little different because it's a different personality type, but still the core capacities and the leadership behaviors are gonna be the same for across types. So, yeah, it can be helpful. I mean, this is kind of, you know, Irish Briggs came in, I don't know, 30 years ago or something, and

Mike Leber:
Mm.

Bill Joiner:
has been used very widely. And I think any framework that says a person is this versus that, can be used in one of two ways. It can be used either to pigeonhole evaluate people, which is kind of an expert approach,

Mike Leber:
Right, right.

Bill Joiner:
or it can be used to understand and empathize with people. Right, and so the healthy use of the Myers-Briggs is, oh, you and I are different, now I understand why. And rather than saying, oh, you're one of those, I say, Well, of course you're doing it that way. And now I need to adapt what I'm doing so that we can work together effectively.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
So the same thing with vertical development. It would be a misuse to use it and say, oh, that person's just an expert,

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
which can be tempting in an agile environment because there's so many of them. And they can't resist change. But the intent behind this framework understand why is this person acting this way

Mike Leber:
Great.

Bill Joiner:
and in addition to whatever systemic pressures may be on them, which can push somebody toward expert, you know, what is their, what is their home base

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
in terms of how they think about things? And you know, then I have to adapt myself so that there's a maybe a healthy tension, let's say between if I'm not an expert, if I move beyond that, between my approach and the other person's approach.

Mike Leber:
Right. And I mean, a little variation of what you just outlined could be even self awareness, right? I mean, it's not about the other

Bill Joiner:
Oh yeah.

Mike Leber:
person, but basically saying what in this kind of description relates to my behavior, which either, you know, helps or cancels certain goals of mine.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
understand a little bit myself better. As you said, it's, it's just a

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
map. It's not the territory, but it might help me to reflect. And I'm not sure,

Bill Joiner:
Maps

Mike Leber:
but I

Bill Joiner:
can

Mike Leber:
can

Bill Joiner:
be

Mike Leber:
imagine,

Bill Joiner:
useful.

Mike Leber:
right. And the coaches probably work with, um, and, and the leaders probably got a lot out of this kind of thinking.

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would say leaders have found this to be very practical. And in spite of the, you know, what I've tried to do, and this is kind of a tendency I have, is to take leading edge ideas, synthesize them, and make them very practical and easy to understand. And I think that's a lot of leaders experience this framework in that way. And you can also think of it as, you know, it's relevant not only for individual leaders, but for teams. So a team can have its own center of gravity. And you know, I've worked with several senior teams where... they have an achiever center of gravity. And they... they, you know, through an exercise we do, they realize that they identify the nature of the environment that they're operating and how complex and fast changing it is. And they see that there's a bit of a disconnect there. They're not operating at the level that would be most effective in the environment that they're facing. And it's not that they need to change everything they're doing, but there are certain conversations, topics and issues that... would be much more effectively dealt with from a more catalyst perspective. And I guess we haven't described catalysts yet, have we? Maybe I should

Mike Leber:
That's

Bill Joiner:
say

Mike Leber:
the next

Bill Joiner:
something

Mike Leber:
point I

Bill Joiner:
about

Mike Leber:
wanted

Bill Joiner:
that.

Mike Leber:
to, yeah, exactly. That, that was the next one because we talked a lot and it's no coincidence. We talked a lot about an expert achiever and you mentioned about

Bill Joiner:
Right.

Mike Leber:
90% in total these two stages, but so

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
what's, what's the, what makes the catalyst then differ from

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
the previous

Bill Joiner:
Need a tweaper,

Mike Leber:
page,

Bill Joiner:
yeah.

Mike Leber:
the achiever.

Bill Joiner:
Well, one big thing is the perspective on organizational change. So an achiever approach, as I said, is a strategic approach. And it means you set an objective for where you want to be in the next few years, and then you create a plan to get there, and you implement the plan. Now as I said, these build on one another. And it's not that... a catalyst abandons that. In fact, they're very good at that.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
So they're dealing at a strategic level, but also beyond a strategic level. And I sometimes call that a strategic capacity building orientation. And it comes out of this kind of thinking. They're actually thinking farther down the road than the current strategic horizon. They're thinking what kind of organization do we need that's going to be able to sense and respond to whatever unknown new developments they're going to be? Because there's an awareness that you can't predict. You don't know five years from now what your challenges are going to be. So what these leaders do is, in addition to ensuring that the current strategic objectives are met, they're building the capacity of the organization to sense and respond to anything that comes over that horizon. So that's a that's a big mindset shift or

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
shift in thinking There's a greater Interest in self-awareness and self-development More proactive approach to seeking feedback their teams are highly participative, empowered. And they, for example, in leading an organizational change, what catalyst leaders tend to do is... Well, first of all, they see that the change in the culture is being essential to

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
developing. I mean, what they're really talking about is an agile organization,

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm. All

Bill Joiner:
whether they use that term or not.

Mike Leber:
right.

Bill Joiner:
This, you know, and so how do we develop an agile organization? And, you know, of course, they're important systems and methods to be implemented. Coming out of the agile movement and elsewhere, but They're particularly tuned into the culture that's needed in the organization to support this kind of organization. And that is an empowered participative culture where people can talk straight and constructively with each other. And catalyst leaders will start by creating that culture in their own team before they roll it out into the organization. So, you know, a lot of achiever leaders, trying to change the culture, they have a tendency to delegate that to HR

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
and say, you know, roll out a culture change program while we run the business.

Mike Leber:
Mm.

Bill Joiner:
And analyst leaders are like, we're going to learn to interact differently among ourselves. And that's going to create a cohesive leadership team that can both role model and be in sync and leading the change in the organization. So that's quite a different approach. They're more deeply collaborative when that is necessary. they still make ultimate decisions, the ultimate decision, but they often, it depends on the situation as to how they will do decision-making. But they have a kind of preference for a more collaborative approach. And they believe that you need to collaborate not just so that people will buy into your change initiative, but you need to collaborate because you know that new ideas are going to come in that are going to be valuable.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
So those are some of the key characteristics

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
of balance.

Mike Leber:
And this is quite interesting, because now, from what you explained regarding expert, achiever, and catalyst, it might not be a coincidence that there are not so many catalysts in the field. Because

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
to me, it sounds like a bigger shift, a way bigger shift to get there versus moving from expert to achiever. And I'm not sure about

Bill Joiner:
Well,

Mike Leber:
your experience

Bill Joiner:
it's a more unfamiliar

Mike Leber:
with it.

Bill Joiner:
shift, I think.

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
I mean, if you are a fully developed achiever, and we even see in the 360 some leaders who are kind of in the transition

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
between achiever and catalyst, those are the people who are most ready to develop this

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
catalyst approach I've been describing. If you're just learning to be an achiever, you've got to. pretty well master one of these levels before you can really move

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
beyond it in a real way.

Mike Leber:
I mean, there is this business bit and there is this emotional bit, right?

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
And if I would only take the emotional one, we might maybe say somebody can become a catalyst due to a longer term personal journey with a lot of, I don't know, experience, maybe dramatic experiences in private life or anything, but there is still this business bit, we're talking leadership and leading a business or... a system or an organization,

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
which requires additional perspectives, right? And so putting this together, it sounds, that's why I was asking, it's, it just sounds like a typical journey, a longer year term journey to grow into a catalyst stance. Is that something you experienced with catalyst leaders? If you probably you've met a few.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, well it is a journey for sure. And what you just said reminded me of another important point, which is that you can have leaders that are at a particular stage of development personally, put them in an organization and give them leadership responsibility and subject them to the stresses of a of being in that situation. Some leaders have not really, they have the cognitive and emotional capacity, but they haven't developed the behavioral repertoire that goes with it. So that's important to know when you're coaching. It's like, okay, this person, I'm thinking of an example of someone who clearly, in my early conversations with him, he thought like an achiever. yet he was managing his team like an expert.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
And for him, it was a pretty easy shift. In other words, what he was doing was he was, you know, it was a hub and spoke approach. They would have meetings where, what I call searchlight meetings, where you go around to each function and you interact with them. And the team as a whole doesn't really take on any group problem solving or whatever.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
So he shifted that, and that, you know, that was a journey of a few months, because the people in the group had to go on the journey with him. And one person resisted and he was able to have a few meetings with her where he just listened to her bitch about she wasn't getting enough direction. And yet he was providing good strategic direction, day to day directions, what she was talking about. But as he listened to her, he turned that into coaching sessions, coaching conversations where she was able to get with the program. So that's an example of somebody who was pretty much already there in terms of their stage, but not their behavior. But

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
then there are many other leaders who are acting pretty consistently with their stage. They need to evolve both their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral

Mike Leber:
Right, right,

Bill Joiner:
repertoires.

Mike Leber:
right. So I think this is more or less a brief intro into a very complex or complicated arena of material, which I think is sort of, I mean, state of the art leadership, which

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
people might look into, but probably the question would be why, what for? So the question

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
would be, you know, we could be an organization of... primarily expert leaders because we're in a certain industry. And the question also I would still have is, are there certain industries you experienced who tend more to develop further than others? Like, for example, I could imagine, I mean, it's just my experience, the finance

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
industry and maybe other regulated industries. Maybe it's about regulation and what you have to do, right? And leaders grow into what we have to avoid and it's all about risk. maybe it doesn't at least open so many opportunities or triggers to grow further versus maybe others that some might refer to teal organizations. I don't even want to bother about the term, but

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
where it's more about thinking about, you know, aligning emotional capacities with strategic direction and everything. Is that something? you've seen or sort of correlation with industries or even geographies because we might also compare these.

Bill Joiner:
Okay,

Mike Leber:
There's about

Bill Joiner:
I need to

Mike Leber:
two

Bill Joiner:
take

Mike Leber:
questions.

Bill Joiner:
a quick break.

Mike Leber:
Maybe let's start with the last one first, which is about where do we see more or less development towards further stages?

Bill Joiner:
Okay, I need to take a quick break because my air conditioner is on and I'm starting to freeze. Just

Mike Leber:
All

Bill Joiner:
one

Mike Leber:
right,

Bill Joiner:
second,

Mike Leber:
so

Bill Joiner:
okay.

Mike Leber:
let me press the button.

Mike Leber:
at them.

Bill Joiner:
Well, in terms of, do we see, let's say, in terms of this framework, greater or lesser development in leaders by industry? I have not really seen that. And I think it really, I'm just sort of scanning past clients and research and stuff. I think it has a lot more to do with the... the person and people at the top and what their level of development is.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
Because that has such a big impact on the rest of the organization. As I said, there are some expert CEOs and they create very command and control type of organizations that, as we all know, increasingly is not very effective in today's environment.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
And back to the question of why, why develop leaders further along this spectrum? I think it has everything to do with the environment. Well, I'd say two things, but the environment is certainly a big part of it. And with the pace of change, not only, not only are things moving fast, but they are accelerating. And if organizations don't get out in front of that and develop their leaders, that have the complexity and their thinking and the emotional intelligence to deal effectively with that. They're going to be in trouble and they, you know, there may be certain, you know, we have this special product and so we're going to do really well. That may be true for a time. But, you know, that catalyst perspective is like, well, yeah, but what's going to be after that? And are we going to be ready for that? So. That's a big part of it. And I think the other is more of an emotional thing. As you said, there's kind of the business and the emotional. What's more satisfying? you know, which of these leaders would I like to be on a team with? Um, we'll kind of... Whoops. Sorry.

Mike Leber:
I'm just making

Bill Joiner:
I'm sorry.

Mike Leber:
a marker clip here and we can just repeat.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
I will cut that out.

Bill Joiner:
Uh... What was I saying?

Mike Leber:
Um, whom, which like, you know, what is, what about satisfaction? Which leader do you want to work with?

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, which one would you want to work with? Yeah. So I think, you know, We run an exercise where we simulate the three levels. And so it's both experiential and conceptual way of learning these levels. And one of the questions we usually ask, once we kind of get to the end of it, is which leader would you rather work with? And it's always the catalyst and never the expert. And people, sometimes they'll comment, even in this exercise, they'll say, I noticed a real shift in the energy in this group. as we move through those levels. You know, it went from a kind of a heavy constricted energy to a lighter and more free flowing energy. You know, and it's still getting things done, but it's doing it in a different way. And I really believe that this, it's catalyst leadership to be successful in an agile transformation. you need to develop certainly senior leaders who are catalyst level leaders. That's why I say I think it's the missing ingredient in a lot of agile

Mike Leber:
Right,

Bill Joiner:
transformations.

Mike Leber:
right. And I'm not sure if this is still accurate. I even remember you once showed a chart where there is some correlation between business results and higher levels of agility in an organization, right?

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, that's right.

Mike Leber:
Which is another

Bill Joiner:
Yeah,

Mike Leber:
argument.

Bill Joiner:
that was, yes. Yeah, I did a research project after writing the book where I reviewed the literature on is there a correlation between organizational agility and business performance. And that study that I did sort of encompassed all kinds of organizations. business and non-business, a wide variety of geographical locations. And the studies I was looking at ranged from academic studies to survey research to case studies. All of them came to the same conclusion, which was the better the organization is at dealing with complexity and change. In other words, the more agile, the better the business performance, just using traditional business metrics. Yeah, so that's pretty compelling. I think it, and we sort of added into that, we did another couple of studies, one in Europe and one in the US, where we added in the leadership agility questions. And so we were able to see that there was a correlation between those organizations that were more achiever catalysts in their leadership culture compared to those that were more expert achiever. Those with higher levels of agility in the culture were more agile as organizations. And again, we replicated that finding that. they had better business performance.

Mike Leber:
And I mean, business

Bill Joiner:
Thank you.

Mike Leber:
performance can be a very narrow measure,

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
right? And

Bill Joiner:
Right.

Mike Leber:
I'm not sure how much you already looked into possibly, let's say, more like sustainability metrics. And metrics is even probably a hard term here, but you know,

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
you mentioned it anyway, to say there is a bigger capacity to deal with rapid change. And I

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
mean, I'm thinking about, you know, stress levels. I'm thinking about this high degree of silent quitting, which we have at the table

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
latest since the pandemic, but before it was, you know, burnout across the organization. But even now, again, specifically across managers who work just harder and harder and harder because there's the system they're in is forcing them. And then we've got forced ranking and everything. There is no space for emotions anymore. So I think that could be a very

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
important capacity or competence to overcome these limitations, which are, you could say basically toxic,

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
right? So anything you're looking into from this angle?

Bill Joiner:
Well, we don't have metrics on that, but.

Mike Leber:
and well.

Bill Joiner:
You know, another way of describing what catalyst leaders are trying to do with their organizations, in addition to making them more agile, is making them more sustainable. Because it's taking that longer view, realizing that we have to be adaptive, resilient, agile, to succeed in this increasingly chaotic world. We also find that it's the, that in today's world that the, uh, catalyst leaders are those who are not only most effective, but most resilient, uh, least likely to burn out. So you could have achiever leaders that are making it work. Um, but there's a cost, uh, you know, some personal cost and some organizational culture cost, uh, to do it. to just sort of staying in that gear and not shifting into a higher gear.

Mike Leber:
Now we already mentioned it, the agile transformation bit, right? And I'm struggling

Bill Joiner:
I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

Mike Leber:
with this term anyway. I mean, a little bit, I can a little bit deal with organizational transformation, um, in, in

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
general, but agile is already a little bit too. I mean, questionable what, what it would be, but however, there is a lot of investment into these programs, uh, since years

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
and not sure what is your experience. what are they maybe doing right, but what is maybe missing in relation to leadership or involving leadership or addressing leadership when it comes to agile

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
transformations.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah. Well, in my experience, there's a kind of a surprising number of agile transformation efforts. Some of them, you know, I encounter them where they're three years into it or it's not really working, not really getting the results they want or the changes that they want. What are they doing about developing leaders? Oh, developing leaders. That's an idea. I mean, you know, it's just not part of the mindset of what it is. And then when they do think of leadership, they'll, if it's connected, particularly if it's connected with introducing agile methods, you know, they'll think about agile leadership in the same way we talked about at the beginning of our conversation. Um, and I think it's hard because that's a more abstract understanding of Agile leadership, I think it's harder for leaders to grab onto to see specifically what would they do differently. Um. I'm going to be a broken record here and just say that I think the leadership agility approach is a better fit for agile transformations than some of the either non-leadership or leadership things that are being done.

Mike Leber:
Hmm. Well, but I could imagine, you know, like, as we just looked into it, expert, achiever, as long as we just run an organizational transformation, why results on a lower or bigger scale, we are lacking the needs that come up during such massive change, which is all about, you know, like, total different types of working together and new roles. new perspectives into the

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
future, which I think amongst the whole organization usually creates a lot of angst first. If we're not addressing

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, I can.

Mike Leber:
those, then we are running into a trap. So I could imagine, and

Bill Joiner:
Uh-uh.

Mike Leber:
again, even if you don't have specific research material that it could be helpful to first turn to people instead of first turning to results and methods and practices, at least this is little bit related

Bill Joiner:
Well,

Mike Leber:
to my experience.

Bill Joiner:
yeah, I think an all inclusive approach is probably what's needed. Um, I mean, you know, most agile transformations I've seen or even just implementing scrum, uh,

Mike Leber:
Mm.

Bill Joiner:
in, in a, in a, uh, you know, in a, in the technical side of the business, uh, which was sort of how it started out, usually there are, um, sponsors, you know, executive level or whatever.

Mike Leber:
Exactly.

Bill Joiner:
the right authority level is sponsors. And that's, you know, we know from past few decades that that's essential for any major organizational change. Those sponsors are educated in what Agile is and how to support it. But much less often are they given the opportunity to develop their own agility. And so I think it's a both and. And because it's that leadership that's going to create the environment in the organization to be able to address the things you're pointing to. You know, as leaders develop along the spectrum, they become more interested in and effective at dealing constructively with resistance. With...

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
creating environments where people can thrive in spite of the pressures they're under.

Mike Leber:
Right. So apart from, I want to look into this in the next question, apart from, you know, individuals, individual leaders taking on the journey. I mean, growing an internal capacity or expanding the internal capacity, wouldn't, wouldn't HR be the first place to, to think about such concepts, um, to make them accessible and to develop them further at scale across an organization. So with that, with that. make a difference. I'm not sure exactly what HR departments across the globe are doing today, because I think they're confronted also with so much changes, but

Bill Joiner:
Right. Yeah.

Mike Leber:
probably it would be a helpful lever to look after, right?

Bill Joiner:
Well, in the work that we do, sometimes we're brought in through HR and sometimes we're brought in through

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
line managers. And frankly, it's, well, it's just a different, it's a whole different power dynamic and set of issues to deal with. HR, maybe, depending on who's running it and who's, who's sitting in the leadership development seats.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
may be more receptive to this kind of an approach. but they don't necessarily have the leverage to bring it as fully into the organization as line managers do. Line managers are getting interested in this. I say not so much through the psychological side of it as through the practical, more effective leadership side of it.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
And as I said, it does usually when we present the framework and we can be concrete about it and especially when we can do this interactive exercise I mentioned

Mike Leber:
Mm.

Bill Joiner:
earlier. Um, leaders can pretty quickly grasp, uh, what we're talking about and what the value of it is. You know, it's another thing to put it into practice, obviously. And I think that's for, for that to happen. It can't just be educating people, you know, like here's a workshop. Here's the framework, you know,

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
go be a catalyst or whatever, go increase your agility level. It is, like you said earlier, it's a journey. And I think one of the most effective tools, although we also do workshops and leadership development programs, is coaching. And we've developed specific methods for helping experts become achievers and achievers become catalysts. And there are different methods for each of those shifts. And... There's another part of the framework that I would just touch on. We haven't touched on it yet. The four types of agility. And that is context setting. And that's, you know, when I talked about the catalyst approach to organizational change and how they think about what they're trying to do, that's an example of context setting. And then achievers being more strategic is their context setting. Then there's stakeholder agility. This is how you work with others to. how you collaborate or whether you collaborate and

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
how deeply you do. Creative agility has more to do with specific problem solving. It's the most kind of on the ground. And then self-leadership agility includes what you mentioned earlier, self-awareness and experimentation with new behavior. And so there are specific coaching methods to help leaders in each of those four areas develop from one level to another. So armed with that, and that's what we teach in our Leaders in Vigility Coaching program, which by the way is coming up on September 28th.

Mike Leber:
Alright.

Bill Joiner:
And if you want to get in on the action, you can come to our website and

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
take a look at that. But those, we found those methods to be very effective in helping leaders move along the journey. If we combine the 360 and the coaching. really helps them to elevate their level of agility.

Mike Leber:
All right. So there are specific paths or opportunities to raise your individual level of leadership agility.

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
And thinking about triggers, what would usually bring somebody, if I'm a leader, what would bring me to this concept or to this idea, what's typically the case in your experience? I mean, you already mentioned it just run, just attending another training or workshop is maybe a thing, you know, because agile leadership, for example, is a little bit hyping here and there, but it's probably not this sense of, Hey, I want to change something in my life. There must be other backgrounds or

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm

Mike Leber:
trigger points.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, well, let me think. So you're talking about the need that a leader would feel that would take them to

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
consider

Mike Leber:
First of all,

Bill Joiner:
getting

Mike Leber:
an individual.

Bill Joiner:
involved in this.

Mike Leber:
Exactly. And, and I mean, out of individual engagement could come a movement. You know, I was thinking a little bit about cohorts, groups that could start growing in an organization. Somebody hears about

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
something, but what brings me to this? I mean, uh, any line manager who is, who's been into, into the business for a while might say, you know, I'm, I'm covering this. I'm. good enough. Some things

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
might not work as well, but it's not about me.

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
And

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
so the question is, when do I step out and say, well, but maybe it is also about me.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah. Well, gosh, there's so, there's so many different ways that has happened. I'm thinking about one CEO of a small tech company who read the book. He was having conflicts with his co-founder. The book helped him understand. I mean, he was essentially a kind of achiever catalyst transition person. His co-founder was an expert and it helped him to understand what was going on and why they kept arguing over how to run the business. And it led them to an amicable separation where the expert leader sold his piece of the business. And the sort of catalyst in waiting CEO. engaged me to do coaching for him personally. And he's the 360 and over a course of several years he became a real catalyst leader and also worked with his executive team the same way. So that's one way it can happen. Sometimes it happens because there's pain in the organization. Oh, well there was pain in that case, I guess as well, but it not just between a couple of people, but I'm thinking of a a city in Canada that we worked with. It was just really had bogged down. They're really at loggerheads with each other. Essentially, the executives that were running the municipality. So we came in and did 360 feedback and coaching with them. So it's often, I mean, sometimes it's an individual leader and occasionally it's a sort of remedial case that an individual leader will wind up working with us, but that's pretty rare. It's most often in a group situation. So it's that the team... Let's see, let me see if I can describe the kind of situation that usually, usually the team, it's like a senior team or senior-ish team. That's two in the weeds. Uh, that isn't collaborating effectively. That's sort of in other words, operating in kind of an expert way. Um, and, um, you know, that just says all kinds of ramifications down through the organization. Uh, And I think it's a combination of that need and then, for some reason, becoming aware of this framework. And, you know, people who see, maybe this is something that we need.

Mike Leber:
Right,

Bill Joiner:
So, it's kind

Mike Leber:
right.

Bill Joiner:
of like that.

Mike Leber:
Is that then, if we think further, and again, going beyond the individual, is that then maybe also becoming a leadership agility culture? Is that something we can talk about? I mean, so far I understood the concept more as an individual

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
one, but you also mentioned

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
culture and somehow as soon as I'm... behaving differently and others and we do that as a group, right? There is something emerging. We might even talk about

Bill Joiner:
That's

Mike Leber:
a

Bill Joiner:
right.

Mike Leber:
catalyst culture,

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
right?

Bill Joiner:
Well, yeah, I use the term leadership culture as

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
the sort of the neutral description and that can

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
be that's what I was talking about earlier in that research.

Mike Leber:
Mmm.

Bill Joiner:
Is it more achiever catalyst or is it more expert achiever?

Mike Leber:
Hmm

Bill Joiner:
And yeah, that's a real thing. I mean, the way I think of leadership culture relative to organizational culture is it's a subset of the organizational culture. It has to do with what are the norms we're setting for what leadership looks like in our organization. What do we role model? And so as I said, if you have a more expert kind of culture, that has many ramifications that are not so positive down through the organization.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
So we do work on not only focusing on individual leaders, but raising the agility of the leadership culture.

Mike Leber:
Right. And I assume what you mentioned before, senior or higher levels of leadership. Now, I'm not talking about the levels of leadership agility, but in the organization, having

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
probably a higher impact on what's possible, right.

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
In a certain kind of organization.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, I mean, it's not impossible to do things from the bottom up or from the middle out, but

Mike Leber:
Right, right.

Bill Joiner:
it really helps if you can create genuine change at the top and

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
then sort of enable them to create change throughout the organization.

Mike Leber:
Yeah. But that brings us to a very common probably situation when, you know, a lot of grassroots movements probably happen in the agile industry, department head or somebody just

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
understood or saw somewhere else what could be possible. And then, you know, basically stretches beyond and maybe is on a catalyst path. But unfortunately, his boss and boss's boss is more. would be more attached to the Achiever Expert levels. How would that sort out? I mean, that's

Bill Joiner:
Well,

Mike Leber:
a little

Bill Joiner:
that's

Mike Leber:
bit of

Bill Joiner:
an

Mike Leber:
flash,

Bill Joiner:
interesting question.

Mike Leber:
right?

Bill Joiner:
Yeah. That's an often asked question.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
So it depends, I think, generally speaking, if your boss is an expert and therefore inclined to micromanage, it can't really inhibit your, and you have a higher level of agility that's natural to you. That can be inhibiting. Um, it's not that you can't make that work, but it's, it's challenging. If you're, if you're have catalyst inclinations and your boss is an achiever, what that means is that your boss is going to manage you to outcomes. Right. So as long as you're achieving the outcomes, most achiever bosses don't care how you do it. Just, just hit that number.

Mike Leber:
Hmm

Bill Joiner:
And so it gives you more freedom

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
to experiment with, I'm gonna run my team meetings this way, right? And good catalyst leaders are ones who do pay attention to those achiever goals and objectives and make sure they're met. So they're really working on kind of two levels at the same time. In the book, there are examples, the examples of the leadership agility book is sort of structured around the levels and has each, I think each chapter has four stories that illustrate

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
that level of agility and across those arenas.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
And when you look at, when you read those stories about the catalyst leaders, they're all working for achieve our bosses. So that tells me, you know, it's not an absolute ceiling on your agility level to have an achiever boss.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
In fact, that's a very common scenario. You can still really be a catalyst and get the results of a catalyst. But you have to manage that relationship, but you know, that's part of what catalysts do.

Mike Leber:
Right, right. And I can imagine there was a potential for, I mean, influencing the Achiever Boss over time. And

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
then maybe get them also on board with

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
different kinds of conversations, right, and exploring maybe other perspectives. So they might step back and just or lean back and just say, Hey, that's interesting things you bring in here.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, it's always a possibility, yes.

Mike Leber:
Right. Now, pretty close to the end of this very interesting conversations, but there is still so many questions. And one of them, you mentioned coaches and coaching. And again,

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
the agile, the agile world is pretty famous for agile coaching. And, and, um, so obviously the question would be, I mean, how would developing themselves across the leadership agility framework while

Bill Joiner:
Oh,

Mike Leber:
or

Bill Joiner:
developing

Mike Leber:
before

Bill Joiner:
themselves.

Mike Leber:
they are coaching leaders,

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
right?

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I think just as leaders can be at these different levels, coaches can as well. And, you know, the. The expert approach to coaching in a nutshell is, I'm an expert on how to do this agile stuff, so listen to me.

Mike Leber:
Exactly.

Bill Joiner:
and not necessarily highly collaborative in the approach. And that could be frustrating for both parties. Achiever approach is more. I think a lot of enterprise Agile coaches, just this is a huge generalization, but our achiever level coaches who can do coaching that's not just advice giving, but stimulating the reflection, the leadership reflection on their own practice, and you know, which is really such an important part of leadership agility and Agile.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
Um, and then there are some, you know, I'm going on, we have many agile coaches, agile enterprise coaches who've come to our workshops and some of these coaches, I think are catalyst level people in coaches. Um, they're able to go deeper. They're able to modulate, um, when to sort of step back and just ask questions and let the leader reflect. and come to their own conclusions, but they can sometimes it's like, well, here's an idea. Would you, you know, you think this might work so that there, um, there's, uh, I think in good coaching is not just, um, sort of the stereotypical psychoanalyst who says,

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
uh, I see, I see

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
it's, uh, it's, uh, it's someone who's able to. really stimulate the reflection of the leader, but

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
also has a point of view that can be offered in a collaborative way. Not like this is what you should do, but is this something that might be worth exploring? So you know, I feel there are, I think probably a higher percentage of catalysts. Enterprise Agile Coaches than Catalyst Leaders.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
Just as I think there's a higher percentage of regular leadership coaches who are

Mike Leber:
Right, right,

Bill Joiner:
themselves

Mike Leber:
right.

Bill Joiner:
catalysts.

Mike Leber:
Right. So you mentioned it, if I was a coach, well, actually I did that, but if somebody wanted to

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
make the leadership agility framework part of their repertoire, right? They wanna use this in their practice. You mentioned workshops and programs. So what exactly does this offering look like? What could people expect if

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
they wanted to make this? you know, part of theirs and

Bill Joiner:
Hmm.

Mike Leber:
then

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
maybe

Bill Joiner:
Well.

Mike Leber:
have nothing. Maybe they even didn't read your book yet. So where would they start?

Bill Joiner:
Yeah. Well, one thing they can do is go to changewise.biz, which is my company website, and download the white paper on leadership agility, which is sort of the executive summary of the book and the framework. That's one way you can take a closer look at that. Also on the homepage are two programs for coaches. So there's the coaching program I mentioned earlier, which starts September 28th and runs through mid February. with some breaks for holidays. And there's the 360 certification workshop is October 24 through 27. And you can access that also on our homepage. I think the 360 is particularly useful for enterprise Agile coaches because it gives you a structure to... look together at a leader's leadership.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
And it results in a coaching agenda so that leaders come out of this process highly committed to working on usually three things. And those are put into a well-structured action plan that says, okay, this is what I've been doing behaviorally. I wanna do this instead.

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
This is the mindset that is going to help me do this new thing.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
And that's always unique to the individual. And this is the mindset that's been sort of unconsciously driving me to do the old behavior. And here are the situations where I'm going to most often practice this. And this is how I'm going to remember to do it. Um, so, you know, I think a lot of, a lot of agile coaches are a bit frustrated with the leaders they work with. Because it can be hard to get them to see what they need to work.

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
And this provides, I think, a great tool to solve that problem.

Mike Leber:
Yeah, it's this whole bunch of benefits. And it's not about advertising here, but just talking from my own experience, first of all, better embracing

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
what leadership means, right? I mean, again, as Agilist, we sometimes have been, but not always have been in leadership positions ourselves. So it has been easy

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
to talk about these new ways of working and then just bash leaders, making them responsible for something.

Bill Joiner:
Yes.

Mike Leber:
where things are not as simple as they might look like. So you might gain a different stance, growing your own capacity to see more, maybe also developing your own emotional capacity and then even learn concrete tools to analyze, to help leaders analyze their own situation, reflect upon and then help them to turn to concrete

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
development action, right? Sounds like a thing. Now, a final question that's interesting to me because you've been doing this work now pretty long and the book was released on something like nearly 15 years ago, right? It's quite some time. And if you look back, what have you seen as most significant changes that impacted leadership or leadership development in general? since the release of the book. Is there anything that stands out for you? I mean, zoom back to 2007 when you made this available, the whole industry was in a different state, of course. I think

Bill Joiner:
Right.

Mike Leber:
scaling became, scaling agile became a topic even a little bit later.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
Now it's everywhere and leadership is

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
challenged everywhere. Is

Bill Joiner:
Well,

Mike Leber:
there

Bill Joiner:
I think

Mike Leber:
anything?

Bill Joiner:
you've summarized it pretty well. I mean,

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
I think to me, this framework is something and the book even talks about two levels of agility beyond catalyst,

Mike Leber:
Mm. Right.

Bill Joiner:
which to me is kind of the frontier, or these are real pioneers in how to lead and they're very... These are people for whom leadership and personal development are closely intertwined. But I think it's going to be a useful framework for decades to come. That's that's my, you know, we'll see. Am I just myopic and my in that prediction or is that actually possible? I think what's happened is in a way that the world has become even more like the world that was described in the book.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
You know, even more chaotic. And now, of course, we have climate change. That's part of the highly complex, rapidly changing environment, but it's an existential threat

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
to everyone. So I think that's certainly, and I think that's something that catalyst leadership can help with.

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
I'm not saying you have to be at the catalyst level to work on climate change, far from it. But I think the more... catalyst leaders we have, the better position will be to make the changes of adjustments that are needed. Yeah, I mean, I think the scaling of Agile is a huge piece of what's happened. And it's made. think the relevance of this kind of leadership and the kind of culture that it can create even more central.

Mike Leber:
It sounds enlightening at least, despite all the challenges you just mentioned. I would totally agree that we cannot just limit agility to the development of products within

Bill Joiner:
Mhm.

Mike Leber:
a closed context of, for example, an organization or company, because

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
as you mentioned, there are too many interdependent systems where there are major problems. where these, you know, where these products are going to even, and then, you know, society where people come from and politics and everything. As you said, there's

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
a lot of chaos nowadays. So I'm just imagining leadership development or leadership agility development also becoming a topic, at least in universities and in business, business courses, and maybe even

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
earlier, and across educators. So So we're, you know, developing this capacity

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
or becoming at least aware of a bit

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
earlier. and

Bill Joiner:
I was just contacted recently by a professor in Spain who teaches at a business school. And we just, we kind of came into contact through a mutual friend and he said, oh yeah, I've been teaching leadership agility for a number of years now using your book. And I'm teaching in multiple countries and leaders are finding it very practical and helpful. We haven't made a concerted effort to try to get it into universities, but I'm encouraged by that.

Mike Leber:
That sounds beautiful. Brings me actually to a final question here. I mean, you mentioned the courses which are coming up this fall. People could join, I assume online, most of them.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah,

Mike Leber:
But

Bill Joiner:
these

Mike Leber:
again,

Bill Joiner:
are virtual programs.

Mike Leber:
yeah,

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
virtual programs. But again, we'll put a pointer to your website. You mentioned it already change wise, change wise,

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
right? Thought, bees,

Bill Joiner:
Changewise.biz, yeah.

Mike Leber:
thought bees. Anything else that's coming up on your side next where you're diving into any kind of research, publication, things that

Bill Joiner:
Hmm

Mike Leber:
draw your curiosity further on all these topics? Exploring humanity, literally.

Bill Joiner:
Not at the moment. I mean, there's a link on the homepage that goes to, it's called something like learn more about leadership agility and it includes

Mike Leber:
Mm.

Bill Joiner:
various articles I've written, including some that are in the Agile space.

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
It includes talks I've given, some of which are to Agile audiences. So there's a lot there that if somebody's interested, they could explore.

Mike Leber:
Yeah. All right. Bill, it's been a pleasure talking to you as always. And it's a great, great

Bill Joiner:
Yeah,

Mike Leber:
opportunity

Bill Joiner:
thanks for a great

Mike Leber:
learning

Bill Joiner:
conversation,

Mike Leber:
from you.

Bill Joiner:
Mike.

Mike Leber:
Thank you. And I'm looking forward to explore more with your work, with your help and everything else in the practical fields. It's an

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
exciting, exciting topic that brings us new insights nearly every day when we meet people. and face challenges, but you know, see possibilities. And that's just what you helped us with. Thanks for being here. All the best for your

Bill Joiner:
Thank

Mike Leber:
next

Bill Joiner:
you.

Mike Leber:
tips.

Mike Leber:
at them.

Bill Joiner:
Well, in terms of, do we see, let's say, in terms of this framework, greater or lesser development in leaders by industry? I have not really seen that. And I think it really, I'm just sort of scanning past clients and research and stuff. I think it has a lot more to do with the... the person and people at the top and what their level of development is.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
Because that has such a big impact on the rest of the organization. As I said, there are some expert CEOs and they create very command and control type of organizations that, as we all know, increasingly is not very effective in today's environment.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
And back to the question of why, why develop leaders further along this spectrum? I think it has everything to do with the environment. Well, I'd say two things, but the environment is certainly a big part of it. And with the pace of change, not only, not only are things moving fast, but they are accelerating. And if organizations don't get out in front of that and develop their leaders, that have the complexity and their thinking and the emotional intelligence to deal effectively with that. They're going to be in trouble and they, you know, there may be certain, you know, we have this special product and so we're going to do really well. That may be true for a time. But, you know, that catalyst perspective is like, well, yeah, but what's going to be after that? And are we going to be ready for that? So. That's a big part of it. And I think the other is more of an emotional thing. As you said, there's kind of the business and the emotional. What's more satisfying? you know, which of these leaders would I like to be on a team with? Um, we'll kind of... Whoops. Sorry.

Mike Leber:
I'm just making

Bill Joiner:
I'm sorry.

Mike Leber:
a marker clip here and we can just repeat.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
I will cut that out.

Bill Joiner:
Uh... What was I saying?

Mike Leber:
Um, whom, which like, you know, what is, what about satisfaction? Which leader do you want to work with?

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, which one would you want to work with? Yeah. So I think, you know, We run an exercise where we simulate the three levels. And so it's both experiential and conceptual way of learning these levels. And one of the questions we usually ask, once we kind of get to the end of it, is which leader would you rather work with? And it's always the catalyst and never the expert. And people, sometimes they'll comment, even in this exercise, they'll say, I noticed a real shift in the energy in this group. as we move through those levels. You know, it went from a kind of a heavy constricted energy to a lighter and more free flowing energy. You know, and it's still getting things done, but it's doing it in a different way. And I really believe that this, it's catalyst leadership to be successful in an agile transformation. you need to develop certainly senior leaders who are catalyst level leaders. That's why I say I think it's the missing ingredient in a lot of agile

Mike Leber:
Right,

Bill Joiner:
transformations.

Mike Leber:
right. And I'm not sure if this is still accurate. I even remember you once showed a chart where there is some correlation between business results and higher levels of agility in an organization, right?

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, that's right.

Mike Leber:
Which is another

Bill Joiner:
Yeah,

Mike Leber:
argument.

Bill Joiner:
that was, yes. Yeah, I did a research project after writing the book where I reviewed the literature on is there a correlation between organizational agility and business performance. And that study that I did sort of encompassed all kinds of organizations. business and non-business, a wide variety of geographical locations. And the studies I was looking at ranged from academic studies to survey research to case studies. All of them came to the same conclusion, which was the better the organization is at dealing with complexity and change. In other words, the more agile, the better the business performance, just using traditional business metrics. Yeah, so that's pretty compelling. I think it, and we sort of added into that, we did another couple of studies, one in Europe and one in the US, where we added in the leadership agility questions. And so we were able to see that there was a correlation between those organizations that were more achiever catalysts in their leadership culture compared to those that were more expert achiever. Those with higher levels of agility in the culture were more agile as organizations. And again, we replicated that finding that. they had better business performance.

Mike Leber:
And I mean, business

Bill Joiner:
Thank you.

Mike Leber:
performance can be a very narrow measure,

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
right? And

Bill Joiner:
Right.

Mike Leber:
I'm not sure how much you already looked into possibly, let's say, more like sustainability metrics. And metrics is even probably a hard term here, but you know,

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
you mentioned it anyway, to say there is a bigger capacity to deal with rapid change. And I

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
mean, I'm thinking about, you know, stress levels. I'm thinking about this high degree of silent quitting, which we have at the table

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
latest since the pandemic, but before it was, you know, burnout across the organization. But even now, again, specifically across managers who work just harder and harder and harder because there's the system they're in is forcing them. And then we've got forced ranking and everything. There is no space for emotions anymore. So I think that could be a very

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
important capacity or competence to overcome these limitations, which are, you could say basically toxic,

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
right? So anything you're looking into from this angle?

Bill Joiner:
Well, we don't have metrics on that, but.

Mike Leber:
and well.

Bill Joiner:
You know, another way of describing what catalyst leaders are trying to do with their organizations, in addition to making them more agile, is making them more sustainable. Because it's taking that longer view, realizing that we have to be adaptive, resilient, agile, to succeed in this increasingly chaotic world. We also find that it's the, that in today's world that the, uh, catalyst leaders are those who are not only most effective, but most resilient, uh, least likely to burn out. So you could have achiever leaders that are making it work. Um, but there's a cost, uh, you know, some personal cost and some organizational culture cost, uh, to do it. to just sort of staying in that gear and not shifting into a higher gear.

Mike Leber:
Now we already mentioned it, the agile transformation bit, right? And I'm struggling

Bill Joiner:
I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

Mike Leber:
with this term anyway. I mean, a little bit, I can a little bit deal with organizational transformation, um, in, in

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
general, but agile is already a little bit too. I mean, questionable what, what it would be, but however, there is a lot of investment into these programs, uh, since years

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
and not sure what is your experience. what are they maybe doing right, but what is maybe missing in relation to leadership or involving leadership or addressing leadership when it comes to agile

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
transformations.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah. Well, in my experience, there's a kind of a surprising number of agile transformation efforts. Some of them, you know, I encounter them where they're three years into it or it's not really working, not really getting the results they want or the changes that they want. What are they doing about developing leaders? Oh, developing leaders. That's an idea. I mean, you know, it's just not part of the mindset of what it is. And then when they do think of leadership, they'll, if it's connected, particularly if it's connected with introducing agile methods, you know, they'll think about agile leadership in the same way we talked about at the beginning of our conversation. Um, and I think it's hard because that's a more abstract understanding of Agile leadership, I think it's harder for leaders to grab onto to see specifically what would they do differently. Um. I'm going to be a broken record here and just say that I think the leadership agility approach is a better fit for agile transformations than some of the either non-leadership or leadership things that are being done.

Mike Leber:
Hmm. Well, but I could imagine, you know, like, as we just looked into it, expert, achiever, as long as we just run an organizational transformation, why results on a lower or bigger scale, we are lacking the needs that come up during such massive change, which is all about, you know, like, total different types of working together and new roles. new perspectives into the

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
future, which I think amongst the whole organization usually creates a lot of angst first. If we're not addressing

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, I can.

Mike Leber:
those, then we are running into a trap. So I could imagine, and

Bill Joiner:
Uh-uh.

Mike Leber:
again, even if you don't have specific research material that it could be helpful to first turn to people instead of first turning to results and methods and practices, at least this is little bit related

Bill Joiner:
Well,

Mike Leber:
to my experience.

Bill Joiner:
yeah, I think an all inclusive approach is probably what's needed. Um, I mean, you know, most agile transformations I've seen or even just implementing scrum, uh,

Mike Leber:
Mm.

Bill Joiner:
in, in a, in a, uh, you know, in a, in the technical side of the business, uh, which was sort of how it started out, usually there are, um, sponsors, you know, executive level or whatever.

Mike Leber:
Exactly.

Bill Joiner:
the right authority level is sponsors. And that's, you know, we know from past few decades that that's essential for any major organizational change. Those sponsors are educated in what Agile is and how to support it. But much less often are they given the opportunity to develop their own agility. And so I think it's a both and. And because it's that leadership that's going to create the environment in the organization to be able to address the things you're pointing to. You know, as leaders develop along the spectrum, they become more interested in and effective at dealing constructively with resistance. With...

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
creating environments where people can thrive in spite of the pressures they're under.

Mike Leber:
Right. So apart from, I want to look into this in the next question, apart from, you know, individuals, individual leaders taking on the journey. I mean, growing an internal capacity or expanding the internal capacity, wouldn't, wouldn't HR be the first place to, to think about such concepts, um, to make them accessible and to develop them further at scale across an organization. So with that, with that. make a difference. I'm not sure exactly what HR departments across the globe are doing today, because I think they're confronted also with so much changes, but

Bill Joiner:
Right. Yeah.

Mike Leber:
probably it would be a helpful lever to look after, right?

Bill Joiner:
Well, in the work that we do, sometimes we're brought in through HR and sometimes we're brought in through

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
line managers. And frankly, it's, well, it's just a different, it's a whole different power dynamic and set of issues to deal with. HR, maybe, depending on who's running it and who's, who's sitting in the leadership development seats.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
may be more receptive to this kind of an approach. but they don't necessarily have the leverage to bring it as fully into the organization as line managers do. Line managers are getting interested in this. I say not so much through the psychological side of it as through the practical, more effective leadership side of it.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
And as I said, it does usually when we present the framework and we can be concrete about it and especially when we can do this interactive exercise I mentioned

Mike Leber:
Mm.

Bill Joiner:
earlier. Um, leaders can pretty quickly grasp, uh, what we're talking about and what the value of it is. You know, it's another thing to put it into practice, obviously. And I think that's for, for that to happen. It can't just be educating people, you know, like here's a workshop. Here's the framework, you know,

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
go be a catalyst or whatever, go increase your agility level. It is, like you said earlier, it's a journey. And I think one of the most effective tools, although we also do workshops and leadership development programs, is coaching. And we've developed specific methods for helping experts become achievers and achievers become catalysts. And there are different methods for each of those shifts. And... There's another part of the framework that I would just touch on. We haven't touched on it yet. The four types of agility. And that is context setting. And that's, you know, when I talked about the catalyst approach to organizational change and how they think about what they're trying to do, that's an example of context setting. And then achievers being more strategic is their context setting. Then there's stakeholder agility. This is how you work with others to. how you collaborate or whether you collaborate and

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
how deeply you do. Creative agility has more to do with specific problem solving. It's the most kind of on the ground. And then self-leadership agility includes what you mentioned earlier, self-awareness and experimentation with new behavior. And so there are specific coaching methods to help leaders in each of those four areas develop from one level to another. So armed with that, and that's what we teach in our Leaders in Vigility Coaching program, which by the way is coming up on September 28th.

Mike Leber:
Alright.

Bill Joiner:
And if you want to get in on the action, you can come to our website and

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
take a look at that. But those, we found those methods to be very effective in helping leaders move along the journey. If we combine the 360 and the coaching. really helps them to elevate their level of agility.

Mike Leber:
All right. So there are specific paths or opportunities to raise your individual level of leadership agility.

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
And thinking about triggers, what would usually bring somebody, if I'm a leader, what would bring me to this concept or to this idea, what's typically the case in your experience? I mean, you already mentioned it just run, just attending another training or workshop is maybe a thing, you know, because agile leadership, for example, is a little bit hyping here and there, but it's probably not this sense of, Hey, I want to change something in my life. There must be other backgrounds or

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm

Mike Leber:
trigger points.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, well, let me think. So you're talking about the need that a leader would feel that would take them to

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
consider

Mike Leber:
First of all,

Bill Joiner:
getting

Mike Leber:
an individual.

Bill Joiner:
involved in this.

Mike Leber:
Exactly. And, and I mean, out of individual engagement could come a movement. You know, I was thinking a little bit about cohorts, groups that could start growing in an organization. Somebody hears about

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
something, but what brings me to this? I mean, uh, any line manager who is, who's been into, into the business for a while might say, you know, I'm, I'm covering this. I'm. good enough. Some things

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
might not work as well, but it's not about me.

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
And

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
so the question is, when do I step out and say, well, but maybe it is also about me.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah. Well, gosh, there's so, there's so many different ways that has happened. I'm thinking about one CEO of a small tech company who read the book. He was having conflicts with his co-founder. The book helped him understand. I mean, he was essentially a kind of achiever catalyst transition person. His co-founder was an expert and it helped him to understand what was going on and why they kept arguing over how to run the business. And it led them to an amicable separation where the expert leader sold his piece of the business. And the sort of catalyst in waiting CEO. engaged me to do coaching for him personally. And he's the 360 and over a course of several years he became a real catalyst leader and also worked with his executive team the same way. So that's one way it can happen. Sometimes it happens because there's pain in the organization. Oh, well there was pain in that case, I guess as well, but it not just between a couple of people, but I'm thinking of a a city in Canada that we worked with. It was just really had bogged down. They're really at loggerheads with each other. Essentially, the executives that were running the municipality. So we came in and did 360 feedback and coaching with them. So it's often, I mean, sometimes it's an individual leader and occasionally it's a sort of remedial case that an individual leader will wind up working with us, but that's pretty rare. It's most often in a group situation. So it's that the team... Let's see, let me see if I can describe the kind of situation that usually, usually the team, it's like a senior team or senior-ish team. That's two in the weeds. Uh, that isn't collaborating effectively. That's sort of in other words, operating in kind of an expert way. Um, and, um, you know, that just says all kinds of ramifications down through the organization. Uh, And I think it's a combination of that need and then, for some reason, becoming aware of this framework. And, you know, people who see, maybe this is something that we need.

Mike Leber:
Right,

Bill Joiner:
So, it's kind

Mike Leber:
right.

Bill Joiner:
of like that.

Mike Leber:
Is that then, if we think further, and again, going beyond the individual, is that then maybe also becoming a leadership agility culture? Is that something we can talk about? I mean, so far I understood the concept more as an individual

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
one, but you also mentioned

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
culture and somehow as soon as I'm... behaving differently and others and we do that as a group, right? There is something emerging. We might even talk about

Bill Joiner:
That's

Mike Leber:
a

Bill Joiner:
right.

Mike Leber:
catalyst culture,

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
right?

Bill Joiner:
Well, yeah, I use the term leadership culture as

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
the sort of the neutral description and that can

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
be that's what I was talking about earlier in that research.

Mike Leber:
Mmm.

Bill Joiner:
Is it more achiever catalyst or is it more expert achiever?

Mike Leber:
Hmm

Bill Joiner:
And yeah, that's a real thing. I mean, the way I think of leadership culture relative to organizational culture is it's a subset of the organizational culture. It has to do with what are the norms we're setting for what leadership looks like in our organization. What do we role model? And so as I said, if you have a more expert kind of culture, that has many ramifications that are not so positive down through the organization.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
So we do work on not only focusing on individual leaders, but raising the agility of the leadership culture.

Mike Leber:
Right. And I assume what you mentioned before, senior or higher levels of leadership. Now, I'm not talking about the levels of leadership agility, but in the organization, having

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
probably a higher impact on what's possible, right.

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
In a certain kind of organization.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, I mean, it's not impossible to do things from the bottom up or from the middle out, but

Mike Leber:
Right, right.

Bill Joiner:
it really helps if you can create genuine change at the top and

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
then sort of enable them to create change throughout the organization.

Mike Leber:
Yeah. But that brings us to a very common probably situation when, you know, a lot of grassroots movements probably happen in the agile industry, department head or somebody just

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
understood or saw somewhere else what could be possible. And then, you know, basically stretches beyond and maybe is on a catalyst path. But unfortunately, his boss and boss's boss is more. would be more attached to the Achiever Expert levels. How would that sort out? I mean, that's

Bill Joiner:
Well,

Mike Leber:
a little

Bill Joiner:
that's

Mike Leber:
bit of

Bill Joiner:
an

Mike Leber:
flash,

Bill Joiner:
interesting question.

Mike Leber:
right?

Bill Joiner:
Yeah. That's an often asked question.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
So it depends, I think, generally speaking, if your boss is an expert and therefore inclined to micromanage, it can't really inhibit your, and you have a higher level of agility that's natural to you. That can be inhibiting. Um, it's not that you can't make that work, but it's, it's challenging. If you're, if you're have catalyst inclinations and your boss is an achiever, what that means is that your boss is going to manage you to outcomes. Right. So as long as you're achieving the outcomes, most achiever bosses don't care how you do it. Just, just hit that number.

Mike Leber:
Hmm

Bill Joiner:
And so it gives you more freedom

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
to experiment with, I'm gonna run my team meetings this way, right? And good catalyst leaders are ones who do pay attention to those achiever goals and objectives and make sure they're met. So they're really working on kind of two levels at the same time. In the book, there are examples, the examples of the leadership agility book is sort of structured around the levels and has each, I think each chapter has four stories that illustrate

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
that level of agility and across those arenas.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
And when you look at, when you read those stories about the catalyst leaders, they're all working for achieve our bosses. So that tells me, you know, it's not an absolute ceiling on your agility level to have an achiever boss.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
In fact, that's a very common scenario. You can still really be a catalyst and get the results of a catalyst. But you have to manage that relationship, but you know, that's part of what catalysts do.

Mike Leber:
Right, right. And I can imagine there was a potential for, I mean, influencing the Achiever Boss over time. And

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
then maybe get them also on board with

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
different kinds of conversations, right, and exploring maybe other perspectives. So they might step back and just or lean back and just say, Hey, that's interesting things you bring in here.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah, it's always a possibility, yes.

Mike Leber:
Right. Now, pretty close to the end of this very interesting conversations, but there is still so many questions. And one of them, you mentioned coaches and coaching. And again,

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
the agile, the agile world is pretty famous for agile coaching. And, and, um, so obviously the question would be, I mean, how would developing themselves across the leadership agility framework while

Bill Joiner:
Oh,

Mike Leber:
or

Bill Joiner:
developing

Mike Leber:
before

Bill Joiner:
themselves.

Mike Leber:
they are coaching leaders,

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
right?

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I think just as leaders can be at these different levels, coaches can as well. And, you know, the. The expert approach to coaching in a nutshell is, I'm an expert on how to do this agile stuff, so listen to me.

Mike Leber:
Exactly.

Bill Joiner:
and not necessarily highly collaborative in the approach. And that could be frustrating for both parties. Achiever approach is more. I think a lot of enterprise Agile coaches, just this is a huge generalization, but our achiever level coaches who can do coaching that's not just advice giving, but stimulating the reflection, the leadership reflection on their own practice, and you know, which is really such an important part of leadership agility and Agile.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
Um, and then there are some, you know, I'm going on, we have many agile coaches, agile enterprise coaches who've come to our workshops and some of these coaches, I think are catalyst level people in coaches. Um, they're able to go deeper. They're able to modulate, um, when to sort of step back and just ask questions and let the leader reflect. and come to their own conclusions, but they can sometimes it's like, well, here's an idea. Would you, you know, you think this might work so that there, um, there's, uh, I think in good coaching is not just, um, sort of the stereotypical psychoanalyst who says,

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
uh, I see, I see

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
it's, uh, it's, uh, it's someone who's able to. really stimulate the reflection of the leader, but

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
also has a point of view that can be offered in a collaborative way. Not like this is what you should do, but is this something that might be worth exploring? So you know, I feel there are, I think probably a higher percentage of catalysts. Enterprise Agile Coaches than Catalyst Leaders.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
Just as I think there's a higher percentage of regular leadership coaches who are

Mike Leber:
Right, right,

Bill Joiner:
themselves

Mike Leber:
right.

Bill Joiner:
catalysts.

Mike Leber:
Right. So you mentioned it, if I was a coach, well, actually I did that, but if somebody wanted to

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
make the leadership agility framework part of their repertoire, right? They wanna use this in their practice. You mentioned workshops and programs. So what exactly does this offering look like? What could people expect if

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
they wanted to make this? you know, part of theirs and

Bill Joiner:
Hmm.

Mike Leber:
then

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
maybe

Bill Joiner:
Well.

Mike Leber:
have nothing. Maybe they even didn't read your book yet. So where would they start?

Bill Joiner:
Yeah. Well, one thing they can do is go to changewise.biz, which is my company website, and download the white paper on leadership agility, which is sort of the executive summary of the book and the framework. That's one way you can take a closer look at that. Also on the homepage are two programs for coaches. So there's the coaching program I mentioned earlier, which starts September 28th and runs through mid February. with some breaks for holidays. And there's the 360 certification workshop is October 24 through 27. And you can access that also on our homepage. I think the 360 is particularly useful for enterprise Agile coaches because it gives you a structure to... look together at a leader's leadership.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
And it results in a coaching agenda so that leaders come out of this process highly committed to working on usually three things. And those are put into a well-structured action plan that says, okay, this is what I've been doing behaviorally. I wanna do this instead.

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
This is the mindset that is going to help me do this new thing.

Mike Leber:
Mm-hmm.

Bill Joiner:
And that's always unique to the individual. And this is the mindset that's been sort of unconsciously driving me to do the old behavior. And here are the situations where I'm going to most often practice this. And this is how I'm going to remember to do it. Um, so, you know, I think a lot of, a lot of agile coaches are a bit frustrated with the leaders they work with. Because it can be hard to get them to see what they need to work.

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
And this provides, I think, a great tool to solve that problem.

Mike Leber:
Yeah, it's this whole bunch of benefits. And it's not about advertising here, but just talking from my own experience, first of all, better embracing

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
what leadership means, right? I mean, again, as Agilist, we sometimes have been, but not always have been in leadership positions ourselves. So it has been easy

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
to talk about these new ways of working and then just bash leaders, making them responsible for something.

Bill Joiner:
Yes.

Mike Leber:
where things are not as simple as they might look like. So you might gain a different stance, growing your own capacity to see more, maybe also developing your own emotional capacity and then even learn concrete tools to analyze, to help leaders analyze their own situation, reflect upon and then help them to turn to concrete

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
development action, right? Sounds like a thing. Now, a final question that's interesting to me because you've been doing this work now pretty long and the book was released on something like nearly 15 years ago, right? It's quite some time. And if you look back, what have you seen as most significant changes that impacted leadership or leadership development in general? since the release of the book. Is there anything that stands out for you? I mean, zoom back to 2007 when you made this available, the whole industry was in a different state, of course. I think

Bill Joiner:
Right.

Mike Leber:
scaling became, scaling agile became a topic even a little bit later.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
Now it's everywhere and leadership is

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
challenged everywhere. Is

Bill Joiner:
Well,

Mike Leber:
there

Bill Joiner:
I think

Mike Leber:
anything?

Bill Joiner:
you've summarized it pretty well. I mean,

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
I think to me, this framework is something and the book even talks about two levels of agility beyond catalyst,

Mike Leber:
Mm. Right.

Bill Joiner:
which to me is kind of the frontier, or these are real pioneers in how to lead and they're very... These are people for whom leadership and personal development are closely intertwined. But I think it's going to be a useful framework for decades to come. That's that's my, you know, we'll see. Am I just myopic and my in that prediction or is that actually possible? I think what's happened is in a way that the world has become even more like the world that was described in the book.

Mike Leber:
Hmm.

Bill Joiner:
You know, even more chaotic. And now, of course, we have climate change. That's part of the highly complex, rapidly changing environment, but it's an existential threat

Mike Leber:
Yeah.

Bill Joiner:
to everyone. So I think that's certainly, and I think that's something that catalyst leadership can help with.

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
I'm not saying you have to be at the catalyst level to work on climate change, far from it. But I think the more... catalyst leaders we have, the better position will be to make the changes of adjustments that are needed. Yeah, I mean, I think the scaling of Agile is a huge piece of what's happened. And it's made. think the relevance of this kind of leadership and the kind of culture that it can create even more central.

Mike Leber:
It sounds enlightening at least, despite all the challenges you just mentioned. I would totally agree that we cannot just limit agility to the development of products within

Bill Joiner:
Mhm.

Mike Leber:
a closed context of, for example, an organization or company, because

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
as you mentioned, there are too many interdependent systems where there are major problems. where these, you know, where these products are going to even, and then, you know, society where people come from and politics and everything. As you said, there's

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
a lot of chaos nowadays. So I'm just imagining leadership development or leadership agility development also becoming a topic, at least in universities and in business, business courses, and maybe even

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
earlier, and across educators. So So we're, you know, developing this capacity

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
or becoming at least aware of a bit

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
earlier. and

Bill Joiner:
I was just contacted recently by a professor in Spain who teaches at a business school. And we just, we kind of came into contact through a mutual friend and he said, oh yeah, I've been teaching leadership agility for a number of years now using your book. And I'm teaching in multiple countries and leaders are finding it very practical and helpful. We haven't made a concerted effort to try to get it into universities, but I'm encouraged by that.

Mike Leber:
That sounds beautiful. Brings me actually to a final question here. I mean, you mentioned the courses which are coming up this fall. People could join, I assume online, most of them.

Bill Joiner:
Yeah,

Mike Leber:
But

Bill Joiner:
these

Mike Leber:
again,

Bill Joiner:
are virtual programs.

Mike Leber:
yeah,

Bill Joiner:
Yeah.

Mike Leber:
virtual programs. But again, we'll put a pointer to your website. You mentioned it already change wise, change wise,

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
right? Thought, bees,

Bill Joiner:
Changewise.biz, yeah.

Mike Leber:
thought bees. Anything else that's coming up on your side next where you're diving into any kind of research, publication, things that

Bill Joiner:
Hmm

Mike Leber:
draw your curiosity further on all these topics? Exploring humanity, literally.

Bill Joiner:
Not at the moment. I mean, there's a link on the homepage that goes to, it's called something like learn more about leadership agility and it includes

Mike Leber:
Mm.

Bill Joiner:
various articles I've written, including some that are in the Agile space.

Mike Leber:
Right.

Bill Joiner:
It includes talks I've given, some of which are to Agile audiences. So there's a lot there that if somebody's interested, they could explore.

Mike Leber:
Yeah. All right. Bill, it's been a pleasure talking to you as always. And it's a great, great

Bill Joiner:
Yeah,

Mike Leber:
opportunity

Bill Joiner:
thanks for a great

Mike Leber:
learning

Bill Joiner:
conversation,

Mike Leber:
from you.

Bill Joiner:
Mike.

Mike Leber:
Thank you. And I'm looking forward to explore more with your work, with your help and everything else in the practical fields. It's an

Bill Joiner:
Mm-hmm.

Mike Leber:
exciting, exciting topic that brings us new insights nearly every day when we meet people. and face challenges, but you know, see possibilities. And that's just what you helped us with. Thanks for being here. All the best for your

Bill Joiner:
Thank

Mike Leber:
next

Bill Joiner:
you.

Mike Leber:
tips.