Learning to Truly Lead Well
Episode Notes
When Ryan is thrust into a leadership role, he learns that being a leader is very different from what he expected. Hear his story of how one encounter 17 years ago changed his perspective of leadership.
About the Guest
Ryan Southern
Executive Vice President of Learning Design and Lead Facilitator
The AIP Group
Ryan Southern is the EVP Learning Design. He uses creative and forward thinking solutions to shape how we develop future leaders and c-level executives. Ryan is constantly striving to deliver tangible results through changing mind sets and developing critical skills.
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0:26
I'm excited to be talking with Ryan Southern about human first and empathetic leadership.
0:31
Ryan is the executive Vice President of Learning design and lead facilitator at the A IP group and an amazing human being.
0:38
Ryan.
0:38
Welcome to the show.
0:40
Yeah.
0:40
Thanks Paul.
0:41
Glad to, glad to be here.
0:42
So excited to be here and appreciate that K is a wonderful human being.
0:47
I think we all strive for that.
0:49
So hopefully I'm living up to it.
0:50
You know, it's a high bar, but we do our best.
0:53
I think everybody, you know, ultimately tries to do their best every single day.
0:56
Some days, it's good some days it's not so good and that's how we learn and we get better.
1:00
Why don't you tell us a little bit about the A I group and what you do there.
1:03
I love your tagline on linkedin because it's like I love, I'm going to paraphrase, I love creating light bulb moments.
1:09
And I used to, when I was in L and D early in my career, I would talk about light bulb moments.
1:13
So talk to us a little bit about that.
1:15
Yeah.
1:16
So I mean, look the light bulb moment thing, you know, it kind of came after a number of years trying to figure out why I do what I do and kind of where my passions of purpose lie and, you know, but ultimately, for me, if I could say something to somebody or you could say something to me that, that changes the way I think changes the way I interact for the positive.
1:38
Then, that's a pretty good day.
1:40
And if I'm able to do that even once a day, I feel like that's kind of an accomplishment and, and I could go to bed at night, feeling relatively fulfilled as well.
1:48
So, and the A I T group, honestly, Paul, like it's a, it's a vehicle that I've kind of stumbled on in my career that allows me to do that.
1:56
So, A IP is a full scale learning and development consultancy.
2:00
So we kind of do consulting services, we have our own off the wrap kind of skill development pieces.
2:06
And then we also do a lot of content creation and today's kind of hybrid word.
2:10
But the unique thing about it is, and D stands for adventures, inspiring performance and I think those light bulbs came on for me.
2:19
They use this metaphor of adventure and there's a number of world class world record holding adventures and will kind of tie in the video footage from their expeditions and then layer it back together with some of the kind of latest and greatest in adult learning neuroscience performance research being a good human.
2:38
and start to teach those lessons with a little bit of an anchor.
2:41
Yeah, I love it.
2:41
I love the light bulb moments too.
2:43
And like you're right, if you can create one, like even every couple of days, like that's amazing.
2:47
And you see, you can see it sometimes in, in people's faces.
2:50
And so I also think learning development and kind of, you know, developing employees developing leaders and thinking about that and companies thinking about it and using the A A P group along with their learning and development or, or their learning org is so important and it is something that gets talked about so much now employees are looking for that development.
3:08
And so, and I think leadership, you know, developing leaders is a part of that too.
3:12
And I think part of what we try to try and do on this show is just spark somebody to think a little bit differently.
3:18
So can you, you know, you're on to share a story about your experience in human first leadership?
3:24
And so can you tell us, tell us, tell us your story.
3:27
Yeah, I think it's like it's not, it's probably not unique.
3:32
I often kind of find that there's, there's head of normalcy in the mundane, right?
3:37
Like the, the relatively seemingly day to day interactions is what often kind of sparks those light bulbs for people.
3:43
But, you know, I like a lot of people were, were, I was probably thrust into leadership way before I needed to be in full transparency.
3:52
I was in my like mid to late twenties in the pharmaceutical space and because I was successful in selling pharmaceuticals and moving up the ladder and, and top achiever of president's club and all those things, the next logical thing is to say, well, here, why don't you take a team of people and teach them how to do the same thing, right?
4:11
And I think everybody knows, it just doesn't work that way.
4:14
we're not all equipped with those skill sets, especially in your mid to late 20s to do that effectively.
4:21
And, you know, I jumped in with both feet guns blazing, really thinking like I'm going to solve the world and this is my big break and if I could just create everybody to be like me, it's gonna be this massive win and I'm gonna get all these kudos and, you know, being a bit naive and frankly, Paul probably being a bit egotistical at the moment, right?
4:41
I, I, I went after it that way.
4:43
And, and I, I kind of tried to use this one size fits all approach to, to leading that first year.
4:50
And really starting to say like if, if I can motivate people to do more, to reach K P I s to reach sales goals, to get promoted, that ultimately is going to make all of the people that report to be happy.
5:03
And, and it worked for some, you know, admittedly, probably just because it would have worked anyway because they were those type of people.
5:09
But, you know, that that year really probably kicked off that journey toward light bulb moments and that journey toward really understanding my purpose because there is one rep in particular that I just struggled with, if I'm completely honest, you know, didn't really see eye to eye all the time.
5:28
I thought that this person was perfectly capable from a skill standpoint, very knowledgeable, you know, very outgoing, could be very personable at offices.
5:37
But for whatever reason, their call numbers were low, their results on the other end in terms of actual prescriptions and, and getting customers to, to do things was also not really at the level that the rest of the team was.
5:50
And I just kept trying to push harder and harder, right?
5:54
How are you gonna get promoted?
5:55
How are you gonna be a a top achiever?
5:58
You know, how are you gonna go to President's Club and all these things then we got to the end of the year.
6:02
and, and I kind of decided that it was time to put, put this person on a a performance plan, right?
6:08
And in Pharma and in Pharma sales, especially in the outside sales, you don't have meetings in like really nice offices that are equipped for this type of conversation.
6:19
So, you know, you're often doing these in like a Starbucks or a Panera bread.
6:23
And I remember sitting in one of those places and, and having this conversation and saying, you know, like it's just not working out, we're not hitting numbers the way that you need to.
6:32
And I've tried to get you to kind of see how you become a top performer, how you get promoted.
6:38
And, you know, ultimately, it just might not be for you and, and we're going to have to kind of, and, and this person literally stopped me right about that point in the conversation.
6:47
It was like, hang on a second.
6:48
Like this is the problem.
6:50
You've never once ask me why I do what I do and what's important to me, right?
6:56
And, and kind of share this whole thing around.
6:59
It doesn't really matter to me that I reached top achiever or that I go to President's club or that I even get promoted.
7:06
And in fact, this individual, like what was important was that they showed their two young kids that they were capable of balancing life and work and able to show like, hey, you know, your mom's pretty smart.
7:17
I'm able to get through this and, and kind of deal with it and, you know, it just floored me in that moment because I had never thought about leadership in that way.
7:26
I thought it was dictating activities, measuring results, Trying to do all the things that you kind of grow up thinking that it is and, and it ultimately kind of shaped the next 17 years of my career.
7:38
If I'm honest, a ball, like it just kind of changed the whole trajectory of what I've used leadership.
7:42
But as importantly, I mean, it, it set me on a journey to really start to say, how do I define my own purpose in a way that I could articulate it like that person did and then how do I start to find ways to create those light bulbs if you will, where other people are able to unlock that purpose for themselves and share that with others so that they could be leveraged and, and led in a way that's actually congruent with who they want to be as a person.
8:07
Yeah, I, I love the story.
8:09
It's not, it's not an uncommon story, but I, I, I love the story because for a couple of reasons, one, you know, I used to, I used to believe in the adage.
8:18
One size fits all.
8:19
And now my mantra is one size breaks all.
8:23
because it is and like you, I became a leader in my mid twenties too was going, I think we've all been there.
8:28
Sales is probably even on another level.
8:30
Like I'm not a sales person, but I know a lot of them on another level.
8:34
And so I get that because it is about that, whether it's quarterly or annual target, like you're just charging and the best ones just charge and charge and charge and charge add.
8:44
but I love it how you, you mentioned that it changed your leadership style.
8:49
You changed your trajectory kind of for the last 17 years.
8:52
How did it like?
8:54
What do you do differently now?
8:56
Yeah, it's, it's interesting like, you know, a few months slash a year later, the Pharma business that I was in got bought out by a large scale Consumer goods organization.
9:06
and, you know, mergers and acquisitions can be pretty scary.
9:10
You don't really know what's going to happen.
9:12
I was lucky enough to kind of meet the, the head of sales in that organization fairly early on.
9:19
And, and I had started to formulate this concept of how do I start to think about?
9:24
What am I passionate about?
9:25
What am I good at?
9:26
How do I bucket that up?
9:27
And, and ultimately, we just had a conversation one night at a meeting and it led to that person kind of offering me a gig to kind of run total sales enablement for North America in a business that I knew nothing about.
9:39
Right.
9:41
And, and what I would say is like, I didn't even know it at the time, probably Paul.
9:45
But what, what I started to stumble on was like the ability to actually articulate and understand why I do what I do and how that betters the people around me became extremely important to, to my career.
9:59
you know, that led me into, they moved me from sales and to hr and I, I thought at the time, you know, no offense, Paul is a the fellow hr I thought hr was kittens and rainbows at the time, right?
10:10
Like I had no, no, but, but they saw like the skill sets, the passions, the purpose that I had matched at, right?
10:18
And they kind of kept putting me in roles and then I was head of North American talent and then I was head of global leadership development and, you know, all these things kind of happened and then I did a couple of years at a large hr consultancy.
10:28
And what I learned along the way is like there's real power in first of all, figuring that out up for yourself as a leader and as a human being.
10:36
But, you know, everything that I do now when I work with clients, when I'm training large groups, when I'm coaching individuals, if we can't get you to a point where we can tap into those passions where we can get you to feel like you can live up to, you know, what you actually love to do and what lights you up inside and, and drive that kind of purpose zone.
10:58
Then what are we doing as leaders and, and what are we doing as kind of individuals as a whole?
11:02
And that, that's, you know, it, it enabled me to get into places in my career.
11:07
But I think hopefully it's enabled a lot of the people that I've touched along the way to do the same.
11:13
And to start to live a more purposeful life, to start to, you know, really put some of the, what we normally would call softer skills first when they, when it comes to leading and, and managing human beings because at the end of the day, we're all people, we show up with emotions, we show up with, you know, stuff that goes wrong in our lives and you can't separate that from the workplace anymore and the leaders who try to do that often end up failing anyway.
11:39
Yeah, I, I, I, I thank you.
11:42
hr is not all puppies and, and learn the hard way.
11:49
I probably did too.
11:50
I love the fact that this dinner you had with your leader at the time you were sales sales leader turned into a new gig for you because you found what you were passionate about and I think that's such an important thing for employees is like, figure out what you're passionate about and then go tell people about it and figure out a way to do that because it's interesting to me, you go to school and like there are internships and you get a, you choose a degree, you choose a major and you go into this job and it's like, oh, like do I really want to use?
12:18
Like, I started my career out in customer service and customer service leadership.
12:22
And then I was at a company called City Search.
12:25
And similarly, there was a conversation one night and they're like, you're a really great leader, you understand the company, we need someone to run.
12:31
Hr And I was like, I, I had a reaction I told them they were, you know, expletive out of their mind because I don't know the first thing about it.
12:40
But, you know, that was 22 3 years ago now.
12:44
And like, I love my job and what I do and I love this chapter of my career of being a human, first leadership advocate because you're right, we're all human beings.
12:52
We all have our own stuff going on.
12:54
Full disclosure.
12:55
I asked Ryan, we were going to I asked Ryan to change a meeting that we had this week because one of our dogs had to go in the hospital and I was dealing with that and I was getting them out of the hospital when we were supposed to meet and Ryan was nice enough to do that.
13:07
And so I think that's like such a great example and it's, you know, it's, it's, it's not unusual, but I think it is unusual in the sense that you, it caused you to figure out what was important for you.
13:19
And I don't think that always happens sometimes with leaders.
13:21
And if you get a leader like that hasn't figured that out and they're not really happy, they're probably not going to be the best leader because they're not, you know, just they're not, they're not happy and they're not fulfilled.
13:31
And so I think that part of it is so important, it's always a two way street and we, at the end of the day, we're all human beings.
13:36
We've all got lives and that are full and sometimes challenging and sometimes wonderful.
13:41
But we come to work and we want to do a job and I, I, I always, when I was, when I had a full time job, I wanted to do something.
13:46
I was really passionate and excited about.
13:48
Yeah, I it, it's great.
13:50
I love it.
13:50
I love what you do today too.
13:52
Well, it's interesting, right?
13:53
Like you, it's the old airplane adage.
13:56
If something goes wrong, you know, you put the mask on your neighbor or your kids first and then you do it for yourself.
14:02
And I think in this case, it's kind of flipping it on its head, like for my career, at least, you know, until I was able to take care of myself as a human first leader, it, it really is difficult to do it for anybody else.
14:16
And I think there's, there's a lesson there, you know, yes, we want leaders to be kind of in this human first mindset, but there's a lesson there that says like you've got to take the time to pause and treat yourself that way first, if you're ever going to be able to do that for others.
14:32
Absolutely, a critical lesson because leaders are human beings too like that.
14:36
That's the, you got to like, and you know, you're, you're actually, you're absolutely right.
14:40
Like figure yourself out and take care of yourself first and self-care is so important.
14:44
Certainly during the pandemic, it was and even even ongoing.
14:47
Thank you so much.
14:48
for sharing the other thing I want to tell the audience is r and I did not collaborate on what shirts we were going to wear today just today.
15:00
But you look good.
15:01
So thank you and thanks for being on the show.
15:06
Thanks everyone for joining us on 52 humans.