196. Navigating Leadership: Career Diversity and Emotional Health with Mick Spiers

In this episode of The Leadership Project, Mick reflects on his interview with Kristina Fussella about non-linear career paths and her experiences. They discuss the importance of a learning mindset, stepping out of comfort zones, and balancing generalist and specialist roles. 

The episode also covers findings from Gallup's 2024 Global Emotions Report, revealing surprising correlations between learning, respect, and emotional well-being, while debunking the connection between material wealth and positive emotions. The host concludes with personal leadership reflections, emphasizing clarity of communication, patience, and curiosity in solving problems.

00:00 Introduction: Exploring Connections in Leadership
00:43 Christina Fussella's Non-Linear Career Path
01:19 Deep Experts vs. Generalists
02:42 Learning and Growth Mindset
03:37 Leading Experts as a Generalist
06:53 Gallup's 2024 Global Emotions Report
08:24 Surprising Correlations in Emotional Well-being
10:36 Learning, Loneliness, and Social Interaction
14:56 Personal Leadership Reflections
20:02 Conclusion and Upcoming Episodes

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction: Exploring Connections in Leadership
• 0:43 Kristina Fusella's Non-Linear Career Path
• 1:19 Deep Experts vs. Generalists
• 2:42 Learning and Growth Mindset
• 3:37 Leading Experts as a Generalist
• 6:53 Gallup's 2024 Global Emotions Report
• 8:24 Surprising Correlations in Emotional Well-being
• 10:36 Learning, Loneliness, and Social Interaction
• 14:56 Personal Leadership Reflections
• 20:02 Conclusion and Upcoming Episodes

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

Is there a connection between material wealth and positive emotions? How about between loneliness and learning? In today's episode of the Leadership Project, I share my reflections from our interview earlier in the week with Christina Fussella, where we explored non-linear career paths. This will be followed by a breakdown of interesting and surprising findings from Gallup's 2024 Global Emotions Report. There's some really interesting things that surprise me somewhat, and at the end I'm going to wrap it up with my own personal leadership reflections of the week. So let's start with Christina Fasilla.

Mick Spiers: 0:43

Christina shared her own personal journey of success. She was an engineer, but she's also had all kinds of jobs, from being a waitress through to being a chief of staff and through to being an executive. We discussed that there are multiple paths that you can take to have a rewarding career. You can become a deep expert in your field, or you can become a generalist who goes through a variety of roles, learning different things and a broad set of skills along the way, and the truth is there's no right or wrong answer to this. These deep experts, they're the ones that go on to change the world. They go on to win Nobel Prizes. They develop new inventions and innovations, they develop patterns. They solve some of the world's biggest problems. Or there's the path where you become more of a generalist, where you go from role to role.

Mick Spiers: 1:37

Christina shared her journey and, along the way, the mindset that she's had the most important things along this non-linear progression was that she was always looking to learn something new in every role, that she would step out of her comfort zone. She would approach fear and take action despite fear. She would lean into the discomfort. She had a saying that she used, that if I'm comfortable, I'm not growing. She was also very careful to be patient with herself and to be compassionate, to give yourself time. Now to be clear if you're going to go down this non-linear path where you do change jobs from one job to the next, you do need to make sure that you spend enough time in each role to make the most of it, that you can do something where you can look back and say that you achieved something tangible out of that, that you do step into this hands-on learning. As we know, with learning, most things are learnt on the job, using the 70-20-10 rule, where 70% of your learning is by doing, 20% is from learning from other people and 10% might be your formal education. So, looking for these roles, we're going to learn something new. We're going to step out of your comfort zone and grow a new skill set, and to do so at all times with a learning mindset. What am I intentionally going to learn from doing this role and having a growth mindset and the growth mindset is really important it's to move away from a fixed mindset, which is someone that would believe that you're either good at something or you're not, to having a growth mindset where you back yourself to learn something new all the time.

Mick Spiers: 3:35

Christina also shared something else very interesting, which I've personally experienced in my career as well, which is that if you take this generalist approach, you are going to end up in a situation where you lead people that are more experienced and have more expertise in the field than you have, and this is going to need to be handled with care. You need to have the confidence of what you bring to the table, but you also don't need to have all the answers. You need to build trust with these people, and building trust is to take the time to get to know them. There's a good chance if they're an expert in the field. They might have been in this field that you're now leading for 20 years or 30 years. They're going to have a lot of experience that you can tap into, and the best thing you can do is to approach it with curiosity and to ask them lots of questions.

Mick Spiers: 4:33

What do you think the real challenge is here? What would you like to see happen? And then create the environment where these people can do their very best work, where they feel empowered, where they feel enabled, where they feel trusted, and you'll be surprised what you can do as a leader in a field that you are not the expert, but you've surrounded yourself with people that do have the right level of expertise and experience and doing this together. You can build and co-create by bringing together your collective strengths. So you wouldn't be the leader if you didn't have certain strengths, and they wouldn't be the successful people that they are if they didn't have certain strengths. And it's the ability to bring these strengths together to co-create something that is greater than the sum of the parts.

Mick Spiers: 5:24

This is the answer, and it really comes to the heart of one of my favorite sayings. That is, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, you go together. And by bringing these people together that have got different experiences, different backgrounds, different levels of expertise, different strengths, you are going to create a lasting impact on the world. So they were my takeaways from Christina. Once again, there was nothing wrong with these eye-shaped, deep experts that really become masters of their craft and mastery. Is there, for a reason, someone that studies something so deep that they understand it beyond anyone else's comprehension and they're able to solve the world's problems. There is nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

Mick Spiers: 6:15

Then the second approach is this generalist approach where you go from different jobs every could be every two to three years, every four to five years and you're purposely putting yourself into different realms. It could be going from being a bid manager through to being a project manager, through to engineering, through to quality management, through to finance, experiencing different roles along the way. You might go sales and marketing, and by doing so so you're getting a broad set of skill sets along the way, and this is what can make you a very rounded leader. Okay, now on to our friends at Gallup, and they've released a really interesting report recently called the 2024 Gallup Global Emotions Report, and I'm going to share with you some of the interesting things that come from it.

Mick Spiers: 7:06

Now, there were some things that were not surprising. The global emotions that we talk about we're talking about have you experienced anger, have you experienced sadness, have you experienced stress, have you experienced worry, have you experienced physical pain. So these are some of the negative emotions. On the positive side, have you experienced enjoyment, have you been well rested, have you smiled or laughed in the last 24 hours? And some other measures that they take on the side of this, which is about things like were you treated with respect in the last 24 hours and did you learn something new in the last 24 hours. So there's going to be some things here that are not too surprising. The first one, which I was really pleased to hear, is that our positive emotions and the emotional index that they use here have returned for the first time to pre-pandemic levels. So the world, despite some challenges in the world, with conflicts, et cetera generally we have an upward swing in people having more positive emotions and a downward swing in negative emotions, which is wonderful to see.

Mick Spiers: 8:22

What was interesting for me was some of the correlations. The first one is that there was absolutely no correlation between material wealth and these positive emotions. In fact, if you look at the countries that had the highest positive emotion index or positive experience index. They are in Southeast Asia and in Latin America, in countries where the GDP per capita is really quite low compared to some other countries in the report. So no connection between material wealth and whether you're well-paid matters to whether you experience positive experiences. Also no connection there or correlation to whether you experience negative emotions. So material wealth had nothing to do with it. Where there were some interesting correlations is this word were you treated with respect in the last 24 hours? And when someone has been treated with respect, there was a correlation to less negative emotions and more of the positive emotions. So here's a great lesson. We talk about this on the Leadership Project all the time.

Mick Spiers: 9:43

What do people want? They want to feel seen. They want to feel heard. They want to feel valued. They want to feel heard. They want to feel valued. They want to feel like they are matter. They want to feel that they're being treated with respect. They want to know that their opinions are valued and that they're being listened to. So, as a leader, there's a direct correlation here. If I go out of my way to treat people with respect, to to make them feel seen, to make them feel heard, to make them feel that they matter. It directly correlates to an increase in positive experiences and positive emotions and a decrease in negative emotions. So that's my first takeaway.

Mick Spiers: 10:29

The next one it did surprise me, but maybe it shouldn't have, but I'm going to share it with you here the connection between whether someone learned something new or not. And there's two parts that I want to unpack here. The first one is the connection between did I learn something new in the last 24 hours versus some of the positive emotions, and there's a direct correlation. If I've learned something new in the last 24 hours, there is a better than average chance that I've experienced some kind of enjoyment, that I've smiled, that I've laughed, that I've felt that I've been treated with respect, that I've felt that I've been treated with respect. So a correlation between learning and opportunities for learning and growth to whether I experienced enjoyment or not. Here's the next interesting connection.

Mick Spiers: 11:21

The study also asks whether people experience loneliness in the last 24 hours. Did you experience loneliness in the last 24 hours or did you not experience loneliness in the last 24 hours? And a really surprising thing here there was no correlation between loneliness and some of the positive emotions. It was possible to have loneliness in the last 24 hours and still have enjoyment, to still feel well rested, to still smile and laugh, to still feel like I was treated with respect. There was and this is to be expected a correlation between if I've experienced loneliness in the last 24 hours, I may experience anger, sadness, stress, worry or physical pain. That's not surprising. So if we are feeling lonely, we may be more susceptible to some of the negative emotions, but it didn't detract our ability to feel positive emotions.

Mick Spiers: 12:23

But here's the one that got me those that felt lonely did not feel that I learnt something new in the last 24 hours. Now, that's a bit of a generalization, but there was a connection here that if I felt lonely, that I was less likely to have learnt something new in the last 24 hours. Now what does that tell me? It makes me think of Glasser's Pyram. Now, to be clear, glasser never produced the pyramid. The pyramid was produced by others and it was an extrapolation of his work called choice theory in the classroom.

Mick Spiers: 13:04

And what choice theory talks about when it comes to learning and the now famous glasses pyramid, is that people only remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see, 50% of what they hear and see. But then they start getting right up there. They remember 70% of what they experienced for themselves. They remember 85% of what they discuss with other human beings. So our learning is very communal. Our learning is very much about our ability to have social learning, the ability to discuss some new topic with other people, and when we bounce those ideas off them and they contribute to the conversation, we start co-creating a learning that is greater than if we read it in a textbook, if we watched it on YouTube, whatever else it could be. Our learning is greatest when we do it together. So this ability to have micro learning, social learning, the ability to have communal learning where we discuss important topics amongst ourselves, unlocks our ability to learn and grow. And when we're experiencing loneliness, as shown in the report, and we're not having that social interaction, we don't learn something new. This was really interesting for me. I'm going to put a link to the entire report in the show notes so you can have a look yourself and see what other takeaways you take. I'd love to hear from you about your reflections on this Gallup report.

Mick Spiers: 14:55

Now onto my personal leadership reflections this week. For those that are new to the show. These are the same five questions that I've asked myself for the last 11 years at the end of every day and on the show. At the end of the Self-Reflection Friday, I share with you some of the outcomes that I've had this week. The five questions are what went well today? What didn't go well? What would I do differently next time? What did I learn about myself and what did I learn about others? So here are some tidbits of my reflections from this week. So what went well? Clarity of message I've had a clear focus this week on communication skills.

Mick Spiers: 15:42

I taught a small session on influence and persuasion and it triggered me to re-look at my own approach and to make sure that I was practicing what I preach. In this case, it was about being clear in my messages and taking a less is more approach, and I've noticed a distinct improvement in the retention of messages that I've been trying to get across. So I've been doing different sessions where I'd be trying to get certain messages across and then in the days subsequent I'd be testing to see whether the message landed. And when I focus on this less is more approach, it really works. What didn't go well?

Mick Spiers: 16:23

I fell into the trap a few times of wanting to solve a problem before I got to a full understanding of what the real issue was. What would I do differently? I would stay curious for longer and ask better questions, and I'd avoid the temptation to solve the problem for the other person. Sometimes the person doesn't want you to solve their problem. They just want to talk it through with you. They want to feel heard, they want a sounding board, and the best thing you can do is just be there for them. Maybe ask them a few questions, get curious, but allow them to solve the problem for themselves. If they do solve the problem for themselves, they'll always remember that. They'll remember that much more than if you just roll up your sleeves and solve the problem for them every time.

Mick Spiers: 17:15

What did I learn about myself? It is important to apply the very same principles that I teach others. That doesn't mean I have to be perfect I'm far from it but I do notice a change. When I stop and teach all of these principles about leadership and communication and having a high performance mindset. When I intentionally make sure that I'm following my own teachings, I notice a huge improvement in my leadership, in my relationship and in my performance. What did I learn about others Coming back to this, staying curious and asking better questions and falling into the trap of wanting to solve other people's problems? We need to remember that people take time to get to the real issue that is bothering them.

Mick Spiers: 18:08

If someone comes to you with a problem, there's going to be a really interesting thing. That happens Usually. The first thing that they say is important because that's what's immediately on their mind, because that's what's immediately on their mind, and then it's the last thing they say. In that opening part of the conversation where they're trying to tell you what their challenge is, it's usually the first thing and the very last thing that they say that are the most important. And what's going on here is they're doing a few things. First of all, they're building up the courage to tell you what the real challenge is. Secondly, they're also testing you. They're trying to see whether you're going to be judgmental. If they share something a bit personal, are you going to react in a judgmental way? And if they share something a little bit soft first and you don't react in a judgmental way, they go oh okay, I'm in a safe space here. I can go a bit further. So they're building trust with you. They're building their own courage, but they're also building the trust with you that you're not going to be judgmental with the thing that they're about to share with you, with the thing that they're about to share with you. So, coming back to that reflection, if someone comes to you and they start downloading some issue and you start solving it from the outset, you haven't even got to the real issue yet. You've interrupted them and you're solving the wrong problem. So remember, it does take time for someone to build the courage to tell you what's really going on in their world. So we need to stay curious longer, we need to ask better questions, we need to be patient and allow the person the space to let them get the real issue on the table with you. Okay, that's it for this week.

Mick Spiers: 20:00

In the next episode of the Leadership Project, we'll be joined by Richard Triggs, who shares with us tips about finding and retaining the right talent. If you are enjoying our content, we would love it if you would leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast service. You can also subscribe to the Leadership Project YouTube channel, where we bring you weekly video, podcasts, curated videos and our weekly live stream show. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Project at mickspearscom. A huge call out to Faris Sadek for his video editing of all of our video content, and to all of the team at TLP Joanne Goes On, gerald Calabo and my amazing wife Say Spears. I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to the Leadership Project YouTube channel, where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, facebook and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.