325. Leadership Is Cultivation: Creating the Conditions for Greatness with Mick Spiers

What if the real job of a leader isn’t to get people to do what you want, but to create the conditions where people can do their best work? I’m reflecting on the biggest leadership lessons from this month’s conversations and pulling the common thread that ties them together: stop chasing control and start designing an environment where clarity, trust, and ownership can actually grow.

We start with communication and culture, because every culture begins with what people hear, understand, and believe enough to act on. I walk through the head, heart, and hands framework to help you communicate change without triggering confusion or resistance: make the facts clear, make the meaning real, and make the next action obvious. Then I add the piece leaders often skip: communication as dialogue. When you open a loop for response, you don’t just “inform” your team, you build alignment and shared ownership.

Next, we zoom in on people and performance through strengths, role fit, psychological safety, and neurodiversity at work. Every person has peaks and valleys, and “different” never means “deficient.” I share simple prompts for a low-stakes strengths conversation you can have this week to reduce friction and help someone flourish without lowering the bar.

Finally, we look forward to the future of leadership as co-creation. Think conductor, not hero: your job is to create the room, ask better questions, and make space for perspectives you don’t own. If you want a practical challenge, pick one condition to improve this week, then turn it into a concrete action. Subscribe, share this with one leader who needs it, and leave a review with the condition you’re choosing to improve.

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

What if leadership is not about getting people to do what you want? What if it's about creating the conditions where people can do their best work? In today's episode of The Leadership Project, it is solo cast where I reflect on all of the great learnings from our amazing guests this month. We reflect on the learnings from Alejandro Ramirez, Wainwright Yu, and Chris Deaver, and we look for the connection between those. What is the thread, and that thread is exactly that it's about creating an environment where people can do their very best work. Let's dive in. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. Today's episode is a solo cast where we reflect on the great learnings from our amazing guests through this month, Alejandro Ramirez, Wainwright Yu, and Chris Deaver. Alejandro reminded us that communication creates culture. Wainwright reminded us that people do their best work when we understand how they do their best work, and Chris Deaver reminded us that the future of leadership is not about having all the answers, it's about co-creation. So, this month's message is simple. We need to stop trying to control people and start creating the conditions for greatness. Let's start with Alejandra, because every culture begins with communication, not just what we say, but what people hear, what they understand, what they trust, and what they believe enough to act on. Alejandra gave us a practical framework, the framework of head, heart, and hands. The head, what do people need to know? The heart, why should they care? And the hands, what do they need to do next? What do they do with this information? And this is where so many leaders get it wrong, they communicate to inform, but not to connect, they explain the what, but not the why, they ask for action, but do not create alignment, then they wonder why people resist the change, but that resistance is often not stubbornness, sometimes it's just plain confusion, other times it's fear, or it might be a lack of trust. Sometimes it's simply that people were never truly brought on the journey in the first place. You need to take them on this journey. It might be obvious to you what it is that needs to be done, but if it's not obvious to them, and if you haven't brought them on the journey. You're going to lose them, and you might need to remember you've, you've probably been thinking about this topic for months, and they might be hearing it for the first time. So, here is your first action. Take one message you need to communicate this week, could be a change, a decision, a priority, some kind of update, and run it through this head, heart, and hands framework. Ask yourself, have I made the facts clear? Have I explained why it matters, and have I made it clear what the next action is? And then add one more question. Have I created a way for people to respond? Because communication is not a broadcast, it's a dialog, and we need to have that dialog. We need to create the environment where people can respond and can be part of the conversation, and that's when you start building a level of ownership. All right, let's move now to Wainwright Yu. This conversation challenges us to think more deeply about people, not as job titles, not as performance ratings, not as resources, but as human beings with different minds, different strengths, different challenges, and different ways of working. Wainwright reminded us that every human being is uneven. We all have peaks, we all have valleys, and for Neurodivergent people, those peaks and valleys may be more pronounced, and that matters, because too often leaders see differences difficulty, but different does not mean deficient, it just means different, and the job of the leader is not to force everyone into the same mold is to understand what helps each person flourish, that does not mean lowering the bar, not at all. It means removing unnecessary friction, so people can meet the bar. It means understanding role fit, it means noticing when someone comes alive, it means having low stakes conversation about strengths, preferences, and support, and it means creating psychological safety, so people can share what helps them do their very best work. It's almost like to me, it's a evolution of the Platinum Rule, even further, so we all know that the Golden Rule that many of us were taught for many years is limited, right? So the Golden Rule "Treat others people the way you want to be treated." We know that's a bit deficient. The Platinum Rule is to treat others the way they want to be treated, and with Wainwright's messages here, this becomes even more important with Neurodivergent people, but it starts with deeper conversations about how do people do their very best work, what brings them alive. So, here's your second action for the week. Have one strengths conversation this week, ask someone what kind of work gives you energy? What kind of work drains you? When do you feel most focused? What gets in the way of your best work? What is one small adjustment that would help? And do not wait for an annual performance review for this. Don't make it heavy, make it human, make it a very casual conversation. Because when people feel understood, they stop wasting energy masking, compensating, and fighting the environment. They stop doing what they think is the societal expectation of how they should behave, and they start using their energy in a way to contribute. Okay, and then we shifted on to Chris Deaver. Chris took us into the future of leadership, a future that is not built around the hero leader, not the leader who knows everything, not the leader who has every answer, not the leader who dominates the room, but the brave leader who creates the room. The leader is the conductor of the orchestra. That metaphor matters, because an orchestra is not powerful because one person plays louder than everyone else. It is powerful because different instruments combine to create something that none of them could have created by themselves. That is what co-creation looks like, and it requires bravery. It requires the leader to park their ego at the door, for the leader to ask better question for the leader to allow space for other people's ideas, and for the leader to role model the behavior they want to see, because bravery, like many other emotions, is contagious. If you show up with fear, the room feels it. If you show up with curiosity, the room feels it. If you show up with humility, the room feels it. If you show up brave, you give others permission to be brave too. So, here is your third action. In your next meeting, stop trying to be the smartest person in the room try to be the person who unlocks the room. Ask questions like this. What are we not seeing? Who has a different perspective? What would we try if we were not afraid? What could we create together that none of us could create alone, then just listen, really listen, listen without judgment, because co-creation does not happen when the leader performs, it happens when the leader creates space. So, when we bring these three conversations together, we see a powerful thread, Alejandra teaches us to communicate with clarity and care. Wainwright teaches us to understand the unique strengths and needs of the individual people that are in front of us. And then Chris teaches us to bring those strengths together through brave co-creation, and that gives us the May leadership challenge. Create the conditions, create the conditions for understanding, create the conditions for trust, create the conditions for contribution, create the conditions for courage, create the conditions for people to do the best work of their lives. Because leadership is not control, leadership is cultivation. It's like tending a garden, you do not force a plant to grow by shouting at it. You create the conditions. The right soil, the right light, the right water, the right space, and then, and only then, growth becomes possible. So, here is my challenge to you. Pick one condition you can improve this week, maybe it is clarity, maybe it's trust, maybe it's psychological safety, maybe it's role fit, maybe it's co-creation. But do not leave this as an idea, turn it into action, send a clearer message, close a feedback loop, have a strengths conversation, invite a quieter voice, ask a better question, admit that you do not have all the answers. Because the quality of your leadership is not measured by how much control you have, it's measured by what becomes possible because of the environment you create, so stop trying to control people, start creating the conditions for greatness, and as always, lead better. You've been listening to the Leadership Project. If today sparked an insight, don't keep it to yourself, share it with one other person who would benefit from listening to the show. A huge thank you to Gerald Calibo for his tireless work editing every episode, and to my amazing wife Sei, who does all the heavy lifting in the background to make this show possible. None of this happens without them. Around here, we believe leadership is a practice, not a position, that people should feel seen, heard, valued, and that they matter. That the best leaders trade ego for empathy, certainty for curiosity, and control for trust. If that resonates with you, please subscribe on YouTube and on your favorite podcast app. And if you want more, follow me on LinkedIn and explore our archives for conversations that move you from knowing to doing. Until next time, lead with curiosity, courage, and care.