Ep16 - Authenticity Isn’t Enough: What Makes a Great Leader with Ken Sher

Talk a little bit about, I guess, kind of the return to office types of policies.

I remember back when we were doing training that most of my team was remote.

They would come in maybe every other week and there was a lot of pushback against that.

And then after COVID, a lot of people loosened up from that perspective.

Now you're seeing a lot of return to office edicts.

And just want to know what your thoughts are around that and how that relates to trust or lack of trust from leaders to people on their teams.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of it, of forcing people back to work.

Although I will say, I think an ideal is if you can have a hybrid situation.

And I like the three and two, three at home, two in the office, if possible.

And I think the reason why leaders don't do that is because there is a lack of trust.

They don't feel like people are going to get things done, that they're going to collaborate as well as they can if they're in person.

They feel like they missed those hallway conversations.

And, you know, I think you could certainly see there are differences, but I also think that's a little lazy.

I think it's lazy to say the only way we can have good teams and good collaboration is if we're all in the same place all the time.

And I think in today's world, you know, it's funny back in the day when millennials were the big generation and everybody would say, oh, they only want everybody gets a trophy and they want to be recognized for their work and they want to have their family time and home time.

I think when you look back on it, that's probably not a bad way to live.

And I think that's the way people want to live today.

And if you want to bring the best people and keep the best people to your company, I think you have to kind of meet them halfway and Give them what they need in order to get what you need as a leader.

Yeah, I would agree with that.

I think that the return to work edicts have been, I won't say necessarily difficult.

I think people have gone back to that, but it does speak to trust and how well do you manage? How do you communicate? How do you make up for some of the communication that doesn't necessarily take place? And I think perfect example is you spoke about those hallway conversations.

You know, one of the big things that when we talk about when we talk about things like collaboration, talk about in your experience that cross-functional alignment is something a lot of companies talk about.

What does it look like when it's working?

Yeah, well, I think that there's something called the theory of self-determination.

Are you familiar with that at all?