Episode 55: From Stage to C-Suite: Transforming Executive Leadership with Kevin Simmons

Narrator:

Welcome to 9 0 9 Exec, the executive leadership podcast from 9 0 9 Cyber Where Cybersecurity intersects with Business Strategy. Your host is Den Jones, founder and CEO of 9 0 9. Cyber for more than three decades, den has led security at Adobe, Cisco, SonicWall and Banyan security, helping executives navigate risk, trust, and transformation. Each episode goes beyond headlines and height with conversations that matter to leaders shaping the world of technology. So please join us for 9 0 9 exec, episode 55 with Den Jones and Kevin Simmons.

Den:

Well, everybody, welcome to another episode of 9 0 9 Exec, ideally the journey for executives in tech, and we cover all sorts of things in this show. And today I've got an amazing guest. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a couple of weeks now. Kevin Simmons, now you're the founder and CEO of Speak Deeply. But Kevin, you've got a huge history of fun, artistic and leadership and all sorts of stuff. So please introduce yourself and share a little bit more about what you do.

Kevin:

Oh boy. Where you're, well, hey, thanks so much, den for having me, and feel free to hack back the foliage if I start going on too long here, right? So I don't want to get us in the weeds too much. So I was an actor for 30 or 40 years. I was a director, teacher coach. I was an opera singer. I sang here at the San Francisco Opera in Germany, down in la. And I've just always been interested in audience and performer dynamics and interchange. It's a sacred bonding, connecting community making activity that goes back well beyond the Greeks. Obviously for thousands of generations. We've been gathering around campfires, telling story whistling, singing, dancing, these things. So this is what made us human. This is how we won against the Neanderthals.

Den:

You think we won? Sometimes that's question.

Kevin:

It's a, well, it's a little bit like the story of English. I mean, we won by absorbing it. Now I'm talking about the language we won by absorbing. And so potentially now that we can tell what our gene contributions are, we absorbed the Neanderthals, right? At any rate, so I'm sure they have, I don't know what percent, I mean, I think a really high percent for people is like 4% or something like that. And then you can kind of actually begin to see it. But anyway, so yeah, I was a teacher, director, coach, and I was still performing and then COVID game, and during that lockdown I thought, well, how can I make this a little bit more valuable? Along the lines of belonging, inclusion, meaning mattering, and to try to change culture a little bit, try to make the workplace a place where you really kind of want to come and kind of actually, how do we feel good in a space? We feel it in our bodies, right? Yes, it's intellectual. You play with people, but where are you feeling that feeling of, hey, I feel good,

And that's in the body. And so these days I even go as radically far. And to me it doesn't seem very radically far as saying to my speakers and my leaders and my managers, you know what actually your responsibility is that people's bodies feel good around you. I'm going to go that far. We talk about, and you can go really far into this stuff, and I have a little bit, but it's like polyvagal stuff, and it's like somatic experiencing stuff. And it's like everybody's heard at least the phrase emotional regulation. So you got some emotional intelligence. You use my favorite methodology, which is nonviolent communication, and then you are stepping into you parasympathetic in a nervous system, and then the breathing, you've done this in breathing, exercising, and you've done a lot of speaking, Dan. And so what happens to you, even for a seasoned performer, what happens to you? You're feeling what in your body just before you go on.

Den:

Yeah, there's usually some nervous tension, right?

Kevin:

For real.

Den:

And

Kevin:

Then you can rebrand that. And that's something that I do with my people because I started a dozen years ago with just a couple of entrepreneurs and a woman who had a TEDx talk and a guy who wanted to put a webinar together and a couple of engineers who wanted to learn to lead these kinds of folks. And I would say, look, so what is this that you're feeling? And we'd talk about it and they'd ordinarily say that it was fear. And I'd say, fine, but guess what? Excitement and fear are felt indistinguishably and interchangeably, and they're felt in exactly the same spot in the body. So why not just call it excitement and just get on there?

Den:

One thing. So I would love to dig into your journey of founding this coaching and speak deeply business. But before I get there, the whole thing for me and why I really feel is important to have somebody like you on the show is most executives I know only got where they got because they're networking, they're communicating, and they're presenting And

They're delivering strategies and so on and so forth. It is a lot of communication. And unfortunately, I've also met a lot of people, especially in the Valley, who are absolutely useless at communicating to humans. They're very good at technical stuff.

Kevin:

That's a hard den. That is a harsh phrase. Useless.

Den:

Oh my God, useless. Well, okay, so some of them are not useless, but I would certainly say that

Kevin:

Reminds me of this book of Japanese inventions, which is called useless inventions. I dunno whether you ever saw that

Den:

Unuse, but not necessarily useful communicators.

Kevin:

There you go. A little softer. Now,

Den:

If I think of it like I'm a founder of a startup and I need to do two things. I need three things, really. One is I need to convince a VC to give me money. Two, I need to convince the organization, the team we're building that I'm the one to lead us to the North Star. And then three, I need to convince people to buy our product. Those are all three distinctly different communications. They are different methods on how you show up your body language, your dress sense, I mean just all of it. All of it. The whole package. In those three different scenarios, they actually require three different types of presence.

Kevin:

Can I add one that I was quite sure you were going to land on and was over here? Yeah, a little bit surprised that it didn't come up. I'm sure it's in there. Maybe three and a half. And that's your people, your team, the folks.

Den:

Yeah, that was the second one that was, well, what did you say there? The company? Your company. Yeah.

As you build your company, your startup, so your employees and I've, that's where it was. Okay. I've built many teams over the years, and one of the bigger struggles that you lose sight of if you're not paying attention to it, is bring in a whole group of an organization through a strategy and saying, Hey, this is strategy. This is go north. This is how we're, and this is our culture. This is our ethics. This is how we deal with situations. This is how we want to show up. This is our brand, this is our team brand, our personal brand, all of that. I am like a lot of leaders miss that stuff.

Kevin:

See, for me, there's another little shortcut to that that I really love. And that is, and you touched on it, so what is sacred here and what is taboo here? What is the stuff we always do and what is the stuff we never do? And so that's culture, And

That's something around another pet, I would say commitment of mine is psychological safety. So we can get into that a little bit later, but you wanted to proceed in some way. You want to get back on that track?

Den:

Yeah, yeah. Back on the, so if I picked it up correctly, you're busy doing your normal job in your life and COVID hits, and then at some point you decide, I'm going to go into this consultancy thing full time. So what was that decision and journey?

Kevin:

I will say that it was scalding. I will say that it was terrifying. I'll say that I'm also exceptionally grateful. And this is not just fluff, right? I'm not just blowing smoke. I'm exceptionally grateful that I was forced to do it because what I tell people about that journey, and I'll get back to it, so maybe the story is being told a little bit backward, but what I tell people is that it brought me into contact with some fears and some, I'm just going to say trauma that 40 years in performing arts had not. And I was shocked. I was like, oh my God, this entrepreneur stuff is rugged.

Just getting in there and getting told no a ton and just learning it and coming from the arts and education and learning business really from, I mean, I could show you the bookshelf over here. I mean, I've read every management book and subscribed to things and worked really hard. Anyway, so now we'll go back. So for a dozen years, I had been doing this sort of side shingle thing, just kind of had this thing, I'd always have a client, I'd have five clients, sometimes that would be a high number for me. And these would all be performance folks. Folks who got this speech and were terrified, folks who had the mistaken ideas. A lot of us do that. It's about survival, About

My survival. And what I say is no, it's about gift giving. So let's turn this thing 180. And the imagination that I've been offering clients for years is so did you ever get the perfect gift, right? Was that ever landed in your lap? And they think for a minute, most of 'em say, yeah, sadly, a couple will say, well, no, I never did get the perfect gift, but you were a kid. You got just the bike or just whatever it was you felt, what then what did you feel when you got the perfect gift?

Den:

And I think you and I in our prep call had that question we did, And

I can't remember my answer, but I struggled and I was like, oh, wait, but I'll, I'll tell you one thing was a photo book that a friend made for me, and I've redone that for other people over the years. Nice. And I think now to your question, it's like, well, what was that emotion? What was that feeling? There

Kevin:

You go.

Den:

When you opened this gift and you're like, holy shit. And I just thought, wow, this is incredibly thoughtful of this person, dude, this.

Kevin:

And you felt seen, you felt valued, all these things and you felt your connection, didn't you? Also your connection with the person. So I say, well, that's the imagination for you when you're setting about to do a talk, any kind of presentation at all, is you want to make sure that you are in the position of the person that gave you that gift so you know exactly what that audience is going to value.

Speaker 4:

Exactly

Kevin:

What's good for them. So that's the turnaround. So I have been doing that for folks, had been doing that for folks for a good 12 years before COVID shut down my, then I was teaching, I was directing, I was still singing and acting a bit, although that had come down a little bit. And so then I thought, well, really, the first thing I started with then was something called Play to Belong. And I don't know whether you saw that as part of my doings, but I still have that website. And that is games, physical games from actors bootcamp. And what happens with those is you feel flow with a group. You are taking risks with them, conflicts come up, you're having a ball, you are intellectually taxed and your whole body is going, these are really full physical games. And I thought, well, what if the workplace was the only place that you could actually play like this? How many adults play? And we are the only mammal species that doesn't play as it ages.

Speaker 4:

We

Kevin:

Quit. Never thought of that. Yeah. Not talking about golf, talking about the stuff that actually replicates the things that keep you from the five dysfunctions of a team that really make it so that, Hey, I made an error. Oops. Okay. That's part of learning. And that too is part of psychological safety. That's part of flow, that's part of innovation. That's part of what you go in. You risk a little bit. What do you get back? You get camaraderie.

Den:

Yeah. And it is really funny, I think of the whole valley mantra, fail fast. We kind of celebrate it almost. Now I'm going to pause. I'm going to pause for a brief minute just for a message, and we'll be right back. Nice. Hey folks, just want to take a minute to say thanks for listening to the show, watching the show, however you engage with us. If you're liking the conversations, if you think we're adding some value, we'd love you to subscribe and share the show with your friends. If you know of anyone else that would benefit ideally for us, that will help us be able to grow the show, invest more in the quality, get some more exciting guests, and keep bringing you some executive goodness. Thanks everybody. Take it easy and enjoy the rest of the discussion.

Well, Kevin, let's dig into this a little bit. So one of the things you mentioned there was just really about the playing element. And in the professional work setting, we do team building things every now and again. But I think in the general sense of any business, there's not necessarily a lot of freedom or time allocated for people just to work together in a way where there's not some high expectation of a deliverable in the result. It's usually always business business. So why don't you share a little bit more about that whole play philosophy? Thank you. Yeah.

Kevin:

A lot of the time, what you are talking with decision makers about here on their side is gamification and problem solving. They're like, okay, so we've got some deliverable, we've got some process, we got some problem that is going on, and can you design a suite of games around that so that we can then actually come back having made significant progress on that? And ordinarily, I discourage that it does a couple of things. One, it's not the kind of free activity that I'm after. You use the word freedom. What it establishes and what it brings back is what I listed before, people who have seen the sparkle in each other's eyes, people who have dropped whatever that work mask was. And this is another alter ego, people who you see with a mad glint in their eye, rushing towards some kind of something, right? And safe places to come up against one another in ways. I mean, I always like to go back to the schoolyard. So if you just lurk, not that we can or should

Around schoolyards, what do you hear? Yeah, you hear happy yelling and voices and stuff, but you hear a ton of arguments. And the arguments are about the rules. They're always about the rules. And what are rules for? Rules are for safety. So again, back to what do we hold sacred here and what's taboo? You don't cheat, that's taboo, and you get called out on that. So it makes culture and establishes a true connection and true belonging. That's my little flag. That's the one that I want to plant on the moon or Antarctica or wherever we belong with and to each other here. And you can look at that. It looks like you want to say something or shall I continue?

Den:

No, keep going. You can tell. My brain's working away here.

Kevin:

Yeah,

Den:

I just want to be, I got a couple of thoughts.

Kevin:

Yeah, I want to be responsive to, it's your show and you might want to get in.

Den:

Well, so as I hear you say that, the thing in my brain that I'm translating is, okay, so if I'm a leader building and running an organization in a company, how do we translate that for them in a way where they can do something meaningful for their team? Do you have some thoughts or advice there?

Kevin:

Well, the first thing I'm going to say is that this kind of activity is in and of itself meaningful to the team. I'll give you an example from a group of architects at convention, at the, you've probably been to the computer museum in Mountain View. And so it was held there and it was held in the giant space. And so we cut it down a little bit and the request was simply, well, the statement was, we suck at networking, so can you build something so that we can network better? And I did. It was really easy. So you can append really any problem of work or of culture to this activity and it all goes better. So I suppose that would be my idea, but I am a little bit resistant, maybe a little bit more resistant, more than a little bit resistant to working on a bunch of specific problems. We need to learn to do X together over and over and over again. Because like I said, one of my favorite quotes, and you've seen it maybe on my little badge on my email, is the measure of a free society is in its play.

So I don't know how much don't playful. Some of the things that are occurring right now actually are, they don't seem very playful to me. No, no, exactly. I could be wrong anyway to say I could put this to bed because I mean, at least here, because I'm not really doing or featuring that coaching that much right now. My coaching is in communication issues, people getting stuck. People who say to me, clients who say to me, I can't talk to her. Well, well, how come? Well, she's Gen Z, I can't talk. Right?

Den:

And I was just about to ask you this. So this was one of, I think the pivotal things here is for our audience, when would somebody in our audience call you? What does a typical client call come across and an engagement? And then what does success look like at the end of it?

Kevin:

Okay, so how to answer it, one would be, so on the performance side, it would be something like, I got a promotion. I don't know how to talk to people. I just got a TED talk. I have to do a board presentation and anything performative, and maybe you and I will, as we talked about, do just a little bit of a slice of that if we get time, we'll see today. And the other bit is somebody who is, I like to say that it's always a system when you go into an organization or a corporation, but the identified patient to use a psych term. So the last one that was about a six month engagement. And these could be, I don't do one-offs unless we have a pre-existing relationship. So I do want some kind of package because change, this kind of change doesn't come that quickly. So it's in the three to six month or longer. So this is God bless Persian engineers. There are many of them. And I'm just going to have to virtue signal that I actually love that culture. And this guy was the identified problem in the middle of a medium-sized tech organization. He had been in Australia for 15 years. His English was nonetheless not so great.

I mean, he was fluent, but he didn't play the music of it like you or I do or a native would. And the hierarchy of that, I don't know whether the Scots put themselves above the Irish and the Brits. In any case, the Americans are not in that group. You folks are the fluent ones. You are there with the mother tongue.

Den:

Well, it is funny you say that. I always think of it in Scotland. There's a lot of slang. When I moved here, even though English is my first language, people couldn't really get past the accent and the slang, so I had to really adjust. But then I'm working with a bunch of people whose first language is not English, and they have learned English over the years and different levels of success. And I think that's where quite often you need somebody to come in and be like, I'm going to help you communicate better. And there's a package to it. And I think one thing you mentioned, there's, this isn't a pull me in for an hour and we're good because it really is. I brought in coaches to Adobe and at Cisco when I was building my teams, so team branding, personal branding, communication, strategic communications, and I would have that person work with our team for many years. Many years. I mean, it was, you're on retainer, you're helping us build a team. And do you feel that your clients walk away realizing that this is a differentiation for them compared to others in their peer group?

Kevin:

I don't see how you could avoid it. It depends on the personality. I mean, some people grab stuff and just want to spread it out

Speaker 4:

And

Kevin:

Other people grab stuff. Like my daughter, if she ever got a gift when she was one, she'd look at it and then she'd run away and hide. So some people want to squirrel away gifts, and some people just want to really spread 'em out. Yeah, that's widely variable. Yeah, there's so many things around language. Here we are in America where everybody talks about this, and that's about the pitch variation. And I'm talking about women, that's a bit of a joke, but women and men push down pitch and they don't play it. And you go to England and people are talking all over the place, and this is men, they're everywhere. And this is a birthright and it's a shame. It's a dirty doggone shame

Den:

That

Kevin:

We're also pushed down. So anyway, back to this guy helping him, it wasn't vocabulary or even a slang or idiomatic expressions, it was more about the music. And he talked like this. And then there were some more word packages and people just misread him. He was actually a sweetheart. He had some cultural baggage around, admittedly the sexes, let's just say. And so I was working with him both linguistically culturally and helping him get some more eq. That would be a typical client is like, so let's say that you're a leader and you're resistant to giving a shit about people's feelings on your team. That's not where my clients can stay. I mean, my clients have to admit or come to me with a desire for or be identified by HR or somebody higher as somebody who needs to begin to give a shit about how people feel this can be done. And so it's under communication, but it really is about, and this is why I love nonviolent communication, it's not a user-friendly title because people say, what are you saying? My communication is violent. So it's also called compassionate communication. But if you know what you're thinking, feeling, and needing, if those are connected like that, and people don't spend time on that,

They confuse thoughts with judgments, blame analysis, evaluation, gripes. I mean, thoughts are data driven. And then those link to how you're feeling. And then those feelings are driven by unmet needs. And that's how I work with almost everybody, no matter what we do, speakers, leaders. And that's why I say you get regulated like that, then you can be curious about your people. If you're not regulated, you are not curious about people. I mean, you're not.

Den:

One of the things I got feedback on years ago, and everybody I go through, I've gone through my journey of learning and maturing my leadership craft. But early on, even as an individual contributor, I had very little empathy for people. I mean, it wasn't that I wasn't thoughtful about people around me and their feelings, but I had a bit of an ego to the point where it was more about me than that was about you. And it took a long time for me to kind of get over that. And I think some of it was becoming a parent, some of it was going through health issues, just other life changes and stuff. And over the course of time, then it began to really twig on me what my boss was trying to help me see. I didn't see it at the time. And I also had that fit in mouth disease where I'd just say random shit without thinking about it. Sometimes still have that, but I try and get better. But it's interesting because when you're in a leadership role and you're trying to really impact an organization, I think if you're not good at some of these things, you can really bring the whole organization down. You can change the culture of the company, you can change the brand, the reputation of the company. So that's why I think the kind of work that you're doing, I feel there's such a value to our executive audience on the podcast

Of why is this important?

Kevin:

There's a nuts and bolts way. I've been talking a little bit what I would call West County, that's what I call stuff that gets a little bit moist or a little bit psychosocial or a little bit spiritual or a little bit growth oriented or whatever. And some people don't want to really dip into that very much. And unfortunately, it might be my opinion that those are the very people who need it.

Speaker 4:

But

Kevin:

I just want to say there's two things I like to say. One is the best leaders are teachers. Leaders are teachers, period. And so then we can work. I mean, if that resonates with you, then we can work. And what do teachers do? They find students where they are, they teach them where they are, and then they develop them. They help transform them. That's what they want to do. So there's that, and there's some ego that has to go away there. And there also has to be some abundance. If you're a leader and you're operating out of scarcity and fear and winners and losers, then that's not such a great deal. And then the other thing that is also from teaching, and this is the last thing I'll say for a moment and let it get back on the rails, is trust. What are you doing? You're trying to build trust. And that's made of two things, two really simple things and not very many more than that. One is passionate devotion to whatever the hell, whatever's in front of you, whatever you're doing, passionate, devotion, the product, the process, whatever. And the other is demonstrating care about people. If you can do those two things, then people look at you and they go, yeah, I'm in.

Den:

Yeah. The one thing trust is hard earned, easily broken. And I remember years ago, I was 16, and my manager was a postman at the time in Scotland. So my manager was giving me some grief about something and really threw me onto the bus. And a lot of it was like some gossip and rumor and stuff like that. And he threw me under the bus. And I just remembered at that point that my lesson was that if a leader doesn't have the trust of their team, then the ability to be successful is diminished severely. People will do stuff paid, but they'll do stuff a hell of a lot better if they trust the leader. They know the leaders got their back. And as I was going through my career at Adobe, there was a time where one of the people in the team shut down the whole network or whatever, really balls something up. And I remember my boss asking me to name who'd done it, and I was like, but why? I went, it's my fault's mine, it's my team. It's under my watch.

Kevin:

I love that you said that because I got a question for you and that proceeds from you agree with me on trust, right?

Den:

Yep.

Kevin:

So what do you do in the ordinary circumstance that trust is broken? Because relationships go rupture, repair, rupture, repair. I mean, that's what happens. So what do you do? What have you done?

Den:

I think this is the one thing for me is I like to think of, you'll talk the talk and you'll walk the walk. So you'll show up with the same ethics and morality regardless of who you're having the conversation with. So I don't want to show up with you in this conversation and talk about brilliance of this and that. And then in my personal life, I'm hanging out with some friends and I behave entirely different. I think people need to see that line of sight of you still know what you're going to get, and you can still see that I'm genuine through those communications regardless of the circumstance.

Kevin:

When

Den:

You're under stress and pressure,

Kevin:

People

Den:

Sometimes behave one way, and when things are good, they behave another way. But I think the reality is you're really trying to be, I think I want to be pretty predictable to those around me. For sure. You know what they're going to get. And

Kevin:

Though you're going to blow it, Dan, now again, yeah, it's going to happen. And so I just wanted to say that that's one thing that I offer folks in my work is how to repair. Yeah, how to apologize, right?

Den:

Yeah. That's a hard, so how would do, so give me an example. Let's role play a little bit here.

Kevin:

Well, what's a mistake that you, I mean, if you lost your temper or I mean, do you have an example that you can bring or prefer not to or

Den:

No? Yeah, I mean, I think as a parent, right? So sometimes your kid will do something

Speaker 4:

That

Den:

You just lose your mind with. And quite often it is funny, I always think of the kid gets hurt and you're like, why did you do that? And your initial reaction and then you're like, oh, wait, you're hurt. But I think in general, there's been times as a parent where you're like, oh, I really didn't handle that situation very well, and now I've created a friction between me and my teenager. And somehow you got to think about how do you repair it?

Kevin:

Wow. Well, so I will go ahead and deal with that, right? Oh, you want to tell me how much more time we have, like to get a chance to play with you a little bit too?

Den:

Yeah, I mean we can shoot over. So let's do another

Kevin:

10.

Den:

So essentially, I'm

Kevin:

Sorry, go ahead. You were going to say?

Den:

Yeah, I'm just also, yeah, we can do about 10 or 15 minutes.

Kevin:

Excellent. Great. Okay. So we can get a lot done. So the first thing is many leaders, as many parents think that they can't really apologize because of status. They think that they're going to lose something, that they're going to be unable to recover. And the first thing is to talk about, just to talk about that and let people know that you know what? You don't lose anything that way. You're making things even stronger than they were before if you do it right. Yeah. Because you're showing, I mean, obviously it's a buzz about show vulnerability and obviously too, that doesn't mean that you just are vulnerable all over the gosh darn place because nobody wants that. So what do you do? So it's a four part thing. It's acknowledge the offense, take responsibility.

Speaker 4:

There

Kevin:

Needs to be, guess what? No excuse in it. No excuse in it for you. That's not an apology. If you weren't such a dumb shit, it wouldn't have happened. So you just simply say, Hey, you know what? I was wrong. I hurt you. And just really get into it and say, that is unacceptable. So you express remorse. You say, and I feel rotten about it, and you explain what happened if you want to. I like to go a little bit light on that because a lot of people can't resist getting into, I was under a ton of stress and strain and really I'm suffering. And then it becomes about you are asking them to take care of you, but guess what? No, you don't get to do that, right? And it kind of diminishes the apology, right? Completely. Then it makes it a crappy apology. And then finally it's like, okay, what are the amends? What are the amends that you can think of here? The other thing is if it happened in a group setting, this is what I learned when I was a teacher, is if I lost it with a kid, and I did a couple of times, I mean, I was a drama teacher, and I mean, I suffered Dan, there were some

Den:

Drama in the drama class.

Kevin:

Things were happening in my life anyway. So if you lose it with one person, guess what? You've lost it with everybody who saw it. And that means that you have to make an apology in that same setting, or you have to chase down every single person who was there and say, Hey, when I lost it with her, when I lost it with him, that sucked. I explained to them that it sucked and I felt bad, and this is what's going to happen in the future. And even you could go, if you wanted to make the princely apology or the queenly apology, you would say, what was it like for you? Yeah, what was that like for you? So that's one thing I offer, and it's beautiful. I think, right? Then they can see the justice in it.

Den:

And this is the one thing for me. So I've, again, trying to be mature. I don't see an apology as a weakness. I actually see an apology as the opportunity to show strength. I see it as being the ability to understand and self reflect. I don't think as a weakness, I just see that as I've crossed some threshold of maturity. You're so right, where before I'd, maybe before you'd have realized that you messed up and then you'd be internally gone off, feel bad, but then you wouldn't take the next step and gone back to the person and having the conversation. And then to your point, in the early days, you have the conversation and you tack on all the reasons that you were an idiot. And as you get older, then you realize, well, wait a minute. When somebody said that to me, I listen to their reasons and think they're trying to justify their actions. And

Kevin:

Not only that, if somebody says, look, if I start saying to you, Dan, that I really suck and my life is bad and I'm a terrible person, and the reciprocity is that you're going to be wanting to take care of me, and that's wrong. That's not what we're here for. You know what I mean?

Den:

Anyway,

Kevin:

So that's cool. And you said that you see it as a sign of strength. I'm just going to enlarge on that for a second. And that is that what it's really doing for co-regulation and for teamwork and for dignity, is you're showing the person's safety. That was an unsafe thing that happened. And guess what? You're recognizing that and you're saying, you know what? I want safety back, and this is how I'm going about it.

Den:

And translating it to a leadership business team, kind of organizational setting I've taken away, there's a couple of things. One is the acknowledgement that we're all human and we are all under different constraints. We all have different things going on in our life. There's external forces and factors that might impact our days. And really at the end of it, and especially in a business setting, there's a lot of decisions that get made above you and around you that you've got no control over. As I then led my organizations, the couple of things, one was I tried to be consistent as often as possible so that the time where you do mess up, or the time that you do do something which is not your normal,

Kevin:

It's unsafe. It makes people feel unsafe.

Den:

But I think people give you a pass if 95% of the time you're kicking ass and being great, and then that one time you have a bad day, and while you may apologize for it later, that's abnormal. And it's not the setting you've generally set. Do

Kevin:

You remember that's do remember Andro, cle and the Lion?

Den:

No.

Kevin:

No. So this is the one where the lion gets a thorn in its paw and andro. CLE takes it out despite the lion being fierce and him being afraid and all that stuff. And then the lion is grateful to him ever after. When you lose it, you've put a thorn in somebody, it's in their body. And for you to come and do that apology, you're taking the hurt out of their body, actually. And to me, that's a beautiful thing.

Den:

Yeah, I think people need, I do think that people in business recognize that generally speaking, we didn't wake up in the morning and think, I'm going to be an ass today. I mean, you think they do wrong? I do think there is a couple of people I've met over the years that probably wake up in the morning and think, I'm really going to enjoy being an asshole today to somebody. But I don't think generally that's our human nature. I mean, human nature, I don't think it's like that.

And I look at it when you're building an organization, it is vitally important that you're really paying attention and mindful, again, to the people in the organization, their needs, how you're building and growing careers. And what's been interesting to me over the years, I've had several people acknowledge where they really respected the job I tried to do as a leader, and I've had some people call me. I've had some people say, you didn't have to try so hard to be an asshole. But then later on, I found out that they repeated a lot of the stuff I'd done in their company, so that was cool. But I've also had spouses of people in my organizations or come up to me afterwards and say, Hey, thank you for what you've done for our family.

Kevin:

Oh, how beautiful.

Den:

Yeah, because you did try and help build careers good for you with people.

Kevin:

Yeah. That says that the stuff they're bringing home from work was stuff that they actually, I'm not even going to say. I'm just going to say they used it in their family, right?

Den:

Yeah. Going back to the coaching business, we had that brand coach who came in and mentored our team. One of my leaders actually took it home to his family for sure, and they talked about personal brand, family brand. Oh, that's interesting. And I thought what was really cool about the brand stuff was if you tell someone, look, I want to be seen as professional. I want to be seen as trustworthy, transparent. If I am in a setting and I do something or act in a certain way that is not conducive to that brand desire, it was very easy for somebody in my team, either my boss or my peers or my direct reports to be like, then remember you said this was your brand. This was important to you. Do you realize that you showed up and that's not your brand?

Kevin:

That's outstanding.

Den:

Yeah. It's a great way to give feedback without really being overly harsh about it, because if it's important to you, you told me that that's your brand, then therefore, so it's such a good, that resonated. And when Eric and our team took that home to his family and he is like, oh, I told my whole family, and we went through the whole exercise, I'm like, holy crap, your wife and kids had,

Kevin:

Yeah, I mean, your influential, so your wellbeing is the same as your team's wellbeing is the same as their family wellbeing. So I wanted to offer maybe one thing of value, because your listeners are C-suite folks, leaders, folks like that. And there's something that this crowd gets wrong a ton, and this is just a quick thing that they could begin to get, and it makes a huge difference. And it's about praise. Shall I just come?

Den:

Oh, yeah, let's go down. It's almost the praise and feedback dilemma.

Kevin:

Yeah. Yeah. Feedback. I don't think we'll get there necessarily, but praise,

Speaker 4:

Right?

Kevin:

When you say to somebody, great job, or when you say to somebody, you are the best, or when you say something like that, there's a little pulse of something there, and it feels good, but the person doesn't get any usable information out of it. It's not properly motivating. It's nice, but it's the spray, spray and pray kind of thing. And so what you want to do is you want to specify the three things about it. One is the actions that contributed to your wellbeing. The second is the particular needs that have been fulfilled. And the third is the pleasureful feelings that are engendered by that action. 1, 2, 3. So the example would be something like, okay, so I'm waiting for a report from you. I know that it's going to be unlikely that you're going to get it to me before the weekend. I want the weekend free.

But I'm sitting there going, is it coming? Is it coming? Is it coming? Right? Lo and behold, it comes on Thursday, and what do I say as praise, right? To my direct report, right? I say something like, when you got this thing to me today instead of Friday afternoon, that saved my whole weekend because I wanted the weekend for my family. So that's a specific action. The need is contained in there as well. And that is that I wanted to have this done by close of business Friday. I wanted to have this off my desk by close of business Friday. And how did that feel to me? I feel liberated. I feel free. I feel like I'm going to get some belonging time with my family. You say something like that to a direct report to a team member. They know exactly what they did. They know exactly what need of yours it fulfilled, and exactly how you felt about it.

Den:

Yeah. Boom. That's brilliant. Yeah, and I think that's one of, we'll need to grab you back on the show at some point. I'd love to dig into that whole conversation of, I think feedback. There's praise and there's feedback. I see all as feedback.

There's praise, there's a type of feedback, and I also think constructive, I'm going to try and help you improve. Or I see you do something which displeased me or went against what we're trying to do within the team. I see that all as one of those conversations that so many leaders mess up. And the worst thing I saw was you're doing your annual reviews and you give, it's almost like praise. You've done this well, this, well, this, well, this, well this. Oh, but you really screwed that up. Or the way they phrase it is, you could improve on these things. And then they would also, in the early days at Adobe, they'd also include as part of that, your annual pay raise. And the worst thing that would ever happen in a company is you've got one of your top performers and you're giving them all the praise in the world and very little constructive. You could do better. So wonderful already. But then their pay raise, because your budget is very limited. Their pay raise is just like a regular pay raise, and then they're all like, well, what the hell? This doesn't equate. So I think within corporate America and probably around the world, there's a lot of room for improvement in that little space of the whole thing. So I know we're up on time, Kevin, this man, this 50 minutes just flew right in there.

Kevin:

It kind of did. I felt myself, Dan, I didn't leave enough space. I was grabby. I was greedy.

Den:

It's great though. It's great. I mean, look, you're here. I talk all the time, so I've used my talking credits for the whole week, but I appreciate you. Look, I appreciate you taking time out of your day. This for me, as I said at the start, I was looking forward to this conversation. You've got this really colorful background. You're using your talents and skills in a way that I think can benefit a lot of leaders in their journey, which is why you're a perfect match for jumping on the show.

Kevin:

Nice.

Den:

I'd love to have you back at some point. So

Kevin:

We didn't get to play together in some way.

Den:

I know. I know, right? You had all these magical plans. So yeah, next time we'll do that, and then in the show notes, we will put links to your details so people can get in touch with you. Great. Yeah, we'd love people to be able to connect with you and learn more about what you're up to and how they can benefit from your services. Kevin Simmons, thank you very much, sir. Really appreciate it.

Kevin:

Den short for Dennis Jones.

Den:

Yeah. Wonderful.

Kevin:

Wonderful. What's your middle name den? William. William. So do you go by den Will? No, I do not den Don. I joke that it was maybe mother or something like that. Den mother.

Den:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I've been called all sorts of names over the years, but that had a long career.

Kevin:

And you've been married?

Den:

Yeah. No, I

Kevin:

Don't. My children.

Den:

Yeah. Hey, Kevin. Thank you, sir.

Kevin:

That was a ton of fun. Thanks, Deb. Cheers. Okay, bye-bye.

Narrator:

That wraps up this episode of 9 0 9 Exec. If you found value here, subscribe and leave a rating to help others discover the show. To learn more about 9 0 9 Cyber our advisory services and how we help organizations secure growth, visit 9 0 9 cyber.com. Thanks for listening, and until next time, lead with clarity, build trust, and stay secure.

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