Eric Svaren - A Trained Eye

Eric Svaren coaches executives, as well as senior and emerging leaders, in business, tech, health care, research, higher education, government, associations, and NGOs. He is also an organization development (OD) consultant, serving local, national, and international clients.

He teaches Leadership in Action for the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington. Eric is also a developmental leadership coach for Global Leadership Associates in the United Kingdom.

With students and clients, he focuses on the practical application of theories and models to pressing leadership, organizational, and societal problems. He draws on research and writing on adult development theory, adaptive leadership, team dynamics, culture, equity, engagement, adult learning, and polarity management.

Eric served in internal roles supporting clinical operations in a national cancer center, staffing a Seattle city council member, and running a joint labor-management program.

He earned his Master’s degree in sociology at UW, with concentrations in social psychology and organizational sociology. He also holds certifications in many coaching and OD methods and instruments.

A Quote From This Episode

• "Leadership is all around us, but most of the time, we're not recognizing it. And that leadership is usually "Little L" leadership. It's not broadcast, it's not announced, and it doesn't have a marquee like a movie theater; it’s something that is happening very subtly, and it takes a trained eye to notice it. And one of the things I'd like to leave my students with is that trained eye."

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Infographic: Technical Problems vs. Adaptive Challenges by Svaren
• Article: The Principles of little 'L' leadership by Svaren
• Books:  The Wager, Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
• Book: The Secret Hours by Mick Herron

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Plan for ILA's 26th Global Conference in Chicago, IL - November 7-10, 2024. 

About The Boler College of Business at John Carroll University

• Boler offers four MBA programs – 1 Year Flexible, Hybrid, Online, and Professional. Each track offers flexible timelines and various class structure options (online, in-person, hybrid, asynchronous). Boler’s tech core and international study tour opportunities set these MBA programs apart. Rankings highlighted in the intro are taken from CEO Magazine.

About  Scott J. Allen

• Website
• Weekly Newsletter: The Leader's Edge

My Approach to Hosting

• The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.

Chapters

• 0:00 Leadership Development and Organizational Sociology
• 15:19 Developing Leadership Skills in Students
• 25:31 Exploring Leadership and Followership Dynamics

Transcript

Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.

Scott Allen  0:00  

Okay everybody, welcome to the Phronesis podcast. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. It is good to have you with us. Today, I have Eric Svaren (He/Him). Eric coaches executives as well as senior and emerging leaders in business, tech, healthcare, research, higher education, government associations, and NGOs. He's also an organization development consultant, serving local, national, and international clients. He teaches Leadership in Action for the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the beautiful University of Washington. Eric is also a developmental leadership coach for Global Leadership Associates in the United Kingdom. With students and clients, he focuses on the practical application of theories and models to pressing leadership, organizational, and societal problems. He draws on research and writing on adult development theory, adaptive leadership, team dynamics, culture, equity, engagement, adult learning, and polarity management. Eric served in internal roles supporting clinical operations at a National Cancer Center, staffing at Seattle City Council member, and running a joint labor-management program. He earned his master's degree in Sociology at the University of Washington with concentrations in Social Psychology and Organizational sociology. He also holds certifications in many coaching and OD methods and instruments. Hailing in from the Pacific Northwest in the United States, beautiful Pacific Northwest. We were just talking about Eric: "The mountain is out." Can you help listeners understand? The next time they go to the Pacific Northwest, they'll know. They'll seem like a local if they say, “The mountain is out.”

Eric Svaren  1:36  

Exactly right. In Seattle, that's our phrase when we can see Mount Rainier through the clouds.

Scott Allen  1:40  

Such a beautiful, beautiful part of the world. Thank you so much for being with us, Eric. Now, what isn't in your bio? What else could listeners learn about you as we kind of ease into the conversation here?

Eric Svaren  1:51  

Well, one thing I'll mention, Scott, is probably the most important contribution I've made to the leadership development field has been a distinction between technical problems and adaptive challenges I fashioned about 30 years ago and is now all over the place and used everywhere that I've totally lost track of. Based on Ron Heifetz’s work when I first read ‘Leadership Without Easy Answers’ and the work of leadership article in HBR, his sort of real first works in, I thought he didn't define enough the difference between technical problems and adaptive challenges. So, I put together my own version of that, and it's just dispersed. It's kind of an example of diffusion of innovation or something because it's all over the place. And I occasionally have colleagues sending me pictures of PowerPoint slides with that distinction on it. Maybe we could share the document in the show notes for the podcast so your listeners can have it, and they might as well have it because it seems like everyone else has it. It's probably my primary contribution to scholarship in this area. That was 30 years ago. 

Scott Allen  2:53  

Okay. So, you reached out to Heifetz and said, “Look, you need to distinguish this a little bit better.” 

Eric Svaren  2:59

Yeah. 

Scott Allen  2:59

Did you reach out to him? 

Eric Svaren  3:00  

No, I didn't, actually. I just put it together to help me with my own thinking about it and to share it with others, and because it was sort of a place, I saw people stumbling. I did hear once that Marty Linsky used it in a retreat. It's the governor's office in Washington State, but otherwise, I've actually never met Heifetz or Marty Linsky. 

Scott Allen  3:20  

Interesting. And okay, so this background in sociology I find intriguing because A) I never heard of organizational sociology. So, that's kind of interesting. Obviously, organizational psychology or organizational psychology, but organizational sociology, would you talk a little bit about that?

Eric Svaren  3:38  

Yeah. Well, it's now been many moons since I was in graduate school, so I don't know where the field is now. But, essentially, when I was in graduate school, I was trying to get a degree in organization development without knowing the field existed. So, I was studying people like Kurt Lewin and trying to get my arms around some of these ideas. I'd come from a place of already experiencing organizational dysfunction when I was in graduate school and really wanted… That was my amusement. I was really trying to dial in on what's going on there; I'm trying to understand what's happening. And the lens of organizational sociology, Amitai Etzioni was a big name in this field, and I'm losing track of some of the others. And then, combined with social psychology, which I continue to just adore and love, was sort of my way into understanding what was going on. It was a super useful analytic tool.

Scott Allen  4:28  

Oh, that's so interesting. And again, in your bio, you're looking at things through very, very interesting lenses, whether that's polarities, or whether that's adaptive leadership. And you have this kind of distinction, ‘little L and big L leadership.’ Let's go there. Let's have a conversation about...

Eric Svaren  4:44  

Sure. Great. I came to this and actually, the idea isn't originally mine. One of my mentors uses the phrase ‘small L leadership,’ but I love the alliteration of ‘little L leadership.’ But it kind of came to a head for me when I started teaching undergraduate leadership right at the beginning of the pandemic. And trying to make the class on leadership, something more available to them, more accessible to them as students, namely, having them understand that they've already been leaders. That if I have some kind of record of their lives, we could code it for moments of leadership. So, I wanted to demystify this idea of leadership as that thing over there that those people are doing, especially people at the top of hierarchies. If that's the only place leadership is happening, the organization is not operating and most of it is not recognized. So, one of the exercises I do with the beginning and end of my class is asking students for leadership moments they've seen outside of class, and then ending the class by asking them for leadership moments they saw inside of class where they can't use me as an example. That exercise, by the way, came from my colleague, Josh Armstrong, at Gonzaga University. And the notion there is leadership is all around us, but, most of the time, we're not recognizing it. And that leadership is usually little L leadership. It's not broadcast, it's not announced, and it doesn't have a marquee like a movie theater; it’s something that is happening very subtly, and it takes a trained eye to notice it. And one of the things I'd like to leave my students with is that trained eye.

Scott Allen  6:19  

I love that. I really, really enjoy that phrasing “a trained eye,” because I think it's so true. I was in class the other night, a graduate course that I'm working on right now, and literally, I just finished saying something, and we got into an exercise that the students are engaged in, and what I just said happened. Push the pause button, and I said, “Hey, did you just notice what just happened here? Did you see that? Did you notice it?” And, in this case, it was influencing an authority figure. And, in that context, I'm the authority figure. They asked me a question, and I just flatly said, “No,” and they just accepted it. They didn't try to push back at all, they didn't try to step back up and influence me. They just rolled over and gave up, and they missed. They missed that not 10 minutes earlier, I had said, literally, three or four times I had repeated it, “If it's something you're passionate about, are you designing an influence attempt that is more likely to impact the other individual, that is more likely to succeed? Are you designing an influence attempt? And if it's important, are you coming back to it, and are you trying again?” Not just accepting no for the answer the first time. Again, if it's something that's important to you, because, oftentimes, followers will just give up after one shot, “Well, I mentioned it, nothing happened,” and they give up. And it's happening, it's happening all the time. So your distinction, that trained eye, I love that. I love that phrasing.

Eric Svaren  7:50  

Well. The other thing that I would mention from what you just said is also the importance of experimentation, trying new things, and being attuned to the context. When you talk about big L leadership, or what people see, it looks like the leader is in charge of the context. And that's just not the case. We've seen a lot of examples recently of big L leaders thinking that they're masters of their context and seeing them, essentially, learning that they're not; they're sort of getting knocked down by the context. So the little L leaders, just like big L leaders, need to attend to what's going on in the context. When is my leadership helpful, and in what form should I exercise it? And that also requires a very trained eye here. One of my theses, Scott, is that you can't wait for people to be in positions of authority to exert leadership; that's way, way too late. They need to practice leadership much earlier in their lives and make all those little errors when the stakes are lower, and they might have a better chance of getting some feedback and some guidance on how to do it differently. So, one of the messages to my students is we need to be practicing leadership right now, today, this week, in order to be trained up enough and have enough muscle memory to be effective when you are in a position of greater authority and have greater responsibility.

Scott Allen  9:05  

Well, and it's a distinction that if we can help individuals see… So, as I'm working with undergraduates, I teach in the spring, and I teach a course with juniors and their management and organizational leadership majors. And it's so interesting. I love that activity. “Where have you seen it outside? Where have you seen it inside the organization?” And I'm going to go with one example and another example just because I think this is fascinating because it is all around them. It's happening all the time. People without a position of authority can influence the direction of the group and can make a difference in whatever community they are a part of, maybe in brief moments. Maybe in brief moments to exercise leadership, and they step back, and they're more of a followership role. But it's happening in their fraternities, or sororities, or in student government, or in associations. It's happening all around them all the time. So, one way that I've experimented with really trying to help the students see that, similar to what you're doing, is I have what's called the daily observation. They write a paragraph each day, and it's kind of like my version of eight-minute abs. (Laughs) You are going to do this, brief moments, write a paragraph. And we have a lot of terms, and concepts, and buckets of content that we kind of explore. So, they have to use 10 to 15 of those concepts in this observation. It could be that you're watching the football game on Sunday, it could be that you are watching your favorite film, it could be that you are in your association, or you were in class. What did you see during the activity that we did in class? Because it's a totally different world when we can bring them to a place. And I always feel so excited when the students start really just getting good at that. They get really, really good at starting to see, starting to notice the dynamics happening in front of them. I love the activity at the beginning of the end of class, I think that's awesome. Is there anything else that you do in the context of class to help train them to see with different eyes?

Eric Svaren  11:07  

Well, one of the things that… I'm moved by Bob Hogan's quote, “Who you are is how you lead,” I spend quite a bit of time in class having the students figure out who they are, or at least who they are at this moment. They're 20 years old, they're still evolving, learning, and so forth. So, the two papers they write in my class are focused on them as people. There are papers on what they've learned from various psychometric tools about themselves, and they can take or leave whatever they want from those tools. In the second paper, I have them go on to collect feedback on some hypotheses or questions that they have to sort of put them in charge of collecting feedback instead of receiving it passively or waiting for it. So, in this case, it's having them notice stuff about themselves, what's going on inside of them, and how they're showing up. What's their unique type of leadership that they would be doing, as opposed to sort of the, I don't know what you'd call it, kind of the culturally proved of sort of American extroverted kind of, ‘I’m the big boss,’ suit and tie kind of leadership, versus something that can be done by people who don't wear suits and ties. People who are not in senior roles, and so forth. So, those are some things I tried to bring their awareness to. The highest compliment I've received on this course, Scott, was a few years ago with students saying, “This course is really relevant.” And I don't know that there's any of us who do this kind of teaching who don't love hearing that word from the students. It's an endorsement of something that's close to them and useful to them at the moment for their lives now, as opposed to some imaginary rule they're in 10 or 15 years later. So, my intention with the course is to bring that and a bunch of other little models and tools -- judiciously selected, there are too many -- that might meet that relevant standard with them.

Scott Allen  13:00  

And what I really like about what you just said is… The example I'm using, oftentimes, when I talk about the daily observations is that they're paying attention to their environment and what's happening externally. But the dimension you've just added that I've never thought of is to help them be better at monitoring what's happening internally because that's a whole world in and of itself. Be energized, frustrated, triggered, and am I present with that? Am I aware of that? Am I noticing that? Or am I just defaulting into some type of behavior as a result of that?

Eric Svaren  13:38  

This is an example of me trying to sprinkle in a little bit of adult development theory and the kind of coaching I'm doing with clients outside of the class. Recently, you had Val Livesay on your podcast talking about fallback, and Val is a colleague of mine as well. I have some of these adult development ideas I try to sprinkle into the course without expressly talking about them. And this idea that you were just mentioning about having them look inside is coming from that space. And notice, I'm not talking about fallback explicitly, I'm not talking about action inquiry from Bill Torbert explicitly, but I'm trying to sprinkle some of that into the course and plant some seeds for the future. 

Scott Allen  14:18  

Yeah. I think that's incredibly valuable because I am noticing what's happening within. Am I noticing what's happening outside in this context? Now, you have also said something that I found interesting. So, would you describe paper number two? So, they've done some exploration, they've done some self-assessments, they've kind of gotten somewhat of a sense of what those data points suggest, but then you actually have them going out and engaging with others.

Eric Svaren  14:45  

Yeah. So, the idea here is to get them in charge of collecting feedback. And feedback for me, I think one-on-one feedback is the primary engine of our growth and development. And I want these students to have the experience of doing that in a structured way, so I asked them from the first paper where they're learning about themselves, or at least what some tools say about them, that they have five hypotheses about themselves. 

Scott Allen  15:11  

Oh, wow.

Eric Scaren  15:11  

And they identify those. And then, they go out and test those five hypotheses with five people in their lives. These students are 20 years old, and many of their hypotheses are tested with family members, parents, and so forth, but also with friends and roommates, coworkers, and then report to me what they learned. And then, at the end of the paper, it says, “What might you try? What are a few experiments or steps you might take to metabolize that feedback you've received?”

Scott Allen  15:42  

So, Eric, what might be an example of a hypothesis that I would have about myself? What do you see? Because I find this really, really cool. 

Eric Svaren  15:50  

Yeah. So, one of the hypotheses might be just that I tend to talk a lot. And I tend to rule over people, or I don't talk enough, people don't know where I am. Typically, that assertiveness continuum is one of the sources of hypotheses. And so, they're one or the other end, and they are wondering, how is that showing up, or how are you seeing that?” So, they're asking these five informants, “Where am I at? How do you see that? Do I tend to talk over people and not leave people enough space to talk or share? Or am I not asking enough questions or something like that? Or do I tend to be more of a wallflower and tend to hold back? And are you left wondering where I stand or wishing you'd heard more from me? So, that would be an example of a hypothesis that shows up a lot in these papers.

Scott Allen  16:36  

Now, I love that. I love that activity. I think I would really, really, really enjoy learning more about that. And a similar cousin to that might be that I've used in class a few times the reflected best self exercise. Have you ever seen this exercise? 

Eric Svaren  16:53

No. 

Scott Allen  16:53

It comes out of the positive organizational behavior movement at the University of Michigan. And, essentially, you have participants go and ask people in their community basically three questions. And the three questions might be something of the nature of: when have you seen me at my best? What was I engaged in? Who was I with? And do you have any other data for me about what it's like when I'm at my best? And, oh, my gosh, Eric, I've had students present… Because I would oftentimes then do maybe a five-minute summary that they would then give the class about their reflected best self. And it had to be people who were going to give them serious answers; it couldn't be, “You were at your best last Thursday night, bro?” You know, that type of stuff. (Laughs) Those who are going to give you honest, serious answers, and they're going to be really meaningful conversations. And, oh, my gosh, some of the answers that students have come up with are just beautiful. And what's interesting about that activity is also that when is it that people publicly say really good things about you? It's your wedding, retirement, and funeral. You aren't even there for one of them. Retirement is less of a thing nowadays as people don't exist for 60 years in an organization. It's a really nice pause for the students to hear some of that feedback. But it's a little bit different than what you're doing where the students have a hypothesis about themselves because it's a different type of awareness, which I just really, really love.

Eric Svaren  18:29  

Right. And I phrase the hypotheses in terms of deficits or something to work on, but they don't have to be that. Sometimes, students phrased their hypotheses more positively. But I really like what you described, and I think I still have time to modify that assignment for this quarter. So, I may take you up on that and try that out instead, we'll see how it goes. 

Scott Allen  18:52  

Yeah. I can send you another… I've been experimenting with another activity, which I call the personal leadership profile. I've been using it with some organizations, I've been using it with students, and basically, they answer, let's call it, 15 questions about them as leaders. And it might be about their values; it might be about hot buttons that they have, it might be any number of different dimensions about kind of how they work, “Under stress, you might notice that I, etcetera, etcetera.” And then, they come up with basically a four or five-paragraph summary of them as a leader that they can share with others. And so, this is the first semester where I had them actually talk with some loved ones about what they wrote and asked for some feedback, but again, kind of a cousin to what you're doing, but just so incredibly valuable. I think a lot of times we don't spend enough time helping an individual situate themselves in them, whether it's their values, whether it's who they are and what they stand for, whether it's some of these hypotheses that you are speaking of because...I thought it was Bernard Bass for a long time, but it wasn't, who said this: “Do you have your own shop in order,” so to speak. Back to some of the adult development work, are you on a. Solid foundation, yourself that who you are is how you lead? I love that quote from Hogan as well. Really situating ourselves…critical.

Eric Svaren  20:22  

Well, boy, this is an unexpected bonus from this conversation, Scott, is getting ideas from you as a fellow traveler here. The things that I want to change in my own course. So, this is one of the joys of doing this, is I'm constantly learning and revising the course. It's also one of the terrors, I would say, making changes. I'm not sure how they're going to work out little adaptive challenges all the time.

Scott Allen  20:42  

Well, the feeling is mutual because I've never thought of having the student come up with some hypotheses and then have them checked. I think, and to your point, that's exactly what I love about the classroom the opportunity to experiment to see if we can get further faster. And again, my passion in life is how we better prepare people to serve in these really challenging roles or serve in little L situations where I'm not the authority figure necessarily, but I'm trying to help and make a difference. Am I prepared to do that? So, David Day, when he was on -- early episode, I think it was episode 17, he said, “You want to invest in your development because everybody needs to be a leader even when they're not ‘the leader,’” quote-unquote. Are you prepared to perform that little L leadership, even when you're not the quote-unquote, ‘Big L’ leader to use your phrasing.

Eric Svaren  21:40  

That's fantastic. Yeah, I love that notion. That is totally consistent with what I'm trying to do in my course. A couple of things that come to mind here, Scott, that I might just mention, and I think you, as another teacher of leadership, have encountered this, is this persistent belief. I've had a conversation with a professor of leadership at UW, Bruce Avolio, about this, too, and I've just had this persistent belief that leaders are essentially born and not made. Leadership is a position. It is authority as opposed to a behavior or set of behaviors, or philosophy, maybe even. And I feel like I'm constantly pressing back on that with the students. And I really, really want them to see themselves… If you don't see yourself as a leader, you're not consciously then practicing leadership. And then, when you are in a formal authority role, you wouldn't be doing good leadership because you're not as rehearsed or prepared for that work. So, these cultural myths that leaders are born, not made, they just flummoxed me and are things I'm constantly pushing against. 

Scott Allen  22:46  

Well, I've seen it in organizational life where maybe you're with some frontline workers, a number of different contexts, and when you suggest that they are leaders… And again, if you go to the Gallup numbers, there are different numbers from different organizations, but one number I came across is roughly 70% of someone's lived experience in the organization is their direct supervisor. And if you have people who are in positions of authority, and they don't even construct themselves as a leader… I've seen that in organizational life, “Well, we're not the leaders; we're not the CEO. Jim's the leader.” “No, you are very, very important. Actually, Jim is very irrelevant to their day-to-day existence; you are their day-to-day existence.” So, we see that in organizational life as well. 

Eric Svaren  23:33  

Yeah. And that's a classic sort of mistake people make, of putting themselves in a one-down position here and refusing to accept their own authority, or self-authorization, or claiming one's own agency or power in that situation. In your example, the leader isn't doing that. The leader is resigning or sort of placing themselves in more of a passive role when they do have great power there. You mentioned the Gallup work, and one of the things that is really clear from that is that the reason people stay in jobs or leave jobs is their immediate supervisor. And if that person isn't doing the leadership, and doing the development of their people, and having conversations, and building relationships, and so forth, then that's going to be a bad experience for that employee, and they're going to look elsewhere for leadership or a job.

Scott Allen  24:20  

Anything else as we kind of begin to wind down our time together? Is there anything else that is standing out for you as you do the work in the classroom that you think listeners might be interested in, or are your observations?

Eric Svaren  24:32  

Well, one of the things I do in the class is a heavy emphasis on getting the students talking with each other and doing a lot more facilitated conversations using cases and examples. Yesterday, we talked about the Columbia disaster of the space shuttle. We used two different articles: Amy Benson's take on that and Joseph Granny's take on that. And to the point we were just covering, one of the engineers there placed themselves in this passive role and failed to do enough to alert the NASA hierarchy to the problem, and NASA hierarchy, of course, wasn't hosting those kinds of alarms. But that was really a significant problem and probably led to the loss of seven astronauts. So anyway, get them to practice in the classroom around exerting leadership in the class together. I'm doing a little bit of an experiment here this quarter with giving over six class days to leadership labs. I'm calling them because their project is to run a 45-minute session on our class day. Those proposals are due tomorrow, so I'm interested to see what they look like. And then, I'm hoping to have the students actually get in the role of leading a class and, perhaps, getting feedback from their colleagues right there on the spot. 

Scott Allen  25:49  

Yeah. I think it was at the O-Ring. Is that the case study now? 

Eric Svaren  25:53  

Well, that was the challenger in '86. The 2003 was the foam strike on launch that the orbiter burned up on reentry.

Scott Allen  26:02  

The damaged tiles. Is that what that one was? 

Eric Svaren  26:05  

That's right. Yeah. Basically, both disasters were known problems inside NASA at the time, and NASA's own way of working and its culture prevented them from doing what they needed to do to keep the astronauts safe. 

Scott Allen  26:19  

Yeah. It's a great book, if you've never had the chance to check it out. But Ira Chaleff, ‘The Courageous Follower.’ His work is so important. I forget his actual phrasing, but it's standing up to and for our leaders. Love that. Love that. 

Eric Svaren  26:38  

Indeed, I would say to that, Scott, that I think when I'm talking about little L leadership, in part, I'm talking about followership. And I know that's part of what you lead into with the introduction to the podcast, which may even be reframing followership to be a form of leadership. And I'm not sure if he does that in that book., but I'm sort of reframing followership as leadership there. I'm not talking here about mutiny or something like that; I'm talking about how you lead for the position you are in terms of the purpose and mission of the organization overall. 

Scott Allen  27:11  

Well, I had a conversation about mutinies with Keith Grint, sometimes it might be mutiny (Laughs) You need some little L leadership. And even the context in where you were in world history. 

Eric Svaren  27:27  

Indeed. Scott, one point that I feel I'd like to make here is how interesting it is that many of the things that I'm doing with clients who are mid-career professionals or senior executives apply directly to what students want to learn in the classroom. I take a model like the distinction between adaptive challenges and technical problems, and it transfers immediately into the classroom. This was a surprise for me, going back and teaching undergraduates for the first time in decades, that they're hungry for that stuff, too. And since most leaders have not been trained in leadership, and most leaders learn leadership from their previous bosses, it’s not really a surprise, I guess, that these tools are equally applicable to both audiences. But it's a sort of a wake-up call to me, a little bit, about where we are with leadership in organizations.

Scott Allen  28:15  

Well, I've had a similar experience in that it's useful. What we've just discussed is credibly useful in both contexts. It's very, very useful for undergraduates in the classroom; it's just as useful for middle managers in organizational life because they aren't necessarily in a context where they're getting some of these assessments. Then, developing a hypothesis and testing those hypotheses are perfect for a coaching engagement and an activity. So, I see, just very, very nicely, a one-to-one. I think listeners don't just think that the personal leadership profile that I mentioned is only applicable to juniors in college; situating ourselves strongly in who we are as leaders is important regardless of context.

Eric Svaren  29:03  

Exactly. Yeah. 

Scott Allen  29:05  

Well, okay. As I wind down my conversation with guests, I always ask what they've been reading or streaming and what's caught their attention in recent times. And so, what is that for you, Eric? What's caught your eye? It could have to do with leadership or followership, but it could have nothing to do with leadership or followership. But what's been on your radar?

Eric Svaren  29:24  

Well, we're just speaking about mutiny, and I am reading David Grann's book, ‘The Wager’ right now, which was about a mutiny. He is the author of Killers of the Flower Moon, which is about to come out as a movie. And an amazing nonfiction, narrative nonfiction author, David Grann. And so, I'm really enjoying this sea story about a mutiny on a British Man-of-war called ‘The Wager,’ and we can put that in the show notes, I suppose, for people. 

Scott Allen  29:50  

Oh yeah. For sure.

Eric Svaren  29:50 

And then, my relaxing read, I just finished Mick Herron’s new book, ‘The Secret Hours.’ He's the one who invented the Slow Horses franchise that has been turned into a television series about burned-out spies in the British Secret Service. And I think he's the successor to John le Carré in terms of writing the more cerebral spy novels. So, those are two things I'm enjoying right now in terms of reading.

Scott Allen  30:14  

I just finished 1984. I’d never read it, and so, I listened to it, actually. So, 1984 and then today, I started Hiroshima. And so, I've not been in a happy place while I've been consumed. (Laughs)

Eric Svaren  30:37  

Yeah. Well, I recommend a good spy novel; a butcher thing, or science fiction, whatever your genre is.

Scott Allen  30:44  

1984 was enough science fiction for right now, and not all of it was… It's kind of a little close to home at times. Well, Eric, it's so good to have you on today. Thank you so much for being with me. I really enjoyed the conversation. It's always fun to dialogue with another individual who's in the classroom, who's experimenting. And again, trying to figure out how to better prepare these individuals, whether it's big L or little L, how to engage in the work, in the activity of leading others effectively. And so, I just really, really appreciate your experiments. We'll definitely put some items in the show notes. And thank you, sir. Be well.

Eric Svaren  31:27  

Thank you so much, Scott. I appreciate the opportunity. It is great to be with you. 

Scott Allen  31:30

Okay. Bye bye. 

Eric Svaren  31:31

Bye-bye.

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