Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen, Ph.D.

The Knowing-Doing Gap in Leadership with Dr. Amal Ahmadi & Dr. Bernd Vogel

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 291

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Dr. Amal Ahmadi is an Associate Professor and Program Coordinator at the College of Business and Management, American University of Bahrain. She holds a PhD in management from Henley Business School. Her research focuses on leadership and leadership development, and currently revolves around investigating cognitive, affective, and behavioral mechanisms surrounding leadership and leadership development.

Dr. Bernd Vogel is a professor in leadership and the founding director of the Henley Centre for Leadership, Henley Business School, University of Reading, UK. He holds a PhD in Management from Leibniz University Hanover. His expertise is in strategic leadership to mobilize and maintain energy in organizations, multi-level leadership, leading transformations, culture and change, and the future of leadership and leadership development.

A Few Quotes From This Episode

  • “Leadership programs give you a platter of fruit; the real work is choosing what to eat and when.”
  • “Structured reflection shouldn’t be optional; it has to be part of our day-to-day.”
  • “There’s a dormant, inactive capacity in managers that just sits there if we don’t create space for it to breathe.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode 

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

About  Scott J. Allen

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.


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SCOTT ALLEN:

Okay, everybody, welcome to Practical Wisdom for Leaders. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. Today we are in a couple different places in the world and I'm really, really excited for this conversation. I have two incredible thinkers I have Dr Amal Ahmedi and I have Dr Bernd Vogel, and they have been working hard on this really fascinating puzzle, a nook and cranny of this whole conversation around leadership development. These two are professors. Their full bios are in the show notes, so please check that out.

SCOTT ALLEN:

We're going to jump right into the conversation today because I want it to really focus as much as possible on the topic at hand, which to the two of you. I retired from full-time academia probably a year ago now, and so I've been spending a lot of time in organizations sometimes multiple times over a year in organizations and so this topic of the knowing-doing gap sometimes it's also called training transfer, transfer of training, really the person taking what has been learned and implementing it back into the job the two of you have written this just world-class paper in a world-class journal about this topic, and so I'm so excited to jump into the conversation today. To start, amal, maybe you give us a little bit of background on this topic. Start, amal, maybe you give us a little bit of background on this topic. How did you get fascinated about this knowing-doing gap, this kind of space between what was trained and what we know we should do and actually putting it into practice when we get back on the job?

Amal Ahmedi:

Sure, well, thank you, first of all, for having us. Bernd is probably better at telling the story. It all started with my PhD. We were brainstorming challenges, leadership challenges and what can we work on, and so he brought this up and it really, really stuck with me because it was something that I personally experienced. I was working at finance at the time, prior to becoming an academic, and I saw this issue. People are really great experts at the things that they did, so they're really great experts in finance as a risk head, as an investment placement head, and so on, but they were not so great at leading people. You get promoted to these positions based on your technical expertise, your knowledge base, how great you are at what you do, but you don't necessarily get the background, the skills, the training, the time to practice actually putting leadership into action, leading people, not just leading your knowledge area, and so it really stuck with me and that's how the whole thing kicked off. So, bernd, what would you like to add?

Bernd Vogel:

Well, yeah, so I had this idea for quite some time and, as academics also working in practice, one of the things that you always find is there's a paper that you should have written yourself but someone else has done it. And I think this idea by Pfeffer and Sutton you know they're knowing doing gap in management, that's an eye opener. You read it and I think it's just envious, full stop, exclamation mark, and let's be honest about these things. But I thought taking this idea into the specific area of leadership should be a fascinating journey. And they looked at something else, but just the logic was so appealing.

Bernd Vogel:

And the second is that when and I think our work now, you know, when we talk about that, it's intuitive work as well. So people get in half a sentence the idea, which is just a lucky find, if you want around these themes as well. Again, you know it's nothing to do with the academics, sometimes just the imperial, and then people resonate, which motivated me, and then I look for someone who could really dive into that and explore that, and that's where I'm going to come into play and say, well, I really like that idea. You know, let me start and take this on and really dig deep, and that's how this started.

SCOTT ALLEN:

Great. So, amal, would you just bring listeners into just kind of briefly and I know that's probably an unfair thing to ask of you but talk a little bit about what we know from a literature standpoint about this topic. As you started to explore what were some things two or three things that kind of stood out for you about the literature that currently existed, Sure.

Amal Ahmedi:

So there's so much literature out there, as you called it earlier. It's all on training transfer, looking at training in general and issues that support or hinder the transfer's training for various different areas. So we were interested in applying this to leadership, because organizations spend considerable amount of money, time, effort to develop managers into leaders, but then not a lot is actually being done to measure or evaluate training programs or any kind of leadership development initiative, whether it's implementing 360 degree feedback or having coaches or hooking people up with mentors or whatever it might be. A lot is being done, but it's seen as a checkbox. We've done this. We've taken five managers on this great five-day program and here they are.

Amal Ahmedi:

The rising stars are back as great leaders, right, but are they really? And so what the literature does, sadly, is also focus on what to learn about leadership, how to learn about leadership, but not a lot about the return on investment and how to measure what happens next. So what are things in the organization once a manager is back to the workplace? What are they doing about what they know about leadership? So they accumulate all this knowledge, so you might have a great manager who knows exactly what leadership is, knows exactly how to enact leadership, in what sort of situations. They have practiced this in various settings, maybe even on the job experiences, but they haven't had the time to really sit and think through whether or not they're implementing this the right way, whether they're really using their knowledge.

Amal Ahmedi:

And so there's this dormant, inactive capacity that individuals have that is just sitting there, not put into real practice, not really tangibly showing us the value for individuals and for organizations, and so, sadly, the literature has not advanced to look beyond what we could do about this transfer problem. We understand a lot about the problem being there, but how can we now close this gap? What else can we do? Not from an educational point of view, not looking at particular episodes, programs on leadership development but what happens in the organization itself? What can individuals do? So that's where the main area, I think, the gap is. There's obviously more, as you said. It's hard to summarize, there's so much out there to talk about, but this is one key area that motivated our research on this particular paper.

SCOTT ALLEN:

And it's so interesting because if I send an auto tech to training and they are learning a process of how to work on a new car, a BMW or Mercedes, or if I am a beautician and now I have to actually go cut hair, or if I'm in healthcare and I'm training someone on a piece of equipment where, if they don't implement it correctly, you know someone could severely be damaged and injured. Or if it's something like sales training, I can look at Scott's abilities to sell pre-training and then post-training. Did my, you know, did my numbers go up?

SCOTT ALLEN:

And with leadership it's mental models, it's things that are happening in seclusion, like a difficult conversation where I'm never really getting feedback on how I actually performed. At least with a therapist we can train to cognitive behavioral therapy and then there's some monitoring that happens with that therapist and some coaching that occurs, but we send people back into the organization and there's no feedback, there's no reinforcement. I mean there's so many kind of nooks and crannies. This conversation. I just I'm in awe of it because I know that potential solutions exist. A solution might be the wrong word, but we can move the needle on this. Bernd, how do you think about?

Bernd Vogel:

it, I think from a you know, if you catch me in a really bad mood, right, I even call that a sustainability or responsibility problem. Yes, because your examples are great, but because what we're actually doing is, whether that's in programs or at work, we create some insights and don't use them and for that, some electricity, some gas, some data has been used and it's actually an attack on our planet in a way, if you're really harsh, because we don't follow up on it, it's a very harsh perspective, but I think it's sometimes good and I think in leadership development overall, in conversations, you know, are we a sustainable industry? You know it's a fascinating and that part is part, you know, actually belongs to that. So we're creating all this stuff but it doesn't pay back. So that's one where I think there's a duty in a way to look at that Difficulty is that broad range of things that we also expect from leaders or leadership.

Bernd Vogel:

That's why we struggle with this idea of the hairdresser.

Bernd Vogel:

You know it's pretty simple, but we want strategic, we want face-to-face, we want interaction, we want complex thinking, but we also want empathy. That's where it is even unfair to expect all that, but that doesn't take away to a bit more stringent and to the individual, but also the environment, to help those people you know, bring more back, and a lot of organizations aren't doing that. And then the last one is I think there's also a bit of the idea about learning at all around leadership which often takes away the going after really did we get something for an investment? Because, hey, it's the person, it's an intuitive, it's an art. No, it's not only, it's both ends, and so that's why we also allow ourselves. But on the positive side, I think a lot of organizations get much more clever in the complexity how they build their learning environments, because they see what's happening and they don't get enough back. And then they have frustrated managers as well who want to give more. They want to give more, but they might just not work.

SCOTT ALLEN:

Well, it's so interesting. I'd never thought of this. As you know, do we have a moral obligation to ensure that we're at least working in the design If we're partnering with an organization and this could be executive education you all, at which our universities all are engaged in and it's a huge revenue stream for our institutions and you're doing executive education and is there a moral obligation to build this in? And on another level, is it unfair to the participants on some level that we unload all of this content? You need to be humble, you need to be strategic. You got to build that team and we give them the laundry list.

SCOTT ALLEN:

But it's like me going to a cooking class and it's, let's say, it's French cuisine, and they do basically just tell me all of the things that I would have to know and be able to do when it comes to French cuisine, and then I go home and I don't ever really cook French cuisine because I'm a little overwhelmed, it's kind of gnarly and you know, I'm just going to go ahead and put something in the microwave. So I hadn't thought about it that way before, but it's really, really interesting. Amal, what's going through your mind right now? Probably not French cuisine is not what you were thinking about.

Amal Ahmedi:

No, but I'm laughing because I use a similar example in classroom. So, on the first day of any leadership course, I always ask participants or learners to tell me what they think leadership is and start to fill up a whiteboard right, or a virtual whiteboard, whatever it is. And it's always too many things that you just can't possibly ask one individual to fill in that role. So we then talk about this myth of this heroic, unstoppable leader who knows it all and does it all and everything to everyone. It's just impossible. So, similar to the French cuisine example that you were just giving, I just say listen, in this course we are exploring a whole bunch of different tools, techniques, ideas, insights, and I'm giving you this platter of different kinds of fruits, but it's up to you to pick and choose which fruit you want to eat, on what day, what time of the day, because you can't possibly eat them all. So it's up to you to take what works for you and decide. So it's too much. It's too much to ask one individual. But that's also possibly why this knowing-doing gap happens Because, as you said, it can be overwhelming. You learn all these different things. You said it can be overwhelming. You learn all these different things.

Amal Ahmedi:

People might have different aha moments. They're making a lot of notes, going home and thinking about these notes, and we're always ending every session asking go back and reflect and think about how you're going to put these learnings into action. And so they'll get out of class or a program feeling really elated and enlightened and excited to go back to work and put all of this stuff into action. Then, guess what? The first day they're back, that inbox is exploding. They're catching up on all the emails they've missed out on while studying, reflecting, doing all that fun stuff with us, and they get right back into that hamster wheel of meeting after meeting, email after email, task after task that there isn't time to sit and reflect and think about it.

Amal Ahmedi:

Okay, they might do it for a week or two, and this was a common one-liner that a lot of interviewees gave me. I'll go back to after a program and I'll think about what I've learned for a week, two weeks. I'll revisit it a month later. Then I'll forget all about it and get right back to where I started, back in that hamster wheel. And so it's really hard. It's a lot of information and it's not a lot of time to digest and think about what works.

SCOTT ALLEN:

But I think, another way of thinking about this too. I mean, I love that and I think it's so true. Another challenge that we have, at times at least in our work, is that in long-time listeners know that this is a point of contention for me, but I don't know that we always scaffold the learning well. So back to the French cuisine. They have scaffolded that learning. Well, they have where you start. Maybe it's even how you hold a knife. These are some concepts we need you to know. These are seven different types of cheeses. But they've scaffolded the learning Like we're going to scaffold the learning to create a pilot or a surgeon or a beautician.

SCOTT ALLEN:

And I think at times, when it comes to this topic of leadership, we start all over the place. We might start with systems thinking, or sometimes we're starting with complexity, or when, in fact, should we be starting with things like mindfulness and reflection and listening, the white belt type content that we should be exploring with individuals? And I wonder if that's also part of the problem is that maybe I'm starting with building teams and I'm missing some basic, foundational elements of how I would even interact with another group of human beings to build a relationship from which then we can start to build a clear and coherent team. So I'm thinking out loud right now I wonder if that's also part of the challenge is that we don't have our own shop in order some of the time and our own thinking clean about how we truly because all three of us on this discussion right now are passionate about how do we better prepare people to do this really difficult work, because it's hard. Bernd, would you react to that? What do you think?

Bernd Vogel:

Yeah, I think you're spot on and I think that it's quite a couple of observations. In turning and run into practical thinking, I think this is lifelong learning and we underestimate that. This is lifelong learning. And then it's an investment question and it becomes a nice thing to have or not. Well, we see that all the time, you know.

Bernd Vogel:

So talk to someone in our industry who budgets are at the moment more difficult again in the next and half year, because so did we make a big enough claim that this is essential along the life number one. Number two is leading self, in a way, the starting point, instead of leading teams. Most of the time it kicks in leading teams. Right, oh dear, someone has a team now or project, so no, but actually should it be leading self? And there's some great work, as we know, for years, that actually start at that level and we do some of the programs always with identity questions, with the deep wire stuff, and I think that's quite interesting. Again, again, do we have the willingness? And then I think those things that work is also where actually and it's not all about programs, but where we have in programs or in on the job learning, are we true to our own responsibility. We get excited about all that stuff that we want to give them. You know, let's face it, that's another thing they really, really need. And there's this. You don't have that, it doesn't work. And all of a sudden the design is driven by content and ideas and things that help, but it's not driven by well, what's the design on the?

Bernd Vogel:

You know, knowing, doing gap questions, so that's an afterthought, and I think that's where we are part of that and where it works is where these things come together. And we see that very often where strategy and betterness. Why do we do that? Because we want to have a better business and better to our stakeholders. It's not a nice piece of work for an individual. And then, oh, that's interesting, and that costs money. Because things cost money to make our clients, our stakeholders, happy, oh, interesting, things cost money to make our clients, our stakeholders happy, oh, interesting. So I think starting from there and then building in again, starting from the individual, is where this really works. We have some in our network who do leadership development for everyone in the organization and that's a different approach, right, and then mixed, and all of a sudden looks different. So I think that we're also part of the equation. Let's face it in doing these things and some of the pressures we have translate in making it work or not work.

SCOTT ALLEN:

Yes, but I love the notion also of is this part of our design? And back to that morally do we have an obligation to make it part of the design process? Because I also think that's something in the training and development literature. Of course they've explored this, but I don't know the leader development literature is really familiar with the training and development literature about what instructional design entails, because there's a lot there.

Amal Ahmedi:

So, yes, without shifting the focus too much. I think also part of the responsibility lies in what happens in the organizational context. So beyond, let's say we have the perfect leadership program, so we've done all the right things, you have the great design, you do it all in the right order, you ask the right questions, you challenge great things, fine. But then managers go back to their organizations and what's happening there? So there needs to, just like the leadership literature needs to speak with the training literature, the education needs to speak to the organization what's happening afterwards? Because there's a gap that's happening there.

Amal Ahmedi:

Sending people to a leadership course or a program just isn't enough. So organizations need to stop checking that box to say, just because they've learned, that's going to translate to something. Without the follow-up in organizations, without the support, without real accountability and really making leadership a priority in organizations, most of that training, however good it was, will just stay in the notebook or up in our minds but it won't actually translate into anything. And so really it should be about how can we support managers, leaders in the workplace, what kind of feedback loops do we have? What kind of peer support do we have? Is there enough time for reflection for that learning to really materialize? Is there space for people to feel free to trial and error, make mistakes? Try to put that leadership into practice. Is there time for that? Oftentimes no, there are other priorities, sadly.

Bernd Vogel:

Bernd, yeah, I think in one of our recent leadership quarterly reviews on leadership development, we said some of the future research and practice should actually look at the ecosystem view. When you look at these things and we often look at on-the-job learning or off-the-job at the designer and the learner and maybe then the person you go back to but I think it's more complicated. We need to get that right who's the buyer in these things and what decisions are made for that? So why do you buy a program where there's no follow-up inside an organization? You shouldn't actually do it. You some of the budget probably needs to go away from us.

Bernd Vogel:

Bad news for the business school to why don't we spend more money internally actually from this budget? I don't like that for us, but that's actually what it should happen. So what's the full cost instead of the on-the-job learning cost, the sending people off doing all these things, and so that's one level. Then the interference on what is it that we actually want to do with these engagements around leadership learning? So I think we call that a bit of an ecosystem view and we don't understand enough around these dynamics. So there's something about standing back. That's all decided in the decision making at the beginning around this and that's kind of been difficult to unravel once you're there. There's great other examples. You know there's an apprenticeship system now in the UK where the embedding is really center stage, but that came by policy quite interestingly, because we want more embeddedness and so there's a lot of levers that we can still use right and probably haven't looked at as much and don't understand as much as we could.

SCOTT ALLEN:

I'm going to take the conversation in a direction that you weren't expecting, so please let me know if you don't want to go there or you take time to think. So I had a wonderful conversation recently with Barbara Kellerman and she talks about professionalizing leadership. Should we become a profession? Should there be continuing education? Should there be a certification? If I'm an attorney, I am certified. If I am an accountant, I am certified. If I'm a physician, thankfully they're getting continuing education and they're certified.

SCOTT ALLEN:

Now should the same thing happen for managers? And I know that some smaller programs exist around the world, but is that something that should occur here? Exist around the world, but is that something that should occur here? Because it seems to me, to Amal's point from a few moments ago we are unleashing, hopefully well-intended people and placing them into very, very challenging situations and they're simply unprepared much of the time. And when you look at some of the global statistics around engagement and 70% of people, according to Gallup, are going to work and they're actively disengaged Do we have an obligation to kind of take even the coaches? Now the certified coaching industry has kind of elevated so that we aren't just unleashing people who are calling themselves coaches out into the world. There's been some training and some continuing education. How do you all think about that?

Amal Ahmedi:

So what comes to my mind is I think it was Warren Bennis who likened the process of becoming a leader to the process of being human, because it takes years and years for you to figure out what your strengths are, what your weaknesses might be, where the limitations are, and what to build and grow. And so, going back to the whole idea of lifelong learning that we started this conversation with, learning about leadership just can't stop with the one program or several episodes. There needs to be much more than that. So professionalizing leadership is also more than going to this course and then that course, and then this course and then that course right. So what else can be done to really make it materialize?

Amal Ahmedi:

But then the one other thing that I'm also thinking about and sorry to take the conversation to a slightly different direction is that not everybody's necessarily on a pathway to becoming a leader just simply by being promoted. Not everybody's necessarily motivated and we talk about this a little bit in the paper. But if the motivation to lead isn't there, no matter how much you try and how hard you try, that individual is simply just not going to rise up to that challenge, because it's not within them to be a leader. To manage others. Yes, they might want to be successful and be head of whatever it might be, but they want to be the head in that technical expertise area, not in the soft skills around managing other people, and that's fine. Where can that exception be? How can we draw the line and say, fine, you're okay to do that and maybe you can be promoted? And there's a different pathway for you who are not interested in leadership.

SCOTT ALLEN:

I was just working with an accounting firm where, yeah, they were coming up with kind of partner level designations, but it's because of your expertise, versus having to go the route of doing business development and leading, because I think you're exactly right. There's some very wizard-like people that are happy sitting behind their screen and you don't want to build a team that's not where their energy is, but it's the only path forward.

SCOTT ALLEN:

So I love that insight for sure. As we begin to kind of wind down our time today, I want to go to each one of you, you know, is there anything else that you want to say about this paper, about this work? Because we're going to provide listeners with some links you found intriguing, or even kind of next steps that you want to highlight for listeners. What comes to mind for you?

Bernd Vogel:

So a couple of things inside which I think is it's passion, have not researched, but I think is really important. Part of it to make it work is also empowering leaders themselves. But often we think about it the other way around. Right, and leaders empower others, but empower managers to engage with their leadership skills inside intuition much more. Don't provide barriers, and that's the other logic. I think that's really and say that you empower them, right. You know, because that's again, I'm a manager, I don't need to be empowered. Well, talk to anyone as a middle to senior manager. They will exactly talk about all the boundaries and the limitations. So empower them to engage with their work is one, I think, going forward.

Bernd Vogel:

I, by the way, like the idea of professionalizing. I think the argument would be what's in there? Well, we manage the sustainability development goals with a lot of conflict. Then we probably do the same.

Bernd Vogel:

So the tricky bit is, I think the next level is the question going away from the individual to leadership process, because we all, again, our conversation is very much centered around individuals, but most of the issues that we have at work involve decision making, setting direction, motivating, mobilizing energy, many, many people.

Bernd Vogel:

So how do we go there and understand that we collectively get the idea how we collectively do leadership. And then how do we collectively do that? Then, if you go one step further, we work on the idea of leadership as a capability of an organization. That's even one step further and I think that's where the starting point really helps, probably to start the research, already slightly different, with more an endpoint in mind than an input view, and that will help organizations and it adds complicatedness. But also it's the reality that most of leadership works with others, but we have to start somewhere, so that. But it's exciting then to think, well, let's move to the next, you know, and how would that work? And again, we don't know a lot actually, or we ignore each other in the debate because some actually are experts on that around, but then we don't look. So I think these are the couple of things where I think that can give a lot, and then it also provides the springboard for adding the demand yes, Amel.

Amal Ahmedi:

So Bernd nicely summarized that and, looking at the broader view of processes and systems and you talked about the ecosystem earlier I want to take it back to the individual. So, as individuals, how many books do we read on leadership? How many podcasts including yours do we listen to about leadership? Where is this information going? What are we doing with it? So the key learning for me from this piece of research was the importance of reflection, and I'd like to do more work on that.

Amal Ahmedi:

There is so much literature out there on reflection, but I still think that we need to find better ways to shed some light on the importance of reflection just not being optional, but something essential that needs to be part of our day-to-day.

Amal Ahmedi:

So how can we instill structured reflection for individuals, ourselves and in organizations?

Amal Ahmedi:

Because what I found from speaking to managers about this knowing-doing gap is that those of them who took the time to pause and think whether it's on their commute back from work, on that train journey, or during that long drive, during some quiet moments that they had, or after some really harsh feedback that they've heard those individuals are better at then thinking about what went wrong and they knew what they did or did not do because they've taken the time to think about it.

Amal Ahmedi:

And so how can we build in those regular check-ins in our day-to-day, whether it's your walk in the morning or late at night or whatever it is that you do? How can you build it in to your day-to-day so that we're not racing from one thing to the next and really thinking about for every leader to think like how was it for other individuals to be at the receiving end of me today? What leadership behaviors have I avoided today? What could I have done differently or done better, what this means to them and how they can instill some structured reflection in their day-to-day to hopefully not end as just knowing things, but actually really thinking about how to translate that knowing into real doing.

SCOTT ALLEN:

I just love that. I mean, I think it was said that we should start with developing a solid, whole human being, and I think a piece of that we could go to a conversation on the inner development goals. But things like reflection, dialectical thinking, perspective taking, metacognition, and those are all fancy words. But should we be starting there and building some of those habits of mind with humans so that as they navigate all of these different, we've given them some kind of master tools to hold on to? And I think you've just highlighted one that's a beautiful one Reflection, reflexivity. Do we even know what those are and is that a habit of mine and I'm at least going to be ahead of the game? But we start with transactional and transformational leadership and LMX.

Bernd Vogel:

And I think that to add, you know I always look at, you know, formula One whether you like it or not, fastest race, but they do stop for some reason or another.

Bernd Vogel:

You know. And if you look at organizations, I think there's the individual part, like Emily you say, but it's organization's duty to create a culture where it's the routine to stop, where it's the routine to reflect, and it's not. You don't do that in hiding, you know, or at the end of the day. So why is it not built in? And good organizations are doing that and the others basically cut it out of slack and then they wonder why they're permanently overused and the drill just becomes faster in the doing instead of thinking. So I think that these things play well together and I like these, you know, underpinning tools, masteries, before they also cut across others. And but giving, allowing yourself time, being allowed to have time and actually recognize that this is how you become better, working more to your stakeholders, is a huge jump for some organization. Some are right in it and know how it works, and that's fascinating to see.

SCOTT ALLEN:

Well, I mean, you could get into a fun conversation right now of adult development and if are we doing some vertical development while we're doing some of this horizontal development? And if are we doing some vertical development while we're doing some of this horizontal development, and is that baked into everything we're doing so that you have an individual with a form of mind that is navigating some of these complexities better prepared? At least that's the theory, is that they would be better prepared, and so you know it's well, and again, we're not going to, but we could go down a whole conversation around technology and how that can potentially help with some of this as well. Maybe that's part two of our conversation. We will leave listeners there To the two of you. Thank you so much for your work. I really, really appreciate it.

SCOTT ALLEN:

I always check in with guests. Something quickly that you've been listening to, streaming something that's caught your attention in recent times that might be of interest to listeners, so it could have something to do with what we've just discussed. It may have nothing to do with what we've just discussed, but what have you been streaming, listening to reading that listeners might be interested in? Bernd, would you start us off?

Bernd Vogel:

I could share what I'm really reading or can make it up. So I'm really reading this book at the moment and I will share that in a moment for you, okay. So I'm reading at the moment lawrence reese. It's a historian from the uk and he tries to understand. The book is called the nazi mind and it's 12 steps of science, how people have developed you know, I'm have a german background how people develop into behavior, patterns.

Bernd Vogel:

Subscribing that is extraordinary negative. You know, a read has a lot of leadership in that. You know that's extremely. But there's the tricky bit for me is there's learning about that specific situation. There's learning about specific political situation maybe, but it's actually quite interesting when we compare to some of the organizational questions we have, how some of these elements are in light form. Nothing compares but how extraordinary normal people get into that space and what's their journey and how can we hold this up. So it's not a very uplifting reading, I can tell you. But it's also, I think, a really fascinating reading that shows a lot of the difficulties in leadership as well and how we talk about leadership. Actually, you know, that's some of the shocking part of that.

SCOTT ALLEN:

Yeah, not uplifting but important to be aware of and at least have yes ML.

Amal Ahmedi:

Not uplifting. Now I'm thinking of what I was going to recommend, and again it's maybe doom and gloom. So a podcast that I enjoy listening to is called how to Fail by a woman called Elizabeth Day. If you haven't checked it out, it's an interesting. It's not leadership per se. What she does is she interviews individuals and asks for three failures that they've had in their lives in general, some of which will be professional and to do with leadership, but generally speaking, it's all about learning about failure and reframing failure as actually a foundation for how we could grow. It's a deeply human conversation. It's very interesting and full of lessons that could be valuable for any leader, and I think it's related to what we're talking about today because, as we said earlier, in leadership we're asking too much of one individual right, and so the idea here is that how can we learn from things that we trial and error and we fail at to become better leaders? So I hope that your listeners enjoy listening to this other podcast without putting too much competition out there.

SCOTT ALLEN:

I'm comfortable. I think that's awesome and it's what a fun topic too. I mean again, failing. Well, that's another topic that we could cover with leaders, because that's part of the game, for sure. Well, to the two of you, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate your good work. Thanks for helping us better understand this topic called leadership. Take care of you all. Have a wonderful day, be well. Learning, learning, learning, practical wisdom. For me, leaders are learners. Speaking of learning. Two learning opportunities for you the ILA Annual Conference, prague Check the show notes. International Studying Leadership Conference, st Andrews, scotland, this fall Check the show notes for that as well. Two learning opportunities, opportunities for you. Thank you so much to my guests. That was an awesome conversation. Always, always, always, love thinking about how we do leader development better. As always, thanks for checking in. Bye-bye.