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

Dr. Ron Riggio - Daily Leadership Development

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 43

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How can you work to be a better leader every day of 2021? My guest gives us 365 steps to get you there.

About Dr. Riggio
Ronald E. Riggio, Ph.D., is the Henry R. Kravis Professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology and former director of the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College. Professor Riggio is the author of more than a dozen books and more than 100 research articles and book chapters in the areas of leadership, assessment centers, organizational psychology, and social psychology. He's served on the editorial boards of The Leadership Quarterly, Leadership, Group Dynamics, and Journal of Nonverbal Behavior.

Explore Ron's Work

Quotes From This Episode

  • "You know, this is a journey, not a destination."
  • "This book (Daily Leadership Development: 365 Steps to Becoming a Better Leader) could be something that you could go back to throughout your leadership career because the final few weeks are really about thinking about the end of  your leadership in terms of, 'what's your leadership legacy?'" 
  • Question: What does President-Elect Biden need to do to move past some of the challenges that are inherently baked into the role he's about to assume? - "I've done a lot of thinking about this. I think the number one issue is divisiveness."

Resources Mentioned in This Episode


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Note: Voice to text transcriptions are about 90% accurate.

Scott Allen  0:01 
Happy New Year, everybody, and welcome to Phronesis. We have an exciting conversation to have today with Ron regio. He is our first repeat guest. And I just looked at the analytics. And he's actually the most downloaded guest that we've had since we started in April. So, Ron has published a new book, and it is called Daily Leadership Development: 365 Steps to Becoming a Better Leader. So I thought why not? What a great time It's the new year is 2021. We're turning the page. And how do we think about leadership development in this new year? So Ron, how are you sir?

Ron Riggio  0:40 
I'm good. And Happy New Year. Scott.

Scott Allen  0:42 
Thank you. Thank you. Well, take us through the book. I mean, this is an undertaking, this is 365, suggestions. That's intense. That's awesome. I love it. Tell us about it.

Ron Riggio
Well, it was a bit of work. But actually, the new year is probably a good time to talk about this, because one of the ways you can think about it is a new year's resolution. And we know that one of the problems or one of the issues with new year's resolutions is it they're really hard to keep, right? So we say we're going to lose 10 pounds, or we're going to you know, change this part, exercise, you know, weekly or whatever. And we're unable to do it. And so just like that, just like any new year's resolution, this would be a good time to think about your leader development, your personal leader development. And that was kind of the idea. And so the idea was, what could you do? When you wake up or when you go to bed for five minutes? That could help develop your leadership step by step right. And we know that we don't have a whole lot of time to do this. And so the idea is, what could we do in terms of small daily sort of bite-sized chunks of leader development? So that's the idea.

Scott Allen
I love it. Well, it makes me think I just finished Jay Conger actually had recommended that I read Atomic Habits. So I don't know if you've had a chance to read the James Clear book Atomic Habits. Have you read it yet?

Ron Riggio  2:19 
Well, I have not.

Scott Allen  2:21 
But it's very much in line with some of his thinking about these, these very small changes and behavior. changes that are you almost can't fail at are what builds upon one another into better habits long term. And he has a really beautiful biology example, that I'm not going to be able to repeat right now. But I think it's something similar here. It's Look, if every day, I'm going to this, it's not going to take me 20 minutes or 30 minutes or an hour, it's five, seven minutes. I'm keeping this topic top of mind for me. And it keeps it on our radar. Right?

Ron Riggio  3:00 
Yeah. And that's the idea. And you don't have to do it on a daily basis to because it's broken down into weeks. And so there's a topic for each week. And some of the larger topics extend to more than one week. But you know, so the book sort of starts out and says, you know, you've got to commit to this, you've got to motivate yourself, you know, this is a journey, not a destination. You know, and it follows on through to that. And so another way to look at it another way that I thought about it is that it doesn't even have to be a year, this could be something that you could go back through throughout your leadership career, because the last few weeks are really about kind of thinking about the end of leadership or the end of your leadership in terms of what's your leadership legacy, right. That's week 50. What's your leadership legacy?

Scott Allen  3:56 
Yeah, um,

Ron Riggio  3:58 
There's also information on here about, you know, like, what, you know, how should a leader think about retirement? How should a leader think about the next generation of leaders So, so you can sort of see it as a year or you could see it as kind of your whole lifetime. And the hope is that this is the kind of book that you'd leave on the nightstand, you know, and pick it up in the morning, read a little bit, and then eventually go back to it, too.

Scott Allen  4:25 
Tell us about the underdog. How long did this take you is this is a big project?

Ron Riggio  4:30 
Well, I mean, the writing itself took a few years. But I really you know, it actually was the COVID lockdown that got me to finally do that final push and get it all done is I didn't really have it sort of cleared other projects. And we locked down and got done with classes and may and I pretty much worked on it through August and we'll pull it all together. It's actually based though the kind of concept that came to me with a book that I, you know, sort of keep around, right? Keep it right here on my desk of The Daily Drucker because Ah, you know, I knew Peter Drucker here in Claremont. And this is a, you know, day by day reading 365 readings of, you know, some of Peter Drucker's pearls of wisdom. And I'm hoping that this could be the same thing. This is a little more organized and integrated and follows a kind of a progression of leader development. But you can still go jump around, go back to earlier parts or skip ahead if you want to.

Scott Allen  5:39 
Yeah. Well, you told us about even some of the later weeks, right, it might be the end of career transitioning. What are some of the other themes that you explore in the content of the book?

Ron Riggio  5:51 
Well, I try. I tried to be comprehensive, I told my daughter, my daughter helped me help me with proofreading and editing. And then she sort of became my publicist. And, and she sort of said, Guys, you know, what's in here? I said, essentially everything I know. So, you know, I've taught I/O psychology, taught management, leadership courses, and all that, and I kind of so embedded in here is kind of a quick overview of what I think are exemplary leadership theories. So there's a week on transformational leadership, you know, there, there's a little bit about leader relationships, it kind of has some, you know, some LMX in there. But then even going to kind of the OB level, there's a couple of weeks on what leaders need to know about human resources issues. So human resources, from the leader's perspective, a couple of weeks on organizational politics, from the leader's perspective, lots of stuff on communication, for example. Yeah. So there's, there's a lot of practical stuff. There are toolkits throughout, at the end is sort of the near the end is sort of the advanced toolkit. And the basic toolkits are in the front. There's, there's leadership, the one I like is leadership lessons, which actually covers two weeks. So leadership lessons from everywhere, and ever. Yeah, and part of it is, you know, there are some really interesting books out there. So, you know, there was one that I remember reviewing a long time ago, leadership lessons from the navy seals, but I kind of put that together leadership lessons from the military leadership lessons from wit, I did a paper with Nick Warner, you might know, Nick...

Scott Allen  7:47 
...I don't know, Nick no.

Ron Riggio  7:49 
Yeah, he's sort of a film studies guy. And we did one on essentially leadership lessons from the Godfather from the movie The Godfather. So what are the good and the bad lessons that you learn? You know, so. So there's, there's some kind of fun stuff in there. But most of us, you know, kind of serious leader development. And I, and the idea is that if you finish the book, and you're really paying attention, you'll know quite a bit about leadership theories, you'll know quite a bit about the tools and how to lead. And, and you'll pretty much have a pretty good grounding in just management and just the field of management. So you know, I tried to kind of put my courses into this too, in little, you know, in a light level.

Scott Allen  8:39 
Well, and what I like about it, you mentioned, hey, you're going to learn about leadership theory. But this isn't an academic, the tone is not academic. It's very, very user friendly. It's very accessible for really anyone at any level, wouldn't you say?

Ron Riggio  8:56 
Yeah, that was the idea. I mean, you know, part of the idea, too, as I was thinking about our graduates here, right? So we're liberal arts undergraduate college. And you know, the students go off, and I thought, What can I give them, to take with them. We're giving all of our seniors a copy. And the idea is, you know, don't leave it here. You know, you're good. And you're going to get a job, you're going to end up in a leadership position. So don't stop developing because one of the things we do here at the Kravis Leadership Institute is we develop the next generation of leaders and you know, but the problem is once they graduate, who knows where they go, scattered to the four winds.

Scott Allen  9:37 
Yeah. I love that you're giving it away as a gift. That's wonderful. It really is. Because, again, if people are embracing that thinking around using this as a reference like you had that you literally just picked up the Drucker book right and showed it to me as we're recording right now. And it's right there. And if this is that resource, From a leadership perspective, I think, what an incredible value, what an incredible value. And what a great gift to give these seniors as they move on to begin their careers.

Ron Riggio  10:11 
Yeah. And that was kind of the idea, you know, keep...and actually the very last entry is keep in touch. So one of the things that I'm doing is, and I have a blog on Psychology Today, and some of these, you know, many of the entries were inspired by the blog. So I took the blog post sometimes and re reformatted them. But the last one says, stay in touch with me. So I continue to put, you know, put up new lessons on my blog post, my daughter set up a website, www.riggioleadership.org, and there's resources there. And in fact, in the book, there are some assessments too. I didn't mention the assessments, and some of them are bigger. So you have to go to the www.riggioleadership.org website to do the assessment. Take the assessment. Yeah. And we'll be adding those as we kind of go along.

Scott Allen  11:02 
Well, even as I look at the contents, yes, I mean, you've got good leadership, ethical leadership, leader qualities, complex leadership, teams, I mean, more leadership in teams. That's a big topic, right?

Ron Riggio  11:18 
Big topics go over two weeks, you can do a week, you know,

Scott Allen  11:25 
even more on leadership and team. I think there's two weeks on bad leadership either a lot of bad leaders out there. You did there is there's a toxic culture is toxic leaders. Yes.

Ron Riggio  11:37 
And in fact, when you get to the end of that, that it goes into good leadership because I think after I wrote those two weeks, I was a little depressed. Let's focus on, you know, I mean, we talked about that, what are the lessons we learned to avoid from bad leaders? But then how can we move that forward in kind of, then the next chapter or the next week is good leadership? And then ethical leadership, which takes it even higher level?

Scott Allen  12:01 
Yeah, yeah. If you think about what you have in here, is there anything that you've left out? Is there anything upon retrospect, or I imagine that's going up on the website? But is this literally everything Ron?

Ron Riggio  12:17 
So I had quite, you know, I sent a copy to someone, I got an I've got to give her a shout out, and you've had her on your program. Susan Komives? Yeah, they sent it to her. And I said you know, what do you think because I really respect her work. And she essentially, almost line by line, edited, you know, and, and made suggestions, I mean, put it an an enormous amount of work. And I almost should have given her co-authorship on it. But she said I had and of course, this is her area, she said, I probably should have done more on leadership and change. And there are a couple of things on leadership and change. But, but she thought that, that there should be more. And so that's one of the things I'm looking at. The other thing, I do have a couple of weeks on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. But there, but that's a tough area. And there's, you know, very complicated. And so I probably could do some more on that. And, you know, there's always new things coming out to so that's why I'll sort of continuing it. And I've actually thought about I mean, I got to rest a little bit from the work. But wait, you know, revising? Yeah, you know, yeah. And updating.

Scott Allen  13:34 
So let's, so can we move from the book for just a moment and talk about kind of a continuation of some of our conversations from our first podcast? Sure. We do run? Absolutely, yeah. So I've asked this of a couple of people. Now I've asked this question, I interviewed Emilio iodized. Emilio has a book right now called commander in chief. And he has really worked in a few different administrations been right there at the forefront of all of what's happening. And so we had a very interesting conversation. I asked Mary, oh, been the same question. And now I want I'd love to hear your perspectives. What is President-Elect Biden need to do to move past some of all of the challenges that are inherently baked into the role he's about to assume? I mean, you have, of course, some of the well, I don't even need to go into it. We've we know the status that we're at. Yeah. So as you think about that leadership challenge if Biden's folks came to you and said, Hey, Ron, what do we need to do here? What what are some things that come to mind for you about how to think about that?

Ron Riggio  14:48 
Yeah, that's actually an easy one because I've done a lot of thinking about this. And I think the number one thing is the number one issue is divisiveness. And so how it works on overcoming that divisiveness. And, and you see him already doing that. I mean, even in his speeches, he says, I'm as much a president for the people who didn't vote for me, as the people who did vote for me and I, and he's echoing, you know, President Obama who said, I'm the president of for all people, right? And, and that's the critical thing because of the divisiveness and you can see it, I mean, all the other problems are hampered, and, you know, extremely hampered by that divisiveness. So we can't muster a good defense against the pandemic, because people don't believe there are two sides. So you know, we I mean, that right now, we call them "the maskers," and the "anti-maskers," but really is about you know, coming together and agreeing that we have a superordinate goal. And I use that term because I'm trained as a social psychologist. And the idea is, when you have divisiveness, you get this, this bias this "in-group/out-group" bias, where the good guys where we know what's going on, you guys are the bad guys, you're the outgroup. And we know this from early social psychological studies of in-group/out-group bias, that the only way you can get people to pull together is to find that superordinate goal that both sides can agree upon. And then and then work toward, and we aren't gonna solve any problems unless we come together. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Allen  16:35 
So what might a superordinate goal be that we can find common ground on?

Ron Riggio  16:41 
Well, I mean, you would think the pandemic would, would be one. And, and so there's, you know, so I think having consistent messaging, you know, I mean, look at what's happened is, we've lost faith in science. And, you know, science is what's keeping us alive. And together in many ways. I mean, the, you know, the greatest advancements in terms of longevity, or due to scientific discoveries. Then, you know, technology comes from science. I mean, the fact that we're even able to do this being 1000s of miles apart is, is due to, but there's a mistrust of science now, you know, yeah. And that's problematic. So, um,

Scott Allen  17:27 
so yeah, it's interesting, because it's like a selective mistrust. Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna benefit from the cancer treatment. And that was science. And by Gosh, I'll take that. But, again, some of these issues like masks or some other way you can go to climate, you can go to that whole conversation, but it's almost as if we selectively choose which pieces of science fit our paradigm, and which don't.

Ron Riggio  17:53 
Yeah, right. Yeah, you're exactly right. And that's, that's the problem. Right? And instead of seeing it, as, you know, we have to agree on certain things. And, and I know that you know, we don't talk about facts we talk, you know, when we're talking about like social science, we don't say it's proven. But there's support for this, that this is the best course of action in either instance, and there's always going to be exceptions, but we have to agree on this. I mean, you know, I think if we look at kind of what's happening, I mean, we're gonna hit we got weather issues right now, a lot of it because of climate change. And there's another good example, where there are people who are climate deniers, you know, climate change deniers, and until we can pull together and say, "Look, we got to do something about this," and there's some agreement, we're not going to solve that problem. And that problem, you know, that problem is going to kill us, just like the pandemic is going to kill a number of us, you know, people are going to lose their lives due to weather incidents to change the changing climate.

Scott Allen  18:59 
Yep. Anything else come to mind? Of what to focus on?

Ron Riggio  19:04 
Well, I mean, I think the other thing that we need to I think we one thing is we've got to really work on preserving our democracy. And, you know, I mean, I think that the the challenges that have come to our democratic institutions in, you know, just in this last administration, is that we've got to, we've got to restore that because we've got to, you know, come up with we've got to accept the fact that we have a system where the majority rules and there's going to be an unhappy minority, but the minority has to say, you know, look, we're gonna we're, we're going to go along with you be out of this sense of unity. We can't we can always be divided.

Scott Allen  19:50 
Yeah. Well, in those, I think where you're tapping into is which is so important is even shared agreement, and some the most basic fundamentals that have been assumed for decades, right?

Ron Riggio  20:06 
Yeah, yeah.

Scott Allen  20:07 
I mean, it's just, it's just not perfect. By no means are any of those things perfect? has an election never been perfect? No. But, you know, when the Supreme Court, through the republican attorney general (In GA) through the front line, the poll worker has said it was an order, generally speaking, it's an order. Right. And

Ron Riggio  20:29 
we, I mean, you know, we there are things we're gonna like, and things that we don't like, but we have to, you know, we have to come together, we have to adhere to rules, regulations, laws, you know, I mean, or else, there's chaos. So, you know, so I think that's the biggest issue. And, and, you know, to be honest, when people dig in their heels and refuse to listen to reasonable arguments, I don't know how to solve that. You know, I mean, I think underneath it all, is that I mean, I'm, you know, I'm at a liberal arts college. So one of the things that we try to do here and why I think liberal arts is a little different, is we really try to instill critical thinking, in our students. And I think that everybody needs a really good dose of critical thinking ability, they need to not just take things at face value, not just listen to one stream of news, whether it's, you know, right-wing, laced, or left-wing laced, I think they're both problematic. We got to look at it and try to get some objectivity taken different sides of information and come up with, you know, the conclusion that's based on critical thinking, and not just based on, "because they said something that I liked or something that agrees with my belief system." Yeah.

Scott Allen  22:05 
Yeah, exactly. Because ultimately, there's going to be, there's going to be a debate, you know, so what I always say to my students is, I want you to be able to argue both sides. And once you've can come up with an argument on both sides of whatever the issue is, ultimately, then your values take over. And what it is you value is where you potentially you land, but make that an intentional process, again, to your point, don't just consume, what the left or the right, the storyline, the narrative that they're sharing... Have you explored all of it, and really, truly worked to explore it? And then where you end up on what you value is where you end. But I think to the confirmation bias, right, yeah, I mean, just going to be fed my, my bias. That's, it's toxic.

Ron Riggio  23:06 
Yeah, you know, it's really interesting, because that, I think, is a lot of the problem, the sort of inherent biases that we have. So some, some of the issues are probably more hardwired, evolutionary, you know, the in-group/out-group bias, for example, is probably comes from our evolutionary roots, right, that people who are different, we feared them because they could potentially harm us, you know, and, and so there, there's some route to that. A lot of the other ones, I think, come out of our social processes, but we have to be aware of those, you know, a colleague right now who's working on an instrument to measure your sort of proneness to cognitive biases. Oh, wow, wow, that's a really great thing. Because what it's going to tell you is, is this person going to be easily swayed by these biases? Are they going to be trapped by their own cognitive biases? And, you know, he's actually in sort of the personnel world? Because he's saying, well, you don't want people like that in your workplace. Right? If there Yeah, you know, because obviously, that leads to discrimination and other kinds of problems. And, and, and lack of creative thinking, but, but I think that's a really important thing is we've got to learn to overcome the sort of human tendencies that lead us down the wrong path.

Scott Allen  24:35 
It makes me think even of you, obviously, there are some of the classic experiments but I think of the brown/eye blue, I was at Nebraska or  Iowa.

Ron Riggio  24:44 
Classic. That's the classic in-group/out-group bias. I mean, she just picked eye color. And what's interesting is I think it was the next day or maybe it was like she flipped it around and believed it. Yeah, I mean, so that she argued one side They, they bought it hook, line and sinker, the next day she argued the other side, they bought it hook line and sinker. Right. And, and that just shows you how in, you know, that just shows you how malleable we are, how powerful these biases are. And we have to stop ourselves and say, you know, that doesn't make any sense. How could...

Scott Allen  25:23 
Oh, anything else comes to mind on advice for Joe Biden that I'm jumping this on? Yeah,

Ron Riggio  25:31 
no. Big, big problems, big issues. I mean, I think the thing is, is about inclusion, right. And so he has to be inclusive, he has to, you know, have a diverse, diverse set of advisory, you know, I mean, that, you know, this is just kind of common sense. You know you get it, it's very difficult. I mean, politics is, is really tough, because, you know, you, you've got to, you got to stay in the position, you've got to, you know, you can't turn everybody off all at once. And so you have, I know, you have to tread very lightly. And in fact, you know, there. I mean, that's the issue too, with organizational politics. And, like I said, there, there are two weeks on the organization. Because it takes so long to even just explain, you know, what do we mean by politics? What are the, you know, what are the problems, the pitfalls, you know, what, what's good about politics, because it's not all bad. It's neither good nor bad. It's just a, it's just a process. We want to, we want to further our own ends, you know, Bob Hogan, Robert Hogan, you know, he was we were talking about leadership. And he said, "it's really simple. There's two things that leaders need to do, they need to get ahead, and they need to get along." And you know, and the get ahead is the political thing, right. But the idea of I want to further my own ends, I want to get promoted, I want to have the things that I want. I want to achieve my goals. Yeah, um, but you got to get along while you get it. Yeah. So you can't, you know, do it by stepping on other people as you climb your way to the top right. I mean you have to get along.

Scott Allen  27:20 
So there at least that's not a sustainable approach.

Ron Riggio  27:25 
No, it's Well, the problem is this. Scott, you kind of know, this, I mean, I'd like to make a big deal out of this is we often when it comes to leadership, or teams or groups, we equate effectiveness with being good. And you can be effective and be a bad leader. You can do terrible things. You can do terrible damage. so good. So we want to be effective, and we want to be good. I don't want to get into the sort of, you know, we don't want to have sort of religious moral overtones, but we mean being a good person being a person of a trustworthy person of good character. Yeah, it comes down to that.

Scott Allen  28:11 
Ron, other than Daily Leadership Development 365 steps to becoming a better leader. What are a couple of resources that are seminal resources, when it comes to this topic of leadership for you? What would two or three pieces of work that I can put in the show notes that people could also prioritize for the coming year?

Ron Riggio  28:35 
Yeah. Well, I mean, I really think that, that a big issue right now is inclusiveness. And so I'm gonna recommend, you know, Stephanie Johnson's, Inclusify, I think you might have had Stephanie, have you had stuff on your program?

Scott Allen  28:51 
We did. We did. And actually, she spoke in my class last night, we read her book as a part of my class, and then she zoomed in from Boulder, Colorado last night. So it was a great conversation. Yeah, we discussed the Boy Scouts for a long, long time. And it was a really interesting conversation. Because they are moving through this transition of trying to be inclusive of young girls and women, and how they navigate that and not ostracize the decades of Eagle Scouts, but advance the organization and then even once they do become more inclusive, are they actually inclusive? Do young women feel welcomed and as they belong? So it was really great, it's a great book to my students loved it. It was a great book, so I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah,

Ron Riggio  29:41 
So so that that's one resource. You know, I mean, there are so many, you know, really think about politics. Gerald Ferris sent me this recently Political Skill at Work. Hmm. And I'm only partway through it. Now. It's a little bit and it's, it's accessible. I mean, it's, it's written at a level that you know that most of your, your listeners would grasp it. You know, it's based on research. You know, the stuff I read is much more technical. You know, I keep, I keep basses Handbook, you know, right there where I can grab it, but I don't think basses handbook is

Scott Allen  30:24 
that's a little thick run. Yes. I think I have it back here as well. You're involved in that last version, weren't you?

Ron Riggio  30:33 
Well, I mean, you know, I helped Ruth, you know, because Bernie, unfortunately, passed before it was before it came out. So I helped a little bit I helped with being a resource for Ruth, as she pulled the last pieces together. But

Scott Allen  30:47 
He said something that will forever stick with me when I first met him, and I knew that I know that you knew him well and wrote with him and but we were at a conference where at the Gallup Leadership Institute, I think Bruce Avolio, was at the University of Nebraska. And they had a couple of conferences for a few years, and I met Bernie Bass. And I said, How have you stayed prolific for all of these years? And he said something to the effect of, "two pages a day adds up."

Ron Riggio  31:19 
You know, we could have a whole conversation about we should because he was really a remarkable guy. And, but you know, I mean, I used to go with him to conferences. And he would, I mean, if you look at the handbook he cites conference papers, he, I mean, he was like a sponge. He just grabbed whatever he could I remember him just grabbing reprints and talking to people. And I just had a hard time keeping up with them, even though I was 20 years younger than he was.

Scott Allen  31:50 
That's great. Well Ron as always, thank you, sir, for the work that you do. Thank you for the time today. I hope you have a wonderful 2021

Ron Riggio  31:59 
Yes, you too.

Scott Allen  32:00 
And I really appreciate all you do.

Ron Riggio  32:02 
Yeah. Well, thank you so much and, I appreciate your podcasts.

Scott Allen  32:06 
Okay. Be well,

Ron Riggio  32:07  
Okay. Take care. Bye Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai