Eileen Dowse, Ph.D.
Executive Coach and Certified Master Facilitator
The Agile and Facilitative Leader
Episode Summary
Dr. Eileen Dowse is the Chair of the International Institute for Facilitation (INIFAC). This global leader explains how she specializes in helping to create ‘collective impact’ for her clients in this episode entitled: “The Agile and Facilitative Leader”
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Bio
Eileen Dowse Ph.D. is an insightful, global leader specializing in helping to create ‘collective impact’ for her clients. She is blazing new trails in the practice of Agile Leadership- which places emphasis on quality, speed and collaboration. As an Organizational Psychologist, she is one of the thought-leaders helping organizations focus on being responsive, adaptive and effective in an era filled with confusion, contradictions, and corruption. She has extensive practical experience in the field of global leadership and cultural competency development.
Eileen is an award-winning author of “The Naked Manager, How to build open relationships at work”. She has also written “The Agile Business Leader, The Four Roles of Successful Leaders” which has been translated into Chinese. She is widely regarded as one of the leaders in international facilitation as well as being a co-founder and Chair of the International Institute for Facilitation.
Clients seek out Eileen for her services in executive coaching, educational programs and facilitating sessions to produce innovative results. She has mastered the art of identifying the root of organizational issues and implemented strategies which allowing leaders, teams, and entire organizations to become more effective.
Website
https://human-dynamics.com/
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eileen-dowse-ph-d-cmf-mcec-b3a449/
Twitter
https://twitter.com/eileendowse
Leadership Quote
“Today’s mighty oak is just yesterday’s little nut that held its ground.”
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Transcript
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Welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast, a podcast dedicated to promoting leadership development and sharing leadership insights. Here’s your host, the Leadership Excelerator, Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host, Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact.There are many theories about what makes a great leader. Would you like to be a great leader, a 21st century leader? I believe part of being a great leader is being a facilitated leader. My guest today believes the same and she’s done a lot of work in the field of facilitation. My guest today is organizational psychologist Dr. Eileen Dowse, and she will tell us the reason it’s important to be an agile leader as well as a facilitated leader. She’ll tell us about this and a lot more right after this.
This podcast is sponsored by Eddie Turner LLC. Eddie Turner LLC delivers executive and leadership coaching, professional speaking, facilitation services, and management consulting across the globe. Eddie Turner LLC also creates voiceovers, serves as a master of ceremonies, as a panel and event moderator, and provides national media commentary. Visit EddieTurnerLLC.com to learn more.
Eddie Turner:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights. I’m your host, Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact.There are many theories about what makes a great leader. Would you like to be a great leader, a 21st century leader? I believe part of being a great leader is being a facilitator. My guest today believes the same and has done a lot of work in the field of facilitation. She is a facilitative leader. She’s also an organizational psychologist. Dr. Eileen Dowse is a global leader specializing in helping to create collective impact for her clients. She’s blazing new trails in the practice of agile leadership which places an emphasis on quality, speed, and collaboration. She has extensive practical experience in the field of global leadership and cultural competency development. Eileen is an award-winning author of the Naked Manager: How to Build Open Relationships at Work. She’s also written the Agile Business Leader: The Four Roles of Successful Leaders, which has also been translated into Chinese. She is widely regarded as one of the foremost authorities in facilitation and she’s also the co-founder and chair of the International Institute for Facilitation.
Dr. Dowse, welcome to the show.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Thank you, Eddie. It’s truly an honor to be here and to have the opportunity to talk with your wide-ranging audience.
Eddie Turner:
Thank you. Well, tell us a little bit about your background.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Well, if I had to put myself into a bucket, I would say there were three areas that I primarily work with. The first is I do a lot of educational programs, all under the umbrella of leadership and the components of leadership. I also facilitate different types of meetings, whether they be meetings where teams are in conflict or meetings where a group wants to have a brainstorming session or a team building session or a strategic planning session. And I do a lot of executive coaching and I do that all over the world, in Sweden, in Ghana, in Honduras, Canada, the US, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong. If there’s a plane that gets there, I’m there.
Eddie Turner:
That is fantastic. And I’m impressed with your range and your depth of scope of your facilitation experience but then also I’ve had a chance to get to know you. I should probably tell people in full disclosure how I know you. You and I met because of our mutual love of facilitation but you may not realize this but the very first time I heard your name was when I read the name of the person who assessed my facilitation skills when I applied to become a certified facilitator through INIFAC.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
There’s some saying that karma will come back and get you. And here I am back on your show.
Eddie Turner:
Well, I tell you, I hate to admit this to everyone but my ego was crushed when I did not attain the certification on the first try. So, I saw the name of the assessor and I saw Eileen Dowse – “Who is this? Doesn’t she know I’m one of the best facilitators around?” And then a year later I received an email. Of course, I achieved the certification, by the way. I received an email from this Dr. Eileen Dowse inviting me for an interview to fill the open seat on the International Institute for Facilitation’s board. And since that time, we’ve done a lot together and I’ve grown to be quite fond of you. You’ve become a mentor and a very dear friend in addition to allowing me to share the privilege of putting a global mark on the facilitation industry as we spread the power of facilitation and the importance of certification around the world.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
And, Eddie, I feel the same. And that truly is, like anyone who’s listening will know, when some commonalities get created with folks, good things happen, really good things happen.
Eddie Turner:
It does. And I truly believe that you’re one of the best out there. You’re one of the brilliant people I know, one of the wittiest people I know, but you’re no softy. You’re no pushover. You don’t play around with people and that’s how we get stuff done. And it takes a lot to control our board when you are dealing with some of the best facilitators in the world and some pretty accomplished people on that board, it takes a lot to keep us in line and you do that.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Are you saying that’s good leadership?
Eddie Turner:
It’s facilitative leadership at its finest. So, we’re talking about facilitation but can you explain to our listeners what do we mean when we say the word ‘facilitation’?
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
It’s really interesting because depending on what part of the country you go to, some folks are really terrific at having created facilitation in their organizations and within their community groups and in some countries it’s still a very much of a brand-new concept. So, what I like to tell people is facilitation, in the purest sense, it’s really about helping a group as you as the facilitator. It’s helping the group get to their desired outcome. And I have two metaphors around that. One for your females in the audience that they might be able to relate to is facilitation is often like being a midwife. You’re not there, you didn’t create the baby, but you’re certainly there to help deliver the baby. And that’s what a facilitator does. You deliver the final outcome to the group. You help them do that.I’ve often referred to facilitation, it’s a lot like sailing, and you simply have to work with whatever arises. So, if you’ve got some stormy waters in the group, well, you have to deal with that. Whether it’s convenient or not, it really doesn’t matter. You have to be skilled and qualified to be able to deal with what comes your way. And all in all, in all facilitation you are helping the group move forward. And while your focus is on the group and on their task, you are also very much focused on the process and the people
Eddie Turner:
Very well said.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Now, you had asked me about facilitators. And then you introduced the show about facilitative leadership. There is a bit of a different side. What I just described was facilitators. So, facilitators really are guiding the process and helping the group dynamics and they’re very much experts in meeting processes whereas someone using a facilitative style, now that can be a facilitative parent, a facilitative best friend or a facilitative leader, and they really are partners and they’re both leaders, they may instigate to get conversation started and they are experts in both the content and the process. And as you might imagine, as we look at the world becoming so global where organizations have people from many different countries as part of their organizations, we have more generations working in one spot than ever before in our history, all different kinds of research are showing up and preferences, whatever it is. Having that ability to facilitate conversations is just critical for being a good leader.
Eddie Turner:
Absolutely. And it is something that you and I have talked about a lot and there’s been a lot written on this. The idea that it is a leadership skill, it is not just something that should be designated to a select few when it comes to controlling a group norm, being able to bring the best out in others, being able to not necessarily have all the answers, as you said, being experts in the process, not the content, it’s a true skill in and of itself.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
And it’s very much of a mindset because the question when I’m coaching executives is “Where is your ego?” It’s hard to be neutral if your ego is heavily involved. Where does your ego go when you’re really trying to care for, I getting the group conversing well?
Eddie Turner:
Yes. And so, you get on another passion of mine, being able to talk about it in executive coaching. And the similarities between executive coaching and facilitation and, to your point, I love how you said that actually, being able to let go of your ego, being able to let go of not having all the answers and really believing in the group as a facilitator or in the clients as a coach that the answers lie in them.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
And just on that ego thread that we’re following here, I will often tell leaders “The greatest power is when you can give up power.” That when they kind of tilt their head and they do like “What are you talking about?” And what I say to them is if you let the power that you don’t have to control the meeting, you don’t have to control the people, you give up the power and you say to folks “What do you think is the right answer?”, when another person feels that it’s a collaborative type relationship, recognizing that you have additional information as a leader based on your position, you give up that power a little bit, you will find that the other person will put you in higher regard, you gain more power in the end because you gain that respect and that credibility.
Eddie Turner:
Absolutely. Very well said.Now, speaking of these skills, what critical skills would you say are needed by today’s leader to work across cultures, races, and ages because there’s a lot of discussion about that in the business world today?
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
I would say that there would be three categories. The first one would be your personal capability. Is that within your DNA to be a leader? And that whole question of are leaders born or can you teach leaders. And please, let’s not go down that path. That will be about six more podcasts. So, your personal capability.And the second one is your ability to focus on the business because as a leader, and I can only assume you’ve talked about this in other podcasts, that my message to folks is if you don’t have followers, you probably aren’t a leader. You’re probably a really smart great person doing something on your own but you’ve got to be leading and having followers wanting to follow you. So, how are you leading the business and whatever that business focuses?
And then the last one is how are you leading the people within the business. So, it’s the business capital of the human capital and you’re your personal skills. So, within that there’s everything from, if you have those capabilities, are you resilient, can you take initiatives, do you have integrity and honesty and, in the business, can you drive results if you have technical and professional knowledge. Then you take a strategic perspective, the whole leadership speed, the big piece now is “Make mistakes. Learn quick.” Life moves really quickly. So, come on, you’re going to make mistakes.
Eddie Turner:
Yeah, constantly fail and pass. Actually, both – fail fast and fail forward.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Exactly. I mean, even if you’re falling on your face, you’re moving forward. So, keep going, keep going.And then the last one is that human capital. Can you inspire others? Can you build those relationships? Can you collaborate when people are polar opposites of an opinion? And can you connect with others? Can you connect different parts of the world to bring people together? I’m also part of a UN Peace Coalition and in one of our meetings I was working with Kofi Annan and we had Pakistan and Israel. I mean, we were just working with all these different cultures. And boy, let me tell you, people have different views. So, how do you bring them together and look for that common red thread going through the conversation?
Eddie Turner:
Yeah, I didn’t realize you were working for the UN until I was preparing for the show. And then I realized that’s how she’s able to control us. We’re small potatoes.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
I mean, I have stories in Honduras. We had to stop a meeting at 4 o’clock because if we had to be on the road and be back on the main highway because if we didn’t, then motorcycles with machetes would come and kill us, which is an incredible motivation to end the meeting on time.
Eddie Turner:
Yeah, we get a little unruly at times but we will not be going to take a machete to you.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Exactly.
Eddie Turner:
Wow! That is something. So, yeah, you are definitely facilitating under adverse conditions. So, lots of experience on your end. So, thank you for sharing those critical skills with us that we should be striving me to hone if we’re going to be great leaders, 21st century leaders.Now, would you add anything else to the discussion that we had about the definition of facilitative leadership and what the competencies are that leaders should be incorporating into their portfolio of skills?
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
I am so glad you asked, Eddie. And as you started this podcast, you indicated that we both are part of an organization called INIFAC or the International Institute for Facilitation. And what INIFAC did was we went out and we said “Okay, here’s what we think are six areas that we think are competencies for facilitators.” And we did a massive survey to find out if that was right and we surveyed facilitators, people who use facilitators, people who hire facilitators. And we weren’t correct, we weren’t correct. And we missed some of them. So, we went back to the drawing board. And I say that because INIFAC is very much about having quantitative data to indicate that we have the right competencies. And those competencies are a facilitator must have a presence, they must be able to stand in front of that room and bring that compassion and authority at the same time into the room with warmth and caring. They also have to be able to assess what the group needs and certainly what the client needs for a good meeting. They have to be able to communicate well. They have to be able to actively listen and process information quickly. And they have to be able to control the group to ensure that the group is productive but also very much a safe environment where people can work and feel safe to give their opinions. And the second last one is consistency. Are they a great facilitator on Monday and a horrible facilitator on Friday or are they consistent, you know what you get when you hire that person or ask that person to facilitate? And the last one is around engagement. Do they have an incredibly large toolbox filled with all kinds of tools for helping a group problem solve or decision-making events or actions or whatever it is or just to even raise the energy so that people can be in a meeting for three days and still want to stay in?
Eddie Turner:
All right, thank you. And we have an acronym for that. If you could just share that for us. You gave us all the details. What’s the acronym you use?
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
So, again, it was Presence, Assessment, Communication, Control, Consistency, and Engagement and that spells word PACE. And because that there are three Cs in there, that’s like a C to the third power. And the acronym is PACE.
Eddie Turner:
Yes, we think that all great facilitators know how to keep PACE.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
That’s right. And leaders as well, right? That kind of leaders, anyone using facilitative skills?
Eddie Turner:
Excellent. Thank you for that clarification.So, if people want to know more about that, where can they find that everything you just mentioned?
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Very simply they can go to the website. And that is INIFAC.org.
Eddie Turner:
Yes, INIFAC.org. We’re going to recommend people visit there. And if people want to learn more about becoming a facilitative leader who is recognized for their skills, get a third-party endorsement of their skills, what level of certification does INIFAC offer?
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
INIFAC, to be clear, is a certifying body. There are some terrific membership organizations out there. What INIFAC does is only certify. And we have a base level certification, a CCF – Certified Competent Facilitator – and then we have the next level up, the Certified Master Facilitator, the type of facilitator who knows how to manage extreme situations or know how to really keep people engaged. And, again, on the website, all the information is there around the scoring. It’s very much a quantitative assessment. And the best part is it’s virtual. So, you can do it at your own speed and from the comfort of your own home.
Eddie Turner:
Excellent. So, INIFAC offers the highest-level certification in the industry. It is the Certified Master Facilitator. And so, that is third-party independent verification of your skills as a facilitator.Eileen, thank you for sharing this with us. And at this time, what we would like to do is pause for a word from our sponsor.
This podcast is sponsored by Eddie Turner LLC. Organizations who need to accelerate the development of their leaders call Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator. Eddie works with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. Call Eddie Turner to help your leaders one on one as their coach or to inspire them as a group through the power of facilitation or a keynote address. Visit EddieTurnerLLC.com to learn more.
Hello, this is Charles Fred. I’m the CEO and Founder of True Space and you’re listening to the Keep Leading Podcast with Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
Alright, we are back. We’re talking to Dr. Eileen Dowse and she is telling us about facilitation and facilitative leadership. Now we’re going to transition and I want to have Dr. Dowse talk to us about agile leadership. Dr. Dowse, you’ve written a book entitled the Agile Business Leader. What is an agile business leader?
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Thanks, Eddie. And one of the things that occurred to me, and I was talking to a colleague and we started swapping stories about some of our clients, and we found that he was, he is still, a gentleman, an Australian living in Hong Kong and I was this Canadian living in the US. And in all of our worldly experiences with clients, what we found was clients were pulled in two particular vectors, two directions. And one is that the clients really have to focus on their business. These leaders, they have to focus on getting the business going, lead that business to success. And they also have to focus on their people because, I’m sure you’ve heard and I’ve heard you say this before, why do people leave a position a company? It’s because of the leaders. So, there’s that pull. And then the other thing we noticed was leaders have to have this capability, this DNA. It would be great that they have it but if they don’t put it into action, essentially, they’re a battery, they’re just sitting there not doing anything with it. So, there was this other pull that you have the capabilities and you put it in action. And as we talk more about this, what we decided was, in different leadership models, you’re a red, green, blue leader, whatever it is, we found that this four-point model created for roles for successful leaders. And the more we talked about it, we said “You know what, it’s not that you’re that leader or this a certain kind of leader. You have to be all four.” And those four words, someone who focused on the business and very much had the skills, we called them the specialist. So, Eddie, you are certainly a specialist at podcasts and social media and leading groups where I’m not a specialist. I’m a specialist at doing something else. So, that was one category.Someone who is still focusing on the business of putting it into action, they’re the strategists. How do they strategically get their business maneuvering through all the craziness in life and get the business to its success? So, that’s on the business side. And the other side, on the people side, someone who’s focused on people but focused more on themselves, they’re the champion. Do they have those skills, those abilities, almost like that emotional intelligence to be a good leader or conversational intelligence, which is now a big word of advice that Susan Glasser spoke of? And then it’s great if you have that but sitting in your office not doing anything with it, you could still be a champion but you’re not doing anything with it. So, someone who goes out there and puts all those skills into action are an enabler. And often we think of enablers, “I’m enabling you,” has a negative connotation. And this is really about enabling people to do well. And that is very much taking a facilitative leader role. So, the premise of this entire book, the premise of all the research we did and, again, we did surveys, we did interviews, the whole thing is you must be a Strategist, a Specialist, a Champion, and an Enabler.
Eddie Turner:
That’s an interesting take and I appreciate you explaining that. I’m holding a copy of your book and I’ll put this in the show notes for the audience to be able to see this book. And now I understand the four colors that you have on here and why you have them in a wheel. So, it’s not a matter of I’m red or yellow. I need to be all four. That’s very interesting,
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Right. The logo for the Agile Business Leader is like kind of a very flexible stickman riding on a unicycle. And we made it a wheel because there are some times that you have to be more of an enabler and there’s sometimes you have to be more of a strategist and you must have access to all of those. And if you have a flat tire, if you don’t have that sort of emotional intelligence, you’re going to be flat and you’re going to start wobbling there. So, it’s going to make it harder to be in those other areas as well.
Eddie Turner:
And so, in your book you do a great job of defining those four but you also explain to people how they can figure out where they are and how they can take action steps to get to their desired state.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Right. And, in fact, when I do training programs, I have folks fill out a self-assessment and then throw it out, wherever it is, a three-day program or a one-week program, whatever we do. They will check in again at the end of the week. And I will also give them some feedback based on that model. So, it’s something that they can compare themselves to and we’ll use it then for executive coaching to say “Okay, you’ve self-assessed yourself this way. Let’s see what areas you want to work on.”
Eddie Turner:
Excellent. So, clients have the opportunity to have the assessment, they have this book, they can have you leading workshop for them where they can learn more in depth through the three to five days and even do one-on-one as their executive coach. So, that’s wonderful.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Thank you. And you know what, I’m now going to tease you, Eddie, because you pointed out that we hang out together. I just want to say what a wonderful agile business leader enabler you are. Brilliant, brilliant reframing and feeding back what I said. And that’s a perfect example here that a facilitative leader, a facilitator has to feedback and say “Hey, wait, am I understanding this correctly?” So, I thank you for modeling that behavior.
Eddie Turner:
Well, that’s very kind of you to say. Well, I don’t have a choice but to do that, especially after you assessed me and made sure I got that corrected and learned to do a better job.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
I certainly hope you’re not there locking in the fetal position from that experience somewhere.
Eddie Turner:
It took me quite a while to get over it but I’m over it now but we all need those lessons. So, I humbled myself before you.So, you also give a really nice acronym for what agile means in your book and ABL, for the Agile Business Leader. Would you just like to share those briefly with us?
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Yeah, sure. So, the Agile Business Leader is just as it is, the ABL. And we really have entered into a world more so, I would say, in the last three to five years, everybody’s using acronyms, right from FoMos all over the place. The other acronym that we used is we had so many leaders that wanted to know a nice tool for coming up with a strategic planning model. So, we created a model called the Agile Strategic Thinking Model. And, in all honesty, what I find is I’m also using it for coaching. So, if you have any coaches listening, feel free to use this model. And it’s based very much by using positive psychology. There’s a lot of thinking out there that if you talk to a person and focus on someone’s problems, not only do they feel terrible, then they may say “Wow! After our conversation, I thought I had three problems. Now I realize I have 10. And I feel really bad” as opposed to more of us like a solution focused and saying “Let’s take the best of what is and use that as the momentum to move forward to make changes.” When you do that, the human psyche is much more likely to want to go on that journey with you. So, that’s what the Agile Strategic Thinking Model Approach does. So, the A in that acronym stands for ‘Assess’ the situation. If you were to tell me “Eileen, I want to double the size of my podcast audience,” we would have a conversation and say “Hey, what’s the suspicion that it might not be that way?” So, that’s using it for both strategic thinking and if I was doing some coaching. G in the AGILE model stands for ‘generate’ or ‘generating’ an understanding of our strengths. Rather than saying “Well, why is it not working, Eddie? What are you doing wrong, Eddie? What do you feel, Eddie?”, what we might be saying is “Eddie, tell me about why you are so great at these podcasts. People are listening. People are listening all over the world. What are you doing that’s really working well?” And then, suddenly, the other person is kind of on board. I mean, “Hey, why wouldn’t you want to do more of what’s working well?” Then the I in the AGILE model is for ‘Innovating’ a desired future state. This is saying “You know, Eddie, if I had a handful of sea dust and could just throw it on the situation, the perfect world, if a miracle could happen, what would be that perfect state for you, that desired state?” And we get silly, and we brainstorm and we come up with wild and crazy ideas. And the L in the AGILE model is taking those strengths that you came up with and that creative idea that you came up with and putting it together to get a little bit more realistic to say “Okay, what could we really do?” If any of your audience has the opportunity to watch Netflix and has watched that show Black Mirror, there is a whole different kind of thinking out there like we’re being like black screen on your phone and just that technology is clean. And so, the whole concept of what is possible has gotten smaller and smaller right now that anything is possible. And then E stands for the ‘Evaluate’ and create options – “All right, what are you going to do next week? What are you going to do next month? Let’s make it happen.”So, that’s the AGILE model.
Eddie Turner:
Excellent. Thank you for sharing that. AGILE, it has more than one meaning. So, listeners will be able to dig deeper into that by reading your work or by reaching out to you.So, one last thing I want to share. You’re just so fascinating. You covered a lot of ground. And some of the work that I’m doing for a client, and you actually have supplied the content for that client and you wrote a white paper that is what the designer read and thought “Wow! We need this as a part of this curriculum.” And you explore what accountability means for leaders. Can you tell my listeners what the difference is between accountability and responsibility from your research?
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Happy to. And a little bit of backstory here. My dissertation was on what personality traits contribute to accountable behavior. So, I kept hearing everybody say “No, we need more people to be accountable in our organizations.” And I said “Well, here’s an idea. Hire an accountable person.” So, I really dug in deep on what is accountability. And if you just take from the actual structure of the word, accountability is your ability to account for your actions. And sometimes it gets confused with responsibility which is your ability to respond to a task. When you think about it like that, responsibility is taking the necessary action for carrying out an assigned task and saying “Yep, I’m going to do that” whereas accountability is really about being answering or answerable to your actions. And then that bodes a whole bunch of question about “Well, then, who can be accountable?” And if you think someone who has any type of mental disability or in any way challenge, do they have rational behavior? Anyone who has any type of mental illness, can they be accountable for their actions? The answer is no. If I’m agreeing to be on this podcast and I’m currently based in Dallas, if there’s a tornado here, which there almost was two days ago, if there was this unforeseen event, should I be held accountable for not being on this podcast? No. So, you can’t be accountable for unforeseen events or held accountable. And then what about this conversion where if your expectations and my actions were so divergent, it wouldn’t work. So, you can’t be held accountable. Think about that. And then what can you be accountable for? There are three things. You can be accountable for finances, so the money. You can be accountable for fairness. And you can be accountable for performance. And, as you and I have spoken in the past, this conversation has really started getting people to think about it. I think we work very loosely around accountability. Everybody wants people to be accountable but it’s not so easy.
Eddie Turner:
Yes. So, in more cases we need to look for people to be responsible but have a person that is accountable for responsible people.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Exactly. And just as a fun little side note. What I found with these traits was it really just came down to there were like 14 full traits for an accountable person but if you broke them into two categories, commitment and self-management were the two areas that make up an accountable person.
Eddie Turner:
All right. Well, very good. I’ve enjoyed your sharing this and getting us to think differently, Dr. Dowse. So, if I were to summarize what I’m hearing in our conversation today, it would be that leaders of the future are facilitative and agile and now I’m going to also add accountable.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
There we go. There we go.
Eddie Turner:
So, what advice or words of wisdom would you share with the listeners on the Keep Leading Podcast?
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Words of wisdom. We have talked so much during this program on about being agile and thinking differently and all my work around the world, there really is no one right answer. You go into a country and you cannot go in thinking that you know it all. You really have to be very agile in your thinking to work with others, to lead others, to encourage and engage others. So, I am reminded of a quote, I think it’s like from 1963, so long ago, and this probably tells of the way I live and the way I think and it’s an unknown author. So, sorry, if you’re out there and you came up with this, please tell me because I would love to quote you. And the quote is “Today’s mighty oak is just yesterday’s little nut that held its ground.”
Eddie Turner:
“Today’s mighty oak is just yesterday’s little nut that held its ground.” All right. Well, thank you for that. Meaning that there’s hope for us all. You have to be resilient.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
I’ve been that little nut for a long time.
Eddie Turner:
My wife says I’m still a nut but that’s another story.Well, wonderful. Where can my audience learn more about you?
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Well, they can certainly do any kind of search. I’m all over Google these days. And if they would like to contact me or know more specifics about me, they can contact me on my website at www.Human-Dynamics.com.
Eddie Turner:
Excellent. Well, I have thoroughly enjoyed speaking with you, and you’re just someone who I look up to and admire tremendously. So, thank you for being on the Keep Leading Podcast.
Dr. Eileen Dowse:
Eddie, it has truly been an honor and very much a delight. Thank you.
Eddie Turner:
And thank you for listening. That concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.
Thank you for listening to your host Eddie Turner on The Keep Leading Podcast. Please remember to subscribe to The Keep Leading Podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen. For more information about Eddie Turner’s work please visit EddieTurnerLLC.com.
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The Keep Leading!™ podcast is for people passionate about leadership. It is dedicated to leadership development and insights. Join your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator® as he speaks with accomplished leaders and people of influence across the globe as they share their journey to leadership excellence. Listen as they share leadership strategies, techniques and insights. For more information visit eddieturnerllc.com or follow Eddie Turner on Twitter and Instagram at @eddieturnerjr. Like Eddie Turner LLC on Facebook. Connect with Eddie Turner on LinkedIn.