IAM2085 – CEO Coach and Author Creates Leadership Development Programs Based on Behavioral Science

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Full Interview:

Transcription:

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Dr. Matt Paese Teaser 00:00

We've made our business-focused on being able to watch leaders, being able to watch them do things, And so we build learning programs and assessment programs and development programs that focus on watching how it happens. And so those observations produce a behavioral signature.

Intro 00:24

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:51

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Dr. Matt Paese. Doctor, Matt, it's great to have you on the show.

Dr. Matt Paese 01:00

Thanks, Gresh. Great to be here.

Gresham Harkless 01:02

Absolutely. Super excited to have you on and talk about all the awesome things that you're doing. Of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Dr. Matt so you can hear about some of those awesome things. And Dr. Matt is Senior Vice President of Leadership Insights at Global Leadership Company, DDI. And having, advised thousands of CEOs, senior teams, boards, and C-suite executives in more than twenty countries across the world is a recognized author, CEO coach, C-suite consultant, keynote speaker, and pioneer of many of today's leading approaches for helping leaders succeed at the top.

He's the lead author of Leaders Ready Now: Accelerating Growth in a Faster World, in which he wrote in 2016 and co-author of its award-winning predecessor Grow Your Own Leaders in 2002 which have shaped over two decades of impact in growing leaders into skilled, self aware, compassionate, enterprising executives. Dr. Matt is sought after for his expertise in CEO succession and on-boarding, senior team effectiveness, board effectiveness, and executive succession and develop development. And one of the things that I was super excited about when I got a chance to, like, read a little bit more about, Matt is that he said he was a passionate believer that humans have limitless potential, which it really stuck with being because I think so many times we can get in our own way, but if we start to realize that phenomenal things happen happen.

And one of the videos I was listening to is he said that accelerated learning generates energy. And I think that so many times when we think about, as he said in the video, going back and think about what was our best experience in learning something new, what that experience was like. He starts to reshape the way that we look at those things.

So, Dr. Matt, super excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Dr. Matt Paese 02:43

I am ready, Gresh. It's a privilege to be here. I know you've had so many, so many talented, influential, and experienced people on, and it's a real privilege to be among them.

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Gresham Harkless 02:53

Yeah. Absolutely. I've been truly blessed to have so many valuable people that are doing phenomenal things, and I'm glad it doesn't stop with you. It starts and it probably even accelerates a little bit more. So super excited to have you on the show. Are are you wanting to, rewind the clock a little bit so we can hear a little bit more on how you got started? What started with all your your awesome work that you're doing?

Dr. Matt Paese 03:13

Yeah. Gresh, I thought I was gonna be a Clinical Psychologist when I was growing up. Even almost back to grade school, I thought that's what I was gonna do. I went to college, and I went to a mental health clinic to do an internship and worked under some really talented clinicians and learned that it takes a special set of skills to be in health care and a set of skills that I don't know that I have and that I certainly at the time didn't feel prepared to access.

So there I was, not headed for Clinical Psychology, but I found my way into Organizational Psychology or IO Psychology as we like to call it, and then found my way into a leadership company here at DDI and then all the way back to psychology again, but doing a professional version of what I originally thought I was gonna do in a health care environment. So I don't do therapy. We don't do that sort of thing at DDI. We're Behavioral Scientists, and we help people find the best versions of their own behavioral signatures in their jobs, in their companies, in the C-suites, in the boardrooms. And, somehow, I made my way back to where I started, but I guess through a a different doorway.

Gresham Harkless 04:30

Yeah. I absolutely love that. So I wanted to drill down a little bit here a little bit more on, like, how that process goes, how you're making that impact, how are you making this dent for these organizations so that they can have, impactful leaders?

Dr. Matt Paese 04:42

I mentioned that DDI is a Behavioral Science Company. And when we talk about behavioral science, we mean the science of what we can observe, what we can watch you do, not what we think you might do or what we think you believe or what we think is inside of who you are. Sometimes it matters to think about those things, but we've made our business-focused on being able to watch leaders, being able to watch them do things. And so we build learning programs and assessment programs and development programs that focus on watching how it happens.

So you might, if you were gonna learn how to coach somebody, you might start by watching someone on a video in a positive model, but then you get to try it yourself and somebody else watches you, or we let you take a video of yourself and you watch yourself being, in a coaching situation. And so those observations produce a behavioral signature because no two people are alike in their DNA, and guess what? No two people are alike in the way they behave, in the way they react. And so when you see your own behavioral signature exposed to yourself, then it gives you a choice. What do I wanna do with that? Because behavior is a choice. You decide what you wanna do every day, how you wanna show up, where you wanna be, where you don't wanna be. And what we found is that the science of those observations are information that we can all use to figure out how we wanna grow.

Gresham Harkless 06:23

That's extremely powerful. So Right. What would you consider to be what I like to call your secret sauce? This could be for yourself, the organization, or a combination of both, but what do you feel sets you apart and makes you unique?

Dr. Matt Paese 06:33

When you get to the C-suite and now you're a Chief Financial Officer, you're a Chief Marketing Officer, you're running operations, human resources, et cetera, you are the chief of that function. You might have a business unit. You might have a global region. You are the head of a critical arm of capability for the company, and probably you're more professionally capable than your CEO. You may be more deeply trained and developed, and so your job is to think beyond your CEO. So who's your boss if it's not your CEO? It's your customers. It's your shareholders. What do they need your function to be doing? And that doesn't mean that's the only thing you think about.

But as a starting point for how to be the most effective leader you can be for your CEO, for your board of directors, thinking through the lens of who's being affected by the work that I create every day. That is the way a lot of senior leaders have to evolve their thinking when they get into the C-suite, but this could also be applied to a first line supervisor. So you take a job as a first line supervisor, and you're getting used to things like scheduling time for other people, giving people new accountabilities, asking them to do things that they don't feel like they have time to do, steering performance in new ways that are new to you. What's the best way to think about doing that? It's to think, who are the customers of my team's work?

And your boss is, of course, gonna be one key person to help you sort that out, but you can look around your organization and think, who are the recipients of my team's work? Let me think about what those people need and use that to ask my boss questions, use that to ask my team questions. And so it's thinking beyond where your direct responsibilities may guide you so that you can expand your mindset.

Gresham Harkless 08:47

Yeah. And it's so huge. I so I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or even a habit that you have, but what's something that you feel like makes you more effective and efficient?

Dr. Matt Paese 09:01

I think for I would include myself in this and I and maybe for a lot of us, when we're trying to find when we're trying to be effective, when we're trying to find a way to contribute, when we're trying to have more impact, I think we're often challenging ourselves and rightly so to give something, to teach something, to show something. I wanna leave my mark. I wanna make a difference. I wanna have impact. And it doesn't always occur to us that what we learn, what we spend the time learning can often have as much impact as what we spend the time giving.

And if I could just maybe translate that a little bit more, imagine that someone hires you, Gresh, to go help their team. And you walk in from the outside, and you show up in their conference room or on their Zoom call, and you start listening to way this team operates, and they hired you. They want Gresh's insight and your wisdom. And so you're feeling pressure to give that to them. And I think if I were to convey one hack, it's that the time you spend showing them, demonstrating to them that you're learning about them is going to enable them to use whatever it is that you give them. If that makes sense. Does that make sense?

Gresham Harkless 10:31

Yeah. That makes so much sense. So what would you consider to be a little bit more of a CEO nugget? This might be something you touched on. It could be like a word of wisdom or a piece of advice you might give to your favorite client. Or if you happen to a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Dr. Matt Paese 10:44

And so if you can start with a reason that, hey. This is why I'm here. We're trying to accomplish this. We're trying to move forward on this thing, and that's why I'm here. The next thing you have to be able to do is have a completely unblemished crystal clear mirror to look at the true version of who you are. Because if you're not prepared to build your own self insight, the world is gonna give it to you. And it might not be as easy to digest when you get it. And so being the most authentic version of who you are is the way to be the best CEO that you are.

There are dozens, probably hundreds of books about what CEOs do and how they're supposed to do it. We don't need new information about what is the CEO job and how do they do this because that's not what people struggle to figure out. What they struggle to figure out is how should I do this? Who am I? And the best because the job is so all consuming and it's not just CEO, It's every leadership job that brings people out and makes them exhausted at the end of the day, and they just can't wait to get home and turn Netflix on or something like that. So when you can be yourself, you sustain your energy. You can stay more connected to your reason, but you have to bring courage and you have to bring honesty and you have to let that be something that evolves because every big challenge in life is going to expose new dimensions of who we are.

And sometimes we're gonna be proud of them, and sometimes we're gonna wish we could do it over again because we didn't like the way we did it, and that's life. And if you are prepared to be honest with that and you can look in the mirror and say, yeah. That's me. I'm not good at that. And but I can get help. Or I can try harder next time. Or I can accept that and and move on and keep working at my reason. Those are the best CEOs, the ones with a great reason and a crystal clear mirror that they use. And often those two things are the starting place with with new CEOs and not just CEOs, but leaders who are trying to make their way into a a more challenging situation.

Gresham Harkless 13:19

Yeah. And I appreciate you bringing that to light. I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. So our goal is to have different quote, unquote CEOs on the show. So Dr. Matt, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Dr. Matt Paese 13:33

I think I have to build on the last answer and say that being a CEO means being the most true and authentic version of who you are as a leader. It's not the template of a leader. It's not following a recipe. It's not doing what somebody else did. It is courageously looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, this is the best version of what I can be. And that requires being totally open to where you need help and where you need input. And the people who feel as though they don't need help or that they probably have a better answer than most other people are the ones who are most in at risk and the most in danger.

One of the things that, Gresh, I've often said to CEOs as well that surprises them is I say you're probably going to be more effective if you work to reduce your power and increase the power of the members of your senior team and the leaders who surround you. That doesn't mean reduce your power to something meaningless, but build other people up. Create larger expectations for other people, create more of a platform for people to do things that will surprise you. And I think CEOs are the best ones, are the ones who can be themselves, and they can find a way to help other people be themselves.

Gresham Harkless 15:18

Mhmm.

Dr. Matt Paese 15:18

And there it is.

Gresham Harkless 15:20

Nice. I definitely appreciate that definition. So wanted to pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you, thought about all the awesome things that you're working on and you can help support them doing.

Dr. Matt Paese 15:33

Thanks for that. I think the only thing I would say is that leadership is something that we watch as an organization every day. We gather data on it, and we're scientists. And the science of creating leadership capability gets results, you can find me on ddiworld.com, and you will find my name and which, of course, they can see on all the headers on this podcast. But, yes, ddiworld.com, and you'll find more about the data that I've been sharing, the services that that we provide. Thank you, Gresh.

Gresham Harkless 16:12

Yeah. Absolutely. Of course, we're gonna have the links and information in the show notes as well too, just like Dr. Matt mentioned. I'm gonna help you on a phenomenal rest of the day.

Dr. Matt Paese 16:19

Thank you, Gresh.

Outro 16:20

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CBNation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase. It's a community. Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at CBNation.co.

Also, check out our I AM CEO Facebook group. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless, Jr. Thank you for listening.

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