[00:00:00] Chris Gaffney: Welcome to the Supply Chain Careers Leadership Podcast. And I’m your host, Chris Gaffney, and I’ll be joined by my co hosts, Mike Ogle and Rodney Apple. We’re excited in this series to talk about a number of key impact areas for leadership and development for supply chain professionals, students, and employees.
[00:00:20] Chris Gaffney: We’re going to talk about how you can work more effectively as an individual. To create your own space for development, how you can differentiate in the workforce, how you can chart your own path to grow and develop, and how you can guide your own career. So sit back and enjoy the ride.
[00:00:38] Mike Ogle: This podcast is made possible by SCM Talent Group, the industry leading supply chain executive search firm.
[00:00:45] Mike Ogle: Visit s SCM Talent [email protected].
Rodney Apple: [00:00:00] \Welcome back to the supply chain careers podcast. This is our leadership series, featuring Chris Gaffney, our supply chain industry and leadership expert. We’ve got Mike Ogle, our academic specialist focused in supply chain, and I am Rodney Apple, the supply chain talent specialist. Today marks the 20th episode of our leadership series, and we’re very excited today to recap the 20th series.
And we’re going to focus on how you can apply this to your own professional development and with leadership coaching for others within your organization.
Mike Ogle: That’s right, Rodney. We’ve covered a whole lot of ground over these 19 episodes, providing many valuable insights and various aspects of supply chain leadership.
From the first episodes where we focused on getting your own house in order so you could lead others, To the episodes that focus on becoming a first time manager, [00:01:00] then you make your way up to the top even. So today we’ll discuss strategic approaches to leveraging all the content for both individual and team development.
Rodney Apple: Chris, I think a good place to start would be the importance of assessing your own needs at that, that individual contributor level. How can our audience identify episodes that could be beneficial for their own personal development?
Chris Gaffney: Thanks, Rodney. And I agree with you and Mike that we have come a long way as we hit this 20th episode.
I know we hoped we would come up with something that would be useful for folks. And now it’s nice to look back and say, how do you make a constructive use of it? I do think For anybody to get value out of this series, they’ve got to have some self awareness of where they can improve. And so we would say, if you could start with some type of individual self assessment, so you can be [00:02:00] honest with yourself and validate that with others, that’ll help you prioritize.
And a lot of people use the idea of a SWOT assessment in a strategic analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that actually works just fine from an individual standpoint. And I do think, for our early and mid and even late career audience, there are lots of people who get away from doing that personal inventory.
And I think it’s a good habit. If you’re good at it already, that’s great. If you’re not. Doing that as a precursor to saying, how do I sort through and prioritize which of the episodes are most relevant for me is great. And as I said, if you do it yourself and then validate that, whether with a peer who you, you have a good trusting relationship with a mentor and then potentially even a manager, so you can say, will you, am I missing anything?
Do you agree with me on my priorities? And I think, Then it allows you to say, Hey, if personal productivity is something that you [00:03:00] need to focus on to make space for more time and to get things done, then our episode four on personal productivity will be a great place for you to start.
If you’re, if you’re enhancing or focused on enhancing your leadership skills, we’ve got a bunch, but, I think you could start with our episode 10 on servant leadership, and it just gives you an understanding of kind of a foundational leadership style. I think there’s a, a bunch of ways that you can dive in, but I think starting against a kind of an organized set of priorities for your own development is a good one.
Mike Ogle: Okay. Yeah, that, that’s a great start, Chris. And added to that is your introduction to the 70 20 10 model for learning and development. I’ve actually started using this in my classes with my students and talking about how they need to be able to develop themselves going forward in their career.
And that model that you’d put out there. Suggests that 70 [00:04:00] percent of the learning comes from on the job experiences and 20 percent from interaction with others and 10 percent from education, whether that’s formal or informal study that you’re making an effort to be able to push yourself forward outside of those other two pieces.
So our podcast episodes can serve as part of that 10 percent formal education, which you can compliment with practical application and peer discussions.
Rodney Apple: That’s a great point. Mike. We’ve been applying the 70 2010 here at our firm as well. And, learning the recruitment business is a lot of we call it butts in seat, but it’s just a lot of rotation and conducting searches.
That’s the best way to learn. And, shadowing peers and things like that. But we also know there’s A more structured approach when it comes to learning and development Chris, do you have any suggestions on how, teams could create comprehensive development plans and, leveraging some of our past leadership [00:05:00] episodes?
Chris Gaffney: Yeah, I would say when I was in the best kind of development environment, whether as a leader or as an individual, a lot of my reinforced learning came when I was doing that in the context of the interaction with my team and folks we worked closely with. So people knew what I was working on and could.
Catch me doing it right, or could give me feedback that said, I thought you were working on this and it appears you’ve still got work to do. And so that sense of accountability that, hey, people know I’m on notice that I’m trying to address this, this issue and and they can help me with that.
So I think for a structured approach with a team, I think it’s, it can be part of annual planning for the team and people always want to go heavy on the business objectives for the team. But it’s nice if you can also talk about the team capabilities that need to be built. So if you’re a leader, you can
sit down with your team after [00:06:00] having individual discussions, and you could talk about themes that come out of those individual discussions or clear capabilities that require multiple people on the team to move their needle a bit. So if the team needs to work on collaboration or how they lead individually or lead others.
That can set, set up a place of focus. I do think creating the space, so having some kind of structure around this in terms of asking the team to allocate time each week to listen to an episode, maybe you do an episode a week, that’s probably pretty aggressive. You might do it less frequently than that, but get it on the calendar and then follow that with a specific discussion, a lunch and learn or whatever.
So that the team can say, Hey, what did I hear? What resonates with me? How can we then think about applying that in a group discussion? And I think then, those discussions can fold into team meetings so that we’re really clear on key takeaways and application. And so that [00:07:00] to Mike’s point moves the 10 percent piece of this into the 70 percent world.
How do we put this into An on the job kind of setting. So then we’re in the world where we’re actually applying this. We’re implementing the strategies and insights gained from the episodes in the real in the wild, if you will. And then you’ve got that kind of loopback process where the team can say, how did that work?
How did we do? And do we need to adjust that? Is the advice that the 3 of us have provided holding water for the team when they actually try? And then I think it’s that. Review, reflect and reinforce so that, the team can reflect on progress and kind of build that foundation.
Acknowledge. Hey, we’ve worked on collaboration. We’ve worked on how we all lead individually and others. Now, let’s build on top of that. And I think that whole reinforcement can get you to truly building both individual and team capability.
Mike Ogle: Yeah, that’s a great framework, Chris. I think one of the things that we’re always [00:08:00] challenged with is we listen to great podcasts.
We say, Hey, wow, that was something that inspired me a little bit initially make some plans, but if you don’t find some way to be able to put that down somewhere, that’s going to be on your calendar, on your plan you need some kind of place to be able to make it. All the pieces come together and something that you can use when you’re going through busy days with so many distractions.
So using tools like individual development plans or IDPs can be a really great addition to what you put into your leadership development plan. And these plans should include. really specific goals and actions to achieve the goals, things that you’ve noted that you’ve heard and seen, and you want to take some kind of action on to be able to integrate it into that 70 percent after you’ve done your 10%.
And you also have to have metrics that you set to be able to understand, are you getting to where you want to be? How do you [00:09:00] know? So listeners can refer to different kinds of episodes to, to support their IDP goals. So for instance, in the lead, in the leadership series. For setting goals and achieving results, go all the way back to episode one on avoiding the regrettable move.
And then to enhance your self awareness and receive feedback, look at episode three on overcoming blind spots, because that can be invaluable, especially being able to solicit information from others to know where your blind spots are, because when you don’t know what you don’t know, that’s when we tend to get into trouble.
Chris Gaffney: Can I throw one in here? One of the premises for this series, when I pitched it to you, Mike and Rodney was that I have worked in a lot of large company settings that have a big infrastructure for training and development, but that’s not true for all employees in all companies and employees may move from a business setting where [00:10:00] they have a lot of that infrastructure to one where they don’t.
So what we wanted to try to do was provide the type of. Access to those resources that you could get at a big company, even if you weren’t and in the context of individual development planning in a big company, you may be asked to do that, right? Put it in some system, a big workday kind of system or whatever, so that it’s tracked and modified.
And I think that’s great. But I do think individuals really need to own those and they need to be portable in case your world And I do think, we, we espouse and I know in our episodes, we talked about mentoring and coaching is having that broader network of people you trust. There may be parts of your development plan where you and your manager don’t see eye to eye and you may need to.
Have that portable development plan to talk to an external mentor and say, I’m hearing this, I’m being told this and someone can give you the [00:11:00] tough truth that says, yeah, you really do need to work on that. Or, hey, somebody’s got a different perception of you than I think is common. And that’s a different set of action.
But I do think the IDP is really important, but you want to own it. Okay, and you may have it on a company laptop, but I’d make sure I’ve got an Excel or Word version that’s on my own device that I know that I can take with me. Because for us, it’s a, it’s ideally, it’s a document that you should live with for decades, right?
Because we’re always growing and learning.
Rodney Apple: Excellent point, Chris. And I do firmly agree that you have to own the plan and because if you don’t plan your career, someone else is going to plan it for you. And that may not be best for your interest.
You may or may not know about David Kolb, but he has created the experimental learning cycle. And so that’s another framework that you should consider when it comes to learning and development. There’s four pieces to it. It’s concrete [00:12:00] experience, reflective observation, abstract.
Conceptualization and then active experimentation. So if you apply this kind of cycle you can effectively integrate learnings from our past episodes into day to day activities. So concrete experiences is simply listening to an episode and noting key points. As I’m going through my one on ones with folks on my team, I’m having them go back through the list of podcasts.
Why don’t you pick one out that you’re interested in? Let’s start there versus me cascading that down to you. And then let’s talk about some of the key takeaways. So we’ve done that in this example. Reflective observation is reflecting on how can I apply this into my current role?
Abstract conceptualization is developing a strategy, an action plan, a framework based on the reflections, and then the last piece is that active experimentation where you’re actually implementing these new strategies and tactics into your [00:13:00] day to day work. And observing and reflecting on outcomes. Chris, anything you want to add to that piece?
Chris Gaffney: I think the last point to me is the most important is you’ve got to try things, right? If this is something, if this is a brand new skill for you, you’re going to have to invest a lot of effort to, to build that. Okay. If it’s an area where you have been uncomfortable and you’ve got to lean into it, you’re also going to have to
try and accept the fact that you may stumble a bit. So I think that idea of giving yourself space and grace to say, I’ve got to try this. And then accept the fact that I may have to course correct. I think that’s a really important. Principle I also that’s another reason why I like having the opportunity to do this in a safe environment and in my early and mid career, I would always have a peer coach.
Okay. And I recall, I think we talked about in 1 of the episodes in the early part of my career for a variety of reasons in group interactions. I took too much of the air time. [00:14:00] My, my voice was heard, okay. More than it should have been. And I think that was tiring for other people. And I sure wasn’t learning anything while I was spouting off.
And so I had a peer coach and I would say, if there’s 10 people in the room and we’re having a discussion, I can’t have any more than 10 percent of the airtime. I’m trying to watch this. Let me know how I did. And then that person would say today was okay. And the next time would say, you missed the boat.
And at some point, somebody would say, I don’t think you spoke up enough. If you’ve got something to say, just plan it out, get it out there and get it into the conversation so that experimentation and observation, can sometimes, be best done with the peer.
I love that framework. And I think, part of what we’re trying to do for people is give them different ways to do it. We’ve talked about individually versus a group and different methodologies and, classically. When we build business goals, we think of this idea of smart goals, right?
A specific, [00:15:00] a measurable, achievable, irrelevant, and a time bound kind of goal so that you can say, I’m going to, I’m going to make progress on this area over the course of the year. Of a year and I recall one of my versions of an individual development plan would really be a three by three and one of those axes was time.
What am I doing this quarter? What am I going to try to do the balance of the year? And what’s on my Sunday list? I know I have to work on this, but I can’t do it. Work on everything now. And then I would have a leadership strip, a technical strip, and maybe an experiential strip. So it was a bit of a tic tac toe board, but that was a way that I tried to make this smart.
Cause I would say I’m really focused this quarter on trying to move the needle in this area. And I know that for the balance of the year, I’m focusing on one or two things. We’re not trying to solve world hunger here. That structure was helpful for me.
Mike Ogle: And smart is a very, [00:16:00] that is very valuable and you hear about it throughout the industry.
I’m briefly going to go back to the active experimentation side of things because I’ve seen this firsthand and I’ve done these kinds of things myself after we’ve done an internal three 60 and then we had. Coaching, again, at a company where we had these kinds of resources you’d bring in from the outside and they come in for a week and talk to everybody and try to coach everyone and help them change their behaviors.
It’s best as an ongoing kind of exercise, but it’s always interesting when you see people try new things out without any warning, for instance that they’re trying something out. Sometimes it’s valuable. You’ll have to make the decision yourself. But sometimes it’s valuable to give people a little bit of a heads up, that you’re, you’ve heard something, you want to talk, you could talk to them, rather than a full team, but, as an individual one on one to let them know what’s going on.
Otherwise it’s is he, is that person okay? If you’ve gone through a sudden change in behavior [00:17:00] from where you were possibly for years. Sorry, just a little bit of a side there, Chris.
Chris Gaffney: No, I, and I think it’s actually a great build, Mike, and you can think about it from an academic context, right?
We have all grown up in this context where we take on a new subject and in the primary and secondary, we’re working on it over the course of a year. And then in the, Undergraduate world. We’re working on something for a term, right? A semester. Typically, somewhere along the way, somebody did research that said, that’s how long it takes for somebody to learn and embed and sustain those concepts.
I think the same analogy needs to apply to our our individual, soft skills development. Then, we’re in that leadership space here versus functional knowledge. And we also are who we are, right? And I think, Changing what we know, learning Python and R when before just new basic statistics or basic coding skills is one level of way that we can gain [00:18:00] knowledge.
I think it’s probably easier when we get into these leadership and soft skills, because they start to get into our personality. And there we have to accept that it’s been, Probably a longer journey. So you have to manage expectations. And I think, this is where the tortoise probably wins the race versus the hair and the slow burn versus the flash in the pan is probably much better and become known as something to say.
I’m always working on something. I methodically make progress. I can demonstrate over time that I have climbed a ladder, but I can’t fundamentally change who I am in a week or a month.
Mike Ogle: Yeah, absolutely. I think is a great connection to change management principles overall that we’ve talked about in some other episodes of how do you introduce change?
How do you make that happen to where it’s not? It can be accepted. It’s not so sudden. So I think that’s a great addition.
And I want to toss in another piece here and a little bit of a different word that some of you may not be familiar with, but [00:19:00] additionally, the Andragogy theory of adult learning emphasizes that adults need to know why. They’re learning something as well. There’s a lot of books out there these days in business, like start with the why I think Simon Sinek was the one who had had written that one.
You need to be able to help people understand the why, in being able to move forward, whether it’s in sales or whether you’re leading a team. But they need to know why they’re learning something. They also want to be self directed and they also want to be able to you know They also bring prior knowledge and experience to the learning process So use these principles to guide your engagement with our content
Chris Gaffney: Yeah, I think that’s a good one because the why can be easy if someone says hey for this job that you’re interested in they’re you know somewhere on the job spec it’s highlighting this skill and capability that I don’t believe I’ve demonstrated.
That’s a big motivator. That’s okay, I’m going to really work on this because then I might have a shot at that [00:20:00] job. It’s different if someone has given you not positive experience that says the way you are interacting with somebody else or the way you aren’t getting your work done is a limiting factor.
It places a lot more stress because you’re under the gun from a perspective. Yeah. Learning and development standpoint, and you may also not agree with it. So I think for both the managers contemplating using the series and for the individuals, you’ve got to be aware of that, right? It’s very humbling as an individual, wherever you are in your career to be told you’re not where you need to be in how you approach your work.
The good news is, All these things can be addressed, and you’ve just got to find a way to process that emotion and get to action, which I think is a theme that a lot of these frameworks we’ve talked about suggests.
Rodney Apple: That’s a good point, Chris. And I think that brings us to, having a having a mindset, a growth mindset [00:21:00] where you’re focused on continuous learning, and you’ve got even a way to do this through a continuous learning loops.
If you are struggling, you’re trying to apply a certain tactic into your your leadership acumen, 1 way that you can do this is to, revisit. The content revisit a past episode, try to reinforce the learning and then seek out additional resources through research, maybe through chat GPT to see if you can deepen that understanding and then continuously apply it in practical ways in your day to day work.
So an example could be revisiting an episode on servant leadership. You’re trying to refresh your memory, gain some new insights seeking out additional resources. Perhaps you’ve got a mentor that you can lean on that can give you some actionable advice. There’s plenty of leadership books out there, articles, HPR, no shortage of things to learn on in addition to our leadership series within our podcast, and then just continuously applying it through practical [00:22:00] application, implement the strategies, insights, reflect what went well and just seek out that continuous improvement.
Chris Gaffney: I love that one. I’m trying to improve my chess game now. I’ve played chess for 50 years and I’m not very good at it. And I finally said, instead of just randomly playing, let’s actually do some studying. So I’m reading. I’m doing a lot of lessons. I’m practicing. It’s very humbling. But I’m seeing slow progress.
So I think that that rule applies for our audience for sure. And I actually think in the context of what we’re talking about, if an area of growth is really important to you, this whole concept that you’re talking about, Rodney, you may just say. I’m just going to go down the rabbit hole in this and I’m going to become an expert on this, right?
And I will ultimately be equipped well enough that I can build my own capability and then, then be a resource for others. I like that. And I think that gets us to this whole idea [00:23:00] of this collective learning. And I’ve, we’ve talked about mentorship and peer learning. I think all of those things connect to this reinforcement and also, mentors and peers offer a different perspective.
They, in many, we said the answers in the room and some of the podcasts, but you may get a nugget for why something is important for you or how you can build your own capability. And it just through an ongoing or intentional interaction with a team member. A mentor and a manager. And so I think that whole idea of having the team discuss the episodes and share the insights, it just has multiple layers of benefits to it.
Mike Ogle: Yeah, creating that kind of learning community within an organization can be really powerful. We’re all tend to be most of us social animals and, wanting to have acceptance and grow and have value. And if you can put together things like. study teams study groups [00:24:00] or book clubs or even podcast clubs.
Never hear that term anywhere. But to explore how to to apply all the lessons learned that you go through. It is a peer pressure type of thing that I think is very helpful. This uses a little bit of peer pressure to create a culture of reflection, continuous improvement and collective and shared team growth.
Chris Gaffney: Yeah. It’s interesting when I was at Coke, we had a toast masters chapter and there, I think historically, they’ve been all over the place, and they’re very focused on helping people with public speaking, which for many people is just terrifying and Mike, they embody everything that you just talked about their, this idea of a study group or a club.
And so I don’t know that there are many as developed as toast masters, but that model will work for a lot of these. If you could find some like minded people who have the interest and motivation in a particular. area or to take on, the book club idea may take on a [00:25:00] different opportunity over the course of a year.
You could say, Hey, let’s work on these episodes together as a club over the course of a year.
Rodney Apple: Yeah. I like that concept, Chris. And we have been applying it just to give some examples of how we’re taking some episodes and embedding it into our team here. I talked about. Using on a one on one and in this particular session I asked the employee to, pick something out on the list of the 20 episodes on the leadership series.
Let’s talk about 1 in particular. Maybe we can even talk about a couple of key takeaways that you learned. And so he went to the leadership soft skills episode. This employee has a tendency to have, I’d say, knee jerk responses and can fly off the handle sometimes. And he seems to circulate that around the team and likes to vent with others and, he came back and said, the big takeaway here that I learned is [00:26:00] taking that proper time to respond to some kind of an issue or conflict. Instead of getting emotionally charged let’s apply the 24 hour rule. Let’s walk away. Let’s come back the next day. Have ample time to reflect and then come back with the right or proportionate response.
And he has been applying this. We have noticed a major, difference in how he reacts to problems or challenges that pop up and they always pop up in our world of recruitment and executive search. And so that’s just one example of how we’ve applied it here and had. On a one on one individual coaching lesson and have seen some great results.
Chris Gaffney: I think all the things that we’re talking about here, they’re great nuggets in terms of how we can go about using this. I think there are a couple of things that we should emphasize. Enclosed is it’s perspective, right? You’re not going to take a quiz or a test on this necessarily, but it’s also [00:27:00] important to measure progress, right?
There are plenty of self assessments that are available for free online. There are also in many cases, those can be peer driven, right? You can select some peers and email them and let them provide feedback. On you. And so you can then say, are people seeing a difference, right? I can have my own point of view.
And then based on that, you can adjust your development plan. Say I’ve gotten to a stable level on this. I need to maintain this. Now I need to think about what’s next on, on my list. So I do like that.
Mike Ogle: Yeah. And you certainly can’t forget the value of being able to celebrate milestones. So if you’ve put a plan together and you’ve achieved something, then you should celebrate that.
Yeah. And in the same way, you need to be able to have the awareness, if you’re a leader, to be able to look at the people on your team, and if they’ve shared something in a development plan, something they’re trying to make a change on, there are such a, [00:28:00] there’s such a wide spectrum of how people react to you.
criticism and encouragement and, those that are self motivated as opposed to motivated by their leader or their team. But you need to have that kind of awareness if you’re going to lead of your people and what they might need. And it may vary. Case by case, do they want recognition in front of the team?
Do they want it one on one, so recognize and celebrate the progress you and your team make. So it not only boosts the morale, but it also reinforces the importance of that continuing, continuous learning and development process.
Chris Gaffney: Yeah, we had our episode on confidence, and I think we talked about that confidence is building blocks of demonstrated evidence that you can do something.
And I think getting that acknowledgement whether it’s self reflection, but most importantly, from peers and managers, Hey, I seen progress here that will relieve someone’s tension [00:29:00] if it was an issue of performance to say, Okay, I may not be Perfect. But I know I can make progress and there’s been acknowledged so that emotional tension can go down and that person can then reinvest that emotion into further development.
And so then you create that positive kind of virtuous cycle as someone gains confidence that I can do this. Now, let me get better at this and let’s talk about what’s next. And I think again, back to the team concept that this is really where you really start to create some momentum.
Rodney Apple: Excellent points, guys.
I think that recognition and just verbally communicating wow, this made a big difference. I see you making the effort. You’ve come a long way. That kind of communication and feedback. It just keeps that momentum building and snowballing. And that’s what we’re aspiring to do.
And as we wrap up here, just I’d like to make a point. I think this is from, 30 years of working in the talent and recruitment space, 25 in supply chain and have followed the careers [00:30:00] of those that I placed 20 some years ago is as we old, analyst and planners and buyers, that, Entry to junior level and then staying in touch.
We talk about the importance of networking and that’s a hallmark trade in my line of work. But I’ve stayed in touch with a tremendous amount of people over the years from my corporate days and have watched many of these folks rapidly rise up the ladder. And I think what they all have in common is maintaining a growth mindset.
They’re dedicated to a lifelong journey of learning and development. And that is what truly separates those that rise up into that executive rank that are You know, recognized as true leaders within their companies and from everyone else. They know how to influence, they know how to motivate, they know how to coach, they know how to develop and lead other leaders.
And you can get there too. This advice is time tested and it can certainly make a tremendous impact to your [00:31:00] career. If you apply it and bake it into your day to day planning and career planning, because if you don’t plan out your career and focus on this stuff, it’s just not going to come to fruition.
And so we’ll leave you with this. Thank you so much for listening on behalf of the supply chain careers podcast team. We thank you for listening and we Appreciate you staying in touch with us. You can always find plenty of content and resources at scmtalent. com.
Chris Gaffney: Yeah I think it’s been great.
I think along the way, I think we said 20 would be a milestone for this portion of the leadership series and. I’m excited that we got here for those who have listened with us. We appreciate it for those new. We hope you continue to use the series engage with it, share episodes, I share episodes with others all the time, and, we love the field of supply chain and the field is advancing, but it requires us as individuals to [00:32:00] advance.
And, I think for us, we’re also trying to practice what we preach and in terms of what comes next for the leadership series. We have given each other feedback. We have received some feedback, and I think we’re contemplating both the what and the how this series will evolve. So we would tell everybody to just stay tuned on that.
Mike Ogle: Yeah, and absolutely don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and as Chris had mentioned, share the podcast with others. If you care about other people’s development and you’ve found nuggets of wisdom inside here share those, along with the episodes and then people can dive in and look at other subjects as well.
So your feedback also helps us improve and reach more people. So Please provide your feedback and until next time, keep learning and growing your leadership capabilities.
Rodney Apple: Thanks everyone.