Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:01:40: Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?

00:06:14: The authentic chameleon

00:11:59: Developing the skill to adapt

00:20:48: Considering others' motivations

00:27:07: Changes in terms of leadership over the years

00:31:09: Vulnerability in leaders

00:35:41: Examples of great leadership

00:41:12: Rob's career advice

00:43:07: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah and this is the Squiggly Careers podcast.  Every week, we share ideas and tools that we hope will help you to navigate both the obstacles, but also make the most of the opportunities that come our way in Squiggly Careers.  This week is one of our Ask the Expert episodes, where I'll be talking to Rob Goffee about leadership.  So we're taking on a big topic this week. Rob is the co-author of one of the leadership books that I rate and recommend most frequently. 

There are lots of books written about leadership but there are very few that I think stand the test of time, and Rob and Gareth's definitely does, and it's called Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?  Together with Rob, I talk about how to approach answering what can seem like a very confronting question, "Why should anyone be led by you?"; the critical difference between leadership and management; and we even borrow some brilliance along the way from social anthropologists, which surprised me and something I very much enjoyed. I've been hoping to talk to Rob for a long time.  I've actually been taught by Rob, not that I expected him to remember, when I did a program at London Business School.  So I had met him before very briefly, and he's always been on my list as someone who I hope all of our listeners will find really helpful to listen to and learn from.  So, I hope you find the conversation useful and I'll be back at the end to point you to some really helpful resources and to say goodbye. So, Rob, thank you so much for joining me today on the Squiggly Careers podcast, I'm really looking forward to our conversation together.

Rob Goffee: It's very nice to be with you, Sarah, and I'm looking forward to it too.

Sarah Ellis: So, we're going to dive straight in, because what has really attracted me to your work and the work that you've written and researched over the years is it all started with this very propelling, and I think in some ways provocative question, that's the title of a brilliant HBR article that you wrote and then a book, which is that you suggest all leaders should be able to respond to this question, "Why should anyone be led by you?"  And I just wondered with this brilliant question, which is both insightful and a bit confronting I think at the same time, how do leaders typically respond when you've asked them this question, I'm sure now thousands of times all across the world; do people have clarity; can they answer that question; do people look a bit bemused; what happens when you offer that question out to a room full of leaders?

Rob Goffee: Well, as you say, Sarah, I've asked it many times.  I think the most typical response is stunned silence really, and a kind of, I don't know, nervous laughter, a bit of anxiety.  It's a fairly, as you've just said, a fairly provocative question, it's almost a kind of rude question, "Why should I be led by you?" I guess an important thing to say right at the start is that the question is not, "Why should I be managed by you?"  If I joined your organisation, Sarah, and I saw your name on the organisation chart above my name, that's the answer to the question, "Why should I be managed by you?"  But it's not the answer to the question, "Why should I be led by you?" 

And the distinction really is the "led" bit is really referring to what's different about you, Sarah, that's going to excite me to some kind of higher level of performance. So, our simple definition when we wrote the book was that leadership has something to do with exciting other people to higher levels of performance; that's what it's all about.  And that's got something to do with what's different or unique or distinctive about you by comparison to all sorts of other people in this organisation that I could, to use an old-fashioned phrase, lend my allegiance to; what's different about you?  Now, that's inevitably a question that has something to do with, who are you; who is the authentic Sarah, by comparison to other people inside this organisation, who could be my leader?  So that's a difficult and rather uncomfortable thing to start thinking through. I guess the other thing about the question is that it's a reminder that leadership is a relationship.  In other words, you can't be a leader without followers.  I sometimes bump into people and say I'm a great leader, I've got fantastic charisma, they just can't see it!  You cannot be a leader unless you have followers.  So, the two things that the question is prodding, as it were, or investigating, is what's different about you, and what's the nature of your relationship to others, because you cannot be a leader unless you have followers.  Those are two big things to think about, and sometimes that's a sort of uncomfortable proposition, as it were.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I think in some ways, though as you describe, it might be a bit uncomfortable, it's also reassuring because it starts with you.  And I think certainly when I was first moving into leadership roles in my career, I had this sense of expectation I think I was placing on myself, that I would look around at other leaders that I admired and aspired to maybe be like, and I could see they were very different to me.  And so for a while, I think I fell into a trap of thinking, "Well, to be a brilliant leader, I need to be more like X person or Y person", but maybe they've got a different personality to me, maybe what makes them distinct and different inevitably isn't going to be the same as why people might want to follow me.  Once you get to grips with why you're asking this question, I started to find that reassuring because I thought, "Well, at least it starts with me and what I've got to offer".

But I think when we use this word "authentic", it comes up a lot in organisations and the organisations we work with, and you have this lovely phrase that I will often share with people in a workshop and say, "Rob has this great phrase, he talks about being an 'authentic chameleon'".  Now again, those two things might intuitively sound counterintuitive rather than intuitive, you're both authentic and a chameleon, how do those things work together?  So, perhaps you could describe that to us a bit more.  So, what do we mean when we mean being an authentic chameleon; what might that look and feel like?

Rob Goffee: I'll get to the authentic chameleon.  Before that, Sarah, what you said was, you were worried when you were coming into organisations about, were you able to be more like some of these perhaps very successful others or leaders inside the organisation.  And of course, you can learn from other people and what they do, but I think it's a great error to try and mimic them, as it were, because the challenge is not to be like someone else, the challenge is to become more like yourself, not more like someone else.  And so in the book, a phrase we use a lot is, "Be yourself more".  That's not the complete phrase, and I'm sure we'll come on to it, but the challenge is to be more like yourself, not to try and copy others, because if you try and copy others, inevitably that's a fast route to inauthenticity. So the thing is this, that you must be more like yourself, but you can't go to this extreme position of, this is me, take it or leave it, because guess what?  Quite a lot of people will say, "Next.  We'll leave it, thank you".

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, "No, thank you"!

Rob Goffee: Exactly, "Thank you and goodbye".  You cannot simply present yourself in organisations by simply saying, "This is how I am, so you've got to live with it".  Now, I do think some people do try that, and they get ejected, frankly, from organisations.  And a fair number of them, I feel, become entrepreneurs.  And when they become entrepreneurs, they can more or less say, "This is me, take it or leave it, because this is my organisation.  And if you don't like it, you can go somewhere else".  And I'm sure you've probably met some entrepreneurs that are a little bit like that.  They just couldn't live inside a large, structured organisation of one kind or another. So you cannot simply present yourself and say you need to adapt to me.  The reality is you need to adapt a bit, as it were, to other people and to the context.  In the book, we said leadership is non-hierarchical, in other words it's about you, not the position you're in; we said it's relational, you need followers, I've made that point already; and we said it's contextual. 

So non-hierarchical, relational, contextual; those are the three fundamental axioms. Now, the moment you accept that it's contextual, in other words, it varies according to where you are and who you're with, and of course that's very different from one business to another, from one country to another, from one region of a country to another, from one year to another; what leadership looks like frankly post-pandemic might be a little different from what it looked like before the pandemic, etc.  So, the moment you accept that leadership is contextual, you've got to accept, first of all, there's no universal recipe for what leadership looks like.  But it also means you've got to balance being yourself with the requirements of the context.

That's essentially what we were trying to get at with the idea of an authentic chameleon.  In other words, the chameleon is this marvellous creature that changes its colour according to context, but it's still a chameleon.  I think that's the thing to think about, that there's this thing called you, and I want to see some kind of common thread in Sarah that I recognise from one context to another or one set of relationships to another, but I also want to see a Sarah that adapts because in the end, you won't get traction with other people, because leadership is a relationship; you won't get traction with other people unless you adapt to them a little.  It's like two cogs coming together.  If you imagine wheels, cog wheels, you won't get the traction between them unless they mesh, they interact.  And I think some people fail as leaders because they refuse to adjust to the context that they're in. I'm sure you know, as well as I do, many examples of people who, they're one-hit wonders.  They're good leaders in one place at one time, but they never sustain it anywhere else because they don't really adapt to anywhere else. 

So, this is a horrible, complicated thing, really.  Getting the balance right between adaption and being yourself is a really difficult balancing act.  And if you do too much adaption and you look like you're just a kind of role player, then the danger is you look inauthentic; and if you do too much, this is me take it or leave it, you just look like a maverick that one day is going to get killed, as it were, so you've got to get the balance right and that's really hard.

Sarah Ellis: So, just pausing for a second on this idea or this skill, I would describe it as a skill, this skill of adaptability, because one of the things that I really enjoyed about Why Should Anyone Be Led By You? when I was reading the book, was actually the final section where you describe, you give everybody a set of questions to reflect a bit on your own capability, and you discuss things like being able to conform enough, that's this idea of adapting; to be able to move modes in terms of distance, so when to zoom in, when to zoom out, when to speed up, when to slow down, and I'm using my simplistic phrases there to summarise. But the common thread that really came through for me was this idea of, you've got to be yourself more, and you end that phrase with, "Be yourself more with skill", so this skill of sensing like, "How do I adapt in a way that is useful and helpful for those people who are following me for that organisation that I'm in?  And so, if somebody is listening to this now and thinking, "Right, I understand that as a principle.  I think that sounds very sensible and we can see how we'll be more successful as a leader if we're able to do this".  What might this look like in practice; how do we get better at this; how do we know if we're doing a good job?  Maybe we think we're being a brilliantly authentic chameleon, but maybe we are being too much of a chameleon, maybe we're being too authentic without enough of that sensing.  What have you observed in terms of the leaders that you've worked with; what have they done well to get this sense of improving that skill of being able to adapt?

Rob Goffee: That's a really good question, Sarah.  Just before I try and address it head on, thank you for finishing the sentence I only started earlier on, which is, "Be yourself more with skill".  So don't remember just the first three words, everybody!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I have to say, I always add the "with skill" because I think actually that's the really important bit!

Rob Goffee: The "with skill" is almost the most important bit because that's the bit that's saying, think about the context, think about the relationships.  So you've got to do all of it.  The other thing, little phrase you used, which I'll also echo, which we used in the book was, as you've just said, "Conform enough".  Don't conform, because if you conform completely, you've lost yourself.  And I think that's where a lot of potential leaders go wrong.  They don't give themselves the opportunity to become leaders because they do too much fitting in, if you see what I mean. There's an ocean of difference between conform enough and conform.  And in a way, if it doesn't sound too bizarre or ridiculous, conforming enough is pretending to conform, it's adapting whilst keeping yourself, as it were.  And again, that's because you've got to conform enough to connect with others, but that's a very different thing from conforming, which is dangerous as a leader.  The last thing I want to say before getting into your interesting question is, you started by saying this is about skill, and I think it is.  So I think the ability to sense context, the ability to move between being close to others and creating some kind of distance, which you sometimes need, is a skill.  The ability to show yourself and to communicate who you are is a skill.  So I'm banging on about that word, skill, because if it's true these are skills, you can get better at them.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, that's the good news.  With any skill, you can learn, practice and improve.

Rob Goffee: Exactly right.  You can shift behaviours.  It's sometimes a lot more difficult when you're talking personality, but behaviours, small shifts, big impact.  Now, to your question, the fundamental thing about adaption, adapt to context, move between closeness and distance in relationships, show different aspects of yourself in different places, these are all about adaption, so how do you get better at it? I think the first thing, going from basics, if you use the word "adapt", not change, if you use the word adapt, it implies for sure I think that you're adapting to something.  And what I've been arguing and what we've been talking about is, you're adapting to context and different relationships.  And so I think you need to practise what we call in the book situation sensing. 

And I think sometimes really people live in such a busy world, they're so frantic, they're so busy, they're so task-oriented, to use the terminology, that they sometimes just don't give themselves the time to look around. Gareth and I, my co-author, we used to say a lot to people that it's a really good idea to use a notebook to record your impressions of where you are and who you're talking to and what they're saying.  That's what social anthropologists classically did when they were doing field research.  They had a notebook.  So I think, practise observational skills, use a notebook, jot down your thoughts and observations.  These are good, really good practices for getting better at reading and sensing situations. In terms of relationships with others, I used to use a kind of motivational assessment tool where you ended up getting an idea of what motivates you, is it recognition, or is it running things, or is it self-fulfilment, or is it being in a great team, or being stressed; some people are actually motivated by stress, and so on.  And you end up with this kind of rank of various motives for yourself. 

I used to ask people, "Well, think about the four or five people around you who really influence your performance, who are the key influences on your own performance?"  Okay, identify those four or five people, and for most people that's probably their boss, or two or three very important peers, or one or two very important direct reports. I would then say to people, "Okay, you've identified these people, now tell me what you think their top two motives are.  Don't tell me about their skill, don't tell me about their experience, because I suspect you can write a book on this on the basis of their CVs, but tell me about their motives".  The key point here is, people get this straight away, the huge danger is you tend to assume the most important motives for you are the most important motives for other people.  You make that assumption in the absence of information about their motives. So, what you very quickly realise is that people around you have varied motives.  And the reason why this is so important is if you go back to what I said at the beginning, leadership is about your ability to excite other people to higher performance, you have no chance of exciting other people unless you understand what their motives are.  And the huge assumption that most of us make is that other people's motives are like ours; and I can tell you for sure, they're not.  So, notebooks, being a good detective, given I'm using the word motive, being a good detective of other people's motives, that's really important. I guess the only other thing I'd say is that, get feedback, not just from 360 and all that good stuff, but by talking to people.  That's a way of finding out, are you adjusting, adapting, or changing in the right kind of way?  One last thing about this adaptability thing, someone said this to me when we were writing the book, "You've got to adapt within an acceptable bandwidth", that was the phrase they used.  And what that means is that people won't tolerate very comfortably wild swings between being, I don't know, a very close, empathetic, chummy kind of person, and then all of a sudden transforming into a cold sergeant major, which is the closeness distance thing.  It's got to be within reason.  When you show different colours as a chameleon, don't make the colour contrast quite so severe that people think, "What the hell is going on?" and that can be very disconcerting.  So acceptable bandwidth is important. Yeah, I probably said enough but this is a hard thing and I think it requires lots and lots of practice.

Sarah Ellis: Yes, though I think what is great about the things that you've just described to us there is they are practical things that everybody could start having a go at very quickly.  So, we always talk about who, what and where are you borrowing brilliance from?  And I love the idea of borrowing brilliance from social anthropologists and actually just starting to just make some more notes about what do you notice, what do you observe, just giving ourselves small moments in our day, regardless of how busy we are or how many back-to-back meetings we might be in. Sometimes we encourage people to do a one-minute mind map at the end of their day, and you're literally doing just a one-minute mind map of, "What did I notice about today?"  

And I think even that, you'd be surprised how quickly that then starts to increase both your self-awareness, but then once you've got that awareness, you can link that then to your ability to adapt based on that awareness.  So I love that idea.  And to your second point, I've certainly had personal experience of understanding other people's motives and how that makes you a better leader.  I started doing lots of work on motives in my leadership roles, and what it really helped me to see was, like you say, particularly where, say, my motives might be quite dramatically different to my team's, how I could adapt. So, when I first moved into working, for example, in corporate responsibility, I figured out that lots of the team that I had, that I was managing, more to use the definitions that we started with today, they were really motivated by caring.  These were really caring individuals, and they particularly actually cared about people.  And it really mattered to them to understand, were people being well looked after, whether that was employees or customers, and that's not necessarily something I would have known if we hadn't done some work together on all of our motives.  

And actually, it really changed how I chose to communicate certain messages. Previously, I might have communicated certain messages in an email and thought, "Well, that's good enough.  That's what people need to know", in a bit more of a transactional way.  Whereas actually I knew with that team, if I needed to say deliver a message around some changes that were happening corporately that were going to affect people, even if it wasn't going to affect them, I knew they wanted me to talk to them face to face, I knew they wanted a bit more time to be able to ask me questions to really understand.  And so every time I've ever done any work with a team where we're all sort of understanding each other's motives, you don't have to go super deep about it, I always just ask people, "What's most important to you; what really motivates you?  Talk to me about some career highs and some career lows"; that often really reveals people's motives. So I think we can do that in a sort of accessible way that doesn't have to feel kind of scary for people, that you can just get started by, even in people's one-to-ones that they're having as leaders, just trying to get a feel for, "What do I think motivates; what do I think matters to this person; and have I really thought about that in terms of then how I'm choosing to lead this team or this individual?"

Rob Goffee: Yeah, I mean very well said and I think a lot of this is about developing good habits, making time, it's basic kind of stuff.  But as I said, and you've definitely repeated I think, that a lot of the time we're just too busy to do it.

Sarah Ellis: One of the things that we are talking to leaders a lot about, and actually I was talking to a big global leadership group today, is not always trying to think about practising these skills in a way where there is pressure to feel like you're adding on to your day.  I talked a lot to people about how can you add in, so add in rather than add on.  So if you're thinking about something like feedback, for example, rather than thinking, "I'm going to have to make this meeting or this conversation longer to include feedback", I always say, "Well what's stopping you from making the agenda slightly shorter, having the same amount of time, but including one feedback question; what's working well; what's an even better if?" Whatever that feedback might be, one of the things that we often do with leaders is say, "Well, look at your diary", because everybody's very committed to their diaries, "and see that as data for your development".  So look across your week and think, "Right, well what am I already doing?  What are the meetings; what are the conversations; what are the projects?  And then, if I was going to add in some of these behaviours, some of these techniques, what would that look like; what would I be doing differently?"  Almost attaching new habits to things that are existing, we find feels more realistic, and it feels like often a good starting point to develop some of these skills, in case that's helpful for people listening.

Rob Goffee: Yeah, I mean, one last little technical point, really, when you're talking about motives.  I think I've already used the word, think of yourself as a good "detective".  And to your comment about embedding this in what you do, the reality is with motives, a lot of the time, you don't need to even talk to people about it, they're dropping clues about their motives all the time.  You just need to be there picking the clues up and putting them in the right page on your notebook to add together to create an idea of what the most significant motive is.  And of course, that's what really good detectives, they don't ask potential criminals, did you do it?  They know they've done it by the time they've collected enough information or clues that the criminal has unknowingly dropped, if you see what I mean. I think at work, people are giving clues about their motives, not just at work, by the way, in their leisure and with their families.  They're giving clues about their motives all the time.  The only issue is, are you using your eyes and ears, like a good anthropologist, to make notes about what they're communicating to you, and on which you can charge them guilty around a certain motive later.  But yeah, it's there in front of you; you don't even need to create particular routines, I don't think.

Sarah Ellis: That's a great way to think about it.  So since writing Why Should Anyone Be Led By You? I mean I've re-read it hundreds of times probably and certainly gone back to certain paragraphs or sections, I've used it for myself, I've shared it with other people, I've definitely plucked certain ideas out of it and combined it with other things; I wonder what has changed, if anything, in terms of your perspective on leadership?  That will have been a particular moment in time where you will have dived deeply into this area of leadership and spoken to lots of people, and then you will have continued and refined that work, I'm sure, over time, albeit as I say, when I read it today, it feels as relevant to me as when I first picked that book up probably ten years ago.  So I was just wondering, what would you change or what would you add if you were doing it again today?

Rob Goffee: Yeah, it's a very good question.  The book is, I don't know, it's well over ten years old.  We wrote a second edition I think in, I don't know, around about 2015.  Has anything changed?  My ,reaction is, everything's changed and nothing's changed.  I was reading recently that we're still working through what really are the consequences of the pandemic in terms of patterns of work and where we work and how we work, and I think lots of organisations are still working that through and haven't really come to a conclusive answer. So in terms of leadership, you can look at the pandemic, you can look at the fact that there's a war on in Europe, you can look at stuff like Brexit, you can look at the background stuff of the virtual world, the fact we've all got less time these days, apparently, lots of stuff seems to be changing.  But if you frankly ask me, does that really change how I would think about leadership and what the fundamentals are, I don't think it does. 

I think what I said at the beginning, that there's three fundamental assumptions: relational, contextual and non-hierarchical, I still think that's the basis of wisdom if you're trying to think properly and in a disciplined way about what leadership is about. What might have changed a bit, I think, and we changed our mind on this between the first edition of the book and the second edition, by the time we wrote the second edition, we were saying, I think, that what we called situation sensing, the skill you need if you think that leadership is contextual, I now feel for sure that situation sensing is the foundational skill of leadership. 

And if you can't work out where you are and what's required, then you won't be able to do any of the other things we recommended doing about, should you be close, should you be distant, which aspects of yourself should you reveal, which weaknesses are acceptable, how should you communicate, all of these things.  I think if you can't work out where you are, you're done for. I think actually, interestingly, the pandemic showed that in stark relief that it showed leaders who could sense the situation and adapt accordingly, and it also showed other leaders who were hopeless.  Now, I'm not going to name names and embarrass people, but I'm sure you can think of some examples.  I think what recent events have shown is that we need, under these crisis-type conditions, we need great leadership.  What it also shows, sadly, is it's been massively lacking in the places where we most needed it, and that's been shown in stark relief, I think.  But what's required in order to enact leadership skilfully, I think the fundamentals are exactly the same.

Sarah Ellis: The one other area that I was reflecting on, as I tried to answer this question in my own way for myself, was one of the areas that you discuss in the book, this idea of selective vulnerability.  So, that doesn't mean you've got to be vulnerable all the time and every day, but what it does mean is thinking about what is useful to share about myself, taking away maybe this expectation or pressure to be perfect because you're in a leadership role, which is certainly something I think I had to learn when you go into those positions of leadership, or you feel like you're getting more influence and impact. 

Does that mean you're meant to know all of the answers, or you're never meant to have hard days; or if you do have hard days, you certainly shouldn't talk about them or you shouldn't be asking for help? One of the things that I've observed, which I think is a really positive thing, particularly over perhaps the past five or six years, is much more acceptance and encouragement of people to have that vulnerability at every level in an organisation, for people to share mistakes they made or when things are not going very well, and to sort of have that empathy at all levels.  So that was the one other area that I think, to your point, has stayed the same in terms of remaining important.  But I wonder if it is easier, I get not in every organisation, that wouldn't be true in every culture and every context, but certainly I hear it and I observe it more frequently now than I think I've ever done before, since I started working 20 years ago or so.

Rob Goffee: Yeah, I mean in our terms, the "be yourself" bit involved communicating differences, that's where we started, "What's different about you that's going to excite me?" communicate differences that might excite me skilfully.  Those are the things that are the positives.  But also communicate some of the fallibilities or vulnerabilities or weaknesses, whatever word you want to use, in ways which communicate you as a human being.  The reality or the basic observation would be, I want to be led by a person.  I don't want to be led by a suit, a role holder, a position filler, a bureaucrat, a player in the organisation, I want to be led by a person. One of the ways you can communicate yourself as a person is by revelation of some of your fallibilities. 

My view on this is, and we said this in the book, don't show them all, I don't want to know everything that's wrong with you.  Just show me some, which indicate that you are a human being.  So there is some choice here, I think, about what it is you choose to reveal.  And of course, that choice has inevitably got to be informed by your understanding of the context, and your understanding of your relationship. I'm sure all of us share weaknesses, possibly with close family and friends, that we think might be inappropriate to share at work, and vice versa.  That's entirely understandable and frankly inevitable if you think that leadership is contextual.  So the key thing is, what is acceptable?  And that's a really hard question.  I would say probably if you're a finance director, it's not very acceptable to go in and say, "Hey, guys, I've got a problem with balance sheets"; I wouldn't recommend that. 

That was a kind of silly joke in a way, but it's a serious issue, what kind of weaknesses are acceptable?  And frankly, in the times we live in, there's a lot of misunderstanding about that, and some people lose their jobs in terms of the revelation of certain sorts of weaknesses at work. But I think it's a kind of, yeah, whether or not it's more acceptable these days than it once was, which you were implying in what you said, I think that's probably true.  And I think that's probably good, that we've learnt to live with greater kinds of diversity, maybe, and differentiation at work, and I think that's a good thing, and hopefully that's a humanising aspect of the way work gets organised and experienced by people.

Sarah Ellis: And you must get the opportunity to meet all sorts of leaders in lots of different contexts, some who are amazing, some who are hopefully practising these skills to go on to be amazing.  Are there any stories or examples of people that you feel really epitomise this idea of creating an environment where people can achieve performance and explore potential that they probably wouldn't have unless they were being led by this person? One of the things that really stands out to me when you do describe what some of these people do have in common, there's absolutely no blueprint, you can't copy any one person.  But I did get this sense of, and you'll have to tell me whether this is right or not, but this sense of the leaders that seem to really excel have this continual commitment to being a work in progress, to developing themselves, to learning.  They seem to recognise that there'll never be a point where they can pat themselves on the back and go, "Oh, that's it, I'm done now.  I've completely answered the question, why should anyone be led by me?  I'm all brilliant at everything.  Great, I'll just keep doing this then".  I sense this ongoing desire and motivation to always be answering that question and always to be getting better and being really committed and recognising, I guess, the privilege that comes with leadership.

Rob Goffee: Yeah, those are well-chosen words.  This is where we start confusing in a way leadership and seniority, because I think what happens is, people that get into senior positions and are "successful" sometimes suffer from hubris, and sometimes suffer from a kind of complacency really that they've done it, they've made it.  And as you correctly implied, I think that's not what this is about.  This is about, leadership occurs all over organisations at many levels, and it does certainly rest upon a sense that you keep learning and developing, and to our conversation, adapting.

Certainly, I mean this really from my heart, "be yourself more with skill" is a lifelong ambition.  You're always polishing your act, and forgive me for using the word act, but I do think leadership is a role that you play and you should play that role as skilfully as you possibly can, and invest yourself as much as you possibly can in a skilful way.  But it is an act and you need to keep polishing the act.  I thought you were going to come on and ask me which leaders do I most admire, etc, and I'm always very nervous about that question! Zelenskyy, at the moment, when he first popped onto the scene, I think amazing.  And it's no coincidence, I think, in his previous life, he was both an actor and a comedian.  This is someone who's probably thought long and hard about how he communicates and connects with others, and boy, does he do it skilfully.  But I think back to your original, I do think you've got to keep learning, because if leadership is a relationship, it's inevitable, if you think about it, that it's the followers that create the leader or the leaders.  And they also, just as they create the leaders, they kill the leaders. You stop being a leader once the followers don't follow you. 

And of course, the great thing about watching politicians is, because they're in a non-hierarchical relationship with their followers, you can see that the followers drop the leaders.  The moment the leaders get it wrong, it's in front of your face.  So, one of the great skills, I think, of good leaders is to know when to get out before they get you, because they will get you in the end.  You move and the context moves and all the rest of it, and you need to keep nimble on your feet. I think it's the case, I was also in admiration of Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand during the recent crises, of one kind or another, that she faced; I thought she was pretty impressive.  And you could argue that her recent leaving of the stage, as it were, is to some extent getting out before she was got, if you see what I mean.  I don't use that example as a criticism, I use it as a kind of compliment, that more people need to learn that one of the great skills of good leaders is to move on at the right time.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I was talking about her recently, and one of the things that we sometimes support people with, with their Squiggly Careers, is leaving well.  So, we talk about this idea of having an elegant exit.  Think about your time, choose your timing well, keep your connections and your relationships, also be in control of that, because as a leader at any level, that can happen to you, or that can be your choice.  So I think some really interesting observations there. So, just as we're coming to the end of our conversation together, we always finish our Ask the Expert interviews with the same final question, which is leaving our listeners with one piece of career advice.  And it could be your own advice, it could be advice that you've been given that's served you well in your career so far, or just any words of wisdom that you would like to finish our conversation with today.

Rob Goffee: Well, to repeat something we've said already, "be yourself more with skill" is lifelong.  Don't try to be perfect, but do try to be great.  What I mean by that is, the moment you pretend you have no weaknesses and you are perfect, you're inauthentic.  But the ambition should be to be great.  And what I mean by that is, if you're regarded by colleagues and others at work and in your organisation as "good", I suspect you're conforming, and the people that are great are the kind of clever non-conformists.  So, "be yourself more with skill" is all about clever non-conformity, being different in ways where you still survive, and that's a hard thing to do. Last little comment on this, which we didn't really say, sorry, this is more than one word of advice, but I think this does connect with your idea of Squiggly Careers, but the more you can get rich, different experiences outside your comfort zone, and as early as you possibly can in your working career, the better.  And we may not have the list and never will of the great characteristics of wonderful leaders, but what we do know is that early, rich, different experiences are developmental of leadership, and I think people should seek those out as much as they can.

Sarah Ellis: We would definitely encourage and reinforce those words of wisdom from everything that we know about Squiggly Careers.  So, Rob, thank you so much.  One of the best things about the job that I do is the opportunity to speak to people who I've learned loads from, spent lots of time with, and then actually get the opportunity to meet.  And people always say, "Well, maybe you shouldn't meet those people".  But I always say, my experience is the exact opposite; it is literally the best thing. So, I'm so grateful for your time and the opportunity to explore some ideas with you which have really impacted my leadership, and certainly I hope, as we said, I'll never be the finished article but I will always keep trying to be myself more with skill, so thank you.

Rob Goffee: I've enjoyed the conversation, Sarah, thank you, and it's always nice to meet people that have read the book and enjoyed it.  Thank you very much.

Sarah Ellis: So, thank you for listening to today's episode of the Squiggly Careers podcast.  There are loads of brilliant and mainly free resources on Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?  So, please do look at the links in the show notes to find out more.  There's a great Harvard Business Review article that's a really good place to start.  If you have any other experts that you'd really love to hear from, always let us know because we're always looking for ideas and inspiration.  You can just email us at helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com.  And we'll be back again next week, talking about how to get support and buy-in from senior leaders and stakeholders.  So hopefully, quite a nice complementary twin episode to what we've been talking about today. Thanks again for listening and we'll be back with you again soon.  Bye for now.