404. "Stop Believing Your Own Lies" | Leadership, Communication, and Growth with Sabina Nawaz

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Sabina Nawaz:
So, in a meeting, be at least the third person to speak. Take notes in the margins of your notebook on your own ideas, so you don't worry about losing them, but don't pop them out until the end because you know what, someone else might come up with those ideas as well.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Hello and welcome to the Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster. Food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. Each episode, you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strived to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping. 

Thanks for tuning into this episode of The Daily Helping podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And I love episodes where I get to welcome people back to the show. One of my favorite guests, who we actually had on literally almost five years to the day. Her name is Sabina Nawaz, and she is an elite executive coach who advises C-level executives and teams at Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, nonprofits, and academic institutions around the world. 

Sabina routinely gives speeches each year and teaches faculty at Northeastern and Drexel Universities. During her 14-year tenure at Microsoft, she went from managing software development teams to leading the company's executive development succession planning efforts for over 11,000 managers and nearly a thousand executives, advising Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer directly. She's written for and has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, NBC, NASDAQ, and MarketWatch to name a few. And she's here to talk about her latest book, You're the Boss: Become the Manager You Want and Others Need. 

Sabina, it feels like no time has passed. We've been having the best conversation. Welcome back to The Daily Helping. We're so grateful to have you with us today.

Sabina Nawaz:
Thank you so much, Dr. Richard. It's a joy. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
It's amazing. I mean, we were just chatting, and I didn't realize how long it was ago when you were on. And for those of you who don't know the Sabina story, we're going to link. That was way back episode 145. So, we'll have that and the show notes. But for those that don't know you, we got to hear your bio, but just give us a little snippet about what wakes you up in the morning, what's your passion about, what's your why, and then I want to dive into this great book. This book is available everywhere today.

Sabina Nawaz:
Fantastic. What gets me up every morning? Gratitude. Every morning, when I wake up and this will sound like a cliche, but it is 100% true, I wake up, I open my eyes and I go, "Wow, I'm alive." And then, it can only get better from there. So, for me, it's about really connecting to what is it that we have versus what is it that we don't have. And how can I transfer that juju, to use a technical term, to the clients I work with. 

Whether I'm speaking on a big stage, or I'm working one on one with a CEO, people find themselves surrounded by pressure, tremendous pressure, above, below, sideways, externally, internally, you name it. And we're never going to be pressure-free, but my purpose is to help people become pressure-proof. There are things you can do, despite those pressures, simple things, not easy, but simple things to help manage that. 

And especially the higher up you go in the ranks, the greater the pressure, which then tends to start to corrupt your actions. By corrupt, I mean you forget to slow down and pause and check in on how someone is doing. You forget to explain things clearly and so on. And that leaves a whole bunch of damage in its wake, and it tanks productivity. So, how do we get the best out of people no matter who they are, no matter where they are, and especially when they're managers, because that's a scaling situation. You can either scale for good, or you can scale for damage. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
As you're talking, and I think about this, and yes, this absolutely applies in the corporate space but I think this applies to us as parents, this applies to us in the home, this applies really everywhere because you mentioned the internal, the external pressure. I mean, even just our time in social media places pressure on us. 

There's research, good research, that the more time people spend on social media, the more emotional distress they have because they're either worried about what's being blasted into them about what's happening to our world either geopolitically or environmentally and/or they're seeing these other people who are in their neighborhood posting these pictures, which are oftentimes exaggerated, about their exceptional life. And they're wondering, why don't I have that too? 

So, what you're doing is very needed in the world and it's the perfect time for it. So thank you for that share and that was helpful to set a context. So, let's frame, though, this new book, which we're gonna just really dive into and I'm excited about it. Why now? So, what was the reason you chose to write You're the Boss?

Sabina Nawaz:
I can answer that question in so many different ways. Let me give you the personal answer. When I was a manager at Microsoft, I often got feedback, "You're a great manager because you really care about people," and I did. So, I started off being a great manager, according to the people on my teams. And then, I became a really lousy one. This happened, I'd been promoted right before I went off to have my first son. The first day back from parental leave, I get a frantic call from my assistant, "Where are you? You're supposed to meet with Steve, the CEO of the company, in 30 minutes." 

So, as I'm driving, she's reading out these memos and things that I need to know to be prepared for this meeting. And that set the tone for the pressure that I was gonna be facing. And under those crushing deadlines and non-sleeping infant at home, I forgot my humanity. I figured people around me were adults, they would figure it out. I micromanaged every detail, down to having people check whether every name had an umlaut or not in every single conference that we organized at the senior levels. I was careless. 

And this came from someone, people said, who cared a lot. And I did not realize this until a colleague gave me feedback that somebody in their office was crying because of a conversation they had had with me. Gut punch. That got me curious, ever the engineer, to go, "What happened?" The same person who was best boss ever is now worst boss ever. What happened? 

So, let's try and reverse engineer this and figure out not what makes one person succeed and one person falter, but under what circumstances also. As I started coaching people, I interview about a dozen people who give feedback on that individual. I ended up collecting 12,000 pages of verbatim feedback that people have about their bosses and their coworkers. 

I realized that it wasn't just me. I hadn't changed. My circumstances had changed. Now, I have to take accountability for that. But through that data analysis, I felt like I had a vantage point to show what tanks of bosses and their teams' performance and what makes them soar. And I wanted to scale that, not just to the people I coach one-on-one, but to lots of people.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, you know I'm a data guy. This is exciting to me. Like 12,000 individual documents with this feedback is really great. So-

Sabina Nawaz:
12,000 pages. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
12,000 pages.

Sabina Nawaz:
Yeah.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I know we're going to talk about this book in different ways, but I want to start here. So, positives and negatives, what did the data show? 

Sabina Nawaz:
Yeah. Unquestionably, one of the biggest positives was intelligence. Intelligence from an IQ perspective. This person is wit smart, this person is off-the-chart smart, Nobel Prize, Turing Prize level person. I could almost not talk to people and know they were gonna say that. And that's why we tolerate bad behavior sometimes as well because no one hesitates to fire somebody who has bad behavior who also has bad performance. So, these people are smart, and that was the topmost positive. Another one was this person is incredibly passionate and really cares about the business. So, those were consistently big positives. Strategic was also there. Not always, but most of the time. 

On the negative, there were two that were really at the top of the stack. The first one, by a long shot, is this person has a hard impact on others. They shout, they bully, they don't give me positive feedback. People are crying as a result of conversations with this person. I'm pointing at myself. So, they have a hard impact on other people. 

And item number two, communication. Now, communication is a very big nest of things. And there were a number of sub-bullets around communication, so many that I call this chapter in my book, Communication Fault Lines. And it is the longest chapter in the book because there are seven different fault lines, all sorts of things that come into communication, everything from lack of clarity, to making it all about you, to not understanding where the other person's coming from.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So within the Communication Fault Lines, what would you say, if somebody is listening to this, and communication, you're right, it is a very broad category, but in being more effective interpersonally, what are some of the skills you can quickly implement to get there?

Sabina Nawaz:
The shortest cut would be asking. And the second one is what I call exercising your shut-up muscle. And these are both very quick, almost instant solutions. A lot of my clients struggle and get tied up in knots when they have to give someone strong corrective feedback. And I ask them, "Have you asked the other person what they think of their performance?" And they're like, "No." 

And at least half the time, the other person will actually tell you the truth. And it makes your job a lot easier. When they say, "You know what? I am struggling with this, I don't think I did a great job there," and then you can come in and go, "Yup, you're right. How do we course correct?" And even if they are not there, you can then say, "You know what? This is an alignment issue, first of all. And perception is reality. Here's my perception. It's different from your reality. Let's figure out how we align the two." 

So, simply asking than assuming cluelessness of the other person when we're the boss, and instead asking, "How do you think you're doing? And let's have a conversation. Let's have a two-way dialogue". So that's one piece. 

And the other one is the shut-up muscle, which is we tend to talk too much and people let us talk too much. Look, it's a two-way tango because the more the manager talks, the less the other person has to talk. Power obscures things for you. It muddies the water because who's going to tell the boss, "No, boss. Your idea is a really bad idea," or "No, boss. Let me give you some really tough feedback." So, we talk and we over talk. 

So, in a meeting, be at least the third person to speak. Take notes in the margins of your notebook on your own ideas, so you don't worry about losing them. But don't pop them out until the end because you know what, someone else might come up with those ideas as well. Or use two magic words, say more, and let them give you more information instead of being in and rescuing them.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I love that you described a shut-up muscle because I think so many people, either they can't turn it off or they feel like they need to get their point across, but oftentimes, you don't give people that opportunity to provide the feedback. So, I love this. I've been thinking about something else as you've been talking. And I know that we've jumped around a bit, but you've got all these data points where we know strengths and we know weaknesses. You've been doing this the highest level around the world for a long time. In your opinion - so totally putting you on the spot here, Sabina - is it better to… if you had to pick, do you build up strengths or do you address deficits first? What would you do?

Sabina Nawaz:
Oh, you're not putting me on the spot at all, Dr. Richard. I have a very clear perspective on this. You build up strengths. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
That's what I thought you would say.

Sabina Nawaz:
I subscribe to the Marcus Buckingham, Kurt Kaufman School of Thought around strength finders and strength-based leadership and development. You become world-class when you work on your strengths. You become mediocre at best on your weaknesses. 

Now, there's a key distinction between weaknesses and fatal flaws. You do need to bring things up to the bar if they're needed. When we're talking about the book and these issues that come up around hard impact on others, it's less about a weakness. They know how to do this, just like I did. I genuinely cared about my people and I knew how to show that caring and be that caring person. The circumstances changed. So, it's about managing yourself and opening your eyes wider because, again, nobody will tell you this. You cannot actually receive this through direct feedback most of the time. 

I was running this off-site for a small company. And the CEO, totally off-agenda and script of the plan for the off-site, suddenly, people started giving the CEO feedback. And they said, "You know, you're really tough to talk to. You don't listen to us. You shut us down. You're kind of harsh and abrupt and condescending." And his reaction was, "Thank you. This is hard to hear. And I appreciate it. All good so far. Will you give me feedback next time you see it?" 

And I said… Let's call this person Joe. I said, "Joe, that is not going to happen. If by definition, they see you as someone who's not safe to talk to, and you're asking them to raise something that is one of the most unsafe things for them to raise with you, why would they do that? Did you not hear the feedback? So, it would not only not happen, but if you did that, they will not tell you the truth. In fact, they might even tell you the opposite, and it'll give you incorrect data with which to work."

Dr. Richard Shuster:
So, we've talked a lot about communication, which is one facet of leadership. There are many others. Obviously, we can't go through them all, but take us through another one of your favorites in the book that is just so important that leaders get right to make themselves better.

Sabina Nawaz:
Another one is what I call the sole provider, which is thinking that I am the one who has to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. Not only that, not it has to, I must, because if I didn't jump in, nobody else will, or nobody else will do it as well, or they don't have all the context, or they don't care as much, or they don't have as much initiative, they cannot do it as fast as possible. You see all the reasons that we can come up with. 

So, sole providers come in many, many forms. They're all well-intentioned. And they're even right initially in the short term. The problem is when they take that short-termism, "Oh, nobody else is fully read into the context, so they won't be able to do this, and I keep doing it," well, guess what? You're continuing to leave people ignorant and unskilled. So, of course, then people are continuing to come back to you as the sole provider, and you're continuing to keep them down below here. 

So, what can you do to reduce some of your sole-provider tendencies? One, you might examine yourself and understand, what are some of your own internal wirings that are keeping you in that position. For example, maybe you're afraid - and this happens often - you're starting to age in your 50s, 60s even, and you're afraid that you're gonna become irrelevant. So, you wanna stay at the center of everything, and that's your not super effective way of being in the center of everything. Maybe you wanna be still seen as the smartest person in the room. So, you jump in and answer on everyone else's behalf. 

To offset sole provider tendencies, the other thing you can do once you understand what's going on is delegate. But delegation is problematic. The number one mistake people make when they delegate is treat it as an on-off switch. "Okay, I'm in it, I'm in it, I'm in it. Nobody else knows what I'm doing. They're not skilled. And now, here, you take it on. You do it. I'm empowering you. I'm delegating to you." They're guaranteed to fail because you haven't skilled them up. 

So, instead of treating it like an on-off switch, which inevitably leads you to then swoop in later when they failed, and cause frustration and confusion all over again, why not treat it like a dial? See where they are right now. Give them as much as they can at the moment. Maybe it's just telling them what you're doing and teaching them. Then, maybe it's coaching them a little bit. What did you try? What else did you consider? How did you approach this? Understand how they're thinking about the problem. 

And so, the dial has several stages, several steps 'til you build them up, and they build themselves up. And only then do you turn off the switch completely. And even then, depending on the importance of the topic, maybe you have some check-ins and checkpoints, as opposed to that big deliverable landing on you on a Friday night, where now there goes your weekend because you have to redo everything.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And again, this sole provider feels like there's a hinge of just lack of awareness, if not, in some instances, narcissistic tendencies. And there are in the West, we know this through science, everybody's got narcissistic tendencies in the corporate space, in our society today, and some of them are adaptive. But you're talking about something, and it may have other motivations too - keeping your job, not getting phased out or replaced by an AI construct, whatever the case may be. There's a lot of awareness and insight that you have to have in yourself to even get this now, "Oh, that's the kind of manager I am. I'm the sole provider." And  you said before that, in many cases, they're going to lie to you, your subordinates, and give you false data. So, where is that-

Sabina Nawaz:
It is good.? 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Where did that insight come from, that, "Oh, I'm this way. And I should shift that a little bit"?

Sabina Nawaz:
Well, and a lot of what you're describing, Dr. Richard, is around the pillars of emotional intelligence, awareness of self-awareness, of other, and the interaction between the two. And that is absolutely something people should invest in, and it's the work of a lifetime. 

You can also do some quick diagnostics on yourself, like a quick self-check. It's the engine light coming on. And there's a few ways you can do that. So, for example, if you read the Sole Provider chapter, you might recognize yourself in it. And you might recognize what kind of sole provider are you. Are you the caretaker? Are you the straight A student? Are you the whack-a-mole who's trying to whack the tasks as fast as they pop up all day long every day? Are you the flash who's so fast that nobody else can keep up with you? 

So, you could look at some of these examples and stories and see where you recognize yourself. And if you don't have the patience to do that, at the very end of the book, I have a set of 42 questions on 360-ing yourself, as in understanding in a 360-degree view where you are. And it's based on these specific traps and gaps that we create when we're in positions of management and authority and power. So, answer those questions and see where you are. 

Here's an even shorter shortcut. There are four questions from those 42 that I've picked out to say, "Here's an early warning sign." If you've said yes to these questions, then maybe you want to dig further. One, nobody disagrees with you or pushes back, ever. Two, sole provider, you find yourself working more, coming up with all the agenda items, staying later than everyone else, following through on everything. Three, people treat you as funnier, smarter, faster, et cetera, than you know you are. In other words, they're totally putting a smoke screen up for you. And four, you often have a "yeah, but" that justifies all your actions.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
I'm enjoying this so much. I think I love that you're giving people the signposts that they could read. Yeah, EQ is a lifelong journey. You never get a certificate saying, "Congratulations, Sabina. Today, your emotional intelligence has reached X." Like we're always striving to be better. 

I'm curious, and I know we've kind of bounced around through the book, but can you share with us a particular, not a case study, but perhaps a client experience where you've implemented this, that you've really seen radical change and what that looked like.

Sabina Nawaz:
Yes, yes. I know we have limited time, so I'll just choose one. And I'll call this person Adam, who was phenomenal. And like all the other feedback that people got, his feedback was this person is incredibly smart, taking the world by storm, it's going to be on all those lists of people to watch and so on. And was getting promoted at a rapid clip. And then finally got called to the boss's office thinking he's going to get promoted again. And instead the boss says, "I'm fiddling so many complaints about you. I don't want to hear these anymore. Make it go away."

So, we do a 360. And I hear a lot of colorful language when I do these 360 interviews, that is interviewing the people who work with the person. This was one of the more colorful ones. There were some words that I won't repeat on a show like yours but that essentially pointed to him being a 100% certified bully. Here's the kicker. He had no idea. He genuinely had no idea. 

A lot of people like Adam are what I call innocent saboteurs. They do things that are really not helpful but they think they're doing it for a good reason. So, he was making jokes because he wanted to uplift the team. He was being sarcastic because he thought he was motivating them through his sarcasm. And of course, that wasn't true. So, crushed by the feedback, decided, "Okay, I'm the last one to know, I'm going to work on this because this is going to dog me no matter where I go." Thought about quitting for a while. He worked on it.

And then, we did a second 360. And people said he was a thousand percent better. A thousand percent. So, he had stopped making jokes because he figured, "I'm actually not a great judge of what joke is appropriate or not."  And this is because, again, it is in you. There are rarely totally good bosses and totally bad bosses. We're all just human. And we need to know where we are and be willing to face that, the things that we don't know, and then use some tools to implement and change.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Amazing. A great story. I wish we had more time. It's flown by. I knew that it would. Sabina, you're going to have to do a different answer than you gave us five years ago. So, as you know, I love to ask everybody who comes on the show one question, and that is, what is your biggest helping, that one most important piece of information you'd like somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today?

Sabina Nawaz:
I have got this and I have no idea what I said last time. So, the biggest helping is stop believing yourself. Stop believing your "Yeah buts." Think about "yes, and," like the improv practice. What else might be true? What else might be going on? You might not be wrong, but is that the full story? So, I would want people to expand their story by not just believing a singular story about themselves.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Wonderful. The book is You're the Boss: Become the Manager You Want to Be and Others Need available everywhere today. Sabina, tell us where people can learn more about your work online.

Sabina Nawaz:
Sure, they can go to sabinanawaz.com. And follow me on LinkedIn on Instagram at @SabinaCoaching. Read my articles on Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, and so on. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:
And for those of you in the gym, we got you covered. Everything Sabina Nawaz will be linked in the show notes at drrichardshuster.com. Well, Sabina, this was wonderful. Thank you so much for coming back to the show and sharing with us all that you've created in your new book, which I know is gonna help a lot of people.

Sabina Nawaz:
Thank you so much, Dr. Richard.

Dr. Richard Shuster:
Absolutely. And I wanna thank each and every one of you who took time out of your day to listen to this conversation. If you are gonna go do some of that inner work, and you are going to put some of these practices into place, especially that shut up muscle, go give us a follow and a five-star review on your podcast app of choice because that is what helps other people find the show. But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are, and post it in your social feeds using the #MyDailyHelping because the happiest are those that help others.