#043 We Need New Leaders | Charlotte Otter

Charlotte Otter, guest · [03:22]Yeah, it came out of a thesis. So when I left corporate in 2022, I went back to university after 30 years and did an MSc in Change Leadership. And the thesis that I wrote was on reputation, so how the CEO and the head of comms build trust to manage and mitigate reputational risk. When that was finished, I spoke to my two professors and asked, you know, how should I take this forward? And the one said, well, you could do a PhD, and the other said you could write a business book. And I thought, well, a business book will be quicker, and it sounds more fun, so I think I'm going to do that. But really, the there are a couple of sort of genesis points of we need new leaders. And one is Having grown up in South Africa during apartheid, even as a, a, a white person who, who, who nomi, who benefited from apartheid, you know, we still switched on the TV and saw and heard those terrible leaders that we had in those days. So having been a child immersed in terrible leaders, but also having see, lived through the change in South Africa, as an adult, there was the sense of things can get better and they can be transformed. And then during my course, another thing that was a spark was, I learned about, double loop and single loop leaders. And single loop leaders are leaders who see a problem, fix the problem. Problem goes away. Double loop leaders are leaders who see the problem, throw the resources at the problem, fix the problem, and then say to their teams, what was it in my behavior That contributed to causing this problem, and what do I need to look out for in the future to make sure that I don't cause this problem again? And if I look back at my corporate career through the lens of single and double loop leaders, there's a very stark division. There's no gray area. So, people fall into one of the other categories. And so that really started to make me think that the extremely personal behavior of a leader has an incredibly intensive positive or negative effect on the people who report to them. And how could I explore that further?

Charlotte Otter, guest · [09:24]Yeah, so clear, Brené Brown says clarity is kindness, and I do believe that the more clear leaders can be, the, the kinder and more helpful it is to their team. So transparency, instead of retaining information, keeping it to yourselves, using it for political gain. So I think clarity and transparency are really important. Credibility comes down to authenticity, and it, credibility also is closely tied into reputation, because you become not credible if your words and your behaviors don't match, and that is, what I often say is, you know, the trust gap or where reputation fails. So leaders who Who, tell a big story and, and use words and use narratives, but then behave in a completely different way, are actually actively making themselves not credible to their teams and to their audiences. And then what was the third C? It was connected. Connected, yeah. So, you know, that is about emotion. And what came up in my research is leaders from diverse backgrounds, diverse identities, underrepresented minorities have gone through obstacles to get where they are in corporates. Those obstacles help them to have empathy for themselves, first of all, and then for others as well. And that empathy makes them connected to their teams and the people that they're leading. And they have an understanding of inclusivity and how, it sounds weird, but how inclusivity actually builds candor. Debate and innovation in teams.

Charlotte Otter, guest · [11:20]Yeah, reputation is really important to me, and it, and it wasn't something I knew was important to me. It just sort of grew over the years as I worked with executives on their profiles. I, I started to realize, oh, this is reputational. And then I did the thesis on how the CEO and the head of comms build trust to manage and mitigate reputational risk. And what I'm saying now to leaders with ambition to lead, but who may not be of the leadership norm, is Your reputation equity is a power tool that you can use to really rocket fuel your way in the corporation. And, you know, there's so many examples of people who believe that just doing a good job is enough. And I'm saying that's 50% of the job. You have to talk about it. You have to show to your audiences that your abilities, you have to be able to record and demonstrate. And it's about, what's known as effective telling. So, you know, people resist this talking about themselves because they're like, oh, it's self-promotion. Oh, it gives me the ick. Oh, I'm not comfortable with it. But if you don't talk about your own work, Who's going to? I mean, you might be lucky enough to have one sponsor in the organization. Not everybody does. Maybe your sponsor's talking about you. But you need to find ways to show the people who matter in your organization what you can do so that you're in the running for the next great leadership role.

Charlotte Otter, guest · [13:26]One of the things that women face in the workplace is this idea of the authority gap. This is another book that I lent on while writing mine, The Authority Gap by Mary Ann Seacott. And she says, having a stellar record of success is a buffer against bias. So that bias that's inherent in the authority gap. And for me, the emphasis is on the word record. How do you find the way to tell the story? So what are the stages you're showing up on? What are the podcasts you're appearing in? What is the thought leadership that you're writing? What are the social media platforms that you're using? The tools are all there. The tools are there. But the onus is on the individual to start to use them and tell the stories. And they don't all have to be stories of perfection. They don't all have to be magical stories of I took this step and then the next step and then the next step. It's equally valid to talk about the mistakes. You know, it's equally valid to be vulnerable. It's equally valid to go, you know, I've reached this point, but here are the errors that I made along the way. Because that is the way that you build connective tissue with your audiences and people who are listening to you is by being vulnerable and by being real and showing the errors that you've made along the way. So it's not about projecting perfectionism, but it's just showing up as a fully realized human being and saying, this is my experience. This is where I've got to. This is how I've done it. And by doing that, not only are you representing for the women who follow and creating a role model for them, but by actively building a reputation, you're actually building a bridge. It's an act of power that helps the next generation to follow you. So You know, women who choose silence are not only choosing it for themselves or people from underrepresented minorities, diverse identities. If you choose silence, you're choosing it for the people who follow you, and that's really not fair.

Charlotte Otter, guest · [22:43]Yeah, so one of the things that became obvious to me when I became a leader, or a manager of a large global team, was nobody prepares you. So there may be some manager training, but it's uneven. It's uneven within organizations. It's uneven between organizations. It's uneven country to country. We're not very good at training our managers. And our managers are so important because they are the culture translators from the C-suite to employees. They are the technology innovators, and they are the people Who make the difference to individuals. I mean, you know, we have a burnout epidemic. We don't have a burnout epidemic because the CEO said a mean thing. We have a burnout epidemic because managers are often not great. So I would focus very much on people managers and training them with, with people skills, and I would start with inclusivity. I think inclusivity is absolutely critical in terms of giving a team the sense of freedom that every voice is valid. I mean, we've all been in team meetings where the two loud people do all the talking, everybody's silent, and then afterwards at the coffee corner or at the water cooler, everyone's going, well, that was a bit useless, wasn't it? And I didn't like the way they said that, but no one feels safe to speak up. So psychological safety, people feel safe to speak up, inclusivity, make sure all the voices are heard, and if you have those in place with trust, that is when you get radical candor. And you get creative abrasion and you actually start to innovate.

Petro du Pisani, host · [24:30]Yeah, and I, I really think that leaders should be noticing who's not speaking at the table. Yes. And, and calling on those people to give them voices around any table that we have a meeting.

Charlotte Otter, guest · [24:41]May I say something more about this? So something I've really thought about a lot is how do you actually make a meeting more inclusive? And I think that if somebody is neurodiverse and you call out of, on them out of the blue, you're going to scare that person. So one way to make a meeting more inclusive is to send an agenda in advance so people know what the topic is. And don't send it five minutes before. Send it a week before so people have got time to think. If you want to be sure that the introverts or the young people or the typically silent in your team aren't always silent, You call on somebody the, the day before and you say, or, or a few days before and you say, hey, this is the topic we're talking about in this meeting. You are the expert. I want you to plan five minutes and make sure that you, you've got something to say because the team really, really needs to hear from you. So managers actually have to learn how to actively run inclusive meetings that, that ensure that all voices are heard. Otherwise, meetings will always be dominated by, you know, the two to three loud voices and everyone's bored of hearing those guys talk.