Transcript
Transcript: EXecuTALK: Be the Leader Everyone Wants to Work For
[This EXecuTALK aired Monday, January 29, 2018.]
[Host Danl Loewen interviews Pablo Sobrino, retired assistant deputy minister.]
(Interviewer)
Hello, I'm Danl Loewen and this is EXecuTALK, courtesy of the Canada School of Public Service.
Today we have a question that leaders are asking themselves across the country: "how to be a leader that everyone wants to work for." To help us reflect on that, we have with us Pablo Sobrino.
Pablo was a zone director for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, as well as a regional DG for Canadian Heritage. He was also assistant deputy minister at the department formerly known as Public Works, working in Procurement
More recently, Pablo has been executive advisor at the Canada School of Public Service, as well as taking on - interrupting his retirement - taking on work as the Interim Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. That's a long way from being on board ship with the Coast Guard back when it was part of Transport Canada. Pablo, how would you help answer the question: "how do you be a leader everyone wants to work for?"
(Pablo Sobrino)
Well I think, I have three values attached to it. The value of respect, and I'll go into it a little bit more, value of courage and empathy. And I think those are the elements that you got to consider in that. So when I mean respect - you've got to respect your clients, like who is it you're serving. You've got to understand their perspective. You've got to appreciate what it is that they know, and you have to respect that. You have to respect their opinion. You have to respect the view of your employees.
Your employees come with a lot of experience, a lot of knowledge, and you need to respect that. You need to appreciate that, and when you come into a new job, you need to actually think about how they're going to contribute to your success. So it's respecting that ability, that knowledge. You have to respect your colleagues. Your colleagues all have a role to play. You have to respect what they do. You have to respect that they have the best of intentions.
An example I like to use often when I talk about this is, we often have to work with central agencies. And our work with central agencies are often ones that have challenge. You're putting through a Treasury Board submission, and all you get is push back. And that's how you see it, as push back. But what you have to understand is what their role is, and their role is not about pushing back. Their role is about getting your story straight so they can advocate for what you're trying to put in. You need to respect that. You need to respect that kind of notion, that approach.
The other thing you need to think about is respecting your boss. Your boss - it's not respect because of position, it's respect about the role they play. Kind of understanding how they fit in to the work that you do. As you go up through a more senior level, you have to respect the vision they've set. If your boss is a DG, you have to respect the direction that they're providing you. And that's kind of the ultimate.
Respect goes all around you and I think that's one of the values that's quite important about getting people to work well with you. Because working well with you is not just about how employees work with you. It's how you as the manager or the boss, whatever, work with everybody else. And that feeling of respect, that notion of respect, that value of respect is I think, partly, a piece that makes it something that people want to work for.
(Interviewer)
That'll play a huge role in terms of how it affects employees, the degree to which you create relationships of respect up the ladder, across, out with the clients and so on.
(Pablo Sobrino)
That's right, because your organization depends on that value as well. That's kind of another piece of that.
The other piece, [is] courage. Courage is a value that doesn't often get talked about, but . a very transparent form of courage is, you know, speaking truth to power which we've talked about as a core value of the public service - of being able to tell your boss, tell your colleagues what it is that is right and what is wrong. And also all the colours of right and wrong. So courage is about being able to understand how to express yourself and being able to express yourself appropriately so you get a message across that might be difficult to hear.
(Interviewer)
Courage without forgetting respect.
Pablo Sobrino
That's right. That's perfectly tied together. Courage to tell your employees what they need to know, what they have to hear and how to develop their sense of self, their sense of purpose. You have to have the courage to take people through that journey. You have to have courage with your colleagues, again to bring them along, to explain to them what you can and can't do.
You have to have courage as well, I was going to say, with our clients. You have to have courage to be able to explain what you can provide and what you can't provide. We, a lot of people, will shirk that responsibility of sharing what [we] need to share because it's difficult to share. And that element of courage, I think is a very important value.
(Interviewer)
You link that strongly when you're talking about courage. You're linking that to transparency, honesty, integrity, all at the same time.
(Pablo Sobrino)
That's right. Those are all the pieces that you need to put together and when you put that overlay of respect on it, it's how you express yourself that's going to be the key that makes people feel that they've been respected, even though you might have to tell them something they don't want to hear. So, that's another piece.
(Interviewer)
You also mentioned empathy.
(Pablo Sobrino)
Yes, empathy is the last of those core values that I find critical. You need to be able to put yourself in someone's position when you're interacting with them. For example, with a client - I learned that very early on in my career. I was in search & rescue. When the client is telling you something, that's the situation they're currently experiencing from their point of view. It's up to you to recognize what that means and figure out what the proper response it.
So, I have to understand. Empathy is about taking a step in somebody else's shoes. And when a Canadian, a client, a citizen tells us something, that's the way they see it. It's not about telling them 'you're wrong'. It's about understanding how they see it and then how do you express yourself back to them. Empathy is about your boss, for instance. How do you put yourself in your boss's shoes? When I've had to deal with deputy ministers - their jobs are complex, difficult to understand if you don't have all the context, which you often won't have. But you have to appreciate what spot they're in. And so you have to understand: what's the information I need to present to help them figure out what they need to do.
Your colleagues. Your colleagues, the colleague that has no time for you to. I just lost my microphone. (.) Back on the air.
Your colleagues need to understand, you need to understand how your colleagues feel about something. So you are perhaps putting something forward that is controversial, that will affect their program, that'll affect what they deliver. You need to understand how they're going to feel about that so that again, it's being respectful about how you're going to take their concerns. And they may be personal concerns and they may be actual programmatic concerns, whatever. Appreciating that it's going to be very important.
And then finally your employees. You have to be empathetic to your employees' situations. So the personal, what your employees' experience is in their work, you need to understand where they are. A deputy minister once told me that one of the things that you've got to remember is: put yourself back into the shoes of the employee when you were an employee and how would you like to be treated. And you actually need to pause and think that through. So, a lot of times in the day-to-day pressures of our work environment, we don't spend the time to just step back and say "ok, how's that person feeling about this?" These are simple things.
I had a situation not long ago where, you know, there's a snowstorm forecast. So the employee is worried about how are they going to get their kids to daycare because the school buses aren't running, all that stuff. Your obvious kind of position is: "ok, so how can I help you out so you can still do your job and not be worrying?" And this case here, it was, you know, "work from home." I mean it's a simple solution that's within the power of the manager. You can just go do that. But you actually have to appreciate how they're feeling as opposed to how you're feeling.
(Interviewer)
It makes a lot of sense.
To think about it from a body, heart and mind perspective:
What is it that somebody is thinking? What are they feeling? What do they need? It's essential to any sort of negotiation or collaboration. I need to know what the other side is looking for as well. So we talked about: respect, courage, empathy. Is there an example from your career where a particular challenge that you faced would resonate with our audience and serve as a practical tip for DGs?
(Pablo Sobrino)
Well, it happens all the time, it really occurs in most every case. There was one instance where I was asked to transfer from one position to another. In fact, they didn't ask: I received a letter of offer. I wasn't happy because they didn't discuss it with me beforehand. They just assigned me without consulting me. And I was already a manager then, I knew that I could appeal the decision. But the person I had to appeal to was a deputy minister. In fact, it was the deputy minister who had signed the letter. So really, there wasn't much to be done about it.
That, for me, was a lack of respect - to not consult me about how I wanted to advance my career, whether it would be good for my career or not, and so on. I remembered that going forward. I got over my displeasure really quickly and I jumped into the job with both feet. And when I look back, I see that it was a good opportunity. But it didn't feel like it at the time. So that's one example of how I was personally affected by a lack of respect that shaped how I would act when I was faced with such a decision.
Those are the kinds of personal examples, powerful examples. The other one is with clients. This is an old example: How many people have experienced in their office, somebody calls and it's the wrong number? And so there are three ways of handling it. One of them is: "it's the wrong number" and hang up. The other one: "here's the right number" and hang up. And the third one is: "why don't you hold while I connect you to the right person." And the person, the client, the Canadian that asks that question, trying to connect that phone number, they will remember that the Public Service of Canada speaks with one voice and is respectful if you connect them through. You take care of the problem of them not being able to get somebody.
So, to me that's an example of exactly the kind of simple thing that can be done. And how do you create that in your office, in your environment, is lead by example. I have been at my desk when I hear the phone ring and somebody gets the phone and says it's not the right number. And I'll shout out: "connect them to the right number!" Those are the kinds of things that you can do, very simple things that just respect - respect the people that are working with you. The message gets passed to your staff very quickly that that's what your expectation is. Those are the kinds of things that I - an example, for instance, of how I did that.
The other example is interacting with ministers. I've had the privilege of working in regions, where out in the region you tend to interact with ministers more than you might at headquarters, at a lower level. And working with ministers is: ministers come in and they're worried and nervous about stuff. And I remember sitting in a car and getting asked, quizzed about all kinds of questions to do with - nothing to do with our department - but it had to do with kind of the environment in the province I was working at. I was told this was going to happen, and it's nerve-wracking.
I did this a couple of times and I was trying to figure out, you know, where this has all come from. Well what it came from is, it was nerves, the minister was nervous. The minister was off to do a presentation somewhere and it was the jitters before. And the way they act it out was these million questions that you couldn't necessarily answer. I sat down in the car and the minister was there and it started again. And I said: "Minister, I know why you're doing this. It's because you're getting ready for your speech. Why don't we work on your speech and go through it." And the minister laughed and said: "You know, you're right." And, we built a relationship at that point.
It's kind of an interesting thing that when you actually are true to people's feelings and you respect them and you provide that advice, you have the courage, you actually get an incredible kind of experience out of that. And I learned those lessons all along through my career. So it happens all the time.
(Interviewer)
The empathy for how the human being in front of you is feeling, respect for their time and their needs and the courage to speak up and say: "Hey, can I help with this", as opposed to simply deferring when the minister or the person in front of us actually needed something else. I noted your point as well about sort of a one-knock approach which is that if somebody comes knocking on the door of the federal government, it's not up to them to figure out how we're structured. They shouldn't have to do research.
If we know how to get somebody somewhere, let's connect them, let's make sure we have that person call back and so on.
When you talk about courage, and some of the examples, there's a risk. There's a risk in talking, telling, sharing something, the courage to share something with your staff, to speak truth to power. People have been sensitive about that. Governments come and go. There are different deputy ministers, directors come and go. Can you share a little bit about the risk about who I'm talking to, how I address that in order to speak truth to power and speak truth to the people who are reporting to me?
(Pablo Sobrino)
Right. So let's get this straight. In government, you can hardly ever get fired for doing something wrong. So let's just be clear. I hope everybody gets a laugh out of that. The question is.
(Interviewer)
It makes me feel calmer for the interview!
(Pablo Sobrino)
It's reputational [that] is the risk . Generally it's your own personal reputation that may be affected by that. To me, risk is about managing that risk. It's not about avoiding the risk but managing the risk. Let's say I have something relatively confidential that I want to share with my employees. Well, I will let them know that it's relatively confidential and this is how I want them to treat it. A lot of people will share something with their employees and not actually let them know what the boundaries are. And that's kind of one piece. There's that element of trust. With risk comes trust. And you need to trust people to manage that risk.
The other thing is when you're speaking truth to power, which is often the most risky thing, is picking the right place. Telling somebody they're wrong is not to be done. Whether it's with colleagues, with subordinates and with your boss, you don't do that in a crowd. You have to do that privately. You're not trying to embarrass them. You're trying to give them honest feedback, honest truth, honest views.
You also have to keep in mind that that person that you're trying to tell them something may have some other context that you're unaware of. And you need to make sure that when you're framing your speaking truth to power, that you allow an avenue for an explanation or acceptance of your advice. So risk - you have to manage that risk. The risk isn't really in presenting it. It's how you present it. That's, to me, where I find that the risks have to be dealt with.
(Interviewer)
When we look at a Public Service Employees' Survey, the most recent one in 2017, across the Public Service, 75% of employees or respondents would agree that overall, "my department treats me with respect," overall. That's great and yet there's a gap. "Overall I like my job" said 78%. "I have support at work to balance my work and personal life," speaks to a degree to the empathy. That's at 72. We drop to 66 when we talk about "I'm encouraged to be innovative or take initiative at work." It sounds like courage and risk.
(Pablo Sobrino)
You're right. What you have to do to create an environment for innovation is you have to give people room to make mistakes. And the only way you can do that is managing the risk for them. They have to feel safe to take the innovative approach. And you have to put the frame around it to make sure that they have the space to do that. So what does that mean?
I remember in something we were doing in Procurement, [it was] sort of a different approach to procuring services. And in those services, what they were trying to do is come up with a model to reduce the amount of paperwork that people have to go through and they boiled it down to 2 sheets instead of 50 pages' worth of stuff you had to define in requirements.
And that group put that all together and were given the space and some resources to actually get that together. And then they were able to go out to industry and consult. They were given the space to ask the questions, to research the possibilities. I would not have been able to - they would not have been able to do that if I had been risk-averse, because the reason that we have 50 pages of process is to manage the danger of challenges under trade agreements and things like that for the bids that would come in.
You have to give people space to do things so that they can come up with solutions. And then the question is . Then I have a job to do which is to make sure that the policy that supports them can actually be implemented and that those innovations can then become the way we do business. But I think that's true in any kind of innovative role. The boss's job is to provide the space, the boundary, the frame of reference so that the innovations can be explored and to protect that group from the people who are risk-averse. And that's kind of the frame that you have to provide.
(Interviewer)
I think you've reinforced the thinking of a lot of our viewers. And you've probably also challenged the perspective of several in the idea that it is the boss's job to create that space for innovation by acknowledging that there is a risk involved and that there is a benefit to moving forward into that zone.
(Pablo Sobrino)
Right. And I think the biggest thing is being able to protect your team from the naysayers which are always going to be there. Everybody, always when you take innovative approaches, there are always going to be people who want the good old way. And you have a role to play there, and to brief the system as to why you're giving them space, all those kinds of things.
(Interviewer)
We have 10 minutes remaining. If you have a question for Pablo Sobrino, please chime in.
If you just want to click on the Participate button, write out a question - we will try to work that and make sure we get a chance for Pablo to answer in the 10 minutes or so that are remaining. Great!
We haven't dealt yet with a key question:
Employee engagement. And there's of course a difference between employee compliance, employee buy-in and employee engagement.
(Pablo Sobrino)
Right.
(Interviewer)
The latter being indicated if we look at the Gallup poll identifying that in an organization - in the top half of organizations, in those with the highest rankings for employee engagement versus the lower half - we find that the higher group, the organizations that are more engaged have virtually an extra day a week of productivity and an extra two days a week of quality.
(Pablo Sobrino)
Right.
(Interviewer)
What do you want to say about that?
(Pablo Sobrino)
So very simply, I mean engaging employees is - I'd like to say is easy. You have to make them feel included. You have to trust them with information. You need to provide direction - and direction meaning: where they're going, what their purpose is, to understand, appreciate the greater good that they provide. Right now I'm in an organization that is Finance. And Finance is a supporting organization. What is it they're supporting? Like what is it that they're actually contributing to? That's the piece that you have to do.
And you have to - and this is easy to say - is you have to have an open door. You need to have a place where people can come to you with their ideas, their concerns, and you need to be able to communicate openly with them about how you might respond to those concerns. There are things you can't do and there are many things you can do. But I like to say that I will tell you what I can do. I'll tell you what I can't do. And I'll tell you if I can't tell you and I'll tell you why I can't tell you.
So those are kind of the three rules I have. But the thing is about building a culture of respect, because what you have at the end of the day - if you want employees to be engaged, they want to know that you care about them. They want to know that you respect their view. And they want to know that you've given them a place where they can exercise their courage to let you know what you might not want to know. . I think if you do those things, then you have employee engagement. And then you'll get that extra day of work a week out of them.
(Interviewer)
Not only demonstrating those things yourself but in fact modelling them and encouraging them in others, looking to them for respect, courage and empathy.
(Pablo Sobrino)
Absolutely.
(Interviewer)
This makes a lot of sense. Often we hear that employee engagement is tied to a number of things. A few of them that jump out are the notion that employees have a chance to contribute, that they get a chance to use their strengths, and that they have an appropriate degree of autonomy. What jumps to mind for you with those?
(Pablo Sobrino)
Well I mean the thing about using people's strengths is absolutely cornerstone - it's the key, right. What you want to do is take advantage of your employees' strengths and their knowledge to advance the organization's goals. There's no question that that's a piece. The innovation piece and autonomy, that's all the same thing. To me it's about letting people have the responsibility and giving them the responsibility and the accountability to deliver on what they have to deliver.
(Interviewer)
We have a question from.
Here it is, from a viewer: to what extent is it realistic and desirable to be, so to speak, an authentic leader?
Being an authentic leader - and you've been discussing that in your responses to some of the questions. To what extent is that realistic? To what extent is it desirable?
(Pablo Sobrino)
Totally. It is the most real. If you can't be yourself in doing your work, you are not serving anybody well.
It's important to be completely authentic. I've shared this many times: people need to understand that even at the assistant deputy minister level, there are days where you don't know what to do. There are days where you're afraid of what needs to be done, and days where you don't know what should be done.
And you need to be - if you can't admit that to yourself and your team, you're not being authentic. You're going to struggle and your team is not going to be able to help you.
An example I have is "the file." So for those on the webcast - you know the inbox that's got the big pile and there's the stinky file and the roll: whatever popped up to the top of my folder, my inbox, I just flip it over so that the stinky file stayed at the bottom. And then finally, I didn't know what to do. And I finally called my management team together and I said: "I got this file - it's not really to be assigned to anybody. But I have to do something with it."
Well it's amazing. You know, [the] six or eight DGs that I had around the table, they all came to and they said: "ok, this is how we're going to. Here's a suggestion on how to approach it." And we kind of problem-solved it. And suddenly, after feeling alone and not knowing what to do, I had a team that was solving the problem for me because I really didn't know what to do. You can only do that if you're authentic.
(Interviewer)
Truly. And it's a testament as well to the notion that different perspectives are of value. Diversity of opinions, perspectives.
(Pablo Sobrino)
Absolutely.
(Interviewer)
It won't surprise you:
Some participants, many in fact, are asking to hear more about how to speak truth to power.
What is the practical step? We've got a DG, we've got a director in the room who needs, feels like they need to speak truth to power. What are the practical things they can do this afternoon, tomorrow, the rest of the week?
(Pablo Sobrino)
Ok. The easiest way to speak truth to power is: first, have your version of the truth and recognize that it is your version of the truth. You may not have the bigger context. Do your research to understand why there might be different opinions and where those different opinions come from. And when you present that, present it in a safe space where the person you're presenting to doesn't feel threatened. And explain why you're concerned, why you think your view should be taken into consideration, and appreciate that your decision, whether you briefed up properly, having briefed up properly, whatever the decision ends up being, you still have to loyally implement.
Now the big problem is often directors know what might be wrong with a program, and they brief up. And the DG doesn't seem to pass the message on to the ADM, because they're scared to or because they don't feel it's relevant. And so that question there - you need to find out, you need to work on how do you brief up. And if the DG is the roadblock, remember that you're a director amongst many directors. You're part of a network. If you're truly concerned about things, you need to find avenues through a network because there are lots of places advice goes up the line. And I'm not talking about being insubordinate. I'm talking about ensuring that the advice does make its way through the system.
At the end of the day, decisions are made at senior levels because there are other things that are at play and that's why they brief - the advice is provided in a particular way. And at the end of the day, decisions are taken with a whole bunch of different inputs and that's the decision that's taken. And then you have to implement that decision. However, you need some assurance yourself that your advice has been considered. And that is part of the work that you have to do, especially at the bottom. It's harder to believe that your advice was taken when they do the complete opposite of what you think should be done. It's not a black and white issue. It's a very grey issue.
(Interviewer)
In other words, speaking truth to power doesn't mean that our truth will be accepted as such.
(Pablo Sobrino)
Yes, exactly, because there are many different sides to the truth. There are many truths. So it's not a math problem, it's a sociology or political science problem. There's a lot more leeway in the way recommendations can be implemented.
(Interviewer)
It's a challenge then to realize that I have spoken my truth; someone in a different perspective with a different level of authority - it could be a colleague or a client - has considered that and then is moving on. And it's not my job to ensure that they oblige me. It's my job to make sure they've heard me.
(Pablo Sobrino)
Yes, absolutely.
(Interviewer)
And then as you said, I need to faithfully implement. There's a question about. Our last question is: If you're working in an organization - the question, frankly, from the audience is: "How do you cure a sick organization?" Perhaps we should do a session starting with that. But the idea is: how does a DG influence the culture around them when they don't feel like there are a lot of allies?
(Pablo Sobrino)
Engage. That is: get in there. If your organization is sick, get out on the floor. Talk to every individual. Make yourself accessible. Have sessions once a week where you can chat with employees. Brownbag lunches. Have your door open. You need to invest in people, so that means you need to get other people to do your work. Directors work, that's what directors do. Directors implement, DGs direct. So make sure that you're engaged with your people.
And that to me, an engagement is really about building relationships. That's the first thing. In a sick organization, you need to figure out why it's sick. And a lot of times, I would say 95% of the time, it's communication. People don't know what they're there for, don't understand why decisions were made, don't feel things are transparent. Communication is what makes all that go away.
If the organization is sick across the organization - so you have DGs that aren't working together and things like that - well, that has an ADM role to it. But DGs can do their best as well at engagement, which is to engage with the colleagues, to understand their colleagues' issues, to be able to work across the system that way. ADM inherits a sick organization - the same thing: again it's reaching down through the organization. To me, the way to cure a sick organization, the first step is engaging your employees, understanding where they're coming from and how they're feeling.
(Interviewer)
Ironically, that's also the way to best improve a healthy organization.
(Pablo Sobrino)
Yep. To me, it's any organization. If you want a high-performing organization, the way to get a high performance is to talk to everybody who is going to perform in it, that's all.
(Interviewer)
It makes a lot of sense. A last word. Anything come to mind for you that you want to share?
(Pablo Sobrino)
Well it's been great talking about this. To me, public service - people need to never forget that why we're here is to serve Canadians. And if you have that greater purpose in your mind, no matter whether you're a clerk, a director or a DG, you won't lose track of why you're there. And that's an important thing. I think people lose track of why they're in the job they are [in]. And it's not about a salary. It's about serving Canadians.
(Interviewer)
Bravo! Thank you. We've been speaking with Pablo Sobrino, a seasoned public servant. .That's a nice way of saying that you've earned that grey beard, I think.
Not only a seasoned public servant but also the kind of leader people want to work with. Pablo, thank you very much for your time. Great insights.
(Pablo Sobrino)
Thanks.
