Rebel Podcast: Life and Work on Your Terms

RHR132: 90% of Leadership Books are BS with Dr. Brad Harris

December 27, 2022 Kyle Roed, The HR Guy Season 3 Episode 132
Rebel Podcast: Life and Work on Your Terms
RHR132: 90% of Leadership Books are BS with Dr. Brad Harris
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Dr. Brad Harris is a Professor of Management and Human Resources at HEC Paris, the Co-Founder of People Leader Accelerator, and the Managing Partner at TrailHead Consulting.

Brad’s scholarly reputation is built on his contributions to understanding team dynamics and the people/HR-related processes that help organizations thrive, but arguably his most important work—and inarguably his greatest professional passion—is helping current and aspiring leaders find their purpose, scale their impact, and maximize their potential.

Brad expertly weaves insights from his decade-plus as an organizational researcher with his rich experiences working with HR executives to deliver powerful lessons that push leaders to understand, and ultimately overcome, the hidden tensions that stifle growth.

Brad is an award-winning, internationally recognized teacher in the areas of HR, teams, and leadership. He has co-authored two books, 3D Team Leadership: A New Approach for Complex Teams (Stanford, 2017) and Scaling for Success: People Priorities for High Growth Organizations (Columbia, 2021). He holds a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University. 

Brad and his wife live in Paris with their three children. Outside of work, Brad is an avid runner and a passionate advocate for individuals with special needs. Prior to becoming a professor, his claim to fame was riding in an elevator with rock musician Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana).

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradharrisphd/
https://www.seriesbconsulting.com/
https://www.peopleleaderaccelerator.com/

Rebel HR is a podcast for HR professionals and leaders of people who are ready to make some disruption in the world of work.

We'll be discussing topics that are disruptive to the world of work and talk about new and different ways to approach solving those problems.

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Brad Harris:

Sometimes saying no keeps everyone from going down some really, really frustrating path. And you know what, it's a lot better to say no to someone early than have them work on a project for three months only to find out like, you know, I don't think we're going to do that we've got some other priorities. It takes practice. And I suggest before you go to work and start practicing, saying no, try to say no, what other contexts, say no to tangential things that are sort of low stakes in your community at home. I mean, be careful with your spouse, but work on how you say no, you can be kind about it, but you need to be direct. Also.

Kyle Roed:

This is the rebel HR Podcast, the podcast where we talk to HR innovators about all things people leadership. If you're looking for places to find about new ways to think about the world of work, this is the podcast for you. Please subscribe on your favorite podcast listening platform today. And leave us a review revelon HR rebels Welcome back. revelator. Our listeners extremely excited for the conversation today. We have with us Dr. Brad Harris. He is a professor of management and human resources at HEC Paris and co founder of people leader accelerator. He's got a ton of other super cool accomplishments. We'll let him explain those to us. Welcome to the show, Brad.

Brad Harris:

Hey, thanks for having me, Kyle.

Kyle Roed:

Well, we're extremely excited to have you. And we're gonna be talking all about helping HR leaders grow today. And but before we get into it, I want to understand a little bit more about your background. So what brought you where you are today?

Brad Harris:

Why it's not a straightforward story. So right now I'm a professor at HEC Paris. So this is for those of more US centric or not up to date on kind of like business school rankings and stuff. This is often considered like one of the top business schools in the world, very international program. So it's in Paris, France, not Paris, Texas, or Paris, Tennessee, or anything like that. But they do all of their instruction in English, I do not speak French. So that's super, super critical to my effectiveness. It took me a while to get to this place, especially this focus on management in HR. When I grew up, I wanted to be everything from a youth minister to a basketball coach, biological scientist, all these things. And only now can I look back and see the through lines were like, Okay, you're kind of a skeptical person, you'd like to ask questions, you don't take things for, you don't like to take things at face value, which is good from our research, the research side of my job, and you really like to help people grow, which is super important for my interactions with my students. And now with my interactions with our executives that go through people leader accelerator, I'll say quickly, also, like most of my job is in the weeds research. what makes people tick, what kind of practices drive performance, whether that's individual performance or organizational performance. But I had an opportunity to write a book that I didn't really want to write, I just kind of liked the person that was pitching it to me, called Scaling for success with Andrew Bartlow, one of your prior guest. Yep. And it kind of landed Well, it was fun. It was interesting. It was super practical. I enjoyed it. We became friends. And we just said like, you know what? I'm not really sure who reads a book. Like I hope people read the book. But you know, we're busy. So why don't we create this program, and we call it people leader accelerator, and we work with Carmela Krantz and Marie shoots. And it's become like a cool thing. We now have free or we're on our fourth cohort through this awesome

Kyle Roed:

apps. Absolutely. And had a ton of fun interviewing Andrew, on the on the podcast, you know, it's, I think, a really important book. And, and, and I think really important, especially in today's environment, if you want to check out that episode, you can learn more about it. It's called It's episode 70. And it's called Scaling for success with Andrew Bartlow. So feel free if you want to make a note and check that out, encourage you to, to go back and do that. It's actually one of our most popular episodes. And I think the reason for that is we're all looking for those types of answers right now. Right? You know, it's it's, the world seems to be moving more quickly and more quickly. HR is continued to be challenged to, you know, hire enough people. Yeah, make sure your processes are on point, managed through this disruption. Hey, make sure nobody gets sick with COVID. Let's figure out how to handle social unrest. And oh, by the way, you need to continue to grow your own personal leadership so so as we manage through all of these these disruptors and all of the kind of the required innovation, Brad, what are some of the things that we need to be thoughtful of as HR leaders in our organizations?

Brad Harris:

Yeah, that's a wonderful question. I'm going to point to this really, really basic principle that we as leaders need to be ruthless, prioritize errs of what's important and where we're going to spend our own, but also our team's time, talent and energy. So that's, that's one way we talked about human capital, time, talent and energy. And, look, I love my job in academia. But we are slow. Like, it's a, it's a flaw, like we advanced science at a snail's pace. And maybe that's, like, insulting to snails. But I get when I start talking to practitioners, and these people were helping, and then I get involved in their LinkedIn networks. And you know, you start seeing things that they're seeing. I don't want to be like, you guys. I mean, I want to be smart, like you, I want to be important and all those things, but man you get every day, it's something new. It's a global pandemic, it's some social thing that we've got it, we feel a lot of pressure that we need to speak out, or even if it's not really core to what our business is trying to do. And, and the amount of HR tech out there, that's pitching us on, like, how do we do things different, it's too much to process. And I can totally understand how very competent leaders feel like, this is too much, I can never do this. And then of course, everything is made worse because we we use LinkedIn and these places where we're seeing people's code, carefully cultivated images that makes it look like they got all their stuff together. And so like if you were ever predisposition to feeling like an imposter, well, like our sources of information, make it worse. So it's all about ruthless prioritization. What can you do? And what can you what are the three to five things, I'll put a number on it that your organization can be doing that really, really move the needle for what's important, and all the other stuff is just survive.

Kyle Roed:

There's so much golden in like that last like two minutes. And and there's like, you know, we don't have time to even dig into like, a third of that on on this one podcast. But I love the way that you turned it ruthless prioritization. And I think that that's a really, really powerful concept. And, you know, as I reflect on it, I mean, I, I, you know, literally yesterday, I had one of those moments where it's like, there's so much going on, I literally had to disconnect, and just spend like, 10 minutes, doing nothing. But sorting out all of the different things flying through my head. Or I knew that the next meeting I went to went into I was going to be completely worthless. Right. But I don't know, you know, I think one of my challenges, and I'm sure many of our listeners have the challenges. We know we need to take breaks, but we don't necessarily have a great understanding of how best to prioritize. So What recommendations would you have as we think about okay, we understand we need to be focused.

Brad Harris:

Yeah, of course,

Kyle Roed:

where does that focus? Like, where do we start? Where does the focus really start? And how do we, how do we sort through all of the noise to figure out the most important things?

Brad Harris:

Okay. Let me think so this is Rebel HR, right? And so like, I'm supposed to be a little controversial, a little edgy. And hey, man, just for you. Well, my version of that, like I did prep for this car, my version is like I woke up, read the Wall Street Journal, eight mile look for socks. We're here in Paris. And then I told my wife, hey, I'm not shaving today, because I'm going on rebel HR. So hey, I didn't shave either. So there Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, I don't know if your podcast listeners can handle that level of rebellion. Okay, but that's about where it stops with me. I guess it is a little controversial, though, what I'm going to say is, like the, the most rebellious thing I think you can do is if you're one of these people that has a bunch of audio books on leadership, or you've got a big bookshelf of books on leadership, you should take about 90% of those, and you should donate them, Don't burn them or anything, but you should donate them to your little neighborhood library. And know that you just made yourself more competitive because there's a bunch of other suckers out there that are going to read a bunch of stuff that doesn't help. What we can say, is like, we have these models, and I made fun of my profession, academia for moving slow, but we have these models that have worked for decades. And yeah, some of the language needs to change and some of the specific tools we use changes, but a lot of the principles are still the most powerful drivers of performance and business outcomes today. So, you know, don't be afraid to slow down. Take a look at what's already been done. And figure out what makes make sense for your context. I would also add, and this is this is super intuitive, but we're backwards. Like when I design a class you all always, not always. But what you should do is think about what are the learning outcomes? And then how do I build a curriculum around that? And how do I actually deliver it? What we do in HR when we get really, really busy, and I'm in the high growth context. So maybe there's some qualifiers I should add here. But one thing that I see, and it happens for the organization itself, but also the leaders in this space, is we get overwhelmed, we see something breaks. And we're like, oh, my gosh, like, what got us here won't get us there. And that I'm talking about that at the individual level, but also at the organizational level. So what do we do? Oh, no, we're gonna go look at a model of what an HR org chart looks like. And we're going to start building out as many programs, practices, and even whole function sub functions, I guess, for what works, like let's build training development. We need an onboarding program. Okay, let's, let's throw this in there. Let's add a vendor here, do this thing. It's too much. So we need to think about like, what is the business trying to drive? Or the organizational mission? If you're a nonprofit, or something like that? What are the key mechanisms that drive that? And then what are the specific practices we can connect to it? If you could just spend even 10 minutes a day, on your run on your commute in whatever, meditating or just thinking deeply about these things, reminding yourself of it, it will help so much with how you approach conversations throughout the day. And the clarity in which you, you exercise decision?

Kyle Roed:

Absolutely, I think it's a really powerful concept. I guarantee you. Well, I'm about 99% Sure, that nobody who's recently written a book has ever told me you should throw out like, 90% of those books.

Brad Harris:

Yeah. I also meant to clarify, like, mine is the exception. Right? So I've got to like those should say, I'm sure

Kyle Roed:

Andrew appreciates that. Yeah. No, but, you know, I think that's a really powerful concept. It's like, you know, so it, I think it goes to the point you made earlier, which is like the whole the imposter syndrome. And like, everybody's perfectly cultivated, airbrushed social media feed on LinkedIn, or Facebook, or, you know, Instagram or wherever, wherever you consume that content. And it's like, it's so easy to think like, oh, they have the perfect family, they have the perfect job, they have all the answers. Right? Well, you know, there are actually some scientifically validated answers out there, you know, to the extent that the scientific method lets us believe that something is true, which is, again, a whole nother podcast, but some of this stuff has been proven to work. Yeah. Right. And you don't have to reinvent, reinvent the wheel. And I don't know about you, but I also feel like a lot of the, you know, a lot of these books and I am guilty, like, like almost every book I read is some sort of like a business book, or, you know, it's although lately I've been more into like biographies, I think that might be even more powerful than some of these like, self help books. But it to me, it all feels like it's just like derivatives. Right? It's like it but but at the root of it, there's like this. There's this kernel of like, proven leadership that actually, that actually works. And it's just trying to figure out which one works for your scenario, your situation?

Brad Harris:

Yeah, look, I am a big fan of books, even the ones that I'm sort of suggesting, like, may not add as much value. So you want but like when we go to the airport, and we pick out a book, you're right, we need to be trying to surface the common things that actually makes sense for organization. A lot of leadership books, especially. And I'm not talking about your version of biographies here. But they're written by people that have had a lot of success. And there's a lot of survivorship and retrospective bias that's embedded in. And you can say the same for my work, too. We are all just collections of stories that we kind of make up amongst ourselves in a way that makes sense. Otherwise, we go crazy. So it's not a bad thing. But like, you cannot go out there trying to be the next Elon Musk or something like this. I mean, like, yeah, maybe he's brilliant, all this stuff. But, you know, some of these ideas are actually crazy. And they only work because you have billions of dollars in financing. Right? So not all of us have that luxury.

Kyle Roed:

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you could try to be Elon Musk. But for every Elon Musk, there's, there's 1000s of non Elon Musk's that have said the same thing or tried a similar thing. Right?

Brad Harris:

Right. So you're right, though, we have to look for the lessons embedded in these and not like, lift and shift something that worked for this person and put it on our own lives.

Kyle Roed:

Absolutely. And I also love the idea, you know, the the idea of working backwards, right? And I think so often, and I hate this, it's like, so many people complain to me like, well, I don't have the business cloud or you know, I'm not I don't have the proverbial seat at the table or, you know, you hear that all the time. And my my response to that is almost always the same. It's Like, well, how are you adding value? Right. And the only way that you really add value is if you're, you're you fit within the strategy of the organization you're supporting, right? So you can't come in with your own personal agenda, if that doesn't help support the organization you're supporting, right? And so often we, we miss it, we miss that step. And we just, we try to cookie cutter, something that we did last company, into our current company, what we end up doing is just reverberating these structures that have been around for 40 years and probably outdated. That's, that's my two cents.

Brad Harris:

I bet you've raised a good point like we we want that seat of the table, we struggled to get it. And you know that I'm talking about the thought process of like working backwards, there's still this whole other issue of even when you know how you add value? How do you go into that room where the table is, and convince your CFO that you're worth listening to? Or get words in when the chief marketing officers the number one person there right cares about because they're in charge of the sales function? So there's a lot at play here. And I And you made a comment about it earlier. But like, we are academics, teachers, like when we get these short formats, like we have this, this luxury of being able to give out phrases and cute cliche, is that really, they make it sound like okay, that's the ticket. But but there's a whole lot of messy work that goes into it, you know?

Kyle Roed:

Yeah, that's that, you know what, that is the right word for leadership, messy. My finger, there's no, I mean, there's, there's all sorts of models and systems and structures. But we're dealing with people, right? I mean, we're leading people, people are not, you know, really common sense structures. I mean, we're all irrational and emotional. And, and, and we're not logical in many, in many cases. So you know, it's like, you're trying to, you're trying to force a black and white system restructure or whatever the latest thing is, into something that it's not a binary system. Right. So, yes, and I think, I think everybody listening to this probably gets that right, like HR. I mean, HR is messy. Leadership is messy, like, it's all really messy. So. So I think what we're talking about here is really it's like, it's like, wading through the mess wading through the muck. Right. So, so, you've, you've taught a lot of people, you've done a ton of research, you know, I'm, you teach at a prestigious school. I've got to believe that you've seen, you've seen these common characteristics between people who have successfully waded through the messiness. So what are some of those observations that you've seen? Or what are some of those models that you consider to be the models that actually work?

Brad Harris:

Okay, there's a lot to unpack there. So I've been I've taught undergrads, MBA students are still pretty Junior in the career Executive MBA species, students, and then with people lead accelerator, people that are already in these top jobs. Many of them are absolutely brilliant. And I will say that is not the only criteria you have to meet. But that is super helpful when you've got a lot of cognitive horsepower. But, you know, this thing is fairly, we can learn a lot, but our cognitive horsepower, stroke is stable. So we will just leave that be I suspect, people that are listening to this podcast are pretty smart. So what happens, I think, first, you have to be in the right mindset, like you got to be ready to listen, you got to be ready to learn. But you also have to be ready to say, like, I am ready to take on this messiness. And this is what I don't think I could have appreciated as an undergraduate, or even sort of a younger MBA student, myself, and I suspect others are like this. There is rarely a single right answer, there's probably lots of wrong and they're unequivocally wrong. But the answer when we deal with humans is almost always it depends. Unfortunately, that's a totally insufficient answer. We have to be able to say, okay, it depends. And then whether we're making it up or we're just having a moment of boldness, or we actually understand the framework, we have to have the courage to say, these are the questions I need to ask to figure out what it depends on. And then I have to have enough courage to take a step forward and see what happens. And so this, I think this is a big break down spot for a lot of people. They want models, they want frameworks that tell us this is what you do. This is how it's going to work out. This is what you do next. Look, we we debated for a little bit on this book that we wrote like call it the people playbook and there were various reasons we decided like that's not it like that. We want scaling for success. And I think one reason we stayed away from the playbook was like we are not good We need a playbook we're telling you these are the two or three basic ideas that you need to focus on. Or you probably need to focus on, this is what your organization is going through what that actually looks like, well, you're smart, you can think critically, this is where you have to go. So you got to be self aware about what motivates you, your tendencies, these sorts of things. As a leader, you have to do some sort of painful and uncomfortable discovery of how others see you. You got to figure out what's negotiable there. Like some of these things are actually values. Like we were talking before the call about how some of us we say, yeah, and and all these things were in conversation. And we made a joke, like, that's just who I am, I'm not changing it. Well, it's ironic that I just did one of these things. That actually is probably not who you are, that is probably not like a deep underlying value of who you are. So we could probably worked to scrap that. And it doesn't have to feel like you've just discarded some important part of yourself. Alas, this work, really, really, the idea of becoming a leader is different. Because what you're saying is, if you're being kind to yourself, like I've done a lot of good things, but what got me here won't get you there. We've said that before. But if you want to be somebody else, you've got to kind of shed a lot of who you were. And it's hard. Like, it's very difficult to distinguish between the behaviors that make us comfortable and the values we actually hold. And I've had these moments in my teaching career, it's like, you know what, you gotta quit trying to be the funny guy. Like, I don't know if you think being funny is a value or not. But I think what you were trying to get there is connecting with your audience. And there's better ways to do that than trying to be the funny guy in front of the classroom, one you're older than they are to like, you're, you're not really that funny. And three, like, you've got a diverse audience like this stuff doesn't play the same. So yeah, I've given you a lot there. But this is, this is some common threads kind of off the cuff of what people go through.

Kyle Roed:

Absolutely. And I think it is. It's a really powerful thought process to think through. That there is not a right answer. Oh, there's, there's, there's many wrong answers.

Brad Harris:

It's terrifying. But look, that's it. Like if I told you like, three, in late 1980s, maybe early 1990s. But we'll say late 1980s. There's three Jewish kids in New York, at least two of them are going to private schools, and they decide that they're white Jewish kids, just to put some stereotypes on there and help you imagine this. They're in New York, the center of the hip hop world, they're like at think, you know, when if we take some time off to school, and we form like, this alternative metal rat band or something like that? You know, that sounds ridiculous, right? That's stupid. No way that works well, that this group ended up being the Beastie Boys. And like, you know, there weren't any right answers. There were probably lots of wrong answer. So, you know, this kind of goes against my critique of survivorship bias and leadership stories, but like, it does take some boldness and courage to achieve these great things. And HR, like it can be our moments of boldness don't have to be starting to be the next Beastie Boys, they can be something like, You know what, I have a clear understanding what the business is trying to do. And today, I'm going to walk into that meeting where the table is, and people are questioning whether I belong there. And I'm going to display confidence. And this is a big one, Kyle, I'm actually going to tell somebody no today. And you can do that kindly. Like you don't have to say, heck, no CFO, I'm not doing your stupid thing. You can say, hey, I, I hear you. I think that could be important, but not yet. Or you could push back and say, you know, that's a really important idea. I think your group should be having some interventions with your your first time managers. I want to empower you to get that done yourself, because that's your job. Like we can't take it all off.

Kyle Roed:

Yeah. So I want to talk about, I want to talk about that a little bit. Because I, you know, I'm from the Midwest, we were talking about this before we hit record, and you know, part of my values, which we we talked about a little bit earlier, are being what we call Iowa. Nice or Midwest. Nice. Right. And so one of the biggest challenges that I had, especially as an emerging leader was, how do I say no? And when do I say no? And then it took me a while to figure out that sometimes saying no, is actually nice. And so let's dig into that a little bit. Because I do think that's a critical leadership component that a lot of people really struggle with, especially early in their career.

Brad Harris:

Yeah, you're not loan there. So I saw that too. I'm from Texas, and then I went to school. After my master's, I went to Florida, which is in Central Florida. So it's kind of like the southeast. But so and then I worked at the University of Illinois. So I've been to these, these sort of areas where it's really important to be nice. And a lot of times, that just means being polite. It doesn't really mean being honest or anything like that. In fact, like, you know, anytime in the south when someone says, Well bless her heart, like they're about to drop the hammer here, if they don't really mean that. So, so I get where you're coming from. Look, I like the Midwest. So I'm cool with Iowa. Nice. We also have to say, bonjour here in Paris, before you do anything, which is a nice day, because they will, they will also just cut you deeply, right after the pleasantries are over. Ah, so what do we do? Well, I think we have to take on a mindset, that clarity is kindness. And so I think this is where you're going, sometimes saying, No, keeps everyone from going on down some really, really frustrating path. And you know what, it's a lot better to say no to someone early than have them work on a project for three months only to find out like, you know, I don't think we're going to do that we've got some other priorities. It takes practice. And I suggest before you go to work and start practicing, saying no, try to say no, what other context, say no to tangential things that are sort of low stakes, in your community at home, I mean, be careful with your spouse, but work on how you say, No, you can be kind about it, but you need to be direct. Also, you cannot have a no that so wishy washy that comes off as a maybe or a yes. There's three P's. Have a plan for how you're going to approach these conversations. Practice them, even if it's in front of the mirror, know your tendencies to in partnership, find someone at work, that knows that you're working on being more, more of a ruthlessly or ruthless prioritize it and have them coach you through these conversations. Or, you know, in some cases, you can have an executive coach that helps you but I think in most cases, just having a friend at work that knows you're working on that can be super, super helpful for keeping you accountable and giving you feedback. Also, like if you're scared of No, I get it. And we talked about this a little bit earlier. Sometimes not yet is the answer. And sometimes not me is the answer. We HR, man, this job is tough. We get asked to solve all the problems that people didn't know how to solve. Something comes up. Sure, I'll go fix that. I'll go build a culture for you tomorrow, and I'll have it out. You know, yeah, it works. Well. Yeah. And diversity and inclusion. This is also impossible to tackle for just the HR side. This is a values thing. This we need all leaders, all employees on board for this. Don't take on stuff you got no chance on.

Kyle Roed:

Absolutely, I think I think there's there's a lot of power in in No, done right. Yeah, but I think it does, it goes right back to where we started this conversation, which is the the ruthless priorities. And if you if you don't say no to some things, then somebody else is going to be managing your prioritization, right? You're, you're going to be doing something that does not really work on those top two or three things that need to work on.

Brad Harris:

Yeah, I'm gonna jump in here. You had a prior guest, I guess several months ago now that came on and said in the light now the flash round, you know, I really want to see HR leader stop talking about other units as the business and not HR as the business. Yep. And I thought, Okay, I agree with that. I don't think I've ever heard it said that way that I really, really like where this person is headed on this. And I think not I'm going to add to it, what that what they said is perfect, as is one supplement, like you're saying, if you go into meetings, and you don't say no to people, ever? Well, that's how you get relegated to being some support function. And that's how you get relegated to being an administrative role instead of an actual strategic leader. I also want to jump in on one sort of common thing for the people that go through people leader accelerator, and I don't want to pay them too broadly with the brush. We have people that have gone to INSEAD, Stanford, the best business schools in the world in that program. They feel like imposters, even though that's ridiculous. And then we have people that at least have a better excuse for it. They're not imposters but they have a better excuse for these are people that you know they've got some unrelated business or some non business degree or they don't have a degree at all that started as an office manager for a startup. Then they keep getting promoted to bigger roles as organization grows, but before they need like a really They've built out HR functions. And there's this weird dynamic, the CEO still kind of treats him like an admin. But worst of all, they still view themselves as sort of an admin. And this is this is really a lot of the heavy lifting that we're working on is getting the confidence to see now there's no, there's no secret sauce here. And I worked at one of the best HR shops in the world, the University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations, you could take that curriculum, and you're still not going to be ready to go on this complex world that we're living in right this second. So, you know, saying no, saying Not yet. These sorts of things. This is just one idea, or one practice to make sure that you're not treating everyone else, like the business and not yourself. A lot of us are also people pleasers. Kyle, I don't know if this goes into the eye with nice or something like that. But oh, yeah, absolutely. I'm a people pleaser, too. And it got me a long way. Like, let's be kind to ourselves, like being a people pleaser, being a warrior, all these things that turned out to be like, not super helpful. They push us to do a lot of important things to take on opportunities and to prove ourselves. Good, be nice to ourselves, that's fine. But they can stand in our way later, when we're actually trying to get things done. And we're trying to have some voice and what really matters and what this business is going to focus on.

Kyle Roed:

Absolutely. It's I think there's, there's so many things to take away from, from what you just shared. And I think it's a really, really powerful. And first of all, yes, you know, we do need to have a little self love here. Right, you know, we're, we're not all broken and need to be repaired. But, but, you know, you said this a number of different times, and it's so true, you know, the skill sets that got you where you are, need to continue to evolve. And, and, you know, I think, you know, it's interesting, that comment, and maybe but you know, I hope I think everybody probably picked it up. But you know, these people who are extremely exceptional and your people leader accelerator, like these are legit, like legit people, right? And yeah, I've been following people literally, leader accelerator, I can just tell you guys, the people that are in this, they're legit. They struggle with impostor syndrome. They feel like they don't know enough or there's, there's more to learn or they're not. They're not good enough yet. Right? And if they feel that way, and you feel that way, you know, the that's okay. That just means you're growing and evolving and learning. And, you know, my perspective is like, we're all in this together. So, you know, you just got to take that, use that as some some energy to go get better every day. And, and don't let it derail you. Right? So, absolutely. Great comment. All right. Well, we have we're at time, I just want to keep talking. But we don't we don't have time. I definitely didn't I didn't get to ask but you met David role one time and I'm a huge Foo Fighters fan. And so you know, we'll have to get that on the next podcast. But I will shift gears and we'll get into the rebel HR flash round. So ready? Yeah, I'm ready. All right. Question number one. Where does HR need to rebel?

Brad Harris:

Yeah, we got to say no people, I don't I don't I won't expand too much. We just have to say no. And we've got to fight the bright shiny objects. Like there are some cool stuff out there legitimate innovations, people. But you know what, we've got these models like the job characteristics model. We know people like meeting at work, we know they like autonomy at work. We know like they'd like to feel respected. This doesn't all require new HR tech or new practices. We can do it. It'll help us be adaptable. So you know Rage Against the Machine and the machine being like trendy new HR Bad's?

Kyle Roed:

There you go. We just, I'll have to check and see if that's trademarked. But I think we just got the name of this episode. So right against the HR machine. How about that.

Brad Harris:

HR industrial complex is sort of what we're going with here. But okay,

Kyle Roed:

let's say, Okay, sounds good. Question number two, who should we be listening to?

Brad Harris:

Yeah, I listened to a few responses here. I'm going to try to be creative here. I really, really, really wanted to work in a Billy Idol reference for this rebel podcast. I can't I can't do it though. Here's what I can tell you listen to and this is sort of our self therapy for for our HR leaders that are kind of looking to grow and struggling. I want you to get your car go to your back porch, whatever you need to do. Get in the right state of mind and turn on some Tom Petty and now Tom Petty has a song it's pretty cool called rebels. So we want to stick with that thing we've been doing but just any Tom Petty. Here's what I want you to notice. I really strongly doubt that Tom Petty ever won any vocal singing competitions or anything like that. Likewise, his lyrics are surprisingly simple and not complex. And I am probably in the bottom 5% of people that kind of Know how to play guitar. And I can play a lot of Tom Petty songs. They are not fancy are complex. But what does he have? He's got a few simple things, he executes the heck out of them. He's got some of the or he did have some of the best musicians. And they were awesome. But they played simple things really, really well. So every time you hear Tom Petty, I hope you don't conflate it with HR, but I do hope you conflate it with this leadership lesson. Like simple is better.

Kyle Roed:

I love that. I love that. That's the first Tom Petty reference that I've had. But, you know, it's, I do like that you were thinking about Billy Idol. I don't know that that applies here. But, you know, to be honest, so people have asked about this in like, like my podcast cover art. Look, it's like an idol reference. Some people get that some people just think I look weird. But actually the rebel name for me, it's like, I'm such a nerd. It's more like Star Wars, you know, like, we're gonna rebel against the Empire. But you can do different ways with it too. Nerdy Kyle? Sorry, man. It is what it is. But it's also kind of oxymoron, Veronica, because it's just not really, you know, it's not really what you think about. I appreciate that we have about this we won't back down from being simple and effective.

Brad Harris:

Now you're learning today. Even the losers win sometimes, Kyle?

Kyle Roed:

All right, love it. Last question. How can our listeners connect with you and learn more?

Brad Harris:

Yeah, so you can check out people leader accelerator at people leader accelerator.com. It's not for everyone. It's for a certain person. If you want to contact me, I'm on LinkedIn, just Brad Harris. I'm at HEC Paris. Reach out. I'm not talking anything. I'm not trying to sell anything. But if I can ever help you, and it's a reasonable as you can bet, I will try to do it.

Kyle Roed:

Absolutely. Well, thank you for helping us today by giving us some really great things to consider being a little bit rebellious in some of your advice. And thanks for putting out the content with with the people leader accelerator and, and with with scaling for success, I think, some some really great content, some research backed content. And I appreciate you as well, giving your time and energy to help new and emerging leaders get better. So, Brad, thank you for spending some time with us today and have a great rest of your day. Thanks. All right. That does it for the rebel HR podcast. Big thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at rebel HR podcast, Twitter, at rebel HR guy, or see our website at rebel human resources.com. The views and opinions expressed by rebel HR podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast. Maybe

(Cont.) RHR132: 90% of Leadership Books are BS with Dr. Brad Harris