In this human-centered episode, Isabelle Fortin, Owner of Against the Ordinary, dispels several lingering myths surrounding leadership. She shares why we need to be more human-centered as leaders, how to do it, and how to develop your leadership team to do it as well. If you know you need to raise the leadership bar in your organization to improve achieve higher performance and enjoy greater success, you won’t want to miss this episode.
You will discover:
– Why the military command-and-control structure isn’t actually command-and-control
– Why command-and-control structures are so common (and it’s not because of how effective they are)
– Why and how to become a more human-centered leader
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And here with us today is yet another high demand coach in the one and only Isabelle Fortin, whose journey began in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and over the next decade, she developed her communication and critical leadership skills by attending the prestigious Royal Canadian leadership school with over three decades of combined military and business leadership experience, she assists CEOs and HR leaders to enhance communication, culture, retention and profitability. Her approach is customized for each client, empowering them to go against the ordinary. Additionally, she hosts the human leader live stream and features tried and tested leaders who are willing to share their journeys here with us today. Isabelle, I’m so excited to have you on the show. I’m dying to dive into what you call human centered leadership. So welcome to the show right out of the gate here. What is human centered leadership, and how does it differ from ordinary leadership?
Isabelle Fortin
Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here and to answer your question, a human what differs a human centered leader to an ordinary leader? Well, it’s what they focus on. A human centered leader centers all of their focus on humans, and what I would call a norm, or a normal or ordinary leader focuses more on getting this, getting stuff done, and that’s the main focus. Is, where do you focus your attention on?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So a lot of times that this human, centered approach, especially when things are crazy, it feels like a nice to have, not a have to have. And so what would you say to that you’ve got the leader the their world feels like it’s on fire every day from the moment they get there to the moment they leave, they have to get a whole bunch of stuff done. How do they have time for a human centered approach?
Isabelle Fortin
Well, if it hasn’t begun like that, if an organization just grew too fast or didn’t implement having human centered leadership to begin with, yeah, there’s going to be a little bit of a period where it’s, you know grace under fire, because there are moments in time when command and control is absolutely necessary. The building is on fire. It’s not time to ask everybody how they feel about it. It’s time to get the hell out of the building. And somebody needs to tell people, you do this, you do that, and you get the hell out. But if you truly want the most out of your employees and your team members, and you want to increase your profitability, and I mean, come on, we’re in business to make money, let’s not pretend it’s not a fact. Well, then it there’s going to be a little bit of a transition period. But it is a necessary transition period, because command and control does not work. And I would add to your question, if everything is on fire all the time, you have a bigger problem, right? You know? So sometimes something’s amiss, either you’re missing personnel or the structure doesn’t work properly.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, there’s so many I want to go, well, like, I’m like, dying together. Okay, so give me one second. First though, where does this come from? For you? Because when I I’ve never been in the military, I’ve had a couple kind of indirect family members who’ve served, but my understanding of military on both sides of the border is it’s very command and control, right? We know who’s in charge. Everyone’s got their name and their their title on their chest and and so where does this the shift away from, or recognition that, in addition to command and control, right? That the narrow window where that’s necessary, that more often than not, the human centered approach, where does that come from for you?
Isabelle Fortin
Oh, okay, I’m gonna try to, because this is a brief Podcast. I’m gonna try to make this answer short. Although in the military, at least in my experience, command and control seems to be the way that it works. It actually isn’t, and I’ll explain it’s because in the military, the mission comes first. So if newbie just arrived in the squadron, and he is he excels, he or she excels at doing something, either fixing an airplane or whatever it is that this particular task, regardless of how long the other the person currently doing that task has been doing it, and regardless of the rank, if it’s better for the mission, then the newbie gets to do the job and gets to have that task assigned to him or her. So why is that human centered? Well, because every organization. I have ever worked with, every team member, I’ve ever interviewed or coached, every leader have I have ever coached, all want one thing. They all have one thing in common. They want to contribute. They really want to because when you do what you are naturally good at, and you put it in service of your team, of your organization, of a specific mission, if you’re talking about the military, you feel seen, heard and valued. Why? Because you’re actually all these three, these three things, you are seen, heard and valued. So I call that the the dinner table effect when you’re going to work and you know how what is the special thing that you bring to the table that nobody else on your team does or contributes? What does that do to your dinner table? You bring that to the dinner table so you show up better as a life partner, as a father or mother, as as a community member, as anything, you show up better. So it has an effect on everyone, on your family and on your community. Yeah. So it does look like it is command and control and Scott, sometimes it is, and sometimes it has to be, but for the most part is who is the best at doing this, and this is the person who’s going to get that, and that’s why it works.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s so true. It’s so true. So I want to come back to this point that you made. If everything is on fire. There’s a bigger problem here. And a lot of my work as a coaching consultant, I generally get called in when everything’s on fire. I’m rarely the guy that they go to when everything’s good and like, let’s make it a degree better, because I got a tendency to light it on fire if it isn’t already burning, right? Let’s just be honest. So I get called into this a lot and and the real tragedy I see coming in is that a lot of people have tried a lot of things, a lot of good things, and they just don’t seem to work. So why is it that all of these good things don’t work when everything’s on fire? Why do they not turn it around? And what should we do instead?
Isabelle Fortin
Well, I think that at a core of an organization, you you need to have systems in place, instructors in place, that prevents things from being on fire all the time. And that’s that’s what I meant earlier. And most of CEOs and and C suites that I work with is they don’t know what they don’t know, right? And that applies to everybody in every single, single circumstances of life, right? So if you wait to call for a coach or consultant or for the fire department when the heist is on, the house is on fire, instead of calling the the fire department and checking well, is my fire alarm good? Is are the batteries change? Is everything like when it, when it, when it’s not on fire? That’s the time to set things in motion, right? So there’s one of the the the thing that I do when I work with a team is, I call that my prenuptial agreement, is I have the team come together and they, of course, I accompany them, but they come up with the way that they’re going to deal with one another when things go haywire. Because when you’re in conflict with somebody, and when the house is on fire, it is not time. This is not the appropriate time to set the structure in motion. So if every day, as a leader or as or as an employee, is every day you come in and all you do is put out fire. There’s something amiss in your organization, either, like I said earlier, either you don’t there’s isn’t enough employees, or the employees don’t have enough structure or tools that they need in order to get the job done. But we seem to live in an in an era where everything’s on fire all the time. Yeah, it’s it’s just not sustainable. Yeah, people go crazy. I mean, people lose their mental health over these things. That’s not good for everybody. So you need people like you and coaches like you to help with the structure of the organization.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So let’s, let’s assume that we’ve got some of that framework in place. We’re making progress in the right direction, and we’re realizing culturally, we’ve overvalued getting stuff done right. Maybe it was right for a time, maybe it was right for a season, but we’ve got to, we’ve got to recenter. You. What would you say are some of the first steps toward becoming a more human, centered leader?
Isabelle Fortin
Well, the first thing is wanting to and the second thing is being humble enough to look at our flaws and being humble enough to actually listen to the our direct reports, to know what we are doing wrong or what our blind spots are, yeah, and that takes an insane amount of humility. You know, Scott, command and control has has been in place for so long because it’s easier on the leaders, not because it’s easier on the on the employees. It’s just the leader just gets the nice the corner office, and they get stuff done. But now the generations following mine, I believe I’m a little older than you, the generations following mine that saw their parents bring their backs for a company that fired him after 30 years without a pension plan, or without anything, they’re going no, I want more not out of life, and I want more out of the company that I work for. I think it was Mackenzie that published a survey that said new employees, like just hired employees, start looking for another job within three days. So that means they start working, and if the the company culture isn’t aligned with who they are and their own value, they leave. That’s extremely costly. Wow, that’s extremely costly. Yeah. So how do you become a servant, a servant leader, or human centered leader? Well, first of all, you need to want to and then you need to get at, you know, where are your blind spots, and be willing to listen to your direct reports.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love, that extending it from there, because it’s one thing to be a human centered leader. It’s another thing to lead a human centered organization, right? And it can’t be done without you, but it can’t be done by just you. And so what are some some things that you found most help a human centered CEO, founder, to then get that deeper into the organization, to propagate it through the ranks of leadership?
Isabelle Fortin
Well, it does have to start by the CEOs. That’s that’s a given, but and it has to be more than just a logo and a slogan. It has to be deeply rooted in their everyday life. There was something that happened here with a coffee company. It’s something at a smaller scale, but something that looks like a Starbucks, and they have franchise, and one of the franchise owner said something extremely racist publicly, and within one hour, the CEO of second cup coffee said we dissociated. We we legally had taking steps to dissociate this person, de franchise, this person from our organization, because this is not what we prone so this is a human centered leader, because the moment they saw something wrong, they fixed it, and they did something about it, instead of saying, Oh, well, you know, it’s a good old, you know, good old boys club or whatever. So that’s how human centeredly CEOs applies. That it has to be more than just a slogan. It has to be followed by true and actionable things and consequences. If you fall out of line, then sorry, you don’t. You’re just not part of us anymore.
Scott Ritzheimer
It’s a powerful story too, because human centered leadership, as I understand it from this conversation, is not soft, right? It’s not that we’re taking it easy. It’s not that we’re being lax. In fact, I would say it’s much harder in the sense that you’re stepping into that messy relational space, right? And you’re stepping into a much greater degree of ambiguity, right? Because it’s more complex dealing with people than with, you know, just systems and processes that you can control. And so for folks that are listening out there, it’s not soft, it’s not easy, right? In fact, it’s one of the harder things to do as a leader, but I think that it creates a tremendous amount of nobility, right, both for you and for the people that you’re working with. Would you agree?
Isabelle Fortin
Absolutely. And it is hard because your direct reports don’t answer to you. You answer to them. The job of a leader is not to take to get stuff done. The job of the leaders to take care of the people who who does the work. So it is much harder on the leaders to be used, to be human centered. But it also increases everything, and increases engagement and increases but. Productivity, of course, it increases profitability by in this tarnishing number, like by 86% wow, you know, and that’s not a number I drew out of a hat. There are studies out of that. So now finally, the science is able to prove what the soft skills have been doing all these years.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. Fascinating. Isabel, there’s a question that I have I like to ask that of all my guests, I’m interested to see what you have to say. What would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Isabelle Fortin
It’s what I just said. You’re You’re the leader. You work for your people or your people, and not the other way around. It is as simple as that, your job is to take care of the people, and they will take care of your business, and they will do the job. That’s the biggest misconception.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so true. Isabelle, there’s some folks listening, and it’s just the right thing at the right time. They They need someone to come in and help their leadership team as a whole, them as a leader, to become more human centered. How can they find out more out about you and the work that you do?
Isabelle Fortin
They can go on LinkedIn to Isabel, Isabel Fortin, and it’s the Isabel Fortin that has purple hair. And they can go on my website, which is againsttheordinary.org, so Against the Ordinary is the name of my company.org,
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic. Well, Isabel, thank you so much for being on the show today. Just a privilege and honor having you here. Loved, loved, loved, loved this episode. For those of you who are watching and listening, you know that your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Isabelle Fortin
Isabelle Fortin’s journey began in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Over the next decade, she developed her communication and critical leadership skills by attending the prestigious Royal Canadian Leadership School. With over three decades of combined military and business leadership experience, she assists CEOs and HR leaders enhance communication, culture, retention, and profitability. Her approach is customized for each client, empowering them to go Against the Ordinary. Additionally, she hosts ‘The Human Leader’ livestream, featuring tried-and-tested leaders willing to share their journeys.
Want to learn more about Isabelle Fortin’s work at Against the Ordinary? Check out her website at https://www.againsttheordinary.org/ or connect with her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/isabellemfortin/
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