Over the course of his 20+ year career, Alain has worked with tens of thousands of leaders in over 25 countries, and served clients in all industries, including 42 Fortune 100 companies. He delivers dynamic keynotes, seminars, and workshops covering a variety of leadership topics including communication, teambuilding, conflict management, peak performance, motivation, and change.

With his Master’s in Fine Arts in Acting from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Professional Theater Training Program, and a BA from Amherst College, Alain also serves on the faculty of Duke Corporate Education, ranked #2 worldwide in 2018 by Financial Times on its list of customized Executive Education programs. Alain has lectured at UNC Kenan-Flagler’s business school and Columbia University.

Alain has authored over 400 articles, and been published by The Association for Talent Development, CEO Refresher, and the American Management Association.

A certified co-leader for ManKind Project International, a non-profit whose mission is to help men lead lives of service to their families, communities, and workplaces, he’s based in Northampton, MA, with his wife and two children.

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Now please shift your attention to Cracking the Leadership Code. For those who have not as yet read it, hopefully your responses to these questions will stimulate their interest and, better yet, encourage them to purchase a copy and read the book ASAP. First, when and why did you decide to write it?

Every leader I know means well and intends to do a good job. But these intentions aren’t translating into reality. Unfortunately, the data consistently tells us that today’s leaders are not prepared to lead their employees in today’s world. Recent polls find that only 23% of people think their leaders lead well. Poor leadership results in disengagement, turnover, and diminished performance results. On the flip side, effective leadership leads to higher levels of profitability, productivity, retention, and customer satisfaction/loyalty.

As I worked with thousands of groups of leaders over the years, I saw patterns of behavior. It turns out the best leaders have a lot in common. They keep applying the same fundamental principles through a variety of actions. The mediocre leaders had a lot in common, too. They kept falling into the same traps.

I wrote the book because I wanted to help those 77% of leaders who are struggling. I wanted to help them adopt a new mindset and apply a new skill set in order to shorten their leadership learning curve and accelerate their growth. I want them to become the leaders they aspire to be.

The subtitle refers to “three secrets” to building strong leaders: Connection, Communication, and Collaboration. Which of the three seems to be most difficult to master? Why?

It may seem counterintuitive, but connection is the most difficult to master. It’s also the foundational principle: Until one masters the ability to connect with others, it’s quite difficult to move on to effective communication and collaboration.

Connection is such a challenge because it takes a shift in mindset. Leaders need to move away from the identity of being the commander-in-chief and move towards the identity of facilitator-in-chief. Doing this takes humility. It’s not that easy to park one’s own ego and agenda and truly be present, focused and listening to those around you. Yet, that’s precisely what’s required in order to create meaningful connection.

My own experience with helping organizations to accelerate personal growth and professional development of those who comprise their workforce indicates that all three are  interdependent. Your own thoughts about that?

Yes. The model in the book that illustrates connection, communication and collaboration are three concentric circles. All of these principles transcend and include the other two. In many ways, that’s a good metaphor for how leaders need to embrace ambiguity and paradox in leading. Leading is not a linear, sequential, either/or endeavor. Leaders need embrace both/and thinking to lead effectively. In order to teach this content, I had to separate it out into the three sections and present them in a linear sequence for clarity. But in real life, all three are happening simultaneously.

Throughout history, all great leaders — if viewed as gardeners — seem to have had a “green thumb” for “growing” countless new leaders. Here’s a two-part question. First, which specific values drive that development process?

New leaders grow when they are given the opportunity to stretch beyond their comfort zone. The values that leaders need to embody to nurture such growth include:
Curiosity—a drive to know what drives people and what their goals are. Interest in observing the growth process in others.

Trust: the ability to give opportunities for others to try new things and even fail.
Coaching: the ability to observe, assess, and give appropriate feedback to help foster growth.
Service: knowing that leadership is about helping others develop and succeed, rather than needing to look good.

Also, what specific lessons can be learned from that process and then applied by supervisors (i.e. those with direct reports entrusted to their care) throughout the given enterprise?

To develop others, you must start with a mindset that others can and should be developed. If you see and treat people like cogs in the workplace machine, you will miss out on the potential that lies within. Creating a safe environment for people to step out and try something new is critical. Supervisors need to create such opportunities (and tailor them to each individual) if people are going to develop their own leadership capacity.

I agree with you that mutual trust and respect are essential to effective connection, communication, and collaboration but that [begin italics] empathy [end italics] is the basis or (if you prefer) foundation of those relationships. I know why I think so. What are your reasons?

At its core, leadership isn’t a job title. It’s a relationship between two human beings: A leader and a follower. In the industrial age, followers were expected to passively accept the commands of those in charge. Back then, the priorities were efficiency and conformity. Thinking for oneself was not encouraged. Henry Ford, founder of Ford motor company, famously said of his employees “Why is it when I want a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?”
In today’s knowledge economy, the shift from manual labor to knowledge work has changed the nature of the leader/follower relationship. Following is a choice. Every day, skilled knowledge workers make a choice to loan (or withhold) their discretionary efforts. That choice is based on their perception of the relationship they have with their leader. Do they trust their leader and feel trusted by them? Do they feel safe being authentic? Is it okay to bring their whole selves to work?

It turns out there’s one leadership ability that’s required to increase this perception of safety and trust: Caring for the people you lead. Research has found that employees who say they have more supportive supervisors are 1.3 times as likely to stay with the organization and are 67 percent more engaged.
Caring for people isn’t just some warm and fuzzy idea. It’s a learned behavior. The skill is developed by consistently demonstrating empathy—showing people you understand them and care how they feel. Empathy is the platform on which connection is built.

As you know, all of the major research studies reveal that, during a face-to-face interaction, about 80% of the impact is determined by tone of voice and body language; only about 20% (or less) is determined by what is actually said. What’s your take on that?

You’ve asked a controversial question! The research I think you’re referring to tends to all lead back to one original study that was done by Albert Mehrabian in 1967. That study is often cited in reference to what percentage of meaning is communicated by either words, tone of voice, or body language. It found that only 7% of the meaning is conveyed by words, 38% by tone of voice, and 55% by body language.

These results have gotten extremely popular and spread around the world. There’s just one small problem: They’re wrong. Mehrabian himself spoken out numerous times to debunk how his work has been misinterpreted.

The original study wasn’t focused on the meaning transferred in communication. It sought to identify the emotional intent understood in communication. And it did so by asking an audience to listen to only one word and determine the intent. The word spoken by the confederate in the study described their own feelings.

So while I agree that body language and tone of voice matter, so do words. When it comes to communication what you say is vital—it’s your content. How you say it—your delivery—is also important. I prefer to steer clear of saying which is more important and giving percentages. The fact is inadequate content or delivery can make your communication ineffective. Great leaders work at improving both of them.

Here’ a question I have been eager to ask you since I began to read Cracking the Leadership Code the first time.  I guess it was when I was in high school and president of the student council that I began to realize that most of the valuable wisdom I had gained by then was the result of my own failures, not successes or from others’ successes or failures. Here’s my question: To what extent (if any) does being able to “crack the leadership code” depend on the nature and extent of one’s own wisdom gained thus far?

Your description of wisdom gained through failures offers a great insight. Failures are a tremendous opportunity for potential growth. The reason I say “potential” is that to take advantage to the opportunity, you must be open to learning from the experience. That takes a certain level of humility and as Carol Dweck’s calls it, “a growth mindset.” If you are willing to learn, you can take that experience and reflect on what didn’t work and find a new course of action for the future.

Conversely, if you are rigid in your thinking and have a fixed mindset, you won’t learn much (if anything) from any new experience. You’ll do what you did and get what you got. Thus, some people in a career wind up with twenty years of experience, and others wind up with one year of experience twenty times.

You conduct “Killing Complexity” workshops. According to participants, what seem to be the greatest barriers when they attempt to apply your suggestions and recommendations?

Interestingly, when participants are asked to identify the greatest obstacles to simplifying their work, their first impulse is to point the finger outwards. They say things like “we work in a regulated industry” or “we have a matrix structure”. However, as we dig deeper in the process, the big epiphany is that most of the unnecessary complexity they experience at work is self-created and self-imposed. It comes from internal psychological states: fear, control, power, and ego.

Participants realize that the cultural norms in their organization keeps them stuck in a loop where complexity has become a signal of importance. For example, if a five slide PowerPoint deck is good, a 25-slide deck is five times as good. The ego has a need to impress, and the easiest way for that ego to impress is by adding on more bells/whistles and processes/procedures. These add-ons help the ego validate its own importance.

While complexity may serve the fickle ego, it makes getting to the work that matters a lot more challenging. We spend more time on low-value activities. This complexity trap drains employees’ energy and enthusiasm. No wonder employee engagement is so low.

Albert Einstein once urged, “Make everything as simple as possible but no simpler.” In the context of leadership development, you devote a separate and substantial chapter in the book to “Making Things Simple.” For those who have not as yet read your brilliant book, what are the key takeaways from this chapter?

Ironically, while we live during the period of history with the most advanced technology ever experienced on planet Earth, what do people crave most? Ease of use. For example, if you visit a website that’s confusing to navigate, what do you do? First, you get frustrated. Second, you leave. And you don’t come back.

We all want simple, and that includes the people you lead. If their daily work experience is unnecessarily complex, people will get frustrated. Not only does complexity drain morale, it drains performance. A typical frontline supervisor or midlevel manager works 47 hours per week. A survey found that of this time, he or she devotes 21 hours to meetings involving more than four people. Another 11 hours is spent processing e-communications. If you subtract time periods of less than 20 minutes between meetings or processing emails as “unproductive time,” it leaves them with less than 6½ hours per week of uninterrupted time to get work done.

The good news is that if you make simplicity part of your leadership operating system, you’ve got a competitive advantage. Research has found that in a “simple organization,” 95% of employees are more likely to trust their company’s leadership; 54% find it easier to innovate; 65% are more likely to refer someone to work at their company; and 84% of employees plan to stay longer in their job.

Many things can create unnecessary complexity, but there are two titans that play an outsized role in complicating the workplace: meetings and emails. They suck time and energy more than anything else. The chapter on “Making Things Simple” is filled with simple, practical tools to simplify meetings and emails.

In your opinion, which of the material you provide in Cracking the Leadership Code will be most valuable to those now preparing for a career in business or who have only recently embarked on one? Please explain.

The book was expressly designed to help anyone who aspires to be a better leader to shorten their learning curve and accelerate their leadership growth. Whether someone is just preparing for a career in business or is the owner/CEO of a small-to-midsize company, I’d recommend starting with the first section of the book: Context. This section frames why leadership today is so challenging. It reveals that, despite your best intentions, you’ve undoubtedly inherited a mindset and patterns of behavior that conspire to impede your progress and success as a leader. These insights will inspire readers to want to learn more –both in the book and in general—on how to become a better leader.

Which question had you hoped to be asked during this interview – but weren’t – and what is your response to it?

“What do you recommend that aspiring leaders do if they are serious about accelerating their own leadership development?”

The most valuable resource that will you help you grow can’t be found on the pages of a book. It’s getting honest, descriptive behavioral feedback on how you show up in your leadership by the people you lead. Humans are notoriously bad judges of the impact our behavior has on those around us. Stop trying to guess—and ask for feedback.

If you need a structure for the feedback, consider using the +/EBI model. Plus means “what do you think I do well/is a strength/should keep doing?” EBI means “what would be even better if I did it differently in the future?” Ideally, the feedback steers clear of broad value judgments (e.g. “You’re a little unapproachable at times.”) and uses behavioral statements (eg. When you come into the office in the morning, you walk passed me and go straight to your desk, you don’t make eye contact, and you don’t stop and greet or acknowledge me in any way.”)

When you receive the feedback, your role is to be open and receptive to it in the moment. The only verbal response to offer is a “thank you” at the end. Then put the feedback in your file and compare it to the other data points you’ve received. What is trending? Then, create a plan of action for how you’re going to address an area for improvement. You can tell your feedbackers that you’re working on this skill—that way they can keep a lookout for how you’re doing and offer new feedback in the future. Acting on effective feedback will help you fast-track your own leadership growth.

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Here is a direct link to Part 1 of my interview of Alain.

He cordially invites you to check out the resources at these websites:

His website link.

Cracking Leadership Code link

Alain’s TED talk link