Mar 12, 2023
Bio
When Primo was young he wanted to be a Film Director. Today he directs his own business – helping individuals and teams be more effective through the power of coaching and Insights Discovery.
With 30 years’ experience in corporates such as IBM, GE, T-Mobile & BP, Primo has made the transition from IT Project & Programme Management to Learning and Development. He has always used his core values of Empathy, Trust & Honesty to build deep relationships with others and support them in achieving their career potential.
He has a wealth of experience developing others, both as a Line Manager to global teams and in designing and delivering a global Leadership Development Programme.
Now he can use this experience to support individuals and teams in their journeys using Coaching and the Insights Discovery tool.
LinkedIn - Primo Masella | LinkedIn
Interview Highlights
Project work – 04:15
How leadership sets the tone – 08:00
Insights Discovery – 13:26
Recruitments styles – 27:08
What makes a good leader? – 32:15
Books
· The Development of Personality by Carl G. Jung https://www.amazon.co.uk/Development-Personality-Collected-Works-C-G/dp/0415071747
· The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious by Carl G. Jung https://www.amazon.co.uk/Archetypes-Collective-Unconscious/dp/B08RF2RGSM
· The Psychology of C G Jung The Psychology of C G Jung Rev: 1973 Edition: Amazon.co.uk: Jacobi, Irving G.: 9780300016741: Books
· The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey https://www.amazon.co.uk/Habits-Highly-Effective-People-Anniversary/dp/1471195201/
· No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer https://www.amazon.co.uk/No-Rules-Netflix-Culture-Reinvention/dp/0753553651
· The Inside Out Revolution by Michael Neill https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inside-Out-Revolution-Thing-Change-Forever/dp/1781800790
Episode Transcript
Guest Intro (Ula Ojiaku)
Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener.
Ula Ojiaku
So I have with me Primo Masella as my guest of the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. Primo, thank you so much for making the time for this conversation.
Primo Masella
My absolute pleasure, Ula. Lovely to see you again.
Ula Ojiaku
Great. I've been looking forward to having this conversation. Can you tell us about yourself, Primo?
Primo Masella
Gosh, there's a question to start with. So I'm the youngest of five siblings. My parents were both Italian, but I was born here in the UK, and grew up in the Midlands, in the UK, in Coventry. And then, for most of my career, I worked in IT actually, so I was an IT Project and Program Manager for a long time. And then I moved over into HR and got really interested in developing talent, and especially developing leadership skills and future leaders. And I guess that's how I've ended up where I am.
Ula Ojiaku
Okay, so growing up, what would you consider were the significant happenings, the choices that put you on the path you are on right now, career wise?
Primo Masella
Yeah. So I liked things at school, but I also really liked both arts and sciences. So I kind of always felt like I was that person who could bridge that gap between two things. So, you know, I loved English at school and at the same time I loved physics, which I think is kind of unusual. People tend to go one way or the other, don't they? And so then when I did a degree, it was an Applied Sciences degree where I could choose lots of different modules of things, and so it was at that point that I kind of got into IT really, because I chose quite a lot of IT elements and I guess early on in my career, again, I was using that skillset of bridging the gap between technology and business. And so I've never done coding for a living, but I've been the guy that could speak to the coders and then translate that for non-coders to understand. Somehow I kind of fell into that quite early on. My first real job, actually, when I moved down to London, I was in quality assurance. So my first ever job was testing software and also proofreading user guides for software, so that was always quite interesting.
Ula Ojiaku
So what do you do for leisure? What are your interests?
Primo Masella
So I'm a huge movie fan, so I've been passionate about movies my whole life. If I hadn't ended up where I am today, I would've loved to have been Steven Spielberg. I just, being a director would've been amazing. So I still love movies, anything to do with cinema and film, and in the last few years I've become quite a keen road cyclist as well. So I got myself a bike, which worked out brilliantly during the pandemic because at the time when we were still allowed to go out and exercise once a day during the lockdowns, that was just perfect. That gave me my escape for the day, and it also acts as my kind of way of just getting out and being mindful. So rather than purposely practice mindfulness, I tend to just go out on the bike. So yeah, that's kind of the key thing you'll find me doing when I'm not doing this.
Ula Ojiaku
Okay. So what do you do now?
Primo Masella
So I wonder if before I come onto that, I just give you a couple of key things which led me to do what I'm doing now I think. So back in the day when I was in IT and an IT Project and Program Manager, the thing that I really loved about project work was the variety and the fact that we got to work with different stakeholders all the time. And I think in my experience, there are broadly two types of Project Manager – there’s the kind who's really good at managing a schedule and keeping on top of a plan and a risk log and an issue log and really executing a plan - that wasn't me. I'm the other type that's really good at working with stakeholders, defining the scope, making sure that the business case is sound and what the customer wants. And so the piece that I really enjoyed about projects was starting them to be honest, and once the project was underway, I lost interest pretty quickly. And so the first kind of real inflection point for me was when I stopped delivering IT projects and instead, I looked after the pool of Project Managers, I became the resourcing and Line Manager for a group of project professionals, and that was probably the first time where I specifically had people's development at the heart of my job. And whereas previously I'd had people's development kind of tangentially really, when we worked together, when we first met each other, I was doing little training sessions as a kind of an aside really. It was something I really enjoyed doing, but it wasn't part of my job description. So being responsible for a pool, and I was lucky enough that we worked in a model where we had a bit like a consultancy, we had a pool of Project Managers who were then allocated to different project sets, and they all reported to me from a people perspective. And so I could really focus on, how are they developing those skills? Are we giving them the best projects to help them on whatever career path they all wanted? So, I guess that was kind of the first kind of real thing. There might be three things I haven't counted.
So the second thing was, I'd kind of mentally checked out of delivery for quite a while then, so I was looking after resourcing, I was focusing on capability development and how do we develop IT professionals? And then I had the opportunity to step back into delivery, to deliver a really large transformation program, and that was a serious inflection point, because I consciously made a decision where I thought I could add value because I think I can bring some people skills, which were lacking at that time in that particular program. And so I stepped in, and that true, that turned out to be a massively significant part of my career. So without going into lots of details and we don't need to name anybody at all, it was a very challenging piece of work and there were lots of things going on, and I was tested to my absolute limits as a Program Leader, as a person, to be honest, it was probably the most stressful part of my entire career. And I went on this kind of emotional rollercoaster and I left that program on my own terms, having taken away one of the key things that I still hold to this day, and that is that leadership sets the tone. So depending on how the leaders shows up, that cascades to everybody else in that program, in that organisation, it reflects in the culture of the group of people that are working together. And I felt like I learned that the hard way. It was a huge lesson for me, you know, to the point where I was considering leaving the industry. I was, in my mind, at the point where I was going to make some really fundamental decisions about what I wanted to do next. So I say that because that, I don't, as I look back, I'm massively grateful for that experience because I think many of us would agree that it's when we're challenged, that we truly learn about ourselves. We learn about what we want and we learn about what we're going to do next. And so that led me then, that helped facilitate a move out of the IT sector and into HR. That was one of the key catalysts of me moving functions. And I'd always been an IT guy, so this was, you know, although, you know, as I said before, not hands on, not a developer, but IT felt like my home, those were the people that I understood and I knew really well. So to move to the dark side of HR, seemed like a really strange thing to do. And I remember being asked at an interview, this seems a bit odd, you know, you are a project guy, why do you want to come and work in HR? And it was absolutely the right thing for me, because I'm all about people, and every job that I've ever done, irrespective of what the job title was, was about how can I help people get the best out of themselves? That's really the bottom line. So that led me then into this path, which I established for a while, which was around developing talent and developing future leaders. I was fortunate enough to be in a position, right place, right time, where I designed and led one of the global development programs in our previous organisation, and that was great, having an 18 month program to deliver and look at future leaders and what they needed to get to the next stage of their careers. And then that brings me, I guess, to the final significant point, which was during that process, I also became an Insights Discovery practitioner, and we can talk about Insights in a moment if you like, but that gave me a tool, that gave me a mechanism that I could get into a conversation with teams about how do you show up within your team? How do you like to work and interact with others? What is it that makes it difficult sometimes to work with people because, you know, people think differently from each other and that's completely normal, but a lot of us go into teams thinking we all think about stuff the same way, so having that exposure to Insights and having the ability to become certified as a practitioner has then led me to, I'm finally getting to answer your question that you asked me a million years ago, a position where I now work for myself. And I use Insights Discovery as one of my core tools, along with other tools and models to help leaders develop themselves and develop their teams. So anything that's in that space of how do we build the best team that we can with this group of people? And a big part of that is coaching and I'm in my process of becoming a certified coach, I would say I've been an informal coach for probably 30 years, so I thought it's probably about time I had the letters to put after my name as well.
Ula Ojiaku
That's awesome, so what's the name of your business? What sort of service do you offer?
Primo Masella
So I have my own consultancy. It's called Primo Leadership Development Limited. It's just me, I'm not intending to hire lots of people, and the service offer is really to provide physical, virtual workshops, coaching and other training interventions to help people either establish or develop their teams. So whether it’s creating a new team, setting a vision, being clear on, kind of, what are the ways of working of that team, maybe thinking about, you know, how do we look at trust or conflict or emotional intelligence? That's a really hot topic, obviously right now. And then aside that it's the offer of coaching individuals, one to one through their leadership and their career journeys, and we may use Insights Discovery as a tool in some of those offers. So if you wanted just a standalone intervention using Insights Discovery, then I also provide that as a service.
Ula Ojiaku
Okay, so going onto Insights then, what exactly is Insights Discovery, and what's the, if I may use that word, science behind it?
Primo Masella
Sure. So Insights Discovery is a personality profiling tool, it's been around for quite a number of years, probably about 30 odd years now I think, based out of the Insights company in Scotland, in the UK. You'll see in my background I've got a set here of these lovely coloured bricks, we use these four core colours to talk about different traits in people's personality.
Ula Ojiaku
And you're holding up a brick, looks like a set of yellow bricks, I mean, not yellow bricks, a set of Lego bricks, yellow, red, blue and green in the interest of those who are listening only to the audio version.
Primo Masella
Yeah, they're like bricks, we've said Lego a few times, hopefully we don't have to pay royalties for saying that they're like big Lego bricks kind of made of a strong foam, and they're just a physical reminder of what the model is about. So, when we talk about it, we say, we all have these four core traits and the way that we use them, the way that we are made of them is slightly different for each of us. And so we talk about yellow energy being very collaborative or influencing or visionary, red energy being very directive, more focused on results, blue energy being all about attention to detail and being structured and formal, and green energy all about building trust, strong relationships and having empathy. So, you know, each one of us has got all four of those traits, but it's the way that we combine them and the way that they show up when we work with others. So the way the model works is that you take an online questionnaire, you get a really detailed report about your style of working, and then we can use that report in a workshop environment with you and your team to look at what are the common areas and the differences in people's styles, in the team. So you might have, for example, somebody who's very task focused, who's very good at, you know, working in a kind of project context, working with data, really delivering an objective very effectively, but they may be working with somebody who's very relationship focused and wants to take more time to build relationships, look at kind of a bigger picture of what's going on and seeing how it's impacting people. So there, that's one of axis of the model where, you know, you have individuals in a team who will be on different places on that scale. And so Insights is just a way of providing this common language and using colour is a really easy way to access the language, so people very quickly remember, oh yes, yellow means this, and blue means this. And once we have those four core colours, we then get into various layers. So we go from 4 to 8 to 16. Ultimately you can be in one of 72 positions in the Insights model, so it's a very rich model compared to some others in the marketplace that take you up to 16. So in my experience, people overwhelmingly say they find it useful and they say that they could see themselves in the report that they received back. It's very, very rare that somebody reads their report, just doesn't agree with it. When that does happen, it tends to be there's something else going on for that person, because at the end of the day, it's about understanding ourselves and kind of self-awareness and self-reflection. And the greater the level of self-awareness, we tend to see the, the greater the level of buy into the tool.
Ula Ojiaku
I have, you know, taken the Insights assessment a couple of times and whilst I've found it very useful, there were some, you know, aspects of the analysis that I said, hmm, I didn't know I was like that, am I really like that? You know, I had those, you know, moments and you know, where I questioned what I was reading. And that brings me to, you know, some people who are of the school of thought that going through these sorts of assessments, you know, brings with it a risk of shoehorning or putting people into boxes and saying, oh, he's a red, you know, therefore we expect you to always be fiery on the, on the point, get abrupt with people. What do you think about that, what’s your view on this?
Primo Masella
Yeah, I think it's a very common misconception of this kind of tool and especially of Insights Discovery. In my experience, all I could tell you is that I see the colours in the real world. When I work with people, I see these colour energies as they are working, and at the end of the day, this kind of thing is not intended to stereotype. So we purposely say things like, we're not going to use the phrase, she's a red, or he's being a complete blue today, for example, that wouldn't be a healthy way to use the language. But what I can say is that when you work with somebody, and you can just test this in the next few hours, just think about whoever you're going to interact with today. If you know them a little bit, if you've interacted with them a few times already, think about, do they tend to focus on the task more or do they tend to focus on people more? People who focus on task may use the phrase ‘I think’ a lot more often, they may be more detailed, they may be more urgent in what they're talking about and they have a passion for the thing. People who are more people focused, tend to use the phrase ‘I feel’ a lot more often, so we'll hear it in the language that people use, and it's quite subconscious for most of us, and they'll just have a different warmth to them if they have more of that people energy. And so I completely get the idea that it's stereotyping, and especially if people focus on the fact that we start with four colours and people see the four colours and think, well, there's more than four types of people in the world. The intent is that those four sets of traits give us the clue into what makes this person work the way they work, and the model is actually far more sophisticated and much more multi-layered than just four colours. So all I would say is that in my experience, it works. I've interacted with lots and lots of people over the years, I can tell you that I can see the traits described in this model in pretty much everybody I work with. There hasn't been a single person, and I'm pretty happy saying this, there hasn't been a single person that I couldn't say, I wouldn't know where to put them on the model.
Ula Ojiaku
I would agree it’s being more aware of, you know, the colours and the four broad personality traits they represent has helped me with understanding, whilst not stereotyping people or putting them in a box, but understanding, okay, what dimension they're from and how best to adapt myself to, you know, relate better with them. So can you share some, you know, one or two examples of where using this assessment has helped maybe a person or a team to become more aware, because in agile or in even any team at all, the aim is to get teams to become, you know, high performing and when teams understand themselves as individuals and how, you know, they fit in or their skill sets, you know, complement, you know, one another in terms of achieving that common goal, they can move mountains. So have you had any instance where facilitating this sort of assessment and conversation around it has helped?
Primo Masella
Yeah, yeah, very much so. So if I think about, I've worked before with leaders who, say, lead with the red energy, which is all being focused on delivering results. And they may have somebody on their leadership team who meets with the opposite trait, which is the green energy, which is all about being there for the team and building trust and strong relationships. So I've seen in the past where a leader, for example, was about to send an email to a large group of people, and the person that worked for them who was the opposite trait kind of literally stopped them and got them to redraft parts of the email to just make it a little bit more human. And so that's an example of where those two opposite styles can really complement each other and give you a better outcome, because had the initial senior person just sent the email, it would have landed badly with a number of people, because if you have a different style, you perceive things in slightly different ways. So where somebody might think they're being efficient, it may be perceived by their opposites styles as being arrogant or overbearing. And so that collaboration of opposite styles works really, really effectively.
I can think of one particular example, but I've seen that happen lots of, lots of times. There's another kind of, couple of quick ones when we do a physical workshop where we're able to get people in a room and we have a floor mat of the model. So it comes as a kind of circular mat that people can stand on and move around, and that's amazingly powerful because you get the team to physically stand where they would appear on the model. And then you are physically opposite some people in the team and physically next to other people, or slightly adjacent to some other people you work with, and you just see people's eyes come alive as they see each other and, you know, I've had people say out loud, I finally get why that individual behaves that way, and I've always found it really hard to work with them, and now I, understand we just do things differently and that's okay. And part of the premise is we all like to think we're super smart, because we're all pretty smart. Yeah, people are pretty smart, but the challenge is sometimes appreciating that we don't always have to do it our way and just because we thought of it, it doesn't mean it's the best way of doing something, and so somebody else's way that may be different may be just as good. And so a lot of the conversations we have around Insights is to say, you know, nobody's better or worse, it's just different and appreciating the difference can lead you a huge step forward. I'll give you one other quick example, which is I did a one to one conversation with somebody. So one of the powers that we have of something like this tool is that once you have a personal profile, you can use that to continue to work on yourself, develop yourself. And so I did coach somebody at one point, who was having a particular issue with somebody else in her team, and we looked at them both on the team wheel, we looked at where they were different in styles, I gave her some pointers about how she might think about communicating with that individual based on their preferences, and she went away and then we subsequently met again, and literally after years of working together, she found a way of connecting with that person that she'd never found before, and that was just astounding to me, not astounding as in surprising, but I was massively, massively pleased that she'd had that outcome and it improved the level of relationship with that individual.
Ula Ojiaku
There's something you said about being able to see things from other people's perspective that helps us to empathise and hopefully be able to make any adjustments we need, you know, on our own part. So I'm suspecting that's probably what happened for the lady that you coached, being able to understand where that co-worker was coming from. So if someone wants to build a team, assuming you don't have an existing team, because on one hand you've given us examples, how the Insights framework and assessments could help with getting team members to better understand themselves. Is it possible to use this as a role of deliberately putting together a new team?
Primo Masella
Yeah, it's a good question, and we get asked this question quite a lot, especially in terms of recruiting people into a team and an organisation. So depending on, so if you work inside a company that has a policy about how they recruit people, typically, certainly in Western corporate organisations, people tend to do something called competency based recruitment. So we recruit people by asking them questions, like, tell me about a time when you… and so we're looking for some experience in their past, which gives us an indicator of how they might perform in the future. So that's typically, for a number of years, that's how a lot of corporate organisations have recruited. So if you are recruiting that style, Insights isn't the best tool to use for recruitment because Insights doesn't tell us about your competency or your level of skill. So if you have a high level of cool blue energy in the model, which indicates attention to detail and structure, and objectivity, that's not the same as saying I'm good at writing a project plan or working with Microsoft Excel because those latter two things are skills that you can learn to do by practicing them more often. So that's kind of the first thing to say, there's a bit of a health warning. And I think the same would apply to many of these kinds of tools. However, assuming you have somebody within your organisation already, that's passed all the necessary kind of entry checks, Insights is a great way of saying how do I assemble a team in order to deliver on a particular set of objectives? So I may have a team that I need to be, you know, really focused and interrogate data and make sure accuracy is really, really key. If that's the case, then I'll look for that cool blue energy in a number of key individuals in the team. You know, conversely, I may have a team where I really need some creative thinking, I need to come up with some wacky ideas, you know, I may work at an industry where that's, you know, really important, my competitive edge, in which case I'll look purposely for people with more sunshine, yellow energy, which is the opposite of that blue. So it can be really helpful, once a team leader is looking at, what is it I need to achieve, it can be a great way of saying who's the best person to allocate to this task or which two or three individuals do I put together so that I get a really nice balance or a really nice mixture of styles to give us an interesting result that maybe we wouldn't have got otherwise. We can think of it like a, it's another lens on diversity and inclusion, so what's the diversity of thought in the team with respect to how they interact task versus people, how kind of more introverted or extroverted people might be.
Ula Ojiaku
Is it possible to take the tests and then a time passes and you take it again and you come up with different results, and if so, what could be the reasons for that?
Primo Masella
Yeah, it is possible. We refer to it sometimes as a test - that scares people doesn't it, they feel like there's a pass or a fail. It's an evaluation of your preferences, but it can change over time, so for some people, if you, you know, are adapting as you move along your career, if you're changing the roles you are doing or changing the industry or the country, that may have an effect on how you show up. So yeah, I see people as they go through their careers, they may move around and use different styles. I worked with a leadership team in the past where a lot of the leadership team were high in the red energy, were really focused on delivering outcome. And as individuals in the team became more experienced and more mature in their careers, they actually focused a bit more on others and bringing up others below them in the organisation. And so that red energy came down and the yellow energy came up a bit, which was about engaging and collaborating with others. So there are definitely some people who kind of move around, there are others then like me, who I've stayed pretty much in the same place forever, and anybody hearing this who's ever seen the model before would be no surprise to any of you. I'm very high in earth green energy. I don't think that will ever change. So, spoiler for anybody I'm about to work with I'm, so on, on a scale of a hundred percent for each colour, I'm 99% earth green. So I don't see myself moving very far from that position.
Ula Ojiaku
That's very interesting. So how, in your experience, because you've worked with leaders extensively. So what makes a good leader?
Primo Masella
I could take the project management answer and I can say it depends, because that's in any project context, that's always the answer the project manager should give isn't it, but I'm not a project manager anymore, so I'm not allowed to do that. I would say it's somebody who can set the right tone for the organisation to deliver on its objectives. And in setting the right tone, that sounds like a really simple thing to say, doesn't it, but I think those few words are really difficult for some leaders to do. Now some leaders are really naturally just there, they're just on it. Other leaders need to be coached and trained and guided on how to do that in the most effective way, and by setting the tone, it's getting that balance right between how do we deliver safely, in an inclusive way. How do I make sure that each person in my team is engaged, stretched to the right level, but not overstretched? So there's actually quite a lot, I think. To be an exceptional leader is huge actually, and I think there is a mixture of nurture and nature here. I think some people have that innate thing where they understand how other people work. Now, whether you call that emotional intelligence in this context, or whether you say they've got high people skills or they're very self-aware, all of that kind of language is pointing to the same thing. It's having an understanding of what you do. Sorry, how what you do is impacting other people. So I think some individuals have got naturally higher levels of that than others. I think that can be taught up until a point, but I think there's, you know, if you have a natural empathy, I think that will take you a long way as a leader, personally, I'm aware of my own bias though, as well. So my bias is the people lens, that's always been my bias and my focus, which is why I'm very conscious to be clear around, you know, do we understand what we need to deliver, how it aligns with the organisation's objectives? What's the culture I'm working in? There's, you know, there's a framework that has to sit around this. I think being a leader in today's society is a huge ask for anybody.
Ula Ojiaku
Would you then say that there's a particular, you know, colour or energy type that this ideal leader would be more inclined towards than another?
Primo Masella
Yeah, again, that's a really great question. The truthful answer is no. And, so the model that I work with comes as a circle, the four colours, core colours, being quadrants of the circle. If there was such a thing as an ideal, you'd be right in the centre, yeah. You'd have easy and natural access to all colours all the time and use them massively appropriately. Since none of us are perfect, that's a bit of a tall ask. It's unfortunate that some people look at these kind of models and say, for example, they look at the red energy and since the red energy is associated with delivering results and efficiency and meeting objectives, there's a perception with some organisations that we need leaders who've got lots of that red energy. And if you've got a command control organisation or you work in a safety critical environment, or are heavily audited, you know, in any of those environments, that red and that blue energy really play their part. And yes, you may find a lot more of the leadership roles are filled by people with those traits.
My perspective is that in reality you can lead from anywhere. There's a saying isn't there, you can lead from any chair, you don't have to be sitting at the front of the room to be the leader, or at the head of the table to be the leader. I think the trick is adjusting according to the circumstance, so according to the group of people you are with, or the activity that needs to be done. And actually one of the things I often say when we talk about Insights is that if we think of somebody who's a really strong communicator, they'll use all four colour energies. When they work, when they make a speech, I often think of, I cite President Obama as an example, I'm sure Obama had wonderful speech writers, that helps as well, but if you don't hit all four colours, you're going to lose potentially a quarter of your audience. So when Obama spoke, he would talk about a vision, he would paint a picture of what was going to happen, he would give people enough details that they understood there was some credibility there. He would have a sense of urgency and pace about what he was doing, but he would also be empathetic and engaging with the people at a human level. Now, if you can do that, if you can hit all four of those traits, when you speak to somebody, that for me is the sign of a great communicator. It's also a pretty good indicator of a pretty strong leader, I think. I'm not going to name any names, but I'm sure we could all think of senior political figures, past or present, who certainly don't hit all four of those colour energies when they speak. And some of them are literally rooted in one dimension, and the real danger is, like I say, you're going to lose at least a quarter, half, maybe three quarters of your audience, because you're not speaking to them, that's the danger.
Ula Ojiaku
So what I'm hearing is there needs to be a balance and as a leader, an effective leader, or the ideal leader would know how to slide, for lack of a better word, you know, from one energy to another.
Primo Masella
Yeah. So that's not to say that you can't have leaders in different positions who kind of call that out. So it's absolutely fine to have a leader who is more people focused and they're more collaborative and engaging and people know them, that that's their leadership style. Likewise, it's fine to have a leader who's very results focused, and wants the data before they make decisions and move things forward. I think the trick is to kind of be very clear with the team that you are leading - this is how I work, these are my preferences, and be conscious of the fact that you may be missing some things because you have a stronger preference for something else. And then think about how do I use the rest of my team to help fill in those gaps, so that as a team, we bring a unified view to how we're going to deliver this particular activity.
Ula Ojiaku
So, what I'm hearing is, you know, be aware of where you tend to operate from as a leader, and also understand, you know, that you need the team to complement, you know, the gaps.
Primo Masella
I think, because otherwise we do get into this thing of setting an expectation that a leader should be able to do everything. That's a tough call, isn't it.
Ula Ojiaku
What books would you recommend for anyone who wants to learn more about this topic, you know, personalities, leadership teams?
Primo Masella
Yeah, I've got a couple of recommendations, which aren't necessarily related to what we've spoken about. So the Insights model is based on the work of Carl Jung. So if you read anything of Jung's work, that can be helpful. So this whole concept of how our personalities work, the fact that we each have at least two aspects to our personalities, and we might show up in a slightly different way, depending on who we're working with or where we are. So, I would heartily recommend anything in that space. People ask me about leadership books and I have to be brutally honest and say I'm not a huge reader of leadership books, but I would say the one thing that stuck with me over years and years is Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. And I keep coming back to it because it just works for me. So, you know, you can get these things now as synopses, kind of easy read, quick read things, but yeah, read the whole book. It's one of the few kind of management books that I read and have reread, so maybe that's an indicator. On a slightly different tangent I've just finished reading a book. It's been out for a few years now, but I'm a bit late to the party, about the culture at Netflix and, culture, I find, is really interesting. So I've worked in big corporate organisations where they've had certain cultures. The book is called The No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings, who was one of the co-founders of Netflix. And it's really interesting, especially if, like me, you've, you've worked in huge corporate environments for a long time, because Netflix took an entirely different approach to how they created their organisational culture, and it makes no qualms about the fact that if you are in highly regulated or safety critical, or, you know, if you're building aeroplanes and you don't want people to fall out of the sky, you need certain policies and procedures in place. With a company like Netflix, who are in a creative environment, it's really interesting to read about how they built their company culture, which is the polar opposite from some of the companies I've worked for, really interesting. So just as a read, it's a great read. Then the final thing I'm going to recommend is, and this is slightly off topic. So I'm holding up a book called The Inside Out Revolution by Michael Neill, and this is a based on a principle around consciously thinking about how we think, and a principle that I'm becoming more and more interested in actually, as I get older, which is that everything starts from the way that we think about it. So our mindset governs everything else. So where you may feel like an event happens and I'm sad because that event happens, actually there’s growing evidence, and there has been evidence for some years, actually, that how I think about the event dictates really how I feel about it, not the event itself. So Michael Neill's book is a great way into that, but there's loads of other things out there as well. If you, you know, Google ‘mindset’ or ‘consciously thinking’, you'll see a whole bunch of stuff. So that's something that I find really interesting because that's much more about us taking personal responsibility for how we think about stuff, and being quite intentional rather than be reactive and blame things outside of us for what happens.
Ula Ojiaku
I like the concept of, you know, being intentional and actually exploring our mindset and why we're thinking or feeling the way we do. So where can the audience find you? How can they get in touch with you if they want to.
Primo Masella
So, the best place is LinkedIn. So I'm on LinkedIn as Primo Masella, LinkedIn is probably the best place, so you can find me on there, and I’d be very happy to chat to anybody about Insights or connect with anybody who's interested in the same things that we've been talking about today. It's been really interesting, just to share one reflection. So I've been self-employed for just over a year now, so not about long, really, and, and I started this self-employment journey with perhaps a misconception that it would be very competitive and people would be very guarded about sharing anything. I have to say, it's the exact opposite. People have been so gracious with their time. I've made connections that I never thought I would make, and literally everybody that I've been introduced to, or that I've met along the way has just wanted to help. So if you are thinking of going self-employed then, you know, I can heartily recommend it.
Ula Ojiaku
It kind of goes back to a statement you made earlier. And I said when we're challenged, we learn more about ourselves. So sometimes in the challenges, the going out of the comfort zone, that's where you get the room to grow.
Primo Masella
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, in my circumstance, I left the big corporate world. I wasn't expecting to do that, particularly, it wasn't a decision I'd made some years before, I didn't have a plan for this, and so yeah, I kind of felt like I was thrown into it and I thought, well, I'll just see what happens, and it's great. I can't say enough how generous people have been with their time, and that's just reinforced the fact that I think there is still a sense of supporting other people and collaboration and wanting to do good work, you know, across lots of people.
Ula Ojiaku
So any final words for the audience as we wrap up, this has been a great conversation.
Primo Masella
I would say just start with yourself. So if you know, if you're having a tough time or it feels like everything's going wrong, or your team's falling apart, just, just kind of start by looking at yourself. I don't mean that in a kind of negative way, but you know, we are the masters of our own destiny and there's always something you can change, and sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is to change how you think about something and that can help you in whatever circumstance you're in.
Ula Ojiaku
Yes. Those are profound words of wisdom, Primo. And again, it's been a great pleasure having you as my guest on this episode of the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast, so thank you very much.
Primo Masella
My pleasure, and thank you so much for inviting me.
That’s all we have for now. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, do subscribe at www.agileinnovationleaders.com or your favourite podcast provider. Also share with friends and do leave a review on iTunes. This would help others find this show. I’d also love to hear from you, so please drop me an email at ula@agileinnovationleaders.com Take care and God bless!