Evoke Greatness Podcast

The Human Side of Leadership: Building Lasting Impact with Dr. Mandolen Mull

• Episode 149

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🎧 Episode 149: Leadership Legacies & Human-Centered Organizations with Dr. Mandolen Mull

In this powerful episode, we dive deep with Dr. Mandolen Mull, founder of MullMentum Consulting, into the transformative power of authentic leadership and the critical importance of human-centered organizational development. From her early influences to her innovative approaches in leadership development, Mandolen shares insights that bridge academic theory with real-world application.

We explore:

  • The impact of generational mentorship on leadership style
  • Breaking both chains and cycles in professional development
  • The fallacy of standardization in modern workplaces
  • Creating sustainable organizational change
  • The connection between employee wellbeing and organizational success
  • Customizing leadership development for authentic impact
  • The importance of experimentation in organizational growth

🔑 Key takeaways:

  1. 80% of any workforce is disengaged - we're measuring the wrong things and asking the wrong questions
  2. Standardization doesn't work - customization and flexibility are key to employee engagement
  3. A disengaged employee lives a disengaged life - workplace impact extends far beyond office walls
  4. Leadership development must bridge theory and practical application
  5. Organizations need to experiment more and be willing to reinvent themselves
  6. Employee wellbeing directly impacts sustainable organizational success

💡 Quotes to remember: "If I cannot reach them, I cannot teach them." - Dr. Mandolen Mull

"You have to make absolutely certain that you have done your part as a leader to really honor the responsibility that they've asked of you. They may have forgotten that they asked you to look out for their livelihoods, but you don't get to." - Dr. Mandolen Mull's father

"We've been talking to talking points rather than talking to people's pain points." - Dr. Mandolen Mull

🌟 Featured Insights:

  • The crucial role of customized self-care in leadership
  • The importance of breaking both chains and cycles in professional development
  • Why standardized performance evaluations are outdated
  • How workplace wellbeing impacts societal fabric

📚 

https://mullmentum.com/meet-us

https://www.instagram.com/mullivation/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mandolen/

Pick up a copy of “Grit for the Pearl”: https://www.amazon.com/Grit-Pearl-Mullings-Mullivation-MullMentum/dp/B0DCRVY8BH

A rising tide raises all ships, and I invite you along on this journey to Evoke Greatness!

Check out my website: www.evokegreatness.com

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Evoke Greatness. We are officially entering year three of this podcast and I am filled with so much gratitude for each and every one of you who've joined me on this incredible journey of growth and self-discovery. I'm Sunny, your host and fellow traveler on this path of personal evolution. This podcast is a sanctuary for the curious, the ambitious and the introspective. It's for those of you who, like me, are captivated by the champion mindset and driven by an insatiable hunger for growth and knowledge. Whether you're just beginning your journey or you're well along your path, you're going to find stories here that resonate with your experiences and aspirations. Over the last two years, we've shared countless stories of triumph and challenge, of resilience and transformation. We've laughed, we've reflected and we've grown together. And as we've evolved, so too has this podcast. Remember, no matter what chapter you're on in your own story, you belong here. This community we've built together is a place of support, inspiration and shared growth. Where intention goes, energy flows, and the energy you bring to this space elevates us all. So, whether you're listening while commuting, working out or enjoying your morning coffee, perhaps from one of those motivational mugs I'm so fond of, know that you're a part of something special. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your curiosity, your openness and your commitment to personal growth. As we embark on year three, I invite you to lean in, to listen deeply and to let these stories resonate with your soul. I believe that a rising tide raises all ships and I invite you along in this journey to evoke greatness.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to another episode of Evoke Greatness Today. I am absolutely thrilled. I've been waiting for this time. With Dr Mandolin Moll, we have had some life things happen, and I will tell you this is one that I can't wait to sink my teeth into. So you guys all just better prepare yourself.

Speaker 1:

Mandolin is an author, she's a speaker and she's ultimately a dynamic force in the world of leadership, development and organizational change. As the founder and principal consultant of Momentum Consulting, she brings a wealth of experience in fostering sustainable growth for individuals, teams and organizations. She's got a PhD in organizational development and change and an MBA in international business, and she's not just a consultant, but she is a bridge between academic theory and real-world application. Her journey is one of resilience, one of perseverance and determination, having built a successful career while navigating severe Crohn's disease and acquired torsion dystonia. Her unique blend of expertise, humor, storytelling and her authentic leadership style has helped clients globally, from union building trades to healthcare executives. She's an advocate for people with invisible illnesses. She's redefining what it means to lead with grit and grace Mandolin, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much, Sunny. It's been lovely getting to connect with you. I've been so excited to get to have this conversation with you today. I want to dive right in. Like I said, I've been so excited to get to have this conversation with you today.

Speaker 1:

I want to dive right in. Like I said, I've been waiting to sink my teeth into your story and just learn more about you, because you're a fascinating human being for so many reasons. But let's go back a little bit right. There was a lot that led up to Mandolin and who you are today. Tell us a little bit about that story and how that kind of led you to the current version of you.

Speaker 2:

I am the beneficiary of some incredible mentors. You know I had a phenomenal grandfather who really invested in me. He was a colonel in the Air Force and, you know, base commander, and so he didn't really get to see his children grow up and I was the baby and for whatever reason he connected with me. It was the greatest honor of my life to be his favorite. He had no problem telling everyone I was his favorite, so I can say that with great confidence. And so you know, I learned so much at a very young age how to treat people well, and my father was a master stonemason. He had a really rough upbringing. He had some maladaptive skills. He was a very messy person, so he was kind of the opposite of my maternal grandfather. But then as I got older I started to really appreciate what both of these men were teaching me. Where my grandfather was really teaching me to love complex and messy people, and there in my home was a complex and messy person and my father hired individuals from all walks of life. Running a stone masonry company in Texas didn't exactly draw near a whole bunch of employees that wanted to do manual labor in that Texas heat right, and so I got to see my father give a lot of grace to individuals that were navigating all kinds of things, and my father built a very successful career through developing people. So that left me to building my career forward into earning my degrees.

Speaker 2:

I got a degree in political science because that's what my grandfather he had become a politician when he retired at the Air Force. I was going to be the first female politician out of the third generation international business MBA. And then I got a PhD in human resource development and change, dedicating it to my father who had dropped out of high school and giving him that degree. And then I've since got a postdoc cert in positive psychiatry because of the people I've worked with have really been similar to my father in many ways. So yeah, it's kind of a roundabout way and through that process I navigated, you know, health issues and some challenges that I think a lot of the grit that I had from my grandfather and my father really kept me going.

Speaker 2:

You know my motto a lot of times is I am Johnny West's daughter. You know, like there is that, like I am his daughter, I am taught I'm scrappy and you know my grandfather lives rent free in my head all the time, and so it was really about having a purpose-driven life of trying to develop leaders who go on to develop other leaders. So that's brought me to where I am today and really been the through line is trying to get back to that generational mentorship.

Speaker 1:

That explains so much on why you have the love of people that you do and that sense of like being able to see through the messiness. You work with a lot of different industries as you have built your consulting firm, and it's really intriguing just the wide variety that you work with a lot of different industries as you have built your consulting firm, and it's really intriguing just the wide variety that you work with. I love following your stories on LinkedIn because you share this, such a sense of diverse experiences. Your upbringing and your backstory helped me to understand why. Was there a moment where you were like had this light bulb come on that crystallized your mission to foster this like sustainable growth inside of leadership development?

Speaker 2:

You know my father once told me. He said you know, amanda Lynn, if you, if you terminate an employee, you have to remember that you are repossessing their car, you're taking food off their table, you are shutting off their electricity. So you have to make absolutely certain that you have done your part as a leader to really honor the responsibility that they've asked of you. They may have forgotten that they asked you to look out for their livelihoods, but you don't get to, and you know that was such a resounding piece of advice for me, right. I don't get the luxury of forgetting that my responsibility is to have their backs right. I have to be the eyes and ears for them. I have to have their backs to be able to say not on my watch, I'm not going to let you fail. If I see you stepping out of bounds, I'm going to nudge your back. And that was something that was really really important to me, to have that insight right. So it resonated so much with me and Sonny.

Speaker 2:

The most crazy thing about all of this is I got into leadership, so I was in corporate before I went into the academic route, so I came in the back door essentially, and it was.

Speaker 2:

I've only had three months out of my entire working career where I was not in a supervisory role, where I was not leading others, and so I was very, very green from the get-go of being a leader in all I knew to do Because we don't typically get great leader development in onboarding and as a kid I was running a satellite location of a healthcare clinic in Austin, texas.

Speaker 2:

I was so green and all I knew to do was try to live up to the ideals of my grandfather and my father, and so that stuck with me was how could I develop my employees and say, not on my watch. And then, as I continued climbing the corporate ladder in a couple of different industries, as I got my master's and all of that, it was through mentoring my employees that they brought me the job description that got me into academia, because they said we think you should be a professor, we think you should go and teach people how you're teaching us, because here your scope is limited, but if you're in college you're getting a whole new group of people that you get to develop every 16 weeks, and so that's how I got into higher education and then into consulting eventually.

Speaker 1:

And you describe yourself as balancing that line between a scholar and a practitioner which is so perfectly and accurately depicts that. How do you think that dual perspective has shaped your approach to leadership, to consulting, and then what unique insights does that offer the people that you work with?

Speaker 2:

You know, I would say there's an I think I give an element of surprise. Okay, so I am four foot 11, ginger ninja, right, so you get this PhD right. And so, like, organizations get excited because like, oh, we have this PhD coming in with this customized leadership development training program, which is cool. So the organization gets excited to show their employees like, hey, we've got this person with their bona fides who's going to come in and we've hired somebody that's going to give us a customized, unique experience, a bespoke experience.

Speaker 2:

But then I get in front of that training room or in front of those employees and I'm off script you know what I mean Like I'm talking about my experiences and trying to shorten their learning curve and I'm able to weave in cognitive biases that we have as leaders and the things that get in our way, like imposter syndrome and the Peter principle and things like fundamental attribution bias that says I judge you based on your behavior, but I judge me based on my intention. And how can we navigate that? We know that that, from a scholastic point, is something that fundamentally exists in everyone. So then we say, okay, well, how do we navigate that in real time? What does that look like with your colleagues and how do we create space for grace with your colleagues when you witness that?

Speaker 2:

And so I think what people end up finding about me is I start off being a professional development and very, very quickly it becomes personal development and interpersonal development, because, seriously, I have no idea what professional means anymore. You know, by that realm I wouldn't be in my position, you know, 30 years ago because I wouldn't be professional. So it's things like that that, I think, gives me an element of connectivity. I often say, if I cannot reach them, I cannot teach them, and that is something that I have found to be such a motivator in how I am able to bridge that gap between the scholastic realm and the practitioner realm. It's just that sense of like hey, if you're not relating to them and they can't buy into you and you don't have credibility with them, you're dead in the water. I don't care how good your content is if you don't have any kind of connectivity. So that, I think, is what has been my asset there.

Speaker 1:

And what a powerful combination, right? So there's this element of surprise that you bring, because there's this immense sense of degrees and background and education that you bring with it. But I think that is so beautifully tempered by what you said earlier, which is you have a deep sense for humanity. Like there is such a deep, probably partially unexplainable way that you have like this connection with people and a sense of deep humanity in the way that you approach people, and so I think all of that is like boom, you probably walk into a room and the roof starts to shake a little bit.

Speaker 2:

You know, I appreciate that. I think you know this is I heard my nephew say once I don't know what my nephews are my brother-in-law is from Mexico, so my nephews call me Tia and he said I don't know what my Tia does, however, but I know she goes in and helps people from being stuck in their jobs. And I thought, oh my gosh, he's my marketing guy now. You know, right on, bro. But, sonny, it fundamentally brings us to know that we've got and over the last 40 years that we've been researching employee engagement, we've got 80% of any organization in any industry, in any geographical region. 80% of that workforce is disengaged. One, the reason that that's the case is because we've been asking the wrong questions and measuring the wrong things. Two, we haven't moved the needle in all that time, so we haven't had the right strategies.

Speaker 2:

I think we've been talking to talking points rather than talking to people's pain points, and once we understand those pain points, we can start to navigate forward. But what hurts me so much is I know that a disengaged employee lives a disengaged life. They do not suddenly go home and be like work sucked. But my life is amazing. They carry it home with them and it eats away it's their quality of life.

Speaker 2:

It's not just people's livelihoods we are talking about. It genuinely is their livelihoods Not on my watch. We have to care about these people and understand that what is happening in the workplace is absolutely carrying home and disrupting them, and I know that because I know the names of all of my parents' colleagues, of all of my parents' colleagues and I bet you heard that being said when we went home of like what people you know who did this at work and who did that. People were taking it home, and so we've got to care enough about them to try to be more supportive. And so, yes, absolutely. I think that's an accurate statement that I care so much about the humanity of those. I think that's an accurate statement that I care so much about the humanity of those.

Speaker 1:

When you talk about that, we're looking at the wrong things and asking the wrong questions. What should we be leaning towards? And I don't even think it's probably industry specific. I think there's probably generalizations around what we should be leaning towards to better connect, to better understand. What would some of those things be, just in your experience?

Speaker 2:

So great question. You know, the reality is one people always want to talk about culture and nobody knows what the heck that means. You know it's such an amorphous word, right, because it means so many different things. The other thing, you know, I know our buddy, Scott Heathman, colonel Scott Heathman. He and I have these conversations about. He's such a wonderful human being, but we have these conversations about how it came out of the Air Force that standardization doesn't work. So here's something that's pretty fascinating, sonny.

Speaker 2:

Okay, in World War I, out of the military came these standard performance evaluations. During that time frame, though, the US Air Force was starting to experience random and rapid aircraft crashes, and they couldn't understand why this was happening. It was happening from pilots being trained at different locations, different aircrafts differently, like everything was different. They're saying why are perfectly great aircrafts and airmen crashing? And so they start to think well, in 1929, the cock pilot had been designed. So they're thinking. Well, by this time in the 1940s, going into 1950s, possibly the average size of those pilots had changed. So a young airman does some research over 4,000 airmen, takes all these different measurements on 10 different criteria, and so he comes up and calculates an average. What he finds is that not a single one of those 4,000 plus airmen fit the average. So he goes back to the engineers and says, okay, one size fits all fits none of these guys. So we've got to not design for the average, we've got to design for the edges. We've got to not design for the average, we've got to design for the edges. So let's, you know, make these adjustable foot pedals, these adjustable seats, all of this kind of stuff. And engineers said it's not possible. They said, well, you got to do it. And finally they got it done and that's why you and I, my four foot 11 self, can drive, you know, in the car today. But at this same time. So in World War I, we've got about 60% of organizations using performance evaluations, standardized performance evaluations. The same time all of this is going on, the Air Force is going oh crap, standardized doesn't work. By the end of World War II, over 90% of US organizations were using this standardized performance evaluation. So we continue to use these standardized metrics that do not fit anyone. We never went back and fixed it. Organizations don't use enough experimentation, they're not agile enough and they continue to use these like smart goals and metrics that are very, very constraining, and people don't like it.

Speaker 2:

We're dealing with a distracted workforce, more than I think we're dealing with a disengaged workforce, and we really haven't asked the question of how can we customize support for our employees that allows them to have some autonomy. How can we let our employees actually customize their benefits packages? How can we allow them to customize, maybe, their work? There's a wonderful model for work called results-only work environment ROW. I have a client of mine who's been ROW since 2012. They have, I think, a 98% employee retention during that period, hand over fist profit results and returns for shareholders. Employee happiness and satisfaction is extremely high, consistently.

Speaker 2:

And more organizations are just not doing this because it's not the way that we've done it all of that kind of stuff. So I think we're having doing this because it's not the way that we've done it all of that kind of stuff. So I think we're having. But so I think the employees today are rebuking standardization. I think we're tired of it. I think we very much want to have more specialization, customization, and I think that's the strategy we've got to go towards, and I think it will require some creativity, some. You know it will require some creativity, some agility, some communication with employees, and so I think we're getting there. I think it's just very, very slow for us to get there, but that is really. We've got to abolish the standardized one-size-fits-all process. It just does not work. It's all a process.

Speaker 1:

It just does not work. I love that concept because it is. We take things from long, long ago and we try to put, like that round peg in the square hole and somehow we can rationalize how that makes sense. And then we come out with outcomes where, to your point, eight out of 10 people are dissatisfied. I think six or seven out of 10 right now are actually looking for another job or open to leaving their role for another one. And yet we can stand here and say, why are turnover rates so high? Why are people not engaged? And we don't understand the unintended consequences of having people of our role in actually keeping them engaged, maintaining them being a part of the company which, again, to your point, isn't always about, like that, professional role, like it's intertwined of the human that they're made up of.

Speaker 2:

I absolutely agree and I am optimistic that we're getting better at this. I really am. But I do think it's going to require a very honest conversation and top leadership of saying where can we put if our employees' well-being genuinely is what we care about, because we've always known happy employees create happy results. You know, you just said this about rational things, right. But the reality is we don't act rationally because we know like mass layoffs is the worst thing that an organization can do in financial straits, right. So we have hundreds and hundreds of studies that say don't do this. This is terrible for you. Financially long-term, this is not a good thing, and yet it's the go-to of organizations. Still, it's totally not rational.

Speaker 2:

And so we're still seeing a lot of these really irrational behaviors that organizations are doing and sadly, it's trying to get people to really understand that if your goal is to truly get organizations to be sustainable, to be sustainably successful not successful, but sustainably successful you're going to have to keep reinventing it. I always call it like the U2 or the Cher motto. U2 and Cher are really great at reinventing themselves and that's how they've been sustainably successful. That's what organizations need to be thinking about. How can they adopt more of that kind of mindset. I think if they do, we're going to really find a wonderful aspect that benefits employees and then you know, a greater good all around.

Speaker 1:

I had a conversation earlier today that consisted of someone kind of defining what their business was about, like who they served, and she shared that when she first started the business 10 years ago, that definition looked so different. But she said I've given myself permission for that definition to change. I didn't get locked into this one thing because, like, once you have this, you can't ever change it. No, it is. That is going to evolve with me, and I thought, gosh, that's brilliant, Not only for your personal, not only for your, but like for life you. Our goal should be to continually evolve, to continually become more knowledgeable, more experienced, have more wisdom, and that's going to change how we view the world. And so we should be open to the fact that our definitions of whatever it is fill in the blank, are constantly evolving.

Speaker 2:

I would agree with you. You know the reality. So I've asked organizational leaders for a while now what would happen if you paid your employees for a 40-hour work week and instead of an eight to five Monday through Friday, you had them an eight to five Monday through Friday. You had them work eight to four Monday through Friday. What do you think would happen with your productivity? Every single one has said it would go up. I'm like great, so why aren't you doing that for three months and just experimenting and seeing what happens?

Speaker 2:

If your concern is productivity, give that time back to your employees. You know that if your productivity goes up, you're still going to make hit your metrics. You're going to get your profitability, all of the things that you're wanting while doing right by your employees. Like this should be a thing. And if it doesn't work well, then you can still tell your shareholders that look at how innovative you are for trying something new. Like come on now. Like this should be stuff that we get excited about.

Speaker 2:

And yeah, I am finding more organizational leaders are starting to buy into this, thank heavens. Probably because they're like oh my gosh, we're going to deal with the mandolin if not, but we're getting there. You know it's like a slow roll, but we're getting there. You know it's like a it's like a slow roll, but I do. I stay optimistic in all of this because employees deserve it. Again, you know, if people are not going to church, they are not going to counseling, they are going to work. In how we invest in our people at work that fundamentally can change their lives in totality at home and the way that they parent or the way that they behave with their spouses or their partners, the way that they engage with their community. All of those kinds of things start to shift our societal fabric. And I know that sounds like incredibly optimistic and Pollyanna of me, but I really do believe that again, we can't be asleep on the job of that as organizational leaders. That is the stakes, that is how high it is, because employees that are this disengaged, they're going home with these maladaptive skills because one, many of them have never seen healthy coping mechanisms modeled for them. They've seen distraction, they've seen disengagement numbing out. They haven't seen people have healthy strategies for regulating themselves after a bad day.

Speaker 2:

And we talk about like self-care and all that kind of mess, but we don't talk about, again, customized self-care. You know, you and I can sit here and talk about self-care and again kind of talking about that culture. We may be having two totally different conversations of what is comforting to you and what is comforting to me, and we've got to know our brand. So I tell people all the time I don't need to know how you regulate after a bad day, but I need you to know what it is a healthy way, how do you get yourself out of a funk when it's there? What are your tools? What are your touchstones? Plan for chaos, because chaos is going to come. And then what are you going to do to steady yourself? And I don't think a lot of people have been asked that they haven't had the tools available for that. And the ones that seem available, or the go-tos that mean well, genuinely mean well, seem like they're such a heavy lift for folks, right, it's like, oh my gosh, I don't have time to meditate. I am the worst. Do not ask me to go meditate Like no, it's not going to happen. But you know, if I've had a bad day, I sure am going to wrap myself in a giant fluffy pink blanket, watch Moonstruck and quote the entire dadgum movie word you know, line for line Right and I'll feel better doing that, and that's such a healthier way for me than even stuff that I had previously. You know, because it used to be go home and have a couple of glasses of wine and realizing, wow, this is my life, this is a. This is not what I want.

Speaker 2:

I saw this type of coping skill modeled for me growing up. I would like for that not to be I. You know, my father once told me that he had broken a chain, but he had not broken a cycle of his dysfunctional upbringing because he was an alcoholic. He had broken a chain, but he had not broken a cycle of his dysfunctional upbringing because he was an alcoholic. He had a lot of anger and he had affairs on my mother, and so I thought about that a lot. What was the difference? Was I continuing on the cycle? And I was. I broke the chain, I moved away from my family and all this kind of stuff, but I went away to college. I did these things, I built a career, but at the time I had not broken the cycle, and so there's a big distinction. And I've talked to people about that over the years and folks have said you know what, mandolin, I didn't realize it. I'm really good at breaking chains. I'll rip it up out of the ground and walk across the street and plant it and just keep it going Right, and I think that's so true for so many of us and so shifting that mindset of being like we have to do both.

Speaker 2:

You know, we have to break the chain and the cycle for ourselves, and when we do it for ourselves, we start to do it for other people around us and again, I really think that that becomes inspiring. And I think when we talk about how do we create workplace well-being, people crave being inspired. That is what we're seeing. Not how can people be more engaged? How can they be motivated? They want to be inspired. Not, you know, how can people be more engaged? How can they be motivated? They want to be inspired, and if we can create that for folks, it's extremely contagious okay, guys, you know the routine.

Speaker 1:

This is where I hit the pause button. I hope you have enjoyed part one of the human side of leadership with my guest, dr mandolin moll. Make sure you come back next week. You are not going to want to miss part two, where we deep dive into breaking free from the achievement trap and redefining ambition, finding purpose beyond accolades and external validation, the power of vulnerability in leadership development and creating space for real conversation in the workplace. I know you're going to enjoy it, so I hope to see you back next week in the workplace. I know you're going to enjoy it, so I hope to see you back next week. Thank you so much for listening and for being here on this journey with me. I hope you'll stick around.

Speaker 1:

If you liked this episode, it would mean the world for me if you would rate and review the podcast or share it with someone you know may need to hear this message. I love to hear from you all and want you to know that you can leave me a voicemail directly. If you go to my website, evokegreatnesscom, and go to the contact me tab, you'll just hit the big old orange button and record your message. I love the feedback and comments that I've been getting, so please keep them coming. I'll leave you with the wise words of author Robin Sharma Greatness comes by doing a few small and smart things each and every day. It comes from taking little steps consistently. It comes from making a few small chips against everything in your professional and personal life that is ordinary, so that a day eventually arrives when all that's left is the extraordinary.

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