Turning Corporate Culture Upside Down: Leadership Insights

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:00:41

Well, hello everybody and welcome to another amazing episode of Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight. I am your host, Jaclyn Strominger. And today I have the absolute pleasure of speaking with Nico Van de Venne.

And you're going to love hearing from him. We've just had a great pre show conversation. He is not here in the United States. He's actually over across the pond in Belgium.

Yeah, I was like, wait a minute, Belgium in the, in the country? I was like, wait a minute, where are we? We were just talking about a few different countries. Anyway, so let me just tell you a little bit about Nico.

He is a premium confidant for high achievers, successful CEOs and founders and entrepreneurs.

His journey is a master class in professional evolution stretching over 25 years in diverse fields such as nuclear, as a nuclear industry, legal I T, telecom sales.

And extensive experience has culminated in a deep understanding of fulfillment bey conventional, conventional success metrics, which obviously really tends to bring in great leadership. Because when you have vast experience, you have, you can learn so much about leadership. So, Nico, welcome to the podcast.

Nico Van de Venne: 00:01:53

Thank you so much for having me.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:01:55

No, it's my pleasure.

So, so I, you know, I, I'm really curious, you know, you had all this great, you know, experience and across all these different depths of professions and if you could say, like, what was the, what was the turning point for you in this that you were like, you know what, now I want to go out and, and, and help other people.

Nico Van de Venne: 00:02:24

Well, I think, I think that part's been there the whole while. Why otherwise do you go into leadership to guide people towards good, good goals and wonderful dreams and so on.

But if, if I would go to a point where a decision was made to do it as an independent person, that might be a very big switch is when I saw a couple of symptoms in a large company which is called Big Blue. But I'm not going to name the car the company in itself.

When one of the things was like Excel sheet management, leadership, micromanagement, um, you know, paralysis in change, all those wonderful things. I've, I've started to name those things as, as, as a disease. You know, CEO disease and founder syndrome are two films in a way, really.

It's like I've noticed the same things happening to entrepreneurs who are good leaders, but sometimes, you know, letting go and stuff like that does not really work for them because, you know, first you started on yourself, then you have to go to the next level by letting go.

, um, honestly, I think about: 2020

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:03:48

So.

All right, so a couple things that you said I just kind of want to kind of touch on, you know, as you said, you know, when I was asking the question, you know, most people step into leadership, they have the goal to help people.

But I actually want to challenge you on that because sometimes I think people get into leadership not because they have that na, you know, they want to help other people. It's because they've performed well at a company and somebody has helped them rise up into that spot.

Nico Van de Venne: 00:04:19

Yeah, I always chuckle when I get this kind of question because it's so very prevalent these days. I see it happening so many times.

You know, the one expert who does a great job, you know, gets in early, stays in late, you know, gets all these things done, becomes the next leader of a team. Worst mistake that a company can make, by the way. That's my opinion, to be completely honest. You have your exceptions. Indeed.

I'm going to actually talk to myself here and be advocate of the devil because I actually recently put somebody in that position. But I was able to prepare him for leadership, which is a big difference. And that's a lot.

That's what happens a lot is that you have a lot of people, you know, they're expert and they're. They're great in what they do.

And you have to make a distinction between is somebody a leader or individual contributor who's an expert and in a company. I also work in learning and development and I see these things happen. Look for true two distinct trajectories.

One is getting them into leadership, and the other one is giving them the alternative to become an expert for their team. Being, you know, a sidekick of a leader. Not.

Not as in they need to, you know, manage people because usually they're a bit awkward in managing people for one. One part, or they just don't have the talent for it. And you can learn leadership up to a certain extent.

Funny that I just flashed through my mind that my whole career has become falling into leadership one time after another just by being somewhere, by acting with people and so on. So some kind of inherent talent that was within me. But I've seen other people who just jump into being the expert the whole time.

You know, they just know things. They. They find a problem and they solve it. And nobody ever asked for it in a certain way. But. Yeah, I. I see what you mean.

And and indeed, it's something that sometimes needs to be avoided to just push somebody in that direction. You're right. You're right.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:06:22

You know, and, and as we're talking, you know, one of the things that I find that's really fascinating what you, you know, just sharing is that, you know, you said, like, either giving somebody that ability to say, as you shared, you know, you. You just help somebody transition into leadership. Like, you, you help them get ready for it. Keeping. Get ready for it, right?

And, you know, so you put it. And it's. And, you know, but before you help them get ready, you gave them a choice. You ask the question, right? You know, is this some, you know, do.

Is this something that you want to do? Do you see yourself as a leader? Is it something that you want to grow into? Right? And. Or, you know, again, asking those questions.

And I think that's actually, you know, when I think about the. One of the quintessential things about leadership that's. That tends to happen is that the person going into it, you know, they.

It's more like, oh, I want to go. That's my. It's part of my trajectory. I. I know I go here and my next step is to be like the assistant, blah, blah, blah.

And then it's to be the, the director. And then, you know, and you have this ladder.

But nowhere really along the way is somebody really asking and saying, like, or asking the question, what do you really want to do? We just know, right? Like, I want to climb the ladder, but is it really what we want?

Nico Van de Venne: 00:08:02

Good question. Yeah, it's. It's very, very, very difficult to answer because you have to be honest.

You're gonna be honest not with the person who asking the question. It's gonna be, you know, getting up in the morning, seeing that mirror, and saying, what do I really want?

Do I want to get on this next step on the ladder, or do I want to sit where I'm sitting right now and just be better at what I do?

And at the point that we were discussing his jump, it was only like six or seven months ago, and he had the opportunity to really go into a very technical oriented direction or into this. And I had discussion with him and I asked him that question, and he was really kind of baffled looking at me.

He's like, yeah, but it's the logical next step. I'm like, no, no, no, no. There's no logic here. This is about feeling and knowing and understanding who you are as a person.

Because as leader, you need to know a heck of a lot about yourself before you start leading people.

If you don't, there's a lot of stuff that you're going to meet along the way that you don't want to meet, because all your people are reflections of you and they're going to just rub it into your face when you're doing something wrong. And you're going to have to tackle that. And it's better to tackle beforehand instead of really in your role.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:09:20

Right. And it's so important. Like, yeah, you do, as a leader, you really do need to know who you are. You need to know your values and what you stand for.

And, you know, and something that you said, again, I'm just going back to this is. Is. Is. Is helping. You know, as you said, you know, it's about helping people. And I don't.

And I think this is the key thing about leadership is that I think people for sometimes forget that part. Like the word lead is not tell. Right, Right.

And so if we think about what leadership really means, it is, you know, and, and I'll go down to like, you know, we were talking before about being like on a farm. Right. You know, you have the. The person who's leading a flock. You're bringing people to a point, you're moving people. And so I think we forget that.

And so I want to ask you, as you're working with people, how do you help your clients and how do you help people kind of take that step back and say, how do you lead?

Nico Van de Venne: 00:10:41

Well, first of all, I'd like to make a comparison as well.

What I see what leadership is, there's this old image of you have a horse and carriage, and the, the comparisons is the horses are your team and the carriage is the. The product or service or whatever. You're, you know, moving into the world of arts or outside of the world. Now you have different kind of leaders.

There's the manager sitting on top of the carriage, telling people where they need to go. Then you have the leader that is in front of all the horses, showing them how to need to do it and expecting all of them to do the same.

And then you have this one person that somewhere there in between that you don't see, he's running around between the horses and listening to all the horses and trying to understand why that one horse wants to go left and the other one goes right. And you try to compare them and ask them, you know, why are you doing this?

And bringing them back together in that same direction, you know, putting the noses in the right direction.

To me, leadership in my core is that guy who is invisible, but who is there to only support their environment instead of directing them, micromanaging and all that stuff. So how I help my clients in that story is by purely listening first to what's going on with them.

There's a lot of leaders out there who are in very specific positions, and I would say executives or C levels or founders or entrepreneurs who are managing a flock that is so diverse that they meet a lot of different stories and they need to be able to tell somebody those stories, but they're not going to be able to do that to their employees or to their team members. I'm the one who is listening to their story in full confidence, and I will not spread it.

That's the first thing creating the trust environment of, you can tell me your story and it will not leave the room. That is, apparently, that's the feedback I get is that it's very exceptional.

Even though people go to therapists and coaches and so on, their story is being recycled and reused for other, Other means. They might put another name on it and this and that, but in some point, they're reusing it. And it's not okay to do that. Basically.

No, you know, if somebody tells you something in confidence, right? Yeah, Yeah. I don't have any, for instance, I don't have any specific witnesses or anything like that that will tell you about my services.

I do not want that. I don't care about it. It is. I do what I do, and people come to me for that reason.

So that's why I have the possibility to tell them a little bit more and a little bit deeper on who they are, because they're telling me their stories, their deepest threats, their deepest fears, their deepest concerns. I can tackle those deepest fears and concerns and threats more deeply kind of thing. A lot of deep here. But yeah, it's really what's happening.

And the thing is, they come out of this as a totally different person because it's what I said earlier. You meet your reflection in your team, you meet your own pains in your team. If somebody's not performing it, it is really a reflection of you.

You're not performing in a certain part of what you're doing. And they will show you as long as necessary that you yourself see what's, What's. What's going on. What are you doing wrong.

I've had this experience in this. In the, in the past myself. I was. I've never been a writer. You know, procedures and all those documents. It's not my thing.

I. I love AI for it these days. It helps me. I call her Luna.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:14:32

Oh, I love. I love AI for. So, yes. Anyway, yeah, helps.

Nico Van de Venne: 00:14:36

Helps a lot. But somebody in my team as well was always complaining about the fact that she didn't know what she needed to do.

And of course, if you don't have any standard operating procedures within your department, you know, you're. You're effed, you know, forget my French. But I started understanding like, whoa, hold on, there's a big hole there. What's the hole?

And eventually I had a mentor within the company who really rubbed it into my face. And he said, so how do you know every day what you need to do? I'm like, well, actually I open up my email and that's what he said.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're turning out fires. You're not solving problems, you're turning out fires. Where are your SOPs? Where are your standard operating procedures?

What are you doing? Oh, okay. So, yeah. And I started realizing these things and it solved.

The person who had the issue suddenly knew exactly what she needed to do and her day was much better, her life was much better, and so on. And then you come to the layer where you become the foundation of your team, where you are at service.

And that's where I want to reply to the question you have about helping as a leader. You are not there to be what a lot of people think as being the boss. Always makes me think about the 80s episodes, series of who's the Boss?

Where you never know who's the boss, basically. But indeed you're there to service them.

And a couple of months ago, I went to a company and I saw a perfect example of how an infrastructure structure, organizational structure looks like. What it looks like when you're, when you're helping the right people. And they had it upside down, basically.

If you know, you're a classic, classic structure in organizations is pyramid. They turned the pyramid upside down and they said, you know, everybody executive is supporting all the rest of the teams.

They are supporting the sales guys and so on. They're there to provide you with the necessary funds to do that event, to do the customer attraction solution and so on.

And they're not there to tell you what to do. They're the expert. And I love saying this to my team.

When I come into a meeting, I'm like, listen, guys, I'm the dumbest person in the room right now. You're going to tell me what you need me to do to get your stuff moved forward. And that's what they love. You know, keep.

Keep them in the place where they are the best. That's their expertise. So that's how I see leadership and helping and so on. I hope it gives you an answer to the question.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:17:05

And actually it's so. It is, it's, you know, so listeners, I really want you to like, think about this too.

Like, this is a real, you know, we're, we always are talking about, you know, key insights. And I really think this is something that, you know, you may have heard it before, but, you know, is turning the. That pyramid upside down.

And we are here to serve people. The people that are. That they're. They're in your. They're on your team. And you are, you're not telling people what to do.

You know, if you can think a bit about it in the sense of like the conductor, right? The conductor is helping people.

You know, is like helping people figure out what notes to be playing so that the other people who are playing other notes can come together in a beautiful melody so that they can work together. He's not dictating, you know, who's doing what. He's. He's conducting. Right? And so as a leader, we are doing that.

Like, that's, you know, you're not dictating to your team. You're there to help the team thrive and just. And but the other part too is also really getting to know your team, right? So that, you know, that.

Oh, I know Nico, Nico wants to go here.

Like, his vision is for him to do, blah, blah, blah, like five years from now, what do I need to do as the, as the leader to help raise Nico up to that, whatever that is, you know, and, and what you said in the beginning was it's like, do people like. You know, I think some. That's why I think sometimes people fall into leadership and they forget. Like, at the end of the day, it's, it's.

We're leading people. So get to know your team and their values as you were sharing them.

Nico Van de Venne: 00:19:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, It's. It's easy to see where you're going if you, if you're not being mindful of the effects of where you're going.

You know, the next step is logical step. It's not the neck. No, it's. It's. There's no logic in, in humanity. Humanity does not have logic. Life does not have logic. It's.

It's so funny that also, you know, my kids, they're turning 15 and 13 this year.

And it must be horrible to have me as a dad because I can be so very, you know, right on the dot and like, oh, dad, you know these things and why are you telling us? And I prepare them for a lot of things. And I said, you know, pain is something that's part of life. Don't run away from it.

It's something that's part of life and you're going to have pain in life, but it's a good thing.

Pain gives you, teaches you, and it brings you to a point where you find your limits and your boundaries and you go from there and you find those and then you break through them and in comfort and so on. And that's something where a leader as well needs to understand the pain of their team.

And it's bit what you're saying of somebody's evolution, you know, that they're in pain because they want to get somewhere else. So how can you solve their pain?

It's by listening and going through the pain either with them or for them or just understanding how you can move away the wall that they also tend to walk into. But one of the biggest things there, and it's so prevalent with children, with your team, with whatever you do, it's letting go.

It's really letting them do it and trust in their ability to, to get through that pain and that wall and, and they will, they will achieve, but just be there to, you know, pick up the pieces if they don't. That's. That's one thing as well that I've learned.

I've seen people jump into a role that they thought they were ready for and they were not, and they had to come back. And, you know, embarrassment was, was very prevalent.

You know, they crawled into a shell and I was there to break through that shell again and say, you know, there's nothing's changed in your expertise. You are still good at what you do. You just tried something and you failed, which is amazing to do.

You know, fail forward is one of the best things I ever learned. And pain is part of that. And you have to understand all those things. And yeah, it's so much fun being a leader.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:21:37

Right, right, right. And I, and listeners, this is a really big, this is a key thing is, is.

And I think something that you just said, I think it's, it's, it's beautiful to be able to say to somebody, it's okay, you, you, you took a step, maybe didn't. It didn't come out the way you wanted it to, but that's okay, you're learning from it. And you could.

The, the next time you step, you can step bigger because you can, you can know it. But as long as you, the leader, can help that person grow as opposed to, you know, there's two different ways. You could. It could happen, right?

You could shun the person and make them feel like, you know, whatever.

Nico Van de Venne: 00:22:20

Right.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:22:21

And not make them feel good and they. And they don't. Or you could help them thrive. And so, you know, you have to decide what kind of person do you want to be?

Nico Van de Venne: 00:22:31

Well, the quick question is, do you want to keep them or not? Because that's, that's, that's what happens. Make those choices. That's clearly what happens. One goes, the other doesn't. It's as simple as that.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:22:43

Yeah, you know, it's. You know, I, and I talk to people about this a lot of times too. Is that people, you know, and, and not.

And I'm sure people have heard it a thousand times, but it's a key thing to remember. Nobody ever leaves a company because of money.

They may say it's money, but they, they really leave a company because they don't feel that they are appreciated. They don't feel that they have been.

That they're, that they, they don't feel worthy or that the, the leadership doesn't make them feel good about themselves. And if you can help people feel good about themselves when they walk into that room, God, that's just like, beautiful, right? You want.

Nico Van de Venne: 00:23:18

It's like a drug. It's like.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:23:20

Right? It is. It is so like a drug. So, Nico, I could talk to you for hours, but, so tell me, like, what is, like, the one thing?

If you could give people, like, you know, one thing to walk away with, what do you want them to know?

Nico Van de Venne: 00:23:34

There's so many. Shrink it down to pure leadership. If there's one message that I would bring out there is find someone.

And it doesn't have to be a professional, but find someone who is 100% trustworthy. And I don't take that word lightly. 100% is something that I really, really emphasize.

Someone who's 100% worth of your confidence and your trust, and speak to them openly on what is going on within your leadership role. And ask them before you even start, do not give me any solutions. Do not ask me any questions. I just want you to listen.

Because listening to your own voice is sometimes the key to finding a solution to all your problems. It's the same thing as writing down a problem, is solving it halfway.

Because Every solution that you're looking for for a problem is within writing down and within the problem. So that's one thing that I would. Yeah. Send out there.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:24:44

Oh, I love that. That is so important and so true. So how can our listeners connect with you and learn more about you and.

Nico Van de Venne: 00:24:52

Well, the quickest way is LinkedIn.

I'm always active on LinkedIn, so I publicize a weekly podcast as well, the Everlasting Fulfillment Podcast, where I discuss CEO disease and founder syndrome very, very explicitly with the. With executives and C levels. And on. On the other side, I, you know, do the LND and the confidant story. That's. That's the other thing. But LinkedIn.

Find me on LinkedIn or just type in my name, put a.com right behind there, and you'll swim overseas under the ground to a wonderful country called Belgium. And that's where you'll find my website.

Jaclyn Strominger: 00:25:25

Absolutely. Fantastic. Well, Nico, I so appreciate you being a guest on our podcast. This is the Unstoppable Leadership Spotlight Podcast. And again, I'm your host.

And Nico, thank you so much for being an amazing guest. And please, listeners, reach out to Nico and connect with him. Great, amazing wisdom and insight. So thank you so much.

Nico Van de Venne: 00:25:44

Thank you.