The Mindset of Inspired Leadership with Christina Langdon

Drew McLellan: 

Hey everybody. Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute with another fantastic episode of Build a Better Agency. You’re going to love today’s guest. I’m super excited to introduce you to her and for me on your behalf to really dig into her expertise on behalf of all of us. So super excited about that. I do want to remind you that we are coming up on almost the halfway mark of the year already. It’s hard to believe, but by the time you’re listening to this, we are coming right up on June, July, and we are turning the corner into summer. This is a perfect time for you to invest a little more planning and thinking time for your agency. In many, many agencies, things slow down in the summer. Clients go away, they’re traveling, they’re on vacation. Your team may be traveling a little bit more. So as you’re looking at the summer months and you’re thinking, a, I want to take a vacation, which you should, you need to make sure that you take care of yourself and you have the family and friend time that you need, the downtime that you need. But B, if things are looking a little soft and you know that you’re going to have some resource time with your leadership team or your entire team, I think this is a perfect episode to get you thinking about what you might be doing at that time. So let me tell you a little bit about our guests. So Christina Langdon is a consultant. She has had many, many years of success in organizations like the Martha Stewart Organization. She worked for Fast Company. I know she’ll tell you all about that. But her whole focus is growth. And growth, by the way, is not necessarily financial growth. It could be growth in other things or it doesn’t have to be size growth. It could be however you want to grow and evolve your agency. And she has some really interesting ideas about how we need to think differently to sort of make the plan for where we want to go to grow, to change and how we lead our team to that. And so I’m really excited to talk to her on your behalf so that we can all sort of take this next planning season, which I think many agencies are going to have this summer and really make the most of it. So without any further ado, let’s welcome Christina to the show. Christina, welcome to the podcast. Glad to have you. 

Christina Langdon: 

Drew, thank you so much for having me. Delighted to be here. 

Christina Langdon: 

So tell everybody a little bit about your background and how we came to have this conversation today. 

Christina Langdon: 

I’m excited to be here. I am a high performance coach and I am the co founder of the Kite. It’s a leadership development company that’s looking to disrupt the leadership development space. I work with agency owners to help them scale their businesses by scaling their minds. And I help teams to be higher performing through awareness and imagination. I launched my business about six years ago and that was after 30 years of working in corporate. I worked in the media business. Most of my career was spent working for Martha Stewart at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. I finished my media career at Fast Company as the Chief Revenue Officer and in between I worked at an agency. And what I learned was I could apply my decades of operational experience and combine that with my deep love of personal development to help teams and organizations not just perform better, but to be happier doing it. 

Drew McLellan: 

So first of all, I suspect you have some amazing stories to tell given, given the environments in which you worked. But when you, when you look back on those experiences, what’s the big aha for you? 

Christina Langdon: 

My experiences, I mean, in particular, I mean 20 years working for Martha Stewart, I would say the biggest learning I have from her was to. She said her quote, learn something new every day and they’ll go teach it to somebody else. Because if we’re not learning, we’re not growing. We know that. But it really, as the world changes at the rate that it’s changing at, we need to be growing ourselves and the organizations every day. There’s no more status quo because then we are just falling behind. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right? Yeah. We become irrelevant in a, in a blink. 

Christina Langdon: 

Right? Yeah, you can imagine. I mean, Martha was very focused on delivering the exceptional. 

Drew McLellan: 

Yeah. 

Christina Langdon: 

And you know, when I grew up, a C was considered average in school. Right. If you got a C that was average. Well, average today really is A’s. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right. 

Christina Langdon: 

And are how are we delivering exceptional? How are we delivering excellence? And being prescriptive about that is something I’ve been very, I call it idc. I’ve been very intentional, deliberate and consistent about. 

Drew McLellan: 

What does that look like when you think about your point is really a great one, which is we’re not competing against a bunch of C students, we’re competing against all the other A students. Right. And so especially in our world, in the agency world, with AI and all the other things that are happening, I am a firm believer in two things that you said. Number one, if we don’t keep learning, we become irrelevant in a blink. And number two, the best way to learn is to teach. I believe that wholeheartedly. So as you look at the work you are doing now with leaders, where’s the disconnect? 

Christina Langdon: 

That’s such a good question. Well, I call it all my little acronyms, the default mode Network, right. We show up on default almost every day if we’re not very careful about it. Even the owners, the senior leaders and. 

Drew McLellan: 

The leadership team, I think sometimes they show up in default mode more because they’ve been doing it for so long. And so they give themselves credit appropriately. So I’ve got 25 years of experience, I’ve got a master’s degree. Whatever the excuse, whatever the answers are, it’s not really an excuse, it’s truth. But they think they’ve done their time, right? It’s time for everybody else to keep learning. I just have to be really good at my craft at the level I’m at today. 

Christina Langdon: 

So I think the default mode is a really toxic place to be. Because oftentimes when we’re comfortable in the default mode, it brings in a mental toxicity that can really lead to sort of under stress, right? Stress that’s living underneath. And when we allow the calendar to sort of lead our days instead of us leading the calendar, we can get into real trouble because we can get into that status quo. And success in this marketplace does not come from the status quo. It really comes from organizations and leaders that willing to challenge the status quo. Who do we serve? How do we serve? And we’re challenging the status quo on a regular basis. I really think the default mode is something that we have to check. Oftentimes I hear leaders say I don’t have time. And that is indicative of the calendar sort of leading them. Because if you can’t imagine, if you’re not spending time each week learning and growing and what I say, imagining an extraordinary future, then you’re never going to get there. You’re never going to reach the promise, the highest potential. And remember, we want to have a high performing company, but we also want to be feeling good while we’re doing it in the default mode. I think it’s like that toxicity of comfort that can sometimes really wreak havoc on us. 

Drew McLellan: 

One of the things you talk about is that our brains aren’t actually wired for success, they’re wired for survival. And so it feels like that’s a tangential connection to what you’re talking about now, which is this doesn’t happen by accident, like shifting in the way that you’re talking about getting away from sort of that dormancy state. So talk a little bit about sort of how our brains are wired and how do we rewire them? 

Christina Langdon: 

That’s another great question. So we show up every single day in defense. Like when you think about fighting off all of the emails, right? Fighting off the client needs, fighting off a disappointed boss. So every day, even before we’ve opened up the computer to start work or we’ve entered into the office, we’re already in defense mode. And when we’re in defense mode, we’re making decisions and we’re showing up from the smallest part of our brains. So the defense mode is that survival part of our brain, the fear, flight, freeze. And that’s where we are more often than not, particularly when we’re walking into work. We’re already thinking about what we have to do, and we’re thinking about it from the smallest part of our brain, not from the largest part of our brain, which is that prefrontal cortex. We are the only species who has the ability to imagine, and it’s one of the most underused superpowers that we have. We don’t use our imagination enough because we’re always in that defense mode. Now, we know that games are not one on defense, they’re won on offense. So we have to really think about putting into practice how we can be more offensive every single day. Being on the offense every day and how we do that is, I have a simple practice of what worked yesterday, what didn’t work yesterday, and what will I do differently. It’s three questions to answer before you hit the pavement for the day, to really reflect, pause and reflect. We don’t give ourselves enough time to pause and reflect in pursuit of learning and growing. And what we want to be doing as leaders of organizations and agencies is taking that one step further and building in practices with our teams to get into imagination with our teams, get into envisioning extraordinary futures. Every quarter, we really must take a look at what our strengths, weaknesses, capabilities, and capacities are so that we can say, okay, if the agency rose to an extraordinary future, what would that look like? It’s so hard for people to even imagine the extraordinary. People say it’s not possible. People also say that’s not how it’s done here. And the real trick Is I don’t know how, we don’t know how to do that. How is a dream killer? So building in practices every day, what worked, what didn’t work, what do I want to do differently? And then every quarter with your team, how are we imagining an extraordinary future? There is a place for strategic planning. But strategic planning has us planning from the past. Right. And it has us planning from the past and doing it a little bit better. And it’s so funny. We want our strategic plans to be predictable. Why do we want it to be predictable? 

Drew McLellan: 

Right, right. 

Christina Langdon: 

Why don’t we want it to be extraordinarily wildly crazy goals. Now it’s not about setting goals and not meeting them, of course, but building in a practice where leaders can imagine an extraordinary future together and co creating possibility around it. It’s really about challenging assumptions around who we serve, how we serve, where’s the status quo, where are the standards in our business becoming below standards and where do we want to raise our standards? And when we as a team co creating a future, okay, if that’s possible, even though it feels impossible, what are the decisions that we would make today to reverse engineer for it? And when we imagine an extraordinary future, it’s not just about the organization. Because if the organization’s going to do something extraordinary in its growth, each one of the people on the team has to rise to that extraordinary. 

Drew McLellan: 

Yeah. 

Christina Langdon: 

And when you think about the disconnect and the gap between the disengagement at work, I mean 80% of people still report that they’re disengaged at work. How do we re engage people? Not from a place of we have to make our goals. We have to make our goals. We have to make our goals. And often from fear and doubt. 

Drew McLellan: 

Or you’ll lose your job. 

Christina Langdon: 

Or you’ll lose your job. 

Drew McLellan: 

Yeah, right, right. So you talk about paralyzing people. 

Christina Langdon: 

It’s one of the biggest detours that I see on leadership teams is the constant communication around poor performers. It takes us off our extraordinary. Right. Detours us. Now I believe that everybody can reach a higher potential than they’re at now. We only really scratch the surface of what we’re capable of. And I think that that has to come through. Not a job description. I think too many people get stuck in the job description. Well, that’s my job description. Our job descriptions really should be elevating every single year to achieve the, you know, to as I say, to achieve the extraordinary. A lot of it’s mindset. You know, one of the researches that I follow out there says that that success is defined by three components by environment. The second one is skill and the third one is psychology. And when you look at the research, go deeper into attributes success to over 80% to psychology, our mindset. And we’re not taught to manage our minds. When I was growing up, it was sort of woo, woo, Right? But if we are not thinking about what are the outcomes we want to create today, Oftentimes I’ll ask a team member who’s worried about an upcoming pitch or an upcoming meeting and I’ll say, well, what are the outcomes you want to create? And they’re not really sure. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right. 

Christina Langdon: 

We have to lead from outcomes and then reverse engineer for that reverse outcome that we want to have. But managing our mindset, managing how we’re showing up, managing how we want to lead ourselves, it’s really becoming more aware of who we are. And we’re going to have strengths and we’re also going to have weaknesses. That’s okay. We can manage through them. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right? Right. So I have like 12 questions based on what you just said. So I want to go back to the what worked? What didn’t work? What do I want to do different? Walk us through an example of someone answering those questions because I want to know what they do with the answers. 

Christina Langdon: 

Right. So what worked? Typically, we don’t like to spend time congratulating ourselves. Typically, we don’t like to elevate ourselves or appreciate ourselves. So it gives us a moment to actually say what I did yesterday. Sometimes people just write the list of all of the accomplishments or the checklists, the dopamine hits that they got off of, crossing things off of their to do list. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right. 

Christina Langdon: 

But I work with people to imagine, like give yourself some credit. Because we don’t give ourselves credit when we start looking at from a place of what worked. We are looking, we are coming from that critical thinking part of our brain, which is the prefrontal cortex. It’s. We want to start with a positive. Right. And so what worked yesterday? I did a good pitch. I completed the pitch. I was nervous about the pitch and I actually did it. I had a really difficult conversation where I thought it was going to be difficult, but it turned out okay. And I got through my to do list okay. What didn’t work? Well, I don’t think I ended that pitch as well as I could have. I don’t think I closed it as well as I could have. I don’t think I was in that team meeting. I probably could have raised my voice more. I could have shared more. Not from disagreement, but I probably could have said something that would have changed the outcome of that meeting. Instead, I reverted to just keeping it to myself, which is something I do sometimes. I’m not sure whether you would go into that great depth, but the longer you can answer these questions, the more your brain will reveal itself to you. And this practice isn’t a practice we’re doing in our head. We’re actually either writing it on paper or talking it into the recording it into our phone. Got to get it out of our head because our head lies to us. It keeps us small. Right. We want to be seeing our beautiful brain, particularly on paper, working through this practice. And then what would I do differently? This is really important. So we can actually, in that moment say, I would have closed the meeting, closed the pitch by saying and actually writing it down. And in that what I would do differently, I always end it by answering the question, well, who am I becoming? One of the things we don’t focus time on is who we want to be, who we are becoming. And yes, we want titles, yes, we want to make our numbers right, we want to drive the business. But who do I want to be inside my role? If I’m the CEO of the company, who do I want to be for my clients, for my people? I am becoming a stronger leader because I’m listening more. I’m becoming someone who listens more. I’m becoming someone who listens not to respond, but to listen for understanding. I’m becoming a leader that isn’t solving all the problems, but is helping my team to grow and figure out how to solve it for themselves. 

Drew McLellan: 

I’m sorry, I’m just processing that in my head. And of course, I’m going along with you, going, what did I do well yesterday? Right. So it’s an interesting exercise. Do we share this with someone? Do we share this with anyone? Is this our own internal document? However, we do this, like particularly the who I’m becoming or who I’m, you know, what do I do with. So I do with this. How do I maximize the value of making time to do this? 

Christina Langdon: 

It’s such a great question. I do think that every day, if we want to lead ourselves first, to lead others with impact, having a daily practice of reflection is super important. What worked, what didn’t work, what will I do differently? And who am I becoming? I also believe that there’s a place for the practice inside of teams. And it could be what is working on our team? What are our strengths? It could be what Isn’t working. Where are our weaknesses? Looking at our goals and seeing where is the gap between the goal and our capabilities? So what do we want to do differently because of that? What are the problems that we need to solve for, given those gaps? And then who do we want to become as an agency? Who do we want to become as an agency that wants to be, number one, wants to break business? When we do, who will we then have become? So I definitely think that there’s a place for it inside of teams and typically I would recommend doing it quarterly. And who we are becoming, you know, leadership development is really hard. And we have our mid year reviews, we have our end of the year reviews, and there’s a place for it. But I do believe the question of who we are becoming, it helps the review process. If we really understand who someone on our team wants to become, we can help support them, we can help grow them. We can say, oh, yeah, why doesn’t John do that? Because he really wants to become. He wants to become more of a social media manager. Right? 

Drew McLellan: 

Yeah. Right. It’s a great exercise. I’m just thinking through, like, and I’m sure you do this in your coaching work, I’m sure you do it in your leadership development work. But that sharing and then. Because in my mind I’m going to. Oh, okay. Well, if I know who you want to become, then when I see you behaving in that way, I can reinforce that goal for you by going, you know what I saw in the meeting that you really were, you were like in listening mode and you asked such better questions because you were listening. And I know you want to be a better listener or whatever it is. 

Christina Langdon: 

Yeah. 

Drew McLellan: 

I would think that sharing that idea of who you want to be and what you want to take out of each day’s learnings, both what went well and what didn’t, accelerates sort of the skill development. Right. And the mindset change. Like, if not only I’m thinking about it, but I know you’re thinking about it and you’re catching me doing it. Right. I have to think that helps me change my mindset faster. 

Christina Langdon: 

Organizations that have a high degree of awareness of their strengths, weaknesses, capabilities and capacities will perform better. And so just having the conversation with people about who they want to become and what’s working, what’s not working is real. When we talked earlier about learning, it’s about learning about each other, growing together. 

Drew McLellan: 

Yeah. 

Christina Langdon: 

Having open conversations like that. But then how do we build it as a practice for an agency? So just last Week at the Kite. We believe in the convergence model, which is converging leadership development with organizational planning. And in doing it, we are actually defining an extraordinary future and then working to reverse engineer from it. So as the organization rises, so do the people. So how do we do that together? How do we come together to work as a stronger organization, building practice to what worked, what didn’t work. Who am I becoming? I work with teams to develop their user manuals. So a long time ago in the corner office column of the New York Times, I don’t remember the CEO. I’ve looked it up, can’t find it. But he spoke of having a user manual as a leader and that user manuals just aren’t for coffee makers and dishwashers, that we should all have one. So when teams know the extraordinary, know the goals that they’re trying to pitch for, how do they work better as a team? They work better as a team, knowing each other so deeply. So I worked last week, I worked, I did a two day workshop with the team who had worked with each other for a very long time. They’re very tight, lots of retention, lots of great skill and capability. There’s. But they’d never written their user manuals. And that really is. It’s a list of questions to help people understand how to work better with you, how to work better for you, and what they want other people to know about themselves so that it’s on the table, so that we can take it off the table. And when everybody has a user manual, we can then find what the similarities, what are the commonalities, what do we see about each other, what do we understand about this collective team and that we can memorialize it. So now we have a team manual. And then any time, like Drew, if you wanted to give me some feedback, you could pull up my user manual that we have memorialized and you can see. Oh. Christina likes to take very direct feedback and likes to ask a lot of questions when she’s given feedback. Oh, now you know. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right. I don’t have to pussyfoot around. I don’t have to, I don’t have to weasel word it. I can just come in and say it. Right. 

Christina Langdon: 

And in the user manual, you are being vulnerable by saying, here’s when I’m not at my best. Right, Right. If you know, when people aren’t at their best, wow. Then we know each other better. So we give each other more grace, more understanding. And when we do, we become much more collaborative and effective. 

Drew McLellan: 

Yeah. So one of the questions I had Jotted down, which is you’re leading right up to it is I think for a lot of agencies, they have. You have an owner or maybe two owners, and they drive a lot of the day in and day out activity. They’re the strategists and then they have leaders, but their leaders are really department heads. Right. And in some cases those department heads are good leaders, and in other cases, they’re just the most senior person in the company doing that craft. So if I’m listening to you and I’m like, I do want to do this and I do want to build a leadership team that really is capable of thinking about an extraordinary future and helping me imagine it and then reverse engineer it. How do I look at my leadership team today? So I’m going to ask this question, then we’re going to take a break. 

Christina Langdon: 

Okay. Okay. 

Drew McLellan: 

How do I look at my leadership team today and assess where everybody’s at in terms of their actual ability to do that? I’m probably not going to fire all my department heads and hire new leaders. So how do I take the people that I have and myself look in the mirror honestly and figure out what kind of a leader I am? How do I look at all of us and say, we have to get better at this? How do I get better? So I think a lot of cases the owner comes to the leadership team meeting saying, here’s the strategic vision or here’s where we’re going, or here are the goals for the year. Maybe they participate in it together. But it is very owner led, typically. So my question is this feels more like a team sport and it feels like we would get further faster if we can do it better together. So we’re going to take a break, but when we come back, I want to talk about how do I figure out where my people are and how do I get them to be better at this so we can go on this journey together? All right. All right, let’s take a quick break and then we’ll be back with Christina and she’s going to teach us how to do that. So don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back. Hey, everybody. Just want to remind you before we get back to the show that we have a very engaged Facebook group. It’s a private group just for podcast listeners and agency owners that are in the AMI community. And to find it, if you’re not a member, head over to facebook.com groups B, a bapodcast. So again, facebook.com groups Bab podcast. All you have to do is answer a Few questions to make sure that you are an actual agency owner or leader, and we will let you right in. And you can join over 1700 other agency owners and leaders. And I’m telling you, there’s probably 10 or 15 conversations that are started every day that are going to be of value to you. So come join us. All right, we’re back. And I asked that tiny little question, which is a tiny little question I know. How does an agency owner evaluate their leadership team’s ability to do this kind of extraordinary thinking, planning, reverse engineering? And if they’re not up to snuff today, like that’s something they’ve never done before, or they really have been operational, which is, I think, true in a lot of agencies, how do they groom and grow the team to be able to do this well together? 

Christina Langdon: 

So you said earlier before the break that usually the owners, the leaders, the CEOs, have the plan, the strategic plan, and they’re presenting it to their leadership team. And I believe there is a place for the CEOs, the owners, to do a strategic plan. But I would ask them to consider doing it differently going forward. Where you are co creating what’s needed for the agency’s growth together. Because it starts with deciding if we want this. And the owner can say, I want 30% growth. And as a coach, I might say go 100% growth. Because what would be interesting is what would be possible, what would need to change, who would we need and bringing the team together to say, if we were going to grow 30%, 100%, what would need to change in your role? What gaps would there be? What do we not have right now to grow by 30% because we can’t be doing same things over and over again because we’re just going to get the same kind of results. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right, Right. 

Christina Langdon: 

So it’s really about co creating the extraordinary. It’s really co creating it. It starts with challenging assumptions. And this is where the leaders who can rise do start rising. So challenging assumptions about who are we serving, how are we serving them, and why are we doing it that way. Remember, we get into the default mode, right? And some of the underperforming leaders, that’s where their comfort zone is and that’s where toxicity sets in. So it’s really about co creating the future and seeing where the gaps are, seeing who’s willing to commit to working on their leadership. I mean, when you go through this process, it can be very, very vulnerable. And people don’t always agree or align. Say that’s just too big okay, well, then what can you commit to? But coming together as a team is really the first place to start. And not everybody will rise, and a lot of people may not. And those are the people that we might have to gracefully unwind from. 

Drew McLellan: 

How do I, as an agency owner, encourage that kind of growth in a leadership team member? 

Christina Langdon: 

You know, I will answer that in one sec. I just want to go back and finish something that just came up. So in the workshop last week, team had worked together for a very long time. And what came out of their user manuals were so many things that they didn’t know about each other. The other thing that came out in their extraordinary goal that their CEO is driving towards, and it’s a pretty extraordinary goal in the challenge around it and in some of the resistance around getting there, what was uncovered was that even though they’ve worked together for so long, they have different. They learn that they have different definitions for key parts of their business and for key parts of job descriptions, key parts of services, key parts of how they’re actually servicing clients. They were not on the same page. Your definition of that is different than mine. So what happens is we get to uncover, we get to peel back the onion on the things that we really need to work on. To answer your question about. Actually, now I forgot the question. What was the question about leading individual members. 

Drew McLellan: 

So how do I, as an agency owner. 

Christina Langdon: 

Yeah. 

Drew McLellan: 

I have somebody on my, on my leadership team. How do I groom and grow them to be this big thinking leader that I need on my team to help me imagine and get to the extraordinary. 

Christina Langdon: 

So some people can do it with ease, and some people have a lot of resistance around it. Okay. 

Drew McLellan: 

Where do you think the resistance comes from? 

Christina Langdon: 

I think the resistance comes from it’s going to be more work. 

Drew McLellan: 

I already have a full plate, right. 

Christina Langdon: 

I already have a full plate. So one of the things I would work on, I would have the CEO work on with that person is asking them what they do really well. What is the high value work that has the high impact that they want to deliver? So the Pareto principle tells us that 20% of what we do every week produces 80% of our impact, which means 80% of what this leader is doing is low value work. Low value impact. So what is it, Drew, that you believe is your highest value work? And with that, how does that match to your job description? And how does that match to my expectation of what I’m hoping for from you? I often have people actually rewrite their job descriptions every single year because it should be changing. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right. 

Christina Langdon: 

Title doesn’t need to change. But the job description, they should be wanting to do bigger and better and more interesting things with their job and really getting to alignment of that 80%. Like all the emails. Right. All the time wasting that we’re doing. How do we delete, delegate or automate it so it’s helping the people that are in the busy. Can’t do it, I don’t have time. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right. 

Christina Langdon: 

Coming up with a framework for what’s your 20%? How do you want your 20% to apply to your job description? And then how are you, how do you want to evaluate that 80%? That’s really the low value work. It doesn’t mean that the work doesn’t get done. Right, right. We’re either automating it, deleting it or delegating it. 

Drew McLellan: 

You know, one of the things you talk about is sort of, and all of this sort of swirls around this idea of sort of reaction, wiring our brain a little bit. And I think about an agency owner coming into a meeting and saying we’re going to imagine this extraordinary future and then we’re going to figure out how to do it. After years of an agency, you know, growing, they’re doing fine. But it’s incremental growth. And by the way, I just want to remind the listeners, growth isn’t always bigger. Right? 

Christina Langdon: 

Growth is not always bigger. 

Drew McLellan: 

Growth might be more profitable, it might be more sought after rather than you chasing after. I mean, growth could be a lot of things. It does not have to mean. If you’re 20 people, you have to be 40 people. That’s not what we’re saying. If that’s, if that’s your goal, fine. But big hairy goals can be growing in a variety of ways. And you have to decide what will make your organization extraordinary is what kind of growth. 

Christina Langdon: 

I mean, extraordinary could be launching a new product. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right? 

Christina Langdon: 

So it doesn’t have to be growth. All that we’re talking about here does not have to be growth. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right? 

Christina Langdon: 

But we know that these agency leads like to grow well. 

Drew McLellan: 

But again, it could be profitability. It might, it might be same client. We just want to be more profitable or we want to have more retention. So again, how you want to evolve, your agency is going to be, number one, very personal to the goals you have as an owner. And number two, it’s not necessarily about doubling headcount. All right, so just remember as we’re talking about that, just remember that. So, all right, so back to my question. So we have to think differently if we’re going to deliver a different result, we have to think differently. So I have to rewire my brain. I have to change the way I approach my work, the team, our output, our clients, our product. Like all the things. But I know that one of the things you talk about is that how stressed we all are and that the idea of rewiring your brain just makes most people go, well, that sounds like a lot more like, I’m already, I’m already so stressed out, I’m not sleeping well. I never can get my to do list done. Fill in the blank. Fill in the blank. Fill in the blank. So talk a little bit about that concept of the stress and how we approach rewiring our brain in a way that we’re excited about it rather than dreading it. 

Christina Langdon: 

I talked earlier about idc, Intentional, deliberate and consistent. And I think that to rewire the brain, brain we do because think about it, we’ve been building muscle towards stress for so long. So there needs to be a deliberate practice that happens every single day. Seven out of 10 people are chronically stressed. It’s one of the research that’s out there. So there is chronic stress. And I hear a lot from leaders. I’m so overwhelmed. And so one way to manage the overwhelm, the stress is to really look at what are the things that are causing you stress, what’s causing the overwhelm. I ask people to write a huge list. As long as you need to list all of the things you either have to do or that are causing you stress, put it all down on paper. And then I ask them to look at what is in their control and what is not in their control. And then I sometimes will suggest that the things that are not in their control, is there something that they can do to influence it. We are so much more powerful than we give ourselves credit for. And so how can you influence even things that may like what Harry’s team is doing? I can’t control that, but how could I influence that? And then the next part is to look at, based on that practice and that, looking at that exercise, what do I want to stop doing, what do I want to start doing and what do I want to continue to do? So oftentimes we are ruminating. The stress comes from ruminating over thoughts. A lot of it for business leads is they’re ruminating over low performing people, people that they keep too long, people that they believe. So think about this is a big assumption that we see often. If they leave, I won’t be able to get somebody as good, or if they leave, they’re leaving with all of that institutional knowledge. I don’t have time to onboard somebody new. And so months go by, a year goes by, and the same problems are happening over. And think about the mind, space and the energy that that’s taking over. 

Drew McLellan: 

So this is an audio recording, so those of you, you can’t see my expression, but I am grinning from ear to ear because I must give this speech every freaking day that why do we keep talking about this person? You have, you have tried to make them better. You’ve invited them to be better, you’ve cajoled them to be better, you’ve disciplined them to be better. And guess what? They’re better for a month, maybe two, but then we’re right back where we are and oh my God, I am in your office talking to you about them again. And exact. Christine, that’s exactly what you say, which is, I don’t have time to find someone new. Someone else would be more expensive. 

Christina Langdon: 

Expensive. 

Drew McLellan: 

They have all this institutional knowledge. 

Christina Langdon: 

What would the organization think? 

Drew McLellan: 

Right, right. What will people think because they’re the ones that bake cookies on everyone’s birthday or whatever. The thing is, if there is a problem that I bang my head against the wall more often than not, it is this problem that we think magically someone is going to get better or we cannot live without them or whatever it is. But the truth of the matter is, you’re exactly right. It is so all consuming, not only for typically the leader who is their direct report, but usually it’s the conversation amongst the whole leadership team over and. 

Christina Langdon: 

Over and over again. I had a coaching call with a senior executive yesterday who I had the pleasure of leading their quarterly meeting with them and a week prior. And he said yesterday it was the best quarterly meeting that we’ve had in years. And I asked why? And he said, because we’re not talking about this person and this person anymore. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right. The freedom of that is remarkable. 

Christina Langdon: 

And so, you know, we resist change. And it is scary, of course, but all good things come through change. And like when we talk about the extraordinary future, like, think about, like, what would be different without Joe? What’s possible? Think about, is it possible that we could hire Joe squared, Like so better Joe, right? 

Drew McLellan: 

Or two Joe’s two, Little Joe, Joe and Big Joe who have different skill sets because Joe’s kind of a unicorn. That’s the other thing I hear. Well, oh, yeah, bad employee is good at these three things which most human beings are not good at. All three of them. I’ll never find somebody else. 

Christina Langdon: 

Never. 

Drew McLellan: 

Okay. However, they show up late, they’re disrespectful. They don’t live by your values. Your employees have workarounds around them, and guess what? 

Christina Langdon: 

You’ve given them the permission to show up that way. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right. 

Christina Langdon: 

And leaders wonder, it’s so hard. Why aren’t my people more accountable? And it’s because we as leaders have given them permission to. To show up late, to act like they’re a special shiny star. Right? 

Drew McLellan: 

Yeah. 

Christina Langdon: 

And everybody around them sees that and sees what they’re getting away with. And it’s interesting. I had another leader who. It took him six months to actually work through the graceful unwinding from the poor performer. And guess what happened in, like, less than two weeks? The entire team started showing up, the remaining team, with more energy, with more excitement. And they were like, oh, don’t worry. I got that. I can do that. She was doing that, but I can do that. That’s like, not a problem. And he wasn’t even having to hire somebody new. But the other thing is that we live in an economy now that we can always. The person who does so many things, we can always hire an outside contractor until we can find somebody. And maybe that outside contractor is exactly what we need. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right. 

Christina Langdon: 

But considering the possibilities, our brain. Right, Our brain will tell us we can’t. It’s too hard. I don’t have time. They’re a unicorn. They do so much. What would the organization say? And we need to get into possibility around, well, what would be possible if those were just lies I’m telling myself? 

Drew McLellan: 

Right. Oh, boy. You and I could do it an hour just on that topic alone. But let’s go back to. So I have a leader on my team. Maybe they’re young. They haven’t had management training. Yeah, true for most agency people. 

Christina Langdon: 

Yeah. 

Drew McLellan: 

They just have risen through the ranks. They were a good art director, and now they’re a great creative director in terms of, like, their skill set, their day job. Right. But in terms of a leader and being visionary alongside of me, that’s not something they’ve been exposed to. To your point, they look at their to do list and they go, I don’t have time to imagine what’s possible. Like, I don’t have time to do that. How do I help them? Because it feels like a journey to get to the place where they can be that. How do I help them start and stay on that journey? 

Christina Langdon: 

The art director. So how I might answer that question is asking the creative director, who they admire the most in terms of a previous boss, a previous leader. It could be a coach. But who do they admire and why do they admire them for what characteristics? What qualities and characteristics of a leader do they admire? And oftentimes, more often than not, this exercise has been given like hundreds of thousands of times. And when people answer the question, they come up with qualities that are rooted in emotional intelligence. They come up with a great communicator. They were understanding, they were trustworthy. So I might have that person decide what kind of a leader they want to be. Because oftentimes when they answer, those are the qualities that they want most for themselves. 

Drew McLellan: 

Of course. Sure. 

Christina Langdon: 

So if those are the qualities that resonate with you most, how do you want to bring that into how you’re leading yourself and how you’re leading others? Because that may be the path forward even before we get to managing the team. Because if we’re showing up with more understanding, if we’re showing up to listen. Right. For understanding and not to respond, it may help us be a better manager before we’re even managing our people. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right. 

Christina Langdon: 

If that makes sense. 

Drew McLellan: 

And how does that help them? So now they’re sitting around the leadership table. So it’s the director of account services, it’s the biz dev person, it’s the creative director, it’s the, like, it’s all the directors, the department heads and the agency owner. How do they learn how to imagine better together? 

Christina Langdon: 

Okay. And you know, Simon Sinek published a book that’s called Together is Better. It’s a fable and it’s written in cartoons. I think it’s his most powerful book that it doesn’t get. 

Drew McLellan: 

No one talks about. Right? 

Christina Langdon: 

Yeah, no one talks about. It’s called Together Is Better. So I want to be careful when we’re talking about imagining a different future. We don’t need to be a rock and science to do that. We don’t need to change ourselves. And we’re not changing the agency into something else. We are examining possibility. So from awareness comes possibility, and from possibility comes a new future state. So what is possible for you, Drew, in your role? What’s possible for the team? Start it with what’s working, what’s not working, what do we want to do differently? Start asking questions around the assumptions that we’ve built into the business that are actually holding us back, and be open to conversations of what needs to be improved, what needs to be enhanced. Where are we lacking resources? Where do we need more resources? Having the questions, just getting it down on paper, putting it up on flip charts, asking the difficult questions in an environment that is a safe environment for people to challenge each other in a way that’s about creating a stronger future. So imagining a process for client service, if we were going to make it more efficient, what would we do? What would need to happen? What would we need to learn? What would we need to let go of? What would we need to feel right? What would we need to embrace? Oftentimes you’re hearing these days, I’d have to embrace technology. I’d have to embrace more AI. Okay, if it’s AI and if it’s automation, what would be the most important pieces of automation that we could bring in? So it’s really about a conversation. It’s really about having conversations more than it is about being some extraordinary imagination, which I do believe there’s a place for. I think like a context here that might be helpful. Is that when we, in March of 2020, when all of these agency heads were told that they needed to move their organizations home to do work from home, and there’s no real understanding of when we’re coming back. And when you think about some of the largest organizations, hundreds of thousands of people in the states needed to move home in a matter of a couple days. Most CEOs probably used an expletive or two to say, no way, not possible. But because there was a must, there was no choice, they rethought how they did business. So that is an imagining, an extraordinary future that at one point they wouldn’t believe was possible. And to carry it even further, in that period of time, the pharmaceutical companies were told they needed a vaccine, and they needed the vaccine in nine months, when it would typically take nine to 12 years. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right? 

Christina Langdon: 

So think about what needed to be reimagined. New processes, new communication, new thinking, new collaborations, new partnerships. New collaborations, new partnerships, new. So that there is like, that’s the juice. That’s how we. We bring that thinking into that leadership team. Even using the example, what if we had to change the way we did business? 

Drew McLellan: 

Yeah, yeah. It’s such a great example because you’re right. I think a lot of people are listening to this, going, this sounds great, but I don’t know how to do it. We don’t have time, whatever. But they’ve done it. Everybody listening, other than the agencies that were already virtual. And even for them, they had to reinvent a lot of things. Yeah, they have done it and they’ve done it. They’ve done it in the recent past. They know how to do it. They just have to get out of their own way and remind themselves that they know how to do it. 

Christina Langdon: 

And it’s interesting that you use the word how because I hear it a lot. I don’t know how. How would we do that? How would we imagine an extraordinary future? How is a dream killer? It’s just the brain keeping us safe and small when we use how. Because there is always a solution to something new. And Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan have a book that’s called who, not how and when. Your brain says I don’t know how or when. In a leadership meeting, people would say, I don’t know how we’d ever do that. The question to ask is, who could help us? Yeah, who has done this before? Who’s an expert in AI? Who has been through what we’ve been through before? We all have big networks. We also have Google and we have YouTube. 

Drew McLellan: 

Right? Yeah. Somebody’s done it. 

Christina Langdon: 

Yeah. 

Drew McLellan: 

Something close to it for sure. This is a fascinating conversation and I feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface, but I know it’s the top of the hour, and so we need to let you get back to your work. But this has been. This has been extraordinary. I’m hoping people are excited. Like, in the beginning I think they’re probably like, oh, shoot. But now I’m hoping they’re like, oh, yeah, we have done that before. We have imagined a brand new future. We have completely retooled our business in a moment, Literally in a. In two days, in a moment, and we survived. And in some ways, we’re better off today than we were because we have new methodologies, new ways of communicating, new ways of codifying document, like whatever. Whatever came out of COVID and the way we worked. There were some pluses to that for sure. So hopefully they’re like, oh, wait, I can do this. And I’ve actually done it before, which I think would be an exciting place for them to land. So this is a perfect time to sort of pause and say, all right, first of all, thank you so much for sharing your experience. 

Christina Langdon: 

Oh, my gosh, it was such a great conversation. 

Drew McLellan: 

It really was. I’m super grateful for it. So if people want to learn more, more about your work, they want to learn more from you. What’s the best way for them to find out more about your company, the work you do, and how you come alongside folks like them every day? 

Christina Langdon: 

Well, you can always find me on LinkedIn. Christina Langdon. You can [email protected] is my website. I also have a personal website, but I think a good way to close out is if people are interested in reverse engineering for the impossible. If they’re interested in measuring the degree of success through awareness and imagination, they can take the growth zone assessment that we have. It’s free. And it will give you a report back. And I’ve written those reports in a really detailed way so that people will have good takeaways about what they need to do to help their organizations continue to challenge assumptions and see a better future. So you can put the link in the show notes. 

Drew McLellan: 

Okay, so here’s what we’ll put in the show notes. We will put Christina’s LinkedIn profile link. We will put a link to the company, her personal, and then a specific link to this assessment. So you guys can. 

Christina Langdon: 

And it’s free. It’s entirely free. 

Drew McLellan: 

So. All right. This has been great. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise and your energy around this. This was really, really lovely. 

Christina Langdon: 

I really enjoyed the conversation. And it was. It felt like I was sitting right next to you. 

Drew McLellan: 

I know, I know. It was really great. All right, you guys, this was a great episode. If your brain is not like on overdrive right now, then you need to come back and listen to it again when you’re not tired or you’re not driving or you’re not doing whatever, because I don’t know how. One of my challenges in this conversation is I’m obviously, I’m thinking on your behalf. I’m like, what agency owners want to know. But I’m also, of course, thinking about AMI and what. How we can do all these things. It was. I will say it’s very challenging to have this conversation and not be taking notes the whole time about what I think could be our extraordinary future, which obviously benefits you. And so I’m hoping you’re feeling that same energy that I am and that you do something with it. So as you know, I do not love listen and forget it episodes. I like episodes that call you to think differently, to do differently. And maybe you just start. Maybe you just start with what worked yesterday, what didn’t work yesterday, and what do I want to do differently or what do I want to do about that? Maybe you just start there and just again, as Christina said, not in your head. Because then you sort of self doubt yourself and you start sort of editorializing it, like write it down or talk it out loud if you need to, and record it in some way. There’s no excuse for any of you not being able to record this. Anymore. There’s too much technology out there. But get it on paper somehow and begin to observe what you are observing and begin to observe even what happens when you make these little incremental changes in what you want to do different. And then imagine what if you brought that kind of thinking, that kind of exploration to the entire organization and you taught your leaders. I know all of you want your leaders to be even better leaders than they are today, no matter how great they are. So teach them this exercise. All of you do it independently, and then maybe once a week or once a month, share the most, the biggest. Aha. From that, all of you go around the circle and share it. I think you’re going to be stunned at how all of a sudden this is a muscle that you start to not only exercise on a regular basis, but you like what you get from the exercise. And from there, you can start taking Christina’s advice at a bigger level about thinking about what’s possible and how do you get there. Like what is an extraordinary state of being for your agency? And then how do you get there? But first, figure out what it is, Dream it together. And then I suspect, perfect example. Just like you figured out how to work from home and all the other things you figured out after Covid, you will figure it out. And if we can help, of course we’re here to help. I know Christina is here to help. We have lots of resources for you that will help you figure out how’s the easy part. The hard part is opening up your mind and your heart to imagine what’s possible and then committing to getting there. And so I think you’ve gotten a great roadmap today. At least the start of a roadmap of how to do that. So that’s your homework for today. What worked, what didn’t work, what do I want to do different? Start there, start small, but commit to doing it for a month and then see what happens. All right. All right. So that’s. That’s my. I’m going to step off the soapbox for today. But before I let you go, you know what I have to do. I want to thank our friends at White Label iq. They’re a great example of this, by the way. So they were a marketing agency. They had a big problem, which was they couldn’t hire enough people to build all the websites they needed to build. They needed a company that all they did was tap into resources to build better websites. Higher quality, faster, and more cost effectively. So you know what they did? They imagined creating a sister company that that’s all they did. And now White Label IQ is that sister company. And not only do they serve that original agency, who I’ve known for 20 years, but now they serve agencies all over the world, and all they do is solve that problem for those agencies. So if you need White Label Design Dev or ppc, White Label IQ is the partner that you need to know more about. So head over to white labeliq.com/ami to learn more about them. If you’re coming to the Build a Better Agency Summit, of course they’ll be there because not only do they sponsor the podcast, but they’re the presenting sponsor of our conference. So you can hang out with them, you can get to know them, but for sure, check out the website and let them know that you appreciate the fact that they are the sponsor of the podcast because they help make it possible for me to have these kind of conversations and to introduce you to people like Christina, which, as you know and I know, is incredibly valuable. So let them know that you appreciate them. Speaking of appreciation, you know, I like to end every episode. I know how busy you are. I know how crazy busy you are. And I know that sometimes for some of you, I’m on the subway with you or I’m on the treadmill with you. I know I put makeup on with a couple of you in the morning. However, we spend an hour together. I am super grateful that you carve that hour out and we get to hang out together. This is not something I get to do if you don’t find value in it. So I am grateful that you find value in it. And I’m grateful that you keep coming back. And that’s my promise. I will keep coming back as long as you do, too. So I’ll be back next week. Hope you will. We’ll have another great guest like Christina to help us think a little differently about our business. And honestly, that’s. That’s the best gift that we can give each other is to think different. Better. All right, see you next week.