Eagles, Parrots, Doves, and Owls

We’ve established in earlier episodes that the employee experience is a crucial aspect of how well your company executes customer experiences. In other words, you need to pay attention to how well your employees work with each other.

I’ve always believed that we really understand what makes ourselves tick and where we struggle then it’s a whole lot easier to build healthy relationships because we can then leverage the skills and talents, the people around us with a sense of humor, a sense of humility, and not feel like we’re in competition.

Breaking down the styles of how employees work together on this episode of The CX Leader Podcast.

The CX Leader Podcast with Steve Walker is produced by Walker, an experience management firm that helps our clients accelerate their XM success. You can find out more at walkerinfo.com.

Hello, everyone. I’m Steve Walker, host of The CX Leader Podcast and thank you for listening. It’s never been a better time to be a CX leader, and this podcast explores the topics and themes that help leaders like you leverage all the benefits of your customer experience and help your customers and prospects want to do more business with you. A lot of companies do it personality tests or evaluations, ways to help employees discover more about how they and their colleagues work with others. Some might roll their eyes at the mention of them, yet others find them very useful in trying to connect to other people in their company. Regardless of how you feel about them the goal is ultimately a better working team and employees working well together means there’s a better potential for an excellent customer experience. Well, my guest on this episode has a unique way of looking at how employees work together. Dan Silvert is a partner and president of the Velocity Advisory Group, a management consulting company. He’s also a friend and collaborator. Dan, so glad to have you on The CX Leader Podcast. Thanks for being a guest on the show.

Thank you, Steve. Glad to be here.

Well, I’m pretty excited about this one because I’ve been a fan of your work and I actually am one who thinks that self-awareness is key to not only your own success, but successful organizations. So maybe before we get into an overall topic, just give us a little more on your personal background and also the evolution of Velocity Advisory Group and some of the things that you do.

Sure. So I’ve been kind of happily obsessed with self awareness for a long time because I’ve always believed that if we have clarity in the mirror, if we really understand what makes ourselves tick and where we struggle, then it’s a whole lot easier to build healthy relationships because we can then leverage the skills and talents, the people around us with a sense of humor, a sense of humility, and not feel like we’re in competition. That leads to higher levels of quality of life. And then if we’re happy and we’re enjoying a high level quality of life, well now we’re going to be a lot more productive. And so that cycle from self awareness to productivity with a lot of happiness in between, well, that’s a ride that that that folks don’t want to get off. And if you think of the opposite of that, if you lack self awareness in the mirror, what then happens? I bet Steve you you’ve worked with people in know, people that just don’t know themselves very well and are kind of puzzled about why people respond to them the way they do.

Mm hmm.

Have you seen that yourself?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. And it’s it can be tragic at times because you’ve got really talented people that mean well…

Yeah,

…but they just don’t know how to connect. And it’s because they they’ve just got too much distortion in the mirror. So that’s been kind of my thing for, for many years now. And I’ve written a couple of books on the topic. And then with Velocity, you know, we’re fortunate to work with clients in a wide array of different, different realms, from training to executive coaching to strategic advisory services. And throughout all of that, self awareness is key because if you’re a senior leader, you’ve got to understand the impact that you have the moment you walk into a room or get on a Zoom call. And then when you look at a leadership team determining strategy that multiplies that self-awareness can be a force positive or it can create all kinds of issues.

Yeah, well, again, as I said, I’m a I’m a fan and a devotee of this this type of analysis and work. I think particularly as customer experience professionals, you know, we’re kind of working on the some of the soft side of business. You know, we’re trying to create better relationships, we’re trying to create better experiences that people are willing to pay for. So I think this kind of work is is just foundational, particularly, I think in the in the service or experience economy that we find ourselves in today. I should have mentioned your book. I’m a fan of the book, too. It’s called “The True Competitive Advantage: A Practical Guide to Achieving Extraordinary, Extraordinary Success Through Deep Relationships.” So maybe talk just a little bit about your framework and how you go about working with clients to help them understand more about their talents and their strengths and then the the opposite of strengths, because we do know that every strength is, in fact a weakness, right?

Well, you know, every virtue carried to an extreme can become a crime, right?

Yeah.

So we got we’ve got to watch out for that. So we use a modified version of the DISC behavioral profile. And for us, there are eagles, parrots, doves, and owls. And most of us are a combination. And the reason we use birds and some some fun graphics involved or imagery is because good metaphors are brain friendly. They’re really sticky. And what we found is that, well, we’ve got tens of thousands of folks running around speaking birds, thinking birds, using birds in their relationships, whether it’s in sales or internally within organizations. And the reason that is, is because it’s easy. It just sticks. So I’ll take it through a little bit of it. So you tell me, Steve, when you think of you think of an eagle in the wild, what comes to mind to you immediately? How do they behave?

Brave, independent, Get results. Self-starters? Yeah. I mean, they’re the kind of the… they’re kind of the king of the air, aren’t they?

They are. You know, they’re also. Well, for us as predators, right?

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Have you ever seen an eagle dive bomb for prey? I mean, that’s not a gentle moment. Like, stuff’s going to happen there and in the workplace, eagle styles dive bomb for goals.

Yeah.

And while we’re not suggesting that eagles in the workplace are predators, we are saying that they’ve got intensity towards goals, that that can be surprising and even off putting to other styles and then all kinds of unintended consequences result from that. In one study that is pretty fascinating, over two and a half hours of every day, every employee in your organization is distracted by drama. Two and one half hours a day.

Yeah.

So what is that drama? Well, it typically revolves around people. I can’t believe she said that. I can’t believe he did that. So using an eagle as an example, what happens if you find yourself in between an eagle style and his goal? The chances are pretty good that’s not going to be the most pleasant interaction. And if you’re not careful, you’ll take it personally.

Yeah.

And there’s no reason to take it personally, because this is how this person sees the world. So when we understand why people behave the way they do, and then we stop convicting them and that lowers the drama and then, well, the opposite of drama is solutions, right? We start to find solutions to problems instead of just labeling people.

Yeah.

So we’ve got eagles that are results oriented, risk taking, big picture, very direct in how they communicate. Very bottom line focus. These are these are people that go to the office to get stuff done. It is how they measure themselves. It’s not about talking or feeling or analyzing. It’s about doing that. That’s ego energy. Well, then you got paired energy and you think about a parrot. Parrots. Well, you tell me when you think of a pet, an actual parrot, a real one, what comes to mind?

Well, they’re. They’re smart. They can repeat, They can talk. They’re pretty.

You got it.

Yeah.

Well, you got a lot of parrot in your Steve. So the fact that you started with Smart. I get it. You know, you. So. Yeah. So parrots in the workplace. Yeah, they are clever. They’re very verbal, very expressive. They’re colorful. My favorite parrot in the business world is Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Records and then Virgin Airlines…

Yep.

…and a bunch of other industries that he’s been successful in. So parents bring big picture, experiential focus, and they’re all about what is possible. So the fundamental focus is the discovery of what is possible. And so everything they do is in service of that. Then we got doves, doves, international symbol of peace, right?

Yep.

And so doves in the workplace are all about harmony. Doves are very sensitive to how the environment is impacting people. So if the people around the dove are unhappy, fragmented, isolated, well, then the dove feels that and doves go out of their way to smooth that over. Dove energy is calm, sincere doves are empathetic patient listeners. And and this may may come across may be a little counterintuitive to some, but doves actually make extremely powerful leaders because leadership without trust is a contradiction in terms…

Right.

…and doves are amazing at building trust. So when you’ve got a dove style at the head of an organization, it tends to be pretty powerful. So now we got out. So…

The Owls.

…what comes to mind when you think of an owl?

Well, they’re wise.

Okay, so where did that come from? Well, they got these big eyes. They can spot prey to football fields away at dusk and then swoop in silently and take them out. So if you think about it, owls are pretty intimidating.

Oh, yeah, they’re cool.

They’re. They are cool. And owls in the workplace. Well, they can also be intimidating, except it’s not their intent.

Yeah.

I also wake up in the morning and say, I’m going to go to work today. I’m going to go to Walker today and intimidate people. That’s not their agenda. But they can. And the reason they can is because the owls that work for you, Steve, they’ve got skills, they’ve got talents and gifts that are off the charts and they come so naturally to them. And when I am referring, what I’m referring to here is precision, accuracy, orientation, questioning, being extremely objective about controversial issues or decisions that have to be made. These behaviors are so natural to them that they find it puzzling that other people can’t replicate the same behaviors and that can unintentionally create some stress. So most of us, Steve, are a combo of style. Some of us are eagle parrots, some of us are owl doves. And as a leader, when you understand the behavioral makeup of your team and then of your organization, well, it gives you a lot of information about how to get the most out of them.

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Hey, my guest on the podcast this week is Dan Silvert. He’s a partner and the president of Velocity Advisory Group, a management consulting company. And full disclosure, we collaborate with them and they are really outstanding people. Dan is also the author of a great book called “The True Competitive Advantage,” a really great book for folks that are more interested and would like to learn a little more I highly recommend the book. Yeah, I’m going to go back to something you said right off the top, and it had to do with sort of people who have a lack of self awareness, but implicit in there and I want you to unpack this a little bit, but if we fail to acknowledge our own blind spots, our own areas where we’re not good, we’re really devaluing folks that actually have those strengths, right? I mean, that’s part of the problem is unless you’re really knowledgeable and self aware about what your own strengths are, then you can’t really value the strengths that other people bring, correct?

Absolutely. And I think a core function of leadership is to surface the genius of other people.

For sure.

I mean, if you’re not making the people around you smarter and more capable, then what are you doing exactly? Like, maybe you should just be an individual contributor, and there’s no crime in that. Right? But if you’re going to be a leader, the people around you have to be getting better. And if you don’t have clarity in the mirror, then you’re not prioritizing the skills and experience that other people have that you don’t. You’re just not seeing it. And that can be a significant source of frustration for the people around you.

Yeah, and this may be a little bit of a leading question, but I assume that the highest performing teams tend to be not necessarily composed of all the same sorts of personalities, correct? I mean, that there really is value in that diverse kind of makeup.

Absolutely. We like to say it velocity match the moment, not the mirror. Meaning there. There are moments out there. So I don’t care if you’re a collection of eagles and parrots. If you don’t flex to dove in a dove moment, you’ve missed a moment. And if you’re a team of, let’s say owl dove, let’s say you’re an engineering team or a finance team or very eagle moments out there. For example, a deadline that has to be hit and you don’t have sufficient amount of data to make a confident decision. But that deadline isn’t going anywhere. You need to hit it. That’s an eagle moment, right? And if you don’t flex the eagle in those moments, you’ve missed it. So the moment, not the mirror, means it doesn’t really matter what your style is. What matters is can you flex the right style at the right time? And those of us that intentionalize that tend to to be more successful.

Yeah. And just for the benefit of our listeners, you know, I think we talk about CX leaders a lot of times they don’t have the formal authority, but their role is very cross-functional and it has to be that they have to get different people with different ideas, collaborating to create good experiences. So they need to have this kind of leadership skill. And that’s why I think this topic is just so important for them, because they really are. They need to be collaborators, they need to be influencers, they need to be, you know, they need to be able to bring different parts of the organization together for the good of the customer. And I think that this kind of activity is just something that our listeners would really, really enjoy learning more about.

Can I, can I jump can I jump into what you just said there?

Yeah, sure.

So so let’s say you’re in a matrix environment and you don’t have positional authority.

Yeah,

But you got to get a lot done and you need other people to buy in. So how do you get them to buy it? Well, we want to want to lean, right? Wanna match the moment. So if you’re working with the IT team, well, what do they prioritize? The rationale. Do you have a solid rationale for your request? Are you prepared to answer at least a dozen questions around it? Have you thought about the ramifications of moving in a direction A as opposed to B, C, and D? Can you speak to that? Can you approach them in a non urgent manner? Meaning you didn’t wait till the last minute. They actually have some time to deliberate. Well, if you can check off most of these boxes, the chances are pretty good you can enlist their participation. Why? Because you’re honoring where they are coming from. Well, let’s say you’re working with someone who has a strong paralegal orientation and you’re trying to enlist them. Well, paralegals tend to have shiny object syndrome, so whatever it is they’re working on right now is interesting to them.

On the parrot side, it’s fun, it’s fresh, and it has possibilities that are out of the ordinary. And on the eagle side, there’s going to be a dopamine hit of satisfaction when it gets done. So they are just focused on that. And you want to you want to pull them in a different direction. Hmm. Interesting. How are you going to do that? Well, you need to speak to what they value. So eagles value impact. What is the impact of getting what you would like to get done for the organization and for them? Can you quantify that? That’s very important to eagles, right? From a parrot perspective, can you convey this in a charismatic way? Meaning with the proper enthusiasm and warmth that draws them in emotionally? Because that’s how parrots make consequential decisions. They feel it. They feel that, oh, this is important. So balancing the charisma, the warmth with the competency is how you’re going to get people to listen to you. And to the extent that you become fluent in flexing to the right style at the right time, you honor where they’re coming from and you’re more likely to collaborate effectively.

Is there any tricks that you could share, maybe just even to spur a little more interest in the topic, but without actually doing the assessments, which I think most organizations probably have some sort of assessment they’re using, it may be DISC, maybe something else. But is there a way just to sort of like on a quick read or after you’ve been around somebody to figure out what bird they are?

Well, birdwatching is a lot of fun. You can do it formally. You can do it informally, Right. So formally you can take a profile.

Right.

And of course, we do have an app and that’s that can be fun, too. That’s both formal and informal. Right. But really, pay attention to when you’re watching a movie, your favorite TV show, politicians, anyone, any public figure. What what’s the behavioral information that they’re giving you? Right. So if I say give me an athlete, that’s a strong eagle. Anyone come to mind, Steve?

Tiger?

Oh, that’s an interesting one.

Tiger Woods?

I don’t know, owl, maybe I’ll be…

Oh, you think he’s more an owl?

I don’t know. That’s a good one. I don’t play enough golf to know. I’ll give you one. Michael Jordan.

Michael Jordan.

Okay. Quintessential eagle. So why do I say that? Well, right. If you know Jordan, if you. If you watch them, you know instantly why I say that, right?

Yeah.

So think about like a parrot, You know, Robin Williams, I’m probably dating myself here with both of these examples. But think about public figures. An owl. Mark Zuckerberg. An easy one, right? Yeah. Think about public figures. What is it that they’re giving you that enables you to accurately figure out what they are? And if you do that on a regular basis, yeah, you’ll be able to meet people at the office without having to give them a profile.

Yeah, well, one of the things we always tell our CX leaders and it was sort of implied in what you were, where you were going there, but you kind of got to meet them where they’re at. And I think this just is another layer of functionality that we can use. But if you’re talking to an eagle, then you want to start with the results, right? I mean, you know, like instead of showing up with your PowerPoint and going through it, maybe you just start with, Hey, what’s going on? What are you trying to get accomplished? And then, you know, you apply what you’re looking for back to that.

Exactly. In fact, if you’re giving a presentation and you’ve got at least ten people on a Zoom call or in a room, just a pretty good you’ve got three or four styles, right?

Yep.

So be careful. What style are you likely to give a presentation in probably your own style.

You like?

Yeah, exactly. So instead, how about if you divvied up your talk? What if you opened with Eagle? All right, folks, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s the impact that’s going to have. Here’s what success looks like. Here’s when it launches, here’s what it’s going to cost in terms of resources. Let’s go. Hey, guys, This is going to be awesome. Let me tell you why this is going to be so important. We are doing things that are that none of our competitors are even thinking about. This is fresh, this is different. This is going to impact people in some interesting ways. Well, I’ve gone to parrot there. Now I go to dove. Well, we need to be careful about how we roll this out because people are going to be impacted about that with this. So let’s be thoughtful in our approach and then I’ll go owl. And this is exactly what the rollout will look like a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i j. Right. All the way through 8.1 b point one. Now I open with the eagles in my talk because they have the shortest attention span.

Yeah.

Here’s what we’re doing. Here’s what success looks like. The moment I say, Hey, it’s going to be awesome. What happened to the eagles?

They checked… yeah, he checked out.

They’re not listening. Right. But the parrots are happy. And I don’t need the eagles to listen to my every word. I just need them to walk away with what it is they need. And so it is with everybody. So if you circle through your talk with all four, do that a couple of times. Everybody walks away with what they need and the value of your your connectivity and communication goes up dramatically.

Yeah. Let’s talk a little bit about the downside of the traps that you can fall into if you’re not that aware of of what’s going on and some of the sort of the alter ego of each of the birds.

Well, if we’re not particularly self aware, then when we get stressed out.

That’s where you defer. You default to it, right?

We we take our strengths. We turn them into our challenges. And by the way, our challenges are very predictable based upon what our strengths are. So what happens to eagles when they get stressed out? Well, they get aggressive. They start to steamroll people. Very dismissive. Very quick to say no and move on. Right. And can be overbearing. When parrots are stressed out, what happens? Well, they get a little scattered lack of follow through. They can be impulsive, exaggerate. They can even manipulate someone with a lot of parrot energy myself. Well, I can attest to that. Yeah, that’s that’s the situation. When doves overuse their style, what happens? Passive insecure.

Yeah, won’t make a decision.

Passive aggressive.

Yeah,

Right?

Yeah.

Very resistant to change. It’s very hard to read doves when they’re stressed out because they don’t give you much. And when owls always get stressed out, they overuse all that detail orientation with analysis paralysis. Now I like to call the owls the guardians of integrity, because owl styles do not separate who they are from the quality of their work. So if an owl is involved in work, that is some part of them. It’s just substandard, it is personal to them. And then when they stress out, they get into analysis paralysis because it’s not acceptable to deliver something that’s not at their level of quality. The problem for owls and doves, the challenge is that business moves at the speed of business. It does not move at the speed of owl and doves. And so it is it’s a challenge. But they got to kind of lean eagle parrot, when it comes to delivering stuff that’s less than perfect but crosses the threshold of good enough.

Dan, we’ve been talking a lot about the birds and your concept, which I agree is just such a clever way to do it and such a handy way to do it. What are the aspects of sort of this personality profiling and self awareness and stuff inside the organization? How does that actually end up impacting the customer’s perspective with the with the organization?

Well, it’s a it’s a really good question. If you had a heat map of your organization and you knew, wow, we’ve got 67%, 60 to 70% owl doves and 20 to 25% Eagle Parrot, well, your company has a rhythm. Your company has a way in which it conducts itself that is very consistent with that heatmap. And so now you can look at your customers and say, wait a second, is this good for our customers, this energy that we have internally? A good example of this is I mentioned it before, Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin brand, if you will, in multiple industries and if read it, interviews with Branson, they always seem to ask the same questions. And a big one is, what’s your secret sauce? How have you been so successful over so many decades in so many industries? And Branson said, and this is a quote, The secret sauce of Virgin is fun. I’ve never worked a day in my life, and if I’m having fun, my leadership team is having fun. And if they’re doing that, then our employees are having fun. And if the entire organization is committed to the flourishing and being of fun, our customers have a fun experience when they interact with us. So for Branson now, Branson is a parrot. He’s a parrot owl. So for Branson, fun is synonymous with profit. Maybe for Bill Gates, who’s a big owl, right? Precision is synonymous for profit. And I would imagine that Microsoft has a very different culture as a result or has had at least traditionally then Virgin. So the connection is interesting because when we look at our customers, we have to ask ourselves what is their experience with us, generally speaking, from a style perspective, and do we match up well to that? And it’s an interesting way at looking at at this connection between the internal culture that you possess and the experience that your customers are having with you.

Dan we’ve reached that point in the podcast where I always ask each of our guests to give their take home value, and that’s kind of the one concept or the best tip you have for our CX pros to take what you’ve shared with them today and go back and be a little better at their profession. So Dan Silvert, what is your take home value today for our CX pros?

Pay attention to what people want and honor it. If you lean in their direction, if you match the moment, meaning you’re with this person as opposed to someone else and you honor what this person is giving you, then you’re going to create flourishing relationships and that’s going to open up opportunities that have always been there. But you’ve now given the chance, the opportunity to present themselves.

Match the moment. I love that. Thanks. Hey, Dan, if anybody would like to continue the dialog, how can they find you and Velocity Advisory Group?

Yeah, velocityadvisorygroup.com and you’ll find us and reach out to me. I’d be happy to chat.

And your book, It’s available at all the regular spots.

Regular spots on Amazon. Yes. The True Competitive Edge.

Yeah. It’s actually a really a very fun read, very practical for anybody that’s, you know, dealing with people all the time. And it’s a great read. So thanks for doing that. Hey, my guest on the podcast this week has been Dan Silvert. He is partner and president of Velocity Advisory Group. Dan, one more time, thanks again for being a guest on our podcast.

Steve. I really appreciate you having me. Thank you.

And if you want to talk about anything you heard on this podcast or about how Walker can help your businesses customer experience, feel free to email me at podcast@walkerinfo.com. Be sure to check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com to subscribe to the show and find all our previous episodes, podcast series and contact information. You can drop us a note, let us know how we’re doing, or suggest an idea for a future podcast. The CX Leader Podcast is a production of Walker. We’re an experience management firm that helps companies accelerate their experience management success. You can read more about us at Walkerinfo.com. Thank you for listening. And remember, it’s a great time to be a leader, so go out there and do your thing. Thank you for listening and also see you again next time.