Co-creative leadership strategies for SMB owners and managers who want teams that think, and act, for themselves.
GROWTH PILLAR: Leadership & Ops
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Team leads / Managers / Corporate escapees building better cultures
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: Practical language shifts, delegation frameworks, and trust-building habits that free leaders from the bottleneck trap — starting this week.
Most leaders don't have a team problem. They have a leadership habits problem, and they don't know it yet.
Steffan Surdek spent 18 years in software development before realizing the real bottleneck in most organizations wasn't the process or the people. It was the leader. Now the founder of Surdek Solutions and author of The Way of the Co-Creative Leader, Steffan helps business owners and managers build real collaboration, improve leadership communication, and hand teams the tools to make decisions without waiting for permission.
In this episode, Steffan breaks down co-creative leadership — a practical model he has been refining since 2014 — and explains why most leadership training misses the most important part: the conversations teams are too afraid to have.
Key topics covered:
Connect with Steffan Surdek:
LinkedIn | Surdek Solutions | LinkedIn Company Page | YouTube | Facebook | X / Twitter
Free resource from Steffan:
Five Key Skills of a Co-Creative Leader — free PDF handbook
Steffan's book:
The Way of the Co-Creative Leader — available on Amazon and at co-creativeleadership.ca
Books mentioned:
The Gift of Imperfection — Brené Brown | The Five Dysfunctions of a Team — Patrick Lencioni
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Bernie (00:21)
Question of the audience. How do you stop being the bottleneck and get your team thinking for themselves? Our guest will break down how leaders can shift from control to collaboration.
using clear language, self-awareness, and better delegation to build trust, improve decision-making, and help teams take real ownership of solutions. Our guest today is Stefan Srdek. He is a senior leadership advisor based in Montreal and founder of Srdek Solutions, where he helps leaders reshape team dynamics, accelerate organizational success through co-creative leadership. Drawing on a career that began 18 years ago in software development,
before evolving into leadership and human dynamics work. He's known for enabling the conversations most teams avoid. The ones that open new possibilities, strengthen trust and improve how people work and communicate together. He's the author of Way of the Cooperative Leader and a regular writer and thought leader on leadership, collaboration and meaningful organizational change. Outside of advising executives, DeFan is also an avid
woodworker and a fully equipped garage workshop where he designs and builds furniture by hand, most memorably a rock solid wooden rocking horse for his nephew built without screws and strong enough for Stefan himself to ride. Stefan, welcome, welcome to the pony race. you have a favorite quote or saying, sir?
Steffan (01:35)
Well, my favorite quote is, leadership is making something happen that was not going to happen anyways. And I'll repeat it. So leadership is making happen something that was not going to happen anyways. What I like about that quote about leadership is it's kind of twisted, right? How do you make happen something that wasn't to happen anyways? And that's kind of the point.
So, you know, often inside organizations, we want to try something and people will say, no, that'll never work here. no, you can't do this here. we've tried that before, it didn't work. And those are the things that were never going to happen, quote unquote. So for me, the magic is how do you take this thing that people just can't see as possible and find a way to make it happen through your leadership and through showing up?
Bernie (02:21)
Really interesting. It's almost like the answer is there, but no one's touching the answer.
Steffan (02:25)
It's the answer's there and no one wants to take the steps because they figure why even start. So they get caught up in, you know, the energy that people bring when they say, you know, we've tried that here. It never worked, blah, blah, blah. And they don't have the guts to say, well, how about if we tried, but a different way? And then try to see, you know, especially if it's a pain point for the organization, how can we just try this in different ways till, we get to the result that we want?
Bernie (02:49)
It was in the 2000s, I was involved with a corporation that was part of a larger corporation. And there was a task, it was established in 1969. So, you know, it's been around for a few years. going back through the archives of the records going, you know, what drove decisions, etc. And a couple of things popped up that where they were trying different avenues. And the idea was to help improve the
the financial picture of this non-for-profit. And someone says, we can't do that. And it turned around. We gave it another kick of a cannon. But in this case, the players had changed. Everything from the board members to the CFO, et cetera. Not that they were not bright then, it's just the idea came up. just, we gave it another kick of the cat. So yeah, you never know. So you started out in software and now you're in leadership.
Like what, what, what drove you into that line from where you were starting from?
You muted?
Steffan (03:44)
It's actually an interesting story because when I started my career, when I was a teenager, I was always very interested in computers. And I remember in high school, I participated in contests, programming contests in our school system. And I won the two years that I had partaken in it. But I remember one year, the jury, quote unquote,
didn't want to give me the first prize because they looked at the code and they said, there's no way a 17 year old student wrote this code. And apparently I made a stupid mistake somewhere and they said, okay. But they never told me what it was. So I started in this world and then that was like the first 18 years of my career. And what ended up happening is, know, technology is this big wheel and you always have to learn the next thing.
If your resume doesn't say this thing, people won't hire you. And it doesn't matter the experience that you have. It doesn't matter how fast you learn. People don't see that in the resume. And so I ended up saying enough. So I started making a switch to be more of a team lead with the teams, to be more of the person that coordinates teams. The guy that when the team in India can't work, isn't functioning properly, you give him the ball, he'll help that team.
be more productive. started being that guy and eventually it led me all the way to Kotech.
Bernie (05:01)
You know, I've heard in the past that some people like to micromanage and other people are more relaxed and, know, let, let the team kind of flow. Is that level of control an Eagle thing? And you know, that, you know, kind of fail safe. It's almost like, you know, you're, if you're in extreme pain and you speak another language, that's your mother tongue. That's the first thing that comes out. Is that a go-to response?
Steffan (05:22)
I think for some people it's a go-to response because they just don't know anything else. They don't know any other way because people don't teach, we don't teach collaboration in school. People find it controversial sometimes when I say that, but at university, whatever, they don't show real collaboration, real engaging leadership, what happens, how to do that and how to get there. And I think you need to have a certain journey to open up your perspective on it.
Bernie (05:47)
So if you haven't had the journey, you know, in the back of your head, it's one thing to be totally oblivious, right? And you just, you're marching along and you you keep hitting the wall and you get back up and repeat, rinse and repeat. But if you realize that something is not, there's something that's off. You recognize you just can't put your finger on it. Why, why don't leaders kind of like kind of, know, okay, what am I not getting here? Right.
People aren't happy or the results aren't coming up. People might be happy. Who knows what.
How do people, how do they know, in this case, you how do they know, I gotta reach out to Stefan. What's the flag they should be looking for?
Steffan (06:20)
So essentially, you have this crucible moment. You have this moment where you realize that no matter what you're trying with your leadership, it just doesn't work for you anymore. Like for me, the way this happened is I worked with technical teams all my life and I developed a certain way of leading where it was like, okay, get on my back, we'll roll, we'll get this done, and I'll carry if I have to. But we will get there. And it built trust with...
people on my teams and with people that are more introverted in the IT world, that leadership style went well. But eventually I went to a different team that was more of a methodology team. wasn't the same technical crew that I used to work with. And then all of a sudden what happened to me was everything that made me a great leader before kind of blew up in my face. So my confidence, people saw that as arrogance.
when I wasn't being arrogant. Not to me. When I was giving feedback, people were thinking, you're being too demanding. You're being too hard on me. you just want to put me down. All I wanted was the success of the team and that we all deliver something better. That was my intention. And then I started noticing myself, why am I experiencing this disconnect? Why is it so hurtful? Why is it so painful? And it started putting me
bringing me to question myself. And that's when I started doing the work. And that's when I started seeing, okay, so how can I bring my superpowers, but let the people around me develop their own superpowers and help them and help them grow so that we're a team of superheroes instead of me being the hero that leads the charge.
Bernie (07:50)
Well, it sounds like there has to be that uncomfortable conversation that has to crop up. know, no, it's not you, it's me, type of scenario. there different types of team dynamics? Like you talked about one place, the previous place was, you you had a rhythm and you found the solution on that rhythm. The new place, the, that solution is not, was not a good fit. I, you either you have to adapt, the team has to adapt or you're both adapting.
How do you have that conversation? Because that could be a difficult one. I'm just thinking, know, yeah, what we're
Steffan (08:19)
Yeah, it is a difficult conversation to have. And also it depends the level of awareness of the person that you're talking to. Like, I do this work with clients all the time, right? Sometimes I'll start. I remember my most memorable client told me once, he said, I'm 56 years old, I'm an old dog, you will not teach me new tricks. And the approach I took was not to push.
The approach I took was trying to find the crack. And at one point I realized that, you know, I gave the person the book called The Gift of Imperfection by Brene Brown, and the person just devoured the entire book. He told me he read it three times in the weekend, which is crazy. But then when he looked at it, he said, hmm, you know, I tried some of the tricks in the book with my daughter and it really helped.
So it's like, okay, so you don't want coaching at work, but maybe I can help you with your daughter. So I started helping him apply the principles of the book with his daughter. So eventually we reached a point where we encountered a situation professionally that was similar to a situation he had told me about with his daughter. And then I looked at him with a smile and I said, if this was your daughter, what would you do? And then the bridge got built.
Bernie (09:27)
That's very sweet.
Steffan (09:28)
So it's like, the hard thing about my work is taking people where they're at. Because not everyone wants to do this work. So even when I hire clients, I say upfront, I'm an acquired taste. Like you may not want to hire me upfront and I may not want to work with you upfront. We need to get to know each other. I need to see if you're willing to do some of the stuff, how self-aware you are, how interested you are.
in learning and growing, and after that I can work with you without judgment. It doesn't matter where we're starting. It doesn't matter to me. It's your interest and your willingness to play. That's the most important thing for me.
Bernie (10:02)
It sounds like if you're working with an owner or inside a company that, know, there's a reason you're there that everybody has the light bulb that's come on. What happens if it's a really large company? Because you could have a board of directors saying, wow, I got to do this. And then, you know, the upper management goes, I think that's a great idea. Now, middle management is your next doorstop, right? Or you got to go in. How do you go? They'll be looking at you going,
why are you here? And we've done this before, but a different flavor. So how do get around all that? If the same old, same old is kind of response.
Steffan (10:35)
I think the trick is showing what can be different and what value do you bring? And how is it like, you know, I had one of my clients that told me at one point, said, the difference between you working with you and working with the internal coaching team is that with the internal coaching team, if there's a conflict that's brewing and that's going to blow up, they put the lid on it. You can see they're trying to put the lid on it so that it doesn't blow up. He says with you,
You don't light the fire, but you encourage us to walk towards the fire. And we know because you're there with us that we can do this. And he says, we can be awkward, we can mess up, but you're the one that's going to keep us all safe. So we're willing to play and we're willing to try with you. So, you know, one of the hard things in my work, and I had a conversation with a client recently where he was talking about the work that we had done with his leadership team. This person is at
director level and we were talking about the differences between the dynamics and his leadership team and the dynamics of the leadership team with his peers. And his leader may not be willing to do the kind of work that we're doing with his team because sometimes you know executives see the type of softer work as exactly that the soft stuff we're going to be in group therapy that's kind of the the idea that comes out.
But it doesn't have to be that. My approach is very much in the moment, have your meetings. We're going to talk about why it broke down. And the next time it's going to get better because you're going to see now some of the stuff you didn't see before.
Last thing I can think of like this is, you know, I never asked my clients to be perfect. I asked my clients to be perfectly imperfect because it's about how we pick up and clean up when we make a mess. You know, it's not about trying to be perfect all the time because no one is perfect.
Bernie (12:15)
You find generationally that it's a different slice. You mentioned the old dog new tricks ain't going to happen in this scenario. But if you're talking to somebody who's 20 something, one of my wife's nieces married a young lad. He looks younger than he actually is. And I found out that it was in his early 20s. He was the lead hand for a engineering firm. Smart lad. Very smart lad. know, even even people smart.
Do you find that, you
Bernie (12:40)
them.
Bernie (12:42)
know, from that age, like he had enough awareness how to work this solution out. Do you find that generationally there's a bit of a adaptation from your end to going, Oh, okay. You're, in this age bracket and here we go.
Steffan (12:55)
I don't look at it as much in the age bracket, even though there are some stereotypes in certain age brackets. Like the 56 year old person, I got it because it's like, I'm at the end of my career. Why would I bother with this? You know, I get it. There's some people, that's how it is. But for the younger generation, what I find is sometimes it's the resilience aspect. Like when they've been told that I'm sorry if this is a caricature and it rubs people the wrong way, not my intention.
But sometimes what happens, one of my employees had told me this, she was 26 at the time. She said, you know, we were brought up saying that we were super, we could do whatever we wanted. All we needed to do was show up and great things would happen. But we didn't always learn to do the work. So when we encounter problems, it's rougher because we're not expecting the problems. We're expecting everything to just happen.
So gets frustrating when it doesn't. And I learned a lot, like from that conversation, I learned a lot, but I find that it's true. I find that some of the younger generation, when they run into problems, you have to help them work through it. You have to help them develop the patience because the younger generation wants to be go, go, go. And sometimes you have to learn to step on the break to teach.
Bernie (14:07)
Thanks.
Steffan (14:08)
You almost
have to put your foot on the brake with them to slow down the car.
Bernie (14:11)
So is this an example of co-creative leadership or am I just hitting on a new, I know it's kind of a key term, I'll let you explain it.
Steffan (14:21)
So for me, co-creative leadership, I've been talking about since 2014, 2015. And it came out of the work that I've done with leaders over the years and noticing that leaders don't always know how to play well in the sandbox with people on their teams. And I started looking for some of the dynamics, some of the things that was preventing them from being able to collaborate.
from being able to create a space where people are naturally engaged, people naturally want to join in and help and work with the leader because many leaders I know tell me, okay, so when I go see my teams, need to have, I need to know all the problems and I need to have solutions for all of them. If not, people look at me funny, but that's not true. Sometimes if you go see your team,
And you say, hey, you know, we're facing this problem these days. How do you think we should fix this? You're opening the space for them to give you ideas. And if they have no ideas, then you can bring one or two of yours and say, what if we did? But instead of bringing, what if we did upfront? What could be different if you asked your team first?
Bernie (15:29)
Very nice. So the other piece that I noticed, and I've seen this in larger corporations, senior management has a mission statement, know, the certain key points, and then they have a philosophy that they want to, and so they want it imbued everywhere. Is
Bernie (15:44)
Ahem.
Bernie (15:45)
that something that a leader is everywhere, you know, even though they're not, or is it something that they're hoping for?
Is that something pragmatic or is it just, they asking, should the statement be such that it's broad enough that everybody can fit in and then kind of follow it as a guidepost?
Steffan (16:02)
So I find it depends what you're doing because when you talk about like, you know, a mission statement for a company, you'd want that to kind of wrap everything up, but you also want to hire people that believe in those values, that believe in that vision, that believe in that mission, and that want to help you build it. But you know, sometimes an easy example where you can do some vision work that's interesting with teams.
is imagine that you want to have a change come up in your team this year. You want the dynamics to change in a certain way. Well, instead of working on it yourself, what if at the start of the year you had a conversation with the team and you said, you know, between us, what are some of the issues that we're facing that, you know, we'd like to work through this year?
At the end of this year, how would we like to see this team be and how different would it be from last year? And then you kind of create that and you work towards that. One of the big problems I see when I try to help teams do bring change is I find a lot of leaders think that I'm going to do a team building with my team and then we're done. Right? But it's not like that.
The work I do with teams, it takes six to nine months before we really get the traction that I can leave and it'll keep going for a bit. May not be completely perfect after six to nine months, but we've made enough traction that people believe in it and that people, you know, started investing and the people that haven't will typically leave the team by that point. Cause it's like, I don't want this.
Bernie (17:27)
Interesting. Self-selection is a lot easier than... Do you ever offer, okay, here's other jobs out there? Not as a leave, but going, you know what, your style would fit best in this space. And look, they have a job opening. Without it coming up, because that sounds kind of like, you I'm not trying to be manipulative, but if you recognize a person has value,
And it's it's not plugging in well, you know, it's not playing well with the team, but they might, you know, much like your previous, when you mentioned your job, when you went from one place to the other, it's like, you know, if you're over there, you might have a, you might have a better go of it. Do you ever have that as a solution map?
Steffan (18:05)
So that's not my solution to give because I don't make hiring and firing decisions for my clients. That's up to them. I do encourage people to have the conversations, but to give you a few examples along the lines of what you've said, I've seen two things with people that I actually know and that I've spoken to. I know one leader who was a CEO in a big company in the States that took the company in a different direction with values and
and vision and mission and all that. And one of his superstars didn't fit in this new vision. And he was still a superstar. And the leader liked him a lot. But even the superstar said, I can't do this. I'm not interested in this. So eventually, after a few months, they tried it out. They saw it wasn't quite working out the way they would have liked. The leader actually went to see that employee and said, look.
We both know this isn't working and I love you man. And I don't want to harm our relationship. And I don't want, you know, I want to help you out, but I think I can't keep you now. I think I have to let you go. I have a friend that has a company that does this, this, this. And I've spoken with, you know, the boss a few times, one of my good friends, and I'm sure you'd be a great fit. Would you like me to introduce you?
and he introduced the person and the person ended up leaving. But you know, it's exactly what you said.
Bernie (19:23)
Graceful, graceful exit.
Steffan (19:25)
Yeah, and sometimes inside companies, the other thing I do is I work with a lot of corporates. So sometimes what I've heard some leaders say is we're going in this direction. If this is not a good fit for you, I can help you find another job inside the company.
I can introduce you to other people, I can promote you, talk about you in a positive way. I have no qualms with you. And we can do that too. In my own business, I had a situation once where I had an employee that wasn't happy and he was sticking around, was a consultant. He was sticking around because he liked the work that he did with his client, but he didn't like the work we were doing as a team.
And at one point I put him on the hot seat and I said, okay, you have to make a choice. And he couldn't make a choice. And I ended up calling my client and I told my client, look, you told me out of respect, you wouldn't hire this person, but would you if I told you it was okay? And he said, well, if you're giving me permission, I said, here are my conditions. And I laid out a few conditions. I said, if you can respect this,
and he's willing to do it and you're willing to do it, I'm good with it." And he said, okay. So I texted my employee that night. I said, look, we've been talking about this back and forth. I tried to call him by the way, not impersonal, but I didn't want him to have the surprise of the other person just walking up to him. So I texted him in the evening and I said, look, this is where we're at. We both know where we're at. So I spoke to your boss over there and I made it possible for him to hire you. So if this is what you want,
Go have some conversations and come back to me when you've made a decision.
Bernie (20:52)
Very nice. So it sounds like in this conversation that you're having with people or that other people are having at your, kind of guiding them along, they're not overbearing, but there are other people, they come in, it's almost like they're in the military and in an extreme circumstance and muck schnell. Yes sir, three bags full sir.
How can a leader spot, you're not, you're not in a dire straight emergency life or death as in like, if you don't move hard left now, you're going to be taking a hit for the team. And we don't want that. How do you help them recognize that their approach is too stark?
Steffan (21:30)
So often what I do is I'll do like debriefs after meetings. So let's say that we just had a group meeting with the leadership team. After the meeting, I'll sit with the leader and I'll ask the leader, so how did the meeting go for you? What did you notice? And then I try to have conversations around the dynamics that happened in the meeting, either between people on the team or sometimes with the leader. Did you notice what happened when you said this?
And then, you know, sometimes they'll say yes, sometimes they'll say no. Initially, often they say no, because it's just not on their radar. But after we've done it a few times, they come back to me and they say, I did it again, right? Because now they start seeing it. And often what I suggest to clients is start by seeing it. Don't try to change it and don't judge yourself, but you need to be able to spot it when it's happening. And then you need to be able to say, okay,
this is happening again, why am I being triggered by something? And you'll start seeing your patterns. And then what I often tell people, it's not about judging yourself, it's about seeing yourself in that moment and instead of it being a reaction, what you're going to say, have it be a conscious choice.
So which
Bernie (22:37)
How
do you train a person to
Steffan (22:39)
It's practice. takes time. takes at least just working that with a leader. It takes me a good six months on the one-on-one basis. Right? And it's part of the game. Like I call this the noticing part that we're talking here. I call it their leadership game. So your leadership game is like this internal operating system that you have that decides everything that you do automatically. You don't have to do anything.
and you're gonna react, you're gonna do something. But if you don't master your leadership game or if you don't see it in action, you're gonna make a mess. When you start knowing your leadership game, you're gonna go in a conversation and you're gonna go, look, I'm gonna react this way, right? So you can look out for it. And when it happens, you go, okay, now I'm not gonna do my usual thing. I'm gonna do this instead. And it's practice. It's just...
practice and it's messing up and it's a messy process but it can be a fun process depending on how you choose to look at it.
Bernie (23:36)
It sounds like you have to almost shine the light and go, hey, listen, you made a mistake, carry on forward, understood, understand why. But when you make a mistake, usually the word sorry kind of floats back. How do you get the leader to say sorry without it being a self-immolation moment?
Steffan (23:54)
Well, it depends how much drama you bring to it, right? In the end, you know, even for difficult conversations, I usually tell people a difficult conversation, difficult is a word that you're attaching to it. To me, it's just a conversation. The difficult is how hard you choose to make it. So the sorry is the same principle. You can say, okay, Bernie, you know, when I, I just noticed that I shut you down and
and I reacted strongly to you, I shouldn't have done that. I'm so sorry. Can you please start over? And I'm just going to listen.
Doesn't have to be complicated.
Bernie (24:25)
Does that behavior when a leader does that now after six months, right? Do they notice that there's a cascading effect to the rest of the team?
Steffan (24:33)
Yeah, because then other people start saying the same type of thing. So that's why you have to go first. You have to. One of the leaders I worked with, one of the most fun things I did with the client, I was showing the client their behavior patterns. And then I noticed that if I wasn't around, the behaviors would be different and the person would be creating a bit of a mess behind them.
And I had everyone on the leadership team coming to see me and saying, Steph, he did it again. Could you go talk to him? Steph, he did it again. Can you go talk to him? And I would say, why don't you go talk to the leader, right? I'm not going to be here one day. And I knew that if I just did that, they probably wouldn't, or maybe he wouldn't react properly. So I let it go for about a week. And then I saw something when I was in the meeting, something bad happened.
And then, you know, after I debriefed and I said, okay, so Bernie, did you notice what happened in the meeting? And the leader talks to me and at one point the leader says, you know, there's something I can't put my finger on it. I feel a bit more like a bull in the China, in the China shop these days and something's happening, but I don't understand. And you're not saying anything to me. So I must be doing okay, but I'm not. And I looked at him and I smiled and I said, well,
Do you think that maybe I realized that it was turning into your dad and that I decided to stop giving you feedback to see if you'd take ownership of your stuff? And the look on the face of the person was, you mother canucker, right? And then he laughed and he went, okay, I got it now. I understand. And I'm going to take a bit more responsibility for what I'm doing. But it was just...
funny to see the look on their face. even, you know, for me, it's a game. It's you have to own it at one point because I have to go. And it's not that, you know, I've I'm fortunate. I've worked with clients for five, six years and there's always something to do. But, you know, I try to show up less and less and less at one point. And I want the beauty of my work is I want it to survive beyond me. I want to be able to leave.
And you know, things have changed and maybe they come back a bit, but they don't come back all the way that it was before.
Bernie (26:39)
You ever find that, uh, obviously when a company says, Hey, help us, we were in a little bit of turmoil here, straighten us out. But you know, the, people that are hired, you know, depending where they are in their, in their, uh, uh, lifespan, know, the 56 year old, some people will have the belly on the fire to keep going to their 75 others going, you know what's it's 60. I went out of Dodge. I'm good. want to, you know, I want to go fishing. I want to do something else. That means there's new people coming in.
You ever find that you are coming back for the new folk so that, know, if you're hiring 20 something or you're hiring someone that's doing a lateral transfer between companies, know, a CFO to CFO migration, for example, do you find that you come back and kind of provide a realignment? to make sure that, you know, much like you're again, I'm going back to your software career, right? Oh, this is a slightly different.
Yeah. have to come back and do kind of a touch up work.
Steffan (27:33)
Sometimes, yes. Sometimes even working with the same client, when you work over the span of multiple years, the leadership team changes. So it's like, okay, so now how do we, the conversation starts becoming, what do we put in place so that you're training these new people in these behaviors on the team so that we don't need to redo things from scratch? There's some of that that happens. Sometimes it's just,
I've done some workshops with some teams that let's say I've done level one of the work and then a year or two later, I do level two of the work, I go deeper, same topics, but different topics so that they get a little bit more and they go a little bit deeper. I've done that type of work. The other thing that happens is sometimes I have some of my clients that change teams inside an organization or that change organizations and they say, hey, you know what you helped me do here? Can you help me do this here?
And then I go back and I do some work with them. But my goal is to try to be on an injectable seat. And it's weird to say as a consultant, but I don't want to work with the same clients forever because then that means I failed. And at one point what happens, like I had a friend that worked with a client for so long that he was like too integrated in the team.
And when he would blow up or have some sort of reaction, people would look at him and laugh and go, okay, well, Bernie's acting up again, right? And it had like zero impact. I had a few clients that I've left after four or five years and I've told them, said, it's not that I don't love you. I love you guys, but you've seen all my best shots. I've brought you as far as I can go. I'm not saying you don't need coaching anymore. You don't need me.
You need someone else that can show you something different.
Bernie (29:15)
You know, there's a time when in my previous job, working inside a healthcare institution and the kind of space that I was in a separate corporate non-for-profit and inside the institution, if you were to ask for a paint color, here are the three choices. That's it. Kind of banal to banal, banal version two and banal version three.
The person was coming in and they were going to be acquiring office space. I said, okay, here's the color palette that I have access to, you know, it literally, you know, it's a 20 millimeters thick, you you open it up as a fan of colors. And I'm looking at the manager and going, what color do you like? And, know, et cetera. And I said, do you want to have the team choose? And she goes, Oh, not that way. She says narrow down. Okay. Then pick three colors that you want to play with.
and that fit with, that harmonize well with what you're doing. And if you have any special color patterns, cetera, and if you have someone that's good at picking colors and then, you know, have them come forward, but just reduce it. So is it loss of control when there's too wide open a field and there's too many different directions? Do you find that you end up narrowing down that field sometimes to help them get to an end result if it works round one?
Steffan (30:24)
For some things, yes. For other things, I'd rather have them learn how to take ownership of the conversation and how to be able to make decisions as a team. you know, one of the teams that I,
Bernie (30:36)
box.
Steffan (30:37)
I shouldn't say one of the teams, because this is on a lot of the teams I work with, there's like these conflicts that are latent underneath, right? These taboo topics that have piled up over the years.
What I try to do is I try to help them normalize these topics. I try to help them talk about these things. Or some of the things that some people do. Sometimes I work with companies where you have people that speak French, people that speak English. And the French speakers, unfortunately, often have to speak English in meetings to accommodate. sometimes the French speakers don't realize the strength of the word that they're using in English.
and it can come up a little bit more like hitting with the sledgehammer, but they had no intention of that. They just don't know they were doing their best. And then people on the English side get offended. And I've been in the middle of conversations like that a few times. And it's like, but okay, can we just understand that this person is speaking English to accommodate all of you? And can we be kind that this person is making an effort and, but we've had those
conversations and quite a few teams that I've worked with to kind of just set the tone and get people to be more open and accepting of each other.
Bernie (31:45)
Wow. I can see that happening. On the odd occasion, I've said something into another language, both either German and French, and I have people looking at me going, is that exactly what you meant to say? No, not really. No, no, no, no. As I get blushed and going, OK. So.
How do leaders let the team know, listen, we want to grow? you know, it's one thing to be, there's always going to be change, right? There's always going to be a flux. There's always going to be something that's not internally, but externally that might contest what you're doing. It could be the economics of the world. could be,
the world at large, know, nothing to do with you, but you you can't ship to this country anymore, or you were getting resources from this country and you know, someone's pulled a fast one in and everything's gone sideways, whatever it is, or it's just, you know, bad weather like we're about to experience shortly. How does a leader let the team know that, we can grow and we can work around these solutions?
Steffan (32:39)
So often what I tell my clients is it's important to be clear on what you want, not to work on something in the background and hope that it's magically going to happen. So, you know, a common example that I see with some leadership teams is they do a daily meeting to kind of sync up. And the team, if the leader isn't there, the team cancels the meeting, right? I've seen some of that happen.
And often what I'll suggest to the leader is put it out there. What I'd like is I'd like for this meeting to be useful for all of you. Right? So I don't care how the meeting happens. I care that the meeting happens. So in the next three months, how can we work on this? What are the things that we should be doing so that this meeting is useful to all of you? And then we pick little things and we try little things and then we come back to the conversation.
where we basically said, this is what we said we were trying to do, right? So now let's do this. So even for difficult conversations, I'll ask leadership, what I teach leadership teams sometimes is, let's say we agreed to have productive conflict and now you want to start a productive conflict, but you're afraid. I'll suggest people sometimes to say, okay, I'm gonna say something right now, I'm not comfortable.
because I don't want to start a big argument, but I think we need to have this discussion. Can you help me so that we can have this in a constructive way? And then people go, okay. And they understand the exercise we're doing, right?
Bernie (34:03)
Yeah.
Steffan (34:04)
So a little bit of vulnerability goes a long way.
Bernie (34:07)
So this kind of circles back on, guess, once you've having that vulnerability means you've built trust. So what's harder building a rocking horse or rebuilding trust?
Steffan (34:15)
Building a rocking horse is fun. I'll tell you that much. when I built that project, my spouse was off to Europe for work for about a month. So it gave me the time I needed to build the horse. But building trust and rebuilding trust can take quite a bit more time. Because trust is something that can take months and years to build, and it takes an instant to lose it.
So the question is, what are we doing to consistently build trust together as a team? you know, trust, there's a very easy way to see it too. In Patrick Lencioni's book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, he talks about emotionally based trust. So it's as simple as, in my team, is it okay to say I'm sorry?
Is it okay to say I made a mistake? Is it okay to say I don't know?
Is it okay to say I need help? And just, you know, that's the start of trust. It's really the start and the foundation of trust. And for that, someone needs to go first and someone needs to model it and someone needs to show it. And then you need to set a bar and you need to kind of hold the line on that bar. And that's the hard work.
in doing this. And it's easy, but it's super hard.
Bernie (35:26)
Stefan, if someone is listening to this and says, you know what, I need the solution that stuff has, how do they reach you?
Steffan (35:33)
The best thing is to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I post regularly on LinkedIn. I post three times a week. Usually I talk about different leadership challenges or I just share stuff going on in my life. So connecting with me on LinkedIn, reaching out via DM on LinkedIn is usually a very easy way. If not, you can visit my company website at www.surdek.com.
And from there, there's a contact form or you can just send me an email at stefan, s-t-e-f-f-a-n at srdec.com. And you know, just tell me that you heard me on that for business and you're curious and you'd like to talk more and I'd be glad to get on the call with you.
Bernie (36:13)
Well, that's awesome. I also understand you have a PDF that's available for people about the principles of co-creative leadership. Yes.
Steffan (36:21)
Yes, I think that you're possibly going to share this in the notes of the podcast. But if you can't see it in the notes, you can go on my company website and go into resources section. And the document is called the five key skills of a co-creative leader. So what I did in that PDF is I distilled my book and I took each of the five key skills and I tried to give you some ideas of where these skills apply. And I tried to give you concrete actions around what you can do.
So I tried to really take a 300 page book and make it a lot more consumable for people.
Bernie (36:53)
And what is the name of your book and where can people get it?
Steffan (36:55)
So the name of my book is The Way of the Co-Creative Leader. So you can maybe, you know, kind of deduce that I'm a Mandalorian fan. This is the way. So that's really where it came from, to be completely transparent. And it's available on Amazon.com. Or what you can do is I have a website on co-creativeleadership.ca that will point you to all the places where you can purchase the book online.
Bernie (37:20)
Stefan, I want to say thank you so much today for sharing. Great, great story, great wisdom. And to you, the Knack for Busy Listeners, thank you for paying attention to this important messaging. know, Stefan spent two decades in the software development space and then, you know, systems don't fail. People get stuck in how they lead. And that's what he helps you out with, you know, your leadership and just, you know, tweaking it.
and helps you to change the language they use, the space they create, and the trust they build. It shapes the workplace.