Five practical skills that help leaders stop dominating and start building — for SMB owners, managers, and anyone who leads people.
GROWTH PILLAR: Leadership & Ops
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Corporate escapees / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A clear five-skill framework for leading with more collaboration, less friction, and better results — starting this week.
Most leaders were never taught how to lead. They were taught how to perform. Steffan Surdek is a senior leadership advisor and founder of Surdek Solutions who has spent over a decade helping leaders shift from directive to co-creative — and the results speak for themselves.
In this Canada Growth Network Power Hour session, Steffan walks through his five key skills of a co-creative leader. These are not theories. They are practical tools built from real work with real teams.
Key topics covered:
Being a voice among many — how to share your perspective without shutting down the room. Steffan's seven-second rule alone will change how your meetings run.
Unleashing the leaders around you — most teams have dormant leaders hiding in plain sight. They coach soccer on weekends. They run events. They just don't feel permission to lead at work.
Building the capacity of your team — delegation is not about offloading tasks. It is about building muscle. Steffan's do for, do with, let them do model gives you a repeatable path to a stronger team.
Dancing with the system — your organization is a living system. When you understand what it is telling you, you can inject the right change at the right moment instead of pushing against resistance.
Fostering learning by doing — forget "fail fast." Steffan reframes it around learning. When people know what they are trying to learn, mistakes become data. That changes everything.
Grab Steffan's free five-skill handbook and self-assessment here: Five Key Skills of a Co-Creative Leader
Connect with Steffan Surdek on LinkedIn or visit surdek.com to learn more about his coaching and advisory work.
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Acknowledgements:
Carl Richards — Podcast Solutions Made Simple
Fred Crouch — Property Wizard podcast
Jovan Strika — @Hive
Melanie Webber
Steffan (00:05)
We'll just chat around my topic for today. I think what I want to talk to you all today about is one of my signature topics. It's something that I call co-creative leadership. And the reason how did I come up with that? Well, essentially, imagine I'm
speaking at a local event in Montreal, ⁓ December 2014, I'm giving a talk on something that's called Tribal Leadership, which is a book by Dave Logan and Company. And as I'm going, as I finished my talk, I end up in a Q &A. And people ask me at one point, one of the questions was something to the effect of, well, Steph, tell us, what is the one thing that leaders need to develop?
Steffan (00:25)
Thanks
Steffan (00:48)
now inside companies. And I was talking, I ranted for about a minute and a half. I have the rant somewhere on my hard drive. And the way I ended the rant was, it's very easy. In the end, leaders just need to learn how to be more co-creative with their team. So that's essentially how the term was born for me, co-creative leadership. I was talking about it before, but then I wrote an article and I posted it on the Forbes website.
And someone saw it. Someone came back to me and said, Hey, would you write an article for us on our website? So I'm thinking and going, what could I talk about? What could I talk about? And then I go, I know the five key skills. And I made them up in that article. I made them up based on the stuff that I was talking about at the time. And it stuck. 10 years later, it's still the same five key skills as when I wrote that article at the time.
And ⁓ what I've been doing since then is I've been expanding the definition. So as I've been working with clients, a lot of my work is with leaders. So either I work with a leadership team itself or I'll work with individual leaders more on a one-on-one basis. So ⁓ leaders that feel like with the new generation at work now, their old leadership style doesn't quite work anymore. Those are leaders that I like to work with just to show them
a different way of showing up. And it's not that these leaders are bad leaders. It's because, you know, in the workplace, if you look in your career, and you've probably seen this yourself, leaders are typically clones of their leaders, right? And sometimes there's little variance, little evolution, a little bit of growth, a little bit of something, but leaders don't always have good models of being a collaborative leader.
They have more examples of being a directive leader or being an affirmative leader. This is what I want, do it, execute. Right? So if I tell you a little bit of my backstory in all of this, I used to work in IT. So very rational type of thinking, type of environment, you know, and my leadership style at the time, I could show up strong and people liked that. People appreciated that. Right?
And then all of a sudden, after 18 years of that, I switched out and I ended up in a place where I was working with people inside the methodology team. And in that team, everything that made me great as a leader was blowing up in my face now.
So, you know, I was working with them and I wanted us to do better and I was giving people feedback, but people were telling me I was arrogant, I was too demanding, I was too this, too that. And it was hard because that wasn't my intention, but it's how I was showing up for them. So I had to learn and I had to grow out of what I was in there. So I learned how to be.
that leader that I used to be that was more individualistic and turn into a leader that is able to kind of pull people together. And I talked about tribal leadership before. Tribal leadership was one of the awakening phases for me. when I was in that time, I went through a lot of personal change, a lot of personal growth. I want to go through the five skills with you, so I'm not going to go too deep there. But eventually, co-creative leadership
became a way of expressing my own journey of growth as a leader. So the five key skills are kind of very easy actually. The first one, the first key skill of a co-creative leader is to be a voice among many inside the conversation. So what I mean by that, when I talk about being a voice among many, a lot of leaders I know tell me,
things like to the effect of, you know, I have to be careful what I say because as soon as I bring something in a meeting, my team goes, yeah, we're doing that. Right? And that's not what I want. I want people to debate, discuss. I want to be able to bring an idea and to have people discuss the idea, have people talk about it, talk through it. And maybe my idea doesn't win at the end. That's fine. But I want the conversation right now. I'm not even getting a conversation. So do you know what I'm doing, Steph?
I'm holding back and I'm waiting till everyone speaks and then I speak last. So, you know, leaders that tell me that it always makes me chuckle, I go, you know, you're just keeping Thor's hammer at the end because you're saying people do what you say and now you're waiting to see at the end to bring up what you want to say. Of course you're going to keep doing that. So the trick of being a voice among many inside the conversation is to be able to speak first in the conversation, to speak in the middle, to speak last.
speak in the middle and it doesn't matter. It's as if anyone else on your team had brought that idea. So to give you a quick basic example here, I was working with the leadership team once and we were doing a feedback game as part of a series of workshops that we were doing. And the trick was to answer two questions. So someone was sitting in the middle of the room and then everyone would answer two questions.
What is the great gift that you bring to the team? And the second point was, what would I like to see more of from you? And there was a leader, an executive in that room that would always jump in and answer first, always, always, always. And he was the boss in the room, right? So I chuckle this, why are you doing that? And he says, well, you know, I like to bring my ideas. I go, okay, that's cool. Now, can you try speaking last just for fun?
because we had about 12 people that we were going around. So we had time to experiment things. So I had him speak last. And when he spoke last, sometimes he's like, I don't know what to say. Everything was said. it's like, you can't repeat? It wouldn't be useful to repeat what someone else said. Well, maybe it would be in front. Yeah, cool. Try it out. So he tried it out a few rounds. Then we asked him, now you're speaking when your team calls on you. So they called on him in random orders.
Sometimes first, sometimes in the middle, last, wherever, they didn't care. They just called on him to see how he'd react. And what the leader told me after was it was kind of a tough exercise because I didn't know how to play with this. But at the end, it's like, OK, I can. It's liberating because I can bring my idea anywhere and there's value in my idea. And that's what you're trying to do with that skill, number one. And the other thing that you're trying to do.
is you're trying to see what's my impact in the conversation. When I speak first as a leader, what happens? Do I shut down the entire room?
Who's contributing? Who's not contributing? How do I manage the other people that are contributing more to allow space for the people that are contributing a little bit less? All that is part of being a voice among many inside the conversation. Skill number two is unleashing the leaders around you. There's something that we see inside of companies. It's kind of this disease that's called dormant leaders. And dormant leaders are these people that
When you ask them what they do outside of the office, they do amazing things. They're the coaches of your kids' soccer team. They run the safety patrols on the ski hill. They have responsibility. But at work, they don't have the right title. So I'm sorry, I can't bring that here. And the trick to being a good co-creative leader is to see the potential in people, to see what else they can bring, and then create the conditions
where they can step up and they can bring that. But here's the secret, the big, big secret to skill number two. if you're leading from a place where you're not motivated, where you're not pushing things forward, where you're not helping things move ahead, and you're the one that needs to be lit up, how does your team feel that? And how does your team respond to that?
And when you start working with your people, know, once you're like not a dormant leader and you can see it, then it's about how do I help these people wake up? So it could be challenging their stories, challenging their beliefs, giving them a different perspective on something that they've seen that's always been the same in the company or that they believe has always been the same. How can you switch that over to something different?
Skill number three is around developing the capacity of your team. Have any of you ever had, you know that New Year's resolution gym membership? You know what I'm talking about? The one where you sign up at the start of the year and by March you're done.
Okay, now think back to that membership when you go there and you're lifting weights and you're doing curls, right? And you have 15 pounds on the bar and you're cursing because my God, this is so hard, this is so heavy. But if you stick to it for a couple of weeks before you quit, then eventually you'll get to 20 pounds, you'll get to 25 pounds, maybe 30, maybe 40 pounds. Now what happens at the moment that you're at 40 pounds and you say, huh,
I think for old time's sake, I'm going to put 15 on the bar. What happens when you do the curls? Easy peasy, right? Why is that? Because you built the muscle, you did the reps. So developing the capacity of your team is about that. And it's also about remembering a very important thing. One of the things that we often forget as leaders is we forget what it is to be a learner.
We forget what it is when someone asks us to do something for the first time, how awkward it may be, how, you know, not that we're not good at doing it, but maybe we don't know how to do it yet. Of course we're not going to get it right the first time. But for some reason, we kind of believe people have, you know, this skill where they're going to do it right the first time, right? But that's not how life works. Reminds me, my son used to bowl in the junior league. And when he was bowling,
in the junior league, I'd go play with them on Sunday nights. He'd play Saturday mornings. I'd go play with them Sunday nights. And as I played with them on Sunday nights, I realized, I can't keep up with them anymore because he's getting the coaching on Saturdays, right? And he's kind of getting ahead of dad. So how do I do? What do I do to not fall too far behind so that he can keep pushing? I didn't want him to stop because I wasn't keeping up, right? So I hired one of his coaches and I said, show me.
So I spent an evening with the guy and as I'm throwing, he's telling me, okay, now you have to hold the ball like this, take your steps like this, do this, do that. And then he said, okay, now when you move, your arm shouldn't touch my hand here. And when it did, he'd go, and he'd drive me like insane. Till at one point I started laughing and he looked at me and he goes, what's so funny? I go, I just remembered what the heck it is, what it means to be a learner.
because I'm learning right now, this is supposed to be awkward, but it's going to get better if I stick to it. Right? So when you work with your team, the important thing is this, I have a three step process that I like to walk people through. The first one I call doing with, sorry, doing for. So in the doing for stage, what you're doing at this stage is you're doing the work, but you have the other person with you in the room. You're explaining what you're doing. You're explaining,
your reasoning, your thought process, and you may do this initially because you can't delegate this right now. The date may be too close, you may be too tight, right? So do with and do for and then show. The second step is doing with. When you're doing with, then I could say, hey, you've seen this. What do you feel comfortable doing the next time around? And maybe you're going to be comfortable doing 50 % of it.
And then you're tell them, can you do the other 50? Yeah, sure. And then maybe next time you're doing 60 and maybe next time you're doing 80. But we're gradually making it to the place where I can hand this off with you and you know how this works. The last level of this is letting the person do. So when you're letting the person do, what's happening at that moment is the person...
is basically doing the work and coming to see you for feedback when they need it. And if they don't need it, they don't come see you. So this is one way of building capacity on your team, but another could be just being clear on your goals. What do you want your team to do? What are you trying to do with your team? So, you know, if you want your team, for example, to take ownership of your daily meeting, don't just act in that way. Be clear with them.
I want you to be taking over this meeting and being able to run it without me in three months. So now let's work towards that. And then you do the activities that allow you to do that. That's another form of developing the capacity of your team. Skill number four. This is almost the romantic one. This is called dancing with the system. So dancing with the system means that you're seeing your organization, you're seeing the company in which you're working
as a living and breathing system. And this system is going to react when you do something, when each time something happens, the system is going to react in a certain way. Basic example for this. Have any of you ever seen the leader that asks a question and three milliseconds after they answer their own question, have you ever seen that creature? So when that creature manifests,
What happens with your team? What are you training your team to do?
You are training your team not to respond because they know you're going to answer yourself anyways. So why should I bother? So now in my little world, I'm seeing the system act in a certain way. And if I want the system to change, I need to inject something. I need to put something in the system to change the behavior. So what can that be? Well, what I tell most leaders is, how about you ask a question and you count to seven?
What do you think of that one?
Really, you have no opinion on that. And you know, when you re-inject, people go, my God, this stuff isn't going to answer himself. He's actually waiting for me to answer this time. Right? And sometimes people actually answer, like in one of my training courses, I train people in the first 10 minutes on this exact scenario. And then when I ask a question and they don't answer, I start counting with my fingers. I don't say anything. I swear I barely make it to
to before someone jumps in and says something because it's that uncomfortable and they know I'm waiting.
So when you're working inside your organization, the trick is this. The trick is to be able to listen to what the system is talking about. And based on what the system is talking about, you can assign that to what are the beliefs of the system. Is this a real belief? Is this not a real belief? Do I need to challenge it? Do I need to acquiesce it and just say, we need to push on anyways?
Can I hear the needs? So if everyone is telling me, my God, we're so overloaded, what's the need of the system? The system either needs that we hire someone new or the system maybe needs me to help them prioritize what's the most important work and what should they focus on and what can they draw? Right, so you listen for the needs and then what you inject is something to answer the need. The third level,
of what you can listen for is the capacity. What is the system able to do versus what is the system not able to do? I have an example for this one too. I had a client once where the leader was taking up too much space and I tried to get them all together to talk about it, but the team wasn't able to express that and the leader didn't wanna hear that. So the leader told me at the end, said, hey, all they need to do is answer back if they're not happy.
So I took one or two people on this team and I trained them to answer back.
And then eventually it became, well, why are they answering back now? Right? So it's like, okay, but I gave you exactly what you wanted, Mr. System. Now, if it's not this and it's not that, what is it? And how do we play with it? The last key skill of a co-creative leader is learning by doing, fostering a culture of learning by doing. So one of the biggest fallacies that I see inside companies is when we talk about failing fast, the right to make mistakes,
I find those two, yes, I understand the spirit of it, but sometimes I think we're promoting the wrong thing. Because we're talking about our old culture. We're using the words of how the organization maybe was in the past. What I try to encourage people instead is if you're trying to do something, someone comes to see you and say, would like to do X. Let's say Bernie comes to me. I would say, Bernie, why are you doing this?
What are you trying to learn by doing this? And if Bernie can tell me what he's trying to learn, cool. If he can't, well, I'm gonna help him. Because what I want is you're doing something because you're trying to learn something. Because sometimes we try something and we know we're gonna fail. We know it's not gonna work, right? But the biggest fallacy I find with the right to make mistakes is that eventually someone makes a mistake big enough that they get fired.
And then when someone gets fired, everyone goes, you see, we can't make mistakes here. And then you're fighting that game again. So instead, if you focus on learning, when people make mistakes, we can talk about the mistake as a mistake. The rest, it's learning and how do you adapt based on what you learn? Where are you going next? What are you doing next? When I talk about learning by doing, what I also mean is just to throw yourself.
Like you want to learn to have a difficult conversation with your team? Have a difficult conversation with your team. See how it breaks. See not working. See what people aren't able to do, but just make it safe so that we can have that conversation and try it. And if it breaks down, we can go, okay, now this is broken. How do we try to have this again and normalize the struggles. Normalize
speaker-6 (17:41)
What
Steffan (18:01)
that it takes time that we need to practice to get better at doing this. So I'm looking at the time. I think I'm around 22 minutes ish now. And those are the five key skills of co-creative leaders.