Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have CEO and Founder of Agile Leadership Journey, Pete Behrens. Welcome.

Pete Behrens: Thank you Lee, glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about your practice. How are you serving folks?

Pete Behrens: Yeah, we often see leaders operate effectively in two terrains, what I call clear skies and stormy weather. Uh, clear sky represents, you know, the stability, the set a plan, execute, optimize. Stormy weather is obviously the conflict and crises that ultimately emerge through that journey. The problem is most leadership lives somewhere in between, in another place where that path isn’t so clear going forward. And perhaps there’s a few fires, but no immediate ones. I call that the fog, and it’s what we see derail even some of the most experienced leaders. We’re just not trained for that. And so that’s our focus, helping leaders work through that uncertainty and change.

Lee Kantor: So in a typical day, week, month or year in an organization, what percentage of the time are they in clear skies versus stormy weather versus the fog?

Pete Behrens: That’s what’s changing so fast as you’re experiencing, whether it’s through geopolitical disruptions, whether it’s technology and AI, the concept of clear skies is almost, you know, negligent in today’s most of today’s business environment. And so what we see is this fog, this environment is becoming the landscape of leadership.

Lee Kantor: So that’s a typical leader’s day is in some sort of fog, not having enough information, not knowing kind of the landscape of what’s in front of them, clearly, because you can’t, I guess, trust the map from yesterday because today’s changing so rapidly.

Pete Behrens: Exactly. And certainly there are crises. And part of the problem is treating everything as a crises. In fact, even treating the fog or uncertainty as a defect, when we start to think about uncertainty as something to fix, we’re in the wrong mindset. It’s something we have to navigate, and that changes the orientation and the role of leadership when you start to do that shift.

Lee Kantor: One of my favorite books is called The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday. And he talks about that, is that these obstacles aren’t there to sabotage you or to derail you. They’re just part of the landscape. Is that kind of your thinking that nowadays the fog isn’t. It’s nothing personal. It’s just that’s the environment we’re living in right now.

Pete Behrens: Well, it is personal and professional, yes, but it is the landscape. It is what we need. In fact, what I think that book is referring to is also that’s what makes us better leaders. We call them heat moments. Moments that go beyond our capability to solve but push us to the capability we need to get past them.

Lee Kantor: So what are some advice you can give when you’re navigating the fog? Is it do you attack that? I’m sure you do differently than you would clear skies or even a stormy weather?

Pete Behrens: Yeah. Think of the default in clear skies. In stormy weather. We often want to operate in speed, whether it’s we’re optimizing something because it’s predictable and repeatable processes. That’s great. Or in a storm, we need to make clear, decisive action in crises. And whether that’s a pandemic crises, whether that’s a tariff crisis, whether that’s a competitor, crises, those things require fast, immediate action. When you think about fog, it’s counterintuitive, but you recognize it when you’re driving in a car. What’s the what’s the thing we do best is slow down, not stop, right? That’s not going to achieve our goals and it’s not going faster, which is the natural instinct. So this, this concept of slowing down to create clarity because that’s what’s most scarce in uncertainty and change is clarity. That’s the thing we need the most. The only way we create that is by slowing down, observing more, creating more sense sensory input to then pivot in a better direction, potentially going faster takes us simply faster to what’s likely the wrong destination.

Lee Kantor: But if you’re in this kind of fog like state and you are pausing, not stopping, not speeding up, how do you kind of get your bearings? How do you know which, where’s, where’s true north? Have I deviated from that? How do I know what’s real and what’s imaginary? How do I know what’s a trend or what’s a fad.

Pete Behrens: We don’t. That’s the challenge. We are making guesses. If you think about the definition of leadership, it takes us places we’ve never been before. Management is about dealing with things we have and resources and taking projects forward. Leadership takes us fundamentally into an unknown future, so there is no right and there is no waiting for that clarity to occur again. The counterintuitive move here is movement creates clarity. This is the mode of take a Seal team and military. Smooth is fast. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. So when I start to think about how do I create both movement and clarity? That starts with movement. That’s what creates the feedback loop. That’s what creates the sensing. That gives us more data to make better choices. But it’s an iterative process, not a Plan, define, execute process.

Lee Kantor: That reminds me of a story somebody told me about. Like, if you’re in a landslide and you’re buried under snow, you like spit so you can see where north is. You can see where top and up and down are because you’re totally disoriented. How do you kind of go about that in an incremental way when you’re in a business and it isn’t clear what the next move is?

Pete Behrens: Yeah. And in my book Into the Fog, one of the stories I share is a story called Small Sandcastles. I was part of a program that, for two and a half years, tried to define a new system and failed miserably. We got nowhere, but spent a ton of money. And we see this over and over, especially in high tech orientated areas where change is happening so quickly. Every time we felt like we were getting close, the tide came in and just washed away our foundation. You know our sandcastle. Our virtual sandcastle. What we learned over time. What really drove me to understand this, this new approach in the fog is, is really about smaller sandcastles. Having this huge grand vision is great, but progress towards that grand vision isn’t designing the entire base of this grand grand castle. It’s, well, let’s build one over here. Let’s see how that goes. Let’s get some feedback from that. So that spit example you just shared is a perfect example of a very small sandcastle. One small experiment that we can learn from that allows us to make the next best decision. Which way I need to dig to get out of this avalanche.

Lee Kantor: So then are you saying then the first move really isn’t that important? But I guess you want to be directionally correct. But any move is a good move as long as you learn and can iterate off of that move.

Pete Behrens: Yeah. Think about you want to go to the store so you have a goal in mind. And most leaders recognize the importance of vision. So you take vision away. You take the goal away. Now direction is meaningless. It doesn’t matter. And this is part of the problem leaders run into. If I don’t have a clear direction of where I want to go, pivoting makes no difference. Any choice, any direction won’t matter because it doesn’t mean something. Once I have a vision, once I have a goal. Now, since I’m operating in the fog, let’s say I’m doing that without the GPS and I’m taking a few steps in this direction. Now I can start to get that feedback. Oh, is this taking me towards that store or away from that store? That combination. Having that vision with the ability to pivot in action is that sweet spot where you have the data or receiving the data, but it’s meaningful towards some directional aspiration.

Lee Kantor: So what is your backstory? How did you get involved in leadership and how did you come up with the idea of the fog?

Pete Behrens: Interestingly, my background is engineering. I was trained to solve technical problems. Things like parking lots, elevator banks. I spent much of my career on technical systems like databases and and applications. What I realized, however, as I started to move into the organizations more deeply, most of the interesting and problematic problems weren’t technical. They’re human fear avoidance, differences of opinion, just competing priorities. These aren’t problems you can solve or optimize. And this is what put me on a different path that we’re not necessarily dealing with a problem with a solution. We’re dealing with a tension that needs to be managed. And how do we do that? I look at a lot of what I do today is actually engineering of a different focus. If you think about some of the most complex systems in the world, they’re organizational adaptive human systems. So leaders, their job is to optimize that organizational system to get the most out with the least input. In that world. And so that’s a lot of the way I look at organizations and growth, and that’s the way we look at leadership in terms of their role.

Lee Kantor: And who is the ideal client for your leadership? Uh, coaching and leadership style. If they want to implement it.

Pete Behrens: Yeah. Any leader operating in a space with a lot of uncertainty and change. So if you, if you’re looking at things like, uh, manufacturing or construction, these are fairly predictable industries without massive disruptions, unless you’re thinking supply chain, now you’re starting to get into a disruption oriented business. Certainly anything that has a tech fintech and sure tech, uh, you know, just tech in general, those are certainly going to be organizations we work quite closely with, but we’re seeing this in pretty much every spectrum. Ai and technology is starting to change the landscape for pretty much all industries today, which is driving change where it hasn’t been in the past.

Lee Kantor: And then how do you deliver kind of your coaching? Is it primarily through one on one coaching or do you do seminars for organizations? Do you do online coaching? Like what is the, how do you deliver?

Pete Behrens: Yeah, we offer all of those things. So we tend to start with education. We often leaders are blinded more by unawareness. We talk about this as most bad leadership isn’t purposely evil or maniacal. It’s just simply ignorant, unaware. And when we think about the fog, we often think fog is external. And that’s true. Markets change, competitors change. You know, tariffs form things like that. The most dangerous fog we haven’t talked about yet though happens between our ears. It’s the ego the assumptions, the biases, the blind spots we have as leaders, that lack of self-awareness that impacts all of us. So what we’re doing is essentially helping leaders to start to unpack that, put up the mirror, understand how their own behavior, their lived reality is impacting their organization. One of the terms we use is organizations mirror their leaders. So if you’re seeing something problematic in the organization, it’s likely stemming from the leader. So that comes through education, through coaching, through workshops and through, you know, one on one and team based.

Lee Kantor: Well, if your main, uh, buyer or your is the leader that is lacks self-awareness, how do they know they have a problem? What are some of the signals or signs that a leader, even if they do lack self-awareness, can say, I better address this because this is not good. Things are not as they should be.

Pete Behrens: That is the number $1 million question. And one of the biggest impediments to any growth is the leaders lack of awareness. Or even if they’re aware, the comfort or the discomfort that that creates to go there. It’s it’s not easy to look at yourself. It’s easier to try to solve an external problem than it is to look in that mirror. This is where we could lead horses to water, but we can’t get them to drink. And we’re not going to change leaders who aren’t going to confront their own role in what’s going on. The organization. What I would say to the leader out there listening is notice what’s happening in your organization. If you feel a discomfort, if you feel a tension, if you feel something that feels out of sync, that’s the signal. It’s usually something felt versus something seen.

Lee Kantor: So it isn’t something that shows up on a dashboard. It’s not, um, you know, maybe it’s hard to hire certain people or have a lot of turnover. Like it’s not organizationally evident. It’s something that you’re just feeling in your gut.

Pete Behrens: Well, this is where we might differ from a traditional consulting firm. A traditional consulting firm might come in and say, is our strategy correct? Is our direction correct? Are we hitting the market in a particular direction? That’s not what we work with. We work with the execution of that. Are we actually operating on all cylinders? It’d be like going and taking your car in for a tune up. Are we working effectively? Sometimes. You know, you think about your car. Do you know it’s operating at its peak performance? Do you know the oil’s running low? Well, yeah, we could have some dashboards for that. And sometimes they’ll get information like a culture survey or an employee engagement survey. So you can find things through those. Often those are delayed indicators though. These are things that you can see. But by that point it’s too late. The feeling tends to come before the data.

Lee Kantor: So how do you help a person who you described as not being self-aware, be self-aware enough to sense a problem?

Pete Behrens: Yeah. You know, we talk about leadership as not a solo activity, not a solo sport. That’s more of an adventure you might take to the mountains on your own. Leadership is a team sport. So when I start to think about this, I want leaders to recognize they don’t have to do this alone. This is not something that they have to navigate alone. This is not something they have to carry a burden alone. One of the biggest challenges we find leaders is they feel like, number one, either they have to have the answers, they don’t, or number two, they have to have the solution or the direction they don’t. What they need to be able to do is project a better future. But also the vulnerability to say, I can’t do this alone. I can’t get there alone. That’s where the best leadership lives. So my, my request or my ask of maybe this leader who’s in that space is the vulnerability to reach out and say, I see something, but I need some help in getting there and reaching out, whether it’s to someone like us, whether it’s to someone they’re comfortable with a peer or even somebody in their organization.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there a story you can share about maybe somebody you work with that was going through, um, the fog and you were able to help them get through it? Don’t name the name of the person or the organization, but maybe share the challenge they were going through and how you were able to impact them.

Pete Behrens: Sure. Yeah. We have dozens and dozens of stories. And in fact, my book Into the Fog is a storybook. Every chapter represents or shares a real story by a real leader in just that way. Let’s see, what do I want to choose? Let’s take a story of a high tech firm that was essentially operating in the fog and going incredibly fast and essentially or almost broke that organization. They had this moment where nothing was working. They, they they’re in this mode of what we call a scale up. They’re going from startup. They had proven themselves, they had hit the market, and now they’re in scale up mode, which means fast growth and in fast growth. What we see is what worked when we’re small doesn’t work when we’re large. And the problem is when you wait till you’re large to fix it, then the problem just becomes bigger. What was really fascinating about this particular story is, is I was brought in when this crash was occurring. So that was interesting. Point number one, that they were open and revealing enough to realize we have a problem and we need some help. That’s great. What was interesting about this though, is not I provided some magic, I didn’t. I simply provided some of the mirror and what’s going on in the organization. And in this case, the pause and the pivot was truly impactful for them. What was interesting about that, though, is they paused and pivoted and they crashed again. And this is often the case. This is not a one time mode. This is more of think about this as like your operating system, not a one time event. The inspect and adapt can’t happen a single time. It has to happen over and over. So with this particular leader, it’s learning the muscle or it’s building that muscle to be able to do this over and over again, that drives the success over time. But yes, the, the concept of awareness change with data, inspect and adapt from that point is a common pattern that we find to be effective for all leadership in the fog.

Lee Kantor: And then once they kind of the aha moment happens, the light bulb turns on. It is something that makes that second time easier.

Pete Behrens: Yes it does once you start to see the patterns. In this case, one of the patterns that showed up that was a little harder for this leader to deal with is once they got their own pattern. How do I scale that pattern to others? Because now everybody else, all the other leaders below them in the organization are wearing their capes, making their choices, moving their speed. So now how do we scale that? And this is the problem that we see in organizations because everything’s moving so fast, we don’t have time to operate from the top of the organization. We don’t have time to trickle down strategy and direction. It’s got to be more of an organic system. That means this mindset of inspect and adapt. We call it a catalyst leadership mindset, where change becomes the operating rhythm that has to be embedded throughout the organization at every layer. In fact, one of the terms we use is leadership is not a title or position. It’s a choice. It’s a behavior that happens at every place inside the organization, regardless of title or position. So that became the next challenge, particularly for this organization.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you talk about change and you mentioned that speed can, uh, isn’t maybe not the most optimal first move, but it sounds like action is the optimal first move.

Pete Behrens: Say that part again.

Lee Kantor: You mentioned speed may not be the optimal first move, but you talk about the importance of changing during uncertainty. So it sounds like I’m hearing when you say change, I’m hearing action that it’s not kind of a mental like, I guess mentally you have to, uh, understand what’s happening, but at some point you have to take an action.

Pete Behrens: Yes. Think about this as the first step for leadership doesn’t need to be competence or certainty. We often see leaders wait for clarity. They wait for data. They wait for proof before action. I want to reverse that. I want to do the action that creates the clarity. That takes a different set, that takes a courage of leadership to be able to take that step without all the data, without all the information. But it’s it can be a small step. It can be a safe step. It can be experiments. It can be trials. We see this a lot where we know we’re in uncertain territory, whether you’re dealing with healthcare or pharmacy, pharmaceuticals. They do millions and millions of different trials and experiments to find what’s right. That mindset, that curiosity, scientific mindset, although works incredibly well in all industries that are dealing with the fog.

Lee Kantor: Now, how do you help the organizations? Because it sounds like this is at the heart of it. It’s a culture shift as well because it has to permeate the entire organization. It can’t just live with one person in one room, somewhere in the office. It’s got to really permeate everybody. If you really want to be able to deal with this over any period of time. How do you help them change the culture where there might have been? Everybody says, oh yeah, feel fast. You know, like it’s okay to take. Experiment, experiment, try whatever you want to call it. Take chances. But a lot of times you’re penalized when you’re wrong. And it’s hard to kind of marry both of those concepts of take chances and never be wrong.

Pete Behrens: What you’re describing is one of the most overused words in what’s become a platitude culture. And I think a lot of leaders roll their eyes when they hear culture. But you’re correct. What we help with is cultural. And if you think about what is culture, it’s simply a reflection of behavior of its leaders, what they see as priorities, what they see as important that turns into culture. There’s two ways to really shape culture, and we help leaders with both of these. One you start to think about is these macro levers, and this is where a leader might bring in a big consulting firm and do what I’d call open heart surgery, massive reorganization. You’re going to change culture when you start to really, you know, rip open an organization. And that often is short term focused, not necessarily long term health oriented. Another way to shape this is through micro culture. We simply start changing the behavior of leaders. Now one leader’s not going to change a culture. But if I get 30 leaders in a room and then they start over the next six months to start changing conversations, changing decisions, changing meetings, changing interactions with others, that shapes culture. The macro culture. So yes, culture is incredibly important. We help leaders visualize this. We actually have a picture of their culture that we get, and we get some data so they can see it because data tells the story better than anything else. And then once we have that data, help them understand the correlation between their behaviors and that culture that they’re trying to achieve.

Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Pete Behrens: What we’re looking for are leaders curious enough to want to do something different. The biggest problem we see in today’s world is copy paste organizations. We saw this ineffective throughout the history in the 20th century, and we’re still seeing it today. People want to take an organization and copy it, whether it’s Google, whether it’s Microsoft, whether it’s Spotify, whether it’s, you know, take your pick. That doesn’t work. What works is understanding the levers that make those company, the policies, the metrics, the structures, the behaviors of leaders that make that effective. And putting that building your own recipe, the way I describe this is organizations want to be that five star restaurant, that five star chef, but they want to use other people’s recipes to do it. No five star chef uses other people’s recipes. They make their own. The best organizations in the world today are making their own recipes that divide their own culture, that shape this future. So what we’re looking for, we’re looking for those leaders who want to make a difference, who don’t just want to copy what’s worked from somebody else but wants to make their own dent in the universe.

Lee Kantor: Now, does this work best for those established organizations, or does it also have a place at a startup?

Pete Behrens: It works at any scale. It’s actually quite easy to affect startups because they’re pretty small systems and you can shape it through a single individual. The larger systems, what we tend to do is we tend to work in pockets. So we’ve worked with organizations upwards of 100, 200,000 people and those we work at various layers within the organization. Maybe it’s a product team, maybe it’s a plant that we’re working with. Maybe it’s a division or a function that we work with. And so we start to scale through these. So every one of those we call a bubble or a pocket inside that organization that we would work with that can be independent in the way it operates.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, get Ahold of the book Into the Fog Leadership Stories from the Edge of Uncertainty, or get Ahold of you or your team when it comes to coaching or speaking. What is the website? What is the best way to connect?

Pete Behrens: Yeah, the best way to connect all of those things, including myself, would be into the fog Book.com that is a landing page on our website. So you can go from there to get more information. Look at our resource library, understand me a little bit better and what we do.

Lee Kantor: Well, Pete, thank you so much for sharing your story today, doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Pete Behrens: Thank you Lee.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.