#139 Transform Your Team: Mammoth Leadership Lessons with Nicolas Pokorny

"Whatever we have achieved as a species has nothing to do with one person alone."

Why start a leadership book with a mammoth hunt?

Nicolas and I delve into the human dimension of leadership and what it brings to society.

Human behaviour is the most unmeasured risk in strategy implementation. To avoid pitfalls, be aware of evolutionary biases such as the false positive decision-making bias. Companies build echo chambers, where people raise a view that is not the same as their boss’s, and then avoid talking about it.

A crucial point: humans achieve greatness through collaboration. A lone human has little chance against a mammoth. Hunting one requires strategy, the right people, and a shared purpose. This highlights a fundamental truth: our collective efforts drive success.

Organisations should acknowledge the inherent tension between individualistic needs, collaboration, and competition among employees, fostering a culture where personal and company goals align.

Nicolas shares his insights, experience and stories of working and researching the human dimensions of leadership and what it means for today's workplace.

The main insights you'll get from this episode are :

-      The human dimension of leadership and what it brings to society is key – a failure to understand ourselves and the people we lead is a big problem that is borne out by history (as far back as the time of the mammoth).

-      Collaboration and strategy were needed to hunt the mammoth (cf. the big machine in modern times); nowadays we have lots of smaller, interconnected mammoths but we still need to know how to lead a herd of mammoths.

-      To progress in an organisation requires sharing our learning and leading a team towards a goal: leaders need people with the right expertise and people they trust – very similar to a mammoth hunt.

-      The human ego is problematic when it comes to achieving a common goal, with the apparent paradox between working for oneself and being wired for collaboration, i.e. the individual vs the collective.

-      Leaders in the transactional corporate world must learn to be humble, lead by example, be purpose-driven and role model a positive culture – they need their team more than their team needs them.

-      Leadership, followship and hierarchy counteract the vulnerability, slowness and weakness of the individual; leadership was originally task-related, with different leaders for different tasks, teaching how to lead and how to follow.   

-      Today, one person becomes CEO without the relevant skills/knowledge for all the different tasks and must therefore understand when to lead and when to follow, going against the grain of what it means to be a ‘strong leader’.

-      The ‘mammoth’ approach to leadership involves four levels of team performance - fight or flight, competitive, creative and flow – along with a leadership/ followship framework and a dynamic stability framework.

-      These are old ideas to avoid pitfalls, e.g. if you don’t evolve, you die as an individual and die out as a species – the same is true for companies, yet human behaviour remains the most unmeasured risk in business strategy.

-      Diversification is very risky – if the main aim is to survive and be sustainable, it is vital not to lose sight of the core business; what you do today is most important, otherwise there is no tomorrow.

-      We must understand that as humans we have evolutionary biases (false positive decision-making bias, confirmation bias, anchoring bias), are risk averse and prone to fail.

-      Leaders especially need to accept failure, be proud of it, learn from it and be open about it rather than cover it up, particularly in a corporate culture that is performative and does not reward failure.

-      Facing the ‘mammoth’ forces leaders to honestly ask: am I leading as I would like to be led? Understanding more about human behaviour is crucial as evolution isn’t just a scientific theory, it’s a leadership imperative.

Find out more about Nicolas and his work here :

https://mammothleadershipsciences.com/book/

https://mammothleadershipsciences.com/podcast/

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-mammoth-in-the-room/id1761401140

https://open.spotify.com/show/47QueVgXZ8HP6b0fKyNvB6

https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/the-mammoth-in-the-room/5253032

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolaspokorny/