Adaptive Leaders: Damian Goldvarg on Mastering Leadership in Current Times

In the evolving post-COVID word, the leadership paradigm is changing to keep up with the evolving requirements of the new generations and a fast changing technology.

In Dr. Damian Goldvarg’s lastest book, Leadership for Current Times, empathy emerges as a crucial trait for effective leadership, which requires a genuine willingness to understand and connect with others’ perspectives. 

Dr. Goldvarg also underscores the practical benefits of strategic thinking and foresight in leadership. By developing skills in anticipating future trends and challenges, leaders can make informed decisions and stay ahead in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform.

Please check Dr. Damian Goldvarg’s Liderazgo Para Los Tiempos Actuales: Nuevos Paradigmas Y Habilidades De Coaching, soon available in English. Use the affiliate links to support Pity Party Over at no additional cost to you.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: As a collective society, we've been talking about COVID and all the ramifications of COVID. And I think we are definitely realizing that the post COVID is probably just as harsh as the actual pandemic. There are a lot, a lot of different ramifications. And you decided to write a book about it. So I was wondering how the idea came about.

Damian Goldvarg: Well, I started working in a book on leadership. So I have been training leaders for more than 30 years. And I wanted to write one on coaching skills for leaders.

So I wrote already eight books, was author of books on coaching skills for coaches, mentor coaching, supervision in English and Spanish, nd this time, I wanted to write a book on coaching skills that I could use in my trainings; When I train coaching skills, I can use that book as a manual, but also my colleagues who benefit from it.

I thought they can use that also with their clients when they are coaching leaders because they had all exercises and activities. So I thought I would be sharing that.

I started writing the book and then COVID hit. And then I kept working with the book. And then I was thinking, well, things are changing now. So I think what about working on how COVID is affecting the work and the leadership?

I started looking at working in a hybrid environment, working virtually, talking about the mental health sequels from that, how people are affecting the level of stress that they had during COVID and after COVID. I think that there were a lot of emotional experiences that leaders needed to deal with and being overwhelmed by their own experiences, but experiences of their teams.

The idea with this book was to answer, okay, how leadership is changing and what leaders need to pay attention to. And I think that the leaders need to be more focused on these formative relationships and also developing coaching skills, being more coaches.

Some are already doing that. The ones that are not doing that needs to look at it because you know they're going to get behind in terms of their requirements for the new generations.

And then it's interestingly because when I was getting ready to send the book to the publisher, I sent the book to a few people to give me feedback. And several of them from medium don't have the word COVID or post-COVID in the title of the book, because people are tired of it, are burned out. They don't want to hear anything about it too cold.

So I said, OK, so let's go for the third name, Because first at the beginning, we have a leadership coaching skill for leaders. The second title was post COVID leadership. And now the final title is in Spanish, and the book is totally translated, and I am working on the edition of that.

It's called “Leadership in Current Times,” What is required right now, what is right now in this moment, what is required for leaders. I decided to take from the name post-COVID because out of the reaction of people were telling me, "That's it." I said, "Okay." But it's interesting, Stephen, because I hear from some people that they like it to be reminded that it's post-COVID, et cetera. But you know what? I had COVID for a second time last month. So it's not gone. It's still around.

I have a friend of mine that I was talking to him yesterday. He has been very sick, even though he had vaccines. And he was one of the most careful persons that I have ever met around COVID and finally took for him too once. And there is a lot of more cases now in LA County where I live.

Stephen Matini: So when you introduce these concepts to your own clients, usually, how do they react? 

Damian Goldvarg: It makes sense to them. I work globally, and because I am originally from Argentina, I work in Spanish a lot. And the Latino cultures tends to be compared to the American culture or the European cultures, a little bit more authoritative in terms of having more distance, power distance between leaders and their reports.

It's more like, and also have a tradition from Italy, Spain, the father figure, and this parental, and the resistance, and the disrespect to the authority. It's a different kind of relationship. And many times, these leaders are not very collaborative in their approach. They feel responsible.

They feel responsible when they want to take care of things, and they may not engage as much as the colleagues, as peers. There is this distance in hierarchies that we see that is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. So sometimes that for leaders who feel that it's their responsibility that they need to make their decisions, they don't engage and include people in decision-making. They have, I think, the hardest time to listen to these ideas. And sometimes it's really, really in their system. So it's not easy to change the mindset. So I try not to force anything.

As a coach, part of my job is to challenge mindsets and being patient because different people need different time to look at things from different angles. And at the end of the day, everybody has the right to look at reality the way that they want. I have an invitation and the metaphor that I use is the glasses.

I said, okay, you know, your sunglasses are blue, you see everything blue, are you willing to take your sunglasses for a minute and put one that are green and see if you're willing to look differently with different color things. And sometimes people are willing and sometimes they are not, but it's their decision.

Stephen Matini: What usually does the trick, meaning those who actually shift, you know, or somehow they start wearing a different pair of sunglasses, you know, tinted differently, what helps them making the shift?

Damian Goldvarg: Sometimes if everything is going very well and they're being very successful, and they do not have any reason to think, why aren't we going to change? We're very successful. We have done things like that.

If people have a challenge and suddenly they have not been as successful, they are not selling as much and there are a lot of complaints or there is conflict crisis. Then when people are realizing, okay, we are not going to keep being successful with past practices. So we need to look new ways of doing things. So they've been forced by the market or the circumstances, you know, because of economy and the changes.

There are some jobs because of AI. Some jobs are being redundant. And I'm telling my colleagues and they don't like to listen to it. But they said, you know, eventually in the future, I also will replace some of the work of some cultures. And so you need to be prepared. You cannot be saying, no, I don't want to listen about it. I don't want to say.

No, it's like, okay, we are supposed to be open to what's happening in the world, and we need to have a dubious responsibility. Being on top of technology advances, trends. So I do believe that we can also show the trends to the leaders, and they may choose not to pay attention.

Stephen Matini: In your opinion, if someone is not that empathetic, can the person actually transition and to become more empathic, which is one of the key features of the post-COVID leadership? 

Damian Goldvarg: Definitely. I do believe it's possible, but the person needs to be willing to go there. Like, for example, what I do in my work with my clients is I start with the 360, where people receive feedback from the boss or other people in the organization, peers, and deliver reports, sometimes also customers, other third parties.

So I collected data and I shared with th