M.K. Palmore [00:00:00]:
It is a fact that organizations that practice, organizations that walk through security response, always respond better in real life scenarios. It is an absolute fact and unless you are doing those things on a periodic basis, in all likelihood you will find yourself potentially not responding in a way that’s helpful to you.

Karissa Breen [00:00:36]:
Joining me now is M.K. Palmore, Chief Executive Officer at Apogee Global RMS. And today we’re discussing how to lead through uncertainty, security, safety and cyber awareness in a time of crisis. So mk thanks for joining me and welcome.

M.K. Palmore [00:00:55]:
Thanks for having me. Appreciate the invite.

Karissa Breen [00:00:58]:
So, going to start mainly with a lot of stuff going on in the world, depending on what news you’re reading, et cetera. So I’m keen to sort of get your insight given your background, your pedigree. MK how do you sort of lead in a time of crisis?

M.K. Palmore [00:01:12]:
That’s a great question, but frankly it always feels like we’re in a time of crisis and or nearing one. I think that leadership, regardless of the situation or circumstances around it, always requires a couple of things. One, leading with a people centered approach, meaning that people are always at the center of your decision making as a leader. And when you do that you tend to make decisions that are both humane and keeping intact people’s humanity as you make decisions about what needs to happen and appropriately understanding that when you feel as though you’re in a moment of crisis, in other words, you either have reduced time available to you and or you feel external pressures, it’s important to always level set on what the desired outcomes are, what you’re needing to do in order to achieve them, what you’re willing to do. And of course centering back on how is that going to impact the people who are a part of your team and or the folks who are on the other end of the decision making and potentially will be impacted by the decisions that you make. So I think that times of crisis actually require even more diligence obviously than we normally execute as leaders during times of heightened crisis. I think it’s important for all of us to remember that making sure that we keep people at the center of this decision making ultimately will bear out better decisions than they will if we simply stick to agendas and objectives.

Karissa Breen [00:02:36]:
Yeah, you make a couple of great points. So when you say being more diligent, is that hard for people to sort of like when you deal with a crisis, like sometimes you can Talk about it. You can practice the plan, you can go over, you can have external advisors that come in to talk through the plan. But when it’s a crisis, people tend to forget about all of that and then the panic starts to sink in. So how do you still operate under severe pressure or to your point heightened crisis, are still thinking clearly, still operating with, to your earlier point level set? How does that work? Because often it’s very easy. And I’ve had multiple people on the show come on and talk about these things in a perfect world, but as you said, we’re forever in a state of crisis. Walk me through what that looks like.

M.K. Palmore [00:03:20]:
Yeah, so I mean, a couple of things I want to push back a little bit on your assumption. And that is with practice actually does come a certain level of perfection. And when I say perfection, I mean that your reactions to events as they happen tend to be better if you’ve practiced than they would be if you had not practiced, had not discussed or had not had a scenario where you work through what potential decision making might look like during the course of any one particular crisis event. So I actually believe that practicing, especially when we talk about things like cybersecurity or security in general, my experience has taught me that practicing actually does make a difference in the long run. Certainly during my time in the FBI, where I found myself in many a what you might consider crisis scenario, we find that our actions ultimately are impacted by what we’ve done to prepare for those particular events. And practice was a huge component of it. Even if you could just inoculate yourself and others to walking through what a particular scenario might look like and seeing the different versions of the potential outcomes of a scenario, even if they’re notional, helps to prepare you for what a real life scenario might look like. And you actually find that your reaction time, your decision making, are all better in real life scenarios if you walk through and practice those items.

M.K. Palmore [00:04:41]:
So to your point around, you can think about and practice a ton. And then of course, real life hits and the outcomes may be different and, or your reactions may be different. That’s not always the case. And again, I would just harp on the idea that practice, the old saying practice makes perfect, actually has some application in the real world. It doesn’t necessarily make perfect, but it definitely brings about better outcomes than you would had you not run through those scenarios, either in notional form and or just walk through them with the potential stakeholders or players so that you can see what decision making might look like in the event of an actual thing. That requires your attention or requires some heightened level of involvement and, or leadership.

Karissa Breen [00:05:23]:
So just to build on a little bit more. So maybe let me rephrase my question just for clarity purposes. So other people that I’ve interviewed historically have been like, okay, they’ve, companies, organizations, have practiced, but maybe they’re practicing not the right scenarios, or maybe the circumstance in which they are practicing isn’t relevant to what may happen in a real life scenario. Have you seen that throughout your career perhaps?

M.K. Palmore [00:05:48]:
Yeah, sure. I mean, it’s very hard to, in a notional fashion, practice towards exactly what’s going to happen in, in real terms. But what you can do is you can build a framework for decision making. More often than not, leaders are working with teams when they make hard decisions. And so working with those particular stakeholders through a variety of scenarios will prepare you for any one particular scenario that happens to present itself. And so while you may not be able to exactly replicate the real world, in a practice scenario, you can replicate the decision making workflow, the people that you’re going to be in that, in that event with the roles that are going to be necessary, the types of decision making that may be required to get you on the other side of that particular scenario, you can walk through those kinds of things and at the very least create new tissue connectivity around the types of decision making that may be required, what external resources may be required to be brought in in order to be able to make sound decisions, what other internal stakeholders may need to be included in any one particular decision. And when you’ve walked through those scenarios, you do have again, an upper hand on a real life decision making process and you do tend to walk through it a little bit faster. Now, does that guarantee that you’re going to still make the right decision or the right call? Not necessarily.

M.K. Palmore [00:07:13]:
There are no guarantees. But I would say, and I will stand on the fact that having walked through a scenario, having visited a particular challenge, especially if you’ve done it with the same people over and over again in a practice scenario, you will understand what it takes in order to get to a natural decision and conclusion, and you will be able to exercise it with a speed with which you would not normally be able to do had you not gone through that practice scenario or visited with the folks who are other stakeholders that might help in the decision making process.

Karissa Breen [00:07:45]:
Do you also think as well MK that people are saying, oh, you know, I’m just, I’m just so busy, I haven’t even gotten through the things I’ve got to do day to Day and now I’ve got to practice, got to practice more. Do you often find that the practicing side of things drops to the bottom of the list quite quickly, or how does that mindset look in your eyes?

M.K. Palmore [00:08:03]:
No, it absolutely drops to the bottom of the list. Especially in the security realm, folks are reticent to take time out of their daily schedules in order to conduct the practice. In fact, if you tell someone that you’re asking them to take half a day out of their schedule and bring in other executives to take half a day out of their schedule in order to walk through something that’s not real, they oftentimes will give you pushback. And folks are brought in for a variety of reasons. They develop trust with the other executives. And the teams and people that I normally have conversations with have built a level of trust with the other executives that shows that if so, and so is recommending this, that we take time out to do this, that there’s some value associated with it and that value is going to yield dividends in the long run. And so they all accommodate break schedules and then tend to make a priority out of it. And I think it depends on who’s making the ask and if they’ve developed the level of trust that they need with the other executives so that they know that they’re not wasting their time.

M.K. Palmore [00:09:00]:
But I do see pushback, generally speaking, in the industry around practicing our response to security scenarios, whether they be physical security or cybersecurity related, because we do both at Apogee Global. It is a fact that organizations that practice, organizations that walk through security response, always respond better in real life scenarios. It is an absolute fact. And then, and unless you’re doing those things on a periodic basis, in all likelihood you will find yourself potentially not responding in a way that’s helpful to you.

Karissa Breen [00:09:36]:
Yeah, that’s interesting. So you said not responding in a way that’s helpful to you. So what was coming to my mind as you were speaking was back in the day, corporates, it’s like, all right, everyone, we’ve got to do the five drill exercise. Everyone moans, groans, I’m halfway through my lunch, I’m on a phone call. Then everyone does it, like really bare minimum standard. But do you think, given that scenario, with what you’ve seen, do you think people, if there was an actual fire in a building, like, do you think people would react the same way they’ve practiced? I mean, this is a very rudimentary example, but the mindset and the behavior is still there. I’m just curious to know people seem a little disgruntled when they’ve got to practice something and it’s not real to your point before, but when these crisis is hit, do you think that people tend to go back to their instincts or do you think that, hey, you know, Joan and Jeff really weren’t paying attention? Even irrespective of doing the practices over.

M.K. Palmore [00:10:25]:
The last 12 months, the scenario that you present is actually an apt one. I do believe that there’s some value in those sort of notional fire drills that happen. I mean, if you’ve shown someone once or twice where the rally point is or where to go to in a physical sense, if a fire happens, believe me, people will respond and react accordingly in a real life scenario. Now what you can account for is the fear factor that people experience when they’re in the midst of something that’s actually real. Not only have the fire bells gone off, but they smell the smoke and, or they see the fire and there is a sort of innate built in fight or flight instance that each individual has. You can hope that with a little bit of practice that people will respond accordingly. And again, the data shows us time and again that the practice actually supports a better outcome. And so if you’re approaching this from a risk management standpoint and you want to bring down the potential risk associated with an incident, time and again it’s shown us that practicing response to that will help to mitigate the potential impact of an incident.

M.K. Palmore [00:11:33]:
And so there’s value associated with it that we just simply have to encounter and agree that there’s a value set that we’re going to get out of practicing and do those things. The flip side of that is also true for every instance where an entity, an organization or a company blows off or decides that they’re not going to practice and then they find themselves in the midst of a real life event, I guarantee you that their actual engagement will be something that they will ultimately consider to be subpar or not meeting the moment. And unfortunately in real life we’ve seen some of this come to pass. We have a society at the moment that’s in the midst of a lot of things like active shooter events and or events where there’s live violence and things happening at the moment and people are prone to respond in a way that is a replication of what they’ve either practiced or seen or what comes naturally to them. And if you haven’t practiced, then everyone’s left to essentially fall back on what their natural inclination or reaction is. And because you’re Oftentimes dealing with lots of different people, you’re going to get lots of different reactions. So there is value in it, there’s value in practicing. It helps from a risk mitigation standpoint.

M.K. Palmore [00:12:45]:
There’s value in building plans on how you’re going to react, documenting those plans again, walking through them with stakeholders and folks who understand that and understand the risk proposition, I think avail themselves of services that will help them be ready for these kinds of events. And now more than ever, I think people should be taking note of taking time out of their busy, busy day to day schedules and making sure that they’re prepared for the types of events, quite frankly, that we’re seeing in the news on a weekly basis.

Karissa Breen [00:13:15]:
So before we jump into that, because that’s a very big thing that I want to get into, I just want to stay with the same example of the fire drill, the fire. The main objective really is you got to get out of the building, right? But when you’re looking at a cybersecurity or national security or just physical security threat, it’s a lot more complexities, right? So like the main objective is get out of the building, hopefully unharmed, don’t worry, laptop, handbag, forget it, you just got to get out. But when you’re looking at an incident, it’s like, okay, well now we have to general counsel and now we have to speak to these people, and now we’ve got the media calling, customers complaining, or something else has happened. Add that layer of complexity then. So do you think even in that scenario, people still default to what they know? Irrespective of the interdependencies and the complexities surrounding these incidents, they revert to what.

M.K. Palmore [00:14:03]:
They know or what they’ve practiced. So cybersecurity incidents, since you talk about them in a national security form and or a breach that may have an apt adversary associated with it. All of these things require you to have done work beforehand in order to even understand how to respond to an event like that. And the kind of work I’m talking about is relationship building with external organizations, relationship building internally with stakeholders who obviously are going to be brought to bear. You mentioned the general counsel. These are all stakeholders and external entities that you should have relationships with before you experience a significant event so that you’re not rushed in. That first phone call that you’re having with someone is not, hey, I’m in the midst of an emergency, come help. Part of the reason you want to do this beforehand is you want to understand what another entity is actually capable of bringing to the table in the event of an emergency.

M.K. Palmore [00:14:56]:
And part of the conversation you should be having with them is what do you do and what don’t you do in the midst of an emergency? Because you need to understand where you need to go for resources and, or help. And you want to understand what kind of help may actually be available to you. And again, you know, it gets back to the idea of practicing. I tell you know, my time in the FBI as a cybersecurity leader, 100% of the time, the entities that we had relationships with in terms of either having had prior conversations, helping to have participated in, or helped to conduct tabletop exercises. Those organizations, if they did find themselves in a security incident, it was very simple. You sort of enacted the plan that you had walked through, the phone calls were made, and everybody sort of hopped to or stepped to on their duties or responsibilities. Nothing was worse than receiving a call from someone you had never had a conversation with. They’re in the midst of an emergency, and to them everything requires an immediate response.

M.K. Palmore [00:15:54]:
You don’t have a relationship with them, you don’t really understand the parameters of what’s being asked of them on the other side. And, and you dispatch personnel and or resources in order to help them. And it just takes longer to even understand the problem set if you don’t know who all the stakeholders are or you don’t understand how they play in potentially helping you to resolve that incident at some point. And so a lot of this takes some active work beforehand. And, you know, people are always asking, you know, how much effort you should put into it. I would say minimal effort’s not good enough, and an excessive amount of effort will mean a couple of things in terms of positive dividends, not to mention positive relationships that you have with stakeholders and external organizations and people who potentially could help you at some point. So all of this is part of the daily task and job of anyone that considers himself a risk management leader. And that includes CISOs, CSOs, and others who are ultimately involved in responding to incidents.

Karissa Breen [00:16:56]:
So now I want to switch gears slightly. And a lot of stuff going on in the news at the moment. As you know, no matter where you are in the world, people are following what’s happening here in the United States. So I’m keen to maybe get into your mind about the growing security concerns for government officials and leaders, maybe paint a bit of a picture. Mk, what’s going on? What’s your thoughts around what’s happening?

M.K. Palmore [00:17:18]:
Yeah, so we’re definitely in interesting Times. I spent 32 years in the US federal government and retired back in 2019. I don’t recall a time during my time in service where the nature of the threat was as heightened as it is now. And I definitely believe that we’ve entered a period where government officials, especially those who are not part of a law enforcement apparatus, should and probably will be taking extra steps to protect themselves. I mean, we’ve had a number of incidents over the course of the past several months and years where we’ve seen elected officials attacked, in some cases in their own homes, violently, family members of elected officials attacked. And that means that folks who are in my line of work, physical risk management probably, you know, our phone should be. An email should be ringing off the hook because that. It appears as though we’ve entered a period where officials need to be contemplating bringing on board additional resources to protect themselves and their families.

M.K. Palmore [00:18:24]:
And it’s quite unfortunate that we find ourselves in this spot. But to not recognize it would be not recognizing a reality that unfortunately we’re now seeing on the news once every several weeks that someone in the public eye has found themselves being victimized and or potentially a victim of unwanted attention when it comes to potential physical violence and the threat of it. And because most people, unless you’ve spent a career in the military or a career in law enforcement, most people don’t walk around with that, what I would call sort of flashing orange light or yellow light, taking note of every scenario that you find yourself in and being cautious in a way that I think those of us who lived a career in law enforcement do. And when you live that career, you think it’s an unfortunate state of being, that you’re always cautious about your surroundings. But unfortunately, it seems like we’re getting to a state where, where more people probably need to be security aware around what’s happening to them and coming up with mental models around how they might react in the event of a real life situation. And that extends all the way even to your personal domicile where people should feel the most safe. But also you should probably be taking some natural precautions around protecting yourself, even in your home.

Karissa Breen [00:19:42]:
You said my 33 year career, you’ve never seen, in terms of the extent of what’s happening right now, where would you say this is? Where’s it coming from? What’s stemming it, given you’ve got the tenure and the pedigree to support what you’re saying? So I’m really curious to be like, why all of a sudden the things are spiraling out of control over recent years.

M.K. Palmore [00:20:03]:
There’s always beliefs and counter beliefs and people who exist on one line of a spectrum and occupy opposite ends and naturally have beliefs that don’t align with one another. I think that what we have seen historically was that people were willing to settle those disagreements in a much more amenable fashion than what they are today. And unfortunately, we’ve gotten to a point where political disagreements have now crept into the realm of violent outcomes. And although things like terrorism have certainly been around for ages, decades even, I think the level of willingness to engage in violence in order to settle political disagreements has gone into a different level of activity. Hence the discussion we just had around political officials taking steps to protect themselves. I just believe that a lot of it has to do with political rhetoric and outcomes and people not taking the time to really understand the differences between the statements that people make and whatever reality might be. And because of that, you can’t really guarantee how someone’s going to digest or take in a piece of information or what they’re willing to do in an effort to support their own personal beliefs. We’re just seeing a state of being where these beliefs, I think, have gotten people on the bad end of potential violent acts.

M.K. Palmore [00:21:30]:
And that’s unfortunate because we’re all taught from very, very early stage that the country was founded on the idea that differing beliefs could exist in the same hemisphere with one another. And somehow we’ve. We seem to have gotten away from that.

Karissa Breen [00:21:44]:
Okay, this is interesting. So what do you think? The US Government or governments around the world, how are they going to start to control a lot of this threats? I mean, because this can’t just keep going the way it’s going, right? Because we’re seeing it spill over into other nations. Other countries are getting worse as well. So how does this look? And sometimes it’s hard. And I know it’s a bit of a hard question to answer, but because you’ve got the background, you probably have a little bit of insight on what is the government going to do to be able to like, stop this from happening, reduce it.

M.K. Palmore [00:22:19]:
This is where the topic of leadership comes in. This is a problem that our leaders have to help us solve. And when I say leaders, I mean leaders across the political spectrum, folks have to all take a step back and understand the role that they are playing in this heightened rhetoric period that we’re engaged in. And in order to bring down the temperature, in order to bring down the heightened response that we’re seeing from some individuals, our leaders have to take a step forward and essentially model for everyone else, how to have these really, really hard discussions, which actually should be much more about policy than anything, have hard discussions about policy, understand that compromise is inevitable and should be a part of these discussions. Unfortunately, the term compromise doesn’t seem to play as big a role as it apparently used to in the political realm. But compromise is a good thing. And compromise is how you get to a point of agreement on really, really tough issues. And our leaders have to show us that they understand the nature of compromise, the willingness to compromise.

M.K. Palmore [00:23:28]:
And I think that example in and of itself will help to bring down the tension, help to bring down the temperature on these issues. But as long as they seem to indicate at the leadership level that they are unwilling to compromise, unwilling to engage in fruitful discussions that might bring both sides results and, or yield dividends for both sides, we’re going to continue to see, I think, this heightened sense of reactivity to a belief that there is no room for compromise and, or coming to the table and every side getting a little something out of what they want from any one particular issue. We seem to be approaching it as if it’s a zero sum game at the moment. And that’s not appropriate for. That’s not an appropriate example to set for the rest of us to follow.

Karissa Breen [00:24:20]:
So whatever happened to the phrase agree to disagree or whatever happened to coexisting? So, for example, you might, you and you might like a movie and I don’t like it. We can still coexist. We can still have a conversation. I’ve also been reading online MK that people have said, you know, a lot of this has been fueled by cognitive bias on social media. A lot of, like you said that, you know, the divisive side of people spreading their views online, which people start to buy into more as well as even the cost of living is starting to drive people to this level. What are your thoughts then on that in terms of, is this what some of this behavior is being influenced by? Maybe at a more rudimentary level.

M.K. Palmore [00:24:58]:
It’s kind of unfortunate. Social media and all things the Internet were invented in order to share knowledge. One of the positive benefits people thought of many of these platforms is that people would just simply be more informed. But I think one of the unexpected dividends from the advent of social media, and quite frankly, the unexpected nature of how much time we all spend plugged into social media has yielded something very, very odd in terms of the human response to what we see online. It’s pretty well agreed upon and known that the way that these algorithms are written is that people essentially are fed information that aligns with their belief system. And when you’re. Then that’s regardless of where you happen to exist on the belief spectrum. If you are particularly liberal, you probably tend to see liberal influencers, liberal outcomes, liberal statements.

M.K. Palmore [00:25:58]:
If you’re conservative, you see the opposite. If you are extremist, I’m sure you see extreme versions of rhetoric and things fed to you. And when that information is put back in front of you, it becomes a validation of sorts of your beliefs. And that, I think, heightens your response to any one particular issue because you’re being validated constantly whether you go from one platform to the next. All these algorithms seem to feed back to you that which you happen to be in agreement with or things that you are particularly interested in. And unfortunately, I’m not quite sure how, how we unring that bell. The old statement is that you can’t unring a bell. But we have to figure out some way, I think, to get this back to a form and our state that deals much more with centrist information that’s available so that we can all digest things in the appropriate context for which they are, for which they are meant.

M.K. Palmore [00:26:56]:
I mean, me personally, I started to look for centrist news sources so that I get to see both sides of any one particular issue that’s out there, because I even found myself relying heavily on news sources that, that I had previously assumed was feeding me a balanced amount of information. But you get to be suspicious over time that maybe you’re just seeing the kinds of things that reiterate what you already believe, and that’s not actually healthy for anyone, especially in this challenging time. We should all be seeing clear, imbalanced reporting on the issues that are being presented to us so that we can subsequently vote accordingly, because that’s what it’s all about. At the end of the day, the only real power we have as citizens of this nation certainly is to vote our conscience and vote what we think is best for the outcomes of the country. At the end of the day, what.

Karissa Breen [00:27:46]:
About lessons learned from past crises? Is there any sort of thing that people are looking at in terms of, hey, this was a thing that happened X amount of years ago. It’s something that we can take as a data point to be able to fuel how we approach this current situation, this current climate that we’re in. Is there anything you can sort of talk through there?

M.K. Palmore [00:28:07]:
I think that there is. I was born in the late 60s and all I have available to me is the same thing that Anyone who didn’t live through that time has available to them. All you can do is read, right, read. You can watch documentaries. You can certainly, you know, encounter elders and people who live through those times. But I would say that this is as troubling a time as there was and the 1960s in America. Not necessarily the same issues, although there is some repetitive nature in terms of the issues related to civil rights and probably a litany of other things that are still, we thought, were resolved, but now back on the table as unresolved issues in terms of the climate, in terms of the people’s reaction to government decisions, and in terms of whether or not there is a way to see our way through this to some normalized time. I think that the 1960s probably offers an analogous time period where it presents both hope and a matter of dismay that we don’t appear to learn from the historical periods that are part of our history, and we’re decidedly responsible for living through them again during our own generation.

M.K. Palmore [00:29:21]:
The hopeful thing is that the country did come out of that. The 1970s were ripe with things like economic disparities and inflation and things that didn’t normalize for the better part of a decade until the 80s came. But it again gives you at least some kind of compass, some kind of direction that there is a way out of this. But I don’t know what that sequence of events is again, other than turning to our political leadership and hopefully seeing better leadership and discipline out of that group. And I think people will follow suit if our leaders begin to act in a way that helps us to measure our response to some of these issues that we’re experiencing.

Karissa Breen [00:30:00]:
Do you think it’s a fair assumption to say history does repeat itself?

M.K. Palmore [00:30:03]:
Yeah, I feel like we’re already seeing that. We’ve been taught historically that, of course, a famous saying around, you know, those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. We know history. We know the history, certainly of our country. And I feel like in many instances we are still doomed to repeat it because we take unfortunate and believe that making the same decision that was made in the past that led to some kind of catastrophic outcome will yield a different outcome in these times. And I think that’s unfortunate. I think we’re hellbound to experience really some of the bad things that we’ve experienced as a country and as a people over and over again without learning the lessons from them.

Karissa Breen [00:30:41]:
Do you think it’s always hard as well? Like with social media, for example? Just say someone makes a decision, a leader Government official makes a decision, there’s always someone that’s not going to agree. Right. And, but so because someone doesn’t agree, then other people start to jump on the bandwagon and it really fuels that negativity. And I know no matter what you do as a leader, there’s always going to be someone who disagrees. But do you think that makes it just inherently harder? Because then people just start reading the comments, they start seeing what’s happening. Then you’ve got the media organization that are saying, oh, well, that decision was wrong. And then so therefore it does create this gap in how you move forward as a nation. Collectively, yes, there can be disagreements, but collectively, this is still the value, there’s still the mission.

Karissa Breen [00:31:23]:
It just sort of feels as if people are just turning on each other now.

M.K. Palmore [00:31:27]:
Yeah, but you know what, in any leadership scenario like that, especially when you’re dealing with a country as big as the US and you know, 340 million people people, there’s no single decision that you’re going to get 100% agreement on. The idea is that you should be making a decision that most likely yields and or benefits the most of those people potentially impacted by the decision making. And as long as that is at the core, you know, taking care of those people is at the core of your decision making, then the outcome itself will produce the kind of result that you hope for it to produce. People are just simply not going to agree 100% on everything that’s decided that’s never going to happen. And so they’re short. That should not be the litmus test for decision making. It should be widest positive impact on the widest group of people possible. And that kind of positive impact again, tends to yield the best results, ultimately impacting the most number of people.

M.K. Palmore [00:32:26]:
And when you can make decisions in that regard and help a lot of people, then I think at the end of the day, it ultimately will be viewed as a generally good decision. Doesn’t mean everyone will have a good.

Karissa Breen [00:32:37]:
Agreed with it is that when resiliency in terms of leadership really comes into play. Because maybe people can say, okay, well, maybe due to our data or whatever we think we’re going to make, we’ve looked at the history we’re going to make this decision, 20% of people are going to really hate it, you know, and maybe 20% are sort of on the fence, but the rest will sort of be in favor of it. I mean, these are arbitrary numbers, but do you think that’s something that people have to consider in terms of leadership. And I know that we’ve sort of talked about this throughout our interview today, but is it something that perhaps is lacking that resiliency to be like, okay, I’m going to make this decision, I’m going to stand behind it, irrespective of what, you know, John over here on social media thinks about the decision?

M.K. Palmore [00:33:18]:
Yeah, I think that anyone that’s been in the leadership ranks for any amount of time will recognize that that happens again in every decision that’s made. And you can call it resilience, you can call it just simply an understanding of what, what it means to lead, certainly in a complex society like we, we have today, that you just have to be stalwart about your beliefs, you have to be stalwart about the outcomes again and you have to keep at the center of the decision making, the impact on people. Ultimately, these leaders are put in place to have positive decisions, have positive outcomes for, for the citizens. It’s not about the individual leaders. And that’s probably the first lesson that everyone, everyone learns. If you’ve been in leadership for a while, it’s not about you. You have been asked to be a leader or recognized for your leadership skills and capabilities and brought in to actually lead the outcomes for other people, not yourself. And if you can take yourself out of the center of decision making and understand who your constituents are and who it is that you’re actually leading for, you can make good decisions that ultimately impact those people’s outcomes.

M.K. Palmore [00:34:25]:
And again, if you keep in the context that you’re there to help others at the center of your decision making, then you can probably make some pretty decent decisions that will yield positive outcomes.

Karissa Breen [00:34:37]:
Do you think whether it’s government or just private businesses, people make it about themselves too much and then therefore it tracks from the main mission of what we’re here to do. Do you see that or do you seeing that more nowadays or what do you think?

M.K. Palmore [00:34:50]:
I see it a ton and I’ve seen it my entire career. People forget why they are selected and or asked to be leaders and making it about yourself is the first problem. Maybe you can call it a natural human instinctual thing to look inward or to become inward when selected for a leadership role or to say I deserve this because of the hard work that I’ve put in and yeah, I need to make sure I get a positive outcome from this. But at the end of the day, leadership is about the impact that you can have on other people and it can’t be about you. And if it is about you, then I would suggest that maybe you look for a different role because that’s not what leaders are. Therefore, that’s not the intended benefit of having good leaders in place. Having a good leader in place is about how can they help other people get to where they need to be, how can they help with the outcomes of the group rather than themselves? The idea there and that what most people don’t recognize especially immature leaders is that by helping the group you do actually help yourself. You can actually achieve personal outcomes by the group achieving its outcome and by the group achieving its own personal outcomes.

M.K. Palmore [00:36:02]:
It tends to yield benefits to you that are sometimes unrecognizable initially. But there’s a benefit in helping other people that yield results that’s wildly more impactful to you as an individual than simply thinking about your own personal outcomes.

Karissa Breen [00:36:17]:
So in terms of looking forward, how would you advise leaders to sort of balance safety, trust, critical decision making, resiliency, all the things we sort of discussed today in these really uncertain, heightened crisis times?

M.K. Palmore [00:36:32]:
Yeah, keep people at the center of your decision making. If you’re making a decision, who are the people impacted? How are they impacted? Have you done everything to ensure that, that for the most part the impact to them will likely be positive? And for the ones who may be negatively impacted, is there, you know, a safety net of some kind or do you have an off ramp for them that will allow them to digest the decision in a fashion that yields the softest landing for them? It can’t just be about, you know, make the decision and the hard call and let the chips fall where they may. This is where the diligence parts comes in decision making. Especially if you’re not dealing with life and death situation, take the time to to evaluate potential outcomes and hopefully guide your decision making again towards impacting the greatest good and the greatest number of people. But then understand too that you have to, you got to answer the mail on the people who are negatively impacted as well and give them an off ramp of some kind to provide for either short term relief and or longer term relief from the decisions that you’ve made. Keep people at the center and when you keep people and their outcomes at the center of decision making, you will make better decisions. It’s when we start putting on the agenda everything other than the people potentially impacted by these decisions that we tend to go off the rails and start thinking about things that don’t yield the best outcomes.

Karissa Breen [00:37:54]:
And lastly, MK what would be your closing statement to leave our listeners with today?

M.K. Palmore [00:38:00]:
My closing statement is around people centered leadership good decision making and judgment and really around making sure that we’re taking the time to be smart and thoughtful and allow people, as I discovered in a conversation I had with someone many weeks ago now, but just really struck me, allow people to keep their humanity in the scenarios and instances where you’re having dealings with them. Maintaining humanity is probably the best part of being a good leader or practicing good leadership principles. And at the end of the day, if you people can maintain their humanity, we can all sort of live with the decisions that are made.