EW 081 – How To Be An Effective Mentor Who Builds The Next Generation Of Leaders – Winning with Eric Dillon, President of General Bank of Canada

Gordon Sheppard (00:00.779)
Eric, welcome to the show.

Eric Dillon (00:02.92)
Hey Gord, great to great to be chatting with you today. Thanks for having me.

Gordon Sheppard (00:06.156)
Well, we are so lucky to have you. I was in the privileged spot of sitting in an audience, seeing you on a panel at the Women United event for the United Way and getting to hear some of your own thoughts on leadership, hearing you demonstrate sort of moments from your past, as well as the contributions that you're making, specifically in the areas of female leadership at that event and the, you know, diversity interest that you have and support that you've obviously been doing in spades.

for many, many years and that made me want to reach out to you to get you on this show to learn about maybe one of your biggest wins. But I can tell you there's a lot of people that haven't met you just yet. So if you had to describe yourself, what would you say?

Eric Dillon (00:46.144)
Yeah, well, I would say I'm kind of a community believer, banker by trade. I've worked in the finance industry for thirty years and just been kind of naturally curious about this idea of people leadership for a very long time, which morphed into the things I talked about at the Women United event around specifically trying to advance gender diversity in the areas of finance and banking.

Gordon Sheppard (01:07.48)
Gender diversity, what's what's this so what's this passion in that gender diversity and and then again leadership in this area that you've invested so much time in? Cause I know you've had you've also been a mentor to many people as well.

Eric Dillon (01:18.014)
Yeah, and I think, you know, we're gonna spend some time, I think, talking about that today. That's the the win that I that I'd like to get to. But the the area of gender diversity, I mean banking is no surprise in our businesses across the ones I've worked in, primarily in Alberta. There's a high percentage of the employees that are female. And yet you could see almost a straight line th through the organization as an intersection about the

significantly lower percentages that progressed to individual leader or individual contributors, then leader roles, you know, senior leaders and executive leaders. And there was a just a falling off of that percentage. And I just became wildly curious about the why behind that.

Gordon Sheppard (02:02.412)
And you've been in it for a while and you've had a chance to make a dent in that as well. Is that fair along your leadership progression?

Eric Dillon (02:09.288)
Well, I don't know if I've made a dent in the industry, but I've certainly tried the to dedicate the time and energy I have to advancing the cause, primarily around mentoring and the the obligation and responsibility all of us have of senior leaders to kind of create the next generation of leaders. and so I'd like to say I'd I left it better than I found it.

Gordon Sheppard (02:28.972)
Yeah, and I'm just gonna tie in one of the guests that was on the show is a woman named Deborah Rosotti. She started Women Get on Board in twenty fifteen. I met her at a conference in San Diego and we had a nice chat and then got in touch and I got the chance to interview her for this podcast. One of her wins with Women Get on Board was she formed it in this latter part of her career in wanting to mentor women to help fill a gap where she saw the stats being that in corporate boards in Canada in twenty fifteen is twelve percent women on corporate boards. It's about thirty percent now, twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six-ish.

in terms of where it's gotten to. And she's dedicated to helping those people. So that's another sort of someone else in Canada anyway, in a similar way, trying to help with this gender issue and moving that forward for the best reasons. I think organizations function better when we have a more diverse representation across the leadership area. And I'm so glad to hear that you are interested in that and putting your energy into their so that leads me to my first question on on this podcast anyway is was which is you know if you had to describe your biggest win.

you know, I'm sure you've had many, but if you had to describe your biggest win, what would that win be and how would you describe it?

Eric Dillon (03:33.099)
Yeah, I would I would say it's kind of that kind of leadership pyramid. So I was very lucky early in my career to have exceptional mentors and those around me that took an interest in me. And one of them in particular, I at the time 25 years ago, said, you know, at the end of our mentoring relationship, you know, this has been fun, Eric. And I was like so grateful. Thanks for all the time. He made a meaningful difference in the way that I chose to lead people. And then and then he said, Well, I have one ask at the very end of the relationship. And I said, Well, what

What's that? And he said, Well, I want you now to kind of commit and promise to me to make the same investment when you're sitting in the chair I'm sitting in that you make the same investment in those coming behind you. And I've never forgotten that I actually have a scorecard that I keep and I report to him a couple of times a year when when we used to connect.

and and so, you know, this whole legacy of taking a real genuine interest in others in the business, for whatever reason the paths crossed, seeing some potential, you know, finding a goal that can be established, and then really investing in either opening up my network or advocating or sharing information that they probably had never seen before, running through case studies, just you know, all the things that mentors do. And so it just kind of ignited a fire in.

In me for why this matters, you know, because I've said this to many colleagues in my in my time: the primary job of leaders is to build more leaders. Like before the business success, before let's you know celebrate the results for the year, whatever the case may be, the primary job of leaders is to actually build more leaders. And so I've really taken that to heart. And I it's one of the things that, you know, when it's all said and done for me, I will take most pride in.

Gordon Sheppard (05:17.102)
How lucky from a capacity building point of view? We could take it from a productivity angle in Canada that we hear we're supposed to do something about. We hear someone who's doing something about it. We talked about the gender thing I've seen you put into action. That's so neat. Scorecard. Please tell me about this scorecard. I'm so interested. like what does it look like? And and what are some of the pieces of information that go into this scorecard that you were?

Eric Dillon (05:37.321)
Yeah, like I just the all the people that I've connected with in the past and have a whether it's either a formal or informal mentoring relationship with, you know, what kind of what was the nature of power pass cross, what were the mentoring goals, did they how did we assess success at the end? And you know, interestingly, I've got over a hundred, I think there's a hundred and twenty-two in there today. And I think as interesting though, not all of them were super successful. And I've learned the areas that, you know, I can add lots of value in terms of mentoring, but I've also learned, well, hey, there's this

you know, maybe a few times where it's happened where I haven't had as much success in the venturing relationship. So maybe what I should do instead of spending my time on that, maybe introducing somebody else that, you know, maybe has deeper skills in that area or has had more proven success or what have you, and then I'll just make a referral to somebody from my own network who probably has a better chance at unlocking growth than than I was able to.

Gordon Sheppard (06:29.87)
How lucky to take sort of a statistical, in a sense, look at things and then really measure your impact and know when you're you because now you would be in a better sense once you entered in the next mentoring relationship to know if it's gonna be successful, who should be their mentor is something that's come up in what you've talked about as well. How lucky to be tracking that along the way. So that the win is is this mentorship and sort of you know capacity building, you know, the this this leader builds the next leader.

frequency that you've been able to create along the way. Whenever I hear about a win, I always like to jump into what I call the anatomy of a win. So let's look at the strategy, work plan, people, operations, and results behind a win. If we say strategy is vision, mission, values, goals, this kind of thing, what's the strategy behind this win? you know, what's the highlight?

Eric Dillon (07:11.285)
Yeah, I will

Well, Gordon, I think it's connected to that thought of, you know, my job here is to create more leaders in the bank that I run today. But, you know, outside of that, more leaders in finance, more leaders in my community, more leaders in the, you know, the areas that I cross paths with, whether it's volunteer boards, you know, nonprofits, what have you. So that is absolutely the win for me. Because keep in mind, the the question I got asked from my mentor was about this contribution I was willing to make. Well, now if you multiply, I've asked that same question.

question of 122 people that have come behind me and now I've got people that I got connected with you know 10, 15, 20 years ago now have their own quote scorecard mentoring kind of inventory. And and I think they've taken seriously their obligation to pass on this capacity building is a good way to put it the way you framed it earlier.

Gordon Sheppard (08:02.712)
Love it. And so again, that's the strategic part of it is this is this we get this multiplier effect, exponential, really. I if we started to look at the family tree of mentors, we would see many branches that have come from mentor to you, you to many, and how that's sort of going along the way. Interesting. So anytime we have a strategy, we need a work plan. So maybe just take me into if I was a mentee of yours, just to describe what would sort of the first meeting be like and and how many meetings I mean

probably not typical, but what you how many meetings what what happens in a mentoring relationship if there was sort of an idea to be mentored by you and take me through that for just an example.

Eric Dillon (08:36.574)
Yeah, so when I when I started this, I would say it was a bit less structured in that, you know, I'd only experienced one on the other side as a mentee. And so I had that grounding. And so used what I learned there and what I experienced in those settings to to those that I'd started with. But over time I just found that there was a bit of structure that emerged that was

It was really helpful to set up those relationships for success over the longer term. And so it was things like how do we deal with confidentiality? Both the information I'll share and the information that you'll ask for advice on.

How do how do we deal with what the goals and today and are are you sharing those goals with your leader? Hey, I'm engaged in this relationship and here's the mentoring goals that we're gonna have of the time we spend together. You know, how open and transparent are you about that with those that you formally report to or those that formally lead you? Cadence, how often will we get together? What will it look like? Who prepares agendas? Who sets up meetings and proposes times? All of these things seem like small things, but getting them out of the way.

In the first conversation is critical because some of these things are very compressed for time. They might be a quarter, they might be a six-month relationship, 12-month relationship, what have you. And the quicker you can actually get through the structure and process things and get to actually the meat of the mentoring goals and what you're trying to learn or accomplish in that period of time has been a big learning for me over doing this for 15 or 20 years, because then you get into those conversations much, much quicker. You harvest much more learnings, and it's just way more productive.

And I think some mentees, you know, when I show up and say, okay, here's how, speaking from experience, here's some things that'll set us up for success. I think at the time they're like, this seems like a lot of thinking right out of the gate. And then when I've assessed them both after a couple of meetings, another critical piece of feedback is if it's not working, call it early. So there's a feedback piece a couple meetings in, and then of course an assessment at the end where you're saying, you know, were we successful? Did we achieve our goals working together?

Eric Dillon (10:41.186)
But in that time, it's been a much more productive conversation to share really candid and open feedback. So, you know, just a few things in terms of how to set it up, having that quick check-in two meetings in to make sure it's actually working. Because if it's not, they're busy, I'm busy. Let's let's find another way for you to solve those development objectives beyond this, because this is clearly not working with the speed it needs to. And then at the end, taking all of that learning and using it into a repeatable process that gets scaled for the

Gordon Sheppard (11:14.296)
I really appreciate the tone and the word candid in there. There's something about i in your early days when you would have been mentoring. I'm gonna I'm if I say if I guess, would you have hesitated to ask about the confidentiality or hesitated in those earlier ones or did that kind of pick up right away? 'Cause you said this has been an evolution. But there's something about the nature of being able to have that candid conversation quickly. did that evolve or was it there right away?

Eric Dillon (11:37.647)
no, I'm much more courageous about it now and much more direct about it now than I was when I started. And you know, I've had situations, Gord, where somebody's, you know, again working in the finance industry and maybe they're working in a branch, say of a bank, and their leaders not really engaged in their development. And then I get introduced to them through some way at a conference, a speak engagement like United Way or what have you. And and you get into this relationship, and of course, you know, I say, Well, you know, what are the things you want to learn? Well, here's what I want.

Want in terms of my development, well, what are you doing today? What's on your development plan today? What conversation do you have your leader? And and at times I've had this, well, my reader, my leader's not really engaged in this. Well, so then imagine what that conversation's like to say, well, how transparent are you going to be with your leader about your having these meetings with this other guy over coffee, you know, once a month on your own time to replace maybe what you believe should be happening in a normal one-on-one discussion with your leader? So I, you know, I was a

bit sensitive to that reality early. And now I'm just very matter-of-fact saying, look, here's the conversation you need to have with them. You're you own your own development. There's nothing wrong with taking it seriously, but you should be open about the things you're pursuing. Why, where, how, with who, because you know, you never know. Maybe you'll ignite some interest from your leader in the work you're doing and end up at a more productive relationship. So I'm just kind of unapologetic about it today.

Gordon Sheppard (13:06.04)
What a nice, comfortable place to be in. right. Cause then it's you you're really in it for the right reasons. Also the people that mentees that would come into your world would align with this value set that's underneath sort of simmering, I can hear underneath this as well. So that and that would go, yeah.

Eric Dillon (13:18.356)
Well for sure. And if

Yeah, and if there's people that I'm getting introduced that I've worked with in the past, this is all kind of like here's what you can expect. And it's, you know, normal. And I think they come in kind of eyes wide open about this this level of candor and transparency. But it works both ways too, Gordon, in that you know, there's times where I'll all share, you know, in a previous life, I work for a private business now, but in a previous life it was a more public company and I would have shared, okay, well, here's a real life scenario happening in this business that we're leading. You can, you know.

If you want to, like, let's say their development goal is around what's it like to sit around a board and report to a board? Okay, well, I'll be the board member. Here's the board package. The mentoring conversation this month is going to be you present the material to me, and I'm going to ask you all the very pointed hard questions. And and we're gonna role play, but that's with real live information. Like, this is not make believe things. These are real scenarios, real money, real consequence, real impact. And then let's like have a real conversation using a real live case.

Study more of an experiential learning opportunity. And so that confidentiality has gone both ways historically.

Gordon Sheppard (14:28.374)
And how important how lucky, 'cause the learning would be so much significantly better with that real world information. I mean, you you know that for sure. And then confidentiality, are they signing a document or are they doing it sort of is it handshake? How do you know that it's gonna stay confidential?

Eric Dillon (14:44.51)
Yeah, well, of course I'm I'm vetting the candidates that come in today. Like I don't work with everybody that that asks. And you know, there have to be things again that I on areas that I can add value. Things that I know in the past I've been able to move the bar on. But but also, you know, organizations that I know and trust. I'll know something about the candidate coming in from wherever it was sourced a relationship. I'll have a few meetings with them in advance, maybe before we, you know, get down to is this gonna work or are we gonna engage in this kind of relationship or not? and then I do have an agreement that.

that if if I ever feel like it's necessary that then I'll whip it out and and ask them to think about it. And and probably only for reinforcement and commitment than actual legal purposes.

Gordon Sheppard (15:26.53)
Yeah, and it it's funny about documentation and so the there's an implied sort of trust in a sense that comes with it, but along with, like you said, a thorough vetting process that you're putting into play. I can't believe the amount of detail that you've bolted onto this since since Mente number one, it sounds like into the whatever hundred plus now that there's really an evolution of of what it's been that I can hear along the way. So we've got strategy, work plan. There's always people involved in a win. How would you describe your own attitude for mentoring?

From again, Menti number one to mentee hundred plus these days, has it been the same? Has it been ups and downs? How would you describe your own attitude through that process?

Eric Dillon (16:03.86)
Yeah, well I think a bit of that and if it's all framed from my own leadership journey too and leading people and I've worked in organizations where I've led teams as big as two thousand, you know, the small group that I have today that works in the bank of you know, a hundred and fifty ish or so. And so, you know, I think as you get into these senior leadership roles in organizations, particularly organizations that are larger, I mean a significant portion of your time is unlocking the capacity of other people. And in our business, Gordon, there's you know, we we in bank

Banking we talk about capital all the time or equity in a business. And historically that was the money that gets locked up in a vault every night and then you use to build a plant or a

you know, whatever, and to to create economic goodwill. But I would say today the capital in organizations is largely the human potential. And the difference is they they go home every night. And so you have to create an environment where they actually choose to get, you know, get up, have a shower, put their clothes on, and come back to work in the morning. And I think that's been a real fundamental shift for leaders in terms of what does the environment look like? How am I investing in their future? Am I setting them up for success? What happens when an employee

Leaves and because maybe the organization doesn't have the next opportunity that they they are passionate about. And do we hold them back or do we off-board them, set them up for success, and maybe you know, good things happen to good people, they'll come back three years later as a much more different, better equipped person for the challenge that you have in front of your business at that time. And so, this whole idea that unlocking the power of people is where business capital gets created today. I think I think it's been a mind shaft. So my

passion for it probably has increased over time as that shift has taken place and in finance today it's more about the knowledge worker than ever before. Even and and I would say, you know, people might argue that the advent of AI might change that. I would say it's actually going to accelerate that from my own perspective, where some of the easier repeatable tasks will be done by AI or tools or agents. But the ability to exercise judgment, have courageous conversations, harvest diversity,

Eric Dillon (18:14.258)
Those are things that the tools can't yet do today, and I think, you know, are are where the where the opportunity lies for leaders, business leaders like myself.

Gordon Sheppard (18:22.806)
Interesting. And so there's yourself in there and you've described that passion and how it's grown over time. who are some of the other people involved in this win? Is it really go back to that first mentor that you had that was that sort of a major impact and have there been others along the way for you?

Eric Dillon (18:36.496)
yeah, I've had lots. And you know, again, I think I just saw the value of these relationships outside my reporting structure early. I was very lucky. So I was selected in a young leader contest, which would have been back in the early 2000s, 2003, 2004. And one of the most senior leaders in my industry should showed up for my presentation. And I and I remember he's sitting in the front row and his notebooks open. And I remember I was scared stiff because I'm thinking, what could this person possibly want to know?

From what I'm about to say. I mean, he's done everything in the industry. I see him as an icon. And afterwards, he came up to me right afterwards and he's like, that was super insightful. I love, you know, this piece. And I wrote a note about that. And I'm thinking, what is going on here? What world is this? And he took a real interest and was one of my early mentors. And I just remember the view of

You know, he he might have been doing it for thirty years, but a fresh perspective for him was quite interesting. And he was super curious about what these emerging leaders were thinking about the same business problems. And so that framed for me this, you know, mentoring is much less a one-way relationship nowadays and much more a two-way relationship. I've got a young student in the bank today that's just here for the summer, and he's helping me create agents and write code on my own version of Claude to do, you know, kind of an

Analysis on very complex problems. So I'm learning as much from him as the time you know I'm spending imparting any wisdom with him.

Gordon Sheppard (20:06.638)
You sound funny enough, you sound mid-career to me for the energy that you've got in this conversation. Yeah. No, but the the the enthusiasm, you're reminding me of many other leaders that have been on this show that maybe age is not reflective of their attitude towards things. Like they're really just enthusiastic about things and they're s simply making a difference every chance they get. Well, we can go on and on, I'm sure, about the other people, I'm sure your family's involved in there, all the kinds of things that support along the way. Strategy work plan people, there's operationally, yep. We have to operationalize.

Eric Dillon (20:11.612)
Well I wish I wish Greta used to have a different haircut and

Gordon Sheppard (20:36.215)
ment mentoring in this sense. You've described that quite well. You you talked you t you walked us through the steps of kind of what it takes to make that mentorship relationship occur. Any other sort of operational highlights that you like to mention around

Eric Dillon (20:49.952)
Yeah, well I again I think the tools are are quite good today in terms of the ability to kind of capture discussions that have been had, whether that's you know, the AI note-taking. I I've got a religious kind of approach to keeping notes in a cloud folder of all these relationships, and the all the mentoring tools I use are all now inventoried across, whether it's self-awareness tools, communication tools, strategic thinking exercises.

for teams all the like. And so, you know, my kind of organizational system around the mentoring relationships, I think, is quite it's evolved quite a bit over time. And I have this now extensive toolkit of information that I use in all these relationships.

Gordon Sheppard (21:34.468)
You're gonna have to plug yourself and create the Eric AI, I think, with all these tools, right where somebody could plug into your world and be mentored by you by the agent of Eric as a possibility. So that's interesting. So we've got again the the discipl, there's a discipline that you bring to this, obviously, as well, where you are tracking that information over time for your own self-interest, but again, for that capacity thing. There's a book in there somewhere. There's all kinds of future in this, I think, from what I can hear. Strategy, work plan, people, operations. Finally, there's results. Quantitative.

Eric Dillon (21:38.154)
Yeah, wouldn't that be fun?

Gordon Sheppard (22:03.172)
Qualitative results. Quantitatively, you wanna take me through some of the quantitative highlights that you like to point out about this win over the years?

Eric Dillon (22:09.63)
Yeah, well, I I think, you know, if you accept the earlier premise we talked about that the business with the most leadership capacity will be more better positioned and have higher results. So I think I think there's a few pieces. That's one. The second is that organizations with more diverse perspectives and diverse teams, you know, to your point earlier, I think the academic science is clear. Diverse decision making in organizations improves performance, you know, kind of period, end of story. And so if if

If you can become a part of the talent attraction mechanism for the organizations you lead, my view is you have a much better chance at at driving top quartile performance or better for your firm. And so, you know, if if anything, so creating this kind of leadership pyramid or or capacity across our industry, I would suggest has created a reputation that you know firms that I'm in or

that I've led have a reputation for doing these things well and creating upward mobility. I've had lots of mentees who are now CEOs of their own financial services firms.

and people that I've been engaged with. And I again I think when I post a job at the bank I lead today, we get lots of applications from people who either I used to work with or they work with somebody I worked with and have said this would be a great place to grow and learn and develop. And so I think for me that's been the biggest kind of result of doing this. It's not it's not my why, but it's a really nice side benefit of having done this for 25 years.

Gordon Sheppard (23:47.588)
Interesting. I and I just sorry, I I I just mean to go back to the first moment I got to see you on the stage at that event and you were you were on a panel talking about in in a room, you know, for Women United, you were the the fella up on the stage. And then you spoke eloquently again about how you've put into action this gender equaling things that you and you brought you you you helped help me with United Nations statistics you brought in about

Pay equity and these types of things. That was valuable and memorable for me. I wanted to mention Teresa Spinelli, who runs the Italian Center, was also on the show. And she made a comment in this sort of space that I like to bring up around female leadership, which she said, Gord, you know, try being a woman in an Italian family being a leader, leading the business. That's one thing. The other one was she said, you know, Gord, I in my opinion, men won't admit their faults, but women won't admit their strengths.

So is there a unique take, when you're working with a female leader coming up in your area versus a male leader? Is there a distinction that needs to be drawn there that you could point out from your insights?

Eric Dillon (24:54.169)
Yeah, I I've I've read lots of things about those, I would say

comments about the things that hold certain genders back. And and I so it's a it's a bit of a dichotomy, Gordon. One hand, I I I've seen that in people that I've mentored and led. On the other hand, you know, I think it's really easy to get stuck in kind of overgenderalizing some of these problems. You know, because I've worked with some wonderful leaders who were you know strong advocates for themselves, very courageous and

A room and that would maybe fly in the face of some of these articles I read about you know the level of courage you need as a woman leader, you know, in the minority in an industry. So, you know, I'm like I've read them, I'm curious about what they say, but I'm also very self-aware not to you know apply those labels to people and just say, like, what are what are the development things you want to get after and solve? And then let's find forums or environments or experiential opportunities like the ones

ones I shared earlier that actually help solve these things. To me, that's been a much more productive conversation because I just think you can get lost in this, you know, kind of academia about here's all the reasons. You know, none of them might actually apply to the individual mentoring relationship you're you you know have at hand from my perspective.

Gordon Sheppard (26:18.444)
Well it it really is then about leadership for where you're hi talking. Is that fair?

Eric Dillon (26:23.432)
Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's not different than how you lead people. Step one of leading people is understanding, you know, what makes people tick, what do they care about, how do they work, and how to set up the environment around them to get the best out of them and elevate their performance. And I don't think that's any different than the mentoring relationship, which to say if it's a male leader, what are the challenges, opportunities, things that you might want to work on? And as a female leader, what are those? And if the female leader identifies it's, you know, courage and a minority and I want to speak up more, great, let's find opportunities to do that.

that and then let's work on that skill. If I if that's the same for a male person that I mentored 15 or 20 years ago, then you know, same issue. Let's get after solving it. the solutions might be slightly different, but let's get after solving the problem.

Gordon Sheppard (27:09.636)
So meeting the person where they're at in their developmental journey and getting them sort of the tools and relationships, confidence, things that they need to kind of move forward. That's interesting. So we talked about quantitative, qualitatively, after all this time, hundred plus menti relationships or whatever that is, the diverse things that have occurred. How's it feel to get this kind of win or stay it say it out loud?

Eric Dillon (27:31.201)
Yeah, I mean it's it's just when you reached out and asked and you said what's your biggest win, I'll be honest, I had to actually think about it for a minute because I'm like, Well, what would I talk about? and it's just I d this wasn't top of mind for me, but but I also think it's the thing that when you know I bump into other leaders, it's the thing I get asked most about.

And so I just thought it might be it might be interesting. and you know it's funny because when you get paired with people now, I have lots of people reach out on LinkedIn or whatever and they say, hey, you know, or coming out of the Women United event, I'd love to chat more or I'd love to set up a relationship. And I asked them, well, what are the goals?

And I'm I'm to this day a bit shocked at the challenge people have in describing that. So they're desperate for doing development. They're maybe less precise about inventorying their own skills, figuring out those that they might need to get where they want to go, you know, career-wise or you know, success-wise if if they're have their own small business, and less precise about them describing what are the three or four kind of specific skills or competencies I need to build. And so

I'm very again candid and direct with people now about well what is what are your mentoring goals? And if they can't answer that question, I say, well look, you know, you're not you're not quite ready for a conversation if you don't actually know the specific thing you want to solve. Give that some more thought and then you know, reach out if you if you want to have a chat about, you know, the thinking you've done on it because again, I'm just not prepared to weigh into these relationships today into a cloudy kind of mud puddle of development where people don't know what they want to achieve.

Gordon Sheppard (29:10.488)
I think they're hopefully gonna hear this podcast before they reach out to you because they wouldn't if if they sat in a cloudy conversation with you, they wouldn't know what they were missing out on if you know, if they hadn't had those things lined up 'cause we can hear the clarity that you're bringing to this along the way, including what what do we hear? You just mentioned along the way, Well, I mentored a few people. They're on the way to be CEOs. Like we were helping to draw people in.

our world. There's so many good knock-on effects for what you've been able to do here. And funny enough, part of why I do this podcast, and I work with a lot of wonderful leaders like yourself, is and I when I say, tell me about your biggest win, it's not an easy answer for them frequently. They don't, they have to really sort of think back on it. And and again, we get these eloquent conversations like this one here today, where I'm sure you could talk about accolades or prophets or whatever that was, but instead we're talking about something that I think has a real capacity building opportunity for the listeners.

that are gonna hear this along the way. Well, you know, whenever I have great leaders like you here, I always have to say, you if you had a couple sentences to say to that next leader, that next mentee, a few sentences on the way out that you wanna say about to give them a leg up, what would you say?

Eric Dillon (30:17.726)
I would say there's three levels of leading. Lead self.

Then lead others and then lead enterprises. And I would say lots of people, they skip step one, they get their first leadership job, they struggle a bit, figure out, boy, this is really hard leading other pesky humans, and they wonder why they never get the job to lead enterprise. When I talk about building leadership capacity today, and I talk to you know lots of university students, I do lots of work at the U of A School of Business, it's like figure out leading self. Like, and so almost imagine as two people, observe yourself.

and then give yourself advice on things you could do better or differently or strengths you could leverage. And when you're really great at leading self, then you should seek the privilege of leading others. And if you're exceptionally good at that, you'll get the opportunity to lead enterprises. But step one is the most critical of all three of those.

Gordon Sheppard (31:10.222)
I you know, that ties into just what, thousands of years of wisdom from so many different places. I love privilege. You get the privilege to lead others. I think that's been in underneath this entire conversation. Eric, we could talk on and on and on, but I wanna say thank you so much for being on the show.

Eric Dillon (31:26.336)
Yeah, it was g great to be invited and great to meet you that night at Women United, a another organization, you know, kind of lifting leadership capacity. And I appreciate your reaching out with the opportunity to chat more.